This is voting day for some local and state elections.........get over to the polls and vote!
1/ With the unpredictability of the Tea Party crazies who dominate the Republican agenda the oligarchs have had to change tactics. They now look for a prominent Democrat to validate policies that favour the oligarchs, thus getting them minimal media scrutiny.
A fascinating story from David Sirota on "liberal-washing"......
How the 1 percent always wins: Liberal washing is the right’s new favorite tactic
Here's why plutocrats control our politics: Corporate America knows both parties are up for sale
BY DAVID SIROTA
TOPICS: GREENWASHING, TEA PARTY, CHICAGO, RAHM EMANUEL, RHODE ISLAND, ANDY STERN, SEIU, BILL CLINTON, NAFTA, SOCIAL SECURITY, OBAMACARE, CORY BOOKER, GINA RAIMONDO, PENSIONS,RETIREMENT SECURITY, EDITOR'S PICKS, ELECTIONS NEWS, BUSINESS NEWS, POLITICS NEWS
(Credit: Kim Seidl via Shutterstock/samdies
“What is most striking about the present is not the virtues of moderation but of the potential power of conviction. One detects, behind all the anxiety about ‘extremists,’ ‘radicals,’ and ‘militant minorities,’ a degree of envy. On the Right there is a group with enough commitment to a shared project that is willing and able to disrupt the ordinary functioning of government. If only the Left had such wherewithal. We might, at the very least, get something more than than the economically stagnant, politically oppressive Mugwumpery of the Democratic Party.” — Jacobin’s Alex Gourevitch
This trenchant passage about liberals’ reaction to the Tea Party summarizes a hugely significant yet little discussed truism: American politics has been inexorably lurching to the right not only because of the extremism of the Tea Party, but also because of a lack of Tea Party-like cohesion, organization and energy on the left. There are, of course, many factors that contribute to that sad reality including a successful war on the labor movement; a campaign finance system that makes conservative oligarchs even more powerful than they already are; and a mediasphere that ignores principles and tells liberals everything must be seen exclusively in partisan red-versus-blue terms. One factor, though, stands out for how it so destructively shapes the assumptions that define our political discourse. That factor can be called “liberal washing.”
Similar to green washing or so-called “gay washing”/“rainbow washing,” liberal washing is all about wrapping corporate America’s agenda in the veneer of fight-for-the-little-guy progressivism, thus portraying plutocrats’ radical rip-off schemes as ideologically moderate efforts to rescue the proles.
Liberal washing has always been around, of course. But it has really risen to prominence — and dominance — in modern times. Indeed, one of the most reliable political axioms of the last 30 years is this: If corporate America cooks up a scheme to rip off the middle class, Republicans will provide the bulk of the congressional votes for the scheme — but enough establishment-credentialed liberals inevitably will endorse the scheme to make it at least appear to be mainstream and bipartisan. Yes, it seems no matter how venal, underhanded or outright corrupt a heist may be, there always ends up being a group of icons with liberal billing ready to drive the getaway car.
The most reliable way to liberal-wash something is to get a famous Democrat to support it. This is because even though many Democratic politicians, party officials, operatives and pundits are neither liberal nor progressive, the media nonetheless usually portrays all people affiliated with the Democratic Party as uniformly liberal on all issues.
2/ "The West Wing" was a great show - witty, smart and fast, and this four minute clip about cartography is fun, and also informative.
Cartography? Maps? How utterly boring [I hear you thinking] but give this a chance - it's clever........
3/ Fascinating story - look at the title. It's a tale of the Italian version of the Boomers, and how the oldies are protected at the expense of the the millenials.....
Not directly applicable to the US because our safety nets are threadbare compared to Europe's, but definitely some of it hits home......
CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER
Italy: The Nation That Crushes Its Young
By BEPPE SEVERGNINI
Published: October 30, 2013
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My son Antonio just turned 21 years old, and I’m worried. Not only is his generation of young Italians grappling with the longest economic slump in modern times, but they also have to deal with us, their fathers and mothers.
