Twilight from the Cold

Avatar: The Bald One Not the Blue One

2011-12-05T12:11:00.001-08:00

Yeah!!

Despite being butchered by Hollywood studios and getting its name ripped-off by Mr. "King of the World" Cameron (a genius nonetheless when he shut up and shoot movies), one of the best American animated show will finally come back!

As you can see in the trailer, they splurged and it shows: the action and animation are none plus and the creators (Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko) usual humour is intact. So more fun for us.

Unfortunately, no sign of boomerang, Sokka, Katara and my favourite, Zuko. Well Appa appears and Aang is now a revered statue. Hopes he appears in animated flesh during the new series but if we maybe lose old friends we seem to gain a cool, mighty new one...

So one we won't miss given the dearth of good shows of any type on what's left of TV land. There's HBO and then there's Barbies movies for adults (even though True Blood does belong to the latter...)

Anyway: The Last Airbender: the Legend of Korra, 2 seasons of 12 and 14 episodes with no starting date yet announced. Meanwhile, enjoy the trailer

Politics in the Ruins

2011-12-05T10:38:00.001-08:00

I was over and out. I was burned and discourage. Cain, Romney, Perry, Gingrich!!!! Obama becoming a ghost, a revolution thwarted and drown in an overabundance of futile insipid information. Harper donning faked glasses and being re-elected with a majority. Jack Layton dying, brave and so close to his goal...

I love politics. It's where we can create and shape the future. It is a fact that one wants it or not. Those who think we can live without it are actually the one being shaped - by events they hope are out of their control. Being passive is choice in itself.

What I see now is a deep transformation of our society into a constant war zone. We have enemies everywhere and 2 generations of children who do not know what living in a time of peace and diversity of point of view can be like. Our principal resources are canalized into weapons and the military. Helping those in need is now seen as a taxing childish pipe dream. Debt controls our lives and the institutions who should serves citizens now serves corporate citizens who give back nothing but the prospect of minimum wage for most. Extremist views are now normalized, police are using sound cannon for crowd control and cataloging protests' participants...

So yeah, for a year, I unplugged.

I'm back because some of you left me messages- a midst the usual spam fest- that were heartwarming and fun. I'm back because I just love beautiful stuff and like to share them with you. I'm back because being shell shock by the "New World Order" is not an excuse big enough for giving up.

So, without further ado, let me shut up and blog away...

Hey, Democrats, I'm with the Stuffed Bear...

2010-11-23T22:36:00.001-08:00

Thanks ndintenfass. At YouTube, of course...

The 'BenBernanke' and us: How Our Tax Money Still Lined Goldman Sach's Back Pockets

2010-11-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

Masses, educate thyself on the mystery of the Fed and how our tax money find its way, unimpeded as we speak, to the people that are still laughing on their way to the bank at lonely Bernie Madoff: Goldman Sachs. Wait! They own the bank!

I understand we have to spend. I know that deflation is a wicked, slow, vicious spiraling down the tube of an economy. I'm totally for monetary measure that ease credit lending to small businesses and individuals (if the different banks and creditors involve decides one day to lend again, which they haven't done yet, sitting instead on enormous mass of liquidity. Probably waiting for the Repug to take power before opening the floodgates again, all the while giving credit to the party of 'No, hell, no!') And please, taxes for the middle class are lower now than before.

So, of course, take this video with a grain of salt. Some of the most debilitated elements from the anarchist fringe of the tea drinker party repeat those same talking point memo item as religious truth and reason enough to take down the government.

But, still : Goldman Sachs!!!! Anyway you put it, we are royally screwed...

All the same, a very funny 5 minutes of your time. It all starts by a beautiful day of quantitative easing...

Letter to Obama: Please Read, Mr. President, About What Will Be Done on Your Watch...

2010-11-23T21:42:00.000-08:00

I do see your need, Mr. President, to not let the crazies run the asylum and to resist the lowering of the public debate to the basest level where Beck, Limbaugh, Palin, Rove, O'Reilly, Politico, half of the AP and 'new bestselling author' Bush are thriving but resisting alone won't change the debate.

There is a communication vacuum in the Democrat's camp. First, because the right-wing media are owning and shaping every debates, but also because the democrats themselves are scared of their own message. They are afraid of the political price to pay to embrace a socially responsible agenda. They do not even make a concerted effort to redefine or repackage those ideas into more palatable fare to the scared right wing extremists.

Nonetheless, one thing is certain, when we said change, we did not mean 'Kiss up to every republican shill, shady economists or fraudulent health care industry's lobbyists you met.' It meant: 'For once, let there be somebody on Capitol Hill that fights for us instead of his private club buddies.' It meant: 'You have a blank check and ammunition: now fight!'

Unfortunately, we discovered that we did not elect a fighter nor a leader but a Master of Compromises. Patient, earnest, hardworking, Mr. Smith has finally arrived in Washington. What irony! The Nobel Peace Prize WAS indeed well deserved. Anybody facing the horde of foaming at the mouth two-headed monsters created by this new bizarre Republican/Tea Party hybrid and who still tries to create equitable, level-handed solutions through sane, reasonable dialogue do deserve it.

There's very little time left to combat all the lies by omissions, insinuations or pure fabrications of the Murdoch/Aile/Koch brothers Tribe however: time to forget the Peace Prize and get dirty.

When the Republicans will get back at the trough, guess who's going to get blame for every single mess? Who will be left standing but emptied, chewed and spit out? You and us, both.

Your only friends left then, Mr. President, are the one who elected you. We might sound unreasonable to you. Socially conscious. Progressive even. But wait and see and compare with the rest. Wait and see who's ready to lend you a hand. And who's too busy selling everything from the chandelier to the crystal cup to the highest bidder to even look at you drowning.

For this a-coming group of 'concerned, fair, balanced, independent, true, patriotic, free enterprise-loving, papa, mama, baby, BS selling, dancing, Alaskan Bears' paid citizenry, bipartisanship means one thing only: 'Give all government funds to corporate interests. No strings attached.' The dialogue you yearn for is pretty much a one way street.

They are ready to do what they did best before: restructuring (read bankrupt) America. After selling the country's jobs and technology on the cheap to outside interests - incongruously strengthening and enlarging those nations' middle class all the while shrinking ours - they are now at the point of dismantling basic services.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the department of Education.... All will be hollowed out and the funds allocated to lawless, unsupervised private corporations. Costs will soars, the rich/poor divide widen. They see it as a 'business cycle'. The pendulum will swing while they drink champagne. We all can see it as madness.

I know it's hard for you to see that they do not care. Really, believe us, they do not. But you do. So try not to play the role assign to you by their well funded think-thanks and believe in your own word: you can make a difference.
You still can, Mr. President. But you do need to wake up and get some fighting Rambo-style help....

Insist on the words sanity, decency, common good. Keep on saying that you will fight for the middle class until your last breath. Put the tea drinkers on the defensive: they're not even sure why they are there themselves. Give Howard Dean a call, thank him for a fantastic BBC interview where he defended your position eloquently and forcefully. Give Krugman and Nouriel Rubini a call. Bernanke was wrong and they were right, there's not much more to be discussed here, really. Call Clinton - can't escape him, he's the oasis President between two Desert Storm campaigns- and the new DLC chairman, Harold Ford, tell them you won't go in the middle. Nothing in the middle but dead possum. Triangulation satisfies no one but corporate interests. The 50 states strategy worked. It's now or never the time to be on the message in the party. Tell them that a parrot could do what the Republicans do: repeat, repeat, repeat until we hear nothing but their voices and all else is dwarfed.

Just repeat a different message: 'As for the Republicans attack on the middle class: the buck stops here!'

Oh, by the way, speaking of Truman: don't forget that China was behind North Korea in the 50's. they still are.

