Sorry if any of these links have previously been shared/discussed – I’ve been a busy fella…
– Not a big surprise that people who espouse bigotry don’t have the courage to explain their rationale to a public audience.
– This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is a great window into how the law enforcement community doesn’t understand the dynamics of drug markets. After 11 people were arrested in a drug sting in the small western Pennsylvania town of Clairton, the police chief foolishly expected crime to go down. Instead, the void was filled with a new wave of violence as new dealers fought to re-establish control of the trade.
– If the low-level war between Iran and Israel continues to escalate, none of us are ready for how crazy the 2012 election season will be. If the Obama Administration gets pulled into bigger conflict as the GOP (with right-wing Israeli allies) tries to defeat him in November, things are going to get ugly. Yes, this is probably obvious, but holy crap does it feel very ominous to me.
– TPM reported this week that Justice Scalia is being “boxed in” by his decision in Raich v. Gonzales when it comes to the Affordable Care Act (or for the yokels in the comment threads, “ObamaCare”). I’ve written about how GOP Gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna has also been exposed as a massive hypocrite over this. It looks like there might actually be a very big risk in hippie-punching.
Making A Dirty Buck Even Dirtier Dep’t
If there’s one think GOP-voting greedheads are truly good at, it’s exploiting others — kids not exempted — to line their own pockets.
“Republican politicians in Maine and Wisconsin have relaxed decades-old child labor laws, enacted to protect children from being forced to work long hours under dangerous conditions, claiming they no longer make sense.
“In Maine … Republicans sponsored bills last year to increase the state’s limit on the number of hours, from 20 to 32 a week, that 16- and 17-year-olds can work and to allow employers to pay them $5.25 an hour — $2.25 less than the state’s minimum wage. ‘How come it’s O.K. … for teenagers to spend 40 hours a week in sports, glee club, chorus, debate society, or any other select activity sanctioned by the social elite, but if you are a teenager who wants to work or needs to work, there are limits?’ says Dick Grotton, president of the Maine Restaurant Assn., which lobbied for the bills. ‘Kids working is not a bad thing.'”
Not a bad thing for employers who want cheap labor, he could have added.
http://www.businessweek.com/ma.....52012.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: How is repealing child labor laws progress? What are they going to say next? Sweat shops build character? These bills are being pushed by rich people who want to get richer by exploiting kids, period. If you vote Republican, you’re voting for the 19th century. For the people who lived in it (I knew a few of them), the 19th century sucked. Pssst, Republicans suck, too.
“If the low-level war between Iran and Israel continues to escalate, none of us are ready for how crazy the 2012 election season will be.”
No problem. If rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalate into a shooting war, as appears increasingly likely, we’ll just do what GOPers did in 2004: Sell the electorate on the idea that it’s unwise to change presidents in the middle of a war. Didn’t you see the movie ‘Wag the Dog’, Lee? War is not only good for business, it’s also good for incumbent politicians. The only losers are the few soldiers unlucky enough to get killed or maimed in combat and the huge number of civilians who become ‘collateral damage.’ But as any Republican draft dodger will tell you, those folks are ‘expendable.’
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
I spend a lot of time reading financial news and punditry because, like the rest of the idle class, I want capitalism to shower free money on me.
What I’m seeing in news and commentary is something like this:
The Euro Zone as we’ve known it can’t survive and it’s inevitable that Greece (and possibly several other countries) will be forced to leave. When that happens, probably soon, Europe will drag the whole world into a deep recession.
Fragile regimes in Iran and the U.S. trying to cling to power are itching to start a war, so there’s likely going to be a war, probably soon. When that happens, oil will go to $300 a barrel, dragging the whole world into a major depression.
Unemployment probably will stay stuck above 8% for at least two or three more years, and we’re probably looking at 2025 before housing begins to recover because foreclosures will just keep coming and may even escalate as housing prices continue to fall, dragging more homeowners underwater.
The world has $120 trillion of debt, backed by only $7 – $ trillion of banking reserves, so to keep the global financial system afloat governments will have to print money like crazy.
Corporate profits probably will grow over 10% this year, so buy stocks now while they’re still cheap!
Wait a minute.
With the world blowing up and/or falling apart all around us, how the hell can corporations be making money hand over fist? There seems to be some kind of maldistribution of output between capital and labor going on here.
