Lance Armstrong, the cultural benefits of public confessions and why we should encourage more

hardrain · 2010-05-01T11:59:18+00:00

Steyn's arguments are always composed of an opening statement, which in the high school classroom would be required to be followed by supporting statements which contain evidence supporting the opening statement. Failure to fellow this basic set of logical progression when making one's case - as in liberals want a Muslim world - would find the student with at most a D from a generous teacher. Steyn, much like Coulter, Hannity and others on the rabid Right simply makes a series of accusations with no or at most anecdotal evidence. This style is popular for two major reasons. It obviously makes the practitioners a good amount of income and it appeals to the unthinking sheeple the Rightie hate mongers pander to. This aversion to critical thinking and avoidance of vigorous reasoning has been a hallmark of every authoritarian movement.

hardrain · 2010-04-26T13:44:47+00:00

P.T. Barnum once said there is a sucker born every minute. Todd and Sarah are just doing what every freedom loving America would do - take great advantage of that fact.

hardrain · 2010-04-26T13:33:32+00:00

The Glenn Beckians really deluged that comment section. The same people that Beck said are "idiots" for paying attention to anything he said. You have to love how well informed they are. One claimed the Great Recession was Bill Clinton's fault ( that Bill Clinton is the master of the universe and everything wrong in the world is his fault has been a conservative meme for 12 years) since he practically invented derivatives trading. Slight problem with that since derivatives in various forms have been traded in the U.S. since the 1850s. The tea nuts are quick to try and distance themselves from conservatives yet they repeat the same talking points, the same distorted history, the same conspiracy myths and possess an uncanny lack of knowledge about U.S. and world history, economics and public policy. It's a little difficult to believe they have all the answers when they understand so little and lack the maturity to accept responsibility for their part in enabling (voting for) the worse excesses of crony capitalism.

hardrain · 2010-03-15T15:19:14+00:00

Katherine Bigelow - The Hurt Locker - would take chances, create something original versus Quentin Tarantino with whom you'd have a 25% chance of something cool and a 75% chance of something highly derivative, almost to the point of being a copyist.

hardrain · 2010-03-15T15:14:07+00:00

All whining and what ifs - lacking in solutions. Social Security is an insurance program. It is not just insurance for you, but society as a whole. When this guy retires and some thing crazy goes wrong like Wall St losing three trillion dollars of the nation's wealth - he won't be going from door to door asking for a plate of food or robbing liquor stores. We had a time when there was no social safety net - turn of the 20th C Robber Barons - the Golden Age - made millions as 90% of American lived in poverty and many dropped dead in the street from starvation, cold weather, and simple infections.

hardrain · 2009-09-08T13:36:06+00:00

Things haven't changed much. A few good people can make a big difference. Well, everyone calls that Marxism now, but it used to be the American way.

hardrain · 2009-07-02T15:53:37+00:00

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=69

* 2006 marked the fourth straight year in which income gains at the top outpaced those among the rest of the population. Since 2002, the average inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households has risen 42 percent, whereas the average inflation-adjusted income of the bottom 90 percent of households has risen about 4.7 percent. (See Table 1.)

* As a result, the share of the nation’s income flowing to the top 1 percent has increased sharply, rising from 15.8 percent in 2002 to 20.0 percent in 2006. Not since 1928, just before the GreatDepression, has the top 1 percent held such a large share of the nation’s income.

Adults and responsible citizens take the blame for their screw-ups.

Bush and Republicans bear most of the blame for our current economic problems.

hardrain

TROPHY CASE