Tuesday, October 5, 2010
jbet777 
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Nearly Half of You Loves the Rich Enough...
Seriously, I haven't been blogging for awhile but it doesn't mean I haven't been enjoying the ride.
Obama seems poised to finally say all those things we wanted him to say at the very beginning of his presidency, finally remembering that he wasn't elected to play nice with the Good Old Boy's Club (now with spunky hostesses!) but to protect the interests of his base, the middle-class.
The Republicans have found more callous and twisted than them and are a bit surprise. And annoyed.
Yahoo has erected itself as the Fox News of the internet, doctoring main stories distribution and choosing elements of coverage that only reflect Tea party/GOP allegiance. The comments section itself is nothing more but a gathering of strident bullies, a motley crew of GOP zombies repeating that they want nothing more than to let the Tea Party loose on the world and let the theocracy that the Saintly Anointed Founding Fathers OBVIOUSLY wanted for this country triumph at long last! This victory will usher a new dawn of God fearing prosperity, where women are women and paid less, men are tools and paid less and children that have the money get educated and the rest are paid less or sent to war! Imagine! They'll get a gun! EACH! For free!… la-la-la la-la-la!!
Damn! Where's Poland when you need it?!
Well, yes, all that would be tempting and enticingly suicidal but I prefer my Democracy lunatic-free and anti-totalitarian. I know, old habits die hard… So I still go back to Yahoo to get my GOP sponsored news page and I sill read the AP news wire everyday. And everyday I wish I could laugh it all off as an elaborate punk hoax by George Orwell but, no, doublespeak is the new official language of the United States. For exemple:
Pasted from <http://www.fair.org/index.php>
Isn't that pretty? Nearly half! Well that couldn't mean that (counting on my fingers)... let's say, more than half?... So.. the majority? By Jove, my man, the majority are for tax hikes for the Rich (with a capital R)!
I would have given a bloody Pulitzer to any decent journalist that would have wrote a simple, reality based headline: Majority of Americans are for the Repeal of Bush tax cut for the Wealthy.
Less sexy to the lunatic fringe, I guess…
Posted by Julie Hollar on 09/16/10 at 11:36 am
An AP piece published across the Web today (9/16/10) carries this headline: AP-GfK Poll: Nearly Half Oppose Tax Hikes for Rich.Well, that's one way of looking at it--just like you could report the results of the 1988 election by saying that Michael Dukakis got "nearly half" of the popular vote. The more logical way of putting it would be that more than half support letting tax cuts expire for the rich: 54 percent to 44 percent. But framing it instead around the minority position lets them focus on how Democrats might worry about "provoking the 44 percent who say the reductions should include the wealthy," as opposed to worrying about provoking the majority who don't feel that way.And that majority is particularly strong among Democratic voters (three quarters), who are presumably the ones Democratic lawmakers need to be most worried about, particularly given the sharp drop in enthusiasm among those voters.
Pasted from <http://www.fair.org/index.php>
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Arianna Discovers Wal-Mart....
Well, let's say she discovered what we've meant for years about the Wal-Martization of America.
She explains it well, in an articulate, crystal-clear smart piece that suggest we turn our boat around.
That would be a fantastic idea, if it wasn't a tad too late.
Let's be frank: the 'too big to fail' are also too big to fight. Obama has 671 billion dollars worth of guns pointing at his head to continue the mess we are in in Afghanistan and Iraq, Wall Street is one of the biggest contributor to the Democrat's party purse and despite the Republicans being outrageously Grand-Guignolesque in their pursuit of idiocy, bad taste and openly racist agenda, the Dems can barely make a dent in public opinion that's positive and lasting.
The seeds where sowed with Reagan, his deregulation process and hallowing out of Federal agencies. It consequences where obvious and they were not in anyone's favor but a handful of corporate casinos and their gambling-addicted brokers.
This process involved creating two very distinct classes, the have and the have-not, so that the working pool stays affordable and 'flexible' and the United States copies the 'amazing successes' of 'emerging' giants like China and India.
