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America and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Jobs Numbers

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - So headline unemployment now stands at 10.2%, higher than forecast. Another 10 million or so workers are working "part time for economic reasons", meaning they want to work more hours, but can't get them. And 2.4 million are "marginally attached to the labor force"--they have looked for work in the past 12 months, and say they want a job, but have stopped looking too hard because there doesn't seem to be anything out there.

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It Doesn't Mean Squat

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Marc Ambinder - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - Along with tarot cards and goat entrails, a lot of people believe they can divine hidden meaning from the results of off-year elections, like the ones in Virginia, New York and New Jersey on Tuesday. I'm skeptical. For one thing, nobody bothers to wait for the polls to close anymore--the "meaning" of the results has been hammered out in advance. A GOP sweep will be taken as proof that conservatives are resurgent and President Obama's agenda is in trouble, while Democratic wins in New York and New Jersey--Virginia is hopeless--will demonstrate that conservatives have gone off the deep end. (Any other combination will mean a dull night for cable television.)

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The Lethal Politics Of The Opt-Out Public Option

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Oct. 29 (Opinion) - I'm surprised this hasn't gotten more attention. But imagine for a moment that the opt-out public option passes and becomes law (I give it a 65 percent chance at this point). Then what happens? Well, there has to be a debate in every state in which Republicans, where they hold a majority or the governorship, will presumably decide to deny their own voters the option to get a cheaper health insurance plan.

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Much Worse Than I Expected

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - The president gave a speech he could have given at any point in the last three years. No one in that room could disagree with any of the things he said. I sure don't (with the exception of the hate crimes hooey). And he said it well

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The Olympic Spirit

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Oct. 03 (Opinion) - I didn't think it was a good idea for Obama to go to Copenhagen given the intense policy questions he as to address right now. It seemed a trivial matter to me compared to two wars, healthcare, the Iran question and the fiscal and economic crisis. I

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The Story Behind the Story

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Mark Bowden - Sep. 09 (Special Report) - With journalists being laid off in droves, savvy political operatives have stepped eagerly into the breach. What’s most troubling is not that TV-news producers mistake their work for journalism, which is bad enough, but that young people drawn to journalism increasingly see no distinction between disinterested reporting and hit-jobbery. The very smart and capable young men (more on them in a moment) who actually dug up and initially posted the Sotomayor clips both originally described themselves to me as part-time, or aspiring, journalists.

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The Washington Post's Support For Torture

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Aug. 30 (Comment) - In the latest release from those in the Bush administration and CIA who authorized and supported America's torture of prisoners of war, we get the following story today in the Washington Post. It details that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed gave up a ...

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How American Health Care Killed My Father

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By David Goldhill - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - Like every grieving family member, I looked for someone to blame for my father’s death. But my dad’s doctors weren’t incompetent—on the contrary, his hospital physicians were smart, thoughtful, and hard-working. Nor is he dead because of indifferent nursing—without exception, his nurses were dedicated and compassionate. Nor from financial limitations—he was a Medicare patient, and the issue of expense was never once raised. There were no greedy pharmaceutical companies, evil health insurers, or other popular villains in his particular tragedy.

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I was wrong

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - Aug. 15 (Opinion) - I said two weeks ago that I thought today's communications systems had caught up with people who invented facts. I was wrong.

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Let's mark this moment in the health debate as it happens

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Fallows - Aug. 10 (Comment) - ... it is striking to come back -- from the world of controlled media and not-always-accurate "official truth" in China -- and see the world's most mature democracy, informed by the world's dominant media system, at a time of perceived economic crisis and under brand new political leadership, getting tied up by manufactured misinformation. No matter what party you belong to, you can't think this is a sign of health for the Republic.

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Selling the Post Dinners

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Joshua Green - Jul. 04 (Special Report) - Mike Allen’s recent report on the controversial Washington Post lobbyist dinners has sparked a furor. One thing that’s been largely overlooked is the fact that the invitations to administration officials and members of Congress differed markedly from the “sponsorship opportunity” fliers sent to lobbyists. See for yourself: I’ve gotten a hold of an invitation and an accompanying personal email from Post publisher Katharine Weymouth to Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a key figure in the health care debate.

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Why Iran Matters

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Jun. 19 (Opinion) - Iran is at the very heart of the global struggle between the forces of distorted and politicized religious tyranny and the power of real faith and freedom. This struggle was never ours' to impose, however good the intentions. It was always there for the people themselves to grasp. And grasp it they now have - with astounding courage, clarity and calm.

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North Korea, the Next Iraq?

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Robert D. Kaplan - May. 28 (Opinion) - If he doesn’t hit North Korea hard with sanctions, he risks demonstrating to Iran that America is a pushover. Indeed, Obama’s Iran policy – which requires the stick of tough action in addition to the carrot of talks and recognition – is on the line in North Korea. On the other hand, vigorous sanctions against North Korea could lead to the collapse of the regime. And anyone who talks breezily about “helping” North Korea to collapse has simply not learned the lesson of Iraq: The only thing worse than a totalitarian state is no state at all.

