As the economy fails to improve, as we chart the rise of the Tea Party and the Republican Party’s ability to express disdain for unemployment benefits without significant political cost, Americans lack a roadmap for the role of class and gender in the new American landscape. Joan Williams’ book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Harvard 2010), supplies that roadmap. The book creates an innovative framework for examining the relationship between law, work and family in the post-industrial economy.

The big-business-worshipping Blue Dogs are (along with Big Media allies like Lawrence O’Donnell) trying to push the myth that they lost big, not because they pressured Obama to go with a stimulus package that every economist worthy of the name said was too small, but because of (get this) Nancy Pelosi.

Well, well, well — look what The Decider says in his ghost writer’s new book.

There is too much money for private investment and not enough for investment in the public sector. Big money wants government monopolies to increase their profits while shrinking the ability of government to control exploitation of public resources. Part of the solution is to increase taxes on the hyper-rich.

What is it about my politics the Right hates so much? It’s a question I kept asking myself as the election returns rained down last Tuesday. How do they convince themselves that my vision of America’s future is somehow un-American,  a threat that will somehow make their lives intolerable? I’m speaking in the first person [...]

The country that has so benefited in civilizing effects and prosperity from the education given veterans by Ralph Yarborough’s Cold War G.I. Bill of Rights just voted against those who want to bring it back from the gutter it’s been pitched into. That’s hard to understand. I’ll just be proud of what we could do, and wait for an electorate to redevelop for the treasures we have in our hands.

We know plastic additive Bisphenol A is bad for humans, although we’re still learning more about its effects on humans. But why is the U.S. spending tax dollars on studying Chinese workers’ exposures?

Set Your Clocks Back.

Little Johnny Jet. This Oscar nominated Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon was released on April 18, 1953. Grab your popcorn, put your feet up on the seatback in front of ya, and aim your spitballs at the ushers please. This is Late Late Night FireDogLake, where off topic is the topic … so dive in. What’s on your mind?

In his contribution to the Jonah Goldberg “edited”  Proud to Be Right: Voices of the New Conservative Generation, James Poulos laments that “once alerted to your conservatism, most people do not believe you when you tell them you are interesting.” Which I suppose must be awfully hurtful to to those who find themselves endlessly fascinating, [...]