This is one of the most unpopular headlines an American blogger can write, a guaranteed hit-suppressor.  But it is true nevertheless, as President Obama is now finding out.The immediate problem is Afghanistan; the President wants 10,000 troops from our allies to match the 30,000 the President is putting in.  Britain already has 9,000 and has […]

When asked this morning by Politico to assess Obama’s jobs summit, here’s what I said:The group at the White House knows a lot more than me about this jobs stuff so I hope they figure something out.However, this could be a lot harder than it looks.First, I don’t think economic stimulus works as well as […]

If the news reports are to be believed, Tiger Woods has feet of clay. The eminently likable and admirable golf wonder says he has let his family down in unspecified ways.Here at Mead GHQ there is no joy in this news and no desire to poke around into the private life of Mr. Woods or […]

I am probably the only person in the United States who actually likes the fact that President Obama set an 18 month timetable for the beginning of a drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan in his speech on Tuesday night. Republicans have been attacking it because they say that it sends a signal of weak […]

This just in from Charles Edel, a longtime Team Mead associate now a Ph.D. candidate at Yale.It’s the anniversary of the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, one of the big moments in the history of American foreign policy, and since Charlie has been studying this history very closely of late, I thought it would make […]

It is 150 years to the day since John Brown was hanged, and more Africans are being enslaved today than at the height of the infamous Atlantic slave trade.This at least is the conclusion that can be drawn from United Nations studies in ‘human trafficking’, as the slave trade is now being called.  Millions of […]

“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved.  If I left the woman I really loved — the Great Society — in order to get involved in that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home.  All […]

While I was on my travels, churches all over the world started a new Christian Year with the season of Advent: the Coming.In many churches the vestments and altar clothes shifted from green to purple.  Wreaths popped up here and there with four candles; on each of the four Sundays in Advent another candle will […]

This health care article by Robert Samuelson is something every young person in America should read.  They won’t of course; young people don’t pay serious attention to politics, and that is one of the reasons that American social policy is increasingly rigged against them.  One of Samuelson’s key points is that the House bill “mandates […]

While flying back from the Aspen conference in Italy I came down with my second cold in a month.  In honor of that, and of this generally dark season, I offer another occasional poem, this one by Ezra Pound. “Ancient Music” Winter is icumen in, Lhude sing Goddamm, Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how […]