With the manufacturing jobs go the manufacturing unions. With affordable and equitable education goes an informed and active middle-class. With a swift and organized recognition and integration of immigrants go a new citizenry access to the American Dream.
Instead, religiosity, self-aggrandizement and military might popularized by a fabricated network of right-wing superstars, constantly present in the 'News', are pushed down our collective throat. The Federal government and all those 'brown wetbacks' are presented as scapegoats explaining the decline of the country and the economical hardships felt by what's left of the middle class. And finally, the service sector, principally non-unionized from McDonald to Wal-Mart, keeps wages low and upwardly mobility expectations lower. Don't forget that Wall Street, more often than not, owned the market place, your workplace.
I have seen the future and it's in Dubai: no taxes, no minimum wage, no minimum working hours, second-class citizenship accorded only to those who can afford real estate, immigration of individual on (paid) sponsorship only and with bank accounts in the sponsors' names that can be seized at any infraction. No family reconstitution. And God help you if you rear-end a Saudi limo or, Heaven's forbid, if he rear-ends you. On both cases, you're screwed. Well, guess where's Halliburton moving...
Arianna is right but how many Democrats are thinking long term solution and long term fight. How many thought 'We voted Obama, he'll clean that mess up.' and are now disillusioned because it is a process that is taking much longer than ONE term. How many will vote with spite on the next election and bring back the Republicans in power so they can finish what they started.
Hope we can reverse the trend created after 24 total years of Republican distortion and extortion. Hope it's not too late. So I hope I'm wrong. I really hope I am.
Monday, April 26, 2010
African kimono by Serge Mouangue
From DesignBoom:
African born, Tokyo based designer Serge Mouangue combined African fabrics with the design
of traditional Japanese kimonos since 2008 to create his 'Wafrica' series. Together with Kururi, a Tokyo based kimono maker he produced the traditional Japanese attire in 18 African limited edition prints. Mouangue developed the range to celebrate the diversity of the two cultures.
Being Young, Black, Talented and in a TV show (Wait! You're Not!)
It's all about being correct.
Not politically correct but just being right.
I was watching an old episode of Bones the other day and was struck by a familiar pattern of TV characterization:
The uppity Black character that is supposedly brilliant needs to be corrected by e-v-e-r-y other characters about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g in e-v-e-r-y single scene she's in.
Think Camille in Bones, Omar Epps in House, or any show with a Black BFF that is just there to sassily say anything too outrageous for the good white girl's lips(Yes, Sookie, I do mean you!).
Of course, those Black characters are not an integral part of the group, they serve as foil. The group get coherence and unity by , not hating per say, of course, let's stay hypocritical, but by being deeply annoyed by this Black presence.
A research demonstrated that that antagonism I perceived in TV shows is not all in my head, as the proponent of the 'No, no, racism is dead and you're only suffering from massive collective delusions because Black people are crazy that way but I'm not racist' theory would like us to believe.
TV CLIPS Reveal Racist Body Language
A new study reveals white characters display far more negative body language toward their black peers
Joseph Hall , Health Reporter
'Racist body language comes through loud and clear on television, even when the sound is off, a new study shows.
Through a set of ingeniously concocted experiments, reported Friday in the journal Science, researchers show that white characters in television series display far more negative body language toward their black peers than to members of their own race.
The bias conveyed by these body clues is not only recognized subconsciously by people who watch the shows, but significantly influences their feelings about the black characters.
"Sadly, we observed that non-verbal race bias is a typical pattern on scripted television shows," lead study author Max Weisbuch said in a release on the paper.
"White characters are treated better across the board and this has an impact on viewers," said Weisbuch, a post-doctoral psychologist at Massachusetts's Tufts University...'
And funnily enough, when they are cordial and well-rounded, they are often swiftly replace with a less 'agreeable' character or they are pushed into doing seemingly irremediable stupid errors to the point of losing all credibility and respectability. 'We don't want to seem to friendly', seems to be the word around TV studios.
It is not only a question of Black and White but one of life versus bad script. Stringing along a long list of idiotic cliché does not make good writing of any kind. Sometimes, I rather they do not try at all rather than ruin a show with good intentions and crass ignorance. Some of these writers have never seen a Black, Asian or Hispanic person in the flesh except on aTV screens and it shows.
So I watch Supernatural and cringe when they brought in 2 completely closed-off Black British actors once. But I applaud them with the intervention of Kali - beautifully made, guys. I'll miss Gabriel. Bad Luci!
I have to remember that Bones is on FOX network and Fox always had their issues (In 2001, they were the one with the least Black actors on their shows among all the networks according to a SAG study.)
I watch Law & Order - the original- because the real McCoy is there but also that precious, fantastic underused actress S. Epatha Merkerson as Detective Van Buren and she is leaving the show next year. Also, Alana de la Garza is playing gracefully and smartly against type.
Forget I'll Fly Away, Any Day Now, Star Trek Voyager or DS9 or even Mannix, for Pete's sake. They're gone and forgotten with nothing of value to replace them.
I watch shows that don't think I'm an idiot.
And there's not too many of those right now. So, I'll stick to movies, books and the news.
Oh, wait, the News writers definitively think we're all idiots...
Pasted from <http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/science/article/740486--study-finds-racist-body-language-on-tv>
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Javier Marin: Sculptures of a Doomed, Graceful Dream
I love their tortured shapes, the fake history that they hint at ( and the real ones that they questioned.)
His pieces remind me of one of my favourite sculptor, the African Ousmane Sow.
He will take part of the Vancouver Biennial taking place now 'till May 20th.
See more on his website.
More Headlines...on the Crazy Republicans of the Day side
Tea party and the Republicans try to unite to create an anti-government militia?
Armed right-wing activists comparing themselves to Warsaw ghetto Jews and calling for 'thousand little Wacos'?
Michele Bachmann 'Prayercast' against Health Reform?
Can they get anymore bizarre than that?
Yes, they can!
Why not recruit your employees to become your 'grassroots' activists?
From Think Progress:
EXCLUSIVE: U.S. Chamber of Commerce Coordinating Wall Street’s Stealth Lobbying Campaign To Kill Reform
On Thursday, President Obama announced his commitment to pass sweeping legislation to reform Wall Street and to create a new regulatory structure meant to avert another economic crisis. However, the financial industry is fighting back, hoping to obstruct legislation, water down the bill, and possibly kill effective reform.
The legislative battle is multifaceted. Frank Luntz, a consultant who is paid by financial services firms, wrote a messaging memo now used by opponents of reform to confuse the public and smear the legislation. As Talking Points Memo revealed earlier this week, a K Street PR firm known as the DCI Group — with ties to Wall Street — is working with a front group to run ads against reform. And recently, Republicans have met with top bankers and representatives from the banking industry to trade campaign dollars for a promise to fight reform.
However, as with the health reform debate, there is a large, more subterranean effort from industry to kill reform. As the Politico Playbook reported yesterday morning, “financial-services giants are going grassroots” to lobby against reform. ThinkProgress has learned that the banks and financial conglomerates are using the same stealth lobbying operation the health insurance industry employed last year to mobilize opposition. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Master Card, and other industry players are working through “Democracy Data & Communications” (DDC) — a firm that specializes in helping corporations activate their employees and customers into grassroots advocates — to join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s effort to kill reform. The domain list of the DDC server, obtained by ThinkProgress, contains various Wall Street websites, including one seemingly named after JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon, which all transfer visitors to the Chamber’s anti-reform campaign:
www.bankofamericavotes.comUSAA, the financial services corporation, also employs DDC for its grassroots lobbying and mass e-mailed its customers Friday morning to call lawmakers and oppose reform (view a copy here). Last year, DDC helped JP Morgan Chase coordinate a stealth campaign to kill efforts to tax banker bonuses.
www.dimonvotes.com
www.aftermarketvotes.org
www.mastercardvotes.com
The Hobbit House is for Sale in Mexico...
