Archive for September, 2009
Unfathomability
There was, apparently, some unnecessary confusion this morning in Washington, D.C. over a Coast Guard training exercise on the Potomac river near the Pentagon: A Coast Guard training exercise in the Potomac River near the Pentagon sparked confusion amid Friday’s commemorations of the Sept. 11 anniversary. FBI agents scrambled to the scene and the nearest [...]
Game-Changing?
The early reviews were positive, no doubt — and the phrase “game-changing moment” is being bandied around in some circles — but even after sleeping on it for two nights, it’s not clear to me that Obama‘s speech on Wednesday night is really going to change very much. A CNN poll conducted immediately after the [...]
Sista Souljah
Full Text Of Obama’s Health Care Speech | TPM News Pages There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there [...]
St. John The Ashcroft’s Other Cheek
Back when news of the dramatic hospital bed story broke in May 2007, John Ashcroft took over from John McCain as the reigning St. John of American politics. Some news that appeared late Friday evening, and got buried over the holiday weekend, shines a light on the other side of John Ashcroft. A three-judge panel [...]
How To Steal $107 Million And Make A Clean Getaway
Over the weekend, we got to celebrate not just Labor Day but also the first anniversary of the taxpayer takeover of Fannie Mae. Which led the NYT‘s Gretchen Morgenson to reflect on an earlier capital crime at Fannie Mae. Franklin D. Raines used to be the chairman and CEO of Fannie Mae. Together with chief [...]
Poor Babies
Conservatives See Need for Serious Health Debate –
Secrecy Is The Best Policy, Isn’t It?
Once again, the Obama administration has chosen to hew closely to the Bush administration’s line on a controversial aspect of The War Against Terror. This time it’s about supporting the CIA as it invokes national security as a reason for drawing an invisibility cloak around the CIA’s “defunct detention and interrogation program”. The Central Intelligence [...]
If The Queen Had A Dick, Take 2
Kevin Drum points out that, as we approach the end of the August recess, it is possible to take an optimistic view of the prospects for healthcare reform: So that’s the optimistic view: the Fox/FreedomWorks crowd has created some great political theater, but underneath it all not a lot has changed. If Democrats can just [...]
Headline Virus Spreads To ThinkProgress
Earlier this year, I wrote several posts about the merry antics of the headline writer at TPM. There was a disconcerting pattern of headlines that were misleading or inaccurate. That virus seems to have spread to ThinkProgress. Last week, I noticed several headlines that were quite a stretch, but nothing that warranted a post. Yesterday, [...]
Political Discourse in 21st Century America
The New York Times headline reads: Putin Calls Nazi-Soviet Pact Immoral. Bean-counters are still totting up what percentage of adult Americans read that and said to themselves: “That makes no bleeping sense. How can Obama enter into a pact with himself?” Bookmark on DeliciousDigg this postShare on Facebookshare via RedditShare with StumblersTweet about itBookmark in [...]