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Talking to the Taliban

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Robert D. Kaplan - Apr. 06 (Opinion) - No matter how much leverage you hold over a country, it is rare that you can get it to act against its core self-interest. The United States has struggled with this dilemma for decades in regards to its relations with Israel and South Korea. Self-interest based on the facts of geography is what makes America’s relations with these two close allies particularly fractious. Israel has long refused to scale back settlements in the occupied territories, frustrating U.S. efforts at peacemaking, even as American soldiers die in Iraq and Afghanistan. Conversely, South Korea has, in certain periods, extended an olive branch to the North Korean communists, frustrating U.S. efforts to erect a strong, united front against the Pyongyang regime. Now the U.S. faces the same problem with another of its ostensible allies, Pakistan. The U.S. demands that Pakistan’s Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), its spy agency, sever relations with the Taliban. Based on Pakistan’s own geography, this makes no sense from a Pakistani point of view. First of all, maintaining lines of communications and back channels with the enemy is what intelligence agencies do. What kind of a spy service would ISI be if it had no contacts with one of the key players that will help determine its neighbor’s future? This is particularly the case when one considers the long and unruly land border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and how both countries form one organic region. Indeed, Sugata Bose, a history professor at Harvard, in 2003 described the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier area as “historically no frontier at all,” but the very “heart” of an “Indo-Persian and Indo-Islamic economic, cultural, and political domain that had straddled Afghanistan and Punjab for two millennia.” The fact, which we all keep repeating, that there is no solution for Afghanistan without a solution for Pakistan, is itself an indication of the extent to which both countries are joined. This makes it even more crucial for the ISI to maintain contacts and highly developed networks with all principle Afghani political and guerrilla groups.

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Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jeffrey Goldberg - Apr. 01 (Interview) - In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

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The Quiet Coup

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Simon Johnson - Mar. 27 (Special Report) - The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

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The Revenge of Karl Marx

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Christopher Hitchens - Mar. 20 (Opinion) - Marx did not believe in the existence of any such organism as “the economy.” What he postulated, and what made him different from any previous theorist of materialism whether historical or dialectical, was a sharp distinction between the forces and the relations of production.

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The Lieberman Disaster

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jeffrey Goldberg - Mar. 17 (Comment) - Maybe it's just a dream, but an Arab population that has the same rights, freedoms, opportunities -- and responsibilities (i.e. national service of some sort) as the Jewish population is an Arab population that is too busy and successful to hate. (Yes, I know Israeli Arabs have the same legal rights as Israeli Jews, but what I'm talking more about opportunities here).

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America, The (Jacksonian) Meritocracy

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Marc Ambinder - Mar. 13 (News Report) - A fascinating survey released Thursday by the Pew Economic Mobility Project-one of the few million research arms of the Pew Charitable Trusts-illuminates from some fresh angles the complex American attitudes toward opportunity, fairness and government likely to shape public reaction to President Obama's sweeping agenda.

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How the Crash Will Reshape America

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Richard Florida - Feb. 19 (Special Report) - “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The United States, whatever its flaws, has seldom wasted its crises in the past. On the contrary, it has used them, time and again, to reinvent itself, clearing away the old and making way for the new. Throughout U.S. history, adaptability has been perhaps the best and most quintessential of American attributes. Over the course of the 19th century’s Long Depression, the country remade itself from an agricultural power into an industrial one. After the Great Depression, it discovered a new way of living, working, and producing, which contributed to an unprecedented period of mass prosperity. At critical moments, Americans have always looked forward, not back, and surprised the world with our resilience. Can we do it again?

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Jerusalem's Power Broker

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Gershom Gorenberg - Feb. 18 (Opinion) - If they chose to, Livni and Netanyahu could form a government together and leave Lieberman as an izgoi in opposition. But that would require agreeing on who becomes prime minister, and so far, such agreement has been out of reach. On Wednesday, back in Israel, Lieberman is expected to tell Peres whom he supports — Netanyahu or Livni. The price paid for his support could make Israel itself an outcast.

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When No News Is Bad News

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By James Warren - Jan. 23 (Special Report) - The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune are among those organizations that have spent many millions of dollars covering the Iraq War, with each outlet paying for multiple reporters, translators, full-time drivers, guards, bullet-proof armored cars, year-round office space, office managers, and security consultants with intelligence backgrounds to provide threat assessments. And all of them give that work away for free online.

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The End of the Bush Presidency

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Ross Douthat - Jan. 17 (Opinion) - Bush never had the gift of persuasion, the ability to give a State of the Union address or a press conference that left his enemies disarmed, but there was a time when he at least seemed like a leader - like someone consequential, active, and important, whatever one thought of his actions and their consequences.

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The problem with Israel-Palestine blogging

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Jan. 01 (Opinion) - Point out that Israel is killing a lot of civilians and you are told that they had to do something in response to the Hamas rockets. Point out that practically, the response they chose has absolutely no strategic or tactical benefit, and a huge potential downside, and you are castigated for your lack of moral outrage about Hamas's attacks on civilians.

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The center and change

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Ta-Nehisi Coates - Dec. 23 (Comment) - Groups advocating "change" whether of the FDR sort or the Reagan doesn't usually come from the center (unless maybe the "change" is realizing that there actually is a center.) The most important changes of the 20th century -- social security, ...

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