NewsTrust - Most Recent Stories

A Milestone In the Health Care Journey

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Mark Ambinder - Nov. 21 (Opinion) - Gruber may be especially effusive. But the Senate blueprint, which faces its first votes tonight, also is winning praise from other leading health reformers like Mark McClellan, the former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under George W. Bush and Len Nichols, health policy director at the centrist New America Foundation.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Did Christianity Cause the Crash?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Hanna Rosin - Nov. 15 (Special Report) - "America's mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated- one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now."Hair-raising and horrifying, truly scary, and truly sad. Jesus wept.

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.3 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

North and South in the Republican Party

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Nov. 05 (Comment) - Rural areas have a farmer's contempt for welfare, and the entire upstate region knows too well that the taxes and regulations imposed by the rich downstate voters are crippling their economy. No, this is not libertarian cant; it's obvious to basically anyone who spends any time there. New York has onerous business taxes, a deeply problematic workman's comp system, and various rules about public sector unions that are slowly destroying the budgets of the local cities. Combine this with a whole lot of cold weather, and there's no way they can attract new businesses to replace the big industrial plants they've lost.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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.)

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Media Death Spiral

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Megan McArdle - Oct. 27 (Opinion) - I think we're witnessing the end of the newspaper business, full stop, not the end of the newspaper business as we know it. The economics just aren't there. At some point, industries enter a death spiral: too few consumers raises their average costs, meaning they eventually have to pass price increases onto their customers. That drives more customers away. Rinse and repeat . . .

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Olympia's 'Betrayal'

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Mickey Edwards - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - For weeks, as the Senate Finance Committee moved toward a final vote on a health care reform bill, public attention focused sharply on a single member of that committee, Olympia Snowe of Maine. That focus told us a lot about her: how she came to conclusions, what values motivated her, what life experiences had shaped her. But now the question is not about Olympia Snowe but about her Republican colleagues. We know a lot about Olympia; how other Republican Senators react to her departure from the party script will tell us a lot about them. Most importantly, their reaction to Snowe's exercise of independent judgment will tell us how they see their own roles as members of Congress. Is their loyalty to their party or to their oath of office; to the club they belong to or the Constitution they swore allegiance to? To be clear, there are valid reasons to oppose almost every item in the Democrats' health care proposals just as there are sound reasons to support them. What a constitutional democracy requires is not consensus but thoughtful consideration of alternatives and vigorous advocacy of differing views. The question is how one decides on a course to be followed. Democracy, after all, is not about policy but about process: not what policies one chooses to adopt but how important policy decisions are reached. To this point, it is not a distinction many Republicans have understood.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.8 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Does the Flu Vaccine Matter?

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Shannon Brownlee, Jeanne Lenzer - Oct. 15 (Special Report) - "What if flu vaccines do not protect people from dying—particularly the elderly, who account for 90 percent of deaths from seasonal flu? And what if the expensive antiviral drugs that the government has stockpiled over the past few years also have little, if any, power to reduce the number of people who die or are hospitalized?"

NewsTrust Rating: Not rated yet - See Info » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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

NewsTrust Rating: 3.6 average - 4 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average - 3 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

All Evidence to the Contrary

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Lane Wallace - Sep. 25 (Special Report) - One hundred years ago this month, two intrepid explorers returned from the Arctic reaches and declared that they had reached the North Pole. Not together, but on competing expeditions to become the first person and team to the Pole. Robert E. Peary led one expedition, and Frederick A. Cook led the other. And each declared the other's claim to the Pole untrue. Today, of course, that kind of controversy could be settled far more easily. At the very least, we would expect a GPS track record showing that the Pole had been reached, and airborne photographs or other corroborating evidence might be required, as well. Without that technology, however, the claims were a little harder to confirm. It's not like there was an exact marker at the spot, because nobody had been there before. And unlike the peak of Mt. Everest, the landscape at the precise location of the North Pole doesn't look distinctly different from the rest of the terrain--for hundreds of miles in any given direction.

