Visual source: Newseum
Frank Bruni rolls his eyes at those talking about Rick Perry's intelligence.
I’m less troubled by how thickheaded Perry may be than by how wrongheaded we already know he is on issues like evolution, which he says is just a theory, and homosexuality, which he has likened to alcoholism.
President Obama has those issues right. And can talk authoritatively about them and most others. A former editor of the Harvard Law Review, he has that kind of mind, that kind of fluency. In this one poised man, erudition and eloquence join hands.
But they don’t save him. Last week, he set himself up once again to look like the nation’s deferrer in chief by proposing a date for his jobs speech that had the possibility of provoking Republican opposition and did precisely that, at which point he retreated. Is this the Mother-May-I presidency? With John Boehner in the role of paddle-wielding matriarch?
Personally, the timing of this week's speech is item number 814 on a list of the top 813 things I'm concerned about, but pundits gotta pun. So...
Maureen Dowd takes her swing.
Just as Obama miscalculated in 2009 when Democrats had total control of Congress, holding out hope that G.O.P. lawmakers would come around on health care after all but three senators had refused to vote for the stimulus bill; just as he misread John Boehner this summer, clinging like a scorned lover to a dream that the speaker would drop his demanding new inamorata, the Tea Party, to strike a “grand” budget bargain, so the president once more set a trap for himself and gave Boehner the opportunity to dis him on the timing of his jobs speech this week.
It's not that I disagree about a lot of the gripes here, but the presentation is simply petty.
Robert Reich was in yesterday's round up, and here he is again. Same piece. A second chance to read it if you opted out the first time. Go read, dammit.
When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?
The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed.
By absolutely no coincidence, this is exactly what I'm going to be talking about come 9AM ET.
Ryan Avent mentions a factor in job growth not likely to be in the upcoming speech.
When it comes to economic growth and the creation of jobs, the denser the city the better.
How great are the benefits of density? Economists studying cities routinely find that after controlling for other variables, workers in denser places earn higher wages and are more productive. Some studies suggest that doubling density raises productivity by around 6 percent while others peg the impact at up to 28 percent. Some economists have concluded that more than half the variation in output per worker across the United States can be explained by density alone; density explains more of the productivity gap across states than education levels or industry concentrations or tax policies.
As a small town boy myself, I tend to join in waxing lyrical about life between the megapoli, but we shouldn't kid ourselves—it's not small town dollars that support the cities. It's the other way around.
Steven Erlanger says that while America may be using Libya as the model for "how we do this from now on," Europe is already saying "never again."
Libya has been a war in which some of the Atlantic alliance’s mightiest members did not participate, or did not participate with combat aircraft, like Spain, Turkey and Sweden. It has been a war where the Danes and Norwegians did an extraordinary number of the combat sorties, given their size. Their planes and pilots became exhausted, as the French finally pulled back their sole nuclear-powered aircraft carrier for overdue repairs and Italy withdrew its aircraft carrier to save money.
Only eight of the 28 allies engaged in combat, and most ran out of ammunition, having to buy, at cost, ammunition stockpiled by the United States. Germany refused to take part, even in setting up a no-fly zone.
Although Washington took a back seat in the war, which the Obama administration looked at skeptically from the start, the United States still ran the initial stages, in particular the destruction of Libya’s air defenses, making it safe for its NATO colleagues to fly. The United States then provided intelligence, refueling and more precision bombing than Paris or London want to acknowledge. Inevitably, then, NATO air power and technology, combined with British, French and Qatari “trainers” working “secretly” with the rebels on the ground, have defeated the forces, some of them mercenary, of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The question, however, is whether European members of NATO will ever decide to embark on such an adventure again.
While we often hear that American productivity is soaring (meaning that companies are able to extract more work from fewer workers) Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer put their collective fingers on a factor holding the nation back.
Labor Day is meant to be a celebration of work. Yet, on this Labor Day, few have reason to rejoice. Even those who have jobs.
The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling over 1,000 adults every day since January 2008, shows that Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before. People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve.
David Ignatius credits President Obama with foreign policy that actually works, even when it doesn't quite look like the kind of American foreign policy that's familiar both here and abroad.
If you step back from the daily squawk box, some trends are clear: Alliances are stronger, the United States is (somewhat) less bogged down in foreign wars, Iran is weaker, the Arab world is less hostile and al-Qaeda is on the run.
George Will creates a series of questions for the GOP candidates, and in doing so demonstrates his painful ignorance on so many subjects that it's almost worth reading it just to see how many ways Will can screw things up in one article. But only almost.
The Washington Post looks at the EPA and finds more value there than... some people.
What is clear is that the “job-destroying regulation” line is a better slogan than it is an expression of the real trade-offs involved in EPA regulation. Aside from ozone pollution, EPA rules under development would restrict the emission of mercury, acid gases, dangerous fine particles and other pollutants from power plants and other sources. These regulations have costs that can be predicted and measured, in jobs and dollars. They also have measurable benefits — lives saved, chronic illnesses prevented, hospital visits avoided and sick days not taken, which in turn have economic effects.
The Washington Post editorial staff does a fine job of taking down Eric Cantor, making a measured response to President Obama's action on ozone, and upholding the worth of the EPA. Yes, really. I was shocked too.
As it turns out, there really is a climate gate, only that gate doesn't swing quite the way conservatives have claimed.
Last month, we described how a paper that compared climate models to satellite readings had been blown out of proportion by a hype machine that was soon claiming the paper would "blow a gaping hole in global warming alarmism." However, even a cursory glance at the paper revealed that its claims were far more modest; other scientists who discussed the work indicated that problems with its analysis were already widely recognized. Now, the editor-in-chief of the journal that published the paper has considered these criticisms—and chosen to resign.
