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kf Unburies the Lede in Ben Smith's piece on John Edwards' ex-aide and Fall Guy Andrew Young (who was talked into claiming paternity for Edwards' mistress' love child). It's not the sex tape! Kf and N.Y. Daily News readers have known about the sex tape for a while. I'd say the lede is Smith's report about the spring of 2008, after Young had publicly claimed paternity, after Edwards had dropped out of the primary and after he had endorsed Obama--but when he still had hopes of being named Attorney General or VP:
Young was under the impression that Edwards would, after dropping out, step forward and claim paternity - which he showed no inclination of doing.
Elizabeth Edwards, meanwhile, had been leaving messages on Young's and Young's wife's voice mail, two sources say Young told them, demanding that he reassert his paternity to clear the cloud over her husband.
Is this really just more hurt-wife denial or are we heading into the active careerist cover-up zone? Elizabeth Edwards had to know at least that there was a good chance Young was not the father--and that her husband was. She certainly had known for a long time that her husband had had an affair with the mother, Rielle Hunter. Perhaps she wasn't proceeding with sure knowledge that she was asking Young to lie for her again, but it's hard to see how she wasn't proceeding with at least what libel lawyers call "reckless disregard for the truth." ... Did she ask Young if he was really the father before "demanding"?. ...
#2 Lede: Smith reports that in late 2006 "worries about a possible affair coursed through Edwards’s organization." Just as suspected! Did Edwards aides (for example, Jonathan Prince and Mudcat Saunders) really not hear about these coursing worries? Or did they hear them but nevertheless set up the Democrats for a possible epic PR debacle (if Edwards had won)? "Reckless disregard," anyone? ... P.S.: You make the call about Edwards aide Joe Trippi's excuse, available here. ... 2:20 P.M.
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UPDATE: This blogger claims the Daily News story is false, though I don't quite follow his argument ... MORE: But I'm beginning to have grave doubts about the Daily News report myself. 1) Would Elizabeth Edwards rail against "New World Order corporations"? 2) Would she go on about Larry Summers' speaking fees? 3) It's not that there are too few "Cherubim" postings. There are almost too many. They defend Eliot Spitzer. They attack Diane Sawyer. They praise Michael Jackson and ... the Isley Brothers. They all seem to cohere as the opinions of a passionately opinionated, quirky, not wildly sophisticated die-hard Edwards loyalist blog commenter who is nevertheless distanced from the Edwardses herself. It's a big country. There's bound to be someone like that out there. It would be a huge, and seemingly inexplicable, effort for Elizabeth Edwards to have created this persona and stayed in character. ...
But I've been wrong before! If it turns out Elizabeth Edwards is also a diehard Michael Jackson defender who thinks he was "murdered by powerful people in the record industry," I'll certainly reconsider. ...
ORIGINAL ITEM: If--big if--St. Elizabeth Edwards is the blog commenter "cherubim"--as the N.Y. Daily News' Rush & Molloy argue--it raises as many questions as it answers! In particular, this one: Is "cherubim" a) deluded (actually believing Edwards clearly "was not the father" of Rielle Hunter's child,etc.), or b) deceiving (trying to sell the Web on a story she might well not be true, a story she was in fact working out in her comments)? Or--the inevitable consensus choice (c)--some wacky combo of both? ... As usual, I urge readers not to overlook possibility (b) ... This Daily Beast web page (worth a screen cap just in case) is one of those with juicy "cherubim" comments that now seem much juicier. ... P.S.: Note that on this page "cherubim" is accused of being Elizabeth Edwards back on June 22 by another commenter, "Ohseriously." ... 2:20 P.M.
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Good Neil Lewis NYT story on John Edwards today--not much news that a Carolina TV station, the National Enquirer and even kausfiles didn't have more than a month ago, except this fabulous nugget (from Ex-Fall Guy Andrew Young's book proposal):
Mr. Young says that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter. He wrote that Mr. Edwards once calmed an anxious Ms. Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.
