"That the tone coming out of CPAC is as hard-edged as it has been ("Al Franken and ACORN: How Liberals are Destroying the American Election System"; "Health Care: The Train Wreck Ahead"; "Bailing Out Big Business: Are We All Socialists Now?") reflects this core fear that Democratic control of government means more and more aspects of life will be filled with interactions like this one. A lot of the spinoff spew that takes shape in prejudice behaviors of intolerance derives, I believe, from fear that a force bigger than me is taking from me with no recourse. Prejudice is about looking for targets to blame for the powerlessness."

"Not as immediately accessible as Ghosts, April starts with "Lost Verses" and "The Light", two long, slow songs that are together nearly twenty minutes long. This is Kozelek time, and it takes a moment to adjust. But once you do, the nuances of the songs' melodies and arrangements gradually announce themselves, like lengthy jam tacked onto "Lost Verses" and the grinding electric strums that fill the spaces between the vocals on "The Light". Lyrically more than musically, "Lost Verses" makes for an effective opener, as Kozelek seems to consider all the things that he has neglected to write down: "Lost verses well up my eyes and ears," he sings plaintively, fearing that he'll become a lost verse to the people he loves. That sense of faltering memory colors April in shades of rainy grays and deep blues. It's a spring album that still pines for previous seasons." I am no Pitchfork slut, but this pretty well sums up how I feel about /April/, which I really like!

"In other words, athletes who took the Clear were literally in the clear. They had not committed a crime. The drug could not be described as a steroid under federal law. Athletes were arguably not even lying if they’d taken it and then denied under oath that they’d taken a steroid. Taking the Clear was not illegal. Nor was taking human-growth hormone or erythropoietin, the endurance drug. Sure, they were banned by many sports and you needed a prescription for HGH or EPO, but that didn’t mean it was a crime to use them." I'm literally stunned.

Before becoming Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers liked to tell a hypothetical story to distill the trend. The increase in inequality, Mr. Summers would say, meant that each family in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a $10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners.

Right now the deficit is huge thanks to temporary factors (at least we hope they’re temporary): a severe economic slump is depressing revenues and large sums have to be allocated both to fiscal stimulus and to financial rescues.

But if and when the crisis passes, the budget picture should improve dramatically. Bear in mind that from 2005 to 2007, that is, in the three years before the crisis, the federal deficit averaged only $243 billion a year. Now, during those years, revenues were inflated, to some degree, by the housing bubble. But it’s also true that we were spending more than $100 billion a year in Iraq.

I'm turning into a soft leftie, because this makes me want to go to recycled paper. :sigh:

"All of that speaks to why I don’t allow comments. Maybe those rebuttals would have been written if I did, but I can’t be sure. What I do know is that the authors took the time to call me out on their own turf, and I think it made for some great debate." It's the consideration I have about killing comments.

I just had a nerdgasm. [Also, I totally missed that Cameron Marlow left Yahoo! for Facebook. Awesome.]