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Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic:

It’s not that Romney tax return proves he’s done something wrong. It’s that his tax returns prove that the tax code is wrong. Households worth $200 million earning $20 million in investment income a year shouldn’t be paying a lower tax rate than some middle class families, especially at a time when we’re thinking about cutting spending that disproportionately benefits the lower and lower-middle class.

From Ryan Lizza’s excellent piece in The New Yorker this morning:

Polarization also has affected the two parties differently. The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.

Two well-known Washington political analysts, Thomas Mann, of the bipartisan Brookings Institution, and Norman Ornstein, of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, agree. In a forthcoming book about Washington dysfunction, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” they write, “One of our two major parties, the Republicans, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

(emphasis mine)

Matt Yglesias on the current inequality, economic unfairness debate:

There’s a sense that a lot of us have that our public policy ought to be aiming to produce large gains for everyone. You often here that for one reason or another the United States “can’t afford” this or that. We “can’t afford” to pay people Social Security benefits. We “can’t afford” to build high-speed trains. We “can’t afford” to give everyone early childhood education. But why can’t we afford this stuff? Are we a poor country? No, we’re not. We’re one of the richest countries that’s ever existed. Are we a poorer country than we used to be? No, we’re not. But a very large share of the gains we’ve made over the past three decades have gone to a relatively small number of people. If the gains has been broadly shared, then the burden of paying for that basic infrastructure and public services would have to be very broadly shared. But the gains have been very concentrated, and so if we’re going to afford that stuff a large share of the revenue has to come from the people who’ve gotten the money.

(Via Slate Blogs)

Myth busted, turkey does not make you sleepy.

The truth is, turkey is not to blame for your sleepiness. Chicken and ground beef contain almost the same amount of tryptophan as turkey — about 350 milligrams per 4 ounce serving. While you might have heard someone claim that turkey made them drowsy, you have probably never heard someone say that chicken, ground beef, or any other meat made them sleepy. Swiss cheese and pork actually contain more tryptophan per gram than turkey, and yet the American classic, a ham and cheese sandwich, somehow escapes blame.

The amount of tryptophan in a single 4 ounce serving of turkey (about 350 milligrams) is also lower than the amount typically used to induce sleep. The recommendations for tryptophan supplements to help you sleep are 500 to 1000 milligrams.

[Via Wonkblog]

For some reason, I’m not surprised by this study.

Via Daring Fireball

James Shelley:

Perhaps politics is hobby-like because it is has been designed to feel like a club. With it’s color schemes and catchy slogans, partisanship fabricates a fraternity mentality that does more to detract from the essence of democratic participation than facilitate it.

The whole thing is worth a read and something I’ve been thinking about as the 2012 election draws closer.

Steve was right.