Tag Archives: Barack Obama

No Foolin’

4/1/2010 – 11:58 am

Happy April Fool’s Day. This is not a joke. No one seems quite sure why the first of April is called “April Fool’s Day.” The first reference to the day is in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales.” In the story, a fox and rooster trick each other in turn. So […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Energy, Nuclear Energy, Oceans, Oil | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Oh No, Not Again

3/18/2010 – 2:37 pm

One of the unpalatable things about being an environmentalist (there are others) is that no victory ever stays won. An ancient tree cut down stays cut; a species driven to extinction is gone for good. The tree saved, however, has been saved for a day only. A species preserved is preserved for now and the […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Oceans | Also tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Phorced to be Phony

3/4/2010 – 10:41 am

“You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save in college.’’ It’s not me saying that, it was Barack Obama, last month. Good advice, but as is often the case when you’re president, it landed him in hot water, so two weeks ago he went out of his way to […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Stockholm Syndrome in Copenhagen

12/17/2009 – 8:32 am

It’s cold in Vermont. Our long autumn has given way to the winter weather that always beats the calendar winter by a few weeks here. Frank Capra snowflakes fall past my window as I type. On Saturday evening, in the company of a 14-year-old girl, I walked to a park in the south end of […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Also tagged , , , | Comments (0)

The Audacity

12/10/2009 – 10:14 am

The need to address the co-option of Newsweek and the Washington Post was so strong last week that I left hanging President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today, Mr. Obama spent a good portion of his speech addressing war in general and the Afghan war specifically. So, […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary, Iraq Invasion | Also tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

The Edge of History

11/12/2009 – 9:31 am

I hate anniversary journalism, but the remembrances of the fall of the Berlin Wall this week got me thinking. I was in Chicago that week in 1989, watching the news in a hotel room as I rested my feet, which ached from walking all over town in new shoes. Never visit Chicago if you’re wearing […]

By floegel | Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary, Economy | Also tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Condemned to Repeat It

9/3/2009 – 9:24 am

The actual quote from George Santayana is, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (Those who cannot remember the quote are condemned to misquote.) Today’s New York Times has a story about Ted Kennedy’s posthumous memoir, in which he says President John Kennedy’s “antenna” was up over the misbegotten situation in […]

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