Liberal Talk Radio

[cue Don LaFontaine]In a world where turbaned madmen ACTUALLY WANT TO KILL YOU … [/Don LaFontaine]
There’s something charming about the Russian’s insistence on pretending they’re still a world power.
Last night, an anonymous American general broke some possibly alarming news: Over the weekend, a Russian bomber flew directly over an American aircraft carrier in the Pacific [...]

Talking about Charlie Wilson’s War and America’s involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s, Will writes:
Ultimately, I have to disagree with both parties, and with both non-interventionist Democrats and neo-conservative Republicans. America’s involvement in the world should be based on America’s national interest. All other considerations are less important. Was the covert war propagated by [...]

Good interview in Today’s NYT:
“If, as president, I travel to a poor country to talk to leaders there, they will know I have a grandmother in a small village in Africa without running water, devastated by malaria and AIDS,” he said. “What that allows me to do is talk honestly not only about our [...]

Q: What were voters in Venezuela able to do yesterday that U.S. voters couldn’t muster the gumption to do in 2004?
A: Throw the bums out!
[Bruno and I, who noted in our most recent podcast that "Venezuela looks set to slide into socialist despotism" improve our perfect track record calling elections this year to 0 fer [...]

How did Malawi end its chronic food shortage issues? Funny you should ask:
Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States [...]

Smart words from our SecDef:
“We are miserable at communicating to the rest of the world what we are about as a society and a culture, about freedom and democracy, about our policies and our goals,” he said. “It is just plain embarrassing that Al Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the Internet [...]

The Norwegian diaspora in the upper Midwest loses a point of pride when Norway closes its consulate in Minneapolis.
But give it to the Norwegians themselves for an underwhelming, if charming, show of class:
Wegger Christian Strommen, the recently appointed Norwegian ambassador, said no one was abandoning the Midwest.
“We’re not going to leave,” Mr. Strommen said in [...]

It’s like pre-grunge America circa 1987, except with much higher stakes:
Marxists once referred to religion as the opium of the people, but in today’s China it is the music promoted on state-monopolized radio that increasingly claims that role. China’s leader, Hu Jintao, has talked since he assumed power five years ago about “building a harmonious [...]

Mongolia is set to receive $285 million in U.S. aid via the Millenium Challenge account, which may well be the only good idea to come out of 8 years of the Bush Administration. The program gives money to countries who promise to enact pro-democracy reforms.
It is difficult, however, to avoid snarkiness after [...]

sigh
A Vatican official suspended after being caught on hidden camera making advances to a young man says he is not gay and was only pretending to be gay as part of his work.
In an interview published Sunday, Monsignor Tommaso Stenico told La Repubblica daily he frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men [...]