File away Peggy Noonan’s latest column, “America Is at Risk of Boiling Over,” into the Grand Unified Theory of PANIC!!!! file. Money quote: The biggest political change in my lifetime is that Americans no longer assume that their children will have it better than they did. This is a huge break with the past, with assumptions and traditions that shaped… Read more »
This Tuesday, less than three-quarters of a mile from my front door, employees of Hartford Distributors, Inc., their friends and family, emergency vehicles and personnel, and members of the press gathered at Manchester High School, on the lawn and parking lot, and across the street, because some three miles away from my front door, a man had opened fire on… Read more »
Via Kevin Drum, a perfectly depressing Financial Times article about the “crisis in middle-class America,” culminating in this key passage: What, then, is the future of the American Dream? Michael Spence, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, whom the World Bank commissioned to lead a four-year study into the future of global growth, admits to a sense of foreboding. Like a growing… Read more »
Gregory Mankiw makes an analogy: To understand the challenge government economists have faced over the past year and a half, it is useful to imagine the case of a physician trying to treat an ill patient. The patient presents herself in terrible shape; the physician has never treated a condition with symptoms quite like hers before; and the causes of… Read more »
Hahahaha: Charlotte McCourt…who died July 8 [at age 84] after a long illness…was a homemaker, proud mother and grand mother and wife of 67 years to Patrick McCourt. And she was at one time a loyal supporter of Harry Reid. Her obituary, printed in Tuesday’s Review-Journal, reads in part, “We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have… Read more »
* * * * * [UPDATE, 7/14: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! FYI, a group of Alan’s “rare readers” — myself included — have launched a group blog in an effort to keep alive the wonderful community he built. It’s called “Sullivan’s Travelers.” Please join us!] * * * * * Author, poet and… Read more »
[UPDATE: Some fantastic, newspaper-by-newspaper design analysis & critique here.] Reaction from Ohio:
After a number of false alarms, unexpected reprieves and surprising comebacks, it appears that blogger Alan Sullivan’s battle with cancer is — for real this time — rapidly nearing its end.
[Bumped to top. -ed.] In preface, I think I’ve officially become a cranky old man… I don’t have any problem with the short form Census that was sent out earlier in the year. It is a Constitutionally mandated function of the government, and an accurate count of the population is necessary for a number of things. But all they really… Read more »
FiveThirtyEight’s updated Senate forecast is out, taking into account the results of various primaries — most significantly Nevada, where the victory of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle has turned a likely GOP pickup into a tossup (and where “Harry Reid’s favorability/approval numbers have also improved some, and are now merely godawful rather than mind-bogglingly wretched”), and Arkansas, where choosing incumbent… Read more »