Monthly Archive: January 2016

Will Truman

/// January 24, 2016

Dissecting Paul Krugman’s Bernie backlash: Being a Sanders skeptic doesn’t make you a hack – Salon.com

They remember how critical Krugman was of candidate Obama in the 2008 primary; and they remember that he was the “anti-Obama” during the president’s first few years in office. But they also remember that Krugman ultimately came to write an influential Rolling Stone piece in the president’s defense. They believe that the Democratic Party establishment is in the tank for Hillary Clinton, Sanders’ chief opponent. They figure Krugman, now firmly back in the establishment’s clutches, is following suit.

Again, it’s not a wild or outrageous narrative. It doesn’t require imagining Krugman is part of a coordinated campaign, devised in some dark and shadowy conference room — perhaps the one the Springfield Republican Party uses — with elevating Clinton, and thwarting Sanders, as its goal. But it’s still wrong; and it misremembers (or misrepresents) not only Krugman’s positions in the past and today, but also, by proxy, the position of Sanders-skeptic lefties in general.

From: Dissecting Paul Krugman’s Bernie backlash: Being a Sanders skeptic doesn’t make you a hack – Salon.com

Will Truman

/// January 23, 2016

Rod Dreher: Trump & the Conservative Intelligentsia | TAC

{Via Mike Schilling}

But a funny thing kept happening. When I would go back to south Louisiana to visit my family, I often got into (friendly) arguments with people about conservative principles and policies. I noticed that we were at loggerheads over many things. It frustrated me to no end that reason was useless; “ideologically unmoored cultural passions” weren’t just something, they were the only thing. This was a tribal conservatism, one that had very little to do with ideas, and everything to do with nationalism and a sense of us-versus-them. To be a conservative is to agree with Us; to disagree with us means you must be a liberal.

I remember getting into it with my dad once after I moved home. I was driving him to the VA clinic for a check-up. This was during the Obamacare debate, and he started complaining about welfare spongers who expected the government to pay for their medical care. I pointed out that he was an avid user of Medicare and of veterans’ medical benefits, and that if not for those government programs, he would have died a long time ago.

From: Trump & the Conservative Intelligentsia | The American Conservative

Will Truman

/// January 22, 2016

Washington Post: Why a looming storm makes us think we can eat all the junk food we want

Thursday night, a day before the storm was due to pound us with blizzard conditions, American University students Miranda Oliver and Ashley Sillaro were casually wheeling out of the Columbia Heights Target with two six-packs of Blue Moon and hard cider. These were backups, said Oliver, 21, in case the beer she’d bought just a day earlier ran out.

On that trip, she added, “I got like three things of ice cream. And I don’t even really like ice cream.”

“We were going to get an ice-cream cake,” added Sillaro, 20.

From: Why a looming storm makes us think we can eat all the junk food we want – The Washington Post

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