April 2, 2011 archive

Our regular featured content-

• Six In The Morning by mishima
• On This Day In History by TheMomCat
• Punting the Pundits by TheMomCat
• Evening Edition by TheMomCat while ek hornbeck warms up for tonight’s “Final Four” Live Blog of the Men’s NCAA Championship Tournament which starts at 6 PM EDT

Our weekly features-

• Health and Fitness by TheMomCat
• Random Japan by mishima

And these articles-

• It is Immoral Not to Challenge Obama and the Democrats in 2012 by Michael Kwiatkowski
• My Little Town 20110331: Etta and Roy Chandler by Translator, aka Dr. David W. Smith

The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is an Open Thread

Paul Craig Roberts on Lybia, etc.: http://counterpunch.com/robert…

Washington pursues world hegemony under the guises of selective “humanitarian intervention” and “bringing freedom and democracy to oppressed peoples.” On an opportunistic basis, Washington targets countries for intervention that are not its “international partners.”  Caught off guard, perhaps, by popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, there are some indications that Washington responded opportunistically and encouraged the uprising in Libya. Khalifa Hifter, a suspected Libyan CIA asset for the last 20 years, has gone back to Libya to head the rebel army.

Nothing really surprising here.  What’s more, there were stories circulating before the Lybian uprising that the US was formenting an uprising against Lybia as an attempt to do the imperialist thing.  Needless to say, pretty much any time the US goes on a foreign endeavor you can guess that it’s for the the increase of US/Corporate/Military power (and/or NWO power if you see the US’s action through that lens).

A week of perplexity.  A week of indolence.  A (last?) week of winter.  A week of introspection.  A week of distraction.  You name it.  In other words, your bloguero has his moods (read: excuses) for a week of low productivity.

Sometimes it’s hard for your boguero to keep up.  Like everyone else riding this blue planet round the nearest star, your bloguero has concerns about survival.  His survival, the planet’s survival.  He doesn’t write a lot when he’s got worries about the state of the planet and its inhabitants.  And to confess, he is becoming slowly convinced that he’s silently and secretly being irradiated and mutated, as all of you are also, into a glowing, green,  cridaria.  One that doesn’t require any sea water.  One that is a giant, amoeba like, creeping, green ectoplasm.  In this progression, the end, and who knows how far away that might be, is looking like human silly putty.  Your bloguero has trouble typing when he’s worried that his fingers are being radiated into spongy tendrils.

On the other hand, if we’re all really hurtling like crash test dummies into a future as glowing silly putty, this week’s blog output is the least of your bloguero’s concerns.  Or yours.

On Thursday, in an effort to stave off life as Sponge Bob, your bloguero invited everyone to a Ceremony For Japan/Ceremonia Para Japon.  If as Dr. Emoto argues, water is responsive to prayer, your bloguero was in no mood to ignore the possibility of an energetic transformation of the ocean.  Alas, the news on Saturday suggests that this ceremony hasn’t prevented radiation from seeping into the Pacific Ocean.  The next thing your bloguero anticipates is the appearance of a particularly angry Rodan.

And then there’s your bloguero’s slowly turning The Dream Antilles back to its original conception as a Lit Blog in The Market Of Dreams and the the Haiku that inspired it, which was in turn inspired by Eduardo Galeano.  Your bloguero enjoyed these two pieces and considered them among his best.  They weren’t cross-posted anywhere because, well, there really isn’t another place they fit.  Your bloguero hopes you enjoy them.

Your bloguero notes that this Digest is a weekly feature of the Port Writers Alliance and is now posted early Saturday morning.   Your bloguero will see you next week, planetary and his psycho-emotional condition permitting.

Kadafi government rebuffs Libya rebel cease-fire offer

After rebels refused for weeks to negotiate with Moammar Kadafi’s regime, a rebel leader offers a cease-fire if Kadafi agrees to withdraw his forces from besieged cities and permit peaceful protests.

By Borzou Daragahi and David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya- Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi’s regime brusquely swatted down a truce offered by rebels Friday and continued to pummel opposition positions in both the eastern and western sections of the country.

After rebels had refused for weeks to negotiate with Kadafi’s government, the leader of the opposition’s national council, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, offered a cease-fire if Kadafi agreed to withdraw his forces from besieged Libyan cities and permitted peaceful protests.

