Let's play a little game. Guess who said this: "You have to spend a little to grow a little... what we're trying to do is stimulate the part of the economy that's on its back ( Read more... )

Many of the attacks against Mitt Romney by Barack Obama and his various political allies have been petty, vapid, misleading, and/or hypocritical. The particularly odd thing is that these petty, valid, misleading, and/or hypocritical attacks are only effective at all because Mitt Romney has repeatedly held up signs saying: "Hey! Please attack me on ( Read more... )

I've been trying to put my finger on some of the extreme disconnect between center-wing and right-wing thinking. Notice I didn't say left-wing vs. right-wing; what most people call "left-wing" in America nowadays used to be called "centrist," and what most people call "right-wing" in America nowadays used to be called "extreme right-wing ( Read more... )

The Link: Peter Thiel: We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education. (Peter Thiel is an uberlibertarian of the sort that I usually find nauseating, but I find him to be endlessly fascinating and his arguments at least interesting and quite often quite compelling.) A related link: Peter Thiel Has New Initiative To Pay Kids To “ ( Read more... )

What struck me was the basketball-style bounces of World Wars I & II and the Spanish Flu. Also, at the 2:45 mark, fix your focus on the large red ball respresenting China; Rosling doesn't specifically comment on it, but if you track it you'll notice the huge drop at 1960. "Great Leap Forward," my ass.

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I don't know if Olbermann's attempts to link this to Tea Party philosophy is valid; it seems that most Tea Partiers believe there should be some taxpayer-funded services (state and local level, of course), like, say putting out fires. But that aside... firemen standing and watching a home burn to the ground? At some point, wouldn't you expect a bit ( Read more... )

I understand that minimum wage laws are controversial and tricky, and there may be pros and cons to various specific policy changes. What jumped out at me was the claim that waiters and waitresses were taking in six-figure (I must have heard that wrong?!?!) salaries.

I can remember, quite vividly, the moment when I learned that John McCain had picked Sarah Palin as his runningmate. I had taken some time out from the festivities of Dragoncon to have lunch at a diner down the street from one of the con hotels. I audibly exclaimed "Sarah who?" and then promptly went back to my meal. I later created and posted my ( Read more... )

"But you know what? This is a country, not a strung-together system of well-intentioned start-ups. A city cannot live on volunteer anarchist health clinics alone." - Rachel Maddow

Considering how deftly Wall Street elites and CEOs managed to siphon money from Main Street, workers, and shareholders over the past couple of decades (aided and abetted by the Clinton and Obama administrations, in addition to Reagan and the Bushes), I've been wondering if the "financial meltdown" should be called a "financial meltup ( Read more... )