Thursday, September 29, 2011

Davids Daily Dose -Thursday September 29th

1/  This was written by Chris Floyd in November 2001, a couple of months after 9/11, and is his vision of the future. He is predicting, 10 years ago, the subtle replacement of American democracy with an oligarchy......read this and tell me it isn't either all true or soon will be......



It won't come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won't come with "black helicopters" or tanks on the street. It won't come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.
As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there; legislatures, elections, campaigns – plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the "consent of the governed" will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among this elite, and a degree of free debate will be permitted, within limits; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to govern or influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized – usually by "the people" themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by an impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, not thoughtful citizens, and left ignorant of current events by a media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will often act in secret; for reasons of "national security," the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, the murder of "enemies" selected by the leader, undeclared war, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new "security structures" targeted at the populace. In time, all this will come to seem "normal," as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone.
 
 









2/  Frank Rich, one of the best journalists in America, weighs in on the current state of politics and how bipartisanship is a disaster for Obama and the Democrats. Oh and no matter what you hear Rick Perry isn't dead yet.
This article should be required reading in the White House, and if you even have a glimmering of interest in politics and the future of this country you should read this....excellent article.

The election is still thirteen months away, but in certain coastal circles, the quadrennial wailing has erupted right on schedule: “If that man gets in the White House, I’m moving out of the country!” This time that man is Rick Perry, who might have been computer-generated to check every box in a shrill liberal fund-raising letter: a gun-toting, ­Bible-thumping, anti-government death-penalty absolutist from Texas. And this time the liberals’ panic is not entirely over-the-top. Perry isn’t a novelty nut job like Michele Bachmann. He’s the real deal. It’s not implausible he could win his party’s nomination and prevail in enough swing-state nail-biters to take the presidency. He could do so because the times and the politician are in alignment. A desperate and angry country is facing the specter of a double-dip recession with zero prospects of relief from a defunct Washington. Perry is the only viable declared candidate—as measured by organizing savvy, fund-raising prowess, poll numbers, and take-no-prisoners gubernatorial résumé—hawking an unambiguous alternative to the failed status quo.
The important thing to remember about Perry is that he’s anathema to Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, andmany conservative pundits no less than to liberals. His swift rise does not just reflect his enthusiasts’ detestation of Barack Obama. Perry’s constituency rejects the entire bipartisan Establishment of which Obama is merely the latest and shiniest product. For two decades, the elites in both parties and in the Beltway media-political combine have venerated a vanilla centrism, from Bush 41’s “thousand points of light” to Clinton’s triangulation to Bush 43’s “compassionate conservatism.” They’ve endorsed every useless bipartisan commission and every hapless bipartisan congressional “Gang of Six” (or Twelve, or Twenty, not to mention the new too-big-not-to-fail budget supercommittee). Perry, by contrast, is a proud and unabashed partisan. If he’s talking about gangs, chances are they’re chain gangs, not dithering conclaves of legislators. He doesn’t aspire to be the adult in the room, as Obama does, but the bull in the china shop of received opinion. Despite all the flak from political gatekeepers of most persuasions, he didn’t back down from calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme” and “a monstrous lie” in his first national debate. Indeed, he touched the third rail of American politics and lived. Gallup found that his stand didn’t hurt him a whit among GOP voters. Though most commentators across the spectrum awarded the night to Romney, a CNN survey found that more Republicans by far came away feeling that Perry had the better chance of beating Obama. They, unlike Washington’s political aristocracy, may actually know what’s going on in America.
















3/  An interesting but unpleasant article from the Times on how the justice system is weighted against anyone charged with a crime because of the power of the Prosecutors office. I can't watch CSI or any of those shows because in reality the system is so weighted in favour of the police and justice system most cop shows aren't believable. The prosecutors aren't the good guys, they are the ones enforcing the stupid laws with minimum mandatory sentences passed in State Legislatures and that gives them incredible power.....
Of course the Times article uses Florida's patchwork of laws named after victims, and the drug possession statutes....Rick Scott's got to fill those prisons for his cronies in the private prison industry....

