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

Can You Blame The Kid? Here’s the now famous bored-kid, instigator of the CNN-White House-David Letterman flap (via Atrios), looking at his watch: But who was his role model? For that we have to turn to the Elder Bush in (roughly) the year of the bored kid’s birth, when George Bush Sr. found that he […]

Saddam’s WMD Note: This is *not* a 4/1 joke. Based on a story today, Saddam Hussein possessed half the components required to build a nuclear landmine based on 1950’s era British technology: LONDON – A claim that Britain considered using live chickens in a nuclear weapon aroused skepticism Thursday, but officials insisted it was not […]

Flippity-Floppity Yesterday, I quoted an AP story on some of Bush’s reversals. The Center for American Progress has a more complete, though I’m sure not comprehensive, list. AB

The Headline Says it All Page 1, Washington Post. Top Focus Before 9/11 Wasn’t on Terrorism: Rice Speech Cited Missile Defense. On Sept. 11, 2001, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to outline a Bush administration policy that would address “the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of […]

An Inside Look at Rumsfeld’s Talking Points This is an interesting tidbit. Apparently someone walked into a Starbucks over the weekend and found some notes that were obviously written by someone prepping Rumsfeld for his Sunday morning interviews on the news shows. That individual then gave them to the Center for American Progress, the Democrats’ […]

Tomorrow’s Big Economic News I’m referring to the release of the March employment report, which will be released by the BLS at 8:30am tomorrow (EST). This is what CNN/Money has to say about it: Since at least November, there have been signs of a long-hoped-for jump in jobs, leading economists to make fairly rosy forecasts. […]

Wow! Great news today, on almost every front! Latest report: 600,000 jobs added in March; Bush now on pace to meet jobs projection in the Economic Report of the President. Budget will be in balance in 2006, due to rapid economic growth caused by Bush tax cuts. Trade deficit plummets as current accounts deficit turns […]

Angry Bear, Now With WorkingTM RSS (I think) I thought I had it working before, but based on a number of emails, the feed quit updating many moons ago. I think I’ve got it working now, and it gives the full post instead of just the first part. Here’s the link: http://angrybear.blogspot.com/atom.xml The link in […]

Your Tax Dollars at Work Generating talking points for the Bush Campaign, via the WSJ (subscription required): WASHINGTON — The Treasury tapped civil servants to calculate the cost of Sen. John Kerry’s tax plan and then posted the analysis on the Treasury Web site. A federal law bars career government officials from working on political […]

Yet More Outsourcing Fuel Here’s one more recent piece of data and analysis about offshore outsourcing, to add to the analysis discussed in the post below. Jason Kirkegaard of the Institute for International Economics (a nonpartisan think tank devoted to careful research on current issues in international economics) made an extremely detailed examination of the […]