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I’ve taken to calling us the Generazione Pitone, the Python Generation. We refuse to give ground, and instead slither forward and ingest everything in our path. We have stamina. We are selfish. We have a soundtrack (that’s why Bruce Springsteen is still touring). And now that we’re getting old and retiring, we cost plenty.
America’s baby boomers are not alone in the world. Every Western country produced a substantial postwar generation that has no intention of stepping aside.
But Italy is special. Old-age pensions swallow 14 percent of the country’s gross domestic product and 57 percent of all social spending. No other country in Europe spends so much on making its past comfortable.
And the future? Unemployment among people ages 15 to 24 is a record 40.1 percent, while the number of people 55 or over who are still working has ballooned to 3.5 million from 2.8 million in just five years. Italy is no country for young men, apparently.
Italy is still one of the world’s most attractive countries, a land graced by the arts and blessed by the weather; it is sumptuous at table and abounding in elegance. But clearly this is not enough. Many young Italians have begun to flee their iconic, pythonic homeland.
It would be sad if Italy’s emigration went back to the way it was in the 1950s, when people had to leave for Northern Europe, the United States or Australia to feed their families. And yet that seems increasingly likely. About 60,000 move abroad every year, seven out of 10 taking a college degree with them.
Almost 400,000 graduates have left Italy in the past decade, and only 50,000 similarly qualified foreigners have arrived. This is not the healthy, free movement of people that the European Union was set up to encourage. This is a nation on the run.
Young Italians who leave to find a job sometimes do so at great risk. Joele Leotta was a 20-year-old waiter who had relocated from Lecco, in Lombardy, to the British town of Maidstone, southeast of London. He was kicked and punched to death by a gang of Lithuanian immigrants who accused him of stealing their jobs.
Even getting into the job market is challenging. Many simply give up. According to government figures, three million Italians — half of them young — have stopped looking for employment. That’s a third more than the European Union average.
Part of the problem lies in the Italian legal framework. The Biagi law, a well-intended piece of legislation, has made the labor market more flexible. But the system it has created is based on short-term contracts, which undermines the market for stable, long-term jobs.
Internships, supposedly a way for businesses to help young people, have turned out to be a system in which young people help business by providing skilled, poorly paid labor. And then there’s the paperwork: To hire an apprendista, or trainee, an employer must apply to 12 separate offices.
4/ Bill Maher in a serious mode Interviewed by Piers Morgan - the subject is cable news, and especially Fox News.....90 seconds......
How come it takes a comedian to say this stuff? Our media is truly bought and sold......
5/ Charles Blow with a very good column reminding us how wildly unfair the distribution of wealth is in this country......billionaires are doing very well, and millions of children are living in poverty.......
Bank profits have reached theirhighest levels in years.
The market for luxury goods isrebounding.
Bloomberg News reported in August, “Sales of homes priced at more than $1 million jumped an average 37 percent in 2013’s first half from a year earlier to the highest level since 2007, according to DataQuick.”
A report last week in The New York Times says that developers are turning 57th Street in Manhattan into “Billionaires’ Row,” with apartments selling for north of $90 million each.
And there’s no shortage of billionaires. Forbes’s list of the world’s billionaires has added more than 200 names since 2012 and is now at 1,426. The United States once again leads the list, with 442 billionaires.
It’s a great time to be a rich person in America. The rich are raking it in during this recovery.
But in the shadow of their towering wealth exists a much less rosy recovery, where people are hurting and the pain grows.
This is the slowest post-recession jobs recovery since World War II. The unemployment rate is falling, but for the wrong reason: an increasing number of people may simply be giving up on finding a job. The labor force participation rate — the percentage of people over 16 who either have a job or are actively searching for one — fell in August to its lowest rate in 35 years.
This disconnecting is particularly acute among young people. Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, recently released astudy finding that a staggering 5.8 million young people nationwide — one in seven of those ages 16 to 24 — are disconnected, meaning not employed or in school, “adrift at society’s margins,” as the group put it.
6/ Rand Paul will be running for President in 2016, so his public statements and speeches are fairly important given his ambition. Rachel Maddow did a story last Monday on how Paul plagarized Wikipedia references in some of his speeches.....an important story but not earthshaking, certainly to Rand Paul voters.
