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Doug Gray

Bloomington, MN
Commenter for
1 year 36 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 03/19/13 at 11:27 am in response to Minnesota senators' 'No' votes on Iraq War — and other 10th anniversary thoughts

Here's a partial list by party affiliation of the places the U.S. has intervened militarily since the Polk administration:

Democrats: Mexico 1846 (Polk), Nicaragua 1894, China 1894, Panama 1895, Nicaragua 1896 (Cleveland), Mexico 1913, Dominican Republic 1914, Haiti 1914, Dominican Republic 1916, Mexico 1916, Cuba 1917, Russia 1918, Panama 1918, Honduras 1919, Yugoslavia 1919, Guatemala 1920 (Wilson),Uruguay 1947 (FD Roosevelt), Vietnam 1960, Cuba 1961, Laos 1962 (Kennedy), Iraq...

Posted on 03/20/13 at 09:46 am in response to Minnesota senators' 'No' votes on Iraq War — and other 10th anniversary thoughts

What the election of 2004 proved was that the American people prefer a chief executive who is decisive even when wrong to one who would have been deliberative even when right. See the list of decisive U.S. chief executive actions above for the consequences of that way of thinking, and voting.

Posted on 03/14/13 at 10:08 am in response to 10 years after Iraq War: What do we have to show for it?

Other than being distinguished by duration and cost in human lives, national honor and economic near-collapse, Afghanistan 2001 and Iraq 2003 are just two more entries in the long list of places and times the U.S. has interfered, justly or not, in the affairs of other nations, a list which includes Mexico 1846, Argentina 1890, Chile 1891, Haiti 1891, Nicaragua 1894, China 1894, Panama 1895, Nicaragua 1896, Spanish colonies 1898, Nicaragua 1899, Panama 1901, Honduras 1903, Dominican Republic...

Posted on 02/11/13 at 12:07 pm in response to Karma's knife-twist: I have to take freshman comp

...between "there," "their" and "they're"... ;)

Posted on 01/16/13 at 11:04 am in response to Evangelist files election complaint against Bachmann

...doesn't it seem the same people who helped turn Park and Portland from three-lane streets with bike lanes into two-lane streets with bike freeways must also secretly want more global warming? Otherwise those third of a street-wide lanes are going to be chronically underpopulated from November through March. Tip: when Eric the Bike Man is advertising snowboards, your bikes belong in the garage.

Posted on 01/15/13 at 11:27 am in response to Minnesotan Eugenie Anderson blazed trail for female diplomats

While Truman also famously appointed Perle Mesta to head the U.S. diplomatic mission in Luxembourg in July 1949 (three months before Eugenie Anderson's appointment), at that time the U.S. sent only an Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Grand Dutchy. As the article notes, Anderson served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary in Copenhagen, the first U.S. woman to hold that rank.

Posted on 01/03/13 at 03:17 pm in response to Beyond 1862: Another year of remembering the Dakota-U.S. War

It should be a goal that no student graduate from a Minnesota school without knowing that the largest mass hanging in US history happened in Mankato in December 1862 and why. But honesty on both sides is required; most of the 38 (plus the two captured in Canada later and returned to Minnesota to be hung) did participate in the attacks of that summer, though a few probably did not. The problem was with their status (prisoners of war from sovereign nations as opposed to subjects of the Federal...

Posted on 11/09/12 at 11:34 am in response to Why do more votes translate into fewer U.S. House seats?

Systems other than single-member districts still can be, and were, used to gerrymander along racial and partisan lines. I moved to Arlington, Virginia in 1981. Arlington elected three members at-large to the state House of Delegates, the City of Alexandria elected two at-large, and Arlington and Alexandria together elected one more at-large. The rest of the state was a similar crazy quilt of at-large and shared districts. There were no African-Americans in the Virginia state legislature....

Posted on 11/01/12 at 11:38 am in response to Assessing Obama's and Romney's foreign-policy views

For me the answer is in the people Gov. Romney has chosen for his foreign policy team. Other than Cheney and Rumsfeld it's everyone from the George II Administration. If you thought U.S. foreign policy from 2000 to 2008 was the model for the future, then your choice is clear. And vice versa.

Posted on 11/01/12 at 11:31 am in response to Remembering Ambassador Christopher Stevens

You honor all diplomats who gave, and continue to give, their lives for their countries. Do go back to Libya, and go well; you ably represent the best of your country and its people. But there are "diplomatic special forces populated by Americans...well versed in the language, custom and culture of the local people." They are called the members of the U.S. Foreign Service. And trivializing their sacrifices to score political points is indeed abhorrent, no matter which politician or what...