Tom Brokaw is wrong. Not everyone agrees that Social Security is a ticking time bomb. And the problem with Medicare is not Medicare, but our broken health care system.
Debate blogging 2
I think Obama’s approach — the “scalpel” approach, he calls it — makes more sense than an across-the-board cut, though he neglected to talk about defense spending, which needs a hatchet taken to it.
Debate blogging 1
The debate on the credit crisis can be winnowed down to this basic line: John McCain blames a few bad apples — in this case Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and, by extension, the people who relied on these institutions to ensure that banks would provide them loans — i.e., the poor and those living in poor and minority neighborhoods); Barack Obama blames deregulation.
McCain’s argument ties to his “clean up Washington” rhetoric, to eliminate corruption without upsetting the basic free-market structure; Obama’s focus on reigning in the excesses of the free-market.
Runner’s diary, Tuesday
Five days off the road and I feel like a slug. So getting back on the treadmill — yes, I wimped out because of the temperature — and doing four miles was a bit of a victory. It shouldn’t be, of course, but I’ll take it as it comes.
iPod: Bill Moyers’ Journal
How not to raise the age issue
There is something unseemly about this post on FiredogLake from TBoggs about Sen. Joe Biden’s mother-in-law:
It should be noted that, at 78, the late Mrs. Jacobs is only six years older than former prisoner of war John McCain. Now it is entirely unlikely that Mrs. Jacobs spent five and a half years being tortured in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp which might have had some bearing on her untimely death, but we do know that she had the good fortune to live in a country where women outlive men by slightly over five years.
Not that any of the math or actuarial tables mean anything.
Exactly. It doesn’t matter, or only matters nominally. The death of Bonny Jean Jacobs should not be a campaign issue. (And, don’t forget, Joe Biden is only six years younger than McCain.)
Hank Kalet 