A Thinking Reed

  • Hillary and the meat-industrial complex

    The recently announced co-chair of “Rural Americans for Hillary” is the former head of “the main trade group representing CAFO [concentrated animal feeding operations, a.k.a. factory farms] operators.” More here. Hard to think of too many things that’ve been more generally detrimental to the livelihood of “rural Americans” that industrial farming (not to mention their…

  • Who ever heard of a skinny Santa?

    Seriously? (via Mary)

  • Another view

    I don’t have anything interesting to say about Mitt Romney’s religion speech, but, as it happens, yesterday I was hanging out with an out-of-town Mormon friend. I asked him what he thought of Romney’s speech. He didn’t like it because he doesn’t think Mormonism should strive to be mainstream. He said he has never thought…

  • Eddie Izzard + Legos + Star Wars = hi-larious

    A friend sent this to me (warning: some salty language):

  • Alterna-nomics

    I finally got my hands on a copy of Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy and I’m tempted to call it my non-fiction book of 2007. It manages to be both troubling and hopeful as it paints a bleak picture of what our present obsession with “growth” is doing to us and to the planet, while holding…

  • Friday metal – Killswitch Engage, “A Bid Farewell” (live)

  • Huckabee vs. torture

    It’s a depressing sign of the times when you feel like you should praise a politician who wants to hold America to a higher standard than, say, the Inquisition or the Khmer Rouge. Still, it’s good to see Mike Huckabee joining John McCain (and Ron Paul) as a Republican against torture: After the Iowa poll…

  • D.C. = most walkable

    Lucky for me as I walk pretty much everywhere I go. I might take the Metro once or twice a week, but we’re lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where pretty much all the necessities (and several of the luxuries) of life are within a couple blocks’ distance. Of course, we pay for that…

  • The case for McCain

    CPA makes it. I’ve come around, somewhat to my own surprise, to the view that, of all the likely GOP nominees, McCain is the best option. Initially I thought Romney might be the least damaging of the crop since I reasoned that he would govern as a northeastern Rockefeller Republican (far from my favorite ideological…

  • Elizabeth Kucinich talks Ron Paul

    As a follow up to the other day’s post, Elizabeth Kucinich praises Ron Paul (via YF). And is Mrs. K a total babe, or what? Wow!