lundi 28 février 2011

Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: John Cole, who never links to me, but who does point out what it means when the government gets out of the pension business and delivers a bunch of easy marks to the very same banksters who killed the American economy.

Money quote:
What I find most amazing about all of this is that while these changes are being made, no one seems concerned about the regulatory side of the equation. You would think that if governments are pushing potentially millions of people into the market, there would be some concern about the recent multiple financial crashes brought on by the perfidy of our Galtian overlords in the market. It’s really quite a good scheme if you are one of the Wall Street grifters- someone is sending you marks, and promising to look the other way. You don’t exactly have to be Nostra-fucking-damus to realize that in about a decade, a couple million Americans of retirement age are going to be wiped out by the same class of greedy pricks that just vaporized the economy a few years ago.

There's only one logical candidate to host the Oscars next year

It's always amusing to watch older people (and yes, I am one) try to figure out what "the kids" would like to see, because it's always so tragically, desperately wrong. I'll give the folks who put together the Academy Awards credit for trying to shake things up a bit, but if you're going to bring in the kids, a self-important, pretentious quasi-intellectual indie guy and a Liza Minelli-lookalike who did a couple of princess movies and seems to also be a big presence on the indie circuit is hardly the way to go.

Last night's broadcast, described today by Randi Rhodes as "the worst television viewing of our lifetime" started out promisingly, with James Franco and Anne Hathaway in an Inception dream sequence. But it went rapidly downhill from there, and as soon as it devolved into Hathaway bickering with her mom on worldwide television and Franco making sure everyone know he's still young enough to have a grandma, I knew that I was going to watch the American Masters documentary on Ahmet Ertegun that was being broadcast on Channel 31 instead. Because the only thing I really wanted to see from last night's broadcast was this:



Because I doubt there breathes a woman in this country over the age of thirty-five who hasn't been madly in love with Colin Firth ever since this:



So I wanted to hear what The Man Who Will Always Be Darcy had to say, and as one could have predicted if one had watched any of his interviews this season, he knocked it out of the park.

I dare say that Colin Firth could do a quite lovely job hosting the Academy Awards, with a light froth of self-deprecating charm mingled with the self-important ponderousness that this annual festival of industry self-congratulation requires. And after watching Joel McHale's obsessive tubthumping the night before at the normally very funny Spirit Awards about what he referred to as "having lunch down at the Y" and missing John Waters, who used to host the Spirit Awards, terribly, the show could do worse. But what a step down that would be for the Divine Mr. Firth, who having finally received the brass ring he's deserved for so long, should finally become a household name outside of those households occupied by sighing middle-aged women.

But that's not who I'm thinking should host this show. I'm not thinking in terms of George Clooney either, for while I like him as an actor, and respect his good works, his dimply adorableness would probably wear thin after three hours.

It seems to me that what the show needs is someone who can pull off the infusion of snark that this annual spectacle of self-importance so desperately needs, while doing it so quickly and so deftly that the bejeweled and botoxed divas and identically-tuxed men won't even know what hit them. It needs a man whose television work every week never fails to make me say, wonderingly, "HOW THE HELL DOES HE GET AWAY WITH THAT IN PRIME TIME???"

I speak, of course, of this man:




Listen to Seth MacFarlane's rendition of "Singin' in the Rain" and think of what he could do with the kind of cheesy musical number that usually opens the show:




He's already hosted the Writer's Guild Awards:

And while he doesn't wear a suite QUITE as nicely as Colin Firth, he wears it quite well.

So, if you're with me in believing that only Seth MacFarlane can save the Motion Picture Academy from dishing up three hours of this kind of crap next year, go tell them so.

I guess Jesus has forgiven him for helping to drive the U.S. economy off a cliff

When a Democrat runs for office, everything he did in his entire life is up for minute scrutiny at the hands of a voracious media and equally voracious Republicans. But when a Republican runs for office, we're supposed to forget his entire record, his entire life, and just trust him.

Last week we had the appalling spectacle of Newt Gingrich, a convert to Catholicism who seems to have forgotten the repentance part of the confession/repentance/forgiveness model, embody the worst aspects of "Clean Slate Christianity" when he was confronted by a student about his marital history. For the uninitiated, Gingrich's history consists of fucking his second wife while married to his first, presenting said first wife with divorce papers while she was recoverning from cancer surgery, then fucking his third wife while married to his second -- and working very, very hard to impeach Bill Clinton for an extramarital affair while doing so.

Gingrich's response
:

"I've had a life which, on occasion, has had problems," Gingrich said. "I believe in a forgiving God, and the American people will have to decide whether that their primary concern. If the primary concern of the American people is my past, my candidacy would be irrelevant. If the primary concern of the American people is the future... that's a debate I'll be happy to have with your candidate or any other candidate if I decide to run."

If you want to know why I talk about the Christofascist Zombie Brigade, and while I knock Christianity in a way I don't knock others, it's because of people like Newt Gingrich -- arrogant, self-important assholes who think THEY know the mind of God.

Now we have another Republican asshole, who may lack the religious hubris of Newt Gingrich, but who is blatantly playing a similar game of "Don't look over there, look over HERE, where I tell you to look. It's Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who has realized that he's going to have a tough time running as a fiscally responsible conservative after having been George W. Bush's first budget director:
Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-Ind.) is known as a strong fiscal conservative, a top selling point for a potential presidential run. But before he was governor, Daniels was the first budget director for President Bush during a time when the country went from a budget surplus to a budget deficit, and it's likely that he'll have to explain how that fits with the philosophy he touts should he decide to jump into the Republican field in 2012.

On "Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace pressed Daniels on this point. "When you came in, this country had an annual surplus for the first time in 30 years of $236 billion. When you left, two and a half years later, the deficit was $400 billion. You were also there when President Bush launched his Medicaid drug benefit plan that now cost $60 billion a year. I know there was a recession, but do you think it was wise -- at a time when we were fighting two wars -- to have two tax cuts and launch a huge new entitlement?"

Daniels said deficits during that time were inevitable. "It was a recession, two wars and a terrorist attack that led to a whole new category called homeland security," he said. "So nobody was less happy than I to see the surplus go away, but it was going away."

Click over to get to the link to the full article at the $40 Million Woman's site, including the order for diverted attention from Mr. Daniels.

dimanche 27 février 2011

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Pho Pasteur, Haymarket, Sydney


Bánh hỏi chả giò seafood spring roll with steamed rice noodle $9.00

How can you not love a dish involving spring rolls? I'm a sucker for bánh hỏi chả giò at Vietnamese restaurants, the perfect excuse to crunch into spring rolls under the guise of eating a salad.

We've stopped in at Pho Pasteur on George Street several times lately, always filled with a gaggle of office workers, uni students,

Scumbaggery is discernable in youth

We learned with George W. Bush that what a man does when he is "young and irresponsible" does reflect on the man he becomes later. When a boy gets his kicks by blowing up frogs with firecrackers, it's a pretty good bet that given the opportunity, he'll get his kicks in middle-age by torturing actual human beings. When a boy insists on changing the rules in the middle of a game he isn't winning, it's a pretty good bet that given the opportunity, he'll steal an election.

And when a young man engages in illegal campaigning in college, you can bet that he's going to be equally scumbaggy as a candidate for Governor of Wisconsin:
Walker attended Marquette from 1986 to 1990, but never attained a degree (see page 5). His sophomore year, Walker ran for president of the Associated Students of Marquette University (ASMU, the former title for Marquette Student Government). He was accused of violating campaign guidelines on multiple occasions.

The Tribune reported then that he was found guilty of illegal campaigning two weeks before his candidacy became official. Later, a Walker campaign worker was seen placing brochures under doors at the YMCA. Door-to-door campaigning was strictly prohibited.

