I’ve seldom seen so much rubbish written by people who ought to know better in a single day. Many able people have heaped the scorn and incredulity on three articles, one a piece on Rahm Emanuel slotted to run in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, another an artfully packed laudatory piece on Timothy Geithner by John Cassidy in the New Yorker and a more even handed looking one (I stress “looking”) in the Atlantic. Ed Harrison has skillfully shredded parsed the Geithner pieces . Simon Johnson thrashed the New Yorker story. A key paragraph below: The main feature of...
Mitt Romney's new book, "No Apology: The Case for American Greatness," will debut on top of the New York Times bestseller list due out March 21, a source tells me. Romney's book tour has, so far, attracted pretty large crowds, serving -- along with the book sales -- to reassure his supporters that, though he may not draw Sarah Palin style hordes, he's a figure of genuine popular interest.
Karl Rove now says he is sorry that immigration reform was not President Bush's top priority at the beginning of his second term rather than social security reform. Speaking to The New York Times Rove said " As I said in the book, (Courage and Consequences) I wish we had led the second term with immigration reform. If we had led with immigration reform at the beginning of the second term we could have had bipartisan cooperation with a Republican majority in the House and the Senate and done something important for the country that was tilted more toward what...
John Schwartz of the New York Times has published a piece on the reaction of some conservatives to an ad by Keep America Safe asking for the DOJ to identify government lawyers who previously represented or advocated on behalf of terrorists. The Times, of course, was eager to highlight dissent within conservativesÂ’ ranks over the controversial advertisement. Â The conservative critics argue that the lawyersÂ’ work on behalf of detainees is a strictly noble pursuit. They point to John AdamsÂ’ representation of British soldiers after the Boston massacre as evidence that the lawyers are simply the heirs of a longstanding...
Rahm Emanuel has emerged as the major problem within the White House on reform of immigration. A New York Times magazine article due out this Sunday reports that Hispanic leader in Congress believe that he does not take the the issue seriously and is the person blocking progress. The New York Times writer Peter Baker reports that "The Congressional Hispanic Caucus say he does not pay attention to their issues. Hispanic lawmakers blame him for a provision inserted into the Senate health care legislation that would bar illegal immigrants from buying policies on new insurance exchanges even with their own...
Some of the most absurd lending and borrowing happens in the payday loan industry. According to the Center for Responsible Lending (.pdf), the average payday loan borrower pays $800 for each $325 they borrow. That’s an absolutely absurd interes...
The legislative tactic known as “reconciliation” uses a soothing word to mask an ugly reality. Far from the dictionary definition of “restoring to friendship and harmony,” the Congressional term “reconciliation” suggests the spurning of cooperation and the brute use of partisan power. Worst of all, in the case of Obamacare, it also involves a dangerous, destructive violation of democratic principle. The original idea of reconciliation, first employed in 1980, involved desperate efforts during the Carter era to bring the exploding federal deficit under control –a goal embraced by both political parties. As the New York Times described it (March 7,...
State Insurance Experts See Flaw in Obama’s Plan to Curb Health Premiums (will cause insolvencies) New York Times ^ | March 8, 2010 | Robert Pear Posted on Tuesday, March 09, 2010 5:54:44 AM by reaganaut1 At the heart of President Obama’s drive to rein in health costs is a proposal for federal review and regulation of health insurance premiums, with a new agency empowered to block excessive rate increases. State officials are leery of the proposal, which raises a host of questions: How would Congress define “excessive”? How would the new federal power relate to state insurance regulation? Bam...
Economics: The columnist who worries about Washington not spending enough also blames the financial crisis on "free-market fundamentalism" and "letting bankers do what they want." When did Uncle Sam do that? In his new book "The Great Money Binge," legendary newspaper editor George Melloan calls attention to New York Times writer Paul Krugman's "novel theory that the New Deal had failed to pull the country out of the Depression during the 1930s because government had not spent enough!" Melloan calls Krugman "even more Keynesian than Keynes himself." The reality is different. By May 1939, even Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau was...
Our glaciers are growing, not melting - More falsehoods from Al Gore By Robert Felix 8 Mar 10 - "Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising," said Al Gore -in an op-ed piece in the New York Times on February 27. Both parts of Gore's sentence are false. Never mind that Mr. Gore makes only passing reference to the IPCC's fraudulent claims that the Himalayan glaciers will all melt by 2035. ("A flawed overestimate," he explains.) Never mind that Mr. Gore dismisses the IPCC's fraudulent claims that the oceans are rising...
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
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