Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The System Was Blinking Red After spending only an hour or two with the report so far, Chapter 8 has become my favorite chapter. That’s because it seems to offer the most insight into whether and how the attacks might have been prevented. Chapter 8 describes the state of US intelligence reporting and government responses […]

The 9/11 Commission Report The 9/11 commission report is an odd document in some ways. Ten out of thirteen chapters of the report simply contain an organized retelling of the factual documents and statements that they received. Only the last three chapters contain any sort of “editorializing,” as it were. And in that section, the […]

Update on the Tax Cuts Here’s the latest on the proposed tax cuts about which I wrote the other day. Yesterday congressional Republicans reached a compromise between the extreme tax-cutters and those fiscally responsible Republicans who wanted to limit the tax cuts and find offsetting revenue to make the changes budget-neutral. So what was the […]

Bush Resolves to Dramatically Change Course According to the New York Times, Bush is promising that in a second term he will do exactly the opposite of what he’s done in his first term: WASHINGTON, July 21 – President Bush on Wednesday set out the broad principles that he said would guide his domestic agenda […]

Lying Liars Visiting Pandagon, I re-encounter a crazy story that I’d heard before but never got around to posting about. No, Pandagon is not the source of the story, they just link to it, and also point out that it’s crazy. Via Yahoo News: Republican officials expect the Democratic ticket — Kerry and running mate […]

Religion in the US The Chicago Sun-Times has an interesting story about how dramatically the religious composition of the US has changed over the past decade. The results are summed up in this table: The Sun-Times article focuses on the fact that Protestants will probably comprise less than 50% of the US within another year […]

Divergent Opinions on the Economy This week’s survey of consumer confidence by ABC News and Money Magazine showed no changes from the previous week. What I found really interesting about this survey, though, was how very different the opinions on the state of the economy were depending on the political affiliation of the person surveyed. […]

Political Markets I’ve referred to the Iowa Electronic Markets on political futures in past posts. The exchange creates contracts that pay either $0 or $1, depending on what happens. For example, a George Bush Presidential election contract will pay you $1 for each contract that you own if Bush wins, and will pay you zero […]

Greenspan the Optimist In his testimony before Congress today, Greenspan indicated that he is not worried about a slowdown in the economy in the second half of this year. Some revealing excerpts from his testimony: [I]n light of the considerable uncertainty surrounding the anticipated evolution of price pressures, the FOMC emphasized that it will respond […]

Breaking Promises   Could this sort of story have anything to do with the NAACP’s antipathy toward the Bush administration?  I guess in a way it seems only fitting that our government has no qualms in reneging on a promise made to a segment of our society that it has always treated poorly in the past. […]