February 2011 archive

The Kinks are likely the most important British Invasion band that most folks remember only slightly, if even at that.  They were quite good, but completely different from the BIG THREE (The Beatles, The Who, and The Rolling Stones) in that they just never seemed to get things completely right.  I mean no disrespect to them by that statement.

I really like that band!  The problem with them was that they never really penetrated the American psyche like the previously mentioned ones did, although they DID have lots of hits.  I guess that part of it was because they did not have quite the level of genius in writing that The Beatles had, nor the outstanding musicianship that at least three of the four of The Who had, or the showmanship mastery (and good writing) that The Rolling Stones had.

Regular Features-

• Late Night Karaoke by mishima
  

• Muse in the Morning by Robyn
• Six In The Morning by mishima

Featured Essays for February 4, 2011-

• Is Mubarak in De Nile – or is he in Tel Aviv yet? by RUKind
• Social Security: Where’s Our Tahrir Square? by fake consultant
• The Video That Sparked Egypt’s Revolution by Edger
• "The True Face of Hosni Mubarak" is Now Being Televised Across the World by Edger
• World Wide Tahrir coming to a street near you. by dharmasyd
• Reporting the Revolution: The Day of Departure Update:1800 hrs EST by TheMomCat
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to Honduras: Stop the Killings of Transwomen by Robyn
• The Most Common Mosquito-Borne Virus: Dengue by TheMomCat
• Original v. Cover — #64 in a Series by curmudgeon

DocuDharma

Almost solid premiers, must be a sweeps month.  You may find better uses for your time (unless you’re a Smallville fan.

No Fate.

• AMC– Terminator 2: Judgment Day x 2 (my personal favorite of the series, along with Aliens it makes up my action women of the 80s double feature)
• Bravo– The Green Mile x 2 (I understand some people like this movie)
• Disney– Wizards of Waverly Place, Fish Hooks (premiers), Phineas and Ferb
• Discovery– Gold Rush (last week’s and new), Flying Wild (premier)
• E!– The Soup (premier)
• ESPN– Hoopies, Mavs @ Celtics, Jazz @ Nuggets
• FX– The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II: The Golden Army
• National Geographic– Dog Whisperer (premier)
• Oxygen– Grease Sing-A-Long x 4
• Sci Fi– Merlin (premier)
• Style– One Fine Day
• TBS– The House Bunny x 2
• Turner Classic– The Heiress, The Bridge on the River Kwai
• TLC– Say Yes to the Dress marathon (with premier)
• TNT– Speed 2: Cruise Control
• Toon– Generator Rex (premier), Clone Wars (Part 2 of the Mortis Trilogy, premier)

You’re already dead, Silberman. Everybody dies. You know I believe it so don’t fuck with me!

Later-

The hardest thing is deciding what I should tell you and what not to. Well, anyway, I’ve got a while yet before you’re old enough to understand the tapes. They’re more for me at this point… to help get it all straight.

• AMC– The Terminator (not so good)
• Disney– Phineas and Ferb Rollercoaster: The Musical
• Sci Fi– Being Human (this week’s), Merlin (Instapeat)
• TBS– Spanglish
• Turner Classic– Ryan’s Daughter
• TNT– The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, D.O.A.: Dead or Alive
• TV Land– Hot in Cleveland marathon
• Vs.– Skiing, FIS Freestyle World Championships
• VH1– New Jack City

Dave hosts Justin Bieber, Martha Stewart, and Robert Plant.

The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 48 Top Stories.

1 Mubarak stays put on ‘departure day’

by Ali Khalil, AFP

15 mins ago

No doubt the Obama administration will tout today’s news that unemployment has fallen .4% to 9.0% as an indication the US economy is improving. It will be quite a back aching twist of logic in the face of poor job growth of only 36,000 jobs in January far below expectations. So what’s really happening? David Dayen at FDL explains the drop in the face of such dismal job growth:

How does this happen? Well, January is always a month when the establishment survey gets revised. New population estimates get incorporated into the survey, and the seasonal adjustment factors get updated. So there is a difference in the January survey of 600,000 less unemployed people; that number is down to 13.9 million according to the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics).

Does this mean that those people got a job in this month? Not really. The employment/ population ratio rose slightly to 58.4%, and the labor force participation rate declined to 64.2%, the lowest rate since the early 1980s. Basically, the drop in the top line unemployment rate is entirely due to changes in the total population estimates and other adjustments.

The U-6, which counts not only people without work seeking full-time employment (the more familiar U-3 rate), but also counts “marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons.” Note that some of these part-time workers counted as employed by U-3 could be working as little as an hour a week. And the “marginally attached workers” include those who have gotten discouraged and stopped looking, but still want to work, is currently 16.1%.

