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The Age of Treason

Justine Sharrock — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:17:04 -0500

Glenn Beck loves them. Tea Partiers court them. Congressmen listen to them. Meet the fast-growing “patriot” group that’s recruiting soldiers to resist the Obama administration.

Canada Grabs Gold, Star Settles for Silver

Andrew S. Garib — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 20:05:13 -0500

Whether or not the men’s hockey team beats the U.S. in the gold medal final and despite lagging far behind the Americans in the overall medal count, the Canadian Olympic Committee’s Own The Podium program can claim almost complete vindication after matching the Winter Olympics record for the most gold medals won by a country. You just won’t hear that from The Toronto Star.

Sharpen up our rinks with ‘wild imaginings’

Catherine Porter — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

How come most skating rink change rooms in the city resemble forgotten war bunkers, and a few chosen others have become community hubs?

Health Care Summit Happily Brings Period Of Bipartisan Illusioneering To An End

Jason Linkins — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0500

The two or three people in the world who believed that lawmakers were going to emerge from yesterday’s Health Care Summit having forged a brave new path of bipartisanship or a collective decision on a new Pope must be feeling disappointed today.

Is China really so scary?

Steven Mufson and John Pomfret — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:37:27 -0500

This new Red Scare says a lot about America’s collective psyche at this moment. A nation with a per capita income of $6,546—ensconced above Ukraine and below Namibia, according to the International Monetary Fund—is putting the fear of God, or Mao, into our hearts.

The Big Zero

Paul Krugman — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:18:26 -0500

Maybe we knew, at some unconscious, instinctive level, that it would be an era best forgotten. Whatever the reason, we got through the first decade of the new millennium without ever agreeing on what to call it. The aughts? The naughties? Whatever. But from an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true

The Ooglay Truth

Andrew S. Garib — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 21:33:42 -0500

Anti-terrorism needs a nanny state; The worst ~~architect~~ building of the decade; Consider the opposition prorogued; Bye-bye Blue Cross? AND: Modern conservatism, in a nutshell

Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan

James Dao — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:56:12 -0500

The early and undermanned effort to use counterinsurgency is one of several examples of how American forces, hamstrung by inadequate resources, missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war, according to the history, “A Different Kind of War.”

Who’s running the TSA? No one, thanks to Sen. Jim DeMint

Margaret Talev — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0500

An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration — if there were one.

Kinda Funny: Good Riddance

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:36:02 -0500

CBC’s Smart Shift Web site: What’s the deal with IBM?

Andrew S. Garib — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:38:15 -0500

CBC News’s new Web site, called Smart Shift: Conversations for Change is clearly labeled as “presented by IBM.” But what does the century-old US$109 billion business consulting firm get out of this partnership with Canada’s national public news source? And what do CBC.ca readers receive in the end?

The Fall of Greg Craig

Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Obama turned to Craig to roll back Bush-era policies in the war on terrorism. But by September, Craig had been sidelined by pragmatists.

Stephen Harper and the politics of suspicion

Don Newman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Parliament used to work because of majority governments but also because MPs made it function. That is not the case today. The fraying was not—it might surprise some I’m sure—the fault of the Bloc Québécois. Rather it came from the Reform party led by Preston Manning.

The Wisdom of Crowds

Andrew S. Garib — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:50:57 -0500

Crowdsourcing was the New Coke; JavaScript’s sloooow in Firefox; Overrated minds on display; Sarah Palin’s real threat; AND: Wait, wait...

Too Many Chiefs

Andrew S. Garib — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

In one fell swoop, Joe Lieberman, once Democratic candidate for vice president, then neocon stoolie, and now so-called “moderate” independent senator from Connecticut, both put the Democratic health proposal’s essential public option in doubt and proved James Madison wrong.

Munyaneza gets life for Rwandan war crimes

CBC News — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

In an unprecedented decision, Justice André Denis wrote the sentence is severe because "the law considers the crimes committed by the accused to be the worst in existence."

Lawyers: Photos show Khadr “innocent” in death of US soldier

Michelle Shephard — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

Classified photos show Toronto-born Omar Khadr lying buried and hurt in a trench during a firefight in Afghanistan that killed a U.S. commando. His lawyers say that proves he couldn’t have thrown the lethal grenade.

Ongoing Agony of the Banks

The New York Times — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

If the federal government’s strategy to save the banks was meant to get them back into the business of lending to American consumers and businesses, it has not worked yet.

Today In The History of This Website...

Andrew S. Garib — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

Today, on the once sorrowful Feast of The Blue Screen of Death, did Andrew, once burdened with old files, decrepit javascript and non-validating markup, proclaim his Web site, saveandrewgarib.com, complete in archives, and valid in the eyes of W3C The Infallible, in both HTML and CSS, excepteth for some crap about oncontextmenu or something about which he giveth not a shit, and he did rejoice, in the year of Unix 39, the 28th Day of the Tober of Oct, 1256688000. Ameneth.

