Are Designer Sunglasses Worth the Price?

Are you in the market for a new pair of designer sunglasses this summer?

It's the season for it, and you can spend hundreds of dollars on your next pair of shades. Some Prada and Bulgari pairs will run you nearly $500, and that's if you don't need prescription lenses. Even more moderate design labels like Ray-Ban or REVO can cost a couple of hundred bucks.

Designer shades are big business, even in this economy. I keep hearing about the new age of frugality, but I'm not seeing much of it at the mall. Sunglass Hut's same-store sales in the U.S. rose 10.8% in the first quarter, pretty much erasing the slump in early 2009.

But are these expensive brands worth it? How much better are they, really, than the $25 pairs you can get in your local pharmacy?

Before you spend big money on your next pair of designer shades, here are six things you should know.

1. Most sunglasses are made by the same company. Do you prefer the "quality" of Ray-Ban to Oakley? Do you think Bulgari is better than Dolce & Gabbana, or Salvatore Ferragamo is better than Prada? Wake up. They're all made by one company, Italian manufacturer Luxottica–one of the biggest consumer companies that consumers have never heard of. Luxottica also makes sunglasses branded Burberry, Chanel, Polo Ralph Lauren, Paul Smith, Stella McCartney, Tiffany, Versace, Vogue, Persol, Miu Miu, Tory Burch and Donna Karan.

"We manufacture about 70% of those brands in our factories in Italy, and the balance in America and China," says Luxottica spokesman Luca Biondolillo. "We do the design, the manufacturing, and the marketing," he adds. The company makes most of those brands under license, working closely with designers at the relevant fashion houses. But it owns several brands itself, including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Oliver Peoples and REVO.

2. In many cases, the same company is also selling you the glasses. Luxottica also owns LensCrafters, Pearle Vision and Sunglass Hut. This is extreme vertical integration. The eye doctor telling you that you need a new pair of glasses, the sales people helping you choose them and the people who design and make the glasses all work for the same company. Make of it what you will. But if your financial advisor was actually employed by the mutual fund company that he recommended for your portfolio, you'd at least want to know.

3.The markups are as big as they seem. Whenever I have bought a new pair of regular eyeglasses, I have always reflected on how little I seem to get for my money. I can sort of understand why lenses are so expensive, as the material has to be made and ground precisely. But $100 or $200 for frames? These are bits of metal or molded plastic. Once I bought tiny slivers of hollow titanium that weighed considerably less than the bills I was handing over.

The cost of a new pair of glasses will of course reflect materials and labor. But the price will also reflect brand values and marketing–and how much consumers will pay. Luxottica says it makes a gross profit of 64 cents on each dollar of sales. Even after deducting sales and advertising costs, overhead and brand licensing royalties it's still making 52 cents. That's some margin.

While the company's return on equity has fallen since the global economy turned down, last year it still managed a respectable 11%, according to data from FactSet Research Systems. A few years ago that number was as high as 20%. And investors are confident on the company's future. The stock has jumped from $13 to $25 from last year's market lows. It's about 20 times likely earnings, an optimistic rating.

4. Those expensive sunglasses may not be any better for your eyes, either. "Three hundred dollar sunglasses don't do anything better than $100 sunglasses, except maybe look better and have a brand name associated with them" says Dr. Jay Duker, chair of ophthalmology at Tufts Medical Center.

"A significant chunk of what you pay for isn't the quality of the lenses, it's the brand," adds Dr. Reza Dana, director of the cornea and refractive surgery service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. He notes that making lenses that offer protection against harmful ultra-violet rays "isn't very expensive technology." And while spending more may get you better quality frames, here, too, there are laws of diminishing returns.

For about $40, says Dr. Duker, you can get a pair that offers 100% protection against ultra-violet rays. If you spend maybe $70 you should be able to get a pair with decent quality polarizing lenses that cut out glare. Beyond that, the medical benefits tail off pretty fast.

5. An inexpensive pair of sunglasses from the pharmacy isn't the worst thing in the world. They may be fine for most people in most circumstances, Dr. Dana says. "The main reason people wear sunglasses is to block out (regular) white light," he says, "and from that point of view, cheaper glasses work pretty well." And they will probably block most UV rays, even if not all of them, he adds.

