This is about as grim a picture as anybody could paint.
McMansion dotted suburbs may become the new slums
The subprime crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Fundamental changes in American life may turn today’s McMansions into tomorrow’s tenements. Strange days are upon the residents of many a suburban cul-de-sac. Once-tidy yards have become overgrown, as the houses they front have gone vacant. Signs of physical and social disorder are spreading. At Windy Ridge, a recently built [...]
Tags: Economy, Home Sales
Categories: Economy · Housing Market
Man, does Chris Bowers nail it with this piece at Open Left. All of the reasons why Obama’s working and Hillary is not. It’s not the message. It’s the method.
The Old Is New Again
I am loathe to write this, since it smacks of growing old and crotchety. However, to a certain extent I can understand some of the insider exacerbation with the arguments coming from some Obama supporters. Specifically, the ideas put forth by the Obama campaign on a wide range of process issues such as how to defeat Republicans and how to successfully govern are not new ideas from [...]
UPDATE: Here’s another reason she’s tanking:
Texas, Texas, and more Texas
…First of all, if you want more evidence that Clinton is being done in by her campaign, there’s this blog post from TV reporter Elise Hu in Austin. “Since the arrival of the competing presidential campaigns, I have had a difficult time getting a hold of [...]
Tags: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
Categories: 2008 Election · Democrats · Republicans
One of the greats, Walter Cronkite. He was among those whom I admired, those who I wanted to follow in my decision to become a broadcast journalist. It’s difficult to believe that this particular broadcast was 40 years ago. It’s even more difficult to understand how the industry has changed in those 40 years. Heck, it’s impossible to understand how much it’s changed in the past ten years.
Walter Cronkite, Vietnam, and the Decline of Media Credibility
Walter Cronkite’s remarks at the end of his February 27, 1968 evening news broadcast, four decades ago today, were a watershed in the history of the MSM’s credibility [...]
UPDATE: Coincidentally, there’s a new poll:
Poll: Traditional journalists are ‘out of touch.’
A new Zogby poll finds that 67 percent of Americans “believe traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.” Forty-eight percent say that their primary source of news and information comes from the Internet, an increase of [...]
Tags: Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite
Categories: Television
Grown men and women. Denied the right to read what they want. Keep in mind, this isn’t like your workplace blocking access to certain sites while you’re at the office, this blocks access even when they’re not on duty!
Air Force Blocks Access to Many Blogs
The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word “blog” in its web address. It’s the latest move in a larger struggle within the [...]
Tags: Air Force, Blogs
Categories: Military
It would seem Americans ARE a bit worried about what their financial future might be. And, we’re not talking just low and middle-income people anymore.
Consumer confidence hits 14-year low.
A new ABC News Consumer Comfort Index “stands at -37 on its scale of +100 to -100, steady for three weeks at its lowest since November 1993. One reason for concern is that “the index this week is -8 among people with household incomes over $100,000, a new low in three years of tracking that [...]
Tags: Economy
Categories: Economy
February 27, 2008 · 1 Comment
At least, she should get credit for what she HAS accomplished.
He Was Too Busy, But Hillary Got Help for Veterans
Over at MyDD, Fleaflicker writes, “In last night’s debate Hillary mentioned that Obama was Chair of the subcommittee that has oversight over NATO. And that while Chair of that Subcommittee Senator Obama held not a single substantial meeting [covered at NoQuarter as well]. Not one. When confronted with this Obama’s excuse was that he had [...]
Tags: 2008 Election, Veterans
Categories: 2008 Election · Military
It just shouldn’t happen.
Halliburton/State Department Rape Stories Get Worse and Worse
…She is one in a string of sexual assault and harrassment victims who suffered what they did while employed by Halliburton in Iraq. Her particular story is the worst I’ve heard and far worse than I had thought before conducting the interview. She was [...]
Tags: Iraq War
Categories: Iraq War
Booman Tribune makes an excellent point, and I’m surprised it hasn’t come up in a debate or any other interview. The answer would have been fascinating. How many Bush Administration people would you prosecute? And for what?
Cleaning Up After the Bushes
I confess that the Bush administration’s brazen brazen criminality even has me beaten down. I have simply gotten used to them breaking the law. However, President Obama is going to have to decide how much of this criminality to prosecute. He can’t possibly prosecute it all. His Justice Department will have to pick and choose. Some investigations are already ongoing (Sen. Ted Stevens, for example), while others are stuck in various [...]
