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Monthly Archives: January 2011

Paul Ryan

This is rather personal for me. From Crooks and Liars: In Paul Ryan’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union address last week, he fretted over our social safety nets becoming hammocks. Ryan is the guy, as you probably know, who is hell bent on destroying Social Security and Medicare. But in turns out, […]

Book review with comment

I just finished Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia, and I highly recommend it. It is an excellent account of the scam artistry that destroyed the economy, and is, like the vampire squid to which he compares Goldman Sachs, (the arch, but not only villain of the book) sucking the life blood out of the country. It’s a […]

Friday Night Music

To the people of Egypt. Here’s hoping that they come out of this with something better than they’ve got now. I realize, by the way, that the word “crusade” is problematic, but you can’t have everything. It’s a wonderful song.

Friday Night Music

Back in the early 80s, my wife and I went through a period when we watched a lot of MTV. Those were the days when they actually played music videos, with VeeJays and everything. One performer we saw a lot of was Cindi Lauper. I’ve often wondered what happened to her. It seems she’s still […]

Democrats preserve the filibuster

If you were interested in knowing how interested Senate Democrats are in actually governing, you now have your answer: not very. I’ve said before (too lazy to find a link) that we would know whether the Democrats had any serious intentions to accomplish anything by whether or not they did anything substantive about the filibuster. […]

The Definition of Chutzpah

This is rich: Robert G. Burton wants UConn to give him his $3 million back.Burton gave the money to the University of Connecticut to build the Burton Family Football Complex in Storrs. Now, citing disagreements with the school’s athletic director and a desire to be consulted about the new football coach, he wants that donation […]

Thieving China

There’s no better blog, in my opinion, than Dean Baker’s Beat the Press, in which he skewers the press for its economics illiteracy, or, at times, for its seeming deliberate ignorance of the facts. Today he criticized the New York Times for characterizing the Chinese as thieves for stealing our intellectual property. With reference to […]

What’s with Enfield?

It would appear that the Republicans that are running Enfield have a secret agenda: enriching the ACLU, which is entitled to attorneys fees from losing defendants when it vindicates the constitution. After handing the ACLU a slam dunk victory when they insisted on having the high school graduation in a church, the Enfielders decided to […]

A tax by any other name

The New York Times is reporting that a move is afoot among the banks to charge a fee for debit cards. Right now, it appears that U.S. Bank is going to lead the way. Economic dogma would lead one to believe that other banks, in order to compete, would try to take U.S. Bank’s customers […]

Friday Night Music-Hey Joe

Part of the fun of this feature is the search process, which often involves sort of surfing a stream of consciousness. Last week I was looking for an acceptable version of Walk Away, Renee to post (there isn’t one), and, in one way or another ended up watching Rickie Lee Jones singing Chuck E’s in […]