"Barack Obama's election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual.

Maybe, just maybe, the result will be a step away from the anti-intellectualism that has long been a strain in American life. Smart and educated leadership is no panacea, but we’ve seen recently that the converse — a White House that scorns expertise and shrugs at nuance — doesn’t get very far either."

-Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

Worse, from a tedium standpoint, the failure to assemble an easily gettable record has perpetuated a particularly sterile argument over who’s to blame. David Brooks, George Will, and other cultural conservatives—let’s call them behavioralists—have felt free to blame the unraveling of the financial system on some sort of spontaneous mass deterioration of public morals. Structuralists like myself, meanwhile, argue that people didn’t change, the marketplace did. Most journalists, I would argue, retreat to the mushy middle: the there-is-plenty-of-blame-to-go-around school, a theory of more generalized cultural decay that includes undisciplined lenders as well as irresponsible borrowers.

The trouble with this debate is that all the evidence is on my side. All they have is lazy musings about Woodstock and tattoos. This argument should be over by now, and I honestly believe if these cultural commentators (and everyone else) had better information, it would be.

And by the way, the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve agree with me—not with Brooks or Richard Cohen and his stupid tattoo theory of debt (Cohen linked the two in a Washington Post column mailed in on July 22). New rule changes approved by the Federal Reserve Board in July are targeted entirely at abusive lending practices—better disclosure in ads, good-faith estimates of fees, curtailing prepayment penalties, etc.—and the changes take no steps to crack down on borrower misconduct (which, by the way, did occur, but as the Fed rules recognize, is not what crashed the system).

It has always seemed to me that one of the most dangerous errors of American journalism is mistaking the center for neutral. The center is a mid-point on a sliding scale. Its place is determined by opinions and prevailing winds.

Neutral is, or should be, the radical willingness to find and communicate what's true, no matter whether that truth lies in the middle or to one side.

And his speech was a welcome return to the stirring outward-looking rhetoric of yore, in an age in which most Democrats rely on personal tales of of relatability and hardship. ("I was born of a single mother and met an iron worker once" vs. "we're going to the fucking MOON").

"What then, was it that raised the animal act to a level higher than even that of the most exact arts or the wildest flights of pure science? It would not be sufficient to say that in his love-making with Ada he discovered the pang, the ogon', the agony of supreme "reality." Reality, better say, lost the quotes it wore like claws -- in a world where independent and original minds must cling to things or pull things apart in order to ward off madness or death (which is the master madness). For one spasm or two, he was safe."

"It is unrealistic to expect the Pentagon to do anything other than to advance its own institutional interests in the media and elsewhere. Furthermore, it is not surprsing when retired career military officers present a perspective that coincides with that of their former cohort.

Two things are disturbing, however. One is the secret, unacknowledge coordination between the Pentagon and the purportedly independent spokespersons. That stinks. But what's worse is the failure of the media to come to terms with the way it was manipulated. Media organizations are supposed to be skeptical of authority, and evenhanded in their approach to public policy issues. This story illustrates how badly they failed to justify the public trust."

-Steven Aftergood, of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists

So, Bush's Defense Department gives a massive tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and the European firm EADS. In doing so, it shunned Boeing, which bid on the contract.

So, Bush's Defense Department gives a massive tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and the European firm EADS. In doing so, it shunned Boeing, which bid on the contract.

This action is perverse on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin.

In handing out the contract--worth between $40 billion to $100 billion--for the construction of Air Force refueling tankers, the Bush administration claimed that 25,000 jobs would be created in Alabama and other southern states.

That assertion obscures several key points: Far more jobs--44,000--would have been created had Boeing received the contract, with more than 300 suppliers in 40 states benefiting, according to Boeing. At Boeing plants, those jobs would be highly paid and the workers would be members of unions. The 25,000 jobs Bush claims the contract creates involve far lower-paying jobs assembling parts made overseas. And they're not union jobs.

Since he's taken office, many of Bush's attacks on unions have been overt. But far more insidious are moves like this one, that surreptiously undermine the fundamental premise of the union movement: People who work should earn wages that support themselves and their families.

And look who was instrumental to pushing through this un-American deal: the senator from Arizona, John McCain. Time magazine reports McCain wrote letters and pushed the Pentagon to change the bidding process so that EADS's government subsidies could not be considered when deciding to whom to award the contract. This placed Boeing, which receives no subsidies, at a clear disadvantage and conflicts with U.S. trade policy.

Defense expenditures are supposed to comply with federal Buy American law provisions, which require purchasing certain products from American companies when possible. But this administration has granted more waivers of the Buy American provisions than any administration in history.

A September NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found 59 percent of the country believes existing trade policy "has been bad for the U.S. economy." In January, Fortune magazine found 68 percent believes other countries "are benefiting the most from free trade, not the U.S." Exit polls in 2004 showed 70 percent of Ohio Democratic voters blamed trade policies for job losses, and those numbers could be even higher in the state's March 4 primary.

...

The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that "by a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy." Similarly, a Democracy Corps poll showed that unfair trade policy was the top concern of self-described Republicans who considered casting a Democratic vote in 2006. Against NAFTA cheerleader John McCain (R), Obama's fair trade position can win over these disillusioned voters.

[Sherrod] Brown said the media attacked him for opposing NAFTA, "And so what? I won by well into double-digits, in a slightly Republican state, against an incumbent."

I am an independent and looking for a president with integrity. Should I vote for John McCain or Barack Obama?

Didn’t we all swear to stop picking the candidate who would be most fun to go on a picnic with? You’re torn between the guy who’s been against the war from the beginning and the guy who’s willing to stay in Iraq for 100 years? Between the guy who wants to pay for a $50 billion-a-year health care program by eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy, and the guy who wants to keep the tax cuts and pay for them by cutting the budget? Get a grip.