NewsTrust Rating: 5.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

A TiVo Challenge: Watching ObamaVision on a Sunday Morning

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By James Warren - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Kristol and Obama didn't have a lot in common ideologically but were united by a reflexive penchant for the systematic and analytical. Coming from different ends of the political spectrum, they each embodied an empiricist thrust; by and large looking at policies and wondering, "Does this really work?" In an age in which the provocative (Beck) can trump the smart and correct, one can imagine Kristol, who once called a conservative "a liberal mugged by reality," and Obama actually getting along for hours in some quiet den, shooting the intellectual breeze.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.5 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Life In (and After) Our Great Recession

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Benjamin Schwarz - Sep. 15 (News Analysis) - Dashed hopes, less sex, even more Sisyphean labor for women—what the histories of the Depression era tell us about middle-class families in crisis, both then and now.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Why I Love Al Jazeera

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Robert D. Kaplan - Sep. 14 (Opinion) - Outlets such as CNN and the BBC don’t cover foreign news so much as they cover the foreign extensions of Washington’s or London’s collective obsessions. And Al Jazeera, rather than spotlighting people who are loaded with credentials but often have little to say, has the knack of getting people on air who have interesting things to say, like the brilliant, no-name Russian analyst I heard explaining why both Russia and China need the current North Korean regime because it provides a buffer state against free and democratic South Korea.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Rise of the Professional Blogger

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Benjamin Carlson - Sep. 13 (Opinion) - Today, the romantic notion that solitary, untamed bloggers are running the Web is more fantasy than fact—nearly as apocryphal as old myths about stoic Western sheriffs killing 11 outlaws with six bullets.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.9 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.3 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Benefits of Vacation

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Jonah Lehrer - Sep. 05 (Opinion) - When we escape from the place we spend most of our time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas we’d previously suppressed. Furthermore, this more relaxed sort of cognition comes with practical advantages, especially when we’re trying to solve difficult problems.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.1 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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 ...

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 6 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.2 average - 10 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Expectations Still Shifting as Afghans Vote

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Benjamin F. Carlson - Aug. 20 (News Analysis) - Polls have closed as millions of Afghans turned out to vote in presidential elections that pundits view as a yardstick of the country's stability. How are the signs so far? Despite threats of violence from the Taliban, turnout appears high. Will fears of corruption be fulfilled? Even as counting begins, commentators' expectations are still shifting, with more predicting that President Karzai will fail to win a majority and face runoff elections

NewsTrust Rating: 3.7 average (not enough reviews) - See Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.0 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

The Final Days of Merrill Lynch - The Atlantic (September 2009)

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - Aug. 14 (News Report) - On one level, the merger between Bank of America and Merrill Lynch is a simple story of executive hubris and cowardice. Leaving aside the question of whether [ BofA CEO] Lewis’s failure to publicly disclose new information—about Merrill’s losses, about his deal with [Bush regime treasury secretary] Paulson and [Federal Reserve chair] Bernanke—was legal, his passivity throughout the process was, in the eyes of some financial-industry insiders, contemptible.

NewsTrust Rating: 4.6 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

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.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.8 average - 5 Reviews » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Shocked. SHOCKED. Astoturfing Exists. ... Now What?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Marc Ambinder - Aug. 04 (Editorial) - In eight years of writing about politics, nothing gets people angrier than when I try to make the case that most activists and most journalists practice politics differently, have different worldviews, and are both forces for good in the democracy. 3....2....

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer

Round Pegs in NoLA's Square Hole: Entrepreneurs Defy Recession

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Christina Davidson - Jul. 21 (Special Report) - With New Orleans still reeling to recover from the devastation wrought by Katrina, Cummings--a successful real estate developer--recognized an opportunity to do something more than simply help re-build his native city. Partnering with Perkin and two other business leaders, Cummings launched Start Up New Orleans, a web-based information service designed to connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to set-up a new business in the Crescent City.

NewsTrust Rating: 3.4 average (not enough reviews) - See Review » - Review It Visit NewsTrust | About | Sign Up | Disclaimer