Walker initially denied this but later admitted to the violation, which resulted in lost campaign privileges at the YMCA.

In the run-up to election day, the Tribune’s editorial board endorsed Walker’s opponent John Quigley, but said either candidate had the potential to serve effectively.

However, the Tribune revised its editorial the following day, calling Walker “unfit for presidency.” The column cited Walker’s distribution of a mudslinging brochure about Quigley that featured statements such as “constantly shouting about fighting the administration” and “trying to lead several ineffective protests of his own.”

The revision also expressed disappointment in Walker’s campaign workers reportedly throwing away issues of the Tribune after the endorsement was initially made.

Walker dismissed this, saying he had no knowledge of what his supporters did, according to a Tribune article from February 25, 1988.

In a Tribune article dated April 25, 2002, Walker recalled the election, saying he regretted the approach he took to campaigning.

“I didn’t achieve office because I focused on personalities and egos,” Walker said in the article.

He also blamed Quigley for the negative path the race took, saying he made the election into a partisan one.

Walker has said Barrett is responsible for the negative direction the current gubernatorial race has taken, using attack ads to compensate for his trailing position in polls.

Graeme Zielinski, communications director for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said he believes Walker will do anything to win the election.

“He practiced dirty tricks and mudslinging back then,” Zielinski said. “He’s still doing the same thing today … the ‘say anything, do anything’ campaign.”

Zielinski also said Walker “shamed himself by the way he acted at Marquette” and that his campaign was one of the dirtiest in school history.

If he's lost the cops, has Scott Walker lost the battle?

While I was driving home from work on Friday, I was listening to Thom Hartmann talking to someone who said that the police were going to be sent into the Madison, Wisconsin Capitol building and start arresting protesters one by one -- whatever it took to clear out the rotunda.

How's that working for ya, Gov. Walker? From Boing Boing:

Yesterday afternoon, hundreds of cops marched into the Wisconsin Capitol Building, where Wisconsinites have spent more than a week protesting their governor's plan to eliminate collective bargaining for most public employees. They were there to join the protest. Musician Ryan Harvey posted this report to Facebook:

"Hundreds of cops have just marched into the Wisconsin state capitol building to protest the anti-Union bill, to massive applause. They now join up to 600 people who are inside."



"Police have just announced to the crowds inside the occupied State Capitol of Wisconsin: 'We have been ordered by the legislature to kick you all out at 4:00 today. But we know what's right from wrong. We will not be kicking anyone out, in fact, we will be sleeping here with you!' Unreal."



Click over to see the video. Money quote:

"Mr. Walker, if you are listening to me, let me tell you something. we know pretty well now who you work for. Let me tell you who WE work for. We work for all of these people."

Why They Invented the Internets

It wasn't so you could go shopping. It wasn't so that you could bank online. It wasn't so that textbooks could be delivered to a device slimmer than a cigarette pack.

No, it was so that we could have memes like Cats Quote Charlie Sheen.

Which means that this is absolutely true:


samedi 26 février 2011

We're #1? In what, assholes per square mile? Willful ignorance?

26 troubling stats about the United States, from The Opinionated Liberal:

1. Has the seventh largest debt (as a percentage of GDP).

2. USA Ranking on Adult Literacy Scale: #9
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- OECD

3. USA Ranking on Healthcare Quality Index: #37
(#1 France and #2 Italy)- World Health Organization 2003

4. USA Ranking of Student Reading Ability: #12
(#1 Finland and #2 South Korea)- OECD PISA 2003

5. USA Ranking of Student Problem Solving Ability: #26
(#1 South Korea and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

6. USA Ranking on Student Mathematics Ability: # 24
(#1 Hong Kong and #2 Finland)- OECD PISA 2003

7.USA Ranking of Student Science Ability: #19
(#1 Finland and #2 Japan)- OECD PISA 2003

8. USA Ranking on Women's Rights Scale: #17
(#1 Sweden and #2 Norway)- World Economic Forum Report

9. USA Position on Timeline of Gay Rights Progress: # 6 (1997)
(#1 Sweden 1987 and #2 Norway 1993)- Vexen

10. USA Ranking on Life Expectancy: #29
(#1 Japan and #2 Hong Kong)- UN Human Development Report 2005

11. USA Ranking on Journalistic Press Freedom Index: #32
(#1 Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands tied)- Reporters Without Borders
2005

12. USA Ranking on Political Corruption Index: #17
(#1 Iceland and #2 Finland)- Transparency International 2005

13. USA Ranking on Quality of Life Survey: #13
(#1 Ireland and #2 Switzerland)- The Economist Magazine ...Wikipedia "Celtic
Tiger" if you still have your doubts.

14. USA Ranking on Environmental Sustainability Index: #45
(#1 Finland and #2 Norway)- Yale University ESI 2005

15. USA Ranking on Overall Currency Strength: #3 (US Dollar)
(#1 UK pound sterling and #2 European Union euro)- FTSE 2006....the dollar is now
a liability, so many banks worldwide have planned to switch to euro

16. USA Ranking on Infant Mortality Rate: #32
(#1 Sweden and #2 Finland)- Save the Children Report 2006

17. USA Ranking on Human Development Index (GDP, education, etc.): #10
(#1 Norway and #2 Iceland)- UN Human Development Report 2005

(Source for numbers 2-17 here)

18. A national unemployment level of 9.6% (Google)

19. 10th largest per-capita GDP (CIA)

20. 110th in unemployment (CIA)

21. 34th overall in literacy (CIA, 2009)

22. 12% poverty rate (CIA)

23. #1 in oil consumption by almost 3-to-1 over #2 but only 3rd in oil production (CIA)

24. Largest external debt (CIA)

25. More military spending than the rest of the world combined (Source here)

26. Highest obesity rate in the world : 30.6% (source here)

Republican Scumbaggery In Action


Try to see if you can spot the exact moment this slimy union-busting bill was passed in the Wisconsin legislature at 1:05 AM. If you blink, you'll literally miss it because the Republican blitzkrieg came and went faster than a 12 year-old boy's first orgasm.

This is the only way these douchebags can get shit done and actually move their fat, pasty asses: Through trickery, chicanery, threats, parliamentary shell games and tyranny of the majority, especially in the interests of shafting the working people.

Remember the first 100 hours of the 110th Congress when Pelosi led the way to the House passing a massive raft of progressive legislation by locking out the Republicans? Remember how they squealed like a couple of hundred butt-fucked Ned Beattys about how they were locked out of the legislative process? That was Pelosi's object lesson in how effective one party rule can be when the other party brings nothing but stall tactics and "No!" to the table. If only the Democrats had continued doing that throughout the entire 110th and 111th Congresses.

Now the only thing standing between the Republicans and assfucking most Wisconsin public unions with a microplane nutmeg grater sans lube are the Wisconsin Senate Democrats who did the same exact thing their counterparts in the lower assembly had: They're holing up in Chicago and calling for lawyers, guns and money.

If you're from Wisconsin and reading this, don't forget: the cross-eyed cunt spearheading this party-line union busting bullshit is a Marquette University dropout who was asked to get the fuck out for cheating and was found guilty of dirty tricks when running for college class president (he lost). (Bonus trivia fact: Scott Walker had a 2.3 GPA, even with cheating.) Your public unions are being dismantled by a man who looks as if he ought to wear a football helmet 16 hours a day and wear boxing gloves to keep from fist fucking during that time.



He also takes phone calls in his office from guys he thinks are David Koch, looks forward to spending time at a California retreat with that billionaire scumbag and his brother and seriously thought about planting rabble rousers among the protesters (in other words, professional union busters straight out of the 20's and 30's.) What's next? African mercenaries?

