Month: July 2010

by Jacob Davies You can tell from the first sentence that this story isn’t going to end well: Timothy McCollough freely admits that he stopped making payments on his Chase Manhattan credit card in 1999. He says he did not have the means to pay after he was disabled by a head injury that cost … Read more

by Jacob Davies Back on the Well (in the stone age of the Internet), there was a tradition of having an introductions thread when a new forum was opened. The hosts and the regular users would introduce themselves and invite any new members to do likewise. The nice thing about it was that even if … Read more

by Jacob Davies I’m often surprised to read or hear from Americans who believe that the US has fallen behind other industrialized countries in output or standard of living. Sometimes people even believe that China is about to eclipse the US in standard of living. Now, anyone who’s read what I have to say knows … Read more

by Eric Martin The ADL on the contemplated expansion of the mosque near the World Trade Center: We regard freedom of religion as a cornerstone of the American democracy, and that freedom must include the right of all Americans – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths – to build community centers and houses of worship. … Read more

by Eric Martin Kevin Drum calls attention to some alarming recent scientific evidence of global warming's effects on our ecosystem.  This one has to do with the health of the world's oceans, and it borders on cataclysmic: So, anyway, as temperatures rise the plankton die. As plankton die, they suck up less carbon dioxide, thus … Read more

by Eric Martin Adam Serwer highlights only the most recent encroachment on civil liberties undertaken by an executive branch that is, in this regard, as avaracious in its appetites with Democrats in charges as with Republicans: Civil libertarians have been trying to add more restrictions to the FBI's National Security Letters since their use exploded … Read more

by Jacob Davies Via Ezra Klein, a novel argument from the hydraulic-fracturing natural-gas industry: if you knew what we were doing, you wouldn’t let us do it… so we have to keep it secret. Here’s the industry’s appointed spokesman: Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma said the new requirements could effectively end onshore natural gas production. … Read more

by Jacob Davies You have to hand it to the New York Times: they really know how to pick a perfect link-bait case study. This one is a classic: Tremaine Edwards, 35, a former computer technician who had been unemployed for two years before he was hired in May by Gallery Guichard, a private gallery … Read more

–by Sebastian I don't like to bleg.  But I do like to help my friends out.  I have a friend who is one of the long term unemployed.  He had a great job in a bio-tech field and went through one of that field's fairly routine layoffs expecting to get hired somewhere else right away.  … Read more