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Is Oracle Trying to Crush HP? (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - The feud between Oracle and Hewlett-Packard escalated dramatically yesterday as HP sued its former CEO Mark Hurd for accepting a position at Oracle. HP claims that Hurd is violating the terms of his severance by joining a competitor and jeopardizing HP's trade secrets. Defending Hurd, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison lashed out at HP in a surprising display of corporate brinkmanship:
Who Is Terry Jones? (Huffington Post)
September 8, 2010Huffington Post - Read Harry Shearer's other articles on HuffingtonPost.com
Imagining the White House After Rahm Emanuel (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - Chicago mayor Richard Daley's announcement that he would not seek reelection immediately sparked speculation: could Rahm Emanuel seek the spot? Rumors that the White House chief of staff might be Chicago-bound have only intensified, producing a belated outpouring of positive Emanuel assessments. The canny political operator was seeming very unpopular, particularly among liberals, earlier in the year. Will the White House suffer if Emanuel leaves?
Why Has America's Income Inequality Skyrocketed? (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - Slate's Timothy Noah is doing a multi-week feature on income inequality. The blogosphere, particularly the left-leaning portion, is taking note. Noah starts out at a point many liberals have been hammering for years: income inequality today is greater than in parts of the famously stratified Gilded Age. Toward the end of that era, "the richest 1 percent accounted for 18 percent of the nation's income. Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income." Noah's multi-part series is dedicated to exploring why this is the case: "few ... experts have much idea how to reverse the trend," he explains, "because almost no one can agree about what's causing it." Noah reviews the work of experts to explain why "the Great Divergence [of income from the 1970s through the present day] can't be blamed on either race or gender" any more than it can be blamed on immigration; even economists working specifically on the subject admit immigration can only account for a tiny portion of the problem.
Morning Vid: 'Edgy' Meghan McCain Justifies Her New Book to Leno (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - On a media blitz to promote her new book Dirty Sexy Politics, Meghan McCain stopped over at Jay Leno's Tonight Show to reveal a couple more tidbits from her father's 2008 presidential campaign. She ends up riffing on how she was sent to an image consultant for being "too edgy," how she overdosed on Xanax pills prior to election day, how she had to "kiss ass" to the secret service agents in order to go anywhere, and yes, her "stripper hair." As for what her father (who has his Senate seat to protect this November) thinks of her memoir, the younger McCain didn't seem too concerned. "He only read it a few days ago," she remarked.
The End of Chicago's Daley Dynasty (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - For much of the past half century, the city of Chicago has been run by Daleys. First with Richard J. Daley from 1955 to 1975, then with his son Richard M. Daley from 1989 to 2011. On Tuesday, the end of the Daley dynasty came into view as Mayor Daley announced he won't run for reelection in 2011. "Simply put, it's time," said the 68-year-old mayor. "Time for me, it's time for Chicago to move on." While suspicions swirl that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel may look to succeed Daley, columnists and bloggers examine the impact the Daley dynasty has had on America's third largest city.
What Do You Read? First Edition (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - Earlier this week, we asked our readers to give us a peek into their daily media consumption habits. Here are some of the standout replies we received so far:Longtime Atlantic Wire reader and commenter Süper Chuñdy:First thing I do is scan my RSS feeds from The Atlantic Wire, memeorandum, the Slatest, and NPR. This gives me a good sense of what the talking-heads think is important. To find out what I really should be concerned about, I'll read The Independent, ProPublica, Reason, and Al-Jazeera English.Then for some lighter reading, I check out Gawker, the Awl, McSweeney's, the Slog at The Stranger, and Wonkette. For cogent analysis, I head for Democracy in America at The Economist, The New York Review of Books blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, and the Planet Money blog on NPR. Finally, I'll head to Slate, Salon, Foreign Affairs, National Affairs, the Wilson Quarterly, and longform.org (which is a great site that collects the best long form articles from across the web) to pick out some articles to read throughout the day and over the weekend. One last thing, if you use Firefox as your browser, I recommend getting the Read It Later add-on, which allows you to save articles onto a convenient queue.
Rethinking Afghanistan (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - Nine years, 1,200 U.S. military casualties, 800 coalition military casualties, and tens of thousands of civilian deaths after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, U.S. pundits are coming together for an increasingly common exercise: rethinking our war in Afghanistan. The conflict that began with the Soviet Union's 1979 invasion shows little sign of abatement, with recent military initiatives like the assault on Marja showing little progress, government corruption still endemic, and insurgent violence increasingly far-reaching. In a new and deeply worrying twist, The Daily Beast reports that leaders of the Tajik minority, long a reliable ally of the U.S., may be considering revolting against the Afghan government. Here is what a handful of writers, some of them responding to the recent Afghanistan Study Group report, have to say. Although there is little impetus for those who support the status quo to say so in an op-ed column, it's telling that so many writers are so pessimistic about the current strategy. Many say it's time to scale back.
5 Best Wednesday Columns (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire -
Obama Economic Agenda Seeks Middle Class, Populists (The Atlantic Wire)
September 8, 2010The Atlantic Wire - President Barack Obama says he will not extend Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, which are scheduled to expire this year. However, he will extend the Bush tax cuts for the 98 percent of households that annually earn below $250,000 for couples or $200,000 for individuals. The White House says the tax cuts for the top 2 percent would add $700 billion to the deficit over the next ten years. Obama's announcement comes only two days after his proposals, which some call a "second stimulus," for $50 billion in infrastructure spending and $100 billion over ten years in business tax credits for research and development. Here's what pundits are saying about whether Obama's new economic initiatives will counterbalance two very negative forces for the White House: The poor economic situation and the forecasted electoral losses for Democrats.
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