Friday, September 16, 2005

[Daily Brief]

I Brief, Therefore I Am

In the MSM
Without ceremony, here's
the last free Krugman. Enjoy. Last night, after the emperor addressed his subjects, I considered a post, but felt that I'd find scores of commentary today saying the same thing. I was perhaps hasty. Here's the Times: "He forthrightly acknowledged his responsibility for the egregious mishandling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina." That wasn't exactly what I was thinking. The other coast's Times does better: "But his goal clearly was to rescue his presidency, which Katrina's storm surge tattered as well." John Nichols agrees: "Nothing gets the Bush White House's damage control operation moving like declining poll numbers. And so it should come as no surprise that the president is suddenly "Georgie on the spot" in New Orleans."

We're number ten--in terms of standard of living.

The most important article in today's MSM is from someone decidedly un-mainstream: David Mamet, who writes in the LA Times. Using a game--poker--now familiar to Americans unfamiliar with the game of politics, Mamet says the Dems need to get in the habit of raising, not folding.
Control of the initiative is control of the battle. In the alley, at the poker table or in politics. One must raise. The American public chose Bush over Kerry in 2004. How, the undecided electorate rightly wondered, could one believe that Kerry would stand up for America when he could not stand up to Bush? A possible response to the Swift boat veterans would have been: "I served. He didn't. I didn't bring up the subject, but, if all George Bush has to show for his time in the Guard is a scrap of paper with some doodling on it, I say the man was a deserter."
Today's must-read.

Around the Blogosphere
For five years, liberals have regarded Bush as a puppet thrust onto a stage to mouth the words of his political masters. Now the right agrees. Andy Sullivan has the details. E-Robin believes Rove is no genius. I don't actually agree, but it's a sentiment with legs. Did somebody say pork? I don't think he was referring to Hog, but you never know. (Warning, insider link approaching.) Kari defends skinny-ass, fixed-width blogs, like this one. Hey, even smart guys get it wrong from time to time. Brad DeLong was conferencing in the Tetons and discovered a "deep fault" among economists about the dollar's imminent decline. No, it wasn't that some thought it wasn't imminent: some just didn't think it would be catastrophic. He has the details. Max, meanwhile, detailed where Bush will get financing for Katrina clean up. (It's a visual, so follow the link.) Recall that I knew someone would post my thoughts about Bush's speech? Josh has. And Matt rings in with much the same.

Which concludes this week's briefings...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

did you hear about how the lights went on in NO for the first time for the Prez, then went off again when he left?

so compassionate!

check it here

Anonymous said...

re, the second part of your post...why has the liberal blogosphere given-up on the fact that the election was stolen? why aren't your howling for paper trails from Diebold, for Congressional hearings on voter fraud, for real democracy and not a rigged lottery?

the next presidential election is right around the corner. if the Repubs stole TWO elections in 8 years, they'll do it again. there should be a greek chorus on the www screaming for accountability and fair elections - rather than whitewashing and blinders.

Anonymous said...

re Kari's concept:

Divine Invasion is built to expand and contract based on a users browser and screen resolution settings...and i think it performs nicely.

you can have both without having to have skinny content areas. hell, fix the width on the nav bars and then let the content area collapse/stretch as it will...if you don't want it to go over a certain amount of the screen width, write a little javascript and set the width on the client side.

does Kari code or does he just manage programmers?

Jeff Alworth said...

Kari does all his programming. Mandate Media is getting big, but not that big yet.