Janelle Monáe has been writing and performing for years. She was Grammy nominated in 2008 for the track 'Many Moons,' off her EP 'Metropolis: The Chase Suite.' A fusion of many musical styles including R&B, rap, hiphop, classical and musical theater, I personally find her music and video performances exciting. I hope you do too. 'Cold War' is her latest, a low-tech video, just released August 5th, and 'Tightrope' featuring Big Boi from Outkast is a sample of her more elaborate side, performance-wise. Both are from her CD The ArchAndroid.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (88)

PLAYS: (346)

Now that BP has gone from 1000-5000 barrels to 12,000-19,000 barrels, to 35,000 to 60,000 to 62,000 a day, Rachel feels about the same way I do about this. The latest line of B.S. from our government is that the oil and those dispersants they put out there with them are mostly gone now. Yeah right.

As Maddow reports they're now claiming 25% of the oil was boomed or skimmed, 25% evaporated or dissolved, 24% was dispersed through "human operations" and there's 26% residual that's still out there and they swear to god they're going to clean that up.

They're pretending some of these waters are safe to fish in now as well. I'll believe that when Thad Allen, all of the CEO's from BP and our EPA head start eating that fish for part of their daily diet on camera.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (57)

PLAYS: (251)

Sarah Palin's very proud of her idiotic "cojones" jibe at President Obama last Sunday, and went on Sean Hannity to crow about it some more last night:

HANNITY: Yes, it's amazing to me. I wonder -- and tell me this is separate and apart. I think on national security issues and some other issues like immigration a willingness to really take on a controversial issue, do you think over time the narrative that the president is wimpy is going to take place?

PALIN: I think he's quite complacent and I think he's over -- in over his head and I think he has poor advisors surround him and I think he's really influx kind of when it comes to what his governing philosophy actually is. Some of this though is a result of he not having much experience and then a complicit media, and maybe some voters who chose not to allow him to be vetted very closely.

It's a combination of things that's resulting in a president who's not taking a strong stand on those things that are the will of the people. Obviously the will of the people is to enforce the laws that we have on the books.

HANNITY: Yes, but you know, Governor, I've tried to make this observation as many times as I can. It seems that -- you know, I know we are supposed to have government of, by, and for the people. That's what I -- that's what I always understood.

But this administration -- Democrats in particular -- right now seeing it's government by and of and for Obama. And by that I mean, you know, look at where the American people are on immigration. Look at where they are on health care.

Look at where they are on deficit spending. And then look at the Obama administration's positions. They seem at odds and a willingness to be at odds with the American people so often.

Is it ideology? Is it a lack of sophisticated political knowledge? What do you think it is?

PALIN: It's ideology and it's a commitment to what he had set out to do as a candidate. Barack Obama. And that was to fundamentally transform country.

So wait, which is it? Is Barack Obama a lousy president because he's a wishy-washy leader who doesn't really know which way to go? Or is it because he's a hardcore radical ideologue who refuses to budge or compromise or try to work with Republicans?

These nabobs seize on any straw in a windstorm to bash Obama. It's pretty pathetic, really -- except, of course, that one of them is about 90 percent likely to be a major Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012.

It's a little (pardon the pun) depressing to read that our economic policy in the face of this "balance sheet recession" is exactly the wrong one. Japanese economist Richard Koo has been sounding the alarm for a while, citing Japan's economic collapse after following the International Monetary Fund's advice to cut their deficit:

Hearing comparisons between the US and Japan? Confused about deleveraging, private saving, and government spending? Look no further – Richard C. Koo explains it all in his testimony before the Committee on Financial Services U.S. House of Representatives.

The first point Koo makes is that ordinary recessions – which tend to come up every so often – and full-fledged depressions are “two different diseases requiring totally different treatments.”

What’s the difference? In a depression, the private sector is focused solely on getting rid of debt. Who cares? Just take an example: a family makes $1000 and saves $100. Normally that $100 is lent by the family’s bank to a borrower who can invest and use that money. But in today’s world, where everyone is trying to get rid of debt, no one wants to borrow that $100.

This is just what happened during the Great Depression, and also what happened to Japan in the 1990s. But Japan was smart: the government borrowed and spent $100 instead, keeping the money flowing. Even though it increased the government’s debt by 460 trillion yen, it sustained over 2,000 trillion yen – “making it a huge bargain,” the understated Koo points out. On the other hand, cutting spending and government deficits will have the opposite, devastating effect.

