Bits and Pieces for the Week of September 25 - October 1

Promising breakthrough: possible HIV vaccine (Mike)
Facebook "pokes" at your privacy. (Mike)
A primer on the Greek debt crisis (Mike)
Since the MSM isn't yet covering this ongoing protest, it's important to make the effort ourselves to follow it. (Mike)
"These are the same Republicans...." (Mike)

"Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation – despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America... There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates... Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future?" (7 of 6)

80 Years of Planning: The Kochs + The Family + Birchers = Tea Party. A really good article on the Machiavellian timeline against the poor and middle class by these Oligarchs. (one paragraph headline) "Their goal: A Proto-Fascist (Business run) Government, Union Free Country, Privatized Education, and the End of Social Safety Nets." (7 of 6)

Why they're protesting on Wall Street

He doesn't work there, but his work ethic does:

"....We know how to get out of this mess, we have known how for 70 years. We just need the government to generate demand. That means spending money. Ideally it would spend money on useful things like education, health care, and infrastructure, but even if it spent money in wasteful ways it would still create jobs and put people to work. In the 30s we got much of the way back to full employment with the Works Progress Administration and other programs. Much of what was done was useful -- look around, you won't have to go far to find infrastructure built by depression-era programs. However, it took the massive spending associated with World War II to get the economy back to full employment. There is no magic associated with war that makes military spending more effective in creating jobs. The only difference was that the threat to the nation from the Axis powers removed the political obstacles to the necessary spending. The same situation applies today. We just need to spend money. That applies to both the United States and the euro zone countries. The problem is that we have more people in political leadership positions who want to be morality cops and lecture about balancing budgets rather than focus on policies that will restore economic growth. This includes the top officials at the European Central Bank, many of the voting members of the Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee and much of the political leadership in the euro zone countries, the United Kingdom and of course here...."

If we repeat this mantra long enough, maybe someone in power who cares will listen.

The American Awakening Starts on Wall Street

Only one thing is preventing an economic recovery in the United States: Republicans
The global consequences of a Greek default
GOP Leaders Write Unprecedented Letter Urging The Federal Reserve To Keep Unemployment High
Some British humor
Oh, great: typhoon headed toward radioactive Fukushima.
The blatant hypocracy of Pro-lifers.
How far should you drive for cheaper gas?
Guys: Hate shopping with the wife? Check out the new guy-friendly Ikea.
Here's a nice summary of Obama's deficit-reduction plan.

Speaks for itself:

Robert Scheer nicely summarizes how we got to where we are (snippet):

"....The late 1990s, it should be noted, is when President Clinton, working with Phil Gramm, the Republican head of the Senate Banking Committee, pushed through two critical pieces of legislation ending effective regulation of the banks. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act smashed the wall between high-flying Wall Street investment firms and the once staid commercial banks entrusted with the deposits and mortgages of America’s innocent souls. The next year Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, banning any effective regulation of the rapidly expanded trade in the collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps that have since haunted the world’s economy. "The collapse of those toxic securities led to the housing crisis and resulted in 15.1 percent of Americans now living in poverty, the same level as when Bill Clinton took office. But thanks to another one of Clinton’s grand triangulation strategies, the one he called “welfare reform,” the impoverished are now denied the safety net that existed before the Clinton presidency. Although 22 percent of U.S. children are now below the poverty line, the Aid to Families With Dependent Children program no longer exists. "Some of us who voted for Obama thought he was no Clinton, but he was and is, as was demonstrated in his first days in office when he appointed two key veterans of the Clinton Treasury Department, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, to head up the Obama economic team. Geithner, as treasury secretary, is the point man for the administration’s push to pass the so-called American Jobs Act, which the president hyped in his Sept. 8 speech to Congress and the nation. It was pure Clinton bull: I feel your pain while I help the superrich pick your pocket....."

Oh woe are we. I no longer see a way out of this spiralling decline in the American economy in my lifetime. We had a chance in 2009, but forget it now.

Rick Perry Wins Coveted Title of Number 1 in Executions

If you still are unsure of the mindset of Tea Partiers, check out the applause by them at this Tea Party sponsored Republican debate:


Yay! Three cheers for executions, even if some of those executed were innocent!

Tea Partiers might not be left behind at End Times, but that won't stop them from leaving the rest of us behind NOW.
Rambling, yet interesting, analysis of the current NBA lockout.
Up next: Binderclipgate. Thanks, Fox News!
"For that reason, it might be far more effective if the LCD display showed dollar bills flying away as the driver laid on the gas." Figuring out how to turn leadfoots into featherfoots.
A huge black eye for the California Democratic Party
Why the U.S. should leave Afghanistan.

Toothpick Architecture in Motion

If you have some extra toothpicks laying around....

8 years later, Colin Powell continues lying.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of September 4 - 10

It appears that Ron Paul might have a teeny weeny problem with Black Americans. (Mike)

This is a much better idea than waiting at home for package delivery. (Mike)

Wind lenses could bolster the green energy industry. (Mike)

A list with descriptions of the wealthiest SOBs supporting the American radical right. (Mike)

Blow your mind with this 8-minute video (be sure to use full-screen). (Mike)

Beyond PTSD: Soldiers Have Injured Souls. "What sometimes happens in war may more accurately be called a moral injury - a deep soul wound that pierces a person’s identity, sense of morality and relationship to society. In short, a threat in a solder’s life." I couldn't agree more. (7 of 6)

Bolivia Set to Pass Historic 'Law of Mother Earth' Which Will Grant Nature Equal Rights to Humans (7 of 6)

What a wasted effort by Obama.

No matter how bold and promising his American Jobs Act sounds, you can be assured that Republicans will "drown it in the bathtub". Am I a pessimist? Maybe. Realist? Definitely. Angry, frustrated, dejected, resigned, exhausted? What hardcore liberal wouldn't be by now?

One Republican operative has given up:

"To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy. "It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill. A couple of months ago, I retired; but I could see as early as last November that the Republican Party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of World War II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. Then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages. "The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization. "Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. This fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the Bob Dole era in terms of its orientation. For instance, Ezra Klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while House Republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. Of course they might - the attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was "bring it on!" "It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe....."

One down, a million more to go.

From a Republican think tank:

"Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote? "Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery. "Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote....."

If you're still not convinced that Republicans consider poor/unemployed Americans as vile sewer waste, well....

This is what happens when you let Republicans control government decisions about job stimulus:

Bits and Pieces for the Week of August 28 - September 3

See how Tampa, FL is preparing for the 2012 GOP convention. (Mike)

American Family Association says, let's criminalize the LGBT community in the U.S. (Mike)

A sad avoidable story: The start of lousy educations for Wisconsinites. Moral of the story: Don't elect republi-cons. (7 of 6)

I have dozens of Google+ invites available. Send your email address to me (see email link in sidebar) and I'll shoot you one. (Mike)

Some predictions about the world economy over the rest of this decade. (Mike)

Bill Nye, "The Science Guy" explains global climate change to Fox News by using the analogy of sex between a dachshund and a pit bull. (Mike)

"Chocolate-lovers could be cutting their risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke, research suggests." (Mike)

18 Reasons to Thank a Liberal: A Partial List of Liberal Achievements; 1935-2010. (7 of 6)