Washington Babylon

Nate Silver is the founder of the popular website FiveThirtyEight.com and a writer, analyst, and partner at a sports media company called Baseball Prospectus. He developed a system called PECOTA,…

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The current uproar about John McCain’s remarks on health care is as dumb as the earlier uproar over Barack Obama and the “bittergate” scandal. McCain’s views on deregulation are important,…

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Gabriel Nathan Schwartz rocketed to national prominence when he was drugged by a hooker and robbed of $50,000 while serving as a delegate to the Republican National Convention. But Schwartz…

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From my new piece in the October issue of Wallpaper*, on a recent trip to Ashgabat, the political and cultural hub (as it were) of Turkmenistan. The article is not…

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John Kenneth Galbraith wrote this in 1954, in his book The Great Crash, and it still rings true today: In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for…

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The government bails out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG. Lehman Brothers goes bankrupt and Merrill Lynch is sold. Stocks are tanking with the Dow Jones down by 22 percent…

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I’m taking part in the Online 100, a panel put together by PoliticsHome.com, a terrific website that offers breaking political news and analysis. The Online 100, which is meant to…

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Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person from Harper’s Magazine, a collection of fifteen pieces from the magazine, is about to go on sale. One of my stories is…

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Speaking of huge contributions to politicians from Wall Street, you’d think members of Congress would by now be reluctant to accept donations from the American subsidiary of Swiss giant UBS.…

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“Both the Republicans and Democrats have given the financial services industry everything it wanted. The finance sector has endless amounts of money to influence politics and can outgun the bank…

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From today’s Washington Post, which cited Sarah Palin’s repeated claims that she fought the Bridge to Nowhere as an example of “a candidate staying on message even when that message…

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Here’s a lovely nugget from the fed’s indictment of Kevin Ring, the former aide to California Congressman John Doolittle who after becoming a lobbyist worked closely with Jack Abramoff. Ring…

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From the Washington Post: Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a “per diem”…

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From ProPublica and PBS’ “Frontline” In the world of Big Oil, Albert “Jack” Stanley was legendary for winning billion-dollar contracts in Third World countries as the Halliburton (HAL, news, msgs)…

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There are two great American pastimes: baseball and sucking up to huge corporations. It appears that McCain Campaign Chair Rick Davis has found a way to combine the two. There’s…

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A lot of prisoners had it much worse—a lot of—a lot of prisoners had it much worse than I did. I’d been mistreated before, but not as badly as many…

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I’ve heard of the five-year plan to graduate from college, but this is the first time I’ve heard of the five-college plan. Yes, that’s the number of different colleges that…

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Sarah Palin must have felt right at home last night during her speech to the G.O.P. convention: there were almost no black people. African Americans make up only 3.7 percent…

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Karl Rove thinks that a president who would pick as his running mate a former small-town mayor and state governor with little experience would be making “an intensely political choice”…

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From the Boston Globe: Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin got her first passport in 2006 and has visited just four countries, and she had little involvement in her state’s…

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From Lawrence Auster, about the “warm embracing response of Christian conservatives to the Bristol announcement”: Over and over, there’s no disapproval at all of Bristol’s pregnancy. To the contrary, there…

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Joe Lieberman really knows how to heap on the praise: “He is a blessing to the United States senate, to America and to our shared hopes for a better, safer…

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John McCain’s camp is attacking the media for having the audacity to question Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience, even though — as the GOP talking points go — her stellar…

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Quite a few news stories and op-eds about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter have touched on the issue of the alleged “hypocrisy” of the G.O.P. vice-presidential nominee. But…

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From ABC News: As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and…

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From James Wolcott: Jake Tapper asks: “What would the response be if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and his wife Michelle had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter?” I can answer that.…

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During the 2008 campaign the beliefs of various candidates’ spiritual mentors has attracted a great deal of attention, especially those of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and to a lesser extent…

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Ken Silverstein is traveling. Washington Babylon will return next week.

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