JackRiddler
JackRiddler's JournalBecause Switzerland is a tax haven for American wealth?
Your point about military spending is extremely well taken. That's the single factor that most negatively distinguishes the US from all other developed nations. We have put the richest chunk of our surplus product into maintaining a costly empire, creating enemies and destroying other countries, with little or no benefit to the 99 percent of Americans.
What's going on with humanity? About the usual.
The US homicide rate has been falling steadily for more than 20 years, to about one-half of what it was in 1990. There are still many thousands of cases, and you hear about many of these (as is to be expected). The only counter-trend in this has been in rampage killings - those have stayed steady or gone up in the same period as the homicide rate generally has fallen.
Also, something like 60 people got killed by New York subway trains last year. This is not nice, and deplorable, and worthy of taking preventive actions if any effective ones can be found - but it does not represent anything unusual for humanity generally in this month as opposed to any other.
The propaganda begins in the headline. Monti never ran.
First, a blatant untruth:
Monti never ran.
The former Goldman Sachs advisor was never a candidate for prime minister and thus was never elected. His accession was the result of bankster pressure to put an austerity government in place, especially given the weakened and reluctant state of the Berlusconi government. Thus, if he leads a party into the next election, Monti will be running for the first time. Not "again."
Next, two phrases are not reporting, they are obvious editorial:
1) an economist who has helped restore Italy’s international credibility
correction: an economist who imposed an unpopular austerity regime favored by international banking
2) centrist
correction: neoliberal
The phrase "centrist" is always ideological. It's always bullshit. Among establishment writers it's tantamount to calling him the Good Guy in the movie.
Here's the better movie:
He dangled the baby over the balcony because they couldn't demand he drop it.
Which means it was always safe.
Are you fucking kidding me?
This shows how dishonest (or deluded) the fluoridation advocates are.
The majority of the developed world does not fluoridate their water, and despite this all of these countries have seen enormous improvements in dental health through the decades. (Many of them have better dental health indicators than the US, of course.) It's correctly seen as a forced medication of the entire population, as well as a self-evident health hazard. But in the United States it's liberals who have been successfully brainwashed into thinking that the only people who object to the practice are right-wing and crazy. Very typically for Americans, they are either ignorant of the rest of the world, or prefer to ignore it, and make a virtue of their ignorance. The liberal reaction to the anyone even mentioning fluoridation as a problem reveals an extreme provincialism masquerading as enlightenment rationalism. That's not what liberals should be about.
In an ironic fashion, she has a point.
Not intentionally, and of course in classic conservative-confusionist fashion she's got the facts exactly reversed.
Prima facie, women and children were the target. This may have primarily been a femicide.
Joe Lhota is not "a serious and popular candidate for Mayor."
At least, not currently. He is nobody and arrives with serious drawbacks due to his record at MTA.
That doesn't mean we won't see the kind of money pour in that could sculpt him into a threat. But that money (and the corporate media noise machine) will find someone to back regardless. The money might back someone even worse (like the police chief, oh jesus). That is the dark age we live in, after eight years of Caesar, followed by the billionaire media mogul and his $150 million out-of-pocket campaigns.
Calling on Democrats "to coalesce behind one person quickly" is the real recipe for disaster. The likely result of such panic-driven haste will be that the media gets to crown a neo-liberal non-entity without courage or conviction. That is monarchist thinking, and it's a losing strategy. I say, let democracy take its course. A primary should decide the candidate after a proper campaign in which the issues are debated and a strong candidate emerges. There's no need for premature hysteria in reaction to a non-entity like Lhota.
One could see it so, but it wouldn't be the case.
The proposals that were given to Boehner with chained CPI were all too real. Luckily his intent (or his perceived necessity for staying on top of his lunatic party) has always been to negotiate in bad faith. Thus the bad D proposals (capitulating to cuts on SS etc. and giving way on taxes on the 250-400K set) are being rejected even as we speak! Thus, thanks to the R's being insane, we should go over the fiscal bump. The phony hysteria on the market and in the corporate media should evaporate by mid-January, and next year gives a slightly better chance of a good deal. (8 seats better in House, possible end to preemptive filibusters in Senate.) Or the Rs drag it out for many more months, damaging themselves above all. It's essential that the current offer not be accepted. (Golly, hope Boehner ain't reading this!) ;0
Maybe the Republicans will save things...
By blowing the deal and causing a minor panic as we go over the Fiscal Bump.
Okay, maybe you don't know them very well.
Gates? Seriously? Gates of Iran-Contra? Gates of the bogus Baker commission that recommended a drawdown in Iraq? Gates who then succeeded Rumsfeld and initiated the mass-murdering "surge" but "won the war" by increasing the pay-offs to the insurgents?
As I said, no one will be selected for this office who won't serve the MIC and the neocon fantasy of what constitutes a threat (which they will do even if they don't support every neocon plan for new wars). Let me know when Obama has someone in mind ready to end the bogus and reckless war-coming-soon propaganda on Iran. Someone who will be willing to draw down the empire and stop devoting of 50% of discretionary spending to useless and murderous pursuits.
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