08 December 2011
If I had listened to my first mind
On the waterfront: Occupy movement calls for Dec. 12 West Coast Port Shutdown. Video from Occupy Oakland.
Much as I ♥ Charlie Pierce, I have to disagree with this assessment of Obama and his speeches. I don't for a minute think Obama believes that, "this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules." Unless what he means is that the rich and the poor alike can sleep under bridges. I think Obama is an adept deceiver who can make some people feel all warm and fuzzy while he gives them the shaft, the very essence of a successful con man.
But here's the Pierce I love: "I have long proposed that every single major elite political pundit be frog-marched away from the buffet tables inside the Beltway and deep into the Blue Ridge Mountains, there to be confined to a re-education facility where they will clear trails, and reclaim swampland, and repair dams, and make life lovely for the furry little woodland creatures until every damn one of these hacks has learned not to look at the incredible universe of grifters and charlatans that is our current political elite and in them see the giants of the past." Yes, Jon Meacham really is suggesting that Newt Gingrich could be a mensch of the stature of FDR, apparently just because some people hated FDR (of course, he doesn't say who hated FDR - and why), and a lot of people hate Newt, too.
Pinch presents some folks from the NYT opinion pages, including Krugman. Oh, and Tom Friedman.
At Eschaton, I learn that Obama wants to stop fraud - by people who get an extra few pennies out of their food stamps: "With more Americans relying on the program, the Obama administration on Tuesday plans to announce new steps to crack down on SNAP fraud amid estimates suggesting as much as $753 million in federal food aid is spent fraudulently each year." $753 million? Tim Geithner's friends commit that level of fraud every damned day. Where's the crackdown?
Check out Lakeside Diner for your morning links.
S&P goes after Europe, too.
Not in the news: The Saudi Arabian spring.
David Dayen on Occupy Our Homes. Sam Seder has been doing some great coverage on that this week over at The Majority Report. (He also wrestled a bit with Bill Scher, who seems to be calling himself a "Proud Obot" lately, on Wednesday's show.)
Occupy Daytona.
PB True says: "I think the Evangelicals should fight the Muslim brotherhood, face to face. Momma Grizzly Palin takes on Jihadist Abu Mohamed in a cage match. We could sell tickets, and solve both sides of the world's problems."
The Cabin in the Woods trailer.
What's your favorite fish?
RIP Bill Gannon, Colonel Potter, and the much-loved actor Harry Morgan. Good-bye.
RIP Hubert Sumlin, blues guitarist and close colleague of Howlin' Wolf, at 80. Here he is doing "Killing Floor" last year.
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16:37 GMT
Tuesday, 06 December 2011
And the nights draw in
Digby has a nice clip of Chris Hayes talking about the failure of the Supercommittee and how anti-democratic it is - and contrasts it with a lot of wankery Village babble from the junior Russert. (Also: Stealing grandma and grandpa's nest egg. And why isn't Eric Holder launching the easiest prosecution in the world?)
Liz Warren now in dead heat with Scott Brown: "Warren leads Brown by 4 points among registered voters in the UMass Amherst Poll, 43 percent to 39 percent, the difference being within the 4.4 percent margin of error, say UMass Amherst political scientists Brian Schaffner and Ray La Raja. The poll finds Warren is drawing strong support from women, middle-to-low income residents and younger voters. Brown maintains a large lead among Independent voters while Warren is getting overwhelming support from Democratic voters in Massachusetts." (via)
Politifact competes to tell one of the year's biggest lies when it lists as one of the year's biggest lies something that is absolutely true,
I see no reason why Paul Ryan should stay in Congress.
20 years ago, Cory Robin was radicalized.
After Virtually Speaking Sundays was over for the evening, Stuart and I had an argument over whether this is essentially a reactionary position or something different. What do you think? Maybe I just can't credit them with the level of stupidity it would require for them not to know that they have created the sorry mess they affect not to have any control over - and that they could fix it.
"To get Wall Street out of our government, out of our courts; to return the USA to a democratic republic, not an oligarchy." (via)
Dan at Pruning Shears said he had to read a Persian state news outlet to find out what was happening with this occupation event in Iowa. And, via that same linky post from Dan, I'm pleased to know that not everyone needs sing Barney Frank's praises since he's retiring from running cover for the banksters. Oh, and don't miss the latest little passage from Econned.
I'd wondered if our old friend was occupying the freeways... Yes!
The Tax-Dodging Owners Of Zuccotti Park Owe The City $139,000 In Back Taxes.
Alan Moore: "I think that the 'Occupy' movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail. It's a completely justified howl of moral outrage and it seems to be handled in a very intelligent, non-violent way, which is probably another reason why Frank Miller would be less than pleased with it."
I think one of the coolest things about Occupy Wall Street is that they are not endorsing any candidates. I get so sick of the, "Yes, I know he's a war criminal whose policies are making our economy even worse, but I'm definitely voting for Obama" theme. I don't care if you're voting for him, you don't have to say so.
