The closing performance of last night’s American Music Awards is generating quite the buzz today — and if he subscribes to the “any publicity is good publicity” theory, then Adam Lambert must be positively ecstatic this morning. Last night, though, he was on the defensive. “I do feel like there’s a bit of a double standard in the entertainment community, on television, on radio,” Lambert told CNN backstage. “I feel like women performers have been pushing...

Gems like these are why I so enjoy reading James Joyner at Outside the Beltway: The two parties and their constituent interest groups have done a superb job of poisoning the well. Republicans have virtually ensured that we’ll never have anything short of a massive defense budget and we’ll never have the sort of confiscatory tax brackets for high earners that they have in Europe and we had here as recently as John Kennedy’s administration. And Democrats have made it a virtual certainty that...

Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), writing in CNN, says he plans to oppose raising the debt ceiling what the issue comes up for a vote next month. He’s unwilling to raise this ceiling, he writes, unless “Congress adopts a credible process to balance our books and eliminate the red ink” — and he wants to form a “debt commission” to start the process. A debt commission will force members of Congress to take — or reject — a single gulp of politically...

Geeeesum! Could Jesse Jackson be more insulting with this? The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill. “We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.” What Jackson apparently means is, you can’t think for yourself and call yourself a black...

This has been bugging me all day. “I think that we’ve restored America’s standing in the world, and that’s confirmed by polls,” [Obama] told CNN’s Ed Henry in a wide-ranging interview this week during his trip to China. “I think a recent one indicated that around the world, before my election, less than half the people — maybe less than 40 percent of the people — thought that you could count on America to do to the right thing. Now it’s...

Andrew Sullivan reminds us all how Sarah Palin came to be driving the dialogue today: [W]hat I didn’t fully come to terms with, until the Palin farce, was the full extent of John McCain’s recklessness and cynicism. This is worth keeping in mind through all this. The only reason we even know about Sarah Palin is John McCain. Certainly McCain’s VP pick brought some sudden life to his campaign. And yes, it looked extremely cynical to me as well. But when Sullivan goes on to suggest...

Writing about “The Excommunication Of Lou Dobbs” in Forbes, one Roger Kimball is perturbed by the claiming of the “middle ground” by Dobbs’ critics. Elevating political discourse. Drawing a line in the sand. Polite company. A middle ground. Get it? If you’re Media Matters, CNN or The New York Times, you are in the happy position of proposing that what you espouse is elevating, middle-of-the-road, non-fractious opinion that is acceptable to “polite company,”...

There seems to be a deep-seated need by some folks to cast Major Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, as something — anything – other than a religious fanatic who killed in the name of his religion. In spite of the ever-mounting information regarding his extremism, his self-declared status as a “Soldier of Allah”, his statements that he viewed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war on his religion… the arguments still continue. “He was just like every other crazy that...

I’m looking forward to reading Sarah Palin’s book. Like Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father, Palin’s Going Rogue will likely give insights into how she thinks, and who she is at a much deeper level than hyper-partisan electoral politics could ever give. I expect to come away from reading it with an even stronger liking for her personally — just as I did Obama’s book. She is, on so many levels, utterly ordinary. One cannot be a parent (much less a Mom), and...

Sarah Palin, with a huge assist from some nameless ghostwriter, has come off of Facebook and gone mainstream with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. The piece includes some elements that have been discussed elsewhere: continued uncontrolled costs, tort reform, patient-centricity…. and of course, the ubiquitous, hysteria-driving “death panels”. Leaving aside the rational bits (and there are some), I played around a bit, mentally, with her scenario of “unelected bureaucrats...

The last two elections (2006 and 2008) were a rebuke to a Republican party that was running amok, and utterly without coherence, vision, or leadership. They deserved to be ousted, and their overheated rhetoric and deliberate misstatements about the new administration demonstrate that they are nowhere near ready to return to power; they need far more time in the political wilderness. I don’t think, though, that the Republicans are going to be out for very long. It’s highly likely,...

So. The White House has released the prepared text for Obama’s speech to the nation’s students tomorrow. It’s packed full of what I consider to be classic values that are held very dearly by pretty much every parent I know. It talks about taking responsibility, and working hard, and having goals that take effort, and that there’s no excuse for not trying. It says, basically, what the White House said it would say all along… and I find myself truly curious about something. If...

