10 Congressmen Who Should Be Fired
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:47 pm PDT
 The Daily Beast - They tried to build a Bridge to Nowhere, fretted about "killing Grandma," and stiffed the IRS. John Avlon presents a rogue's gallery of House members who should be bounced come November, from Joe Wilson to Alan Grayson. Full Story | Top |
5 Best Friday Columns
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:04 am PDT
 The Atlantic Wire - Paul Krugman on Obama's Tentative Centrism While the current President rode into office on a "wave of progressive enthusiasm," the New York Times columnist writes he has since been far "more centrist and conventional than his fervent supporters imagined." This isn't necessarily a good thing, argues The New York Times opinion columnist, and Obama's choices can't always be blamed on Republican obstructionism. He concludes: "The point is that Mr. Obama’s attempts to avoid confrontation have been counterproductive. His opponents remain filled with a passionate intensity, while his supporters, having received no respect, lack all conviction. And in a midterm election...[that] could spell catastrophe."Peggy Noonan on the Competent Chris Christie In what has recently become a trend among conservative pundits, the Wall Street Journal columnist gives a ringing endorsement for New Jersey Governor Chris Christie saying that, "He's going to break through in a big way." While the Democrats are campaigning against the GOP's "populist spirit" (the Tea Party) in the lead up to the November midterms, their biggest worry should be worried about Christie's courageous and, more importantly, competent style of governance. She enthuses, "But Mr. Christie's way is also closer than most national Republicans have come—or Democrats will come—to satisfying the public desire that someone step forward, define the problem, apply common sense, devise a way through, do what's needed."David Brooks on the Long Slow Decade The New York Times columnist fears the impact of the recession will be felt for years to come. "What we have is not just a cycle but a condition," writes Brooks. "We could look back on the period between 1980 and 2006 as the long boom and the period between 2007 and 2014 or so as the nasty crawl." So, how to the spur economic growth? Brooks sees good plans on both sides of the aisle. For Democrats, it's what Brooks calls the "Moon Shot Approach"--an economy buoyed by a strong infrastructure and tax breaks for key sectors. Republicans see hope in the "Unleash America" school of thinking--it's defined by "a free-market and entrepreneurial vision of their country." Both approaches, Brooks says, are better than the inevitable "nativist and antiglobalist visions that will be arising" in coming years.Patrick Kennedy on a Brain Disorders Battle Writing in the Boston Globe, the Rhode Island congressman says the recent 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act should inspire politicians to demand the same protections for those with brain disorders. "Approximately 100 million Americans have some form of traumatic brain injury," writes Kennedy. "Millions more suffer from Alzheimer’s, autism, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy." Yet only 5 percent of the NIH budget is spent researching neuroscience. Kennedy argues America must respond to the rise in brain disorders with "the same kind of urgency...as we did with AIDS."Steven Pearlstein on the New Division of Labor "The only surprise is that anyone is surprised by the lack of private-sector hiring," concludes the Washington Post columnist. "It is only in the world of Chamber of Commerce propaganda that businesses exist to create jobs." Writing in response to the recent news that corporate profits have soared while little new job opportunities have been created, Pearlstein isn't optimistic that most employers will soon be adding full-time employees. "There are lots of theories why this is happening," he writes. "With consumers cutting back on debt-financed spending, cutting expenses has been the most obvious way for businesses to increase their profits." In effect, the profits are addition by subtraction. Full Story | Top |
Op-Ed: Securing Medicare's future
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:57 pm PDT
 Exclusive to Yahoo! News - Forty-five years ago today, the creation of Medicare transformed our health-care system and our nation. It helped to make us a stronger and more prosperous country by freeing older Americans from the fear that sickness or injury would cost them their lifetime savings and security. Full Story | Top |
Is the Intelligence Community Unmanageable?
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:00 pm PDT
RealClearPolitics.com - Beginning with the Washington Post's "Top Secret America" series last week, the media are creating a narrative aimed at cutting down to size what the Post called the American intelligence community: a system so big and unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine. Our intelligence community, according to the Post series, has become ungovernable in the way the media used to characterize New York City. Full Story | Top |
Do Guantanamo media restrictions also prevent open trials?
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:44 pm PDT
McClatchy Newspapers - WASHINGTON _ Reporters covering trials of accused terrorists at Guantanamo on Monday will have their first-ever face-to-face chance to air their complaints about the U.S government's restrictive rules, which journalists say make it nearly impossible for the public to follow the proceedings. Full Story | Top |
Time's 'horrific' cover: Honesty or sensationalism?
