How worried are Japanese about the rise of China? Hiroshi Kawamoto form Japan’s Isen Shimbun, after closely examining what he considers the calamitous decade of U.S. behavior since 9-11, warns that closer ties to America is the only strategy that has any hope of preserving Japanese prosperity. For Japan’s Isen Shimbun, Hiroshi Kawamoto writes in part: Trying to return to the United States of the...

Was that a long ago-echo in my ears? The other day I caught video of a big protest with demonstrators shouting, “The whole world is watching!” as police approached. Wasn’t that chant from 1968 when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley unleashed his police on anti-war demonstrators at the ill-fated Democratic convention? In the same video, some chanted “Un pueblo unido jamas sera vencido!” a worldwide protesters’...

Love her or hate her, Maureen Dowd certainly knows how to put things into political/partisan perspective—take your pick. Her eagerly anticipated post-mortem of Chris Christie’s equally eagerly awaited “I have told you before, I am telling you now, ‘the answer was never anything but no’ announcement” will not disappoint fans or foes. From the opening paragraph of her “Man in the [Big] Mirror”...

Is the state of the world really as dire as world leaders who recently spoke at the U.N. General Assembly would lead us to believe? Have we all gotten carried away with gloom and doom? For Argentina’s Diario Decuyo, columnist Andrés Oppenheimer cites a recent report that asserts things are on the upswing almost everywhere, from life expectancy to education levels to the number of wars. For the Diario...

Why do public school teachers have such a bad reputation in the US and get little pay? That’s one of the things I don’t get. It’s quite different over here. The job is well paid and respected by most folks. As a country with little natural resources, Germany depends on innovation and a smart work force. Education is good for democracy, happiness etc. The children are our future, yade, yade. The...

A majority now see Barack Obama as a one-term president and he calls himself the “underdog,” but social networks may be changing the political landscape for 2012 in a way that the new medium of television did during the “youthquake” of the 1960s. What started as a small disorganized rally on Wall Street three weeks ago is spreading to Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and elsewhere into a movement. “With...

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Now that Chris Christie—potential savior of the Republican primaries—is expected to announce in a couple of hours his decision not to seek the presidency, Republicans are left with a slate of candidates they still wish they could improve upon. Among them, Obamacare “prototypist” Mitt Romney; Rick Perry and his Pet Rock; Congressional witch hunt proponent Michele Bachmann; homophobe Rick...

If you’re of a certain age you might remember a time when the U.S. was preeminent among wealthy nation s in a number of respects,including providing educational opportunities for all of its citizens regardless of their ability to pay. The U.S. has already fallen from the top in other respects. It now incarcerates more people on a per capita basis than any country other than China. It has the highest...

When it comes to financial collapse documentaries, the public canon has one well-deserving Oscar Winner, “Inside Job”, and one straight to HBO exercise in ass kissing and name dropping which shall remain nameless. Ironically, just like during the Arab Spring, it is that “dubious” Al Jazeera that shows US media how coverage of various matters, either geopolitical or financial, is done. ~Tyler...

The new millennium has spawned a sibling to the old adage that “You Can’t Fight City Hall” — “You Can’t Fight Wall Street” — a reflection of the hopelessness most of us feel about reforming let alone fighting back against the financial institutions that are a de facto shadow government that is responsible for the ongoing economic downturn. And so I have looked...

As the GOP plods through its revival of last century’s Absurdist masterpiece, “Waiting for Godot,” (Christie, Palin, whoever), there are reminders that Americans have an actual president trying to govern in the real world. In his Weekly Address, Barack Obama says, “It’s been almost three weeks since I sent the American Jobs Act to Congress–three weeks since I sent them a bill that would put people...

Is America’s ‘No Tolerance’ approach to battling crime something for Europe and the rest of the world to emulate? According to Die Zeit columnist Dr. Eva Schweitzer, this may seem counter-intuitive and disturbing to European sensibilities, but cracking down on grand and petty crimes committed primarily by ethnic minorities is the very ‘glue’ that hold America’s multicultural...

WASHINGTON — Why hasn’t there been a tea party on the left? And can President Obama and the American left develop a functional relationship? That those two questions are not asked very often is a sign of how much of the nation’s political energy has been monopolized by the right from the beginning of Obama’s term. This has skewed media coverage of almost every issue, created the...

It’s that time of year again when folks have to try to figure out their health insurance plans for next year. I tell you, the Red Queen made more sense.

I think there is a place for the government to support solar power but supporting supply, as in the case of Solyndra. is not the way to do it.  The government should be encouraging demand.  The most recent Energy Department loan guarantees are a step in the right direction. DOE said Friday it finalized a $1.24 billion loan guarantee to SunPower Corp. to help finance construction of a California photovoltaic...

He is good at selling things, and now Herman Cain is outdoing his Burger King and Godfather Pizza triumphs by getting hungry GOP voters to order him up for the White House. From the bottom of the pack, Cain has surged to third in the national Fox poll at 17 percent, two points behind Rick Perry, after surprisingly eating the Texas governor’s lunch in a Florida straw poll this week. The political noise is all...

Is the United States inching back bit by bit to the 1960s, where demonstrations and counter demonstrations were all the rage (literally and figuratively)? It could be. First came the conservative Tea Party movement with the angry town hall meetings and demonstrations of summer-fall 2010, which impacted the 2010 elections. Now come signs that the country’s left is toying with demonstrations that set up...

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