Category: politics

Greg Sargent on Charles Krauthammer and Paul Ryan: “This is worse than a shell game. It’s a shell game without the pea.”

Greg Sargent on Charles Krauthammer and Paul Ryan: “This is worse than a shell game. It’s a shell game without the pea.”

There is a real simple two question test I apply when I am trying to sort out the sincerity of a policy opinion.

  • If the facts were different, would the policy opinion be different?
  • If the facts were opposite, would the policy be opposite?

I first came up with this test during the debate over the Bush tax cuts. The debate quickly when from the economy is doing well, we can afford a tax cut to the economy is in crisis, we need a tax cut for stimulus.

So, if unemployment were low and school costs flat; would Ryan propose the same budget or a different budget?

U.S. Has No Idea Whether al-Qaida is Beat

U.S. Has No Idea Whether al-Qaida is Beat

The official continued, “I think it is a very useful exercise, for us and for you all, to think about how do you conceive of the defeat of an organization like al-Qaida? But I think, I’ve said in the past, determining whether or not we’ve achieved strategic defeat may be more a question for historians than for analysts.”

So they are going to leave it to historians to decide when the country can get back to normal levels of security and military posture?

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Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party. The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.… Continue reading Untitled

Robert Reich: Why Anyone Should Care that Bill O’Reilly Calls Me A Communist

Robert Reich: Why Anyone Should Care that Bill O’Reilly Calls Me A Communist

robertreich:

Bill O’Reilly, the tumescent personality of Fox News, said on his Friday show “Robert Reich is a communist who secretly adores Karl Marx.” (This came after Fox News’ Neil Cavoto called me a “sanctimonious twit” for suggesting the rich should pay more in taxes.)

O’Reilly’s accusation is odd, to…

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being a right-wing ideologue and a spineless flip-flopper don’t have to be mutually exclusive conditions. And in Romney’s case, they probably aren’t. The Romney paradox, explained – War Room – Salon.com

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So how come the roads are so bad in the richest part of the country? Can’t even the rich people get the government to do things for them in Haiti? Actually they can and do, that’s not the problem here. Here is a hypothesis that was independently proposed by three different people last summer to… Continue reading Untitled