SHAKE WELL BEFORE USING

The debt ceiling deal has rightfully been criticized by progressive commentators.  One problem with the deal is its content: its deep cuts in spending on health care and other valuable domestic programs; its lack of additional revenues through progressive taxation; and finally, its movement away from providing a Keynesian stimulus, even as the Great Recession (or "Lesser Depression") continues.  A second major problem with the deal is that it so greatly rewards, and thereby encourages, the "extortion politics" of Republican leaders who, throughout the negotiations, based their positions on delusional--even idiotic--claims ( tax cuts always increase tax revenues,  to cite just one example). Yet, while progressive commentators did a good job pointing out these serious failings in the deal Obama accepted, it concerns me that, in many cases, they encouraged Obama and the Democrats ...

I am always curious about large industrial objects travelling on the same road as cars; what makes it impossible for me not to look is the public visibility of something that, for most of us, is otherwise unseen and even a tad esoteric.  This big pipe was seen in July. That we could get photos had everything to do with the recent ubiquity of "cameras"; these were taken by a "phone." The shot below was taken a few weeks later, in August; we had trouble identifying the object; we considered an aircraft wing (there were two of them, carried separately on their own trucks) and a propeller for a wind turbine.  As the object moved on its truck-bed, it seemed too flimsy or too flexible for the former--but what do I really know about aircraft wings? Oh, the photos were taken by my son (Nathaniel Shrage); I was driving.

So it’s the early 1940s, and the United States is entering WWII to fight evil; and there’s this would-be heroic guy, but he happens to be physically weak.   So instead of being a hero on the frontlines, he keeps being refused entry into the army.   But then he gets super powers! And he’s called "Captain America"! But what makes it really o.k. that he has superpowers—what makes it really o.k. that America is a superpower—is that unlike Evil Others, Captain America is good and caring and all that.   Oh, and the Evil Others (aka, the Bad Guys), they have been desperately plotting to obtain superpowers, while Captain America just did the right thing, even when he was weak, and he got his superpowers without asking. It’s all there in this movie, called Captain America . Which means we should ask, just what is this movie’s relation to, or stance on, the myth of America as the exceptional hero/nation that can safely possess the ...