Category Archives: Current Events

Sarah Palin has been belittling Barack Obama's record of legislative accomplishments by saying he hasn't had his name on one important bill. As Jonathan Alter notes, that's not quite an accurate representation…and if you apply the Palin standard, John McCain (who's been in Washington a lot longer) hasn't accomplished a lot more.

I don't blame Phil Gramm wholly for the reckless deregulation that has led to the recent financial crash-and-burns. (There's sane deregulation and reckless deregulation and I don't think a lot of our leaders know the difference.) An awful lot of people of both parties went along with this movement, including Joe Biden who I hope will have the decency to admit he voted wrong. But Gramm was one of the main architects of it all, if not the auteur. Here's a piece about him by David Corn.

According to Nicholas D. Kristof, the C.E.O. of Lehman Brothers (you know, the financial institution that just tanked) earned a nice piece of change. Between 1993 and 2007, it was around half a billion dollars.

This brings us back to that approximate quote I put up from Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony. He said — this is not verbatim but close — "The thing that will eventually doom much of American business is that your executives pay no price for failure. You can become CEO of a corporation, do everything wrong, drive your company into the ground and then retire and buy several mansions with the money they will pay you for doing this."

It's one of those situations that will probably never change. It's like the wartime scams depicted in Catch 22: Everyone knew it was crooked but nobody stopped it because anyone in a position to stop it was making money off it.

I have to link to an article called Why Obama's Health Plan Is Better. Quick summary: His is better because he actually has one.

Michael Kinsley crunches some numbers and comes to the conclusion that Democrats in the White House are always better for the nation's economy than Republicans in the White House. In fact, Democrats are even better at achieving what most Republicans say they want the economy to be like. One excerpt from his conclusions…

On average, in years when the president is a Democrat, the economy grows faster; inflation is lower; fewer people can't find a job; the federal government spends a smaller share of GDP, whether or not you include defense spending; and the deficit is lower (or — sweet Clinton-years memory — the surplus is higher). The one category that Republicans win is, unsurprisingly, federal taxes as a share of GDP. But it is no trick to lower taxes if you don't lower spending.

I'm sure there are other ways to parse the numbers that don't yield this realization…but this is a pretty straightforward recitation of the stats. I would also caution that whenever people say that Republicans do this or Democrats do that, I always assume they mean "most" Republicans and "most" Democrats. Surely there are deviants or incompetents in both factions. Still, isn't this an interesting article?

Richard Cohen, a political writer who has admitted to being "in the tank" for McCain, has decided to leap off the Straight Talk Express.

My favorite political writer Fred Kaplan has a view of the Sarah Palin interview that seems spot-on to me.

It will be interesting to see if a lot of people this time vote for Vice-President. There have been some elections where it felt like a ticket could have had Bozo the Clown on it and it wouldn't have made a difference as long as he was in the second position. I think a lot of folks who voted for Bush-Quayle or Gore-Lieberman felt that way. But maybe McCain's age plus Palin's unfamiliarity with foreign affairs makes it more of an issue this time than usual.

Michael Kinsley on Sarah Palin's track record as a "fiscal conservative" in Alaska.

Another 9/11 anniversary is almost upon us…a good time to remember the heroes and victims of that day, some of whom were one and the same. But amazingly, there have been 9/11 heroes and victims years after that awful date. Jennifer Kahn has the story of someone who may have been one…and then again, maybe not.

Everyone of a non-partisan bent seems to agree that Barack Obama's tax proposals would raise 'em a smidge for the richest 1% and lower them, in some cases substantially, for most Americans. John McCain's would lower them a lot for the richest 1% and do almost nothing for the lower and middle classes. Naturally, as Sebastian Mallaby explains, Republicans are selling this as "Obama will raise your taxes and McCain will lower them."

Gloria Steinem on what the pick of Sarah Palin tells us about John McCain.

I agree with this piece by Ted Anthony. If the McCain-Palin team wants some privacy for the Palin family, they oughta stop parading them around as campaign props.

My pal Robert J. Elisberg (we call him Bob…or sometimes just Elisberg) has a nice column up about Steve Goodman. If you don't know who Steve Goodman was, you need to click and read. If you do know, you've probably already clicked and read.

Joe Conason pretty much nails down (for me) what John McCain's running mate selection means.

Sorry if I'm spending a lot of blog time today on McCain's veep selection but it's what everyone around me seems to be discussing. So I thought I'd link you to an article by David Frum. He's pretty Conservative but he doesn't think it was a good pick.