October 28, 2011 archive

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Please join us tomorrow night at 8 PM EDT for the 2011 World Series- Cardinals at Rangers Game 7 with pithy commentary by ek hornbeck and un bon mot par moi, maybe even in English.

The Stars Hollow Gazette

This Week In The Dream Antllles

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These days your Bloguero isn’t much of a baseball fan.  His current team of choice, the Mets, flamed out early in the season.  They were so bad that your Bloguero pronounced their season over on April 21, 2011.  After that, your Bloguero treated the Mets with the revulsion he usually reserves for serious hangovers and the less benign forms of dentistry.  Something to be given a very wide berth. Something to be avoided at all cost. But tonight is the climactic Seventh Game of the World Series.  And last night’s Sixth Game, so the Trad Media inform, was a wonderful game.  So maybe tonight’s game might be worth watching.  Right.

It’s never that simple.  There’s always the past to consider.  And matters of the heart.  When your Bloguero was small boy, he was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan.  He loved the Dodgers.  He loved “dem Bums.”  He particularly loved Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges and Duke Snyder.  And others. All the other baseball cards were meaningless; only the Dodgers counted.  The Giants and Yankees were obviously teams of spoiled patricians; the Dodgers were the people’s choice.  Hell, the Giants and Yankees were probably Republicans.  Or worse.  They certainly weren’t the lovable underdogs. How could any self respecting kid like teams that always won? Or pretended they did?

Yes, the Dodgers lost almost all of the important, big games back then.  To the Yankees.  To the Giants. It was a tradition. But that didn’t matter.  The Dodgers were great players, and they were a great team.  And there was always next year.  Your Bloguero loved that they might lose, but that they tried hard not to.  And he knew they were trying hard.  What else was there, other than to show up and try hard?  Your Bloguero liked the innocence and simplicity of that.

One morning your Bloguero awoke and learned that his beloved Dodgers had decided to abandon him.  They announced they were pulling up roots in Brooklyn and heading to Los Angeles for the next season.  Just like that.  Poof.  Here at Ebbets Field today, gone to LA tomorrow.  Loved today, leaving behind your Bloguero, heart broken and abandoned tomorrow.   And why?  There was no reason your Bloguero’s 10-year old brain could understand.   Ten year olds in love with a team don’t care about finances.  Or revenues.  Or anything else. They care about the game.  They care about balls and strikes.  Your Bloguero was stunned.  And hurt.  And perplexed.  Asked your Broguero to any who would listen, to any who might be able to explain it to him, “You mean that the team I love is leaving me and going to the West Coast, to California for reasons I don’t understand?”  Your Bloguero could not forgive that Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher ever, your Bloguero’s favorite pitcher, would not be throwing in Brooklyn but in LA.  And that the home games would begin because of time zones at 10 pm in New York, past his bed time.  He’d never see his first love again.  There was no justice in that.  At all.

So it’s the Seventh Game of the World Series tonight.  And it might be interesting baseball to watch.  But it’s also irritating the small, old scar your Bloguero has on his heart, the one that marks where the Dodgers were yanked away from him half a century ago.  And your Bloguero wonders whether like him, all of the men of a certain age who used to be Brooklyn Dodger fans when they were kids, have the same small scar that marks the very first betrayal of their most avid love.  And whether the World Series makes it ache.

This Week In The Dream Antilles is usually a weekly digest. Sometimes, like now, it isn’t actually a digest of essays posted in the past week at The Dream Antilles.  For that you have to visit The Dream Antilles.

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cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Wild Wild Left Radio #128 Jack-booted Thugs and Teflon Messiahs



Join Diane Gee on WWL Radio Friday, October 28th at 6pm EDT!



Listen live by clicking the link icon below:

Listen to The Wild Wild Left on internet talk radio

PhotobucketIts been a week of crime and terrorist activity.

All of which have been by our State against us, from the Teflon Messiah to the Pigs on the street.

Strap on your gas-masks folks; there is a huge history of violence against and they are adding chapters as we speak.

Hopefully, I am going to have some guests from the Oakland fiasco to speak out first hand about it. Confirmation awaits 🙂

The call in number is 646-929-1264 to join the conversation!

Tip: In order to comment in the show’s companion chat, you must create a BTR account, its free and only takes seconds. I read chat while on air, so make yourself heard.

Miss the show? The podcasts are available at the link above, or at the Wild Wild Left

Join Wild Wild Left Radio every Friday at 6pm EST, via Blog Talk Radio, with Hostess and Producer Diane Gee to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective….  



WWL Radio: Bringing you controversial, cutting edge, revolutionary, “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective since January of 2009!


Fawke ’em – Occupy Wall Street Friday 10.28.11

For more Info, other editions in this series can be found HERE

and up-to-date OWS Basic Info is HERE



Find Your Occupation

***Reuters: Peter Henderson: Veteran injured in Oakland “Occupy” protest awake(Thu Oct 27, 2011 9:59pm EDT)***

***Guardian: Andrew Gumbel in Oakland, Adam Gabbatt and Ewen MacAskill: Occupy Oakland protester Scott Olsen to undergo brain surgery (10.27.11)

Olsen’s condition upgraded from serious to fair after an incident that has prompted calls for Oakland mayor’s resignation

***Guardian: Angela Woodall: Occupy policing blunder opens rifts in Oakland city hall (10.27.11)

Fallout from Tuesday’s heavyhanded police operation against Occupy Oakland may cost both mayor and police chief their jobs

Occupy Wall St. Livestream: Day 42

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

OccupyWallStreet

The resistance continues at Liberty Square, with free pizza 😉

“I don’t know how to fix this but I know it’s wrong.” ~ Unknown Author

Occupy Wall Street NYC now has a web site for its General Assembly  with up dates and information. Very informative and user friendly. It has information about events, a bulletin board, groups and minutes of the GA meetings.

