Why is America Teh Awesome?
David Brooks writes : Why did the United States become the leading economic power of the 20th century? The best short answer is that a feroc...
The New Liberal Economics
Harold Meyerson writes that liberals are finally inching closer to a consensus on economic issues: If there's one thing to which the w...
Where we stand
We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee
Very interesting discussion this week at TPMCafe Book Club (and if you read that and didn't immediately click to another page, I commen...
The fundamental misconception of American politics
New Urbanism Watch: lawn sharing!
Great post by Matt Yglesias , who is rapidly turning into one of the blogosphere's biggest proponents of the New Urbanism. For the unini...
So much for catching flies with honey
Famous economist and blogger Brad DeLong has long held that getting on China's good side is Job #1 for the U.S. Earlier this year he wro...
Jews: Obama > Lieberman
The dark mutterings I've heard from a few Jewish voters about how Obama doesn't hate Iran enough "doesn't have enough fore...
The Conservative Media
Clive Crook, British politics-and-economics blogger, writes : Mr McCain has to contend with the US media’s increasingly shameless bias in fa...
Furniture-building Democrats vs. furniture-burning Republicans...
From an email I wrote to a friend: I generally like Obama's economic policy. It's very production-oriented (which makes sense, since...
Yay for China! (not)
From a WaPo article : With the [Olympic] Games three weeks away, the precautions already have proved so sweeping that some observers questio...
Know your Obama hater code
I have never heard anyone say they support John McCain. I have heard very few people say they actively oppose Obama. What I have heard is qu...
Environmentalists cause global warming
Apparently the Right's new line of attack on climate change is this: Yes, we need to do something about it, and we could if environmenta...
Did unions kill GM and Ford?
A common theme among defenders of auto unions is that bad management decisions, not union pressure, made GM and Ford uncompetitive. Chief am...
Fannie Mac and Freddie Mae
Or is it the other way around? :-) Anyway, someone asked me to do a post on the GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises), whose stocks have t...
Did Clinton sabotage liberalism?
Ezra Klein contributes to the " Clinton was bad after all " strand of liberal revisionism, suggesting that "by adapting to a ...
Whose side are we on, anyway?
Ezra Klein foresees conservatives trying to preserve their faltering movement by starting a new Cold War - this time with China. [T]he case...
"Neither 'bubble' nor 'China', but a 'China bubble'"
Daniel Gros, writing in the Financial Times, explains why oil prices are high : W hat is behind the ever-increasing price of crude oil? Most...
Budget balacing - the reality
Matt Yglesias sums up a recent multi-think-tank study on balancing the budget . The proposals in the plan re pretty reasonable. But, as Ygle...
China and the Rule of 70
A new report by Albert Keidel predicts that China's economy will be as large as America's in 2035, and twice as large in 2050. That...
The Ice-Grill
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes : [T]he idea that D.C. could feel like Murderland is mind-boggling to me...as anyone whose spent some time in the ci...
"The" Clash of Civilizations?
In 1993, Samuel Huntington claimed that, with the Cold War over, the main fault lines in he world would be between religious/racial blocs, o...
The New Urbanism
For many liberals of my generation, the New Urbanism is in. Some of us grew up in Southern and Western towns that were basically strip-malls...
Jewish-Americans and divided loyalties
Legend has it that when George W. Bush asked his father what a neocon was, the elder Bush answered "One word: Israel." Many Americ...
Yay for $4 gas
One of my favorite articles in recent memory is this Time piece called " 10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas ." The list is: 1. Ma...
We want our bandaid!
Apparently, Americans aren't very worried about the caribou any more; Republican arguments for expanded drilling in Alaska are beginning...
The writing on the wall
For all those who believe that China will keep growing at its current breakneck pace for the next 40 years, take a look at this report , whi...
