I hang my hat at Tumblr
This is how I got here: Phoenix Skyharbor Airport (circa: my childhood)
Is this painting still there? It may be the greatest piece of airport art ever.
From lighthouse to ice house: Sunlight illuminates the ice-covered Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse in Ohio on Dec. 14. Waves that crashed into the lighthouse froze in subzero temperatures, coating the structure and its navigation lights in multiple layers of ice. (Lauren Jorgensen/U.S. Coast Guard via AP)
Today in Cold.
Here’s a new interactive map from Measure of America that maps the life expectancy at birth. It’s pretty obvious that living in cities/high population density is one of the largest contributions to life expectancy. New York is ranked #3 and Mississippi is dead last with a 6 year difference.
Wealth = health
Education = healthRural America does not equal health.
? I don’t think “Rural America” has anything to do with this—take a look at the Dakotas, for instance, or Western Minnesota, or Kansas. Per capita income is probably the best, and only real, indicator here.
(via librarysciences)
“I trust in Portlanders sense of fairness; that bad actions by one member of any group does not and should not be generalized or applied more widely to other members of that same group. Otherwise, as part of the biggest racial group in Portland, European-Americans, producing many crimes daily, would be in deep trouble.”
(via matthew)
“I’ll just say that I remain astounded — and deeply disturbed — by a political culture that does everything it can to cut taxes for rich people, but can’t be bothered to care about the depression-level conditions among African Americans, or the permanent underclass that will come as a result.” (Jamelle Bouie, Say Hello to the New Permanent Underclass. | The American Prospect)
Read this.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s … all of the above!
A flock of starling moves in for a hug as a U.S. Navy plane lands in Arkansas.
This dramatic image was taken by Kaia Larsen, who had been driving past the runway at Fort Smith Regional Airport in Arkansas.
‘They all started to fly towards the plane like a big ball,’ she said. ‘I realised something strange was going on.”
Things have gotten out of hand, here in Arkansas…
In Which We Learn Fareed Zakaria is Capable of Vastly Overestimating the American Public
The people have spoken, or at least 42 percent of registered voters have spoken, which is 90 million of America’s 300 million people, and the verdict is clear. The Republicans have come to power. But whether they will be able to stay in power will surely depend on whether they’re able to fulfill their central campaign promise, which is to cut down big government.
I’m going to lead - leave aside the question of whether cutting government and government spending is the right thing for the economy now. We actually have a great debate on that very topic coming up. But I’m simply holding the Republican Party to its pledge.
The reason I think this will be tough for them to stay politically popular, if they renege on this pledge, is because we’ve been here before. You see, this is actually the third Republican revolution.
The first was Ronald Reagan’s when he came into office in 1980 and promised to cut taxes and cut spending. He did the first bit, enacting a massive reduction in taxes and closed hundreds of loopholes. It was a landmark piece of legislation.
The problem is he never got around to the second part. The result by 1985 was that the federal deficit as a percent of GDP had doubled. It only went down slightly after that because Reagan agreed to several tax increases. But his budget director, David Stockman, argued that the Reagan revolution failed because Congressional Republicans refused to cut spending.
The second revolution was Newt Gingrich’s. That was more successful, and Gingrich deserves some credit. Much of the credit, however, must go to the man who was president during those years, Bill Clinton. Clinton’s years in office saw the lowest average deficits in decades ending up with a massive surplus, and that is because he both raised taxes and cut spending.
Next up, the Bush years, with Republicans controlling all levers of government after 2002, an ideal time to fulfill the Republican promise, to close the deficit, right? Wrong. It turned out to be the most reckless expansion of government spending in two generations. The two percent budget surplus he inherited from Clinton turned into a two percent deficit. Why? Tax cuts, prescription drugs, and two wars, all unpaid for. The debt exploded.
So, this time, if the Republicans look at the deficit and promise to close it, but then cut taxes and continue to expand spending, the public surely, at some point, will say, fool me three times, shame on me.
Or How About This: “Don’t Try White-Collar Criminals. Lock Them Up”
Jack Goldsmith’s NYT op-ed the other day, in which he argues that anyone the government decides is a terrorist is too dangerous to be allowed a trial in open court, and therefore the government should be allowed to simply detain that person indefinitely, was nicely written, and frightening in its reasoning. Because it misses the fundamental point of any system founded on the rule of law: The right to confront your accuser.
This is one of those policies that people think is just fine when it’s aimed at people not like them—that is, right now if your name is Jack Goldsmith you’re in little danger of being arrested at JFK and shipped off to Syria to be tortured for 10 months because somebody thought your name sounded kind of Arab and, you know, terrorist. But if your name is Maher Arar, you just might be.
In Goldsmith’s world, if President Obama decides tomorrow that my mother is dangerous, he should have the right to keep her in prison for at long as he wants. But someone isn’t a “terrorist,” or a “criminal,” just because the U.S. government says so. We have a legal system to decide this.
Thirdway.org proposes a taxpayer receipt. The IRS breaking down how the check you sent them was spent. Although that’d be one more receipt to keep track of.
Here’s what it would look like for FY09.
(via Ezra Klein)
This is very smart, because it expresses the information in a way that’s a lot easier to understand; it especially shows how Afghanistan and Iraq are just sucking the life out of the federal treasury.
