The latest from Henry Clay People and The New Mastersounds.

I’m trying to understand what the Birthers want to accomplish. Sure, they want to prove that Barack Kenyatta X is not the legitimate president. But where does their super-secret planning take them then?

Have you noticed that we’re a quarter of the way through August and Obama has not yet cleared any brush?

As we prepare for another week of lobbying on health care, I wanted to share a bit of inspiration — Brave New Voices, the poetry slam competition for 13 to 19 year olds.

and basic senses of justice about torture

If the teabagging people weren’t such rage-filled imbeciles they would be the most adorable slow children on earth.

While the books on business and sustainability have mushroomed into a cottage industry, there’s just a handful of writings that elegantly weave a book’s theme or thesis into the very fabric of the writing itself. Leigh Stringer’s The Green Workplace fits well into this small club.

The evolution of The Green Workplace is a story in and of itself. Beginning as a blog site written by a small group of contributors (www.TheGreenWorkplace.com), the blog quickly took on a life of its own, with a growing list of topics, research, Web 2.0 style pooling and refinement of information taken on by the public at large (see p. 127 for a synopsis of this process). The result is a book whose very DNA is sustainability, epitomizing:

You can also now embed the FDL searchable events widget in any website. Just copy and paste the code below in your html:

<iframe src=”http://firedoglake.com/files/1/files/2009/08/fdlevents3.html” marginheight=”1″ marginwidth=”1″ frameborder=”1″ height=”300″ scrolling=”no” width=”300″ </iframe>

There is no precise definition in economics of a recession. The rule-of-thumb definition is “two consecutive quarters of negative GDP” sounds good until you realize that GDP is measured in quarters, not months. This is why the NBER uses the term “downturn” because in economic reality, the period of falling economic activity is likely surrounded by difficult times, either before, or more generally, after.

The NYT is reporting that PhRMA will spend $150 million in advertising to support the White House health care plan in August:

The drug industry has already contributed millions of dollars to advertising campaigns for the health care overhaul through the advocacy groups like Healthy Economies Now and Families USA. It has spent about $1 million on similar advertisements under its own name.

All of the commercials closely echo common Democratic themes about