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Not Close
Kevin Drum provides a wonderful opportunity for me to launch my first volley in the struggle to write the first draft of history for the 2012 election: Liberals, you should rein in the triumphalism....
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Sailing Away to Irrelevance, Part II
“But there is another kind of light; a light that fills even the darkest places. For if this meat-light did not exist, how could darkness be seen? And so it is with the truth. There are some things...
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Election 2012 Wasn’t Close. Here’s Why It Matters.
Note: Here’s a post that I began some time ago and that is increasingly losing relevancy as post-election developments multiply. But it ended up being rather long and, frankly, the idea of having spent...
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We’re Going Over the Cliff
Another example — and they’re daily at this point — of why I think the US is about to take a dive: A group of House Republican conservatives – incensed by its leadership’s purge of dissenters from...
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About Today’s Fiscal Cliff Trial Balloon
Note: Such are things right now that writing about the fiscal cliff struck me as a welcome diversion. Ezra Klein is the White House’s favorite young journalist, so he’s been the guy when it comes to...
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The Grand Bargain, Revisited
Before describing himself as “agonizing” over whether to support it or not, Paul Krugman tries to distill the pro/con of the latest potential Grand Bargain: So is what Obama gets out of this —...
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The State of the Union’s Quiet Radicalism
Michael Tomasky of The Daily Beast’s response to the president’s fifth State of the Union address sounds much like my own. It was Obama’s second liberal stemwinder in a row; and if nothing else, the...
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What Spurs the GOP’s Conservative Base
Andrew Kohut, former Pew Research Center president and founding director, has a big op-ed in WaPo arguing that while the GOP’s intransigent conservative base keeps it competitive at the Congressional...
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Amirite?
Let’s say a man is working with a woman in a professional capacity. Let’s further say that, without necessarily wanting to pursue a romantic, sexual or any other sort of personal relationship with her,...
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Obama’s Speech at Knox College
If the United States were a country with a well-functioning political media, I doubt President Obama would’ve had to give the speech he gave Wednesday on the economy and the middle class. After all,...
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The Inequality President
There are a few interesting bits in this New York Times interview with President Obama. For one thing, it’s striking to hear how centrally he views combatting inequality to his legacy. For another...
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A good idea packaged wrong
Via Memeorandum, I see that President Obama is proposing to cut corporate taxes if Republicans agree to invest in middle-class job programs. Apparently, it’s part of a Grand Bargain to ward off a...
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Paul Wells on Keystone, Barack Obama and Stephen Harper
At Maclean’s, Paul Wells looks at President Obama’s talk about the Keystone pipeline, as well as Prime Minster Harper’s actions, to try to determine just what the hell the PM is up to. Over at Politico...
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“The faint echoes of Sister Souljah rattling around American racial politics”
I’m basically a Barack Obama fan, albeit less of one than I was 5 years ago (who isn’t?), but I am so, so, so sick of this shit: And then, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that during the...
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Thoughts on Double Down
I plowed through Double Down, which I recommend if you are one of the relative few who belong both to the set of people who like politics and the set of people who are not put off by tittle-tattle and...
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New Column at The New Republic
Forgive me the hiatus in posting. I’ve been parenting (and writing a fair amount). Saw Tod (et al) at Leaguefest and he (et al) encouraged me to share links here to my work elsewhere, so…here goes!...
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Three Questions About The Bergdahl Deal Answered
I Does it matter if Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post in 2009, after having become disillusioned with the war in Afghanistan, only to be captured by the Taliban and held prisoner of war for five...
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Mount Rushmore – Mount Rushmore Edition
Hey, everyone! Guess what I don’t know shit about? Presidential history! But why should that stop me on weighing in on who I think should grace a Mount Rushmore of Presidents limited to those who...
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Why the House Should Follow Through and Sue President Obama
This week the Republican-controlled House voted to endorse suing the President of the United States, a move unprecedented in our nation’s 200+ year history. The root of the suit’s beef with the...
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Fashionable Politics
Thank god for New York’s Peter King. I thought for a bit that Obama was going to get away with Or it. If only he’d been in office when Reagan took his turn embarrassing America. Fortunately, Reagan...
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A Hagelian Dialectic
Via Shane Harris, on the resignation of defense secretary Chuck Hagel: “Hagel wasn’t brought in to tackle these crises, and some defense sources say he simply wasn’t up to it. The presumption at the...
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Cooler Than Lukewarm
By chance, did anyone else hear the interview this morning on NPR with President Obama about the deal with Iran? I had a hard time discerning any enthusiasm or energy in the President’s voice on the...
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Voice of the Senate
I discovered that in August 1960, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a resolution, S.RES. 334, “Expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should not make recess appointments to the...
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Impeach Barack Obama
Barack Obama should be impeached, convicted, and removed from office. He has ordered the killing of at least one US citizen without indictment, conviction, or any sort of judicial review. His office...
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So Long, President Obama
It is hard to decouple the personal from the political when it comes to assessing a president’s reign. When we look back at the great presidents of old, it’s clear the rosy assessment we have of an...
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Briefly, On The Search For Explanations
I have always been drawn to this scene; I find its argument appealing, especially the idea that people looking for patterns will always find them. There is something particularly human about this...
View ArticleObama — Farewell Address
In his own farewell address, George Washington wrote that self-government is the underpinning of our safety, prosperity, and liberty, but “from different causes and from different quarters much pains...
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Analyze This: 2004 Video of Donald Trump and Jesse Ventura
Donald Trump and Jesse Venture at Wrestlemania XX, WWE YouTube If you had told me 10 years ago that one day a member of the WWE Hall of Fame would be president, I would have responded, “Yeah, Jesse...
View ArticleFmr President Obama on Being Always Politically Woke: “You Should Get Over...
Former President Obama caught some folks’ attention when a clip of him speaking at The Obama Foundation Summit made the rounds on social media. “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and...
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In Case You Missed It, It Isn’t 2009: Pandemics Then and Now
Flyers at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport wearing facemasks on March 6th, 2020 as the COVID-19 coronavirus spreads throughout the United States. Photo by Chad Davis via Flickr Fear is...
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