Friday Start the Weekend Open Thread

Me llamo Rico. ¿Qué quieres tomar?

Farrah Fawcett Living Downstream

Farrah Fawcett’s death is both poignant and embarrassingly mundane. It is poignant because she gathered the energies she gained from being an “it” girl and used them to bring to light some common, and less common, plights of women in general. Farrah’s touch of America, brought America in touch with some of its hidden aspects. [...]

Is “Major Social Upheaval” Coming if Obama Continues to Favor Banks over People?

I just came across a new (to me) blog this morning: New Deal 2.0: A Project of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. The latest post is by Marshall Auerback, an investment manager and consultant.  Auerback suggests that the administration’s current economic policies are going to lead to disaster. State and local governments have been [...]

Failure is a feature, not a bug

The New York Times had this to say about Max Baucus: He conceded that it was a mistake to rule out a fully government-run health system, or a “single-payer plan,” not because he supports it but because doing so alienated a large, vocal constituency and left Mr. Obama’s proposal of a public health plan to [...]

A Tribute to Michael from another Gen Xer

UPDATE:  Michael Jackson died after a Demerol Injection (via Gawker). I know I’ve been out of the loop here at the Confluence, but I came here because this is home to me on the intertubez. I was 5 years old when Elvis Presley died.  I knew him very little.  My mom had a couple of [...]