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or other harsher penalties.

Some experts say the process has become coercive in many state and federal jurisdictions, forcing defendants to weigh their options based on the relative risks of facing a judge and jury rather than simple matters of guilt or innocence. In effect, prosecutors are giving defendants more reasons to avoid having their day in court.
“We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors,” said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that “in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage.”
One crucial, if unheralded, effect of this shift is now coming into sharper view, according to academics who study the issue. Growing prosecutorial power is a significant reason that the percentage of felony cases that go to trial has dropped sharply in many places.
Plea bargains have been common for more than a century, but lately they have begun to put the trial system out of business in some courtrooms. By one count, fewer than one in 40 felony cases now make it to trial, according to data from nine states that have published such records since the 1970s, when the ratio was about one in 12. The decline has been even steeper in federal district courts.














4/  We've got a double dose of Jon Stewart for you, both 4 minutes. The first is Jon's reaction to the Fox and Friends analysis of  "Dancing With the Stars" issues, Chas Bono and Nancy Graces's nipple peek.....his Fox segments are wonderful....

The second is his reaction to Sarah Palin's equivocation about running for President.....since we haven't seen much of her recently it's fun to be reminded what a wack job she is.....also a very good clip......

Take your pick....or both!















5/  What are the evil bastards at our nations health insurance companies up to? 
In a year when people are not going to get medical help to save money so corporate expenses are down they are looking for premium increases of 15% and higher......but guess what will get the blame? 

Obamacare......actually under the Affordable Care Act any increases over 10% have to be  justified, but that doesn't take effect until 2012 so the insurance companies are sticking it to us all royally this year....

Why did they put in a 2 year grace period?

A study released on Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a research group, showed that the average annual premium for family coverage through an employer reached $15,073 in 2011 — 9 percent higher than in the previous year. And even higher premiums could be on the way, particularly in New York, where some companies are asking for double-digit increases for about 1.3 million New Yorkers in individual or small-group plans, setting up a battle with state regulators.
The higher premiums are particularly unwelcome at a time when the economy is sputtering and unemployment is hovering at about 9 percent. Many businesses cite the cost of coverage as a factor in their decision not to hire, and health insurance has become increasingly unaffordable for more Americans. The cost of family coverage has about doubled since 2001, compared with a 34 percent gain in wages.
Aetna and United Health/Oxford said their requested rate increases in New York largely reflected actual hospital, physician and pharmacy costs. “Our rate requests are simply keeping pace,” said Maria Gordon Shydlo, a spokeswoman.
How much the new federal health care legislation pushed by President Obama is affecting rates remains a point of debate, with some consumer advocates and others suggesting that insurers have raised prices in anticipation of new rules that would, in 2012, require them to justify any increase of more than 10 percent. Kaiser pointed out that the increase this year could be an anomaly, after several years of 3 percent to 5 percent increases during the recession.















6/  OK - a bit of culture for you out there. 
The theme from "Star Wars - The Phantom Menace", played by a full orchestra, the RTO  of Serbia. You'll recognise parts of the music, I'm sure.

Great photography, focussing on the musicians.....
















7/  Thomas Friedman takes the dysfunctional scum in Washington to task........good article, but a little too focused on blaming both sides. The reason for the partisan gridlock is almost all due to the Republicans.....
TO Barack Obama, John Boehner, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi and Eric Cantor, I just have two words of advice: Herbert Hoover.
Josh Haner/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman

Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
I know you’re all familiar with that name. Hoover lives in infamy in U.S. history for having been on duty when the Great Depression happened. You’re all courting a similar fate. Your collective behavior is setting all of you up to be known as our generation’s Herbert Hoovers — the leaders who were on duty when we entered our second great economic meltdown.
But unlike Hoover, who was just practicing the conventional economic wisdom of his day when we fell into the Depression, you have no excuses. We know what to do — a Grand Bargain: short-term stimulus to ease us through this deleveraging process, debt restructuring in the housing market and long-term budget-cutting to put our fiscal house in order. None of this is easy and the economy will not be fixed overnight; it will take years. But there is every chance it will get healed if our two parties construct the Grand Bargain we need.
But the more I read the papers the more I’m convinced that “we the people” are having an economic crisis and “you the politicians” are having an election — and there is frighteningly little overlap between the two.
What’s worse — both parties seem to have concluded lately that no compromise is possible and therefore their differences will just have to be settled by the 2012 election. No problem! I’m sure our markets will be patient until the next president is in place in early 2013! And I am sure the European debt crisis will be happy to take the next year off. In fact, that must be why Republicans held another presidential debate on Thursday night and the European economic crisis and how it might affect us — and what we must do to insulate ourselves — merited no discussion.
Has our leadership lost its mind? Do these people go home on weekends to some offshore island, where everyone’s retirement fund is doing fine, everyone’s kids have jobs and no one’s mortgage is under water? Where is the urgency? This is code red. We are facing a possible global financial contagion triggered by European banks choking with sovereign debt spreading their woes to an already weakened U.S. financial system.













8/  This is from a British TV show - Billy Connolly interviews an obsessive compulsive collector of....."stuff", Rob Lurvey.....the guy must be rich too, because some of these items are expensive.....

Fascinating 4 minutes.......poor people end up on "Hoarders", guys with money have documentaries made about them.....













9/  Book review - "Tropic of Chaos"
A book on how three disruptive trends are converging together to produce potential chaos - political gridlock, global economic hardship and climate change related disasters.....
You know, one of those cheery books........
“Tropic of Chaos,” Christian Parenti’s epic new book, revolves around what the author refers to as catastrophic convergence, the “collision of political, economic and environmental disasters.” Catastrophic convergence is a culmination of the compounding and amplifying effects of adverse climate change, post-Cold War political violence and neoliberal economic philosophy.
Parenti, a meticulous writer and economist, uses a timeline and pan-geographic perspective to show how the first factor aggravates the latter two, like pouring gasoline on a raging fire. The combined effect causes the least protected people (such as the “climate change refugees”) the most amount of harm.
Parenti doesn’t debate whether global warming exists. He doesn’t have to—though he provides scientific and military-based evidence from a swath of sources. Parenti humanizes his information. He travels through equatorial regions that span Africa, Asia and Latin America—the Tropic of Chaos situated between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn—and meshes the experiences of individuals most affected by climate change and related catastrophic convergence, with historical and forward-looking implications.
Parenti begins with a poignant example of a young Kenyan man, Ekaru Loruman, who was shot through the head and left to die in the desert. 















10/  If you saw the really funny movie "Bridesmaids" one of the great scenes was in the jewellery store when Kristen Wiig trades insults with a snooty teenage girl - here's the 10 minute extended scene that was whittled down to 2 minutes in the movie..........
By the way if you watch this to the end you'll see other clips from the movie - watch the one in the bridal store when they all get sick.....hysterical.....

For the record, her eggs are wet.
One of the catalysts for the action in "Bridesmaids" is when Kristen Wiig's character Annie bottoms out -- or so she thinks -- after getting fired from her job at the jewelry store. Annie gets canned because she calls a snooty young customer a majorly offensive name, and from there, bad luck and bad decisions set her on course for a run of pure disaster (and, of course, comedy).
All those yuks are more than enough to satisfy the audience -- the film received a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes -- but as it turns out, what seemed like just a plot point originally had its own huge set of laughs.
Check out this deleted scene from the film, which features an epic argument between Annie and the snot nosed teen customer, firing insults more fit for sexually aware middle schoolers back and forth. We learn that farts aren't edible, HPV is very common, Annie may have had gangbanger boyfriends and teenagers use hand symbols to signify slut.














