AN ODE TO SPRING (OF BANKS WE SING)

Lo, yon derivative swaps have taken wing.
'Tis an ode to spring. 'Tis of banks we sing.
Oh so recently, richly, wildly over-inflated,
their lending rooms are now tightly constipated.
But, "O Goldman," and also "O Sachs,"
...

Credit where credit is due. The TV show 24 is probably the most significant piece of political drama in the last decade.

On one hand, it is very likely that Barack Obama got elected because America had already had a serious black presidential candidate (one season)...

US economic growth has been strongest when our taxes have been high. During World War II, then under Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, our upper marginal tax rates were between 88-92%. Read those numbers again. They are astonishingly high. Those were our strongest growth years.

I never expected...

This is a multi-part series about God, religion, and politics. The previous parts of the series can be found here.

Part I says that we need to understand religion because, after a brief, semi-retirement of a few hundred years, religion has returned as the number one cause of violence,...

This is a set of essays about God & religion, science, morality & politics.

PART ONE said that it's important to study religion because it has become the primary source of violent conflict in the 21st Century.

Let's start with what everyone can agree on. There was a Great Depression, then the New Deal, then World War II.
Also, that America emerged from that war as the world's economic powerhouse and embarked on an astonishing period of growth, prosperity and power.

...

#1 - WHY WE NEED TO STUDY GOD

"Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century."
-Tony Blair

Mumbai. 9/11. Chechnya. Sectarian violence in Iraq. Somalia. Afghanistan. Nigeria.

The man with the most military power in...

The most interesting, and perhaps the most important, moment in philosophy in the last decade occurred on October 28, 2008, in a hearing of the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman.

The statements were made by Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987...

TAX CUTS: THEOLOGY, FACTS & TOTALLY F**KED

THE MYTH

Do tax cuts stimulate the economy?

Yes. Tax cuts allow people to keep more of their own money therefore they have more to invest and spend into the economy and more money...

It was Jesus Christ, if Matthew is to be believed, who said, "Love thine enemy." It is in that spirit that I write this belated valentine to Sarah Palin.

Sarah, I love you for having revealed unto the media the snarling heart of the beast that is the base (and...

Trick or Treat, America!
Your choice, an African American President, or the Great Depression.

Costume!
Put on your banker suit, get a box of apples, crayon a sign on cardboard, "Brother, can you spare a trillion?"

George Bush has a 25% approval...

Keep religion away from the ballot.

The Constitution, Article VI, Section 3, states "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." James Madison, the primary author of...

Reason #1 to be suspicious of the Big Big Bailout is George Bush.

This is not a Bush bash, it's actually an analysis. All major George Bush initiatives, and most of the minor ones too, have certain things in common.
1. They're failures.
2. They leave...

The first time I was in a car crash, I was six or seven years old.

That's a long time ago. But there are certain things about it that I remember quite vividly. My father was driving. The road was icy. We began to slide. This was in the days...

"Chamberlain's deal with Hitler has become shorthand for naive, weak leadership."
Newsweek, June 23, 2008

It was George Bush who raised the specter of Munich and appeasement. He raised it in reference to Iran and Palestine. He used it as a slur against Barack Obama because...

From Blog to Big Screen! Well, by way of a novel.

From Variety:

Mandalay finds 'Salvation Boulevard'

Ratliff to write, direct Beinhart adaptation
By MICHAEL FLEMING

Mandalay Independent Pictures has acquired screen rights to "Salvation Boulevard," the upcoming mystery novel by Larry Beinhart. George Ratliff will write the...

On June 10, 2008, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush.

On June 11, 2008, they were referred to the Judiciary Committee. According to NPR, the Associated Press and the like, they were sent there to die.

That's too...

Old Myths From the Age of Idiocy (The One We're in Now)
To be replaced by:
New Truths For The Age of Reality (One We Hope to Enter)

The Great Republican Disaster, from Reagan to Bush the Lesser, has been the Time of the Unreal....

"In 2001 painstaking postmortems of the Florida count, one by The New York Times and another by a consortium of newspapers, concluded that Mr. Bush would have come out slightly ahead, even if all the votes counted throughout the state had been retallied." Alessandra Stanley, New York Times, May...

READY ON DAY ONE!!!

In order to be READY ON DAY ONE, as both Hillary Clinton and John McCain claim they will be, you have to be ready a long time before that.

You have to come in with a plan. You have to come with a good organization....