The Landlord Society

Last updated on: June 25, 2012 at 12:14 am By Fred Clark

Stephen Moore of the Club for Greed weighs in on President Bush's second-term "ownership society" agenda: "By doing these things in little bitty steps at a time, it's sort of like a slippery slope, but in the right direction." The right direction for people like Moore means taxing wages, but not wealth. It means cutting the funding for frivolities like public education, Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits and homeland security. It means Two Americas as deliberate policy. And the America... Read more

The Ownership Society

Last updated on: August 24, 2004 at 5:43 pm By Fred Clark

4 Comments

News item: "WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid signs that the economy is cooling, President Bush is showcasing initiatives for a second term under the banner of an 'ownership society' in hopes of bolstering his economic stewardship credentials." Them that's got shall get Them that's not shall lose So the Bible said and it still is news Mama may have, Papa may have But God bless the child that's got his own That's got his own Yes, the strong gets more While... Read more

The Nader Concession

Last updated on: August 24, 2004 at 7:54 am By Fred Clark

8 Comments

According to TheNaderFactor.com, "Republicans have launched concerted, coordinated and well-crafted efforts to boost [independent presidential candidate Ralph] Nader’s ability to get on the ballot in Arizona, Oregon, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Florida." These Republican efforts, in fact, turn out to be better organized and more determined than the Nader campaign, as Sharon Emery reports from Michigan on MLive.com: The Nader campaign submitted fewer than 5,400 signatures seeking ballot access for the consumer activist and 2000 Green Party nominee as... Read more

Health Care

Last updated on: August 23, 2004 at 7:54 pm By Fred Clark

12 Comments

I missed this Washington Post article when it came out in early June, but came across it today via Google, trying to learn more about John Kerry's health care plan. Ceci Connolly provides a useful summary and evaluation of Big John's Big Idea on health care: … catastrophic claims account for less than half of 1 percent of all claims but generate 20 percent of the nation's health care costs, according to the latest federal data. To cover those costs,... Read more

Dulce et decorum est

Last updated on: August 23, 2004 at 7:23 pm By Fred Clark

12 Comments

Adam Gopnik's New Yorker review of a handful of recent books on World War I is disturbingly timely. We were all taught in school that World War I began when the Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and the Austrians went after the Serbs, then the Germans, Russians, French and British all jumped in, etc., etc. But the infamous web of European treaties was only the ticket to war, it can't explain why so many nations wanted to see the... Read more

Karma Police

Last updated on: August 21, 2004 at 3:35 pm By Fred Clark

5 Comments

arrest this girL her hitLer hairdo is making me feel iLL &we have crashed her party tHis is what you get. tHis is what you get. tHis is what you get when you mess with us. (phew for a minute there … [update: added link to "Old Tricks" ad via atrios] Read more

Oswald alone

Last updated on: August 21, 2004 at 8:09 am By Fred Clark

11 Comments

"He's been baptized, sanctified, redeemed by the blood, But his daily devotions are stuck in the mud …" — Amy Grant, "Fat Baby" (Millikan/Robinson) On May 4 of this year, President Bush spoke about his daily devotional reading: Bush said he is reading Oswald Chambers, a Scottish-born devotional writer and author of "My Utmost for His Highest," who died in 1917. "If you've read Oswald Chambers, you'll understand that Oswald Chambers is a pretty good gauge to test your walk,"... Read more

Sovereignty not a given

Last updated on: August 20, 2004 at 8:59 am By Fred Clark

9 Comments

In comments to this post below, a couple of folks asked about the sovereignty of Native American tribes. This brings to mind President Bush's recent garbled, gasping response to a question on sovereignty at the Unity: Journalists of Color conference. Here's how that exchange went: QUESTION: What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century, and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and the state governments? PRESIDENT BUSH: Tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign.... Read more

Get Out The Vote

Last updated on: August 20, 2004 at 7:35 am By Fred Clark

4 Comments

Via an e-mail from Brendan Lynch, I learn of MoveOn's latest effort: MoveOn PAC is launching an incredibly ambitious, groundbreaking, precinct-level neighbor-to-neighbor campaign we're calling Leave No Voter Behind. We will be working in 10,000 key neighborhoods in battleground states to get 440,000 new votes for John Kerry to the polls. I live in one of those battleground states — Pennsylvania. And I see that the electoral vote predictor has shifted the Keystone State from "Weak Kerry" to "Barely Kerry"... Read more

Snap, Crackle, Pop

Last updated on: June 25, 2012 at 12:09 am By Fred Clark

2 Comments

David Kay is not impressed with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice: A former Bush administration official who led the fruitless postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq told Congress on Wednesday that the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice had botched intelligence information before the war and was "the dog that did not bark" over Iraq's weapons program. … "Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this... Read more