There’s a party in the park today. There’s a Bounce for the kids – one of those soft cages kept inflated by an infernal combustion engine spewing noise and fumes for the next 10 hours. You gotta have a Bounce. Otherwise, what would the kids do for fun – run and play like generations before them? (Not  today’s kids: they’ll be on their iPhonePadPlayers texting each other and playing games that involve destroying.)

I have a feeling the noise-generating Bounce is a gateway to a lifetime of similar toys: the BMX, the ATV, the JetSki, all towed behind the self-contained RV with microwave and DVD player, powered by a generator. Now, surely, this is a coincidence. Surely, the Bounce isn’t a cynical tool for pushing children into a lifelong consumer rut (both meanings). However, where does running and playing in the park lead: walking, hiking, maybe even the quiet contemplation and appreciation of one’s surroundings. Where’s the profit in that?

Of course, the Bounce provides parents with a place to deposit the kids while they check their email. They may even get a few minutes to talk with other grown-ups, if they can hear each other over the din.

And tomorrow the park will be strewn with more trash than usual. This obliviousness, indifference, and disdain of place is the logical culmination of our evolution: we don’t need no stinkin’ Earth. The anthrosphere transcends place. When this planet is used up, we’ll order another one. There’s an app for that, surely.

ThinkProgress » Trump Adviser: Even If Long-Form Birth Certificate Is Genuine, It Doesn’t Prove Anything

This morning Obama said, “I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do.”

ThinkProgress » Trump Adviser: Even If Long-Form Birth Certificate Is Genuine, It Doesn’t Prove Anything

If you’re a birther at this point, you’re an idiot and, probably, a racist. You’re certainly wasting precious time and brainpower on bullshit.

Cross of Iron Speech

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms in not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. 
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.
It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Address by President Dwight D. Eisenhower "The Chance for Peace" delivered before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16,1953.

Cross of Iron Speech

ThinkProgress » During Bush Presidency, Current GOP Leaders Voted 19 Times To Increase Debt Limit By $4 Trillion

[W]hile the four Republicans in Congressional leadership positions are attempting to hold the increase hostage now, they combined to vote for a debt limit increase 19 times during the presidency of George W. Bush. In doing so, they increased the debt limit by nearly $4 trillion.

ThinkProgress » During Bush Presidency, Current GOP Leaders Voted 19 Times To Increase Debt Limit By $4 Trillion

ThinkProgress » FLASHBACK: In 2001 Address, Bush Said The National Debt Would Be Paid Off In Ten Years

DUHbya said: “At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.” [liar-idiot]

Of course, the opposite occurred, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion. In fact, conservatives argued in 2001 that the very existence of a budget surplus was a valid reason to enact large, regressive tax cuts. But this is precisely what happens when you have an administration that believes “deficits don’t matter.”

ThinkProgress » FLASHBACK: In 2001 Address, Bush Said The National Debt Would Be Paid Off In Ten Years

ThinkProgress » 12 Tax-Dodging Corporations Spent $1 Billion To Influence Washington Over The Last Decade

A new report by Public Campaign examines how these major corporations have influenced Congress to craft a tax code that lets them get away with making so much money and paying so little taxes in return. In its report, “The Artful Dodgers,” Public Campaign juxtaposes the limited tax liability of dozen major corporations with the companies’ campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures, which amount to more than a billion dollars over the last decade: [read the list at the following link]

ThinkProgress » 12 Tax-Dodging Corporations Spent $1 Billion To Influence Washington Over The Last Decade

E.J. Dionne Jr. – Don’t spin the Civil War

After the war, in one of the great efforts of spin control in our history, both Davis and Stephens, despite their own words, insisted that the war was not about slavery after all but about state sovereignty. By then, of course, slavery was "a dead and discredited institution," McPherson wrote, and to "concede that the Confederacy had broken up the United States and launched a war that killed 620,000 Americans in a vain attempt to keep 4 million people in slavery would not confer honor on their lost cause."

Why does getting the story right matter? [T]here is to this day too much evasion of how integral race, racism and racial conflict are to our national story. We can take pride in our struggles to overcome the legacies of slavery and segregation. But we should not sanitize how contested and bloody the road to justice has been.

E.J. Dionne Jr. – Don’t spin the Civil War

ThinkProgress » Gov. Scott Walker Chose Top Donor’s 26-Year-Old Dropout Son Over PhD And Engineer

On Monday, ThinkProgress noted that Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) was using state funds to pay more than $81,500 a year to Brian Deschane, a 26-year-old son of a major campaign donor with no college degree and two drunken-driving convictions. The job involved overseeing state environmental and regulatory issues and managing dozens of Commerce Department employees.

Yesterday, after the media reported on the hiring, Walker abruptly reversed course and removed Deschane from his position. Despite calling Deschane a “natural fit” just last week, Walker spokesman Cullen Werwise said Tuesday that the Governor decided “to move in another direction” after learning of the details of the appointment.

Yet, Deschane will still serve in the Administration, returning to his previous job where he made $64,000 a year.

ThinkProgress » Gov. Scott Walker Chose Top Donor’s 26-Year-Old Dropout Son Over PhD And Engineer

Cal Thomas: Spreading Wealth the Right Way  

There is a kind of wealth spreading, however, that ought to meet the political litmus test of conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and radical Independents. At a time of high unemployment, … it is disheartening to see so many CEOs having recovered enough from their personal recession to pay themselves salaries and benefits that would have shamed the super-rich in America’s Gilded Age.

USA Today reported last week in a story on CEO compensation that "three-quarters of CEOs got raises — and, in many cases, the increases were substantial." Employee pay, on the other hand, effectively stalled. Median CEO pay, reported the newspaper, increased 27 percent last year, meaning the average CEO received $9 million in 2010. Even in a struggling economy, I wager most people could get by on $9 million a year. …

If I were a CEO being paid such astronomical amounts and people were being laid off, or struggling in a recession, at least in part due to the lack of pay increases, I would feel morally obligated to take less money. I would ask the chief financial officer of my company to share some of my wealth with loyal employees so that they could continue caring for their families.

One doesn’t have to be a liberal who believes in income redistribution to see the unfairness in disproportionate pay. Think of the kudos and favorable press coverage that would come to a corporate chief who shared his wealth, rather than lay off employees. …

Five CEOs saw a slight decline in compensation, according to the USA Today/GovernanceMetrics international data, but they still earned more than most lottery winners receive.

President Obama has spoken of some of these CEOs as not "needing" the money they get. Again, that is a subjective judgment. What he should be doing is shaming those companies that lay off workers while paying their top management such exorbitant salaries and benefits. Stockholders ought to demand that no competent worker should be laid off if a CEO earns above a certain amount of money. Stockholders also have a moral responsibility beyond the dividends they receive.

Making money is a noble American objective, making a living is a nobler one. Corporations ought to have enough decency and compassion to make sure no worker is let go solely to increase the bottom line or pad the boss’s pockets with more money than he (or she) can ever hope to spend in a lifetime.

Cal Thomas