Krugman Hits Another One Out Of The Park

Click here for a recent NYT article by Paul Krugman entitled "Ideology and Investment."

John Oliver's Canine SCOTUS

John Oliver's canine take on SCOTUS:



And then the additional time on the web:

Eisenhower: Military/Industrial Complex

Video clip and transcription of Eisenhower's "military/industrial complex" speech.


Good evening, my fellow Americans.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time, and as required, make swords as well.

But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. How to do this? Three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.

Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Shep Smith Goes Off The Fox Reservation Again

Say it, Shep! (But I frequently fear for your future employment at Fox.)

For the next few minutes, I'm going to give you the facts on Ebola. It'll take just three minutes.

But first, today, given what we know, you should have no concerns about Ebola at all. None. I promise. Unless a medical professional has contacted you personally and told you of some sort of possible exposure, fear not. Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television or read the fear-provoking words on line. The people who say and write hysterical things are being very irresponsible.

Here are the facts. A man contracted Ebola overseas. Tragically, he was dying in a Texas hospital. He was at his most contagious while showing the most severe symptoms; that's how Ebola works. And a healthcare worker at the hospital got the virus from him. She is doing well, she says, Skyping with her family from isolation just yesterday, saying she's blessed to have so much support and such great medical care.

The CDC director told us, all of us, yesterday, that he did indeed expect other health care workers at that hospital who treated that one dying patient to contract the virus, and that's now happened. Another health care worker at that same hospital now has Ebola. They tell us they're transferring her to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Now, before she showed symptoms, she flew from Cleveland to Dallas on Frontier Airlines. They say she should not have done that, but she did. But as we all now know, if you don't show symptoms, you are not contagious. She did not show symptoms, according to the doctors. Still, medical professionals are contacting everyone who was on that plane to make sure each person is okay. The CDC director says chances are very slim that any of those passengers is sick.

Now, big picture, and this is important: You have to remember that -- in the middle of all of this, you have to remember that there is politics in the mix. With midterm elections coming, the party in charge needs to appear to be effectively leading. The party out of power needs to show that there is a lack of leadership. So the president has canceled a fundraising trip and is holding meetings, and his political opponents are accusing his administration of poor leadership.

For the purpose of this fact-dissemination exercise, those matters are immaterial. Again, these are the facts. We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States, nowhere. We do have two health care workers who contacted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America: not one person in the general population in the United States.

Suggestions have been made publicly that leaders and medical professionals may be lying to us. Those suggestions are completely without basis in fact. There is no evidence of any kind of which we at Fox News are aware that leaders have lied about anything regarding Ebola.

I report to you with certainty this afternoon that being afraid, at all, is the wrong thing to do. Being petrified -- and that's a quote -- is ridiculous. The panic that has tanked the stock market and left people fearful that their children will get sick at school is counterproductive and lacks basis in fact or reason. There is no Ebola spreading in America. Should that change, our reporting will change. But there is nothing to indicate that it will.

Best advice for you and your family at this moment: Get a flu shot. Unlike Ebola, flu is easily transmitted. Flu, along with resulting pneumonia, killed 52,000 Americans last year alone. A flu shot will reduce your chance of getting flu. So get one.

Britain Votes (274-12) To Recognize A Palestinian State,

Click here for an article by Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars entitled British Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly In Favor Of Recognizing Palestine State, 247-12.

According to Labour member Andy Slaughter, Israel has engaged in a new “barbarism”:

I think that the British people have been on the same sort of journey as the Right Hon. Member for Croydon South [Conservative Sir Richard Ottaway] described. It is certainly true of the Labour movemen -- from being very sympathetic to Israel as a country that was trying to achieve democracy and was embattled, to seeing it now as a bully and a regional superpower. That is not something I say with any pleasure, but since the triumph of military Zionism and the Likud-run governments [Netanyahu] we have seen a new barbarism in that country.

Madrak says:

One lawmaker says that the occupation is “much worse” than apartheid in South Africa. Another says that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 now seems like a “sick joke,” because it never guaranteed freedom to Palestinians. Many members offer frank descriptions of Israeli detention of children and unending settlement expansion. Several describe Israeli actions in Gaza as war crimes. One mentions the use of terrorism by Mandela and Begin long before Palestinians used the tactic. Labour and Conservative members alike speak about the role of the Israel lobby in the United States.

