Some Thursday Observations

Irony 101: Authorities arrested 17 students at Texas Christian University on Wednesday as part of a six-month drug sting, an especially embarrassing blow to the school because it included four members of the high-profile football team.  Texas Christians huh?
The great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis envisioned the state legislatures as "laboratories of democracy". I guess that makes Arizona, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia meth labs.
The biggest threat to America’s global leadership is competitiveness.  Without competitiveness we will continue to lag behind financially until the American Dream comes crashing down.  The key to regaining out competitive advantage is Education.  And yet, Republicans want to end the Department of Education and if that isn’t bad enough GOP frontrunner Rick Santorum wants to end state funded education as well.  This is absolutely crazy.  When Communism was the global threat and the Soviet Union the evil empire, did anyone call for abolishing the Department of Defense?  Of course not.  Education is this generation’s Arms Race.  And just like the DoD, there will be waste and mistakes in the Department of Education, that doesn’t mean you scrap the whole enchilada.   The privatization of education will lead to even greater disparity from the haves and have nots, from urban schools to suburban schools, and from suburban schools to rural schools.
The financial sector does not look to be getting any healthier.  Moody's said it may cut the credit ratings of 17 global and 114 European financial institutions in another sign the impact of the euro zone debt crisis was spreading. Among the banks listed were Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group, and Bank of America Corp.  No bailouts coming this time fellas.
WrestleMania XXIX will be held at Met-Life stadium in New Jersey on April 7, 2013.  So what will be Chris Christie’s wrestler doppelganger?  The Orb?  Deathstar?  Big Ball of Hate?  How stretchy is Spandex and Lycra?
Republican Senators Coburn and Barr were on the political talk circuit pushing their Seniors Choice Act, the latest GOP plan to save Medicare.  One question, is offering seniors choices over the current system really what seniors need?
Warning folks that the Attack Obama Machine and Apparatus will be getting fired up again when the GOP and its surrogates realize they cannot run against the President’s foreign and domestic policy records.  Yes they will get desperate and break out the Birther, Kenyan, Muslim, Socialist, Reverend Wright, and Bill Ayers attacks.
Social Conservatives want to ban abortion.  But they also want to ban contraception.  Doesn't contraception limit abortion?
Alan West (R-FL) cannot help himself.  Put a camera in his face and the hateful bile just spews forth like Old Faithful.  “For this reason, the Republican value of minimizing government dependence is particularly beneficial to the poorest among us,” he continued. “Conversely, the Democratic appetite for ever-increasing redistributionary handouts is in fact the most insidious form of slavery remaining in the world today, and it does not promote economic freedom.”  Yes it’s just like slavery. 
You have every right to fly your confederate flag in front of your store.  I have every right to say you’re an ignorant douche nozzle.
You don’t put matters of social justice up to a referendum.  Should Truman have held a vote to see if the Armed Forces should be desegregated?  Should Lyndon Johnson have left the decision for a national Civil Rights Act to a series of state referendums?  When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for leaders to lead and that the right thing to do isn’t necessarily the most popular course of action. 


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