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 09:40 am PDT
The Week - Time's latest cover may shock you — and that's exactly the point. The haunting image shows an 18-year-old Afghan woman — her name is Aisha — whose nose and ears were cut off by the Taliban after she tried to escape her abusive in-laws. The accompanying article, "What happens if we leave Afghanistan," details the gruesome dangers women will face if the fundamentalist Islamic movement regains control of the country. "I'm acutely aware that this image will be seen by children," writes Time's managing editor Richard Stengel, but I would rather people know the reality "as they make up their minds about what the U.S. and its allies should do in Afghanistan." Did Stengel make a responsible choice? Full Story | Top |
Morning Vid: Palin Says Letting Bush Tax Cuts Expire Is 'Idiotic'
Sun, 1 Aug 2010 05:09 am PDT
The Atlantic Wire - Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Sarah Palin swings hard at the idea of letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, saying it would "lead to even fewer job opportunities for Americans," calling it "idiotic to think about increasing taxes at a time like this." So strong does she feel her case is against them that, in a slyly self-mocking reference, she says that her "palm isn’t large enough to have written all my notes down on what this tax increase, what it will result in." Full Story | Top |
Divorce is costly. The settlement need not be.
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:28 am PDT
The Christian Science Monitor - A new wave of legislation aimed at rectifying perceived injustices in divorce cases is rolling into state legislatures. For example, in Massachusetts, a controversial “father’s rights†bill would create a presumption of joint child custody, and proposed changes to alimony statutes would limit the duration of spousal support. All of these proposals will probably face stiff opposition. Full Story | Top |
The Farmer in the Dell
Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:29 am PDT
The Nation - The Nation -- Good morning, dear pupils! Please settle down, take your seats. Today's class will be another exciting lesson in our infinite series of teachable moments. Hush now, stop the giggling. This is important, and we're never going to graduate until we master the basics of how to read and write. We will begin with a nice little fairy tale that I'd like you to read aloud: Full Story | Top |
Letters to the Editor – Weekly Issue of August 2, 2010
Sun, 1 Aug 2010 09:05 pm PDT
The Christian Science Monitor - Lessons from the oil spillThe July 12 cover story, "Gusher: six ways to prevent another disaster," mentions the political difficulties of taxing oil but should have said more about the economic – as well as environmental – reasons favoring such a tax. The article states, "[n]othing can compete with [oil] in terms of price, ubiquity, and ease of use on such massive a scale." Full Story | Top |
Celebrating Paul Rudd's Hysterical Body of Work
Sun, 1 Aug 2010 11:45 am PDT
The Atlantic Wire - Splashed on the covers of magazines, all over the late night circuit and now starring in this weekend's summer blockbuster Dinner for Schmucks: Paul Rudd is everywhere. Though not everyone's optimistic about his new film, the New Jersey-born funnyman is a critics' favorite. Across the Web, writers are paying homage to his body of work:From the Beginning, a Classically Trained Comic, writes Sam Adams at Salon: "Allow us to make a modest proposal: Paul Rudd is one of the great comic leading men of his generation. With his boyish charm and unassuming good looks, he could easily have ended up as a romantic-comedy lightweight, following the template laid out by his breakthrough role in 'Clueless.' But instead, he's spent much of the last decade surrounding himself with stand-ups and sketch comics, matching wits with Steve Carell and Seth Rogen in 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' and guesting as an oily Lamaze instructor on 'Reno 911.' Although he studied Jacobean drama at Oxford, Rudd's classical background hasn't prevented him from improvising alongside club-hardened comics, a talent that serves him mightily well in 'Dinner for Schmucks.'"You Can't Beat 'Wet Hot American Summer', writes an adoring Elbert Ventura at Slate: Rudd's comic talent first became apparent in 2001's Wet Hot American Summer. Made by the folks behind the MTV sketch comedy show The State, the movie affectionately spoofs '80s pop culture... [Rudd] stole every scene he was in as Andy, the sleazeball camp counselor. In Rudd's hands, Andy becomes the biggest asshole you knew in high school, fearlessly amped up to 11. Playing the guy who gets the hot girl—and who throws her away just because he can—Rudd pushes past believability into hysterical hyperbole, the obnoxious bad boy in quotes. In the middle of a make-out session, Andy suddenly pulls away and accuses the girl of 'suffocating' him—then goes on to scratch his behind extravagantly. ('My butt itches,' he remarks, peevishly.) Making out with another girl, he breaks off, sneering, 'You taste like a burger. I don't like you anymore.' But it's his aria of exasperation, a temper tantrum in the camp cafeteria, that has become one of the movie's best-remembered scenes: Full Story | Top |
5 Best Sunday Columns
Sun, 1 Aug 2010 04:41 am PDT
