links for 2009-08-28
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I appreciate the points that the Great Orange Satan and Glenn Greenwald are making about Jon Chait’s flip-flops on the subject of Joe Lieberman and ideological purges. But this strikes me as a time when it might be a good idea to just take “yes” for an answer. If you make groveling apologies your price for admitting converts, you’re going to find yourself running a small church. That said, I don’t think it’s been generally acknowledged how much damage the Democratic Party leadership’s failure to aggressively back Ned Lamont in the 2006 general election has wound up doing to the cause of progressive politics. The issue has less to do with the specific malfeasance of Lieberman than with the consequences for party discipline. If you can go so far as to lose a Democratic primary and run against the Democratic Party’s nominee and still not get kneecapped by the leaders of your party, then of course you’ll feel no compunction about joining opposition party procedural obstruction and all the
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At what level of material wealth does one become, completely, totally, utterly sated? How much stuff--how many things--how much power to buy and control does one have to have before one can say "enough is enough," stop playing the game for increased wealth, and start playing some other, different game? Here is discouraging psychological evidence from publishing magnate and Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. It turns out that--at least as far as he is concerned--wealth in nine figures isn't enough yet to make him not care...
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Congrats to the editorial page of Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal for this signal achievement...
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I think, after this, we can officially designate Megan McArdle as the America's Stupidest Blogger™.
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Ambinder added in their (and his own) defense that “Our skepticism about the activists’ conclusions [that the alerts were politically motivated] was warranted because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence.” The sentence inspired blogosphere outrage on many levels simultaneously. First, and most egregiously, it attributed motives—“gut hatred”—to individuals without any evidence. Second, it attributed these suspicions only to “activists” as if it was not shared by anyone outside this small and (hateful) circle. Third, it treated opposition to George W. Bush—now roundly recognized to be perhaps America’s worst president ever—as a kind of irrational emotional disorder rather than a considered (and patriotically inspired) understanding of the consequences of his presidency in order to dismiss them out of hand. And finally, in doing all of these things, Ambinder paved the way for such views to be dismissed agai
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the irresponsibility of the Bush years has left us poorly positioned to deal with the current crisis, turning what should have been an easily financed economic rescue into a more difficult, anxiety-producing process.
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Seeing as how Typepad (and Typepad comments, let us not forget, which is a different beast) is still blocked, I will risk complaint and re-publish the post, in full...
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U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 108th Congress - 1st Session as compiled through Senate LIS by the Senate Bill Clerk under the direction of the Secretary of the Senate. Question: On the Conference Report (H.R. 1 Conference Report . Vote Number: 459 Vote Date: November 25, 2003, 09:23 AM. Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Conference Report Agreed to. Measure Number: H.R. 1 (Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003 ). Measure Title: An act to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to provide for a voluntary prescription drug benefit under the medicare program and to strengthen and improve the medicare program, and for other purposes. Vote Counts: YEAs 54 NAYs 44 Not Voting 2.