Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) describes how to beat ISIS militarily. The plan? Give Iraq six months to "take back Western Iraq under international air cover," and if/when that fails, "assemble an international Sunni fighting force and deploy it against ISIS." This plan would a) put Arabic soldiers on the ground, not U.S. soldiers and b) work a whole lot better than air strikes. Of course Our Glorious Elites won't use it, because they're not interested in solving problems so much as letting problems fester so they can keep running political campaigns on them.
"Here Come the Grainy Images of Terrorists" in campaign ads "Because the Republicans Have Nothing Left," announces Daily Kos diarist Hunter. Of course Republicans have nothing left, but they always have nothing left -- would you want to run on voting to turn Medicare into a voucher program? -- and the vote-for-us-if-you-want-to-live line worked in 2002 and 2004, and damn near worked again in 2006 until the Mark Foley scandal came along.
Paul Krugman writes about "The Show-Off Society," noting that criticism of rich folks' ostentatious lifestyles now emanates even from the right. He concludes that slamming the rich for their lifestyles is just as "futile" as slamming the poor for their alleged bad habits, but though I agree that bringing back the 91% tax bracket will change things far more effectively, I will not accept that shaming people is a worthless act, not in my America.
David Dayen describes the current state of our "gimmick" economy. Choice quotation: "Companies now spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out not how to beat their competition, but how to prosper from tricks and loopholes their accountants find buried in the law. Every corporation has become, at the root, a financial company, adept at moving money around on paper and little else." So when the politicians tell you TEH FREE MARKETZ MUST BE FREE!!!!, you can say, "free to completely destroy the relationship between work and money?"
Along those lines, CNBC reports that "Billionaires are Hoarding Piles of Cash" -- some $600 million of it, on average. CNBC spends an awful lot of time pretending they're doing this because they're "afraid," and there's no need, even, to retort that they're sitting on that money because they don't want to help the economy get better as long as that Socialist Communist Nazi Kenyan Anti-Colonialist is in office, although that's true. All you need say the next time someone tells you Our Glorious Elites are the Boldest Brightest People Evah is that these Boldest and Brightest are afraid of what might happen to a pile of $600 million.
Finally, the Obama Administration expands the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, quadrupling the marine boundary around three of the five reserves within the monument. This will protect more of our ocean waters (and ocean plant and animal species) from development, and thus from pollution and climate change as well. Those right-wingers about to squeal BIG GUMMINT KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!! might want to look at the name of the President who actually designated the Pacific monument in the first place. Hint: he did it in 2009, right before leaving office.
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