Really, Matt?

I just finished listening to Susie Madrak and Matt Stoller from last night’s blogtalkradio broadcast of Virtually Speaking. Highly recommended. For the most part, they’ve got the Obama situation right. Matt Stoller gets a bit closer to Obama’s psychology when he talks about how Obama has seen liberalism and rejected it. The New Yorker profiled [...]

Wednesday: Americans pay too little in taxes?

I’ve heard this from Paul Krugman and Fareed Zakaria recently and now some new dude is claiming that Americans pay too little in taxes. From David Leonardt’s article this morning at the New York Times titled, “Why Taxes Will Rise” (NYTimes, limited free access), we get this: Polls show that most Americans are opposed to [...]

Dems may be looking forward to this briar patch

Well, as long as politicians insist on playing games, Boehner and McConnell may have put themselves on the losing end of this one.  Kevin Drum lays out the details of “The Blink” in Mother Jones: Next month Obama would receive approval to raise the debt ceiling $700 billion. A “resolution of disapproval” would then be [...]

Tuesday: Hack this

The phone hacking scandal in Britain is getting pretty hairy.  It turns out that investigators for Scotland Yard who were looking into reports of phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp outlets were in turn phone hacked (NYTimes, limited free articles): The disclosure, based on interviews with current and former officials, raises the question of whether [...]

Tuesday: Worser and Worser

The phone hacking scandal in Britain is getting pretty hairy.  It turns out that investigators for Scotland Yard who were looking into reports of phone hacking by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp outlets were in turn phone hacked (NYTimes, limited free articles): The disclosure, based on interviews with current and former officials, raises the question of whether [...]

Monday: Blink!

huh, did the Republicans blink yesterday over the debt ceiling?  I was forced to watch a lot of talking heads shows on Sunday.  Well, it was better than another Casey Anthony rant fest with Nancy Grace and her vorpal bangs.  The big news yesterday is that Boehner took $2 trillion of the $4 trillion spending [...]

Convergence(?): something Paul Krugman said

The other day, Paul Krugman speculated that Barack Obama was adopting the values and the rhetoric of the serious people, who for some reason always want to impose austerity on the little guy, because he identifies with that class: OK, here’s an unprofessional speculation: maybe it’s personal. Maybe the president just doesn’t like the kind [...]

It’s Change! Alright

Three years ago, I was a gainfully employed scientist designing oncology drugs.  I had a modest townhouse, a used car, a small pension and an lousy 401K.  I based some of my projected retirement salary on my social security benefits and medicare.  Now, through no fault of my own, I join the ranks of the [...]

Paul Krugman getting the Townhall via the AV equipment

Poor Paul. He sounds disgusted and disappointed with Obama. It turns out that Obama wasn’t just an aspirational candidate, he had aspirations of his own: OK, here’s an unprofessional speculation: maybe it’s personal. Maybe the president just doesn’t like the kind of people who tell him counterintuitive things, who say that the government is not [...]

Lessons to be learned from the Casey Anthony trial

1.) Nancy Grace is a horrible human being. 2.) We still have no idea what happened to Caylee Anthony. 3.) The justice system worked in this case. It wasn’t that the defense won so much as the prosecution lost. 4.) The slut shaming of women by other women has got to end. Casey Anthony was [...]