Clearly good news coming out of a bad economy:
The Army last month stopped accepting felons and recent drug abusers into its ranks as the nation's economic downturn helped its recruiting, allowing it to reverse a decline in recruiting standards that had alarmed some officers.
From Uncle Mark. Garrison Keillor on the nature of crisis.
Got a good link? Want to share what you're reading? Feel free to pass the good words along and. If they seem about right, I'll be happy to post links here for others to enjoy.
Reuters outlines the McCain Plan.
The other news outlets haven't painted the scene in such stark terms. To the extent that the Reuters account is accurate, the observation should be made loud and clear, from town to town and coast to coast, that John McCain, the wild card candidate with a history of gambling, has wagered not merely hundreds of billions of dollars, not simply a campaign or the presidency, but the American economy itself in a politically--no, in a civically--irresponsible electoral stunt. Country first? John McCain no longer deserves the credit he's been generously awarded these past years as a patriot.
And as a maverick? Here's Webster: "an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party." I'd amend that to read "group, party, or country."
It'll be interesting to hear how independent analysts parse the new plan. Obviously, I write from the gut at this immediate moment. Just as the man who wants my vote shoots from the hip.
I'm gonna pass on another from Marc Ambinder. In a nutshell, Ambinder called out the Obama camp for complaining that McCain will take his economic advisor, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, to the (somewhat irrelevant) White House meeting today. Marc wrote that Holtz Eakin "knows as much about the economy as anyone on McCain's Senate staff." He went on to write "McCain's bringing his best policy guy to a meeting, and he gets knocked for it?" From there, he awarded Obama the cheap shot of the day.
But Ambinder later posted an update:
Obama must feel like he's walking into the lion's den, between GWB and John McCain in what appears to be a closely coordinated effort to momentarily derail or at least distract from the campaign. What kind of conversation can that possibly be, anyway?Update: the Obama campaign says that they were told NOT to bring campaign staff to the White House.
So -- there's a double standard here.
I guess it's not a cheap shot. Just irrelevant.
Just as, it turns, the White House meeting might be, since Congressional leaders and the White House have already reached an agreement on principles, and neither Barack Obama nor John McCain had anything to do with it.
