Visual Source: Newseum
The New York Times isn't particularly impressed with the huffing & puffing on the right, but they're even less impressed with the left(ish).
It was not surprising to hear the Republican presidential candidates repeat their tiresome claim that excessive government spending and borrowing were behind Friday’s terrible unemployment report. It was depressing to hear President Obama sound as if he agreed with them.
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There has never been any evidence that the federal debt is primarily responsible for the persistent joblessness that began with the 2008 recession. ... There is plenty of evidence, in fact, that the spending cuts already imposed by Republican intransigence are responsible for a great deal of joblessness.
Matt Bai says that Washington keeps mistaking the last wave for a mandate.
The unprecedented succession of wave elections in 2006, 2008 and 2010 — meaning, by one popular definition, that a party picked up a minimum of 20 House seats in each of those years — were largely interpreted by both parties in Washington as the wild swings of a fickle electorate. Democratic leaders in Congress saw their 2006 and 2008 victories as proof that a long period of resurgent liberalism was finally at hand. When the voters apparently changed their minds again in 2010, jubilant Republicans rejoiced that we were now a nation of Tea Party sympathizers.
Some waves may have meaning, but every wave is a temporary phenomenon.
Paul Krugman uses a form of the "drunkard's walk" to explain why wages are creeping upward even if jobs are still hard to find.
Peter Kramer notes that there's been a current of voices raising doubts about drugs used to treat anxiety and depression, with some even suggesting that the whole thing is little more than a massive form of the placebo effect.
Could this be true? Could drugs that are ingested by one in 10 Americans each year, drugs that have changed the way that mental illness is treated, really be a hoax, a mistake or a concept gone wrong?
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Critics raise various concerns, but in my view the serious dispute about antidepressant efficacy has a limited focus. Do they work for the core symptoms (such as despair, low energy and feelings of worthlessness) of isolated episodes of mild or moderate depression? The claim that antidepressants do nothing for this common condition — that they are merely placebos with side effects — is based on studies that have probably received more ink than they deserve.
Neither critics nor supporters are likely to be swayed, but if you've been hearing just a few rumbles from this battle, this is a worthwhile look at the status of the fight.
Kathleen Parker begs her fellow Republicans to stop being crazy long enough to extract a win out of their self-created debt-ceiling "crisis." Unfortunately, reasoning with people in the middle of a tantrum rarely works; a rule that applies for both two year-olds and Michelle Bachmann.
Charles Krauthammer hurries to prove that he's exactly the kind of tantrum-thrower that Parker was talking about, and that reason is the last thing he's interested in.
The Miami Herald has one of several editorials looking at life in the post-Space Shuttle era. It's great to see many looking forward with hope, but let's hope that the latest draft out of Congress goes back for a major re-write. The legacy of the Shuttle (and Apollo, and everything else) should be more than turning NASA into the most expensive source of make-work jobs on the planet.
The Denver Post says it's past time that President Obama commits himself to the cause of gay marriage.
Now the president must makes his views clear. There can be no change without Obama's leadership. The time for half-way steps is over. It's time for Obama to lead the charge.
Unfortunately, the president has made his views clear, several times, and actually it looks like there's been a lot of change without the White House at the first of the process.
Amy Goodman looks back at the brief career of Wikileaks and the documents it surfaced.
Byron Williams says President Obama isn't standing his ground.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bipartisan federal agency that provides economic data to Congress, more than half the current deficit is attributed to the tax cuts during the presidency of George W. Bush and the two wars that were financed on borrowed dollars during the same time period.
It's not health care legislation, it's not TARP, nor is it the stimulus package -- the troika with which most seem obsessed -- it's the tax cuts and wars that many who sit at the table negotiating with the president supported, but have irresponsibly drawn a line in the sand in opposition to any revenue increases.
Republicans sank the economy and ran up the debt, now they're looking to capitalize from their own destruction. Don't let them. Might be worth repeating... say at 9AM eastern.
If you're feeling a lack of something to celebrate on this post-holiday weekend, celebrate this.
Plunging prices and booming investments are beginning to reshape the energy market, according to a couple of reports that were released this week. A report produced on behalf of Bloomberg says that investments in renewable energy have gone up by roughly a third over the last year, to $211 billion. Led by China's renewable push, the world is now on a trajectory that will see its investments in renewable electricity surpass those in fossil fuels within a year or two. As a result of these investments, the US is now producing more renewable energy than nuclear power.