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Monthly Archives: January 2009

Friday Night Music-Bettye LaVette and Jon Bon Jovi

Friday, January 30, 2009

I was holding a bunch of Friday Night suggestions from a liberal drinker in reserve, but the first few I checked either had embedding disabled or had been pulled down. My wife suggested this song, from the Obama Inaugural Concert. It doesn’t top the Pete Seeger clip, but it’s right behind it.

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Grandmaster Obama

Friday, January 30, 2009

Greg Palast seems to think that Obama played the Republicans just right: Republicans are right. President Barack Obama treated them like dirt, didn’t give a damn what they thought about his stimulus package, loaded it with a bunch of programs that will last for years and will never leave the budget, is giving away money […]

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What should be done with the Norwich Hospital property

Friday, January 30, 2009

The Town of Preston is about to lose control of the former Norwich Hospital site. Both the state and Preston went about marketing the property in a back asswards way. The site needs to be cleaned up. The state should clean it up and then market it, if market it they must. They’d be likely […]

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Told you so, even if I didn’t understand it

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Last year I wrote a post about credit default swaps. A few days later I was on a cable access television show and I was asked to explain them. I wonder if what I said made sense. From what I read then, it seemed clear that these instruments were a potential economic land mine: … […]

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Speculative history

Thursday, January 29, 2009

A little exercise in alternative history. What if Gerald Ford had not pardoned Nixon, and that presidential crook had done some hard time? What lessons did Ford’s deputies, Cheney and Rumsfeld, learn from that little episode and what would they have learned, instead, had Nixon gone to jail. And, oddly enough, given the widespread notion […]

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Well that was a surprise

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The stimulus plan got exactly zero Republican votes in the House. In order to get those votes, Obama and the Democrats added useless tax cuts, and subtracted family planning funding, etc. Now, if Obama expected this, and has some long term strategy to capitalize on it, fine. But if he really thought he could get […]

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Barack O’bama

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

You may recall that much of Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience, other than the Russian flyovers, consisted of a stopover at an Irish airport. Turns out that Barack Obama has a bigger claim on the Emerald Isle. I’m beginning to feel cheated. Doesn’t he have any Polish or Italian blood in there?

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From little rotten acorns, rotten oaks are grown

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

This is a story about what happens when one branch of our government relinquishes its proper role in the name of national security. In 1948 an Air Force plane crashed. A number of people were killed, including some civilian employees of RCA. Their family members sued the Air Force for negligence, and asked for a […]

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Your bailout money at work

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

This is far worse than buying a jet: Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority. Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative […]

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Bipartisanship

Monday, January 26, 2009

I just finished watching Keith Olbermann and the beginning of Rachel Maddow’s show. Both of them bemoaned Obama’s push for “bi-partisanship” on the stimulus package, and both they and their guests feel the Democrats are being played by the Republicans. That may all turn out to be true, but let me propose an alternative theory. […]

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