Larry Meyer of Macroeconomic Advisers is a smart guy and, as a former Federal Reserve Governor, is one of the more looked to voices for opinions about Fed policy moves and appointments.  He believes that Obama has essentially fired Ben Bernanke and that the president wasn't kind about it.

"This is really remarkable," said Meyer. "I almost fell off my chair when I heard the President's remarks last night. He basically fired Ben Bernanke on the spot, and gave a fairly tepid testimonial afterward." [Read more]

Hassan Rouhani, Iran's newly elected president, will serve for four years. By the end of his term, Iran and the U.S. will either reach an agreement, or they will go to war.

Last March, Obama told an Israeli television station that it would take "over a year or so" for Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, the first time an American president stated a timeframe on the record. The dates coincide with a U.S. intelligence estimate during George W. Bush's administration: "sometime during the 2010-2015 time-frame." [Read more]

There is nothing wrong with being young. Nothing wrong with not having a high school diploma. Nothing wrong with being idealistic.  Nothing wrong with distrusting the government if something they're doing doesn't strike you right.

There is something wrong with taking a job so sensitive to national security it requires a solemn oath to keep what you've seen secret, and within three months of your starting date you've already disregarded the oath and have stolen the very secrets you promised to protect. [Read more]

Just some things I don't want to see on any blogs anymore, anywhere.  These words and phrases are now banned until further notice on all of the Internet.  I will be working with my friends at the NSA to enforce this. By the way, they aren't all that prevalent at Dag.  This is just stuff irking me on the rest of the Internet.

The List

We the people...

Duly appointed officials...

Duly elected representatives (or president)...

He (She/They/It) broke his (her/their/its) oath... (I'm so sick of it).

Those who would trade freedom for security... (seriously, stop it.  In the history of mankind, this quotation has never convinced anyone of anything and everyone has heard it a zillion times.) [Read more]

Go ahead, collect my phone records, track my websurfing, analyze my email.  I don't give a damn.

I do not write this out of any loyalty to Obama or because I worry about the Terrorist Threat.  I simply do not care about my data privacy and never have.

Why should I? My buying habits are ordinary, my emails are pedestrian, my phone calls would bore any spy to tears, my political opinions are very public and published under my own name. As long as no one spams me or steals my identity, why should I care what they do with my data? [Read more]

This morning, my favorite columnist in the world, David Brooks, gave his quick take on Edward Snowden, ultimately condemning him for antisocial behavior driven by a hyper-individualistic morality formed out of his refusal to conform to various social norms (he didn't finish high school, or community college, didn't want to be friends with his neighbor, hadn't put a ring on his girlfriend, no organized religion, etc.) [Read more]

In the 4 1/2 years I've been writing this blog I've never felt inclined to bring in a guest poster.  Today I do, and I couldn't be happier that Briana Morganroth has agreed to let me reprint the essay she wrote about her thoughts on gun control.  

She is the granddaughter of my friend, Ramona Moormann, the publisher of The Marcellus (MI) News (where my own pieces sometimes appear), and I first read this essay in her newspaper a couple of weeks ago.

But here--I'll let Ramona tell you about her granddaughter:  [Read more]

Back in the 2008 primaries (ah, those days that no progressive blogger out for anything other than a fight really misses) I though it was a big deal that Senator Obama didn't support people's right to bring class action civil suits against telephone carriers who broke privacy laws in order to share information with security agencies. [Read more]

Michele Bachmann to leave Washington to spend more time with her "family".  Prompts the resurrection of FRIDAY FOLLIES.  (What?  Every Friday?  Uh. . .we'll see how it goes.)
 [Read more]

Five weeks after a terrorist attack on Boston, President Obama has declared that the War on Terror, "like all wars, must end."  If I had told you a year ago that he would make such a speech a month and a half after a high-profile terrorist attack on a major American city, neither you nor I would have believed me. But the lessons of Boston drive home the wisdom of the President's decision. It showed us that a terrorist attack is meant to be lived through and that Americans are ready to live through one. And it showed us an excellent civilian response to a terrorist attack paired with a decidedly mixed paramilitary response.
 [Read more]

I don't think there's much doubt that, in terms of law enforcement we are headed down a path that will lead to the prosecution of a journalist for publishing something classified.  My guess is that the first target will not be a strictly mainstream journalist, but I could be wrong about that.  It will almost certainly be a target that doesn't have much public sympathy.  It's not going to be somebody who has revealed unmitigated wrongdoing.  The Attorney General, whoever it is that first goes down this path, will want to contend with at best, a divided public. [Read more]

At last! Republicans have been awaiting this moment for five long years, the day that Obama finally gets his gate. You see, every two-term president has a defining scandal that renders him permanently villainous and/or ridiculous. By hallowed convention, the scandal must end with word "gate."

