Things to Know - 7 February

1.  Sometimes it may be good to experiment with other sources of news, satire, or internet publications.   To that end, I'm going to introduce this, and see if it sticks to the wall:
http://www.cagle.com/2012/02/why-is-mitt-romney-playing-the-rags-to-riches-game/

2.  Apparently Mitt Romney went to the same school of American Patriotism as Sarah Palin's  Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.   If you get all tangled up in the vicissitudes of patriotic protocol, this one is for you:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romneys-misfire-on-the-national-anthem/2012/02/05/gIQA5NLKsQ_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics

3.  If you saw the Chrysler ad during the Super Bowl, you saw Clint Eastwood extol the resurgence of the auto industry and the rebounding of Detroit as an example of how America has struggled through the first half and will really get going in the second half.   Well, this was just too much for Karl Rove and the Super Pac ad producer of the right wing.  He just sees things in political tones, and was offended that it conveyed a political message.  Rove, grow up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/karl-rove-offended-by-clint-eastwoods-chrysler-ad/2012/02/06/gIQAYt3HuQ_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics

4.  The candidate who "is unemployed" and know what it is like to be poor, sure has been able to provide that his kids won't starve:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/pf/romney_kids_trust/index.htm

5.  As a follow-up to the above link, Romney just does not connect with enough people in his own party (whatever that means), to generate adequate excitement:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitt-romney-the-front-runner-who-leaves-the-gop-cold/2012/02/06/gIQAn0L5uQ_print.html

6.  I am giving you this Joe Nocera column, and going to let you know that I totally disagree with him.  The Keystone XL is a disaster for the environment.  Its proposed route through Nebraska and the Ogallala aquifer is a potential pollution hazard to the fresh water for the heartland of America.  A question was raised as to why Trans Canada (the oil company pushing this thing) does not just run this pipeline up and over to Bristish Columbia, refine it there, and avoid all the hassles in the USA.  The reason is that the Canadians are even more staunch and dead set against the destruction of their arboreal lands and water than we are.  The USA was seen as patsies and the easy to way to take their product to market, via oil refineries in Texas.  I personally will do as much as I can to see that this Keystone XL goes no where:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/nocera-the-poisoned-politics-of-keystone-xl.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

7.  David Brooks comes up with a rationalization on how Obama should be doing a better job to help the poor:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/brooks-flood-the-zone.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

8.  When the Big Banks screwed around screwing people, the abused actually moved their money to better places:
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-bank-transfer-day-20120206,0,5186717,print.story

--
Juan

"If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the Up button."

       -- Sam Levenson

"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
       -- Robert Heinlein

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength." (Rush Limbaugh?  ed.))
       -- Eric Hoffer

"She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table."
       -- Henry James

"The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name."
       -- Aldous Huxley