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Monthly Archives: March 2008

Counting Delegates

Monday, March 31, 2008

Via Talking Points, here’s a fun site at Slate, where you can tinker with the delegate math and play out different scenarios depending on how things go in the upcoming primaries. The conclusion is inescapable: Hillary can win only if she steals it, or a miracle happens. I assumed, for example, that she gets 65% […]

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Good regulations can’t trump bad regulators

Monday, March 31, 2008

Paul Krugman makes the valid point today that Treasury Secretary Paulson’s proposed “reforms” amount to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic: Anyone who has worked in a large organization — or, for that matter, reads the comic strip “Dilbert” — is familiar with the “org chart” strategy. To hide their lack […]

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Last Democrat Standing

Monday, March 31, 2008

Poor Joe Lieberman. According to him, he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, every other Democrat in the country did: “It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government,” he said. “It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the […]

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Zbigniew Brzezinski calls for an exit

Sunday, March 30, 2008

The Washington Post runs against type today and gives some space to Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has opposed the Iraq war from the start. Nothing he says is much different than you can read, for instance, at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment every day, but it’s important that it appears in the pages of a paper that […]

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Slight sign of spring

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Looks like we’re on track to have one of those Southeastern Connecticut springs, when the weather stays cool until somewhere around the end of May, when it suddenly becomes blazing hot. My wife’s records say we often have daffodils by this point, though not always. Yesterday I spotted a crocus. Not much, but at least […]

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Expelled

Friday, March 28, 2008

Regular readers of the excellent blog Pharyngula can stop right here. For the rest of you folks, I must bring you up to date on a controversy brewing in the ongoing wars between scientists and crackpots over evolution. It has been covered extensively at Pharyngula, whose blogmeister, PZ Meyers, world renowned atheist and biologist, was […]

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Friday Night Music

Friday, March 28, 2008

Okay, I do this with some reluctance, but I am sick of cold weather, and this song, California Dreaming by the Mamas and the Papas, came to mind. I know they are something of a cliche, but the song brings back pleasant memories. I searched in vain for a non-lip synched version, but could find […]

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Mind Boggling

Friday, March 28, 2008

According to MSNBC the nations investment banks are borrowing an average of 32.9 billion dollars a day from the Fed. I think even nowadays that’s a lot of money. The total proposed budget for the state of Connecticut for the fiscal year 2009 is about 18.4 billions, which means that the banks are borrowing a […]

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Taming the President

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

I just finished reading the decision in Medellin v. Texas, which is being billed as a defeat in the Supreme Court for George Bush, because the court, the conservative justices in the majority, rejected a Bush bid for expanded presidential powers. Since this is the most political court in our history, I smelled a rat. […]

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The Land of Stupid Habits

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

In a break with tradition, the Hartford Courant covered hard news on page one today, to wit, an article about a proposal to allow big cities to impose a 1% sales tax. The idea is appallingly stupid for the reasons pointed out by several legislators: But Republican and some Democratic legislators questioned the idea, saying […]

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