Here on TMV, we’ve discussed health care reform (often with a fair amount of heat) up and down, in and out, and every which way. Usually, the threads end up circular, with everybody back at their respective starting places; we’re getting nowhere. So I’d like to ask a different question (and perhaps go somewhere new): Why are we stuck on the “insurance” model for health care delivery? Insurance is (or was) intended to off-set risk of catastrophic financial loss from...

An interesting thread developed last night here on TMV, in which several people who are not ideologically sitting behind a firewall (”Public plan or nothing!” or “If the government touches it, it’s Socialism!”) tried to find areas of common ground on health care reform. We found several areas of agreement. However, we also heard from folks who think there are irreconcilable ideologies at work. I concede the possibility, but I’m not ready to accept it as a foregone...

We’ve had lots of discussion the last few days about what motivates people opposing reforms that hinge on government-run health care. I’ve concluded that even educated, well-intentioned, and highly engaged people, regardless of ideological orientation, sometimes seem to have an unfortunate tendency to fit the narrative to a worldview. Take E.J. Dionne, Jr, in a Guest Post right here on TMV today (my emphasis): On the contrary, violence and the threat of violence have always been used...

It’s unfortunate that what I brought online yesterday was colored by some distracting background noise, and I very much regret that I allowed a defensive reaction to intrude on the larger point I was trying to make. Since that point got lost in the shouting and attacks (and with the acknowledgment that I may have some hitherto unrecognized masochistic pathology), I’m going to try again. Let’s go all the way back to the original question from Dorian de Wind: But what I don’t...

This morning, co-blogger Joe Windish points to a paper that says Americans are resisting health care reform because we’re racist; it’s a legacy from slavery. Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society, and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system...

This is a (very) lightly modified version of a letter composed at my house this weekend. The only changes are the removal of my personal information and the name of the company. FWIW — I thought very hard about going Galt with the whole credit card industry. Still thinking about it, in fact… ***** August 15, 2009 To: My (former) Credit Card Services Company Re: Your response to the Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act Dear Sirs: This weekend I received a document in the mail...

In light of all the heated discussion about health care reform, this Houston Chronicle article seems pretty timely: Obesity is causing “death and illness on a massive scale,” according to a new study by University of Virgina and Urban Institute researchers. And it is all but impossible to treat. “Unless there is some vast improvement in the efficiency of the health care system — and I mean vast — we’re going to be spending a lot more just because a lot more people will have diabetes”...

Patrick Edaburn’s interesting post yesterday, in which he examined his mental reactions to a slow driver, set off a whole slew of thoughts for me regarding stereotypes, prejudices, bigotry, and racism. For instance: Let’s say you attended a neighborhood social function, and your Republican neighbor talks at length about his son, of whom he’s extremely proud. This beloved son, as it happens, is gay. Yet a week later, you hear a Republican say s/he thinks marriage carries religious...

This, I’m sad to say, is absolutely right: The lesson that the ruthless corners of the political world will take from the rise, fall, and departure of Sarah Palin that if you attack a politician’s children nastily enough and relentlessly enough, you can get anybody to quit. A hideous, but logical, outcome. My chron post about her resignation is here. Cross-posted from Polimom Says.

The outcome of yesterday’s election in Iran is, to say the least, disturbing. From CNN: TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has won a landslide election victory despite protests by his main challenger of “blatant violations.” Ahmadinejad won 62.63 percent of the vote while chief rival Mir Hossein Moussavi received 33.75 percent, the Iranian government said Saturday. Winning by nearly 63%, in a field of 4, is indeed a landslide. More — it’s...

There’s a fair amount of spin going on regarding yesterday’s tragic shooting at the Holocaust Museum and as a result, many Republican and conservative leaning blogs and writers are on the defensive as their political opposites attempt to score points. It looks, in fact, very much as it did in April when the DHS report came out. Unfortunately for the defense, though, I’m afraid that report was right — at least, as it applies to the shooter yesterday. Since I’m a bit late...

President Obama’s speech in Cairo today was excellent (full text here). He gave historical context to grievances, lauded achievements, and affirmed commitments. He addressed primary concerns held closely by people on the various sides of many issues… and from my perspective, he did it very well. Of course, noting that Obama gave a great speech is like noticing that the sun rose today. He’s really really good at it, as everyone’s long-since discovered. The real question...

On the heels of the assassination of Dr. George Tiller on Sunday, some wondered about what they see as relativism, and complained that radical actions from the extreme Left don’t get the same treatment as those from the Right. As a commenter to my post on the subject asked “Where’s the outrage over extremists from the left?” Leaving aside the obvious immediate answer (the Tiller story was a current event and the extremist left was not), there’s a valid question here....