Category Archives: Current Events

Will Wilkinson went to hear Newt Gingrich speak. Now, I have a feral cat in my backyard who has about the same chance of being president as Gingrich but Newt's speeches are still kinda interesting. They're textbook examples of using God and religion to try and move product and to stampede people into voting in the speaker's best interests, as opposed to their own. That's certainly nothing new. It's just that you don't usually see someone who's so bad at it that he can stay in the public eye and draw attention long after he has any constituency at all.

Matt Yglesias suggests a solution to the debt-ceiling crisis. It's a simple, workable proposal…but since it doesn't give anyone the chance to defeat their politicial opponents, it'll never happen.

The Economist is a very Conservative financial magazine. In this editorial, they address the matter of the debt ceiling with a few harsh words for Barack Obama. But they believe Obama has come around to a good position on deficit reduction and it's now the Republicans in Congress who are playing politics, gambling with the nation's economic health and future.

Robert Shapiro, another member of the team of attorneys who enabled O.J. Simpson to walk, makes the same self-serving argument that "the system worked" in the Casey Anthony trial. He's right that when a case is discussed in public or on Nancy Grace's program, inadmissible evidence gets discussed along with rumors and testimony that is not heard in court and many other factors. Certainly, if you follow a case from afar, you get a very different perspective on it than the jury gets, and not necessarily a more accurate one.

That said, the jury does sometimes get it wrong and when one of Mr. Shapiro's clients gets convicted, he's probably the first to say all the things some are now saying about the Anthony trial: The jury didn't understand the case, they were prejudiced, it's not justice, etc. At times you wonder if some lawyers are prouder of getting an innocent client acquitted or enabling a guilty one to go free.

Bruce Bartlett offers us Five Myths About the Debt Ceiling.

I did not follow the Casey Anthony case closely enough to have an opinion as to her guilt. Lawyer Alan Dershowitz wrote this "the system worked" article…and I guess I agree with him in the abstract that it's possible for someone to commit a murder but for the case against them to lack enough proof such that "Not Guilty" is the proper verdict. Whether that applies in the Anthony case, I dunno. Look at how many guilty verdicts are overturned on appeal or by some group like Project Innocence noting that an innocent guy was on Death Row for ten years, many of them after eyewitnesses recanted and DNA proved the wrong person was convicted. Clearly, the system sometimes doesn't work…or at least doesn't work the first few times for some cases.

Where Dershowitz loses me in the article is where he turns it into an infomercial for the idea that there was nothing wrong with the trial in which O.J. Simpson was acquitted. That may be so on some levels but as is unmentioned in the piece, Professor Dershowitz was on Simpson's infamous "Dream Team" of lawyers. As such, he has way too much interest in justifying that case through this case, selling the idea that we should expect some guilty folks to go free because, well, you know that kind of thing happens. It sure does but that's the system working.

Kevin Drum explains deficit reduction in plain English: It's Republicans getting rid of programs they've never liked which benefit the young and the poor. Read the entire item.

David Frum thinks Barack Obama is handing the G.O.P. a big "win" over this debt ceiling matter by not being harsher with them. That's sure the way it looks to a lot of us.

Fred Kaplan on the forthcoming cuts in our military budget. I guess there will be some and I guess even neo-cons won't be screaming that they make our country unsafe and hand our future over to the Commies or the Terrorists or whoever they're afraid of, this week.

On the matter of the debt ceiling, read David Brooks and then go read Megan McArdle. McArdle doesn't think the Republicans are bluffing about capsizing the economy if the alternative is that rich people lose tax breaks. I think they are…but sometimes you get so immersed in a bluff that you can't get out of it.

Harry Shearer on "American exceptionalism." It struck me that that phrase has gained a lot of traction because Barack Obama declined to parrot it verbatim. A bunch of Conservatives were going around using it, telling Americans that Americans were the greatest people on the planet…and of course, by "Americans," they meant only the ones who side with them. They didn't, for instance, mean Liberals who might by some silly technicality be considered by some to be Americans.

This is not unusual. I suspect that in most nations on this globe, there's someone running around telling the people there that they're the most terrific, super, fabulous people anywhere and they're God's chosen humans and let's feel sorry for anyone who isn't us, etc. Anyway, in that grand tradition, these Conservatives started using the term, "American exceptionalism."

And then along came Obama and he's no different from any politician in this regard. He tells us how spectacular we are, only he puts it in his own words. He says we're extraordinary and grand and, you know, our feces have no aroma…but he doesn't use the precise term, "American exceptionalism."

Which is the cue for everyone on Fox News to point that out and act like he said we were river bottom trash. He couldn't even bring himself to utter the words, "American exceptionalism." Obviously, that's because he doesn't believe America is exceptional. If he did, he would say it that way instead of some other way…and it's all just another bogus way to fill air time and to try and whip the dumber public into supporting Republican candidates who'll cut Rupert Murdoch's taxes. My, that's exceptional.

Frank Rich is now over in New York magazine and he has a long piece about how Obama has disappointed so many of those who elected him. I don't think it's quite that bad but I agree that this Administration — you know, the one its opponents claim is inarguably Marxist and destroying the Free Market system — has done darn little to prevent any U.S. corporation from maximizing profits…by legal means or otherwise.

So…just how much will the wars in Iran and Afghanistan wind up costing this country? Joe Conason says it's more than you might think…a lot more.

And here's Ezra Klein to provide a little more context for the info in the previous item posted here.

How could Congress get the deficit under control? Well, according to this, they could do it by just going home and not doing anything. There's only a real problem if they insist on doing things like renewing the Bush tax cuts or passing more unfunded expenditures.