Its designer, the Mexican architect Javier Senosiain calls it the Nautilus, I call it the Hobbit house.
I can just imagine Ian Holmes trotting along, preparing cordials with a couple of Russian hookers and Ian McKellen chuckling along (still dreaming of Derek Jacobi)...
Some Headlines You Should go Beyond.... and Some Answers for Tea Partiers
I am happy that Huffington Post caught up with the right answer to give any tea partier who ask what do the government do with his tax money:
It gives almost 50% of it to the Army to make war and gives the rest to Wall Street just for the hell of it.
Give my regard to all the Bushes for me.
Or give it to them in another language:
Dept. of Defence Spending Budget : 663,700,000,000
Dept. of Small Business Spending Budget: 700,000,000
Dept. of Education Spending Budget: 46,700,000,000
Dept. of Social Securities Spending Budget:11,600,000,000
And that doesn't take into account the Stimulus bill - or Recovery Act - that I like to call the New Deal Extra Light and that tries, timidly, to correct the wrongs done over the years in our messed-up-priorities case of a democracy.
But AlterNet have some startling headlines and keen analysis that always makes me want to dig deeper.
Here's some that should warrant your attention:
* Moyers: Six Banks Control 60% of Gross National Product -- Is the U.S. at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy?
It Was Never About Capitalism: It Was Always All About Money...
There is a difference.
Capitalism, socialism, they're only systems, only a way to acquire things and reach a goal.
They are complex arrangement of ideas, people and environments that give absolutely no guarantee of success.
The only way people can win all the time - in any system - is by cheating.
Wall Street decided to give themselves a boom and bust version of capitalism ideology that will let them cheat and win every single time.
After the 1929 stock market crash, the American government put in place modern market regulations to prevent any more depressions lead by panicked investors and banks.
The SEC was created and Kennedy Sr was its first chairman.
And it worked: for 58 years, there was not one market crash since Roosevelt's intervention.
But we all know how Republicans could not leave all this good work alone.
Reagan came in and lifted most regulations (Hand in hand with Margaret Thatcher who was doing the same thing oversea by stopping exchange control and turning a blind eye on the activities of the London Stock Exchange) and crippled federal agencies so that controlled capitalism could be easily replace by uncontrolled greed.
The result was the Savings and Loans scandal and the very first post-1930s bailout of private financial institutions - under Daddy Bush himself - for almost 125 billion dollars worth of bad loans, deposit brokers commissions and real estate investment failures.
That scandal put the government in a deficit state that would take 20 years to correct - before another Bush came around to play with public funds.
Do you see a trend here yet?
If not, you should.
One way or the other, all your tax dollars will go to Wall Street.
There has been a big syphoning of public money toward bailing out irresponsible, gambling addicts.
Wall Street is very unhappy right now because Obama would like to see the moolah party end in our generation. Addicts being addicts, they just can't stop cold turkey without help, mental and otherwise.
Seeing the Forest have again put their hands on a gem: a regulator is crying for help and saying that their role is now to be complacent decoys, supporters of fraud and laissez-faire.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Why the Left is Losing the new Civil War...And How Can we Win?
Yeah, I know: it sounds very apocalyptic and desperate but we are in a feverish, high strung , desperate time.
It is clear we're in the centre of a vast political turmoil. The right have declared war on the New Deal Legacy. They just want to scrap at everything FDR left. The left seem undecided about what to do: go on with the popular kids or fight them with all their meagre strength.
The most successful right wing contender was Ronald Reagan: by demonizing African American as THE Welfare Queens and Kings and not as they always been the traditional cheap labour of the Nation on which freedom all have been built, he succeeded in re-establishing the moral principles of the right as viable and sound.
Reagan articulated a rage so potent in some that they did not understand that by defeating those 'spongers' they were actually voting against their own self-interest.
