Sarah Palin's Canadian Health Care

Sarah Palin's recent statement that, presumably during her childhood, she and her family used to cross the border from Alaska to take advantage of Canada's health care system is not really a gaffe or a verbal slipup, but offers an interesting insight into Palin. It is not exactly surprising, or even"ironic," to use Palin's words, that somebody who has made a name, and a great deal of money, for herself by linking health care reform to some kind of socialist bogeyman, used to take advantage of socialized medicine.


Why Calling Countries "Strategically Important" is Hurting US Foreign Policy

There’s also some truth to this. All countries, particularly from America’s point of view, have some strategic value.  The problem with this approach is that if all countries have strategic importance, then no country has strategic importance and all countries are of equal import.  Strategic value only has meaning if it is a relative term, and referring to a country as strategically important only means something if it is considered more or less strategic than other countries.