April 2010 archive

Photos and Stories from the Labor March on Wall St.

Cross-posted many places including DailyKos.

On Thursday afternoon the AFL-CIO held a rally to protest the banking bailout and demand a peoples’ bailout. There was a call for not just regulating the banks that almost took this nation down but also doing an about face and forcing the bankers to bailout the people.

Do you think Wall Street should pay for the jobs they destroyed?

“People in New York and across the country who did nothing wrong and want to work have paid for the misdeeds of the big banks with their jobs, homes and retirement savings,” said Richard Trumka, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. president.

Do the elected officials of this nation think Wall Street should pay for the jobs they destroyed?

See a few photos and read some people’s stories below.  

Afternoon Edition

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Disaster looms as oil slick reaches US coast

by Erica Berenstein, AFP

21 mins ago

VENICE, Louisiana (AFP) – Oil from a giant Gulf of Mexico slick washed onto Louisiana shores Friday, threatening an environmental calamity as President Barack Obama called for a “thorough review” of the disaster.

With up to 200,000 gallons of oil a day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico from a ruptured well, the accident stemming from a sunken offshore rig may soon rival the Exxon Valdez disaster as the worst oil spill in US history.

Strong southeast winds blew the first oily strands of the slick directly onto the coastal wetlands of South Pass near the mouth of the Mississippi river late Thursday, Billy Nungesser, president of Plaquemines Parish, where oil washed ashore, told AFP.

NeoNazi/AZ GOP link exposed through Racist Immigration Law. Where the hell is the media on this?

     Meet J.T. Ready, avowed Neo Nazi, past president of the Mesa Community College Republican Club and Maricopa County Republican precinct committeeman. J.T. is the second schmuck from the right in the picture below.

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   And here is J.T. Ready (Left) with Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce, the author of the new Arizona police state “show me your papers” law, who has his own history of ties to Neo Nazi white supremacist groups.

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    In most states being seen publicly with a Nazi would ruin your political career. In most states you would be shunned by your political party. But not in Arizona, and not in the Republican party.

WTF?

More below the fold

Arizona Backs Down. Sorta Kinda.

Battered by the media tsunami caused by Arizona’s “show us your papers” law and the resulting lawsuits and threats of boycotts, Arizona’s legislature today sought cover by seeking to moderate provisions of SB 1070.  Are these real changes or are they just cosmetic changes and an effort to save face?  It’s probably some of each.  Put another way, those who oppose the law can know that their outrage is being heard and felt.  But the changes don’t eliminate the problem, they just provide better cover for it.

The Arizona Daily Star reports:

– State lawmakers voted late Thursday to repeal one of the more controversial provisions from the new law aimed at illegal immigration….

HB 2162, approved by the House and Senate, changes the law to specify that when deciding whom to question about immigration status, police may not use race, ethnicity or national origin as a factor.

That is a significant change from SB 1070 as it was approved by lawmakers and signed less than a week ago by Gov. Jan Brewer. That version of the law permits police to consider any of those factors when deciding if there is “reasonable suspicion” someone is not in this country legally, as long as it is not the only reason for investigating further.

There’s more, of course:

As originally approved, SB 1070 requires police to determine the immigration status of those with whom they have “lawful contact” if there is reasonable suspicion the person is not here legally.

That “reasonable suspicion” language remains. But the language about “contact” is replaced with a reference to “stop, detention or arrest.” Paul Senseman, the governor’s spokesman, said the changes effectively reduce checking immigration status to “secondary enforcement.”

“There have to be other steps, such as another law being broken first,” he said, before an officer could, with reasonable suspicion, inquire if a person is a citizen or legal resident.

He compared it to Arizona’s seat-belt laws: Police cannot stop a motorist solely because the person is unbuckled. But officers can issue a ticket for failing to buckle up if the driver is stopped for some other reason.

Join me in Nogales.

‘Gag-inducing’ fuel smell wafting over New Orleans (updated)

New Orleans residents are understandably annoyed over their city being enveloped by the smell of fuel. Mandie Landry, an attorney who works in the city’s Central Business District, told Yahoo! News that “it smells like it’d smell if a bus was in front of you blowing out exhaust fumes right in your face.”

Another local resident, Tulane University employee Laura Mogg, told us that she caught wind of the “terrible” and “gag-inducing” smell from her office building on the school’s sprawling uptown campus. “I smelled it the second I opened the door,” she said. “Really, it’s that strong.”

How many weeks/months will people in Louisiana and other states be forced to breathe these poisonous fumes as wave upon wave of toxic sludge hits their shores?  

What kinds short and long term health problems can these millions of people expect as a result?