6. Those fancy glasses are really costing you a lot more than you realize. If you make your shades last for many years, that would be one thing. But who does that? The people who want designer items want the latest fashion each year. And then there are the pairs that get lost. Scratched at the beach. And sat on. Personally, I have come to consider sunglasses a disposable item, and I suspect I am not alone.

Over a lifetime these things add up. Indeed they compound. Even at, say, 4% interest, $200 a year over 50 years adds up to $30,000.

Write to Brett Arends at brett.arends@wsj.com

via online.wsj.com

Holy Crap.

Voters Don't Have Accurate View of Economy

Check out our other sites: Political Dictionary and Political Job Hunt

October 29, 2010

Voters Don't Have Accurate View of Economy

A Bloomberg National Poll finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won't be recovered.
The facts: The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, has overseen an economy that has grown for the past four quarters and expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks.
Said pollster Ann Selzer: "The public view of the economy is at odds with the facts, and the blame has to go to the Democrats. It does not matter much if you make change, if you do not communicate change."

via politicalwire.com

I really am shocked at how poor the Democratic Party has been at communicating this. If I had the money of the DNC and related groups, I'd be buying up airtime and repeating this ad nauseum.

Floating Cube "Trompe L'oeil"

Watch how real it looks...until...

 

I've learned (sometimes the hard way) that a lot more of life is like this than I'd have cared to believe.

Charles Murray’s Bogus Elite | FrumForum

Can you write about class without mentioning money? Charles Murray tries in Sunday’s Washington Post, and the results make for very, very strange reading.

Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows — “Mad Men” now, “The Sopranos” a few years ago. But they haven’t any idea who replaced Bob Barker on “The Price Is Right.” They know who Oprah is, but they’ve never watched one of her shows from beginning to end.

Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.

They can talk about books endlessly, but they’ve never read a “Left Behind” novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).

They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn’t be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.

There are so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven’t ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn’t count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don’t count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn’t count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

Murray here is offering a less splenetic version of the argument urged by Angelo Codevilla in his Limbaugh-promoted new book, The Ruling Class.

America’s elite, insist Murray and Codevilla before him, is defined not by money and power, but by educational credentials and consumption choices. Watch Mad Men? Backpack? You’re in – regardless of whether you are a doctor earning $200,000 a year or an investment banker earning $200,000 a week.

Do I exaggerate? Listen to Murray himself as he does research in the New York Times wedding announcements:

Three examples lifted from last Sunday’s Times: a director of marketing at a biotech company (Stanford undergrad, Harvard MBA) married a consultant to the aerospace industry (Stanford undergrad, Harvard MPP); a vice president at Goldman Sachs (Yale) married a director of retail development for a financial software firm (Hofstra); and a third-year resident in cardiology (Yale undergrad) married a third-year resident in pathology (Columbia undergrad, summa cum laude).

Murray reads that passage and to him the key words are Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Columbia.

But there’s Yale and then there’s Yale. I’d wager the fee Murray received for his article that the Yale-educated cardiologist mentioned above has never talked to his or her U.S. Senator. The Yale-educated Goldman VP? His senator calls him.

Murray appears to wish to define the American elite in such a way that it excludes Philip Anschutz, Larry Ellison, and Sarah Palin (all of whom have lots of money and power but unlavish educational credentials), but includes everybody who shops at Zabar’s. It seems an unscientific way of proceeding.

The kind of analysis Murray offers reminds me of a great story in Michael Korda’s memoir of his family, Charmed Lives.

Michael Korda’s uncle Alexander had the habit of dismissing everything he didn’t like as “chi-chi” and praising everything he did like as “simple.” Cufflinks were chi-chi, for example, while loafers were simple. Beluga caviar thinly spread on melba toast was “chi chi.” Beluga caviar thickly spread on rye bread was simple. Dom Perignon drunk from proper champagne glasses was “chi-chi.” Dom Perignon drunk from cleaned-out jam jars was simple.

There’s a lovely arbitrariness to it, and the same is true for Murray’s scheme. I wonder if it ever occurs to him that Tim LaHaye – the minister turned author who has sold those 65 million copies of the Left Behind series – might belong to some kind of elite? He has money and power, doesn’t he? (LaHaye played an important role in securing evangelical support for George W. Bush in 2000.) But no: LaHaye is an evangelical Christian and so is by definition excluded.