Good Luck, Mr. President. We still love you: who could replace you? Seriously, with Hillary gone, who can? Don't be a stranger: meet us on Huff Post.

Inverted Cannibalism: How the US is Eating its Young By Chris Hedge

2010-10-20T03:21:00.000-07:00

We all have seen the signs, the strange discomfort is changing into outright disbelief, but not too many can argue now that everything is well in the Republic of Palin and Snookie.

The Right is doing its job all right but the Left is seen as impotent, even thought all the political capital in the world were thrown at it so as to shake up, shape up and reaffirm this thing called democracy in a society that should not shudder at the mere mention of empathy and that assuredly should regard compassion and justice as valuable human principles.

TruthDig Chris Hedge's talk on 'The Death of the Liberal Class' go further into the dissection of the disease that seems to erode all the Left's political endeavors.

An eye opener and a somber take on the history, as well as the uncertain future, of a broken republic.

More Stumble Upon News

2010-10-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

Jobless Claims in U.S. Decreased 11,000 Last ...
Rated 06:29am • 1 review • economics • bloomberg.com

From the page: "Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in three months, indicating companies are slowing the pace of firings.

Jobless claims dropped by 11,000 to 445,000 in the week ended Oct. 2, the fewest since July 10, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists projected 455,000 new claims last week, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance decreased and those getting extended payments jumped. "
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U.S. Companies Buy Back Stock Instead Of Investing...
From the page: For months, companies have been sitting on the sidelines with record piles of cash, too nervous to spend. Now they're starting to deploy some of that money - not to hire workers or build factories, but to prop up their share prices.
This Story

Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year, according to Birinyi Associates, a stock market research firm. But the rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce economic growth.
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Goldman Sachs and the Economy - NYTimes.com
Rated 05:55am • 1 review • economics • nytimes.com

From the page: "Correlations in economic data that suggest higher credit helps cause higher growth are not worth much " if they fail to take into account future losses on bad credit. If G.D.P. were adjusted with provisions for future losses, G.D.P. growth would be lower during periods where credit grows very fast."
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Senator sees hope for Obama-led tax code reform| Reuters
Rated 05:35am • 1 review • politics • reuters.com

From the page: "Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, the author with Republican Judd Gregg of the only bipartisan plan to overhaul the tax code, said he saw a sliver of light this week when Obama said he wanted to find ways to lower the corporate tax rate - a cornerstone of their plan.

"The fact that the president has put it on the table so early I think is a huge deal," Wyden told a packed room of tax lawyers, experts and aides to lawmakers on Capitol Hill to discuss the Wyden-Gregg plan."
BBC News - UN condemned over 'appalling' Haiti...
Rated 05:27am • 1 review • politics • bbc.co.uk

From the page: "UN condemned over 'appalling' Haiti earthquake camps
A girl stands next to tents destroyed by heavy rains in Port-au-Prince on 25 September The report says camps for displaced Haitians are squalid and close to anarchy

A US charity has issued a damning criticism of efforts by the UN to help those made homeless by the devastating quake in Haiti almost 10 months ago.

The group, Refugees International, says the UN bodies in charge of camps for displaced Haitians are inexperienced, dysfunctional and lack translators"
Poor healthcare may shorten American lives: study -...
Rated 05:25am • 1 review • politics • yahoo.com

From the page: "Americans die sooner than citizens of a dozen other developed nations and the usual suspects -- obesity, traffic accidents and a high murder rate -- are not to blame, researchers reported on Thursday.

Instead, poor healthcare may be to blame, the team at Columbia University in New York reported."
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Ted Hughes Poem Details Sylvia Plaths Suicide : NPR
Rated 05:15am • 1 review • poetry • npr.org

A previously unseen poem by Ted Hughes that details the painful moments surrounding the suicide of his wife Sylvia Plath is being published by The New Statesman on Thursday, the magazine said.

Hughes, an English poet laureate, and Plath, his American wife, are considered among the 20th century's greatest poets. Their doomed marriage inspired some of their best work and has been the focus of endless fascination.
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Measuring global poverty: Whose problem now? | The Economist
Rated 05:11am • 1 review • shihtzuman • economics • economist.com

'The thesis was true in 1990: then, over 90% of the worldâ€s poor lived in the worldâ€s poorest places. But it looks out of date now. Andy Sumner of Britainâ€s Institute of Development Studies* reckons that almost three-quarters of the 1.3 billion-odd people existing below the $1.25 a day poverty line now live in middle-income countries. Only a quarter live in the poorest states (mostly in Africa). '

2010-10-06T06:38:00.000-07:00

Daschle Admits -- Then Denies -- That White House Agreed...
Rated 05:31am • 0 reviews • government • talkingpointsmemo.com
They wanted to keep those stakeholders in the room and [the public option] was the price some thought they had to pay."
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Oil and Gas Contributions Still Rising in 2010, Repub...
Rated Oct 05 • 1 review • politics • opensecrets.org
From the page: "This spring and summer, hundreds of millions of gallons of oil seeped into the Gulf of Mexico.

Simultaneously, debate raged in Congress about offshore drilling, energy independence, "cap-and-trade" legislation and a shift away from fossil-fuel energy sources.

Nevertheless, congressional candidates and federal political committees nationwide have raked in more than $17 million from the oil and gas industry so far during the 2010 election cycle -- a number on pace to easily exceed that of the most recent midterm election four years ago."
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MoveOn Asks DoJ To Launch Criminal Investigation Of...
Rated Oct 05 • 1 review • crime • huffingtonpost.com
The Democratic Party's infrastructure responded with noticeable alarm on Tuesday to a report that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may be funding its political efforts with foreign donations.
The story, broken by the liberal blog Think Progress, contained all the elements of a compelling election story -- a pro-business lobby, operating largely in the dark, supporting conservative, free-trade candidates with money that may be culled from international corporations. Somewhat lost in the discussion (though quite evident in the Think Progress report) was the possibility that the Chamber's actions pushed the legal limits for acceptable electioneering.
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Warren Buffett Calls For Tax Cuts -- For Almost Everyone...
Rated Oct 05 • 1 review • economics • huffingtonpost.com
From the page: "Warren Buffett proposed a further tax cut for the middle class, upper middle class and lower middle class -- essentially, everyone except the wealthy -- in an interview Tuesday with CNNMoney's Poppy Harlow, at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, DC (Check out more clips atFortune)."
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Poll: Majority Of Voters More Likely To Back Candidates...
Rated Oct 05 • 0 reviews • liberal politics • huffingtonpost.com
Fifty-four percent of voters say they would be more likely to back a candidate who supported health care reform, according to the poll. That number includes 51 percent of independents and 79 percent of Democratic voters. Fifty-nine percent of Republican voters, however, say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported the legislation.
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Pelosi Calls For Investigation Of Foreclosure Fraud
Rated Oct 05 • 1 review • politics • huffingtonpost.com
From the page: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the other California Democrats are calling for aninvestigation into the foreclosure fraud scandal that has forced the nation's biggest banks to halt foreclosures in 23 states."
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BBC News - Hardtalk - Howard Dean predicts Democrat victory
Rated Oct 05 • 1 review • politics • bbc.co.uk
From the page: "n a month's time, Americans will go to the polls in the midterm elections and if current polling is correct the Republicans should win control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate. If they do it would slam the brakes on President Obama's legislative agenda.