The book proposal also has Edwards conspiring with trial lawyer Fred Baron to conceal the Hunter story, even asking Baron "if he could find a doctor who would falsify a DNA report." ... Lewis missed the sex tape, though! ... P.S.: While John Edwards' ongoing agony about whether or not to tell the truth is riveting, he is rapidly becoming the Prinz von Anhalt of the Democrats**--a spectacle, but he won't be making policy in the near future. The more relevant angle is the complicity or lack thereof of Edwards' aides--and his wife--in constructing the Twin Edifices of BS with which the campaign attempted to snow the press. Jennifer Palmieri, Mudcat Saunders, Jonathan Prince and Elizabeth Edwards are still potential players in the party, after all. What did they know and when did they know it?*** Of course, they're also still potential future sources for the New York Times, which may make aggressively questioning their accounts a less urgent prirority for the paper. But maybe Andrew Young can fill us in. ...
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**-- ...whom we nominated for Vice President in 2004. Whoops.
***-- My impression is that the truth about Edwards and Hunter was well-known around Edwards HQ. During the campaign I was contacted by two non-campaign people who questioned whether I should push the story, but who checked with their friends in the Edwards camp and came back and told me they were surprised to learn that the allegations were true. ... 12:06 A.M.
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Roger Simon says John Edwards could rehabilitate himself by becomng the "poster boy for tort reform," He forgot about the sex tape. ... 6:47 P.M.
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Jimmy Carter cites racism as anti-Obama factor. Instant reaction: Kiss of Death. Gift to the GOPs. Remember the Carter era of smug moralizing? Anyone want to go back to that? ... P.S.: A good example of how, if the MSM wants to tilt against the Republicans, it's often too wedded to its own conventions--e.g., the desire to 'make news' with an ex-Pres.--to be effective. ... No sophisticated campaign propagandist would say, "OK, let's throw Jimmy Carter at them. They'll be reeling!" ....6:42 P.M.
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Obama Overexposure Tour continues. ... Next: Bloggingheads? Mediaite Office Hours? 6:40 P.M.
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Jeffrey Lord gives a good description of the MSM Gatekeeper's Greatst Hits. Then he goes on and on. Makes Rabbi Saperstein look like Marcel Marceau. ...P.S.: Lord lays it on as if only conservative bloggers, etc, have been rebelling against Big Media. As if he wants a piece of the Mark Levin business. Depressing. ... [via Lucianne] 6:40 P.M.
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Why did the GOP lead in "generic" ballot evaporate on Rassmussen, even as Obama health bounce also vanished? Is the Joe Wilson heckle hurting? ... Could this be an example of a successful kamikaze-style attack? Wilson's "You lie" badly damaged its target (Obama has apparently now caved on the central issue of verifying legal status) but it also damaged Wilson. ... Except that it's not clear it damaged Wilson himself, reelection wise. It's his party that's maybe been hurt. "Kamikaze" isn't the right analogy. ... What's the word for a kamikaze attack in which the pilot survives but the carrier he took off from gets sunk? ... 6:23 P.M.
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Twitter is not @marcambinder's friend! It broadcasts his initial take--which is often 180 degrees wrong. Example #1: Twittering as if Obama would be mad at the networks that his off the record "jackass" comment leaked. #2: Twittering as if town hall rebelliousness would help the Dems. ... 6:09 P.M.
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That False Consciousness Keeps On Coming: Workers at Boeing factory vote to un-unionize. By secret ballot. ... Because when it comes to decertifying unions, union lobbyists insist on the sanctity of the secret ballot. ... 6:08 P.M.
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Jack Palance Plays Elmer Gantry: Andrew Breitbart + Good Haircut = Slightly Scary Rabble-Rousing Potential. ... 6:05 P.M.
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From OMB director Donald Rumsfeld Peter Orszag's recent blog post explaining the deficit estimate increase:
... the Administration is insistent that health care reform not only be deficit neutral over the next ten years, but also incorporate changes that will help reduce the deficit thereafter.
a) Isn't it pretty clear that these "changes that will help reduce the deficit" after ten years are the very changes that have scared seniors and others out of supporting Obama's health reform? I thought the plan was not to talk about them any more. ... b) Please tell me you're not going to veto a health care reform that is "deficit neutral over the next ten years" just because it doesn't also include those longer term defcit-cutting "game changers." You're not going to veto it--everyone knows this--but mightn't this be a good time to reassure us that you are not insane? ... 12:03 P.M.
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From Resilience to Delusion: Is Christopher Hitchens really offering up the most ancient, cliched rationalization of infidelity in defense of his friends, Elizabeth and John Edwards?
