In 2010, Obama will have a miserable year, NATO may lose in Afghanistan, the UK gets a regime change, China needs to chill, India's factories will overtake its farms, Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum, the stimulus will need an exit strategy, the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2", African football will unite Korea, conflict over natural resources will grow, Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled, the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable), technology will grow ever more ubiquitous, we'll all charge our phones via USB, MBAs will be uncool, the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so the Tens begin.

The Economist: The World in 2010. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Nov 14, 2009 - 40 comments

As I write this, I realize I am about to do something that, for the most part, is never done. I am going to criticize a critic. Filmmakers are never supposed to respond to a critic about their work. It's an unspoken rule of engagement. But in this case, I feel compelled. [more inside]
posted by philip-random on Nov 10, 2009 - 54 comments

The only open seat for Congress this election day, in New York's 23rd district, was shaping up to be an interesting 3-way race with possible implications for the future of the Republican party. But after today's Sienna poll showing Democratic Bill Owens leading in this traditionally Republican district, the Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava has announced she is suspending her campaign. Is the race now a shoe-in for Conservative Doug Hoffman, already endorsed by Pawlenty, Palin and others in the far-right of the party? Or will Dede's supporters, who were drawn to her her more moderate stance, simply stay home?
posted by saffry on Oct 31, 2009 - 154 comments

Asset inflation, price inflation, and the great moderation
Economists as penance have been trying to locate the origins of the great chain of causation that has led us to our present situation -- the worrying conclusion is that problems remain -- imbalances precipitated by a labour supply shock [1,2] and/or (the rise of) machines [1,2] have not gone away and continue to persist in decimating the ('developed world's) middle class, as evidenced by high and rising unemployment, which has led to a crisis in central banking itself. [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Oct 31, 2009 - 31 comments

Veto is a four-letter word (google quickview, here's the PDF):.Governor Schwarzenegger of California, at odds with the state legislature but ever the poet, vetoes Assembly Bill 1176 with a nice little acrostic.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Oct 28, 2009 - 72 comments

Is California finished?
posted by shakespeherian on Oct 28, 2009 - 110 comments

While his uncle hits the motivational speaker circuit, 33 year old George P. Bush ships off to war: other than being arrested at 18 for burglarizing the home of an ex-girlfriend, George P. Bush appears to have all the right credentials to carry the Bush legacy well into the future. And while his dad wants the GOP to shed its "old white guy" image, some are positioning George P. Bush to be America's first Hispanic president.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 on Oct 27, 2009 - 102 comments

Do you feel disappointed in government? Does Obama seem a little too meek for the Presidency? Do you wish he'd make larger structural reforms? Maybe, suggests Matt Taibbi, there's an answer. [more inside]
posted by jock@law on Oct 23, 2009 - 43 comments

There was a rivalry between the parties, of course, but in Potter's account, it was more like the rivalry between Cal and Stanford than that between today's Republicans and Democrats. The parties had somewhat different constituencies and pledged fealty to a different set of men, but each attempted to encompass as much of the political spectrum as possible rather than merely half of it. The story of the 1850s, by these lights, is about how this changed.

Left vs. Right , the Infographic
posted by blue_beetle on Oct 21, 2009 - 70 comments

You know, if I ran the BNP, I think I would think twice about this whole "trusting people with the members list" idea.
posted by Pope Guilty on Oct 20, 2009 - 90 comments

"We only went into Iraq because of oil, you know." "We only appease Saudi Arabia because of oil, you know." To hear people talk sometimes, you'd think they never used oil. - David Mitchell on hypocrisy and politics, and how we blame our leaders for making decisions based on what we want, not on what we say.
posted by Artw on Oct 19, 2009 - 74 comments

"Join in NOW and help Capture Obama and the renegade Cong. Defeat the Union Troops and other allies of the former President and help safeguard American Freedom. " It's the online survivalist game/wish fulfillment entitled "2011: Obama's Coup Fails" (via) [more inside]
posted by bardic on Oct 18, 2009 - 171 comments

