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Dec 21 2010

Prime Time

“Corona veniat electis.” Victory shall come to the worthy. Today, democracy, liberty, and equality are words to fool the people. No nation can progress with such ideas. They stand in the way of action. Therefore, we frankly abolish them. In the future, each man will serve the interest of the State with absolute obedience. Let him who refuses beware! The rights of citizenship will be taken away from all Jews and other non-Aryans. They are inferior and therefore enemies of the state. It is the duty of all true Aryans to hate and despise them. Henceforth this nation is annexed to the Tomanian Empire, and the people of this nation will obey the laws bestowed upon us by our great leader, the Dictator of Tomania, the conqueror of Osterlich, the future Emperor of the World!

You speak.

I can’t.

You must. It’s our only hope.

Later-

Dave hosts Jack Black and Marv Albert.  Jon and Stephen in repeats, 12/14 and 12/8.  Alton does Cheese and Cheesecake.  Conan hosts Aaron Eckhart, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Beach House.

Boondocks– A Huey Freeman Christmas (“another irresponsible white person”)

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another.

Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another.

In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little.

More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The airplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men – machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines, you are not cattle, you are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate! Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it is written that the kingdom of God is within man, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.

By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people.

Now let us fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through!

We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed, and brutality. Look up, Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope, into the future! The glorious future, that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up!

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Dec 21 2010

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 World piles pressure on Ivory Coast’s defiant Gbagbo

by Dave Clark, AFP

1 hr 8 mins ago

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Ivory Coast’s isolated strongman Laurent Gbagbo faced a barrage of international criticism on Monday as world powers queued up to demand he step aside and allow Alassane Ouattara to take office.

The United Nations mission in Ivory Coast accused the defiant leader’s men of involvement in killings and rights abuses against Ivorians and demanded he stop harassing foreign envoys and UN peacekeepers in Abidjan.

In New York, the UN Security Council warned that Gbagbo’s camp could face new sanctions, and opened the way for the 10,000-strong UNOCI peacekeeping force to be reinforced — dismissing the regime’s demand that it leave.

Dec 20 2010

Just Plain Wrong

Monday Business Edition

As Krugman points out–

When historians look back at 2008-10, what will puzzle them most, I believe, is the strange triumph of failed ideas. Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything – yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever.

…

(T)he fact is that the Obama stimulus – which itself was almost 40 percent tax cuts – was far too cautious to turn the economy around. And that’s not 20-20 hindsight: many economists, myself included, warned from the beginning that the plan was grossly inadequate. Put it this way: A policy under which government employment actually fell, under which government spending on goods and services grew more slowly than during the Bush years, hardly constitutes a test of Keynesian economics.

…

(E)verything the right said about why Obamanomics would fail was wrong. For two years we’ve been warned that government borrowing would send interest rates sky-high; in fact, rates have fluctuated with optimism or pessimism about recovery, but stayed consistently low by historical standards. For two years we’ve been warned that inflation, even hyperinflation, was just around the corner; instead, disinflation has continued, with core inflation – which excludes volatile food and energy prices – now at a half-century low.

And while it is true that Republicans are trying to write certain false narratives–

(T)he modern Republican Party is utterly dedicated to the Reaganite slogan that government is always the problem, never the solution. And, therefore, we should have realized that party loyalists, confronted with facts that don’t fit the slogan, would adjust the facts.

…

It’s not as if the story of the crisis is particularly obscure. First, there was a widely spread housing bubble, not just in the United States, but in Ireland, Spain, and other countries as well. This bubble was inflated by irresponsible lending, made possible both by bank deregulation and the failure to extend regulation to “shadow banks,” which weren’t covered by traditional regulation but nonetheless engaged in banking activities and created bank-type risks.

Then the bubble burst, with hugely disruptive consequences. It turned out that Wall Street had created a web of interconnection nobody understood, so that the failure of Lehman Brothers, a medium-size investment bank, could threaten to take down the whole world financial system.

It’s a straightforward story, but a story that the Republican members of the commission don’t want told. Literally.

Last week, reports Shahien Nasiripour of The Huffington Post, all four Republicans on the commission voted to exclude the following terms from the report: “deregulation,” “shadow banking,” “interconnection,” and, yes, “Wall Street.”

…

That report is all of nine pages long, with few facts and hardly any numbers. Beyond that, it tells a story that has been widely and repeatedly debunked – without responding at all to the debunkers.

