March 2010
Doc Thompson Thinks A Tanning Salon Tax Is Racist
Nothing that comes from Fox can surprise me, but this rings the bell pretty loudly:
The recently passed health care reform act includes a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning salons to help pay for expanded insurance coverage for millions of Americans. Radio host Doc Thompson, subbing in for Fox News host Glenn Beck on his radio show today, used the tax to make the absurd accusation that the...
Militia Mugshots
Those arrested in the militia case were, top row, from left, David B. Stone Sr., David B. Stone Jr., Jacob Ward, Tina Mae Stone, and, bottom row, from left, Michael D. Meeks, Kristopher T. Sickles, Joshua J. Cough and Thomas W. Piatek.
via nytimes.com
4 tags
Joachim Starbatty on Euro Trashed
Starbatty proposes what others are whispering: Germany and other stable members of the European Monetary Union need to leave the Euro behind, allowing the weaker states to devalue their currencies:
via nytimes.com
Germany and other “euro-optimists” hoped that the introduction of a common currency and the global economic competitiveness it spurred would quickly lead to sweeping economic and...
Happy 30th Birthday, Millennials!
via edelman.com
Paul Krugman on Punks and Plutocrats
Krugman knows that the GOP will argue that any attempts to create new regulation on the banking industry will be met with deception and trickery. And it’s already started.
We have already, in effect, recreated New Deal-type guarantees: as the financial system plunged into crisis, the government stepped in to rescue troubled financial companies, so as to avoid a complete collapse. And...
2 tags
LL Bean Maine Hunting Shoe
via drp.ly
I need these next fall
Online Dating Statistics Reveal What Women Lie...
via huffingtonpost.com
One out of three women who meet men online have sex on the first encounter.
3 tags
Israeli Strike on Iran: A Simulation
An extremely provocative piece in the NY Times about a war game played at the Brookings Institute:
via Brookings Institution The simulation was conducted as a three-move game with three separate country teams. One team represented a hypothetical American National Security Council, a second team represented a hypothetical Israeli cabinet, and a third team represented a hypothetical...
Childhood Lost
We are raising our kids in a fucked up way, and it has led to the end of childhood as we have known it for thousands of years. This sounds like the colony collapse of the bees.
David Elkind, At Schools, Playtime Is Over
Children today are growing up in a world vastly different from the one their parents knew. As the writer Richard Louv has persuasively chronicled, our young people are more...
Swearing
Swearing makes up 3 percent of all adult conversation at work and 13 percent of all adult leisure conversation
via people.howstuffworks.com
Eddie Corriea
edviges.com
Click to view linkDownload this gallery (ZIP, undefined KB)Download full size (272 KB)
]]>
via edviges.com
1 tag
Manifesto For A New Politics
Tony Judt, A manifesto for a new politics
Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.
The materialistic and selfish quality of...
A Bunch Of Old Posts From Posterous
Mar 26 2010 / 6:49am
David Frum: Waterloo
Frum was booted out of the American Enterprise Forum for writing this piece, basically saying that the GOP has caved into extremism, and is now fucked. There is no way to recapture the lost middle ground, and the Republicans won’t be able to made credible appeals to the electorate.
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended...
Jesse James' Other Woman: Michelle "Bombshell"...
]]>
via nypost.com
The Difference Betweet Income Tax and Value-Added...
This is actually an interesting argument for leveling the playing field in international trade.
Robert Lighthizer, W.T.O. Talks Are Stifling the Economy, One Argument at a Time
The United States relies primarily on income taxes to pay for government services, while most of our trading partners depend on value-added taxes on purchases. Under current W.T.O. rules, countries with value-added...
1 tag
2 tags
“In the end what this day represents is another stone firmly laid in the...”
– Barack Obama, via NYTimes.com
“To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle of...”
– Edmund Burke, via Rise of the red Tories « Prospect Magazine
“All of us were Mexicans once.”
