Am. History & Culture
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Quote of the Day: Michael Lind
On who really creates wealth: the true creator of wealth is, ultimately, the commonwealth – not only the political community, but the civilization that it shares with other nations. No technical invention or business innovation is a creation of something from nothing. All depend on the intellectual capital that the human race has accumulated since
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Does Obama Have What It Takes?
There was a lot of talk last year about how Barack Obama would be a “transformational” president — but true transformation, it turns out, requires a lot more than electing one telegenic leader. Actually turning this country around is going to take years of siege warfare against deeply entrenched interests, defending a deeply dysfunctional political
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The Tortured Mind
Can we all agree that Cheney has zero credibility and that he should not be heard from again unless subpoenaed? Eric Holder, whether for him happily or unhappily, has got the ball rolling in his appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate torture. I think this move will develop a momentum that will shift us
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On Converting the Slaves
Ta-Nehesi Coates has a thoughtful post on the slaveholders' making Christians of their slaves that is worth reading, but I reproduce here a comment by Doctor Cleveland: It's a classic example of how ideology controls perceptions, where the slaveholders (in this case) just couldn't see what they were doing because they couldn't acknowledge some basic
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The Second Civil War 2
In February, I wrote a fantasy post in the form of a movie treatment about how a second Civil War might erupt. I was unaware until recently that HBO actually presented a movie with this title in 1997. I finally got around to watching it recently, and it's pretty bizarre, but interesting in the category
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Reconciliation
Both in reference to Obama and as a general observation, David Bromwich gets to the heart of the matter: [Obama's] aversion to strife was plain from his conduct in the primaries and the general-election campaign. But the degree of avoidance we have seen could never have been predicted. Obama's training, one recalls, was in the
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Reform and the Politics of the Lie
There has to be a reason that the US, of all the industrialized nations, the richest country in the world, is so hostile to social welfare programs. There are a lot of contributing factors, not the least of which is our vaunted individualism. But one of the fundamental reasons America is so resistant to programs
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Quote of the Day: Digby
Civil rights legislation in the 1960s didn't move forward until the House Rules Committee chair, a segregationist Southern Democrat, saw his power neutered by an expansion of the committee. Process changes often precede policy changes. Sen. Baucus, take note. (Source) We saw some encouraging developments on the healthcare front yesterday–some actual push back from Dems
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Quote of the Day: Sullivan
In reference to NYT article on Saturday What Cheney was doing here was making a point: that he believes that the president can impose the equivalent of martial law inside the country at any moment he feels it's necessary, even if it isn't. What Cheney was about was making a point about his own untouchable
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Sanity about the Gates Incident (Updated)
Is it possible? Obama takes a shot at it: Does any sensible person really believe that Gates was arrested for any reason other than that Crowley wanted to teach this uppity guy a lesson? It's pretty clear that the issue was Gates's verbal abuse of Crowley, and human nature being what it is, and given