• Shutdown averted.
• 11 days on Wall Street.
• “Help us, Chris Christie. You’re our only hope.“
• How will the Roberts court rule on ACA?
• Someone’s always taking their guns away.

And not all of us can have 19 children or have the stomach to force one of them into pageants so we can get on Toddlers & Tiaras; and the competition is getting fiercer for those slots.

Lady Gaga – Born This Way

Well, that’s the point, really: To find a reason not to get off the couch. If they’re all just hippies in hoodies, there’s no reason for you to think about what they’re saying. If they’re all just filthy teenagers, you can go back to your dinner and not worry about that nagging feeling in your gut that says get on a goddamn bus and go join them. If you can find a reason why this protest, these protesters, are unsuitable, then there’s really nothing you need to get worked up about.

The incident involving a New York Police Department (NYPD) officer unloading a canister of pepper spray on a few female protesters at the Occupy Wall Street protest on Saturday has garnered much attention. It is responsible for the huge uptick in media coverage and renewed interest in the occupation in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.

The political problem for President Obama right now isn’t that he is losing support from a few specific ethnic/age/religious/income groups. He’s losing support across the board.

Chasing Madoff’s protagonist, Harry Markopolos doesn’t call himself a hero. He just says he’s a citizen “doing what your supposed to do.”

For Markopolos, that meant spending over a decade trying to get anyone and everyone to listen to his analysis of Bernie Madoff’s funds and to look at the evidence that Madoff was a fraud. Luckily, he had a trio of friends –including financial reporter Michael Ocrant who wrote the first article exposing Madoff years before the scandal broke– helping him investigate. But not even Ocrant’s story, which led to a follow-up article in Barrons was enough to get the SEC to sit up and take notice.

The Reader’s Digest version of my story goes like this:
For almost 20 years I worked as a Union Carpenter building concrete forms on bridges, high-rises, and commercial buildings. The work was heavy, dirty, and dangerous, and I loved it.

In March 2007 I started getting what I thought was just a migraine. It wouldn’t go away and I started having pain in my neck and numbness and pain down my right extremities. I ended up having three of the vertebrae in my neck removed.

I have been unable to work since this all started.

Lady Gaga bought a top-tier ticket and attended an exclusive Silicon Valley fundraiser at the home of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Sunday night. Wearing a black, sleeveless lace gown and with her hair piled up, Lady Gaga was 2 feet taller than everyone including Obama, thanks to her super high heels and substantial up-do. Her outfit included a black veil. In recent days Gaga has been saddened and angered by the suicide of 14 year old fan Jamey Rodemeyer, and her choice of attire suggests mourning.

Past Presidents and political campaigns found they could often ignore the public’s desire for marijuana policy reform, party because of bipartisan support for the War on Drugs. But the growth of the internet means that now the issue simply will not go away.

Every time the Obama administration gives Americans the ability to use the internet to indicate what policies they want to be debated more, the issue of marijuana reform has dominated.