My biggest gripe so far with the Obama administration, which is one I've had with politicians of all stripes, especially the alleged liberals for years, is their complete failures of imagination. There are times when incremental technocratic moderate change is important, necessary, or the only option. And there are times when the status quo has ( Read more... )

John McCain, April 3, 2008: "I know economics very well, certainly better than Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. So let's clear that up,"

January 21, 2008: "At a recent meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Republican presidential candidate John McCain admitted he "doesn't really understand economics" and then pointed to his ( Read more... )

I'm so proud of our President, in no more than five minutes, he gave me the need to find the proper word ( Read more... )

Last year, the top 1% of Americans made 21.2% of the total income in the US ( Read more... )

The following is the text of an email I sent to NPR's Marketplace show today, after they had a hack from the WSJ editorial page spouting nonsense straight out of the "Fairtax" book. Here's the article in questionAnd my letter ( Read more... )

"Food cannont cause you to put on weight, unless you think it can."

From The Secret, Page 59.

And with that, The Secret, you completely and utterly fail. I may skim the rest of the book, but at this point I know this book is utter and complete trash, and now I'm going to feel even more rotten having to sell it to people. I wonder if I'd get in ( Read more... )

...is to write a self-help book and fleece a bunch of people who need help out of their money.

Okay, context. I've started reading The Secret, this book that's been on Oprah at least twice and a couple of the other daytime talk shows and we've been selling a zillion copies of it, the DVD, the audiobook, and the CD soundtrack. I'm only about 30 ( Read more... )

I work at B&N, as I've mentioned before. And there are four sections of the store that make me feel the most cynical. Three of them are for largely the same reason, the fourth is the politics section, since a lot of screeds get shelved there that really should go in fiction, what with how much relations they have to reality ( Read more... )