In The Boston Globe article Debate on Romney’s memory of incident Michael Levenson presents an interesting possibility.

While some observers have expressed doubt that anyone could forget such a dramatic episode, one activist who has studied bullying said he believes Romney may, in fact, have no recollection.

Teenagers who bully others often don’t remember the incidents because they weren’t traumatic for them, said Don Gorton, chairman of the Anti-Violence Project of Massachusetts, a nonprofit group that seeks to reduce violence against gays and lesbians.

“Empathy is the critical variable,’’ Gorton said. “If they don’t feel their victims’ pain, the episode won’t stand out. It wasn’t a big deal for them.’’

That should make us feel better about Mitt Romney.  He simply has no ability to feel a victim’s pain.  Sort of a reverse Bill Clinton.

I bet that when Mitt Romney spanked his children he told them, “This is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me.”

He may have said something similar to all the victims of his vulture capital business.  Maybe that is what made him so good at it.  The victims screamed, but he just couldn’t hear it.

So you say, what are you talking about Romney and vulture capitalist? See Romney Economics: Bankruptcy and Bailouts at GST Steel.

JP Morgan announced a $2 billion trading loss yesterday. The big banks and their lobbyists have been fighting to water down the regulations that we need to prevent another crisis — and today we find out that they’re still involved in trades that increase the risks in our financial system.

How many of you out there still believe that we need to cut regulations on the banks? Other than our current Senator, I mean.

You don’t suppose $2 billion is a big enough Oops! that Jamie Dimon might lose his job as CEO of JP Morgan?

Watch the video of the interview Keller @ Large: Senate Candidate Marisa DeFranco.

I know the Introduction to this blog says:

This is my blog for commenting on politics.

I make no pretense about balance on this blog. If you want balance, read another blog.

and I am heavily into promoting Elizabeth Warren, but I will say this about Marisa DeFranco:

Damn, she is  good.

If we could have both as our next Senator, then that would be wonderful.  If we get Scott Brown because of the challenge from Marisa DeFranco, that would not be so wonderful.  Because of my support for Elizabeth Warren, I’ll make no comment on a third possible outcome.

By the way, she may have referred to me without naming me in this interview.  What is the equivalent of junk mail for a Facebook post?

As Goes Janesville is a movie that is coming out this year.

As Goes Janesville follows the story of how the community of Janesville, Wisconsin recovers and reinvents itself after the loss of its century-old General Motors plant. The film will premiere in the summer of 2012 and is supported by The MacArthur Foundation, ITVS and the Sheldon and Marianne Lubar Family Foundation. Stay tuned for more details.

I saw an overlay in the video in my previous post Governor Scott Walker’s ‘divide and conquer’ strategy for union busting. In tiny letters it mentioned the web site and movie that I am highlighting here.  I am glad my curiosity made me follow up.

At one point in the trailer to the movie where one person was saying that it was all for the best, it instantly brought to mind the book, The Shock Doctrine.  Administer a big enough shock to a populace, and they will accept almost any conditions as a remedy if it means any kind of a job at all.  Seems to be working quite well.

I wonder how plainly the Republican’s have to speak before the union members recognize that politicians like Scott Walker are not their friends.

Documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein videotaped this conversation in which Gov. Scott Walker says he would use “divide and conquer” as a strategy against unions. Video courtesy of Brad Lichtenstein

I have heard rumors that the postal workers in Massachusetts favor Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren. I wonder if these postal workers are aware that part of the reason for layoffs in the Postal Service was the unusual demand put on them by Congress to prefund their retiree health care plan to the tune of $11 billion. No other public or private retiree health care plan has such an onerous requirement.

Maybe Brown has convinced the postal workers that he is their friend because of a recently floated plan that would give an $11 billion cash infusion to the Postal Service. Like this is a subsidy instead of restitution from the people who stole the money in the first place.

Wait, you haven’t seen the half of it. Go to the web site that you see in the above video, As Goes Janesville.

Nation Of Change is selling the video, Hot Coffee,  to raise money.

Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts? Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.

If you look at the comments on YouTube, you see most people are not convinced by the trailer that McDonald’s was wrong.

To form an enlightened opinion yourself, I provide you with a balanced presentation of Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants from WikiPedia.

After reading WikiPedia, you may or may not agree that this is another example of something I noted in a previous post – once the media gets a story wrong, they just won’t let go of it. The previous post to which I refer is Lukewarm US Support of Chinese Dissident – My Donkey.

