Here is the health-care reform agenda of Republican politicians and the right-wingnuts (pundits and conspiracy theorist deadenders) who constitute the aptly-named Republican “base”:
Defeat Obama.
That’s it. It’s just that simple.
No innovative health policy. No creative health proposal. Just a political calculation: Defeat Obama on this big one, and he becomes a lame duck. Then try to make [...]
As widely reported in the news media, the preeminent scholar of African-American studies, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a public intellectual known to a large American audience for his PBS programs on Africa and on African-American genealogy, was arrested at his home in Cambridge, MA, after he allegedly yelled at police who had come [...]
It has been over twenty years since I visited my mother’s ancestral home (her father was a McVey) in Edinburgh, Scotland, but on my next journey there I will visit Broughton Street Bookshop.
Proprietor Brian Rafferty opened the shop because he was unsuccessful in securing career employment in information technology for which he has the necessary [...]
Two used and antiquarian booksellers in Devonshire deserve attention.
In the village of Moretonhampstead, Roger Collicott Books specializes in used books, antiquarian books and manuscripts related to Devon and Cornwall. It is a tidy, well ordered store with an impressive variety of books given the narrowness of its focus. On my recent visit, the owner was busy [...]
Flying back to the States from two weeks in England, I pass the time reading The Daily Telegraph.
Front-page news: Homes with no garden will hit 2.1m next year. (The number was only 1.6 million in 1995.)
Extensive front-page and inside coverage of the war in Afghanistan (including photos and profiles of recent casualties). The war dead [...]
For two decades, the Southern Poverty Law Center has been warning the Pentagon about the presence of military personnal associated with organized hate groups enlisted in the services. Apparently the Pentagon is more concerned about presence of gay and lesbian people in the service, however, since the FBI reports that the neo-Nazi presence has grown.
As [...]
Here in Oxford for a three-day conference (Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease) and to present a paper, “AIDS and the Paradigms of Dissent,” I began my visit by attending a concert in Exeter College chapel performed by Charivari Agréable and ended tonight with another concert by the same. The advantage of visiting a musical place (Oxford) in a [...]
Where is one so weak as in a bookstore? — a theme of a blog posting last year. I’m in Oxford presenting a paper at a global health conference at Mansfield College. Arriving a day early (on purpose) I spent the day wandering the streets and browsing in bookstores. Books and Oxford have been closely associated [...]
