Kevin Drum

MIRROR, MIRROR….When is a tax increase not a tax increase? Do you have to ask? When it’s a Republican tax increase, of course.

THE CASE FOR NATO….Robert Farley investigates the case for admitting Georgia and Ukraine to NATO: Even before the war, the practical cases for admitting Ukraine and Georgia to NATO were very weak, weaker even than for the Baltic states. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine have stable, pro-Western democratic governments. The Saakashvili regime has made strides beyond […]

EQUAL TIME….Should this blog be required to offer equal time to conservatives? According to a recent Rasmussen poll, nearly a third of Americans think so: Fifty-seven percent (57%) say the government should not require websites and blog sites that offer political commentary to present opposing viewpoints. But 31% believe the Internet sites should be forced […]

THAT WORD “CRISIS” DOES NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS, SENATOR…. Apparently John McCain thinks the Russian invasion of Georgia is “the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War.” This is, pretty obviously, factually wrong, since you could trot out the Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, the al-Aqsa Intifada, 9/11, […]

DEAD ZONES….Just in case you didn’t have enough to worry about, marine biologists Robert Diaz and Rutger Rosenberg have recently finished counting up all the world’s dead zones, and the news isn’t good: In the latest sign of trouble in the planet’s chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved “dead zones” in coastal waters around the world […]

QUOTE OF THE DAY….From James Fallows, modifying his reaction to the universally reviled Gibson/Stephanopoulos primary debate after watching all 29 Democratic debates in a row in order to write about them for The Atlantic: When I’d seen this final debate in real time, I’d been outraged by its harsh tone and belated attention to policy […]

KRISTOL ON POWELL….Why did Bill Kristol — a warmonger, sure, but a shrewd warmonger — go on Fox yesterday to insist that Colin Powell would be endorsing Barack Obama and speaking at the Democratic convention? Steve Clemons take a flier: Since Steve Schmidt was given the operative reins of the McCain campaign, Schmidt has been […]

PRIORITIES….Here’s the first graf of today’s LA Times story on the economy: Consumer prices took another sharp jump last month with high energy prices fueling a 0.8% monthly increase — nearly double analysts’ predictions — and chalked up a 12-month inflation rate of 5.6%, the highest since 1991, the Labor Department reported today. ZOMG! Inflation […]

THE POLITICS OF HATE….Joe Klein responds to Mary Matalin, publisher of Jerome Corsi’s shiny new book alleging that Barack Obama really is a secret Muslim after all: But hey, Mary stands to make big bucks off this scholarship, which I’m sure was submitted for peer review and otherwise held to the highest editorial standards — […]

THE AMAZING MICHAEL PHELPS….I don’t have any special reason for posting this, but, you know, why not? Olympic fever and all that. Anyway, the chart on the right shows the progression of world records since WWII in the 800m sprint and the 200m freestyle swim, both of which take roughly two minutes for world class […]