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Mar 09 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 51 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Kadhafi says West after Libya’s oil as rebels pounded

by Antoine Lambroschini, AFP

1 hr 55 mins ago

TRIPOLI (AFP) – Moamer Kadhafi accused the West on Wednesday of wanting to seize Libya’s oil and warned a no-fly zone would backfire as his forces pounded rebel lines and a top aide jetted into Cairo.

“The colonialist countries are hatching a plot to humiliate the Libyan people, reduce them to slavery and control the oil,” Kadhafi said on state television.

He again accused Al-Qaeda of being behind the insurrection that began on February 15 and called on inhabitants of Benghazi, the rebels’ main base, to “liberate” the eastern city.

Mar 09 2011

Barack Hussein Obama Shuts Down National Labor Relations Board

And censors them.

A fierce advocate indeed-

“The House of Representatives is expected to soon vote on a funding proposal that contains drastic cuts to several federal agencies, including the National Labor Relations Board. The proposal would eliminate $50 million from this small administrative agency, or 18% of its total annual budget. Because the reduction would be squeezed into the final 7 months of the fiscal year, the cuts would be felt even more deeply – representing the equivalent of one-third of remaining 2011 funding.

Nearly all of the agency’s budget is spent on salaries and rents; there are no programs to eliminate or postpone. The only way to meet this extreme and immediate reduction would be to furlough all of the NLRB’s 1,665 employees for 55 workdays, or nearly three months, between now and the end of September. The great majority of these employees work far from Washington D.C., in 51 local offices, where every NLRB case begins. The economic impact of this cut would be felt by families and communities in 33 states.

If enacted, the House proposal could force the NLRB to curtail all agency operations, including investigating alleged illegal practices by private sector employers and unions, conducting workplace elections, and helping to settle election-related disputes. Regulation of a broad range of conduct, such as unlawful lockouts of workers, termination of union organizers, refusals to bargain with unions selected by workers, unilateral changes to contract provisions covering such things as health insurance and pensions, unlawful strikes, picket line violence, and secondary boycotts, would be stalled if this proposal were adopted.

NLRB: White House Muzzled Us In Budget Debate

Ryan Grimm, The Huffington Post

Posted: 03/ 9/11 11:08 AM

The White House demanded that the NLRB scrub the statement defending the agency from its website, an NLRB spokesperson told The Huffington Post.

…

The White House pushback against the NLRB would sound familiar to Wisconsin demonstrators. The Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America, the group that is a remnant of Obama’s ’08 campaign operation, initially got strongly behind the pro-labor protests. But after the GOP criticized the White House for its involvement, an administration spokesman told The New York Times that “the White House had done nothing to encourage the demonstrations in Wisconsin,” as paraphrased by reporter Jackie Calmes.

Of course, this President is almost entirely absent from the Budget debate, except when it comes to throwing core Democratic Principles and Constituencies under the bus.

Obama Tries to Re-Engage on Budget with 9 Days Until Government Shutdown

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Wednesday March 9, 2011 11:06 am

The President has been completely disengaged on the budget battle in Congress, preferring to let them battle it out while he jets around the country and says “win the future” a lot. And some members of Congress are sick of it. Now, part of this is Congress wanting to share the blame with the White House for whatever comes out. But the other part is a recognition that the caucus is rootless and without direction, and only a party leader can come in and impose that. The fact that Obama set Joe Biden to the task of working out a compromise, only to have Biden leave for Europe for a week, is testimony to the fact that there’s something wrong with this lack of engagement. When Joe Manchin, who I think got to the Senate three days ago, is calling you out for a failure of leadership, there’s a problem of engagement.

Why did we elect him again?  Oh, he claims to be a Democrat.

Well, he’s not.

And he’s not even doing his job, he’s just an AWOL deserter.

Mar 09 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for March 8, 2011-

DocuDharma

Mar 09 2011

Prime Time

A V premier.  That’s about it.

