Things to Know - 5 October

10/5 Mike Luckovich cartoon: Waiting in pumpkin patch

1.  The Occupy Wall Street effort, by this writer, needs to also bring attention to K Street in Washington D.C. to really bring effective change.  He is probably right.  Karl Rove and his handful of billionaires (money from Wall Street) are talking of putting up $240 BILLION to defeat Obama in the next election.  The K Street Lobby has the bucks to do it.  Read on:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print/38757/

2.  A Manifesto for the Wall Street Occupation.  It seems that as each day and week passes, clarity of purpose takes traction.  The real test is when the weather starts getting very cold, damp, snowy, and then freezing.  If the protesters truly have no place to go, and are are dedicated to their civil disobedience (which heretofore has been quite civil), then the action will become a movement, not just an inconvenience for those walking to work on Wall Street:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/7091

3.  Medicare and Fraud.  Opponents of Obamacare or any reform would like for us to think that our current medical institutions are the best in the world and the free market will sort everything out.  Read this, and see how an unregulated or criminal element exists in whatever form of health care we have to work with.  The Greed on Wall Street is no different than the Greed by Big Pharma.  The only difference is that one group plays with other people's money in their private schemes, but socializes their losses.   The other group illegally socializes the use of chemicals in the Medicare patient's blood streams and privatizes any financial gains to their own coffers, unless the whistle get blown.  Do I hear a toot, toot?:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/7077

4.  Paul Krugman has a quick show-and-tell about taxes on the rich and middle class:
http://www.truth-out.org/print/7116

5.  Thomas Friedman explains what Christie's departure means to the GOP campaign, and how it changes Obama's center of re-election strategy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/opinion/friedman-no-christie-no-bargain.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

6.  Maureen Dowd, following up on Friedman's subject, paint a more entertaining picture (enlarged to fit the subject matter):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/opinion/dowd-man-in-the-mirror.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

7.  This is a nice story to end it for this edition.  It's going out early this time - so you folks on EST have it for breakfast, and my buddy in Albany might be in shock if he reads it before he goes to bed tonight.  I plan to sleep in and enjoy a full day of rain in Claremont:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-1003-krikorian-wallet-20111002,0,5246273,print.story



--
Juan Matute

"The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."
       -- J. Paul Getty

"A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward."
       -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Indecision may or may not be my problem."
       -- Jimmy Buffett

"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."
       -- Andre Malraux

"The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools."
       -- Doug Larson