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.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Justice Scalia's "evil day":

Linda Greenhouse, perhaps the most knowledgeable member of the press on the machinations of the Supreme Court, offers her opinions about where the Roberts' court might go next with its right-wing activist agenda, after having recently overturned one hundred years of legislation meant to protect American citizens from having democracy sold to the highest bidder.

Greenhouse speculates that anti-abortionists may have to wait awhile before the court sets back thirty-seven years of federal law on their favorite issue. Instead, we are likely to see a further development of the old racial bugaboo, separate but equal. The current means of achieving this injustice is to make sure the vast majority of minorities receive a much poorer education than their white counterparts so that they cannot advance as quickly. (See the New Haven firefighters case, Ricci v. DeStefano.)

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Saturday, January 23, 2010

Quotable Quotes:

"A library is an enormous repository of information, entertainment, the best that has been thought and said. It is also probably the densest concentration of potential boredom on earth" (Jennifer Schuessler "Our Boredom, Ourselves," The New York Times "Sunday Book Review" January 23, 2010.) And Schuessler ends with "if it weren’t for all the boring books in the world, why would anyone feel the need to try to write more ­interesting ones?"

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Friday, January 22, 2010

Haiti, Looting, the Media:

Haiti lies a wreck and yet the media still reports on "looting" taking place there. The image that comes to mind is of young toughs robbing women and children of goods that have been handed out by aid workers, but is that what is actually taking place?

Rebecca Solnit voices her opinion at Salon.com. It's worth reading. The media reports mostly what falls into its lap, accepting spokespersons' versions with little question. I learned a long time ago that the news media simply repeated about 90 percent of the time what came to them in the form of government and business news releases, usually without bothering to even do the most minimal of checking.

The people of Haiti are generally considered to be "black." Would the word "looting" be so easily attached if they were considered "white"?

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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Supreme Court Votes to Kill Free Speech:

In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court voted to allow giant corporation to strangle free speech today. (See The Washington Post story.) In effect, huge corporations can now buy up all the newspaper space, all the radio air time, and all of the TV time to back their hand picked contestants in any political campaign.

Under the guise of supporting free speech, the Republican appointed justices voted to allow any sort of campaign financing that any entity can afford to buy.

The big winners here will be the TV, radio, and newspaper corporations who will reap in the profits as corporations with fat pocket books, after having kept wages stagnant for the past thirty years, compete with one another to purchase every square inch of newspaper space and every second of TV and radio time.

Will this bail NBC out the next campaign season? They can stop their other programming now and sell every minute to political advertisers.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in descent, railed against the decision as a revocation of 100 years of campaign law. Republicans have for years complained about activist justices, yet this decision is by far the most "activist" one to come out of the Supreme Court in generations.

In one fell swoop, the Republicans on this court have revoked our constitutional rights and usurped the powers of congress.

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Sunday, January 17, 2010

Vampires at Republican HQ:

Frank Rich points out the many ways that the Republican leadership are sucking the blood out of the Republican party's base, leveling criticism at the two most prominent blood suckers: Michael Steele and Sarah Palin, both of whom are hustling the Tea Partiers out of large chunks of money. (See today's New York Times.) When will real Republicans wise up to the fact that Democrats aren't going to stake these "undead" for them?


Will Google Abandon China?

The big tech news didn't come out of the recent annual show in Las Vegas, it came with the announcement that Google might pull out of China. Initial reaction in the U. S. revolved around the fact that Google has a relatively small market share in the search business there, but the situation is slowly becoming clearer. Educated, wealthier, and notably college students rely on Google. These are the folks that the ruling party wants on its side. (See today's New York Times.) There was no "great leap forward" during the 1960s when China repressed this class of people.


Pop Culture Studies:

How the mighty have fallen. Tim Arango examines the recent debacle at NBC through the eyes of history in today's New York Times. Comcast Cable is in the process of purchasing the network that introduced TV to the nation, and the current leadership is apparently in the process of destroying it before the new ownership can take over.

Television appears to be in a race with newspaper companies to see which can fall victim to the new media structure first.


Haiti:

The big topic in the news the past few days has been the earthquake in Haiti. NPR is still the best source of information on this unfolding tragedy. If nothing else, perhaps Americans will learn more about the part we have played in helping to create this situation through 200 years of neglect at outright oppression that has been based solely on race and bigotry. If Haiti were not so poor, the tragedy their would not be as intense.

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Friday, January 15, 2010

And the Good News Is!

Real wages fell by 1.6 percent when adjusted for inflation. In the meantime, inflation increased by a "modest" 0.1 percent. Now that shouldn't seem too bad. Unless you need to buy gasoline for your car. Prices there have risen by a dollar a gallon compared to last year at this time, and the same is true for heating oil. In the meantime, the cost of health care has continued to grow nearly exponentially, if you're lucky enough to even have it. And then there are the poor college students, who see the costs of attending higher ed compete with the rising costs of health care. Add to that the continued unemployment rate in excess of ten percent. (See The New York Times' article.)

Is it any wonder that folks are obsessing about the late night TV talk show imbroglio? Well, at least the press finds it entertaining.

In other economic news, the prices for used cars continues to rise as their supply decreases. Consumers are finally realizing that "brand new" has little relevance in their lives.

This just in: Illinois has now edged closer to falling into bankruptcy, trailing California by a nose in the race to determine which state is in the worst economic shape. Arizona, in the meantime, is auctioning off its state buildings and plans to become the first state government to have been officially leased.

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Monday, January 11, 2010

It's Like the Race Issue:

(Maybe that should be plural, but …) Where are the real conservatives? I don't mean the idiot tea partiers or the I'm-against-anything-a-Democrat-is-for clowns in congress. I'm talking about people who drive defensively, who say, "Wait a minute, let's take a closer look at this."

