Republican Hierarchy Set to Exploit the Tea Party:

Sarah "I ate the Grizzly" Palin and company are all set to discover that the elephant is about to eat them if the Republican party makes the hay the media thinks it will come Tuesday.

The party of big business, bought and owned by big business, is letting the flighty news media focus on the noisy herd that beckons to the call of right-wing pundits even as a few business interests fund the hew and cry from behind the scenes. Are we in the Emerald City? We already know at least some of the hands pulling the strings from behind the curtain.

Frank Rich provides an excellent prognosis in today's New York Times.

Hint: The lobbyists aren't just funding politicians now, they are the politicians. Some states/districts are about to elect some of the very people who earn their keep by buying votes, to office. Yes, it's come to that.

The Truth:

The richest 5 percent of Americans have $40 trillion in wealth; that's more wealth than the whole world created throughout history until 1980 (the year Ronny Rayguns won the presidency on an advocacy of trickle down economics).

If a one time 15 percent tax were placed on those wealthy Americans, the whole national debt could be wiped out over night. Are you surprised they're spending millions to keep from paying taxes? So much for patriotism.

Illiteracy on the Increase:

Newspaper circulation continues to fall in the United States according to new numbers released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The late edition of The New York Times, released online, reports on the falling trend in paid circulations of newspapers around the country. Naturally, the Web is being blamed, but the truth is that literacy is falling as well. Fewer people are willing to read and much of the country has difficulty reading newspapers, which are written at the seventh grade reading level.

While the business model of selling paper newspapers may be a failing one, the harder truth is that fewer people are capable of being able to decipher sentences that thirty years ago the average twelve-year-old could easily understand.

Quote of the Month:

"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?" — Christine O'Donnell, Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware, during a debate yesterday. What followed indicated that Ms. O'Donnell wasn't simply making a slip of the tongue/misspeaking, as politicians often explain when caught making a gaff. She seemed completely unaware of what is clearly stated in the First Amendment. (See The New York Times story.)

Angle Angles for the Asian vote in Nevada:

Trying to shore up her anti immigration message while running for the U.S. Senate, Republican candidate Sharron Angle told an assembly of school students that she has "been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly." To date, no one has been able to figure out precisely what she was trying to say. (Anything for a vote?) (See The Washington Post story.)

Health Care Reform to Believe In:

The New York Times reports today that the Obama administration is suing Blue Cross Blue shield of Michigan for price fixing with hospitals. It seems the insurance giant coerced hospitals into charging higher prices for services rendered to clients of other insurance companies.

It appears that this will just be the first of a series of such law suits, with other large insurers to be investigated by the Justice department.

Yes, Maggy, Americans Are Incredibly Stupid:

You can still find plenty of people who receive their healthcare coverage solely through Medicare while at the same time stating that the government should keep its hands off healthcare coverage.

A poll reported on by The Washington Post illustrates the amazing number of people, about half of all Americans, who either just don't get it that healthcare needed fixing or are just evil enough so that they don't want their neighbors or their neighbors' children covered.

Lords of the Manor—That Foreclosure Business:

Two million homes are in foreclosure, and perhaps as many as two and a half million more are dangerously close. We've all heard by now of the scandalous way the paperwork has been processed, including the story from Florida (naturally) of the man who owned his home outright, being evicted from it by a bank who had never loaned him any money at all.

Today's Washington Post tells the story of the madness surrounding the process of banks' attempting to dump as many people into the street as possible. The approach appears to have been the same as attempting to sandbag a levee during a flood. And that's putting it nicely. When it comes to banks, the one thing we can all count on is that they are in it for themselves.

Texas Murder System To Be Placed on Trial:

Back in 2004, the Texas murder mill executed Cameron Todd Willingham after convicting him on "junk science" of his three children. Six years later, his family may be starting to find justice for him and shed light on a system that has almost certainly put to death any number of people who did not deserve their fate. (See The New York Times' story.)

The Nobel Does Not Impress the Party of No:

Republicans balked when President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and they remain unimpressed by Peter Diamond winning the prize in economics. That's this afternoon's hot news item.

If you're like me, you've got no idea who Peter Diamond is, but The Washington Post explains that Diamond is a behavioral economist, and that's a branch of the field of study that Republicans have said they're absolutely opposed to.

Again, if you're like me, you've got no idea why they're against this because, like me, you have no idea what this means. Want to bet there's a politician on Capitol Hill who does?

Diamond has been nominated to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, and Sen. Richard Shelby continues to block him, stating that Diamond just doesn't have the credentials for the job.

And Shelby would know this because he's such a shining light on the subject of economics, right?

Yes, Folks, the Majority of Americans Want the National Gov't To Work Exactly like California's:

A recent poll run by Kaiser and the Harvard School of Public Health found that 56% of American's want to emulate California's referendum style that has caused so much of that state's economic problems.

