Not to borrow a page from Brad DeLong, but three days before the singer’s would-have-been-80th birthday and 67 years to the day after the events that made his subject famous…

Greg Sargent, whose Gatekeeper Job at Kaplan Prep Daily makes him somewhat important in determining the results of elections, cast a pale over my good mood about my dinner bet with Lance Mannion this morning:* Having trouble getting outraged with Romney campaign sending out only good parts of Det[roit] News endorsement. Seems like par for […]

Today’s Page 1, above-the-fold, biggest type headlines for the FT: US PDF edition: “Obama proposes corporate tax rate cut: System ‘outdated, unfair, and inefficient’ US Print edition: “Obama and Romney unveil rival tax plans: Proposals show strong support for reforms” The latter piece waits until the 7th graf to Tell the Truth and Shame the […]

You don’t have to be a conservative who’s helped coopt the American flag as a rightwing Republican political symbol—replacing the Elephant, which no one under the age of 50 even recognizes anymore as the GOP’s official emblem—to be offended by someone’s false claim of having received a military honor, especially one awarded for extraordinary valor.  […]

Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast points us to the crazy nature of our current attitude regarding attacking Iran in The Crazy Rush to Attack Iran. He lists and quotes an impressive series of experts familiar with the the last decades wars, and finally asks: Can you find former military and intelligence officials who are […]

by Linda Beale Politicians’ wealth and the tax policies they support A story in the Boston Globe by Britt Peterson on Feb. 19, 2012 explored “Why it matters that our politicians are rich” (available here on Boston.com). A key point–the four remaining GOP presidential candidates all are millionaires, with most making more than a million […]

Whats the matter with Chisago county?  One look at the NYT’s article on how and why people who receive benefits from the government think they don’t, and considers the ’causes’ slid into the article as ‘fact’. Payroll tax cut undermines Social Security  An article in the LA Times that considers the messages involved in using the […]

I made a mistake in my original post.   Graph 4 in that post was based on the wrong data set.  As Roger Chittum pointed out in comments, that graph only covers a subset of total gasoline deliveries. This is the correct graph.  (Source.)  Thanks, Roger! Graph 1 Gasoline Supplied The fall off in gasoline delivery […]

Yves at Naked Capitalism  comments on this Bloomberg article about the Eaton v. Federal National Mortgage Association case before the MA Supreme Court in the article  Massachusetts Home Seizures Threatened in Loan Case: Mortgages: This is super important … The highly respected Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is going to rule on whether the mortgage (the lien) can be […]