NYC General Assembly #OccupyWallStreet

Late yesterday word began trickling out the the Iraq Marine vet, Scott Olsen who sustained a skull fracture after being stuck with a non-lethal object, possibly a tear gas canister, was off the ventilator and awake. The fracture caused a brain contusion that has affected the speech center of his brain. Doctors are optimistic that it is not permanent and will resolve itself. No surgery was necessary. Scott’s parents are with him. He knows where he is and recognizes his parents which are all excellent signs. According to the hospital, shortly after Scott arrived, he began to have seizures and was placed in an induced coma.

The other good news is that Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has done a complete reversal, allowing the Occupy Wall Street protesters to return to the park and pitch tents. Candle light vigils were held around the country in support of Scott.

#OccupyCleveland reaches court assisted resolution in federal court against city; will begin 24/7 occupation immediately.

There were arrests in NYC as over a thousand protesters participated in a march with bag piped and drums for Scott. At one point the protesters pushed back the police taking the orange mesh barrier that is used to pen them in and turned it on police.

This weekend OCW will be taking over state capitols around the country.

Occupy Wall Street invaded the halls of Congress when a protester stopped the Super Committee’s hearing.

Cold weather is here and OWS is preparing with stock piles of warm clothing, cod weather sleeping bags, tarps and tents. OccupyTogether has put together a wiki cold weather manual that has good information.

On This Day In History October 28

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

October 28 is the 301st day of the year (302nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 64 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1893, Symphony No. 6 in B Minor, Pathetique, the last symphony written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is premiered in St. Petersburg. Nine day s later, Tchaikovsky died suddenly at age 53 possibly from cholera but others have theorized that he might have committed suicide. Tchaikovsky was homosexual and often suffered from bouts of depression and doubts about his creative talents throughout his life. At one point while composing the 6th, he tore up the manuscript and discarded it.

Tchaikovsky dedicated the Pathetique to Vladimir “Bob” Davydov, his nephew While the relationship was apparently never consummated, Davydov was reportedly one of the great loves of Tchaikovsky’s life.

The theme in this first movement is most familiar since it has been frequently used in movies and songs.

The second theme of the first movement formed the basis of a popular song in the 1940s, “(This is) The Story of a Starry Night” (by Mann Curtis, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston) which was popularized by Glenn Miller. This same theme is the music behind “Where,” a 1959 hit for Tony Williams and the Platters as well as “In Time,” by Steve Lawrence in 1961. All three of these songs have completely different lyrics.

British progressive rock band The Nice covered Symphony No. 6 on their album Five Bridges.

Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony has proved a popular choice with filmmakers, with extracts featuring in (amongst others) Now, Voyager, the 1997 version of Anna Karenina, Minority Report, Sweet Bird of Youth,Soylent Green and The Aviator.

Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony has also been featured during the 2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony, being danced by Russia’s national ballet team.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

–Joseph Campbell



Rose Road

Cartnoon

A Witch’s Tangled Hare

Late Night Karaoke

The Definition of Insanity

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Sometimes (like Krugman) you have to re-arrange the order.

Over before it began

by digby

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

So here’s what’s happened so far. The President put forth a jobs bill, which didn’t make it through the congress, as expected. This jobs bill was highly touted as containing “ideas” that Republicans had proposed in the past and therefore, it should have “something for everyone.” Needless to say, the GOP wasn’t interested in any one from column A and one from column B negotiating. After the defeat of the big jobs package, the Democrats announced they were going to propose popular pieces of the bill and force the Republicans to prove once and for all that they don’t care about the plight of the average American as they join together in Scrooglike conformity.

Unfortunately, the Republicans decided not to play (surprise!) and are instead proposing their own combinations of the most toxic conservative elements of the President’s bill and the President is apparently signing on, thus signing into law a terrible GOP policy while simultaneously giving them a “bipartisan” win.



What, at this point, is the rationale of the Democratic Party? We’ll kill terrorists twice as hard and only slash the safety net half as much? We’ll pass the Republican agenda so they don’t have to?



I’m not sure what the President hopes to gain by proposing and then signing deeply unpopular GOP legislation, but that appears to be the plan.

Do you get it now digby?

(References supplied)

Update:

House Passes the "Even Obama Supported" Non-Jobs Jobs Act

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Thursday October 27, 2011 2:18 pm

The House bill eliminating the 3% withholding rule, making it easier for government contractors to cheat on their taxes, a small part of the American Jobs Act and supported by the President, passed today, on a near-unanimous vote of 405-16. The bill was paid for through a separate measure, which changes the calculation of modified adjusted gross income by including Social Security benefits in the calculation, for the purposes of determining eligibility for programs like Medicaid and SCHIP. This fix of a “glitch” that would allow some middle-income early retirees to get nearly free Medicaid coverage (we can’t have that!), passed by a smaller amount, on a vote of 262 to 157. 27 Democrats joined 235 Republicans in supporting the bill.



How facilitating tax cheating counts as a jobs measure is beyond me, but whatever the case, the bill and its offset go to the Senate. A 3% withholding bill got 57 votes in the Senate last week, with a different offset that just reduces expenditures across the board. That was before the Administration came out in favor of the bills, however. So surely, something incorporating 3% withholding is likely to pass Congress.

The CBO estimates that federal revenues would be reduced $11 billion over 10 years by this measure. That’s a little more than 2% of the cost of the American Jobs Act. And it has almost nothing to do with jobs. But it’s destined to become law.