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Comment by doone on April 18, 2012 at 7:34am

 Atrios / Eschaton:

THE ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE  —  Tom Friedman.  —  Tom Friedman, artist's conception.  —  Friedman possesses all of the qualities that make a pundit truly wankerific.  He fetishizes a false “centrism” which is basically whatever Tom Friedman likes, imagining the Friedman agenda …

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Discussion: The Impolitic, Hullabaloo, The Agonist, Brad DeLong, Lawyers, Guns & Money and Guardian

Comment by doone on April 15, 2012 at 4:48pm

50 AMAZING NUMBERS ABOUT TODAY'S ECONOMY

Morgan Housel in The Motely Fool:

50. The S&P 500 is down 3% from 2000. But a version of the index that holds all 500 companies in equal amounts (rather than skewed by market cap) is up nearly 90%.

49. According to economist Tyler Cowen, "Thirty years ago, college graduates made 40 percent more than high school graduates, but now the gap is about 83 percent."

48. Of all non-farm jobs created since June 2009, 88% have gone to men. "The share of men saying the economy was improving jumped to 41 percent in March, compared with 26 percent of women," reports Bloomberg.

47. A record $6 billion will be spent on the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Adjusted for inflation, that's 60% more than the 2000 elections.

46. In 2010, nearly half of Americans lived in a household that received direct government benefits. That's up from 37.7% in 1998.

45. Adjusted for inflation, federal tax revenue was the same in 2009 as it was 1997, even though the U.S. population grew by 37 million during that period.

44. In November 2009, the nationwide unemployment was around 10%. But dig into demographics, and the rates are incredibly skewed. The unemployment rate for young, uneducated African-American males was 48.5%. For Caucasian females over age 45 with a college degree, it was 3.7%.

Posted by Robin Varghese at 04:03 PM | Permalink 

Comment by doone on April 15, 2012 at 12:04pm

A map to offend us all

Comment by Dallas (on hiatus) on April 13, 2012 at 12:00pm

Comment by doone on April 13, 2012 at 11:16am

The Unseen Complexity Of Foreign Nations

by Zack Beauchamp

Richard Dowden bashes simplistic media treatments of African countries:

For the past ten years many African countries have been growing at rates we in the West can only dream about – thanks largely to an emerging middle class, mobile phones and China’s demand for its raw materials. Now our businesses are following the Chinese into Africa looking for its fabled wealth. Africa is now a place for investment. ... [Africa] can be both poor and disease-ridden and rich and dynamic at the same time, sometimes in the same village. To be a proper news story and fit into the outdated news agenda, it has to be one or the other.

Comment by Dallas (on hiatus) on April 11, 2012 at 4:41pm

Arizona bill declares women pregnant two weeks before conception

 

Global Collapse: MIT researchers predict the end of the world as we know it

 

 

Comment by doone on April 10, 2012 at 12:20pm

It Will Never Make Sense To Me

By John Cole April 9th, 2012

Why our elites and media elites have such sheer contempt and hatred for social security. It’s there for everyone! It’s a solid government program which gives everyone the peace of mind that no matter what, there will be some money available for you to take care of yourself in your most vulnerable years. It’s such a miniscule portion of the taxes we pay, and for the ultra-rich screamers who hate social security the most, it’s a negligible portion of their income, and it’s capped! It’s not money wasted on fraud and abuse, it’s extremely efficient with the kind of overhead any charity or organization in the world would die to achieve, and it’s just an amazing program.

I’d argue that social security also helps innovation and entrepreneurship, because people can take wild risks opening businesses and if everything fails, they still will have the peace of mind to know that some of their most basic needs will be met due to their participation in the program.

There are a lot of things I can understand people getting mad about (I may not agree with them, but I can understand it), but this program simply is not one of them. Yet social security is under constant assault, with ridiculous amounts of hand-wringing and lying about the program. It’s insane. 

Comment by Neal on April 10, 2012 at 11:34am

This is a clip that explains what is happening in Michigan. I think you need to hear this.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Comment by doone on April 10, 2012 at 9:36am

Browse more Travel infographics.

Comment by doone on April 9, 2012 at 6:58pm

What Did It Cost To Oust Saddam?

by Maisie Allison

A reminder: 

[D]ocumented civilian deaths in Iraq since Bush’s 2003 invasion—noncombatants killed by military or paramilitary acts or because of the breakdown in civil society—have numbered nearly 120,000. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, some 4.7 million Iraqis have been displaced by the chaos unleashed by Bush’s war. This number includes 2.4 million internal refugees, some half a million of them living as squatters in slums. Another 2.3 million have fled the country altogether and have not returned. This is a civic catastrophe that gets little attention in America. By way of illustration, a proportional civilian death toll in the United States would be nearly 1.2 million. The proportional refugee total would be 45 million.

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