Your burger may try to kill you

This woman learned the hard way that hamburger doesn't always live up to its advertising claims:

Ms. Smith's reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

Bonjour Vietnam

Even a century of war hasn't marred Vietam's beauty. Will global warming drown it?

For centuries, as monsoon rains, typhoons and wars have swept over them and disappeared into the sunshine, the farmers and fishermen of the Mekong Delta have drawn life from the water and fertile fields where the great river ends its 2,700-mile journey to the sea.

The rhythms of life continue from season to season though, like much of the country, the delta is moving quickly into the future, and industry has begun to pollute the air and water.

But everything here, both the timeless and the new, is at risk now from a threat that could bring deeper and longer-lasting disruptions than the generations of warfare that ended more than 30 years ago.

Humans eat so other animals don't have to

Take a look at Japan's dolphin and whale slaughter. But don't do it while eating sushi.

The tarpaulin covers have been meticulously erected, but they can't completely mask the brutality of the slaughter unfolding below. Even from the clifftop, it is possible to hear the hunters' voices and the thrashing of tail fins as their prey make a final, fruitless bid for freedom.

Occasionally a hunter emerges into the gaps between the covers, grimacing as he plunges his knife into the water. Minutes earlier the sea around him was emerald green. Now it is turning a deep crimson, the morning air tainted with the stench of freshly drawn mammal blood.

2009 the bloodiest yet for Yanks in Afghanistan

So why is 2009 such a bloody awful year for American forces in Afghanistan?

More than 30,000 extra U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan this year, most part of a package of reinforcements ordered by Obama in May. There are now more than 100,000 Western troops in the country, 63,000 of them Americans.

And why are we still there? What purpose does it serve?

Of course, we broke it. But maybe the one who broke it aren't interested in fixing it.

America votes for war, endless war

It seems that the United States has voted: we will wage war forever! Or until we run out of money, whichever comes first.

Not even the defeat (yes, it was a loss) in Vietnam failed to dampen the lust for war without end.

For more than a generation now, two illusions have dominated American thinking about Vietnam. On the right, there has been the idea that we "fought with one hand tied behind our back." (In fact the only weapons the U.S. did not use in Indochina were nuclear.) Within the liberal establishment, on the other hand, a lone-assassin theory is preferred: as with the Iraq War, where the blame is placed on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, so with Vietnam the culprit of choice has become Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Will the F-22 money -- if it's excised from the budget -- be channeled into another war expenditure or any of the many cash-starving peace initiatives?

If you don't know the answer to that question, you haven't been paying attention!

The Culture War takes no prisoners

When Ann Coulter is waging culture war, she takes no prisoners.

She slit Bill O'Reilly's throat on his own show while he was desperately trying to say nice things about Dr. George Tiller after Olbermann (among others) accused him of goading Scott Roeder into killing the man O'Reilly called "Tiller the Baby Killer." Problem was, his "guest" didn't cooperate.


Unfortunately for Ann, her viciousness was overlooked by Olbermann/Maddow/Stewart/Colbert in favor of the Gov. Mark Sanford adultery saga -- a different kind of culture war.

9/11 has happened before and 9/11 will happen again

The Big Dick (Cheney) is right: September 11, 2001 will occur again. Not for the reasons he gives (weak-liberal failure to throw out the Constitution and anoint Bush-Cheney as co-Presidents for life) but because every damn time someone tries to generate a serious online discussion about what happened and how to prevent it, the 9/11 "Truthers" co-opt the discussion/comments with their conservative-generated, military-industrial-complex-financed "theories."


If we can't learn from the past -- indeed, can't even talk about the past without attracting Truther-mosquitos, are we doomed to repeat the mistakes and missed chances?