Read This Now - Our Political System Is Broken And It's The GOP's Fault

You know things are really starting to get out of hand when even the big guns from the AEI agree that the Republicans are to blame for the dysfunctional state of Congress and politics in general...

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

That's from this past weekend's WaPo piece from Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein who were also on NPR this morning to talk about the problem and their new book, appropriately titled It's Even Worse Than It Looks. Be sure to check out both stories in their entirety.

The Corporate World We Live In, Visualized

You know how it comes up every once in a while that there are only really a handful of corporations in the world anymore if you go back up the chain far enough? 

Here's a pretty good graphical representation of that experience...

I'm not sure who put this together (and I just noticed that A&W is in two corporate structures) so I can't vouch for its full authenticity but I decided to share it anyway since I think it helps frame a legitimate point in an interesting and more digestible way even if it isn't perfect.

(via ML on fb)

Read This Now - Guns In America

Americans love their guns, or at least a certain percentage of us do since, as Jill Lepore points out in her excellent recent article for the New Yorker, the US has the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world even as the percentage of Americans who own guns has been declining. 

Lepore takes a thorough look at guns in America, historic shootings, the Second Amendment and its political and legal history, the NRA, and several recent shootings. Normally their would be a pull paragraph here, but this piece is so well done, so interesting, and so hard to sum up fairly with a single pull quote that you really do need to just go and read the whole thing (if you need the cliffs notes version check out Lepore's related blog post).

It's also worth noting that the NRA doesn't monolithically represent and speak for all gun owners or even for the majority of them.  Lily Raff McCaulou elegantly made this point recently in the NYT...

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that every N.R.A. member is also a hunter — which is highly unlikely, considering that the most comprehensive national survey of firearm ownership to date found that only 35 percent of gun-owning households say they hunt. Even then, the N.R.A. would represent only about one-third of all hunters in the United States.  

You should be sure to read her whole op-ed as well, it won't take long.

The Art Of The Title Sequence

It's much more important than we tend to give it credit for.  Take a minute to think about title sequences though (you'll just end up thinking about them and more than are in the video if you watch it) and watch this short video and you'll probably have a new found appreciation for them...



PBS Off Book is a web series on youtube.  If you liked this one you can check out all 18 of their episodes to date.

(via kottke)

The POTUS With The Most-us

It's just how he rolls (maybe it has a little something to do with helping light a fire under the youth vote this election season as well)...



I'd also like to say that I think Jimmy Fallon keeps doing really interesting stuff on his show, it's a lot better than I ever expected it to be. Well played sir.

(via HP)

Read This Now - Why Austerity Does Not Work

I've been meaning to put something together on the wrong-headedness of the austerity binge as it drags Europe ever further down the economic drain, but I haven't gotten around to it.

Luckily Henry Blodget has; he succinctly explains why austerity doesn't work and why Keynes was right, or at least provided the least bad way to get out of a recession / depression...

The reason austerity doesn't work to quickly fix the problem is that, when the economy is already struggling, and you cut government spending, you also further damage the economy. And when you further damage the economy, you further reduce tax revenue, which has already been clobbered by the stumbling economy. And when you further reduce tax revenue, you increase the deficit and create the need for more austerity. And that even further clobbers the economy and tax revenue. And so on.

Basically, austerity puts you into a death spiral in which you keep trying to cut your way to prosperity, but all you end up doing is digging a bigger hole. And in the meantime, tens of millions of people are out of work, the economy is retrenching, and everything is generally miserable.

The whole thing is worth reading and will only take you a few minutes.

(via BDL)

Should You Check Your Email When You're Done Reading This Post?

Luckily we have a flow chart to help you with that decision...

Flow charts are great, nice work Wendy MacNaughton.
(via LS)