11/  Madonna with her video "Sorry - Pet Shop Boys Remix".......she tries to be erotic in this movie but it goes a little wrong......

Just my opinion......as they say on Fox "we report, you decide"......4 minutes......















12/  Interesting column from the St. Pete Times that surmises to be a Republican candidate for any state or national office it's essential that you're batshit cazy....

GOP sends in the clowns

By Daniel Ruth, Times Columnist
Let's suppose for a moment that you are a Republican and in a moment of experiencing a massive brain lapse, you think it might be a peachy idea to run for public office.
Where to begin? What to do?
Judging from the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Orlando last week, the first thing you need to do is get completely crazy. Not just a little bit crazy. Not just the addled Uncle Festus in the attic crazy.
Nosiree, we're talking certifiably Ezra Pound/Zelda Fitzgerald/Col. Kurtz/Norman Bates kind of crazy.
Fortunately, once you check your sanity at the gates of FreedomWorks, you'll have no shortage of role models to emulate.
What better place to start than Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, who channelled her inner Carrie Nation, accusing the media of engaging in a calculated assault on Christianity by promoting the ideas espoused in The Da Vinci Code and condemning the The Passion of the Christ.













13/   Not quite "I'm not a Witch" or Antoine Dobson", but a fun Autotune song "Reality Hits You Hard Bro" from the Gregory Brothers....2 minutes














14/  The great Carl Hiaasen with some commentary on the idiot we have as Governor and his drug testing plan for welfare recipients....only 2.5% of the tests are positive for drugs....
Gov. Rick Scott’s crusade to drug-test cash welfare applicants is turning out to be another thick-headed scheme that’s backfiring on Florida taxpayers.
The biggest beneficiaries are the testing companies that collect $10 to $25 for urine, blood or hair screening, a fee being paid by the state (you and me) whenever the applicant tests clean — currently about 97 percent of the cases.
The law, which easily passed the Legislature this year, was based on the misinformed and condescending premise that welfare recipients are more prone to use illegal drugs than people who are fortunate enough to have jobs.
Statistically, the opposite is true, despite the claims of Scott and Republican legislators who cheered this unnecessary and intrusive law.
The Department of Children and Families reports that since July, when the drug-testing program started, only 2.5 percent of welfare applicants have failed.
By contrast, about 8.9 percent of the general population illegally uses some kind of drug, according to the 2010 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.











Todays videos - for guys working around the house.....Powerdrill, Trimmer and Toolboxes








Todays burglar joke

A man breaks into a house to look for money and guns.
Inside, he finds a couple in bed.

He orders the guy out of the bed and ties him to a chair.

While tying the home owner's wife to the bed
the convict gets on top of her, kisses her neck,
then gets up & goes into the bathroom.
While he's in there, the husband whispers over to his wife:
'Listen, this guy is an escaped convict. Look at his clothes!
He's probably spent a lot of time in jail
And hasn't seen a woman in years.
I saw how he kissed your neck. If he wants sex,
Don't resist, don't complain...do whatever he tells you.
Satisfy him no matter how much he nauseates you.
This guy is obviously very dangerous.
If he gets angry, he'll kill us both.
Be strong, honey.. I love you!'
His wife responds: 'He wasn't kissing my neck.
He was whispering in my ear.

He told me that he's gay, thinks you're cute,
and asked if we had any Vaseline.

I told him it was in the bathroom.

Be strong honey. I love you too.' 




Todays marriage joke

cid:X.MA1.1314391055@aol.com


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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Davids Daily Dose -Sunday September 25th



Quote of the day - "I won't believe corporations are people until Texas executes one".





1/  President Obama has a decision coming up - whether to approve the oil pipeline from Alberta to Texas. The shale oil from Alberta is the dirtiest oil produced anywhere,

with the explicit intent to block the U.S. from buying Canadian tar sands oil -- considered the dirtiest oil on the planet.

 Scientists agree if the pipeline is approved it's "game over" for the planet.....

