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The question, “If I were President I’d…” implies that if you swap out one leader, put in another, then all will be well with America — as though our leaders are the cause of all ailments.

That must be why we’ve created a tradition of rampant attacks on our politicians. Are they too conservative for you? Too liberal? Too religious? Too atheist? Too gay? Too anti-gay? Too rich? Too dumb? Too smart? Too ethnic? Too philanderous? Curious behavior, given that we elect 88% of Congress every two years.

A second tradition-in-progress is the expectation that everyone else in our culturally pluralistic land should hold exactly your own outlook, on all issues.

When you’re scientifically literate, the world looks different to you. It’s a particular way of questioning what you see and hear. When empowered by this state of mind, objective realities matter. These are the truths of the world that exist outside of whatever your belief system tells you.

One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, and host of NOVAScienceNOW

Recently deployed to participate in counterinsurgency operations outside of Kabul, 19-year-old Pvt. Robert Welsh told reporters Monday that for as long as he can remember, he has wanted to serve his country by fighting in Afghanistan.

"My most vivid childhood memories are of seeing the war on TV and imagining one day I'd be able to grow up and come over here to fight for my country," said Welsh, who has followed the U.S. struggle against the Taliban for more than half his life and once spent recesses at school make-believing he and his fellow third-graders were fighting the war on terror.

"I honestly never thought I'd get the chance to participate all these years later, but here I am." Welsh went on to say that while he doesn't want to get his hopes up, he remains cautiously optimistic that his own children will one day follow in his footsteps by fighting in Afghanistan.

The Obama administration's pattern of targeted killings in the war on terror establishes an important conceptual point. It is now clear beyond dispute that the United States, on a bipartisan basis, fully embraces the paradigm that the threat of international terrorism is a matter of war, not a matter of law enforcement. And rightly so.

That Obama presided over the killing of an American citizen like Anwar al-Awlaki marks a major advance in solidifying and legitimising the war paradigm. [Awlaki's] terrorist sandals may momentarily seem hard to fill, but as history demonstrates, not impossibly so. Lenin's death did not bring the end of Bolshevism; it brought Stalin.

Rahatalousjärjestelmässä taloudelliset heilahtelut johtuvat kokonaiskysynnässä tapahtuvista muutoksista. Jos rahamääräiset transaktiot (kokonaiskysyntä) taloudessa vähentyvät, myös tuotanto supistuu. Mitä enemmän rahamääräisiä velkasuhteita taloudessa kulloisenakin hetkenä on, sitä suurempi on yleensä myös transaktioiden määrä. Jos velan määrä taloudessa kasvaa, kasvaa samalla myös kokonaiskysyntä. Jos velan määrä vähenee, myös kokonaiskysyntä vähenee.

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There has not been any organized, explicitly class-based violence in the United States for generations, so what, exactly, does “class warfare” really mean? Is it just an empty political catch-phrase? [...] I recently argued that real class warfare is when those who have already achieved a good deal of prosperity pull the ladder up behind them by attacking the very things that once allowed working people to move up and join the ranks of the middle class.

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Numerous prominent politicians from both major political parties in the United States have not only been enthusiastically promoting and advocating on behalf of a designated terrorist organization, the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK/MKO/PMOI), but they have been receiving substantial amounts of cash from that terrorist group as they do so. There is only one list of "designated terrorist organizations" under the law, and MEK is every bit as much on that list as Kashimiri Lashkar-e-Taiba or Al-Qaeda are. Yet you will never, ever see those politicians being indicted by Obama's Department of Justice for their far more extensive -- and paid -- involvement with MEK.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/09/04/speech/

The era of the modern sex scandal began in 1988 with Gary Hart. Back then it was de rigueur for the press to maintain that the sex scandal of the moment was not really "about" sex. What it was "about" was lying, which in turn meant that it was "about" something more important than sex, i.e., "character." The problem is that lying is an inherent part of adultery and of any embarrassing sexual activity. The fact that a person has lied about sex tells you nothing about that person’s general propensity to lie. Unlike most citizens, prominent politicians make speeches by the hundred, give media interviews constantly, and have extensively documented public records. If the politician is a habitual or characterological liar, the public record will show it, and the lying-about-sex is redundant. If the politician is not a habitual or characterological liar, his lying-about-sex is misleading -- is itself a lie, in a way.

Sex scandals are an increasingly prominent, increasingly frequent, and increasingly varied part of American political life. They come in all flavors and orientations. Weinergate breaks new ground: it is the first entirely virtual political sex scandal, the first to have been conducted entirely online. In other ways, though, it is not so new. It confirms a pet theory of mine: the Clinton Rule, which states that when a married politician appears before cameras and microphones and starts babbling absurd lies about some sexual something, the person he is really trying to lie to is his spouse. The lies that get told to the public and the press are side effects. After Anthony Weiner’s press conference, there was near-unanimous agreement among the cable talkers that his political career is finished. I doubt that. I think he will be around for quite a while. Weiner may yet be Mayor of New York one day. Just not next time.

http://rdd.me/lmjeoqyx

The Obama administration is unable to show that the billions of dollars spent in the war on drugs have significantly stemmed the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States, according to two government reports and outside experts. "We are wasting tax dollars and throwing money at a problem without even knowing what we are getting in return," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who chairs the Senate subcommittee that wrote one of the reports. "I think we have wasted our money hugely," agreed Bruce Bagley, who studies US counter-narcotics efforts and chairs international studies at the University of Miami. "The effort has had corrosive effects on every country it has touched."

The reports criticize the government's growing use of contractors, which were paid more than USD 3 billion to train local prosecutors and police, help eradicate fields of coca, operate surveillance equipment, and otherwise battle the widening drug trade in Latin America. The majority of US counter-narcotics contracts are awarded to five companies: DynCorp, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, ITT, and ARINC. DynCorp received the largest total, USD 1.1 billion. Among other jobs, the US contractors train local police and investigators, provide logistical support to intelligence collection centers, and fly airplanes and helicopters that spray herbicides to eradicate coca crops grown to produce cocaine.