Murray reports that Branson, Missouri, is off limits to the American elite. Accordingly, Glenn Patch – the area’s largest landowner, and if not a billionaire, then next door to it – must lack elite status.

Factory floors off limits to the American elite? I have to believe that more than a few members of the Forbes 400 have visited the factories they own. So that disqualifies all of them.

As I said: a strange way to think. You can call this kind of analysis many things – but social science sure is not one of them.

Reading Charles Murray’s slapdash article in yesterday’s Washington Post, the thought occurs: how does an intelligent man and serious thinker produce such silly work?

How do you end up with a definition of “elitism” based on favorite TV shows and vacation preferences – and with no regard to money and power?

Let me hazard a guess – or a “thought experiment” as Charles Murray might say.

Murray is of course right that there exists an American elite. Murray may be right that this elite has pulled further away from ordinary people than the American elite of say 1960. Murray does not prove the case, he does not even try. But intuitively, Murray’s case makes sense for a reason that Murray omits to mention: the American upper class of 2010 is so very much, much richer than the American upper class of 1960.

But here’s another difference between the elites of 2010 and the elites of 1960: The current range of elites have done a much, much worse job of governing the country than did their predecessors.

For a decade, almost all the news from the nation’s political and economic leaders has been news of failure and mistake. From 9/11 through the stimulus, we have careened from one mistake to another. The one success of the entire period from my point of view was the TARP – and even that success was only necessary because financial and political elites had steered us toward the worst financial collapse since 1931. Kudos to those who averted the worst catastrophe, but their work should never have been necessary in the first place. And even TARP leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth, because the price of rescuing the US (and world) financial system was another round of outsize financial rewards to those who had created the mess in the first place.

Now here’s Charles Murray’s intellectual problem, to which the Washington Post piece represents an attempt at solution:

The elites who created this havoc were both financial and political. They include the sort of people who staff the higher levels of the U.S. government – and the people who give to the American Enterprise Institute. Any real analysis of what went wrong in the United States between 2000 and 2010 would likely arrive at a great many conclusions uncomfortable to a scholar at AEI, as I can attest! So better not to arrive – better not even to start. So instead we get Murray’s latest: a Style section lifestyle piece offered as social science.

via frumforum.com

Are you elite because you went to a good school and prefer NPR to the "wacky morning crew" or are you elite because you are a multi-millionaire with real political connections? Here David Frum argues for what should be obvious - being "educated" does not mean being "elite" unless you insist that it does. And that's the problem with Charles Murray and people like him: Question-begging in the service of scoring political points.

The Last Words on Lucretius « Anger, Et Cetera Online

Intro

As I said earlier, Lucretius thinks the mind controls cognition and the particles it is made up of are localized in the chest. On the other hand, anima, the vital spirit, is everywhere else in the body but the mid breast. Vital spirit’s particles move to the sway of mind particles and give the body sensation; thanks to vital spirit “even the teeth share in sensation”. Keep that in mind as we talk below about “registering” and “bodily awareness”.
The View from 10,000 Feet

Echoing Plato’s analogy of the psyche with a country, where the rational part is the leaders and the spirited part is the military,

Basically like this, but I see courage as an example of the broader concept "spiritedness"

Lucretius says that while mind rules, vital spirit is the “body’s guard and cause of health”. It’s a safety mechanism to protect your flesh. In fact, vital spirit and flesh “twine together with common roots” and he thinks trying to tear them apart would be all but impossible, like taking separating the scent out of curry. He also describes it as being so thin and light, so sensitive, that even thoughts can make it move.

read the rest at damienadupont.blogspot.com

My latest dissertation blog post! Up next, the Epicureans.

So you Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities

via xtranormal.com

Last week I posted one of these on going to law school. I was hopeful that someone (or even I) would get around to doing for for humanities PhDs. Its been done as of yesterday!