We Americans are nothing if not unbelievably stupid.

Weak Ties, Strong Ties, and never wear striped ties with striped shirts:

Malcolm Gladwell compares the Internet age with the Civil Rights movement and argues that true revolutionary change occurs through face-to-face contact not Facebook contacts. While weak ties, Gladwell argues, help generate new ideas, strong ties generate resolve. "A networked, weak-tie world is good at things like helping Wall Streeters get phones back from teen-age girls," Gladwell concludes after relating a story in which a lost/stolen cell phone is recovered. However, if you want a true revolutionary movement to take place, you need a hierarchical structure, preferably lead by a charismatic leader like Martin Luther King, Jr.

On the other hand, generating new ideas, being creative, works better when the emotional ties between people are not particularly strong. We don't like to be challenged by those about whom we have strong feelings. We want to be reassured by them. Think how disturbing it is to have to admit that someone you hate actually has a good idea. Or to be shown inadequate or wrong by someone you love.

Politics: How Bad Can Things Be?

Gail Collins doesn't need to be a humorist to make a lot of fun out of the current political fiascoes decorating the landscape. All she needs to do is name the candidates around the country and list their various foo pas.

Naturally, her outrage depends on significant short term memory loss. Back in 1968 the country was so fed up with political corruption that it elected Richard Nixon. In 1980 the country was so wearied of political ineptitude that it elected Ronald Reagan, a man whose sole ability was reading a teleprompter. In 2000 the country was so outraged by the moral corruption of its leaders it elected George W. Bush, whose qualities brought the country to the brink of economic collapse.

Just when you think things can't get worse, we seem to figure out a way to make it so.

Cash Rich Companies Buy Back Stocks:

While unemployment remains near 10%, the companies that laid off workers are flush with megabucks that they are now using to buy back their stock from investors in an attempt to drive the value of that stock even higher. Jia Lynn Yang reports on the development in The Washington Post. Never fear, though, these same companies are investing heavily in political advertising after the recent Supreme Court decision defined corporations as human beings, granting them, under the guise of free speech, the ability to dump millions of dollars into political advertising while hiding behind the masks of dummy nonprofit organizations.

"Trifecta of Torment: higher unemployment, worse deficits and greater inequity":

Nicholas Kristof, who normally reports on the atrocious behavior of men in underdeveloped countries committed against women, weighs in on the argument that things could have been worse under Republican rule and will be if the Republicans gain any advantage in the coming elections.

The Republicans are fond of warning the working class that they, the rich, need to be allowed to continue gaming the system to the max in order to prevent "class warfare." Kristof quotes Warren Buffett to remind us that "class warfare" already exists and that the rich are now, as they always have been, winning.

40 Years Later, and the Right Still Promotes Death:

Richard Cohen remembers 1970, Kent State, and four murdered people on the mall, American citizens murdered at the behest Richard Nixon and Ohio Gov. Rhodes in the thrall of machismo and hate.

40 Years Later, and the Right Still Promotes Death:

Richard Cohen remembers 1970, Kent State,

On Writers and Their Readers:

Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, addresses the complexities of translation and the relationship of writers with their readers in today's New York Times' Op-Ed page.

The Argument for Reading:

Recently techie folks have been arguing the relative merits of eBooks, focusing most especially on young readers and whether or not eBooks will increase the amount of time children spend reading. The evidence isn't in yet, but many observers not directly involved with the marketing of eBooks argue that kids will be no more interested in reading a book on a screen than they have been in reading words on paper. Ultimately, it is argued, content and not delivery is most important.

This debate is based on an interesting assumption, which is that reading as an activity is good in and of itself, which in turn is based on the assumption that the vicarious experience of reading allows for the acquisition of a greater amount of experience than one might otherwise have the opportunity for if one does not read.

But what happens if the reader can't remember what he or she has read?

James Collins addresses this question, one which every student has asked, in a New York Times' essay, published September 17 of this year. Central to the issue is "Am I somehow changed as a result of experience I have had in the past even if I cannot recall that experience?"

American Exceptionalism; Or, People Who Live in Glass Houses:

Shocking news has hit the fan this week: Apparently America is little better than anyone else. It turns out that from 1946-48, while America was participating in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals for, among other things, experimenting on prisoners, it too was practicing the same sort of barbaric torture. (See The New York Times' story: "U.S. Apologizes for Syphilis Tests in Guatemala.")

At this point, you have to be a blithering idiot not to know about the Tuskegee experiments when the government lied to its own soldiers about treatment for syphilis and the theft of personal property and internment in concentration camps of its own citizens (even as it was drafting the young men from the concentration camps and sending them into war only to return them to the same concentration camps when they returned).