The American-Philippines War

I’m amazed that Filipinos generally march hand-in-hand with America on most diplomatic and military issues. The American-Philippines War of 1899-1902 should haunt them and us through history. It was not America’s finest hour.

Around 1890, we good Americans who had demanded freedom from England suddenly decided we needed colonies. So we took Hawaii, Cuba, Guam and the Philippines. We told the Filipinos we’d give them independence if they fought on our side against Spain. When we won, we told them they were too “uncivilized” to run themselves. We’d run them.

That started a new war: Us versus the Filipino insurrectos. First an ordinary war, then a guerrilla war we were losing. So we started indiscriminately killing Filipinos, burning villages and destroying food supplies on Samar and Leyte. To say there was a racial reason for that policy is an understatement.

Roosevelt wrote: “In a fight with savages, where the savages themselves perform deeds of hideous cruelty, a certain proportion of whites are sure to do the same thing.”

Gen. Jacob Smith’s orders to his officers on Samar were: “I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and burn the better you will please me.” He said every male over the age of 10 should be killed and the island turned into “a howling wilderness.”

Some Americans were appalled at the atrocities that came out in hearings, but most thought it wrong to impugn our fighting men – 2,446 died there. Filipino deaths have been estimated at anywhere from 34,000 to 1 million.

It’s where the “water cure” was invented, the antecedent to today’s waterboarding.

The Stars and Stripes would fly over the Philippines for 46 years.

-- Bob Jones, Midwee, April 18, 2012

12 killed in Colorado movie theater

AURORA, Colo. >> A gunman wearing a gas mask and black SWAT gear hurled a gas canister inside a crowded movie theater during a midnight showing of the new Batman movie and then opened fire, killing 12 people and wounding nearly 60 others in an attack so bizarre that some moviegoers at first thought they were watching Hollywood special effects.

As smoke from the canister spread, audience members watching "The Dark Knight Rises" at the suburban Denver theater saw the silhouette of a person materialize near the screen, point a gun at the crowd and begin shooting, apparently without a word.

It was one of the deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history.

The suspected gunman, identified as James Holmes, a 24-year-old doctoral student in neuroscience who was about to drop out of the University of Colorado-Denver, was arrested near a car behind the theater.

America's broken health care system

Regardless of how you feel about last week's Supreme Court ruling upholding most of Obamacare, one thing is clear: America's health care system is broken, unsustainably expensive, and often embarrassing compared with the systems of other developed nations.

Here are 17 charts showing why.

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Why does health care in the United States cost so much?