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Cable boxes are, almost without exception, awful. They're under-powered computers running very badly designed software. Their channel guides are slow, poorly laid out, and usually riddled with ads.
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There are two important things to remember about 'entitlements': They are hugely popular programs for a very good reason, and actual sensible 'reform' would mean improving them, not sacrificing them at the altar of 'fiscal responsibility.'
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Conservatives don't want to read good, smart books. They mostly want to read Fox and talk radio hosts writing about presidents.
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Tax expenditures for middle- and working-class Americans - like the earned income tax credit - aren't thought of as loopholes; they're just thought of as benefits.
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It's easy for the thought-leader and executive classes to embrace a 'do what you love and love what you do' philosophy when they are wealthy enough to work hard only voluntarily, and when their jobs grant them status.
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Rush Holt would be a fine senator. He's an actual physicist, which is neat. He cares very strongly about global warming, which is probably the single most pressing issue of our era.
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Most politicians are vain. Many of them are stupid.
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Anderson Cooper is fine. He is a smart, conscientious guy, and he seems to want his show to produce and highlight good journalism. But he also seems to want to replace Regis, or maybe even Oprah.
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Cory Booker became a millionaire because this is how the economy works for people of his class: Rich people give other rich people money to do nothing, simply because they 'deserve' it.
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The song 'Take This Job and Shove It' spent 18 weeks on the country charts in 1977. 1970s country music fans had a clearer understanding of the ennui of wage-slavery than modern elites.
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We are actually a very rich country with a lot of resources and the ability to do almost whatever we want. We could eliminate poverty in America by spending a fraction of what we spend on defense.
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Political journalists, socially inept or no, are not nerds. Most of them can't do math, a fact that campaigns and politicians regularly exploit.
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For CNBC, and for Wall Street, billion-dollar fines for violations of the law are just part of the price of doing business, along with litigation costs and 'compliance.'
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American politicians are responsive almost solely to the interests and desires of their rich constituents and interest groups that primarily represent big business.
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I think Matt Yglesias is wrong to declare that the world of 'This Town' is dying, unless he thinks publicly financed elections, strict lobbying bans and Scandinavian-style wealth distribution are imminent.
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Do you know who takes weekday shuttle flights between Washington and New York? People who think they are too important for the train, let alone the bus.
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I'm not great on television. That's one reason I don't do it very often.
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Christopher Hitchens, the late essayist and sot, was a man who purposefully cultivated a lot of friends of a certain type - rich, self-important, generally dim-witted and hence easy for a well-spoken Oxbridge debater to impress - and he electrified Washington D.C. society mainly by not being a completely charmless bore.
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I guess if you want me to stop writing horrible, mean takedowns of everyone, give me a really, really cushy columnist gig.
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Apocalyptic hysteria is much more effective at getting people to open their wallets than reasonable commentary.
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For the most part, congressional Republicans represent people who are whiter, older and richer than most Americans, and our creaky old political system gives those Americans disproportionate influence over public policy.
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Political battles are won when the rich favor them.
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John Boehner was and is an unprincipled ward-heeler who simply couldn't weather the transition of the Republican Party from a corporatist party with a sizable conservative base to a purely conservative party.
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What really destroyed Tucker Carlson, respected magazine journalist, was TV. TV exposed him as glib, smug, and not nearly as clever as he thought he was.