Saturday Cross Over

• Emerging Saturday theme: "This is not what it is."
  Alexandra Petrie refers to Occupy Wall Street protesters as these people, criticizes everything she can, refers to them as "us" and "we." She attempts to ride the coattails of the movement for any success she can get while at the same time demonstrating the incredible wit with which she can dispatch the ignorance of the protesters to futility.
  Her column picks at every dangling thread of Occupy Wall Street using language that pretends she empathizes, or is even a part of the movement, Ms. Petrie, how hip art thou?
  
  In Mitt Romney's campaign platform dealing with foreign affairs, the plan proposed with regard to China is not to build an anti-Chinese coalition, but rather "to strengthen cooperation among countries with which we share a concern about" that country. As Daniel Larison points out, Romney proposes to do all the same things as Obama with less tact and more antagonistically. It's not anti-Chinese, it's pro-weapons buildup, to be used against China, in case.
  
  Laura Ingraham refers to herself as being together with the rest of us "who yearned for history" in the election of a black man to the presidency. Right after that she goes on to discuss how Herman Cain would really be the first black President, because Obama is mixed race. Ms. Ingraham has worked out the race thing for everyone, and we should be thankful. We might have thought Barack Obama was a black man if it weren't for her. What a classy dame.
  
  These re the things that are what they are, not that aren't what they are, even if the author tells us that they are most definitely not what they are. Then there are industry shills masquerading as pundits who don't even bother to pretend they aren't what they are. Neil Stevens speaks out against Net Neutrality without any backing argument. He should have just said, "I'm against everything I am paid to be against. Down with the FCC and the law, especially Net Neutrality, because.. down with Net Neutrality!" Here's a gem, however: Obama himself is manipulating numbers on behalf of the FCC in order to steal from normal Americans. I knew it!
  
  Dishonesty is beginning to ramp up. Attacks lacking context but long on criticism are on the uptick. It's a big election year coming. For many of these writers the facts aren't nearly as important as influence. But don't ask them. They'll answer that the facts are not what they "look more like." How does one do look more like? It doesn't make sense, correct? Neither do a lot of Republican statements as of late.
  
  
• Encountered graphs and charts showing just how royally we, the 99% of the people who own the tiniest fraction of wealth, have been getting screwed for decades. It would be easy to cart them over here with a little of the old copypasta action, and that may still happen later. For now here's a link to the very depressing numbers and the glaring reality of how the wealthy have been sticking it to us.

I've forgotten to port from Symbols a few times. Gotta work on that.