Reverse Robin Hood

Graham Bowley — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The Bailout Helps Fuel a New Era of Wall Street Wealth

Tories won’t update information and privacy laws

Joan Bryden — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

OTTAWA—The Harper government has quietly nixed recommendations to expand and modernize Canada’s access-to-information and privacy laws.

Lobbyist Pushing to Represent Sudan

Dan Eggen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

A prominent Democratic fundraiser and ally of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) is attempting to secure a lobbying contract with the pariah regime in Sudan, which has embarked on an aggressive effort to enlist U.S. support against allegations of genocide and war crimes.

Elephant, Now In Room

Andrew S. Garib — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:57:11 -0500

Pulling the pulling-the-race-card card; Brow-beating Beyoncé; Self-promoting Tories won’t save the Liberals; Why we need government-run news; AND: FUDGE!!!!!

Photos: Summer’s Over

Andrew S. Garib — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:33:26 -0500

Stanley McChrystal’s Long War

Dexter Filkins — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The magnitude of the choice presented by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and now facing President Obama, is difficult to overstate. For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge — a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men. And that’s if it succeeds.

Opt Me Out of Public Option Purism

Nate Silver — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Some of the usual suspects are out this morning with criticism of Tom Carper’s compromise proposal to insert a robust public option into the Democrats’ health care bill, but allow states to opt out of it by legislative or popular action. But this compromise is leaps and bounds better than most of the others that have been floated.

Cigarette firm destroyed studies, review finds

CBC News — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Imperial Tobacco Canada destroyed up to 60 early studies that linked cigarettes to addiction and carcinogens, according to a review published Wednesday in the online Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Succeeding Downwards

Calvin Trillin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

“The financial system nearly collapsed,” one man in a sparsely populated Midtown bar told me, “because smart guys had started working on Wall Street.”

On Sensitivity

Andrew S. Garib — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

For those of you keeping score: This is completely offensive. This is banally offensive. (There is nothing banal about its high-concept creepiness.) This is obnoxious. And this? Hilarious.

Mr. Inside

Gretchen Morgenson and Andrew Martin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Citigroup’s new hire has been in the middle of everything from the savings and loan disaster to Plamegate.

Student Loans are the New Indentured Servitude

Mike Konczal — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

How should we judge this young person profiled in the Wall Street Journal? Is taking on a large debt load to pay for college the post-Risk-Shift American Dream? Or is it a form of Living For Now, and being irresponsible and short-sited? Why should we think of her as irresponsible, instead of someone rationally going into debt peonage, like a 17th century indentured servant, in order to take a small shot at bettering oneself—the new middle class dream?

Falling Flat

Andrew S. Garib — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

Wicked WICD; The Case of Al Gosling; Afghanistan’s blurred lines; AND: Why Jackie Robinson is not Clarence Thomas

Photo: The Shrinking View of an ‘Old Friend’

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:19:31 -0500

Bank Buster

David Corn — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Elizabeth Warren is applying her people-first philosophy by simultaneously running the Congressional Oversight Panel, which monitors the $700 billion TARP bailout program on behalf of the taxpayers, and pushing for a new agency to protect consumers from predatory lenders. Now, as Congress seriously considers her proposal (and lobbyists maneuver to kill it), the question is: Can a middle-class populist in Ivy League garb change the world—or at least Big Finance?

The Most Hated Name in News

Deborah Campbell — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Can Al Jazeera English cure what ails North American journalism?

Activists challenge Olympic bylaw on free speech

CBC News — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

Two anti-Olympic activists have launched a court challenge to Vancouver’s Olympic bylaw to defend their right to distribute material critical of the Games during and around the events.

Squiggly Words To Catch Comment Spam

Andrew S. Garib — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

The World Wide Web is less spammy because of you, genius mathematician Alan Turing. Here’s how.

The Muppets Take Ramallah

Samantha M. Shapiro — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The Palestinian territories have been, not surprisingly, a tough place to produce “Shara’a Simsim,” the local version of the global “Sesame Street” franchise, Sesame executives say, rivaled only by Kosovo.

Charitable Rendering

Andrew S. Garib — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:22:19 -0500

Tom Coburn’s hedonistic fix for health care have nots; Outlawing exaggerated product claims will bring about a totalitarian state; My autobiography is faster than yours; Stalin and Jim Crow; AND: Wyatt Cenac on the video ho crash

The Bible, but More Paranoid

Rachel Weiner — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500

A group of right-wing activists is setting out to purge the Bible of liberal bias.

Work In Progress

Andrew S. Garib — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0500

Please forgive the current state of this Web site as it continues its ongoing overhaul. Because the changes have been very substantial, I haven’t made posts public since May and have only begun re-posting them since certain upgrades went live on October 9. Here are some of the new features of saveandrewgarib.com, and what changes are to come.