Robert Reich: Why This is Exactly The Time to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure explains the following:

Now connect the dots. Anyone with half a brain will see this is the ideal time to borrow money from the rest of the world to put Americans to work rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.

Problem is, too many in Washington have less than half a brain.

Coincidentally, before I read this article, I had posted a comment that with trillions of dollars of needed infrastructure investment and prices so low to do the work, it should be a no-brainer to do the work now.  The only difference between Reich and me is that I don’t even think it should take any brains to figure this out.

With the Republicans and Faux Noise spewing the opposite idea 24/7, it just takes as much repetition on our side as they have on their side.  People are not thinking (not using any brains).  They are on automatic pilot and following what they hear most often.

If we could repeat the truth often enough, maybe we could get people to think.  Once they started thinking, they too might see the obvious.

Maybe we also need to repeat the part where Robert Reich says:

Seems like only yesterday conservative nabobs of negativity predicted America’s ballooning budget deficit would generate soaring inflation and crippling costs of additional federal borrowing.

Remember Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the United States? Recall the intense worry about investors’ confidence in government bonds — America’s IOUs?

Hmmm.

Last week ten-year yields on U.S. Treasuries closed at 1.83 percent.

In other words, they were wrong.

In the article DOJ Says They’ve Debunked The ‘$16 Muffin’ Myth, the cost is explained.

“The package consisted of food, beverages, staff services and function space, including a 450-seat ballroom and more than a dozen workshop and breakout rooms each of the five days of the conference.”

This answer is so obvious, one wonders how the DOJ’s Inspector General could have been so silly as to make the accusation in the first place.  Imagine an Inspector General going after this kind of stuff when we have issues of past corruption and approval of torture in the DOJ.  I guess any little thing that will distract from the real issues is what the Inspector General’s job requires.

As I watched CBS new anchor Scott Pelley repeat the charge on several nights, I wondered about his competence.  Is it possible to  suppose a person in his position has never been to a large social function to see the resources that a hotel puts out to host a large gathering before they even set out the food?

Surely not.  So you know that when Scott Pelley sits there and says these things with a straight face, that he is pulling your leg.  This kind of “understanding” of what they report is what has turned me off from watching Scott Pelley’s previous program 60 Minutes. I can’t remember when it was that I finally got sick and tired of 60 Minutes.  It must be 20 to 30 years ago.

For a brief while after I decided to give Pelley another chance by watching CBS Evening News, I thought that Pelley might have left behind the shenanigans of 60 Minutes.  What a forlorn hope that a news anchor could exhibit half the intelligence of most of his audience.

I have created a petition on the Whitehouse web site, We petition the Obama administration to: Regain the governing mandate of the 2008 election by acknowledging your mistakes that cost you the mandate and fix it.  There is also a short URL that you may use to access the petition – http://wh.gov/42B.

Signatures needed by October 25, 2011 to reach goal of 5,000.  This number is the minimum needed for the staff to bring this to the attention of the President.  This is your chance to do more than just complain about the President’s lackluster battle for progressive principles.  Click on the above links to add your vote.  Also spread the word about this petition.

Below is the description to back up the title of the petition:

The President has noted that many of his supporters from the 2008 election have become discouraged. In order for the President to be effective, he must regain the discouraged supporters and thus his mandate to accomplish the goals for which we elected him.

In order for these supporters to regain the faith we initially had, he must acknowledge his mistakes in failing to use the mandate and the people who gave it to him. He must acknowledge that he failed his primary role of educating his supporters and prospective supporters about the reasons behind each and every initiative he took.

The President must acknowledge that it was his failure to enlist the mass of his supporters. He needs to acknowledge that he understands that his tactical compromises are what lost him his strategic advntg

That last word advntg is of course an abbreviation of advantage.  It had to be shortened to get the description to fit in 800 characters.

If you have trouble signing the petition, read my post How To Sign a whitehouse.gov Petition.

As of October 01, 2011 10:44 EDT the petition has received 3 votes. Only 4,997 to go.

As of September 28, 2011 19:39 EDT the petition has received 2 votes. Only 4,998 to go.

As of September 27, 2011 20:32 EDT the petition has received 1 vote. Only 4,999 to go.

As of September 26, 2011 19:46 EDT the petition has received 1 vote. Only 4,999 to go.

I found the article War of words over global warming as Nobel laureate resigns in protest on the UK Telegraph web site.

A Nobel laureate has quit one of the world’s leading organisations for scientists in protest at its assertion that the evidence of damaging global warming is “incontrovertible”.

After reading this, I had mixed feeling to say the least.  I was not going to make a blog post about this.  However, after making the post What Can We Say About 9/11? And How Can We Say It?, I started to think that I couldn’t avoid posting this one about global warming.

In thinking about how to make a blog post out of this, I ended up in a circular, self-referential discussion about this with myself.  Here is a comment I made on a video clip of the Bill Maher show.

Maher has some very good advice for himself.  On a slight twist for what he is recommending for U.S. policy, maybe the people who say things about 9/11 that anger people should ask themselves, “Do I really want to do this?  What’s the point?”

Yes, they have every right to say what they do.  They even have a valid point.  They even know that the reaction might be to their remarks might not be rational.  As he says about the US putting bases in places like Saudi Arabia, “Do I really want to do this?  What’s the point?”

The people who get angry about this kind of remark about our Saudi Arabian policy don’t want to take this advice any more than Maher wants to take the advice about being cautious with his own remarks.

What irony on both sides.

As I thought about including the video in this post, I had to ask myself, “Do I really want to do this?  What’s the point?”

The point of this blog is only to allow people to think about the circularity about reasoning about this question.  It might also raise some thoughts about applying such reasoning on the reverse side of related issues.  Hence, the circularity of the whole discussion. And finally to the last part of the headline.  If we want to have a conversation to figure out what to do, how can we have it?

Since I do not want to anger people, I am not going to embed the video in this post.  I will give you a link to the item that has the video replay.  Click on the link only if you really want to see the video.  Maher, Moore defend Tony Bennett’s 9/11 comments.

To the mathematically inclined reader, shades of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

Now that I am on my Cenk Uygur kick, I stumbled across the video Israel Could Partner With Terrorists To Fight Turkey

If you want your head to really spin, watch this video that talks about Israel, Palestinians, Turkey, Armenians, and Muslims. I am not sure you can tell the good guys from the bad guys without a program. (My head is spinning so much, I can’t even figure out if that pun is intended or not.)

This really ought to light a fire under the discussion that has started on my Facebook page since I posted a number of articles about the Middle East today.

Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks are going to join Al Gore’s Current TV. That explains the reference in the video below to Al Gore being Cenk’s new boss.

The only reason for posting this video is to demonstrate why I like to watch Cenk Uygur so much. I have The Young Turks on my personal web page about the search for intelligent news as one of the 78 items there (not all of them really that intelligent). I should remember to watch it more often.

According to The Colbert Report article accompanying this video, Jeremy Ben-Ami,

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the [pro-Peace,] pro-Israel lobby J Street, discusses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Palestine’s application for full U.N. membership.

Even in this situation, sometimes a little humor can help to clarify. Well, I am not really sure what it clarifies.

Perhaps to fully appreciate some of the comments in the interview, you have to see the piece, Obama’s U.N. Gaffes & Rick Perry’s Support for Israel, that preceded this video.

The article on The Real News, Palestinians, Israelis Skeptic of UN Bid, provides fodder for the support of all the points of view on this issue.

Here is the video from that story.

Now that Google + is open to the public, I have managed to sign up.  It’s kind of lonely over here with only about 30 of my friends.  Why don’t you join us?

Steve on Google +

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