And it's his decision - the scum in Congress don't have to agree, it's up to him.... we will see if he can resist the pressure from the oil lobby and the Koch Brothers.......

If President Obama elects to unilaterally disregard Section 526, the planet may be doomed. According to Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and one of the leaders of the Keystone pipeline protests, the burning of the recoverable oil in the Alberta tar sands by itself would raise the carbon in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm). It wasn't hard to figure out that this would increase the 390 ppm carbon in the atmosphere today by more than half. Indeed, it would increase the gap between the current level and the safe level of 350 ppm five-fold.
The leading NASA climate change specialist Jim Hansen summed up what's at stake, saying: "If the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over" for a viable planet.
While protecting the climate will ultimately require legislation and treaties, in the meantime it is essential to prevent the use of "extreme energy" fuels like the Alberta tar sands oil that will rapidly make climate change far worse.












2/  Excellent column from the conservative Ross Douhat, and he points out the execution of an innocent man by the redneck State of Georgia emphasises a dirty little fact - there are many people behind bars, mainly minorities, who are there because they were wrongly convicted. 

But there’s a danger here for advocates of criminal justice reform. After all, in a world without the death penalty, Davis probably wouldn’t have been retried or exonerated. His appeals would still have been denied, he would have spent the rest of his life in prison, and far fewer people would have known or cared about his fate.
Instead, he received a level of legal assistance, media attention and activist support that few convicts can ever hope for. And his case became an example of how the very finality of the death penalty can focus the public’s attention on issues that many Americans prefer to ignore: the overzealousness of cops and prosecutors, the limits of the appeals process and the ugly conditions faced by many of the more than two million Americans currently behind bars.














3/  I missed the Thursday Republican debate because of a power outage on our street [tree on powerline!!!], so it was great to see SNL has done a synopsis for us all......very funny......11 minutes.....

Saturday Night Live opened its 37th season with a send-up of the seemingly endless parade of GOP debates.
This one, entitled "Either The 7th or 8th GOP Debate," started out by tackling the inappropriate cheering of previous audiences, and then made it clear that Mitt Romney (Jason Sudeikis) and Rick Perry (host Alec Baldwin) were the only candidates worth the attention of moderator Shepard Smith (Bill Hader).
After briefly introducing the other "six people who will never be president but showed up anyway," the sketch tackled Rick Perry's inconsistent performances -- "Can you speak for 10 seconds without alienating your base?" -- Romney's inability to connect, and the rest of the field's general lack of gravitas. An extended bit with Taran Killam as Jon Huntsman, addressed the former ambassador's two years in China in a way that had us both squirming and laughing out loud.
Kristen Wiig, Paul Brittain and Kenan Thompson also had fun turns as Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Herman Cain respectively, and given that Cain just won the Florida straw poll by a healthy margin, maybe Thompson will get to roll out this impression a few more times before the season is over.













4/  I got a call from the Obama 2102 campaign last week [because I'm on the list of people who donated in 08], but this time I told them to call Goldman Sachs because my money won't make a difference....
.
And as this story says, there are a lot out there like me......

Don't know what to tell you......

They were once among President Obama’s most loyal supporters and a potent symbol of his political brand: voters of moderate means who dug deep for the candidate and his message of hope and change, sending him $10 or $25 or $50 every few weeks or months.

