Team Obama has turned the candidate of hope and change into a ferociously political animal. They’ve discarded their most valuable asset, his stature. The outsider who flew above the hated, polarized politics of red and blue now does nothing but campaign and polarize. The Obama who was “one of us,” apart from Washington, is increasingly and, to his detriment, “one of them.”

Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed by The New York Times and CBS News since the announcement said they thought Mr. Obama made it “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Independents were more likely to attribute it to politics, and nearly half of Democrats agreed.

From Hope and Change to Just Another Politician in four years flat.

The point of the numbers is that getting a student loan is easy. Too easy.

You know who knows that the money is easy better than anyone? The schools that are taking that student loan money in tuition. Which is exactly why they have no problems raising costs for tuition each and every year.

Why wouldn’t they act in the same manner as real estate agents acted during the housing bubble? Raise prices and easy money will be there to pay your price. Good business, right? Until it’s not.

There’s more student loan debt in this country than credit card debt or auto loan debt. Obscene. Throwing money at a problem does not a solution make.

President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of “evolving” on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.

Finally.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is firmly (and unfortunately) opposed.

In The $100 Startup, Chris brings together advice, stories, and case studies from dozens of successful entrepreneurs who have managed to leverage their interests and passions into viable, profitable businesses. This is not one of those books that deals in vague generalities, but in useful concepts backed up by detailed, real-life examples.

Check out the book here. It’s definitely worth your time.

I actually like football a great deal. I am not some anti-sports prude. It has a place in our society, but not on college campuses. If you want to establish a minor league system that the National Football League pays for—which they should, given that they are the greatest beneficiaries of college football—that is fine.

Call me the Grinch. But I would much prefer students going to college to learn and be prepared for the rigors of the new economic order, rather than dumping fees on them to subsidize football programs that, far from enhancing the academic mission instead make a mockery of it.

The money argument in favor of football also falls flat: according to the NCAA, a whopping 43% of schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision actually lost money on their programs.

Still, perhaps banning is too strong an approach. It’s not that sports and academics can’t mix – it’s that too much emphasis is placed on the former in an environment supposedly designed to promote the latter. Keep the sports teams, but move them to a more appropriate location on the list of priorities.

Resetting Google Android smartphones to the original factory settings doesn’t always work, [McAfee identity theft expert Robert] Siciliano says. “On iPhones and iPads, we found little to no data; BlackBerry, same thing,” Siciliano says. “Even when someone did a factory reset on an Android, we still found a tremendous amount of data.”

His solution: “I would beat the thing to death.” Ouch.

It’s astonishing, for instance, that the movie system is so hooked still on counting swear words. The peculiar result is that movies that many parents would be more than happy to have their tween and teen children see are off-limits without an accompanying adult […]

“Once,” a gentle movie about creative collaboration, in which the romantically-inclined couple does not even kiss, but Glen Hansard does say “fook,” in an Irish accent thick enough that you’re not entirely sure what he’s saying, was rated R. So was “The King’s Speech,” an uplifting story about a man conquering a speech impediment, in which Colin Firth utters “fuck” several times in a lightly comic scene involving a vocal exercise.

Also some clever commentary on the way public figures choose their (bad) words.

Those who have received much must be obligated to pay – not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay – in the same proportion.

Putting aside all debate about the feasibility and economic impact of raising taxes on the rich, I suspect that here in Mr. King’s op-ed lies one of the key differences in mindset between two opposing viewpoints.

“Those who have received much,” King says, ought to pay more. Note the word choice. Not earned, but received. It’s difficult to argue that someone is obligated to give up what he or she has earned – but much easier to demand that someone pay out of what he or she has been given.

The difference is more than rhetorical – it describes two very different worldviews: one (right-leaning) which emphasizes the contribution of the individual, and the other (left-leaning) which emphasizes the contribution of society. If the individual is primarily responsible for his own wealth, then he has little obligation to “pay in the same proportion” – except as dictated by his own personal convictions. On the other hand, if an individual’s wealth is primarily given to him by society, then he is absolutely obligated to give back in return.

Both viewpoints are perfectly reasonable (contrary to what Mr. King’s passionate rhetoric would have us believe), but they begin from different premises and thus inevitably reach different conclusions.

I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share.

And this is precisely the point: the idea of one’s “fair share” depends heavily on where one believes that wealth comes from. As Jonathan Haidt reports, research on why people share shows that:

The “share-the-spoils” button is not pressed by the mere existence of inequality. It is pressed when two or more people collaborated to produce a gain. Once the button is pressed in both brains, both parties willingly and effortlessly share.

Willingly and effortlessly. Contrast that with the pitched battle going on today. Psychologically speaking, the reticence of today’s rich to “share the marbles” is rooted in the belief that their wealth did not come from collaboration with society as a whole, and thus they are already paying more than their “fair share” in taxes. So long as that belief persists, pontificating – as Mr. King and others do – about the situation leads to plenty of anger but zero (and quite possibly negative) progress.

Mr. Haidt notes that:

Unfortunately, President Obama promised he would not raise taxes on anyone but the rich. He and other Democrats have also vowed to “protect seniors” from cuts, even though seniors receive the vast majority of entitlement dollars. The president is therefore in the unenviable position of arguing that we’re in big trouble and so a small percentage of people will have to give more, but most people will be protected from sacrifice. This appeal misses the shared-sacrifice button completely. It also fails to push the share-the-spoils button.

In other words, you can’t solve the inequality problem by pitting the rich against the poor and turning fellow citizens into bitter enemies. You can’t win by antagonizing the other side. You don’t get people to share by calling them names or accusing them of all being corrupt, greedy criminals.

Back to Mr. King here:

Last year during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) or Ebenezer Scrooge (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn’t fairly addressed, last year’s protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.

Of course, I don’t believe that Mr. King is truly calling for violent rebellion à la the French Revolution, or for beheading those who opposing raising taxes on the rich. He’s clearly making a rhetorical point. But seriously – this sort of rhetoric really undermines the whole appeal to shared sacrifice and fairness that he claims to represent. Incendiary language does nothing but inflame one side and enrage the other. Cathartic, maybe. Productive? Hardly.

If you believe that wealth is more given than earned, fine. But you won’t convince people to share your views by telling them how wrong and morally bankrupt they are.

If you want people to act like family, then you have to treat them like family. And if you preach that we are all in the same boat, that we are one nation, one society, and accountable for helping one another, then you had better be the first to act like it. That means treating people with respect – even if they disagree with you. Even if they’re richer than you.

For its fans and advocates in the visually-impaired community, the iPhone has turned out to be one of the most revolutionary developments since the invention of Braille. That the iPhone and its world of apps have transformed the lives of its visually impaired users may seem counter-intuitive – but their impact is striking.