February 5, 2011 archive

from firefly-dreaming 5.2.11

Regular Daily Features:

Essays Featured Saturday, February 5th:

Alma takes a look back at some of the Brilliant essays we’ve had in our first year in the tooobz in Firefly Memories 1.0. Featured Today: Dreams of Living Off the Grid

come firefly-dreaming with me….

5,000,000 Disappeared Workers, and 20,000,000 Missing Jobs

The front-page measure of unemployment declined in January 2011 from 9.4% to 9%, which translates into a decrease of about 600,000 in the number of unemployed Americans, but the official survey of new jobs showed an increase of only about 36,000,

So how did 36,000 jobs reduce unemployment by 600,000?

According to the usual mob of media pundits, it’s a very big mystery!

“It’s all a mystery,” said Robert Brusca, chief economist at F.A.O. Economics.

“Given the confounding nature of this report, we will have to wait at least another month to see if the labor market is rebounding strongly,” said Heidi Shierholz, of the Economic Policy Institute.

And…

“We don’t believe the extent of the drop in the unemployment rate,” said Stuart Hoffman, an economist at PNC. “It’s like funhouse mirror image, although I don’t know if there’s anything funny about it.”

“Who the hell can make sense of this report? It’s distorted. It’s definitely distorted.”

But it’s only as mysterious as corporate-media tools want to make it, and the difference between 600,000 and 36,000 is just another weak signal emitted by dark matter beyond the fringe of our phony economic “recovery.”

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

And this article-

Along with The MomCat’s weekly feature Health and Fitness News and mishima’s weekly feature Random Japan.

Tomorrow there will be 3 special posts by yours truly-

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Today in the Wild: WWL FP News

Headlines from The Wild Wild Left…the last Island on the “LEFT” in a Sea of Wildly Wrong Rightness…a Harbour of Sanity for Liberals, Progressives and Radical Leftists – Get Wild, Get Left – JOIN IN!

If you read nothing else today, be sure to read John Kozy’s Demented Democracy.

He is kind enough to provide me his work via email, free of charge. I cannot stress how crucial to changing our thinking his views on logic/philosophy/ideology is to making people break out of this Demented state….

Speaking of Demented? davidseth’s Making the Independent Judiciary a Joke chronicles just how tainted we have allowed the SCOTUS to become. Good read!

Who we are…by the numbers



Scarlet Letter

Every day, transgender and gender non-conforming people bear the brunt of social and economic marginalization due to discrimination based on their gender identity or expression. Advocates confront this reality regularly working with transgender people who have lost housing, been fired from jobs, experienced mistreatment and violence, or been unable to access the health care they need. Too often, policymakers, service providers, the media and society at large have dismissed or discounted the needs of transgender and gender non-conforming people, and a lack of hard data on the scope of anti-transgender discrimination has hampered the work to make substantive policy changes to address these needs.

So begins the introduction to the report Injustice at Every Turn:  A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which was jointly released Friday by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality.  At 222 pages and 43 megs, it is unlikely that too many people will investigate more than the Executive Summary, which indeed is where early reporters opted to stop.  But it is Saturday and there is wintry mix expected, so here I am.

This part just is about the numbers…covering about 30 pages of the report.  More will come, especially the conclusions that can be drawn, in the future.

Making The Independent Judiciary A Joke

The independence of the judiciary means that the Courts should be free from improper influence from outside interests.  What a great idea for having a transparent, fair judicial system.  It’s a concept that has so much promise.  But in practice the present Supreme Court and its members may be driving it off a cliff. Today’s news about Justice Thomas’s wife’s lobbying business may signal its ultimate demise.

The New York Times reports that Justice Thomas’s wife,

who has raised her political profile in the last year through her outspoken conservative activism, is rebranding herself as a lobbyist and self-appointed “ambassador to the Tea Party movement.”

Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, said on libertyinc.co, a Web site for her new political consulting business, that she saw herself as an advocate for “liberty-loving citizens” who favored limited government, free enterprise and other core conservative issues. She promised to use her “experience and connections” to help clients raise money and increase their political impact.

 

Today on Antemedius’ Front Page

HomeThe end of George Bush. The end of the Democrats. The end of Obama. The end of home ownership. The end of Hosni Mubarak. The end of the Amazon. The end of US agriculture. The end of the world food supply. The end of sanity. And the end of Advanced Civilization.

The Kinks. The end of Justice. And everything you always wished you never knew. It’s all here. 😉

Six In The Morning

The Square That Is The Center Of Their Universe  





CAIRO, Egypt – Dozens of Egyptian women spilled out of a mosque in the Dokki neighborhood Friday, only their eyes visible from black veils that flapped in the breeze.

Marching in formation, they set off for downtown Cairo, where they hoped to join hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square who were calling for the removal of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

When pro-Mubarak youths jeered at them from a balcony overhead, the women raised their voices louder. “Go home!” the youths yelled at the women, who replied by chanting, “He’s leaving! We’re not leaving!”

Why IS Ronald Reagan a Hero to Conservatives?

Rush Limbaugh chats w/me about Ronald Reagan’s legacy

Well, he’s a tax raiser, an amnesty giver, a cut-and-runner, and he negotiated with terrorists. Why is he a hero to conservatives? I don’t think you understand it.

The transcript can be read here at Mike Stark’s web site, The StarkReport

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Why IS Roanld Reagan a Hero to Conservatives?

Rush Limbaugh chats w/me about Ronald Reagan’s legacy

Well, he’s a tax raiser, an amnesty giver, a cut-and-runner, and he negotiated with terrorists. Why is he a hero to conservatives? I don’t think you understand it.

The transcript can be read here at Mike Stark’s web site, The StarkReport

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

All Politics Are Local

While I have no desire to get back into the national political scene, I have been keeping tabs on my local political scene. As you know, or maybe you don’t, I live in South Carolina and Nikki Haley (Republican) was just elected Governor.

Also, if you were at Daily Kos years ago and you have a great memory, you remember that I have had a running battle with our state’s largest newspaper, The State, a holding of McClatchy.

So, how’s it been going?

Late Night Karaoke

Load more