Two really good questions

clipped from www.time.com How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark?

'Nuff said.

Right wingers get a pass

clipped from digbysblog.blogspot.com The Villagers have spent the last 30 years chasing phantom hippies and black panthers. They have not cared about or even noticed the radicalism on the right, which doesn't fit their picture of scary political terrorists because right wingers look like what they think of as Real Americans. How in the world can these nice, white middle aged and elderly people possibly be so crazy? Every editor in the country should assign all of his reporters and spokesmodels to listen to Limbaugh, beck savage, an d the rest for a solid week. Then they might not be so surprised to find out that the people who listen to them are paranoid, racist, hysterical, narcissistic and stupid. And there are a lot of them. And they aren't wearing headbands or tie-dyed t-shirts. They look just like David Broder and Cokie Roberts.

Jim Kunstler: Get ready for a much lower standard of living

clipped from economicedge.blogspot.com The number problems we face are now hopeless. America will never be able to cover its current outstanding debt. We're effectively finished at all three levels: household, corporate, and government. Who, for instance, can really comprehend what to do about the number problems infesting Fannie Mae and the mortgages associated with her? There's really only one way out of this predicament: to get ready for a much lower standard of living and much different daily living arrangements. We can't wrap our minds around this, so the exercise du jour is to play games with numbers to persuade ourselves that we don't have to face reality. We're entertaining ourselves with shell games, musical chairs, Chinese fire drills, Ponzi schemes, and Polish blanket tricks (where, to make your blanket longer, you cut twelve inches off the top and sew it onto the bottom).

The unanswered questions about the US economy

clipped from www.counterpunch.org How does an economy based heavily on consumer spending recover when so many high-value-added jobs, and the GDP and payroll tax revenues associated with them, have been moved offshore and when consumers have no more assets to leverage in order to increase their spending? How does the US pay for its imports if the dollar is no longer used as reserve currency? These are the unanswered questions.

The truth about the USAmerican economy .... with car smashing!

How come this working class guy gets the whole bailout scam, but the talking heads on TV don't?

Oh right. Because he's actually probably feeling the bite instead of just yammering about it in his $10,000 made-for-TV hairdo.

This is the MOST ENTERTAINING list of depressing facts about our economy that I've ever seen.

Doesn't free speech mean you can ask a cop for his name and badge number?

I think the press has focused on the race angle in the Gates debacle to the detriment of the more salient issue, i.e., that we are expected to treat police with deference at all times and that doing otherwise is a punishable crime. To equate being upset with a cop with a crime is plain wrong and has no place in a free society. Draw the obvious conclusions about just how free our society is...

clipped from www.counterpunch.org “You don’t argue with a police officer,” Colin Powell told Larry King, commenting on the Gates episode and his own personal history. But why not argue, if anyone in this society is supposed to believe it’s a free one? Why should arguing with a cop, or just demanding his name and badge---after he’s walked into your house---get you get you arrested for “disorderly conduct”? Why should he have the right to do that to you---as a Black man or as anybody else---just because he’s a cop? A cop’s someone supposed to be doing a job protecting the public. Isn’t that the idea? Instead he or she is given impunity to bust people he/she finds personally uppity. This is a system problem.

Authoritarianism, not racism, is the elephant in the Gates-Crowley room

Have Americans really lost the suspicion of authority that Jefferson seemed to think was indispensable in a free country? Seems like the answer to that is a resounding yes.

clipped from digbysblog.blogspot.com Sure, we should treat the cops with respect and society shouldn't encourage people to be reflexively hostile to police. They have a tough job, and we should all be properly respectful of people who are doing a dangerous and necessary job for the community. But when a citizen doesn't behave well, if not illegally, as will happen in a free society, it is incumbent upon the police, the ones with the tasers and the handcuffs and the guns, to exercise discretion wisely and professionally. And when they don't, we shouldn't make excuses for them. It's far more corrosive to society to allow authority figures to abuse their power than the other way around.