The trailer doesn’t explain it, but the summary of the movie above does seem to hint that there is an explanation of what is the driving force behind all of the media telling you just one side of the story (and it is [almost] always the same side).

The lesson to be learned is that when you hear a news story that promotes only one side of a story, you need to be very skeptical. You have to wonder who is benefiting from this one sided approach, and why would the news outlet be so sloppy as to not report the other side? This is something that always comes to my mind when I hear or read news stories like this. It does not matter to me which one side is being promoted and which one side is left out. A one sided story is always suspect.

As for whether or not I practice what I preach on this blog, I refer you to the Introduction where I say:

This is my blog for commenting on politics.

I make no pretense about balance on this blog. If you want balance, read another blog.

Actblue is requesting you to Help air this TV ad & recall Scott Walker.

Perhaps it is because the Wisconsin Democratic Party just settled on their candidate to challenge Scott Walker, but I would have expected a bigger lead for the Democrat by now.

It is also hard to imagine that Wisconsin voters need a reminder of why they signed on for a recall, but every little bit helps.

It would also help the whole country if Wisconsin would reconsider sending Paul Ryan back to the House of Representatives. I think their politicians have caused enough mischief to last a generation.

I knew I would read about this eventually.  The Boston Globe has the story Fenway voice Beane dies while driving.

Golfers from nearby Hemlock Ridge Golf Course called police at 12:39 p.m. to alert them to the crash, according to Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early.

When we first drove by the scene yesterday, the ambulance was just pulling away.  As I travelled back and forth by the golf course on various errands throughout the day, I noticed accident reconstruction police at the scene for hours.  When I saw the WHDH satellite news truck, I figured that it had to be something serious.  I mentioned to Sharon that it was probably a fatal accident that drew such attention.

I don’t usually pay much attention to the sports section of the newspaper, but for some reason this morning I took a look at it.  I don’t even know why I read the story with this headline.  Although maybe my subconscious picked up on the “dies while driving” part of the headline.

Truth Out has the article Austerity vs. Keynesian “Growth” vs. Economic Democracy.

Keynesianism (expansionary state economic intervention) never was capitalists’ preferred policy for capitalism’s recurring recessions and depressions. Their Plan A was government borrowing to bail out major financial and other corporations followed by “austerity policies.” Austerity repays the costs of bailouts by siphoning money away from (cutting) government jobs and services. Only when anti-capitalist movements threaten from below, as in the 1930s, do anxious capitalists abandon Plan A and shift to Plan B – eventually formalized as Keynesianism. Via government spending, Keynesian policies claim credit for jobs and income “growth” and aim to keep political control away from anti-capitalist forces. Keynesianism’s dependence on radicals’ pressure from below explains its strength in the 1930s versus its weakness today.

More such rhetoric like this is needed to scare the 1% into adopting plan B.

Capitalism has its internal contradictions as pointed out in this article.  Socialism or “Democratic Capitalism” also has internal contradictions.

Any ism that tries to boil down human nature into a simple explanation is bound to have internal contradictions.  However, if the best we can manage is to go from one extreme to another, we may have to accept that this is part of human nature, too.

I don’t know if the author of the above article, Richard D Wolff Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, meant it as I have taken it, but that does not matter.  The article is still useful no matter how he intended it.

I have been saying since it happened that the fall of Communism would let loose all restraints on Capitalism.  This would eventually lead to the rise of some system to counter the bad effects of unrestrained Capitalism.  Too bad the Capitalists cannot see the obvious and put some restraints on themselves.  Has there ever been an example in history where people saw looming disaster and took action to head it off?

The Rock Hill Herald has this Commentary: President Obama won’t be ‘swift-boated’ on Bin Laden’s death by James Werrell.

President Barack Obama is determined not to get swift-boated. He’s not going to let Republicans turn one of the crowning achievements of his first term into a negative.

That should be lesson number one for any Democratic candidate.  Lesson number two should be that you can take an opponent’s main selling point and turn it into a negative.  For instance, Mitt Romney’s “business experience” of buying up companies, draining them of all their assets, and then letting them stick it to their creditors and employees by going bankrupt, is not how we want this country’s President to operate.

Sure it would be great for some of the wealthy 1% to drain this country of all its assets – privatize all government operations by selling them off at fire sale prices to the lowest bidder, drain all the money promised to Social Security and Medicare payees, and then let the bones of our economic infrastructure bleach in the parched territory of underfunded infrastructure investment – but I don’t think this is what an aware voter really wants.