The Fox News immediate spin on Obama's election was to talk about all the expectations and promises and question whether he'll live up to them. It seems with all that disappointing to do, Obama has been pragmatic, and gotten started early ( Read more... )

There was, rather, a tremendous sense of empowerment in the notion that someone more like them was going to take up residence down the street: someone younger, someone blacker, someone poorer, someone who knew that the majesty of America exists not just in the tranquility of its small towns but also in the bustle of its cities.

- Nate Silver on

I watched Of Mice And Men (1992). What a tremendously stressful movie. Steinbeck's foreshadowing is so universally negative that even in the most hopeful moments the dreams of the characters seem doomed to collapse, and the movie maintains this feeling throughout. Entire scenes are thickly stressful, like the tense silence in the scene where Sandy' ( Read more... )

Sometimes I endeavor to be culturally literate.

Upon analysis, it has some issues.I recently explored the idea of a "NIT" or negative income tax, conducted through a flat tax with a basic guaranteed income paid to every adult citizen. Rather than just take the proponents' words for it, I built a google documents spreadsheet depicting eighty different scenarios, from 15% to 60% as the target tax ( Read more... )

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I used to play Ultima Online, and listen to the Indigo Girls, at the same time. I did this so much that I later found that whenever I listened to Indigo Girls, I'd have incredibly vivid flashbacks to playing Ultima Online. It doesn't even have to be songs I know, just the sound of Amy and Emily's voices over their acoustic guitars, and I'd see ( Read more... )

Recognition of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, and those rights derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.

The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines and prohibits torture. The US ( Read more... )

Fox & Friends airs altered photos of NY Times reporters

Man! Fox & Friends don't get no respect. Last year they got torn up for repeating false claims about Obama being muslim, and got sued for slander by a school superintendent in a non-political case when they ran a parody story then claimed it was true. The lawsuit got thrown out by a judge who ( Read more... )

Senator Gordon Smith is up for re-election in Oregon this fall. He's a reasonably popular moderate second-term Republican (12 years in office) with a tendency to go with the flow and vote with the majority on hot button issues. He has gone against his party in support of withdrawing troops from Iraq, but has been a bit more wishy-washy about it ( Read more... )