The streets and parts and sidewalks of London are home to some 800,000 closed circuit TV cameras, a huge number of which are mounted on walls of public buildings. The cameras capture the comings and goings of vast numbers of people, scarcely any of whom feel that the cameras constitute an intrusion on their privacy. …
Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, hit the nail on the head in a piece that he wrote for the Times last week, in which he bemoaned President Obama‘s failure to seize the narrative of the political issues of our times. Imagine, says Westen, how things would have been different if Obama …
From The New York Times, July 26, 2011. “This chart should accompany all discussions of the Debt Ceiling,” says Jim Fallows of The Atlantic. Amen to that.
In one of the most perceptive articles I have read in a long time, pollster par excellance Stan Greenberg wonders why Democrats are not finding better traction with the voters. “With high unemployment and the rich getting richer,” writes Greenberg in the New York Times, “you would think that voters of average means would flock …
At the Republican National Convention in San Diego in 1984, UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick memorably labeled the Democratic Party, which was meeting that year in San Francisco. “And now, the American people, proud of our country, proud of our freedom, proud of ourselves, will reject the San Francisco Democrats and send Ronald Reagan back to …
In The New York Times last Sunday, John F. Burns wrote a lamentation for the state of his native Britain, and the recognition of the overall depressing complexity of the hacking scandal, the corruption of the three major institutions of the media, the police, and Parliament, really left one with the sinking, sickening feeling that …
At the risk of making myself part of a set of Russian nesting pundits, please let me take this opportunity to endorse Fareed Zakaria‘s column in yesterday’s Washington Post about how to escape our dysfunctional politics, which is itself an endorsement of a column former Republican congressman Mickey Edwards wrote for the The Atlantic. Edwards …
Did Grover Norquist blow it a little bit yesterday when he played the “what the meaning of `is’ is” game with his famous No New Tax Edict, which he wields over Republcians faithful like a scythe? Plain as a guillotine, the edict requires all Republican candiates to forswear raising taxes while in office. First, he …
The highly revealing Parliamentary hearings into Rupert Murdoch and the News Corp. hacking scandal were interrupted yesterday when spectator Jonathan May-Bowles, a.k.a. “Jonnie Marbles” tried to throw a shaving cream pie at the media baron but was thwarted by his wife, Wendi Deng. In an article in The Guardian, May-Bowles defended himself. “Simply put, I …
In his column in today’s Times, David Brooks points a finger at the various Republicans who let the opportunity for a grand bargain with President Obama on the deficit crumble away. It is worth quoting at length: “Republicans will come to regret this missed opportunity. So let us pause to identify the people who decided …