A UT Austin/LBJ School student of Economics Professor James K. Galbraith has submitted the following question to CNN for the CNN/Univision debates on Thursday between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

OK — Which of the presidential candidates is prepared to finally break US-Cuba relations out of the anachronistic Cold War cocoon they have been frozen in and initiate a new course that benefits American interests? Barack Obama has sketched out the initial steps of a changed direction already, while Hillary Clinton in response said that…

I have to admit that I was a bit peeved at Ron Paul for a sleezy ad that his team did with the line in it — “no more visas for students from terrorist nations.

1. Pakistan Elections Today Preliminary results trickling in seem to indicate that, as expected, there will be no clear winner with each of the three major parties holding their own with their base — the PPP in Sindh, the PML-N in Punjab, and the MQM in Karachi.

I’m working on some writing this morning at the Hotel Okura in Tokyo — where I stayed the last time I came over when accompanying George Soros on a trip to kick the tires of the health of Japan’s civil society.

Kosovo has declared independence and America will recognize it as a state. Consequently, Russia will eventually make us pay a high price in other aspects of our national security portfolio for this international sleight-of-hand.

I’ve had a busy but excellent couple of days in the San Francisco Bay area. Thanks to Ben Rosengart for organizing a meeting with a dozen people in Berkeley. The discussion we had was great. Some have asked why I hadn’t noted that former Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) had endorsed Barack Obama.

Shooting down a spy satellite whose orbit is decaying is either an exercise in super power vanity or an action designed to escalate the further militarization of space.

MoveOn just announced that they’ll run a petition ad in USA Today with the following text: “The Democratic Party must be democratic. The superdelegates should let the voters decide between Clinton and Obama, then support the people’s choice.” I was disappointed and surprised that no one was doing anything like this.

George W. Bush certainly seems like he likes to strangle things. He’s been trying to strangle Cuba and Cuban-American families with tightened restrictions on family-related travel to emphasize how much every President of the United States since Eisenhower has tried (and failed) to undermine Fidel Castro’s government.