Michael Moore told the huge crowd in Madison Wisconsin that 400 obscenely wealthy Americans have more money than the combined assets of 155 million Americans!
I haven’t been to the dentist in over two years because I lost my dental insurance along with my last regular job. After struggling with a toothache for the past week (a tooth that already was the recipient of a root canal and an obscenely expensive crown), I’ve come to the sad realization that it’s likely an abscess…. One that will likely cost me a small fortune to deal with.
But I bit the proverbial bullet, and made an appointment to see the dentist this afternoon.
To one of those afore-mentioned 400 Americans, my tooth issue would not be an issue at all. To me, it’s great cause for concern. But I’ll deal with it.
I wanted to sleep in yesterday, but I awoke early as usual, and turned on the TV. I came across an HBO documentary about the homeless kids in Orange County, CA who are living in motels around “the happiest place on earth” Disneyland. If I couldn’t sleep before, that completely did the job on any rest I was hoping to get.
Then last night, 60 Minutes did a story on the homeless kids in Orange County, FL who are living in motels around the other “happiest place on earth” Disney World. That’s right… Who was it who said there are no coincidences?
I hope the world is paying attention. We’re at a breaking point.
***Update:
On today’s show, I spoke with Scott Bonn – Assistant Professor of Sociology at Drew University in Madison NJ, and author of the new book “Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the US War on Iraq“. Before heading to academia, he working in media – as a VP at NBC television, and exec VP at SonicNet.
Nicole Belle was here for our weekly Fools on the Hill© segment, recapping the Sunday talking head shows.
George Santayana once wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I can’t be absolutely sure, but it doesn’t appear to me that we have a lot of Republicans with any awareness of history, because they seem determined to ignore history and do things that we’ve seen historically have never worked out well for them.
Case in point, John McCain made what had to have been his 7,348th appearance on a Sunday show. As a man who spent years as a prisoner of war and still suffers from permanent injuries as a result, one would think that he’d be hesitant to suggest more American intervention in the Middle East. But no, that would be learning from past mistakes.
Cranky McSame instead advocates that the US establish a No-Fly Zone in Libya. Obama’s new Chief of Staff Bill Daley said flat out that anyone advocating a US-established No-Fly Zone doesn’t know what he’s talking about (video in same post). This apparently includes John Kerry too. Exactly how many boondoggles must we have in the Middle East? And have we not yet learned that American intervention makes us less safe?
Republicans even seem immune to recent history. Sarah Palin, for example, has dropped from being the rock star of the GOP/tea party and presumptive presidential candidate to the person who falls at the bottom of the polls for Republican candidate choice. So it would be odd to take your interview cues and word salad tendency from Sarah Palin, especially if you’re looking to increase your own influence in the GOP/tea party circles. And yet that’s exactly what Michele Bachmann does. Choosing to answer questions she wants to answer instead of the ones posed to her, Bachmann obsesses about the $105 billion dollars she claims the Obama administration “hid” in the “Obamacare” bill.
Details are troublesome things though. 1) The Obama administration neither writes nor funds legislation; 2) Is Bachmann saying that legislation shouldn’t be clearly funded? Has she talked about this with her party, because that was part of their “Pledge to America”; 3) How was the funding hidden if the Republicans in office have been vowing to defund the legislation since before they regained the majority?
The entire interview is annoyingly partisan and hyperbolic. We could spend the entire segment talking about her pulling facts and figures out of her rear (gas prices quotes alone is ridiculous), her obliviousness about government shutdown ramifications and her dangerous (and borderline racist) rhetoric, calling the Obama administration a “gangster government”.
By the way, does it surprise you to know that the Wisconsin protests were virtually ignored on the Sunday shows again? I say ‘virtually’ because while the media opted not to directly address the protests, even as they spread this week to Ohio and Indiana and beyond, but to let the American people know that they need to get used to getting less. And that the fact they don’t have a job has NOTHING to do with the government not taking care of workers over the uber-wealthy. Of course, the last time they tried this, we had Hoovervilles all over the country. How’d that turn out for them, the politicians and wealthy alike?
And finally, I played a little bit of Michael Moore’s address to the protesters in Madison Wisconsin over the weekend. It is must-see video… and here it is!