Blogger asks White House if they know what hippie-punching is

Susie Madrak

I just got off a White House conference call in which I asked David Axelrod if he ever heard of the term “hippie punching”.

Silence.

“Are you there?”

“Yeah, I heard you. Go on.”

Basically, after Axelrod told us how wonderful we were and how much they needed us to close [...]

Those Fighting Poodles

Fear me, I am the Democratic Congress

The Democrats gave up on a pre-election tax cut vote, vowing to git ‘er done after the election when they will have considerably fewer votes than they have now. Right….

Oh, I know, boo hoo hoo, they will snivel, it’s all the fault of those Bad and [...]

About that barrage of No Brown Bailout ads you’re seeing

Tired of seeing me, aren’t you?

If you’re like me, you’ve been seeing those No Brown Bailout ads everywhere and constantly on the net. Someone must have deep pockets indeed to pay for them.

It’s Fedex. Their arch-rival UPS and the Teamsters are trying to get a bill passed that would make it easier [...]

Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future

Robert Reich on his new book.

The problems are structural, he say, with the biggest problem being the growing disparity of wealth. The upper 1% in the US got 27% of income in 2007. This leaves much less for the middle class. We will either have reform or reactionary politics which turns us against [...]

Pod cars coming to Heathrow

Unlike driverless trains that shuttle airport passengers, pod cars wait for a passenger, then move. If one isn’t waiting for you, push a button and it will come. Because they only move on demand, costs are much less

Household worth in America drops $1.5 trillion in 2nd Qtr

Really? But just this morning (literally) I was reading that everything was fine, just fine.

Flash cookies can be evil. How to control and remove them

NY Times explains why – and that some computer users are suing.

The technology, so-called Flash cookies, is bringing an increasing number of federal lawsuits against media and technology companies and growing criticism from some privacy advocates who say the software may also allow the companies to create detailed profiles of consumers without their knowledge.

[...]

A case study in humankind’s violent struggle for power

How could Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury and a forgiving person in many other aspects of his life, reconcile his Christian values with the burning of heretics? This case shows the desire of institutions, and the individuals inside those institutions, to use all force necessary to preserve their power. And those who challenge entrenched institutions [...]

Google Maps aggregates election predictions

Many political experts and news sources track and revise predictions, but until now it’s been hard to compare perspectives. We’ve worked with some of the top names in politics — Cook, Rothenberg, CQ-Roll Call, and RealClearPolitics — to make it easier to track the daily changes in the political landscape.

[...]

This ranks up there with it was a “bookkeeping error” or “accounting oversight”

Vatican bank head attributes money-laundering complaint to ‘procedural error‘