Ugly, Ugly Fratricide This is not pretty. And one wonders why the Republicans have gained such complete control over the US’s political system, given that the majority of American’s are closer to Democrats than Republicans on the issues… Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, had billed his speech here to the Pacific Council on […]

Guest Blogging Just a reminder: Kash and I are looking for guest-bloggers from 12/20 to 1/7 (I’ll be blogging through the end of the year, then taking a week off. Kash is off for 2.5 weeks.) Happily, we have one great guest so far (the much anticipated unveiling will come at the end of this […]

It’s Your Children’s Money. Quick! Keep Taking It! Here’s the new fiscal responsibility plan: cut the deficit in half by 2009. Maybe. There’s a major caveat: In an interview Friday, Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the White House budget office, said Bush would halve the deficit “by pursuing very aggressively his pro-growth economic policies, and […]

Good News The latest news is that Saddam Hussein may have been captured. Clearly, that would be unambiguously good news. But it leads me to wonder whether the opposition is driven by pro-Saddam loyalty or anti-American sentiment. If the former, then things could take a turn for the better; if the latter, then we’re likely […]

Yet Another Miserable Failure From today’s Washington Post: KIRKUSH, Iraq, Dec. 12 — More than half the men in the first unit to be trained for the new Iraqi army have abandoned their jobs because of low pay, inadequate training, faulty equipment, ethnic tensions and other concerns, leaving the nascent 1st Battalion dramatically understaffed just […]

How Do You Decide on a New Constitution? It’s not easy. Just take a look at what the EU is going through this weekend as they try to write their first Europe-wide constitution. The biggest issue is how much representation in the Council of Ministers to give to each country. They have to be careful […]

Into the Breach Again I Go… Fight it… Fight it… No… Can’t… Resist… Must… Bring up… Trade… Again… It’s not my fault. Blame Brad DeLong. He put up a provocative post yesterday about this week’s Economist piece (subscription required) on white collar jobs in the US being outsourced to places like India. DeLong’s point is […]

Uncompetitive and Unmonitored Josh Marshall has a lovely follow up to Kash’s earlier post on the likely impact of the administration reducing competition for reconstruction contracts in Iraq (illustrative example of this effect: importing gasoline from Kuwait costs $2.64/gallon). Here’s the news from Marshall: When Congress voted the $87 billion for military expenditures and reconstruction […]

Medicare, continued Reader and commenter Greg refers me to this important story on Medicare in the Boston Globe. It’s an oped by two professors, Jacob S. Hacker, assistant professor of political science at Yale and Theodore R. Marmor, professor at Yale School of Management. There’s a lot of good stuff in the piece, some of […]

Best Lefty Blogs Wampum is now taking nominations for the “Koufax Awards,” a set of awards for various outstanding achievements in the field of excellence by lefty blogs. In most of the categories, the competition is likely to be fierce (but friendly). Best Blog: Likely to be a close race between Atrios, Marshall, CalPundit, and […]