Tags: Bush Administration
Categories: Bush Administration
February 27, 2008 · 1 Comment
This is your “must read” for tonight - politically accurate and downright funny, all in one post.
Campaign Speech Writers Secret
One of the key things to any potential political candidate for President is a group of damn good speech writers. In every speech written is a message that you want to convey and apparently the Clinton campaign has a bunch of chimpanzees wildly typing and hoping that eventually War and Peace will come out. Hillary Clinton is in the mud flinging stage of [...]
Tags: 2008 Election, Campaign Speeches
Categories: 2008 Election
The White House. Just thumbing its collective nose at lawmakers and Congress. Adequate words escape me.
The missing White House emails that will never be found
The last we heard from the White House on the subject of its missing emails, one presidential spokesperson was telling the nation, “I wouldn’t rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost…. We screwed up, and we’re trying to fix it,” while another presidential spokesperson was also telling the nation that White [...]
Tags: Bush Administration, Missing Emails
Categories: Bush Administration
That debate. This seems to pretty much echo the concensus opinion today.
No knockout punches on either side
Well, it was a subdued Hillary Clinton on display in last night’s debate, at least as compared to the kind of ranting we’ve seen out of her in recent days. And we saw an increasingly confident Barack Obama, who seems to have shed the fumfering tentativeness of his early debate performances. But nothing happened that’s likely to [...]
If there was a loser, it appears to be MSNBC:
Russert and Farrakhan: What Hillary should have said
Against all odds, Daily Kos and TalkLeft reached the same conclusion, about last night’s debate: MSNBC is horrendously bad. I don’t need to go into all the details. In terms of the horse race, there was little that likely changed the dynamics of the campaign. On that level, Barack Obama won the debate. Hillary Clinton needed a game-changer, and probably didn’t get it. But I want to focus on MSNBC, on one question, and [...]
From up in Northwest Arkansas, somebody LIKES MSNBC and has a suggestion or two for Hillary.
WHAT WOULD BILL HAVE DONE?
What a shame tonight in Ohio.
We could very well be wrong, but what we saw sure looked like the end of the Clinton-Bush presidencies unfolding. Again, we’re not Hillary loyalists here. We respect her, and think she’d make a fantastic [...]
Tags: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Debate, Hillary Clinton
Categories: 2008 Election · Clinton · Obama
Those magnificent, once-pristine, parks out West aren’t fairing so well these days. And, it’s all our fault.
Study: Contaminent Levels High in Parks
Pesticides, heavy metals and other airborne contaminants are raining down on national parks across the West and Alaska, turning up at sometimes dangerously high levels in lakes, plants and fish. A sweeping, six-year federal study released Tuesday found evidence of 70 contaminants in 20 national parks and monuments - from [...]
Tags: National Parks, Contamination
Categories: Uncategorized
We’ve pretty much made it through the first half of the week, haven’t we? Not too worse for the wear, I must say.
Too bad we can’t say the same about the economy. Multiple hits on multiple fronts, again today.
Dollar falls through support level, oil hits new high
From bad to worse in the GOP economy. The dollar has fallen through a very important support level $1.50 - €1 so if the greenback fails to bounce back quickly this could hit the free fall that many have been predicting. So what does this mean in America? Exactly what [...]
Then, from the “no kidding!” department:
Soaring Gas Prices Threaten Family Budgets
Gasoline prices, which for months lagged behind the big run-up in the price of oil, are suddenly rising quickly, with some experts saying they could approach $4 a gallon by spring. Diesel is hitting new records daily, and oil settled at a record high of $100.88 a barrel on Tuesday. The increases could not come at a worse time for [...]
Tags: Economy, Gas Prices
Categories: Economy
My, but this is a bit frightening. Particularly, if you’re working the night shift or are prone to waking up and reading..
PEEK: Study Links Nighttime Light to Breast Cancer
According to a recent article in the Washington Post, a new breast cancer study has revealed a correlation between levels of exposure to light in the nighttime and rates of breast cancer. Scientists mapped satellite imagery of nighttime light distribution onto cancer registries and found that [...]
Tags: Breast Cancer
Categories: Health Care
