Government Shutdown

This article calls to mind my view of how Republicans both negotiate and play politics in one little scenario:

Republicans: "Compromise? No, either you take our version of the budget or you, the Democrat Party, are responsible for the government shutdown."

An Observation

From the Economist's DIA Blog - "But guess what? By far the strongest of the ideas currently on offer—and the one for which most Egyptians seemed to be clamouring these past few weeks—is none of the above. It is liberal democracy (emphasis mine)."

Notice the term is not "conservative democracy."

Getting Rid of the Penny/Paper Dollar

I concur with what Matthew Yglesias says about revamping the physical representation of our currency. On the one hand, this would save money. On the other hand, it moves everybody's cheese around. Which side to conservatives come down on? I'm genuinely curious.

Definition of the Day - Republicanomics

From the Economist's DIA blog.
Republicanomics - a vulgar, acontextual cartoon of Reagonomics.

They explain:
"Reagan met the specific challenges of the American economy in the early 1980s through tax cuts and tight money, among other things. Republicanomics transformed the policies of the Reagan administrations and the Volcker/Greenspan Fed into hardened ideology. "Reagan's embrace of a tight monetary policy in a high-inflation environment had hardened into a dogmatic insistence on tight money and anti-inflationary policies all the time," Mr Rauch writes. And thus:

At a time when most economists saw deflation and long-term, Japanese-style stagnation as a far greater danger than inflation, and when high unemployment and below-target inflation indicated that monetary policy was too tight, Republicans were hyperventilating about "currency debasement" and denouncing the Fed's efforts to expand the money supply."

Thank You. Thank You.

I listen to NPR Morning Edition on my way to work and All Things Considered on my way home from work. My home NPR station is WAMU, which means if I'm in the car during the middle of the day, I might hear the Diane Rehm Show or even Kojo Nnamdi. So I hear a lot of interviews with people - celebrities, politicians and regular people through the course of a week of radio listening. Here's something that's struck me and has begun to get on my nerves. At the end of the interview, the interviewer will say something like, "John Doe, from Raleigh, North Carolina. Thanks for your time, John." And then the interviewee will almost invariably say something like, "Thank you Mark." Whatever happened to saying "you're welcome," or even "my pleasure?" Why does a thank you have to elicit a thank you in response? I suspect this happens in interviews not on NPR or even in real life, but I think I only notice it when I'm captive in my car listening to NPR.

I say, if you have to thank the interviewer, your response to his or her thanks for the interview is to say, "It's my pleasure Mark. Thanks for having me on." Thank you is not a response to thank you. Quit taking the short cut people!

Federal Judicial Vacancies Reaching Crisis Point

The above is the title of a piece from the Washington Post detailing the state of the Federal judiciary. Of course the blame lies mostly with Republican obstructionism, but you have to give some blame to Democrats who consistently don't play this particular political game very well. The President needs to start pushing this as an issue instead of trying to be a centrist.

Sarah Palin...

...is a former half-term governor.