The writing process - in infographic (via)
Cello Wars
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03:46 GMT
Sunday, 04 December 2011
Thousand Island dressing
David Dayen (dday) and Stuart Zechman will be tonight's panelists on Virtually Speaking Sundays. The rest of this week's VS schedule is here, complete with the YouTube video for What Digby Said about Frank Luntz's panicky new instructions on how to talk about that now-unpopular thing called capitalism (don't call it that!) without saying what it is, what to call things the public likes ("taxing the rich" becomes "taking from the rich", for example), and so on. Oh, and now more talking about the middle-class, it's "hard-working taxpayers".
Best trailer for a news show, ever: The Young Turks.
Your Punk Rock Advent Calendar (I thought these were fun, and got a real chuckle out of the one for the 2nd.)
There's a some discussion in the comments to the post below about the controversial nature of the Naomi Wolf article, and Mike did a little sleuthing into how Naomi Wolf heard Occupiers including in their demands something Joshua Holland hadn't heard. The question might be: Did Holland talk to people in the Occupy movement before or after 60 Minutes had aired a segment on that very subject and Anderson Cooper had followed up on it? But, just how unreasonable are Wolf's speculations about federal coordination of the assault on the occupations? Especially in the face of Obama's continued silence....
Krugman. DeLong, and Atrios all seem baffled by Cameron's destructive austerity policies and the LibDems' continued failure to balk at wrecking the country. Things might clear up if they read Chris Floyd and realized that what we have in the LibDems is pretty much the same thing as what we have in the Democratic Party: "But here is the result of all this serious savviness on behalf of progressive ideals: the LibDems are now helping implement the most regressive policies that Britain has seen since the Victorian era. They are presiding -- happily, even giddily -- over the wanton ravaging of a society already brought low by the brutal, bipartisan religious extremists -- blind, fanatic worshippers of Mammon -- who have held sway in Britain, America and Europe for more than 30 years. The LibDems are Obama: socially liberal, fiscally conservative, willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of millions of innocent people to save a thuggish elite from facing the slightest consequence of their own criminal greed and stupidity." Yes, they are Mammonists. They're not liberal, they're not democratic, and they are not your friends.
This post from Greg Mitchell's Occupy blog at The Nation has Keith Olbmerann's interviews with Scott Olsen and with Jackson Browne (who actually talks about how the police response resonates with COINTEL!), Ry Cooder's video for Occupy, Michelle Shocked performing for a rally in Wisconsin, Jackson Browne playing in Liberty Plaza, Lou Reed's mic check at Lincoln Center, a lot of other things, and a link to this Dan Froomkin piece: "The United Nations envoy for freedom of expression is drafting an official communication to the U.S. government demanding to know why federal officials are not protecting the rights of Occupy demonstrators whose protests are being disbanded -- sometimes violently -- by local authorities. Frank La Rue, who serves as the U.N. 'special rapporteur' for the protection of free expression, told HuffPost in an interview that the crackdowns against Occupy protesters appear to be violating their human and constitutional rights."
Enlightened self-interest means realizing that you have a better life if everyone else does, too. Even if you're rich, you don't really profit in the long-run from grabbing all the goodies away from everyone else. Even some rich people still understand this.
I worry less about people who pay no attention to the news at all than I do about people in the Mental Welfare State.
Penn Jillette: An Atheist's Guide to the 2012 Election. (Personally, I think he's naive. Obama is lying because Obama is a liar.)
Radio Times: "Pick of the Day - Black Mirror 9:00pm C4: COMEDY OF THE WEEK New Series - So how does Charlie Brooker's new comic drama - the first of two, with a third written by Jesse Armstrong - open? A touching tale of a WI picnic in 1940s Lancashire? Not Quite. No, we get angst, nightmare and warped comedy dipped in the blackest of paint. A royal princess is kidnapped and the ransom demand - and please stop reading now if you're of a delicate disposition - is that the Prime Minister must have sex with a pig, live on national TV, or the princess gets it."
A TSA Christmas
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23:40 GMT
Friday, 02 December 2011
Your happenin' world
And, now that it's December, here are some Advent Calendars that started on the 1st:
Bengal Cat Advent
Jam Trust Advent
German Advent
(This one's in English.)
Electric December
Christmas Magazine
Greenwich Advent
Woodlands Junior School
North Pole
St. Mary Margaret actually started on Advent, but since I looked too early I missed it because it appeared to start a week late.
This isn't really an Advent calendar, but it might amuse you, anyway.
I accidentally ended up sitting in for Stuart on Virtually Speaking A-Z last night. Interestingly, that was followed by Jay talking to Cory Robin, who is clearly in my camp in the belief that the Democratic leadership, whatever they may call themselves, are conservatives - that is, reactionaries against liberal government. When they talk about the New Deal period as an aberration and say they are trying to return us to more normal historical trends, that's what they mean.
Sam Seder did a good interview with David Segal Tuesday on The Majority Report, with discussion of the Kill the Internet bill and why it's so important to stop it - and how.
Richard Seymour of Lenin's Tomb was on Democracy NOW! explaining what led up to the historic general strike in Britain, complete with how Murdoch turned leftish media into right-wing media, and what the phone-hacking scandal may mean to his power in Britain. Raed Jarrar (best know to many of us as the blogger of Where is Raed? or Salam Pax), discussed the question that the majority of Iraqis are asking while Joe Biden pops over to Iraq making deals. Meanwhile, police arrested lots of people in clear-outs of Occupy LA and Philly, Congress seems set to authorize indefinite detention without charge of any American who someone in power claims is a terrorist, and Obama is a better friend to corporate lobbyists than Bush.
