Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Richard Cohen on Perry and Obama, Nancy Wake a True Heroine, Ross Douthat on Romney and Perry, Urban Foraging for Food . . .

And Quotes in the News


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The White House now has plenty to worry about. Of course, Perry may turn out to be no Ronald Reagan. But then he doesn’t have to be. After all, Barack Obama has turned out to be no Barack Obama.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post on Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s chances.  He compares Perry electorally to Reagan.

 
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Not a Nice Person, But a WWII
Heroine



“I was not a very nice person,” 

Ms. Wake as a
Resistance Fighter


Nancy Wake, a WWII Resistance fighter in Europe who died recently and, according to her New York Times obituary “By her own account she once killed a German sentry with her bare hands, and ordered the execution of a woman she believed to be a German spy.” 


Read the full obituary notice, Ms. Wake was a genuine heroine, not a movie one.  Of course she was unknown in the U. S. because she was not an American, and we rarely pay attention to non-American heroines do we.

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OK, politics isn’t being devised for our entertainment — although given the dismal situation, finding the humor often seems the only way to get through the week

Paul Krugman, on starting to miss Tim Pawlenty in the Presidential race. 

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No one doubts Romney’s intelligence or competence, but he has managed to run for president for almost five years without taking a single courageous or even remotely interesting position. 

Ross Douthat, Conservative columnist in the New York Time arguing for another entrant to the Presidential race.  Actually, he is wrong, many people doubt Mr. Romney’s intelligence and competence.

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Imagine if the Democratic Party nominated a combination of Al Franken and Nancy Pelosi for the presidency, and you have a sense of the kind of gamble Republicans would be taking with Perry

Mr. Douthat again, and we don’t think he will be invited to the next Texas BBQ for Mr. Perry.


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A Very Short Book


What started as a reasonable attempt at political rebalancing turned into a jihad against all regulation, all taxes and all government, waged by right-wing zealots who want to privatize the public schools that educate your workers, cut back on the basic research on which your products are based, shut down the regulatory agencies that protect you from unscrupulous competitors and privatize the public infrastructure that transports your supplies and your finished goods.


Steve Pearlstein on why large corporations must take major blame for the current economic and political situation.


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Ms. Callahan with Her Prize

“I don’t think of it as stealing.  These things were planted by a person who was going to harvest them. That person no longer has the ability to. It’s not like the bank people who sit in their offices are going to come out here and pick figs.”

Urban forager Kelly Callahan who forages abandoned and foreclosed properties for fruits, nuts and garden vegetables. 

Urban foraging on foreclosures, the new face of America.

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