Dems To Define GOP With ‘Republican-Tea Party Contract With America’ (VIDEO) | TPMDC

Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine today will announce a new party initiative aimed at defining the Republicans who want to win control of Congress as tea partiers who want to repeal everything and abolish federal agencies. From Dems To Define GOP With ‘Republican-Tea Party Contract With America’ (VIDEO) | TPMDC This is brilliant politically.… Continue reading Dems To Define GOP With ‘Republican-Tea Party Contract With America’ (VIDEO) | TPMDC

The only thing Americans hate more than big government is the absence of government protection

middle-class Americans of the right, left, and center have now come to expect a level of personal financial security that—despite the stereotypes—most people would never demand from their governments. In a review he wrote earlier this month, Brink Lindsey, the vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute—a man who knows what he is up against—pulled… Continue reading The only thing Americans hate more than big government is the absence of government protection

Climategate debunking is (or should be) major news

By restoring the reputation of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the reports released by a  Netherlands environmental agency and a special British investigative panel should do much to dispel the widespread doubt generated by hackers who  pinched nasty e-mails from the computers of climate scientists associated with the IPCC. Or the reports would… Continue reading Climategate debunking is (or should be) major news

Joyless parents: You’re doing it wrong

Somewhere along the line, having a baby has stopped being an inevitable part of the life cycle and started to be one of those things-to-do-before-you-die, like climbing Machu Picchu or running a marathon. Basic aspects of the mothering experience, like labor and breast-feeding, took on a spiritual significance. Now, as we prepare to make the… Continue reading Joyless parents: You’re doing it wrong

Myths of Austerity

This conventional wisdom isn’t based on either evidence or careful analysis. Instead, it rests on what we might charitably call sheer speculation, and less charitably call figments of the policy elite’s imagination — specifically, on belief in what I’ve come to think of as the invisible bond vigilante and the confidence fairy. Bond vigilantes are… Continue reading Myths of Austerity

Things We Already Knew – Ross Douthat

It isn’t really “surprising” that if you take the marginal tax rate on labor from 29 percent to 38 percent, raise the tax burden dramatically for the middle and working classes, permanently slash physician reimbursements for Medicare and curb domestic discretionary spending growth as successfully as the Clinton-Gingrich deadlock did in the 1990s, you can… Continue reading Things We Already Knew – Ross Douthat

GOPers Vote For TARP Bailout Continuation, Against Bank Bailout Fund

in a scramble to save the bill in the wake of Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-MA) objections to the conference report, Democrats worked with moderate Republicans to figure out a new way to pay for Wall Street reform. What they came up with was pretty simple: end the TARP legislation (i.e., the much-maligned bank bailout) early.… Continue reading GOPers Vote For TARP Bailout Continuation, Against Bank Bailout Fund