I have always lived and worked between the poles of art and commerce. I try to make profit-making organizations more focused and honest in their communications, and artist-suppliers more sensitive to the needs of business. I try to give some of my time outside of making a living to my duties as a citizen, particularly as an election judge and party precinct chair. Finally I invest a dedicated amount of my spare time to sculpting in a medium of my own making.
I joined newstrust.net because I think it is an important and valuable new tool for not just receiving news, but evaluating its quality, which is necessary for well-informed opinion and fulfilling our duty as citizens.
Interesting introduction about better ways to measure political preferences, and by extension, to improve democracy. The glib title belies the seriousness of the ideas explored in the article. Worth a read.
Although I am no fan of American military adventurism, and know that many politicians can't resist using our military improperly, this article is a welcome voice in our way to a "deeper understanding of our post-9/11 world," to quote the tomdispatch.com mission. As the father of a son who wants to go into the Marines, Astore has helped my understanding of why that might be. It's perhaps that same pursuit of authenticity that caused me to backpack Europe for five months after working a year in a mill during my college years. Progressives do need to embrace the democratic opportunity the military provides now, to outflank the charge of being weak on national defense, but more important, to have a credible role in preserving our ... More »
I don't think evil is the right word to describe a political economic world order that must be changed to its root. Evil connotes a supernatural being in many people's minds, and too often the struggle against it involves attacking the individual human avatars of evil. Today's world order may be something much worse, conveyed in the writer's use of the word evolution. I say "may be" because I dread the implications if he is right. What we have today, after the collapse of communism, is decentralized capitalist totalitarianism. In the absence of rival ideologies I believe all socio-economic systems evolve organically toward an extreme form, amoral in its function, but not evil. What were once constraints on extremism, such as ... More »
The best quality about this article as journalism is the consistently informative batch of links embedded within, especially the one to Dan Cooper's book. They really help flesh out what could be another "grudge" piece. The second-best thing is the litany of ratings drops against other networks. The third-best thing is that now the Thinking Person's Dictionary, 2007 edition has a wonderful and appropriate positive illustration of the term, schadenfreude. Next stop for the writer is a more difficult target, the BosWash corporate bias of other news channels. Will his aim be as true?
Given the evidence the writer presents, this article could be much shorter. To wit: Hillary is leading strongly in most Super Tuesday state's polls. The polls are notoriously unreliable this campaign season. We don't know what will happen next Tuesday. This story is a fine compilation of facts steering conventional wisdom.
A stellar example of a bad headline almost ruining a good story. I too have noticed increasing aversion to Hillary among politically engaged Democrats. But it's not because the Right figured her out first. The Right hates the Clintons because they won twice despite intense efforts against them. Republicans often have a misplaced sense of entitlement to the White House. Among Democrats Hillary is being revealed as someone with a similar sense of entitlement. She has not shown any true leadership qualities. Obama has brought warm rhetoric back to politics, and Edwards has been out front on all core Democratic issues. Hillary has led only in fundraising. And underneath it all is a sense that she and Bill might be surrounded by ... More »
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Simply astonishing. This is a good example of what journalists do best. Although the author probably does not consider himself a journalist, he has fulfilled the mission of presenting clearly a broad complex subject that most readers are only partly familiar with. I have wondered why the world is not following our current administration's lead in the least- quite the opposiite- and now I know the reasons are more than just misadventures in Iraq. Recommend this article to as many people as you can.
Bob Herbert is one of the best opinion writers out there, and he nails it again. He seems to have his finger up in a different breeze than most political writers. He senses that Americans are moving toward a different view of leadership. After all a literal reading of "winning at all costs" means that victory is dead broke.
The only time I say nice things about Reagan's leadership is when I am arguing with rightwingers and need them to stop shouting so I can get in a decent point. Let's hope that's what Obama was doing. But Krugman is right on when he declares the new progressive movement must relegate Reagan to his proper place in the pantheon of Presidents, He doesn't deserve mention in the same breath as FDR. Maybe McKinley. Krugman, as usual, is a much needed voice in the media world of Reagan worshippers.
