So... the whole "no FAA reauthorization bill" thing that put 4K FAA employees out of work, and several thousand more construction workers out of work as the airport improvement projects got put on hold was bad enough. Now I'm starting to get worried about where my next paycheck is going to come from. The whole manufactured debt ceiling crisis has ( Read more... )

So... You may heave heard that the federal government has been acting particularly like doorknobs lately. Many of them seem to have slept through English class when "compromise" was being defined and civics class when "the role of Congress" was being explained ( Read more... )

Last big snowstorm, when I got a couple of days off of work, Kat, Brandon and his friend Victoria came over to hang out. Brandon and I played video games, and Kat and Victoria made cookies. This is the result of those cookies - A velociraptor in a bowler hat.


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I was just looking over the Ballot Initiatives for the 2010 ballot, and there are a lot of dumb things on there. So many of them are driven by fear, xenophobia, ignorance and Conservative Medieval-ism that it makes me want to hurl. I support term limits, a bipartisan commission of redistricting, upping education funding and increasing the amount ( Read more... )

So, since the senate passed a (watered down, loophole-filled) consumer protection bill, there's a lot of debate on who should be appointed to head the new consumer protection group. The person who makes the most sense, in a "will do the job in the public interest" way, is Elizabeth Warren. The reason I think this is because of exactly WHO hates ( Read more... )

I'm not so sure that Helen Thomas was so out of line. I certainly don't think it was a fear or hate motivated remark, and I seriously doubt she's anti-Semitic. When you think about it, until the 40s, they had been a very small minority in the middle east, and the Palestine area in particular, for several hundred years. Also, King Abdullah had a ( Read more... )

I was talking with Kristina the other night and she had the brilliant idea that we should make all of our politicians sit the equivalent of a doctoral defense with intelligent, perceptive people who wouldn't let them weasel out of answering questions and wouldn't let them go until their positions were explained clearly, consistently and thoroughly ( Read more... )

It's someone actually being honest on CNN. Granted, he's a comedian, but still...

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Really, more people need to speak with this level of candor on national television. It'd be great if everyone would just say what they mean. Then Bill O'Rielly, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would be torn apart by angry mobs within days, and none of our elected ( Read more... )

I was catching up with posts on FiveThirtyEight, and I came upon this article. It makes an interesting point, especially on how the top marginal tax bracket has moved DOWN over the years. Why is the top tax bracket now $357K a year? Why aren't there brackets above that, especially given how many more people make over that amount now than they ( Read more... )

Yes, Obama's been inaugurated. This is clearly a good thing in most respects. Bush and Cheney are gone and this is a very good thing in ALL respects ( Read more... )