By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
It’s Labor Day weekend, the book-end to Memorial day, marking the end of summer season and routinely celebrated with the sale of hot dogs, hamburgers and dozens of flavors of potato chips, soda and beer. This should be a day when we examine, for better or worse, what has become of our national work force, but nobody wants to look too closely. If we read the web pages we might discover that a New Jersey woman, working four low-paying jobs to make ends meet, died napping in her car this week. If we open those e-mails we might learn that due to our staggering income inequality, we’re losing somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000 a year, and who wants to be bummed out on a three-day holiday?
But that’s difficult to avoid. Now that corporations are people too, it’s evident that money has become speech, talking louder and louder these days. The high rollers aren’t necessarily the winners, though, depending on how we define “winner.” Putin rolled the dice this week, assisting with the creation of a “new Russia,” incorporating parts of Ukraine that weren’t all that anxious to rejoin the motherland. Protestations that Russia wasn’t actively involved were belied by the sight of Russian tanks and gear, as well as the capture of Russian soldiers. In response, the European Union met to decide how to beef up economic sanctions, resulting in the ruble plummeting to an all time low. The New Russia looks to be as poorly funded as the old one.
Obama has stepped up bombing in Iraq, going after the brutal Islamic State, but the Pentagon is warning that this will not be enough to stop them. These highly organized Muslim regressives are already the best funded jihadist group around, savvy about raiding banks as they go, and holding hostages for ransom. They’ve taken considerable territory, terrorizing everyone they meet along the way, killing those (men) they can’t convert and raping and enslaving those (women and children) who are left. And, although we’re no longer responding to the scare tactics that left us quivering in front of our TV screens more than a decade ago, there are enough dire pronouncements regarding these deadly zealots to give us all grave concern. Happy Days for John McCain, his wee sidekick, Lindsey Graham, and the money-hungry military industrial-complex that plays them — and us — like a fiddle.