I meant to talk about that plan to make it okay to detain Americans indefinitely earlier, but I got distracted. This is pretty serious stuff that would almost be comical if it weren't real, and Marcy Wheeler explained what's going on a couple weeks ago on Virtually Speaking Sundays, complete with an astonishing description of the debate, such as it was, between Levin and Feinstein, who were arguing not over whether it should be done, but how most perfectly to do it. You would think those two, of all people, would have been more resistant to such a program - especially with commemoration of the Night of Broken Glass not so far past. Here's How Your Senators Voted on Udall Amendment to Strip Out War and Imprisonment Power Grabs.
Atrios finds an amazing quote: "'The thing that matters the most in determining the health of the US economy and job creation is what happens in Europe,' says a senior administration official." A real journalist would follow-up with, "Do you actually believe that, or is this just more of your strategy of trying to distract the public with irrelevancies and blame the results of your deliberate destruction of the economy on other forces?" Because, really, anyone with even an elementary knowledge of economic history knows that this is complete and utter bollocks.
Atrios named Ruth Marcus as The Worst Person In The World after her astonishing attack on an 18-year-old student who tweeted something rude about Senator Brownback. I can remember when attacking private individuals who didn't support right-wing policies was the job of the crowd at Free Republic, but apparently they've outsourced to The Washington Post. Charlie Pierce and Glennzilla both had some sharp words on the subject.
Maybe it's time to treat Aldous Tyler like he's a serious primary challenger. I'm tired of voting for the lesser evil, and so should you be. What's that you say? Primary challenges usually hurt the chances of the Democratic incumbent? No, primary challenges happen because the Democratic incumbent has already hurt his own chances by losing the base. Do keep up at the back. What if we don't challenge Obama and he still manages to lose? What's the plan? Republicans are going to get back in eventually, either way, and all Obama has been doing is preparing the ground for them to do even worse things. Do we really need to give him another four years for that? It's time to go on offense. Yeah, we might lose, but we're losing anyway. You can not win by supporting Obama.
Dan at Pruning Shears thinks the Dems will need more than just blaming the GOP if they're gonna have a real campaign. But, knowing the Dem leadership, they'll just add in more blaming the hippies.
Bill Black says: "And that's why we have a crisis and it came from the very top of these organizations, and it went through - as the FHFA said in its complaint - the largest banks in the world were endemically fraudulent. It is not a few rotten apples. It is an orchard of one percenters who are rotten to the core." (via)
"Andy Stern, a bigger sell out than you could ever have imagined: Yes, he really wrote that China has a superior economic model." In the WSJ, of course.
Occupy Student Debt.
Naomi Wolf's article on The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy has caused some controversy. But that was rather different from Digby's earlier speculation about coordination against the Occupy movement, and yet she's run into an Occupational Hazard.
I noticed the other day that pretty much no one remembers the Jackson State killings. There was always less attention to this (of course, there was one very great difference between the two events) and therefore the background is murkier - debunking of claims about what happened at Kent State was fairly swift, but I really have no idea whether the official version about Jackson State has any validity. Nevertheless, the fact that the cops behaved as they did should remind people just how dangerous they could be even before the modern militarization of the police force.
"Shocker: Mandated ObamaCare really is junk insurance: Nobody could have predicted: In a letter (appended below) sent to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and posted on the Internet today, more than 2,400 physicians, nurses and other health advocates condemn the recommendations of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee regarding the 'essential benefits' to be mandated under the 2010 federal health reform law."
Notes on the indefensible raid on Occupy LA - and the even more shameful media blackout.
Alan Moore on the "V"/Fawkes mask
I enjoyed the Mark Twain Google logo.
I'm chilly, let's have some of this.
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17:00 GMT
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Slow glass
Another way to describe the Democratic and Republican leadership is, "Good cop/bad cop." They're both trying to do the same thing to you, it's just that one is more genteel about it.
Abi Sutherland was talking the other week about something I've been thinking about, too - that playing by "the rules" of how to do media outreach is no more likely to work for the Occupy movement than it has for any other real liberals - or for ordinary hardworking people who played by the rules and are now on the verge of living in the street. But, as Stuart was saying last night, the process of discrediting the movement is already well underway and will in all likelihood succeed. I'm not sure what comes after that.
Stuart also mentioned the Obama mic check, but his emphasis was on the crowd response:
"Mic check!" they shouted. "Mr. President, over 4,000 peaceful protesters have been arrested. While bankers continue to destroy the American economy. You must stop the assault on our First Amendment rights. Your silence sends a message that police brutality is acceptable. Banks got bailed out. We got sold out."But the rest of their message was quickly drowned out by Obama supporters chanting, "Fired up, ready to go!" and "Obama!"