The Atlantic Wire - Nicholas Kristof on Another Revolutionary Pill The New York Times columnist celebrates the discovery of a cheaper, safer, and potentially more effective abortion method that could "revolutionize abortion around the world, especially in poor countries." The method in question is a drug called misoprostol (originally used to treat ulcers) which is 80 to 85 percent effective at inducing miscarriages. Because the drug is widely available, and the abortion it induces is indistinguishable from a natural one, Kristof anticipates that word will spread "among women worldwide," possibly saving thousands of women's lives and resulting in "a tad more acceptance" for abortion.Thomas Philipson and Richard Posner on Saving Fat America Posner and Philipson, respectively a lecturer and professor at the University of Chicago, lament America's "obesity plague" and highlight some ideas from health economics to combat it. Since changes in technology--increased television consumption, computer use, etc.--helped drive the rise in obesity, technology may be the way to correct it. This doesn't simply mean making America less fat; rather, "if most of the adverse health consequences of obesity were eliminated, obesity would cease to be an issue, except perhaps from an aesthetic or emotional standpoint." Bariatric surgery and other technological innovations may ultimately be "more successful [at] reducing obesity than attempts to change people's eating and exercise habits have been.Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh on Responding to Iran's Bomb Writing in the Washington Post, these two senior fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations try to imagine Obama's response to a radical, if perhaps not far-fetched scenario: "Imagine that diplomacy has run its course, after prolonged and inconclusive negotiations; that surging international oil prices have undercut the power of economic sanctions against Tehran; and that reliable intelligence says the Islamic republic's weapons program is very close to reaching its goal [of a nuclear weapon]. Facing such conditions, would Obama use force against Iran?" They note that Obama's "impulse to multilateralize the use of force" would mean that any attack would need Security Council backing, which they see as unlikely, and would run against European resistance. It would also depend on hard-to-gauge domestic support for force. While we may hope it doesn't come to this, they warn that "the world imagined here may not constitute destiny -- but it will be hard to escape."Maureen Dowd on Holly Golightly vs. Betty Draper  Dowd compares female characters from "two Manhattan fantasies" that depict "escapes from the prim, airless Eisenhower era." One is Holly Golightly, a call girl played by Audrey Hepburn who "was supported by men, yet ... seemed free," the other is Betty Draper, who "is supported by men, and she seems trapped." Dowd touches on many similarities between them, citing their alcohol-swilling streaks and "luminescent looks overlaying dark psyches." Ultimately she focuses on Hepburn, whose beloved call-girl character served as a "fairy godmother, not only to feminism but to the prevailing ethos that style and cool trump all."Thomas Friedman on the Double Game in Afghanistan "If you are in a poker game and you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s probably you," writes the mustachioed New York Times columnist. "In the case of the Great Game of Central Asia, that’s us." This is the lesson he takes away from the massive cache of WikiLeaks documents on the war, which show Pakistan's "two faced" relationship with the U.S. At the same time, the U.S. is playing a double game of its own with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, trying to "impact them by indirection" by nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. Friedman is hardly optimistic about how this effort is going, concluding that "we don’t have the money, manpower or time required to fully transform the most troubled states of this region," but that we can accomplish a great deal by "developing alternatives to oil. It is time we started that surge. I am tired of being the sucker in this game." Full Story | Top |
Peter Orszag's Complicated Legacy
Sun, 1 Aug 2010 03:16 am PDT
The Atlantic Wire - Effective but Polarizing Politico's Ben Smith writes that while Orszag might be the first cabinet member to depart, "he left as deep a mark as almost anyone in it." His time wasn't always smooth, though. "Orszag made enemies in the House leadership for his emphasis on controlling costs," writes Smith, "and his independent profile at times rankled the white House as much as any disagreements over budgets." Full Story | Top |
EDUCATION REFORMS WILL HELP POOR KIDS GET BETTER TEACHERS
Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:57 pm PDT
Cynthia Tucker - WASHINGTON -- Living in Indonesia with her second husband, Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro couldn't afford a fancy private school for her son, Barack, but she made up for her lack of funds with discipline and dedication. Obama was only 9 years old when she supplemented his education with a U.S. correspondence course. Full Story | Top |
NO COMPARISON
Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:57 pm PDT
David Shribman - With the economy still in tatters, with White House officials speaking openly about the possibility of a Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress, with the administration frustrated by the stalling of campaign-finance legislation in the Senate, and with the president's poll numbers at alarmingly low levels, the last thing Barack Obama needs is fresh doubts about the American role in Afghanistan nourished by mischievous and misleading analogies to the war in Vietnam. Full Story | Top |
Is Charlie St. Cloud This Summer's 'Notebook'?
Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:23 am PDT
The Atlantic Wire - The latest such film, Charlie St. Cloud, stars Zach Efron as a sailing prodigy who loses his younger brother in a horrific car accident and eventually begins to communicate with his brother's ghost. Reviewers have declared it an episodic and sappy melodrama akin, in some respects, to The Sixth Sense. And while the harsh buzz may doom St. Cloud, Efron isn't giving up anytime soon on becoming the leading man in a romance film: he's signed on to play a soldier in The Lucky One. A movie adaptation of a book, you may recall, that was written by Nicholas Sparks. Critics weigh in: Full Story | Top |
Democratic Surge? Part II
Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:51 pm PDT
Huffington Post - Last week, I argued that a reported “jump” for Democrats in Gallup’s weekly tracking of the national generic U.S. Full Story | Top |
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