Word: washington
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...challenges facing our leaders in Washington, none is more difficult or urgent than the long-term, structural budget deficits resulting from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. These programs are useful and well-intentioned: They form the bedrock of the American social safety net. Important as they are, however, they have also become exorbitantly expensive...
...Discussion of such nightmare scenarios may have gone out of fashion with the end of the Cold War, but the fact that Washington and Moscow maintain thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert explains why even the modest successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that was agreed on last week proved so elusive. And it also serves as a reminder of how dauntingly difficult it will be to achieve cuts deep enough to remove what President John F. Kennedy once called "Damocles' sword" hanging over humanity. (See pictures of President Obama in Russia...
...potential threats. The Cold War gave us warnings of missile and bomber gaps, later found to be largely mirages, that were supposedly leaving U.S. citizens vulnerable to Soviet attack. Fear of the supposed Soviet missile advantage spurred President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars initiative and the $100 billion Washington has spent preparing to counter incoming enemy missiles even as the Soviet Union disappeared. Then, 9/11 put us in the crosshairs of Islamic terrorists, calling into being a mushrooming homeland-security industrial complex. All very well, warn the sentinels at the Heritage Foundation, but what about the EMP threat? (Watch TIME...
...discussion regarding the EMP threat, Congress should establish March 23 as EMP Recognition Day" - not coincidentally, that's the date of Reagan's famous 1983 speech launching his missile-defense initiative. Leaving aside the contradiction of urging Congress to concentrate attention and resources on a threat that most in Washington consider an infinitesimal probability, the whole notion seems rooted in some visceral need for foes with diabolical destructive abilities. There's something almost pathetic about cowering in the shadow of such a threat, instead of shrugging it off with the resilience that was typical on the American frontier. (See "Scrapping...
...joint press conference at Karzai's heavily guarded Arg Palace, both he and Obama put a traditional diplomatic gloss on their meeting. Obama said "the American people are encouraged by the progress that is being made," while Karzai lauded Washington's continued commitment to Afghanistan...