NewsTrust - Politics - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

President Obama Should Seize the High Ground

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas Friedman - May. 27 (Opinion) - President Obama has quite a record of accomplishment to run on for re-election if he would only run on it. During a recent discussion in Seattle with a group of educators, one of them surprised me when she pointed out that even though their state did not win President Obama’s education “Race to the Top,” that program was critical in spurring education reform in Washington State. As I listened to her analysis, the thought occurred to me: I wonder how Barack Obama would do if he ran for president as himself. ... How he would do if he ran for re-election on all the things he’s accomplished but rarely speaks about.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Facebook Illusion

Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Ross Douthat - May. 27 (Opinion) - There were two grand illusions about the American economy in the first decade of the 21st century. One was the idea that housing prices were no longer tethered to normal economic trends, and instead would just keep going up and up. The second was the idea that in the age of Web 2.0, we were well on our way to figuring out how to make lots and lots of money on the Internet.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Bain Capital and our screwed-up culture

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By Fromma Harrop - May. 26 (Opinion) - The problem is not the profession. It's what one does in the course of business. But even among those intent on making it big, people with a conscience will not cross certain lines. Bain blew across them.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Liberals put the squeeze to Justice Roberts

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By George Will - May. 26 (Opinion) - In one of his characteristic conniptions about people who frustrated him, Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism’s first president, said of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that.” TR was as mistaken about Holmes’s spine as are various progressives today about Chief Justice John Roberts’s. They are waging an embarrassingly obvious campaign, hoping he will buckle beneath the pressure of their disapproval and declare Obamacare constitutional. The crucial question is whether Congress exceeded its enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce when it mandated that individuals engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Gay marriage: Judge overturns DOMA, stepping up pressure on Supreme Court

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - May. 26 - A federal judge struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which precludes gay couples from receiving federal marriage benefits. She is the third federal judge to do so, suggesting that the Supreme Court might need to step in soon to clarify its position. ...

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Letter: Simpson needs 'intervention'

Thu, 24 May 2012 20:27:00 -0700

The Politico - By Patrick Gavin - May. 24 - After former Sen. Alan Simpson’s scathing, profanity-tinged letter to the California Alliance for Retired Americans, one organization is saying, “Enough!” “Call this a political intervention, if you will,” writes Max Richtman, the president and CEO of th

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Well: Sleep Apnea Tied to Increased Cancer Risk

Mon, 21 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Anahad O'connor - May. 21 (Opinion) - Two new studies associate a common disorder of sleep that causes pauses in breathing with a higher risk of cancer.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Most Powerful Special Interest in Washington: The Acronym

Sun, 20 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Micah Cohen - May. 20 (Opinion) - A linguistic plague is creeping through the nation's capital - the "bacronym," where a PAC or bill name is chosen so that the initial letters of each word form a desired word.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Do You Want the Good News First?

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - May. 19 (Opinion) - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs — Silicon Valley and Seattle — and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread. The excitement comes from not only seeing the stunning amount of innovation emerging from the ground up, but from seeing the new tools coming on stream that are, as Amazon.com’s founder, Jeff Bezos, put it to me, “eliminating all the gatekeepers” — making it easier and cheaper than ever to publish your own book, start your own company and chase your own dream. Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re still just at the start of this trend.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 7 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Wright stuff: President Obama and the Ricketts smear

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Ana Marie Cox - May. 19 (Opinion) - Republicans are rightly shamed by a Super Pac ad plan to tag Obama as a black radical. The irony is his very lack of radicalism Nebraska has already supplied the right with a billionaire boogeyman: Warren Buffet, hero of the secretarial pool and worldly philanthropist. Now, the left has a Husker to hate: Joe Ricketts, the man for whom a group of Republican troublemakers dreamed up the perhaps-intentionally hilarious, to-be-sure-intentionally shocking "Plan to Defeat Barack Hussein Obama" . The document's deadpan staccato phrasing has the punctuation-agnostic urgency and livid prose of a "Mission: Impossible" assignment memo (or an Austin Powers trailer). "The Plan. An Overview," reads the titular section: "A five-minute unusually unique" – sic! – "film bringing his tutorship beneath Reverend Wright and others to the forefront of popular discourse … We start by raising an eyebrow. Teasers, hints of dark clouds to come. Buying print space, newspaper ads, kiosks at the airport, around the ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

How to Use the Internet Wisely, for Your Health and Your Country's

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Howard Rheingold - May. 13 (Opinion) - Use the following methods and tools to protect yourself from toxic bad info. Use them and then pass them along to others. Promote the notion that more info literacy is a practical answer to the growing info pollution. Be the change you want to see. Although the Web undermines authority (by enabling anybody to publish), authority is still useful as one clue to credibility in a detective hunt that accounts for many other clues. Claims to authority, however, need to be questioned. I might add credibility to my assessment if a source is a verified professor at a known institution of higher learning, an authentic MD or PhD, but I would not subtract it from people without credentials whose expertise seems authentic. If you are going to grant credibility to people whose expertise is based on being a professor of something, make sure that assertion is accurate. Don't stop at simply verifying that the claim to be a professor is valid if you are looking for scientific credibility. The next step is to use the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index that derives a score from the scholar's publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Or use the h-index to calculate how many times other scientists have cited a particular source. Again, don't trust just one source; triangulate.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

JPMorgan Chase’s $2 Billion Loss

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - May. 13 (Editorial) - The lesson of JPMorgan’s stunning $2 billion trading loss is that the banks haven’t learned their lesson, and neither have the politicians. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, can be clear as a bell when he denounces financial reform. But on an emergency conference call with analysts on Thursday to announce the bank’s stunning $2 billion trading loss, his message was frustratingly vague.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Europe’s rush to austerity will have severe consequences.

