“I only got two things in this world: my balls and my word, and I don’t break ’em for nobody.” – Tony Montana –
First up we have more coverage on the ongoing LIBOR scandal in Britain. This reddit post includes a CurrentTV video featuring Matt Taibbi, as well as some insightful commentary on what this really means in terms of the public at large.
I’m just wondering how many of these scandals need to happen before the general public rises up in outrage and demands the government do something about this? I mean, these are the same people that torpedoed the global economy in 2008, then went right back to work doing it again. Every time one of these scandals comes up, it’s always “a few bad apples”. Well, if there’s always “a few bad apples” causing problems, and it keeps happening, doesn’t it stand to reason that perhaps it’s not the fruit that’s the problem, but rather than the tree itself is diseased or rotten? It’s clear that Wall Street and international finance in general no longer play by the rules; they have more in common with gangs and the mob than they do with regular businesses. The too-big-to-exist banks are financial cartels, and men like Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and Bob Diamond of Barclays are the Capos.
Switching gears, TPM’s Brian Buetler reports that many of the GOP governors threatening to turn down additional Medicare funds as part of the Affordable Care Act also govern states where the rate of uninsured individuals is also among the highest.
Half of this country, including my own home state and current state of residence, is utterly off the rails, and has elected politicians to match. What’s worse is that they’re actively voting against their own self interests. The policies enacted by these Governors are LITERALLY going to kill people. By reducing Medicaid funds, they’re going to keep people who are probably already not in great health away from the medical care they need until it’s either tremendously expensive to treat them or it’s too late. We keep ratcheting up the stakes in elections, and now we’re up to life and death for millions of Americans and the survival of our planet. How much higher do we need to go as a country before we get people to show up and vote?
Along with that, we have an Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal, titled “Romney’s Tax Confusion”, about the candidates ongoing issues with whether or not the individual mandate is a tax.
BET YOU THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER SEE THE WSJ LINKED HERE, DID YOU!? WELL I’M JUST FULL OF SURPRISES.
Anyway, the article makes and exceptionally valid point: Mitt Romney can’t respond to healthcare at all, because he enacted basically the same plan. Saying that it’s penalty at the state level and a tax at the federal level doesn’t fly. It’s one or the other, and either way it’s constitutional. The Romney campaign is going to tie themselves into knots trying to make this work, and the American people won’t buy it.
Here’s a tremendous article by MotherJones’ Hamed Alezasis, Dave Gilson, and Jaeah Lee on the GOP’s ongoing efforts to stamp out nonexistent voter fraud.
But really, the entire article can be boiled down to this one chart:
Blacks, Latinos, 18-to-24-year-olds. Gee, I wonder who they vote for?
As some of you may have heard, scientists confirmed the discovery of the Higgs Boson, a previously hypothetical particle that provides an explanation for why things have mass. What you may not know is that the Higgs Boson could have been discovered in Texas instead of Switzerland, were it not for a slash-happy GOP and a handful of Democratic enablers killing the Superconducting Super Collider in the mid-90s, as detailed in this article from Wonkblog’s Brad Plumer.
While we’re talking about the Higgs Boson, here’s a computer generated image of what it “looks” like:
Maybe it’s just me (and half the internet), but doesn’t this image of the Higgs Boson remind anyone of this:
Truly, we have all been Touched by His Noodly Appendage.
Finally, we have TPM’s Benjy Sarlin talking to Jonathan Krohn about his conversion from conservatism to liberalism. The reactions Krohn describes further support my views that conservatism is comprised of people whose political views stopped developing around age 13. For further proof, see Grover Norquist, who came up with the idea of an anti-tax pledge as a teenager, and has since enthralled the vast majority of the GOP with it.
