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- I appreciate the list of reasons Nate Silver has compiled for why we can't dismiss the possibility of a third-party candidacy in 2012, but one that he emphasizes -- "a candidate who presented a 'serious' plan to balance the budget could possibly gain traction" -- doesn't ring true. After all, a "serious" plan would involve a combination of tax hikes and cuts to Medicare and the military; is it any wonder that most politicians are unwilling to campaign on the deficit in any serious way?
- Speaking of our crippling budget deficit, it's interesting that the same people who caution us about the accuracy of the Congressional Budget Office's long-term projections for savings in the Affordable Care Act are perfectly happy to accept the CBO's long-term projections for interest on the national debt. Look, this isn't hard. Everyone agrees that projections are not set in stone and that policy changes can affect them. It's almost as if there's a desire to laud the projections when they suit your agenda and denounce them when they don't. You might even say there is an ideological motivation at work.
- Andrew Sullivan is not the first commentator to essentially make the argument, "Yeah, Glenn Beck is a pretty ignorant dude, but at least he's trying to learn about the world and educate his audience." I confess I don't understand this "defense" of Beck. Why, pray tell, are we lowering the bar for this man? Did Jonah Goldberg make it cool to obsess over facile Hitler/liberal comparisons? What happened to treating basic history and knowledge with respect?
- Remainders: I'm pretty sure Obama is smart enough to ignore advice from failed presidential candidates on "connecting" with voters; The Wall Street Journal has breaking news, "Dick Cheney Gives Speech in Colorado"; the FBI sure had its priorities straight in the 1980s; and it hardly takes a flickr feed analysis to determine the identity of the president's inner circle.
-- Mori Dinauer
