1. Stitcher Radio
This app aggregates radio programs based on interest from around the Web, which you can stream when connected.

2. AP Mobile News
Straight news on a decent platform from the industry standard.

3. Camera Bag
Great tool kit for photo effects, including borders and styles.

4. Public Radio Tuner
An interesting collaboration between NPR, PRI and other public radio broadcasters that allows you to tune in to public radio stations from around the country.

5. Pandora
One of the earliest apps for the iPhone still reigns supreme.  Awesome.

It is often noted that the Chinese character for “crisis” is the same as “opportunity”. While I don’t know how factually accurate this is, I do know that governments take advantage of major crises to execute their policies. Said policies are, more often than not, based on ideology rather than solutions to the actual problem at hand. This theory was addressed in Naomi Klein’s excellent, but radical, book “The Shock Doctrine,” which details the darker side of U.S. foreign policy as policymakers seek to exploit instability to further U.S. interests in locations from South America to Asia, and pretty much everywhere in between. Tsunami in Sri Lanka? Perfect opportunity to relocate those pesky local vendors and build western-financed luxury tourist resorts. Economic collapse and protests in Boliva? Opportunity to impose the so-called Washington Consenus economic model. Insecurity in Iraq? A boom for American industry building a green zone.

But exploitation of instability is not limited to foreign ventures. It’s a domestic, and bipartisan, endeavor as well. George Bush famously ushered in the “security industrial complex” following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Reconstruction efforts in the Gulf Coast took advantage of the situation to change the demographic make up of part of New Orleans, as well as its education system. And now, our current President Barack Obama, is using the economic meltdown to push forward radical reforms in health care, education and energy. His Vice President Joe Biden has apparently learned to value of disaster capitalism, and says so himself in this Washington Post article. And it’s not been lost on those to the right, as witnessed in this Wall Street Journal editorial.

As always, the question remains, will such efforts – again based more on ideology and pre-conceived thoughts rather than immediate solutions to the crisis at hand – align enough in order to resolve the current economic situation? Doubtful. But either way, the Obama administration seems ready to fight to make its platform a reality. We may end up a nation of insured, hybrid-driving,educated Americans with no jobs.

Business journalist Michael Lewis, best known for his scathing tell all about his time as a Wall Street trader at Solomon Brothers in the 1980s, Liar’s Poker, has penned a very insighting article for lay people about how the investment firms of today caused the current economic collapse.  Read the article in Portfolio.  Just added: Scandalized former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer, a renegade regulator during his tenure, weighs in on the problem.

This is a great story from NPR about how gun enthusiasts, despite the gloomy economy, are out in droves buying guns in preperation of greater regulation under an Obama administration.  Apparently, the need to purchase automatic weapons and assault rifles has increased exponentially, since an Obama administration would likely regulate gun sales.   (File under: Only in America).

President Bush and his administration announced this week they would no longer use the term “stay the course” to describe U.S. policy in Iraq, since Americans are misinterpreting the description they say is no longer accurate. “The characterization of, you know, ‘it’s stay the course’ is about a quarter right,” said the president, noting that his administration is “constantly adjusting the tactics,” according to the Washington Post. No word yet on “cut and run” or any of the other rhetorical verbiage coming out of the White House in past years.