Robert Reich points to some ominous numbers suggesting that the real economy (focusing beyond the currently profitability of Wall Street) is headed for a double dip. He suggests that it is not in the interest of either political party to suggest otherwise.
Greta Christina explains why so many atheists are angry. [Note: I had originally linked to a site that claims that someone other than Greta Christina had written it. Greta wrote to tell me that this was incorrect, and I have now linked to her site and attributed this writing and these ideas to her.]
What is Elizabeth Warren's attitude toward the "free market"? It's not what it is often portrayed to be, as described by Madonna Gauding of Occasional Planet:
She does not envision new rules and regulations as the main focus of how the CFPB can best protect consumers. Her concern is that they are like “putting down fence posts on the prairie: They can be too easy to run around.” Rather than increased regulation, she wants to make markets for consumer financial products and services work in a fair, transparent, and competitive manner. “That means creating a level playing field where both parties to the transaction understand the terms of the deal, where the price and the risk of products are clear, and where direct comparisons can be made from one product to another.”
The radical right will say and do anything in their attempts to discredit, disgrace and dishonor Barack Obama, America’s first African-American president. The ruling Republican leadership does nothing to dispel falsehoods about President Obama but, tacitly endorses these falsehoods in their attempts to “make sure Barack Obama is a one term President!” The tactics and accusations aren’t new, almost all of them are from previous Republican playbooks and most have been used in Republican primary and general election campaigns for the past 40 years. Some other accusations are vicious racist paranoid rants of a more vocal lunatic fringe that has come to dominate the right as more and more corporate and rich ultra-conservative donor dollars are pumped into any effort that might bear the fruit of the continued destruction of President Obama, the Democratic Party, unions and the American Middle Class. It’s as though the right has taken all the racist, fascist, and corporatist twisted deep blue stygian depths of paranoid lunacies of past Republican abuses of government and recast President Obama, the Democratic Party, unions and the Middle Class as the “perpa-traitors” instead of the actual Republicans who have already done exactly what the right claims to fear the most. My personal favorite is “Obama is the anti-christ!” Polls show that 25%, a substantial minority, of Republican voters actually believe that President Barack Obama is the anti-christ. If these folks would stop drinking the Jonestown Kool Aid they could see that their personal insanities about Armageddon and the end-times are not here because an African American was elected President of the United States in 2008. See here, here and here. [More. . . .]
I stumbled across this earlier post recently and found it quite helpful. The ideas weren't my own, but I was reporting on the work of Jonathan Haidt. Real-world persuasiveness is about far more than the reasons and rational thinking so often offered by Democrats.