Michael Tomasky's Blog, page 62

News you can use | Michael Tomasky

As some of you will recall I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, among the finest of America's 3,100-odd counties (yes, I'm being serious) in so many ways. Except for one thing. Power goes out like every other week.

Yesterday morning, we had frightening electrical storms. Our power died on us two or three times, but miraculously each time came back on. This morning, however, we weren't so lucky. Around 9:00, while I was on the train coming in, Sarah called me to say that the power went...

Friday quiz: first things first | Michael Tomasky

We take a slightly different tack this week. In each of the questions below, your task is to identify which of the three things or events grouped together happened first. We're going to stick to the 20th century here, but we're going to cover several areas of human accomplishment. In some cases, the things cross genres and are grouped together because they happened right around the same time and contributed to a general societal shift (see number 9, for example). In other cases, they are...

The arsonist and the fire fighter | Michael Tomasky

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent argument (I know it's excellent because I've made it myself) and concludes it with a boffo line:

But [the Tories:] are doing what Obama should, in my view, have done from the start: relentlessly remind people of what the GOP did to this country. Obama allowed the hacks on the right to pivot immediately to pinning the entire deficit and debt on Obama - and, amplified by the FNC, they have somehow managed to turn the debate back into the exhausted...

Russia, Pakistan and food for thought | Michael Tomasky

The Associated Press is moving an interesting dispatch across the wires this morning, vis a vis the climactic calamities ongoing in Russia and Pakistan. Charles Hanley writes:

The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says — although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming...

...The U.N.'s network of climate scientists — the Intergovernmental...

Adding to the deficit is all right when you're helping millionaires | Michael Tomasky

From Lori Montgomery of the WashPost we receive news of an instructive new study. Prepare yourselves for another stroll down the supply-side hall of mirrors:

A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year -- and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation's millionaires, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday.

New data from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation show that households...

Vacation assistance | Michael Tomasky

I'm going on a brief vacation in the near future, to the beach, and I beseech all of you on two points:

1. Tell me a new novel I should buy and take with me.
2. Recommend some DVDs that meet the following criteria: a, must be suitable for viewing by a 15-year-old young lady, my niece; b, older fare preferred, i.e. 1970s on back; c, nothing on either the first or second or arguably even third tier of obviousness, because among the lot of us we've seen lots of things, especially by the major...

Easy to be hard | Michael Tomasky

Ezra Klein has helped ruin my afternoon by directing my attention to this thoroughly depressing report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities about the parlous fiscal conditions of the states. A few points.

The report details service cuts, some of them quite drastic and some of them (to be honest) difficult but not catastrophic - the vast majority of them, of course, falling on lower-income people, who tend to be neither seen nor heard. It notes also that about a dozen states have...

The primaries and the limits of extremism | Michael Tomasky

Can you call a bicycle programme a UN conspiracy and be elected governor of Colorado?

So it's come down to this, in America in 2010. You can probably be a birther and become governor of Georgia, but can you call a bicycling programme a UN conspiracy and become governor of Colorado?

That, friends, is what has become of us. In Georgia, there was primary for the Republican nomination for governor. So far, it appears that Nathan Deal has a slight edge over Karen Handel, by less than a percentage...

Yesterday's primaries, and the limits of extremism | Michael Tomasky

So it's come down to this, in America in 2010. You can probably be a birther and become governor of Georgia, but can you call a bicycling program a UN conspiracy and become governor of Colorado?

That, friends, is what has become of us. In Georgia, there was primary for the Republican nomination for governor. So far, it appears that Nathan Deal has a slight edge over Karen Handel, by less than a percentage point. The race attracted a lot of attention because it became a kind of surrogate...

We miss you, George Bush | Michael Tomasky

We receive more reports this morning of former Bush administration officials lashing out at today's GOP, in this case over the mounting calls to eliminate birthright citizenship for children born here from illegal immigrant parents. From HuffPo:

In response to a recent movement by GOP brass to combat the so-called "anchor baby" or "birth tourism" issue created by the 14th Amendment, Mark McKinnon, media adviser to Bush's two presidential campaigns, attacked Republicans for forfeiting their...