Howard Dean is a former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is now helping the party's fundraising effort for the midterms. He believes the polls are wrong and that the Democrats will triumph. "
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Many Tea Partiers part of religious right| Reuters
Rated Oct 05 • 1 review • politics • reuters.com
From the page: "Many supporters of the conservative Tea Party movement that has shaken up politics share the same views as the Christian right on social issues like abortion and the role of religion in public life, according to a poll released on Tuesday."
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More Stumbled Upon News Briefs

2010-10-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2010/10/05/lind...
Rated 08:49am • 0 reviews • politics • salon.com
From the page: ""In a plutonomy there is no such animal as 'the U.S. consumer' or 'the UK consumer,' or indeed the 'Russian consumer.' There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the 'no-rich,' the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie." The Citigroup analysts speculated that a plutonomic world economy could be driven by the spending of the worlds rich minority, whose ranks are "swelling from globalized enclaves in the emerging world."

The data support their analysis. According to Moodys Analytics, the top 5 percent of American earners are responsible for 35 percent of consumer spending, while the bottom 80 percent engage in only 39.5 percent of consumer outlays."
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Big-name companies to help colleges train workers -...
Rated 07:53am • 1 review • politics • yahoo.com
From the page: "Tuesday's community college summit is considered a consolation prize for community colleges, which had been slated to receive $10 billion in federal money for job training, building projects and initiatives to graduate more students.

But by the time an overhaul of the federal student loan program had made its way through Congress, all that remained for community colleges was $2 billion over four years for job training.

Obama has set a goal of 5 million more community college graduates and certificate-holders by 2020, part of broader push for the U.S. to again lead the world in number of college graduates."
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His Struggle: Glenn Beck's Hitler fetish | The Economist
Rated 07:47am • 1 review • politics • economist.com
From the page: "Mr Beck is trying to tilt the balance of anti-extremist critiques on the left and right, which normally accuse leftists of communism and rightists of fascism, by associating fascism as well as communism with the left. It then becomes impossible to accuse right-wingers of extremism, since all extremists must by definition be leftists. "
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Red toxic sludge spill sparks Hungary emergency| Reuters
Rated 07:28am • 1 review • environment • reuters.com
From the page: "waste generated during bauxite refining, poured through Kolontar and two other villages on Monday after bursting out of a containment reservoir at the nearby Ajkai Timfoldgyar Zrt plant, owned by MAL Zrt.

On Tuesday the Natural Disaster Unit (NDU) said four more villages were affected and the death toll had risen to four. Six people were known to be missing.

Many others were suffering from burns and eye irritation caused by the lead and other highly corrosive elements"
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Palin adviser worked for foreign governments| Reuters
Rated 07:26am • 1 review • politics • reuters.com
From the page: "The firm is a Washington consulting firm founded and led by Randy Scheunemann, a lobbyist who served as a senior foreign policy adviser to John McCain in his 2008 U.S. presidential bid and to Palin when she became McCain's Republican running mate.

Controversy over campaign advisers who work as lobbyists for foreign or domestic interests can often blight national political campaigns. At least five of McCain's aides quit his presidential campaign because of their lobbying activities."
8 views
Joseph A. Palermo: Why Liberals Dont Stand a Chance in...
Rated 06:59am • 1 review • politics • huffingtonpost.com
''CNN has a lot more Republicans in its stable of commentators than Democrats, and its "go-to" Dems are people like James Carville and Donna Brazile, hardly fire-breathing progressives. But there's nothing going on at MSNBC that can even compare to Fox. Fox's entire 24-hours is dedicated, day-in and day-out, to cheerleading for greater corporate power. (And when I use the word "cheerleader" I really mean it: just look at Megyn Kelly.)''
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Op-Ed Columnist - Fear and Favor - NYTimes.com
Rated 06:26am • 1 review • politics • nytimes.com
''As Politico recently pointed out, every major contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination who isn't currently holding office and isn't named Mitt Romney is now a paid contributor to Fox News. ''
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Op-Ed Columnist - That's Where the Money Is - NYTimes.com
Rated 06:17am • 1 review • politics • nytimes.com
''The U.S. is in terrible shape right now because far too much influence has been ceded to the financial and corporate elites who have used that influence to game the system and reap rewards that are almost unimaginable. Ordinary working Americans have been left far behind, gasping and on their knees. ''
Health insurers pour money into GOP campaigns, hoping to...
Rated 06:04am • 1 review • jbet777 • politics • latimes.com

Best Stumbled Upon News Briefs

2010-10-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

Health insurers pour money into GOP campaigns, hoping to...
Rated 06:04am • 1 review • jbet777 • politics • latimes.com
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Barbour, Cornyn, Cantor Lower Expectations For GOP Congress
Rated 06:04am • 0 reviews • huffingtonpost.com
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For-pay fire department lets mans house burn -...
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • politics • salon.com
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Officials fight unlimited campaign spending - Campaign...
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • politics • salon.com
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ODonnell said China plotting to take over US - Yahoo! News
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • politics • yahoo.com
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Google lines up Internet TV programming partners -...
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • internet • yahoo.com
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A Voter Wishes For Someone Who Cared About The Working...
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • politics • npr.org
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John Legend: Wake Up! We Know How to Fix Our Schools
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • education • huffingtonpost.com
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TH - Opinion Article
Rated Oct 04 • 0 reviews • politics • thonline.com
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Corporate Profits Near-Historic In Second Quarter,...
Rated Oct 04 • 1 review • politics • huffingtonpost.com

More Good News: We're Not Insane!

2010-09-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin, Tea Party are not viewed favorably by most Americans, latest poll finds

BY Sean Alfano
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, September 16th 2010, 9:40 AM

Sarah Palin may have a magic touch with candidates she endorses, but nearly half of American voters aren't impressed by the former Republican vice presidential candidate.

The Tea Party isn't a hit with voters, either, a new poll finds.

Just 21% of those asked have a favorable view of Palin, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll, which also found that 19% support the Tea Party.

Despite drawing large, raucous crowds wherever she speaks, the number of voters who view Palin unfavorably rose six points since August to 46%.

Meanwhile, 33% say they are undecided on Palin or don't know enough about her positions.
Still, Palin's endorsements seem to matter.

So far this primary season, Palin has backed 43 candidates and 25 of them have won, 11 have lost, with the rest not having had a primary race.

Most recently, she helped lift Republicans Christine O'Donnell and Kelly Ayotte to Senate primary wins in Delaware and New Hampshire, respectively.

However, two in three voters say Palin is just looking for attention with her endorsements, according to the poll.

The former Alaska governor has not said whether she will run for president in 2012. However, a poll from last month shows 59% of the country thinks she would be an ineffective commander-in-chief.

As for the Tea Party, 63% do not support it, though voters who are familiar with the party are more divided.
The poll finds 29% have an unfavorable view, opposed to 23% who see the party in a favorable light.
Still, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a champion of the Tea Party, thinks the budding political movement can be a force in Washington.

"The Tea Party represents a broad cross-section of the American people," DeMint told NBC's "Today."
"You can't change Washington unless you change people who are here," DeMint said. "People are ready to throw out the bums."
salfano@nydailynews.com

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/09/16/2010-09-16_sarah_palin_tea_party_are_not_viewed_favorably_by_most_americans_latest_poll_fin.html#ixzz0zkN8uVsS

Nearly Half of You Loves the Rich Enough...

2010-09-16T18:07:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I haven't been blogging for awhile but it doesn't mean I haven't been enjoying the ride.

Obama seems poised to finally say all those things we wanted him to say at the very beginning of his presidency, finally remembering that he wasn't elected to play nice with the Good Old Boy's Club (now with spunky hostesses!) but to protect the interests of his base, the middle-class.

The Republicans have found more callous and twisted than them and are a bit surprise. And annoyed.

Yahoo has erected itself as the Fox News of the internet, doctoring main stories distribution and choosing elements of coverage that only reflect Tea party/GOP allegiance. The comments section itself is nothing more but a gathering of strident bullies, a motley crew of GOP zombies repeating that they want nothing more than to let the Tea Party loose on the world and let the theocracy that the Saintly Anointed Founding Fathers OBVIOUSLY wanted for this country triumph at long last! This victory will usher a new dawn of God fearing prosperity, where women are women and paid less, men are tools and paid less and children that have the money get educated and the rest are paid less or sent to war! Imagine! They'll get a gun! EACH! For free!… la-la-la la-la-la!!

