Politics
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Culture vs. Politics
Noah Millman has an interesting contribution to the ongoing debate begun by Damon Linker at TNR which was taken up by Deneen and Larison. (All the appropriate links to earlier posts on this question can be found on the posts I link to above.) Linker, I think, misjudges Larison and Deneen, but not Millman insofar
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Movie Treatment: The Second Civil War (Updated)
Treatment for a first episode in bad made-for-TV miniseries: It's 2011. As credits roll in the opening, scenes of lines at soup kitchens, tent cities, a radio newcast voiceover describes a food riot in Miami, survivalists in a firefight with mobile marauders in the Northwest, another voiceover editorializes about the failure of the Obama administration's
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Executive Suite (Updated)
God forbid that Obama should undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. From Greenwald today regarding Charlie Savage's NYT article about Obama's continuing Bush ideas about executive privilege: Concerning the pending dispute over Bush's wildly broad assertions of executive privilege in order to prevent his aides (such as Karl Rove) from having to disclose
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Right America: Feeling Wronged
I watched Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary last night. Pelosi wants to show that there are two Americas which are incapable of understanding one another. Her film is an attempt from the Liberal side to at least listen sympathetically to what the conservative side has to say, even if some rapprochement is at the end of
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Web of Interest
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."– Henry Ford Simon Johnson has been getting a lot of exposure lately. In addition to the TPM blog posts from which I quote in
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What’s Going On? (Updated)
Michael Cohen at TPM Cafe: Republicans seem to be basing their political aspirations on the hope that the stimulus package fails and the economy worsens. But there is an obvious flip side: what if it works? What if widespread deficit spending is seen as the solution to America's economic woes? Not only will Obama have
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Quote of the Day: Douthat
Now fiscal responsibility is generally a good thing, and so a centrism mindlessly focused on tweaking legislation away from deficit spending has its uses. But what Nelson, Collins, Specter and Co. have done isn't a new kind of politics. It's the definition of politics as usual. And in this particular case, there's a reasonable argument
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Lagaan & Game Theory
I've given up on the idea that anybody really knows what they're doing regarding this economic crisis, so for me figuring out the best course to take is a question of gaming the possibilities. I see Obama as in a similar position to Bhuvan, the hero of the terrific Bollywood film Lagaan–it's among other things
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Live and Learn (Updated)
E.J. Dionne: For most of the debate, Obama has cast himself as a benevolent referee overseeing a sprawling and untidy legislative process to which he would eventually bring order. He urged Democrats to knock out small spending measures that had caused public relations problems while doing little to defend the overall package or to reply
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Daschle Goodbye
I think we dodged a bullet. The tax stuff is just the tip of the iceberg–we don't want this guy any where near efforts to solve the healthcare problem. For serious consideration as a replacement: Dr. Howard Dean. He is the anti-Daschle. The Beltway establishment won't like him, but he's proved that he can make