Things to Know - 21 October

1.  Is the American Dream over?  Data suggests that poverty is on the increase everywhere.  The middle class is shrinking:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/poverty-rates-rise-in-mos_n_1022927.html?utm_campaign=102011&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-business&utm_content=FullStory

2.  National Security and Defense is eating up all of budget, and is showing signs of getting more money.  Is it any wonder that providing for the general welfare and domestic tranquility for the needs of our communities is inferior to what we had before?  The bloated priorities of corporations to keep feeding the MIC (military-industrial complex) is destroying us.  This is what I protest as I occupy the seat from which I send out this "stuff to know":
http://www.truth-out.org/print/7825

3.  Here is a link to a very cool and informative resource for getting much of the daily news that the main-stream media does not always cover:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/7829

4.  Meanwhile, The Amish life goes on.  They hit the news when something happens in their community......and then they blend back into the fields of Lancaster when it is over.  Kaddafi is not know there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/opinion/our-amish-ourselves.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

5.  Paul Krugman points out that the Gee Opie plan to trash regulations and let the energy industry run wild in drilling on the promise that it will create jobs is ....well , dumb, and harmful:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/opinion/party-of-pollution.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

6.  Timothy Egan does a great job in framing the issue of immigration and the disconnect our Gee Opie, and Donkeycrats have over it:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/migrants-from-sanity/?pagemode=print

7.  You get a double-whammy today.  Another editorial on the bad stuff that the Republicants are trying to do with our environement:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-jackson-train-act-20111021,0,4464566,print.story

8.  You have all heard about "cap and trade". The Gee Opie is dead against it (naturally), and they fear monger it to people.  Well, California just adopted the legislation yesterday and here is a nice column that explains what it is all about and how it is going to work, and how the rest of the nation will eventually follow suit:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap-trade-20111021,0,4780746,print.story

--
Juan Matute

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man...only five hundred."
       -- Meredith Willson

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry."
       -- John Cage

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
       -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
       -- Sir Winston Churchill
"If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow."
       -- George W. Bush