In the unequal battle between life and death (as she understood in her father's case), Eros has its part in warding off Thanatos, and if this really was--as I believe--her husband's first lapse, it might have been partly because of the death-haunted context in which, for all his money and charm, he found himself.
'Thanatos made me do it.' This was also Warren Beatty's rationalization in Shampoo, if I remember right. ... P.S.: I think there is actually a significant possibility that Hitchens really believes Rielle Hunter was John Edwards' "first lapse"--that he's not just trying to be kind to his friends. He should stop being a fool. ... Update: Alert reader E emails--
John Edwards had never strayed before. I guess he'd been waiting 30 years for someone to say the magic words, "You're so hot!" ....
12:26 P.M.
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Test Your Tomato IQ: Lots of delicious U.S.-grown tomatoes in L.A. supermarkets last week. Weren't they supposed to be rotting in the fields due to lack of low-wage illegal immigrant labor? ... 10:22 P.M.
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Do we really need angry outsider Pat Caddell to tell us that Edward Kennedy's absence left a "vacuum of leadership" in the Senate? (He "knew how to get things done" and "worked across aisles"!) How is David Broder supposed to earn a living? ... P.S.: Caddell also says that health care "probably would have been a done deal if [Kennedy] was around," which seems like pretty much 100% BS, unless Kennedy would have cajoled Obama into pursuing a different strategy. ... 10:51 P.M.
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Getting to Know the Public Option As It Disappears: Steven Pearlstein argues that the "public option" isn't necessarily a good way to keep down health costs. He notes that, unlike Medicare, "public" insurers would have to bear the costs of collecting premiums, managing care and marketing. Administrative expenses would inevitably be significantly higher than Medicare's 2-3 percent. Plus, the "public" plans wouldn't necessarily have much market leverage in areas where a single dominant hospital, for example, just has to be in your network.
But Pearlstein is assuming that the purpose of the "public option" is to control costs! What if, as Jacob Hacker and Rhul Rajkumar note, it is also designed to serve as a "crucial backup for those ill served by private plans"? Security, not cost. (Pearlstein asserts that a public option wouldn't be "the long-awaited safety net for the uninsured," but never backs it up with an explanation.)
And why do I get the disquieting sense that if the Obama administration had needed a strong defense of the "public option," Pearlstein could have written it the other way?
P.S.: Hacker and Rajkumar produced a generous and highly useful set of answers to my questions about the "public option" that they've championed. My initial reactions:
1) H & R note that when it comes to "community rating"--requiring insurers to charge the same rate to sick and ill people--there will likely be a "cat and mouse game" as insurers try to avoid the rules. But when it comes to preventing private insurers from gaming the system by attracting only healthy patients (even if they charge everyone the same rate) H& R rely on the effectiveness of regulation. (I don't see how competition from "public" plans will help out regulators in the latter case . Will a public option discipline private insurers that engage in "cherrypicking"? The availability of a public option seems what is likely to allow private firms to get away with cherrypicking--the victims denied insurance can always get it from the public plan. That also seems likely to decrease the incentive for regulators to prosecute.)
2) Won't sick people flock to the secure public option? H &R say such "adverse selection" will be "modest,"--and that "extreme adverse selection that really jacks up the cost of the public plan" is "unlikely." But nobody knows, right? And H & R's fallback solution to this problem--"risk adjustment," requiring those who enroll healthy customers to pay money to those with less healthy customers--seems like a solution that proves too much, as lawyers likely say. If "risk adjustment" reallly works, won't it solve all problems of private insurer cherrypicking--indeed, virtually all the problems of health insurance? Yet obviously H & R think there will be continuing cherrypicking, if only on a "cat and mouse" level.
3) Why will the public plan "create a strong competitor that pushes plans to focus on controlling costs and improving value"? As Pearlstein notes, the public plan will have to do most of the things private plans now do--in fact, they will probably farm the administration out to private contractors. To the extent the public option cuts costs by aggressively managing care, doesn't that defeat the purpose of having it as a Medicare-like backup that doesn't aggressively manage care? Won't the public plan be more vulnerable than private plans to anti-managed-care lobbying by voters? So the pro-public argument on costs basically amounts to an antitrust argument: competition in some markets is weak, and this will add another competitor. .