We already went through this on a national level for 8 years with his spiritual Godfather, fellow college fuck-up George W. Bush. And you see well that turned out.

He's also a fucking hypocrite when it comes to state pensions.

Truth. Pass it on.

I'm serious. Start telling everyone who will listen the truth (from David Cay Johnston) about the Wisconsin state workers and their benefits:

When it comes to improving public understanding of tax policy, nothing has been more troubling than the deeply flawed coverage of the Wisconsin state employees' fight over collective bargaining.

Economic nonsense is being reported as fact in most of the news reports on the Wisconsin dispute, the product of a breakdown of skepticism among journalists multiplied by their lack of understanding of basic economic principles.

Gov. Scott Walker says he wants state workers covered by collective bargaining agreements to "contribute more" to their pension and health insurance plans.

Accepting Gov. Walker' s assertions as fact, and failing to check, created the impression that somehow the workers are getting something extra, a gift from taxpayers. They are not.

Out of every dollar that funds Wisconsin' s pension and health insurance plans for state workers, 100 cents comes from the state workers.

How can that be? Because the "contributions" consist of money that employees chose to take as deferred wages – as pensions when they retire – rather than take immediately in cash. The same is true with the health care plan. If this were not so a serious crime would be taking place, the gift of public funds rather than payment for services.

Thus, state workers are not being asked to simply "contribute more" to Wisconsin' s retirement system (or as the argument goes, "pay their fair share" of retirement costs as do employees in Wisconsin' s private sector who still have pensions and health insurance). They are being asked to accept a cut in their salaries so that the state of Wisconsin can use the money to fill the hole left by tax cuts and reduced audits of corporations in Wisconsin.

The labor agreements show that the pension plan money is part of the total negotiated compensation. The key phrase, in those agreements I read (emphasis added), is: "The Employer shall contribute on behalf of the employee." This shows that this is just divvying up the total compensation package, so much for cash wages, so much for paid vacations, so much for retirement, etc.

The collective bargaining agreements for prosecutors, cops and scientists are all on-line.

Read the whole thing here. The media will not tell your conservative, and even your not-paying-attention friends this truth. You have to.

vendredi 25 février 2011

Is this actually news to anyone?

There's something to the "Cat Lady" thing after all:
The bond between cats and their owners turns out to be far more intense than imagined, especially for cat aficionado women and their affection reciprocating felines, suggests a new study.

Cats attach to humans, and particularly women, as social partners, and it's not just for the sake of obtaining food, according to the new research, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Behavioural Processes.

The study is the first to show in detail that the dynamics underlying cat-human relationships are nearly identical to human-only bonds, with cats sometimes even becoming a furry "child" in nurturing homes.

[snip]

While cats have plenty of male admirers, and vice versa, this study and others reveal that women tend to interact with their cats -- be they male or female felines -- more than men do.

"In response, the cats approach female owners more frequently, and initiate contact more frequently (such as jumping on laps) than they do with male owners," co-author Manuela Wedl of the University of Vienna told Discovery News, adding that "female owners have more intense relationships with their cats than do male owners."

Cats also seem to remember kindness and return the favors later. If owners comply with their feline's wishes to interact, then the cat will often comply with the owner's wishes at other times. The cat may also "have an edge in this negotiation," since owners are usually already motivated to establish social contact.

Presenting...the debut of....

The FOK News Channel!!

Doin' it live!

No video yet, but "Worst Persons" is back.

Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel? Or just an oncoming train?

Great minds think alike

Jill Filipovic writers over at RH Reality Check:

Dear Rep. Franklin,

I applaud your efforts to support the rights of zygote citizens of Georgia by criminalizing miscarriages and investigating every instance of fetal death as a potential crime. The bill you are trying to pass is clear that the Georgia State Assembly knows that life begins at the moment of conception, and that any fertilized egg that dies is a human death that we should all grieve. I couldn't agree more, and I would like to help.

As I'm sure you know, more than 50% of fertilized eggs --Georgia citizens! -- naturally don't implant, and are flushed out of the body during menstruation. I am personally concerned that my own murdering woman-body may have flushed out some human beings, and I may have flushed them down the toilet without knowing that I was disposing of Georgia citizens in such an undignified way. This must be remedied. I would like to be sure that I am not killing any more Georgia citizens -- and that if I am, they are able to receive a proper funeral and not a burial at sea, and that our state police can dedicate valuable time and resources to investigating their deaths.

To that end, I attach a picture of my latest used tampon. I am preserving this tampon, as well as all of my other tampons, pads, feminine hygiene products and soiled panties from my current menstrual cycle, so that the Georgia State Police can come collect them as evidence. I would also be happy to drop the specimens off at your office, should you want to examine them yourself.

Please let me know if I can make an appointment to give you these items. Or, since I appreciate that you are a very busy man, please let me know when the police will be by my home to collect them, as my next cycle is rapidly approaching and they are starting to smell. I cannot keep them in my refrigerator for much longer.

Thanks for all the work you do to further the pro-life cause.

Funny....disgusting...and I said it first -- in 2005, 2006, and last Saturday.

I call dibs.

And when one of these nutballs finally does it, conservatives will say that their incendiary rhetoric had nothing to do with it

Another dispatch from Teabag America, in this case Athen, Georgia:

At Rep. Paul Broun’s town hall meeting on Tuesday, the Athens congressman asked who had driven the farthest to be there and let the winner ask the first question.

We couldn’t hear the question in the back of the packed Oglethorpe County Commission chamber, but whatever it was, it got a big laugh. According to an outraged commenter on the article, the question was, when is someone going to shoot Obama?

I’ve asked Team Broun whether that was indeed the question and haven’t gotten an answer. The commenter accurately described the questioner and the circumstances, and no one has disputed his account.

Update: Broun’s press secretary, Jessica Morris, confirmed that the question was indeed, who is going to shoot Obama? “Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,” she said.

Here was Broun’s response:

The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

He then segued into Republicans’ budget proposal.


Got that? It's at a point now where a Republican Congressman doesn't even express outrage at a question about shooting the President of the United States. Three or four signs at a Wisconsin demonstration of fifty thousand equate Scott Walker with the worst despots in history, and the media goes into a frenzy of "Both Sides Do It." But on the right, it's perfectly OK to treat a question like this as simply "inappropriate."

Asking a Congressman when he stopped beating his wife (when he hasn't) is inappropriate. Asking a Congressman who is going to shoot the president is outrageous -- and should be treated as such. Even John McCain, who whored himself in the worst way to these people in 2008, finally drew the line at "I don't trust him...he's an Arab." Today Republicans don't even flinch when someone talks about shooting elected officials of the other party.

Baghdad, Wisconsin

Krugman on the Shock Doctrine in action in Wisconsin:

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting. The bill in question is 144 pages long, and there are some extraordinary things hidden deep inside.

For example, the bill includes language that would allow officials appointed by the governor to make sweeping cuts in health coverage for low-income families without having to go through the normal legislative process.

And then there’s this: “Notwithstanding ss. 13.48 (14) (am) and 16.705 (1), the department may sell any state-owned heating, cooling, and power plant or may contract with a private entity for the operation of any such plant, with or without solicitation of bids, for any amount that the department determines to be in the best interest of the state. Notwithstanding ss. 196.49 and 196.80, no approval or certification of the public service commission is necessary for a public utility to purchase, or contract for the operation of, such a plant, and any such purchase is considered to be in the public interest and to comply with the criteria for certification of a project under s. 196.49 (3) (b).”

What’s that about? The state of Wisconsin owns a number of plants supplying heating, cooling, and electricity to state-run facilities (like the University of Wisconsin). The language in the budget bill would, in effect, let the governor privatize any or all of these facilities at whim. Not only that, he could sell them, without taking bids, to anyone he chooses. And note that any such sale would, by definition, be “considered to be in the public interest.”