So, they're fired up and ready to make sure no one gets to speak up.Matt Stoller cites a fancy bit of coding: "In Jones v. Wells Fargo, this Court discovered that a highly automated software package owned by LPS and identified as MSP administered loans for servicers and note holders but was programed to apply payments contrary to the terms of the notes and mortgages." Matt says it works by rescheduling payments so that it costs you more to keep up with your mortgage: "The software, however, prioritizes servicer fees above the contractually required interest and principal to investors. This isn't a one-off; it's programmed. It's the very definition of a conspiracy! Who knows how many people paid late and then were pushed into a spiral of fees that led into a foreclosure? It's the perfect crime, and many of the victims had paid every single mortgage payment."
Whatever you think of Obama, the economy bites.
Nice little tweet from ladydebidebz: "Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world."
Citizens complain that, "They cut, we bleed," and the cops roll in. Here's a look inside Occupy Olympia before the tasers came out.
Naomi Wolf has a suggestion: "When I was in Zuccotti Park last week I thanked the cops each personally for standing peacefully by while citizens exercised first amendment rights and thought they could not say anything many faces softened, smiled and seemed relieved not to be demonized...it is hard for cops to be put in positions that dehumanize them too and psychologically traumatizing to be forced to act against their morals. This is a war and they are forced into front lines they did not choose. So Occupy, and everyone, be kind to the cops whenever you can please, thank them when they are non-violent, reach out to them. Most importantly: I would say it would be VERY powerful for an OWS representative (NOT A LEADER! JUST A ROLE!) to reach out to the policemens' benevolent associations in each city and try to find common ground. Even if you can't get decent ground rules it will have a softening effect. Also the OWS rep should ask: 'how can we help you...?' There are thing cops need too that Occupy could help deliver."
I'm already fed up with Leahy, but it's sad to learn that Franken is one of the co-sponsors of the bill to break the internet. Maybe we should all write to him and ask what's happened to him.
There's still one guy in the Senate I have time for, so have some Senator Bernie on Social Security.
Charlie Pierce: "It was 25 years ago today that President Ronald Reagan and his attorney-general, Edwin Meese, got up before the press and told a series of half-truths and demonstrable lies about what their administration had been up to as regards dealing with Iran, and how some of the money from that dealing had found its way to the Contra rebels then fighting Reagan's proxy war in Nicaragua. [...] It remains the great lost opportunity. [...] Iran-Contra was the moment when the country decided - or, alternatively, when it was decided for the country - that self-government was too damned hard, and that we're all better off just not knowing. It was the moment when all the checks and balances failed, when our faith in the Constitution was most sorely tested, and when it was found most seriously wanting. Iran-Contra is how all the crimes of the subsequent years became possible. It is when the Constitution became a puppet show."
I worry when Susie puts up a post saying "Back to the ER." I'm betting she could use some dosh.
The trick is to keep people from falling off the edge. Give if you can.
Charlie Stross on how publishers are cutting their own throats by insisting on DRM.
Elvis Costello tells fans not to buy his latest release - says the record company is gouging you and you should buy Louis Armstrong music instead - and get the new Costello by other means.
Illusion
Thanks to Charles for making sure I didn't miss the Imelda Marcos turkey.
Vintage weight-gain ads
OK, so the migration has been interesting, but incomplete. This is going from a D630 Latitude running XP to a Vostro running Win7. Maybe you've run into this problem I have, which is that on the Vostro I can't get a couple-few things to work. I can't enter anything into the comment field in my own comments (nor, apparently, Livefyre comments), and the Publish button in Blogger just ignores me. Anyone know why that is?
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16:45 GMT
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Advent
Jay Ackroyd and I will be taking calls tonight for our special Thanksgiving Sunday call-in (now a tradition!) tonight on Virtually Speaking Sundays.
Also, here's what Digby said about Dehumanization, and the rest of the Virtually Speaking schedule for the week can be found here.
It's that time of year again, and this year I actually found some calendars that start on the first day of Advent itself. (Have a midi of "Carol of the Bells" to get you in the mood.) I quite liked Trinity's.
I don't speak French well enough to enjoy the word game in the French one, but I didn't check all the links they provided for the day.
Busted Halo is off to a nice start..
Beliefnet has one, but it didn't inspire me.
Paperless Christmas isn't an Advent calendar, but I liked it anyway.
This extremely linky post at Naked Capitalism lured me to click on a link with this quote: "In focus groups, 'people have been breaking down and crying' when they talk about the economy." - even though it's just another article that makes it appear that the economy magically just got this way and that no one seems to be to blame. There's also a link to a great open letter from a member of the UC Davis Faculty Association to Chancellor Katehi. Lots and lots of great links, including to Turley, Greenwald, David Cay Johnston, Barry Ritholtz, and more! Oh, and a neat photograph, too.
Why Do Police Officers Use Pepper Spray? (You do remember what pepper we're talking about here, right? It's also known as mace.)
How to Occupy (via)
Occupy Y'All Gainseville.
Infinite Manhattan
Farewell to Susan Palermo. We loved her.
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17:42 GMT
Friday, 25 November 2011
Walk right in, it's around the back
It was just an ordinary Thursday here in Britain, so we have the big dinner on Saturday (which means I have some massive tidying up to do around here). I have a lot to be grateful for, and all of you who make this blog possible count for a lot - readers, commenters, those who drop a little in the tip jar, and of course a special thanks to those who make sure I've seen those important links. And of course, as always, an extra special thanks to our fabulous tech support. Thank you all so much for being here.