The Economics of Seinfeld

Seinfeld ran for nine seasons on NBC and became famous as a “show about nothing.” Basically, the show allows viewers to follow the antics of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer as they move through their daily lives, often encountering interesting people or dealing with special circumstances. It is the simplicity of Seinfeld that makes it so appropriate for use in economics courses. Using these clips (as well as clips from other television shows or movies) makes economic concepts come alive, making them more real for students. Ultimately, students will start seeing economics everywhere – in other TV shows, in popular music, and most importantly, in their own lives.

We hope that you find these clips valuable and would appreciate your feedback.

via yadayadayadaecon.com

Very nice crash course on some every day and theoretical econ issues

Sharron Angle Nevada Senate Race - Mark Warren on Nevada Tea Party - Esquire

There's a saying: It's impossible to win an argument with an ignorant man. Given the year that this has become — and given the strange period we are living through — it is time to attach a corollary to that: But that doesn't mean that we ought to capitulate to ignorance.

Which calls to mind Nicholas Lemann's book report on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in this week's New Yorker. First, it must be said that Lemann is an esteemed figure, a longtime writer and editor for Texas Monthly and the Atlantic and now for The New Yorker, and, as the dean of the Columbia Journalism School, is the very soul of Ivory Tower journalistic probity.

It is, of course, Lemann's position and stature that make his failure to commit journalism in his piece on the pivotal Nevada Senate race all the more puzzling. No, it is worse than a puzzling failure: It is a capitulation to ignorance. Somehow this year, in our zeal to understand the madness around us, we have all gone a bit mad.

I'll explain.

In Lemann's piece — which finds Reid at the center of the great and angry storm sweeping across the country — his brand of journalistic probity apparently requires a journalist to give equal weight to both sides of an argument, however unhinged those sides may be (and please, decorum insists that you be more polite than to point out derangement when it looks you in the face), and to ascribe rationality where rationality is nowhere in evidence. ...

via esquire.com

Ditto that

Shakespeare in the original pronunciation

via kottke.org

Wow, what a great idea! I can't believe no one's ever done this. Hopefully it will catch on.

Welcome to RPM's Movie Wav Nation

Welcome to RPM's Movie Wav Nation

Established January 1, 2008

Site Updates Site FAQ Do NOT Hotlink Links Guestbook

Greetings! My name is Ryan (RPM are my initials). Like most people, I like to watch movies. I also like to record sounds and occasionally experiment with HTML and CSS, so I've decided to make a website featuring sounds from movies I like. All sound clips on this site were personally selected and ripped from the movies myself and are not simply recycled from other sound websites on the internet. Most of the movies I like are comedies, so the majority of the movies featured here are comedies. This is not a commercial website; I am not even a professional webmaster, and I am doing this only as a hobby. You may also notice that there are no annoying advertisements on this site, and I will never accept money for advertising on this site -- this website is for sounds, not ads! You can find other information about this site, as well as links to other sites, by checking out the links to the left of this paragraph. Every other page of this site has a link back to this page at the bottom, and you can click my site's logo, which appears at the top of every page of this site, to get back to this page as well. Happy listening! If you have any comments about this site, feel free to e-mail me at cyberryan26@hotmail.com (or sign my guestbook). Vote for this Site:       Top 50 Movie Wav Sites   -   Top Ten Wav Sites

Movies List

The 40-Year-Old Virgin - 67 sounds Accepted - 46 sounds Ace Ventura: Pet Detective - 43 sounds Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls - 45 sounds Airheads - 47 sounds Airplane! - 44 sounds American Pie - 48 sounds American Pie 2 - 54 sounds American Wedding - 48 sounds Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - 47 sounds Anger Management - 53 sounds Austin Powers in Goldmember - 47 sounds Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery - 47 sounds Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me - 48 sounds Back to School - 48 sounds Band Camp - 47 sounds Baseketball - 52 sounds Beavis and Butthead Do America - 41 sounds Bedazzled - 45 sounds Beerfest - 55 sounds The Benchwarmers - 43 sounds Beta House - 50 sounds Bewitched - 51 sounds Big Daddy - 47 sounds Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey - 47 sounds Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure - 45 sounds Billy Madison - 45 sounds Bio-Dome - 44 sounds Black Sheep - 44 sounds Blades of Glory - 47 sounds The Book of Love - 48 sounds Bruce Almighty - 51 sounds The Cable Guy - 48 sounds Clerks - 46 sounds Clerks 2 - 49 sounds Click - 54 sounds The Comebacks - 54 sounds Dead Man on Campus - 48 sounds Detroit Rock City - 48 sounds Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story - 46 sounds Dude, Where's My Car? - 42 sounds Dumb and Dumber - 54 sounds Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd - 43 sounds Employee of the Month - 52 sounds European Vacation - 48 sounds Eurotrip - 45 sounds Ferris Bueller's Day off - 51 sounds Freddy Got Fingered - 45 sounds Fun with Dick and Jane - 44 sounds Grandma's Boy - 48 sounds Happy Gilmore - 46 sounds