We have yet to even remotely grasp the ecological, human and economic damage this disaster will cause.  Indeed, the more I read the more I fear that when the final butcher’s bill is taken, Deepwater Horizon could very well rival Chernobyl on the all time list of man-made disasters.  

And the most horrible part of all?  Nobody can do a damn thing to stop it.  

Open Toy Box

toy box

Wild Wild Left Radio #62 Disaster Capitalism in Real Time

Tonight at 6PM Eastern Time, WWL Radio!!!!!

Gottlieb and Diane G. will be live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio tonight at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.

Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!


The human and environmental disasters are in everyone’s hearts and minds right now: From the latest mine collapse, to the eco-disaster unfolding in the Gulf. As we report both of these serious events, we have to ask: The lives of humans, or the life of the Planet itself; is that the price of profit?

Then there is the horrific overt racism in what is known as Arizona’s SB 1070, bound to fail, yet entered into the Public Fray for a purpose. We will be exploring who profited from the passage of this travesty of hate.

There is controversy surrounding immigration in Great Britain as well, with an election changing comment, “bigoted woman” by Gordon Brown. The climate of competition for ever declining resources; resources pillaged by the Rich from the masses, sets an ugly stage for racism and clannishness to raise its ugly head. Is hate the price of profit?

Join us as we report these stories and speak about the underlying thread through every aspect of these catastrophic events ~  while all these stories are real and problematic, they are greatly distracting from the conversation that is their true cause: Financial Reform, here and abroad.

It is the unregulated markets that are causing us to vie worldwide for a diminishing piece of the pie. They continue to plunder recklessly, cut corners for profit, and gamble on our failures; making our livelihoods in danger, our lives at risk, and the destruction of our ecosystem the price we pay.

Will sanity and regulation be forced upon Wall Street, in the face of the obvious fact they knew and intended to profit off of the collapse? Will there be restrictions put in place in the Global Market before utter World Financial calamity ensues?

Its time to get serious, add your voice, and force this conversation into the American (and World) psyche.

Please join us!

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.

Call In!

Join Gottlieb and Diane every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

The call in number is 646-929-1264

Listen to The Wild Wild Left on internet talk radio

The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!

CHAT LINK:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/f…

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Scandal may sink Strickland’s chances for re-election.

According to a report issued by the office of Ohio’s inspector general Thomas P. Charles, one of governor Ted Strickland’s cabinet members perjured herself to protect his boss from a criminal investigation.

As reported in The Columbus Dispatch and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Public Safety Director Cathy Collins-Taylor put the kibosh on an investigation into Strickland’s apparent laxness of supervision in an inmate work program at his home.  Prisoners are alleged to have used the opportunity afforded them to smuggle tobacco products and weapons from Strickland’s residence and into prison.

“Lt. Joseph Mannion, Strickland’s top personal security officer,” according to the Plain Dealer article, was accused of lying under oath to investigators during the course of their probe into the matter.  

Politics Daily recently reported that Strickland is so far maintaining only a “shaky lead” over Republican rival John Kasich.  That his top aides lied under oath to state investigators, thereby breaking the law, to protect their boss’s reputation has had the opposite effect – Strickland’s campaign may now have suffered a terminal blow going into the November election.

Climate: Oil’s Coming Ashore For Weeks in Louisiana Gulf

Last night, McClatchy reported that the first globs of crude oil from the wreck of the Deepwater Horizon were washing up on to the Louisiana delta shores of the Gulf Coast.  

The wind forecast for today in the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans, Louisiana, is from the southeast.

http://forecast.weather.gov/Ma…

climate Nature

Map of April 30 2010 Friday forecast of the BP Oil spill trajectory, in tan. Other days shown in other colors. Black asterisk at lower tip of light blue shows location of broken Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico.  Image courtesy of NOAA

Dharmathon! Now With Extra Protein!

Do you see the brass bowl at the right side of the screen?  The one that has “donate” etched upon it?

If you click on the bowl, you can donate, and now is a good time.

Our Zen Dictator, buhdydharma, would normally be writing this essay, but he is having a flare-up of his back injury so you’re stuck with me.

Here’s buhdydharma’s semi-autobiographical essay from the last Dharmathon, for those of you who are interested.

Here is a pictorial biography of buhdydharma:

Photobucket

What a handsome man!

There Must Be Some Kinda Way Outta Here

Said the joker to the thief

There’s too much confusion

I can’t get no relief

Businessmen, they drink my wine

Plowmen dig my earth

None will level on the line, nobody offered his word, hey…

Two Photos From Afghanistan

100420-A-3996M-052

US Army photo by Staff Sgt. Horace Murray

Now Dah is a very small village north-west of Bagram AFB in Afghanistan, and it’s virtually invisible on the internet except for photographs by American soldiers, distributing humanitarian assistance or “engaging key leaders,” as above, April 20, 2010.

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