Don’t have time to read the bill? Don’t want to, like most people in Congress? Regardless of your situation, take a minute to grasp the basic points lest your life’s ambition is to be fodder for late night TV’s latest reel on dumb Americans.
He loves it so much that he and his cohorts have tried to strangle its economy with their intransigence, then point the finger to someone else when it fails to be resuscitated.
The Article: NSA Snooping: The War on Terror Is America’s Mania by Klaus Brinkbäumer in Der Spiegel.
The Text: America is sick. September 11 left it wounded and unsettled — that’s been obvious for nearly 12 years — but we are only now finding out just how grave the illness really is. The actions of the NSA exposed more than just the telephone conversations and digital lives of many millions of people. The global spying scandal shows that the US has become manic, that it is behaving pathologically, invasively. Its actions are entirely out of proportion to the danger.
Since 2005, an average of 23 Americans per year have been killed through terrorism, mostly outside of the US. “More Americans die of falling televisions and other appliances than from terrorism,” writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, and “15 times as many die by falling off ladders.” The US has spent $8 trillion on the military and homeland security since 2001.
America has other threats. The true short-term danger is homegrown: More than 30,000 Americans are killed by firearms every year. An American child is 13 times more likely to be shot than a child in another industrialized country. When it comes to combating the problem, President Barack Obama and Congress are doing very little — or, to be fair, nothing at all. They talk about it every now and then, after every killing spree. The gun lobby, incurably ill, counters that the weapons are necessary for self-defense.
Case closed.
The Article: I risked my life to pay off $108,000 in student loans by Jennifer Liberto in CNN Money.
The Text: Thomas McGregor risked his life to pay off his student loans.
McGregor graduated in 2008 from the University of St. Thomas law school in Minnesota with $108,000 in student loans.
After several months of job hunting, and with the threat of a deeper recession looming, McGregor decided to enlist in the Army.
“I paid off $108,000 of law school loan debt,” said McGregor, 31. “All I had to do was put my life on the line.”
McGregor knew what he was getting into. When he joined, he was told there was a “100% chance” he’d be deployed overseas.
