Midday open thread 0
- Despite multiple bombings in the past week, Iraq’s prime minister says the country is more than ready for U.S. forces to withdraw from the country’s cities by month’s end.
- Naked former mayor alert.
- The Cleveland Plain Dealer takes a long, hard look at members of the Senate Finance Committee who were doing some fishy stock trading as the market tanked last fall.
- The Onion: Female Boss Walking Around Like She Owns The Place.
- Never too early to start trying to make a dime off a tribute to Michael Jackson.
- Reality takes hold as the U.S. abandons efforts to wipe out poppy crops in Afghanistan. Richard Holbrooke flatly states the obvious: the efforts aren’t working. Find alternatives.
- One of the most thoughtful meditations on the meaning of the Mark Sanford episode was written by Ta-Nehsi Coates this week over at the Atlantic. He digs deep beneath the surface, tying together arrogance, conservatism, nationalism, the modern Republican Party, racism and American exceptionalism. Just a taste from this terrific essay:
What you have, in both cases, is a hustle, a bait and switch, in which one claims to be hawking patriotism, but in fact, is selling jingoism. If patriotism is love of country, then much of the unquestioning GOP rhetoric fails on the rudiments. Is love of kin, love of siblings, love of spouse, telling your beloved, that they are the best person that’s ever existed in history? Or is that sycophancy, fast talk proffered by loose friends, who in your darkest hours, appeal to your worst self.
The religious right isn’t what’s wrong with the GOP. It’s the pervasive, unthinking, unreflective nationalism. It’s the arrogance of thrice-divorced adulterers reaching for the banner of traditional families, and it’s the arrogance of men who prosecuted a poorly planned war, on weak intelligence, presuming to lecture us on national security.
Coates has become a must-read for me in the past several months. Just a great thinker all the way around.
- My nomination for worst Politico story ever. Share yours in comments. Competition is tough, I know.
- A solid look at the disease that has crippled the New York State Senate: rampant incumbentism.
- Fake news, for real.
- As we move into the critical stage of the specifics of health care reform, Kaiser Family Foundation has posted an enormously helpful integrated database that offers side-by-side comparisons of the various health care reform proposals. You can enter the criteria by which you want to search differences–and which plans you want to compare.
- It ain’t easy being a seer.
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