One distinctive thing about Zimmerman’s personal story is the fact that he chose to live his life as a full time ‘troublemaker’ (committed leftwing activist), abandoning his extremely promising career as a creative and recognized scientist. He got his PhD in psychology at the University of Chicago in 1967, based on path breaking research on brain function in sleep, and gave up his academic career even though he had every expectation of continuing achievement. Why and how he made this life change reveals a lot about the society of that time—and now—so I hope we can delve into this dimension of his experience.

For reasons known only to its publishers, the New York Times has chosen to assign reporters and editors to the budget/deficit negotiations who seem oblivious that the politicians they routinely quote are speaking gibberish, without any effort by the Times to explain it’s gibberish.

The article proclaims that RomneyCare “achieved its main goals.” But nowhere in the 4,600+ word article does it treat “ensuring MA residents get access to health care” as one of RomneyCare’s goals. Instead, it reports on RomneyCare’s great success at ensuring MA residents get health insurance. And given the article’s admission that the cost of the program is unsustainable, the distinction is critical.

Michele Bachmann is making the Republican establishment very, very nervous.

Protecting banksters from the consequences of their fraud insures massive unemployment for the foreseeable future. The Government has alternatives, but it won’t put them into action. Obama raised $2.4 million dollars for his reelection campaign from Wall Street. No one goes to jail.

A moral imperative for the pursuit of wealth and power, whatever the consequences for the many and for society at large. That was the goal of the confidence men who sold us a false and destructive view of our own natures. So successful were they that many progressives (and most Democrats) remain content to operate within the frames and narratives generated by the scam.

Our most important a task involves replacing the deceitful view of humankind with the new – and true – picture of cooperative, empathic and complex human being (we can, obviously, be selfish, cruel and violent – but that’s not all we are).

Someday, long after most of us are dead and gone and then reincarnated and then dead again and then maybe reincarnated once more, someone is going to have to explain to future generations why there was such a battle to treat everyone as equals and bestow upon them freedoms that are rightly theirs, and more importantly, why it took so long.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Sen. Chuck Schumer tallied up what amounted to a list of demands from Democrats on revenue in the debt limit negotiations. They are a collection of real but pretty mild steps.

No specific guests on the NY vote for equal marriage. I guess it’ll come up in a roundtable somewhere. Sure seemed momentous to me.

And now a word from our Scarecrow…

Electronica. This Harveytoon Modern Madcap cartoon was released in August, 1960.