Part two of Chris Hedges's Days of Revolt interview with economist Michael Hudson covers, at length, how much dirty work the Obama Administration has done on the banksters' behalf. Among their ill deeds: stopping any effort at mortgage write-downs, funneling trillions of dollars to banksters instead of writing down debt, preventing the IMF from writing down Greek debt, and worst of all, pretending to understand the people's needs and desires and then "delivering" them to his real constituents, the banksters. I sure do feel a lot better about not voting for him twice.
Mississippi's state legislature passes the mother of all "religious liberty" bills. You name it, this bill does it: clerks won't have to issue marriage licenses to gays, businesses can fire people for being gay or transgendered, adoption agencies won't have to place children with couples they think are having premarital sex, doctors won't have to counsel anyone who offends their "religious" sensibilities, and, well, you get the picture. And whereas Indiana and North Carolina suffered corporate backlash for their pro-discrimination bills, I don't presume the home state of Jr. Food Mart, C Spire Wireless, and MCI-surely-you-remember-them will feel that sort of pain. Southerners like talking about secession all the time; how about we start talking expulsion?
Dan Fischer writes a lengthy report at Counterpunch regarding the reflexively pro-gas drilling policies of Connecticut's Governor, Democrat Dannel Malloy. Connecticut doesn't even have shale gas to drill, but the Malloy Administration has funded plenty of pipeline projects -- including one a mere 105 feet from the Indian Point nuclear power plant, which is rather like putting a bomb right next to another bomb -- and fracked-gas power plants that suspiciously sit in low-income neighborhoods of color. Attend well the lies Gov. Malloy employs to justify what are essentially kickbacks to large contributors, beginning in the "Cooking the Climate" section. Spoiler alert: they're the same lies Republicans tell to accomplish the same ends.
Obama Administration pardon attorney resigns, claiming that President Obama isn't "following through" on promises to grant early releases to low-level federal drug offenders serving long sentences. The main problem? So many petitioners (wouldn't you be one, if you were in that situation?), and not enough workers to process them, just like with every other government agency since the early 1980s. Racism also rears its ugly head, as white petitioners are four times more likely to get early releases than people of color. Maybe this is why Barack Obama gets no love from right-wingers -- even when he outdoes Republicans at withholding mercy, it's obviously because the whole process is farkakte.
Finally, the Engage! blog describes a sort of extended Milgram's experiment which finds that "agreeable, conscientous" people are more likely to follow orders most of us would find evil (like delivering electric shocks to an innocent person) while "more contrarian, less agreeable" folks would more likely refuse to follow such orders. "The irony is that a personality disposition normally seen as antisocial -- disagreeableness -- may actually be linked to 'pro-social' behavior," says one observer, but that's likely no surprise to you if, like me, you think real compromise can't happen between people who won't stand their ground, and that being "agreeable" is worthless unless you're willing to be disagreeable.
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