January 13, 2012 archive

WWL Radio #137 Stupid White Folk Epidemic



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PhotobucketA blond housewife and a black lawyer walk into a bar on MLK day… who knows what will happen? Truth and laughter served up faster than a speed-of-light beer, thats for sure!

David Peery is brilliant, funny and spot-on Politically.  As the silly-season erupts into full fetid bloom, with the foremost players ringing bigoted bells for the Pavlovian Knuckledraggers; we are going to try and counter the insanity with a fresh dose of realism and rationale.

We have Arizona banning Ethnic Studies, we have man-on-dog Santorum, we have Paul wanting to revoke Civil Rights Legislation and we have a Nation turning on its own People in fear and loathing rather than face the obvious:  The Problem is Endemic Class War.

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Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

These featured articles-

This is an Open Thread

The Stars Hollow Gazette

Cartnoon

Fresh Airdale

The ONLY Question of any Political Significance in 2012- Part 2

Capitalism Out of the Closet

By Taylor Marsh

13 January 2012

It’s a mistake to see the 28-minute video above and think this is just about Mitt Romney. He rightly earns the role of diabolical villain in the video, but what he represents is why Occupy Wall Street rose up in the first place. Romney’s a master at playing the Wall Street system, which even the film above stipulates is facilitated by investment bankers who helped Mitt Romney and others like him work the current system that collapsed in 2008, caused the current unemployment rate, but also the hollowing out of the American middle class that started a long time ago.



The caterwauling over Mitt Romney tapping the core of American capitalism for his own benefit is rooted in partisanship and doesn’t address the wider reality, which is that there are hundreds of Mitt Romneys in this country, many of whom got the Bush tax cut extensions, which Pres. Obama gladly gave and never really mounted a nationwide fight against. If you truly understand the calamity facing our middle class there is no way morally or in good conscience you could possibly back down from this fight, turning it into a war if you have to. Yes, a class war, but when Democrats hail compromise and gut Dodd-Frank or go along to keep things moving how innocent are they for watching what’s developed under their own backers and bundlers?

Using Steve Rattner’s defense of Mr. Romney and Bain Capital as an example, what are Democratic venture capitalists and heads of holding companies and investment bankers supposed to do in the shadow of this damning video that reveals the sausage making that is our economic system? As Rattner reveals, Democrats in his class can feel his pain and you can bet they’re just glad it’s Romney and not them.

That Wall Street Democrats are fleeing Obama’s side because of hurt feelings and would certainly find common cause in the onslaught that would be unleashed on Mitt Romney if he’s the nominee, who is one of their own, is another interesting tidbit of this tale. Sympathy vote, anyone? More likely, they’ll send cash.

If Occupy stays relevant, the entire American Corporation class will have to go underground, because Mitt Romney may be the star of the film, but they’re mirror images of this man and his methods and we’ve heard a lot about who’s been hurt lately, but now it’s in a film reel.



That Obama reelect will trumpet the video and all of its parts in the general election season, freaking out their own Democratic version of the Mitt Romney class, is wrought with irony.

What we need is a different kind of conservation about the country we are going to be in the 21st century and that’s not coming from any direction or either political party. The only thing that matters to the partisans is putting their sock puppet in power, while the money men just keep on funneling the system to the top.

It no longer matters who ends up in the White House and Congress anymore, because the Mitt Romneys of this country are the ones really in charge and they won’t allow anyone else in, buying politicians and the presidency.

On this Day In History January 13

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 13 is the 13th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 352 days remaining until the end of the year (353 in leap years).

It is still celebrated as New Year’s Eve (at least in the 20th & 21st centuries) by countries still using the thirteen day slower Julian calendar (Old New Year).

On this day in 1898, French writer Emile Zola’s inflammatory newspaper editorial, entitled “J’accuse,” is printed. The letter exposed a military cover-up regarding Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus, a French army captain, had been accused of espionage in 1894 and sentenced in a secret military court-martial to imprisonment in a South American penal colony. Two years later, evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence surfaced, but the army suppressed the information. Zola’s letter excoriated the military for concealing its mistaken conviction.