His testimony is here and it's the clearest argument yet for the administration to stop pushing this deficit nonsense.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (169)

PLAYS: (693)

Now that a Federal judge has stuck down California's Proposition 8, Keith decided to reair his Special Comment from November 2008.

Here's your blast from the past from the C&L archives. Countdown Special Comment On Prop 8: What Is It To You?

Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.

And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics.

This is about the... human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them -- no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights -- even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage.

If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry...black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are... gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing -- centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children... All because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage. How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness -- this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness -- share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

---

Continue reading »

Social Security Trustees report that social security will be able to make full payments until 2037(pdf). Tax receipts will dip below outlays before then, but this is precisely why the Social Security program has taken in more money than it needed, so that it could handle baby boomer retirement and increased life spans.

Any projection which goes out 27 years is so incredibly reliant on the embedded assumptions about growth, employment and lifespans that it amounts to a fiction. It is, at best, a guess.

Increase growth by just a little bit and the entire "problem" goes away. Get rid of the taxation cap so the rich are not capped in what they pay and the entire problem goes away. Assume higher employment, and the entire problem goes away. Assume a reduction in inequality, and the problem goes away.

The US has a number of problems which are at or near crisis, such as employment, inequality and healthcare costs, to name just a few. Social Security is not one of them. It isn't even close, and politicians and billionaires like Pete Peterson who are trying to gin up a crisis should be ashamed of themselves.

If they want the US budget more in order they should look at health care, where single payer could cut costs by at least a third, and at the military, where real spending has doubled since the end of the Clinton administration.

Or they should work on increasing employment and increasing wages for ordinary people. That's a crisis.

Instead of dealing with real problems, instead of tackling the medical industry or the military-industrial complex, instead of fixing the job situation, they want to steal money from old people.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (194)

PLAYS: (751)

Wingnut Extraordinaire Pam Geller of Atlas Wanks has been all over the TV networks the past couple of weeks, telling anyone who'll listen why New York City should deny a moderate Islamic group the right to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks.

Geller: This is patently untrue. I love Muslims. The Ground Zero mosque is an offensive insult, it's a stab in the eye. I have no problem with mosques across the city. But we're talking about history, and Islamic history, of building triumphal mosques on the cherished sites of conquered lands.

Sooooo ... does Geller actually think that New York City is a land conquered by Muslims?

She continues on with a rant describing the Muslims building the mosque as dangerous, conniving jihadis and "tied to terrorists" -- though of course her evidence for that is wafer-thin.

But really, does Pam Geller "love" Muslims? I suppose -- in the same way a dog loves a rag doll he's chewed to shreds, or a sadist adores the whipping boy chained up down in his dungeon.

After all, we're talking about someone who regularly describes Muslims as "the enemy" of America (particularly when President Obama refuses to go down that road). Someone who believes it's a simple truth that "moderate Islam does not exist".

The other day, another TV anchor -- this time from Russia TV -- asked Geller some far more difficult questions, directly challenging her disingenuous attempts to claim she "loves" Muslims:

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (75)

PLAYS: (1898)

Geller's squirming was well earned ...

Elena Kagan has been confirmed by the Senate to become the newest Associate U.S. Supreme Court justice by a vote of 63-37. For the first time in history, three women will serve as Supreme Court justices at the same time.

As Senate confirmation battles go, this one was fairly low-key. Republicans spent a lot of time claiming she was anti-gun and pro-abortion, but with very little evidence to support their claims. The best they could do was to offer an argument about her lack of judicial experience -- an argument some Democrats also used against her.

The sole dissenting Democrat was Ben Nelson, who may call himself a Democrat, but never fails to bolster the Republican vote count. At the last minute, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) announced his opposition to Kagan's nomination, resting on the "lack of experience" excuse, but really just buying some political cover back home.

More from the AP on Kagan here.

People For the American Way released this statement:

“Americans should be proud that Elena Kagan was confirmed to the Supreme Court today. She brings to the bench sterling credentials and a formidable intellect. Her commitment to the Constitution and equal justice under law will serve the Court well in the decades ahead

“During her hearings, Elena Kagan spoke powerfully about the Constitution as a timeless document, constructed by its framers to be interpreted over time in light of new situations and in new contexts. She articulated a view of the Constitution and the role of judges in sharp contrast to Chief Justice Roberts’ misleading analogy to an umpire calling balls and strikes. Solicitor General Kagan made clear that she has the intellectual fortitude and the command of the law to keep faith with our Constitution--its amendments, its history, and its core values like justice and equality under the law.

