Off the Grid from Newser

The Health-Care Wars Have Just Begun

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 8:40:18 CST

My 84-year-old mother was full of venomous indignation at dinner last night over the great mammogram take-back. Bureaucrats, in her view, will happily kill women to save money. My colleague, Caroline Miller, Newser’s editor in chief, took umbrage in this space the other day about the new guidelines. She noted the obvious cold efficiencies involved with discouraging younger women from having a yearly mammogram, as well as the “patronizing” justification for the new approach: that it will save...

Sarah Palin Deserves Some More Attention

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:20:18 CST

This is a phenomenon that just keeps giving.

Its very lack of explanation, and ensuing incredulity and apoplexy, propel it.

There may not have ever been anything like it in modern American politics. Well, Ronald Reagan perhaps. But his was, at least, a 20-year phenomenon. In little more than a year, Sarah Palin has gone from zero status to significant opposition leader, contender for the leadership of her party, and one of the most extraordinary media figures in the...

And We Thought We Hated Mammograms

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:43:32 CST

No one likes to get a mammogram. Still, it’s hard to find a woman anywhere who was pleased to hear the new ruling that women in their 40s don’t need to endure the annual indignity of baring their breasts to the radiologist after all. That’s because it’s hard to find a woman anywhere who believes that the federal panel changed its recommendation for her benefit.

It’s not that the decision doesn’t make sense: It costs a lot to screen women for breast cancer in their 40s, and...

China and the Obese: The President Meets His Greatest Problems

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 8:56:32 CST

For all sorts of obvious reasons, it seems like a greatly unacceptable and possibly discriminatory thing to say that the obese are a lot like the Chinese (though it’s unclear which group, if either, is being slurred). But hear me out.

It is simple math. In eight years, according to a new study released yesterday, 43% of Americans will be officially obese (not just fat, mind you, but off many scales). Likewise, the vast number of Chinese people, with their new economic muscle, have...

Rupert Murdoch’s Guy Gets It

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 6:56:12 CST

If Arthur Miller were at it again, he’d call the play Death of a PR Guy.

Gary Ginsberg, Murdoch’s PR guy who got the ax yesterday, used to beg me not to call him a PR Guy—his official title was Executive VP of Global Marketing and Corporate Affairs—but that was his job: making Murdoch look good.

If not good, less bad.

Here’s the job description: Take one of the least sympathetic people on earth—cold, hostile, mean, old, almost pathologically...

Obama's Secret Weapon: The Hug

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:41:46 CST

President Obama needs to get the hell out of China as fast as he can, rush back to America and start hugging Republicans.

This will guarantee him a huge majority in Congress next election. No more worrying about scraping up 60 votes. No more sleepless nights for Harry Reid. Starting in January 2011, every Democratic bill sails right through.

The evidence is right there on page one of today’s New York Times. It’s the sad, sad saga of Charlie Crist, governor of...

The President Wants You to Know He’s Too Dopey to Use Twitter

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 8:05:25 CST

“First of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. I notice that young people—you know, they’re very busy with all these electronics. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone. But I’m a big believer in technology, and I’m a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information.”

That’s what the president said upon his arrival today in Shanghai as he took questions from Chinese university students, one of whom asked: “Should we be able to use...

Does Warren Buffett Know What He’s Talking About?

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 7:11:01 CST

Nobody I know who is smart and rich (albeit much less rich than they used to be) thinks the economy is patched up and ready to roll—except, apparently, Warren Buffet (who I don’t actually know), who announced yesterday that “the financial panic is behind us.”

But then he is also a man who believes the future is railroads.

The view of my personal focus group of the smart and the rich is a basic one: Their own businesses continue to really suck; some 17% of the country...

Is Lou Dobbs the Last Conservative Pundit?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 7:09:32 CST

At the top of the Internet boom, Lou Dobbs left CNN to start his ill-fated Space.com, from which he returned ignominiously not long after. Dobbs left CNN again yesterday, at what is possibly the top of the conservative pundit boom, to, as CNN put it with a certain dig, pursue his “advocacy journalism” elsewhere.

The progression of Dobbs from a straight-arrow, voice-of-God-type news guy into a dark, wounded, paranoiac, conspiracist and hater of various ethnic groups is something...