Happy Mother's Day 2012

Below are Tim, Michael, Julie and John outside my parents house for Mother's Day 2012.  Tim was not wearing shoes, otherwise he would look taller.  I would give Julie an A+ on being a mother.

Americans Yoctosecond Memory

There is a fantastic article in

on May 7, 2012 that is titled: Don't know much about history BY MARTY KAPLAN Below are two snippets that give you an idea how quickly Americans forget facts and history:

"Romney is entirely surrounded by those wonderful folks who brought us Iraq, people like John Bolton and Dan Senor.  As Nation columnist Ari Bermanquotes the Cato Institute’s Christopher Preble, “I can’t name a single Romney foreign policy adviser who believes the Iraq war was a mistake.”  This doesn’t mean that Iran isn’t a serious threat, but it does mean that the Republican presidential nominee’s brain trust has suffered a catastrophic foreign policy brain fart."

"Or take Reaganomics.  Every Republican presidential candidate, and every Republican running for Congress, swears allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s economic policies by signing Grover Norquist’s no-tax-increases-ever pledge.  But in 1982 Reagan cut corporate tax breaks, raised unemployment insurance taxes and increased excise taxes.  In 1983 he raised the Social Security payroll tax.  In 1984 he signed an increase in the estate tax, closed more business tax loopholes and increased excise taxes again.  Reagan’s 1986 Tax Reform Act contained the largest corporate tax increase in history.  While Reagan was president, deficits and debt both nearly tripled.  George W. Bush’s tax cuts, successfully promoted as a rerun of a Reagan record that never was, put us in a hole we still can’t dig ourselves out of.  If you’re a candidate promoting a new round of regressive tax cuts, of course you’re counting on our dementia."