November 2007

Education Thought for the Day

November 24, 2007

I just started reading Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, and I am already pretty blown away by his observations. One early passages provides real insight into Kozol’s point of view and his passion: Perhaps most damaging to any effort to address this subject openly is the [...]

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Forest Restoration and the Grizzlies

November 24, 2007

Watching the Grizzlies game (where my fears about their ability to stop the option are being played out), I had the opportunity to watch a delightful ad from the Montana Wood Products Association. It turns out that they want to “restore” Montana’s forests to combat global warming. Who knew? Go, Griz. Bookmark on Delicious Digg [...]

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America’s Military: Too Large For Its Mission, Too Small for Empire

November 22, 2007

Foreign Affairs has a fascinating article by Richard Betts in its November/December issue that argues that the United States has developed an almost completely irrational defense spending policy: If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in the Pentagon’s budgeting office 20 years ago and awoke today, his first reaction would be that nothing had changed. [...]

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Dennis Rehberg Suddenly Gets Religion on Earmarks

November 20, 2007

Call me a cynic, but I find the editorial blitz today lauding Dennis Rehberg’s proposal to reform the earmark process to be a bit puzzling. One would expect that the experienced political observers who write Montana’s editorials could smell an election year ploy like this from a mile away, but maybe the snow in clouded [...]

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Your Issues Based Montana Republican Party

November 17, 2007

Let’s say that you can’t find a credible candidate to oppose Senator Baucus. Let’s also imagine that your party’s ideology is bankrupt, and that your state is starting to see that.  What do you do?  You campaign like this, and get those press-release lovin’ folk at the IR State Bureau to print it. Truthfully, I [...]

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Who Needs a Fake Press Conference When You’ve Got Faux News?

November 16, 2007

From the Washington Post: Fox Business News anchor David Asman’s questions were not just predictably sycophantic — they were beyond that. They gave sycophancy a bad name. And some were specious as well. Asman’s first question: "You call yourself a supply-sider. Your speech today was all about tax cuts. But were even you surprised at [...]

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Max Baucus on the Estate Tax: Huh?

November 15, 2007

I wish I could better understand Max Baucus’s bizarre statement (PDF) on the estate tax to the Finance Committee today. To his credit, the statement acknowledges that so many of the statements about the estate tax are untrue, even concluding that "99 times out of a hundred, the tale is worse than the tax. Less [...]

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Really, John? You Won’t Commit To Supporting Hillary?

November 13, 2007

I have to say that I’m disappointed in John Edwards refusal to say that he will support Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination. I’m hardly one to argue that loyalty to party is the most important thing, but I can’t imagine that anyone who believes in Edwards’ progressive values would rather have any [...]

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