All that supposedly saved money did not go to 'taxpayers' but to subsidizing already profit-full companies and their owner so they could lay off as much workers as possible and send those jobs elsewhere.
Moreover, the biggest 'spongers of them all were not - and still are not - individuals but corporations, war profiteers and industrial farms. Believe me: a single mother of 3 have nothing on Halliburton and the Agribusiness. And by Agribusiness, I'm not talking good ol' farmers here but big industrial complexes that pollutes most of our nation waterways without a second thought.
War spending is 50% of the Federal budget. The welfare Kings and Queens? 5%. Veterans Affairs? 3% Education? 3%
Up to now, since Reagan, deregulation is the key to happiness of a few , a very small percentage of the population. And they in turn dictate what Joseph Lyles has call the 'drumbeat', the catchphrases, the ideological memos, the celebrity (think Palin) distraction du jour. It has been the same 'beat' since Reagan and it won't change. So why can't we adapt a strategy?
I think the reason why the Left will not win this war of ideas is because, unconsciously, we follow the sound of the same drum.
Just go on Huffington any day. Every time there's a Palin pictures, it will generates ten of thousands of comments while any domestic policies coverage will attract 50 or a hundred on a good day. It's fun. We think we're being clever while we're just being distracted...
Unfortunately, I'm afraid the reason why we will lose in November is because we will probably be too busy to post an anti-Palin joke/comment to go vote. The Tea Party bangers will be at the booth while we will be blogging and photoshopping our way to own demise.
So how do we win?
In my humble opinion, Ali was right: 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee'
It means float on the internet, get information, disseminate facts, create an effective left hub (bigger and a bit less glam than HuffPo) where all the small, isolated blogger could have a home and exchange;
and sting like a bee at every right wing commando actions: deflate Rush, give Beck a Kleenex and some chill pill, unmask the Tea Party for the GOP armed robots they are and get our talking point across on domestic policies in major corporate media in an effective manner. Don't we have a think thank on this yet?
Anyway enough doom and gloom.:
An oldie but goodie from Joseph Lyles.
Personally, I don't think 'cheap labor conservatist' has enough bite to it but he's on the right track.
What about 'corporate welfare conservatism' or 'Halliburton conservatism' or 'big Mafia conservatism' or 'Goodfellas conservatism' or 'egotrip conservatism' or ' eat the poor conservatism' or 'WalMart conservatism'?.... I could go on...
From the Democratc Underground website.
DEFEAT THE RIGHT IN THREE MINUTES
by Joseph Lyles
Have you got three minutes. Because that's all you need to learn how to defeat the Republican Right. Just read through this handy guide and you'll have everything you need to successfully debunk right-wing propaganda.
It's really that simple. First, you have to beat their ideology, which really isn't that difficult. At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots" that I call "corporate feudalism". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology. That ideology is pure hogwash, and you can prove it.
The Only Victims You Can Listen To: The Tea Party Bangers
They rock.
They roll.
They scream bloody murders like 3 years old.
They cry on demand and pout.
They threaten the nation of armed revolt and secession.
They are insanely misinformed.
They seem grassroots enough to look genuine but the bermuda clad old white xenophobic guard
- who claim to have direct access to the Founding Fathers' brains, hearts and every other vital organs -
have this air of deja vu, of old news and fake concerns and cringe-inducing ideological contradictions.
In other words: where have we all seen this before?
Bla, bla, bla - small government - with huge WAR facilitating created deficit and corporation subsidizing.
Bla, bla, bla - bootstraps for everyone: if you can't have kids, stay with your alcoholic husband and get to church for moral support like everybody else just die already. Where does it say anything about helping anyone in the Constitution?
Bla, bla, bla - Nafta, Free Trade, The Share Holders Pleasure Principles - no need for manufacturing jobs here, they're for losers and Unionists. If the corporation gets richer then the whole country gets richer! Don't you get it? Your share of GDP just gets bigger! Don't you feel the love?
