Paul Krugman in his latest tome End This Depression, Now!:

Now, there have always been people claiming that there's no such thing as involuntary unemployment, that anyone can find a job if he or she is really willing to work and isn't too finicky about wages or working conditions. There's Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for the Senate, who declared in 2010 that the unemployed were "spoiled," choosing to live off unemployment benefits instead of taking jobs. There are the people at the Chicago Board of Trade who, in October 2011, mocked anti-inequality demonstrators by showering them with copies of McDonald's job application forms. And there are economists like the University of Chicago's Casey Mulligan, who has written multiple articles for the New York Times website insisting that the sharp drop in employment after the 2008 financial crisis reflected not a lack of employment opportunities but diminished willingness to work.

The classic answer to such people comes from a passage near the beginning of the novelThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre (best known for the 1948 film adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston): "Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn't know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world."

Quite.

 If you follow the link to the book above, you'll find the quote at the top of page 2.

Interesting that it is a woman with the cajones to speak out against the NRA. In a NYTimes Op-ed today, Lily Raff McCaulou expresses the sentiment of many hunters, myself included, regarding the NRA.

EARLIER this month, Mitt Romney delivered a speech at the annual National Rifle Association convention, calling for a president “who will stand up for the rights of hunters, sportsmen and those seeking to protect their homes and their families,” presumably with guns. I’d like to remind Mr. Romney that those are distinct groups. Too often — especially during an election year — hunters and N.R.A. members are lumped together as one and the same.

I’m a hunter and a sportswoman. I own guns, but not for self-defense. I support gun control laws. I would happily vote to repeal the Stand Your Ground law in my home state of Oregon. In other words, the N.R.A. does not represent me.

Among gun owners, I’m hardly alone. The N.R.A. has just over four million members. That sounds like a lot until you consider that about one in five American adults own one or more guns. That’s nearly 50 million people. That means roughly 90 percent of gun owners do not belong to the N.R.A.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that every N.R.A. member is also a hunter — which is highly unlikely, considering that the most comprehensive national survey of firearm ownership to date found that only 35 percent of gun-owning households say they hunt. Even then, the N.R.A. would represent only about one-third of all hunters in the United States.

...

To hunt, yes, we need guns. We also need wildlife. We need healthy habitat that is protected from development and pollution. We need land that is open and accessible to hunters.

If Americans’ hunting traditions are threatened, it isn’t because of bans on rifles and shotguns. The more likely culprit is the oil and gas drilling proposed in the San Juan Mountains of New Mexico — a beloved destination for elk and antelope hunters. Or the devastating effects of global warming on migratory game birds like snow geese and sandhill cranes. Or the fact that thousands of acres of United States farmland — and deer habitat — are lost to sprawling development every day.

Thank you, Lily!

Marches defending women's rights are being planned in all 50 state capitals on April 28, 2012.

You can find one here. Buses are available.

Join MontcoDFA in recognizing the contributions Larry and Shirley Curry have made to our community at the
MCDC Area 9 dinner on
Sunday, April 15, in Flourtown.
Click the attachment link at the bottom for details.

By MontcoDFA member Ben Burrows

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 brought light to many dark places in American society. It was most famous for opening businesses and institutions which operated in public to members of all races. Less well known were its provisions which prevented discrimination on the basis of sex, creed, national origin, and religion. In the matter of discrimination in the workplace, the act clearly places responsibility for establishing a work environment free of harassment on the operator of the business. Court decisions later established that employers needed to make themselves aware of harassment of minorities in the workplace, that their toleration of such harassment made them liable to penalties and prosecution under the law, that their encouragement of such harassment would lose them federal business.

The far-reaching consequences of the Civil Rights Act can be seen most clearly in the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency. Unlike Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Obama's appreciation for the role that the Civil Rights Act played in providing him with opportunities -- for his education, for his advancement, for political career, for his being taken seriously as a human being -- has always been open and straightforward. Obama's recent interpretation of the Affordable Care Act -- to guarantee that employees of religious institutions who were not themselves members of management's religious faith were able to practice the tenets of the employees' own faith, without the intimidation, coercion, and harassment of the employer's religious restrictions on those employees -- is something that Jews in particular should be grateful to their friend in the White House, who stuch up for our rights.

The Catholic Church has taken the mission of the Civil Rights Act, and stood it on its head. It is not the big bad government imposing free practice of religion on the helpless Catholic institutions -- who employ followers of Judaism, the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, Unitarianism, and others whose religious beliefs may differ from the Church -- not just in matters of contraception, or about when life begins and ends, or about the relative importance of the lives of a woman and her fetus before childbirth. It is in fact the big bad government which has allowed such Catholic institutions to flourish and prosper, tax free, as they compete with for-profit hospitals, even as the Church provides right-to-life demonstrators at secular institutions to increase their costs of doing business. It is rather these powerful institutions who now influence the votes of our Senators Toomey and Casey -- who both voted for the Blunt Amendment this past week. It is these powerful institutions, who demand exception from having to provide a harassment-free workplace for their employees, on the grounds that their employees' free practice of religion offends management's religious moral sensibility.

