Kat's Catches

By John and Kat (but mostly Kat)

?Wall Street Front Group Loading Up Conservative Activists With Soft Ball Questions For GOP Town Halls
Think Progress 

?Wanted: Angry Liberals -- If the Ryan budget is so unpopular, where are the town-hall meltdowns?
Slate, by David Weigel

?Pennsylvania lawmaker faces heat over Medicare at town hall
LA Times story

Reminiscent of the August 2009 town halls when members of Congress faced angry constituents over health care reforms, a public forum in Carbon County with Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) Wednesday night provided a glimpse of the strong emotions stirred by a Republican plan to alter Medicare benefits.

?Poor Jane's Almanac
Paul Ryan named his plan "The Path to Prosperity" which echoes Benjamin Franklin's "The Way to Wealth."  This NY Times Op-ed takes a close look at some of the realities of Franklin's day, pointing to the sad contrasts between god old Ben and one of his sisters.

Franklin, who�s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts� Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all.

Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.

At 17, he ran away from home. At 15, she married: she was probably pregnant, as were, at the time, a third of all brides. She and her brother wrote to each other all their lives: they were each other�s dearest friends. (He wrote more letters to her than to anyone.) His letters are learned, warm, funny, delightful; hers are misspelled, fretful and full of sorrow. �Nothing but troble can you her from me,� she warned. It�s extraordinary that she could write at all.

�I have such a Poor Fackulty at making Leters,� she confessed.

He would have none of it. �Is there not a little Affectation in your Apology for the Incorrectness of your Writing?� he teased. �Perhaps it is rather fishing for commendation. You write better, in my Opinion, than most American Women.� He was, sadly, right.

She had one child after another; her husband, a saddler named Edward Mecom, grew ill, and may have lost his mind, as, most certainly, did two of her sons. She struggled, and failed, to keep them out of debtors� prison, the almshouse, asylums. She took in boarders; she sewed bonnets. She had not a moment�s rest.

And still, she thirsted for knowledge. �I Read as much as I Dare,� she confided to her brother. She once asked him for a copy of �all the Political pieces� he had ever written. �I could as easily make a collection for you of all the past parings of my nails,� he joked. He sent her what he could; she read it all. But there was no way out. ...

Really sad story.. And a poor analogue for the Ryan/GOP plan.
No, I said that wrong.
It's an instructive and important analogue because  the results, if enacted, will be just as sad.

?Maddow rants against Huffington Post, beltway media

Rachel Maddow had a few sharp-tongued words to say to her colleagues in the press about their coverage of the current budget debacle, and an especially cutting aside reserved for news site The Huffington Post.

In 2009, coverage of local so-called town hall meetings about health care reform was rampant, chronicling the angry conservatives. Now that members of Congress are back home and the budget is the big issue, no coverage, even from �the Huffington Post, which used to be liberal, but who knows anymore,� as Maddow said.

Video clip at the link. Love this woman. Nobody's gonna piss on her leg and tell her it's raining.

?Go After Qaddafi -- Stop worrying about an "exit strategy." What America needs in Libya is an entrance strategy.  
By Christopher Hitchens, Monday, April 25, 2011
Hitch at his take-no-prisoners best. Being short on time, he may also be short on patience. Like or hate him, he's the most formidable rhetorician of our time.   (This last is one of the most widely linked readings of the week in yesterday's Guardian, a peroration of Christopher Hitchens by Martin Amis. Highly recommended.)

The special forces of almost any NATO state�most certainly those of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France�are more than equal to the task of taking him out on their own. If he can't be arrested, he can certainly be killed. This doesn't seem to me to violate the letter or the spirit of, say, the official prohibition on assassination of foreign leaders first promulgated during the administration of President Gerald Ford. Qaddafi is now the commander and symbol of a depraved armed force with which we are engaged in direct hostilities. Like Mullah Omar or Osama Bin Laden, he is a legitimate military target and, if only the international courts would not also be so laggard, a legitimate legal and political one as well.

?How Many Mississippi Voters Wish the South Had Won the Civil War?
Just in time to learn that Haley Barbour ain't gonna run after all. Shucks. I was kinda looking forward to hearing him defend the  KKK  , er White Citizens Councils.

? Rising Gas Prices Expected To Increase Exxon�s Earnings By More Than 50%

?GOP to make hay in May over gas

...House Natural Resources Committee Republicans last week passed three bills aimed at expanding and expediting offshore oil and gas drilling. A spokesman for Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) said he expects at least one of those bills to be on the floor the first week back from recess.

That first bill is likely to be one that gives the Interior Department 30 days to make a decision on offshore drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico, allowing for two 15-day extensions of permits that were not already approved before the Obama administration�s drilling moratorium installed after the BP oil spill last year.

I nearly choked tonight, however, when Speaker Beohner told an NBC reporter that big oil company tax breaks are up for discussion.

?IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end Commentary: China�s economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China�s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 � just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world�s hegemonic power.

?Wisconsin teachers retire en masse in protest

Hundreds of Wisconsin teachers have announced their intention to retire in June of this year, in much higher numbers than in normal years. Many of them cite Governor Scott Walker's proposed changes to public employees' collective bargaining rights as the reason.

Madison school superintendent Dan Nerad says that his district is losing teachers because they fear that Walker's plan will cut deeply into post-retirement benefits for public employees. The district will fill the positions as quickly as it can, but Nerad believes that students and novice teachers will feel the effects of losing so many seasoned educators. "Our intention is to replace them with knowledgeable people," he said, "but as a rule they will be less experienced."

?REPORT: The 46 Year-Long Republican War On Medicare
Think Progress has a summary, including this clip from Michael Moore's Sicko.

?State Department wants lifetime employment history from passport applicants
Raw Story has the scoop. This is what happens when xenophobia meets security with a heavy dose of Arizone-like attention to details. Take a look at the application (link below) and decide for yourself. I'm glad it's still a "proposal" so enough people with good sense have time to trim it back a bit.

The U.S. Department of State has proposed a new questionnaire that would make it almost impossible for some people to get a passport.

The new document (PDF) would require that certain applicants submit a list of every residence and every job they've ever had since birth.

?Second computer worm hits Iran 

?Silver surges 5 percent on dollar and gold at record
Silver prices have climbed nearly 60 percent this year, after jumping more than 80 percent in 2010. ...

?Guant�mo piled lie upon lie through the momentum of its own existence

What is given new prominence by these leaked Guant�mo files is the cold and incompetent stupidity of the system

Let them read the documents. Let them try to tell us after that (as some still do, even now) that the Afghan war was fought well, and fought morally; that Guant�mo was a limited and necessary evil; that there was nothing that amounted to torture; that the prisoners stolen from across the world were almost all fanatics; and that it was necessary for democratic states to excuse themselves from the rule of law in order to save it.

"If you could only know what we can know, you would understand that what we are doing is right," our leaders used to assure us. Well now we really do know � we have the documents, we have the transcripts of interviews with former prisoners, we have everything it takes to understand the nasty story of Guant�mo, exposed today in 759 leaked documents containing the words of the people who ran the place. And it is obvious that we should have seen through the evasions from the start. ...

?Grim toll on mental health of prisoners

?Wikileaks: Guant�mo Bay terrorists radicalised in London

At least 35 Guant�mo Bay inmates fought against the West after being indoctrinated in Britain, leaked files disclose.

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And that's only part of the first of two emails. The Newshoggers crew has the best researcher in the world of blogging. That's why we also drink none but the best wines and have access to imported cigars.