Titanic Post

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

It took just eight decades but H.L. Mencken’s astute prediction on the future course of American presidential politics and the electorate’s taste in candidates came true:

On July 26, 1920, the acerbic and cranky scribe wrote in The Baltimore Sun: ” . . . all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily (and) adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” (more…)

by Ken Nicholson

We have 12 million “undocumented” immigrants because there are 12 million illegal jobs open for them here and none available for them in Mexico. There is nothing in play but an unregulated free market and all your fences and all your Border Patrol will not stop them from coming here.

If you really want Mexicans to stay home in Mexico, write to your representatives and urge them to put pressure on the Mexican government that they do something about the corrupt monopolies, about their destruction of the middle class, about their destroying jobs for poor Mexicans.

Complain to this government about NAFTA and our flooding the Mexican market with crops and products Mexicans should be growing and manufacturing for themselves, such as corn and tortillas.

Quit blaming the victims for Mexican and U.S. political screw-ups and their lack of imagination and concern for working people. If you are for deregulation, this immigration problem, and the World Trade Organization, is what you got.

Or is it that my friend Denise Lang is right and that this whole thing really IS about race? In that case, there is nothing more to be said and you can continue to blame the victims.

Government by itself is not always the problem
by Denise Lang

Government should not be too big. But if it is too small, it can’t protect its citizens from abuses of power. President Theodore Roosevelt said, “The limitation of governmental power means the enslavement of the people by the great corporations.” This is happening now.

The libertarian notion that privatizing services traditionally performed by government is unrealistic. In 1992, Dick Cheney, as defense secretary, spearheaded the movement to privatize most of the military’s civil logistics activities. (more…)