I have had to remind some friends, who were not alive at the time of the Civil Rights Movement, that some white churches in the South justified their practice of segregation on religious grounds. Such churches encouraged "Knights" to act in their defense. As government contemplated the Civil Rights Act, these churches too claimed that the government would intrude on their members' freedom of religion. Many South African white members of the Dutch Reformed Church also justified their apartheid regime, by appealing to their interpretation of scripture, and to the teachings of their church. The coercive use of religious doctrine is not of course confined just to racial segregation and racist governments.

At this time of Purim, where we celebrate the resourcefulness of Mordechai and Esther in proclaiming their Judaism, and attempt to drown out with groggers the name of he who tried to exterminate our people for attempting to practice our basic Covenant, I would urge my compatriots to support their own civil rights, and to support the Obama position on the universal support for women's health care services -- to be exercised as the employee and not the employer sees fit, and to prevent religious harassment in the workplace from being justified, by a sense of freedom which treats the religious freedom of neighbors as if some of us were only "guests" in a Christian Nation.

There's been much fuss lately over whether Catholic institutions that hire from and serve the general public will be required to provide health insurance policies that include basic women's health services. Today, the US Senate barely defeated a measure introduced by Seantor Blunt of Missouri to reverse a rule established by the Obama administration to require these services be provided by health insurers, not the Catholic institution.

In today's Senate vote on the Blunt Amendment, our Senator Bob Casey joined with the likes of Ben Nelson (DINO-NE) and Joe Manchin (DINO-WV) to abolish freedom of religion for employees of Catholic institutions.

Agreed, this is a matter of religious freedom. Not the religious freedom of the Catholic church, as has been proferred by the opponents of Barack Obama,,er,... um,... contraception, however, but rather the religious freedom of the employees of those institutions.

Please, tell Senator Casey how you feel about his decision here, and remember how he chose to stand with a bunch of celibates and against the rights of PA citizens in the matter of if and when those citizens should have children when he comes around with his hand out asking for your support for his re-election.

Like I always say, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

Surely there's someting you could be doing right now to defend us from the wingnuts! Wingnuts who think this is who you ask about women's health care needs:

After pleading with the committee chairman [Billionaire Darryl "Step Away From the Car" Issa - Ed.] to hear from a female witness, the Democratic women on the committee -- all of them EMILY's List women -- literally stood up for us and walked out. These are the women who will always have our backs, but we desperately need more of them -- and that's what we're working to do every day at EMILY's List.

You can start right now by clicking the photo above and adding your name to Emily's List's petition.

And these are the folks that decide if a woman can have a life-saving medical procedure???:

Note our boy Ricky "Man-on-Dog" Santorum leading the cheers.

Unless you're a Florida Republican gander, I guess.

The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi heads to Florida to find out why Luis Lebron, a Navy veteran and public assistance recipient, won't submit to welfare drug testing.

Nate Kleinman is running for Congress in the 13th District!
 

The first Occupy candidate: Nate Kleinman

Nathan Kleinman, a 29-year-old member of the Occupy Philadelphia movement, intends to run for congress in Pennsylvania's 13th district against Democratic incumbent Allyson Schwartz.

Kleinman, who refers to himself as a human rights activist and organizer, served as an aide to Joe Sestak's unsuccessful 2010 Senate campaign before becoming a legislative assistant to Pennsylvania State Representative Josh Shapiro.

More recently, he has been a member of the Occupy Philadelphia movement, participating in a number of associated working groups, including "Free University," "Outreach Working Group," "Process Working Group," "Camp Liberty," and "The Committee of Correspondence," through which he became involved with InterOccupy.org, which he describes as "a central hub for communications" in the national Occupy movement.

Now, he plans to campaign for the House of Representatives, which would make him the first member of the Occupy movement to seek a seat in Congress.

Since last year, we can put Pennsylvania in the Red column now.

Hat tip to Joe Graeff:

This Friday, January 20, 2012 join an Occupy the Courts march and rally in Philadelphia from noon to 3 pm.

It will start at Thomas Paine Plaza just north of City Hall and end at the Federal Courthouse at 6th & Market Streets. The local organizers have received a permit for this event, and they have met with the police and a Homeland Security representative so this was planned as a peaceful demonstration of citizens exercising our right of free speech. Paste this in your browser to see a schedule and a map:

http://act.democracyforamerica.com/go/1434?akid=1614.1004070.7M4Qa6&t=1

Courtesy of Public Citizen

Now that you've seen the movie, join a rally to end corporate personhood on January 20, 2012. Meet at Thomas Paine Plaza (across from City Hall) at noon. More details to follow soon! Watch this space!

Moyers & Company from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo
Moyers & Company>, Coming January 2012

Tip o' the hat due to Mary Clark for finding this one. More evidence that, no matter what is said, we are all one. Just the undeniable emotional response proves it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com, via Associated Press

An 84-year-old retired teacher, Dorli Rainey, was aided after being pepper-sprayed in Seattle on Tuesday. Bloggers are calling this a defining image of this week of Occupy unrest. That's milk of magnesia on her face, which is used as first aid for pepper spray.

The cops may have stepped in it this time, though. Ms. Rainey is a long-time political activist and a friend of the mayor. Oops!