The Senate Finance Committee has approved the plan proposed by Max Baucus.
posted by reenum on Oct 13, 2009 - 177 comments

BNP Wives. A 46 minute documentary following three female members of the far-right British National Party.
posted by afx237vi on Oct 11, 2009 - 32 comments

Against Transparency. "How could anyone be against transparency? Its virtues and its utilities seem so crushingly obvious. But I have increasingly come to worry that there is an error at the core of this unquestioned goodness. We are not thinking critically enough about where and when transparency works, and where and when it may lead to confusion, or to worse. And I fear that the inevitable success of this movement--if pursued alone, without any sensitivity to the full complexity of the idea of perfect openness--will inspire not reform, but disgust. The 'naked transparency movement,' as I will call it here, is not going to inspire change. It will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff." [Via]
posted by homunculus on Oct 11, 2009 - 94 comments

"This may truly be the most important new painting of the twenty first century." The McNaughton Fine Art Company presents "One Nation Under God" [cache], an... interesting take on American history in a nifty zoom interface. Artist John McNaughton, who calls himself "the only living artist in the world today" to practice the Barbizon School of French Impressionism, has an extensive body of less opinionated work for you to admire. Interview. Character list.
posted by Rhaomi on Oct 6, 2009 - 305 comments

The Conservative Bible Project. Rod Dreher of Belief.net offers further analysis of a budding new Wiki project to rewrite the Holy Bible to eliminate what some young conservatives apparently now view as liberal bias in the scriptures (via Harpers).
posted by saulgoodman on Oct 5, 2009 - 304 comments

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a talk at the Newspaper Association of America convention on April 9, 2009 in San Diego. He speaks about how Google and newspapers might co-exist in the future. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Oct 4, 2009 - 78 comments

Stephen Harper, Canada's Prime Minister, sings "With A Little Help From My Friends" at a gala last night in Ottawa with Yo Yo Ma and the National Arts Centre Orchestra. Harper survived a confidence vote this week with a little help from his former sworn enemies.
posted by salishsea on Oct 4, 2009 - 43 comments

Missouri's lack of conflict of interest rules for its teachers' pension funds creates predictable problems [more inside]
posted by reenum on Oct 2, 2009 - 25 comments

What kind of health insurance would you have as a federal government employee? The Office of Personnel Management would like to help you decide among the gazillion plan choices you have. Perhaps you are a Congress member? Then head on down to the Attending Physician of the United States, "It's one of the, quote, benefits of being in Congress," Kagen said. "They have physicians and nurses that will see you on the spot, on the beck and call." (link to single page print version). [more inside]
posted by sio42 on Sep 30, 2009 - 42 comments

42.7 percent of all statistics are made up: After Strategic Visions refused to share the methodology behind some of their polling, Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight analyzed the firm's poling results and found evidence of fraud. Strategic Visions responds to The Hill. More amusingly, Nate went on a look at an even more questionable study by the same company claiming that only 23 percent of Oklahoma students know that George Washington is the first president. [more inside]
posted by The Devil Tesla on Sep 27, 2009 - 76 comments

Michael Sandel's "Justice" has long been one of the most popular courses at Harvard. Now for the first time the class is being broadcast online. The site for "Justice." [more inside]
posted by grobstein on Sep 27, 2009 - 25 comments

The New York Review of Ideas is a web magazine reporting about New York commerce, literature and politics. The Manzine is actually £2 for the print version, but some of the its best is also online.
posted by netbros on Sep 25, 2009 - 4 comments

A three part profile on Glenn Beck by Salon.com's Alexander Zaitchik A morality play in three acts, or, how Glenn Beck parlayed a parlayed his finely honed skills as a drug addled morning zoo shock jock, into the media force that is making America dumber by the minute. Some excellent profiling by Alexander Zaitchik of Salon.com: [more inside]
posted by psmealey on Sep 24, 2009 - 220 comments

