Word: thinkings
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...Sendai, looking warily across the Pacific toward my home country, I shuddered to think America was heading Japan's way. Everyone in Washington knows what problems the nation faces, but there is a Japan-like inability to take the necessary action. The broken U.S. health care system is an embarrassment, yet efforts to change it have been stymied for almost as long as moves to revive Japan's economy. The government's finances are deteriorating as politicians refuse to make the hard decisions on what the country does and does not need. The education system requires far more attention...
...rich nation like the U.S., it's easy to be fooled into thinking there's always more time for problems to get solved. So it has been in Japan. The Japanese are wealthy enough that they don't suffer too much from the prolonged period of stunted growth. But Japan also stands as a warning to those who think tough decisions can be delayed indefinitely. Japan's public finally seems ready for something new. Voters last year tossed out the Liberal Democrats, who had governed almost uninterrupted since 1955. The new sheriff in town is Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama...
...club of wealthiest economies. While much of Indonesia is still poor (18% live under the poverty line), the country is finally using the profits from its plentiful natural resources, such as natural gas and a horde of minerals, to lift up its citizens. "Foreigners used to think of Indonesia as a place of natural disasters," says Gita Wirjawan, the head of the nation's investment board, who earlier this year traveled to the U.S. to drum up interest in his homeland. "But now they realize that this is a $550 billion economy that's on an upward trajectory...
...would be the fifth unpaid bill to pass thus far this year. But making the point on the backs of the most needy is probably the wrong way to go about it. Especially when it underscores Democrats' complaints about GOP obstructionism on even the most pressing of issues. "I think Americans - a majority of whom have someone in their orbit out of work - are not very receptive to the idea of cutting off unemployment benefits in the midst of a bad economy," said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "This strategy is not a winner...
...should remain in their hands. And there are Israelis now so deeply settled in the middle of Arab neighborhoods, sometimes sharing the same building, that any attempt to draw boundaries in the city would likely present a constant source of tension, and even violence. "It's human nature to think that all problems can be solved, but maybe Jerusalem cannot be solved," says Berkowitz...