A picture is worth how many ideas?

Because it’s easier this way ….

On Friday, Glenn Greenwald noted:

And just to save you the spare click, this is what he was referring to:

To be fair, maybe it’s not simply about Time holding Americans in contempt as emotionally immature consumerist dolts. It could be something about market dynamics. Maybe Americans just aren’t that into revolutionary politics. I mean, it’s nice to cheer for the underdogs, sure, but what with those weirdos occupying New York and other cities, it is entirely possible that people really are so unsettled that we need to be pepper spraying eighty-four year-old women.

And, you know, maybe the international cover for Time (v.178, n.22) just makes Americans unnecessarily anxious. So, you know, they run a much more appropriate cover explaining why anxiety is good for people. Rather than working to make life more satisfactory, we ought to just learn how to find greater satisfaction in the things that worry us. That way, well … you know … maybe revolutionary ideas won’t occur to Americans as possible solutions for anxiety. Or something.

Even more than raw politics, this could be about marketplace politics. Sure, this might be what Time thinks of Americans, but Greenwald overlooks the question of whether or not there is a reason for that.

Today in Talking Points

It’s almost like connect the dots. Of course, that’s why they’re called “talking points”:

• Politico covers the latest conservative argument, that wealth and conscience don’t mix.
• Steve Benen explains the obvious about that argument.
• And Tom Tomorrow dusts fourteen years off an old cartoon, for obvious reasons.
• Meanwhile, Rob Goodman hopes to intellectually validate equal criticism against all political players, the feelgood fallacy also known as “both sides do it”.
• And why not get some election coverage from Karl Frisch, a Democratic strategist trying to explain what’s wrong with Republicans.
• If that doesn’t do it for you, try the latest Obama-hates-Christians “war on Christmas” lament. (At least it’s not as mortifying as Rush Limbaugh’s astonishing defense of the Lord’s Resistance Army.)

Or, it’s just another day in the life. Something about decadence. Something about the fall of Rome. Something about what we do with what we are given.

“Let me say this is as clearly and as simply as I can: Republicans did not overreach. What they did is who they are. It is what they stand for. It is what they campaign on.

To claim otherwise would be like saying fish live under water because they suffer from unquenchable thirst.”

—Karl Frisch

The Secretary of Labor sez … well, okay, a former Secretary of Labor. But, yeah. A really smart guy, you know. Econ professor. That sort of thing.

Robert Reich explains the truth about the economy, or something like that. I mean, you know, whatever. But, still, you have seen it, right?