Infiltration

Good gravy! The New York Times has been infiltrated - hacked! It seems to happen every now and again to various media bastions of the status quo. They chug along, happily reporting bald-faced whopping fabrications as he-said-she-said. "Man claims power of flight as he plummets from building. Others, including Primary Deity, disagree."

But them there comes a Paul Krugman moment from an unexpected direction. Krugman has been a voice in the wilderness during the entire run of the Junta. He's been the clearest voice calling the Emperor naked.

But along comes the innocuous headline: Sometimes, a Tax Cut for the Wealthy Can Hurt the Wealthy. Huh. More stuff about how tough it is to be rolling in it, no doubt.

But read it. Cornell economics prof Robert H. Frank makes a succinct and compelling case that tax cuts haven't even helped those who they were intended to help.

WHEN market forces cause income inequality to grow, public policy in most
countries tends to push in the opposite direction. In the United
States, however, we enact tax cuts for the wealthy and cut public services
for the needy. Cynics explain this curious inversion by saying that the wealthy
have captured the political process in Washington and are exploiting it to their
own advantage.

This explanation makes sense, however, only if those in power have
an extremely naïve understanding of their own interests. A careful reading
of the evidence suggests that even the wealthy have been made worse off, on
balance, by recent tax cuts. The private benefits of these cuts have been much
smaller, and their indirect costs much larger, than many recipients appear to
have anticipated. [emphasis added]

So it's not just Iraq anymore. People with brains are dissecting the whole program. When did they find their voice? And aside from voice (because I have no doubt that good Prof. Frank has been saying these things for five years), when did they get column inches in the front page of the Times?

And not just any edition. Today is Thanksgiving - a day when every American will probably finds the time to read a newspaper. Even for the Times this is a big day - their readership must triple.

We're just starting to see the other side of the mountain of lies that have twisted our Republic into something unrecognizable. It's shocking that it's taken this long for simple truths to assert themselves.

When future historians look at this period in American history, their top question will be: "how did the Bush cabal get away with so much for so long?"

Thanksgiving

Today is indeed Thanksgiving. As an expatriate, I always take the day off and relax. I cook a turkey and I watch football. For reasons which have everything to do with the deep flaws in my own character, my family long ago stopped calling my on Thanksgiving or birthdays or any other time. I don't blame them. I've decided that if I'm going to be a Black Sheep, I'll embrace it and complete my Northern isolation. It will make things a lot less complicated for my family in America.

Sorry, I'm usually not so personal in this spot. Mustt be the turkey.