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Joseph E. Stiglitz - May. 13 (Opinion) - This year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund made clear that Europe and the international community remain rudderless when it comes to economic policy. Financial leaders, from finance ministers to leaders of private financial institutions, reiterated the current mantra: The crisis countries have to get their houses in order,...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Capitalists and Other Psychopaths

Sat, 12 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By William Deresiewicz - May. 12 (Opinion) - is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role may be, whether they are good or bad. Well, consider the following. A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are “clinical psychopaths,” exhibiting a lack of interest in and empathy for others and an “unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation.” (The proportion at large is 1 percent.) Another study concluded that the rich are more likely to lie, cheat and break the law.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Game Over for the Climate

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By James Hansen - May. 11 (Opinion) - 'Global warming isn't a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read...that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves 'regardless of what we do.''

NewsTrust Rating: 4.7 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Bernanke Gets 75% Approval From Investors in Global Poll

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:36:00 -0700

Bloomberg - May. 10 - Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers his semi-annual monetary policy report to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington, D.C., on March 1, 2012. Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, delivers his semi-annual

NewsTrust Rating: 1.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama, Gay Marriage, and the American Equality Quilt

Wed, 09 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Esquire - By Charles P. Pierce - May. 09 (Opinion) - This was no happy accident. Just look at how he wove his endorsement into the fabric of everything else he'd done for the cause of equality since he's been president.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Hillary Clinton, barefaced and bespectacled, is a refreshing image in politics

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Suzi Parker - May. 08 (Opinion) - The caption read “Hillary Au Naturale,” and the photo showed the Secretary of state without makeup except lipstick, wearing black-framed glasses.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Maurice Sendak, Children’s Author, Dies at 83

Tue, 08 May 2012 07:40:15 -0700

New York Times - May. 08 -

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Those Revolting Europeans

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - May. 06 (Opinion) - The French are revolting. The Greeks, too. And it's about time.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Murdoch’s Pride Is America’s Poison

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bill Keller - May. 06 (Opinion) - Roger Ailes is (a) the genius who midwifed the astoundingly successful Fox News; (b) the sharpest thorn in the side of Barack Obama; and (c) the most important surviving officer in Rupert Murdoch’s global media army. ou can see why he would be a great subject for a biography. He is also (d) a political operator of the first order, which is why there are now three Ailes books in the works, two of which look to me like pre-emptive strikes by Ailes himself.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The pace we've come to expect

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - By G.I. - May. 06 (Opinion) - For the second month in a row, America’s labour market has disappointed, once again raising questions about whether the economic recovery is truly entrenched. Nonfarm payrolls rose just 115,000 in April from March. While the unemployment rate dipped to 8.1%, the lowest since early 2009, from 8.2%, it did so for the wrong reason: the labour force (those working or looking for work) shrank by 342,000. Private payrolls rose 130,000, but government payrolls shrank, something of a setback because the state and local government austerity that had created such a drag in the past two years had shown signs of easing this year. However, manufacturing payrolls did rise again, suggesting that the industrial sector, and exports in particular, remain a bright spot. Retail employment also recovered, suggesting the recent rise in petrol prices to around $4 a gallon has yet to take a big bite out of the consumer.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Diageo to end funding of Heartland Institute after climate change outburst

Sun, 06 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Leo Hickman - May. 06 - Firm has 'no plans' to work with thinktank following campaign comparing people concerned about climate to mass murderers Diageo, one of the world's largest drinks companies, has announced it will no longer fund the Heartland Institute , a rightwing US thinktank which briefly ran a billboard campaign this week comparing people concerned about climate change to mass murderers and terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski. On Thursday, a billboard appeared over the Eisenhower Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who in 1996 was convicted of a 17-year mail bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens. The caption read: "I still believe in global warming. Do you?" A day later it was withdrawn. The London-based drinks giant, which owns brands such as Guinness, Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Moët & Chandon, said this year that it was "reviewing any further association with Heartland" following the release online of ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Obama launches campaign against Romney, but his real opponent is the economy

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Dan Balz - May. 05 (Opinion) - The president took on Mitt Romney as he formally launched his reelection campaign, but the former Massachusetts governor won’t be Obama’s most stubborn rival.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The incredible shrinking labor force

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Brad Plumer - May. 05 (Opinion) - If the same percentage of adults were in the workforce today as when Barack Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 11.1 percent. If the percentage was where it was when George W. Bush took office, the unemployment rate would be 13.2 percent. That helps explain a seeming contradiction in the unemployment numbers: The rate keeps dropping even though job creation has been soft. In April, the U.S. economy added a mere 115,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In a normal month, that wouldn’t even be enough to keep up with new entrants into the labor market. But in this economy, it was enough to drive unemployment from 8.2 percent down to 8.1 percent, the lowest point since January 2009. The reason why resides in a little-watched measure known as the “labor force participation rate.” That tracks the number of working-age Americans who are either holding a job or looking for one. Between March and April, it dropped. A lot. There were 342,000 fewer Americans sending ...

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer