Political: Reason, The Independent Journal (from the Independent Institute - feels like homework)

General feature articles: Wired, The Atlantic (when political, it is generally left leaning but there are two or three superbly written feature articles every month that I enjoy and learn a lot from.)

Professional/technical: IEEE Spectrum (Wired without the fun), MIT Technology Review (Just started. Surprisingly bad!), Proceedings of the IEEE (feels like really hard homework), Armed Forces Journal, Naval Institute Proceedings, National Defense, Defense News (if you work in defense acquisition and don't get this, it is malpractice on your part), numerous other trade industry (i.e. PR) pubs.

Fun: Car & Driver, Bicycling, Cycle World, Hemmings Import Cars (or something like that). I get most of these for free or almost free by using miles.

If I had to cut back to five - Reason, Wired, The Atlantic, Naval Institute Proceedings, Defense News.

I'll probably let The Independent Journal drop and subscribe to City Journal.

Franz,

The only version of Hallelujah I've heard is Jeff Buckley's. I don't follow the lyrics that closely but I love the sound of Buckley's pipes belting out that song. Aurally, it is one of my favorites. There must be thousands of worse songs you can pick out.

How I hate Commie Christmas! That is clearly number 1 over Imagine. I'm tempted to give Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmas Time" the nod for number 2 (how can those who produced Revolver, Rubber Soul, and Sgt Pepper produce such dreck?), but I have to go with "Maneater" here.

We pretty much switch to all Christmas music in Dec and both my daughters hate ex-Beatles Christmas songs as much as I do, and without any prompting.

Ugh, all that happened was an entrenchment of the philosophy that the bottom 98% get to get government worth 24% of GDP while paying a lot less than that in taxes and sticking my 4 and 9-year-olds with the bill. Thanks. I thought going over the cliff was the best moral, if not political, choice. We won't do anything meaningful until the big crash.

The only rays of hope I've been somewhat convinced by are Nick Gillespie's <http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/02/fiscal-cliff-deal-raises-taxes-delays-se> and John Hinderaker's <http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/01/an-optimistic-take-on-the-cliff-deal.php> both of which are along the lines of "we've given you what you wanted, let's see how it works".

I'm just getting into Wish You Were Here. Not familiar at all with the Syd Barrett era stuff. Once I've digested those my choices may change but, for now:

Comfortably Numb

Us and Them

Brain Damage

Their mellow stuff is so much better than Money, etc.

By the way, if you are a Netflix on-demand subscriber, check out the mini documentary on Dark Side... <https://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Pink_Floyd_The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon/60030169?locale=en-US>

It was weird hearing Salmon Khan's voice in a context other than explaining the multiplication tables to my 9 year 0ld. Gave me some kind of cognitive dissonance. I wish Nick could have done the Reason TV interview with Khan Academy style graphics.

Lake Mattumuskeet, Reason Foundation sponsor

In my situation, I would adopt an approach of resigned malaise, something along the lines of "If I didn't have two young children, I could live with the results of this election. I have a home that is nearly paid for and have saved a good amount for my retirement in addition to having a military retirement. But it pains me to know that my children are going to grow up in a country that is less free and prosperous than the one we grew up in. In the best case, as we transition from free enterprise to a more government controlled economy, we'll suffer the slow growth, moderately reduced living standards, and dependency of western Europe. However, I feel your guy is less of a "we're all in it together" Scandinavian social democrat than a class warrior like Hugo Chavez who takes from the productive to give to his political clients. I think that we've taken a step here that will lead to a Greek-style debt crises or worse." I'd have a gallon of bile in my gut during the whole discussion.

Everyone,

Thanks for the input so far. So many good options that I'm going to need a longer commute.

Link, por favor

Speaking for myself, and some of the strong conservatives I associate with, our enthusiasm was far greater than in 2008. However, we are all part of the economic conservative leg of the stool (the others being national defense conservatives and social conservatives). I would suspect that, due to a lack of emphasis on social issues and lack of a clearly identified social conservative like Palin, the social conservatives were the ones who didn't come out. I sure hope they didn't stay home due to Romney's Mormonism.

Our stool won't stand without all three legs.

How about "Free Stuff or Die"?

I'd love to go Galt but I work for the defense industry.

What I strongly recommend not doing is going off on a 10-minute tirade that violates every aspect of the Ricochet Code of Conduct about what a collectivist, restributionist, un-American, nasty, Maoist bleep the election winner is to your Obama voting wife. She took it well but it wasn't my highest moment. (She was probably thinking "Rave on, loser. Your side lost.")

She's a moderate in every sense of the word but somehow Romney couldn't reach her. She bought a lot of the smears, especially the War-on-Women stuff, that the other side put out.

A thought, can we relax the Code of Conduct for one day so I can rant in a more satisfying manner?

As my heart breaks for my 4 and 9 year old kids. Unfortunately, if the rest of the USA turns to Detroit or Greece around them, they're screwed, so I can't wish what you do regarding the rest of the world. How do we prepare the next generation for the new realilty? I'm afraid the answer might be what John Derbyshire often used to say on his podcast - "Get a government job! Maybe we can get to 40% of the working population like Greece.

I remember when I had a dead mouse wedged in a particularly inaccessible location in my basement. I had a lot of trouble finding it. The whole basement smelled of something dead. When I eventually found it, the scent literally (to quote Joe Biden) made me gag and made my eyes water. Seeing the maggots crawling around wasn't appealing either. (Reminder to self - ensure wife knows of desire to be cremated.) Thanks a lot, cat. If you're going to kill it, eat it.

I imagine that the way the water recedes will leave large piles of dead rats rather than disperse them evenly. These piles are going to be something nasty.

 This is a great podcast, by the way. Three very funny conservatives  or maybe two funny conservatives and one funny RINO squish but it made cleaning post-Sandy lawn debris a pleasure.

Emoticons are the bad 60's-70's SITCOM laugh tracks of written internet discourse. They say "laugh here" or something to that effect when the material isn't sufficient to produce the desired effect.

Mine will be one squeamish libertarian vote for Romney/Ryan (actually an anti-Obama/Biden vote), especially now that my formally dark blue state is now an RCP toss-up.