I keep a lot of tabs and windows open on Firefox; too many, really, which makes things often unstable and prone to crash. Many of them are pieces which I think, abstractly, woud make a good basis for a blog post... but never quite get done. So, since Firefox just crashed - again - this morning, let me try and clear the backlog out a bit:
- I've been interested in the developing narrative around the President, trying to sort out who he is, what makes him tick, and who he has around him. I'm not entirely persuaded that anyone's figured him out fully yet (fans or foes), but I think people are finding pieces of thngs that contribute to the picture. For instance, I think this John Judis piece in The New Republic from a while back, gets at the thing a number of us said all along: there's a class difference between Obama and working class voters that explains a lot.
- Meanwhile, this, now old, Steve Clemons piece at HuffPo on the problems with Obama's core team of Chicago cronies as his key advisors tends to reflect my feeling about what's really wrong with the White House - too insular and too few people in the inner circle who all think alike. I don't, though, think this explanation really does enough to fully explain all the mistakes the White House has made thus far.
- Via Lambert at Corrente, I was brought to this Yves Smith piece that looks at the internal tensions in the Obama White House from a different angle, namely Lambert's view, shared by many, that the Obama folks are trying to marginalize progressives. It's not a view I share, but the Smith piece is interesting, if a bit baroque in its attmepts to tie all the storylines into one game of 11 dimensional chess.
- I've been fascinated by the still-simmering Ayn Rand revival that bubbles on the edges of our national discourse. While I was living in Boston and spending too much time at the nearby Barnes and Noble, I bought copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged... but didn't read them. I still mean to. This article by Jon Chait at TNR is an interesting examination of Rand, and Rand-ian politics on the right. I never figured out what piece I meant to write about it.
- In the last week or so, I've been a little interested - but only a little - in the unfolding discussion of the sales pitches for gold investing that mark a number of prominent advertisers on right wing TV and radio. Like many, I think the ads are kind of decpetive and for suckers... but then, that's advertising in a nutshell, if you ask me. Stephen Spruiell over at National Review tries to make excuses for the attacks being all about politics... but as this followup post at The Corner shows... even rightwing financial advisors tend to look askance at the gold sales.
- I tend to not read - and not write about - Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic; she's not very good, as a writer or an analyst, I find, and her points are usually kind of dopey. Still, knowing the residual anger that simmers over healthcare "reform" as passed by Congress and arguments about whether it will be ruled unconstitutional do generate some interesting discussions. McArdle's piece isn't one of them, but for a minute, I thought about wading in with a theory of my own - which is, mainly that I think the mandate is probably constitutional, but even if it isn't in the form they passed, it wilill be in some other form or fashion. But I can make that a sentence... not a full piece.
- This may be a little old, but I liked the points in this "10 things you don't know (or were misinformed) about the Goldman Sachs case." I knew most of them, and reached pretty much the same conclusion as the author. I also tend to think that Goldman will pay a fine and settle the case without admitting guilt... which will pave the way for further action.
- Jonah Goldberg, in his hacktastic way, makes a fair point from the right about critics of Obama being labeled "racist." I kept hoping for other, better examples to contrast him with... but never really found any worth pursuing, and the piece I would write, really, wouldn't say much more than "I wish we used 'racist' less, and 'predjudiced' more"... and there, I've said it.
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