Tuesday Bloody Tuesday

It’s yet another primary day!
I know you’re just as excited as I am. Here’s a brief rundown of the four marquee races:

Pennsylvania Senate: Nowhere can the right-left divide be seen more vividly than in the Keystone State. On the right, former Congressman and Club for Growth president Pat Toomey has the Republican nomination locked up. “Club for Growth” is, naturally, the euphemistic name for a group of anti-tax zealots. What’s more, Read more

About That Oil Spill

For us visual thinkers, a great graphical representation:

Update: And another!

(via Andrew Sullivan)

In Which I Almost Feel Bad For Ken Blackwell

Just kidding!

Since many readers of this blog (3 out of all 7 of you?) are likely in Ohio, I thought you might enjoy former Secretary of State and erstwhile Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell’s embarrassing appearance on The Daily Show last night. Blackwell is one of my guilty pleasures, because he’s such a blatantly shameless buffoon, and last night was no exception. Woof.

Harry Potter and the Welfare State

In the feverish run-up to the May general elections in the United Kingdom, J.K. Rowling, billionaire author of the Harry Potter series, has published a truly wonderful op-ed in the Times of London about her experience as a struggling single mother and the support she received from the state. The sentiment is particularly relevant in the US today, on Tax Day, when everyone seems to think they pay the government Read more

“47 Percent”

David Leonhardt, with characteristic clarity, gives much-needed context to the misleading statement that 47 percent of American households don’t pay any taxes:
The 47 percent number is not wrong. The stimulus programs of the last two years — the first one signed by President George W. Bush, the second and larger one by President Obama — have increased the number of households that receive enough of a tax credit to wipe out their federal income tax Read more

(Faux) Summer Reading

It is way too gorgeous outside in Manhattan (high of 86!) to do any deep political thinking, or work, so I’d suggest you print out the following articles, find a nice bench or spot on the grass, and enjoy some light reading.

Rachel Slajda at Talking Points Memo has an entertaining post on right-wing paranoia about the census.
Since the disfunctions of the US Senate have been such a hot topic in these Read more

Catholic Guilt, Or Lack Thereof

I’m certainly no expert on Roman Catholicism (do you seem my name up there?), and I generally find Matt Taibbi’s rants to be grating, but his True/Slant piece on the recent revelations about the Catholic Church protecting (even more) child abusers is just devastating:
We don’t permit countries that harbor terrorists to participate in international society, but the Catholic Church — an organization that has been proven over and over again to systematically Read more

The Great Secret Student Loan Reform

One of the bizarrely under-hyped benefits of the passage of health care reform (the reconciliation bill, to be exact) was the much-needed student loan reform package attached to it.
Basically, since the 1960s the federal government has been subsidizing and guaranteeing student loans made by private insurers like Sallie Mae. (The government also makes its own loans to students.) The risk on these private loans was borne entirely by the government; Read more

Department of Untruths: “By definition, this is not middle of the road.”

You’re going to hear a lot of this in the next few weeks. Among the many, many disingenuous Republican talking points about the health care bill, perhaps the most facially absurd is that it’s some extreme leftist fantasy version of reform. The arguments in favor of this view — that a majority of Americans and zero Republican legislators support the bill – are misleading and tautological. Chait provides the ultimate debunking. His bottom line:
Obama is Read more

OH NO: Socialism Has Come To America

Or rather: Yay, it happened!
I’m not going to wade into the actual politics that led to health care reform’s passage — Yglesias and Chait do a fine job of that, and Bart Stupak is just so tiresome to think about, and really, Peggy Noonan, is “demon pass” the best you could come up with?
The noise is just noise, especially when there are practical consequences to think about. Soon everyone will have health Read more