If this sounds to you like a perfect setup for cronyism and profiteering — remember those missing billions in Iraq? — you’re not alone. Indeed, there are enough suspicious minds out there that Koch Industries, owned by the billionaire brothers who are playing such a large role in Mr. Walker’s anti-union push, felt compelled to issue a denial that it’s interested in purchasing any of those power plants. Are you reassured?

jeudi 24 février 2011

They'd make keeping kosher a crime too, except that they like their bagels too much

I wonder what other religions' practices they're going to make a crime in Tennessee:
A proposed Tennessee law would make following the Islamic code known as Shariah law a felony, punishable by 15 years in jail.

State Sen. Bill Ketron, R-Murfreesboro, and state Rep. Judd Matheny, R-Tullahoma, introduced the same bill in the Senate and House last week. It calls Shariah law a danger to homeland security and gives the attorney general authority to investigate complaints and decide who's practicing it.

It exempts peaceful practice of Islam but labels any adherence to Shariah law — which includes religious practices such as feet washing and prayers — as treasonous. It claims Shariah adherents want to replace the Constitution with their religious law.

A dozen other states are considering anti-Shariah bills, and there's a federal lawsuit in Oklahoma over one.

Thursday Anthony Weiner Blogging

Because we are going to post videos of His Awesomeness in action whenever we find them:




(via ABL)

Hey, I worked weekends pumping gas before, I can do it again.

In most states, this isn't even an issue. But here in New Jersey, there is still no self-serve gasoline.

In the late 1970's, during the second Arab oil embargo, I started working weekends at the Exxon gas station right across the highway from what was then the GM plant in Linden, New Jersey. This assured me of a regular supply of gasoline. Even now, I sometimes pump my own gas at my local station. They know me, they work on my car, they know I used to work at a gas station in my young years, and they know that I know what I'm doing.

I'll do it again if I have to, and it's entirely possible that America will be seeing gas lines again:

Major banks warned on Thursday an output loss from another oil producer after Libya would lead to global shortages and demand rationing and said OPEC needs to act quickly as the oil rally could derail economic recovery.

Goldman Sachs issued a note saying the world would not be able to cope with another Libya-style oil production outage as Brent oil prices rallied by over $8.50 a barrel to near $120 a barrel.
Italian oil firm ENI, a key Libyan oil player, said the OPEC member had lost three quarters of its production.

"This makes the risks now associated with further contagion much higher than they were several days ago as further disruptions could now create severe shortages in global oil markets that would require substantial demand rationing," Goldman Sachs analyst Jeffrey Currie said.

Barclays Capital and Citi said it saw no downward pressure on prices until more oil comes to the market.

"Unless we see an explicit move from ... producer countries, i.e. Saudi Arabia, I don't think there is necessarily going to be any downward pressure on (oil) prices," said BarCap analyst Amrita Sen.

Mark Fletcher from Citi agreed that OPEC leader Saudi Arabia needed to take action within weeks. "To date we have had a lot of words from Saudi Arabia ... but they haven't done anything yet and we need to see that action."

Now granted, this is Goldman Sachs and Citibank, two of the most companies that got us into this financial mess...and their executives are no doubt rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect. But for those too young to remember the oil shocks of the 1970's, who are used to driving SUVs and spending 40 bucks to fill up the tank, this is what it looked like:





The dollar-a-gallon gasoline that resulted from those oil shocks took us into a bad recession. Imagine what five-dollar-a-gallon gasoline will do right now.

Pointing the finger of blame down the ladder while they're stealing your wallet out of your back pocket

That's the analogy I've been using for years to describe how the bankers and the rest of the über-rich have been able to get away with funnelling so much of the nation's wealth into their own pockets without the kind of revolution we've been seeing this month in the streets of Cairo and Tripoli.

The Tea Partiers initially had it right in that they sensed that something was very, very wrong economically. They even started sniffing in the right direction, with their outrage at bank bailouts and TARP. But then Dick Armey and the Koch Brothers got hold of them, and pointed their heads down the ladder, first at immigrants, and now at public workers, so that they wouldn't notice while they help themselves to whatever is left in the pockets of the middle and working classes. Give the Koch brothers credit: they knew how to harness that rage and redirect it while the Democrats were still listening to David Broder and Barack Obama was insisting on being the One To Unite Them All.

There are a bunch of graphs over at Mother Jones (I do seem to be linking there a lot lately, don't I?) that explain everything you need to know. They won't shrink well enough to reprint here, so you'll have to click over to take a look. But here's how Average income per family for each income group in this country breaks down:

Top 0.01% (that's one one-hundredth of one percent, not one percent)$27,342,212
Top 0.1%$3,238,386
Top 1% $1,137,684
Top 10% $164,647
Bottom 90%$31,244


While you're there, take a look at the net worth of the 10 highest-income members of Congress. Then consider just who they're going to represent.

Hint: It ain't you.

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Republicans: Putting the "Mad" in Madison


Somehow, against all odds and despite Republican assclownery at its most full-blown, the mainstream media have been able to keep a straight face even when the NY Times publishes a story telling us how WI Gov. Scott Walker was tricked by a Buffalo Beast blogger into thinking he was talking to his boss David Koch over the phone. Among the admissions this inexplicably incumbent dunce made to an ad-libbing Ian Murphy: Tricking renegade Democrats into coming back to Madison so the Republicans can claim to have a quorum and Walker likening himself to Ronald Reagan and PATCO in 1981. So, forget about his "mandate" and mantra of fiscal responsibility: It's all about his legacy or repeating history by latching onto Reagan's tattered coattails.

Yeah, you heard that right. The Murphy/Walker interview that's made an even bigger stir than Sarah Palin getting punked in 2008 by someone claiming to be French President Nicholas Sarkozy helped exposed the meanness, venality, underheanded treachery and Reagan worship that, perhaps more than anything else, has kept this country from truly moving forward in over three decades.

The prank call also revealed that Republicans from coast to coast and everywhere in between can't get shit done except through illegitimate means such as stealth legislation, trickery and chicanery, fake mandates and, in the case of now-former Indiana Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox, violence and threats of death a la Libya, Tunisia and Egypt (Sidebar: Don't forget, this is coming from the same JCCentCom who, while ridiculing anyone drawing parallels between Cairo and Madison, espoused treating the peaceful strikers like the Mubarak and Qaddafi regimes treated their protesters.). Right wing violence to opposition is something that of late used to be the specialty of the Tea Baggers. Now Republican terrorism is virtually mainstream.

Am I taking this man's words out of context, seeing something into a mere Twitter tweet that really isn't there? Uh, no. He meant every word. He really wants to kill public union members.


Wisconsin is getting the lion's share of the pro-labor/anti-labor coverage not because the demonstrations surrounding the State House are the biggest or that's it's become the epicenter of the American labor struggle but because its Governor, Scott Walker, has been fully exposed as an intractable tool of far right oligarchs like the Koch Brothers who have turned union busting into a lucrative industry.

Walker not only received $43,000 in campaign donations from the Koch Brothers but has also signaled he will not negotiate with public unions that have already shown a willingness to accept compromises, which was Big Labor's first mistake when dealing with Republican politicians and corporate tycoons. But they were willing to compromise and that isn't good enough.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, at first as stubborn an asshole as Walker and Chris Christie combined, had since backpedaled and decided not to support an anti-collective bargaining provision in the state budget when he saw what he was up against. Ohio decided to give back collective bargaining rights to their public workers (but only after throwing in a poison pill amendment that stripped from them the right to strike, which is the ultimate power of a union).