Balance - I'm not sure if the thinking here was, "There's no point in putting a Democratic politician here because they never say anything worthwhile anyway, so let's have someone who will point out the absurdity of what this Republican is saying," or just, "No one on the other side can say anything as wacky as this woman, so let's have someone who is funny on purpose," but it was amusing to see Paxman had Lee Camp vs. Sharon Angle. (Also: More ways The Washington Post is crapping on its staff, and the FBI claims to have no documents on OWS.)
Mark Lewis is going up against the rich and powerful in the phone hacking scandal, and now he can't get a job at any law firm and his MS is crippling him, but: "You've got News Corp, you've got News International, you've got News Group Newspapers, News of the World, you've got Farrer & Co, you've got Linklaters, you've got Olswang's, you've got Clifford Chance, you've got so many of the big law firms on this and then on the other side you've got me. I haven't even got a f**king secretary, I've got one hand and, you know, if I had two hands I'd tie one behind my back because they need a head start."
Here's Suzy Charnas saying with remarkable brevity what I've spent several long articles saying: That we've been robbed, that money has to circulate or the economy dies, that we need to tax the rich. Brilliant Jill fills in the details. Via Onyx Lynx, where I also learned about this post about how the rich are different from you and me, and another video from Brave New Films on who's wrecking America.
Digby has another horrible story of a cop murdering an innocent person because he thought the answer to something he didn't understand was to taser someone. Taser's have a record of being a frequently lethal weapon; the public should no longer tolerate the pretense that it is anything less. But, you know, I can't help the feeling that Digby doesn't appreciate the legacy of Robocop, who told you all this was coming. He doesn't just fight crime, he fights corporate crime!
Sam Seder did a 12-hour show last week to celebrate the first anniversary of the current version of his show and also the two-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and this week he's posted podcasts of it in segments to cover their Thanksgiving vacation. There's a lot of wonderful content up there, The first segment is here, and there's more here and here (so far), or even more for members. Some great interviews with Fran Lebowitz, Chris Hayes, Matt Taibbi, Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald, and others, plus live coverage as the dramatic events at Occupy Wall Street on the day.
In Which My Mother Faces Homelessness at the Onset of a New England Winter
RIP Anne McCaffrey. Tor.com: "McCaffrey was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction, the first woman to win a Nebula Award, and the first author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with an SF title (The White Dragon)." The post also has links to others from members of the SFF community. MSNBC, NPR, The New York Times, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and everyone else have obituaries.
Your unforgettable WKRP Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving with Arlo: "How many things in the world are eighteen minutes and twenty seconds long?"
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16:45 GMT
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Yesterday's goneDavid Waldman (KagroX) will be sitting in for Susie Madrak tonight and next week on Virtually Speaking Susie. Tonight he'll be talking to Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel).
But right now I'm going to listen to Sammy talk to Dean Baker on The Majority Report.
I don't know what's left to say about the events at UC Davis and elsewhere that hasn't been well-covered all over the blogosphere (here are the up-to-date links, nicely arranged by Jay Ackroyd in a short but sweet post), except this: Watching people go on a jihad against some well-meaning (and genuinely liberal) fiction author who tried and arguably failed to be sufficiently sensitive to a racial issue just makes me seethe. I seethe because I know that those same people have never put that kind of energy into protesting the privatized prison industry, the militarized police, and the War on (Some Classes of People Who Take Some) Drugs - the very things that have had the most devastating impact on the black community and, ultimately, have been instrumental in leading us to this moment where people who may not even be elective or court officials take it upon themselves to order police forces to commit criminal assaults against peaceful protesters. (Similarly, if you haven't complained to your reps in Congress and written to newspapers to condemn abstinence-only miseducation, don't even speak to me about how much you care about feminism.)
This always happens: "Two people were killed in Cairo and Alexandria this weekend as Egyptian activists took the streets to protest the military's attempts to maintain its grip on power. And guess how the state is justifying its deadly crackdown. 'We saw the firm stance the US took against OWS people & the German govt against green protesters to secure the state,' an Egyptian state television anchor said yesterday." Same thing everywhere - we're now the example of why it's okay to deprive the public of their rights, and even the template for how to do it. (A few weeks back we were being told that the fact that protesters were being allowed to occupy the parks was proof that we are a free country. What did it mean to them when a protester was hospitalized after being directly fired on with a tear gas canister? What did police invading the park and stealing and destroying property mean to them? No one has been killed yet, but how far away is that threat, in reality? It's actually easier to expect a Kent State event now than it was at the time it happened. The escalation to unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters is actually a lot more rapid and public than it was back then, when overt action of that type, against that kind of crowd, was a complete shock. And now Ann Coulter is on TV calling for, literally, another Kent State. You never saw that sort of thing back then.)
