Jonathan Cohn (via the guy with the office next to mine, who for some reason hasn’t been around much lately) has a piece in The New Republic in which he explains that Mitt Romney’s economic message seems to be resonating with Michigan voters more than John McCain’s (or Mike Huckabee’s, for that matter). After New Hampshire, we all need …
Mike Huckabee and gmail have figured me out
Here’s the ad currently running across the top of my gmail inbox:
Mike Huckabee in 2008 – http://www.mikehuckabee.com – Mike Supports the FairTax. Read What Mike Has To Say.
Retail sales down in December! (Or were they?)
You may have read the headlines already this morning: Retail sales fell 0.4%. It’s worse than the flat December that economists were predicting, and it’s another nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy–to go with the rise in unemployment reported earlier this month. Surely we’re in a recession now.
Except that, when you go to the Census …
Citi’s earnings: Ugly, but in so many interesting ways
Citigroup’s earnings release this morning is full of all sorts of interesting things beyond just that headline $9.83 billion fourth quarter loss. I imagine the most revealing stuff will be buried in the 10-Q that comes out later, and unearthed by people far more expert than I. Although as earnings releases go, this one is extremely …
What I plan to achieve while pregnant
Lindsay Davenport, the understated tennis champ, is on a comeback roar—just seven months after having a baby, as all the news articles remind us. This from the Los Angeles Times, in a piece titled “Hope Springs Maternal”:
She was watching tennis at Indian Wells with her husband Jon Leach in March, a few months away from having baby
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AOL workers add “spammer” to job description
Thanks to Lev for this tip. Valleywag reports:
Before the holidays, AOL products chief Kevin Conroy urged employees to send a form letter to their friends, family members, and business contacts talking up AOL’s new products. “Team, excitement about the work we are doing … starts with each one of us,” Conroy emailed. His topdown
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John and Mitt try to perk up the Michiganders
Over on Swampland, Ana Marie reports from the Great and Economically Struggling State of Michigan that Romney and McCain have made economic policy a focus of their primary battle there, even though their ideas to help the state are pretty much the same:
As small government conservatives, neither man supports the kinds of targeted
…
Year Seven of the Bush fiscal stimulus package
You’ve heard the talk about a possible fiscal stimulus package to counteract the recession we may already be in.
Maybe we need it. It’s important to note, though, that the Bush administration has had a fiscal stimulus package of sorts in place ever since the middle of 2001. That’s when the federal government started spending more than …
Enough of the elections. Give me Idol!
I’ve had it. As a conscientious voter who hasn’t missed a presidential election since I came to this country, I am declaring that I am up to here with the candidates’ campaigns. There’s nothing more tedious than watching people you like and admire go at each other like, well, …
How high school shapes our careers
I was fascinated by Lisa Belkin’s article yesterday in The New York Times’ Style section. Titled “Planning a Life With Room for Debate,” she views the new Denzel Washington film The Great Debaters and recalls her own adventures in youthful argument. She writes,
I was also a young debater, and although I can’t say that it helped me
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BofA’s second try at catching a falling knife
Back when Bank of America paid $2 billion for a stake in Countrywide in August there was talk about how the “strategic investment” would put to an end all the worries that the nation’s biggest mortgage lender might go under. The worries subsided only temporarily; over the past week they turned into a mini-panic that send Countrywide …
Hillary did it. But I still can’t cry in the office
I’m weighing in late on the whole Hillary Clinton tearing up in New Hampshire thing because the brouhaha just dumbfounded me. (Read this analysis by Joe Klein for the deets.) Here she is, the first viable woman presidential candidate, in the thick of a brutal campaign that so far had showed few dividends, getting pummeled from all sides …