North Korea announced today that it has arrested a University of Virginia student on charges of "we felt like it" and "he picked the wrong day to be in Pyongyang": Otto Frederick Warmbier, 21, was detained Jan. 2 at Pyongyang airport as he prepared to leave after a five-day trip over the New Year’s holiday, … Continue reading Somebody’s got some explaining to do

I wanted to write a post this week about how there are actually signs that moderates are gaining some traction in Iranian politics for the first time since Hassan Rouhani was elected president, but you know what? It would have been a bunch of feel-good bullshit. In the only way that actually matters, Iranian hardliners … Continue reading Pretend democracy

Big news out of Iowa, folks, where new polling shows that Bernie Sanders is opening up a huge lead on Hillary Clinton: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has opened a wide lead over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic contest in Iowa, according to a CNN/ORC poll released Thursday. The poll showed support … Continue reading Please, make it stop

In case you've been out of the loop for the past couple of weeks, the city of Flint, Michigan, was poisoning its citizens via their water supply from April 2014 through December. This catastrophic failure occurred because of a short-sighted austerity measure put in place by Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder and the emergency manager … Continue reading Reflexive bothsiderism

Now this is a heck of a ride: What's the deal, you ask? All together now: U.S. oil recorded its worst settlement since May 2003 on Wednesday, caught in a broad slump across world financial markets with traders also fearful that the crude supply glut could last longer. U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) prices … Continue reading Another fun day on the rails

Syria analyst Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi has been cataloging and translating ISIS administrative documents for about a year now. It's a great resource for, among other things, getting a flavor of what Kevin Drum calls ISIS's "bureaucratic streak" (I agree with him, it's hard not to laugh at this stuff--in fact, I'm about to do just … Continue reading Well, alright, but keep your hands off my 401(k)

Saudi Arabia and Iran are still feuding, but a hero may be coming to the rescue: Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday expressed "deep concern" to Saudi King Salman over escalating tensions between the Sunni kingdom and predominantly Shiite Iran. Sharif visited Riyadh in an effort to ease those tensions and is to head … Continue reading Couples therapy for Middle Eastern rivals

Courtesy of BuzzFeed: https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedNews/status/689598100961263617 I...think it may be too late for that, to be honest. My favorite thing about all of this is that it's been strongly suggested that Palin wants to be Secretary of Energy in a Trump administration. Except, shock of shocks, she's got no idea what the Secretary of Energy does: Palin … Continue reading Today in “boy, that meteor sure is running late”