Posts tagged ‘politics’
Afghanistan, April 2013
May 2nd, 2013 at 6:54 pm by Dr. Drang
Yes, I’m back with this post again. And we’re still getting our young people killed for no reason.
Afghanistan, March 2013
April 12th, 2013 at 9:53 pm by Dr. Drang
As a young man, our new Secretary of State became famous as a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Forty-two years ago this month, he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and said this: Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has…
Afghanistan, February 2013
March 19th, 2013 at 10:30 pm by Dr. Drang
I was busy at work at the beginning of the month, when I normally do this post, and when I came up for air I forgot to go back and fill in. I was going to just wait until the start of next month, but then I realized there was an important anniversary this month,…
Afghanistan, January 2013
February 11th, 2013 at 7:09 pm by Dr. Drang
January was the best month since 2008. It pains me to say I’m happy to see the casualty rate back to where it was in the Bush administration, but there it is. I hope to live long enough to see a Democratic president who isn’t afraid of looking “soft.” Obama handled Libya well, but trying…
Furlongs per fortnight
January 4th, 2013 at 10:01 pm by Dr. Drang
Last night, I ran across this stupid petition at the White House’s We the People site: The United States is one of the few countries left in the world who still have not converted to using the Metric System as a standardized system of measurement. Instead of going along with what the rest of the…
Afghanistan, December 2012
January 2nd, 2013 at 7:45 pm by Dr. Drang
A significant drop in the casualty rate over the past few months allowed 2012 to end with the US military death total in Afghanistan still under 2,200, something I wouldn’t have expected back in the summer. Coincidentally, 2,200 is also number of coalition military deaths since the start of 2009—over twice the number of deaths…
Sans taste
December 20th, 2012 at 12:49 am by Dr. Drang
Today I noticed, with some regret, that my post on the lights from North Dakota’s oil shale fields was linked to from a blog on the American Enterprise Institute’s site. In case you don’t follow politics, the AEI is the premiere right-wing think tank, set up to provide a veneer of scholarship to policies born…
Reasonably foreseeable misuse
December 16th, 2012 at 8:35 pm by Dr. Drang
Whenever a mass shooting occurs, I wonder how gun manufacturers and importers have managed stay clear of our civil court system. And whether they’ll continue to do so. Now, I realize that gun manufacturers do get sued when their products are suspected of failing—when a gun misfires or its barrel explodes, for example. But those…
Afghanistan, November 2012
December 5th, 2012 at 7:47 pm by Dr. Drang
US and coalition military deaths for November were back down to levels last seen in the spring of 2009—before the surge that should never have been.
Nate, Karl, and Orca
November 25th, 2012 at 11:16 pm by Dr. Drang
In the weeks since the election, three separate but related stories have emerged. Unless you work hard to keep your life politics-free, you’ve seen at least one version of each. Nate The first story is that the polls were basically right, and that predictions based on perceived momentum, gut feelings, and the horse sense of…


