Roundup: Media's Take

Humberto Fontova: Castro's New Republican Friends?

[Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including Exposing the Real Che Guevara. Visit hfontova.com.] Castro's propaganda ministry is not notorious for fawning over Republicans. But lately they've been gushing over the Ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Richard Lugar. "Changing Cuba Policy-Staff Trip Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations United States Senate," is the title of the report Senator Lu

Bob Herbert: Even Worse for Young Workers

... The Obama administration has more than enough on its plate at the moment, but before long it will likely have to consider a range of additional strategies, beyond the recently passed stimulus package, for putting jobless Americans to work. A comparison of the number of people being thrown out of work in this recession with that of the severe recession of 1981-82 will indicate why. The peak unemployment rate was higher in that earlier recession than today’s 7.6 percent, largely b

Brent Staples: The Ape in American Bigotry, From Thomas Jefferson to 2009

Hitler found quite a bit to admire about this country during its apartheid period. Writing in the early 1930s, he attributed white domination of North America to the fact that the “Germanic” peoples here had resisted intermarriage with — and held themselves apart from — “inferior” peoples, including the Negroes, whom he described as “half-apes.” He was not alone in these sentiments. The effort to dehumanize black people by characterizing them as apes is central to our national histo

Martin Kettle: This Thatcher-fest does not mean it's 1979 all over again

[Martin Kettle writes for the Guardian on British, European and American politics, as well as the media, law and music.] She is back. And, what's more, it feels as though suddenly she is being treated a bit more sympathetically. This week the airwaves have been full of Margaret Thatcher, from Michael Portillo's idiosyncratic 90-minute documentary about the post-Thatcher Tory party on Wednesday to last night's brilliant BBC2 dramatisation of her 1990 ousting, starring Lindsay Duncan.

David Leonhardt: Obama's budget plan sweeps away Reagan ideas

[David Leonhardt covers economics for The New York Times.] The budget that President Barack Obama proposed on Thursday is nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters. The Obama budget — a bold, even radical departure from recent history, wrapped in bureaucratic formality and statistical tables — would sharply raise taxes on the rich, beyond where Bill Clinton had raised them. It wou

Mark Gimein: Is Wall Street Evil?

[Mark Gimein writes about business and society for several national publications, including Slate, New York Magazine, New York Times, and Reader's Digest. ] Americans have always hated the moneymakers, rather than hate themselves. One-hundred and thirteen years ago, in the midst of the deepest depression of the 19th century, William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee for president, addressed his party's 1896 convention with one of the most famous speeches in Americ

Karl Rove: Obama's Straw Men

President Barack Obama reveres Abraham Lincoln. But among the glaring differences between the two men is that Lincoln offered careful, rigorous, sustained arguments to advance his aims and, when disagreeing with political opponents, rarely relied on the lazy rhetorical device of "straw men." Mr. Obama, on the other hand, routinely ascribes to others views they don't espouse and says opposition to his policies is grounded in views no one really advocates. On Tuesday night,

Brad A. Greenberg: Blaming Jews for financial woes

[Brad A. Greenberg, senior writer for The Jewish Journal and creator of TheGodBlog.org , is working on a book about the facts and fiction of Jewish power.] The stereotype of the money-grubbing Jew goes back a long way. Zacchaeus was a greedy little tax collector. Fagin was a hideous creature who forced orphans into his organized network of pickpockets. And Shylock, perhaps the most infamous Jewish moneylender of all? Well his avarice ran so deep that he demanded a "pound of fle

Bret Stephens: Post-Post-9/11 Looks Just Like Pre-World War II

[Bret Stephens is a writer and news commentator for the Wall Street Journal.] After 9/11, historians and pundits rushed to give a new era a suitable name. My favorite was Norman Podhoretz's, who called it "World War IV." In doing so, he recast the Cold War as World War III while putting the attacks in a century-long context of the global struggle between democratic and totalitarian forces. But the election of Barack Obama and the financial crisis have now ushe

Aaron Zelinsky: Obama's Rhetorical Inspirations ... Presidents, Poets, and Hobbits

[Aaron Zelinsky is a member of the Yale Law School Class of 2010. He is an Articles Editor for the Yale Law Journal and a former law clerk for Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch of the Israeli Supreme Court.] President Obama's speech to Congress stood on the shoulders of prophets, playwrights, and hobbits. From J.F.K. to an Australian pop band, here are the ten sources behind the most memorable lines of Obama's recent address: 1) "Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Memb

William K. Black: Why Is Geithner Continuing Paulson's Policy of Violating the Law?