Another explanation of the job growth numbers is the horrendous weather across the country since late December:

January’s snowstorms probably had some effect on the anemic numbers, given that sectors like construction and transportation and warehousing shed jobs. The private sector added 50,000 jobs, so government layoffs, particularly at the state and local level, also restrained growth. Analysts had forecast an increase of about 145,000.

However, the real problem is what kind of jobs are being created, the number of people who have had to settle for part time employment as their job benefits run out and the number of jobless who are no longer counted in the numbers that are reported.

The other bad news is, this rate may not hold since austerity measures by the states and localities, facing huge budget deficits and no hope of relief from Congress, will most likely be laying off huge numbers of workers in attempts to salvage education and other vital programs.

President Barack Obama’s goal of driving the unemployment rate below 9 percent this year is threatened by state and local budget cuts that are likely to intensify as Federal stimulus money runs out.

Austerity measures may add as much as 0.25 percentage point to the unemployment rate this year, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics Inc.

“This could make the difference between ending 2011 with unemployment above or below 9 percent,” he said. “There’s no more serious drag on economic growth than the severe budget cutbacks at the state and local level.”

Regular Daily Features:

• News at Six in the Morning from mishima
• The Cure in Late Night Karaoke from mishima

Essays Featured Friday, February 4^th:

• Friday Open Thoughts slksfca shares the exciting new Google Art Project.
• Social Security from fake consultant explores the similarities of humans wanting better in Egypt & the USA & the routes taken to effect change.
• Firefly Memories 1.0 Alma takes a look back at some of the Brilliant essays we’ve had in our first year in the tooobz. Today: The Bean Tent

Long story short- Samuelson Economics is science.  It’s predictive and the predictions are confirmed by observation.

Voodoo Economics is just that.  A bunch of rattle shaking shamen dancing around you shouting and chanting in tongues motivated by vanity, greed, and the academic desire for novelty.

Let’s start with Bloomberg shall we?

Conservative Austerity Idea Is Failing: David G. Blanchflower

By David Blanchflower, Bloomberg News

Jan 27, 2011 10:15 PM ET

Fiscal austerity has already been started in Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal, and this seems to be pushing all of them back into recession. Over the last four quarters, growth in Greece was negative and falling, and bond investors are once more demanding sky-high returns to compensate their risk. The excuse in these countries was that they have little choice because they are stuck in the European monetary union and don’t have the ability to depreciate their exchange rate.

The U.K. may be a purer case of the harm austerity at the wrong time can inflict. Britain now looks as if it is headed back into recession on fear about the damage that will be done by massive spending cuts and tax increases, which haven’t even gone into effect yet. Government ministers with their talk of austerity have already smashed confidence.

…

Despite the government’s claims that its intent was to raise confidence, consumer and business confidence tumbled right after the new government took office.

Businesses and consumers know what is coming and have cut back accordingly. Retail spending has flat-lined. The balance of trade is deteriorating. Unemployment is rising, and house prices have started to fall again.

The Great British austerity experiment

With deficit hawks poised in the US, we watch with great interest UK economic policy. It’s not looking an enviable example so far

Dean Baker, The Guardian

Tuesday 1 February 2011 21.00 GMT

The elite media and the politicians whom they promote would love to see the United States follow the austerity path of the UK’s new government. However, if this path takes the UK into dangerous economic waters, it could provide a powerful warning to the public in the United States before we make the same mistake.

The British economy looks like it is doing its part. The fourth-quarter GDP report showing that the economy went into reverse and shrank at a 2.0% annual rate is exactly the sort of warning that many of us here were expecting. Weather-related factors may have slowed growth some, but you would have to do some serious violence to the data to paint a positive picture. Of course, the austerity in the UK is just beginning. There will likely be much worse pain to come, with a real possibility that the country will experience a double-dip recession, or at least a prolonged period of stagnation.

…

The takeaway lesson should be “austerity does not work; don’t go there.” Unfortunately, in the land of faith-based economics, evidence does not count for much. The UK may pursue a disastrous austerity path and those of us in the United States may still have to follow the same road anyhow. But we opponents of that course all appreciate the willingness of the UK to demonstrate the foolishness of this action.

McCaskill Leads Democratic Rush Toward Austerity

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday February 2, 2011 11:08 am

You could simply not accomplish the cuts in this proposal without massive reductions to Social Security and Medicare. And the fact that this puts those programs “on-budget,” despite their dedicated funding source, is the real tell here. That means that it would be part of the automatic cuts from OMB.

