Eric Alterman

One of the many, many salutary aspects of Barack Obama's impending presidential nomination is the sea change his victory marks in the battle for the mind-set of the American foreign policy establishment. ”

President Obama has lowered taxes more than he has raised them, and they are today lower than they were in President Reagan's time. But you don't hear conservatives crowing about that. ”

Veteran print editors and reporters at places like the 'Times' and 'The New Yorker' manage to feed and clothe their families without costing their companies a million bucks a month, and they produce a great deal more valuable reporting and analysis than the network news stars do. ”

Trends in circulation and advertising - the rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising-have created a palpable sense of doom. ”

Most of the provisions designed to fix what ails our health system don't kick in until 2014, which, one wishes administration officials had noticed, is two years after he has to win an election. ”

To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age, however, no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad. ”

Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us. ”

As a parent and a citizen, I'll take a Bill Gates (or Warren Buffett) over Steve Jobs every time. If we must have billionaires, better they should ignore Jobs's example and instead embrace the morality and wisdom of the great industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. ”

The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems. ”

We live in a media world simultaneously obsessed with technology and personality. ”