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - 51 sounds Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle - 44 sounds Holiday Reunion - 46 sounds The Hot Chick - 52 sounds Hot Rod - 44 sounds Hot Tub Time Machine - 50 sounds Idiocracy - 42 sounds Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - 52 sounds Joe Dirt - 49 sounds Just Friends - 48 sounds Kickin' It Old Skool - 54 sounds Liar Liar - 43 sounds Little Man - 49 sounds Little Nicky - 45 sounds The Love Guru - 46 sounds Mallrats - 47 sounds The Mask - 49 sounds Me, Myself, and Irene - 58 sounds Mr. Deeds - 48 sounds The Naked Mile - 51 sounds The New Guy - 45 sounds Old School - 45 sounds Pucked - 42 sounds Revenge of the Nerds - 45 sounds Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise - 49 sounds Road Trip - 47 sounds Road Trip: Beer Pong - 48 sounds Role Models - 50 sounds Saving Silverman - 48 sounds School of Rock - 52 sounds South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut - 42 sounds Spaceballs - 48 sounds Stealing Harvard - 43 sounds Still Waiting - 45 sounds Super Troopers - 52 sounds Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby - 61 sounds Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny - 47 sounds Tommy Boy - 49 sounds Vacation - 50 sounds Van Wilder - 47 sounds Van Wilder: Freshman Year - 49 sounds Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj - 49 sounds Vegas Vacation - 47 sounds Waiting - 47 sounds The Waterboy - 45 sounds Wayne's World - 48 sounds Wayne's World 2 - 48 sounds Wedding Crashers - 64 sounds Witless Protection - 50 sounds Yes Man - 52 sounds Zoolander - 45 sounds

Total Number of Movies: 102         Total Number of Sounds: 4912

Legal Notice: All sounds and movie posters contained on this site retain their original copyrights as owned by their respective movie production companies. All sound files are for educational, research, criticism, or review for movie purchase purposes. RPM's Movie Wav Nation holds no liability from misuse of these sound files.

via rpmswavs.com

Enjoy!

The Fury Failure

In Delaware, the Republican voters were so angry that they rejected a popular congressman and gave their Senate nomination to an apparently unemployed 41-year-old woman whose major life success had been an ongoing performance as Wacko Conservative Girl on late-night talk shows. In Alaska, they were so mad that they tossed out their incumbent senator for Joe Miller, a lawyer who believes unemployment compensation is unconstitutional, except when his wife is receiving it.

So now in Delaware the unangry Democrat candidate is way ahead. In Alaska, Miller keeps dropping in the polls, which made him so mad that he had his private security guards take an inquiring reporter into custody.

That did not go over very well even in Alaska, an extremely angry state that hateshateshates all forms of government, despite the fact that 40 percent of its economy comes from government aid, and the state’s oil-revenue-sharing program gives families thousands of dollars in payments every year. “Unemployment has never been lower; there is no housing crisis; banks are solvent. We just got Permanent Fund Checks — and, boy, are we pissed off!” said Michael Carey, an Anchorage Daily News columnist.

Really, people, rage never gets you anything but overturned garbage cans and broken windows. If you want to do rage, go to France.

We are talking here about undifferentiated anger, which creates nothing but a feeling of moral superiority on the part of the irate. It’s natural to get furious at specific things: a tax increase or an unfaithful spouse or a blown tire. Or, in the case of the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky, Rand Paul, a debate opponent who asks: “When is it ever appropriate to tie up a woman and have her kneel before a false idol that you refer to as Aqua Buddha?”

This involved a college prank that Paul told reporters he doesn’t remember. You can see why he was angry, although it does sound hard to forget.

