1/ Regular readers of DDD know I like Paul Krugman's columns, but this one resonates - he concludes the oligarchs have actually purchased and completely taken over one of the two major political parties......
Although this has been obvious for years no major mainstream media figure has dared say so, so this is a first......
Excellent article.......
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Plutocracy, Paralysis, Perplexity
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: May 3, 2012
Well, whaddya know?
Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we’re now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion — both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.
Put it this way: If something like the financial crisis of 2008 had occurred in, say, 1971 — the year Richard Nixon declared that “I am now a Keynesian in economic policy” — Washington would probably have responded fairly effectively. There would have been a broad bipartisan consensus in favor of strong action, and there would also have been wide agreement about what kind of action was needed.
But that was then. Today, Washington is marked by a combination of bitter partisanship and intellectual confusion — and both are, I would argue, largely the result of extreme income inequality.
On partisanship: The Congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have been making waves with a new book acknowledging a truth that, until now, was unmentionable in polite circles. They say our political dysfunction is largely because of the transformation of the Republican Party into an extremist force that is “dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” You can’t get cooperation to serve the national interest when one side of the divide sees no distinction between the national interest and its own partisan triumph.
So how did that happen? For the past century, political polarization has closely tracked income inequality, and there’s every reason to believe that the relationship is causal. Specifically, money buys power, and the increasing wealth of a tiny minority has effectively bought the allegiance of one of our two major political parties, in the process destroying any prospect for cooperation.
And the takeover of half our political spectrum by the 0.01 percent is, I’d argue, also responsible for the degradation of our economic discourse, which has made any sensible discussion of what we should be doing impossible.
2/ Rachael Maddow was on "Meet the Press" last week, and had a heated discussion with a Republican strategist who was also a complete asshole, who tried to shout her down and belittle her......bad move dude, don't mess with Rachael...........
Both CNN and MSNBC fact checked the guys numbers the next day, and he was wrong.....
Not often you get a lively political discussion like this.........13 minutes......
3/ Time for our monthly compilation of dumb people doing really dumb stuff........5 minutes of mayhem.......although certainly some of these fails are funny......
4/ Federal and state benefits for everything are being slashed, but special needs children and more importantly their parents are going to face a crisis - this article says the medical advances that save more kids from death and also extend their lives puts more of a burden on their caregivers.....really interesting story from Time Magazine......
And what do these parents do when the money runs our? What's going to happen to these poor kids? Die I guess.....
The Coming Special Needs Care Crisis
Apr 30, 2012 1:00 AM EDT............................
But for most parents, it’s the day-to-day stuff that consumes them: the hours of therapy, the doctor visits, the financial pressures, and the grinding anxiety that comes with it all. It is a rough, often isolating road. And one that promises to become even more challenging as our society enters a new, more complicated era of caregiving. That era is coming in part because many of the medical and social advances that have improved the lives of special-needs individuals have also increased the burden of caring for them. For instance, people with Down syndrome were once lucky to survive to age 30; today, the average lifespan is 55. This presents parents (and society more broadly) with the challenge of somehow providing for an adult child decades after their own deaths, a situation complicated by the fact that the Down population develops Alzheimer’s at a rate of 100 percent, typically in their 40s or 50s.Then there is the 800-pound gorilla in the room: autism. In late March, the Centers for Disease Control issued an estimate that 1 in 88 children now fall on the autism spectrum. While debate rages over the roots of the “epidemic,” this swelling population is placing increasing strains on our health-care, education, and social-services systems. A study released last month put the annual cost of autism in the U.S. at $126 billion, more than triple what it was in 2006. The bulk of those expenses are for adult care. Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, calls the situation “a public-health emergency.” And if you think things are tough now, she cautions, just wait until autistic teens start aging out of the education system over the next few years. “We as a nation are not prepared.”
5/ The President is being heavily criticized on Fox for putting out the "I took out Osama" ad - Jon Stewart takes on the hipocrisy of the right......a delicious segment......4 minutes.......
Between the anniversary of Osama Bin Laden's death and an Obama campaign adthat highlights the President's success in bringing the terrorist down, the 24-hour TV news circuit has been having a field day discussing whether or not the bragging is appropriate.
So on Tuesday night's "Daily Show," Jon Stewart broke out a new segment he called, "You are aware that the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex allows people the ability to store and recall past events as they occurred, right?"
It seems that Republican pundits' main beef with the Bin Laden ad is that bragging about it in a campaigning context "politicizes" the event, and takes a piece of American history that was viewed as positive across the board and makes it a dividing factor -- and the last thing you need in wartime is division at home. In effect, they're accusing the president of "spiking the football" before the game is over.
Stewart's reply to the pundits was simply, "Wah."
6/ Paul Krugman was on the Rachael Maddow show Tuesday to talk about his new book "End This Depression Now", and it was a very interesting interview......first for the fact a Nobel Prizewinning economist believes we are in a depression, but that he also states the way to get out of the slump is simple, known to every sensible economist, but is politically impossible to implement.....
