The first article by Frank Rich is excellent.......
1/ What is the true significance of the Occupy movement? What are the implications, and where is it going? To get the background and the real story we have brilliant journalists like Frank Rich, who make complex subjects clear and understandable......
A wonderful article titled "The Class War has Begun".....highly recommended....
uring the death throes of Herbert Hoover’s presidency in June 1932, desperate bands of men traveled to Washington and set up camp within view of the Capitol. The first contingent journeyed all the way from Portland, Oregon, but others soon converged from all over—alone, in groups, with families—until their main Hooverville on the Anacostia River’s fetid mudflats swelled to a population as high as 20,000. The men, World War I veterans who could not find jobs, became known as the Bonus Army—for the modest government bonus they were owed for their service. Under a law passed in 1924, they had been awarded roughly $1,000 each, to be collected in 1945 or at death, whichever came first. But they didn’t want to wait any longer for their pre–New Deal entitlement—especially given that Congress had bailed out big business with the creation of a Reconstruction Finance Corporation earlier in its session. Father Charles Coughlin, the populist “Radio Priest” who became a phenomenon for railing against “greedy bankers and financiers,”framed Washington’s double standard this way: “If the government can pay $2 billion to the bankers and the railroads, why cannot it pay the $2 billion to the soldiers?
The echoes of our own Great Recession do not end there. Both parties were alarmed by this motley assemblage and its political rallies; the Secret Service infiltrated its ranks to root out radicals. But a good Communist was hard to find. The men were mostly middle-class, patriotic Americans. They kept their improvised hovels clean and maintained small gardens. Even so, good behavior by the Bonus Army did not prevent the U.S. Army’s hotheaded chief of staff, General Douglas MacArthur, from summoning an overwhelming force to evict it from Pennsylvania Avenue late that July. After assaulting the veterans and thousands of onlookers with tear gas, MacArthur’s troops crossed the bridge and burned down the encampment. The general had acted against Hoover’s wishes, but the president expressed satisfaction afterward that the government had dispatched “a mob”—albeit at the cost of killing two of the demonstrators. The public had another take. When graphic newsreels of the riotous mêlée fanned out to the nation’s movie theaters, audiences booed MacArthur and his troops, not the men down on their luck. Even the mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean, the owner of the Hope diamond and wife of the proprietor of the Washington Post, professed solidarity with the “mob” that had occupied the nation’s capital.
2/ Keith Olbermann interviews Naomi Klein, author of the Shock Doctrine, who is arguably the best dressed person yet arrested at the Occupy Wall Street demos, and she articulately explains how important it is to keep your First Amendment rights active, and how it's clear over the last 30 years these rights have been whittled away.......smart, savvy lady....pretty too.....
3/ Remember the song "fly like an eagle"? You will like this 2 minute video then......paragliding with hawks.....amazing.....
4/ The collapse of the Euro isn't going away, and Paul Krugman explains why.....the European oligarchs are even more doctrinaire than ours......they should make Krugman Treasury Secretary - he would do a better job than that corrupt bastard Geithner.....
If it weren’t so tragic, the current European crisis would be funny, in a gallows-humor sort of way. For as one rescue plan after another falls flat, Europe’s Very Serious People — who are, if such a thing is possible, even more pompous and self-regarding than their American counterparts — just keep looking more and more ridiculous.
Well, at this point, Greece, where the crisis began, is no more than a grim sideshow. The clear and present danger comes instead from a sort of bank run on Italy, the euro area’s third-largest economy. Investors, fearing a possible default, are demanding high interest rates on Italian debt. And these high interest rates, by raising the burden of debt service, make default more likely.
It’s a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To save the euro, this threat must be contained. But how? The answer has to involve creating a fund that can, if necessary, lend Italy (and Spain, which is also under threat) enough money that it doesn’t need to borrow at those high rates. Such a fund probably wouldn’t have to be used, since its mere existence should put an end to the cycle of fear. But the potential for really large-scale lending, certainly more than a trillion euros’ worth, has to be there.
And here’s the problem: All the various proposals for creating such a fund ultimately require backing from major European governments, whose promises to investors must be credible for the plan to work. Yet Italy is one of those major governments; it can’t achieve a rescue by lending money to itself. And France, the euro area’s second-biggest economy, has been looking shaky lately, raising fears that creation of a large rescue fund, by in effect adding to French debt, could simply have the effect of adding France to the list of crisis countries. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza.
You see what I mean about the situation being funny in a gallows-humor fashion? What makes the story really painful is the fact that none of this had to happen.
5/ Why support the Occupy movement? Here are some good reasons in this well made video, including clips from Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson and many others.....4 minutes....
6/ Tom Tomorrow with his take on the way the media treat the Occupy movement....or is it Fox News.......or all of the McNewses.......
7/ And our final look at the Occupy protests with Matt Taibbi, who dissects the right wing claims of class warfare. It's not that the 99% resent the rich, it's we have finally realised they are rich because they cheat. Us all.
Excellent article....
That's why it's so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn't disappointment at having lost. It's anger because those other guys didn't really win. And people now want the score overturned.
All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes, things like:
8/ A major prize awaits you if you can guess what this ad is about........a little spooky too.........
9/ Obama says all troops will be out of iraq by the end of the year, and the usual suspects on the right say he's failed. Jon Stewart evicerates Senators McCain and Graham with glee.....one of his better shows ......