Damn! Where's Poland when you need it?!

Well, yes, all that would be tempting and enticingly suicidal but I prefer my Democracy lunatic-free and anti-totalitarian. I know, old habits die hard… So I still go back to Yahoo to get my GOP sponsored news page and I sill read the AP news wire everyday. And everyday I wish I could laugh it all off as an elaborate punk hoax by George Orwell but, no, doublespeak is the new official language of the United States. For exemple:

AP-GfK Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Tax Hikes for Rich.

Pasted from <http://www.fair.org/index.php>

Isn't that pretty? Nearly half! Well that couldn't mean that (counting on my fingers)... let's say, more than half?... So.. the majority? By Jove, my man, the majority are for tax hikes for the Rich (with a capital R)!

I would have given a bloody Pulitzer to any decent journalist that would have wrote a simple, reality based headline: Majority of Americans are for the Repeal of Bush tax cut for the Wealthy.

Less sexy to the lunatic fringe, I guess…

How AP Can Make a Poll Say Whatever It Wants It To
Posted by Julie Hollar on 09/16/10 at 11:36 am

An AP piece published across the Web today (9/16/10) carries this headline: AP-GfK Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Tax Hikes for Rich.
Well, that's one way of looking at it--just like you could report the results of the 1988 election by saying that Michael Dukakis got "nearly half" of the popular vote. The more logical way of putting it would be that more than half support letting tax cuts expire for the rich: 54 percent to 44 percent. But framing it instead around the minority position lets them focus on how Democrats might worry about "provoking the 44 percent who say the reductions should include the wealthy," as opposed to worrying about provoking the majority who don't feel that way.
And that majority is particularly strong among Democratic voters (three quarters), who are presumably the ones Democratic lawmakers need to be most worried about, particularly given the sharp drop in enthusiasm among those voters.

Pasted from <http://www.fair.org/index.php>

Arianna Discovers Wal-Mart....

2010-04-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well, let's say she discovered what we've meant for years about the Wal-Martization of America.

She explains it well, in an articulate, crystal-clear smart piece that suggest we turn our boat around.

That would be a fantastic idea, if it wasn't a tad too late.

Let's be frank: the 'too big to fail' are also too big to fight. Obama has 671 billion dollars worth of guns pointing at his head to continue the mess we are in in Afghanistan and Iraq, Wall Street is one of the biggest contributor to the Democrat's party purse and despite the Republicans being outrageously Grand-Guignolesque in their pursuit of idiocy, bad taste and openly racist agenda, the Dems can barely make a dent in public opinion that's positive and lasting.

The seeds where sowed with Reagan, his deregulation process and hallowing out of Federal agencies. It consequences where obvious and they were not in anyone's favor but a handful of corporate casinos and their gambling-addicted brokers.

This process involved creating two very distinct classes, the have and the have-not, so that the working pool stays affordable and 'flexible' and the United States copies the 'amazing successes' of 'emerging' giants like China and India.

With the manufacturing jobs go the manufacturing unions. With affordable and equitable education goes an informed and active middle-class. With a swift and organized recognition and integration of immigrants go a new citizenry access to the American Dream.

Instead, religiosity, self-aggrandizement and military might popularized by a fabricated network of right-wing superstars, constantly present in the 'News', are pushed down our collective throat. The Federal government and all those 'brown wetbacks' are presented as scapegoats explaining the decline of the country and the economical hardships felt by what's left of the middle class. And finally, the service sector, principally non-unionized from McDonald to Wal-Mart, keeps wages low and upwardly mobility expectations lower. Don't forget that Wall Street, more often than not, owned the market place, your workplace.

I have seen the future and it's in Dubai: no taxes, no minimum wage, no minimum working hours, second-class citizenship accorded only to those who can afford real estate, immigration of individual on (paid) sponsorship only and with bank accounts in the sponsors' names that can be seized at any infraction. No family reconstitution. And God help you if you rear-end a Saudi limo or, Heaven's forbid, if he rear-ends you. On both cases, you're screwed. Well, guess where's Halliburton moving...

Arianna is right but how many Democrats are thinking long term solution and long term fight. How many thought 'We voted Obama, he'll clean that mess up.' and are now disillusioned because it is a process that is taking much longer than ONE term. How many will vote with spite on the next election and bring back the Republicans in power so they can finish what they started.

Hope we can reverse the trend created after 24 total years of Republican distortion and extortion. Hope it's not too late. So I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I am.

African kimono by Serge Mouangue

2010-04-26T14:49:00.000-07:00

From DesignBoom:

African born, Tokyo based designer Serge Mouangue combined African fabrics with the design
of traditional Japanese kimonos since 2008 to create his 'Wafrica' series. Together with Kururi, a Tokyo based kimono maker he produced the traditional Japanese attire in 18 African limited edition prints. Mouangue developed the range to celebrate the diversity of the two cultures.

Being Young, Black, Talented and in a TV show (Wait! You're Not!)

2010-04-26T02:56:00.000-07:00

It's all about being correct.
Not politically correct but just being right.
I was watching an old episode of Bones the other day and was struck by a familiar pattern of TV characterization:
The uppity Black character that is supposedly brilliant needs to be corrected by e-v-e-r-y other characters about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in e-v-e-r-y single scene she's in.

Think Camille in Bones, Omar Epps in House, or any show with a Black BFF that is just there to sassily say anything too outrageous for the good white girl's lips(Yes, Sookie, I do mean you!).

Those corrections are almost systematic and they serve to prove that the other characters' loyalty is with the real boss of the show and that the Black character is isolated in her thinking. And wrong. Very, very wrong. Most of the time.

Of course, those Black characters are not an integral part of the group, they serve as foil. The group get coherence and unity by , not hating per say, of course, let's stay hypocritical, but by being deeply annoyed by this Black presence.

The authority they have is either short lived ( as they never belonged there anyway) or illusionary (as all the other characters will try their damndest to do the complete opposite of what have been ask of them by their Black boss). They're monomaniacal to the point of being ridiculous ('I want my son!' have been uttered one too many times by Michael in Lost to be taken seriously… Usually excellent Harold Perrineau was strained to the point of idiocy since he had to be the traitor/murderer/suicidal loser for all.), they are also confused and overly racist- when race as to be mentioned for a reason or another.

If they are respected and have any weight or agency, then they are uncompetitive in other ways (overweight, unattractive, stupid, dull, all of the above). If they fall in love, it is with 'one of their own'- another Black character as ineffective and dull as them- or with a psychopath/loser/incompetent hybrid of some other race or the love is a lost cause. Rose and Bernard from Lost are an exception, I think. Nikki and D.L., Nikki and her son Miccah or Simone and Isaac, all of Heroes, are more the norm.

A research demonstrated that that antagonism I perceived in TV shows is not all in my head, as the proponent of the 'No, no, racism is dead and you're only suffering from massive collective delusions because Black people are crazy that way but I'm not racist' theory would like us to believe.

TV CLIPS Reveal Racist Body Language
A new study reveals white characters display far more negative body language toward their black peers

Joseph Hall , Health Reporter

'Racist body language comes through loud and clear on television, even when the sound is off, a new study shows.
Through a set of ingeniously concocted experiments, reported Friday in the journal Science, researchers show that white characters in television series display far more negative body language toward their black peers than to members of their own race.
The bias conveyed by these body clues is not only recognized subconsciously by people who watch the shows, but significantly influences their feelings about the black characters.
"Sadly, we observed that non-verbal race bias is a typical pattern on scripted television shows," lead study author Max Weisbuch said in a release on the paper.
"White characters are treated better across the board and this has an impact on viewers," said Weisbuch, a post-doctoral psychologist at Massachusetts's Tufts University...'