Ross Douthat falls into this last category when he points out that allowing a public debate on religion isn't an unreasonable thing to do. Douthat argues that when Brit Hume was asked about what advice he would give golfer Tiger Woods concerning his recent image problems resulting from his sexual problems and Hume responded by advocating for his own religious beliefs Hume was not out of bounds.

The argument shifted, of course, from a comparison about the relative merits of various religious beliefs to the notion that a newsman should not be advocating a particular religious belief even when he was simply a member of a panel and not in fact reporting the news.

The problem was further acerbated by the fact that the panel discussion was taking place on Fox News, a cable outlet whose purpose is to broadcast propaganda that will serve the money interests of its owner, Ruppert Murdoch, in his pursuit to aggregate all of the world's wealth into one mountainous pile to be hidden in a cave of his choosing where he can sit on it.

The long and short of it is that Douthat's take on the conversation is the most reasonable one I've encountered, although why any of us—other than Buick and so forth—be concerned about Tiger Woods' peccadilloes is beyond me.

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Sunday, January 10, 2010

Let's Pretend:

So, a senator tells the truth, and then apologizes for it. What a country we live in.

Senate majority leader Harry Reid's one time remarks on Barack Obama's electability due to his light skin and felicity with the English language has drawn fire from the extreme right. These are the same folks who draw their political might from their racist base. (See The New York Times' article.) There hasn't been an honest discussion on race in this country since the Civil War.

How convoluted can things get? Reid comments on the racism of whites and is forced to apologize to a black president for his choice of words. Is it any wonder that 1) we can't get a decent health bill and 2) the Wall Street banking pirates can get away with robbing us blind? (See Frank Rich's column in today's New York Times.)


Where the Money Is:

Louise Story and Eric Dash tell us about the fabulous wealth the Wall Street Pirates will be plunging into their pockets this year in bonuses paid out to bankers. While unemployment sits remains in the double-digits, the bankers continue to make fortunes.

In the meantime, America's college graduates are heading off to law school and grad school in record numbers. What else is there to do with a bachelor's degree? (Back in the 1970s, a bachelor's degree was equivalent to a high school diploma, now it's equal to a grade school diploma, maybe.)

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Thursday, January 07, 2010

What Happens When China Goes "Pop"?

Hedge fund mogul James S. Chanos is betting that China's economic boom is about to go bust. (See the story in this afternoon's New York Times.) Not everyone agrees that China is a floating economic bubble on the verge of disappearing, but Chanos has a strong track record. He forecast the Enron collapse along with a number of other such predictions. Chanos argues that the evidence lies in the quantity of credit China is accumulating. Currently, the country is producing whopping quantities of goods predicated on the notion that there are actually consumers who will want them.

The big question has to be what happens to the world's economy when its banker goes "pop"?

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Tuesday, January 05, 2010

"A Moral and Practical Failure":

Adam Liptak quotes Professor Samuel Gross in today's New York Times in a report on "the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system … 50 years ago."

Even the body that created the language which the Supreme Court used to justify the reinstatement of the death penalty in the U. S. now concludes that the system is so badly broken it should be abandoned.

The question now is will this provide Texans with more reason to secede from the union? Surely they must fear their right to have the state murder the disenfranchised within their boundaries in order to enhance their politicians' reputations?


Moral Turpitude:

Following Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith's switch from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, his staff resigns, with one member stating, "We cannot in good conscience continue working for him. We do not know what the future holds, but we are taking a leap of faith with the belief we will soon find ourselves in the employment of principled public officials" (See The New York Times' story.)

The question is— "principled public officials" —does such a creature actually exist? Of course, we might also ask whether we really want one.

Griffith's district, by the why, thrives on defense spending.

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Monday, January 04, 2010

Hey, Americans, Rupert Murdoch Found Out You Were Trying To Save Money!

Keep an eye on that ever growing cable bill, Murdoch and the rest of the cable TV industry is about to enhance their billion-dollar empire by squeezing more and more money out of you. The cable industry works much like the phone company, nickle and diming individual customers every month, which amounts to nearly incalculable millions nation-wide. The nation's addiction to sports and so-called "reality" TV shows has locked in customers more effectively than any illegal drug. (See today's New York Times.)

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Sunday, January 03, 2010

Polarized Nation:

One out of every four American children require food stamps to survive: Today's New York Times reports on the desperate situation facing the massive numbers of Americans at the bottom of the economic rung.

One out of every fifty Americans have no other income than food stamps. One out of every eight receive food stamps. One in four children do.

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Saturday, January 02, 2010

The Bush Legacy:

Neil Irwin addresses the "Aughts" in today's Washington Post:



Remember that when Clinton left office, there was a budget surplus.

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On the Nature of Things:

If man did not already exist, women would have to invent him.

P.S. "This is an ongoing process."

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Friday, January 01, 2010

Y2K Revisited:

Americans generally avoid looking at the past, but now is the time of the year when media fills its space with retrospectives. (Remembering Elvis, the Beetles.) Denis Dutton revisits New Year's Eve 1999 and the morning after in today's New York Times, comparing, for instance, the billions spent to prevent "the End of the World as We Know It" by some nations, like the U. S. and Britain, compared with a country like South Korea that, for the most part, ignored it. For whatever reason, Dutton points out, we are infatuated with the concept that "It's Always the End of the World as We Know It."


Is History Repeating Itself?

A Washington Post editorial points out that back in September 1901 America suffered an act of terrorism comparable to this century's 9/11 strike: President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist.

But that act brought the dynamic Teddy Roosevelt into office, beginning what has been called "the American century." In 2001, George W. Bush was president. Instead of a "can-do" philosophy, America was led by a can't-speak-in-public brand of leadership—from energy to ineptitude.

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