But in recent months, the frustration and disillusionment that have dragged down Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have crept into the ranks of his vaunted small-donor army, underscoring the challenges he faces as he seeks to rekindle grass-roots enthusiasm for his re-election bid.
In interviews with dozens of low-dollar contributors in the past two weeks, some said they were unhappy with what they viewed as Mr. Obama’s overly conciliatory approach to Congressional Republicans. Others cited what they saw as a lack of passion in the president, or said the sour economy had drained both their enthusiasm and their pocketbooks.
For still others, high hopes that Mr. Obama would deliver a new kind of politics in his first term have been dashed by the emergence of something that, to them, more resembles politics as usual.
“When I was pro-Obama in 2008, I was thinking of him as a leader who could face the challenges that we were tackling,” said Adnan Alasadi, who works in behavioral health in Mesa, Ariz. Mr. Alasadi contributed repeatedly to Mr. Obama during his first campaign but says he will not give the president — or anyone else — any more money.
“Now I am seeing him as just an opportunistic politician,” Mr. Alasadi said.
Such defections are not merely symbolic. About a quarter of Mr. Obama’s record haul during the 2008 cycle came from donors giving $200 or less, supporters who could be tapped again and again without hitting federal contribution limits. Many of those same people were also volunteers in his campaign, knocking on doors, calling friends and neighbors and helping turn out the voters that fall.











5/  Julia Sweeney explains sex to her 8 year old.....a most amusing 10 minutes.....














6/  The Haqqani clan in Afghanistan is beating us, and they are a major reason why we will never, ever, ever, ever win in this medieval rathole. They beat the British, they beat the Russians and now they are thrashing us.....but since the military-industrial complex needs a war to keep the money flowing and our President either won't stand up to the Generals or is getting really bad advice, we'll be there for 20 years or until President Perry decides to nuke them....

WASHINGTON — They are the Sopranos of the Afghanistan war, a ruthless crime family that built an empire out of kidnapping, extortion, smuggling, even trucking. They have trafficked in precious gems, stolen lumber and demanded protection money from businesses building roads and schools with American reconstruction funds.
They safeguard their mountainous turf by planting deadly roadside bombs and shelling remote American military bases. And they are accused by American officials of being guns for hire: a proxy force used by the Pakistani intelligence service to carry out grisly, high-profile attacks in Kabul and throughout the country.
Today, American intelligence and military officials call the crime clan known as the Haqqani network — led by a wizened militant named Jalaluddin Haqqani who has allied himself over the years with the C.I.A., Saudi Arabia’s spy service and Osama bin Laden — the most deadly insurgent group in Afghanistan. In the latest of a series of ever bolder strikes, the group staged a daylong assault on the United States Embassy in Kabul, an attack Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,charged Thursday was aided by Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. 















7/  One of the truly scary things about this country is the incredibly stupid ideas that have become entrenched in our politics.....how did this happen to climate change? This article takes a stab at explaining the rationale behing the denial of science on the right, but Perry said it again in the Republican debates and not one of the other candidates disagreed with him....

Amazing.....

Meanwhile, other powerful evidence poured in over those decades, showing the "greenhouse effect" is real and is happening. And yet resistance to the idea among many in the U.S. appears to have hardened.
What's going on?
"The desire to disbelieve deepens as the scale of the threat grows," concludes economist-ethicist Clive Hamilton.
He and others who track what they call "denialism" find that its nature is changing in America, last redoubt of climate naysayers. It has taken on a more partisan, ideological tone. Polls find a widening Republican-Democratic gap on climate. Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry even accuses climate scientists of lying for money. Global warming looms as a debatable question in yet another U.S. election campaign.
From his big-windowed office overlooking the wooded campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., Broecker has observed this deepening of the desire to disbelieve.
"The opposition by the Republicans has gotten stronger and stronger," the 79-year-old "grandfather of climate science" said in an interview. "But, of course, the push by the Democrats has become stronger and stronger, and as it has become a more important issue, it has become more polarized."
The solution: "Eventually it'll become damned clear that the Earth is warming and the warming is beyond anything we have experienced in millions of years, and people will have to admit..." He stopped and laughed.
"Well, I suppose they could say God is burning us up."












8/  Evanescence with "Call me When You're Sober"........a powerful rock song verging on metal but with some melodic bits too.....really good. Lead singer is cute...

The video is set in a baroque castle like something out of Dracula....cool!















9/  There has been a week of protests on Wall Street by thousands of demonstrators, but almost zero media coverage.....Keith Olbermann comments on this with a very good guest, and although they dance around the issue they don't come right out and say the reason there's no media is that the oligarchy have shut down mainstream TV coverage.....but I will.....

