Goodbye Reaganism, hello Obamaism
“The budget that President Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters…”The revolutionary
“The Great Communicator of the 1980s would have recognised his successor’s upbeat tone, but not his policies. When Obama unveiled his eye-popping $3.6 trillion (£2.5 trillion) budget proposal two days later, it was clear he had come not to praise Ronald Reagan, but to bury him…”
“If Barack Obama succeeds, his joint address to Congress will be seen as historic — indeed as the foundational document of Obamaism. As it stands, it constitutes the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a US president…”
“Reagan changed America above all by changing the terms of political discourse. Obama has shown that he wants to do the same. There are no more defensive apologies for having to bring government to bear on problems that the private sector can’t solve. He is making, or rather restoring, government as the instrument of a vast social and economic change, summed up in the word equality’…”
You’ve never seen economic indicators like this before
Japan’s exports are down 45.7 percent year-over-year… The US economy contracted at a 6.2 percent pace at the end of 2008… The US will clock a $1.75 trillion deficit this year…Unfinished life, unfinished work
The New Yorker has given David Foster Wallace his due, running an excerpt of his unfinished third novel, The Pale King, as well as images of the original manuscript, some of which are interesting and strange, to say the least… “The sadness over Wallace’s death was … connected to a feeling that, for all his outpouring of words, he died with his work incomplete. Wallace, at least, never felt that he had hit his target. His goal had been to show readers how to live a fulfilled, meaningful life. ‘Fiction’s about what it is to be a fucking human being,’ he once said. Good writing should help readers to ‘become less alone inside’…”Philip Jose Farmer, 1918-2009… More…
Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland has won the PEN/Faulkner Award…
In Hungary, the punishment for being gypsy is death
Eastern Europe’s latest race war against the gypsies, this time in Hungary, has left ten Roma dead…Is the problem sleep deprivation or dream deprivation?
“Much of the depression explosion we witness today is associated with an actual loss of dreams. If we cannot sleep on it, so the evidence suggests, the “it” in question may threaten to overwhelm us…”Is this a travel article or a not-so-subtle political statement?
Iran: The friendliest people in the world…Spain’s painful exhumation
“Franco’s followers received a promise that nobody would be pursued, or even reminded, of abuses committed. In 1977, an amnesty law was passed ensuring nobody from either side of the bloody conflict would be tried or otherwise held to account. A tacit agreement among Spaniards not to dwell on the past took the form of an unwritten pacto de olvido — or pact of forgetting, which most adhered to until very recently, when the mass graves of Franco’s victims began to be unearthed…”South Asia on the brink
The causes of recent violence in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are different in each case, but “there is a common underlying theme: in each case, anger is rising at the failure of government to cope with looming challenges. The consequences could be dire. Each of the three countries is teetering on the edge of breakdown. Rioting and popular demonstrations will only exacerbate the problems and the tensions…”Nicolas Bonaparte
Nicolas Sarkozy “has hit trouble with his mania for running France from his palace and reducing his government and parliament to simple executants and spectators. His leadership is looking arbitrary and even autocratic. Members of his cabinet are talking about their doubts. Comparisons with Napoleon Bonaparte and Vladimir Putin are coming not just from the Socialist opposition, but from within Sarkozy’s own rightwing camp…”An irresponsibility-based economy
“Imagine that a person is terminally ill. He or she would not be able to buy a life insurance policy with a huge death benefit. Obviously, third parties could not purchase policies on the soon-to-be-dead person’s life. Yet something like that occurred in the financial world…”Prints in the sand
Someone, or something, walked upright in Kenya 1.5 million years ago…Popularity = money
The dictum “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” has been proven scientifically. “Researchers have found that the more friends a child has at school, the more earning power they will enjoy later in life…”Let’s fatten you up
“Fears are growing for the fate of thousands of young girls in rural Mauritania, where campaigners say the cruel practice of force-feeding young girls for marriage is making a significant comeback since a military junta took over the West African country…”Doodle away
“A simple task like doodling may be sufficient to stop daydreaming without affecting performance on the main task. In everyday life, doodling may be something we do because it helps to keep us on track with a boring task, rather than being an unnecessary distraction that we should try to resist doing…”There is an optimism gene
“Rather than choosing to believe this study because it confirms what I already suspected, I was genetically doomed to believe it because it confirms what I am genetically doomed to believe about the setup of the universe…”And finally: Vintage Japanese air raid posters…
And finally finally: Portland’s coyote commuter…
And finally finally finally: Sasha Obama Keeps Seeing Creepy Bush Twins While Riding Tricycle Through White House…
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 11:48 pm and is filed under Newsburger. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.