This opinion piece is good journalism mainly because it is one MSM source criticizing another source- all too rare still. Yglesias accurately identifies two of Russert's favorite interview tactics and shows how they are less about informing the audience than creating another news story. I believe Russert is overly respected, and unlike Chris Matthews- an easy NBC target- Russert doesn't get nearly as much criticism as he deserves. Both Russert and Matthews are key actors in the over-dramatization of TV news, like all TV news personalities, which is why citizens should not get their information from television, except perhaps CSpan and sometime PBS. And when it is useful to see motion pictures of spectacular events like Katrina, ... More »
Almost a propaganda piece touting the American model of capitalist democracy, this article is valuable for going beyond the typical bad news about European pension, union, productivity and social dynamism problems. Interestingly, the article shows how deeply embedded a less-than-celebratory attitude towards capitalism is in France and Germany. The author fails to discuss that Europeans might know the terrible price we pay in the US for our creatively destructive economic system of low regulation, attenuated social welfare, and disappearing employee rights. He fails to report the recent studies that show higher generational social mobility in much of social democratic Europe. And from his point of view a reader might think that ... More »
Though of little importance I love this kind of story because it tells me something I never knew. It could have been better with some quotes from present day Koreans about how they view cats. Without such current evidence, the story descends into that kind of "curiosities of the world" journalism of the 19th Century.
The writer captures the inanity of the Sunday morning talk shows. This is an opinion article that is little more than brushed up notes of the conversation many of us have in our heads as we watch the inner circle of Washington pundits. I am assuming the reporting of what was said by the press is accurate, because I no longer spoil my mornings by watching these shows. My advice to the networks is to start staging these shows in a bar on Saturday night so at least the entertainment value would go up, and possibly the level of thoughtful comment.
This story is accurate only as an expression of Arianna's feelings about what Obama's victory means in several ways. It is more a confessional than news analysis, or even informed opinion. Still, I share her feelings about much of what the Obama victory means, and I am an Edwards supporter. His victory might inspire Kenya, and might give US black voters permission to leave their support of Hillary at home.
Interesting survey facts, but the best thing about the article is its restraint in not overinterpreting the results.
This story is a welcome relief from all the lionizing that often follows the assassination of a world leader who seems friendly to the West. Many of the recent stories about her have overstated the difference she could make. I always felt that the chief value of Bhutto's return to Pakistan was that she gave the Sindhi people some representation in the power struggles, not that she was some glorious reformer. Perhaps her legacy will be her bravery in the face of near-certain death, but that is a story for the future.
I have been wondering why the emergence of China and Russia's new-found confidence have not been more a part of the presidential debates. The writer has put his finger on America's most important foreign policy challenge for the next 50 years, except that India and South America were not mentioned. This opinion is well worth reading. As journalism it fulfills the professional mission of informing beyond the trends of reporting and opinion elsewhere in the media.
A refreshing comparison and contrast between two of the two parties' leading candidates, this article effectively personifies the choices on national economic policy that voters will have in November. It's a welcome break from all the horserace reporting. Although conservatives might feel it is slanted toward Edwards, I noticed that the writer made a special point that only one economist is on Edwards' campaign team in a way that seemed to discredit his policies. I guess that's the Establishment voice of the NYT talking. In a way the article favors Romney, but all in all, is a fair portrayal of the two men.
While confessing a bias as an Edwards supporter, this story is good journalism for two reasons. It brings forward Edwards' strong position against all the GOP nominees, which has been true all year, but rarely shows up in "horserace stories." And perhaps more important, it shows one media source criticizing another, which is sorely absent in our national debate. I would like to see more of this criticism in the mainstream media.
The article would have been more balanced if the contrarian view was presented, even briefly. It seemed that the author believes that private interests would not stand in the way of such a large scale change of land use, as we have seen with wind generation in some parts of the country. Also the comprehensive presentation of associated costs left out any mention of obtaining cadmium and telluride for photovoltaic cells. I couldn't help but wonder if these minerals come from Africa where they would become the new blood diamonds. Perhaps a second article about the political costs of this proposal is in order. All in all, this is an informative article about possibilities that have not been brought to the public debate.
Meets minimum journalistic standards, but I'm sure they love this stuff inside the Beltway. The ink would have been better spent on an equal number of words exploring Bill Richardson's campaign in the early states. We have heard enough about Clinton v. Obama. This story is more gossip than news, but many people don't know the difference.