It’s the difference between Joe Manchin, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in West Virginia, who has ads showing him metaphorically shooting a bullet into the heart of the cap-and-trade bill, and the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Congress in Arizona, who had herself filmed spraying machine-gun fire all over the place while an announcer said: “Pamela Gorman — conservative Christian and a pretty fair shot.” Even if you don’t agree with Manchin’s position, you have to admit that Gorman would probably be more difficult to work with.

In New York, Republicans were so full of free-floating rage that they nominated Carl Paladino, a hotheaded developer from Buffalo, for governor. For a while this summer, upstate New York was littered with “I’m Mad As Hell, Too, Carl!” lawn signs.

Paladino quickly developed a gender gap the size of the Grand Canyon. A recent Siena College poll showed that 71 percent of female voters preferred his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, while 21 percent supported him, demonstrating yet again that women will not vote for a guy who yells.

The Republican nominee got into fights, promised to “take out” one reporter and insulted gays. He trotted out his poor wife, who gave interviews recounting how she had forgiven Carl for fathering a 10-year-old daughter after he broke the news while she was getting ready for their son’s funeral.

Cuomo, meanwhile, has not only refrained from yelling, he’s barely had to leave his office.

On the rage-o-meter, this week’s gubernatorial debate in New York was not quite as stirring as Kentucky’s, possibly because it involved seven people, some in alarming get-ups, sitting on uncomfortable chairs in a line. Actually, it looked less like a debate than a tryout for some particularly embarrassing reality show.

Several third-party candidates, including a former Black Panther in a Nehru jacket, were more experienced in the politics of unproductive rage than Paladino. In a late-breaking attempt to change the tone, Paladino announced that he was not actually angry but simply “passionate.” Unfortunately, the world will remember his performance only for the part in which he had to run off to go to the bathroom before his concluding remarks.

The person who got the most postdebate attention was Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. McMillan wore black gloves and had a moustache that wound around his head like a ribbon, and a goatee that looked like two little fuzzy gerbils hanging from his chin. He was very, very, very angry. Particularly about the rents, which he pointed out were too damn high.

Afterward, Sarah Maslin Nir of The Times tracked him down in Brooklyn and discovered that McMillan’s own personal rent is, he said, zero. His landlords, he added, are “like family. They don’t want me to pay any money at all. I am basically living rent free.”

Which doesn’t mean he can’t be ticked off about it.

via nytimes.com

President Obama - It Gets Better

 

I received my share of bullying as a kid, getting picked on and teased for many things, such as my size, for being bilingual, for tearing up while watching American Tale, for being in my own reading group in elementary and middle school, because I "walked funny" - and even for liking a girl!

I know its rough to stick out, to take the chance to be yourself, but President Obama is right, it does get better. Its a very big world and you will find people who think you're pretty cool.

So You Want to Go to Law School

 

Someone needs to do this for PhD students in the humanities too. Maybe I'll write the script.

The GOP's Fiscal Fraudulence, Ctd - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

"So Obama is far to the "right" of the British Tories on his plans for tax increases (he will raise them on those earning over $250,000, rather than $75,000); he is also to the right of the Tories by cutting Medicare spending, while they have retained spending for the NHS (government health spending, of course, is a far bigger slice of the American economy than the British one); and the current GOP is simply off the cliff of fiscal reality.

The Republicans are not conservatives; they are populists in total denial of what simply has to be done. It seems to me reporters should be demanding of the GOP why they cannot bite the bullet the way their counterparts in Britain have."

Federal Budget Reality Check

Check out our other sites: Political Dictionary and Political Job Hunt

October 20, 2010

Federal Budget Reality Check

New York Times: "The parties share blame for the current fiscal situation, but federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006, giving voters reason to be skeptical of campaign promises."

"Calculations by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and other independent fiscal experts show that the $1.1 trillion cost over the next 10 years of the Medicare prescription drug program, which the Republican-controlled Congress adopted in 2003, by itself would add more to the deficit than the combined costs of the bailout, the stimulus and the health care law."

via politicalwire.com

How can the democrats not make this message stick?