Digby on Setting the terms: "Note Kyl's language: he never says 1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. He says, "cuts", "savings", "reduced spending." No taxes or revenue of any kind. He's simply asserting that this is about discretionary and mandatory domestic spending cuts, period. And that trigger obviously means nothing. Then, you had John Kerry on right afterwards saying that the Democrats were more than willing to take a meat ax to the budget as well but they really, kind of, wanted some revenue too. It doesn't look like they are going to get even that (thank God.) But the terms of the election year debate are all going to be about how the Democrats are insisting on raising taxes. After all, the only spending cuts that are controversial anymore are the defense cuts --- which Democrats will never fight for. In fact, the Republicans will be able to say quite honestly in their campaign ads that the Democrats want to cut social security and medicare and raise taxes."
Much as I love Dr. Black, I still gotta ask what the message is for high-information voters. Because the only thing I'm hearing is, "It doesn't matter what you know or how you vote, because one way or another we are destroying the economy and your country and your lives and you can't stop us."
Chad & Jeremy
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16:30 GMT
Monday, 21 November 2011
The ashes of his tinted innocence will annoint us allPanelists on Virtually Speaking Sundays will be emptywheel and McJoan.
If you haven't seen this yet, you might think those first minutes of the video where the police walk up to some protesters who are just sitting down and pepper spray them in the face is the interesting bit, but what comes next is illuminating, too. Still, this assault tells us something about who we are dealing with. The Chancellor at UC Davis who authorized the violence answered a call for her resignation by saying an inquiry will be held (as if we don't already know what happened), but also made the odious statement that though "the university has the responsibility to develop the appropriate environments that ensure the practice of these freedoms, by no means should we allow a repeated violation of these rules as an expression of personal freedom." (And she also earned the opprobrium of Atrios.)
UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza said she was "very proud" of how her officers behaved: "This was a tough scene to walk into. This was 50 people and before you knew it, it probably grew close to 200. When you encircle a group of officers that are just trying to do their jobs, it's kinda scary." Of course, when armed police accost a group of ordinary people just trying to do their jobs as citizens in a democracy, that's pretty scary, too. And that's just what the chancellor and the police chief were counting on.
What the videos don't really show you is what's not happening, even though most of the news media says it's happening. The daily papers and broadcast media repeat incessantly that Occupation sites are a full of filth and crime and violence and orgies and people urinating on each other and more. It's all lies, of course - a coordinated disinformation campaign. But no one is correcting it, unless you're listening to, say, Jay and Stuart on Virtually Speaking A-Z, explaining that, far from being filthy, Liberty Plaza-Zucotti Park-Liberty Park was being kept spotless by the occupiers - and, more than that, what we have seen is a completely illegal, coordinated program by our ruling elite, with the complicity of their courtiers in the mass media, to eliminate any possibility of freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, and a redress of grievances. (In the chat window during the program, Stuart wrote:"That we aren't allowed to say 'we don't like oligarchy in the USA,' physically in front of a bunch of investment banks, because those banks are being treated like they're the capital of the nation, is the point of "Occupy Wall Street.")
I haven't watched the last episode of Up with Chris Hayes yet, but it rang a familiar chime at Down With Tyranny! and Charles and jurassicpork both reacted strongly to "a report that lobbying firm Clark, Lytle, Geduldig, Cranford, former aides to John Boehner offer American Bankers Association a plan to break up Occupy Wall Street. Opposition research on activists 'to expose the backers.' They will also target Sherrod Brown and other races in Ohio, Florida, and New Mexico. [...] Greg Sargent has more, including a link to an NYT story by Nicholas Confessore that the financiers are raising big money to re-elect Scott Brown and thereby block the election of Elizabeth Warren."
Occupy Hope - Shepard Fairey updates his iconic image smartly, but I think he may still be too invested in Obama to realize he will have to hope for something a bit more realistic.
Now here's a curious thing: "The Globe reported yesterday that 11 of Romney's aides purchased their state-issued hard drives and wiped e-mails from the server at the end of Romney's term in 2006. As a result, according to Patrick's legal counsel, no records have been found of any e-mails sent during Romney's four-year term."
It's a pity I didn't know last month that someone had done a Halloween Advent calendar.
Photos by Andrey Yakovlev and Lili Aleeva (most of which look like paintings).
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01:05 GMT
Saturday, 19 November 2011
Just my imaginationI found this over at Greg Sargent's place:
What polls really say about Occupy Wall Street: The Associated Press, to its credit, gets it right about public opinion and the movement:Polling shows the public supports the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement even if people have reservations about the encampments themselves. And political observers say Democrats may be missing a chance to reinvigorate their base. 'It's injecting energy and life into progressive ideas and values, and it's showing some weak-kneed Democrats they should be more aggressive on those issues,' Steve Rosenthal, a Democratic strategist and longtime labor leader, said.
Those issues, of course, are income inequality and the lack of upward mobility.Digby's also been reading Greg Sargent, who cites a Centrist's plea to the Supreme Court to come down on the side of corporate welfare and validate the Constitutionality of the individual mandate or risk a public demand for single-payer. Personally, I'm charmed by the suggestion that the current line-up of the Supremes would put anything above corporations.
Also from Digby:
Why you know you don't have any rights anymore: "compliance devices".
