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Miscellany
No Love Lost Between Rick Perry and Obama
The President and the Texas governor, who have taken public shots at one another before, won’t cross paths during Obama’s visit to the Lone Star State. But each camp says it was the other’s choice. From today’s White House press gaggle aboard Air Force One:
Leaving Afghanistan
I agree with Les Gelb’s assessment that we can be out of most combat operations in Afghanistan by the beginning of 2013. (In fact, I made a similar proposal last January.) Here’s how it would work:
Donald Trump For Sale On Conservative News Sites
The fact that Donald Trump’s name sells stuff is no surprise. (Trump Steaks, anyone?) But who would have guessed that Trump reentry into politics could have been so immediately commodified by the online press? In fact, coverage of Trump’s political ambitions has quite literally become a money-making opportunity for the right’s online news hubs.
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The Mighty Mississippi
Memphis, Tenn.
The Mississippi River is starting to crest here and thousands of tourists are on hand to witness it, even as hundreds of Tennesseans are forced to flee the rising waters. A dispatch from the front lines.
Morning Must Reads: Split
- Kent Conrad floats short-term debt ceiling extensions.
- Aid to Pakistan will likely last, but Diane Feinstein is questioning it.
- The country may be close to giving U.S. officials access to bin Laden’s wives.
- Nate Silver hypothesizes bin Laden’s end could make a small but lasting difference in Obama approval.
Florida Loses Its Mind. Again.
If you think that Snooki has relationship problems because of overly strict drinking laws, or that the Bernie Madoff story is a cautionary tale about overly intrusive financial regulation, you’re probably a Florida politician. Because the geniuses who run the state have decided that its economic distress is the result of overly strict …
Morning Must Reads: Critical Mass
- Syria escalates full-scale crackdown.
- What John Boehner will tell Wall Street about the debt ceiling.
- Gas prices may have peaked.
Foreclosure-Probe Chief Asked Bank Lawyers for Money
A few weeks ago, the National Institute for Money in State Politics published a report showing a marked spike last fall in campaign contributions to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller by lawyers and law firms that represent big …
The Wire War
Andrew Sullivan notes the similarity between The Wire and the actual intelligence campaign to get Bin Laden. But there were also striking similarities to the war in Iraq, oft-noted by some of my intelligence sources back when that war was flaming: In the tv show, the conflict between the slow-moving, hierarchical, unimaginative Baltimore …
1,000 Words
After Birds Point: The Army Corps’ Missouri Floodway Boondoggle
On Monday, I temporarily suspended my longstanding jihad against the Army Corps of Engineers to defend the agency’s controversial decision to blow up a Mississippi River levee and flood 130,000 acres of Missouri farmland. The …