This weekend the police started tasering protesters and arresting many....why not - they won't get any publicity.... 

Keith and author Will Bunch, senior writer, Philadelphia Daily News, call out the New York Times and other mainstream outlets for failing to cover the Wall Street protests that began on September 17. Comparing their social media strategy to that of the Arab Spring, Bunch hopes that the protesters — promoted on Twitter and by the magazine “Adbusters” and other alternative news sources — refine their goals to appeal to a broader audience.
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/83-83/7537-the-media-blackout-of-the-wall-street-occupation














10/  A story about a good corporation!! Marvin Windows and Doors has taken an unusual strategy with their workforce to weather the recession - they have kept all employees on payroll, no layoffs, and everyone's belt is tightened.
If you are replacing any windows in your house, give your business to a decent American company.....

THREE THINGS matter big in this flyspeck city just south of the Canadian border: hockey, walleye and Marvin.
Not necessarily in that order. Yes, Warroad, nicknamed “Hockeytown, U.S.A.,” has sent six of its sons to the N.H.L. And the walleye plucked from Lake of the Woods are served for breakfast, lunch and dinner down at the Lakeview Restaurant.
But Marvin — as in, Marvin Windows and Doors — is the commercial engine in these parts and has been since George G. Marvin arrived in 1904. So when times get tough at Marvin, as they are now, the 1,700 or so residents of Warroad hold their collective breath.
But in this season of economic unease, when neither Washington nor Wall Street seems to have the answers, the descendants of George Marvin are going against the grain. Unlike so many other companies, Marvin Windows has neither laid off workers nor reduced health insurance benefits. And, its executives vow, it won’t.
Marvin Windows might seem like a footnote in the nation’s economic ledger. It employs roughly 4,300 people, about 2,000 of them here, and has annual sales somewhere from $500 million to $1 billion. But what this company is doing — and, more to the point, what it is not doing — is worth knowing.
Marvin Windows and Doors is a throwback to another era. For starters, it is a private company. No public stockholders are complaining that the latest numbers fell short, that the share price is down.
What’s more, Marvin takes an old-fashioned, even paternal view of its role here in Warroad, where the Marvin family has run things for just about as long as anyone can remember. The company has cut employees’ pay and reduced perks like tuition reimbursement and 401(k) matching. Employees haven’t received profit-sharing checks in two years, nor have the 16 members of the Marvin family who work for the company.
But, unlike its top competitors, Marvin has refused to fire people.















11/  New footage of the Japanese Tsunami taken from a delivery truck - you can see it all, from the earthquake itself to the flooding....wow....4 minutes of the frightening power of nature....



















12/  Those of you who have HBO have a treat coming - a three hour documentary on the life of George Harrison, "the quiet Beatle", directed by Martin Scorsese.....his widow Olivia has opened up Harrison's archives...... 

“When he used to be asked how he’d like to be remembered, he said, ‘I don’t care, I don’t care if I’m remembered,’ ” Ms. Harrison said in an interview, affectionately imitating George’s clenched Liverpool accent. “And I really think he meant that. Not in a sarcastic way, but it’s like: Why do you have to be remembered? What’s the big deal?”
These many sides of Harrison — the artist and the archivist; the mystic and the mystery — are all on display in a new documentary, “George Harrison: Living in the Material World,” directed by Martin Scorsese, which HBO will show in two parts on Oct. 5 and 6.
Though the story of the Beatles has been told in many forms before, including in “The Beatles Anthology,” the documentary, record and book series released by Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney beginning in 1995, “Living in the Material World” is a significant and substantially new take on the band and its most elusive member. It is the first film to center on Harrison, the so-called quiet Beatle, and the first time Mr. Scorsese, whose roster of rock documentaries is gradually rivaling his celebrated résumé of fiction features, has focused on the Beatles.
















