Bloggers are supposed to hate Matt Bai, but I can’t remember why. I generally like his pieces and this one is no exception: For all the shouting that has dominated these town hall meetings on health care lately, they have yielded a few important insights. The first is that the town hall itself has probably …
Archives for August 2009
Dirty Jobs
Another busy day at the Atlantic…
The War With China Starts on 24 September
Excellent news: Yep, you heard that right: former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will travel to Hong Kong for her first commercial speaking engagement, a keynote address at the CLSA Investors’ Forum September 23. Given that foreign policy was a soft spot for Palin during the 2008 campaign, this will give her a chance to boost …
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The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves
DougJ’s earlier post today on Cheney reminded me of this article from Walter Pincus the other day: Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general’s review of the agency’s interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former …
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Cox and bow-ties
Even though I find them both relatively amusing, there’s something deeply sickening about the success of Ana Marie Cox and Tucker Carlson. Neither is a reporter. Neither knows anything about policy or about how government works. Yet they’re on tv in quasi-serious settings more or less constantly. So this kind of cracked me up: NYC: …
What are insurance premiums premia like in Galt’s Gulch?
Krugman today: That’s especially true for health care, where growing spending has made the vested interests far more powerful than they were in Nixon’s day. The health insurance industry, in particular, saw its premiums go from 1.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1970 to 5.5 percent in 2007, so that a once minor player has become …
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Tears of a torturer
For someone so enamored of enhanced interrogation techniques, Dick Cheney sure is a sensitive guy: “I guess the other thing that offends the hell out of me, frankly, Chris, is we had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from Al Qaeda. The approach of …