I’m here on the ground with my nose in it since the whole thing began. I’ve nurtured every sensation man’s been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I’m a fan of man! I’m a humanist. Maybe the last humanist.

Don’t get too cocky my boy. No matter how good you are don’t ever let them see you coming. That’s the gaffe my friend. You gotta keep yourself small. Innocuous. Be the little guy. You know, the nerd… the leper… shit-kickin’ surfer. Look at me. Underestimated from day one. You’d never think I was a master of the universe, now would ya?

Later-

Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He’s a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time. Look but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t taste. Taste, don’t swallow. Ahaha. And while you’re jumpin’ from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He’s laughin’ His sick, fuckin’ ass off! He’s a tight-ass! He’s a SADIST! He’s an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!

Dave in repeats from 1/31.  Jon has Brian Christian, Stephen Dan Sinker (get some wiki pages you assholes!).  Conan hosts Nigel Marven and Gary Oldman.

Vanity, definitely my favorite sin.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Mar 08 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 46 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Women march for better life on International Women’s Day

AFP

59 mins ago

PARIS (AFP) – Women worldwide took to the streets Tuesday to mark the 100th International Women’s Day, with protests against honour killings, the objectification of women in Italy and the shooting of seven women in Ivory Coast.

Drawing inspiration from the boardrooms of Finland and the toppling of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, demonstrators staked their claim for equality, education and a better life.

A month before Silvio Berlusconi goes on trial over allegations he paid an underage prostitute for sex, hundreds of Italian women rallied in Rome.

Mar 08 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for March 7, 2011-

DocuDharma

Mar 08 2011

Prime Time

Some premiers.  PBS has an interesting documentary on Islamic Spain.  I understand Stargate Universe is starting it’s final 10 episodes.  This season is ok, but if it’s ever (as it appears to be) I’m extremely disappointed because it’s way better than Caprica.

Quotes are not essential.  I dare you to find them.

Later-

Dave in repeats from 1/18.  Jon has Rand Paul (ugh), Stephen Joshua Foer.  Alton does Garbanzos and Eggs Benedict.  Conan hosts Seth Green and Travis Barker.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Mar 07 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 42 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 France’s ex-president Chirac on trial for corruption

by Roland Lloyd Parry, AFP

2 hrs 15 mins ago

PARIS (AFP) – Jacques Chirac on Monday became the first former French president to go on trial as a court heard charges that he embezzled public funds while he was mayor of Paris in the 1990s.

The 78-year-old, one of France’s most popular political figures, did not attend the start of the trial that will examine whether he misused public money to pay people working for his party ahead of a successful election bid.

Presiding judge Dominique Pauthe adjourned Monday’s hearing after a few hours, saying it would resume on Tuesday when he would rule on a constitutional challenge in the case, which if successful could delay the trial by several months.

Mar 07 2011

How much is that Sheepskin worth?

Krugman points out today that Education is no substitute for a Job and as someone who has programmed I’ll tell you flat out there is no repetitive task I can’t automate (well, once I install my compliers and linkers and blow the dust off my language skills).

Sort of off topic, I’m looking for a script that will cycle through a Soapblox database (they’re sequentially ordered) and save the page with contents, links, and comments to a hard drive so I can burn offline archive CDs and DVDs for the authors on our sites.

Yes, I could do it myself, but it’s mind numbing grundge work of the type suitable only for interns and computers.

Degrees and Dollars

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: March 6, 2011

(T)he idea that modern technology eliminates only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date.

The fact is that since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs – the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class – have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.

…

(A)ny routine task – a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs – is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules – a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors – will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.

And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Notably, with production workers in manufacturing down to about 6 percent of U.S. employment, there aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. Roombas are cute, but robot janitors are a long way off; computerized legal research and computer-aided medical diagnosis are already here.

…

(T)here are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer – we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.

Mar 07 2011

DocuDharma Digest

Regular Features-

Featured Essays for March 6, 2011-

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