If the stakes weren't so high in this ongoing labor struggle, the spectacle would be comical. Democratic state lawmakers from two states have fled to Chicago like Prohibition-era bootleggers or bank robbers and frustrated Republican governors accusing them of drawing pay while shutting down the government and all the while screaming for the repeal of union rights and budget woes while just as stubbornly refusing to rescind tax cuts for the rich. But there's nothing funny in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana or anywhere else where there's labor unrest.

Republicans are always eager to bring back the good old lawless days when tycoons, magnates and other oligarchs determined how many hours a week their workers should work, what they should earn and how safe their workplaces were.

Leaving such decisions to those self-dealing entities naturally resulted in unions. Now, with maniacs like Jeff Cox advocating death, he's pushed the United States that much closer to the 20's and 30's, when people fought, and died, in the streets of America during the labor riots. Yes, Jeff Cox is now out of a job and good riddance. But just by posting those messages on Twitter as an appointed official, the damage has been done.

He got it out there and, however much we may ignore it, it is now on the table.

Balkan Oven Burek Bakery Cafe, Rockdale



Rockdale is worth exploring on foot, a fascinating blend of cultures that sprawls across both sides of the Princes Highway. You'll find Halal butchers next to Asian grocery stores, and restaurants that specialise in Chinese, Thai, Bangladeshi, Greek and Himalayan cuisine. There's a giant used furniture shop on the corner, a supermarket selling Pakistani groceries in bulk, and Lebanese bakeries

So what did I miss?

Wow. I go to work and am offline for blogging for 24 hours, and the governor of Wisconson makes an even bigger ass out of himself on a prank call. Not even the twisted minds behind Crank Yankers could have done something this beautiful:





For the most part, Walker sounds like the dweeby kid from chem class who's just been invited out to the after-game malt shop get-together by the football quarterback. But when he talks about getting the Democrats back under false pretenses of negotiation just to get them into the state so Republicans can vote, all bets are off.

Meanwhile, over in Indiana, another union-buster state, an assistant attorney general has been fired after a Twitter-fight with another Tweeter in which he advocated the use of live ammunition to mow down protesters in Wisconsin. That other Tweeter just happened to be a writer for what is now becoming even more indispensable reading, Mother Jones:

On Saturday night, when Mother Jones staffers tweeted a report that riot police might soon sweep demonstrators out of the Wisconsin capitol building—something that didn't end up happening—one Twitter user sent out a chilling public response: "Use live ammunition."

From my own Twitter account, I confronted the user, JCCentCom. He tweeted back that the demonstrators were "political enemies" and "thugs" who were "physically threatening legally elected officials." In response to such behavior, he said, "You're damned right I advocate deadly force." He later called me a "typical leftist," adding, "liberals hate police."

Only later did we realize that JCCentCom was a deputy attorney general for the state of Indiana.

As one of 144 attorneys in that office, Jeff Cox has represented the people of his state for 10 years. And for much of that time, it turns out, he's vented similar feelings on Twitter and on his blog, Pro Cynic. In his nonpolitical tweets and blog posts, Cox displays a keen litigator's mind, writing sharply and often wittily on military history and professional basketball. But he evinces contempt for political opponents—from labeling President Obama an "incompetent and treasonous" enemy of the nation to comparing "enviro-Nazis" to Osama bin Laden, likening ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Service Employees International Union members to Nazi "brownshirts" on multiple occasions, and referring to an Indianapolis teen as "a black teenage thug who was (deservedly) beaten up" by local police. A "sensible policy for handling Afghanistan," he offered, could be summed up as: "KILL! KILL! ANNIHILATE!"

Early Sunday, Mother Jones sent an email to Cox's work address at the Indiana attorney general's office, asking if the Twitter and blog comments were his, and if he could provide context for some of them. He responded shortly after from a personal email address: "For 'context?' Or to silence me? All my comments on twitter & my blog are my own and no one else's. And I can defend them all.


"[Y]ou will probably try to demonize me," he wrote, "but that comes with the territory."

To be sure, in the current political climate, partisan rhetoric has run hot online—and the Constitution guarantees everyone's right to such rhetoric. Nonetheless, a spokesman for the Indiana attorney general's office, Bryan Corbin, told Mother Jones that Cox's statements were "inflammatory," and he promised "an immediate review" of the matter. "We do not condone any comments that would threaten or imply violence or intimidation toward anyone," Corbin added.



As Blue Girl points out, you have to wonder what those who have had dealings with Cox over the last decade are thinking, particularly in cases regarding things like women's rights, collective bargaining, working conditions, or even free speech that doesn't agree with his.

You want Teabaggers in positions of authorty? Jeffrey Cox is what you get.

And the ever-burgeoning "EEEWWWW!!! Lady Parts!!!" caucus is On The Job -- in Georgia, where Bobby Franklin wants you to be put to death if he determines you had anything whatsoever to do with causing your miscarriage; in South Dakota, where women seeking abortions will be forced to be lectured by the Christofascist Zombie Brigade before obtaining one; and in Nebraska, where the legislature is playing "Mine's Bigger" with South Dakota in terms of Killing for Life, with even crazier "justified homicide" legislation. In Nebraska, you won't even have to know the woman seeking the abortion in order to barge in and kill the doctor. ANY third party, like, say, Scott Roeder, will be allowed to do so.

This is Teabag America, folks. And it's only the beginning.

And where ARE the jobs, anyway?

UPDATE: Legalized murder is spreading to Iowa now, too.

mercredi 23 février 2011

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New Jersey's Thug-In-Chief

This is the guy Republicans and the media are in mad love with.

Protesters in Wisconsin need supplies

Americablog is taking donations to buy supplies for the protesters in Wisconsin.

Here's where you can go to donate. Or you can donate through this site set up by the Teaching Assistants' Association. Please give if you can. This is what they're up against. This too.

The New York Times nails it

The realities surrounding Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's true agenda are no longer the exclusive province of the blogs:
As Eric Lipton reported in The Times on Tuesday, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have long been staunch union opponents, were among the biggest contributors to Mr. Walker. (Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group financed by the Kochs, will begin running anti-union broadcast ads in Wisconsin in the next few days.)

Some public sector unions have contracts and benefits that are too rich for these times, but even when they have made concessions, Republican officials have kept up the attack. The Republicans’ claim to be acting on behalf of taxpayers is not believable.

In Wisconsin, union leaders agreed to concessions requested by Mr. Walker: to pay nearly 6 percent of their wages for pension costs, up from nearly zero, and double payments for health insurance. At that point, most governors would declare victory and move on. Instead, Mr. Walker has rejected union concessions and won’t even negotiate. His true priority is stripping workers of collective-bargaining rights and reducing their unions to a shell. The unions would no longer be able to raise money to oppose him, as they did in last year’s election, easing the way for future Republicans as well.

The game is up when unionized state workers demonstrate a sense of shared sacrifice but Republican lawmakers won’t even allow them a seat at the table. For unions and Democrats in the Midwest, this is an existential struggle, and it is one worth waging.


And in a piece "below the fold" on the paper's web site's op-ed page, a reminder of why unions are important, and what happens when we rely on corporations to do what's right (whether our own employer is union or not):
In The Times’s grim, vivid account on March 26, 1911 — the day after the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire — these words appear: “The victims who are now lying at the Morgue waiting for some one to identify them by a tooth or the remains of a burned shoe were mostly girls from 16 to 23 years of age.” There were 146 victims in all, 129 of them women.

Nearly a century later, the names of the last unidentified victims have been discovered, thanks to the work of a historian named Michael Hirsch. They are Maria Giuseppa Lauletti, Max Florin, Concetta Prestifilippo, Josephine Cammarata, Dora Evans and Fannie Rosen, all buried together beneath a single monument in the Cemetery of the Evergreens on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. This completes the roll of the dead in one of the city’s worst and most important fires.

