We will all miss Walter Cronkite: A lot of smart people have written a lot of eloquent words on the occasion of Mr. Cronkite’s death — and the subsequent death of TV journalism as we knew it. But only Joe Gandelman has the guts to figure out why TV journalism will never be the same.
Bank Failure Friday: Add 4 to the running tally to get 57 bank failures this year. Notice that no matter how bad things get, the really big banks that helped cause this mess will never have FDIC crews sweep in on a Friday.
America’s Best Schools: They have high minority populations, a lot of kids who need free school lunches, and the kids do a whole lot of moving around. Yet they outperform most American schools! What are our military base schools doing right, and how much of it can we do in civilian schools?
Obligatory Health Insurance Reform Items: Pete Abel on balancing urgency and patience; Open Left (oh how I hate quoting Ian Welsh) on what happened to Canada’s costs when they went to single payor, and what it should mean to us; Ed Stein puts it all in cartoon form; What doctors make, versus what they ought to make (hint, family practice docs haven’t gotten a real raise in over 1o years); Mr. Obama tells Congress to get moving; at least the AMA likes this House proposal; Maha Barbara explains a Cato Institute idea; John Aravosis on health insurance realities you may not have encountered yet; how can I have a batch of health insurance reform links without including Ezra Klein; Dave J on making subsidies mean something.
Citizen Carrie, WHERE ARE YOU?: Carrie was one of the most knowledgable lay people I knew when it came to H1-B visas. Please, settle for Charles II at Mercury Rising.
Sanity and Taxes: I know taxes as they stand today are complicated, but still people tend to go nutty overboard when discussing tax hikes for the wealthy. This even applies when people aren’t going to be effected at all. So here’s reality on the latest surtax proposal. Moreover, here is how tax brackets work. Galt was an idiot.
Newtonian Economy: an interesting way of looking at the last decade from Distributorcap.
From Newton to Darwin: somebody caught birds evolving. Stuff that in your intelligent design and smoke it.
Game Over, Man!: Will Wright of all people says we need to stop assuming all gamers are 12 year old boys.
Politician kicked out of anti-abortion group for having common sense: his quote, “I can’t figure out for the life of me how to stop pregnancies without contraception. Don’t be mad at me for wanting to solve the problem.”
DHS also trying to exhibit common sense: The Secretary would like to seriously scale back Real ID requirements.
Compute me to the moon: the computers used to get man to the moon were less powerful than a modern pocket calculator. As the song goes, it’s in the way that you use it.
And Last: Hip Hop Home Remodeling.