Well, now it's official. Let them eat cake. Or, as Daniel Gross says at Daily Beast,
To whom much is given, more tax breaks will be given. To those who have less, tough. The Romney-Ryan ticket now seems to be all noblesse, no oblige.The new GOP ticket was commemorated today by the following image created by a friend of mine, Ray Gregory:
Here's another offering of Ray Gregory: A bumper sticker to mark the occasion (click for full-size).
Tonight I was at OfficeMax, buying some back to school supplies with my daughters. I was surprised to see that there is still a typewriter section at the store. There are actually two models to choose from.
This is going to sound like an "old man" story, but when I started practicing law 30 years ago, the firm of 45 lawyers had no computers. Every secretary worked 0n an electric typewriter. Even in 1990, when I brought my own computer to my law firm, people were wondering why an attorney would have a computer. Now I work at a firm with 14 attorneys, and every attorney has a computer--there is one typewriter (for forms and labels). It makes you wonder, at this rate of change, whether anyone has the ability to predict how the world will look in ten more years.
There are several websites that attempt to give real time estimates as to the cost of U.S. warmongering, and these numbers are staggering, repulsive and immoral. Those of us who are not caught up in the zealous tribalism seized upon and revved up by opportunistic politicians and media outlets can see that the alleged need to fight unending wars is a fraud perpetrated on the American People, with an even bigger burden borne by those who are the targets of our weapons, including untold numbers of civilians. It is perfectly clear that America must always have an enemy--that is how our collective mind works--and there must always be war, even when we can't explain why we are going to war. [More . . . ]
How Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck beat out 2,300 other wines in a blind taste contest. Here's more on the big win for the cheap wine. And there's more evidence that wine tasting is subjective. The wine experts can easily be fooled when the experimenters secretly switch the labels:
The second test Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle was a fancy grand-cru. The other bottle was an ordinary vin du table. Despite the fact that they were actually being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the differently labeled bottles nearly opposite ratings. The grand cru was “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded,” while the vin du table was “weak, short, light, flat and faulty”. Forty experts said the wine with the fancy label was worth drinking, while only 12 said the cheap wine was.
Of course Barack Obama is a different kind of president than Mitt Romney would be, but the differences are few and far between, and rarely occur on the most pressing of issues. To the extent that you doubt this claim, take a look at this stunning chart created by the campaign of Rocky Anderson who, despite the fact that his campaign is almost totally being ignored by the media, is also running for President of the United States. And further ask yourself how it can possibly be that Anderson's campaign and other parties that have much to add to the national conversation, will be excluded from any presidential "debates."