The fire started late on a Saturday, possibly in a waste bin, just before the Triangle shirtwaist factory closed for the day. The flames and smoke spread quickly, and there was no way to escape. The building was supposedly fireproof, the stairwell doors were locked and there was only one internal fire escape, which quickly buckled under the weight of bodies. Before the fire engines arrived, the terrified workers began leaping from the upper windows to their deaths.

The outer building did not burn; it still stands at 23-29 Washington Place. The horror there brought about sweeping changes in fire safety codes, workplace regulations and conditions for working women.


The owners of the factory had managed to fight off the International Ladies Garment Workers Union right through the 1909 and 1910 garment factory strikes (good information here).

mardi 22 février 2011

Dispatch from the "And these guys get PAID for this???" file

Rush Limbaugh thinks Michelle Obama is overweight.

Glenn Beck thinks reform Judaism is like radicalized Islam.

Blogrolling In Our Time

Why on earth haven't I, of all people, not linked before to The Hunting of the Snark? It's long past time to rectify that.

Sydney Seafood School: Mark Best



"Noone ever died from good food," says Mark Best, as he adds another generous handful of salt to a pot of boiling water.

The crowd laughs with relief. I'm at the Sydney Seafood School and tonight's class is being led by Mark, chef and owner of three-hatted restaurant Marque.

The Sydney Seafood School underwent a major facelift in 2009, led by hospitality design specialist Michael McCann. The

Get Christie Love. (Please.)

The Washington gasbag circuit has been all but fellating New Jersey governor Chris Christie on national television ever since the horizontally-challenged bully was elected and immediately set the stage for guys like Scott Walker by deciding that the state's entire problem was caused by the New Jersey Education Association. The insiders are desperately looking for a non-crazy Republican to prop up for the 2012 race, and the pickings are pretty lean. The GOP loves its authoritarian daddy figures even more than it loves its aging high school mean girls, and for sheer Because-I-Said-So bombast, nobody beats Chris Christie.

Today's New York Times focuses on the GOP flavor-of-the-month, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and gets past the bombast to the actual record:

Yet his agenda of balancing the budget, rescuing a pension fund that could go broke within a decade and curtailing rising property taxes — the holy grail of politics in his heavily suburban state — is far from achieved. And he still could face the wrath of voters who discover that the costs of government have merely been shifted onto their local tax bills.

“People have heard the tough talk, but they haven’t felt the full effect of what he’s done,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “That may happen in the next year. And voters tell us that if their property taxes don’t go down, they will hold him responsible.”

In his first year, Governor Christie closed a yawning budget deficit that he estimated at almost $11 billion, though in part by skipping a $3 billion payment to the pension system. At $29.4 billion, spending is down more than $5 billion from its peak two years earlier.

In proposing his budget on Tuesday, the governor is expected to call for more cuts to close another huge deficit. With major union contracts set to expire in June, he is calling for a wage freeze, which polls show the public supports.

But the state will still be deeply in debt, and facing a growing shortfall in its pension fund — $54 billion and counting — that helped spur a downgrade of the state’s bonds.

[snip]

Mr. Christie’s record has not been unblemished. He botched an application for $400 million in federal education money at a time when he was cutting twice that amount.

And in December, Mr. Christie was at Disney World during a blizzard that paralyzed the state. He refused to apologize, saying he had kept in touch with the acting governor, Mr. Sweeney — but Mr. Sweeney said they never spoke.


Yet such gaffes have not transcended the state’s borders, while Mr. Christie’s YouTube rants against teachers and their union leaders have become widespread. Mr. Christie is less popular in New Jersey than with national Republicans: polls show that only about 50 percent of residents approve of his performance.

Where his poll numbers head now may depend on whether Mr. Christie can begin to show success in solving seemingly intractable problems like high property taxes before voters start to hold him responsible.

“When you cut billions of dollars from local government, you can’t turn around and say ‘It’s the mayor’s fault’ — you’re the one who did it,” Mr. Sweeney said. “In Chris Christie’s New Jersey, class sizes are going up, and crime is going through the roof in our inner cities. Eventually, people are going to realize, ‘I’m paying a lot more now, and I have a lot less.’ The people have not realized it yet. But he’s the governor, and the music’s going to stop.”


The question is what this state will look like by the time he gets done with it, and people realize that the reason for a good chunk of his spending cuts is that he has continued the noble tradition started by that OTHER Christie, Christine Todd Whitman, of stiffing the state pension fund for other purposes. In Whitman's case it was for income tax cuts, from which the pension fund has never recovered, and in Christie's case it's for cooking the books.

Last week I hired an appraiser for the purpose of a property tax appeal. The value of my house has dropped over $100,000 since the last town revaluation in 2005. I'm not upset about that; after all, in no sane universe is a dormered Cape Cod with a 1970's kitchen and an original black-and-mint-green 1950's bathroom worth almost a half-million dollars. But the taxes on my little POS in one of the less prestigious towns in the county are upwards of $8000 a year -- and that's lower than many surrounding towns, where taxes on a house like mine can run into the five figures. This is just insane, and it's going to get even MORE insane when the full brunt of Christie's budgets start to hit municipalities. Because anyone familiar with local governments in New Jersey knows that no matter what the political affiliation of those running the town, it's all about cronyism, patronage, and no-bid contracts.

My town, which saw the first contested election in thirty years back in 2009, proceeded to elect the same people who had been on the council for that whole time -- and is now outraged that they're doing exactly what they've done for decades -- spend like drunken sailors, hire their friends for no-show municipal jobs, and give contracts to their friends. One councilman is attempting to have himself also named the town attorney so that he can get taxpayer-paid health insurance for his family. The school district is about to spend $3 million on enhancements to the high school football field. When you shift expenses and taxes to towns, and these towns elect corrupt people because there are no options on the ballot, you aren't addressing the biggest problem about which people complain.

If you read the comments section in this article, you'll see that all the Christie Love is coming from outside of New Jersey. Here, where we're actually SEEING what these policies do, it's a different story:
The people in my very Republican town are furious with him for what he is doing to our school district. He decided that he had to reduce the state funding of education, but rather than deciding on a district-by-district basis what cuts should be made, he simply chopped the state funds provided to districts across the board as a fixed percentage of their general operating budgets. This reduction did not take into account whether districts had been spending way below the state average per pupil or way above. My district had always managed its finances well and spent well under the average, while maintaining an exceptionally high-quality program. For that we were rewarded by having 82% of our already small state funding yanked from us. To add to the problem, he also reduced the amount by which local taxes could be raised. There is no way to make up the shortfall, and we are now being forced to make very painful program cuts.

What I would have wanted from this governor would have been a far more nuanced approach to the education cuts. He is, however, all about bluster and bullying, but deep thought about the fairness and impact of his actions escapes him. He is like a blindfolded man with a chainsaw who is trying to trim the shrubs - loud, unseeing, dangerous, and indiscriminate.


I'll close with the words of one of those demonized state workers, who nails it on where residents SHOULD be pointing their fingers:
I am a NJ state worker and have been for more than 25 years. I have consistently cared about my work and about doing a good job. I have never lost sight of the fact that as a public sector worker I am responsible to my fellow citizens and to the consumers of my agency's services. I am at this moment in time solidly middle class and do not live lavishly in any way.

I am watching with alarm what's going on in our country, something that's been going on for a while now, and that's the systematic turning of people's minds against workers like me, as if our salaries will destroy our neighbors' futures. This is the result of a frighteningly effective information campaign launched against public sector workers in every state in the union, so successful that it has caused people to totally forget about who the real destroyers are -- the bankers who, through a diabolical criminal conspiracy, took the hundreds of billions of dollars out of all of our pockets and laughed as they did it, and laughed as they gave themselves bonuses to celebrate their success.

