Lest We Forget

Today. 64 years ago.

The Longest Day

64 years ago today, Allied forces invaded the coast of France and began the liberation of Europe from Nazi Germany. D-Day exemplified two kinds of courage. One is the kind of courage portrayed in the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. The other is the type of courage General Dwight D. Eisenhower displayed when [...]

Historical Projections

Just a wonderfully, well-written, thought piece on what might have been.

Robert F. Kennedy: What if he had lived? —– A Golden Age That Never Was

40 years ago today Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the world turned into a darker, meaner place in the decades that followed. As a young student at Columbia University – off for the summer — I was to join the RFK campaign staff the following week. The spring of 1968 had been exhilarating and tumultuous. Gene [...]

McCain And The Bush Economy

Care to weed through the details? This makes my head hurt.

After biggest unemployment jump in 22 years, McCain vows more of the same

On the economic front, the news is “ugly.” The nation’s unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May — the biggest monthly rise since 1986 — as nervous employers cut 49,000 jobs. The latest snapshot of business conditions showed a deeply troubled economy, with dwindling job opportunities in a time of continuing hardship in the housing, credit [...]

The Michelle Obama Tape Story

I though it had died down. Thanks to a McClatchy newspaper report, it’s back on the front burner, with a non-denial denial.

Obama Denies “Whitey Tape” Rumor… Or Does He?

..Now it appears to me that Obama isn’t so much denying that his wife gave such a rant, but rather denying the existence of the video (which has yet to be released if it exists) and he’s also choosing to [...]

That Clinton-Obama Meeting

The two candidates talked last night, but there’s a funny backstory, too. It seems the Obama camp got all the reporters loaded up on the campaign plane, they took off, then noticed that Obama wasn’t on the plane! That’s right, he sent them on their way, then went to his private meeting!

Feinstein Talks About Obama-Clinton Meeting

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — host of the private meeting last night between Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton — tells CNN the two met at 9 pm for about an hour with no one else in the room and mentioned they were laughing. Feinstein said Clinton [...]

Tough Talk

If I was a reporter for a Tribune paper, I’d be worried. VERY worried. I’ve never heard such tough talk about job cuts.

Tribune Planning Big Cuts: Fewer Papers, Firing Reporters

Tribune Company newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune will quickly cut costs — by printing fewer papers and employing fewer journalists — top company executives said on Thursday. Samuel Zell, the chairman and chief executive of Tribune, and Randy Michaels, the company’s chief operating officer, revealed the cuts during [...]

Sad State of Affairs

I saw a brief mention of this yesterday. It caught my eye, but I was waiting for more details before posting about it. Another example of how the Iraq War may have gone on too long, with too few people, stretched beyond human capacity.

Time: Nearly 20% Of Soldiers In Iraq, Afghanistan On Anti-Depressants

Time: Seven months after Sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad’s dangerous roads — acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them — he found himself growing increasingly despondent. “We’d been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me,” LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting [...]

You Really Need A Scorecard

Not that the Dems have been easy to follow, but you really do need a scorecard to keep up with John McCain’s positions on key issues.

McCain ‘contradicts precisely what he said earlier’

When the scandal broke over the Bush administration’s policy of warrantless searches of Americans’ phone calls and emails, John McCain took a reasonably sensible position, consistent with a classical conservative, interested in limited government. Just six short months ago, McCain told the Boston Globe that he, unlike the current occupant of the Oval Office, felt compelled [...]

Friday Follies For June 6

I have some running around to do today, so posts may be sparcer than they have for the first part of the week. I’m thinking about some options to move the blog to a platform that offers some more options, in terms of content and monetization. If you come here via www.dougkrile.com, you won’t miss a thing. At any rate, it’s not going to happen right away!

Today, it’s all about the economy. Unemployment rate is up. Stocks are down. Oil prices are up. It’s just downright depressing. But, the hits just keep on coming.

Banks now facing new real estate financial problems

Subprime loan defaults were bad enough, but now banks are dealing with fire sales to unload hundreds of millions and billions of dollars worth of loans to the real estate construction business. The bubble that Greenspan and the Republicans created has ravaged the system in countless ways that will not just go away. Remember, this is what [...]