Nixon started it with the gate to begin all gates, Watergate. Ronald Reagan followed up with Irangate. Bill Clinton enthralled us with Monicagate. George W. Bush gave us Plamegate.

And now Obama has got his own gate...or rather his own gates. Since no single scandal is big enough bring him down, Republicans and pundits are eagerly gathering them up in a big stinking pile of nefariousness: IRSBenghAPgate! [Read more]

...played out in the wrestling ring, years ago.

When Irwin R. Schyster (always announced as "I...R...S!")

Fought the red, white and blue blooded (but orange-skinned) Patriot!

That's all that needs to be said about this latest scandal, right?

I worry when I write about the Middle East because I have no confidence that I know what I'm talking about and probably less interest in the differences and similarities between a Shiite and an Alawite than I do in whether or not I think that Richard Foreman's latest play at New York's Public Theater was any good (it was not.)  I sometimes confuse Wahabi with the condiment for sushi.  Heck, I don't even feel bad about this -- if the sectarian issues of the Islamic world didn't intrude into my own, uninvited, I'd be fine with that. [Read more]

At Esquire, Charles Pearce flags a National Review article wherein some person named Dennis Prager complains that free breakfasts for public school children in Los Angeles will damage the character of the city's young, who will grow up thinking that life is nothing but a bunch of government hand-outs.  Oh, and, he says, it encourages lazy parents not to feed their kids before school.

Nobody, he says, is too poor to give their child breakfast because they can go on WebMD right now and find "five breakfast ideas for $1."  I can't waste any more time with that Prager person.  Terrible. [Read more]

It's been a tough week for elite gay-baiting. First Howie Kurtz, hack journalist extraordinaire, lost his job at the Daily Beast because he badly botched an attempt to smear NBA center Jason Collins. Part of what Kurtz botched was the facts, claiming that Collins had concealed the fact that he had once been engaged to a woman when Collins had "concealed" that fact by explicitly stating it in his Sports Illustrated coming-out article. ("When I was younger I dated women. I even got engaged," is pretty straightforward.) Kurtz, to his credit, has made a full apology.

Then, Harvard history professor Niall Ferguson (also a columnist for the Daily Beast) was also forced to apologize after publicly gay-baiting landmark economist John Maynard Keynes. Ferguson decided to tell an audience that Keynes wasn't interested in long-term policy effects (itself a gross distortion of Keynes's position) because Keynes was a homosexual in a childless marriage. Yes, really. That's the standard of logic and evidence to which Ferguson holds himself. [Read more]

An Oxford University economist and a Stanford University epidemiologist have combined their considerable breadth and knowledge to conclude the Great Recession and accompanying austerity have caused 10,000 suicides and a million diagnoses of depression in the U.S. and Europe.  If you find that hard to stomach, here's something more concrete -- AIDS is once again a full blown epidemic in Greece where budgets have been cut from HIV-prevention programs. [Read more]

So one day somebody at Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood, Mississippi came up with the idea to hold a series of mandatory Christian assemblies, where students would be required to watch a Christian video and listen to ministers (and fellow students) from the Pinelake Baptist Church preach to them about the importance of being a Christian. 
 [Read more]

This morning, Thomas Friedman writes that it is unfair for lefties to criticize Obama's Chained CPI Proposal.  In his words:

"It was good to see President Obama put out a budget proposal that addressed all three needs. The attacks on him from the left are unfair because, ultimately, we will need to do all three even more. As Bloomberg News reported on Monday: 'Typical wage-earners retiring in 2010 will receive at least $3 for every $1 they contributed to the Medicare health-insurance program, according to an Urban Institute study.'"

Oh my!  A three to one return!  Unsustainable! [Read more]

Supporters of gun control lost yesterday. It was not a terrible bill. Expanded background checks would have stopped some future killers from buying guns. It should have passed. But it would have done little to reduce gun violence in America.

"Fighting" Bob La Follette, a progressive senator from Wisconsin, once wrote, "In legislation no bread is often better than half a loaf. I believe it is usually better to be beaten and come right back at the next session and make a fight for a thoroughgoing law than to have written on the books a weak and indefinite statute."

La Follette became famous for championing "radical" legislation that had no chance of passing--corporate regulations, labor rights, lobbyist restrictions, and popular election of U.S. senators. He took up his colleagues' time with "pointless" filibusters. He ran three times for president and never even came close to winning. [Read more]