But Paul made a mistake - he shot back BS at Maddow.......so she took him to pieces Wednesday night with this excellent seven minute segment......
Senator Rand Paul gave a speech with lines almost word-for-word pulled from Wikipedia, and Rachel Maddow called him on it on Monday. But on Wednesday night, after watching Paul’s response to the plagiarism charge, started to wonder if Paul has absolutely no idea what the definition of plagiarism actually is.
Maddow said that there are presently “two clear cases of plagiarism from a sitting U.S. senator in two pretty high-profile speeches.”
She played the entire video of Paul’s response, in which he said he gave due credit to the screenwriters of the movie Gattaca and dismissed the issue as being ginned up by people like Maddow. But what Maddow found striking was that “Rand Paul maybe does not understand what plagiarism is.” After all, no one was accusing Paul of plagiarizing the movie itself, just the Wikipedia page for it.
7/ Truth in advertising photography? Ha!
Have a look at this one minute video to see how a nice looking woman in a bikini bottom is transformed into a goddess.....all with photoshop.....
We've been told time and time again that Photoshop is playing tricks on us, stretching, smoothing and buffing the models in magazines and ads to make them even more gorgeous (and less realistic).
But just how much can airbrushing really change? Just watch this mind-blowing video, "Body Evolution." The video, created in 2011 by GlobalDemocracy.com to demand mandatory disclaimers on all photos of airbrushed models, demonstrates just how much a computer is capable of changing a body.
8/ Stephen Colbert was also on the Rand Paul story Tuesday night, coming to the Senator's defense against "the Maddow".......with very funny results.....three minutes.....
http
Earlier this week, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddowcaught Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) plagiarizing–of all things–the Wikipedia page for the 1997 sci-fi movie Gattaca. Last night, Stephen Colbert came to Paul’s defense, asking how Maddow knows Paul didn’t “write the Wikipedia entry on Gattaca.”
It all started with a speech Paul made in support of GOP Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, in which he used the “liberal eugenics” of Gattaca’s futuristic world to scare people away from Democratic frontrunner Terry McAuliffe. Or as Colbert put it, “That is irrefutable scientific evidence that McAuliffe’s pro-choice policies will lead to an Ethan Hawke movie.”
After playing the clip of Maddow exposing Paul’s word-for-word source, an outraged Colbert asked, “Just because he and Wikipedia used the same words, Rand Paul is a plagiarist? You don’t know that!”
“How dare you, Rachel Maddow, besmirch this man’s good name. Rand Paul’s not a plagiarist,” Colbert said, pulling out his iPad for a little more info. “He’s the junior United States senator from Kentucky…”
As for Maddow, Colbert asked, “Who the hell do you think you are?” Picking up another conveniently placed iPad, he read, “An American television host, political commentator, and author…”
//www.colbertnation.com/the-
9/ Ponder this - if you had cancer and there was a drug that would extend your life for three months, would you take it? What if it wasn't covered by insurance, the drug cost $50,000 a month and your widow would lose the house - would you still take it?
This is one of the quandaries our medical systems are putting ordinary people through - when to say no to treatments that aren't cost-effective.
An excellent article about a revolt by some physicians about the pricing of cancer treatments.
If you know someone with cancer, you might want to send them this - as well as being quite revealing about our insane medical costs, it gives a lot of data on cancer treatments.....
it's a long article, but this paragraph struck me as relevant....
What is sobering about this booming business is that, as a group of oncologists wrote earlier this year, “most anti-cancer drugs provide minor survival benefits, if at all.” They often (but not always) reduce the size of inoperable tumors, but they rarely eradicate the disease. For relatively uncommon malignancies like testicular cancer, some forms of leukemia, and lymphoma, drugs effectively cure the disease; for the common “solid tumor” cancers (lung, breast, colon, prostate, and so on), which account for the vast majority of annual cases, drugs buy some time—precious time, to be sure, but time usually measured in weeks and months rather than years. And even though many of the newer drugs are less toxic, they often still have to be given with older drugs whose side effects include nausea, hair loss, fatigue, and decreasing blood counts. One anti-cancer drug produces a skin rash so severe and disturbing, according to Saltz, that some patients have been asked by employers not to come to work.
