Informed Speculation

I must be away from the computer until this evening, so I just wanted to put up a quick post saying that it is possible that Russia is ending its Georgian aggression, which would be an undeniably good thing…but there are also reports that the attacks continue.  I’m sure the story will continue to unfold…but [...]

Way back in February, 2005, when my blog was about three months old, I wrote a slightly-embarrassing-in-retrospect bit of triumphalism crowing about how bloggers had pushed Eason Jordan out of his senior position at CNN when it was revealed that he had accused the American military of, incredibly, targeting journalists(!!). Imagine my surprise when the [...]

One of the odder political transformations of recent times has been the newfound disdain the American left has for the notion that Social Security is in trouble. One needn’t look far for the reason – as Paul Krugman neatly explains here, it’s because the notion of privatization had gained traction, so the natural response was [...]

If you had a hard time getting to the site today, it’s because I had to update my domain name servers (translation: my address changed).  Looks like things are back to normal now. Of course, Hillary and Obama are debating in my fair city at this moment, but the big story of the day was [...]

While I still insist the he has NOT clinched the nomination, it will take a major, major turn of events to derail Barack Obama at this point.  I have been cautious, perhaps overly so, in dismissing the might of the Clinton machine, but connections and power can only take you so far – at some [...]

Those who waved (and continue to wave – see McGovern, George) the Lancet’s 600,000+ excess-Iraqi-deaths number around as a blunt instrument to strike down defenders of the Iraq War had one advantage over us: they could point to the ‘statistically sound’ methodology and fall back on arcane statistical niceties while we could only say “It’s [...]

If you are a person with a lick of economic sense, you realize immediately that the answer is an unequivocal no.  Paul Krugman, however, has the least economic sense of any economist I’ve every had the dissatisfaction of reading: “Americans’ Economic Pessimism Reaches Record High.” That’s the headline on a recent Gallup report, which shows [...]

Here’s one I couldn’t resist, from The Economist, reviewing Bai’s new book: Mr Bai sets out to uncover the forces shaping the Democratic Party behind the scenes, both within and outside the party hierarchy. He spends time with howling bloggers, billionaire donors and the politicians who try to accommodate their impossible demands. He is instinctively [...]

I’ve had an undisguised admiration for the Washington Post editorial board for quite some time now.  There is no doubt that the Post leans left, as does the NY Times, but unlike the Times, the Post is not so blinded by partisanship that it cannot see any good news that doesn’t fit its political agenda.  [...]

I made no secret of my outrage over MoveOn’s “Betray Us” ad, and my contempt for Hillary’s cowardly response when questioned directly about it (she is running for Commander-In-Chief, after all). I’ve seen the apologetics MoveOn’s defenders have brought forth and have been unmoved – when you used loaded language, such as combining “betray” with [...]

I can’t excerpt this piece, because it must be read in its entirety, and I can’t add anything of value to it, so I’ll simply say: read the new George Will column.  Pronto…

Despite much controversy over the decision to invite Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia, give credit to the institution’s president for pulling no punches: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the stage at Columbia University on Monday to a blistering reception from the president of the school, who said the hard-line leader behaved like “a petty [...]

With all apologies to Bob Dylan (fresh off his poorly received closing of last weekend’s Austin City Limits Festival), the NY Times has just confirmed the long-rumored death of TimesSelect, and even opened up its archive for the last twenty years for free: The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of [...]

Time and time again the extremist elements on the left (and occasionally on the right, as well) overestimate their reach among the rank and file and go way, way too far. This time, it was MoveOn.org: Republicans have seized on a liberal advocacy group’s print ad attacking Gen. David Petraeus and have called on Senate [...]

The big day is tomorrow, as General Petraeus begins his testimony: The top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has recommended that decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of the American troops in Iraq be put off for six months, American officials said Sunday. General Petraeus, whose long-awaited testimony [...]

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry: The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned. After much internal debate, Times executives – including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. – made the decision to end the subscription-only TimesSelect service but [...]

Interesting short piece at Techdirt on one possible implication of the sale of Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch: the demolition of the paid subscriber wall that shields most of the Wall Street Journal’s content from the huddled masses yearning to breathe the hallowed air of the Journal’s famed editorial page in its entirety, not to [...]

Well, what’s new about that, you might ask? The Times gave up long ago. First, to the editorial: WHATEVER THE future holds, the United States has not “lost” and cannot “lose” Iraq. It was never ours in the first place. And however history will judge the war, some key U.S. goals have been accomplished: Saddam [...]

Very, very sad news from California, as one of the giants has died in a car crash. David Halberstam is the author of any number of extremely worthy books, including his Pulitzer-Prize-winning masterpiece The Best and the Brightest [correction - Halberstam did win his Pulitzer while reporting on Vietnam, but it was in 1964, while [...]

Boy, this Imus thing is being totally overplayed, isn’t it?  William F. Buckley, while pointing out the double standard involved, seems to think the sacking of Imus was some sort of great moment of triumph for civility: Some years ago, Cokie Roberts, faithful to her profession and to the proposition that those engaged in public discourse, [...]