If repealing health care without presenting an alternative is the best thing the new GOP majority can do in an economic crisis, pack up your worries about 2012 right now and congratulate Obama for his second term.
Pierre Tristam
My 10 Predictions for 2011
A recap of how I did last year and a look ahead: Obama creeps up, Jon Netts loses, the Supremes overturn health care reform, the fake recovery goes on, Arabs and Israelis go at it again, David Grossman wins big, and a few more.
Prediction Rollovers, I: How 2011 Looked to Henry Ford and Other Psychics in 1931
The New York Times in 1931 asked several luminaries of the period to predict what life would be like in 2011. The results were predictably dismal, but not for obvious reasons. A look back at how little things change.
A Confederacy of Bipartisan Dunces
Obama’s deal with a minority of Republicans over extending tax cuts and adding $900 billion to the national debt is the latest in three decades of bipartisan collusion between Washington and the myth of American power.
In Praise of Wikileaks: Undressing The Scams and Shams of Government Secrecy
With rare exceptions, it’s never been true that secrecy protects national security or interests. Rather, secrecy damages both, often with costly, lethal consequences. That’s why Wikileaks is an indispensable service to democracy.
Offshoring War: How Obama—and Those Moments of Silence—Insult Military Sacrifice
When a president sends soldiers to die in a war that long ago ceased having a claim to being just or to being won, those Americans are no longer being sacrificed by their nation. They’re being murdered. The complicity is national.
Don’t Celebrate Yet, Republicans:
Between Din and Tea Stains, a Reality Check
Short-attention span politics are here to stay, which is why Tuesday’s results are merely the latest re-casting of the same tiresome play that’s not about to end its run on our second-world stage. Not with allegedly educated voters like us buying tickets.
How Republicans Became America’s Arabs
That’s the strength behind the Republican No, as it is behind the Arab No, the Islamist No in particular: it appeals to some mythical, mass-marketable golden age. No proof necessary.
A Bench, a Homeless Man, A Cop’s Brutal Judgment: Poverty as a Presumption of Guilt
The man was sleeping on a bench in Sarastoa. The cop noticed a duffel bag and decided to invoke the city’s anti-camping ordinance. The result: felony charges for the man, and neither justice nor common sense served.
Palm Coast Data’s Invitation-Only Picnic: Hot Dogs, Flattery and Suspended Disbelief
Half Palm Coast and the county’s elected officials and top administrators were invited to Palm Coast Data’s picnic. The public wasn’t. That’s not the main problem.