Facebook Disconnect - Google Chrome extension gallery

Facebook Disconnect by Brian Kennish

(88 Ratings) - 0 users - Weekly installs: 0

Stop Facebook from tracking the webpages you go to.

Install

via chrome.google.com

Facebook is notified whenever you visit one of the more than one million sites on the web that use Facebook Connect and has a history of leaking personally identifiable information to third parties. Turn off the flow of your data to them! Facebook Disconnect blocks all traffic from third-party sites to Facebook servers, yet you’ll still be able to access Facebook itself.

If you don't wish to delete FB, this might be your safest bet.

Scott Meets Family Circus

via scottmeetsfamilycircus.tumblr.com

I've been subscribed to this site for ages. I highly recommend it.

Always hilarious, but it pays to go back and start from the top if you can. Basic premise: Scott is a sarcastic, somewhat amoral guy who moves in with the Family Circus crew and calls them on their B.S. Oh, and he's got a thing for the mom.

Bank Bailout Earned 8.2% Profit

Check out our other sites: Political Dictionary and Political Job Hunt

October 20, 2010

Bank Bailout Earned 8.2% Profit

The federal government's bailout of financial firms "provided taxpayers with higher returns than they could have made buying 30-year Treasury bonds -- enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades," Bloomberg reports.

"The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasuries, high-yield savings accounts, money-market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better."

via politicalwire.com

Bloomberg also notes: "Two years later TARP’s bank and insurance investments have made money, and about two-thirds of the funds have been paid back. Yet Democrats are struggling to turn those gains into political capital, and the indirect costs of propping up banks could have longer-term consequences for the economy."

This is probably because of the liberal media bias?

Tea Party Senate Candidate doesn't know about separation of church and state

http://videos.nymag.com/video/Christine-ODonnell-Has-A-Creati

 

How is this possible? I think the christianists in the republican party generally don't understand our government and simply insist that the constitution says whatever they want it to say.

 

Here's some useful info if you don't know much about the first amendment either

 

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?item=about_firstamd

 

 

The Tea Party And Executive Power - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

One reason I cannot take the Tea Party seriously as an actual small government movement is that they are not campaigning against nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, were overwhelmingly silent as Bush expanded the entitlement state far more recklessly than Obama, but above all their indifference to the claims of Bush and Cheney about executive power. All this "Don't Tread On Me" stuff is something I sympathize with, along with romantic ideas of individual freedoms protected by the Constitution.

But where were they when a US president seized a US citizen on American soil, made unsubstantiated charges against him, locked him away with no due process and tortured him until he became a quivering wreck of a human being? AWOL. Do you think they'd be AWOL if Obama did that to a white American citizens? And claimed he had inherent right to do so regardless of the other branches of government, habeas corpus or the rule of law?

Wendy Kaminer agrees:

Never mind the unaccountable power to detain, interrogate, and even assassinate people, without due process, adopted by both Bush and Obama. Never mind the shadow government spanning both administrations described by the Washington Post in its essential and largely ignored expose of the post 9/11 security state. You can only refer to the Tea Party's "devotion to limited government" with a straight face if you pay no mind to the awesome power of the 21st-century imperial presidency, which Tea Partiers and other right wingers from Christine O'Donnell to Liz Cheney support.

via andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

The Civil Rights act of 1964 and the "Republican Tide" of 2010

I'm reading a fascinating book on Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate, and I'm sad but impressed to see just how clearly he saw the future. And still had the courage to do the right thing. We did the right thing in passing healthcare reform, banking reform and consumer protections. And holding BP accountable. And ending the war in Iraq. And a host of other issues. If the cost is losing congress for 2011-2012, so be it. The tide - outside the south - is going our way. And I'm not even close to convinced there will be any real "republican tide".

Why Democrats are (D) and Republicans are (R)

via buzzfeed.com

That about sums it up.

Bank Guide - Center for Responsible Lending (CRL)

via responsiblelending.org

A neat site offering you checklists for what you should expect from a bank, and what practices ought to turn you off from signing up (or staying on). I'm definitely leaving my current bank as soon as I pay down my checking account's attached line of credit.

How to Stop Facebook from Sharing Your Information With Third Parties - Get Rid of Your Apps

via gawker.com

Or quit FB. But seriously, your apps - you don't use them. So drop them.