Ravenweb Blog

I've added some additions to my blogroll and wanted to make note of them here: ASCII Dreams is an interesting blog penned by a game developer and aspiring writer. There's a lot of good stuff on his blog, especially if you enjoy in-depth articles exploring the nuances of gaming. Chronological Snobbery explores " the forgotten crevices of popular culture". Here you will find excessively detailed posts about all manner of media from the past, with a tilt toward 80s and 90s film, TV, and music. I just stumbled upon Locust of Evil a few days ago, but I immediately enjoyed and quickly subscribed to this blog that's dedicated to current political events.

Paul Krugman's The Conscience of a Liberal is a well-researched and masterfully crafted book that examines why the American middle class and relative income equality following the New Deal through the late 1970s have eroded over the past three and a half decades. Krugman begins by demonstrating how the modern American middle class did not evolve but was systematically created through political movements, principally the New Deal reforms that led to the American welfare state. From this premise, Krugman shows how "movement conservatives" organized and came to power and exploited racial and cultural divisions until they were powerful enough to win elections and begin undermining the New Deal's achievements. This has culminated, Krugman argues, in the movement conservative presidency of George Bush, whose disaster in Iraq and policies that favor the wealthy and big business have all exacerbated income inequality and, in effect, laid the groundwork for a new liberalism...