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Happy Holidays - See what happens when you don’t check your email?

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Next to Christmas, Black Friday is the best day to share news with the media that you would just as soon nobody heard about. Tens of millions of Americans are away from the television sets, gorging on turkey, cursing the traffic jams, and screaming in psychotic rage as the blessed peace of Christmas descends upon them at the local mall.

The media itself is short staffed, with the star blow-dried cretins and much of the union crews getting the day off so they, too, can gorge and scream. As a result, the television news consists mostly of formulaic pieces about holiday travel (“Roger, we have reports of cannibalism caused by flight delays at concourse five…”) and Xmas shopping. This year, some poor bastid at a WalMart got crushed by ravening hordes of shoppers not willing to wait for the store to actually open before bursting in to take advantage of the Michael Jackson special, boy’s pants half off. Read more

Universities and Downtowns: Phoenix’s Big Breakthrough

by John Stuart Hall

A lasting principle of urbanism: great universities are enriched, and cities advanced, when academic centers are located in city centers.

Sadly, many university governing boards took a different view in the last half of the 20th century, locating or moving campuses to auto-only-accessible outlying locations.

But a counter trend is now gaining strength. Arizona, one of the most spread-out of all states, offers a top example. Arizona State University (ASU), originally founded as the Tempe Normal School for the Arizona Territory in 1885, has decided it’s imperative to have a major presence in the heart of newly-vibrant downtown Phoenix, one of America’s newest big cities. Read more

A Sustainable Economy — “The Change We Need”

by Rick Cole

In his first press conference as president-elect, Barack Obama acknowledged, “Some of the choices that we make are going to be difficult…it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole that we are in.”

In this crisis, the “change we need” is to invest in a sustainable economy for our future, rather than borrowing to sustain our current economy. Here’s how the new Administration can help us dig out of the hole we’re in: Read more

Comments from Cyberspace…..Randomly gathered comments

by Magginkat

Randomly gathered comments from forums, blogs, and elsewhere on the net, to present readers with a variety of opinions, both serious & humorous, regarding the political situation in the U.S.

JUSTICE! -  A Republican-generated effort to get out the vote for Georgia’s December 2 Senate runoff election “has hit a snag as thousands of requests for absentee ballots have been denied because the applications were not signed,” the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. Read more

The Ghosts of Desert Storm

by Robert C. Koehler

Tribune Media Services

Seventeen years and three wars later, the ghosts of Operation Desert Storm — the cancers, the chronic headaches and dizziness, the fibromyalgia, the ALS and so much more that have stalked returning vets, whose medical claims have been denied, ignored, relegated to the paper shredder — have just gotten a reality upgrade.

“The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is real, that it is the result of neurotoxic exposures during Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or substantially improved with time.”

Thus concludes the 452-page report of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses, presented last week to Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake. Suddenly the government has several hundred thousand medical claims emanating from a few months in 1991 it has to start taking seriously — and that’s the easy part. Read more

Hit or Myth - How Holman, Junior, wants to reinvent the financial crisis

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

You can always count on right wingers to invent myths. As long as outfits like Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and Faux News are pumping out their propaganda, I’ll never lack for material to write about.

Take, for example, this gem from the WSJ: “Obama Hears a Giant Sucking Sound”. The piece was written by one Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Just the name tells you that this boy isn’t one of the working poor. There isn’t a family in the US worth less than $50 million that would stick a name like “Holman, Junior” on their male child. The subheader is hilarious:   “His legacy is spent before he gets his hands on it.” Holman, Junior, apparently does not approve of Barack Hussein Obama, and does not wish him well. He’s declaring Obama a failed president two months before the man takes office.

Holman Junior doesn’t like this talk about a “new New Deal” and postulates that it’s because, seventy-five years later, “the old New Deal is sinking fast.” Only he doesn’t mention that it took seventy five years for the New Deal to sink, possibly because much of it was discontinued before World War II, and except for Social Security, the rest was privatized. Just in time for the laissez-faire Republicans. Read more

Lingering Effects

by Norla Antinoro

We often think of that war as the Just War, the Good War.  But looking now at its effects, without even going into the details of it like A Bridge Too Far, it was a war with all the problems of war.  It scarred the participants.  It scarred the land.  It left memories so powerful and vivid they colored the next sixty years with their hue.

They gather for meals in a dining room fit for a cruise ship and talk.  Perhaps of today and its problems but every bit as often talk turns to The War, The Big One, WWII.  H. spent only five years in uniform, joining the national guard in 1938 before there was any talk of US involvement in any overseas conflict.  Today those five years influence his life more strongly than the intervening 60.  He does not leave the Portland area because of memories of walking through mud in the jungles of New Guinea, Australia, and Indonesia.  A soft spoken gentle man who is more comfortable with a drum stick or golf club in his hand than a rifle, he was in the military band.  Read more

I Hate to Say I Told You So

by Larry Sakin

My, my, my, it’s only been three weeks since starry-eyed Americans voted Senator Barack Obama into the presidency, and already he’s walking away from many of his promises.

