What's Better In The News: For People Who Want Honesty and Choices Not Deception And Orders

What's Better With Books? A new book, "Magnificent Delusions," by Hussan Haqqani backs up a common belief among thinking people that the treasure chest of intelligence found at Osama bin Laden's home in Abbottabad, Pakistan proved that the Pakistani government knew that Osama was living in Abbottabad. Since the Navy Seals found this information and bagged it for U.S. intelligence, it should mean that Obama knows it, though Obama is very adept at saying he wasn't in the loop for things that go wrong. If Obama does know about it, then he hasn't told the American people about it. Besides being generally pro-Muslim, there is probably another reason for it: He didn't want Americans demanding reprisals against the Pakistani government for hiding Osama. That concern has validity for the U.S. does not want to completely alienate all of the Pakistani. We still have deep friendships with officers we have trained and trained with. These are probably proving invaluable to us, and we see that the military is reacting negatively and strongly to Islamofascist dictates that Pakistani army soldiers killed fighting terrorists are not engaged in jihad and therefore not automatically going to heaven and enjoying the company of virgins and other deeply spiritual events. It seems an insult to the intelligence and maturity of We, the People if Obama decided he could not tell us about the Pakistani sheltering Osama for fear we would demand drastic reprisals. If Obama can be nuanced, there's no reason we can't be too.
  What's Better With Ethanol? That there isn't going to be more we have to put into our vehicles, at least for now. The Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally lowering the federal dicktat about how much Ethanol has to be put into America's gas tank. Technically, it is only negation of an increase in Ethanol which was about to happen. The increase was going to be 16 percent, but that increase has been halted, and the standard of 10% of the fuel put into your gas tanks being Ethanol remains. This is a small victory over the Levanthian. The EPA is responding - a little- to the realization that raising corn for Ethanol puts more CO2 into the air than simply not using Ethanol. However, Ethanol has been getting federal subsidies for 35 years, and industries have grown up on those subsidies. These organizations and the people they buy are not going to give up ethanol use and more importantly, ethanol subsidies easily.
Peter Nickerson, Philosopher, William and Mary, Class of '68