Food for Thought

• Echidne of the Snakes on Why Unions Matter.

  Unions also matter in the political market place. Out of the ten largest donors to political parties, three are unions, and those are the only three which do not donate only to Republicans. If unions can be de-fanged altogether (and we are almost there), one of the few wider channels of donations to the Democratic Party will also die. That the Democrats in the Congress don't appear overly worried about this makes me wonder what color the sky might be in their world.

• Republic of T mentions Elizabeth Taylor's activism at AmFAR.
• Southern Beale on the media not getting it:

  It's kind of sad that the media doesn’t get it. We’ve been in a recession for a really, really long time -- since long before the market crash of 2007. I remember blogging about all the people left behind from the supposed “Bush boom,” and Republicans calling me “angry” and “negative” and a “blame American first” kind of person who suffered from “Bush derangement syndrome.” I mean seriously, am I the only one who remembers these conversations from 2004? Am I the only one who remembers arguing with Bill Hobbs every time he blogged about how terrific the economy was? Am I the only one who remembers George W. Bush telling a divorced mother that it's "fantastic" and "uniquely American" that she works three jobs? As if she wanted to?

• Driftglass...reports on an actual smackdown of Thomas Friedman by someone who knows the history and territory of the Middle East.  And what he found when he checked back later to verify the transcript:

  What is equally interesting in almost exactly the opposite way is the fact that between the time I heard the broadcast live on the air, and the time I checked with the WBEZ website to listen to the above exchange one more time so as to transcribe Mr. Saud's world accurately, someone at WBEZ excised a few of Mr. Saud's more lacerating comments as well as the name of at least one other person who Mr. Saud included in a more generalized indictment of the punditocracy and which WBEZ also censored on the taped version.

  Mmm-hmmmmmmmmm...
  
• From Dr. Grumpy, the main problem with money-driven medicine.