But Musa Ibrahim, a spokesman for the regime, dismissed the offer as a trick.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

An April Fools Day Joke-

A Word About Digital Subscriptions to The Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington

Posted: 04/ 1/11 07:55 AM ET

Today marks a significant transition for The Huffington Post Media Group, as we introduce digital subscriptions for employees of The New York Times. It’s an important step that we hope you will see as an investment in The Huffington Post. If you are not an employee of The New York Times, you will continue to have full and free access to our news, information, opinion, and the rest of our rich offerings. If you are an employee of The Times, you may view one free article a month or choose one of our NYT Employee Digital Subscription Plans®. In our most popular plan, Times employees can view the first 6 letters of each word at no charge (including slideshows of adorable kittens). After 6 letters, we will ask you to become a digital subscriber.

Not An April Fools Day Joke-

Jim Messina Is a Perfect Choice to Be Obama’s Campaign Manager

Robert Creamer

Posted: 04/ 1/11 09:06 AM ET

I’m not sure we could have gotten a Public Option no matter what the president did or did not do. The Senate filibuster, the health insurance lobby, and Senator Lieberman were our chief obstacles. The administration and Senate leadership had negotiated a deal with progressive Senators to include a Medicare buy-in for people from 55 to 65 years of age — which would have been a huge advance. But then the insurance industry told Lieberman — who had favored the plan — to drop it. And that was that.

I think Messina and others, like David Axelrod, would agree that there were mistakes made in the campaign. One of those was allowing the battle to go on for so long — indulging Senator Baucus’ attempt to get bipartisan compromise over so many months that it amplified our opponent’s ability to dominate the air waves. By the way, I don’t know that Messina could have personally done a lot more to get Baucus off of the bipartisan program more quickly — notwithstanding their close relationship — though I suspect he tried.

The White House was being told that the bill had to go through the committee process in order to keep sixty votes. Getting Baucus to move that process more quickly would have required a major confrontation, that at the time the White House apparently did not think would be productive. In retrospect Messina may view it differently, I don’t know.

Another problem was not shifting soon enough to framing the battle as a fight with the insurance industry — a message frame that ultimately allowed us to win. But the decision for the administration not to use the insurance frame early was not made to “coddle” the industry. It was made to keep their money off the airwaves as long as possible. I think there is now general acknowledgment that the campaign would have been better off moving to the insurance frame earlier.

Also Not A Joke-

Veal Appeal: Whitewashing of Health Care Reform Battle Continues

By: Jon Walker

Friday April 1, 2011 10:11 am

Over at the Huffington Post, in an attempt to defend Jim Messina, Robert Creamer reaches for the absolute biggest brush he can find to totally whitewash the actual history of the health care reform battle.

…

The problem for the public option wasn’t that the president didn’t fight hard enough for it. It’s failure to make it in the laws was the result of President Obama actively fighting hard against it, while lying about this support. It was confirmed by the New York Times that President Obama sold out the public option in a deal with the hospitals in exchange for their support of the law. His many behind-the-scenes efforts to undercut it shows he was committed to the secret deal.

In the end, it was fully proven without a doubt that the filibuster wasn’t ever a real obstacle to the public option. The Affordable Care Act was finished with a reconciliation bill that can’t be filibustered and could have included a deficit-reducing public option. The fact that it didn’t speaks volumes.

AFTERSHOCKS

A motorist in quake-hit Iwate died of carbon monoxide poisoning while waiting for gasoline in a line that stretched longer than a kilometer. The man had been trying to keep his car warm with a kerosene heater.

Billionaire US investor Warren Buffett apparently believes that the earthquake “is the kind of extraordinary event that creates a buying opportunity for shares in Japanese companies.”

It was reported that Kansai Electric Power Co. will invest up to ¥100 billion in an effort “to make its nuclear plants more resistant to earthquakes and tsunami.” Maybe they could ask Warren Buffett for some help.

The speaker of the Osaka Prefectural Assembly was forced to apologize after calling earthquake-inflicted damage at a local government office “a divine fortune.” The pol had opposed a plan to move all municipal offices to the damaged building.

It was reported that some teachers and school officials in Tohoku are holding graduation ceremonies at evacuation centers. Others are visiting their students’ homes to hand-deliver diplomas.

The central government is mulling whether to establish a full-fledged federal agency that would specifically deal with post-quake reconstruction.

This week’s selection was released in 1977 and peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts on April 22, 1978, which would be this group’s only Top Ten single.  The song reached Gold Record status shortly afterward.  

Written by Kerry Livgren, it was one of the band’s first acoustic tracks; its slow melody and melancholy lyrics differ from their other hits, which will be included in this writer’s opening comment. The guitar part is played by two guitarists on six-string guitars, one in standard tuning and the other in Nashville tuning, in unison to create a chimy sound similar to a twelve-string guitar.  

The song’s instrumental bridge contains a distinctive and highly memorable melodic line and harmony for violin and viola played by Robby Steinhardt. The song also defined the band’s signature sound, a mix of American-style boogie-rock and complex, symphonic arrangements with changing time signatures.