I seldom read comments to blog posts, but here's just a quick sample of the first of the comments:

* Chris L'Hommedieu • a day ago
So here's how I look at it. You go to war. You win. You put the losers in a very small box. No-one else helps them out either. You build walls. You occupy every inch of their box. You periodically make their box smaller as "settlers" move into the box. You prevent them from either moving around inside the box, or ever leaving the box. Every now and then the people in the box get really really pissed and throw things at you, but don't do much actual damage. But its scary as hell when they do it. So you blow the crap out of the box, killing piles of them. Then you send in more settlers and take more of the box.

And you're shocked, amazed, and appalled that the people in the box hate you and want to kill you.

Repeat. Decade after decade.

* Bill Lumbergh • a day ago

And the sick thing is that Israeli/U.S. govt. propaganda asserts that it's Israel that's in the box.

* Gil Randall • 12 hours ago
It was, but only in the earliest years.

By the mid-50s or so, after Egypt got the Soviet Union to support them, that was when Israel got the US involved to back them and, initially anyway, Israel and the Arab states were just more countries used by the US and the Soviet Union to fight proxy wars as a dick-waving contest against each other for the next forty years.

But as soon as the "religious" people got involved in the 60s, that's when the politicians (and Israeli leaders) starting merging more and more so that even after Egypt made peace (1979), then the Soviet Union collapsed (1991), then Jordan made peace (1994), they still look at Palestinians with contempt.

By today's standards, with the Soviet Union gone, two of the Arab state former antagonists out of the equation (including the largest and strongest one, Egypt), Syria and Iraq too embroiled in chaos and/or civil war, and Lebanon having absolutely no chance on its own if they even think about trying anything, there should be no reason for the US to be SO closely tied to Israel anymore beyond just allies (much less billions of dollars in equipment and such), and religious dogma is really the only reason.

FOX NEWS FLASH: Obama Will Give Iran Nukes In Exchange For ISIS Help!

Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland (born c. July 24, 1951) is an American communications consultant. She served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1985. She also served as a speech writer to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate Republican nomination in New York in 2006 and is currently a Fox News contributor on foreign policy and national security issues.

McFARLAND: Or, I think the more likely, he's going to partner with Iran and he's going to say, you know, you, the pro-Iranian, Iraqi army, the Shiite militias,we're all going to work together to get rid of ISIS and Iran will have a price tag on that, and that will be nuclear weapons.

As karoli says at Crooks & Liars:

That's right, folks. After spending years on delicate negotiations and heavy sanctions on Iran to keep them from developing nuclear weapons, KT McFarland actually thinks the most likely scenario is that President Obama will sign over a few nukes in exchange for their participation in the eradication of ISIS.

Jon Stewart v. Hank Greenberg (AIG)

When's the last time you got good and angry about the financiers that tanked the world economy in 2008?

Want to?

Helping The Little One ...

Reagan + China = Economic Disaster

Click here for an article by Dave Johnson at Crooks & Liars entitled "Reagan Set Up The Death Of The Middle Class, But China Was The Clincher."

Reagan directed the flow of power and money into the hands of a few; they used that power and money to outsource the American economy to China. Germany, though, with stronger labor unions, followed a different economic model where the wealth was more evenly distributed, and thus has a much stronger middle class today.

LBJ's War On Poverty - 50 Years Later

Click here for an article by Mark E. Andersen at Daily Kos from 2008, entitled "The Counteroffensive on the War on Poverty." That counteroffensive was launched by Ronald Reagan. When Johnson announced the "War on Poverty" in 1964, the poverty rate was 19%; today it's 15%. Not really astonishing improvement for 50 years, is it?

Well, when Reagan took office in 1980, after only 16 years, the rate had fallen to 11.4%. But after Reagan's counteroffensive "War on the Poor," it had risen to -- 15%, the same as it is today.

The Kochs' Criminal Enterprise

Click here for an article by Charles Pierce in Esquire entitled "Criminal Minds."

Thanks to Harry Reid's recent efforts, a lot more people have become aware that Charles and David Koch are a couple of America's richest men who are trying to buy state and federal governments: House members, senators, and judges at both levels -- not to mention the U.S. presidency. But a lot of those people are not aware that Chuck and Dave are the sons of Fred C. Koch, a prime mover behind the radical John Birch Society (hell, a lot of them are probably not aware of what the John Birch Society is).

