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

Krugman was Wrong today

Ken Houghton Or at least optimistic. McCain is going after Medicare and Medicaid. But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. McCain’s senior policy adviser, said Sunday that the campaign has always planned to fund the tax credits, in part, with savings from Medicare and Medicaid. Those government health-care programs serve seniors, poor families and the disabled. Medicare spending […]

How Not to Build a Bailout Proposal

Let’s see. There are a bunch of people ready to riot on the streets—or at least do the White Person version of rioting and vote Republican, mainly because of the lies of several House Republicans. And there are a precious few people who believe action needs to be taken and—while they might prefer, say, The […]

Republicano Delenda est *

by Ken Houghton Brad DeLong lays out the breakdown. When 2/3 of your party believes that taking the Dow down 600 750+ points is a Good Idea, claims such as “the party of fiscal responsibility”—or even the “party of Wall Street”—fail the free market test Big Time. If I weren’t worried about the coming harvest, […]

Panic, not even at the Disco

UPDATE: Not even the Wall Street Journal editorial page fell for McCain’s “reasoning”: So count us as mystified by Senator John McCain’s decision yesterday to suspend his campaign and call for a postponement in Friday’s first Presidential debate so that he and Barack Obama can work out a consensus bill to stabilize the financial system. […]

Floyd Norris points out another reason the bailout will not work

Take a page from Douglas North et al., I will simply note that if the institutions charged with managing the process are corrupt, the chance of success approaches zero. Case in point, Christopher Cox (R-BoughtAndPaid) and the SEC: The interesting thing here is that we have already heard that the S.E.C. staff almost immediately demanded […]

The New Feminism: Nothing for Rape Prevention

Via The Good Roger Ailes, ABC News reports that rape kits aren’t the only thing Sarah Palin tried to leave the responsibility of the victim: Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal […]

Is "Five Yeshiva Butchers" Good for the Jews?

Steve Waldman graduated Columbia the year after Barack Obama. His brother Mike was Bill Clinton’s chief speechwriter. So when Steve Waldman declared his suspicion that John McCain would get the highest percentage of the Jewish vote of any recent Republican, with a link that indicated it could put Florida solidly in the Republican column, I […]

Andrew Samwick ponders The Ancestral Party

“On days like this, I wonder if I’m still a Republican.“ I gave up on the Party long ago; I gave up hope when a (very) distant relative wrote an op-ed for the NYT on why he would not support impeachment in 1998, and was attacked by the party for the next few years, before […]