Paul Krugman has a dead-hit column in today’s NY Times about the ”pundit delusion,” or, “the belief that the stuff of daily political reporting--who won the news cycle, who had the snappiest comeback--actually matters.”
I suspect that this delusion extends to all political reporters and their editors, not just pundits. It’s a hubris that comes from being so deep in the woods you have forgotten what the sky looks like. You start thinking that everyone in America knows what is in the financial regulatory bill (or that there was one at all) and what Vice President…
President Obama’s Oval Office speech last night seemed familiar. As if a speech writer had called up the President’s stock al-Qaeda speeches and done a find-replace. Delete “enemy,” insert “oil.”
A side-by-side comparing last night’s battle lines to the battle lines used in speeches about, um, actual battles!
“But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes.” --Oil Spill Address
I’ve become almost numb to the stories about the end of serious print journalism--the lay-offs, the bureau closings, the disappearance of fact checkers, libraries and integrity. So it was strangely refreshing to read today about one budget cut that may make the world a better place and certainly makes common sense.
Check out Thomas Friedman’s column in the New York Times this week. He argues that Obama is missing a massive opportunity in the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, and I think he is right.
“Sadly, President Obama seems intent on squandering his environmental 9/11 with a Bush-level failure of imagination. So far, the Obama policy is: “Think small and carry a big stick.” He is rightly hammering the oil company executives. But he is offering no big strategy to end our oil addiction....Please don’t tell us that our role is just…
As a student at Cornell, back in the day, I remember it as a fabulous place to be if you were feeling good--and a terrible place to be when you were sad. The winters last most of the year. The school is isolated from the rest of civilization. And worst of all, it seemed like you were always walking uphill. I don’t know how that is possible, but it…
Just received the Polish paperback.. I like the dangling rope! Not too Hollywood, nor too Warsaw. As for the title, my handy online Polish-English translation service tells me that it means, roughly, “Survival Instinct.”
(Translator is at a loss to explain subtitle, aside from the obvious word for “catastrophe,” but we’ll hope for the best.)
When a man was stabbed to death early one morning on a NYC subway, a nervous passenger scrambled to pull the emergency brake, immediately stopping the train. Another example of an average citizen averting a disaster?
Not exactly.
TheNew York Times reported this week that the emergency brake is not to be pulled during an emergency. Well, actually, the emergency brake should only be pulled during certain kinds of emergencies, and it’s up to you to know what constitutes an emergency and what doesn’t. In this particular instance, the immediate…
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been wondering: Is this all just manufactured hysteria? Are Americans as freaked out by the failed bomb plot as much as the people on their TV screens?
CNN has a new poll out today that suggests regular people are not the ones with the problem (full results in a PDF here). Americans, it seems, don’t scare nearly as easily as their leaders and their reporters.
* Percent of Americans who say they are very or somewhat worried that they or someone in their family will become a victim…
