No joke — Al Franken is declared the winner by the three-judge panel. Unless the state supreme court reverses and sides with Norm Coleman’s contention that thousands of absentee ballots were improperly excluded there will be enormous pressure on Coleman to pack it in. And rightfully so.
Eugene Robinson whacks the Congressional Black Caucus for failing to notice that “Cuba is hardly the paradise of racial harmony and equality it pretends to be” : “Even without meeting with any of the well-known black dissidents on the island, the visitors from Washington could have observed that the workforce in Cuba’s burgeoning tourism industry — arguably the most privileged class, since waiters and cab drivers receive tips in hard currency, which allows them a standard of living far beyond what is possible with Cuban pesos and government rations — is disproportionately white. Members of the Black Caucus are, quite properly, quick to notice such insults and disparities at home. Maybe they were too busy looking into Fidel’s eyes. ” Bravo.
A weekend show for Chuck Todd seems a better use of his talents than his main gig as White House correspondent. And I agree that if he gets some practice Todd would be an ideal replacement after NBC comes to its senses and concedes that David Gregory was miscast as Meet The Press host.
Moving Guantanamo detainees to Virginia for trial? That’ll help push Virginia back in the “Red” column. So it likely won’t happen.
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell rakes in $2.2M and has more cash on hand ($3.5M) than any of his rivals (in a contribution quarter in which he could not, as attorney general, raise money for nearly a month). If Terry McAuliffe, Clinton moneyman extraordinaire, is the Democratic nominee McDonnell will need to squirrel away every dime he can.
Sen. Olympia Snowe is not so game on public health insurance. She echoes, at least for now, John McCain’s call for more competition among private plans.
Mitt Romney explains why the binding arbitration provision of card check legislation is as bad or worse than taking away the secret ballot. As to why the anti-card check forces fight on after the battle has been won, I have been wondering about that too — and why Big Labor pretends that card check is still viable. I think the real answer is that the anti-card check forces are attempting to embarrass their opponents and to make a pro-Big Labor compromise that much harder to obtain. (Meanwhile, Romney is making headway as the the go-to Republican on economic/business issues, which likely alarms any potential opponents for 2012.)
Two pretty startling facts: 1) “Americans will pay more in taxes than they will spend on food, clothing and housing combined,” and 2) “The only previous years when taxes and deficit spending comprised a similarly large share of national income were 1944 and 1945, at the peak of World War II.”
You’d think people would be marching in the streets. Oh, they may be — or at least meeting in lots of parks.
Perhaps the government should keep this in mind while meddling in the car business: “Consumers who buy minicars to economize on fuel are making a big tradeoff when it comes to safety in collisions, according to an insurance group that slammed three minimodels into midsize ones in tests.”
Megan McArdle shares my puzzlement over how exactly a “quick bankruptcy” for GM is supposed to work. I think everyone is discovering why we have bankruptcy courts — to reach apolitical resolutions about how to reorganize (or liquidate) insolvent companies. Unfortunately, in the meantime we dumped tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into GM.
Goldman Sachs want to get out from under the government’s thumb and pay back TARP funds. Will the government let them? And consider the competitive disadvantage which those firms remaining under TARP control face as each of their competitors escapes. If you are a star employee with a choice to work for a TARP or a non-TARP firm which would you choose?
How’s all that multilateralism going? “Yesterday’s U.N. statement lacks even the legally binding nature of a resolution. It is a promise by the 15 members of the Security Council to enforce sanctions they have already pledged to enforce but so far haven’t, in the name of getting the North to agree to abide by promises it has already made but hasn’t kept. This time, no doubt, everyone really, really means it. . . With this wrist slap for Kim, the Obama Administration has now had its first experience with the limits of the U.N. as the enforcer of global order and nonproliferation. It won’t be the last. See Darfur (feckless denunciation of), and Iran, which just announced it has 7,000 nuclear centrifuges and counting.” Perhaps if we apologize again for causing a global recession and dropping the atomic bomb that will do the trick.
