This is the second installment in a series from Elkhart resident Jennifer Holderread. Jennifer is wife and daughter to family members who work in that city's decimated RV industry.
Jennifer is living on the front lines of the economic crisis and the impact all the political posturing is having has a very real effect in her city. This diary is a reminder that pain can be caused by both sides of the aisle when we stray from the common good.
MSNBC has been running a series of reports about the impact the recession is having on the city of Elkhart, IN. Elkhart has been hit particularly hard by the loss of jobs in the RV industry which had become the lifeblood of the local economy for decades. Now, with gas prices at record levels and fewer people investing in the gas guzzling RVs produced in Elkhart, the city has been struggling.
Jennifer Holderread is a resident of Elkhart who has been dismayed by how the city and its people are being portrayed on the Project Elkhart series on MSNBC. She contacted me on Facebook in an effort to get the word out about what is really going on in the city. The following story below the fold is the first of what I hope to be regular dispatches from the front lines of the recession in Indiana.
Good news is being taken as bad. Vermont constituents of Senator Patrick Leahy report that he's finding very little support for his proposed truth and reconciliation commission from Republicans or Democrats in the Senate. Numerous people have taken this as bad news and cause to despair. I disagree. Here are ten reasons why.
Senior Bush administration officials - like former Vice President Dick Cheney - continue to insist that the use of abusive interrogation techniques like waterboarding has saved American lives.
One big thing about this election between the two democratic candidates that I haven't seen covered, and I think I've mentioned it before in a comment - is I haven't seen anyone take on the "hacks" in the progressive blogosphere.
(A wee reality-based look at trade issues, beyond the soundbite level. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
You are probably aware of David Sirota writing piece after piece smearing Hillary on trade. I have commented repeatedly that these blog posts do not give detailed real position statements, mislead via Hillary's role as 1st spouse, and I find objectionable for they are not the whole truth, which is neither candidate has really adopted a strategy to completely revamp trade policy, especially Obama.
So, let's get to the truth shall we on Hillary's trade policy positions.
Hillary's website is god awful. There it is, I said it. So, it's harder to refute these claims because the position statements are not all in one place. I dig out many for you on the flip.
Rod Dreher of the Dallas Morning News has an interesting collumn that exposes a bit of the root problem Americans face in both general information and in politics.
It's not news that people are prone to believing things that confirm their biases. What is news, I think, is that people are losing the sense that truth is knowable and that one has a moral obligation to seek the truth, no matter how difficult it may be to deal with. Truth is often painful, but truthiness is therapeutic.
I often look at polling data and think, "Here, if anyone chose to look, is all the evidence ever needed to prove that mankind is not, and never has been, motivated by reason." For example, polling data shows that President Bush retains not only support, but truly heartfelt and passionate support among an increasingly smaller number of hardcore Republicans. Some of this is fully explainable by partisanship - in the words of Alexander Haig, "He may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch!". But some of it comes from people like a family member I respect who remarked a few years ago, "I don't care what anyone says, I think Bush is doing a good job!" I don't spend much time with my extended family, so I tend to let such remarks go, but if that had been said in one of my classes, I'd do two things.
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