"What We Didn’t Know Has Hurt Us"

There's a fascinating article at CJR, "What We Didn't Know Has Hurt Us", about the explosion of classified documents under the Bush administration.

I found this bit mind-boggling:

Far more troubling was the revelation in 2006 that more than twenty-five …

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Bush's Economy

So, you think things are bad? The Washington Post can tell you just how bad, in glorious, sickening detail:

President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists …

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The view from over here

An excellent editorial by the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland sums things up nicely:

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific …

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I wonder...

… how many conservative chatterboxes have actually heard Pelosi’s “hyper-partisan” speech (transcript, video). Maybe hyper-partisan speech is, like, subliminal, or something, but I don’t see anything here to get all offended …

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First debate

This is my first time watching the US presidential process from abroad. I’ve lived abroad before (a year in Germany and two in Canada), but never managed to overlap with a US election before. I was part of a course in persuasive speaking during …

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Of pigs and lipstick

NPR has a great overview of the current scandal/gate/tempest-in-a-teapot brewing in US politics. Hearing more of Obama’s speech, it’s clear that the “pig” comment refers to his “that’s not change” riff. Out of …

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"The pro-Obama Dungeons and Dragons crowd"

What the frack?

In a post on the McCain Website on Monday, Alexander Goldfarb wrote, “It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons and Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans …

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An All-White Elephant

This is an excellent, surprisingly well-linked, op-ed by the NY Times’ Frank Rich on race issues in this year’s US election. I particularly like this quote:

If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and …

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Bowling 1, Health Care 0 - New York Times

This is a brilliant op-ed / media criticism by Elizabeth Edwards for the New York Times. It’s remarkably well-written, and I particularly like this quote:

Watching the campaign unfold, I saw how the press gravitated toward a narrative template for …

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George Speaks, Badly - New York Times

Fun, if slightly snarky (and a little late?) op-ed by Gail Collins in yesterday's NYT:

We’re really past expecting anything much, but in times of crisis you would like to at least believe your leader has the capacity to pretend he’s in control. Suddenly …

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