Nor are a lot of those people aware of just how big a polluter Koch Industries is:

Under the nearly five-decade reign of CEO Charles Koch, the company has paid out record civil and criminal environmental penalties. And in 1999, a jury handed down to Koch's pipeline company what was then the largest wrongful-death judgment of its type in U.S. history, resulting from the explosion of a defective pipeline that incinerated a pair of Texas teenagers. The volume of Koch Industries' toxic output is staggering. According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Political Economy Research Institute, only three companies rank among the top 30 polluters of America's air, water and climate: ExxonMobil, American Electric Power and Koch Industries. Thanks in part to its 2005 purchase of paper-mill giant Georgia-Pacific, Koch Industries dumps more pollutants into the nation's waterways than General Electric and International Paper combined. The company ranks 13th in the nation for toxic air pollution. Koch's climate pollution, meanwhile, outpaces oil giants including Valero, Chevron and Shell. Across its businesses, Koch generates 24 million metric tons of greenhouse gases a year.

Good Links

Jon and Stephen both hit this one out of the park. I hope I can add this when I have more time.

Sock It To Me??? Richard Nixon On Laugh-In, 1968

Obama: Best Economic President Of Modern Times?

Click here for an article by Adam Hartung at Forbes, that bastion of liberal progressivism, entitled "Obama Outperforms Reagan on Jobs, Growth, and Investing."

Hartung discusses various ways in which economic performance is measured, and the article concludes:

Economically, President Obama’s administration has outperformed President Reagan’s in all commonly watched categories. Simultaneously the current administration has reduced the deficit, which skyrocketed under Reagan. Additionally, Obama has reduced federal employment, which grew under Reagan (especially when including military personnel,) and truly delivered a “smaller government.” Additionally, the current administration has kept inflation low, even during extreme international upheaval, failure of foreign economies (Greece) and a dramatic slowdown in the European economy.

Ben Carson: U.S. Could Be Like Nazi Germany ...

Black tea party conservative darling Ben Carson (h/t Driftglass):

"You can't dance around it," Carson told The Washington Post's Ben Terris. "If people look at what I said and were not political about it, they'd have to agree. Most people in Germany didn't agree with what Hitler was doing…Exactly the same thing can happen in this country if we are not willing to stand up for what we believe in."

In February Carson suggested that liberals could turn the country into Nazi Germany...

After which comes Driftglass's devastating reply:

But you know what? I actually agree with what Dr. Carson said, although not in any way that would make him happy.

The despair and rage and paranoia of post-WWI Germany that made the rise of Nazism possible -- an overpowering sense of betrayal and lost greatness... an obsession with race and purity... a berserk hatred of impure outsiders and immigrants... a willingness to believe the most paranoid conspiracies about fifth columns and internal enemies ... the relentless scapegoating of (among others) minorities, foreigners, intellectuals, unions and Liberals ... the round-the-clock raving of demagogues -- are precisely the same toxic conditions which prevail within the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement today.

And, just as in Germany, all of it is being purposefully orchestrated and bankrolled by wealthy industrialists, propagandists, amoral opportunists, con men and various other psychopaths and scumbags.

John Kenneth Galbraith:

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

Exxon Hates Your Children - And The World

Bob Rankin - Microsoft Fix It Solution Center

Click here for a Bob Rankin article entitled "Microsoft Fix It Solution Center." Bob claims that at the time of writing this article, Microsoft had 270 Fix It Solutions to common computer problems. There is a one-click option, "Run Now," that simply solves the problem you've selected, or you can click "Learn More" to find out exactly what steps will be taken. (I wish I'd had this a couple of weeks ago, when a Microsoft patch or update bricked my computer -- of course, it wouldn't boot, so I couldn't have accessed it anyway.)

"Demote Reagan From Hero To History"

Click here for an excellent op-ed in the NY Times by Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson, entitled "Bring Back the Party of Lincoln." Can the Republican party reorganize itself, as it has twice in the past, to serve the needs of the general public rather than the wealthy? I like the closing sentence:

The same rebranding is possible today, if Republicans demote Reagan from hero to history and rally to a leader like Lincoln, Roosevelt or Eisenhower — someone who believes that the government should promote economic opportunity rather than protect the rich.

Margaret Thatcher On Global Warming

Taken from Youtube:

Published on May 17, 2012

Recently, the Heartland Institute, a hotbed of Climate Contrarianism, posted a billboard near a Chicago freeway. The Billboard suggested that those who accept mainstream science in regard to climate change, are like Ted Kaczinsky, the Unabomber. Heartland promised to follow up with similar billboards featuring Fidel Castro, Osama Bin Laden, and Charles Manson.

When a scathing barrage of internet protests and parodies went viral, Heartland was forced to withdraw the billboard, and post a defense on its website. Even then, they continued to maintain that "the most prominent advocates of global warming are not scientists, they are murderers, tyrants, and madmen."

Margaret Thatcher thought different -- and she had a chemistry degree from Oxford and experience as a researcher.