Sounds like a very good book......9 minutes.......
7/ Fascinating look at the differences between conservatives and liberals, and how both sides consistently misunderstand each other. And liberals especially underestimate how the conservative arguments resonate with the electorate. He also has some revealing charts on empathy, meaning concern for other people, and the differences between right and left.
Wherever you are on the political spectrum this article will interest you.......
April 29, 2012, 11:34 PM
Finding the Limits of Empathy
By THOMAS B. EDSALLIn any struggle, failure to understand the opposition is a weakness and a point of vulnerability. This is especially true in politics. Both the Democratic and the Republican parties have repeatedly fallen into the trap of overestimating popular support for their own policies and failing to anticipate hostile reactions to them.
In the 2012 election, two issues have already become symptomatic of this liability. The first is Obamacare, which, with its goal of universal coverage, exacts costs that many voters on the right and in the center view as unaffordable and undesirable. The second is the Republican call for an austerity imposed primarily on the poor and elderly under the aegis of the Ryan budget that was recently passed by the House. It seeks a major retrenchment of the welfare state.
Re-election campaigns are often more ideologically charged than elections with no incumbent. In 2012, Obamacare and the Ryan budget represent the predominant governing vision of each party, which means that the outcome of the election on Nov. 6 will accurately test where the voters stand on issues of fairness, equity and equality.
A major pitfall in this debate for liberals is that they underestimate, and in major crucial respects do not even understand, how it is possible that half or more than half of their fellow Americans espouse conservative values.
8/ One of the most infectious music videos we have seen in a long while - Train with "Drive By".....a trio of rockers with a nice breezy song, muscle cars and a beautiful girl he's really in love with......this is #1 in the pop charts by the way.........
9/ You may have read this week Apple, the most profitable corporation on the planet, paid minimal taxes to the US government. Here is a Times article that spells out exactly how they do it......
It's legal, and they have armies of tax lawyers and lobbyists to help them......
RENO, Nev. — Apple, the world’s most profitable technology company, doesn’t design iPhones here. It doesn’t run AppleCare customer service from this city. And it doesn’t manufacture MacBooks or iPads anywhere nearby.
Yet, with a handful of employees in a small office here in Reno, Apple has done something central to its corporate strategy: it has avoided millions of dollars in taxes in California and 20 other states.
Apple’s headquarters are in Cupertino, Calif. By putting an office in Reno, just 200 miles away, to collect and invest the company’s profits, Apple sidesteps state income taxes on some of those gains.
California’s corporate tax rate is 8.84 percent. Nevada’s? Zero.
Setting up an office in Reno is just one of many legal methods Apple uses to reduce its worldwide tax bill by billions of dollars each year. As it has in Nevada, Apple has created subsidiaries in low-tax places like Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and the British Virgin Islands — some little more than a letterbox or an anonymous office — that help cut the taxes it pays around the world.
10/ IKEA has some very cool furniture, but now they have come out with a TV....Conan looks at the new ad for the "Uppleva TV".....2 minutes.....
11/ And continuing the tech theme, if you are worried the government and/or corporations are tracking you on the web, here's how to cover your tracks.......a little......
Legal and technology researchers estimate that it would take about a month for Internet users to read the privacy policies of all the Web sites they visit in a year. So in the interest of time, here is the deal: You know that dream where you suddenly realize you’re stark naked? You’re living it whenever you open your browser.
There are no secrets online. That emotional e-mail you sent to your ex, the illness you searched for in a fit of hypochondria, those hours spent watching kitten videos (you can take that as a euphemism if the kitten fits) — can all be gathered to create a defining profile of you.
Your information can then be stored, analyzed, indexed and sold as a commodity to data brokers who in turn might sell it to advertisers, employers, health insurers or credit rating agencies.
And while it’s probably impossible to cloak your online activities fully, you can take steps to do the technological equivalent of throwing on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. Some of these measures are quite easy and many are free. Of course, the more effort and money you expend, the more concealed you are. The trick is to find the right balance between cost, convenience and privacy.
12/ Reading this article from the Miami Herald brought a smile to my face - our idiot, grinning death mask Governor managed to screw up a simple bill signing and turn it into a disaster.......such a world class dickweed......
Fla. Gov. Rick Scott signs Cuba-crackdown bill, but event turns into a public relations fiasco
Gov. Rick Scott signs a Cuba-crackdown bill with great fanfare, only to blindside Miami Republicans afterward with his concerns about a bill that he calls unenforceable. Now one Congressman is ready to sue him.
13/ This is the weekend of "The Avengers" opening, and the review is that it's OK if you like special effects and masked superheroes.......so if you want a nicely numbed brain go and see it......