"The Obama Haters" is a horribly inaccurate title. The article itself is a 25-years-later review of Richard Hofstadter's 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Reading this essay (and the Slate article today) gives rise to thought on what led to the McCarthyism that Hofstadter wrote in reaction to, and what might lie in our very near future....regarding the Obama haters.
posted by Kickstart70 on Sep 23, 2009 - 73 comments

Eric Holder releases newly revamped state secrets policy. In the face of a storm of recent criticisms from political commentators that President Obama's policies on state secrets privileges represent a continuation of the Bush administration's policies, the Obama administration has maintained all along that these policies were undergoing comprehensive Justice Department review, with the intent of releasing a new set of comprehensive rules governing the invocation and abuse of state secrets. Today, the Obama administration spelled out its new state secrets policy. [more inside]
posted by saulgoodman on Sep 23, 2009 - 89 comments

ACORN already drew fire last year during the election, accused of voter fraud, although ACORN points out there was no real fraud going on [pdf]. Now, they are facing controversy over a recent video showing ACORN officials offering advice to amateur actors posing as a pimp and prostitute on what to say when seeking a mortgage for a brothel. A second video captured an ACORN worker claiming to have murdered her husband (she later said she was simply messing with the filmmakers). As a result of these recent controversies, the Senate voted 83-7 to prohibiting the use of funds to fund ACORN. [more inside]
posted by Deathalicious on Sep 16, 2009 - 159 comments

Curt Flood's suit of Baseball. In 1970, baseball's best center fielder, Curt Flood filed a lawsuit against Major League Baseball and its reserve clause.
posted by klangklangston on Sep 15, 2009 - 61 comments

"Matt Latimer worked as one of Dubya’s speechwriters during the president’s final twenty-two months in office. He was there to help sell the surge to a skeptical public. He was there as we pretended that the fundamentals of the economy were strong. And he was there to see a president who failed to grasp his own $700 billion bailout package—even as he was pitching it to the American public on live TV."

Get This Rat a Lawyer! A recent target of right wing anger has been Obama administration "czars", a term used to denote appointed presidential advisers not subject to Senate approval. Opponents of "czars" were recently emboldened by the resignation of Anthony "Van" Jones, who served from March 16 to September 5, 2009 as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. An additional target of the hunt for Obama's czars is Cass Sunstein, a constitutional-law professor at Harvard University, who was confirmed Thursday as the director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. [more inside]
posted by ND¢ on Sep 15, 2009 - 67 comments

Beth Rickey, instrumental in thwarting the rise of neo-Nazi David Duke in Louisiana politics, died this weekend at the age of 53 in a Santa Fe motel.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Sep 15, 2009 - 34 comments

Many UK FreeCycle branches have suddenly broken away from the American parent, as a response to what they see as increasingly centralised (even dictatorial) management. Apparantly this has been boiling for a while. Now, they are calling themselves Freegle. [more inside]
posted by Grangousier on Sep 14, 2009 - 58 comments

Conservative Republican California State Assemblyman Michael Duvall (Orange County) didn't realize his mic was live, moments before the start of a legislative hearing this past July. So when the 54-year-old married father of two began describing his ongoing affairs with two different women in very graphic detail for the benefit of a colleague seated next to him, he had no idea that he was being recorded. The story was picked up by KCAL, who cited unnamed sources that said Duvall was describing affairs with two married lobbyists. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Sep 9, 2009 - 216 comments

How Charlie Sheen spent his 20 minutes with Barack Obama
posted by miss lynnster on Sep 9, 2009 - 119 comments

Social mobility, income inequality and wealth disparities. [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Sep 7, 2009 - 54 comments

A new documentary by a Swedish-based Italian filmmaker examines how media mogul turned two-time president Silvio Berlusconi's 30-year grip on Italian television has shaped the country, its politics, its culture and society. Erik Gandini's Videocracy, which screens at the Venice Film Festival, starts 30 years ago, when Berlusconi introduced a quiz show whose female contestants stripped for the camera, and charts 30 years of showgirls, celebrities, reality TV shows and Berlusconi's rise to political power, and interviews characters of the system, including a talentless but fame-hungry TV contestant, a fascist-sympathising media fixer, and a paparazzo/extortionist turned celebrity. More details here and (with a trailer) here. [more inside]
posted by acb on Sep 5, 2009 - 14 comments

