Tuesday, May 14, 2013

SAR #13134

One Thousand, One Hundred, and Twenty-seven.

Headline Only: "Guantánamo hunger strikers subjected to harsh new method of force feeding." I simply don't want to know the details, so I stopped reading before I got even more disgusted at our behavior.

And Then There Were None: Eurogroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem, determined to put the square peg of austerity into round hole the the euro is going down, clings to the belief that troubled European nations must privatize everything, fire half the workers and insist that the rest live on bread and water undertake structural reform because it hasn't worked yet and that everybody but Bernanke knows that monetary policy won't work and that only Krugman has any faith in fiscal policies like actually spending some money to put people back to work. Unfortunately, this is not news.

Short Version: To Ron Paul's comment about "What No One Wants to Hear About Benghazi" is mostly that no one wants to hear Ron Paul going on about Benghazi. After a while we get pretty inured to the daily disaster proclamations from the Republicans and their right wing panic and impeach mongers. If you've got the little blue dress, show it to us. Otherwise go sit quietly in the corner.

Q & A: For the third time this year, the Greek government has resorted to emergency action to quash a strike - this one by secondary school teachers. A government spokesman asked, "What kind of teachers choose to go on strike at the most sensitive time for the students?” Probably the kind who have had their pay cut, hours extended, jobs threatened and retirement confiscated.

This Just In: 'Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA.' Okay, so it's filler at this point, but it's nice to see it acknowledged, now that they've taken over the Supreme Court, too.

Yes, But: Senator Marco Rubio (Wannabe - FL) is demanding that the Commissioner of the IRS resign immediately, which would be a better suggestion if there were an IRS Commissioner. The office has been vacant since November, last year. Rubio's talking points will be revised.

Life In These United States: Gunmen shot up a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans, wounding 19. But nothing went boom so it wasn't terrorism, just another day in the park.

Relay Race: The Wall Street Journal, destroying any pretense of actual journalism and apparently misreading the calendar, published an op-ed that included every long-debunked myth and outright lie ever uttered by the climate denial camp. It concluded by calling for more CO2 emissions. And, no, it isn't April 1st.

Prizewinner: A man in Illinois has been arrested for misdemeanor animal cruelty after his sexually abused peacock died. Details were not available because there was a connection to a case involving a child.

Hush, Money: Here we go again, giving private international corporations veto control over the laws on states and countries. NAFTA on steroids is a fair description of the very secret and very scary Trans Pacific Partnership treaty, which also grants unidentified corporations, foreign and domestic, the right to override domestic laws on environmental health and citizens’ rights if such laws and rights stand in the way of profit. The same bunch of corporations want a similar US-European Union Free Trade agreement.

Porn O'Graph: Chained PCE inflation, or not.

The Parting Shot:

130514

Lyreleaf Sage

3 comments:

Thom Foolery said...

CKM,

I made a comment to my Dad on Mother's Day about how the Texas plan explosion is a better example of terrorism than the Boston pressure cooker fiasco, and his response summed up the mainstream perspective:

"Terrorism is when foreigners blow people up."

So things going boom is half the equation. The other half is the international origin (which really means, let's be honest, swarthy complexion) of the one responsible for the boom.

So long as the average Joe thinks like a prime time TV show, things ain't gonna change.

Thom "The Typist" Foolery said...

*planT explosion

Anonymous said...

Monsanto:

"On Saturday, May 25, tens of thousands of people from around the world will participate in the March Against Monsanto, spanning 286 cities in 36 countries. In the U.S., events are slated to occur simultaneously at 11 a.m. PST in 47 states."

Will you be there?

http://ecowatch.com/2013/global-march-against-monsanto-may-25/