Progressive Democrats: "So according to one of the Senate's leading liberals "the challenge of our generation" is massive debt reduction? Wow. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns ..."
Three photographs
Lots of people are telling the truth about this, but it makes no difference, somehow.
"Progressive Notes: Houston School Board Member's Hate Mail Spurs Grassroots into Action." I'm really into the idea that school board elections are important. After all, Spiro Agnew had to come from somewhere....
"Councilmember Rodriguez denounces his Occupy Wall Street arrest as 'improper,' and calls for a full investigation."
Who destroys libraries?
Acting locally: The 99-99-99 Plan
"This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas..." - mysterious little paper sculptures, for your reading and viewing pleasure.
The Temptations
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04:55 GMT
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Smoke gets in your eyesChris Hedges says "This Is What Revolution Looks Like:
Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. They can destroy but they cannot build. They can repress but they cannot lead. They can steal but they cannot share. They can talk but they cannot speak. They are as dead and useless to us as the water-soaked books, tents, sleeping bags, suitcases, food boxes and clothes that were tossed by sanitation workers Tuesday morning into garbage trucks in New York City. They have no ideas, no plans and no vision for the future. [...]
The billionaire mayor of New York, enriched by a deregulated Wall Street, is unable to grasp why people would spend two months sleeping in an open park and marching on banks. He says he understands that the Occupy protests are 'cathartic' and 'entertaining,' as if demonstrating against the pain of being homeless and unemployed is a form of therapy or diversion, but that it is time to let the adults handle the affairs of state. Democratic and Republican mayors, along with their parties, have sold us out. But for them this is the beginning of the end.
So, it turns out there's no mystery about why all those mayors acted at once - it was a conspiracy! Sam Seder had some great coverage on his Tuesday show, including calls to and from occupiers even as events were taking place around them. The Rude Pundit was a guest, as well. Digby notes that there's plenty to back up the conspiracy theory. What she doesn't say is that we had reports from occupiers a few weeks back that the police were advising homeless people and winos and other people with problems to go to occupation sites for help and places to sleep, and then suddenly we started to hear from the media about how the occupy movement was full of winos and the mentally ill and so on. "I'm not surprised by this, but I am curious as to how they are going to justify the federal government's interest? (It will come out if it's true.) If there's coordination, as seems fairly obvious, what's the legal foundation for it?"But The Occupy Education Continues as Mayer Bloomberg openly defies the law in order to curtail free speech: "The law in the US is, and has been for years, a tool which is used as a weapon. Some people are given a pass, others are hit with the full force of the law. That is to say, there is no rule of law in the US, it is a nation of people, not laws. This is well known in certain circles, but needed to be shown to others at the end of a nightstick." On the bright side, at least they aren't being radicalized by being ostracized, beaten up, arrested, thrown out of the house, and kicked out of school for having their hair an inch too long.
Barbara Ehrenreich wonders why Obama couldn't call the mayors and tell him to go easy on the protesters, and why he has been silent. But I don't think he's been silent at all. Someone decided right now was the right time for a Federal response. One of the things that put a stop to attacks on protests during the Depression was the fact that the cost of all those cop ops was just too high for the states. But that was then. Whatever else we supposedly can't afford, there is always money for wars and for Homeland Security. (via)
Vast Left has posted 13 out of 99, Part II, from his interviews with 13 people at Occupy Boston.
Charlie Pierce on Ben Smith's arrant knavery at Politico.
Susie Madrak's guest on Virtually Speaking Susie was Dave Johnson, who again lost his cool.
Why comparing banksters to Hitler and Stalin is unfair to Hitler and Stalin.
"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop and you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all. -- Mario Savio, Sproul Hall steps, 1964
The Platters
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03:10 GMT
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Time passes
So, anyway, Bloomberg and a bunch of other mayors celebrated the tenth anniversary of this blog by evicting the occupiers - apparently with more police riots - all, by some mysterious coincidence, at the same time. Here's a report from Allison Kilkenny. I was too overwhelmed to post anything, so of course I missed noting the anniversary, as usual, but at least this year I didn't forget it altogether until a month later. I just never thought I'd be doing this for ten years.
Meanwhile, the National Lawyers Guild has obtained an injunction (which you can see here)that "prevents the city from enforcing park rules on Occupy Wall Street protesters."
The reaction in London "The camp of 200 tents in London's financial quarter was buzzing with activity today. Activists said they planned to go to the US embassy in London to protest later. Asked if they expect the police to take similar action in London, Stafrace said: 'It's possible. But it might not happen here because there is more legality here and the British are different to the Americans. Things are a lot more civilised here.'"
On Monday's Majority Report, Sammy talked to "occupiers at the Occupy cities who were evicted and/or victim's of police crackdowns over the weekend: Occupy Portland, Occupy Denver, Occupy SLC and Occupy Albany." He also linked a Twitpic of cops with assault rifles at Occupy Chapel Hill.
Atrios: Euro elites want more of a political union, but I tend not to think that they really want silly people like Greek voters having much input as to what goes on there. They want more unaccountable centralized institutions run by the right people. I wasn't always so skeptical about such things, but it's hard to not see that real democracy is falling out of favor everywhere..." (Also: What he said.)
