The article, Halvorson Understands America’s Perils, describes the work that Debbie Halvorson is doing.

Congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, a representative from the 11th congressional district of Illinois, has a clear-cut strategy for creating the next generation of manufacturing jobs.

I titled my comment on this article Separate the Wheat From The Chaff.

Finally an article on OpEdNews that gets a lot right.

Wheat – implementing a National Strategy for Manufacturing

Wheat – legislative proposals to train the manufacturing workforce, boost productivity, incentivize growth, and create new jobs.

Wheat – The provisions in this Act would seek to aid in reversing the loss of our manufacturing prowess.

Wheat – modernize federal workforce training programs to better prepare participants for high-tech jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Chaff – Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act

Chaff – allows Chinese producers to sell its goods in the U.S. market at artificially low prices.  Those nasty Chinese actually selling us stuff at a bargain.  This has to stop.  Why can’t they just charge us more?  When was the last time you went to Wal-Mart and asked them to charge you more?

Some wheat and some chaff – extend tax incentives that allow manufacturers to more quickly recover the cost of purchasing new equipment and machinery.

Given our eventual need to balance the budget, it may be wiser to stop the disincentives that lower tax collections rather than first increase incentives that lower tax collections.  What I have in mind are the obscene incentives that make it millions of times more profitable to trade in financial derivatives than it does to manufacture something useful.  These tax collection killing incentives are doing far more to damage our economy than people have yet seemed to realize.

The lack of regulation and lack of taxes on these so called capital gains certainly enriches people for no productive value to our economy.  The relatively high incentives to do this kind of work instead of productive work draw our most talented away from the kind of work we need to be doing.

The article Fan-Powered Shopping Cart (Of Course) Awhirl at MIT on the Slice of MIT web site is a clear demonstration of the value of an MIT education.

It’s going to make me even more proud to show my diploma.

The article, U.S. may face deflation, a problem Japan understands too well, discusses the likelihood that we may experience deflation instead of inflation.

Under the heading of, we always prepare to fight the last war, most of the public is concerned about the current federal deficit causing inflation.  They might not realize that the deficit is one of the things that is holding off deflation at the current time.

I know there are lots of things to criticize, but there are also lots of things to be proud of. Some of them are mentioned by Rachel Maddow in the above video.

It also just dawned on me that there is an implicit proud moment in RihacrdH’s post Liptak-Court Under Roberts Is Most Conservative in Decades that didn’t even get a mention by Rachel Maddow. Think how President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees have prevented a total disaster from occurring in the Supreme Court.

We need to keep in mind the extremely high stakes in the upcoming elections in November.  If this doesn’t get you stirred up, I don’t know what will.

The Afghanistan War Logs article on the UK Guardian web site is an intelligent response to the leaking of classified military documents.

The White House national security adviser, General Jim Jones, stressed that the documents related to a period from January 2004 to December 2009, during the administration of President George Bush and before President Obama ordered a surge in Afghanistan.

President Obama announced a new strategy with a substantial increase in resources for Afghanistan, and increased focus on al-Qaida and Taliban safe havens in Pakistan, precisely because of the grave situation that had developed over several years,he said.
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In the US, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee and former Democrat presidential candidate, John Kerry, responded to the leak with a direct challenge to the administration. However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America’s policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said.

Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right.

In Why Does Fox News Have More Power Than Any Progressive in the Country?, Cenk Uygur does lay some of the blame for the Shirley Sherrod incident at the feet of Faux Noise.

However, I am still waiting for an article that concentrates its ire solely on Faux Noise, and highlights the damage that they are doing and have done.

This article fails in that respect because it spends too much time calling the Obama administration nasty names for having been drawn into this mess by Faux Noise.

After all that Faux Noise has done, the story is still focused on the people who fell for it rather than on the perpetrators of the crime.  Maybe I should say “alleged crime” or “to be alleged crime”, because Shirley Sherrod has not even filed her defamation case against Faux Noise yet.

Let me be clear that there is nothing wrong with legitimate criticism of the Obama administration.  However, once in a while Obama’s natural constituency ought to consider criticizing something else.  Occasionally they might even find something for which they can praise Obama.  Or maybe once in a while they might take Obama’s side when facing a common antagonist..  How about some praise for President Obama having the courage to reverse an error made by his administration and taking responsibility for the damage that they did? Before the White House stepped in Vilsack, the Agriculture Secretary, seemed adamant that he would stick to his decision even after it was shown to be such a mistake.

The left, liberals, and progressives are so used to the stick approach, that they seem to have forgotten that the carrot approach is frequently more effective.

I recognize that this post seems to be all stick and no carrot, too.  I’ll try to find some carrot that I can give to the left wing media.  There is no carrot I can think of for Faux Noise.  Perhaps someone can correct me on that.

In Using Race to Smear Obama, Eugene Robinson posits his explanation for the Shirley Sherrod incident.

After the Shirley Sherrod episode, there’s no longer any need to mince words: A cynical right-wing propaganda machine is peddling the poisonous fiction that when African-Americans or other minorities reach positions of power, they seek some kind of revenge against whites.

The Democratic Governors Association wants us to Fight The Right.