What insanity looks like

Notes 72

Misplaced anger. A house divided cannot stand. In establishing the value of their work, an individual worker doesn’t stand a chance against the employer who holds all the cards. People see what happens to them without union solidarity but they get jealous instead of organized, Go figure.

Anger brews over government workers' benefits
By GEOFF MULVIHILL, Associated Press Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press – 1 hr 47 mins ago
When Erin McFarlane looks at public workers, she sees lucrative pension benefits she doesn't ever expect to get. And it makes her mad.
"I don't think that a federal employee or government employee is worth any more than anybody else who does their job and does it well," said the Slinger, Wis., woman. She's been working a couple of bartending jobs since January, when she was laid off from her job at a Harley Davidson plant after almost a decade.

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If there were fewer rich and powerful shouting we are broke and more Michael Moores shouting we are not, maybe we could right this ship by implementing tax policies that would take us back to when there was a vibrant middle class at the tiller.

"America Is NOT Broke"
Michael Moore, MichaelMoore.com: "America is not broke. Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich."

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Obama collapses again

New Guantanamo trials could include 9/11 suspects
By Lolita C. Baldor And Erica Werner, Associated Press – 53 mins ago
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's decision to resume military trials for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will open the door for the prosecution there of several suspected 9/11 conspirators, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Obama's order, which reverses his move two years ago to halt new trials, has reignited arguments over the legality of the military commissions, despite ongoing U.S. efforts to reform the hotly debated system.

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Is it possible that the lessons taken away from our great institutions of learning--Libya’s Seif graduated from Harvard--that enable dictators to thrive are the same lessons that make the thieves of Wall Street successful in a different venue? Some kinda higher learning.

The Daily Beast
Can Buy Me Love

NEW YORK
Libya’s urbane, white-haired Foreign Minister, Musa Kusa, affects none of the silly props and pretenses—the tents and turbans and meandering rants—that have become Gaddafi’s trademarks. He got his master’s degree at Michigan State University in the 1970s, and both his children, born in the United States, are American citizens. “He ought to understand our ways,” says an American intelligence officer who dealt with him in the 1990s. And he does. It’s Kusa’s grasp of Western ways that has made him so effective in his primary role as Gaddafi’s enabler, aiding and abetting the Libyan leader’s pathological behavior. Kusa concocts excuses, fends off consequences, comes up with compromises, and thus far has managed to keep his kinsman in power no matter what crimes the Libyan leader has committed against his own people or against the world. But what’s really disturbing is the roster of world leaders he helped to enlist as his fellow enablers: men like Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, Gordon Brown, and even George W. Bush.

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Somethin fishy here. I thought our military experts decided a war could not be won with air power.

Britain and France drafting no-fly resolution

By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press –
UNITED NATIONS – Britain and France are drafting a U.N. resolution that would establish a no-fly zone over Libya to prevent Moammar Gadhafi's air force from bombing civilians and rebels fighting to oust him from power.
A British diplomat at the U.N. stressed Monday that the resolution is being prepared as a contingency in case it is needed, but no decision has been made to introduce it at the U.N. Security Council.
Pressure for the no-fly zone appears to be intensifying after Gadhafi's regime unleashed its air power on the poorly equipped and poorly organized rebel force trying to oust their ruler of 41 years.
The heavy use of air power on Sunday — and again on Monday — signaled the regime's concern that it needed to check the advance of the rebel force toward the city of Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown and stronghold which lies on the main road to the capital, Tripoli.