Sunday, September 2, 2012

Things to Know - 3 September

Ben Sargent
1.  Kind of a slow news morning, so one has to scrape the sides and the bottom for stuff.  In that vein, here we find Michelle Bachmann, somewhere emerging from a discarded 7-11 Slurpee with this dynamic observation about how wealth is an issue in the presidential election.  Ms. Bachmann thinks that Obama is so wealthy that he is disconnected from the average American, and that a Romney Ryan ticket is the answer to all the problems.  Yes.... it is a video clip of the ranking member of the house intelligence committee making a  public opinion.   If the Republicans have not figured it out, their greatest enemy is the recorded digital evidence of public statements:

2.  Continuing on with the hypocrisy of the Republican agenda, Bill Maher does his shtick on the innate talent of the party to forget, or eliminate from the discussion those GOP monuments of blundering and destruction.  Here, have a laugh or two:

3.  Labor Day is a national holiday invented by the labor union movement.  As much as it has been maligned, demonized, and trashed by the Conservatives and the GOP, it is still the symbolic honoring of the sweat and toil of the collective efforts of working men and women who built this country. It is fitting that Robert Reich makes it the subject of today's Labor Day reading:

4.  This article is more than a gentle poke at the ways of the South.  I, having lived there for 24 years of my life, and realized that it was economic exile (my job security in in 1987 existed with the offer by Delta to move to Atlanta).   I really was in a constant struggle with the culture.  Reading this piece, I would like to think that the problems of the South will be resolved as the generations creep into the future.  This article does not have such optimism.  To my friends who I left behind after moving to California, I would be interested in your views of this article:
http://www.alternet.org/print/books/why-do-so-many-southerners-think-theyre-only-real-americans  

5.  The Federal Deficit, the national debt, the weakened economy, tough times, and many people going hungry and hurting - These are hardly the times to increase our expenditures to front an already bloated and wasteful Defense Budget.  However, Leon Panetta and every hawk wants to do so.   What great mystery weapon is it that Afghanistan has that we need to spend more money to defeat?   If there is one, it surely is not made of metal.  Our biggest enemy right now is is here in the states with an economy that needs stimulus, an infrastructure of roads, rails, and bridges, and jobs.  We do not need to look at the Military-Industrial Complex as a jobs program - that makes no sense.  We need to get our heads screwed on straight and quit thinking that the DOD is our savior; it is not:

6.  This article really is about putting American Capitalism on Trial, and examining all its faults and destructive forces.  Some of you have read some of my tirades on the inequalities that unregulated Capitalism can unleash, and how a certain crust (the 1%) of our population has benefited from the rent-seeking cronyism and corruption of which "free-market" capitalism is capable.  If this presidential campaign really would get into a serious debate, this would be the number one issue - "Capitalism is Failing Us"?   yes or no, and explain.  However, that would be too complicated for most people to understand:

7.  Paul Krugman kind of rehashes all the fraudulent presentations that the Romney/Ryan budget cutting speeches make, without including any justifications for the claims or any details, or any reality.  What makes this Krugman piece memorable is that he works off the theme that Ryan started when he boasted about his sub-three hour marathon run, .......couldn't exactly remember the exact details but it was in the "high-twos".   That was a big fat lie, and after he was called out on it by people who actually record the times of marathon runners, Ryan had to admit that he never ran it faster than something over 4 hours.   How do you misspeak by over ONE HOUR?   Do you remember Rosie Ruiz who avoided about three-fourths of the race and boogied in from behind a tree and won the Boston Marathon?  So, now we got Rosie Ryan in the same factoid league:

8.  A cute piece of nonsense about Mitt Romney only eating the tops of muffins (to strangely prove that he is just a regular Joe), just might not appeal to the hard-scrabble immigrants steeped in the American tradition of hard work and frugality:


--
Juan

"I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out." 
       -- Rodney Dangerfield
"What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living." 
       -- Doug Larson
"An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." 
       -- Charles de Montesquieu
"Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day." 
       -- Unknown

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