“Thanks to today’s vote, the Supreme Court will have three female Justices for the first time in our nation’s history. This is an historic step forward for all Americans, and an advancement of which every citizen should be proud.”

Update: Kagan will be sworn in at 2pm on Saturday at the Supreme Court.

Remember: If at first you don't succeed, just do it a lot harder the next time!

Come on, admit it. You're surprised, aren't you? I am, too -- that during this devastating recession, the Republicans still have the cojones to offer public lap dances to their wealthiest contributors:

After opposing, stalling, stonewalling and filibustering almost every recession-related bill for the past year, Republican lawmakers have finally proposed a jobs plan of their own: a bigger, more expensive version of George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich.

The Economic Freedom Act of 2010 -- introduced by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) -- proposes deep tax cuts favoring the wealthiest in America, a reduction in regulatory oversight and the elimination of a federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which will allow wealthy investors to escape taxes entirely on a significant portion of their income.

Republicans say the bill will create jobs where President Obama's policies have failed to do so.

"The multi-trillion dollar government stimulus programs and taxpayer-funded bailouts have failed," reads the bill's official press release. "A growing private sector economy is the only 'stimulus program' that will create the jobs needed to restore America's economic strength."

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a conference call on Tuesday that the GOP's proposal will not only fail to stimulate job growth, but will triple the deficit by 2015 and devastate an already-shrinking American middle class.

"The tax cuts they want to give, as usual under Republican policies, will give 62 percent of the tax cuts to the top 1 percent of Americans," Hoyer said. "Or said another way, an average $467 tax cut to working Americans in the middle of the income levels, and to the top 1 percent earners, an average of $157,000 tax cut, and to Goldman Sachs, $2.6 billion in tax cuts. When you analyze that, you know what is happening is the same old Bush policies of advantaging the wealthy at the expense of the middle income working people and tax cuts which did not, as they were advertised to, grow the economy and grow jobs. In fact, they did just the opposite."

Michael Linden, associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said the Republican proposal is "unaffordable on a level we've never seen before."

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (271)

PLAYS: (928)

I don't know about the rest of you but I get really tired of the media helping the Republican Party pretend that their lobbyist and corporate-funded astroturf Tea Party is anything other than a way to get the Bush stink off of the GOP brand. What's ironic is they're now having discussions about how to get rid of the crazy, wingnut, racist, nativist brand that has always been the extreme right wing base of the Republican Party -- since they're closely associating with this Tea Party "movement", the stink is coming from the Republicans as well.

What they'll never admit is that this is just more of the same from the GOP, which has had little other than fear, race-baiting and division of one sort or the other, where they pit working-class people against each other for electoral advantage for ages now. Instead we get treated to conversations like this one on John King's show on CNN, which isn't short of its usual hackery even when he's gone on vacation. Jessica Yellin has jumped right in to fill King's shoes while he's been gone.

CNN seems to be trying to figure out how they want to brand themselves lately. So far it looks like the strategy is just to be a kinder, gentler version of ClusterFox. MSNBC during the day and right up through Tweety's show is just about as bad. The only person in the media I've seen any honest reporting on with just what the "Tea Party movement" is and who is paying for, riling up and busing in those protesters is Rachel Maddow, God bless her.

I don't think I've seen a single show on CNN or most of cable or network news for that matter other than Rachel's show tell their viewers about who is funding the movement and what their industry ties are. They'd rather keep up with the perception that this is some real grass roots movement that has broken off from the Republican Party when that could not be further from the truth. The Tea Party movement is the Republican Party and they're tied at the hip with their corporate backers and their leaders and their agenda.

Any attempt to paint them as otherwise is just propaganda. Sadly, this conversation on CNN is just one more example of what we see day in and day out out of most of our corporate media, and it's not even one of the worst examples. The downright cheerleading from Fox with their coverage of the rallies and CNN not being too far behind with riding along with them on their tours had to be some of the worst.

There have been much bigger protests from the left on the Iraq invasion among other things and those received nothing short of a collective yawn from our "mainstream media". I guess covering issues that actually have millions of Americans rightfully upset with their government just isn't as interesting to them as pushing their latest Drudge/Politico/right wing talk radio/Republican talking point of the day.

CNN's hackery below the fold.

Continue reading »