That exactly what I mean: there's no friendliness or real acceptance of the Black characters. Their background history (they often have none-no visible, active friends, family or loved one, no complexeties), their quirks, their contribution (if the writers can think of any) are all superfluous and the writers don't even try to hide it anymore. Think Smallville.

And funnily enough, when they are cordial and well-rounded, they are often swiftly replace with a less 'agreeable' character or they are pushed into doing seemingly irremediable stupid errors to the point of losing all credibility and respectability. 'We don't want to seem to friendly', seems to be the word around TV studios.

I don't owned a TV anymore, I gave my last away 5 or 6 years ago. The lack of diversity in plot, characterization and casting made me sick one day and that was that. Maybe I'm not alone. Surely, I'm not alone. I don't think I am the only one thinking 'Oh! Look! Another Hispanic gang member!' (And usually, it's always the same actors doing the same roles too…), 'Well look at that! Another Asian computer nerd!' 'Aaaaanh shuck! A Native American in total symbiosis with nature and drinking peyote.' 'Well, well, well… If it's not the crazy, angry, crackhead Black women with one too many kids…' and feeling sick to my stomach with this absurdity…

It is not only a question of Black and White but one of life versus bad script. Stringing along a long list of idiotic cliché does not make good writing of any kind. Sometimes, I rather they do not try at all rather than ruin a show with good intentions and crass ignorance. Some of these writers have never seen a Black, Asian or Hispanic person in the flesh except on aTV screens and it shows.

So I watch Supernatural and cringe when they brought in 2 completely closed-off Black British actors once. But I applaud them with the intervention of Kali - beautifully made, guys. I'll miss Gabriel. Bad Luci!
I have to remember that Bones is on FOX network and Fox always had their issues (In 2001, they were the one with the least Black actors on their shows among all the networks according to a SAG study.)
I watch Law & Order - the original- because the real McCoy is there but also that precious, fantastic underused actress S. Epatha Merkerson as Detective Van Buren and she is leaving the show next year. Also, Alana de la Garza is playing gracefully and smartly against type.

And I sigh to think that the original Mr. X was a Black man in the X-Files but Mulder and Scully were the best. Ever.
Forget I'll Fly Away, Any Day Now, Star Trek Voyager or DS9 or even Mannix, for Pete's sake. They're gone and forgotten with nothing of value to replace them.

I watch shows that don't think I'm an idiot.

And there's not too many of those right now. So, I'll stick to movies, books and the news.
Oh, wait, the News writers definitively think we're all idiots...

Pasted from <http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/science/article/740486--study-finds-racist-body-language-on-tv>

For the rest of the article on the study on body language, read here:

In the first experiment, researchers used clips from 11 television programs – including Bones, Grey's Anatomy, CSI and Scrubs – and digitally removed one of the characters participating in the scenes.
They then muted any onscreen conversations and recruited college students who had never seen the episodes to watch.
"We took out the target character, who was either black or white, and the (remaining) character was always white," senior study author Nalini Ambady said in an interview with the Star.
"Then we just showed people and said `how much does this person like the person they're interacting with?'" said Ambady, a Tufts social psychologist.
The viewers, it was found, consistently judged the body language expressed by the visible white characters as more negative whenever the unseen character in the scene was black.
Ambady stresses that the black characters in the scenes selected were not criminals or impoverished, as often seen on television.
Instead, the scenes came from enlightened series that portray blacks as social and intellectual peers.
"Take a medical drama for example, both the black and the white characters were doctors," Ambady said. Yet while the negative body language is certainly not scripted, she was not sure if it reflects innate reactions by the white actors, is directorial in origin, or a combination of both.
"There's no bias in what they're saying, the bias seems to be in the way they are conveying, and we have no idea where that's coming from," she says.
Ambady says positive body language like smiling, nodding and leaning forward while talking is far less common when white characters engage with black co-stars.
"The black characters receive significantly less positive non-verbal behaviour. They're liked less non-verbally than white characters."
In a separate test, Ambady's team looked at how the onscreen biases might affect regular viewers.
This involved a new group of students chosen for being frequent watchers of the programs in question.
These students were given a set of standard psychological tests that measure subconscious biases.
Researchers found that this subconscious bias grew in direct proportion to the number of episodes each student had seen.
Thus, Ambady says, the subtle body-language bias displayed on television can create "insidious" repercussions in subconscious racial feelings among millions of viewers.
"Of course, when someone says something to you that's biased, you can correct for it, you can say `that guy's a jerk,'" she says.
"But when something is conveyed indirectly, where you're not conscious of it, then it's more difficult for you to control it."
In a journal commentary on the study, Yale University psychologist John Dovidio said the paper's use of white college students as viewers showed just how potent the non-verbal cues were in creating bias.
"Thus, non-verbal messages influence relatively sophisticated participants who are especially motivated to appear unbiased," he says.

Also, read this article from Entertainment Weekly magazine website.

Javier Marin: Sculptures of a Doomed, Graceful Dream

2010-04-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

I love their tortured shapes, the fake history that they hint at ( and the real ones that they questioned.)
His pieces remind me of one of my favourite sculptor, the African Ousmane Sow.

He will take part of the Vancouver Biennial taking place now 'till May 20th.

See more on his website.

More Headlines...on the Crazy Republicans of the Day side

2010-04-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

Tea party and the Republicans try to unite to create an anti-government militia?

Armed right-wing activists comparing themselves to Warsaw ghetto Jews and calling for 'thousand little Wacos'?

Michele Bachmann 'Prayercast' against Health Reform?

Can they get anymore bizarre than that?

Yes, they can!
Why not recruit your employees to become your 'grassroots' activists?

From Think Progress:

EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Coordinating Wall Street’s Stealth Lobbying Campaign To Kill Reform

On Thursday, President Obama announced his commitment to pass sweeping legislation to reform Wall Street and to create a new regulatory structure meant to avert another economic crisis. However, the financial industry is fighting back, hoping to obstruct legislation, water down the bill, and possibly kill effective reform.

The legislative battle is multifaceted. Frank Luntz, a consultant who is paid by financial services firms, wrote a messaging memo now used by opponents of reform to confuse the public and smear the legislation. As Talking Points Memo revealed earlier this week, a K Street PR firm known as the DCI Group — with ties to Wall Street — is working with a front group to run ads against reform. And recently, Republicans have met with top bankers and representatives from the banking industry to trade campaign dollars for a promise to fight reform.

However, as with the health reform debate, there is a large, more subterranean effort from industry to kill reform. As the Politico Playbook reported yesterday morning, “financial-services giants are going grassroots” to lobby against reform. ThinkProgress has learned that the banks and financial conglomerates are using the same stealth lobbying operation the health insurance industry employed last year to mobilize opposition. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Master Card, and other industry players are working through “Democracy Data & Communications” (DDC) — a firm that specializes in helping corporations activate their employees and customers into grassroots advocates — to join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s effort to kill reform. The domain list of the DDC server, obtained by ThinkProgress, contains various Wall Street websites, including one seemingly named after JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, which all transfer visitors to the Chamber’s anti-reform campaign:

www.bankofamericavotes.com
www.dimonvotes.com
www.aftermarketvotes.org
www.mastercardvotes.com
USAA, the financial services corporation, also employs DDC for its grassroots lobbying and mass e-mailed its customers Friday morning to call lawmakers and oppose reform (view a copy here). Last year, DDC helped JP Morgan Chase coordinate a stealth campaign to kill efforts to tax banker bonuses.

