Category: Politics

Those Annoying Regulations

We know government regulations are bad; we’re constantly being told that, anyway.

Here are a few benefits of free enterprise that were taken from us by bothersome government regulations:

  • Rotting, contaminated meat
  • Automobiles without seat belts
  • Marketing cigarettes to kids
  • Handling with unwashed hands food sold to you
  • Air full of mercury-and arsenic

We take these things for granted; maybe we’ve forgotten how prevalent they were before government regulations got rid of them.

Read more here.

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Won’t Get Fooled Again?

In shock about who’s running the country? Bill Moyer has some motion picture suggestions to give your mind a diversion, if only temporarily. The features share the common theme of demagoguery in America.

  • Gabriel Over the White House (Walter Huston)
  • Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
  • Keeper of the Flame (Katherine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy)
  • All the King’s Men (Broderick Crawford)
  • A Face in the Crowd (Andy Griffith)
  • Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster)
  • The Manchurian Candidate (Angela Lansbury, Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh)
  • Seven Days in May (Burt Lancaster, again)
  • WUSA (Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward)
  • Network (Peter Finch & Faye Dunaway)
  • Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins)
  • Good Night and Good Luck (David Strathairn & George Clooney)

For previews of these movies, click here.

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What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt You.

The day of our peaceful transfer of power, one of the first changes was the disappearance of the Climate Change page on whitehouse.gov. (Also disappearing: LGBT, Civil Rights. Oh, and the button for users with disabilities including a White House video tour in sign language, an explanation of links on the site for viewers to access audible screen readers, closed captioning and other services.)

  • Wildfires in the West are worse, much worse
  • Artic ice is melting; sea levels are rising
  • Oceans are becoming more acidic
  • Plants and animals are migrating
  • It’s getting hotter (yes, blizzards fit into the scientific model)

If we pretend it’s not there, it will go away.

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Truth Becomes Fiction Becomes Truth

In the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers retold – sort of – Homer’s Odyssey, but relocated to depression-era Mississippi. (It also generated interest in so-called “Americana” or “Roots” music,” thanks to the best-selling soundtrack put together by T-Bone Burnett.) George Clooney played Ulysses Everett McGill, a chain-gang escapee and con man, trying to get back to his estranged wife Penny, portrayed by Holly Hunter, and their seven daughters. He needs to prove he’s “bona fide,” so they will take him back.

You’re probably asking what this has to do with Donald Trump.

Continue reading “Truth Becomes Fiction Becomes Truth”

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Political Update

 

 

 

 

In case you are not aware… after January 20, Barack Obama will no longer be President of these United States. After his two terms, we move into the post “post-racial” era.

Take a few minutes to enjoy a photographic retrospective of Obama’s eight years in office.

From the Washington Post:

“We have a generation of children whose first president was a man of color. Who saw a first lady move with determined authority.”

From England’s The Guardian:

“Unlike most politicians, Obama is genuinely cool.”

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