But this movie looks a little more interesting - "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", with a long list of older British stars including Judi Dench and Maggie Smith. Ladies and gentlemen down on their luck decide to move to India.....
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” belongs to the “Enchanted April” school of agreeable grown-up entertainment, in which transplanted Britons shake off the North Atlantic chill on a life-altering trip to warmer climes. Instead of Italy in the 1920s, the place of renewal is Jaipur, India, and the time is now.
Its seven travelers are financially distressed men and women of retirement age lured by an invitation to “outsource” themselves for a stay at the newly opened Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Jaipur. Upon arrival, they discover a place that is far from the luxurious retreat “for the elderly and beautiful” that its advertising claims. But after much grumbling, most of them take it in stride and begin to flourish.
With a cast that includes Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy, this leisurely paced two-hour movie is a reasonably tasty banquet for the same Anglophiles who embrace “Downton Abbey.” Although it’s not as tidy or comfy as that self-congratulating fantasy of British noblesse oblige or as elevated as the Merchant-Ivory films set in India, it’ll do nicely.
Here is the trailer for "Exotic Marigold".....and I hate to do this to you but in the last scene, the last line is a gem.....
14/ There is also a documentary out this week - "Last Call At the Oasis", about our water supplies and how we are using up our reserves at an alarming rate........and according to this excellent review this is not another alarmist global-catastrophe greenie movie - this is real folks.....
One thing they don't mention is the gas industry fracking, which uses huge quantities of water to extract the gas and leaves the water we are rabidly depleting grossly contaminated with chemicals........
Jay Famiglietti, one of a handful of expert witnesses in Jessica Yu’s “Last Call at the Oasis,” is a thoughtful scientist with an engaging manner who specializes in water. In particular, he studies — and tries to raise public awareness about — the rapid depletion of water supplies caused by agricultural overuse, rampant development and globalclimate change. His analyses are thorough and clear, and he presents them, at public meetings and straight to Ms. Yu’s camera, with good-natured patience. For the most part, that is. At one point, contemplating a future of unchecked consumption and political paralysis, he sums it all up in blunt layman’s terms: “We’re screwed.”
Excellent trailer.......
Todays video - German Coast Guard commercial......
Todays Scottish joke
Repent O Scottish Sinner
There was a Scottish painter named Smokey MacGregor who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.
As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings.Smokey put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.
So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.
As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings.Smokey put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.
So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine.
Well, Smokey was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down washing the thinned paint
from all over the church and knocking Smokey clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint.
Smokey was no fool. He knew this was a judgment from the Almighty, so he got down on his knees and cried:"Oh, God, Oh God, forgive me; what should I do?"
And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke..
"Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!"
Todays golf jokes
Ten best caddy responses
Number :10 Golfer: "I think I'm going to drown myself in the lake." Caddy: "Think you can keep your head down that long, sir?" Number : 9 Golfer: "I'd move heaven and earth to break 100 on this course." Caddy: "Try heaven sir, you've already moved most of the earth." Number : 8 Golfer: "Do you think my game is improving?" Caddy: "Yes sir . . . . You miss the ball much closer now." Number : 7 Golfer: "Do you think I can get there with a 5 iron?" Caddy: "Eventually, sir." Number : 6 Golfer: "You've got to be the worst caddy in the world." Caddy: "I don't think so sir . . . That would be too much of a coincidence." Number : 5 Golfer: "Please stop checking your watch all the time. It's too much of a distra_ction." Caddy: "It's not a watch sir - it's a compass." Number : 4 Golfer: "How do you like my game?" Caddy: "It's very good sir - but personally, I prefer golf." Number : 3 Golfer: "Do you think it's a sin to play on Sunday? Caddy: "I'm afraid the way you play sir, it's a sin on any day." Number : 2 Golfer: "This is the worst course I've ever played on." Caddy: "But this isn't the golf course . . . We left that an hour ago sir." And the Number : 1 . . . . Best Caddy Comment: Golfer: "That can't be my ball, it's too old." Caddy: "It's been a long time since we teed off, sir." Bonus . . . An old favorite . . . about the Golfer who has been slicing off the tee at every hole . . . He finally gives up and asks his long suffering caddy . . . Golfer: "Can you see any obvious problems . . . ?" Caddy: "There's a piece of shit on the end of your club." The Golfer picks up his club and cleans the club face . . . Caddy: "No sir, it’s at the other end" | |
Todays Norwegian joke
Ole asked Lena if she vould valk across da frozen lake to da yeneral store to get him some smokes. She asked him for some money, but he told her, Nah, yust put it on our tab.
So Lena valked across, got the smokes at da yeneral store, den walked back home across the lake.
Ven she got home and gave Ole his smokes, she asked him, Ole, you alvays tell me not to run up da tab at da store. Why didn't you yust give me some money?
Ole replied, Vell, I didn't vant to send you out dere vit some money ven I vasn't sure how tick the ice vas yet.
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