Harry Reid opposes this bill and will fight efforts to put it into action. But it’s only one of multiple efforts where Democrats are crossing the aisle in a bid for austerity. Mark Udall pledged support for a balanced budget amendment, introducing the bill with Richard Shelby. Kent Conrad – who finds McCaskill-Corker unacceptable because it does nothing on the revenue side, which just shows you how extreme a proposal it is – has been working to revive the Bowles-Simpson cat food plan on the Senate Budget Committee. Jeanne Shaheen and Johnny Isakson’s proposal for a two-year budget cycle is perhaps the most inoffensive of these plans (I’d actually go along with that one).

The point is that, with a struggle over the new budget and the debt limit looming, and with conservative activists rallying their representatives to stand firm, you have multiple Democrats perfectly to cut and cap spending, reduce Social Security benefits, and basically drown the government in the bathtub the way that conservatives have always wanted.

This is a Live Blog and will be updated as the news is available. You can follow the latest reports from AL Jazeera English and though Mishima’s live blog, our news editor.

The Guardian has a Live Blog that refreshes automatically every minute.

Al Jazeera has a Live Blog for Feb 4

As you can see we now have the live feed from Al Jazeera English.

Today was the largest protest against the Mubarak regime that has been stages yet. Vowing not to leave Tahrir Square in Cairo until Mubarak is gone. The day has been relatively peaceful and there have been only small clashed with the military establishing order keeping the pro-Mubarak supporters out of the square and re-instituting searches for weapons as people entered the square. Night is falling and thousands still remain.

The attacks on the independent news media continues with the burning of the Al Jazeera offices with all their equipment destroyed and Al Jazeera reporters beaten and arrested. The major American news media has taken refuge in hotels as it is completely unsafe for them on the streets. Also reporters from the New York Times, the BBC and others have also been detained and threatened.

“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”

Nicholas D. Kristof: We Are All Egyptians

Cairo. Inside Tahrir Square on Thursday, I met a carpenter named Mahmood whose left arm was in a sling, whose leg was in a cast and whose head was being bandaged in a small field hospital set up by the democracy movement. This was the seventh time in 24 hours that he had needed medical treatment for injuries suffered at the hands of government-backed mobs. But as soon as Mahmood was bandaged, he tottered off once again to the front lines.

“I’ll fight as long as I can,” he told me. I was awestruck. That seemed to be an example of determination that could never be surpassed, but as I snapped Mahmood’s picture I backed into Amr’s wheelchair. It turned out that Amr had lost his legs many years ago in a train accident, but he rolled his wheelchair into Tahrir Square to show support for democracy, hurling rocks back at the mobs that President Hosni Mubarak apparently sent to besiege the square. . . . . .

The lion-hearted Egyptians I met on Tahrir Square are risking their lives to stand up for democracy and liberty, and they deserve our strongest support – and, frankly, they should inspire us as well. A quick lesson in colloquial Egyptian Arabic: Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen! Today, we are all Egyptians!

Dean Baker: The Great British Austerity Experiment

With deficit hawks poised in the US, we watch with great interest UK economic policy. It’s not looking an enviable example so far

Three months ago, I noted that the United States might benefit from the pain being suffered by the citizens of the United Kingdom. The reason was the new coalition government’s commitment to prosperity through austerity. As predicted, this looks very much like a path to pain and stagnation, not healthy growth.

That’s bad news for the citizens of the United Kingdom. They will be forced to suffer through years of unnecessarily high unemployment. They will also have to endure cutbacks in support for important public services like healthcare and education.

But the pain for the people in England could provide a useful example for the United States. After failing to see the $8tn housing bubble that wrecked the US economy, the austerity crew in the United States has been newly emboldened by the hugely partisan media that desperately want to eviscerate the country’s bedrock social programmes: social security and Medicare.

Mark Weisbrot: Haiti’s Growing Momentum Towards Democracy

The possible return of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and a pushback against the electoral fix give hope

It didn’t get much attention in the media, but US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did something quite surprising on Sunday. After taping interviews on five big Sunday talkshows about Egypt, she then boarded a plane to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. The most impoverished country in the hemisphere, not exactly a “strategic ally” or a global player on the world’s political stage.

Inquiring minds might want to know why the United States’ top foreign policy official would have to go to Haiti in the midst of the worst diplomatic crisis she has faced. The answer is that there is also a crisis in Haiti. And it is a crisis that – unlike the humanitarian crisis that Haiti has suffered since the earthquake last year – Washington really cares about.

Like the Egyptians, Haitians are calling for free and fair elections. But in this case, Washington will not support free and fair elections, even nominally. Quite the opposite, in fact. For weeks now, the US government has been threatening the government of Haiti with various punishments if it refuses to reverse the results of the first round of its presidential elections. Washington wants Haiti to eliminate the government’s candidate and leave only two, rightwing candidates to compete in the second round.