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

Clark Interview Josh Marshall interviewed Gen. Clark yesterday and the entire interview is available here. Here’s a sample, but there’s much more and it’s worth reading: And this administration comes in with an ideology that blocks its ability to see, articulate, and resolve those problems. It’s an ideology that’s a sharpened sort of right-wing Republican […]

Rush Limbaugh’s a Big Fat Idiot Many of you probably have seen his comment from Sunday: “I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot […]

Freewayblogging For some time, reader Scarlet Pimpernel has been sending me pictures of various messages that someone or some group has been posting near Camp Pendleton on I-5 near San Diego. For example, the “we’re all wearing the blue dress now” picture. That’s a phrase I meant to use more, as in Whoever leaked Plame’s […]

What the Hell…. …is wrong with Texans? A high school band director has apologized for a halftime performance that included Adolf Hitler’s anthem “Deutschland Uber Alles” and a student running across the field with a Nazi flag. In fairness to the majority of Texans, the shool and its band were roundly booed. AB

Best of the Blogs I got a bit behind in my reading, so here are some highlights from my catching-up: Dan Drezner says that academic faculty are liberal and gives a compelling example from the humanities. Nevertheless, this argument is tiresome. While I’m not in a position to say one way or the other with […]

Good News! You may be more likely to be in poverty, but at least you are also much less likely to have health insurance. AB

Impeachable? A lot of discussion is happening today about the Valerie Plame affair, both in media and in the blogosphere. I’ve even started seeing the word “impeachment” come up in a few places, such as on Brad DeLong’s blog. But there are really two separate questions one can ask about this situation regarding impeachment, and […]

The Birth Tax, Revisited A friend posed an interesting question to me last week: exactly how much of the astonishing change in the finances of the US government is due to Bush, and how much is due to forces outside of his control? Put another way, exactly what is the magnitude of the tax increase […]

Hitting the Fan Calpundit and Marshall are all over these, but the administration is getting hit hard on Iraq, pre-war planning, pre-war intelligence, the purported and promoted Saddam/9-11 link, and The Valerie Plame Affair, all while the performance of the economy remains mixed. Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, and the NYT all have very scathing […]

More Poverty I took this graph from the Census Poverty Report and then identified which presidents were in office during which periods. Notice any patterns? AB