Bla, bla, bla - no taxes but more services! (This one makes my brain explodes. I just can't deal...)
Bla, bla, bla - no immigration reform or else we will have to pay them a decent wage and then where will we be?
Bla, bla, bla - no bank bailout (well, duh! Say thanks to Dubya and Paulson for that one) but no government regulations, meddling or, gasp!, takeover!
Bla, bla, bla - No! To everything! Because I say so!
Bla, bla, bla - no liberal media - but WE own them wouah! ha ha ha! Own the idiot box, you own the idiots! Viva la vida Fox!
Bla, bla, bla - no activist judge - except our own!
Bla, bla, bla - no unemployment benefit - the more desperate you are, the less you cost. And there's always WalMart.
Bla, bla, bla - no government schools - the slaves didn't know how to read and they made a decent livin'! Stop bitchin' all the time and get to work!
Bla, bla, bla - confederacy - And you thought we'd lost?! Suckers!
Bla, bla, bla - God is on our side. Sucker!
Bla, bla, bla - no national heathcare BUT DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH MY MEDICARE ! (Screeching pitch)
Well, you get the gist of it.
Where, O, where have we seen all of this before??
Wait, it's in the tip of my tongue, white, rotund, male, newt worthy, gone in vacation all the time, war, deficit, lame jokes, no accountability....
Darn! I almost had it....
Where have we seen this before?
And why can't we make them eat those words once and for all?
From the Nation
Tea Party Hypocrisy
Editorial
February 11, 2010
"Energy. Budget Tax cuts. Lift American spirits." This was the infamous list of talking points scrawled on Sarah Palin's palm when she stood to address the first-ever Tea Party Convention in Nashville. It's fitting, given that the agenda of Palin and the movement for which she has become a tribune is short on details about how to govern the country. "Lift American spirits" is about as substantive a description of their agenda as you're likely to hear.
Such vagueness has served the movement well, allowing it to claim to be many things it is not. There has arisen in some quarters a quaint and dangerous notion that the tea party movement is an entirely new phenomenon--a bipartisan, organic channeling of broad (and rational) distrust of and disgust with America's main institutions, particularly Wall Street and Washington, which seem to have formed a perfectly closed loop of rent-seeking and self-dealing. According to Tea Party Patriots national board member Mark Meckler, "Although we are conservative in political philosophy, we are nonpartisan in approach. Both parties need to re-dedicate themselves to the principles of our founding fathers and remember that this should be the government of 'We the People' and not of special interest groups or pork-laden politics." While the energy and outrage may be genuine and organic, we should not fool ourselves into seeing this as anything but a right-wing reactionary movement, one whose themes (jingoism, militarism and a cult of victimhood at the hands of sundry nefarious betrayers) are as old as the John Birch Society. And yet, because the details of the tea party's worldview remain obscure, it's startlingly popular with the broader public. Forty-one percent of respondents in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll have a positive opinion of the tea party movement. According to the same poll, the Democratic Party was viewed favorably by only 35 percent. The Republican Party fared even worse with 28 percent.
Esther Kaplan on Massey Energy and mine safety; John Nichols on WikiLeaks and collateral murder
Sunday, April 11, 2010
A House to Get Away From it All
I am not one to go rustic but this house invites Baudelaire's line from 'L'invitation au Voyage' to mind: 'Luxe, calme et volupté'.
Luxury, calm and sensual pleasure indeed...
Discovered on the (beautiful) Style-Files website.
Ana Duncan's Radiant Women Sculptures
I love their shapes.
They're like Giacometti figurines but healthier: sturdy, sensual and strongly present.
They all have a strong enough personality to seperate them from Ikea style bland Euro-sculpture.
From the Ana Duncan website.
Plastic Kills From a Distance: Midway Atoll Tragedy
These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.
To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent. View more from Chris Jordan’s series here.
From Photo District News website.
The pictures themselves are from Chris Jordan.
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