The GOP Field Becomes More Mundane

 

George *YAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWN* Pataki might announce this weekend

 

Pataki puts rocks to sleep.

Quiet Victories

 

While I agree with Friedersdorf's overarching point here, the simple fact is, the American attention span is so short, people only remember that we won.

You Think Energy Prices Have YOU Down?

 

The universe is running out of gas.

In America, Hotels Have Space

 

In Russia, Space have hotel.

I'm Struggling To Make A Joke With This

 

But there's got to be one in there:

 

Homo Erectus: World's First Chefs

 

Something about skewering and spits....

Opening A New Font In The War On....

 

.....errrrr, fonts.

 

Personally, I'm not sure I trust a book by an author named after a musical group and a cartoon....

Damned If "I Do," Damned If "I Don't"

 

You're going to get fat, anyway.

Ya Might Have Picked Someone Who's, You Know, Actually Won A Case?

 

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, has hired an attorney in connection with the Senate investigation to the market collapse of 2008.

 

Will we see bankstahs frog-marched to jail? Stay tuned...

A Little Bit Of Monica

 

I expect the harrumphing to begin by noon, EDT, over the President's choice of books while on vacation.

The beleaguered American president will be relaxing in Martha's Vineyard with his family and an eclectic collection of books, from Woodrell's tales of detective Rene Shade taking on "hit men, porn kings, a gang of ex-cons, and the ghosts of his own checkered past", to Isabel Wilkerson's charting of the migration of black citizens from America's deep south, The Warmth of Other Sons.

I'll say this in advance: what is it about sex that Teabaggers can't even read about someone reading about it?

 

Gee...Think This Might Work Here?

 

The French uberwealthy want more taxes.

 

See, there's something about a true revolution...not that America's was a slouch, but stick with this for a moment...where a people rise up against (here it comes) its own government to demand change.

 

The French Revolution was, in essence, the sea-change the American was not. The American Revolution was the landed gentry being tired of their responsibilities to a king 3,500 miles away who really paid them no mind. The French Revolution was the people's revolution, where a nation stood up against its own resident king and said "Enough!"

 

People were starving. "Let them eat cake." Rising food prices, higher energy costs and poor infrastructure to even ship food to rural areas, as well as a growing disparity in income equality and a monumental national debt all contributed to a circumstance that finally snapped.

 

Add to this the resentment of the working and middle classes to the elites, nobles, and wealthy, and the rejection of doctrinaire religion (Catholicism) holding sway over public policy, and you have your basic powderkeg.

 

Why does this sound so much like present day America? A government out of touch with its people, a people divided into economic strata that are growing apart, and the injection of fundamentalism into public policy.

 

Twain (apocryphally, via Colombo) said it best, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

 

Given French history, it's no surprise that the wealthy in France want to do something to help out. Another Revolution, in a day and age when entire fortunes can be stolen with the click of a mouse, is probably pretty scary. Thomas Jefferson once said that when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

 

Our government does not fear us. Sarkozy, Bettencourt, and de Margerie do fear the French.

 

You know, you'd think the Teabaggers would be a pioneering group but when you're organized and motivated by the very people whom you serve, you're a sham, a fraud, a complete and utter tool of those who would keep you in servitude. Former government officials, leaders of the largest corporations on the planet, lobbyists and advisors all make up the hierarchy that is the Tea Party.

 

The people underneath them don't have a Teapot to piss in, but that's not the problem of the Armeys and Kochs of the world, so long as they can keep them mad at the boogeymen: Muslims, Mexicans, 'Mericans.

 

That's not to say that there aren't Americans who have money who get it. Warren Buffett, arguably the richest man in the world, does, along with Bill Gates, Sr and several others. They understand what the French people have been born with: a tradition that a nation cannot stand on its own unless each of its citizens can stand on their own. History is replete with examples of nations that tried to hoard, to exploit their people for the benefit of insiders. 

 

Nations are not Amway. They are not a pyramid scheme. The very fact that you work in your job about as hard as the guy you work for should entitle you to a bit more than the crumbs off his table, because your work makes his life that much easier. A healthy society would recognize this. Europe certainly does.

Geeky Wow Things

 

Who'da thunk the Fibonacci sequence would have any practical use in applied science and technology?

 

And yet, it may play an important part in fractal calculations...

A New Breakthrough

 

It looks ALS...Lou Gehrig's Disease...is finally coming under the control of medical science.

Interesting

I'd hope we'd be out of our Great Recession by 2020!

 

More likely, it's justifying the capital expenditures now, in the face of massive layoffs and unemployment, to generate jobs later this decade. If we were talking shovel-ready projects, this would be a bad decision. For now, not so much.

And Yet, They Couldn't "Afford" To Bail Out Homeowners

 

This program was on top of TARP.

