National Review articles from October 2008

National Review archives from October 2008

Have a drink on us.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
October 20, 2008... Discussing a group of college presidents (the Amethyst Initiative) who want to lower the drinking age from 21 to 18 ("The Week," Sept. 15), you say "there are good arguments for lowering the drinking age," but don't list any. The old...

A-comin' to set the record straight.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
October 20, 2008... Rob Long has such a good ear for the varieties and styles of American speech that I was disappointed in his otherwise amusing piece on Sarah Palin ("The Long View," Sept. 29). It ends with her saying, "We're a-comin' to gitcha!" The lack...

Go eat uranium.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
October 20, 2008... Richard Brookhiser--I enjoyed your column "Built to Last" (Sept. 15), but don't become too enamored of that '30s Fiestaware. It could be hazardous to your health. I searched the trivia sector of my ancient mind, and it told me that orange...

Touche.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
October 20, 2008... On page 10 of your Sept. 29 issue ("The Week"), you mention that Asif Ali Zardari has a chance for the presidency only because he could stand in for his widow, Benazir Bhutto. If he has a widow, isn't he dead? Linda Hagglund Norton,...

The week.
October 20, 2008... * Cheer up! Things could get much worse. * The financial blizzard and the first debate have lit up the presidential candidates like flares. John McCain is a man of the Senate, proud of its friendships, and reveling in the free hand that...

Sale of the Century.
October 20, 2008... As policymakers huddle in Washington and scheme up plans to end this financial crisis, markets around the world have continued to panic. Such a response may well reflect a prudential understanding of Congress's innate inability to respond...

Taking on water.(THE BAILOUT)
October 20, 2008... TREASURY SECRETARY HENRY PAULSON'S $700 billion rescue plan is palatable to no one. The price tag is huge. The bill was originally presented to Congress as all but a fait accompli. Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke have been...

Anything-goes democrats.(THE BAILOUT II)
October 20, 2008... SHORTLY before the House rejected the $700 billion "bailout" of the U.S. financial system, Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of causing the problem. She said, "They claim to be free-market advocates, when it's really an 'anything goes'...

That sinking feeling.(POLITICS)(John McCain)(Brief article)
October 20, 2008... JOHNMCCAIN spent the latter half of September sinking in the polls. Financial turmoil has added to the public's already strong desire for change in the White House. And a string of unimpressive media interviews has reduced the appeal of...

The road to financial hell: we're only at the beginning.(WALL STREET CRISIS)
October 20, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] UNTIL very recently, an economist who wrote an op-ed about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would get only yawns for his trouble--typically from editors saying, No thanks. But in mid-September, economist Kevin Hassett (an...

Worse than a bailout--a blunder: how not to conduct a government intervention.(WALL STREET CRISIS II)
October 20, 2008... THERE are winners and losers every time the government sticks its clumsy fist into financial markets. But we can't discover who has been helped and who has been hurt by using the word "bailout" indiscriminately. For shareholders of Bear...

A tool, not a fetish: against the economics of Mad Max.(WALL STREET CRISIS III)
October 20, 2008... IN the wake of Sept. 29's dramatic House vote, the prospects, nature, and chances for success of any revived Paulson plan were, to say the least, uncertain. What remained certain was that some sort of rescue, bailout, pick the euphemism or...

Testing the Bradley effect: are opinion polls making accurate predictions about Barack Obama?(2008)
October 20, 2008... IN 1982, California gubernatorial candidate Tom Bradley went into Election Day leading in the polls. He lost in a squeaker. In 1989, New York City mayoral candidate David Dinkins had as much as an 18-point lead in the polls over his Republican...

Gangster politics: a handful of GOP senators came close to blocking sound energy policy.(ENERGY)
October 20, 2008... IN a year otherwise favoring Democrats, high gas prices served up a potential windfall for the GOP. House Republicans rallied around a shared opposition to the congressional ban on offshore drilling, and even John McCain got in on the act. By...

Battle for high ground: of the GOP's prospects in Colorado.(THE STATES)(United States Republican Party)
October 20, 2008... LIKE much of the Mountain West, Colorado has been tilting Democratic in recent years. Colorado's Democratic governor, Bill Ritter, crows that starting in Montana you can drive from the Canadian border to Mexico without passing through a single...

Anatomy of a train wreck: the causes of the mortgage meltdown.(WALL STREET CRISIS IV)
October 20, 2008... WHY did the mortgage market melt down so badly? Why were there so many defaults when the economy was not particularly weak? Why were the securities based upon these mortgages not considered anywhere near as risky as they actually turned out to...

