But when I went to school, my parents, who had recently become middle class after being very poor pretty much their whole lives, could not afford to help me much. Further, I could not qualify for much aid, merely because they were at that time earning too much. So the big schools I was accepted to were off the table.

I ended up one of the lucky ones; with a full-ride scholarship to a state university. (Bless you, NMSC). Many of my peers had no such good fortune. This was ten years ago, give or take, and today the relative cost of school is even higher. I don't believe we ought to consider education a proper place for market economics; instead it ought to be held up as a classic market failure and dealt with accordingly. More kids should have a shot at the free ride, or something very close to it, so that we put the smartest kids (ahem ;]) in positions where they can do some good. If not for that, I would probably be doing much less of it myself.

/inflated head alert=over.

Very true. I wish this was more universally understood. Frankly, the skills most valuable in life are the social ones, tenacity, and willingness to learn.. all things you acquire outside the classroom.

FIFY.

Buying stocks in an inflationary economy is exactly what you want to do.. they represent real value and are thus mostly impervious to inflation. You don't want to own debt. Mostly I want to own stock in non US companies, to reap the full benefit.

I don't understand why people think the TARP funds will effect any significant inflation.. to me it seems obvious that the enormous number of Treasurys held by foreign governments that are inevitably going to inflate the dollar. Further, the velocity effect of economic growth on inflation implies that we'll see "inflation" (more like re-inflation) of the dollar once commerce picks back up.

Anyway, it's not all doom and gloom. Just buy those ADRs, spread your loot around, and smile at the disgusting returns. :]

..especially with the final statement. The military gets a bad rap. We train our soldiers to be killers, yes, but fundamentally they exist to defend our way of life. The thoughtful ones want to do that in the most effective way.

"Stocks" as a group are not easily discussed with precision. This is because they're all different. Some are overpriced. I recommend not buying those ;].

That Hillary Clinton is Obama's Secretary of State, and that the major reversals in secrecy came after she assumed that role. While he bears full, complete, utter responsibility for this disaster, I expect she has had a lot to do with its architecture and implementation. I thought taking her as SoS would be a disaster. Some investigative journalism is in order: who exactly in the Cabinet is for/against what?

You either didn't read my post, are a troll, or both.

Cherrypicking one sentence:

Hillary Clinton is Obama's Secretary of State, and that the major reversals in secrecy came after she assumed that role.

While ignoring the caveat:

While he bears full, complete, utter responsibility for this disaster...

reveals this. It is not the case that GWB dictated in all cases policy for his administration. See Cheney, Richard. Furthermore, he's surrounded himself with old-party people who have strong affiliations with Mrs. Clinton.

I have no idea how much of what you claim there is true, but the writing certainly is amusing.

Really! Can anyone seriously claim the quality of big journalism is *better* today than it was when the doctrine was in place? It sounds like an experiment worth running (several times, maybe, to really hammer the point home) at the very least.

http://www.twitpocalypse.com/

Seriously, who uses 32bit integers for UIDs anymore? Although it's good they kept the sign bit.

She was putting in overtime. Only right and proper.

What are they going to do, vote Republican? We need a third party.

If they were all old wrinkly white guys who *didn't* happen to be determined to wreck the Constitution, it would be better than now. I used to think Obama getting elected meant that we'd have better leadership, since the door is clearly open for anyone to get elected. That just hasn't proven to be true.

Two points:

First, I don't think that question is particularly well phrased, and thus may not reflect accurately public opinion about torture.

Second, I don't think, uh, pragmatically speaking, it's a good idea to refer to the American people en masse as 'coarse'. It doesn't accomplish the goal of arousing support for holding ourselves to a higher standard; it's just bad leadership.

If you read what I wrote, you know I question the poll's construction, and we don't know how good the sampling was, etc. Questioning is good.

If the poll is in fact representative, there is always a choice when you call names. Saying there's a clear need for education because we think public opinion on torture has been distorted by the Right is better than calling the public 'coarse', since the natural human response when categorized negatively is to bristle. I was merely pointing out that it was a suboptimal response, IMO.