Bill Gates: Evil Businessman or Philanthropist Extraordinaire? Mac Diva has an ongoing dialog on this topic with one of her frequent readers, Jim, as well as some other bloggers. First, a little side note about the blogsphere: I believe techies are distinctly more libertarian than the general public and also distinctly more anti-Microsoft (this observation […]

Blogging in the TImes I’ve seen a few bloggers linking to the NYT story, “Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It“, which is mostly focused on personal blogs. Also today, the NYT has another story, “As Google Goes, So Goes the Nation“, that talks a bit about blogging. Dave Winer, whose blog archives go back […]

Red vs. Blue, Revisited Atrios correctly pointed out that I should have weighted the data in computing the average net receipts from or payments to the federal government for the two categories of states. Because the data in the Tax Foundation Report reports “[Federal] Expenditures per Dollar of Taxes”, simply averaging the numbers by state […]

Media Handlers An it would be amusing if it weren’t disturbing story in the NYT today on how the White House stages events and lighting and backdrops to market the president. For example, “…On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in […]

Red vs. Blue Atrios points out that Red states are stealing from blue states. So I went to the full report Atrios cites, added some color-coding, and made some graphs. While the subsidies are much larger in the Red states (those that in principle dislike government subsidizing anything), they are not quite as bad as […]

The ‘L’ Word Tapper is good today in Salon, and his theme segues nicely with Somerby here and here. AB

Stephen Moore CalPundit made a great catch, noting that Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth (a lobbying group devoted to Supply Side policies–Moore is on CNN, Fox, …, writes opinion pieces that appear in major newspapers, and gets quoted fairly often) can’t do simple math. This likely explains his devotion to Supply Side […]

I Didn’t Think this Would Make it Through the Senate From the NYT, among others: “Republicans Woo Moderates on Tax Cut“. It looks like the Republicans have 50 votes in the Senate, with Dick Cheney holding the tie-breaking 51st, for an amendment to replace the Grassley-proposed and Senate Finance Committee approved version of the dividend […]

More Jayson Blair Eric Boehlert of Salon has a story devoted to the race angle. One quote from Jim Dwyer, “a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at the Times” struck me as interesting: …”I’ve worked at six newspapers and seen alcoholic shipwrecks and drug shipwrecks, and people who’ve fallen apart through nervous breakdowns, and they’re all brought […]

The 25th Ammendment… …can be read here. Basically, the President gets to comeback when he says he’s ready, and it takes a majority of the cabinet to initiate a Congressional vote to prevent the President’s return. Should that occur, it takes a 2/3 majority of both houses to prevent the President from returning to office […]