4) The public option is a strange hybrid of Medicare and faux-competitor, apparently. It could emphasize security or cost-cutting depending on who is running it. It seems worth a shot. But I'd feel better about the whole private/public combo if some of my conservative friends would explain to me just what it is that private insurers do that makes them worth preserving. The central problem, sketched by David Cutler in his book Your Money or Your Life, is that the free market does not reward insurers who provide excellent care. The market punishes insurers who provide excellent care, because the people who will be most attracted by excellent care are sick people, the very people who will drive insurers into bankruptcy. If private firms want to make a profit, at least in the indivudal market, the surest way to do it is to think up innovative ways to screw buyers--deny care to those likely to need it, write complicated clauses into policies that allow the insurer to weasel out of paying, etc.. Everyone agrees private insurers do these things. What do they do that's so great that makes up for it? [Keep out unions?--ed Good point! But Medicare eliminates the private insurance middlemen and doesn't seem, yet, to have forced unionization upon hospitals, etc. Of course Dennis Rivera and the Democrats aren't done with their work yet.]
On H & R's final point, I'm still not convinced that if there is no public plan, and the health insurance market becomes a hell of "unraveling choices, runaway costs, and rampant health insecurity" that there will be no political will to intervene later (because we've missed our "once in a generation chance"). Why isn't health care politics more like the environmental politics--you make some changes one year, and then if you win an election you make some more changes next year? (For a contrary argument, see my colleague Timothy Noah, who thinks the insurance lobby will be more powerful than ever after a reform mandating that everyone buy their product.)
P.P.S.: Reader D.C. submitted his own thorough set of answers to my public plan questions. Here is his explanation of why he thinks a public plan would attract enough healthy people to avoid a vicious circle in which it attracted the sickest people and had to raise premiums, further deterring the healthy:
[T]here are many ways for the public option to attract healthy workers, including:
-- peace of mind that you won't lose your job, your insurance, or your sanity when you get sick
-- a much larger pool of doctors to choose from (you get to choose your doctor, as opposed to most HMO's) [True?-MK]
-- portability if you move to a different state
-- ease of customer service (yes, it's the government, but compare the status quo)
-- fewer shenanigans trying to deny coverage based on technicalities
-- better preventative coverage [why?--MK]
-- coordination with state and local health providers
Seems logical enough, though I can't vouch for D.C.'s credentials. Offering security might not unequivocally raise costs, because security attracts the healthy as well as the sick. Still, if that were the predominant effect, wouldn't private insurers be offering a lot more security than they do know?
At bottom, there clearly still seems to be an uneasy, ongoing tension between a public plan's cost-cutting purpose and it's security-for-those-who-get-sick purpose. Hard to see how it can do 100% of both at the same time. And I still don't think H & R know which of those two forces will win out.
Not that this is a fatal objection--one reason to try would be to find out. Unlike Pearlstein, I wouldn't be troubled if "security" won decisively at the expense of "cost-cutting." ... 8:42 P.M.
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Bob Wright on Colbert Report, discussing Evolution of God. "I don't believe in any of these three religions." Colbert (as Colbert) is not receptive. ... 10:35 P.M.
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Jeff Toobin, wrong again? 11:03 P.M.
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Thinking Through The Pubic Option: John Edwards is "tired of all the lies"! ... [via Gawker] 11:39 P.M.
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Hmm. WRAL reported that Edwards would publicly admit paternity at some point, but he hasn't actually done it yet, you know? Is he a) getting cold feet about the admission after seeing the nontrivial and hostile coverage the story has been getting; b) waiting until the grand jury clears him, as part of the bury-bad-news-under-good strategy previously suggested in this space; or c) planning to admit paternity privately but not put out any public admission, leaving the press with rumors and future leaks? The Third Way! ... I have no dog in this hunt--I've already gloated, and I don't think he's going to be Attorney General any time soon--but my guess is still (b). WRAL only said the admission "could come before the end of the criminal investigation." ... You would think at this point that option (c) potentially prolongs the drama during a slow news period. But since most people already think he's the father--it's "old news" in the classic Clinton formulation--then maybe the best PR result for Edwards is if the truth about any admission sort of dribbles out over the next few weeks. ... If past Edwards performance is a guide, the one option that won't be considered is telling the truth unembalmed in a thick layer of narcissistic dissembling. ... 2:27 P.M.
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Edwards' Second Edifice of Lies Collapses: Just when you are no longer all that interested in the John Edwards love child story--because the truth is kind of obvious--he goes and reportedly decides to admit paternity, allegedly after a DNA assesment. The grim dynamics of the Web now require some sort of hit-catching gloatfest. OK. Here goes.