The latest came today, when aides to the president elect said the economic stimulus plan Obama will present would not include any of the tax increases Obama, as a candidate, had said he would impose on taxpayers who make more than $250,000.

This is not a surprise, considering Obama’s choices for his cabinet so far, and his pick for chief of staff.

Let’s start with that chief of staff, Congressman Rahm Emmanuel. As is now known by many, Emmanuel became a Wall Street whiz-kid after leaving President Bill Clinton’s staff in 1998. He is the son of a former Israeli terrorist, and believes strongly in supporting Israel’s efforts to hold the Middle East under her sway. Emmanuel supported President Bush’s plan to invade Iraq, and has gone on record with his support for an American military role in Iran. Read more

When Heroes Have Clay Feet

by Norla Antinoro

The song captivated me even as its message was clear and in contradistinction to its lyrics.  I Need A Hero.  I wanted a Hero.  All the years of hard won wisdom fall beside the way when that yearning for a Hero takes over.

Times were tough.  Life was hard though not without beauty.  Every day was work just to make it to the next sunrise.  A Hero looked awfully good to my weary heart.

Perhaps because I was looking so hard and yearning so deeply, I found one.  Everything my heart could want.  Friend to share the ups and downs of every day.  Mentor in the things I still needed to learn.  Student for what I had to teach.  Strong for the times I was not.  Filled with determination for the times I wavered.  Steadfast.  Articulate.  Charismatic.  Attractive in my eyes and when you’re looking for a Hero those are the only eyes you can see through – your own. Read more

A Plan—Any Plan?: What’s good for GM (and Ford and Chrysler) executives isn’t necessarily good enough for Speaker Pelosi

by Robert A. Letcher, PhD

“When they show us their plan,we’ll show them the money.”
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
11.20.2008

If only dealing with the automobile companies were so straightforward!  Unfortunately for the Speaker of the People’s House – and the People whose money she was speaking of – it’s the poor quality of the automobile companies’ planning that got them into the current dire straits they clearly face.  But the Speaker couldn’t have intended to imply she would simply give them “money for nothin’”.  She couldn’t have meant to convey that any plan would do.  More to the point, the Speaker couldn’t have intended to convey that any plan good enough for GM executives would be good enough for America – those days are long gone.  Rather, it is my strong hope that the Speaker intended to convey that she would demand a good plan as a condition for her “show[ing] them the money”. Read more

Next Page »

• Letter to the Editor: Good Cars need Good Teams - by R. A. Letcher, PhD

  Good cars need good teams -- designers, engineers, line workers… and learning-oriented managers by Robert A. Letcher, PhD [Author’s note: I submitted the following as a letter to the editor of The New York Times, after that paper carried an article under the headline, "To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’", 02/15/2009.] It is widely accepted that you can't win a horse race without a good horse. Of course, it helps to have a lot of money and a good plan for spending it. But, you still need a good horse. The authors reminded me of this when they wrote: “The companies’ plans are required to show progress in cutting long-term costs as a condition for keeping their loans.” I doubt GM and Chrysler can win this most important "automobile race" merely by having better accountants and more muscular negotiators: they still need a good "horse". That means the companies will have to show that their teams can still design and build cars that people are drawn to buy and willing to pay for: winners. I doubt they can. The problem isn't that they didn't know how to; it's that they don't know how to break out of the group-think that ensnarled them, their managers, their whole organizations, decades ago. I would be more optimistic, had the government also required the companies to include plans for transforming themselves into learning organizations. Aye, there’s the rub: learning entails risk-taking, not “yes people”.

• Bob's Bail Out Plan by bobl-tlm

  

• Fiscal Therapy - Getting the economy back on its feet, giving taxpayers a break, saving your retirement fund and your kid's college tuition? Done. And it won't cost you a penny.

  For years now, whenever I've been invited to lecture students on how our tax system works, I have asked a simple question: What is the purpose of the United States of America? The most common answer, be it at prestigious universities, elite prep schools, rural community colleges, or crowded urban high schools, is this: To make people rich. This should come as no great surprise. For anyone born after, say, 1970, the world has been shaped by Ronald Reagan's remaking of government's relationship with private interests—a vision of lower taxes, less regulation, and maximum economic leeway for those at the top. In this view, the pursuit of wealth is the warp and weft of America; everything else will follow. By contrast, the preamble to the Constitution tells us the nation's reason for being in 52 words that can be reduced to six principles: society, justice, peace, security, commonwealth, and freedom. Individual riches don't make the list. They are a product of American society, not its guiding purpose. Progress, then, must begin with a return to the best of the values that created this Second American Republic—one born, it's worth remembering, from the failure of the Articles of Confederation, whose principles (weak government, unfettered capitalism) found their resurrection in the economic policies of the past three decades.

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  read more at Mother Jones

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• How Do You Like Deregulation Now? graphic politics by Dicky Neely

  

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