Dreyfus Affair

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was a Jewish artillery officer in the French army. When the French intelligence found information about someone giving the German embassy military secrets, anti-semitism seems to have caused senior officers to suspect Dreyfus, though there was no direct evidence of any wrongdoing. Dreyfus was court-martialled, convicted of treason and sent to Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

LL Col. Georges Picquart, though, came across evidence that implicated another officer, Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, and informed his superiors. Rather than move to clear Dreyfus, the decision was made to protect Esterhazy and ensure the original verdict was not overturned. Major Hubert-Joseph Henry forged documents that made it seem that Dreyfus was guilty and then had Picquart assigned duty in Africa. Before leaving, Picquart told some of Dreyfus’s supporters what he knew. Soon Senator August Scheurer-Kestner took up the case and announced in the Senate that Dreyfus was innocent and accused Esterhazy. The right-wing government refused new evidence to be allowed and Esterhazy was tried and acquitted. Picquart was then sentenced to 60 days in prison.

Émile Zola risked his career and even his life on 13 January 1898, when his “J’accuse“, was published on the front page of the Paris daily, L’Aurore. The newspaper was run by Ernest Vaughan and Georges Clemenceau, who decided that the controversial story would be in the form of an open letter to the President, Felix Faure. Émile Zola’s “J’Accuse” accused the highest levels of the French Army of obstruction of justice and antisemitism by having wrongfully convicted Alfred Dreyfus to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island. Zola declared that Dreyfus’ conviction came after a false accusation of espionage and was a miscarriage of justice. The case, known as the Dreyfus affair, divided France deeply between the reactionary army and church, and the more liberal commercial society. The ramifications continued for many years; on the 100th anniversary of Zola’s article, France’s Roman Catholic daily paper, La Croix, apologized for its antisemitic editorials during the Dreyfus Affair. As Zola was a leading French thinker, his letter formed a major turning-point in the affair.

Zola was brought to trial for criminal libel on 7 February 1898, and was convicted on 23 February, sentenced, and removed from the Legion of Honor. Rather than go to jail, Zola fled to England. Without even having had the time to pack a few clothes, he arrived at Victoria Station on 19 July. After his brief and unhappy residence in London, from October 1898 to June 1899, he was allowed to return in time to see the government fall.

The government offered Dreyfus a pardon (rather than exoneration), which he could accept and go free and so effectively admit that he was guilty, or face a re-trial in which he was sure to be convicted again. Although he was clearly not guilty, he chose to accept the pardon. Émile Zola said, “The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it.” In 1906, Dreyfus was completely exonerated by the Supreme Court.

The 1898 article by Émile Zola is widely marked in France as the most prominent manifestation of the new power of the intellectuals (writers, artists, academicians) in shaping public opinion, the media and the state.

The ONLY Question of any Political Significance in 2012

Colbert in South Carolina

by Tom Jensen, Public Policy Polling

January 10, 2012

Colbert’s key… (will be) to draw out Democratic voters in the state’s open primary.  34% of Democrats planning to vote in the Republican contest support him to 15% for Romney, 13% for Gingrich, and 10% for Santorum.   … (Will) enough Democrats… (go) out to vote for him to put him in the top tier of Republican candidates?  My guess is if he’d really put some effort into it he (can win) 10-15% of the vote and (nab) himself a 4th place finish there.

While Colbert’s prospects for actually winning in South Carolina may (be) limited, he would have found support on his proposed referendum. Just 33% of likely voters think that ‘corporations are people’ compared to 67% who think that ‘only people are people.’  Supporters of every Republican candidate believe that ‘only people are people,’ even 66% of Mitt Romney’s whose comments inspired this debate in the first place.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning
You’re always a little disappointing in person because you can’t be the edited essence of yourself.

–Mel Brooks



Groove-y

Dead reckoning

Let’s throw the instruments overboard.

The quadrant, the compass, the common sense:

There is no positive integer that answers the question

Of human carrying capacity.

Ahab and Israel have lost their marbles, while we…

What exactly did we do with our

collective conscience?  Effective procedures?

Surely, humans once computed algorithms,

Secured the tackle to the mast and sailed

To the Galapagos.  Darwin’s finches

Grew more better beaks in bad

Weather, but we keep electing Mitt?

Is there an obesity epidemic in

The Gaussian tails of psychopaths these days?  

Late Night Karaoke