"We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," [reporter and former assistant managing editor Karen] DeYoung said. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And if contrary arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far." The Washington Post hasn't gotten a fraction of the criticism it deserves over this attitude. It is a newspaper's job to... Read more
"Income gap widens into a chasm" is the headline on AP writer Leigh Strope's article (via Cursor), which begins with this blunt summary: Over two decades, the income gap has increased steadily between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks, and those at the middle or bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less. The growing disparity is even more pronounced in this recovering economy. Wages are stagnant, and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden.... Read more
Some friends and I watched the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics on the TV above the bar. As the Hong Kong team took its turn during the parade of nations bit, we had some questions. "Isn't Hong Kong part of China now? How come they have their own team?" "Well, they used to be part of Britain, right? And didn't they have their own team then?" "Where the heck can you ski in Hong Kong?" It seemed strange... Read more
This White House memo, dated Oct. 25, 2001, shows the difficulty that President Bush’s staff were having in trying to explain to their boss the ramifications of his plan to “privatize” Social Security. Discussing this memo, Matthew Yglesias offers a pithy summary of the crux of the problem with this scheme: The basic dilemma facing any would-be privatizer is that under the present system, a worker’s payroll taxes pay not for his retirement but for that of current retirees. Under... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 59-66 Over the next several pages we find something new in Left Behind — sympathetic characters. We meet three new people in these pages. None of them is particularly important and each serves mainly to move along the plot and to provide some helpful (and unsubtle) exposition. But LaHaye and Jenkins also want us to think of these minor characters as nice people. The first is the suddenly, providentially appearing doctor who shows up to treat Buck... Read more
How President Bush is defunding the "armies of compassion" The Congressional Budget Office was in the news last week for confirming the already known: most of the benefits of President Bush's tax cuts have been enjoyed by the wealthy and the super-wealthy. It was at least the second official pronouncement of the obvious this month by the CBO. A pair of earlier studies examined the repeal of the estate tax and the impact of that repeal on the national treasury... Read more
In today's lead editorial, The (Del.) News Journal argues that "Gov. McGreevey should resign his office immediately": The sudden resignation of New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey is not only a political bombshell, it is also a personal tragedy involving bad choices and badly flawed judgments. The fact that he is homosexual — or bisexual since he has fathered children — is less of an issue than putting his unqualified gay lover on the state payroll. "Less of an issue"?... Read more
Liechtenstein is the world's largest exporter of false teeth. That's my new favorite fact. I've been having trouble figuring out how to ease it into conversation. * * * "Stoned odyssey brings probation": the Delaware student who took a two-day, mushroom-induced pilgrimage to Connecticut driving other people's cars, has his day in court. After explaining to the judge that Pemulis put DMZ on his toothbrush, or maybe it was "something I ate," the guy got two years of probation. At... Read more
Excuses, excuses. Howard Kurtz offers a long-but-shallow examination of The Washington Post's credulous prewar reporting about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction and the Bush administration's supposed evidence for it. Atrios has already done the heavy lifting in highlighting some of the godawful revelations and admissions in this piece, but here's my two cents. To its credit, the Post did publish a dozen or so articles casting doubt on — and in some cases, disproving — many of the claims... Read more
Associated Press writer Nedra Pickler does not understand how Social Security works. At all. Nor do her editors. Nor do the editors of many of the newspapers that rely on the Associated Press. This is depressing. Here’s what Pickler wrote in her report Wednesday regarding John Kerry’s campaign visit to Henderson, Nev.: Also, Bush does not support privatization of Social Security for today’s seniors. He wants to give younger workers the option of putting part of their payroll tax into... Read more
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