Five at 8 – 10/28/09: Congressional comics
Go Deeper.
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One can almost hear the accumulated anguish of a million lost souls. The Timberwolves open their season tonight.
1)
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Last-minute Halloween costume ideas, anyone? This comic strip from Salon has at least one. I'm also pretty sure it's the first time Eddie Vedder and Michele Bachmann have been mentioned in the same space. (h/t: Ken Paulman)
2) Some people -- and very few, mind you -- can actually make you at least think about rooting for the Yankees when they start the World Series this evening. Almost.
3) Stories to reconsider. Like this outstanding story yesterday from MPR's Rupa Shenoy. "New research at the University of Minnesota shows many of the refugees coming to the Twin Cities aren't getting the mental health services they need, and university researchers are searching for a way to solve that problem just as a new group of refugees arrives," she writes. Of course, a lot of the people who were born here aren't getting the services they need, either.
And next year, with the unallotment of health care for the poor, a lot fewer are going to get the services they need. But, other than a few gubernatorial candidates and activists, there hasn't been much of a clamor to right the situation. Does that tell us anything about ourselves? If they had, say, cancer or war injuries, would things be different? Discuss.
4) A great question in this morning's New York Times about President Obama's idea to send $250 to Social Security recipients. Sure the answers to the fairly rhetorical question are skewed, but still... Read the story and then vote. Discuss below.
5) The Taliban is -- as I write this -- engaged in an assault on Kabul, bombs have gone off in Pakistan, and Sen. John McCain is on CBS complaining that we we're delaying sending more troops to Afghanistan.
And The Atlantic's James Fallows is suggesting people take a deep breath and consider the resignation of Matthew Hoh from the Foreign Service:
The United States entered Afghanistan -- properly and with every moral and practical justification -- to disrupt, punish, and kill groups that had planned the 9/11 attacks. It is now in a mess in Afghanistan largely because of the crucial misjudgment nearly eight years ago to shift effort and attention to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Not everything in foreign affairs can be explained by logic. But as Hoh argues, if we're serious in thinking we can now eliminate terrorist threats with our troops in Afghanistan, then logically we must also send them to Pakistan and beyond. And if we're not serious, then how can we keep them there?
Bonus: How to get a job.
