The Hollywood Liberal

Pinched
Back when I worked at The Atlantic the main editor I worked with was Don Peck, who at one point in late 2007 turned me on to the then-gathering foreclosure crisis and the fact that it was a bigger deal than people realized. In other words, he was right and smart about the big economic […]

Back when I worked at The Atlantic the main editor I worked with was Don Peck, who at one point in late 2007 turned me on to the then-gathering foreclosure crisis and the fact that it was a bigger deal than people realized. In other words, he was right and smart about the big economic trends. I haven’t yet read his new book Pinched: How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It beyond the introduction, but the article he did a year or so ago that it’s based on is great, and I think his insight into this issue is quote profound.

I was reminded to recommend the book because I saw him earlier today on MSNBC making the excellent point that, paradoxically, the longer we suffer through bad times, the less likely we are to do anything about it. Bad times makes politics nastier, more polarized, and individual thinking more zero-sum. That makes it harder to make the changes we need, even as it becomes more important.

Colbert Super PAC Ad Mocks Anti-Gay Group?s ?Gathering Storm? Ad
Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Super PAC has released its first television ad, which will air in Iowa beginning this evening. In it, Colbert calls for attendees of the Ames Straw Poll to write-in Rick Parry — “with an A for America.” The ad pays homage to the National Organization for Marriage’s “Gathering Storm” ad, which was instantly […]

Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Super PAC has released its first television ad, which will air in Iowa beginning this evening. In it, Colbert calls for attendees of the Ames Straw Poll to write-in Rick Parry — “with an A for America.” The ad pays homage to the National Organization for Marriage’s “Gathering Storm” ad, which was instantly ridiculed when it premiered in 2009 and has been satirized since. Watch NOM’s original ad and Colbert’s new ad:

Sarah Palin to visit Iowa State Fair this week on ‘One Nation’ bus tour

DES MOINES — Sarah Palin is coming to Iowa this week.

With the Republican presidential candidates and the national press corps descending on Iowa for Thursday night’s presidential debate and Saturday’s straw poll, the former Alaska governor announced Wednesday that she would “jump back on the bus” to come to the Iowa State Fair here in Des Moines.

In an e-mail to her supporters, Palin wrote: “We are very happy to jump back on the bus for another leg of our ‘One Nation Tour’! We accept with gratefulness an invitation to meet folks at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines this week. The heartland is perfect territory for more of the One Nation Tour as we put forth efforts to revitalize the fundamental restoration of America by highlighting our nation’s heart, history, and founding principles.”

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Charles L. Gittens, first black Secret Service agent, dies at 82

Charles L. Gittens, the first African American agent in the Secret Service and the former head of the agency’s Washington field office, died July 27 at an assisted living center in Mitchellville after a heart attack. He was 82.

An Army veteran, Mr. Gittens joined the Secret Service in 1956 and was soon posted to its New York field office, where he was part of an elite “special detail” that targeted counterfeiters and other criminals across the country.

Mr. Gittens would go on to protect presidents and became a well-respected supervisor.

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Standard & Poor’s, others lobby government while rating its credit

Standard & Poor’s Corp. has a major influence in Washington through its venerable bond-rating business, which helped rattle markets over the past week by downgrading U.S. debt for the first time.

But S&P also seeks to influence the U.S. government in a more traditional way: financing aggressive lobbying efforts aimed at limiting federal oversight and protecting its powerful role in financial markets.

S&P’s parent company, McGraw-Hill, has spent more than $11 million on lobbying over the past 15 years, including at least $1 million on S&P-related legislation, according to an analysis of federal disclosure records by the Sunlight Foundation. The firm’s employees have also given more than $500,000 in contributions to federal candidates since 1989, primarily to Democrats, the analysis shows.

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Wisconsin recalls: Victory, not necessarily vindication, for Republicans

The Wisconsin recalls on Tuesday wound up being something short of the game-changing contests they were supposed to be.

In the end, Republicans notched an overall victory, but not necessarily a mandate for the policies that led to the recalls.

Democrats were able to unseat two Republicans – albeit one in a pretty Democratic district and another who had pretty serious personal liabilities – but fell short of winning the third seat they needed to retake the majority in the chamber.

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We Can’t Even Cut Programs That Don’t Work
Steven Malanga, RCM
The prospect that Congress's proposed 12-member super committee might not do its budget-cutting job properly has provoked anxiety among the defenders of discretionary spending programs in the federal budget. The new budget deal provides that if this so-called “Super Congress” can't agree on some combination of entitlement cuts, tax increases and program reductions to slow the growth of the federal deficit, then spending cuts will kick in automatically, with half the cuts coming from non-defense discretionary spending.I've already read newspaper accounts about how…

The Criminals Who Shame Britain

Blame Statism, Not the Tea Party
Terence Corcoran, Financial Post
After two weeks of panic, fear and something called “pure fear,” global stock markets rebounded Tuesday and settled down. Exactly why is anybody’s guess. Maybe investors, whoever and wherever they are, just exhausted their supply of fear and decided to engage in a little exuberance, global debt crises be damned, while they restocked fear for another day.When markets go down rapidly, investors are caricatured as lunatics driven by dark forces. When markets go up, the same investors are often portrayed as rational responders to allegedly sound policy from some…