10/ Autocorrects are done by your smartphone when texting, and sometimes the results can be most amusing......
These are the best autocorrects of 2012 on this website.....note - some are a little rude......
11/ "The fetus is sacred" say the abortion loonies, and they have enough sway over the Republican base that they have passed laws that give some states the right to confine women in case they might harm the fetus.
These extremists love the fetus, but hate the child.......the same states give mothers no help in coping with the child they insist she carries......
Case Explores Rights of Fetus Versus Mother
Darren Hauck for The New York Times
Alicia Beltran, 28, was sent to a drug-treatment center despite insisting she was not using drugs.
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: October 23, 2013 670 Comments
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JACKSON, Wis. — Alicia Beltran cried with fear and disbelief when county sheriffs surrounded her home on July 18 and took her in handcuffs to a holding cell.
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"It's remarkable how a fetus has so many rights, but if that fetus grows up to be a woman, all bets are off."ugh, NJ
She was 14 weeks pregnant and thought she had done the right thing when, at a prenatal checkup, she described a pill addiction the previous year and said she had ended it on her own — something later verified by a urine test. But now an apparently skeptical doctor and a social worker accused her of endangering her unborn child because she had refused to accept their order to start on an anti-addiction drug.
Ms. Beltran, 28, was taken in shackles before a family court commissioner who, she says, brushed aside her pleas for a lawyer. To her astonishment, the court had already appointed a legal guardian for the fetus.
“I didn’t know unborn children had lawyers,” recalled Ms. Beltran, now six months pregnant, after returning to her home north of Milwaukee from a court-ordered 78-day stay at a drug treatment center. “I said, ‘Where’s my lawyer?' ”
Under a Wisconsin law known as the “cocaine mom” act when it was adopted in 1998, child-welfare authorities can forcibly confine a pregnant woman who uses illegal drugs or alcohol “to a severe degree,” and who refuses to accept treatment.
Now, with Ms. Beltran’s detention as Exhibit A, that law is being challenged as unconstitutional in a federal suit filed this month, the first in federal court to challenge this kind of fetal protection law. Its opponents are hoping to set an important precedent in the continuing tug of war over the rights of pregnant women and legal status of the unborn.
Wisconsin is one of four states, along with Minnesota, Oklahoma and South Dakota, with laws specifically granting authorities the power to confine pregnant women for substance abuse. But many other states use civil-confinement, child-protection or assorted criminal laws to force women into treatment programs or punish them for taking drugs.
12/ Another crazy Republican caught saying something really, really stupid. He said he's vote to bring back slavery if his constituents wanted him to. Needless to say Stephen Colbert had a lot of fun with this......three minutes....
I laughed of course at Colbert's brilliance, but there was an edge to it because of three movies I have seen this year - "Lincoln", "The Butler", and last week "12 Years A Slave", all of which were very disturbing indeed. Slavery was not a joke, it was a crime against humanity and these movies really show our horrible past as a nation. And some of the ugliness lingers on today, e.g. the 'birther" nonsense....
Racism ain't dead folks, and this idiot from Nevada proves it yet again......
Pro-Tip: If you're a politician and someone suggests that you would vote for slavery if that's what your constituents wanted, don't reply to that accusation with, "Yes, I would."
Unfortunately, Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler didn't get the memo on that one.
But Stephen Colbert had to give the man credit for being so committed to the people. In fact, the whole thing gave Colbert a great idea. Wheeler's constituents should test his mettle by starting a petition to have him punch himself in the balls. If it's what the people want...
13/ Lady Gaga's video out now is "Applause", and as usual it's OTT with dozens of changes of costume, constant dancing, a bra shaped like hands, Gaga without makeup, Gaga with beaucoup makeup and a pretty good song......
She is definitely the most visual performer in the music industry......
