Americans generally do hypocrisy and denial well, but need to work on their appreciation of irony.
Ready, Set: Israel has started the US war with Iran Syria by bombing Damascus. It will be interesting to see what Syria's sponsors – Iran and Russia – will do in response to the 51st state's 'defensive actions.'
Basic Math: If there is no growth in US manufacturing, and there isn't, there can be no growth in jobs in the US manufacturing sector, which there isn't. April's heroic jobs report cited zero increase in manufacturing jobs, lots of new minimum wage jobs in services, restaurants, retail and the bed-pan brigades. This is the new normal. And things won't change as long as those who are funding the Republican Idiotology are making big bucks, which they are.
Why Stop Now? Just because austerity has been shown to be a fraud doesn’t mean that the IMF and ECB are going to give up tormenting the Club Med states.
Drip, Drip, Drip: You didn't really think that exposing the CIA's weekly cash deliveries to Karzai would stop the transfers, did you. Of course not. Think how quickly Georgie's Big Adventure would go the rest of the way down the drain if the money stopped.
Mother Hubbard: In the face of ill-timed austerity and increased inequality, London real estate prices are breaking records while 20% of British households are using up their savings and turning to borrowed money to pay for food.
False Dawn: The Republicans once again have used Congressional hearings to pretend to be open minded while getting carefully chosen propagandists experts to say that while climate change seems to be a problem, we just cannot afford to do anything to prevent it. It is all a sideshow anyway; we've left it too long and now the barn door is warped. NASA assures us that we are in for continuing changes in global rainfall patterns, with the wet getting wetter (and in larger doses) and the dry getting drier.
Reality Quotient: In Las Vegas, 8% of single family houses stand empty, but new house construction permits are up 50%. Them that has are buying up houses to rent to them who can't afford to pay the rent. Ain't the recovery great?
Teeter-Totter: Portugal, which seems intent on provoking civil unrest as it courts favors from the northern neighbors, is going to cut 30,000 more civil service jobs, increase the work week for the remaining staff by 5 hours a week, and raise the retirement age by one year. It's a lovely country, full of great sights and fine people, but I'd put off planning a vacation for a bit.
Better Sorry Than Safe: The NRA advises all parents to “store a gun in their kids’ room” in case Big Bird and Kermit get uppity, or the kids decide they don't really want to take a nap.
Happy Talk: America is back! Stocks at all time highs! Eighteen million unemployed! Well, the Fed's free money accounts for the bubble in the stock market and all that glitters turned out not to be gold, but... But the last two 'all time highs' for the market came just before the dot-com collapse and the subprime slaughter. Just sayin', there seem to be a lot of Americans not quite making their money last out the month. The 47 million on food stamps don't seem to be doing too well either.
This Dog Won't Hunt: Senator Mark Begich (D-LaMancha) is introducing a bill to lift the cap on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax - which would keep the program fully solvent for the next 75 years - and to tie increases to CPI-E, which will increase payments, unlike Obama's chained-CPI decrease.
Porn O'Graph:Mapping the future.
The Parting Shot:
Networking.
3 comments:
interesting perspective from a ny times article about the boston bombers:
"Major Hasan was held up as an example for others in a two-part video released by Al Qaeda’s core group in Pakistan in June 2011 titled 'You Are Only Responsible for Yourself,' urging Muslims in the West to stage attacks without waiting for orders from abroad.
There is no consensus on how best to detect such homegrown attacks. Some law enforcement officials say that the Boston case vindicates their aggressive strategy of dispatching informants posing as Qaeda operatives to meet young men who are flirting with violent jihad. Such sting operations often end when the aspiring terrorist attempts to detonate an ersatz bomb provided by the F.B.I.
But some Muslim activists say that identifying potentially violent people requires close, trusting relations between law enforcement and the Muslim community, which are undermined when informants invade the mosque and draw impressionable young men into talk of terrorism.
Had such trust prevailed in Boston, they say, perhaps Tamerlan Tsarnaev would have gotten more attention after two outbursts at a Boston mosque, where he denounced clerics’ references to Thanksgiving and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as contrary to Islam. The outburst, they say, might have led community leaders to go to the police."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/us/terrorists-find-online-education-for-attacks.html?hp&pagewanted=all&_r=0
Israel as the 51st State.
They have way more privileges than a State of the Union and they pay no taxes to support the DC Criminals. Paid ride all the way.
A detailed study should be done comparing what Israel receives from the US and what it gives back, if anything. Included in that should be a study of all the dual Israeli-US citizens in the US Government and US State governments.
The cost of supporting Israel in terms of dollars and civil rights is astronomical.
glad to see a distinction drawn between the government and the state department...was watching Rick Steves on PBS and wondering what a lot of those locales look like in the austerian lighting of today....looked like texas got into the testosterone pills with all the gun bills in the hopper... what war will we have first china/japan, columbia/venezuela, or goobers/gubbmint....
BENGAHZI !!!!!
you have been warned
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