The American Nekkid Nightmare

Finally someone has stated the obvious ... Not only the emperor but all of us are nekkid ... My compliments to Michael Lind for doing his best in trying to tell us the truth.

The fantasy of a vast upper middle class

College isn't for everyone. Neither is the stock market

BY MICHAEL LIND

. . .

For a generation, most Americans have been told by left, right and center that they would be failures if they ended their educations with high school, worked hard, saved cash for emergencies and bought modest homes they could afford. They have been told that to succeed in life they need to ape the lifestyles of the upper middle class that provides most of America’s politicians, pundits and scholars.

The result has been an experiment in social engineering that has gone horribly wrong: the creation of a faux mass upper middle class. Millions of Americans who by objective standards belong to the working class or lower middle class have persuaded themselves that they are part of the professional-investor elite, because they have worthless degrees from diploma mills, negligible amounts invested in stocks, and suburban trophy houses they cannot afford. For the college graduates at Starbucks working to pay off student loans for degrees that they will never use, as for the millions of Americans who are now "underwater," owing more on their mortgages than their houses are worth, the American dream has turned into a nightmare.

LINK: The fantasy of a vast upper middle class

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And this person is a physician?

Fort Belvoir, Virginia (CNN) -- Charges against the Army officer who refused deployment to Afghanistan because he says President Barack Obama doesn't have the authority to send him, should be thrown out says his attorney, Paul Jensen.

Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin went before a military judge -- and a standing-room-only courtroom -- in Virginia on Friday to face three charges of disobeying a lawful order, one count of missing movement (not deploying with his unit) and one count of dereliction of duty.

LINK: CNN Justice

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Let loose the dogs... of rhetoric.

I guess if all you have is a Military-Industrial mentality then all you can see is war.  I was insulted when I read the following headline and then the subsequent snippet that is accessible before hitting the WSJ-pay-wall.  John Lee is the worst sort of saber-rattling 50's propaganda fear mongering profit. <= Spelled correctly - sensational journalism sells something.

China's Rise and the Road to War

BY: JOHN LEE | THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

As with Germany a century ago, an emerging power is overestimating its capabilities.

To draw such an archaic comparison as 'Germany a century ago' to the current world circumstance is broaching the irresponsible.  There isn't a country on the planet that is seeking any sort of 'world domination'.   Besides, China has already won.  Their reign as the pre-eminent wold power will last well beyond our short lifetimes or even shorter memories.

To paraphrase Steven Wright, "If China had everything, where would it put it?"  The answer is "Everywhere."  Silly John Lee, China has already won and we are still right where we are.

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You never go anywhere...

...without your soul.

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Jim Crow is Alive in Khali-phorn-i-ah

Jim Crow is Alive and Well in California

SB 1121 was hardly a radical-sounding piece of legislation. Among other things, it would have given California's 700,000 farm workers the right to take one day off out of every seven. Hourly paid agricultural employees would have received overtime pay after eight hours per day or 40 hours per week. 

But when the bill landed on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's desk, he vetoed it, saying that the new provisions would put farmers out of business. 

Had the law passed, California farm laborers would have been the first in the country to receive the right to overtime pay. In order to get his New Deal policies past southern Democrats in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt exempted field hands (most of whom were African-American at the time) from protections granted other workers. Those exemptions still stand. 

"The governor had a chance to make history," Sen. Dean Florez, the bill's author, told the San Francisco Chronicle. "He had a chance to wipe a 70-year-old shame off the books of California. Instead he has decided to side with the shameful."

Perhaps we should boycott Khali-phorn-i-ah?

LINK: The Atlantic

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gapingvoid cartoon #139 'Not Getting Older'

LINK:  Go here and buy prints!

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xkcd: Atheists

LINK: xkcd

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