1) Historic Gallery of Kossack Krap: Here's Jerome Armstrong proclaiming the original accusation "just a total bullshit story" in 2007--love the tags!--and Markos Moulitsas months later still sneering
... I can't believe this is even subject to debate, but for the crazies, no source is too disreputable if it validates their warped world view. Although in a perverse sense, the more energy they spend on b.s. like this (and Obama's supposedly forged birth certificate), the less energy they're spending on smearing Obama.
Is Moulitsas so dumb he didn't know the truth in July of 2008? I don't think Moulitsas is dumb, as a general proposition.
2) The National Enquirer has been vindicated (though I think they are still congenitally soft on Saint Elizabeth). HuffPo's Sam Stein kicked the story off. And always trust content from kausfiles. ... But this latest development vindicates no more than half of Monday's kf rumor item. I also speculated that the paternity admission would be part of a PR strategy designed to roll out after the grand jury failed to charge Edwards. I still expect that to happen--certainly you wouldn't think that Rielle Hunter went out of her way to damage him before the grand jury if he was going to admit paternity, do you? But to the extent Edwards simply had to talk to prosecutors-Fifth Amendment notwithstanding--then it might not have been so much a PR strategy as making the best of a bad situation;
3) Please do not forget that in his August, 2008 Nightline 'confession,'--"I take full responsibility"--Edwards didn't just deny paternity but said paternity was "not possible" because the affair with Hunter was over when the baby must have been conceived. To do otherwise would have interfered with his carefully crafted modified limited story about the affair--that it involved "a short period in 2006" and ended before Elizabeth's cancer recurred and before he went galavanting around the country advertising his fidelity and good character. If Edwards is in fact the father this entire fallback edifice of BS crumbles. ... It's worth reading the transcript of the ABC interview--practically every sentence out of Edwards' mouth is a lie. He doesn't know who the baby was in the Enquirer's photos, suggests the photos were doctored, doesn't know whether Andrew Young, the aide who took the fall, is the father, says Rielle Hunter's hiring as a videographer had nothing to do with the affair, etc.. And he does it all sanctimoniously.
4) Why construct this fallback line of lies? There are several possibilities, discussed here. My guess: The idea was not to fool his wife but to preserve his political viability as much as possible. Just a short mistaken affair! He slipped! Happens all the time! I also suspect St. Elizabeth was in on this second set of lies just as she went out and helped him try to preserve the first set of lies (i.e., that there was no affair at all and it was all just tabloid trash).
5) Why admit paternity now? Possible (speculative, not-proven) theories: a) He needed Hunter's testimony to be as friendly as possible; b) Disaffected Fall Guy Andrew Young's tell all book forced the issue; c) Edwards was going to be asked by the prosecutors; d) Somehow this helps keep the sex tape bottled up; e) It had to happen at some point. Rielle wants to be Mrs. Edwards, or at least to have the paternity of her child acknowledged. He couldn't keep her happy forever. f) He wants the story to get buried in all the excitement about Netroots Nation! ...
6) Remaining questions: Who was Enquirer's big source? Can it not have been Hunter? Why wouldn't Edwards agree to pay child support but negotiate a clause requiring everyone to keep it secret? Why her? What if he'd been elected? What about the enablers? Mudcat? Prince? Palmieri? Which ones were willing to put the party at risk? ... 12:06 A.M.
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In the 2008 primary, I was always a bit leery of the "love child" aspect of the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter cheating story--it seemed like the perfect setup, which would have gone like this:
Edwards would openly deny paternity, giving implicit permission for the press to report on the scandal. The press would do its part, excitedly reporting charges from Edwards' enemies that of course he's the father, the baby really looks like him, he was seen with the mother, on such and such a date, etc.. Paternity tests are ordered. ... The gossip world waits on tenterhooks. ... The tests come back and the verdict is ... he's not the father! Edwards takes a victory lap, vindicated. In acknowledging his innocence of the sensational paternity charge, the press and public would overlook the less sensational, but still damning truth--which is that he'd been cheating on his cancer stricken wife after basing his campaign in large part on his faithfulness.
