A quick look at what the smart, reasonable voices on the left side of the blogosphere are saying. We usually don’t agree with these views but they’re well worth reading.
Loyal Opposition
Unfogged: I Don't Know How I Got There
Ah, disingenuousness, desperation, and a dollop of stupidity. Obama clearly only misspoke, and meant forty-seven, not fifty-seven. If the folks at the linked page have an agenda beyond advancing the cause of stupidity, or taking cheap shots at Obama, it's to lay the ground for excusing McCain's flubs, past and to come. But McCain's flubs haven't been instances of misspeaking, ... [Link]
MyDD: Blog & News Jump
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." - Oscar Wilde - Happy Mother's Day, Susie. And to all the rest of our mothers, too. We are not Republicans, here. - Torture, lies, killing and poverty ... all in a day's work. - The secret lives of Saints. - Our pretzeldent, fighting the ... [Link]
MyDD: West Virginia from the ground
A collection of thoughts as we head into the West Virginia presidential primary on Tuesday. The caller ID last night showed an 877 number, but I answered it anyway. "I'm a local volunteer for Sen. Hillary Clinton," the caller said. He was polite and asked me if I intended to vote for Senator Clinton in West Virginia's primary on Tuesday. ... [Link]
Matthew Yglesias: Why You Shouldn't Donate Money to Harvard
Brad DeLong explains in a great posts that tours us from the contrasting course of the University of California and the Ivy League by way of a detour into the economics of working-owned firms in Communist Yugoslavia. Long story short if you, like me, are a graduate of a fancy college and the development people come around asking you for ... [Link]
MyDD: The Clinton Talking Points
I whole-heartedly agree with Jerome's point in yesterday's "Deal With Defeat", but I don't think he took it far enough. Yes, Obama supporters should be prepared to lose West Virginia (as well as Kentucky), but so too should Clinton supporters be prepared to lose the nomination. Jerome is right. Clinton is going to do well in West Virginia, and blindly ... [Link]
Political Animal: Our Favorite News Sources
OUR FAVORITE NEW SOURCES....A couple of days ago I asked my readers what news outlet they'd choose if they could only have one. Assuming I counted the answers correctly and successfuly ignored all the double posts, here are the results:... [Link]
MyDD: A Third Bush Term
I don't think this is exactly how the GOP wants this election to play out... WOLF BLITZER: You just heard Congressman Van Hollen say that he represents a third Bush term. You know how unpopular the job approval numbers are right now. HOUSE GOP WHIP ROY BLUNT: I don't think anybody believes that. I think everybody does believe from his ... [Link]
Matthew Yglesias: Dropping Out
On television, of course, it's difficult to make a nuanced point but it occurred to me when discussing the whole "should Hillary drop out" issue that a decision to end her campaign needn't deprive the Ellen Malcolms of the world their chance to register a vote for the first viable woman presidential candidate. If she announced that she was done ... [Link]
TalkLeft: Whatever Happened To The Politics Of Contrast?
A friend of mine writes this comment: At one point in time Armando was one of this site's most passionate and articulate voices about ending racism and empowering people of color. As well as promoting a "politics of contrast." . . . Armando used to speak of a Lincoln 1860 strategy, but Hillary has been playing a Harrison 1840 strategy ... [Link]
Political Animal: Quote of the Day
QUOTE OF THE DAY....From Hilzoy, commenting on which foreign regimes John McCain thinks it's respectable to lobby for and which ones he doesn't:"So Ukraine is too much, but Burma is OK?"Come on. Everyone has fond memories of those old Burma... [Link]
Matthew Yglesias: Quitters
John McCain fires two aides (theoretically they quit) over their background as lobbyists for the military junta that rules Burma. [Link]
Matthew Yglesias: Quick Fix
Mike D'Antoni to the Knicks -- just when you thought the Dolans couldn't devise any new, extremely costly quick-fix solutions to their franchise's problems. Chad Ford calls is "an improbable home run that could immediately turn the fortunes of a franchise in desperate need of optimism" and says "D'Antoni will bring a pedigree of exciting, winning basketball that should inject ... [Link]
Carpetbagger Report: McCain’s lobbyists continue to cause him headaches
Following up on an earlier item, John McCain had to accept the resignation of Doug Goodyear, the man he tapped to manage the Republican National Convention, after reports surfaced that Goodyear’s lobbying firm represented Burma’s brutal military junta. But Goodyear simply ran the firm. What about the specific lobbyist who actually worked on the junta’s behalf? As it turns out, ... [Link]
Unqualified Offerings: I’m getting a subscription just so I can cancel it
By Thoreau TIME Magazine proves that it’s possible to be even dumber than Bill Kristol. Yes, the humanitarian crisis there is awful. Yes, the regime is awful. Yes, it differs from Iraq and Vietnam in certain respects. Nonetheless, the only way to seriously contemplate invading Myanmar/Burma is if you are dumb enough to think that being wrong is a virtue. ... [Link]
TalkLeft: It's Not Personal, It's Politics
Scott Lemieux misunderstands politics imo. I know he misunderstands my argument for a Unity Ticket. He writes that "some people in the Clinton Hackosphere [meaning me, thanks for the kind words Scott] are trying to set up the argument that a decision by Obama to choose anybody but Clinton must be motivated by personal animus, because there simply can't be ... [Link]
The RBC: Some people who need a raise more than you do...
Sharon Manuel works at a home for five intellectually disabled adult women, none of whom has learned to talk. She cooks, cleans and bathes them, and monitors their medications. She earns $9.85 per hour--not a lot in greater Chicago--and works two jobs to support her kids, including a 7-year-old with special health care needs. Her story was profiled in Saturday's ... [Link]
Crooked Timber: Economic fundamentalism and the minimum wage
By Kathy G. I’ve been remiss in replying to this post by Megan McArdle, but today I’ve finally gotten around to it. This will be a really long post, so don’t say I didn’t warn ya. McArdle basically argues two things: that 1) the minimum wage has a disemployment effect, and 2) that monopsony is not a persuasive model for ... [Link]
Matthew Yglesias: The Case Against Polarization
William Galston and Pietro Nivola have an interesting piece on the rise of geographic segregation in political presences, where more-and-more people now live in whole counties full of co-partisans. It ends, however, with a pretty lame entry into the literature of bellyaching about polarization: Because politics is a contact sport, hard-hitting partisan competition is unavoidably part of the game. A ... [Link]
Unqualified Offerings: The Return of AOTP-Pimping
Libertarians probably shouldn’t try to handicap political races. If we had any electoral instincts we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves in this position. Nevertheless, I argue that Obama’s comparative weakness with white voters versus Clinton’s comparative weakness with black voters makes Obama the stronger general-election candidate. No, really! Note: No post-structural theorists were harmed in the creation of the Art of ... [Link]
Unfogged: Big Think
Here's a pretty short and very interesting piece by Clay Shirky with the catchy thesis that television watching over the past few decades in America has hoarded a lot of mental energy that could have been expended more productively and this "cognitive surplus" is just now being tapped by the advent of interactive technologies. It's short enough that you can ... [Link]