Sarah Palin, governor: why has she been successful in Alaska?(2008 II)
October 20, 2008... WATCHING press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or--or, well, all of the above. Palin, the governor of Alaska, has...

'United in the faith, differing on a particular': in which our heroes debate the Panama Canal.(NR SPECIAL)
October 20, 2008... IN 1977 Warren Steibel, the producer of my television show, Firing Line, came up with the idea of supplementing its weekly schedule with special two--hour programs four or five times per year. The first of these, in January 1978, was a formal...

Dismal etymology.(the bent pin)(Wall Street economic crisis of 2008)
October 20, 2008... THE most interesting aspect of the recent Wall Street coverage is the spectacle of our talking heads' not only letting a banished word get by, but actually reviving it. "Depression" is back in all its upper--case glory, wearing its de rigueur...

Transcript: Hardball on MSNBC, with hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.(the long view)(Broadcast transcript)(Audio file)
October 20, 2008... Airdate: Sept. 30, 2009 Main Titles. SFX theme: "He Lifts Us All Up to Face the Glorious Future" CHRIS MATTHEWS: Welcome, everyone, to today's edition of Hardball. My cohost as always is the dedicated and loyal party leader Keith...

Special rules for special needs: could learning-disabled kids lead the way to market-based education reform?(EDUCATION)
October 20, 2008... [LLUSTRATION OMITTED] ALTHOUGH Sarah Palin's GOPconvention address was full of partisan zingers, one of its most memorable passages was anything but pit--bullish. It touched gently on her infant boy's Down syndrome: "To the families of...

Debt or equity? Options for funding higher education.(EDUCATION)
October 20, 2008... WHY does college cost so much? And where can I get some money to help pay for it? Those two questions turn out to be intimately and perversely related. College is expensive because we are willing to pay for it. This is true for...

Pro-choice: democrats--some of them--are learning to love vouchers.(EDUCATION)(educational vouchers)
October 20, 2008... 'VOUCHERS were thought of as a white, Republican type of issue," says Louisiana state representative Austin Badon Jr., a Democratic member of the legislature's black caucus. Indeed, in the half century since Milton Friedman started pushing...

When knowledge is critical: brief reflections on Middle East studies.(EDUCATION)
October 20, 2008... THE Cold War stretched from 1945 to 1991, and somehow the West ended up on top: Soviet Communism gave up. Then we had our "holiday from history": ten years of almost no concerns. Sure, there was a Khobar Towers here, a U.S.S. Cole there. But...

Carpe Christo.(Supreme Courtship)(Book review)
October 20, 2008... Supreme Courtship, by Christopher Buckley (Twelve, 285 pp., $24.99) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY doesn't merely observe the zeitgeist better than anyone else on the planet. He anticipates it--and routinely has a new novel...

Archaeologist.(Poem)
October 20, 2008... ARCHAEOLOGIST For hours, he sat in the ancient cave alone, stunned by what he'd found in the dust and debris: a huge picture, frescoed into the stone, high in the cliffs over the Tyrrhenian Sea. It showed some...

Biased and bonkers.(Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture)
October 20, 2008... Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, by James Bowman (Encounter, 134 pp., $20) EVEN if he did not write media criticism, James Bowman would be a media critic by example: His original thinking and l ucid prose are an...

Ratings sweeps.(The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game)(Book review)
October 20, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game, by Alvin S. Felzenberg (Basic, 480 pp., $29.95) A ETERAN of two Republican presidential administrations, Alvin Felzenberg...

An epic talent.(David Foster Wallace )
October 20, 2008... THE recently deceased novelist, essayist, and journalist David Foster Wallace was a genius. And a big, showy one at that. His style, laden with his trademark footnotes, was that of a man whose brain was permanently stuck in overdrive--a mind so...

Burn before watching.(Burn after Reading)(Movie review)
October 20, 2008... IF you're the sort of filmgoer who thinks of the Coen brothers as American cinema's most nihilistic, misanthropic double threat, tittering behind their movie camera at the duncery and pointlessness of human affairs, you'll find vindication...

The name game.(CITY DESK)(Presidents of the United States)
October 20, 2008... EXPERIENCE has been an issue in this presidential election, but it didn't have to be. We have a number of former presidents right here, in the New York phone book. There are, for example, three George Washingtons, one listed as George J....

Hanks a million!(but enough about you)
October 20, 2008... EVERY now and then, America just strips herself naked and wiggles her cute derriere at you in all its glory. This happened the other night whilst I was chopping garlic in the kitchen. I was watching Henry Paulson--a.k.a. "King Henry" (Newsweek)...