13/  What are the slimy pit dwellers of Tallahassee up to this week? They are about to make it much easier to foreclose on your house, and bankers everywhere are salivating....

TALLAHASSEE— 
Floridians facing foreclosure could be stripped of their homes faster and have routine access to the courts limited under a proposal likely to come before Gov. Rick Scott and the Legislature in the coming months.

Bankers see it as a speedy and efficient way to manage foreclosure cases and get tens of thousands of Florida properties in ownership limbo back on the market, helping pull the state out of its economic doldrums.

In contrast, foreclosure defense lawyers and consumer activists see the plan as removing judicial oversight from a system that has proven to be riddled with fraud and abuse, and leaving ordinary homeowners defenseless before some of the state's most powerful financial interests.

"Obviously there's a lot of fraud being perpetrated by the banks in these cases," said Michael Redman, a Palm Beach County resident who founded the Website 4closurefraud.org to chronicle Florida's ongoing foreclosure crisis. "At this point in the game, it's almost ridiculous to take it out of the court system."
But the Florida Bankers Association, which has pushed the plan over the past few years, has key allies. Scott voiced support for the proposal at a Florida Bar convention this summer and told reporters Wednesday he is still interested in it. Some lawmakers have already jumped on board.
















14/  Unusual - a big name movie for intelligent people out this week...."Moneyball" with Brad Pitt - sounds like a great film....

The hungry heart of “Moneyball,” a movie about baseball in the digital age, is a beautiful hard case named Billy Beane. Coiled yet cool, Billy has the liquid physical grace and bright eyes of a predator. He was built to win. Even his name, with its short syllabic bursts, sounds ready for ESPN exultations. That he’s played by Brad Pitt giving the quintessential Brad Pitt performance just seals the deal. It didn’t turn out that way, and in 2001 this high school star turned major-league washout was no longer a player but the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, the little team that could but didn’t.



Good trailer - shows that although the movie is set in the world of baseball it's more about business and technology.....and people with a dream.....











Todays video - A DDD favourite - "Spanish For Your nanny"














Todays Middle Eastern joke

A fleeing Taliban, desperate for water, was plodding through the
Afghan desert when he saw something far off in the distance.

Hoping to find water, he hurried toward the oasis, only to find a
little old Jewish man at a small stand, selling ties.

The Taliban asked, "Do you have water?"

The Jewish man replied, "I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie?
They are only $5."

The Taliban shouted, "Idiot! I do not need an over-priced tie. I need
water! I should kill you, but I must find water first!"

"OK," said the old Jewish man, "It does not matter that you do not
want to buy a tie and that you hate me. I will show you
that I am bigger than that. If you continue over that hill to the east
for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant.
It has all the ice cold water you need.
Shalom."

Cursing, the Taliban staggered away over the hill Several hours later
he staggered back, almost dead & said,

"Your fxxking brother won't let me in without a tie!"













Todays Little Old Lady joke

A little old lady was walking down the street dragging two large plastic garbage bags behind her. One of the bags was ripped and every once in a while a $20 fell out onto the sidewalk.  

Noticing this, a policeman stopped her, and said, "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag."

"Oh, really? Darn it!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back and see if I can find them.. Thanks for telling me officer." 

Well, now, not so fast," said the cop. Where did you get all that money? You didn't steal it, did you?"  

"Oh, no, no", said the old lady. "You see, my back yard is right next to a Golf course.
A lot of Golfers come and pee through a knot hole in my fence, right into my flower garden. It used to really tick me off. Kills the flowers, you know.

Then I thought, why not make the best of it?
So, now, I stand behind the fence by the knot hole, real quiet, with my hedge clippers.
Every time some guy sticks his thing through my fence, I surprise him, grab hold of it and say, 'O.K., buddy! Give me $20, or off it comes.'

"Well, that seems only fair," said the cop, laughing. "OK. Good luck! Oh, by the way, what's in the other bag?"

"Not everybody pays."
 

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