In the world according to the G.O.P. commissioners, it’s all the fault of government do-gooders, who used various levers – especially Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored loan-guarantee agencies – to promote loans to low-income borrowers. Wall Street – I mean, the private sector – erred only to the extent that it got suckered into going along with this government-created bubble.

Shahien Nasiripour–

During a private commission meeting last week, all four Republicans voted in favor of banning the phrases “Wall Street” and “shadow banking” and the words “interconnection” and “deregulation” from the panel’s final report, according to a person familiar with the matter and confirmed by Brooksley E. Born, one of the six commissioners who voted against the proposal.

…

The shadow banking system refers to the part of the financial system in which investors and other nonbanks like hedge funds and investment firms provide credit to borrowers, as opposed to more traditional banks. Interconnection refers to the links that bind financial institutions to one another, like derivatives, borrowings, and investments.

They’re not the only ones.

Neo-Liberal economics, especially of the Trickle Down Voodoo Variety (call a spade a spade Paul) is a complete, abject failure.

Coming from Republicans or Democrats.

It’s hard for me to fathom how these people can claim Economics is even a “Social” Science when their theories so blatantly violate the first law of Scientific Inquiry- Your Results Shall Be Testable AND Duplicatable.

The Stimulus That Isn’t

By Robert Kuttner, The Huffington Post

Posted: December 19, 2010 07:41 PM

It is astonishing how the Beltway echo-chamber, most egregiously the editorial page and news columns of the Washington Post (hard to tell the difference), thinks this deal is good for the Republic. The Post has become a cheerleader for policies that fail to cure the economy and show off Obama as a weakling waiting to be rolled again.

The tax deal, re-branded as a stimulus program, is paltry and ineffective as economic tonic. What hardly anyone seems to have grasped is that the deal basically continues the status quo with almost no stimulus.

If the tax rates on the books in 2010 did not produce a recovery, why should we expect that the very same rates will change the economy in 2011?

Business News below.

Dec 20 2010

Prime Time

The Santa Clause 2 x 2.  I thought broadcast TV was above that cable laziness.  Survivor 2 Hour Season Finale and reunion show.  Pack @ Patsies (you know how to root though I doubt it will do much good).  Family Guy Something, Something, Something Dark Side.

You will never be able to reach your full potential until you first confront your deep-seated fear of success. Now get into the bag.

What’s in it?

Only what you take with you.

Later-

Dueling Seths!

Adult Swim’s Seth Green and Fox’s (and also Adult Swim’s) Seth MacFarlane go head to head Star Wars.  At 11:30 the *World Premier* of Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode III, guarenteed to be at least 4 times longer than your standard Robot Chicken episode, is followed closely by double size Episode 1 and Episode 2 for TWO FULL HOURS of Robot Chicken Star Wars enjoyment.

AND so you can see how badly Seth Green ripped himself off in addition to Lucas.

Be still my heart.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Dec 20 2010

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 UN warns of death squad killings in Ivory Coast

by Dave Clark, AFP

2 hrs 44 mins ago

ABIDJAN (AFP) – The United Nations said Sunday that at least 50 people have been killed in Ivory Coast’s post-election crisis, amid reports of “massive” human rights abuses, and refused to withdraw its peacekeepers.

The UN force’s determination to stay threatens to provoke a showdown with strongman Laurent Gbagbo’s hardline supporters, but leaders of the world body said it would remain and investigate reports of death squad killings.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay expressed concern about “the growing evidence of massive violations of human rights” in the restive West African country since Thursday.

Dec 19 2010

BREAKING: South Carolina Secedes from Union!

PhotobucketThe New York Times was, typically, wrong.

FROM SOUTH CAROLINA.; PUBLIC FEELING IN CHARLESTON

THE LEADING MEN IN THE SECESSION MOVEMENT

MISGIVINGS ABOUT THE ISSUE.

Published: December 15, 1860

Emphasis in the original.

I think what’s important to remember as we celebrate the sesquicentennial is the root cause of the Rebellion.

A group of wealthy men thought it was ok to work, breed, and sell human beings like animals based on the color of their skin.

More than that, they were upset that certain Northern States were insufficiently zealous about finding their property for them when it got ‘lost’, causing significant impact to the bottom line.

And also their honor was offended that anyone could think this behavior morally wrong.  It hurt their sensitive feelings.

Alexander H. Stephens

Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity.

One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man…. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man.

The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

  • How the South rationalizes secession

    150 years later, a campaign to deny that the South’s exodus from the union was a revolution is in full force

    By Glenn W. LaFantasie, Salon.com

    Sunday, Dec 19, 2010 11:01 ET

Is an interesting and lengthy read.  He put me on the track of Stephens’ racist sentiments and makes a Unionist case for treason, which was the official causus belli of the North.

