Jim Manis on Most Anything

Jim Manis can formulate an opinion about a good many things, including those about which he has little knowledge. (And some dude named "Lazlo.") Visit The MagicFactory.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

So, Did W Ever Do Anything Right?

Amazingly, King George the Bush II did get the food stamp program right, of all things. Back in the 1990s, conservatives did their best to destroy the program, but under Bush II, the program was renamed as "nutritional aid." Today, about 1 out of every 4 children in America is benefiting from the program, as is 1 out of 8 adults. (See The New York Times story.)

"Mommy, where do corn and soybeans come from?" Monsanto, honey, see the big chemical plant over there?

"Ninety-three percent of soybeans. Eighty percent of corn." According to a report in today's Washington Post, these are the figures provided by Monsanto. Genetically altered crops to increase yields and resist pests is the name of the game. Next question: how much water does it take to produce a bushel of corn?

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Monday, November 23, 2009

The Deal with Dr. Evil:

Bill Gates famously announced on Charlie Rose a number of years ago that the one man he feared above all others was Rupert Murdock. So guess who's coming to dinner at the campus in the great northwest? That's right, you got it.

Microsoft is going to pay Mr. I-intend-to-control-the-world's-media to prevent Google from searching Murdock's content, allowing Bing sole access.

Is this the future of newsprint revenue? One set of billionaires paying another billionaire, with us left to decide what's fair and balanced?

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Sunday, November 15, 2009

Book Review:

Dear Husband, (Harper Collins 2009) by Joyce Carol Oates.

How many books can this lady write? That's the criticism, that's the fault found with her. The answer is more difficult to find. Whatever it is, she's still putting out great stories, and Dear Husband proves once again that Oates is one of America's great masters of story telling.

Gothic in structure, mesmerizing in style. I limited myself to one story a day just so I'd have two weeks of something to look forward to each of those days. Michael Lindgren of The Washington Post sets aside "Landfill" as the best of the fourteen, and I suppose he is right. I'd have a much harder time picking one out. Oates imagines Americans better than just about any writer.

The short story is not dead in America, even if the readership has dwindled to a monkish few. If I were an executive at HBO, I'd be hiring some script writers to turn the contemporary American short story into a series of HBO films.

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Sarah Baby in 2012?

Washington Post staff writer, Dan Balz, reports on the speculation around Sarah Palin's book tour and the future of the Republican party, which looks bleak if Palin is the nominee. Frankly, my guess is she's peaking too early. She'll quit the race before convention time.

But I've been wrong before. Maybe she'll wait to quit after she receives the nomination. Balz says Palin's best feature is that she has the one thing every politician has to die for: she's interesting. I suppose that's why I'm writing about her, but the most interesting thing that I can find about her is that anyone wants to support her. What does that say about the American psyche?

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

Hitting a Home Run in the Face of the Apocalypse:

Gail Collins socked one out of the park today with her op-ed in the Times:

Really, for ultraconservatives, the last year has been one sign of the apocalypse after the other. Soon, the rivers will run red with Starbucks Raspberry-Flavored Tazo Passion Shaken Iced Tea. Owls will give birth to two-headed frogs who shriek the lyrics to Lady Gaga songs.

Don't miss the end of the story when Collins asks why, when she was a kid and the nuns sent her home from school on Friday with the affirmation that the end would come on Sunday, they also gave her homework that was due on Monday.

Or her explication of the Nostradamus lines

For the merry maid the bright splendor
Will shine no longer, for long will she be without salt.
With merchants, bullies, wolves odious,
All confusion universal monster.

"Which is obviously a foretelling of the Sarah Palin book tour." Zinnngggg!!!

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Iraq? No! Really, It Was Never about the Oil!

So, it turns out that Peter W. Galbraith, "an influential former American ambassador," who helped create Iraq's constitution back in 2004, stands to make as much a $100 million in oil revenues as a result of favorable arrangements between a company he is heavily invested in and the Kurds, The New York Times reports.

Galbraith, whose views affected policy advocated by Vice President Biden and former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, evidently never listened to then President George W. Bush's proclamation that the war was not about oil.

When Darth Vader proclaimed that the war would pay for itself, this was evidently what he had in mind. American taxpayers pay for the war, sending the economy into the toilet, and then a Norwegian oil company—that's right, Norwegian oil company—gets rich off of it.

Let's pause once again, one day after Veteran's Day, to thank our troupes for their sacrifices, while Galbraith and his ilk laugh all the way to the bank.

Where's that 90 percent tax bill?!!

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Veterans Day in Our Nation's Capitol

This year to celebrate the sacrifices of our many veterans, it would have been nice to bestow some basic freedoms and support the rights of some of our countrymen. Maybe our government could have repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," taken some steps towards equal rights for same sex couples, and worked toward implementing Universal Health Care (because essential health care should be a right, not a commodity). Instead, I guess a day off of work, a tour of our visually compelling memorials, and a series of speeches will have to do. I'm sure that (even those) Americans (who have to stay in the closet/can't marry their partner/can't afford basic medical care) can appreciate that.

Anything else we might have done to honor veterans?

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Sunday, November 08, 2009

Bankers Rake in Millions While You Hunt for a Job:

Reform is just another word that doesn't apply to the rich and powerful. Louise Story describes how the players who brought the economy to its knees continue to exploit taxpayers in today's New York Times. The name of the game is stock options.

House Passes Health-care Bill:

Will the bill provide the instruments to do the right thing with health-care? Will it drive costs down while improving access? (See The Washington Post story.)

How Do You Take Your Republican Party?

To Palin or not to Palin, that seems to be the question. If the New York 23rd district is an example of what the Republican party has to offer, our friends on the right seem to be about to split into two equally ineffective factions.

In the meantime, the Obama-ites must be chomping at the bits in anticipation of a 2012 election that could feature the incumbent against the Alaskan gubernatorial quitter. A best guess is that would provide about an 80-20 split. (See Dan Balz story in today's Washington Post.)

Violence in America:

Mass murder is always bizarre, but the recent events at Fort Hood have got to take the cake. Who would ever anticipate a psychiatrist going bonkers and murdering a dozen people? While the victims of this tragedy mourn their terrible losses, the sad part for the rest of us is that it will provide a distraction from the events that matter most to the millions of the rest of us, health-care and the economy being chief among them.

If anything, the lesson to be learned is that violence seldom if ever accomplishes more than begetting more violence. Ultimately, we will come to the conclusion that the shootings at Fort Hood were nothing more than a weird aberration of a nation already too long at war, with little concept of how to extract itself.

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Sunday, November 01, 2009

How Much Is Too Much?

The Supreme Court is going to take on the question of just how much money is too much to be earned as corporate compensation this coming week. My guess is that the conservative court will do the neo conservative (neo liberal, that is) thing and drop the ball. (See The Washington Post story.)

Ever since pro athletes have started to make massive wages, Americans have been outraged when someone other than themselves is paid millions of dollars a year to do something that doesn't save lives.

The easy answer, of course, is for politicians to "man-up" and do the one thing that makes the most sense: raise the income tax rate to 90 percent on all compensation, including stocks, over a level that is determined to be excessive, say one million dollars per year, if you want to be generous.

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