"Gee, this is odd: Both Greece and Italy have new Prime Ministers from Goldman Sachs."
"Whew! Obama & Dems Promoting MODERATE Economic Terrorism. Jerry White of wsws back in April wrote about Obama's campaign tour to confuse America that what is needed is faux-shared sacrifice bullet-biting austerity right now. Oh yes, and the now familiar razzle dazzle of the Obama 'lesser of two evils' path that the Dem Devastation of the elderly's pensions and health care, the gutting of social services, the administration's stunning lack of seriousness about escalating unemployment are CERTAINLY PREFERABLE to what those crazed Republicans would do to us all."
Here's the clip of Culture of Truth's bit on the most ridiculous thing he saw on the Sunday talk shows.
The Hell of it is that, back before he was Really Famous, we really used to like Frank Miller. Then one day he took a dark, ugly turn that had us viewing his work with consternation. I remember at the time meeting Gary Groth and having a conversation that was mostly about what Miller was doing and all present agreeing that what he seemed to be advocating was fascism. So, I suppose none of this is much of a surprise.
This is a nifty HD time-lapse video of orbiting the earth from 240 miles out.
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17:10 GMT
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Short and sweetTonight's panelists on Virtually Speaking Sundays will be Sam Seder of The Majority Report and Avedon Carol of The Sideshow (also known as Not Atrios).
I love the internet, and I'm really going to miss it when it's gone. "PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites "by accident," mistakenly, or for NOT doing "enough" to protect the interests of Hollywood. These bills that are moving very quickly through Congress and can pass before Christmas aim to give the US government and corporations the ability to block sites over infringing links posted by their users and give ISPs the release to take any means to block peoples' sites, including slowing down your connection. That's right, some say this bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality.
"A Florida Republican names it: The Plunderbund." [...] "Policy has been selling for a high price in Tallahassee. Just follow the money, then follow the legislation all the way to becoming the law. Make no mistake, we are being sold out and heading toward a society ruled by a corporate oligarchy."
Mr. Sideshow is currently reading Terry Pratchett's Snuff, and left this quote from it in the comments: "It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was 'policeman'. If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policeman. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers."
Much like "anarchist" and "violent" are not synonyms, neither are "violence" and "civil disobedience". I realize there are people who would like to conflate these things (and some who wish to pretend they are all merely a subset of "terrorism"), but it's a lie and you should be careful not to fall for it.
I'm getting used to a new operating system here (the situation was desperate), so there's a lot of testing going on and slowing things down. Your continued patience is appreciated.
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16:40 GMT
Friday, 11 November 2011
Interim reportOklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System sues U.S. Bancorp over mortgage backed securities fraud.
I think Occupy Oakland just took a serious wrong turn. [Update: Changed my mind.]
Cops with machine guns? "The most serious consequence of the rapid militarization of American police forces, however, is the subtle evolution in the mentality of the "men in blue" from "peace officer" to soldier. This development is absolutely critical and represents a fundamental change in the nature of law enforcement. The primary mission of a police officer traditionally has been to 'keep the peace.' [...] Soldiers, by contrast, are trained to identify people they encounter as belonging to one of two groups -- the enemy and the non-enemy -- and they often reach this decision while surrounded by a population that considers the soldier an occupying force. Once this identification is made, a soldier's mission is stark and simple: kill the enemy, "try" not to kill the non-enemy."
"Ohio voters reject Issue 2: In a political blow to GOP Gov. John Kasich, voters handily rejected the law, which would have limited the bargaining abilities of 350,000 unionized public workers. With nearly 95 percent of the votes counted late Tuesday, about 61 percent were to reject the law." Mississippi's zygote personhood bill went down, too. And so did Obamacare in Ohio. What does it mean? "But what it all boils down to is that voters are fed up with far right policies that benefit no one but large business interests. In Massachusetts, for example, according to Physicians for a National Health Program, Romneycare - the insurance giveaway on which Obamacare was modeled - nearly 400,000 people still find health insurance unaffordable, and those people are predominantly the working poor. Given this realization, it is no wonder voters would rather opt out. On a broader scale, Americans are increasingly hostile to far right policies, be they industry bailouts, invasive laws designed to take away women's reproductive rights, or attempts to restrict voting rights, We the People are starting to fight back against the wave of fascist power grabs. Only time, though, will tell if it's not too little, too late."
Tim Dickinson has a feature in Rolling Stone called "How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich" which says it's "The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent." Now it would be good to see an article about how the Democratic Party followed suit.
Home at last: Matthew Yglesias has finally gotten the job he's been trying for all along - at Slate.
Here's Glenn Greenwald talking about how journalists have become servants to power. And more of Glenn speaking about his book here.
And here's Glenn Greenwald on Virtually Speaking with Jay Ackroyd and Stuart Zechman.
I haven't watched this yet, but I hear Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, Richard Kim, William Greider, Rinku Sen, and Patrick Bruner did a great panel about Occupy Wall Street (and a lot of other things) Thursday evening. (via)
@davidcnswanson: "How long has it been since we had a victory that was something other than the defeat of a proposal to make the world even worse than it is?" (via)
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14:33 GMT
