The king has been brought to his knees. General Motors is officially bankrupt. Hindsight is 20/20.
 
So far this has been a year of hand-wringing among economic pontificators who have variously proclaimed that the wreckage around us proves capitalism’s fatal flaws or it’s remarkable resilience. What is not often discussed is the way capitalism — true, pure capitalism — is colored by conservative ideology. GM is a case in point.
When General Motors and the United Auto Workers (as well as the rest of the auto industry at the time) entered into a …

Barack Obama may be, above all else, a savvier politician than even Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. Why? With his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court Obama has set a defining trap for Republicans: If they take the bait they will dig themselves deeper into the pit of electoral despair that will take a generation to climb out of.
There are two fundamental things to remember about America and voting: Women vote in bigger percentages than men (plus there are more of them to begin with) and Hispanics are …

 
So Florida Governor Charlie Crist is going to run for Senate. That should be good news for the GOP since the seat he’s running for is being vacated by another Republican (the hapless Mel Martinez) and Crist is very popular in the Sunshine State. The announcement, expected Tuesday, has gotten plenty of coverage but almost all of it avoided the (pink) elephant in the room: Crist is gay gay gay.
The rumors and reports have been well documented for years but a new documentary out this month called “Outrage” outs closeted public …

 
I love reports. Especially reports with neat charts and cool maps. I’m a report geek. So imagine my glee when I came across a new report by two “scholars” who claim to have rigorously measured the level of freedom in each and every state. Whee!
The report, entitled Freedom in the 50 States, concludes that residents of New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota are the freest (doesn’t that word look cool?) while the poor indentured servants of New York and New Jersey are the least free. Now before we go any …

 
Is there an echo in Pennsylvania? You better you bet.
Republicans and especially hard-core conservatives are foaming at the mouth over the defection of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter, decrying him as another Benedict Arnold. One of the most fevered cries is that Specter put politics ahead of principle. Whether you believe that or not (if the principle Specter is upholding is to win then I guess he’s being principled…) it has brought the battle for the soul of the GOP to the forefront. And the front page of the New …

It’s really hard to see the political logic in Governor David Paterson’s unveiling of a same-sex marriage bill for New York on Thursday. But maybe that’s the beauty of it. Honestly, Paterson has no where to go but up.
Paterson’s poll numbers are in the toilet. His handling of the Kennedy-Gillibrand-Clinton thing was a fiasco. He had his lunch handed to him on the budget. He can’t get a handful of gangster Senators from his own party to grow up and back a plan to rescue the MTA (and their own …

It nearly cost John McCain the Republican nomination and it keeps the otherwise feckless Lou Dobbs employed. So what’s Barack Obama doing digging up immigration reform? It’s not as crazy as it first seems.
Sure Obama already has a pretty full plate — the economy, the banking system, health care, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc — and  immigration is hardly an easy lift. In fact immigration is a bit like gun control and to a lesser degree abortion rights. These are all issues that galvanize opponents far more effectively than they do …

The daily dribble of news upstate in the 20th district recount “drama” brings two interesting posts. Nate Silver at 538 does one of his masterful number-crunching jobs to predict that Democrat Scott Murphy will eventually prevail by about 540 votes over Republican Jim Tedisco. What’s really interesting there though is Nate’s take on the Republican’s jaw-dropping challenge of Kirsten Gillibrand’s absentee ballot. He thinks it will make it harder for Tedisco to mount a rematch if Murphy wins. Maybe but Nate may be getting ahead of himself on this one.
You’ll …

Orginally posted 3/29, updated 4/11
Hey if the New York Post can write great, if somewhat misleading headlines, why can’t I?
The equation that liberal Keith and conservative Bill were essentially separated at birth may not apply in all ways but in at least one they are equal: Both are blowhards who seem almost incapable of admitting mistakes.
(Each has one major exception to this: Olbermann famously wrote the “Mea Culpa” essay for Salon in 2002 about his experience at ESPN and O’Reilly admitted in 2004 he was wrong in believing President Bush’s …

There a few things more certain in life than this: Hyper-partisans (left and right) will twist everything and anything to fit their worldview. Today’s case in point comes courtesy of Red State and a contributor who speculates that the Somali pirates who have attacked and apparently captured an American-flagged cargo vessel did so because they know Barack Obama is a wuss.
While the author is correct no U.S. flagged vessel has been successfully attacked by pirates to this point it’s worth noting how few American-flagged vessels there are any more. The …