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Wednesday, Jun 11, 2003
let me intertain you
bunch of interviews ive read in the last two days.
*sidney blumenthal at the wash post
*maer "radar" roshon at black table
*matt drudge at radar
*claire zulkey on her bio page
*michael "moneyball" lewis at bb primer
*bill james at slatemore
Monday, Jun 09, 2003
cigarette girls
study shows that most studies prove nothing.
just duckie
"By any definition, not acting now to narrow the gap between revenues and outlays is a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility. Cutting taxes in the face of it is willful recklessness. But this policy failure is a political success for the Rove/Bush strategy of keeping the sun from setting on the GOP era. Rove is open about the alchemy required. He laid it out for his Boswell, the invaluable Nicholas Lemann, of The New Yorker. Tax cuts and budget deficits will starve the government of funds for discretionary spending on things like after-school programs, health care, and public transportation. Receiving fewer services, Americans will demand tax relief. The idea is to create a permanent constituency for tax cuts, especially among poorer Americans, those "lucky duckies," in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, who pay little or no federal income taxes now. The Journal, the Administration's oracle on taxes, says the key to cutting government is to shift more of the tax burden on to the people at the lower end of the economic spectrum—those who work at Wal-Mart, who clean office buildings, staff nursing homes and school cafeterias. Since most state tax codes follow the federal template, the Bush cuts will trigger state income tax cuts, which will force more reductions in state spending and/or increases in state sales and local property taxes to balance state budgets. Sales and property taxes fall with painful severity on the less affluent. Piece by piece, under successive tax revolts, the regulatory responsibilities assumed by the federal government beginning a hundred years ago will be abandoned, and the programs of the Great Society (Medicare, Medicaid, Federal Aid to Education, Head Start, etc.) and the New Deal (Social Security) will be hollowed out, dismantled, or privatized."
sad state
"After 15 years and $1 billion in charity, international financier and philanthropist George Soros bid an emotional farewell to Russia on Thursday, saying it was time to focus his efforts on a nation more in need of help -- America.
"I was led to come to Russia because of my concern for a prospering open society," Soros told students and journalists at the Higher School of Economics, which was created with his funding. "But now I have to concentrate on what goes on in America. The fight for an open society now has to be fought there," he said."
real squares
"But Blair and Miller have more in common than you might think. Both are in trouble for giving readers dubious information. While Miller's alleged improprieties are of a more subtle nature, and she comes into this rough patch with an estimable reputation built over the course of a long and distinguished career, her case reveals a great deal about the state of today's news media. What Miller did, and the fact that her brand of journalism is encouraged and rewarded by the powers that be, is precisely the kind of topic that the Times's leadership ought to air during its current semipublic glasnost phase. In Blair's case, the only serious damage has been to the paper's image. Miller, on the other hand, risks playing with the kind of fire that starts or justifies wars, gets people killed and plays into the hands of government officials with partisan axes to grind."
brain dread
"A Buzzflash Interview With James Moore, Co-Author (with Wayne Slater) of "Bush's Brain""
history lesions
"The historians' verdict was clear: The impeachment drive against President Clinton lacked constitutional and political legitimacy. The journalists' opinion was equally clear: The impeachment was legitimate, and the historians were really a fusty collection of liberal elitists who had no business sticking their noses into public affairs.
Now an extraordinary thing has happened. Journalists from across the political spectrum are finally acknowledging that impeachment was mostly a partisan crusade on trumped-up charges to bring down a popular president. "From the viewpoint of history," the conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote recently in the New York Observer, "it's going to seem deranged." They have conceded that numerous allegations noisily leveled against Clinton and repeated endlessly in the news media of which they are a part have turned out to be bogus."
pinch me
michael wolff on arthur sulzberger jr.via gawker
only the leo-nely
delong on the conservative misreading of leo strauss.
human be ins
collection of new scientist articles about human nature.via matt yglesias