Kevin Rudd’s government is in a celebration mode following Australia’s twin victory in finalizing 20-year-long liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply deals with India and China. A sales and purchase AUD 25 billion agreement between ExxonMobil and Petronet LNG of India signed last week is the “dawning of a new trading partnership.” Under the agreement, Exxon Mobil will supply about 1.5 million...

News that scientists have demonstrated the possibility of fabricating DNA is bound to be fodder for the conspiracy theorists among us. “You can just engineer a crime scene,” said the lead author of the new study. Oh, swell! Ars Technica has previously reported that there’s not a lot of science to the rest of forensic science. Thankfully, their read of this study suggests all is not lost: Fortunately,...

A new NBC News poll reflects that Americans remain skeptical about the Democrats’ health care reform plans. For example, “a plurality” believes that the Democrats’ health plan would worsen the quality of health care; a result that, according to MSNBC.com, “is virtually unchanged from last month’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.” Fair enough. The president and the Democrats...

Republicans in Congress will not support health care reform, even if the public option is dropped. According to Kyl, there is no conceivable set of circumstances under which the GOP will vote for any health care reform package the Democrats come up with:

I had a dream. It took place in the White House. At the dining table was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sipping a glass of California sherry and nibbling on one of those dainty sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid stared at his plate of fried zucchini and glass of iced tea. Vice President Joe Biden was telling stories of his youth in Scranton while talking with his mouth full of...

It has been widely stated that housing prices are at all-time lows and getting worse. The reality is that this is not true. Absolutely, compared to the artificially inflated prices of 2005 – 2007 created by the irrational interest rate behavior of the Federal Reserve, housing prices have dropped precipitously. This has of course hurt those who invested at the time, but those who buy high and then sell...

Two British academics, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, set out to find why health within a population gets progressively worse the further down the social scale you go. What they found instead is stunning in its implications: almost every modern social and environmental problem — ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, teen pregnancy, mental illness, long working hours, big prison...

Family Guy, former Hanna Barbera animator Seth MacFarlane’s not-just-for-kiddies, cutting-edge humor cartoon that virtually rose from a cartoon drawn in his kitchen to television dead meat to DVD sales bonanza to a $1 billion franchise and now one of the TV’s biggest comedy hits, is now campaigning hard to win the Best Comedy Award at the Emmys. Here’s the cartoon’s highly viewed Emmy...

This morning, co-blogger Joe Windish points to a paper that says Americans are resisting health care reform because we’re racist; it’s a legacy from slavery. Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society,...

Alex Blaze says that America is still paying for the sin of slavery and quotes Nathan Glazer from this paper to explain why working class whites are really worried about a big government takeover of healthcare: AGS [Alesina, Glazear and Sacerdote] report, using the World Values Survey, that “opinions and beliefs about the poor differ sharply between the United States and Europe. In Europe the poor are...

One of the books I read this summer was Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford. I don’ line up for every philosophical treatise that comes down the pike, but this one really peaked my interest. It deals with our evolving relationship with “things” and how we view them, as well as the denigrating view taken of youths who choose to go into “the trades” rather than heading...

WE ARE THE ATOMIC CHILDREN AND WE ARE STILL DANCING It began before we went to school… we asked for live ponies, but received inflatable whales made of polypropylene instead. But it was okay. We waited and waited for April so we could dance can-can tournaments in the rain. We wore eerie iridescent swim suits glowing like uranium. Our swimsuits were always too big and showed everything, or they were always...

On a recent trip to New Mexico, I had lots of time to listen to FM and satellite radio (I am burned out on talk radio) and one topic came up: whether the classics of American theater will survive as America heads into the 21st century. My answer: YES. Why? Just surf YouTube — and you’ll find many examples of young people who are hooked on some of the classics, such as this spunky performer doing...

John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri Cam Cardow, The Ottawa Citizen These cartoons are copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

We call her Dr. E., one of the most remarkable women I have had the privilege of knowing almost exclusively through TMV and one delightful hour-long telephone conversation on her nickel. We share numerous ailments brought about by the scavenging effects of diabetes but, if you read her post today, it dwarfs my ailments to a mere pittance. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in simple terms argues for insurance carriers...

On Memeorandum right now, there is an avalanche of commentary about the White House’s signaling that it’s ready to cave on the public option. Because there is so much progblog analysis, and because there are so many distinct issues involved with this legislation, I’ve decided to organize the progblog analysis by the talking points.

ABC News announced today: “Indicted Former Republican Congressman Cast on ‘Dancing With the Stars,’” and, referring to Tom DeLay, asks, “Does He Know the ‘Perp Walk?” ABC News continues: To the amazement of many in Washington, Tom DeLay, the former Republican Congressional leader who became a poster boy for cronyism and ethical lapses, was named one of the 16 celebrity contestants today...

In the past, we literally had to sell our house to pay a huge hospital bill. The hospital sent the bloodhounds. My husband had just lost his job. I was near death. Afterward, anything related to that crisis was big red lettered ‘pre-existing condition,” by any and every insurer we’d ever had… and although undertaking scrupulous selfcare (dont drink dont smoke, dont do illegal drugs, dont...

I feel connected with Michael Corleone in Godfather III when he was on the brink of ridding himself from Mafia past, they pull him right back. Take today’s news. Please. Item: One of candidate Barack Obama’s agent of change messages was to improve the professionalism of our diplomatic corps. So far, 38 of his first 65 ambassadorial appointments have been political. Among them, Charles H. Rivkin,...

President Obama may or may not be a lame-duck after the 2010 Midterm elections and be swept from office in 2012, but such prognostications are really a waste of time because greater forces will dictate what happens to the U.S. both politically and economically. The reasons behind his moving so fast on so many fronts may be that he senses the ephemeral nature of political power in a deeply divided country with...