March 5, 2011 archive

GRITtv with guest Michael Moore: People Power

No need to say much as to an intro to this discussion, they, as usual, do a great job.

One thing I would like to say is that  think Keith would be doin great if he picked up Laura and gave her a spot on the rebuild of that Gore and company TV Station.

She’s always done a great job when doing radio, her books, and now with this GRITtv venture, though to a to small an audience and Rachel’s still under contract to MSNBC.

from firefly-dreaming 5.3.11

Regular Daily Features:

mishima steps into the Twilight Zone in Late Night Karaoke

Gha!

Six Brilliant Articles! from Six Different Places!! on Six Different Topics!!!

                Six Days a Week!!!    at Six in the Morning!!!!

Essays Featured Saturday, March 5th:

Popular Culture (Music) 20110304. Deep Purple Mark I from Translator

Saturday Open Thoughts are tardy- Doctor My Eyes from Alma Ria

davidseth continues the call- Let’s Support Wisconsin’s Workers

A new piece of Saturday Art! from mishima‘s talented hands.

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

And these articles-

The Stars Hollow Gazette

In Memoriam: Chloe Dzubilo

Chloe Dzubilo, artist and AIDS and transgender activist, died February 18 in New York City.  She was fifty years old.   She was apparently over-medicated and fell on subway tracks.

Chloe studied art at the Parsons School of Design and received an associates degree in gender studies from CUNY-City College in 1999.

Originally from Connecticut, Chloe moved the East Village in 1982 and worked Studio 54 before becoming ad director for the art magazine, the East Village Eye.  She wrote plays for and performed with the Blacklips Performance Cult (cofounded by Antony Hegarty) at the Pyramid Club, which had been founded by her partner Bobby Bradley.  She also edited the Blacklips literary ‘zine, Leif Sux.  She also did some modeling.

Goosed!

Let’s Stand With Wisconsin’s Workers Today!

Photobucket

The AFL-CIO has called for another massive demonstration today in Madison, Wisconsin.

If you’re too far away from Madison to participate in person, please stand in Solidarity with the demonstrators by doing something to show your support.  Buying pizza is always good.  Posting on a blog is good. Organizing your own demonstration is great.  You get the idea.  Let’s do it.

Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: A Review

I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.  John 15:15, NLT.

For white liberals of a certain generation, the Civil Rights Movement will always be front and center.  A struggle for racial equality made significant progress regarding relations between whites and blacks.  Though a success, though by no means was it a landslide victory.   Nonetheless, many apply a coat or two of heavy gloss, choosing to  remember the successes alone, while overlooking the multitude of eyesores that still tarnish our cultural landscape.  Every gathering and, indeed, every person must continually resist and overcome.  A  famous passage, also in the Gospel of John, proclaims that it is Truth that will set us free, not nostalgia.

         

Six In The Morning

Gadhafi’s forces break through Libya rebel lines



Opposition appear to be losing in Zawiya in west, but their flag flies over new city in east

NBC, msnbc.com and news services  

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces broke through rebel defenses at the city of Zawiya Saturday, witnesses said after a battle in which dozens of people were killed.

The attack on the city, about 30 miles west of Tripoli, saw an improvised force of rebels armed with hunting rifles and swords take on troops from the elite Khamis Brigade – named after the son of Gadhafi who commands it.

The witnesses said that forces loyal to the regime had overcome rebel positions with tanks, heavy mortar shelling, machinegun fire.

The rattle of gunfire and explosions could be heard as they spoke to The Associated Press by phone. They did so on condition of anonymity because of fears for their safety.

Obama lawyer defends Bush aide against abuse charges

Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the lawyer who represents the Obama administration in the Supreme Court, argued Wednesday for reversal of a lower court ruling that would allow a lawsuit for money damages to proceed against George Bush’s attorney general, John Ashcroft. He is accused of abusing the “material witness” statute by using it as a pretext to jail-under barbaric conditions-a US citizen, Abdullah al-Kidd, suspected of no wrongdoing whatsoever.

You can read the rest about this latest provocation by the Obama administration here: http://wsws.org/articles/2011/…

Pollution

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

My activist brother often tells me that the reason we have to constantly re-fight the battles of the past is that we didn’t crush these bone head brain dead assholes the way we should have in the first place.

I’m inclined to agree.

Remember Cuyahoga?

3 Dems join GOP fight to block EPA climate rules

By DINA CAPPIELLO, Forbes

03.03.11, 04:49 PM EST

WASHINGTON — Three Democrats are joining a Republican effort in the House to block the Environmental Protection Agency from reducing the gases blamed for global warming.

Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, and Rep. Dan Boren of Oklahoma will sponsor a bill supported by 42 Senate and seven House Republicans that would bar the EPA from using federal law to control greenhouse gases from power plants, refineries and other industrial facilities.

The measure is the latest to be introduced in the Republican-controlled House, where at least a half-dozen bills target the EPA and its efforts to control air and water pollution.

Economics is NOT a science

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

At least the way many economists practice it.  Instead it is a faith based Voodoo cult.

For one thing science is predictive and replicable.

Neo-classical synthesis predicts that reduction in Government spending, without increases in spending of other sectors of the overall economy like Business and Consumers, decreases Aggregate Demand.  In the absence of Demand businesses stop producing now surplus goods and services (there’s no demand for them you see) and reduce marginal expenses (fire people and close factories) and hoard capital (money).

Pretty predictive huh?

And in terms of replicable- we have seen this same phenomena time after time ever since there have been economies and the end result is always the same.  Voodoo economics believes in Tinkerbell and Pixie Dust.

How to Kill a Recovery

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: March 3, 2011

Republicans believe, or at least pretend to believe, that the direct job-destroying effects of their proposals would be more than offset by a rise in business confidence. As I like to put it, they believe that the Confidence Fairy will make everything all right.



(W)e have a lot of evidence from other countries about the prospects for “expansionary austerity” – and that evidence is all negative. Last October, a comprehensive study by the International Monetary Fund concluded that “the idea that fiscal austerity stimulates economic activity in the short term finds little support in the data.”

And do you remember the lavish praise heaped on Britain’s conservative government, which announced harsh austerity measures after it took office last May? How’s that going? Well, business confidence did not, in fact, rise when the plan was announced; it plunged, and has yet to recover. And recent surveys suggest that confidence has fallen even further among both businesses and consumers, indicating, as one report put it, that the private sector is “unprepared to fill the hole left by public sector cuts.”



Over the next few weeks, House Republicans will try to blackmail the Obama administration into accepting their proposed spending cuts, using the threat of a government shutdown. They’ll claim that those cuts would be good for America in both the short term and the long term.

But the truth is exactly the reverse: Republicans have managed to come up with spending cuts that would do double duty, both undermining America’s future and threatening to abort a nascent economic recovery.

I’m not taking any bets on whether Obama caves again or not, or what the results will be when he does, just over/unders on how long it will take.

Late Night Karaoke

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