Last Friday President Obama announced the U.S. will be withdrawing from Iraq by the end of the year.So, you can imagine what Jon Stewart's biggest segment was about on his Monday night return to "The Daily Show."
Turning his "Mess O'Potamia" segment to the more appropriately named "End O'Potamia," Stewart rejoiced at the notion that we will be out of Iraq by 2012. What he didn't understand was how Republicans such as MItt Romney and Michele Bachmann could criticize the President's announcement. Not just because it's a good thing, but because it was former President George W. Bush who set the benchmark for withdrawal with the Iraqi people years ago. Why doesn't the GOP acknowledge this
10/ Parents! [and grandparents].......want your little darling to grow up smarter? Follow at least a few of these simple rules and the beast will be a top achiever. But the #1 thing NOT to do is the first rule.....
Want a little Einstein around the house? There’s no single best recipe, but studies prove that keeping TV out of the nursery, shelling out for music lessons, breastfeeding, having a big library, and withholding cookies are just a few ways to boost your child’s chances of success.
What makes a genius? Even experts argue over whether IQ, EQ, executive function, and/or academic achievement matters most. Nature? Nurture? The role of genetics in intelligence—i.e., the extent to which our smarts are inherited—has long been an academic war zone. What can raise your child’s chances? Cello lessons, French lessons, and juggling.
11/ "Mrs Brown gets a Bikini Wax"......a classic British comedy skit, and if you aren't laughing by the end of this you must belong to the Tea Party.....or you're Michelle Bachmann.....
12/ Scott Maxwell documents how the next Speaker of the Florida House has, in one year, sold himself to a corporation and made a lot of money.....
His Lake Mary mansion was facing foreclosure. And aside from the stuff in his house, his only other assets were $40,000 in cash and a Chrysler Pacifica.His sole income — a legislative salary of $2,600 a month — wasn't nearly enough to cover his monthly mortgage payments of about $10,000. Nor had he been able to satisfy a $1.35 million legal judgment against him from a failed business venture.
In short: Things were very bleak for the Republican legislator.
But the next year, things got much better for Dorworth.
Early in 2010, his GOP peers voted for him to become a future speaker of the House — widely viewed as the second-most-powerful position in the state after the governor.
And, according to recently filed papers, Dorworth went from having hardly any assets in 2009 to having a big one: a $713,000 stake in an out-of-state corporation that paid him $72,000 cash — in 2010.
How did he come into the money? Well, Dorworth won't say.
And that's troubling — especially because a trail of records reveals that his newly listed company and income have ties to other public officials and developments across Central Florida.
13/ The lovely Katy Perry with one of her early videos "Hot and Cold", where some idiot is unsure about whether he should marry her.....quite funny, lively.....
14/ Have you tried to renew your Florida drivers license recently? A nightmare...all in the name of Al Queda. The state of Florida wants to be absolutely positive you aren't a terrorist, even though you are in your 60's and have had a drivers license since you were 17......
However this BS might change, because one of our politicians had to go through this degrading treatment....poor diddums.....
Florida lawmaker seeks to modify Real ID requirements for driver's licenses
By Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Requiring piles of paperwork goes too far, a state senator says.
TALLAHASSEE - Greg Evers had heard people complain about how hard it is to renew your driver's license in Florida, but it didn't really hit home until he did it himself.
He was shocked at the records he had to provide: his birth certificate, Social Security card and two documents proving his address.
"The lady behind the counter lives down the road and knows exactly who I am and knows exactly where I live," Evers said. "This has just gone a little too far."
Evers had come face-to-face with the federal Real ID law, which Florida enacted in 2010 to combat identity theft and prevent illegal immigrants and terrorists from getting official state ID cards.
Now Evers, a Republican state senator from Crestview, has filed a bill to eliminate many of the law's requirements.
He was shocked at the records he had to provide: his birth certificate, Social Security card and two documents proving his address.
"The lady behind the counter lives down the road and knows exactly who I am and knows exactly where I live," Evers said. "This has just gone a little too far."
Evers had come face-to-face with the federal Real ID law, which Florida enacted in 2010 to combat identity theft and prevent illegal immigrants and terrorists from getting official state ID cards.
Now Evers, a Republican state senator from Crestview, has filed a bill to eliminate many of the law's requirements.
Todays video - regular readers can tell I love this video......excellent.....the best seatbelt ad ever made.....
Todays farmer joke
Skinny Dipping
An elderly man in Texas had owned a large farm for several years....
He had a large pond in the back.
It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees.
One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while and look it over.
He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit.
As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee.
As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond.
He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end.
One of the women shouted to him, 'we're not coming out until you leave!'
The old man frowned, 'I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked.'
Holding the bucket up he said, 'I'm here to feed the alligator.'
An elderly man in Texas had owned a large farm for several years....
He had a large pond in the back.
It was properly shaped for swimming, so he fixed it up nice with picnic tables, horseshoe courts, and some apple and peach trees.
One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the pond, as he hadn't been there for a while and look it over.
He grabbed a five-gallon bucket to bring back some fruit.
As he neared the pond, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee.
As he came closer, he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his pond.
He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end.
One of the women shouted to him, 'we're not coming out until you leave!'
The old man frowned, 'I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the pond naked.'
Holding the bucket up he said, 'I'm here to feed the alligator.'
Some old men can still think fast!
Todays short joke
A man walks into a psychiatrist's office wearing only underwear made of Saran Wrap.
The psychiatrist says, Well, I can clearly see your nuts.
Todays talking dog joke
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