The banks are conducting a two-faced campaign to kill reform. In public, the banks pledge to fully support reform. However, behind closed doors, the banks — many of which were bailed out with TARP money and have not paid back taxpayers — are funding the Chamber’s attack ads and are connecting their network to the Chamber’s grassroots lobbying campaign.

The Chamber’s agenda on Wall Street reform is clear. On Wednesday, the Chamber’s political director Bill Miller met with Wall Street executives, Karl Rove, and other Republican operatives. The next day, Miller fired off an e-mail directing Chamber members to fight reform, declaring that the Chamber “fundamentally” disagrees with President Obama’s approach and that the legislation cannot be improved. Miller characterized reform as a “federal takeover of our financial industry” that “won’t do the one thing America needs most: create jobs.” Of course, the Chamber was one of the main lobbying fronts used by Wall Street to deregulate the financial markets under President Bush — and then demanded bailouts as the market crashed.
Indeed, despite having helped to cause the financial crisis, the Chamber has been running at least $3 million dollars worth of ads against reform, and is also paying high-priced consulting firms to lobby against reform on Capitol Hill.

We’ve seen this act before. Health insurance companies told the President, the media, and the public that they would fully support efforts to reform the healthcare system. However, starting in 2009, health insurance companies laundered up to $20 million dollars through the Chamber to run anti-health reform ads, used firms like DDC to scare customers and send their employees to anti-health reform town halls and rallies, and worked closely with front groups to viciously smear reform legislation.

The Hobbit House is for Sale in Mexico...

2010-04-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Its designer, the Mexican architect Javier Senosiain calls it the Nautilus, I call it the Hobbit house.
I can just imagine Ian Holmes trotting along, preparing cordials with a couple of Russian hookers and Ian McKellen chuckling along (still dreaming of Derek Jacobi)...

Some Headlines You Should go Beyond.... and Some Answers for Tea Partiers

2010-04-25T17:12:00.000-07:00

I am happy that Huffington Post caught up with the right answer to give any tea partier who ask what do the government do with his tax money:

It gives almost 50% of it to the Army to make war and gives the rest to Wall Street just for the hell of it.
Give my regard to all the Bushes for me.

Or give it to them in another language:
Dept. of Defence Spending Budget : 663,700,000,000
Dept. of Small Business Spending Budget: 700,000,000
Dept. of Education Spending Budget: 46,700,000,000
Dept. of Social Securities Spending Budget:11,600,000,000

And that doesn't take into account the Stimulus bill - or Recovery Act - that I like to call the New Deal Extra Light and that tries, timidly, to correct the wrongs done over the years in our messed-up-priorities case of a democracy.

But AlterNet have some startling headlines and keen analysis that always makes me want to dig deeper.

Here's some that should warrant your attention:

* Moyers: Six Banks Control 60% of Gross National Product -- Is the U.S. at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy?

Moyers and economists James Kwak and Simon Johnson wonder whether the financial powers are more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever.

* The Financial Terrorists Who Destroyed Our Economy Will Pay Zero in Taxes -- and Get $33 Billion in Refunds

You and I are working our asses off, paying 30% of our limited income in taxes. Not the banks that triggered the financial crisis.

* An American Phenomenon: The Widespread Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers

The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world, medicating children at a younger and younger age.

* Facing the Threat from the Far Right, Noam Chomsky Says He 'Has Never Seen Anything Like This'

"The mood of the country is frightening. The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way."

* Five Ways the Wall St. Reform Bill Needs to Be Fixed

The Wall Street reform bill in Congress won't live up to President Obama's goals -- unless we can push them to change it.

Have fun digging!

It Was Never About Capitalism: It Was Always All About Money...

2010-04-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

There is a difference.

Capitalism, socialism, they're only systems, only a way to acquire things and reach a goal.

They are complex arrangement of ideas, people and environments that give absolutely no guarantee of success.

The only way people can win all the time - in any system - is by cheating.

Wall Street decided to give themselves a boom and bust version of capitalism ideology that will let them cheat and win every single time.

After the 1929 stock market crash, the American government put in place modern market regulations to prevent any more depressions lead by panicked investors and banks.

The SEC was created and Kennedy Sr was its first chairman.

And it worked: for 58 years, there was not one market crash since Roosevelt's intervention.

But we all know how Republicans could not leave all this good work alone.

Reagan came in and lifted most regulations (Hand in hand with Margaret Thatcher who was doing the same thing oversea by stopping exchange control and turning a blind eye on the activities of the London Stock Exchange) and crippled federal agencies so that controlled capitalism could be easily replace by uncontrolled greed.

The result was the Savings and Loans scandal and the very first post-1930s bailout of private financial institutions - under Daddy Bush himself - for almost 125 billion dollars worth of bad loans, deposit brokers commissions and real estate investment failures.

That scandal put the government in a deficit state that would take 20 years to correct - before another Bush came around to play with public funds.

Do you see a trend here yet?

If not, you should.

One way or the other, all your tax dollars will go to Wall Street.

There has been a big syphoning of public money toward bailing out irresponsible, gambling addicts.

Wall Street is very unhappy right now because Obama would like to see the moolah party end in our generation. Addicts being addicts, they just can't stop cold turkey without help, mental and otherwise.

Seeing the Forest have again put their hands on a gem: a regulator is crying for help and saying that their role is now to be complacent decoys, supporters of fraud and laissez-faire.

Why the Left is Losing the new Civil War...And How Can we Win?

2010-04-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know: it sounds very apocalyptic and desperate but we are in a feverish, high strung , desperate time.
It is clear we're in the centre of a vast political turmoil. The right have declared war on the New Deal Legacy. They just want to scrap at everything FDR left. The left seem undecided about what to do: go on with the popular kids or fight them with all their meagre strength.

The most successful right wing contender was Ronald Reagan: by demonizing African American as THE Welfare Queens and Kings and not as they always been the traditional cheap labour of the Nation on which freedom all have been built, he succeeded in re-establishing the moral principles of the right as viable and sound.

Reagan articulated a rage so potent in some that they did not understand that by defeating those 'spongers' they were actually voting against their own self-interest.

All that supposedly saved money did not go to 'taxpayers' but to subsidizing already profit-full companies and their owner so they could lay off as much workers as possible and send those jobs elsewhere.
Moreover, the biggest 'spongers of them all were not - and still are not - individuals but corporations, war profiteers and industrial farms. Believe me: a single mother of 3 have nothing on Halliburton and the Agribusiness. And by Agribusiness, I'm not talking good ol' farmers here but big industrial complexes that pollutes most of our nation waterways without a second thought.

War spending is 50% of the Federal budget. The welfare Kings and Queens? 5%. Veterans Affairs? 3% Education? 3%
Up to now, since Reagan, deregulation is the key to happiness of a few , a very small percentage of the population. And they in turn dictate what Joseph Lyles has call the 'drumbeat', the catchphrases, the ideological memos, the celebrity (think Palin) distraction du jour. It has been the same 'beat' since Reagan and it won't change. So why can't we adapt a strategy?

I think the reason why the Left will not win this war of ideas is because, unconsciously, we follow the sound of the same drum.

Just go on Huffington any day. Every time there's a Palin pictures, it will generates ten of thousands of comments while any domestic policies coverage will attract 50 or a hundred on a good day. It's fun. We think we're being clever while we're just being distracted...

Unfortunately, I'm afraid the reason why we will lose in November is because we will probably be too busy to post an anti-Palin joke/comment to go vote. The Tea Party bangers will be at the booth while we will be blogging and photoshopping our way to own demise.

So how do we win?

In my humble opinion, Ali was right: 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee'

It means float on the internet, get information, disseminate facts, create an effective left hub (bigger and a bit less glam than HuffPo) where all the small, isolated blogger could have a home and exchange;
and sting like a bee at every right wing commando actions: deflate Rush, give Beck a Kleenex and some chill pill, unmask the Tea Party for the GOP armed robots they are and get our talking point across on domestic policies in major corporate media in an effective manner. Don't we have a think thank on this yet?

