progressive politics and regressive entertainment. like peanut and butter.
December 18, 2012 Leave a comment
I do wish more people who manage to fully comprehend the broad trauma a mass shooting can have on our country would consider the consequences of a decade of war.
- Atrios, “War” (December 18, 2012)
September 19, 2012 6 Comments
Duncan Black, aka Atrios the Pioneering Progressive Blogger, has hit the big time. From now until the election, he’s writing a weekly online column for USA Today. His very first column addresses one of my favorite economic issues — the importance of Social Security. Black has the radical notion that the supremely successful program should be strengthened by actually strengthening it — that is, by increasing benefits so that more workers can obtain a secure retirement.
BLACK: Instead of considering some exciting new program to try to encourage workers into saving more, another Rube Goldberg incentive contraption designed to nudge individual behavior in the right direction, we should increase the level of retirement benefits in the existing Social Security program.
August 20, 2012 Leave a comment
I agree with Claire McCaskill that the GOP should not replace their Missouri Senatorial candidate, Todd Akin. Although I have different reasons. It’s not because replacing Akin would constitute Washington Republicans interfering with local Tea Partiers. After all, the GOP is a big believer in limiting democracy. Given their concerted efforts to disenfranchise pesky minority voters, why should they care about democracy within their own ranks?
Rather, my worry is that legitimate disgust with Akin will distract from the reality that his standpoint is fairly representative of the anti-choice movement and their lack of understanding of rape victims and the moral necessity of allowing these women to make their own choices. Of course, all women should be making their own choices about their bodies. Akin’s comments simply make that clearer to some people who are murky on the subject.
We should be outraged, but not surprised. Atrios provides his typically succinct perspective on the affair:
ATRIOS: Frequently we see political reporters be seemingly shocked when right wing assholes express things that right wing assholes frequently express. The whole “rape doesn’t lead to pregnancy” idea isn’t anything new. It’s a pretty standard trope from anti-abortion nutters. Do these people even pay attention?
Amen.
August 11, 2012 5 Comments
The key thing to watch with Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as the GOP VP nominee is how the traditional media covers Ryan Economics. Ryan has a reputation as being “serious” and it’s true that he actually put his (or rather, our) money where his mouth is, in that he came up with a semblance of an actual budget. It’s more detailed than any economic plan put forth by Mittens, who sure loves his vagueries. Indeed, Romney is already backing away from Ryan’s plan. He wants to keep the supposed principles in place without offering any of the details. But the Paul Ryan economic plan is only serious in that it contains actual numbers. As far as a rational plan for economic growth, it’s bonkers, and Paul Ryan is full of faulty logic and overt hypocrisy.
Romney – Ryan 2012 (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)
July 22, 2012 1 Comment
On the Melissa Harris-Perry Show yesterday, the panel discussed how we went from being a society in which assault weapons were banned into one where we can’t even have a discussion about where to draw the line in what sort of weaponry can be owned by the public. I very much agree with Dorian Warren of Columbia University.
WARREN: When you have military-level fire power in civilian hands, this is what happens. This is the inevitable outcome and it will happen again and again and again unless we want to make a distinction and say we have a value around certain kinds of guns in society that nobody needs.
June 1, 2012 Leave a comment
Okay, I’m going to cite this entire post from Eschaton because it’s a short and sweet example of why Atrios is perhaps the premiere liberal blogger. At least, he is in my mind. I know of other terrific sites and authors, but not any particular blogger who does what Atrios with such skill and frequency.
Atrios by Lindsay Beyerstein, on Flickr
April 26, 2012 Leave a comment
You know how the U.S. tried to combat the Great Recession with a half-hearted effort that gave away a lot of free money to business but nonetheless had some money go toward stimulus? Well, as Talking Points Memo points out, the U.K. has been one of the primary promoters of combating stagnation through starvation. And now they’ve slipped back into recession.
Atrios suggests that the U.K. could possibly count on Olympics-related economic activity to ease out from under their self-imposed economic constraints.
Bow before the awesomeness that is austerity!
SEE ALSO
Polentical: Atrios: Top Ten Wankers of the Decade
Paul Krugman: The New Voodoo
Rethinking National Security: UK in Recession Thanks to Cameron’s Stupid Austerity Policy: Lesson for the U.S.
April 24, 2012 2 Comments
I first started turning toward blogs as my main source during the early years of the Bush presidency, when it became increasingly difficult to find any liberal voices in the traditional media. The New York Times, which had participated with glee in the whole Whitewater mess during the Clinton presidency, now turned to carrying water for Dick Cheney — Judith Miller was not an aberration but the norm, as they decided during the run-up to the Iraq war that investigative journalism was not their cup of tea.
It turned out, however, that there were web sites which had accurate, well-written accounts of what was actually going on in the world, full of logic, research, and citation. Anyone who claims that “everyone” believed the fake intel on Iraq is either lying or ignorant of sites like The Smirking Chimp, which I just noticed is still going, although I haven’t been a regular reader in some time.
One of my favorite sites was (and remains) Eschaton, whose prime blogger, Atrios, is particularly excellent on economic issues and the high art of political snark. One of his snarkier categories was that of “Wanker of the Day” — a dishonor granted to particularly egregious offenders in the public arena who have a tendency to use punditry as onanism. Last week, Atrios completed his “Wanker of the Decade” list. Who did he choose?
February 9, 2012 Leave a comment
The federal and state governments are allowing our financial institutions to once again sidestep the enormity of their crimes, although this time they do have to pay a price. It’s a price in the billions which looks large in the headlines but is actually small considering the extent of their illegal and unethical activity during the ongoing mortgage and foreclosure crisis. The banks are getting themselves a deal.
January 22, 2012 1 Comment
I think the not quite made enough point about these types of laws is that they’re really not about stemming piracy, they’re about big media companies declaring that the internet is ours now, bitches!
January 12, 2012 Leave a comment
One of the biggest missed opportunities for Obama was that he didn’t take the GOP pretense that they were defenders of Medicare, and use it to pivot into offering a Medicare buy-in plan for the general public. It would have been good politics and good policy. Which is why, of course, it’s only supported by Crazy Liberal Bloggers.
December 27, 2011 Leave a comment
Atrios is a master at putting individual political events into the larger socio-political context. When he writes that…
pretty soon we’re going to find out if Iowa caucus is the most important thing ever, if those nice people vote for Mittens, or utterly irrelevant, if they vote for Paul or maybe even Gingrich.
…he is correct on both the small and big picture.
Of course that’s how much of the political narrative gets created. The mainstream commentators have a story and, gosh darnit, they’re sticking to it come heck or high water.