14/ Want to know why America is an obese nation? Or why you are carrying a few extra pounds? Read this common sense story - it isn't that complicated, but it is cumulative......
Has another diet failed you? Are you still battling the bulge and wondering why you suffer from diabetes, heart problems, joint issues, low energy and even cancer? You aren’t alone. According to some recent statistics, obesity rates in the U.S. have ‘leveled off,’ but they are still higher than most countries in the world. As one doctor pointed out, people putting on a few pounds shouldn’t seem to strike a proclamation of national emergency, but obesity is responsible for more deaths and added economic impact than one might guess. The fascinating thing is that Americans aren’t lazy. There are other important reasons we lead the charts in obesity, in the company of Mexico, New Zealand and Australia.
Obesity is the True National Health Care Issue
The three top killers – diabetes, heart disease and cancer, all have foundations in obesity. The cost of these illnesses is astronomical and they burden our health care system far more than any politician arguing either for or against Obama Care really want to disclose. While some point to some obvious reasons for our expanding waist lines and burgeoning health care costs, such as a lack of exercise and over-eating, there are numerous other factors at work here.
Many people over eat because they are trying to find energy to carry out daily tasks and the even more basic functions of their physiologies. When you couple our poor eating habits – those of gorging on fast foods, convenience foods, and GMO Frankenfoods, it is no wonder we lack energy to carry out basic cellular functions, let alone go for a walk or head to the gym.
The Real Reasons We are An Overweight Nation
There are additional factors that contribute to this national health care crisis.
15/ A mixed review for "Enders Game", a sci-fi movie with cult religious undertones......but it looks pretty cool if you like edgy films......
At one point in “Ender’s Game,” the boy brainiac Ender Wiggin stands on a podium waving his arms. A vast, immersive image of outer space is spread out before him, and if you didn’t know better, you might think he was playing Wii on an Imax screen. It’s an amusingly self-reflexive moment in a humorless movie about children who play war games as part of their very grown-up military training. As he furiously moves spaceships and troops across computer screens, he looks, by turns, like a superexcited kid, an orchestra conductor, Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice and even a Christ figure. Childhood can be tough in movies, but rarely do screen children suffer for our sins as they do here.
Based on the 1985 science-fiction novel by Orson Scott Card, the movie envisions a future world ruled by a monolithic militaristic government that trains children to fight large insectlike extraterrestrials called Formics or buggers. When the story opens, Ender (Asa Butterfield) thinks he’s just another runt with a monitor jammed in his neck that allows the authorities, personified by Colonel Graff who, because he’s played by Harrison Ford, should have been called Gruff, and a psychologist, Major Anderson (Viola Davis), to observe each potential warrior’s words, moods and tears. Graff believes that Ender may be the child to lead them all, a sermon he preaches as Ender is tested first on Earth and then in the outer space battle school where the movie gets its game on.
It’s no surprise that Mr. Card’s novel, which he followed with several sequels, has sold a zillion copies. The charismatic leader, the divine child, the possible Christ figure or potential Hitler stand-in (according to one notorious, widely circulated reading): Ender Wiggin is an expediently malleable figure. In the novel, he is also, shades of the Spartans, 6 when he ships off to battle school, which puts a distinctly ugly spin on a scene in the book in which he methodically brutalizes a bully, kicking the other boy repeatedly, including in the face. Ender has logically decided that by crushing the other boy, he will prevent future attacks, a prophylactic philosophy that mirrors the authorities’ attitude toward the buggers. He’s 12 in the movie, which doesn’t make that beating any better.
It’s taken decades for “Ender’s Game” to reach the screen, and it’s hard not to think that it had to wait for the right anxious moment. In the 1950s, adolescent alienation meant Sal Mineo’s Christ figure dying in the embrace of his surrogate parents in “Rebel Without a Cause.” Many years and sad stories later, the kids are still not all right, and while much remains the same, much has changed, including the familiar reality of the child who kills. Like the kids in the “Harry Potter” franchise and in “The Hunger Games,” Ender and his schoolmates do have childish moments. Yet what’s striking about the children in these pop culture behemoths is that, unlike in “Rebel,” they aren’t allowed to pretend to be adults, because the world compels them to assume those roles.
