My Internet connection was down for an hour or two today, so I was forced to do most of my afternoon blog reading with my RSS feed reader offline. I've saved a bunch of things to comment on, but now that I'm making my second and third pass through, I'm just not motivated enough to do full posts. So.. a series of short links will have to do!
+ The NYT turned on Clinton today. Considering that they endorsed her a few months back, this should be big news. Assuming that endorsements matter, of course.
+ Our media elite really does believe that McCain can do no wrong. I, on the other hand, can't see into people's souls, so I'm forced instead to judge them solely on their actions. Thus where I see McCain's dishonesty as a sign of his character, Richard Cohen can ignore his actions, peer into his soul, and confidently declare that despite his record McCain is in fact "an honorable man." Forget McCain's words and actions - Richard Cohen knows the truth! Thank god for our elite media; what would we do without them?
+ John Taplin has written a speech that he says Obama should but neverhtless cannot deliver. Why? It hits her record hard, without getting personal at all. What's wrong with that?
+ One of the under-appreciated benefits of a universal health care system is the way it affects health care spending during recessions. When insurance carriers and medical providers are forced to move to community risk polling, they know that irregardless of economic conditions they will have a stable pool of people paying into their system. Not so in our wickedly stupid system, as insurance companies are about to learn. If we had a universal system, this problem would go away.
+ Remember that big battle in Basra earlier this month? The one where Iraqi forces supposedly "took the lead" in fighting, only to expose them as woefully under-prepared to fight? As it turns out, the full story is even worse than we previously thought.
+ We are the world's breadbasket, which means that if we were to get serious about solving the growing food crisis, we could actually do quite a bit of good, both for ourselves and our fellow human beings around the world.
+ If the government serves the people and not itself, shouldn't this be the norm and this be illegal?
+ The Veterans Administration is apparently deliberately withholding statistics on suicides. Why? The truth would make someone somewhere look bad. Or something.
+ The 4th Amendment took another big hit today. Not unexpected, of course. We have apparently entered an age where the preemption of bad events is more important than individual freedoms and liberties, and where the needs of the federal government preempt the rights and privileges of both the people and their various states.
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