Summers on Inadequate Demand, Growth & Employment

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An exchange this Sunday between CNN’s Fareed Zakaria & former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers impressed me and follows in full below.  It’s a quick read but offers some no-nonsense analysis of what is not stirring in the US economy

Reince Needs to Rein in the Nastiness

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Democratic National Committee chairs may have been just as disrespectful and nasty to GOP presidents and they would have been wrong, but RNC Chair Reince Priebus’ nastiness ‘before’ the President’s State of the Union irresponsibly exacerbates the political intolerance and lack of civility rampant in Washington today.

What?? Michael Oren Going to Scowcroft Center

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There are some exceptions, but one of the major failings of Washington’s think tank and policy communities is a general unwillingness to embrace the people and ideas that run counter to an institution’s own. They are contributing to the political and intellectual fragmentation dividing and paralyzing this town.

Rand Paul Boosts Foreign Policy Stock Big Time

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Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) gave a provocative, smart foreign policy speech last night at the 20th Anniversary Dinner of the Center for the National Interest, previously known as the Nixon Center. I’ll offer highlights about the speech later, but I wanted to get the speech itself up now.

Anxieties on The Atlantic Front

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My colleague and editor of The Atlantic magazine, Scott Stossel, has been fighting anxiety demons all of his life, and he shares the highs and lows, the funny spots and very dark places he has traveled on his journey to get his anxiety under control in a new book, My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread,…

Senator Bob Menendez Becoming the Dem’s Jesse Helms

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This morning, I joined Evan McMorris-Santoro, Krystal Ball, Ali Gharib and Steve Kornacki on MSNBC’s Up with Steve Kornacki to discuss Senate efforts to botch up President Obama’s & Secretary of State John Kerry’s important diplomacy with Ira

Discussing John Kerry’s Middle East Diplomacy

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Thought I’d share this exchange I had yesterday afternoon with MSNBC anchor Ari Melber on Secretary of State John Kerry’s impressive diplomatic efforts between Israel and Palestine. We haven’t seen a Secretary of State put himself or herself on the line like this in a very long time.