Gone With the Myths

By EDWARD BALL, The New York Times

Published: December 18, 2010

ON Dec. 20, 1860, 169 men – politicians and people of property – met in the ballroom of St. Andrew’s Hall in Charleston, S.C. After hours of debate, they issued the 158-word “Ordinance of Secession,” which repealed the consent of South Carolina to the Constitution and declared the state to be an independent country. Four days later, the same group drafted a seven-page “Declaration of the Immediate Causes (.pdf),” explaining why they had decided to split the Union.

…

(A) look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union – which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy – reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery.

The ordinance is nothing special, Tenther nonsense of the type LaFantasie debunks.  The Declaration on the other hand is quite interesting-

We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

From The (South Carolina) State editorial page-

Secessionists were clear about their cause: slavery

Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010

What we found most striking in rereading the Declaration was the complete absence of any other causes. After laying out the argument that the states retained a right to secede if the Union did not fulfill its constitutional and contractual obligations, the document cited the one failing of the United States: its refusal to enforce the constitutional provision requiring states to return escaped slaves to their owners. “This stipulation was so material to the compact,” the document declares, “that without it that compact would not have been made.”

Dec 19 2010

Prime Time

I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!, Madagascar.  

Oh, really? I’m from Playskool.

And I’m from Mattel. Well, I’m not really from Mattel, I’m actually from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout.

Later-

SNL– Jeff Bridges and Eminem.

GitS: SAC 2nd Gig– Selecon and Make Up (Episodes 12 & 13)

Listen, Doc, about the future…

NO! Marty, we’ve already agreed that having information about the future can have disastrous consequences. Even if you’re intentions are good, it can backfire drastically! Whatever you’ve got to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time.

…

What about all that talk about screwing up future events? The space-time continuum?

Well, I figured, what the hell?

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Dec 19 2010

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Defiant Gbagbo orders UN out of Ivory Coast

by Dave Clark, AFP

30 mins ago

ABIDJAN (AFP) – Defiant Ivory Coast leader Laurent Gbagbo ordered UN and French peacekeepers out of the country on Saturday, accusing them of backing rebel fighters supporting his rival Alassane Ouattara.

The demand for their “immediate” departure reflects the growing anger of Gbagbo’s nationalist supporters, and came as his most notorious lieutenant urged young Ivorians to make ready to fight for their sovereignty.

The United Nations, United States, European Union and Ivory Coast’s west African neighbours all demanded that Gbagbo cede power to Ouattara after both men claimed to have won last month’s presidential election.

Dec 18 2010

Prime Time

Yes Virginia, Frosty the Snowman (Jimmy Durante), Frosty Returns (Jonathan Winters).  Nutcracker again.  Mid-season finale of Sanctuary so I’ve been distracted trying to catch up with the storylines.  Evidently we’re now exploring the mysteries of ‘Hollow Earth’, a network of tunnels and caverns created by a race of beings at war with the Vampires and those who still carry ‘The Source Blood’ and battling Jekyll and Hyde for access (am I too old to be be a fanboy?  No, no not at all).  You know what’s the best thing about Fridays?  Prison Porn instead of O’Donnell.

Later-

Dave hosts Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.  

When the left tire mark goes up on the curb and the right tire mark stays flat and even? Well, the ’64 Skylark had a solid rear axle, so when the left tire would go up on the curb, the right tire would tilt out and ride along its edge. But that didn’t happen here. The tire mark stayed flat and even. This car had an independent rear suspension. Now, in the ’60’s, there were only two other cars made in America that had positraction, and independent rear suspension, and enough power to make these marks. One was the Corvette, which could never be confused with the Buick Skylark. The other had the same body length, height, width, weight, wheel base, and wheel track as the ’64 Skylark, and that was the 1963 Pontiac Tempest.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Dec 18 2010

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 WikiLeaks chief Assange fears US charges

by Beatrice Debut, AFP

2 hrs 45 mins ago

BUNGAY, United Kingdom (AFP) – Julian Assange said Friday it was “increasingly likely” the US would try to extradite him on charges related to WikiLeaks, as he spent his first day on bail on an English country estate.

The 39-year-old founder of the whistle-blowing website is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two women, which he denies.

But speaking outside Ellingham Hall, a friend’s mansion in eastern England, where he must live while on bail, Assange said he was more concerned about potential moves from US authorities.

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