Without an ounce of snark or irony intended:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc[/youtube]
Category: Society Page 19 of 69
This is just boggling:
It has been nearly eight years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but the fears and anxieties they gave rise to continue to take a toll on the design of public buildings. Even the words “United States,†it seems — when spelled out in the wrong size and color — can be an unacceptable security risk.
Read the whole thing. My hope is that some enterprising young Representative hungry for a bit of attention can ride this for a bit, hopefully embarrassing the people that brought this about.
As of the midnight that just passed, DC recognizes the equality of all marriages performed outside of DC (still working on those performed inside).
Two quotes. From this article. Which you absolutely should read.
Fourteen million dollars.
That is what [Goldman Sachs] paid in taxes in 2008, an effective tax rate of exactly one, read it, one percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and benefits that same year and made a profit of more than $2 billion – yet it paid the Treasury less than a third of what it forked over to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million last year.
And:
It’s not always easy to accept the reality of what we now routinely allow these people to get away with; there’s a kind of collective denial that kicks in when a country goes through what America has gone through lately, when a people lose as much prestige and status as we have in the past few years. You can’t really register the fact that you’re no longer a citizen of a thriving first-world democracy, that you’re no longer above getting robbed in broad daylight, because like an amputee, you can still sort of feel things that are no longer there.
But this is it. This is the world we live in now.
You might not be able to change it, but you should know it. And it should inform all of your civic choices and votes. I understand how we ended up here. And step by step? It doesn’t seem so ridiculous. But stepping back? Fundamentally fucked up.
Nice:
For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few” — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors.
The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels it’s a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”
Your free press hard at work. Meanwhile, Dana Milbank is still whining about the Internets asking questions.
could just as easily have been the US’s “Freedom Filter”. And may yet be, if you keep thinking of the children.
More about China’s “Green Dam”.
Yes, I understand that I’m late to the game, but this is just too good to not share:
Not Maher’s biggest fan here, but he absolutely nails it, starting two minutes in:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtUAHPYYzeM[/youtube]
“Democrats are the new Republicans.” Indeed.