October 2008 Archives

Of all the great moments in Barack Obama's election-night victory speech in Chicago, my favorite was his tale of the 106-year-old Atlanta woman who had voted that day. Obama reflected on all the changes that Ann Nixon Cooper has seen in her lifetime, and then looked ahead: Let us ask ourselves -- if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to ...
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There is a lot of anger in the air right now.  Republicans are angry with Democrats.  Democrats are angry with Republicans.   Both right and left are angry with the "main-stream media."  Byron York reported a shouting match outside a McCain event.  Someone fired a few gunshots at the home of a manager of the Central Florida Republican Headquarters. Of course by this point everyone knows Ashley Todd's story of an ...
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About 18 months ago, the clean tech buzz was all the rage. Billions of venture capital dollars were pouring in to clean energy technology startups, solar and biofuels stock prices (like the overall market) were soaring, and a new booming industry was well underway. Yet as soon as this happened, the voices of panic sprang up in Silicon Valley and beyond. Is this a bubble? It looks like another dot-com ...
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Difficulties in the U.S. mortgage market played a key role in spawning a widening financial crisis, which is now producing real economic distress on a global scale. Discussion of the causes has focused on lending practices in the "subprime" market, where large numbers of poorly qualified borrowers apparently obtained mortgage financing with great ease. These subprime loans were "securitized," i.e., packaged with other loans in "mortgage-backed securities" (MBS). The securities ...
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A few years ago the National Institutes of Health warned of a national obesity epidemic that threatened to shrink the average American lifespan for the first time.  Despite heroic efforts by the nation's diet-exercise complex, things haven't improved much since.  In fact, we're fatter than ever.  We're also living longer than ever.  But there's still concern that obese Americans are sicker than they need to be because of their vulnerability ...
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