As health care reform becomes law and we either A) become a socialist nation on the brink of collapse, or B) like every other first and second-rate country in the world and have something approximating universal health insurance, it’s time to ask a really frank and important question.
Are Americans too uninformed to be part of the process? OK that’s a little over the top but after the last year it’s really difficult for someone who’s spent a career trying to find the facts and then report them to watch the …

It was inescapable from the very start of Barack Obama’s campaign waaaaay back in January 2007 that race and racism would play a big part in whatever came to pass. And of course it did and it has and it still is and it always will. Now the New York Times — or to be fair one of her columnists — has finally said what is pretty apparent: An awful lot of the screaming incoherent rage ostensibly directed at Obama’s actions is actually just plain racism.
Maureen Dowd put it this …

OK so if the pundits left, right, and center are to be believed Barack Obama’s 7-month-old Presidency is in trouble and his speech to Congress on health care was his last best chance to keep the ship afloat. We’ll let you decide if that’s a bit hyperbolic (see: Bill Clinton health care failure 1994, reelection 1996 or George W. Bush “Education President” 2001, Iraq War legacy-killer 2008).
The big speech on the hill is getting plenty of (digital) ink but it was not Obama’s most important speech on Wednesday. That came …

It’s nothing new. Humans seem to prefer faith to facts. And I’m not talking about religion.
Howard Kurtz got lots of (liberal) blog links early this week with an article about the health care “debate” and how facts have been relegated to the sidelines. Kurtz now reports that it was Monday’s most commented piece on the paper’s website as people poured forth their vitriol from both sides of the health care aisle.
Kurtz’s main point was pretty simple: Despite the fact that many reporters demonstrably proved that the death panels myth was …

If  Barack Obama has an Achille’s Heel (if? who doesn’t…) it is almost certainly his arrogance. Most of the time he keeps it in check, or at least does a reasonably good job of masking it. When it peeks through he is generally quick to recognize the potential damage (“You’re nice enough, Hillary”). But this time his arrogance may once again cost Americans the chance at having the health care system as good as every other industrialized country in the world.
The arguments about the relative merits of various plans, the …

 
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 …