Folks, it's not your own working neighbors who have set about dismantling the security that was once inherent in our way of life -- go see the film "Inside Job" and read Matt Taibbi's article in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine. There are obscenely wealthy criminals out there who deserve prosecution (although there are perhaps no prosecutors left who can or will take them on), but your neighbors who pay taxes and mortgages, and who shop in local stores and dine at local restaurants and get their cars repaired in local garages -- your neighbors are not the problem. Please seriously consider rejecting the manipulations of the politicians who are doing the work of the wealthy ones who don't want you to notice that they took all the money away from all of us.

lundi 21 février 2011

Jared Loughner was a college student too

This cannot end well:
Texas is preparing to give college students and professors the right to carry guns on campus, adding momentum to a national campaign to open this part of society to firearms.

More than half the members of the Texas House have signed on as co-authors of a measure directing universities to allow concealed handguns. The Senate passed a similar bill in 2009 and is expected to do so again. Republican Gov. Rick Perry, who sometimes packs a pistol when he jogs, has said he's in favor of the idea.

Texas has become a prime battleground for the issue because of its gun culture and its size, with 38 public universities and more than 500,000 students. It would become the second state, following Utah, to pass such a broad-based law. Colorado gives colleges the option and several have allowed handguns.

Supporters of the legislation argue that gun violence on campuses, such as the mass shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007 and Northern Illinois in 2008, show that the best defense against a gunman is students who can shoot back.

"It's strictly a matter of self-defense," said state Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio. "I don't ever want to see repeated on a Texas college campus what happened at Virginia Tech, where some deranged, suicidal madman goes into a building and is able to pick off totally defenseless kids like sitting ducks."


Yes, because nothing will stop a deranged gunman like a hail of bullets from a bunch of panicky, untrained college kids.

Can't we just tell everyone in Texas that yes, they have the biggest penises we've ever seen and be done with it?

OK, now I really feel old



Some music to go with the pizza

For the state workers of Wisconsin:




Billy Bragg's version of this always reminds me of the OLD "Majority Report" show:








The Domino Effect (Updated)


It didn't happen in Southeast Asia but it sure as hell took effect in Northern Africa and certainly across the Middle East. So why shouldn't the same Domino Effect apply to Wisconsin and the rest of the United States?

Protests are popping up at State Houses and City Halls all over the country. What follows is a list of all the protests being planned from today until Thursday, courtesy of Chris Bowers at Daily Kos (Note: Not all these events are SEIU protests).

This is what happens when you keep trying to take away from people who have nothing left to lose.

Events on Monday February 21, 2011 (All times local)

Indiana
Rally
Time: 9 A.M.
Location: Indiana State Capitol
Address: 302 W Washington St - Indianapolis, IN

Montana
Rally
Time: 2 P.M.
Location: Montana State Capitol
Address: 1301 East 6th Avenue - Helena, Montana

Nevada
Rally
Time: 12 P.M.
Location: Nevada State Capitol
Address: 101 North Carson Street - Carson City, NV 89701

North Carolina
Rally
Time: 12 P.M. Location:
Address: 1 East Edenton Street - Raleigh, NC 27601

Oregon
Rally
Time: 12 P.M.
Location: State Capitol
Address: 900 Court St. NE - Salem, OR 97301

Texas
Candlelight March and Vigil
Time: 6:45 P.M.
Location: Meet at TX AFL-CIO
Address: 1106 Lavaca St. - Austin, TX. 78701

Washington
Rally
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: State Capitol Rotunda
Address: 416 Sid Snyder Avenue SW - Olympia, WA 98504

Wisconsin
Rally
Time: All Day
Location: State Capitol
Address: 2 East Main Street - Madison, WI. 53702

Events on Tuesday February 22, 2011 (All times local)

California
Vigil
Time: 5:30 P.M.
Location: State Capitol West Steps
Address: 1315 10th Street - Sacramento, CA 95814

California
Vigil
Time: 5:30 PM
Location: Poncitlan Square
Address: 38315 9th Street East - Palmdale, CA. 93550

Colorado
Rally
Time: 12:00 P.M.
Location: Colorado State Capitol
Address: 200 East Colfax Avenue (West Steps) - Denver, CO. 80203

Iowa
Rally
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Iowa State Capitol
Address: 1007 East Grand Avenue - Des Moines, IA

Maryland
Rally
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Lawyers' Mall, Maryland State House
Address: 100 State Circle - Annapolis, MD. 21401

Massachusetts
Rally
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: State House
Address: 1 Ashburton Pl - Boston, MA 02108

Massachusetts
Rally
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: City Hall Steps
Address: 36 Court Street - Springfield, MA 01103

Minnesota
Rally
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Minnesota State Capitol
Address: 75 Constitution Ave - St. Paul, MN 55101

Ohio
Rally
Time: 1:00 PM
Location: Capitol Building
Address: 1395 Dublin Rd - Columbus, OH 43215

New Mexico
Rally
Time: 12:15 PM
Location: East Side of the State House
Address: 490 Old Santa Fe Trl # 219 - Santa Fe, NM 87501

Rhode Island
Rally
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: Rhode Island State House
Address: 90 Smith St - Providence, RI 02903

Vermont
Rally
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Vermont State Capitol Building
Address: 115 State Street - Montpelier, VT. 05602

Wisconsin
Rally
Time: All Day
Location: State Capitol
Address: 2 East Main Street - Madison, WI. 53702

Events on Wednesday February 23, 2011 (All times local)

Arkansas
Rally
Time: 11:30 AM
Location: State Capitol Building
Address: 425 W Capitol Ave, Little Rock, AR 72201

Connecticut
Rally
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: State Capitol Building, West Steps
Address: 210 Capitol Avenue - Hartford, CT. 06106

Georgia
Rally
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: State Capitol Building
Address: 206 Washington St - Atlanta, GA, 30334

Pennsylvania
Rally
Time: 12:00 PM
Location: Lackawana Court House
Address: 200 Adams Avenue - Scranton, PA 18503

Events on Thursday February 24, 2011 (All times local)

Ohio
Protest against Governor Kasich
Time: 4:00 PM
Location: Canton Civic Center
Address: 1101 Market Ave N. - Canton, Oh 44702

Events on Friday, February 25, 2011 (All times local)

New Jersey

Time: 12:00 noon
Location: The State House
Address: 125 West State Street, Trenton, NJ

The Greatest Pizzeria in the History of Pizza

For the edification of those not from New Jersey: Here in the Garden State, we take our pizza seriously. This state, which IS the home of The Sopranos, may be the pizza capital of the world. I don't know how we do it, but this state manages to have a pizzeria on practically every corner. My town is an exception, but that's only because our "downtown" consists of a 1/3-empty strip mall where the local pizza guy packed up and left to go to upstate New York only because the rent was too damn high.

Just an example: In Westwood, New Jersey, within a two-block radius, you have Lisa's Pizza, Pompilio's, and Tony D's. A new pizzeria just opened nearby. For a while last summer, you could have started with a thin-crust pie at the Mountain House (now closed), crossed the street for ta cheesy slice at Tony D's, then crossed a parking lot to Banchetto Feast for an individual gourmet pie. And that's without even going to that 2-block radius. Go up the main drag to Hillsdale, and you have even more.

It's fun to poke fun at places real and imagined that think they know how to make pizza, which here in New Jersey means any place outside the New York metropolitan area. I've had Chapel Hill pizza, for example, and while it's passable pizza, it lacks the chewiness of crust that gives real Sopranos-country pizza its, well, pizza-ness.

