Kevin Drum

OBAMA, THE PRESS, AND IRAQ….The big story on Saturday was Spiegel’s interview with Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki in which he endorsed Barack Obama’s 16-month timeline for withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Bush administration was so unnerved by this that they mistakenly sent an email to the entire White House press corps headlined “Iraqi PM […]

UNDERSTANDING THE MEDIA, PART 438….According to an anonymous but well-connected source here at Netroots Nation, the First Law of Foreign Policy Punditry states that the less you know about a region, the more dangerous it must be. Thus, when a foreign policy expert knows nothing about a region, it automatically becomes elevated to the gravest […]

THE ECONOMY….A few days ago, in passing, I remarked that I was impressed (surprised?) by the ability of our economy to absorb so much catastrophe in such a short time without things being even worse than they are. What accounts for this? Via Mark Thoma, Tim Duy proposes several factors but singles one of them […]

VISITING BAGHDAD….Nancy Youssef was McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau chief during the height of the violence in 2005 and 2006, back “when we didn’t bat an eye at 70 bodies in the street, when a good week meant that none of our friends or sources had been killed.” Now, after a stint in DC as Pentagon correspondent, […]

GAYS IN THE MILITARY…. Good news: according to a new Washington Post poll, just about everyone now favors allowing openly gay recruits to serve in the military: Support from Republicans has doubled over the past 15 years, from 32 to 64 percent. More than eight in 10 Democrats and more than three-quarters of independents now […]

OBAMA’S BIG TRIP….In comments, loki demands to know what I think of Barack Obama’s upcoming trip to Europe and the Middle East. Instead of offering a longwinded analysis of my own, let me turn over the floor to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post: The three network anchors will travel to Europe and the Middle […]

THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK IN THE NIGHT….David Brooks writes today in “The Coming Activist Age” that we are entering an era of “epic legislation.” He then ticks off five areas that he thinks will “compel the federal government to act in gigantic ways over the next few years”: healthcare, energy, education, financial markets, and […]

FRIDAY CATBLOGGING….Sorry, felinophiles, but I haven’t seen any cats in Austin, so no catblogging today. Let the wailing and rending begin…..

GAY MARRIAGE IN CALIFORNIA….Here’s the latest Field Poll on Proposition 8, the initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California. There are still four months to go before the election, but initiatives have a hard time passing in California these days just generally, and nine points is a big deficit to make up under any […]

GENERATION CELL….Are telephone surveys that don’t include cell phones accurate? Apparently so, even as the number of cell phone users continues to grow. Here’s the latest from Pew, which just conducted a survey of both cell and landline users: Cell-only respondents are significantly more likely than either the landline respondents or the cell-mostly respondents to […]