The one-percenters are starting to evince a seige mentality. They talk about “class warfare” (against them) and “pitchfork mobs” (coming to get them). They’re acting downright paranoid. Hmmm, in a Bonnie-and-Clyde way … I mean, if an angry mob is coming to get you, maybe it’s because you did something offensive to the common good?
If some rich bastard wanted to force my kid to work in a sweatshop 40 hours a week for $5.25 an hour, I might be tempted to go looking for him …
A brutally Darwinian economic system with no safety nets that creates vast disparities between rich and poor does more than create a class of idle rich. It also creates a class of desperately poor people who will do literally anything to become rich.
If you take a look at the cruel and heartless people who put other people in bondage — child workers, sex slaves, etc. — to line their own pockets, very often you’ll find they’re people who themselves were once desperately poor. That — and the fear of being poor again — is where the desperation comes from that drives some people to commit inhuman acts to make money off the misery of others.
Collateral Damage Dep’t
“Family members of a man held in the killing of four homeless people say he is an Iraq War veteran who was distraught after combat, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.”
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_n.....raq-combat
Roger Rabbit Commentary: Okay, wingnuts, all together now: “It’s Obama’s fault! It’s Obama’s fault!”
The idiot-in-chief has created a foreign policy that ensures Israel will strike Iran. the idiot has handed over Iraq to Iran. One screw up after another. Can’t wait until the idiot is voted out of office in November. His strong disapprovals are well over 40%. He will somehow have to turn around the independents he has alienated from Day 1. No fan of Romney, but he’s way better than the immature, vacationer idiot in chief.
@6. Spoken like a true W apologist. Everything that W abused,he now attribute to President Obama.
W signed the treaty to get out Iraq but the apologist chooses not to remember that. The apologist doesn’t support Rule of Law. That seems awfully anarchist. What was Obama supposed to do, renege on the contract, like some corporate business man?
How soon the apologist forgets that w spent every waking moment vacationing, riding his bicycle, while hiding out on the ranchlette. President Obama has done more on vacation then w ever did while at work. But that would require that the apologist admit that the Democratic President was good at his job.
Huntsman’s out!
That’s another 5% for Mitt.
Scalia is one of the worst scourges Reagan bestowed upon this nation. His hypocrisy is legion. As in Bush v. Gore, in which he said that the opinion was not precedent (a first in the Supreme Court’s history), he will, with regard to the health care act, find a way to justify his partisanship. I get so sick of wingies claiming they know what the Constitution means.
@8 Huntsman also seems to think Romney is the inevitable nominee:
“‘He doesn’t want to stand in the way of the person who is going to be the nominee,’ a campaign source said.”
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com.....rse-romney
Rick Perry once again has proved he’s too stupid to be president.
” … Perry on Sunday accused the Obama administration of ‘over-the-top rhetoric’ and ‘disdain for the military’ in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows four Marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. …
“A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead.
” … Perry said the Marines involved should be reprimanded but not prosecuted on criminal charges. ‘Obviously, 18-, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that’s what’s occurred here,’ Perry told CNN’s ‘State of the Union.'”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46004399/ns/politics/
Roger Rabbit Commentary: First of all, you don’t call combat Marines “kids” under any circumstances, and if you do, you deserve an ass-kicking. Marines are “men.” Biological age has nothing to do with it. Got that, Rick? Secondly, if they did what the video purportedly shows them doing, and if the Geneva Conventions prohibit doing what they purportedly did, then they broke the law because the U.S. is a signatory of the Conventions and the Constitution makes treaties the law of the land. Third, Obama has nothing to do with the criminal investigation; that’s an internal Marine Corps matter, so if you think the criminal investigation is “over the top” and evinces “disdain for the military,” then take that up with the Marine officer(s) who ordered the criminal investigation. This is the fucking idiot who claims to be commander-in-chief of 20,000 TNG troops? I feel sorry for the TNG.
@6 The idiot troll doesn’t comprehend that it was Iran’s leaders who created a foreign policy that ensures Israel will strike Iran.
But, what the hey, if you’re a troll you might as well blame Khameini and Ahmadenijad on Obama, too, because you already look like an idiot so you have nothing left to lose!