Author RSSHitchens and the Tea Party: Know Your Enemy
My only question in relation to Christopher Hitchens’ recent Vanity Fair article about the Tea Party is, what took so long? Why haven’t you turned your guns against this dangerous and absurd movement sooner (your lone article about Beck’s rally notwithsta...
Obama and the Othello Trap: Not “Easily Jealous,” and never “Perplex’d in the Extreme”
I credit Ishmael Reed for saying in Sunday’s New York Times what no one else would say during the recent uproar over Obama’s refusal to “man up” or “fight back:” if the President were to do so his enemies would lurch at the opportunity to label him an ang...
Outrage and Ambivalence over the President’s Tax Deal
Is this Obama’s Bush Sr. moment? If true, is that even a good thing? In other words, is his tax deal a moment of courage or cowardice? Bold leadership or craven capitulation?
I’ve tried to absorb many different perspectives, and the only clear ans...
The Myth of the Free Market
John Cassidy’s article in this week’s New Yorker offers an unanswerable argument against what he calls “the myth of the free market” that flouts at common misconceptions among Americans by walking his reader through many little discussed but unavoidable h...
The Next Financial Crisis?
If the latest potential financial fiasco blows up one can only shudder at the thought of what the repercussions will be. As The New York Times reports, many analysts who predicted the subprime mortgage crisis are warning of another impending meltdown, onl...
The New Food Safety Bill and the Power of Targeted Fear
The Senate’s bi-partisan approval of overhauling the food safety system by granting the F.D.A. authority to implement stronger regulation, increased inspections and recall powers is great news and a testament to the persuasive powers of targeted fear. Ma...
FOX News Logic Knows No Bounds, Even When It Comes to National Security
The recent uproar from the right over the T.S.A.’s tight security measures should come as no surprise, staggering as it may seem. When conservative commentators started calling Afghanistan “Obama’s Vietnam” at the very beginning of his presidency, well b...
A Rebuttal to the Charge that Climate Experts Conspire to Raise Research Money with Hyperbole
Last week, The New York Times published an article on the state of global warming science that prompted climate experts at realclimate.org to proclaim, “That’s how science journalism should be!” The reporter, Justin Gillis, spent months researching the m...
The Republicans unveiled their plan to terminate a program that already ended on September 30.
After a hysteria-filled campaign about the dire need to cut deficits, Republicans have finally announced an initiative. As Jackie Calmes of the New York Times reports, the Republican Study Committee issued a statement last week emphasizing that “Washingt...
The Good News Paradox in Obama’s America
It feels like a curse. Ordinarily, we would have no reason to be anything other than joyous about the Labor Department report released on Friday. The economy added 151,000 jobs in October, and economists are starting to see real signs of recovery and di...
Indispensable Reading: The Watchers, the Rise of America’s Surveillance State
Shane Harris’s The Watchers, the Rise of America’s Surveillance State is a must-read for anyone interested in the war on terror. Harris, who has covered counterterrorism and electronic surveillance for National Journal since the 90’s, has composed a book...
Health Care Disinformation and FOX News Logic
A recent Op-Ed in The New York Times offers a thorough response to the lies coming from conservatives about health care reform, and in doing so it delineates how Republicans consistently incorporate what I like to call “FOX News Logic.”
To start with t...
The Tea Party Does Not Really Care About the Budget Deficit
A recent New York Times article exposing the contradictory claims of the G.O.P.’s “call” for cuts is stunning, even though it reports what anyone paying attention to the news already knew. Riding the wave of populist anger at a perceived draconian govern...
The Social Network: A Contemporary Citizen Kane?
Everyone seems to be saying The Social Network is the defining movie of our generation and today’s version of Citizen Kane. After reading countless articles in praise of the film I finally got around to seeing it the other day, and I can say that while it...
The Obama Tax Cuts
Can we hear a little less about how Obama is just another tax-and-spend liberal? As the New York Times reported the other day, one third of the stimulus package consisted of tax breaks worth $116 billion, covering “95% of working families.” It also provid...
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