John McCain believes we’re better off economically today than we were eight years ago.

The American people know that’s not true — they’re feeling the effects of high gas prices, lost jobs, and a housing crisis. Voters continually rank the economy as their biggest concern.

So this week we’re planning to release our first national television ad of the presidential race to show the American people just how wrong John McCain is on the economy. We’re also strengthening our local organizing efforts to make sure the American people really know how little John McCain understands the economy.

We need $500,000 to help pay for ads like the one we plan to air this week, fund organizers in your state and build a national infrastructure to help Hillary or Barack win the White House.

Can you help us raise $500,000? If you can, then millions of Americans will get to see and hear the real John McCain in his own words — and we’ll be building for victory in November.

Click here to see our first ad of the presidential race:

Is what’s shaking the economic landscape just a simple banking crisis? Or is there – as so many feel, and as the tremors indicate – something more hidden just beneath the surface?

Let’s begin with a quick explanation from the ever-incisive Tyler Cowen. He notes:

“What is distinctive today is the drying up of market liquidity — the inability to buy and sell financial assets — caused by a lack of good information about asset values…Market prices have been drained of their informational value.”

Bolding’s mine - that’s an excellent beginning.

But Tyler doesn’t talk about root causes: why have prices been drained of meaning, especially to an extent never seen before?

The Stanford Experiment - 1959
Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith

Would you lie for a dollar?

In this classic experiment conducted at Stanford University, men were recruited to participate in an unknown study. The men assigned the monotonous and boring task of sorting spools. The experimenter would then convince each subject to lie to waiting potential female subjects about how much fun sorting spools was, and that they should help. The men were paid either $1 or $20 to convince these females that this boring, monotonous task was in fact exciting! (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959) . Most behavioral theories (i.e. reinforcement theories) would predict that the more a male participant was paid to lie to the female subject, the more that male subject would come to like the actual boring task (after all, yes the work was boring, but they were getting paid $20 to recruit unsuspecting help, right?).

The Trillion-Dollar War
Yesterday’s Democratic debate about flag lapel pins didn’t leave much time for issues like the deficit and the sky-rocketing cost of the war in Iraq. In her Reason magazine cover story, Veronique de Rugy writes, “At the end of December, Congress approved $70 billion in bridge funding—a down payment to cover the gap between the beginning of the fiscal year and the passage of the actual appropriation bill—to keep financing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Legislators at the time were still chewing on the rest of President George W. Bush’s request for a fiscal year 2008 war budget of $196 billion. Should that funding be appropriated—and if recent history is any guide, it certainly will—then the total price tag for America’s present wars will rise to at least $822 billion, approximately 80 percent of which will be spent on Iraq. That surpasses the cost of the Vietnam War ($670 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars). And the Iraq portion dwarfs the $50 billion to $60 billion cost predicted at the outset of the war by Mitch Daniels, then director of the Office of Management and Budget.

I am going to start with number 28 and then go from there..If you have anything you want to add, please feel free to do so. I am sure there are some good things I might miss. I also will be compiling a list for why we should NOT vote a republican for office.  

28. We might do away with ATM fees but will be replaced with something else.

27. The activists will start coming out more during the day..

26. The hybrids will become a household discussion, “did you plug the car in, honey?” 

25. Maybe Hillary or Barack will play an instrument for you

24. You won’t be easily shocked when one of them potentially gets impeached..

23. You’ll be more eager to turn the news on and see what scandal has come on now, instead of a death toll.

22. You’ll think the taxes will be lower but…

21. The murder rate will go down because now it’s justified as an experimentation

20. The abortion rate will be higher

19. This would be the good time to invest in the popcorn business…

18. If you are a small business, then its time for you to step up.

17. You’ll see your son/daughter/mother/brother/father/husband once again

16. Maybe this is the year my gay sister will get married!!

15. Does Monica Lewinsky have any brothers in office?

By Ian Jobling
On the night of April 12, vandals tagged three homes, a mailbox, a dumpster, and 15 vehicles in a Denver suburb with the words ‘BROWN PRIDE,’ a Hispanic racialist slogan. Slapstick Politics, a Denver blog, notes that the Denver Post, which printed the photograph to the right, merely stated that the neighborhood had been tagged with graffiti, without mentioning what the graffiti said or speculating about its meaning or source. Even more egregiously, a local TV news report photographed the graffiti in such a way that you couldn’t read it. (The news video is here on the right hand side of the page.) The report speculates that the vandalism may have been gang-related, but does not mention that it was certainly Hispanic-related.

The blogger, El Presidente, asks, ‘If White Pride or anti-Semitic symbols had been spraypainted over quite a large swath of property (remember, just one word at a university has the moonbats up in a rage), would the local MSM have conveniently ignored this fact?’

You have follow that train of thought a bit further if you really want to understand what’s going on here and to appreciate the full measure of the media’s perfidy. If someone had tagged a neighborhood with ‘White Pride,’ the story would not only have been put on the front page of Denver newspapers and been picked up by the national media, but the vandalism would have been interpreted it as the expression of a desire for racial domination and ethnic cleansing, a terrifying prospect. In short, the media did their best to sweep a threat of ethnic cleansing under the rug. We only know it happened because a story on vandalism has to be accompanied by a photograph.

by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff

Posted: April 16, 2008 - 5:00 pm ET

(Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) A major corporation is reportedly having reservations about relocating to Oklahoma City in light of comments by state Rep. Sally Kern that gays are a worse threat than terrorists.

The Journal-Record reports that Staubach, a company that helps corporations relocate, is having trouble selling the city to its client, described only as a triple-A company with more than 1,000 employees.

The paper said that the unnamed company had not made up its mind but was seriously concerned following the publicity over Kern’s remarks.