Category: Government Studies
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Ground Control to Chandrayaan
To India’s space scientists today: Keep your eyes toward the heavens… Your efforts these last eight years, culminating in a profound silence from Lunar Lander Vikram moments before touchdown, share a vast and spirited company. Brave adventurers have gone before you and not returned. Their sacrifices line our memories. Their endeavors fire our imagination. Your vision gives…
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Again
While we sit idly by No longer dumbfounded Just dumb Numb Gunman kills 7 in a rampage that started with a West Texas traffic stop
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Sold Out at In-N-Out
Must applaud the good fortune visited upon author Ted Gup this week in the form of free advertising for his former best-seller The Book of Honor: The Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives. Published almost two decades ago, Gup’s book found renewed celebrity when it appeared on the front page of New York’s gift to…
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Fly America, Call the Philippines (pt II)
When your official government itinerary on U.S.-flag contract carrier United Airlines is thrown into disarray because of concerns about flying over Iranian air space… …and the United agents can’t confirm the final leg of your trip (which includes traveling on Air Canada, Germany’s Lufthansa, and Air India) for 24 hours… …so that after two hours on…
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Jon Voight’s IOU
Well, gee, is anyone surprised by Jon Voight’s absurd words of support addressed to the people of the Republican Party? Is anyone surprised to see the actor who portrayed Milo Minderbinder, Joseph Heller’s brilliant rendering of a profiteering con artist in Catch-22, praise the most notorious and corrupt corporate scoundrel America has ever produced? Sure,…
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Bless Their (little) Hearts
It would be easy to give in to rage over this image in the NRA’s official organ, The American Rifleman. It would be natural and normal to descend into name-calling against them. But that’s exactly what the NRA wants, isn’t it? Emotional contagion. Rather than express my disgust at this callous provocation to violence, I’ll…
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Speaking of Oscar
Previously blogged: Oscar KeyE is Dead. Long Live Oscar Keye. Rather than dwell on my dislike for all things Oscar Awards, trying to unravel the reasons for my disdain, I’ll revisit one thing I do love about Oscar: his utility as an early alter-ego. ‘Oscar Keye is dead and I am free,’ I wrote in…
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Billionaires vs. 1/3 of 1%
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross dismissed the 800,000 federal workers threatened with the loss of a second paycheck this week, saying they represented a paltry “one third of a percent” of the U.S. GDP. Hmmm…. Recent studies show there are about 540 billionaires — people like Ross — in the United States. As a nation of 325…
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Darth Vader’s Henchmen…
Darth Vader’s taskmaster Admiral Piett, promoted under choking duress during the Star Wars Trilogy, bears an uncanny resemblance to a peculiar and unlikeable figure serving the current administration. See if you can tell them apart. That’s Piett in the Nazi-looking uniform. Miller, rhetoric notwithstanding, dresses a different part. But let’s go to the tapes. Here…
Ben East Books 