 by Robert S. Becker
Am I the Great Rudder — or What?
If his stumbling, not ready-for-prime-time worsens, Rick “Treat ‘Em Ugly” Perry will soon be cornered and dangerous. That’s when flinty hardscrabble guys squint, then draw, pumping out enough audacity of rogue to win GOP primaries. No more Mr. Smiley Nice Guy conservative, clinging to compassionate shreds — like educating immigrant kids, immunizing girls, pooh-poohing secession — or not throwing in derringers with school lunches. Hey, don’t 6th graders have drug, crime, bullying, fashion, and pocket money issues dying for resolution?
The power right anoints Perry the most “electable” fringe purist — so step aside, little crazy lady from Minnesota. Full story »
 “October 2011 is the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the beginning of the 2012 federal austerity budget. It is time to light the spark that sets off a true democratic, nonviolent transition to a world in which people are freed to create just and sustainable solutions.”
These words describe the mission behind a “Human Needs, Not Corporate Greed” protest beginning October 6th in Washington, D.C.’s Freedom Plaza. One week from today, I will be participating in this protest with a small group of students and faculty from Tulane’s School of Social Work.
I have joined several committees and coalition meetings since starting my Master’s program one month ago, but this will be my first “hands-on” experience as a social worker in training. While my knowledge of protests until now has involved little more than taking pictures from the sidelines, I feel both fortunate and excited about being involved in this experience. Full story »
 By the time I’d finished the first third of this book, I was ready to send my review copy back to the publisher with a rude note. By the end of the second third, I had decided it might interest a few academics and overly educated Upper Eastside acquaintances. By the end, I decided buy copies to send out as Christmas presents. And of course, that is a pretty good compliment.
Let’s back up though. I began Sweet Heaven with high expectations. Essays, when written well, surpass fiction for their insight and immediacy, and the topic of this book, the various beliefs held by various groups in America, is a fascinating one. There are two hundred nations on this planet, but America is the only one founded simply because people wanted a place to believe whatever in the heck they wanted to believe. (OK, maybe Israel.) If you live in America and want to try to make sense of anything – from current events to conversations with your friends from Texas – you have to understand the variety of belief systems at play. Full story »
Yesterday I reported on an article in The Daily Caller that turned reality on its head by claiming that the EPA’s attempt to avoid hiring 230,000 new employees to administer greenhouse gas (GHG) emission permits was actually the EPA planning to hire those employees. As I pointed out, the article had enough major errors that it needed either significant corrections or a full retraction.
Today the executive editor of The Daily Caller, David Martosko, attempted to justify the original article in an editorial. However, Martosko’s failed defense of an indefensible article means that The Daily Caller now has two articles that are so filled with errors and misrepresentations that they should be corrected or retracted entirely. Full story »
 
I’m ferociously cramming contemporary poetry into my head this semester in an attempt to force-feed my brain. Ostensibly, I’m a poet—but only because I’m taking a graduate-level poetry-writing workshop. I’m trying to figure this shit out, trying to figure out what I am and what I’m not by reading lots of stuff by poets who are.
I’ve taken recommendations from friends and classmates. I’ve browsed random collections at the bookstore. I’ve looked up names I’ve heard once upon a time and barely remembered. I’ve returned to old favorites.
Gary Jackson’s Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf Press, 2010) caught my eye because it was about comic books. Or so I thought. Full story »
For 86 years the Boston sports fan’s image was defined by the Curse of the Bambino and its periodic avatars, like Bucky Fucking Dent. And Aaron Fucking Boone. And Bill Buckner, who later tried to commit suicide by throwing himself in front of a bus, only to have the bus go between his legs (rim shot). The Boston brand was futility, the yearly ritual of hope and its eventual collapse into despair. Full story »
Twitter.com/LeeCamp
[See update at the end of the post]
The devil is always in the details. Which may explain why Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller got his details and facts all twisted up when he wrote that the EPA’s greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations would force the EPA to grow by 230,000 employees. Boyle got this information out of an EPA court filing submitted on September 16 in a case involving the EPA’s authority to tailor regulations to major emitters of GHGs instead of to every emitter of GHGs.
Media Matters for America initially discovered the error and pointed out that the EPA avoided hiring an additional 230,000 employees to administer the GHG regulations. Yet Boyle, Fox News, and Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) all got that critical point wrong. Full story »
 Here’s the chronology:
- During a preseason game between the Flyers and Rangers last night, Philly’s Wayne Simmonds and New York’s Sean Avery engaged in some predictable contentiousness. I say predictable because Avery is without question the most annoying little fuckhead in hockey history and there’s always contentiousness when he’s in the building.
- At one point, Simmonds is alleged to have called Avery a “faggot.” Full story »
 by Hannah Frantz
We returned from Butare yesterday. Butare, located in the South of Rwanada, is anything but Kigali. I’ve never been much of a city girl, so it was a welcomed change for me.
On our way to Butare we made a stop at Murambi, another genocide memorial, that exists at a place where over 50,000 people were killed. The interesting thing about Murambi is that while unearthing the mass graves, they discovered that the bodies at the very bottom had been well preserved. They then removed these bodies and preserved them further so that visitors could come and see exactly what death in the genocide looked like. Full story »
 The wonderful little Estorick Collection, which was established to display modern Italian art, and normally does just that, has a wonderful show designed to present the poster art of Edward McKnight Kauffer. Kauffer revolutionized poster design in Britain after WWI, and was one of Britain’s most important artists during the 1920s and 1930s, before his forced departure back to America following the entry of Britain into the European War in 1939. Kauffer was an American who went to Paris to study art (funded by a philanthropist named McKnight, whose name Kauffer adopted in acknowledgement), and, as an American, could find no work in Britain after the war began, and had to return to the US, which he bitterly regretted doing. This would have been before dual citizenship was possible, of course, and Kauffer had not undertaken UK citizenship.
Anyway, the art. Why should we care? And why now? Well, there has been something of a Kauffer revival going on over the past decade, and visiting the Estorick exhibit tells us why. Full story »
Once upon a time, marketing music must have been so simple: in the ’50s you just bribed a local DJ and off you went. By the ’80s it was a little more complicated – in addition to cash you needed to bring coke and hookers, but still, it was a straightforward process and everybody understood the rules.
Maybe that’s understating the difficulty of getting discovered back in the Good Old Days®, but there’s no arguing that things are a lot trickier here in the 21st Century, as nichification, genrefication, segmentation, fragmentation, the consolidation of major labels, the profusion of new media and the ascendancy of coolmongering has so dramatically complexified the challenge facing new bands that it’s a wonder anybody even tries anymore. (And if you’re naïve enough to think that hard work and talent will ultimately win out, well, welcome to math class.)
Full story »
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