My Synths Are the Bomb - Kraak & Smaak
Honky Tonk Women - The Rolling Stones
Non-Stop Disco Powerpack - Beastie Boys
Blood Like Lemonade - Morcheeba
My Friend - Groove Armada
A Long Time - Mayer Hawthorne
California Soul - Marlena Shaw
Mirage - Santana
Will Do - TV on the Radio
Brother Sparrow - Agnes Obel
Santa Monica Dream - Agnus & Julia Stone
America - Simon & Garfunkel
Getting Ready For Christmas Day - Paul Simon
7 Heures du Matin - Jacqueline Taieb
When people are so under water, they find it hard to move to take new jobs, they find it hard to borrow or raise cash for education or start-ups, and banks become even more cautious about lending. Until we as a country figure out how to divvy up these losses on housing and let these markets clear and move on, they will be a serious drag on employment.Sigh.
Indeed, this mortgage mess just feeds the three other big problems undermining U.S. job growth today: weak aggregate demand, structural impediments and an epidemic of uncertainty about what the future holds for everything from health care to the rate of taxation to Social Security and Medicare spending to the availability of credit to the general direction of the economy — the sum of which has people holding back and thus undermining the government’s stimulus.
That was the last question I heard shouted by the press over the media din as Anthony Weiner copped to, er, sextweeting? The country is facing potential default, the leader of the GOP is a delusional maniac, the Middle East remains on a knife edge ... and the question in the headline above is still ringing in my ears.-Andrew Sullivan, on the embarrassing "news conference" held by Rep. Anthony Weiner (Democrat-NY) yesterday afternoon.
Weiner has not resigned and, frankly, I see little reason why he should. No one, so far as I can tell, was harassed, no one was abused, no actual sex even took place at all. I'm not sure one can even find any hypocrisy here.
Once in office, [then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney] saw that health care was on of the biggest data-driven problems that needed solving. It consumed thirty percent of the state budget, and costs were rising fast. "The Pac-Man of health insurance takes more and more, and ever year roads, bridges, schools, high education have to go down unless you want to keep raising taxes...That's why we decided to tackle health care."Not only did he tackle it, he worked with none other than Ted Kennedy to get it passed.
Pundits speak of [Sarah Palin's] lack of professional organization. What they don't speak of so often is her willingness to say and do things very few politicians will. She will play the race card powerfully, often and repeatedly. She will run a campaign against Obama as an un-American. She will run on hatred of elites, will turn every sad gaffe, lie or untruth into "truth", she will deploy religious motifs more effectively than any Republican candidate in modern times. In the last campaign she accused Obama of being a friend of terrorists, and was prevented from using Jeremiah Wright in the last few weeks of the campaign. She will make the Willie Horton ad look like happytalk.Do yourself a favor. If you want to know what
Most responsible politicians do not throw gasoline on a cultural tinderwood. But remember Tucson. Even then, she could show no restraint, no regret, no responsibility. Even when a politician was shot in the head, she tried to divide and conquer. And the [mainstream media] have no idea how to handle her, how to cope with her, how to expose her. She destroyed them last time and somehow perpetuated the meme that they destroyed her. This is a dangerous, dangerous person.
With Tea Party conservatives and many Republicans balking at raising the debt ceiling, let me offer them an example of a nation that lives up to their ideals.
It has among the lowest tax burdens of any major country: fewer than 2 percent of the people pay any taxes. Government is limited, so that burdensome regulations never kill jobs.
This society embraces traditional religious values and a conservative sensibility. Nobody minds school prayer, same-sex marriage isn’t imaginable, and criminals are never coddled.
The budget priority is a strong military, the nation’s most respected institution. When generals decide on a policy for, say, Afghanistan, politicians defer to them. Citizens are deeply patriotic, and nobody burns flags.
So what is this Republican Eden, this Utopia? Why, it’s Pakistan.