Anyway enough doom and gloom.:

An oldie but goodie from Joseph Lyles.

Personally, I don't think 'cheap labor conservatist' has enough bite to it but he's on the right track.
What about 'corporate welfare conservatism' or 'Halliburton conservatism' or 'big Mafia conservatism' or 'Goodfellas conservatism' or 'egotrip conservatism' or ' eat the poor conservatism' or 'WalMart conservatism'?.... I could go on...

From the Democratc Underground website.

DEFEAT THE RIGHT IN THREE MINUTES
by Joseph Lyles

Have you got three minutes. Because that's all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you'll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.

It's really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn't that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots" that I call "corporate feudalism". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.

But you have to do more than defeat the ideology. You have to defeat the "drum beat". You have to defeat the "propaganda machine", that brainwashes people with their slogans and catch-phrases. You've heard those slogans."Less government", "personal responsibility" and lots of flag waving. They are "shorthand" for an entire worldview, and the right has been pounding their slogans out into the public domain for getting on forty years.

So you need a really good slogan – a "counter-slogan" really, to "deprogram" the brainwashed. You need a "magic bullet" that quickly and efficiently destroys the effectiveness of their "drum beat". You need your own "drum beat" that sums up the right's position. Only your "drum beat" exposes the ugly reality of right-wing philosophy – the reality their slogans are meant to hide. Our slogan contains the governing concept that explains the entire right-wing agenda. That's why it works. You can see it in every policy, and virtually all of Republican rhetoric. And it's so easy to remember, and captures the essence of the Republican Right so well, we can pin it on them like a "scarlet letter".

Is there really a catch phrase – a "magic bullet" – that sums up the Republican Right in such a nice easy-to-grasp package. You better believe it, and it's downright elegant in its simplicity.

You want to know what that "magic bullet" is, don't you. Read on. You've still got two minutes.

Right-Wing Ideology in a Nutshell

When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just "dime-store economics" – intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don't really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don't. It all gets down to two simple words.

"Cheap labor". That's their whole philosophy in a nutshell – which gives you a short and pithy "catch phrase" that describes them perfectly. You've heard of "big-government liberals". Well they're "cheap-labor conservatives".

"Cheap-labor conservative" is a moniker they will never shake, and never live down. Because it's exactly what they are. You see, cheap-labor conservatives are defenders of corporate America – whose fortunes depend on labor. The larger the labor supply, the cheaper it is. The more desperately you need a job, the cheaper you'll work, and the more power those "corporate lords" have over you. If you are a wealthy elite – or a "wannabe" like most dittoheads – your wealth, power and privilege is enhanced by a labor pool, forced to work cheap.

Don't believe me. Well, let's apply this principle, and see how many right-wing positions become instantly understandable.

* Cheap-labor conservatives don't like social spending or our "safety net". Why. Because when you're unemployed and desperate, corporations can pay you whatever they feel like – which is inevitably next to nothing. You see, they want you "over a barrel" and in a position to "work cheap or starve".

* Cheap-labor conservatives don't like the minimum wage, or other improvements in wages and working conditions. Why. These reforms undo all of their efforts to keep you "over a barrel".

* Cheap-labor conservatives like "free trade", NAFTA, GATT, etc. Why. Because there is a huge supply of desperately poor people in the third world, who are "over a barrel", and will work cheap.

* Cheap-labor conservatives oppose a woman's right to choose. Why. Unwanted children are an economic burden that put poor women "over a barrel", forcing them to work cheap.

* Cheap-labor conservatives don't like unions. Why. Because when labor "sticks together", wages go up. That's why workers unionize. Seems workers don't like being "over a barrel".

* Cheap-labor conservatives constantly bray about "morality", "virtue", "respect for authority", "hard work" and other "values". Why. So they can blame your being "over a barrel" on your own "immorality", lack of "values" and "poor choices".

* Cheap-labor conservatives encourage racism, misogyny, homophobia and other forms of bigotry. Why? Bigotry among wage earners distracts them, and keeps them from recognizing their common interests as wage earners.

The Cheap-Labor Conservatives' "Dirty Secret": They Don't Really Like Prosperity

Maybe you don't believe that cheap-labor conservatives like unemployment, poverty and "cheap labor". Consider these facts.

Unemployment was 23 percent when FDR took office in 1933. It dropped to 2.5 percent by time the next Republican was in the White House in 1953. It climbed back to 6.5 percent by the end of the Eisenhower administration. It dropped to 3.5 percent by the time LBJ left office. It climbed over 5 percent shortly after Nixon took office, and stayed there for 27 years, until Clinton brought it down to 4.5 percent early in his second term.

That same period – especially from the late forties into the early seventies – was the "golden age" of the United States. We sent men to the moon. We built our Interstate Highway system. We ended segregation in the South and established Medicare. In those days, a single wage earner could support an entire family on his wages. I grew up then, and I will tell you that life was good – at least for the many Americans insulated from the tragedy in Vietnam, as I was.

These facts provide a nice background to evaluate cheap-labor conservative claims like "liberals are destroying America."In fact, cheap-labor conservatives have howled with outrage and indignation against New Deal liberalism from its inception in the 1930's all the way to the present. You can go to "Free Republic" or Hannity's forum right now, and find a cheap-labor conservative comparing New Deal Liberalism to "Stalinism".

* Cheap-labor conservatives opposed virtually all of the New Deal, including every improvement in wages and working conditions.

* Cheap-labor conservatives have a long and sorry history of opposing virtually every advancement in this country's development going right back to the American revolution.

* Cheap-labor conservatives have hated Social Security and Medicare since their inception.

* Many cheap-labor conservatives are hostile to public education. They think it should be privatized. But why are we surprised. Cheap-labor conservatives opposed universal public education in its early days. School vouchers are just a backdoor method to "resegregate" the public schools.

* Cheap-labor conservatives hate the progressive income tax like the devil hates holy water.

* Cheap-labor conservatives like budget deficits and a huge national debt for two reasons. A bankrupt government has a harder time doing any "social spending" – which cheap-labor conservatives oppose, and . . .

* Wealthy cheap-labor conservatives like say, George W. Bush, buy the bonds and then earn tax free interest on the money they lend the government. The deficit created by cheap-labor conservatives while they posture as being "fiscally conservative" – may count as the biggest con job in American history.

* "Free Trade", globalization, NAFTA and especially GATT are intended to create a world-wide "corporate playground" where national governments serve the interests of corporations – which means "cheap labor".

The ugly truth is that cheap-labor conservatives just don't like working people. They don't like "bottom up" prosperity, and the reason for it is very simple. lords have a harder time kicking them around. Once you understand this about the cheap-labor conservatives, the real motivation for their policies makes perfect sense. Remember, cheap-labor conservatives believe in social hierarchy and privilege, so the only prosperity they want is limited to them. They want to see absolutely nothing that benefits the guy – or more often the woman – who works for an hourly wage.

So there you have it, in one easy-to-remember phrase. See how easy it is to understand these cheap-labor conservatives. The more ignorant and destitute people there are – desperate for any job they can get – the cheaper the cheap-labor conservatives can get them to work.

Try it. Every time you respond to a cheap-labor conservative in letters to the editor, or an online discussion forum, look for the "cheap labor" angle. Trust me, you'll find it. I can even show you the "cheap labor" angle in things like the "war on drugs", and the absurd conservative opposition to alternative energy.

Next, make that moniker – cheap-labor conservatives – your "standard reference" to the other side. One of the last revisions I made to this article was to find every reference to "conservatives", "Republicans", "right-wingers", and "righties", and replace it with "cheap-labor conservatives". In fact, if you're a cheap-labor conservative reading this, you should be getting sick of that phrase right about now. Exxxxcellent.

