Gaming the System

[paft.livejournal.com]

David Asman, Fox Business News: There’s no doubt that Obama himself used education to become successful. He gamed the educational system for years using scholarships and various connections to rise up in his field.

Yeah, that slick Barack Obama, “gaming the system” by making good enough grades to get into Harvard. So unfair.

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Tort reform - "catapult the propaganda" (George Bush)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The documentary shows quite clearly that many of the "citizens for tort reform groups" are nothing but astroturf organizations funded in large part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and or even private companies such as R. J. Reynolds (Karl Rove worked as a lobbyist for RJR in Texas and was the main political force for Texas tort reform). You have a very powerful business industry using large amounts of money to tilt the legal system their way.

Everyone (or most everyone) knows the story about the 79 year old woman (Stella Liebeck) who spilled McDonald's hot coffee on herself and then sued for millions. The case became a laughing matter for many comics and was the seemingly start of a national debate on preventing "frivolous" lawsuits where obviously the person filing was looking for "jack-pot justice." That's the PR the business community wanted you to believe. The realty of the case was a lot nuanced than that.

( More behind the cut )

Where is the safest place to ride out recession?

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

First some facts...

China has dumped (sold) 97% of short term US dollars (Treasury debt) as the American future looks ever the more bleak.

China is the largest foreign creditor to the United States, holding more than $1 trillion (26.1% of foriegn ownership) in Treasury debt as of March. Which is nothing really as USA politicians are attempting to curb a deficit which is projected to reach $1.4 trillion this fiscal year.
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The clapping revolution

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

A curious form of protest was invented in Belarus. Hand clapping. People who are disgusted with the economic drama, the political comedy and all the figureheads serving the man with the black mustache and the funny military hat, Lukashenko, are clapping in silence because they know the mock applause is the most eloquent criticism. There was a time the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam used to write mock poems about Stalin, but the final drop of patience in the Politburo came when he eventually composed a "praise" ode for dear-leader. Then he was sent to the GULags.

The fake applause is deafening. I saw on TV (the No Comment section on Euronews) a crowd standing beneath the commie-time monument in the center of Minsk where stone giants dressed in worker's uniforms stood in grandeur positions. But ordinary people below were clapping and not saying a word, not waving any protest signs, not chanting slogans, no songs, nothing that could have them arrested. Just standing there and hitting their hands against one another. But meanwhile there were cops (Militsia) going around the crowd with hi-tech HD cams making shots so they could later recognize the "instigators", while the instigators in turn were taking pics of the cops with their mobiles. Tech war at its best, eh?

And then the crackdown began.

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Morality and Ethics in a Secular Setting.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

For anyone just back from a trip to Antarctica, a tremendous row has erupted in the UK which has forced Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, to shut down one of his newspapers, the News of the World.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14081705
Some of the links on the links are also very informative - but hey, this is the BBC, not Fox News.

The basis of the story is that journalists working on Murdoch's paper have been arrested and charged with phone hacking. One Paper today ran with the banner headline - "Is this Britain's Watergate?"

Yesterday's edition of the London Evening Standard had a quote from David Cameron admitting that "everyone, including myself" shared some blame for what had happened. So how did the British Prime Minister get involved, some may ask.
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