A variety of links to articles/interviews on current topics that may, or may not, be of interest.

Why change a winning formula? Via Steve Benen we have Mitt Romney’s current stump speech: “We have on one side a president who wants to transform America into a European-style nation, and you have on other hand someone like myself that wants to turn around America and keep America American….” And via Booman the whitest [...]

Rascal Flatts – Easy (featuring Natasha Bedingfield)

I keep saying over at my home base that I don’t, actually, have anything against you making money and going home and enjoying your in-ground pool or your Lexus or whatever. Just don’t come to me and bitch about tough things are for you and ask for another tax cut. That’s all I ask.

I have always loved my state but watching how the occupations are being manhandled and mishandled across the country I have to say I love my state even more.

A “dance party” or flash mob action organized by Occupy Wall Street broke out in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center just after a larger Occupy Wall Street action outside of Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York this morning. The flash mob spread throughout both levels of the area until police moved in to break up the action and make arrests.

Addiction Incorporated, directed by Charles Evans, Jr., methodically and dramatically lays the groundwork for the smoking gun–a research paper by scientists Victor DeNoble and Paul Mele which explains the addictive nature of nicotine, a paper whose research was funded by Philip Morris, a paper which the company ordered withdrawn from publication in a prestigious journal after it was made clear by the company’s attorneys that the data contained therein could provide litigants with evidence in pending lawsuits.

Don Blankenship was head of Massey Energy when 29 coal miners lost their lives in a massive explosion. Forced to resign, he has been largely invisible since.

Now he’s filed papers to start another coal mine venture.

Congress has apparently decided that it can only deal with one major fight at a time. At the same time that the parties jockey over whether to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance, at the end of this week the current continuing resolution to fund the government expires. So, some progress has apparently been made on an agreement that would fund the government through the fiscal year.

Nobody had any interest in actually scoring Gingrich’s plan until he surged in the polls. But now, the Tax Policy Center has taken a look. And they found that his plan would give the top 1% a $428,000 annual tax cut, and the top 0.1% a tax cut of $2.3 million. Millionaires get an average $760,000 cut.