 

But HAARP was the program that got people all wired up. Meanwhile, banks are profitable and homeowners are delinquent

Sounds Like "He Said, He Said" To Me

 

Wikileaks documents destroyed

 

If you believe Assange, Domscheit-Berg was working with international intelligence agencies.

 

If you believe Domscheit-Berg, Assange failed to provide sufficient protections to the leakers of the documents, which included the Bank of America scandal that was never released.

 

I tend to lean with Domscheit-Berg, in that Assange may have become blinded by his anger and eagerness to release the documents-- remember how he touted them left and right?-- but it's very possible Assange is correct.

 

Or, they may both be right. Either way, we've lost a treasure of information.

Vladi Was Stalk

 

While I can't say I blame him...after all, you have to feed your own people first...Putin's actions seem to be provocative and premature.

Alien Visitors: Our Friends

 

Possibly, but probably not

 

Give this some thought: apart from curiousity, there's really only one reason to visit this rock so close to a star: inhabitability.

 

Minerals, water, even gases can more easily be culled from the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, which have lower gravity wells and no population to battle... as far as we can tell. Metals can be grabbed out of asteroids practically for free by robotic miners.

 

But only the earth is in the sweet spot of being neither too close or too far from the star. A hostile visit would almost certainly entail an invasion, with most likely the elimination of the human species (the only one capable of defending the planet from space invaders before they got here.)

 

That said, the chances of an alien civilization reaching across billions of miles to take over our planet would be on the order of hitting the lottery twice in one week.

 

Without buying a ticket either time.

I've Always Like Warren Buffett

Now more than ever

 

Join him at United For A Fair Economy and help take a bite out of the rich.

Catching Up

So I heard Rick Perry jumped in the race while I was away.

 

And now rumour has it George Pataki might toss a feeler out.

 

So, um, why are Republicans so unified in their contempt of the choices available?

Surrender, Moamar! (So We Can Get On Fixing America)

It looks like it's all over but the shouting in Libya.

 

It's a weird world we live in, all of a sudden. It seems like, for so long, we've been battling one extremist dictatorship after another. Now all we seem to have left as adversaries are Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il, and Kim looks like he's pretty much neutralized by his own megalomania. Who's left? Chavez, who's barely a blip of a threat to US interests-- and in fact, extends a hand to the poor of this nation thru Citgo oil? Castro? Some tin-pot African terror?

 

It's a weird world when the biggest threat to world stability is the United States.

 

I say that rather hyperbolic statement to look at a domestic conflict inherent in this age.

 

For some reasons, America requires boogeymen. If it's not minorities and immigrants, it's "them." We seem to be unique in this regard. No other nation has waged war quite as frequently in the past 50 years as the US. When we are united in conflict, it seems, it is the only time when we are truly united. When we are not, we fall apart. When it was "the Japs and Hun," well, we rose to the occasion. Or the "Russkies."

 

We invent political theories designed to create conflict: Brinksmanship, the Domino Theory, Manifest Destiny...these are not the slogans of a healthy, peaceful nation-- like, say, the New Deal or the Fair Deal or New Frontier-- but one of a savage and brutal regime. It's not healthy for us to be picking on fourth rate tyrannies by putting lipstick on them and calling them the second coming of Hitler.

 

That's not to say we do not have a role as a military power in ousting repressive and brutal regimes, but here's the thing: in doing so, we skew our own sensibilities and attitudes to more brutality and repression.

 

And if you don't believe me, just take a look at The PATRIOT Act.

 

We ought to exercise this power judiciously.

 

So now that we've pretty much run the table, note what's happening internally: we're finding boogeymen in our borders. And aspects of our society are waging wars against "them."

 

Liberals, minorities, women, homosexuals, the poor, all have come under the gun from select conservatives sectors of society. All while our corporate overlords...the ones who made money on all those military drubbings overseas...laugh and count the money they're squirreling away after screwing you and me, liberal and conservative, straight and gay, white, black, Latino, poor, rich...OK, not that last, but you get the point.

 

And yes, while the right has a lion's share of the blame to accept here, we ought to take a minute and realize the left has to stop demonizing the low-normals who populate many of the slimier regions of right wing philosophy: they are there not out of a sense of duty, but out of a manipulated sense of "moral" outrage, brought on by the corporatocracy and enhanced by useful idiots like the Blogosphere and FOX News.

 

It's no surprise to me how many of these right-wing asshat pundits claim to have been "former liberals." They thought they could get laid then, and when it turned out it wasn't a free pass to sex (or money or what have you) they turned coats and became conservatives, figuring those folks were stupider.

 

Leeches, the bunch of them. We ought to find a way to isolate them from the general population then get to work fixing the damage they've created and bringing people to the truth of their nation.