If you missed it yesterday, this New York Times article provides a wonderful (and entertaining) service to people trying to understand the political advertising on their televisions this campaign season.
Them for some larger context, see the Washington Post‘s latest offering on the outside-group game, where the dollar figures are …
So it looks like the passionately-reviled $700 billion TARP bailout–maybe not quite a Big Bang for the Tea Party movement, but certainly a huge event in its history–will wind up costing the federral government relatively little. Indeed, it seems taxpayers may even turn a profit on the fall 2008 bank bailout. As former Utah Senator Bob …
We hear a lot of rationales for the ongoing war in Afghanistan. One is is that we’re flushing out al Qaeda. Another is that we’re defending the stability of Pakistan. Then there’s the argument that we simply can’t accept defeat because it would have consequences beyond the immediate region–ones that would “resonate throughout the …
I have a story in the new print issue about the mind-boggling $119 million in personal funds that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, a billionaire Republican, has poured into her campaign for governor of California. Democrat Jerry Brown, by contrast, has only spent about $4 million (though he has raised $30 million).
But the spending …
Meg Whitman on Jerry Brown in last night’s California governor’s debate:
Putting Jerry Brown in charge of negotiating with labor unions around pensions, around how many people we have in state government, is like putting Count Dracula in charge of a blood bank.
It’s a memorable line–but overkill, maybe?
With Democrats growing increasingly anxious that the Karl Rove-affiliated “Super PAC” money machine may swamp them in the closing weeks of the election, Montana Senator Max Baucus has called for an IRS investigation into the tax-exempt status of these groups, which allows them to raise money without contribution limits and in some cases …
Three reasons why the ACLU must be wondering what the point of changing presidents in January 2009 was:
1. “U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet”
2. “Money Transfers Could Face Anti-Terrorism Scrutiny”
3. “Critics Balk at Obama’s Justification for Killing American Terrorist”
My hunch is that Obama could make …
And you thought Koran burning was a problem:
In a video tape obtained by ABC News, a 22-year-old Army corporal from Joint Base Lewis-McChord casually describes to military investigators how his unit’s “crazy” sergeant randomly chose three unarmed, innocent victims to be murdered in Afghanistan.
Corporal Jeremy N. Morlock is among
…
Fun WaPo story on the strange and frustrating lives of professional North Korea-watchers:
Sometimes, careers are built around incorrect predictions. Seoul-based historian Andrei Lankov spent the early 1990s anticipating something that hasn’t happened. In his 30s at the time – “just a beginner,” Lankov recalled – he felt certain that
…
Why does the new House Republican campaign platform’s call for immediate discretionary spending cuts feature a clause promising “common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans and our troops”?
“Seniors” is an awfully broad swath of society to place off-limits, particularly given that quite a few American seniors retire into affluence. …
My timing was impeccable: Last month I wrote a story for Time.com about the modest role health care seemed to be playing in the midterm elections. My thesis was that, although Obamacare was far from a winning issue for Democrats, it hardly promised to be the political debacle that Republicans gleefully predicted when Obama signed health …
NPR has sent around an excerpt from a “Talk of the Nation” interview with Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to early reports, Bob Woodward’s new book depicts Holbrooke as skeptical that Obama’s Afghanistan strategy can succeed. Holbrooke tells NPR that he’s going to “duck” any …
He tells the Daily Beast:
Disgruntled Obama supporters planning to sit out the midterms are making “a horrible mistake,” [Clinton] said. “Like everything else you do when you’re mad, there’s an 80 percent change you’re making a mistake. You’ll get the exact result you don’t want.”
Good advice. Unfortunately …
