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If All You Ask Is a Hammer…

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by Eric Martin One of the maladies plaguing US foreign policy creation is the over-reliance on, and undue deference shown to, the military when shaping that policy.  A simple glance at the respective budgets of the Departments of Defense and State is, at least, an indication of the clout wielded by each (not a perfect apples to apples … Read more

Corporate Ennui

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by Eric Martin Why tax cuts for businesses is particularly ill-suited for stimulating the economy as it stands: For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash, too nervous to spend. Now they're starting to deploy some of that money – not to hire workers or build factories, but to prop … Read more

Robber Baron Redux: Financial Reform Edition

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by Eric Martin You get what you pay for: A full 90 members of Congress who voted to bailout Wall Street in 2008 failed to support financial reform reining in the banks that drove our economy off a cliff. But when you examine campaign contribution data, it's really no surprise that these particular lawmakers voted … Read more

I Change Shapes Just to Hide in this Place

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by Eric Martin Spencer Ackerman has been doing yeoman's work uncovering the ways by which Blackwater – despite its horrific record of law-breaking and wrongdoing – is continuing to secure significant portions of multi-billion dollar government contracts (see also): Never mind the dead civilians. Forget about the stolen guns. Get over the murder arrests, the … Read more

Robber Baron Redux: Health Care Reform Edition

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by Eric Martin Apparently, the health insurance industry has its knives out in anticipation of gutting the Affordable Care Act, and you'll never guess which Party it intends to anoint as butchers by proxy: The insurance industry, attracted by the prospect of millions of new customers as a result of the coverage mandate, initially backed … Read more

Robber Baron Redux

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by Eric Martin Apparently, Fox News' parent Corp. wasn't done giving to Republican Party causes/organizations: Ben Smith reports that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, after having donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association, has also donated to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a pro-Republican business lobby. Yeah, Obama sure was out of bounds to suggest … Read more

Ground Infinity

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by Eric Martin I'm pretty sure that opposition to this community center is out of sensitivity to the non-Mulism victims of 9/11: My God is better than your God. That's the dispute at the heart of recent hearings in a lawsuit aimed at derailing the new Islamic Center of Murfreesboro. What started as a zoning issue has … Read more

Of Stink Bugs and Men

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.. and Africa.

by Doctor Science

Like many people in the mid-Atlantic US, I’ve been noticing a lot of stink bugs this summer. I figured there was some kind of weather-related stink bug boom until a story about them popped up on the NY Times. It turns out that these are actually new and different stink bugs, a recent accidental arrival from China. Most species that are introduced to a new continent don’t make it, but when they do they can run wild, run free! and be extremely destructive away from their home-grown predators and parasites. Researchers are looking into introducing stink-bug-specialist parasitic wasps to control them, but that will take several years — and it looks as though the wasps are killed by agricultural insecticides to which stink bugs are naturally resistant. Oops.

But what does this have to do with Africa?

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