02/18/2011 archive

Regular Daily Features:

• Six Worldwide News articles at Six in the Morning from mishima
• The Darjeeling Limited is in the spotlight at Late Night Karaoke, mishima DJ’s

Essays Featured Friday, February 18^th:

• Youffraita deals with a broken habit
• fake consultant  has amazing news in Campaign Manifesto #1: In A World Of Phonies, It’s Time For A Fake Candidate
• Friday Open Thoughts, proffered by slksfca, sheds a little light
• Want to see the definition of spring? Ready for a full dose of Awwwww? newpioneer does just that in Birth Days!
• RiaD  republishes a diary from twigg (with permission!) Sweet South Carolina
  
  ^{what can i say? it tickled my fancy}
• Firefly Memories 1.0 is where (normally)Alma takes a look back at some of the Brilliant essays of our first years posts, highlighting those which exemplify our firefly-dreaming spirit and mission. Alma has an eye problem so Dreamer is filling until she’s better.
  
  Today:My Magic Marker Finally Paid Off  from Eddie C

join the conversation. come firefly-dreaming with me….

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 55 Top Stories.

1 Bahrain protesters shot as heir promises talks

by Taieb Mahjoub, AFP

51 mins ago

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”

Paul Krugman: Willie Sutton Wept

There are three things you need to know about the current budget debate. First, it’s essentially fraudulent. Second, most people posing as deficit hawks are faking it. Third, while President Obama hasn’t fully avoided the fraudulence, he’s less bad than his opponents – and he deserves much more credit for fiscal responsibility than he’s getting.

About the fraudulence: Last month, Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center described the president as the “anti-Willie Sutton,” after the holdup artist who reputedly said he robbed banks because that’s where the money is. Indeed, Mr. Obama has lately been going where the money isn’t, making a big deal out of a freeze on nonsecurity discretionary spending, which accounts for only 12 percent of the budget.

But that’s what everyone does. House Republicans talk big about spending cuts – but focus solely on that same small budget sliver.

Glen Ford: Obamaland, Where Right Meets Center-Right

The First Black President just gave birth to an unmistakably Republican budget – and everybody knows who that ugly baby’s daddy is. For the past two years, Barack Obama has been making out quite publicly with George Bush’s corporate friends. But that shouldn’t be a scandal; after all, Obama has always told everyone in range of his voice that his main goal in life is to forge a grand consensus with the GOP, a bipartisan understanding between the Right and the Center Right.

The result is an Obama budget that is all sliced up, like the loser in a knife fight – only, Obama and his corporate executives-on-loan at the White House did all the cutting, themselves. Obama is showing such extraordinary talent for obliterating poor and working class programs across the board, he’s making Republicans look redundant and obsolete.

Eugene Robinson: Haley Barbour’s silence speaks volumes

The Mississippi governor continues to display ignorance on issues of race

Does Haley Barbour really have a warped and offensive view of America’s racial history? Or is he just playing a dangerous game?

Perhaps both. . . . . .

The latest outrage – and I don’t use that word lightly – came Tuesday, when Barbour was asked to comment on a proposal for a state license plate honoring one of the most notorious figures of the Civil War era, Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. I question whether any Confederate officer is worthy of such recognition, given that they were all committing treason. But even for the Sons of Confederate Veterans – the group proposing the license plate – Forrest should be an embarrassment.

Friday, February 18th at 6pm EST!

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Tonight the brilliant sooth & truthsayer Professor John Kozy returns to grace WWL Radio with his views on his two latest articles, Demented Democracy and A Revolting World.

He speaks of ideologies and the lack of persuasion, how Politics has become Religion, and how true Democracy is often not the true goal of the US elsewhere. He speaks of revolutionaries must never quit being revolutionary for true change to occur. Revolution is happening in the Middle East and has begun to spread. We need to heed John’s words!

I love talking to the brightest and the best, and am honored to bring John Kozy to our working class audience! Viva la revolucion!

John Kozy is a retired professor of philosophy and logic who writes on social, political, and economic issues. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he spent 20 years as a university professor and another 20 years working as a writer. He has published a textbook in formal logic commercially, in academic journals and a small number of commercial magazines, and has written a number of guest editorials for newspapers. His on-line pieces can be found on http://www.jkozy.com/ and he can be emailed from that site’s homepage.

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm EST, via Blog Talk Radio, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective….  her Joplinesque voice speaking straight from the heart about the real-life implications of the Political and the Class War on everyday American Citizens like you.

Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread…. all with a grain shaker of irreverent humor.