That didn't happen, of course. I think we can guess one reason why! But now there is a credible rumor of a similar PR sleight of hand in the works that would, in theory, allow Edwards to slink away from his (hypothetical) guilt on the issue the paternity tests would have resolved. It would go like this (I'm paraphrasing):
When the grand jury investigating Edwards on campaign finance charges (e.g., did he illegally use campaign money to pay Hunter?) comes back with "not sufficient to press charges," Edwards will in short order admit it's his kid. The idea is that the grand jury's "insufficient evidence" finding will start refurbishing his image, and that this news will overwhelm his admission of paternity (even though he specifically denied paternity was even possible** in his BS-riddled 2008 Nightline "confession").
It's just a rumor, remember!
The key to the rumored PR scenario would be that the respectable MSM is allowed to care about criminal charges while it still pretends not to care about mere sex. So the grand jury findings will get unjustified play, relative to the paternity admission.
It's a brilliant plan! And if this brilliant plan really is the plan ... well, if Edwards thinks it will work he's deluded.
**--Exact quote: "I would welcome participating in a paternity test. Be happy to participate in one. I know that it's not possible that this child could be mine because of the timing of events, so I know it's not possible. Happy to take a paternity test, and would love to see it happen." [Emphasis added] Transcript here. 4:50 P.M.
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Harry Reid or Casey Jones? According to Roll Call, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is "sketching a process for railroading the [card check] bill through the floor as quickly as possible." And maybe not even the vaunted "compromise" card check bill, says Jennifer Rubin--she suggests some union leaders are holding out for allowing labor organizers to avoid secret ballots. ... Obviously this isn't legislation that holds up in public view for long, so the rush approach is strategically sound. But Reid sems like a deeply cynical operator. He apparently likes to engineer train wrecks. (Remember what happened to "comprehensive immigration reform"?) Is he really trying to ram this explosive bill through, or is he trying to demonstrate to labor that it can't be rammed through? ... I note that even Rubin, a congenitally optimistic they-don't-have-the votes card check foe, seems rattled. ... 1:54 P.M.
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Old Comeback: "I'd rather waitress."
New Comeback: "I'd rather have a seat in the European Parliament."
12:55 A.M.
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I'm sure the NYT has already assigned a top reporter to find out what Steve Rattner's old colleagues at Quadrangle think of him. Aren't you? ... 12:45 A.M.
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Postrel 1, Orszag 0: As originally presented, OMB Director Peter Orszag's vaunted "game-changers" were cost-saving changes to the entire health care system. The implication--in Obama's big February Congressional Address (and in Orszag's blog posts) was that you couldn't get the game-changing changes unless you had "comprehensive health care reform," including expansion of coverage to offer "quality affordable health care to every America," According to Obama
[I]t's a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.
Along came Virginia Postrel, who noted in a blog post that if Orszag's changes were so great, why didn't he apply them to Medicare and Medicaid first? Orszag was concerned and conscientious enough to phone Postrel to defend himself. But now, with Orszag and Obama having wholeheartedly embraced the IMAC plan to cut Medicare expenses in the long run, hasn't Postrel's suggestion won out? IMAC appears to be restricted to recommending changes in Medicare, not the entire health delivery system.
That, of course, is a tacit admission that controlling the federal budget deficit by cutting Medicare and expanding non-Medicare health coverage are two separate policy initiatives--and that Obama was dissembling when he said, in his address, that you had to do both parts at once "to bring our deficit down." It looks like you could have an IMAC panel to cut Medicare costs and shrink the deficit without any of the rest of Obama's "comprehensive" reform, including universal coverage. Or you could have the rest of Obama's reform without the IMAC panel.
The connection between the two appears to be entirely political, and conjectural--the idea that either you need IMAC as a way to get Blue Dog votes for expanded coverage, and that only by offering an extension of coverage can you get the senior lobby (AARP) to go along with Medicare changes. Like so many "comprehensive" reforms, it's not an interlocking web of mutually dependent policy mechanisms so much as an interest-group sandwich.
If all you had to do is appease the Blue Dogs and AARP, the strategy might be sound. The problem is that the IMAC "game changer" scares the daylights out of lots of people, and adds to the ballast of the whole package with the general public. ... 12:41 A.M.
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GM's best cars--the Chevy Malibu, the forthcoming Buick LaCrosse and possibly the next Buick Regal--are all basically Opel designs. Yet GM is selling Opel. I don't get it. ... 12:35 A.M.
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