Chicago has long been one of the major hubs for Black culture – Chicago blues, Richard Wright, and – yes – Barack Obama are all products of the Windy City. Recently, however, the wind has been blowing Blacks away from the shores of Lake Michigan towards greener pastures in the South and into the suburbs. […]

Team Mead is keeping a worried eye on religious violence in Nigeria, where the radical Islamic group Boko Haram has been stepping up its summer rampage. The Economist reports a trend of intensifying violence in the mostly Muslim North as the idiosyncratic and virulently intolerant group terrorizes Christians and moderate Muslims alike in its quest […]

In a piece on the proposed oil sands pipeline project from Canada to Texas, the center-left Talking Points Memo picks up on an important point but doesn’t quite drive it home: “Canadians can do what they want with their oil in Canada, and there’s little American protesters can do to stop them,” notes the post.Correct.  […]

Japan’s dull, unpopular and ineffective prime minister Naoto Kan announced his resignation today after a disappointing and short term.  An equally unpopular, ineffective and dull replacement will shortly be named.

As Hurricane Irene barrels up the coast and the weather service warns about hurricane conditions in New York, at Via Meadia this morning we are more concerned with short term weather forecasts than with medium term economic predictions. Nevertheless I see from the Twitter feed that Nouriel Rubini (@Nouriel) is predicting a double dip recession […]

Analysis of the captured files from Osama bin Laden’s compound reveals an Al-Qaeda struggling with less to do, more to fear and feeling the bite of defeat. This isn’t the right occasion to unfurl George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner, but perhaps a national tweet along the lines of “Keep it up guys, we got em’ […]

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will carry oil from tar sands in Canada across the entire midwestern United States to Port Arthur, Texas. It could eventually transport 900,000 barrels of oil a day and without government funding of any kind has the potential to create 20,000 jobs starting early in 2012. The greens want President […]

Abdel Ali Basset Megrahi should be having a bad few days — and this is only the start.  Megrahi is the man the Scottish government released on commercial, excuse me, compassionate grounds after serving 8 years of a 27 year sentence for his involvement in the Lockerbie bombing.Even someone like this deserves the protection of […]

I recently warned readers that giant, poison mohawk-sporting rats from Africa could be joining the throngs of New York rats happily frisking in Manhattan’s hip Tompkins Square Park.It turns out that reality has outrun speculation.  Three foot long Gambian pouched rats have already established themselves in Brooklyn where residents of a city housing project say […]

Two recent pieces in the Washington Post provide a startling look into the decrepit state of one of the grandest of the blue model dinosaurs still walking the earth – the Postal Service. The first explains the USPS’ best plan to cut its costs by $1.5 billion a year: laming the snail — slowing down […]