J. Goodrich

RETURN ON SUCCESS. One is never too old to learn new terms, it seems. Before president Bush‘s latest speech I had never heard about “return on success.” It sounds a little like ROI, or “return on investment”, a way to figure out the financial profitability of some business project. But “success” is not the same […]

COMITY AND CUCUMBER SANDWICHES. Given the recent furor over the MoveOn ad using the term BetrayUs and also the instantaneous reaction to John Kerry‘s troop joke last fall it is interesting to watch whether Democrats will make any kind of hay over Boehner‘s “small price” comment. Sure, he may not have meant the troop deaths […]

AND EVEN MORE ON CONSERVATIVE COLUMNISTS. Kate and Ezra have already referred to the Media Matters study findings on TAPPED. Those findings suggest that if you want to be an op-ed columnist in politics you’d better be very conservative. That’s the way to maximize your market appeal. The interesting question is naturally why that would […]

GOING ALL BIPARTISAN. I’ve read much recently about the desirability for more comity and bipartisanship in Congress and also much about the impossibility of reaching across the aisle given the dearth of topics on which the two sides agree. Two topics suggest themselves to true bipartisan action. One is the question of limiting the enhanced […]

THE POLITICAL BRAIN. The LA Times reports on a study which compared the way the brains of supposed liberals and conservatives work: Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work. Scientists at New York University and UCLA showed through a […]

THE EMPEROR’S NEW FALL COLLECTION. This is the time to bring out new lines of fall fashions, but I admit to some disappointment in finding out what the Bush administration want us to wear for the next season. It’s the same thing they were showing last season, and the season before that, too: Wait Another […]

AND PETRAEUS GOETH. Ezra‘s post titled “Petraeus Cometh” noted the obvious problems in this game about how to define the Iraq casualty figures so that the surge will look like working: the Iraqis will not make the same kind of fine-tuning when observing and experiencing violence in their own lives, and it is their experience […]

AUDITIONING FOR THE ROLE. Now that Fred Thompson has dipped his toe in the waters of the presidential race we can go back to discussing the way he smells and the way he looks so very presidential. He also has lots of experience as a performer of authoritarian roles on television. Jay Carney at Swampland […]

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK. Keith Olbermann‘s Special Comments offer a fascinating echo of Edward R. Murrow‘s eloquent news reports. At the same time, Olbermann’s passionate voice is something that has long been missing on the liberal or progressive side of the political media. He talks unabashedly about values, many of them clearly progressive ones, […]

HEALTH CARE ECONOMICS 101. Good morning, class. Today’s reading material is a guest post at Kevin Drum’s place by Shannon Brownlee. She makes a case for controlling health care costs partly by changing the way physicians are compensated. A snippet of her argument: Last month Blue Cross put physician reimbursement cuts into effect in California […]