Plans for spending and taxing more can be made to look drearily left-wing rather than intriguingly progressive.

ECONOMIST: Germany��s Green party is flourishing

But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire.

FORBES: Wall Street vs. Manufacturing? "We Need to Get Wall Street Off Our Backs."

Raising the petrol tax is political poison, so Congress has hit upon a drearily predictable solution: to take the money from somewhere else.

ECONOMIST: Infrastructure spending: A patch on the road | The

This updated version of the Ira Levin novel, first adapted for the movies (drearily) in 1975, is bright and funny for about an hour.

NEWYORKER: The Stepford Wives

Inevitably and drearily, it has already been labelled the "Hookergate" scandal.

BBC: The scandal that could bring down Australia's government

In the drearily head-lined article, Compensation negotiation among women in the workplace over at Science Daily, we learn that ingratiation (sometimes called kissing the backside of our corporate masters) remains one of the best ways to avoid the social punishment meted out to women who ask to be compensated for their true market value.

FORBES: The Single Best Women's Salary Strategy for 2013