Getting Away with Murder

This past week, Casey Anthony, the so called "tot mom" was found not guilty of killing her 2 year old daughter Caylee. I did not follow the media circus surrounding this case, but apparently many Americans believe Casey got away with murder. 

On his Friday night HBO show "Real Time," host Bill Maher openly equated the Casey Anthony verdict with Republican policy.

"And before you accuse me of equating the Casey Anthony verdict with Republican thinking -- save your breath, I am. I'm equating them. If you're a working-class American who still votes Republican then you don't get to bitch about that verdict," said Maher.

"[Half of American voters] say 'I'm with the party that cuts all these programs for real people, for the 99 percent. Planned Parenthood, environmental protection, college, health care, infrastructure, but holds the line on private jets.' Voting for them is as stupid as voting not guilty for the mom who lost her baby for a month and went looking at a wet t-shirt contest.

"We're now being told that if multinational corporations bring home their current overseas profits of $1.4 trillion, they'll only be taxed five percent on it because we're told it will create jobs. It won't. It didn't, just like the last time we tried it in 2004. Companies took the savings and paid it out to themselves in dividends. Yes, Republican base, you are just like that jury. It's pathetically clear who's killing the middle class but you keep letting them get away with murder."

Mission (Finally) Accomplished

Osama bin Laden was killed yesterday in Pakistan in a focused, 40-minute, US military operation. Today, many in the US and around the world are celebrating. According to President Obama's announcement on television last night, the first intelligence pointing to bin Laden's location appeared last August. This means that the planning, from first hint to successful operation took over 8 months.

I have to say that this careful, precise, well-planned operation is an example of why we need to elect smart leaders. George Bush the younger could never have done it (and, in fact, didn't). Smart leaders hire smart managers; and smart managers plan important, tricky operations carefully. Cowboys ride after the first target they see and start shooting. I believe President Obama should get full credit for this successful operation and that it is an example of clear, intelligent, decisive leadership.

Fire the Rich

The March-April 2011 issue of UTNE Reader has reprinted an essay from Counter Punch by Davis Macaray entitled, Fire the Rich: A radical fix for the economy that greed destroyed. Here is an excerpt:

Shrinking incomes, fewer jobs ... but bigger corporate profits. Not a good sign.
Yet when you broach the dreaded subject of "class warfare." you get blank stares. When you try to demonstrate, through charts and graphs and scores of real-life examples, that the system is largely rigged to accommodate the wealthy and the powerful -- and that we face an unfortunate us-versus-them dilemma -- people back away.
There's an old joke. An Oxford professor meets a former student and asks what he's been up to. The student tells him he's working on a doctoral thesis about the survival of the class system in the United States. The prof expresses surprise. "I didn't think there was a class system in the United States, " he says. "Nobody does," the student replies. "That's how it survives."

I recommend reading the entire article. The middle class has been under serious attack for some time now. Thanks to the super rich, we are well on our way to becoming a third world country, And no one in the mainstream media is talking about it...