The adults in “Ender’s Game” come off as exceedingly creepy, despite Mr. Ford’s strained avuncularity and Ms. Davis’s flooding eyes. Ender is singled out because he seems to be a natural leader, which in the logic of both the book and the movie means someone who imposes his will on enemy and friend alike. He’s rational and brutal, which is a harder sell on the screen, where every punch carries an unsettling intensity that the director, Gavin Hood, has trouble managing. Mr. Butterfield is one of those young performers whose seriousness feels as if it sprang from deep within. And while he’s an appealing presence, little Ender can’t help feeling like a pint-size psycho.
Nice special effects......
Todays video - a huge bear interrupts a photo shoot in snowy Canada.......
Todays toilet joke
I was in a public toilet and had just sat down, when I heard a voice from the next cubicle, he said “Hi!, how are you?”
Embarrassed, I said, “I’m doing fine”.
The voice said “So what are you up to?”.
I said, “Just doing the same as you, sitting here!”.
From next door, “Can I come over?”.
Embarrassed, I said, “I’m doing fine”.
The voice said “So what are you up to?”.
I said, “Just doing the same as you, sitting here!”.
From next door, “Can I come over?”.
Annoyed, I said, "rather busy right now”.
The voice said, “Listen, I will have to call you back, there’s an idiot next door answering all my questions"
The voice said, “Listen, I will have to call you back, there’s an idiot next door answering all my questions"
Todays Southern jokes
THE TOP 3O THINGS THAT YOU’LL NEVER HEAR A SOUTHERNER SAY:3O . When I retire, I'm movin' north.29. I'll take Shakespeare for 1000, Alex.28. Duct tape won't fix that.27. Come to think of it, I'll have a Heineken26. We don't keep firearms in this house.25. You can't feed that to the dog.24. No kids in the back of the pickup, it's just not safe.23. Wrestling is fake.22. We're vegetarians.21. Do you think my gut is too big?20. I'll have grapefruit and lettuce instead of biscuits and gravy.19. Honey, we don't need another dog.18. Who cares who won the Civil War?
16. Too many mounted deer heads detract from the decor.15. I just couldn't find a thing at Wal-Mart today.14. Trim the fat off that steak.13. Cappuccino tastes better than espresso.12. The tires on that truck are too big.11. I've got it all on the C: DRIVE.10. Unsweetened tea tastes better.9. My fiancee, Bobbie Jo, is registered at Tiffany's.8. I've got two cases of Bottled Water for the Super Bowl.7. Checkmate.6. She's too young to be wearing a bikini.5. Hey! Here's an episode of "Hee Haw" that we haven't seen.4. I don't have a favorite college team.3. You Guys.2. Those shorts ought to be a little longer, Betty Mae.
1. We have too many guns now, why do I need another one?
Todays old dog joke
An old Doberman starts chasing rabbits and before long, discovers that he's lost. Wandering about, he notices a panther heading rapidly in his direction with the intention of having lunch.The old Doberman thinks, "Oh, oh! I'm in deep trouble now!" Noticing some bones on the ground close by, he immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat. Just as the panther is about to leap, the old Doberman exclaims loudly,"Boy, that was one delicious panther! I wonder, if there are any more around here?"Hearing this, the young panther halts his attack in mid-strike, a look of terror comes over him and he slinks away into the trees."Whew!," says the panther, "That was close! That old Doberman nearly had me!"Meanwhile, a squirrel who had been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree, figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the panther. So, off he goes.The squirrel soon catches up with the panther, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the panther.The young panther is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here, squirrel, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine!"Now, the old Doberman sees the panther coming with the squirrel on his back and thinks, "What am I going to do now?," but instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet, and just when they get close enough to hear, the old Doberman says ......"Where's that squirrel? I sent him off an hour ago to bring me another panther!"Moral of this story...Don't mess with the old dogs... Age and skill will always overcome youth and treachery! BS and brilliance only come with age and experience.
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