– (inspired by NY Times editorial that said “Nearly all of us were Mexicans once.”)
2 tags
Fixing The Plumbing Will Cost Hundreds Of Billions...
No one wants to think about fixing the plumbing under the streets, which in most major cities in the US date back to the 1800’s.
Charles Duhigg, Toxic Waters - Saving U.S. Water and Sewer Systems Would Be Costly
An E.P.A. study last year estimated that $335 billion would be needed simply to maintain the nation’s tap water systems in coming decades. In states like New York, officials...
“A recent analysis for California determined that there was a 99.7 percent chance...”
– Are We Prepared for an 8.8 Quake? - Room for Debate Blog
“Programs to eliminate the killer buildings and improve critical systems have been stalled for years because of the lack of recognition of the risk, the cost of rehabilitation, and political will.
Beyond California, there are many...
The Ruins Of The Unsustainable
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing Plans to Keep City Viable by Bulldozing 25% of It, 10K Homes
Battered Detroit wouldn’t have to struggle to pay for services in the vast areas of the city that are essentially abandoned if they didn’t exist—so it’s going to bulldoze them. Mayor Dave Bing did the calculus on a $300 million budget deficit and the 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 empty residential lots and...
Obama Falls Between Two Chairs
- Peter Baker, The Limits of Rahmism
When Obama ran for the presidency, liberals saw him as the crusading head of a movement to sweep in a new era of progressive policies on health care, climate change and national security, while independents and some Republicans saw him as a sort of postpartisan figure who would reach across party lines and end the ideological polarization of Washington....
Prepare For Disaster
A solid case against free trade and globalism.
-Alan Tonelson and Kevin L. Kearns, Trading Away Productivity
[…] if offshoring has been driving much of our supposed productivity gains, then the case for complete free trade begins to erode. If often such policies simply increase corporate profits at the expense of American workers, with no gains in true productivity, then they don’t...
2 tags
View anyone’s Tumblr as a huge mosaic. →
sarahcooley:
mdfsmash:
This is awesome
At a glance mine is mostly puppies, elephants, NNN, running, Saints, and family. Seems about right.
(via blakeley:homeofthevain: ninastotler and letthemeatkhake)
This is really awesome!
1 tag
Older Entrepreneurs
- Steven Greenhouse, People 55 and Older Start Own Businesses in Growing Numbers
More than five million Americans age 55 or older run their own businesses or are otherwise self-employed, according to the Small Business Administration. And the number of self-employed people ages 55 to 64 is soaring, the agency says, climbing 52 percent from 2000 to 2007.
[…]
A study by Babson College and...
1 tag
Clathrates Are Melting
There is a strong subtext in this piece: Don’t panic.
But this should be a cause for panic.
- Cornelia Dean, Study Says Undersea Release of Methane Is Under Way
Climate scientists have long warned that global warming could unlock vast stores of the greenhouse gas methane that are frozen into the Arctic permafrost, setting off potentially significant increases in global warming.
Now...
Climate Change Hits Home Foundations
Shifting Soil Is Threat to a House’s Foundation
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association indicates that since the 1990s there has been an accelerating trend nationwide toward more extended dry periods followed by downpours. Whether due to random climate patterns or global warming, the swings between hot and dry weather and severe rain or snow have profoundly affected soil...
1 tag
7 Years For Stealing A Package Of Cheese?
We howl at the moon when a woman in Saudi Arabia is caned for being alone with a man not her relative, but we put petty offenders behind bars for decades or life because of the Three Strikes rule. And this in a state on the verge of insolvency?
Cheese Thief Jailed for 7 Years in California
On Monday, more than a year after a man was arrested outside a market in California with a $3.99 bag of...
“Nations, like men, do not have wings; they make their journeys on foot, step by...”
– Juan Bautista Alberdi
1 tag
“Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene....”
– Brian Eno (via Kevin Kelly)
“You’re like a giant, cock-blocking robot, like developed in a secret...”
– Zombieland
