Via a reader email to Talking Points Memo: Regardless of which side of the political fence you’re on, you have to admire this type of personal animosity:
My next-door neighbor is a life-long Democrat who has spent the last 20 years as a registered Republican. He switched his registration just so he could vote against Arlen in the GOP primaries. When Arlen switched to the Democrats, so did my neighbor. I have disliked many a politician but have never been tempted to switch parties to get another opportunity to vote against him an extra time.
8. Notice that the amount of your pay withheld to pay for your health insurance is a lot more than it was last year.
I won’t ask you to dig up old paychecks from 2008 and 2007, but this has been going on for a long time. Every year, the amount of your paycheck withheld to pay for your health insurance goes up. A lot.
Tom Flanagan nailed it with this update on Twitter. The cities that voted for Scott Brown correlate to the Netflix zipcodes that rented Paul Blart Mall Cop. What does this say to you? If the internet says it, it must be true.
If you remember this summer, one of the crazies leading the charge against this year’s Census was Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. However, in the last couple months she’s taken a backseat in the anti-Census after realizing that Minnesota is one of the states at risk of losing a seat in Congress after population shifts are calculated. And which Minnesota seat would be cut? Apparently, Bachmann’s:
The really fun fact, as I’ve learned from Minnesota experts, is that Bachmann’s district would likely be the first to go if the state lost a seat. The other seats are all fairly regular-shaped, logical districts built around identifiable regions of the state (Minneapolis, St. Paul, the Iron Range, and so on). Bachmann’s district is made of what’s left over after such a process, twisting and turning from a small strip of the Wisconsin border and curving deep into the middle of the state. As such, the obvious course of action if the state loses a seat is to split her district up among its neighbors.
For some reason, Washington is afraid to push reform onto Wall St. It doesn’t make any sense, and now probably won’t happen. Incidentally, Wall St has determined they have more to gain propping up Republicans than they do donating to Democrats, who, you know, are actually nominally in charge. At least until 2010.
The big guns on Wall Street increased their political donations last month after increasing their lobbying muscle. Morgan Stanley’s Political Action Committee donated $110,000 in September, for example, of which Democrats got $43,000.
It’s going to be so awesome when this happens again and it’s worse!
Two links from two weeks ago that you may or may not have seen, but I had saved to share and not gotten around to it yet.
The Yes Men sent out a hoax press release from the US Chamber of Commerce saying they had changed their position on climate change. Obviously the media was interested in this so the Yes Men rented a room at the DC Press Club and gave a fake press conference. Then it gets really awesome when a representative of the Chamber shows up and shuts down the presser. And now, they’re getting sued for it
If you saw the profits made by the big banks last quarter and wondered how they were doing it, Philip Greenspun has an answer:
Because of the Collapse of 2008 financial reforms, the big investment banks are able to borrow money from the U.S. government at 0 percent interest. Then they can turn around and buy short-term bonds that pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Now they’re making 2 percent on whatever they borrowed. They can use leverage to increase this number, by pledging some of the bonds that they’ve already bought as collateral on additional bonds.
20 years ago, East German officials made the decision that East German citizens would be allowed to visit West Germany and West Berlin. East Berliners streamed to the Berlin Wall and West Berliners greeted them warmly on the other side.
10 years ago, I was in Berlin on the anniversary, and saw The Scorpions play ‘Winds of Change’ at the Brandenburg Gate accompanied by Mstislav Rostropovich and 165 other cellists. It was the most metal moment of my life. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find any video or photos of the event.
This year, they celebrated with U2, for whom, ironically, a wall was PUT UP.
In the Esquire article about Roger Ebert a few weeks back, Ebert mentioned his interview interview with Lee Marvin as one of his favorites, and now they've republished it online.
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