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This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 316 days remaining until the end of the year (317 in leap years).

On this day in 1885, Mark Twain publishes his famous, and famously controversial, novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Considered as one of the Great American Novels, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is among the first in major American literature to be written in the vernacular, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry “Huck” Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective).

The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Satirizing a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about twenty years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing look at entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.

The work has been popular with readers since its publication and is taken as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It has also been the continued object of study by serious literary critics. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur “nigger”, despite that the main protagonist, and the tenor of the book, is anti-racist. According to the January 20, 2011 Chase Cook/The Daily article, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel will be released in a new edition. Two words will be changed throughout the whole book, “injun” and “nigger” to “indian” and “slave”. The book is being changed as quoted in the article, “only to make it viable to the 21st century”.

They Fled To Protect Their Rights

Senate adjourns, governor calls exodus a ‘stunt’ and expects holdouts to return



Wis. union vote on hold after Democrats leave state

 

Faced with a certain Republican victory that would end a half-century of collective bargaining for public workers, Wisconsin Democrats retaliated with the only weapon they had left: They fled.

Fourteen Democratic lawmakers disappeared from the Capitol on Thursday, just as the Senate was about to begin debating the measure aimed at easing the state’s budget crunch.

By refusing to show up for a vote, the group brought the debate to a swift halt and hoped to pressure Republicans to the negotiating table.

“The plan is to try and slow this down because it’s an extreme piece of legislation that’s tearing this state apart,” Sen. Jon Erpenbach said.

The Speaker of the House John Boehner told Fox News host Sean Hannity that it was not the Republicans that were talking about shutting down the government on March 4 but the Democrats. Parroting his lying cohort, an “exasperated”, House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA) boasted the same to Hannity.

Really?

I guess these two don’t talk to the other Republicans :

 – Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR): “Womack said he would be open to forcing a government shutdown over spending.” (The Hill, 12/12/10)

   – Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA): “If government shuts down, we want you with us. … It’s going to take some pain for us to do the things that we need to do to right the ship.” (9/10/10)

   – Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): Q: do you think shutdown should be off the table? PRICE: Everything ought to be on the table. (2/11/11)

   – Rep. Steve King (R-IA): “(King) said last week that he wants Boehner and other House leaders to sign a ‘blood oath’ that they will include a repeal of health care reform in every appropriations bill next year, even if President Barack Obama vetoes the bills and a government shutdown occurs.” (Roll Call 9/10/10)

   – Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI): If Obama…responds to the mandate from voters and understands he can’t disregard it, then he thinks Obama will do well “If he doesn’t, he will shut government down,” Walberg said. (Jackson Citizen Patriot, 11/03/10)

   – Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-MI): Q: Are you willing to participate in what would lead to a shutdown of the federal government to stop this monstrosity from going down he tracks? NUNNELEE: I agree with Congressman Boehner. We need to do whatever is necessary to make sure this bill never goes into effect. (11/09/10)

   – Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX): “If it takes a shutdown of government to stop the runaway spending, we owe that to our children and our grandchildren.” (11/15/10)

   – Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX): “This is the way the government should adjust. If they can’t pay their bills, wait.” ()

   – Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL): “We will do what we have to do, to shut down the government if we have to, to choke Obamacare if we have to.” (2/12/11)

   – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) when he was a candidate

Get the cotonout of your ears, guys. Ignorance is not bliss

h/t Think Progress

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

Yes, friends, you too can start a blog (just as Art Fern would say it on the ‘Tonight Show’). Invite assorted celebrities to write for you.  For nothing.  Convince them that their brilliant ideas will be exposed to millions of readers.  Add a bit of fluff to your blog a few months later on.  Go on cable tv talk shows and make bombastic statements, preferably in a bad European accent.  Create faux controversies.  Add a few noted “journalists” to your payroll to give oneself a facade of respectability.  Then, find a corporate sucker to believe in all your hype. Walk away with millions of dollars.

Easy enough, isn’t it?  As Cartoonist Matt Bors predicted in 2009, “the future is grim”

Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
• Muse in the Morning by Robyn
• Six In The Morning by mishima

Featured Essays for February 17, 2011-

• Is there one Democratic party? Or more? by plf515
• Delivering (cough) Freedom & Democracy by Edger
• Good News? by ek hornbeck
• Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? by Jacob Freeze
• Got A Business Idea But No Money? by Edger
• Reporting the Revolution: February 17 Up Date 1930 hrs EST by TheMomCat
• I Read The News Today, Oh Boy… by Edger

DocuDharma