Capitalism: A Love Story
August 31, 2009 8:42 pm

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McFly
September 1, 2009 8:44 pm

Every mention of McFly in the Back to the Futrure Trilogy:

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Hitler is upset about Disney takeover of Marvel
September 1, 2009 8:48 pm

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The Right's 'Tenther' Constitution
September 2, 2009 8:54 pm

In a recent Fox News interview, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) accused health care reform supporters of "forg[etting] what the Constitution says." Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who once called for his Party to defeat health reform because it will "break" President Obama, claimed that health reform violates the Tenth Amendment and urged state legislators and governors to "champion individual freedom" by resisting the bill. Numerous state lawmakers -- including secessionist Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) -- have struck a similar tone, endorsing "state sovereignty resolutions" that demand the federal government "cease and desist" enforcing many laws with which conservatives disagree. (Emboldened by Perry's hardline stance, Texas "tenthers" held a pro-secession rally at the state capital yesterday, demanding that their political opponents "go back to the U.S. where you belong.") Indeed, while "birther" conspiracy theorists make increasingly outlandish attempts to dismantle President Obama's legitimacy, "tenther" constitutionalists like Bachmann, DeMint, and Perry hope to dismantle an entire century's worth of progressive legislation.

THE 'TENTHER' AGENDA: In a nutshell, tenthers believe that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led an illegal coup against the U.S. Constitution, exploiting the passions of the Depression Era to expand federal power to unconstitutional levels. Killing health reform is only the beginning of their agenda. Under the tenther constitution, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, federal education funding, the Veterans Affairs health system and the G.I. Bill are all illegal. The minimum wage, the requirement that employers pay overtime wages, and the ban on child labor are all beyond Congress' power to enact, and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters is an unlawful encroachment on local business. Indeed, nearly every single law that Americans cherish -- from laws protecting workers' right to organize to laws forbidding race and gender discrimination -- could be eliminated overnight if the tenther constitution ever became law. One prominent tenther, a Texas official charged with rewriting that state's public school textbooks, even declared the federal highway system to be unconstitutional.

DISTORTING THE DOCUMENT: Tenthers derive their narrow vision of the Constitution from a strained reading of the Tenth Amendment, which provides that the Constitution contains an itemized list of federal powers and anything not contained in that list is beyond Congress' authority. In the tenthers' eyes, Congress' powers must all be read too narrowly to allow most federal statutes to exist. However, the tenther constitution bears little resemblance to the words of the document itself. Contrary to tenther claims that federal spending programs like Medicare or Social Security are unconstitutional, Article I of the Constitution empowers Congress to "lay and collect taxes" and to "provide for...the general welfare of the United States," which unambiguously authorizes it to spend money in ways that benefit the nation. Similarly, Congress' broad authority to enact regulatory schemes that "substantially affect interstate commerce" easily encompasses laws like the federal minimum wage and the requirement that businesses do not discriminate on the basis of race. As Roosevelt chided tenther-like conservatives from his era, "The Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent."

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The Pap Attack: Jon Voight's New Gig As GOP Rent Boy
September 3, 2009 8:55 pm

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Letterman Slams Palin Over 'Vanity Fair' Article, Possible 2012 Run
September 4, 2009 9:19 pm

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How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
September 4, 2009 9:21 pm

Paul Krugman

.....Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field's problems. More important was the profession's blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable- indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed's best efforts......

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How Our Nation's Financial Sector Became a Massive and Unregulated Gambling Operation
September 5, 2009 9:23 pm

American Casino movie trailer from Leslie and Andrew Cockburn on Vimeo.

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