Next Tuesday, Sept. 8, speaking at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va. President Obama will address the youth of America during a live television broadcast urging them to stay in school. Some school districts, bowing to parent pressure, have decided not to show the speech during school. [more inside]
posted by Secret Life of Gravy on Sep 4, 2009 - 588 comments

TARP investments yield 15% returns. Almost trom the start, critics characterized the TARP program that first began under the Bush administration and that continued through early this year under President Obama as a taxpayer funded giveaway, while government officials insisted it was a long-term investment program whose initial costs would eventually turn a profit as economic recovery began. Now the NY Times reports that the program has already yielded $4 billion in profits, and a separate report reveals that related Federal Reserve loan programs aimed at economic stabilization have returned $14 billion in profits.
posted by saulgoodman on Aug 31, 2009 - 119 comments

Tax authorities using social networks to find tax cheats Yet another reason to be careful who you accept a friend request from.
posted by reenum on Aug 30, 2009 - 25 comments

Japan's opposition party, The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), is projected to win a landslide victory tomorrow, ending the 52-year reign of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Furthermore, according to a survey conducted by the popular Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the DPJ could win a two-thirds majority, enabling them to roll legislation through the Diet unabated. Despite the projections, the two parties are still battling hard. Washington is following these elections very closely, because of the man who could be the next prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Aug 29, 2009 - 46 comments

Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high,
There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

The MGM musical version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz turned 70 this week. It wasn't the first time it was a movie, nor the last time it was a movie or a movie musical. [more inside]
posted by crossoverman on Aug 28, 2009 - 53 comments

An Afghan Reconstruction Horror Story A sad look at the lack of progress in reforming Afghanistan's infrastructure.
posted by reenum on Aug 25, 2009 - 9 comments

RC Soles, the longest serving NC state legislator, aged 75, shot a young man who was allegedly trying to kick in the front door of his home in Tabor City. According to his 97 year old father,“It's a bunch of drunk heads and drug heads trying to force him to keep giving them money. That's my personal opinion.” But this is not the “younger” Soles first brush with scandal.
posted by Huplescat on Aug 24, 2009 - 41 comments

New Zealand voters want to smack their children. 1.4 million New Zealanders (87.6% of votes cast) have voted "No" to the question "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?". Regardless of opinion, this seemingly innocent question has been steeped in controversy. Voters have been confused, ambivalent, and perhaps misunderstood the law. The Prime Minister indicated he would ignore the result, and even the referendum initiators (intent on legalising smacking for corrective purposes) are divided on what the result means, some wanting explicit rights to use wooden spoons. [more inside]
posted by pivotal on Aug 21, 2009 - 94 comments

US News reports that in a new tell-all book, Tom Ridge admits manipulating terror threat levels for political motives. In the forthcoming book, Ridge reportedly acknowledges for the first time that he was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he "saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over." But as The Atlantic points out, Ridge apparently gave in to the White House demands anyway, resigning only after the election. Huffington Post also provides additional discussion on this developing story.
posted by saulgoodman on Aug 20, 2009 - 139 comments

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of United States of America gives us all the right to bear arms. It means that as Americans we can keep fire arms without governmental infringement. A few days ago many Americans chose to exercise this right at political Town Hall meetings on health care reform throughout the United States. Some are defending these actions. Others are not. The NRA is remaining quiet.
posted by Mastercheddaar on Aug 20, 2009 - 255 comments

Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table - I have no interest in doing it! Congressman Barney Frank confronts a woman at a town hall meeting who compared Obama to Hitler.
posted by crossoverman on Aug 19, 2009 - 350 comments

How American Health Care Killed My Father After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem. (via mr) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Aug 18, 2009 - 144 comments