AIG CEO thinks the uproar over post-bailout executive bonuses was "sort of like what we did in the Deep South," and adds that it was "just as bad and just as wrong." Yes, what a sad day that was when we strung up AIG executives just for looking at white women. But you know what might be even worse? He claims that "bonuses" are "core compensation" in the financial industry, which you might refute by looking up "bonus" in the dictionary. The self-absorption of the American financial sector is just intolerable.
Wendy Kaminer describes how our government's obsession with surveillance exists side-by-side with its inability to protect us from real dangers, like the Navy Yard shooter. Students of irony will also recall how our government could wiretap Americans without a warrant while letting a port city drown. What Mr. Reagan said, that a government that could do anything for you could also do anything to you? He didn't say that an utterly incompetent government could do anything to you, too.
Popular Science magazine decides to shut off comments on its website, citing research finding that commenters can skew "a reader's perception of science.". While I certainly share their frustration -- our "liberal" media typically talks about science in a completely unscientific way -- I can't help but feel that if you have idiotic commenters, you just need to work smarter to get rid of them. Note well that I didn't say "work harder" -- you don't carefully refute each and every idiocy they spew forth; you just make them feel like idiots for spewing it forth.
An exhaustive study of almost 40,000 Cotton Belt-area whites finds that whites have more negative attitudes toward African-Americans in areas where the slave/plantation economy dominated than in areas it didn't. Yes, I thought it was a no-brainer at first, too, but remember that this is over 150 years later, and note also the study's finding that Southern areas where slavery didn't dominate rather closely resemble similar Northern areas politically.
Finally, here's an unusually strong Jim Hightower piece, excoriating Republicans for their heartless food stamp vote and extolling the moral compass of my new favorite world leader, Pope Francis, who condemns our "throwaway economy" with money as its "idol." My heart swells at the prospect that our greatest defender of the poor could also just happen to be the Pope -- until I realize that soon the right-wingers will just start calling him a Communist and a Nazi and a terrorist (yes, even the Pope!), and the "liberal" media will feel "obliged" to "cover" all of that.
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