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Showing posts from December, 2010

My New Year Resolutions

I will not call right wingers, wingnuts, I'll try to be polite and call them Wing Nuts. I will not tell them they are corporate tools over and over again, two or three times each day will suffice. I will try not to laugh too hard when their only reply is a three word talking point (TP), aka slogan, given to them by right wing radio. I will try not to laugh too hard when they repeat one of their essential TPs that MSM is liberal. I will try not to think of them as uneducated simpletons even when they get all their thoughts from Beck, Limbaugh, Fox, or the vast right wing echo chamber. I will try to seriously believe they only woke up after Obama's election to deficits and massive wasteful spending. I will try to take seriously the Tea Party's whining about government public policy even as they collect social security and benefit from Medicare. I will try hard to think that Wing Nuts must have more on their minds than just taxes, taxes, taxes. I will try to forget the

What the Census Means

Conservatives and republicans are an odd bunch. First the census is an invasion of privacy and an enormous government conspiracy. Some even said don't send it in. Then it becomes proof that people moving to other parts of the country is proof of some magical correlation. Remember folks, Obama won some unexpected states. Counting your chickens before they hatch can be hazardous. Texas grew because of Hispanics, a few of the blue states dropped because of aging population and weather. Remember the boomers. Many of our boomer friends have moved South. American remains a liberal progressive nation, we have passed healthcare, repealed DADT, improved food safety, we are gradually moving out of Iraq, extended child healthcare, created thousands of jobs, improved consumer regulation, two great SCOTUS choices, and got America back on her feet even if a little unsteady. No republican administration from Coolidge/Hoover to Reagan and the Bushs ever accomplished feats to match these - NEVER

Is Fox making America dumber?

You decide. "Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), the economy is getting worse (26 points), most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), their own income taxes have gone up (14 points), the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican.

Julian Assange and Hypocrisy

I find the outrage over Wikileaks hypocritical. It is curious how we so easily defend truth and then when it is uncomfortable run and hide. What happened to all this horsepucky about freedom of the press. Where is that 'liberal' media we hear about so often? What about the Pentagon papers or Deep Throat, were they not helpful in presenting just a bit of the backroom shenanigans? Or are the insiders the only ones allowed to spread information even when it is total BS. A single day of Fox talking heads is so full of distortion, lies, and omissions that a person's head should spin. The nuns told us omission is sin too! Remember Colin Powell's pack of BS to the UN? Is that OK but truth not? Consider the distortions in the New York Times, as well as most MSM, leading up to Iraq, was that OK. Thousands died over that bit of baloney. Can Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, and other right wing talking heads say any idiocy so long as it is untrue or exaggerated? Consider the WMDs that

It's all about getting reelected....

'The Spirit Level' As the rapacious republicans and the gutless democrats ruin the nation through debt and immoral tax policy, these book examine the consequences so obvious today in America. "In 2005, 21.2 percent of US national income accrued to just 1 percent of earners. Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Walmart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Walmart founder's family that year estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40 percent of the US population: 120 million people." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land' YouTube video. YouTube video. "This disposition to admire, and almost to worship , the rich and powerful, and to despise , or , at least neglect persons of poor and mean conditions... is... the great and most universal cause of the corruption o

'a Call for Reform'

'Have we learned the lessons from the last financial crisis or are we planting the seeds of the next one?' from Amazon Q&A see link below. "He was known as “Dr. Doom” — a perennial pessimist in the often sunny world that is the dismal science of economics. And in 2008 his predictions of disaster — delivered two years earlier — came stunningly, frighteningly true, as the entire global financial system teetered on the brink of the abyss. Cassandra had belatedly become a much-celebrated prophet...." "Taking the reader on a fast guided tour of several centuries of capitalism, Mr. Roubini points out how the patterns of boom and bust are predictable, from the rise of asset bubbles to the spread of collapse to other countries that share similar types of excess. "Lack of transparency," he writes, "underestimation of risk, and cluelessness about how new financial products might behave when subjected to significant stress are recurrent problems in m

Note to Obama

Politics today in America is not about representing the people of the nation, it is about power and getting reelected. Clinton faced the same do nothing republicans and moved too far right in my opinion in order to pacify the corporate wingnuts. Note to Obama: it didn't work for him and moving right won't work for you. They still hunted Clinton, wasting millions on investigations about nothing. Obama needs to face the reality the republicans only want control and will only support the monied interests to gain back control. The scene is so obvious and yet the Dems too play act their part and move like unprincipled pawns for reelection. Working people will only count when they rebel in the voting booth - this is tough as neither side is very good - or rebel as the workers did in the thirties, or the Blacks did in the sixties. Power and money resist any change that moves towards justice and fairness for all. "In the political turnover in the United States in the autumn