elfs | Brainy Snack Pack: Not Just For Kids! (Reply)

The Quiet Coup: If you read only one long-form article today, make it this one, please. Simon Johnson lays out the case that the US is becoming a banana republic, an oligarchy in which ordinary citizens are burdened by debt to keep paying into a system that supports an ultra-rich tier, while we remain mired in impossible situations.

Despite the promise of the American dream, despite our capitalism and liberty, social mobility, the capacity to rise out of your own class, is lower in the US and Britain than it is on the European continent. And it's not going to get better, not with our current financial regime retaining the reins. Recent crises show that larger institutions retain the power and authority needed to survive a crisis, while smaller institutions fall by the wayside, leaving the financial world in even greater sway of the predominant institutions afterward than before. The quality of these institutions is not assessed, only their capacity to garner the attention of goverment.

Johnson shows how an "astonishing" number of de-regulatory moves in the past decade, mostly fueled by the shuttling of Wall Street and Administrative positions back and forth, has led to the current crisis. By exploiting our fear of massive collapse, our government has become "of course, partners," with the financial products industry, and left you and I doomed to pay the price for their failure.
Salmonella found in nation's pistachio supply: Kraft has alerted the FDA and issued a recall for approximately one million pounds of pistachios. Darn it, I like pistachios.
If we curb carbon emissions, we'll be denying plants their food!: Rep. John Shimkus argued the other day in Congress that if we curb carbon emissions we're "taking plant food from the atmosphere." Shimkus went on to say that mankind had absolutely nothing to fear from anything we did to the Earth because Man cannot destroy the Earth, only God can do that.

Steve Benen calls this the "Kill us all, let God sort us out" approach to environmental regulation.
Tax cuts for the rich and less regulation would still cost "a lot.": Last week, Congress watchers had a ball making fun of the Republican's "alternative budget," which had no numbers at all in it. It even became a Fark thread mocking the Powerpoint graphics.

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan promised that there would be a second document with "more specifics," and when asked what the deficit would be with that specific plan, Ryan admitted it would still be "a lot."
Reverse your email composition: I learned this a long time ago, and have been doing it ever since: always do your email backwards. Do your attachments first, your body second, the subject third, and the addressees last. That way, your message is guaranteed complete when you send it out. Also, if you can, limit yourself to exactly three sentences in the body of your email.
If Atheists Ruled the World: This is just too funny to pass up:
Fundies Say the Darndest Things! (hat tip: Boing Boing)