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| http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/opinion/11dowd.html Even when the catastrophe is over, the pain too often persists. For female breast-cancer survivors, that pain has seems to be all too literal. A Danish study shows that many survivors, especially those under the age of forty, feel pain years after radiation treatment and surgery to treat the cancer. Not that doctors can do much about that at the moment other than try to pay more attention to it and hope for the best. The banking regulators must feel similarly impotent against the entrenched predators like Goldman Sachs. No matter what havoc they wreak on the world economy, they seem to get away with it while wearing a self-assured smile and telling themselves they're "doing God's work." Or maybe that was just the CEO of Sachs. After the reckless endeavors his company has embarked upon, nearly tearing asunder the entire fabric of the world economy on credit-default swaps and other manufactured evils and requiring the timely intervention of public funds in order to survive, yes, after all that, CEO Blankfein had the audacity to suggest he had done it all in God's name. Unless Blankfein has an acute awareness of a part in impending armageddon, that seems like a bold and unsubstantiated claim. Somehow, though, he remains employed, well-paid, and heretofore undisturbed by any slander suits, though how long God will wait on the sidelines is hard to say. Long after the recent crisis has been averted, a surefire perpetrator of the next one smiles as if God shines down on him; like so many survivors who continue to feel pain long afterward, there seems little to do other than note it and move on. It's not always a pain in the neck, per se, but it's usually not too far. Survivors, troopers that they are, carry on.
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| http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g7ffRdswXTlfgaQS0FCOZmrvbwcAD9BT1TAG4 Even when trying to rectify a wrong, you always stand the chance of making the mistake look worse. Bandeirante University in Brazil probably feels that way after kicking out then reinstating Geisy Arruda. She had been kicked out ostensibly for an uproar they allege she intended to stir with a short dress she wore to class. After some media attention for the twenty-year-old, though, the school ended up allowing her to return to class if she so chose, though they claimed they were still right to kick her out in the first place. Then why the 180-degree turn? It's not unlike the appearance given to Sen. Dodd in his endeavor to strip the Federal Reserve of much of its authority. Since the collapse of the financial system, many agree that the Federal Reserve should have had more authority, or at least wielded the authority it had more effectively. Realistically, Sen. Dodd does intend to provide a vehicle for that type of oversight, just with an all-new regulatory agency (or three). On the way there, though, he wants to draw down the Fed, which has saliently demonstrated its lack of efficacy in preventing catastrophe. The new agencies could have just as little effect as the Fed had for the targeted responsibilities, but without the decades of history that support the Fed at least demonstrating a modicum of occasional success; for now, and until the new agencies prove otherwise, it will seem like Sen. Dodd mainly succeeded in throwing out the only regulatory "game" in town, crooked as it may have been. By attempting to prevent future disaster, will Sen. Dodd have much success in preventing bureaucratic issues while creating new ones? No way to know yet. Knowing the faithful opposition, though, he had better prepare a more convincing argument than Bandeirante University. Arruda fought hard, but didn't even show up to class again, and the banks (and their well-supported friends in Washington) will put up an even bigger fight for much less in return.
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| http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/asia/11korea.html?_r=1 With the ongoing battles in Afghanistan, people can sometimes find it difficult to ever imagine an end, but it's not like it would be the first drawn-out war that could have an abrupt, successful end. Twenty years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the Cold War, and representatives from Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the US recently made a symbolic trip together across the Brandenburg Gate. Decades of anxiety over an impending date of mutually assured destruction gave way with the stones that fell, and Germany was whole again. Too bad that Korea still cannot say the same. North Korean boats recently made aggressive maneuvers in an area considered part of South Korea. The South Korean navy sent out warning broadcasts and shots, and when the North Koreans returned with fire of their own, they were met with direct attacks before fleeing back to North Korea. Part of the issue is that North Korea refuses to concede the area as that of South Korea, and that stems from the fact that the two nations are still technically at war. Almost sixty years after the Korean War began, their battles rage on in a very literal sense. Eights years in Afghanistan is bad enough; the war in Korea has spanned generations, and in the modern era of instantaneous media, that's difficult to fathom. Germany had a wall to tear down. Maybe the Koreans should build one of their own so Obama can give a speech and wave a finger at it to make it disappear. Even his detractors know he's good at those. And if that works, then an Afghanistan strategy shouldn't be hard to develop from there.
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| http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/11/08/2009-11-08_top_army_official_fears_retaliation_on_muslim_soldiers_in_wake_of_ft_hood_massac.html Having an eye for what's to come can help you in a lot of ways, but there are so many times when anticipating the unknown goes awry. Expecting that Hurricane Ida will diminish oil output in the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies have forced the price of oil to go up from its one-week low. It may not be as big of a spike as that experienced a couple of summers ago, but it still hurts to pay more for a necessary commodity when nothing has yet impeded its production. The expectation is enough to make it an issue. Similarly, Sen. Joe Lieberman has done a wonderful job of sensationalizing the Fort Hood massacre by referring to it as "a terrorist act" of "an Islamist extremist" before any worthwhile investigation into the issue has substantiated said claims. In fact, while the US Army typically plays things pretty conservatively, even the chief of staff, George Casey, has admonished Sen. Lieberman for his heretofore unwarranted allegations that could have a terrible backlash against Muslims within the Army (and beyond). Then again, Lieberman has long appeared to hold a grudge against sensibility, caucusing with the Democrats though he campaigned against the current president and as ready as anyone to support the war in Iraq even after the motivation for going there was revealed to be highly suspect at best. Sen. Lieberman has never required a balanced explanation or logic to motivate him; rather, he takes direction on his instincts, which all too often seem contrary to his former party, especially when it means instigating some armed conflict. Circumventing a fair investigation won't help anyone with Fort Hood any more than unnecessarily raising oil prices. But Lieberman need not worry about oil, or the consequences of trying to attain it. That's what Iraq was for, right?
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| http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-healthcare-house8-2009nov08,0,1723384.story People with pets can cover the full spectrum of affection, but cat people earn a special level of disdain. For whatever reason, people generally just prefer dogs. Well, now that a cat in Iowa has caught the H1N1 flu from its owner, establishing that such a transference is even possible, cats are bound to get an even worse reputation. It's not that H1N1 is necessarily a particularly nefarious disease, even if it comes from a cat, but it just has a lot of people concerned for their health. The ongoing health-care debate has done little to assuage those fears, but now that the House has passed legislation toward health-care reform to hand to the Senate, maybe help is on the way. The bill appears to include things like an insurance exchange, a mandate for everyone to have insurance, more explicit language prohibiting a public option from funding abortion, and...wait, a public option? Thus far, that appears to be the case. Whether such a thing could survive the Senate remains to be seen. The more liberal-stacked House could only barely pass the bill, so a Senate fight is imminent. Concessions have already been made, though, such as that language preventing public money going specifically toward abortions, a measure supporting something Pres. Obama specifically stated on a national stage about what he wanted, despite what far-left liberals may have preferred. Perhaps the public option can make it through and earn at least one GOP vote in the Senate as in the House; someone must simply make the issue real to a GOP member to earn her or his vote. That shouldn't be impossible, though. One of them has to own a cat, right?
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