Living With Le$ is an online comic strip about a Wall Street money manager who loses his job and has to move back in with his parents. Start here then read all 36 episodes to date.

Here’s a post we dug out from late 2008 from a blog called “Life after my Layoff” and sub-titled “The economy stole my journalism job, but not my love of writing.” I watch “Avenue Q”…and nearly cry in my seat Last weekend, my boyfriend treated me to a showing of Avenue Q, a raunchy Broadway [...]

Geeks take note: A slideshow presentation by and video of ElmoFromOK — an “open-minded code monkey” and podcaster from Oklahoma — called… All I Really Need to Know About Life, I Learned From Dungeons and Dragons View more presentations from Chad Henderson.

From the blog economicus ridulous comes this post called Blue and Broke, about the economic necessity of bartering instead of paying for certain extras, and the emotional toll it has taken. My sister’s son is getting married this summer. The invitation is sitting atop my fridge. The family lives in Ontario. I want to attend, [...]

Not so fast there, Ayn Rand fan. That graphic comes from a January 22 post called “It’s dead”, written by former Bush White House economist Keith Hennessey, a few days after a Republican had vanquished the late Sen. Ted Kennedy’s would-be Democratic successor in Massachussetts, becoming the 41st, filibuster-enabling vote in the Senate against health care reform. At the time, Hennessey wrote this:

Yesterday I compared the comprehensive bill to Schrödinger’s cat: it was both alive and dead, and this uncertainty would be resolved only when we could see inside the box of the House Democratic Caucus. Speaker Pelosi opened the box for us yesterday:

“In its present form without any change, I don’t think it’s possible to pass the Senate bill in the House.”

But the House folding and passing the Senate bill was the highest probability path to a signed comprehensive law. The path the Speaker is pursuing instead, of getting the Senate to act on a separate second bill, is too hard to execute logistically, substantively, and politically…

I wrote yesterday that the bill is not dead until the Speaker says it’s dead. I think she in effect did so yesterday. Based on this development I have increased my prediction of collapse to 90%, and I believe the comprehensive bill is dead.

However, Hennessey also wrote that one possible option for Democrats was a parliamentary maneuver called “reconciliation,” but that “neither the White House nor Congressional Democrats appear to have seriously considered using reconciliation as a substitute for the work already done.” But that has changed, and reconciliation is now at the heart of the Democratic game plan. The current proposed path to passage involves the complicated two-step of the House passing the Senate’s health care bill — substantially different than the House bill and anathema to some Democratic representatives — then bringing the bill into line with President Obama’s compromise legislation via reconciliation.

Political cartoon from Kevin Moore’s In Contempt site.

On Sunday, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay defended Sen. Jim Bunning’s recent blocking of an unemployment benefits extension.

From the The Huffington Post:

Some reaction from various sites:

From Hullabaloo

I would guess that this is going to catch on among the dittoheads. The right is reasoning that they can appeal to a good number of the majority who are employed and make them question why they should subsidize all those losers who are not. It worked with health care. Empathy for your fellow man, or even a selfish sense that you might personally need some assistance someday, is being attacked by the right wing head on. And I would guess that there are more than a few people who secretly have thought these things but didn’t have the social support necessary to say it out loud. Now they do.

This isn’t a widely accepted point of view. Yet. But its infecting the body politic.

On Thursday, thousands of California students protested the severe budget cuts to education at all levels that have been enacted due to the state’s fiscal crisis. From the San Francisco Chronicle: The historic day of demonstrations in the Bay Area and beyond was largely peaceful, with students and others carrying signs like “Chop from the [...]

Anthropologist/marketer Grant McCracken thinks he’s found what’s driving the success of USA Networks’ programming. This post called “The secret script at USA Networks (aka the enmeshed male)” explains: I know you have watched something on USA Networks. After all, its a hit machine. It has given us “Burn Notice,” “White Collar,” “Royal Pains,” and “In [...]

Ever hear “Intelligence Squared“? Rethink your point of view with Intelligence Squared U.S., a live debate series in New York City. Intelligence Squared U.S. is a public charity supported by individuals and foundations who share our mission of raising the level of public discourse on the most critical issues of the day. Launched in 2006, [...]