But today I'm announcing that the greatest pizzeria in the history of pizza is located in Madison, Wisconsin (via Yellow Dog):

People have been calling in pizza orders to Ian's on State St all week from the around the country to have them delivered to protesters in the the Capitol rotunda. Today, it reached critical mass. I read this from a local Facebook friend (who I also saw today at the Square):

"Ian's Pizza on State has shut down operations to the public and is now only taking donation orders for pizza's for the protesters. They have received pizza order donations from across the US, Eygpt, Europe - all around the world - to support the protesters. Unbelievable!"

They apparently already have enough orders to deliver to the Rotunda to keep them busy all night. Keep in mind that this is a Saturday night, already one of their busiest.

Via, via, via a bunch of people here in Madison.

If you want to support the efforts of Ian's Pizza to keep those fighting for workers fed, read here, then pick up addresses for sending checks here follow the instructions here.

Seriously, dude...Mac and cheese pizza? Really?

UPDATE: More....

And the Facebook page...

Monday Big Blue Smurf Blogging: What They Said

Today's honoree: Richard Bey, writing about unions. Yes, it's THAT Richard Bey, he of the old Jerry Springer-type TV show. What's less known about Bey is that he was fired from his evening drive-time show on WABC in New York in 2003 for opposing the Iraq War -- and has worked only sporadically in broadcasting ever since.

What is getting lost in the drumbeat among right-wing radio and television talking heads (yes, including, apparently, Glenn Beck) is that most, if not all of them, are members of The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). And so comes today's money quote:
I recognize that some unions have been guilty of corruption. As I stated in previous posts on this site I also favor sensible caps on union pensions and rules that prevent egregious abuses on how those pensions are calculated. But for a movement that derided Rahm Emanuel’s suggestion to ‘Never let a crisis go to waste’ the radicals of the Tea Party are quick to embrace this philosophy. This is not about solving the problem of statewide deficits. From the beginning their rhetoric has been anti-worker, anti-union, strangely recognizing only ‘capital providers’ as ‘THE PRODUCERS’. Capital investment is surely a necessary, central element of the American economy but it is labor that actually accomplishes production so it is an odd way to label the components. FoxNews would have its viewers frame this issue as ‘the unions vs. the taxpayers’, not even acknowledging that union workers pay taxes themselves.

I support the concept that a crisis can provide an opportunity, to learn, to change, to readjust how things are done. But when there is corporate corruption or abuse we don’t attempt to abolish corporations. We attempt to remedy the corruption and abuse to prevent ongoing damage.

[snip]

I should reveal that I am a proud member of three unions. Throughout my years in broadcasting my unions have supported me when I needed support as an actor or a broadcaster. I am such an ardent union member that I have paid my dues to every union twice annually for forty years though I could have taken a leave of absence during those hard times when I was not working. That’s how strongly I feel an obligation to union membership. It’s also true that for many years I made so much money in my profession that I probably had more direct power as an individual negotiator than I did as a union member. But I did not forget how purposeful and important union membership was to my career and my life.

It is undeniable that there are 13 states that prohibit or restrict collective bargaining by teachers and other state employees. It is interesting to note that most of those states have budget SHORTFALLS. A handful of them have deficits of 20% to make up somehow EVEN WITHOUT UNION WORKERS. Its also an historical fact that Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps our most pro-labor president was extremely wary of allowing municipal workers to unionize. Teddy Roosevelt’s most succinct statement supporting labor organization is mute on the organization of public employees: “It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.”

Speaking of not looking at the man behind the curtain...

Paul Krugman today pulls the curtain aside from Scott Walker:
But Mr. Walker isn’t interested in making a deal. Partly that’s because he doesn’t want to share the sacrifice: even as he proclaims that Wisconsin faces a terrible fiscal crisis, he has been pushing through tax cuts that make the deficit worse. Mainly, however, he has made it clear that rather than bargaining with workers, he wants to end workers’ ability to bargain.

The bill that has inspired the demonstrations would strip away collective bargaining rights for many of the state’s workers, in effect busting public-employee unions. Tellingly, some workers — namely, those who tend to be Republican-leaning — are exempted from the ban; it’s as if Mr. Walker were flaunting the political nature of his actions.

Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.

So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy. Indeed, if America has become more oligarchic and less democratic over the last 30 years — which it has — that’s to an important extent due to the decline of private-sector unions.

And now Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to get rid of public-sector unions, too.

There’s a bitter irony here. The fiscal crisis in Wisconsin, as in other states, was largely caused by the increasing power of America’s oligarchy. After all, it was superwealthy players, not the general public, who pushed for financial deregulation and thereby set the stage for the economic crisis of 2008-9, a crisis whose aftermath is the main reason for the current budget crunch. And now the political right is trying to exploit that very crisis, using it to remove one of the few remaining checks on oligarchic influence


What Krugman doesn't mention is the $43,000 in campaign donations that Walker accepted from the billionaire Koch brothers. Walker's marching orders from his billionaire benefactors from the day he took office were to bust the public sector unions. He's just doing the bidding of his masters.

Bernie Madoff as Tyler Durden

It's becoming increasingly difficult to stretch the imagination enough to believe that the Wilpons had absolutely no knowledge of what Bernie Madoff was doing. I don't care how much people trusted Fred Wilpon, shouldn't the idea that people were only allowed to ask about their investments through the Wilpons; that they were not allowed to contact Madoff directly, set off some alarms? I mean, what the heck was this, Fight Club?




The rules, at Mr. Madoff’s request, were clearly stated in advance by the Sterling partners to investors invited into the club. Account holders were never to speak directly with Mr. Madoff or anyone at his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. All communications regarding any of the accounts had to go through Sterling. Clients would receive monthly paper statements from Mr. Madoff, though the year-end tax statements were sent from Sterling.

One woman who, along with her husband, held several accounts with Mr. Madoff said she thought it was peculiar that they were told never to communicate with Mr. Madoff, but it did not stop them from wanting in.

“We never questioned the fact we weren’t allowed to contact Madoff because of our confidence in Sterling,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified as an investor with Mr. Madoff. “We invested because we trusted these two people absolutely; because they were big business and we assumed they knew what they were talking about.”

Irving H. Picard, the trustee trying to recover assets for victims of the fraud, has charged in a lawsuit that Mr. Wilpon and Mr. Katz willfully ignored repeated signs that Mr. Madoff’s enterprise was suspect. That investors were not permitted to contact Mr. Madoff is portrayed in the suit as an intentional and fairly elaborate way to erect a barrier between these individuals and him.

You have to wonder just what it takes for people to accept the "If it's too good to be true, it isn't" rule. It's easy to talk about greedy rich people in the context of the Madoff scam, but then I always go back to Loretta Weinberg, the reform-crusading New Jersey state senator who lost all of her retirement savings to Madoff through her money manager who invested it with Madoff. It might be easy to brand Weinberg as just another greedy rich asshole, but a million dollars in retirement savings accumulated because you lived frugally doesn't qualify one as rich anymore; not when the conventional wisdom is that MOST of us will need about this much in order to retire (and most of us will not have it).

After the 1987 crash, which coincided with the early years of the 401(k), people started to realize that what goes up could come down, and often does. In the decade from 2000-2010, stock returns were nearly flat, bank interest became next to nothing, and bond funds are usually considered as conservative investments. So most people saw their retirement savings barely tread water for most of the decade, and collapse during the crash of 2008. Those who stuck it out may have largely earned it back, but breaking even from 2008-2010 is hardly the "historical 10% return" that most of us were led to believe a growth-oriented asset allocation would yield.

So when you combine that reality with the "special" aura that surrounded the ability to buy into the Madoff Fight Club, it becomes easier to understand why people would want to get in on these returns. What's baffling is that they would buy into the idea that one should not look at the behind the curtain. Even in the (spoiler alert) hallucination that was Fight Club, members got to see who Tyler Durden was.

dimanche 20 février 2011

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