[Associate Professor, University of Missouri; Senior regulator during S&L debacle.] Whatever happened to the law (Title 12, Sec. 1831o) mandating that banking regulators take "prompt corrective action" to resolve any troubled bank? The law mandates that the administration place troubled banks, well before they become insolvent, in receivership, appoint competent managers, and restrain senior executive compensation (i.e., no bonuses and no raises may be paid to them). T

Farhad Manjoo: Jurassic Web

[Farhad Manjoo is Slate's technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society.] The Internet of 1996 is almost unrecognizable compared with what we have today. It's 1996, and you're bored. What do you do? If you're one of the lucky people with an AOL account, you probably do the same thing you'd do in 2009: Go online. Crank up your modem, wait 20 seconds as you log in, and there you are—"Welcome." You check your mail, th

Joan Smith: Manufacturing the myth of monarchy

[Joan Smith is a columnist, novelist and critic.] When members of the royal family were discussing a memorial to the Queen mother, who died in 2002, I wonder if anyone suggested a giant bronze sculpture of an ATM. After all, the Windsor genius that she is supposed to epitomise comes down to one thing: an ability to extract shedloads of taxpayers' money while being expected to do very little in return. Sadly, this kind of playful, ironic thinking is completely alien to the royals and

Steve Benen: Concerning Gov. Mark Sanford's claims about the Great Depression

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING.... At this point, I kind of hope South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) continues to strive for the national spotlight. The governor, who appears to be mad as a hatter, keeps saying crazy things that make for fun blog posts. Here's his latest new gem: "[Y]ou know, people who don't learn from history are destined to repeat it. "The Golden Gate Bridge was a Hoover-era infrastructure project designed to get the economy go

Frank J. Gaffney: Exorcising Churchill

[Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.] It is no secret that Team Obama is all about symbolism and messaging. So presumably it was no accident that one of the new president’s first gestures was to have a bust of Winston Churchill given to the United States by the British government removed from the Oval Office. Mr. Obama didn’t have it relocated to another prestigious location in the White House compl

Moisés Naím: Think Again: Globalization

[Moisés Naím is editor in chief of Foreign Policy.] Forget the premature obituaries. To its critics, globalization is the cause of today's financial collapse, growing inequality, unfair trade, and insecurity. To its boosters, it's the solution to these problems. What's not debatable is that it is here to stay.... Globalization is such a diverse, broad-based, and potent force that not even today's massive economic crash will dramatically slow it down or permanently reverse it

James G. Blight: Is Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam?

[James G. Blight is author (with janet M. Lang and David A. Welch) of Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived: Virtual JFK, published last month by Rowman & Littlefield, and a producer of the new film, Virtual JFK, directed by Koji Masutani.] In a book published last month, David Sanger, a correspondent for The New York Times, paints a bleak picture of President Obama's foreign-policy challenges. Among the nightmares Sanger mentions, several are potentially disastrous. They involve continu

Joel Kotkin: California has come back before, but 'hysterical greens' aren't helping

[Joel Kotkin is a presidential fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and executive editor of newgeography.com. He is finishing a book on the American future for Penguin Publishing.] For decades, California has epitomized America's economic strengths: technological excellence, artistic creativity, agricultural fecundity and an intrepid entrepreneurial spirit. Yet lately California has projected a grimmer vision of a politically divided, economically stagnant state. Last week

Ken Paulson: Newspapers ... the iPod of the 17th century

[Mr. Paulson is the outgoing editor of USA Today. He's leaving to become #2 at the Newseum.] You have to separate the troubled economy from the special challenges facing the news industry, and it's important that we not undervalue the power of print. I can certainly understand why newspapers are not viewed as trendy. After all, they were really the iPods of 1690. But humor me, and consider this alternate history: Imagine if Gutenberg had invented a digi

Dayo Olopade: Why Eric Holder’s “race speech” was better than Barack Obama’s

[Author bio: Dayo Olopade is a Washington reporter for the Root magazine. ] Eric Holder’s confrontational speech to members of the Justice Department on Wednesday spoke plainly and bluntly about the level of racial discourse in America. “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot,” he said, “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” However equivocal his windup, Holder’s line was a punc