If enough people will "get with the program", it won't be long before you can't look at an editorial page, listen to the radio, turn on the TV, or log onto your favorite message board without seeing the phrase "cheap labor conservatives" – and have plenty of examples to reinforce the message. By election day of 2004, every politically sentient American should understand exactly what a "cheap labor conservative" is, and what he stands for.

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Joseph Lyles: my new hero!

~ http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/beattherightinthree.h...

see also: Corporate Feudalism and the Culture War, by Joseph Lyles

~ http://www.newtopiamagazine.net/content/issue13/feature...

The Only Victims You Can Listen To: The Tea Party Bangers

2010-04-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

They rock.
They roll.
They scream bloody murders like 3 years old.
They cry on demand and pout.
They threaten the nation of armed revolt and secession.

They are insanely misinformed.
They seem grassroots enough to look genuine but the bermuda clad old white xenophobic guard
- who claim to have direct access to the Founding Fathers' brains, hearts and every other vital organs -
have this air of deja vu, of old news and fake concerns and cringe-inducing ideological contradictions.

In other words: where have we all seen this before?

Bla, bla, bla - small government - with huge WAR facilitating created deficit and corporation subsidizing.
Bla, bla, bla - bootstraps for everyone: if you can't have kids, stay with your alcoholic husband and get to church for moral support like everybody else just die already. Where does it say anything about helping anyone in the Constitution?
Bla, bla, bla - Nafta, Free Trade, The Share Holders Pleasure Principles - no need for manufacturing jobs here, they're for losers and Unionists. If the corporation gets richer then the whole country gets richer! Don't you get it? Your share of GDP just gets bigger! Don't you feel the love?
Bla, bla, bla - no taxes but more services! (This one makes my brain explodes. I just can't deal...)
Bla, bla, bla - no immigration reform or else we will have to pay them a decent wage and then where will we be?
Bla, bla, bla - no bank bailout (well, duh! Say thanks to Dubya and Paulson for that one) but no government regulations, meddling or, gasp!, takeover!
Bla, bla, bla - No! To everything! Because I say so!
Bla, bla, bla - no liberal media - but WE own them wouah! ha ha ha! Own the idiot box, you own the idiots! Viva la vida Fox!
Bla, bla, bla - no activist judge - except our own!
Bla, bla, bla - no unemployment benefit - the more desperate you are, the less you cost. And there's always WalMart.
Bla, bla, bla - no government schools - the slaves didn't know how to read and they made a decent livin'! Stop bitchin' all the time and get to work!
Bla, bla, bla - confederacy - And you thought we'd lost?! Suckers!
Bla, bla, bla - God is on our side. Sucker!
Bla, bla, bla - no national heathcare BUT DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY MEDICARE ! (Screeching pitch)

Well, you get the gist of it.
Where, O, where have we seen all of this before??
Wait, it's in the tip of my tongue, white, rotund, male, newt worthy, gone in vacation all the time, war, deficit, lame jokes, no accountability....
Darn! I almost had it....
Where have we seen this before?
And why can't we make them eat those words once and for all?

From the Nation

Tea Party Hypocrisy
Editorial
This article appeared in the March 1, 2010 edition of The Nation.

February 11, 2010

"Energy. Budget Tax cuts. Lift American spirits." This was the infamous list of talking points scrawled on Sarah Palin's palm when she stood to address the first-ever Tea Party Convention in Nashville. It's fitting, given that the agenda of Palin and the movement for which she has become a tribune is short on details about how to govern the country. "Lift American spirits" is about as substantive a description of their agenda as you're likely to hear.

Political Analysis
Esther Kaplan on Massey Energy and mine safety; John Nichols on WikiLeaks and collateral murder

Such vagueness has served the movement well, allowing it to claim to be many things it is not. There has arisen in some quarters a quaint and dangerous notion that the tea party movement is an entirely new phenomenon--a bipartisan, organic channeling of broad (and rational) distrust of and disgust with America's main institutions, particularly Wall Street and Washington, which seem to have formed a perfectly closed loop of rent-seeking and self-dealing. According to Tea Party Patriots national board member Mark Meckler, "Although we are conservative in political philosophy, we are nonpartisan in approach. Both parties need to re-dedicate themselves to the principles of our founding fathers and remember that this should be the government of 'We the People' and not of special interest groups or pork-laden politics." While the energy and outrage may be genuine and organic, we should not fool ourselves into seeing this as anything but a right-wing reactionary movement, one whose themes (jingoism, militarism and a cult of victimhood at the hands of sundry nefarious betrayers) are as old as the John Birch Society. And yet, because the details of the tea party's worldview remain obscure, it's startlingly popular with the broader public. Forty-one percent of respondents in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll have a positive opinion of the tea party movement. According to the same poll, the Democratic Party was viewed favorably by only 35 percent. The Republican Party fared even worse with 28 percent.

It is useful for branding purposes that the right-wing organizers and activists draping themselves in nostalgia for the founding fathers not find themselves tied in the public mind to the Republican Party, loathed by a significant minority of the electorate and distrusted by an overwhelming majority. The reason is not hard to divine: over the last decade, the GOP ran the country into the ground. While the party's rhetorical fidelity is to small government and a big military, it has for decades been operationally committed to no philosophy other than perpetual war, upward redistribution of wealth, the defense of corporate power and white Christian identity politics. But despite the tea party's arm's-length stance toward the GOP, these are precisely the values for which it stands.
What's genius about the tea party branding is that it can shift the focus from the governing record of the right wing to a fantasy vision of a Ron Paul- meets-Ayn Rand twenty-first-century insurrection based on principles fuzzy enough to resonate with much of the populace. After all, who doesn't hate the bailouts?
While that's the grassroots message the GOP is stoking and associating itself with, its poobahs are busy laying the groundwork for a restoration of what James Galbraith aptly calls the Predator State. According to a recent New York Times article, the Wall Street titans of finance, who gave unprecedented monetary support to Barack Obama (and have invested heavily in the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party), have had their feelings hurt by the occasional and exceedingly gentle remonstrations from the Obama administration and are funneling more cash to the GOP. Seeing as how not a single Republican voted for the mild financial reform bill in the House, this seems like a marriage with promising prospects.
While the tea partyers bash the bailouts, conservative politicians like John Cornyn skulk around New York hustling to get their hands on some of that bailout-facilitated campaign cash. It's a fresh version of the tried-and-true GOP approach described by Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas?, though this one is more audacious: rather than using social issues to distract from an economic agenda favoring the plutocracy, rage over bank bailouts provides cover for efforts to raise money from banks and stymie bank regulation.
Rank hypocrisy has never spelled doom for a political party in America, and it won't hurt the tea party so long as its views remain opaque. The easiest way to highlight the contradictions between the vaguely attractive populism of the tea partyers and the decidedly unpopulist governing vision of the party they serve is to attack the banks with a tea party-like zeal and force the GOP to close ranks around its new financial benefactors.

A House to Get Away From it All

2010-04-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

I am not one to go rustic but this house invites Baudelaire's line from 'L'invitation au Voyage' to mind: 'Luxe, calme et volupté'.
Luxury, calm and sensual pleasure indeed...

Discovered on the (beautiful) Style-Files website.

Ana Duncan's Radiant Women Sculptures

2010-04-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

I love their shapes.
They're like Giacometti figurines but healthier: sturdy, sensual and strongly present.
They all have a strong enough personality to seperate them from Ikea style bland Euro-sculpture.

From the Ana Duncan website.

Plastic Kills From a Distance: Midway Atoll Tragedy

2010-04-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. View more from Chris Jordan’s series here.

From Photo District News website.
The pictures themselves are from Chris Jordan.