Weekend Update – 03-26-2011

AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile. While I’m a Sprint customer myself, I notice that such a merger would not only produce the single largest US cell carrier, but would also give AT&T a GSM monolopy in the United States. I’m not optimistic that our government will regulate it in any meaningful or effective way, so we’ll probably see the natural trend of laissez-faire capitalism toward oligopoly and monopoly continue. None of that is good for us, of course, but our government seems to have ceased even the semblance of being a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and has returned to the 19th century ideals of the Railroad Barons, big banks, and other lords of capitalism.

Hey, I’m a deficit hawk too! Big deficits are bad. Make somebody else pay for eliminating them!

No, I’m not optimistic that there’s anyone out there who will challenge the Republican craziness on this or any other issue. But it’s a nice column.

When I read about efforts to twist and erase history like those of Maine Governor LePage, I feel echoes of Orwell’s 1984.

Most people either favor the health care law or wish it were more liberal. Not exactly the way you hear the poll results characterized in most places, but if you actually go through them, it’s what they actually reveal.

We’ll happily try ideas that have already failed elsewhere in the world. It’s pretty clear by now that, as a country, we are collectively incapable from learning from history or from the experience of others. Nor do we seem to care much about facts or even simple arithmetic. Here in Texas, the GOP is determined to kill some 355,000 jobs. Of course, once they manage to kill our state’s economy, that will likely be just the tip of the iceberg.

Finally, Jon Stewart explores the way the relationship between the new Republican governors and their states has gone from Mom’s cool new boyfriend to psychotic stepdad.