This is the same sort of thinking that lead to decades of “urban renewal” that amounted to demolishing tons of working-class and poor neighborhoods to put in housing and shopping for the well-to-do in cities across America. That was a total fucking failure for actual human beings. Worked out great for real estate…

Escalators are terrifying, but at least in a power outage they basically turn into stairs. Unlike elevators, where you sit in a dimly-lit, enclosed casket, suspended in midair as the air gets more and more stuffy, wondering if you’re going to die there.

I take the stairs whenever possible.

See, in other cities, it’s the mayor who knocks around the other guy. So it’s nice to see a city where the mayor isn’t abusing his authority that way!

http://www.providencejournal.com/article/201302…

His brand of awful is just out of step with today’s times. We’ve moved on to a new kind of awful.

I love the “Government doesn’t do everthing perfectly, so it can’t possibly tell anyone to do something better.” Also, I’m a huge fan of the “I’ve got mine, so screw you” school of public policy.

Fiorina helped tank Lucent by orchestrating the making of tons of (shady/ill-advised) loans so that service providers could…

One big difference between us and other developed countries - nobody else expects schools to spend tons of money on sports or athletic facilities. It’s not a “thing”.

August launches the official pre-season for racist rants. The season runs from Thanksgiving to New Year’s.

Clearly someone’s racist aunt is aiming to make a championship run this year.

They’re creepy when they’re empty, horrifying when they’re crowded. When I go - and I do end up shopping there because Stolmen is awesome - but I always come away with some small appreciation of what people suffering from agoraphobia must feel like.

I’d love to see hidden video footage of this guy’s conversations.

Perhaps it may not seem as hard to you because you had realistic expectations going in? Maybe both of you are constantly doing what you need to do to keep your relationship going well, so you’re never hitting the “big crisis” point.

This would go a long way to “fixing” Cosby show reruns. Best suggestion I’ve seen so far:

The only time a CPS agency would come down on a white family is if 1) the parents personally pissed off an investigator when contacted or 2) they’re unlucky enough to be the family used to “prove” that CPS doesn’t hassle only families of color.

According to their own rules, pictures of paintings and sculptures are supposed to be OK, aren’t they? And it’s not protected by copyright.

Yes, but we only have the publisher’s word that this is the original and not a later edit. I can see some marketing reasons for them to fib.

I wonder if what actually happened was:

NPR had someone on this weekend who expressed a fair degree of skepticism about the “backstory” of the book - namely that it was entirely written first. She thought it read like an attempt at a sequel, and it she felt it refers back to events in Mockingbird in a way that would only make sense if it had been written…

No, most Libertarians are against forcing anyone to engage in any commercial transaction they don’t want to engage in. The Fair Housing Act says that you can’t refuse to rent or sell to someone based on race. Do some Google searches for “Libertarian” and “Fair Housing Act”. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a Libertarian…

So 28% is the maximum percentage of Americans that could be considered Libertarians. Since opposing the Fair Housing Act is a pretty typical Libertarian position.

Holy fuck, this is his version of Romney’s 47% speech, or his Dad not knowing what a supermarket checkout scanner was, isn’t it? For fuck’s sake - I know plenty of people who are working more than one job for shit pay, have gone back to school while working more than one part-time job, etc. My wife and I each have…

King’s demo of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” is one of my all-time favorites. Forget the Monkees. Snarky, sarcastic, and has the bonus of being yet another song about wanting to leave New Jersey.