It’s enough to make you become a Mennonite: “The Amish church frowns on government aid, but it relented on unemployment checks after a wave of layoffs … Church leaders justified the decision because workers are collecting on the unemployment taxes they paid into the system.”
Credit card restrictions in the works: “In December, the Federal Reserve finalized new rules that limit some credit-card rate increases. Those rules don’t take effect until July 2010, however. Legislation pending in Congress would accelerate implementation of the new restrictions.”
Why not just eliminate suffrage in Florida entirely? New bill “would make it harder for voters to have their voices heard and easier for the major political parties to manipulate the outcome of the electoral process.”
Pretty soon it adds up to real money: Paul Krugman thinks “the president shouldn’t feed the bogus claim that we can close fiscal gaps by eliminating a bit of waste.”
More good advice the Republican Party won’t heed: “We’ve become a regional party… There are 18 states, which total, with the District of Columbia, 238 electoral votes that have now gone democratic in five straight presidential elections. And Sen. McCain wasn’t within ten points in any of those 18 states.”
The strangest monument in America: “Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece … Built in 1980, these pale gray rocks are quietly awaiting the end of the world as we know it.”