I know this is the case because a good friend recently walked away from his home because there was too much paperwork to fix it and the value of the home wasn’t enough to justify saving it. And my guess is if this is happening in Missouri, it’s happening across the board. From CNN: The [...]

NY times article… Nothing has been proven, but it sounds all too intriguing…at least to a cartoonist.

It’s hard to know exactly what Joe Biden is thinking when he makes offhanded remarks about Israel, Iran and the economy. (But let’s save the economy for another day, shall we?) There are few things one can really say about a country like Iran without inflaming some sort of Anti-Western backlash. Yet if our VP [...]

In America, we tend to laud the optimist and shun the pessimist. Not surprisingly, we are inundated with bromides about positive thinking and self-affirmation. But, turns out, all that stuff might not work. A new study published in Psychological Science argues that forcing positive thoughts can have negative consequences. I’ve always thought self affirmations were [...]

Years from now, I wonder how we’ll remember Sarah Palin. Politicians are an odd lot to begin with. But, even in that club, Palin is unique in her peculiarities. How can any office holder suddenly resign and then be surprised and offended when people try to uncover some hidden scandal? Hidden (or very public) scandal [...]

More large institutions are suddenly finding ways to cut a tremendous amount of money from their bottom lines? Fact or fiction? From Wash Post: The nation’s hospitals agreed last night to contribute $155 billion over 10 years toward the cost of insuring the 47 million Americans without health coverage, according to two industry sources. The [...]

After I read Matt Taibbi’s piece about Goldman Sachs gaming the oil/gas marketplace and wrote my own response, I started to think about the massive $24.3 billion budget deficit in California, and I wondered, “How could they get that far in the hole?” Sure, the global economy has tanked the past couple years and revenues [...]

I wrote about this last week and I was pleasantly surprised with the number of people who’ve applied so far. Lots of great submissions and selecting the best has been difficult indeed. However, since this is vacation season I wanted to make sure we weren’t missing anybody, so I’m posting this list of qualifications and [...]

This is an incredibly significant step because it paves the way for an actual revolution. From Times Online: Iran’s biggest group of clerics has declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election to be illegitimate and condemned the subsequent crackdown. The statement by the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qom is an act of defiance against the [...]

Kevin Hassett (whose American Enterprise Institute affiliation probably tells you all you need to know about his economic opinions) has written a skewering critique of Obamanomics. But what’s interesting is not that he calls the Obama administration the most fiscally irresponsible in history, but that he uses California’s monetary problems as evidence that moderate Democrats [...]

He’s not alone in expressing that Obama is doing too much too soon, but his voice definitely carries more weight because he may have done more to swing independents and moderates towards the President than anybody else last year. From AP: “The right answer is, ‘Give me a government that works,’” the former secretary of [...]

The Veep sat down with Stephanopoulos recently and shared some sobering news about our economic health and how their projections and predictions were too rosy. “The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited,” said Biden, who is leading the administration’s effort to implement it’s $787 billion economic stimulus [...]

Apparently, The Washington Post is completely abandoning the idea of hosting exclusive salons with power brokers – an idea which erupted into scandal last week when a marketing flyer indicated lobbyists could pay for access to Post reporters. Now, the paper has apologized blaming the flyer on a marketing snafu but taking responsibility for the [...]

There’s been some speculation on this blog and elsewhere that a potential reason for Palin stepping down was a federal probe into her time as Wasilla’s mayor because of misuse of building materials from a city project. Well, the L.A. Times contacted the FBI, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to it… A day [...]

A great video for today. What do you love about the United States? And, on the other hand, what do you think we could be doing better?

Happy Independence Day everybody. Hope you and yours have a fun and safe 4th. And, as always, thank you so much for reading and joining the conversations here.

(Editor’s Update: The L.A. Times talked to the FBI and they aren’t investigating Palin. So the following is moot.) Sarah Palin’s sudden resignation as Alaska’s governor may be the result of a soon to break scandal involving the building of a sports complex while she was Mayor of Wasilla. It is rumored that federal indictments are [...]

If that’s true, her announcement today makes a lot more sense. Here’s the story from MSNBC: And, if true, she’d be doing the GOP a huge favor by not being a focal point in the coming years. More as it develops…