January 2015 archive
Jan 06 2015
Late Night Karaoke
Jan 05 2015
TBC: Morning Musing 1.5.15
I have 3 things for you today.
First, a city in Canada is about to end chronic homelessness:
Medicine Hat on track to become first Canadian city to end chronic homelessness
Clugston, who served two terms as an alderman before becoming mayor in 2013, said he was initially skeptical of the plan but began to champion the initiative when he realized it made financial sense because money is saved when citizens are housed.
It’s estimated the cost of reacting to homelessness through law enforcement, courts and prisons, emergency health care, shelters and hospital visits costs Canadians more than $7 billion per year.
“I’m a bit of a fiscal conservative and the old school you pay your way, if you want a place to live you can get a job,” Clugston said.
“I used to think you look after yourself first and you take responsibility for your problems and now I’ve come to realize that sometimes the best way is to help these people help themselves.”
Jump!
Jan 05 2015
On This Day In History January 5
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.
January 5 is the fifth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 360 days remaining until the end of the year (361 in leap years).
On this day in 1933, construction starts on what will become one of America’s most famous landmarks: the Golden Gate Bridge. When completed in 1937, the Golden Gate has a 4,200-foot-long suspension span, making it the world’s longest suspension bridge. Since opening to the public in May 1937, almost 2 billion vehicles have crossed the bridge, in both the north- and southbound directions.
The bridge was named not for its distinctive orange color (which provides extra visibility to passing ships in San Francisco’s famous fog), but for the Golden Gate Strait, where the San Francisco Bay opens into the Pacific Ocean. The bridge spans the strait and connects the northern part of the city of San Francisco to Marin County, California.
Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. Ferry service began as early as 1820, with regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for purposes of transporting water to San Francisco. The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific’s automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost US$1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.
Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County. San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats. Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city’s growth rate was below the national average. Many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait. It had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 500 ft (150 m) in depth at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds. Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation.
Jan 04 2015
Anti-Capitalist Meetup: The Pope’s Possible Future Role in Cuba by Galtisalie
There can be no immaculate conception of socialism …
Aneurin Bevin, 1945;
or of our posts about socialism.
I had hoped this post would be the fabulous coming out ceremony for a pamphlet I have been working on in my spare time for over a year on the need for a global social compact. I view Pope Francis as being a potential key Gramscian player in this prospect. I was going to highlight how Cuba may present a unique opportunity for the global social compact paradigm. But, as they sometimes do, real world events in my little world have taken precedence over the Holidays, and the pamphlet is not complete. Nonetheless, I feel I can still take an abbreviated stab at the post I mentioned week before last in a comment on MrJayTee’s excellent Cuba post:
a look at the Cuban constitution, Cuba’s survival of the fittest/meanest capitalist island neighbor immediately to its east, and the potential helpful role of Pope Francis
(My patient, kind but busy tovarishch MrJayTee prefers I keep my posts short anyway, so perhaps this is divine providence.)
Before I get into the meat of this post, I need to get some slights, and caveats, out of the way. Let me begin by “apologizing” to socialists who happen to be Catholic for the Immaculate Conception invocation, but it seemed to fit my situation, and, 55 years into both experiments, it seems to fit Cuba’s as well. That cultural reference got Aneurin Bevin, the founder of Britain’s National Health Service, in trouble with this important left subgroup seventy years ago. But what the hell, Bevin, and after him the Castro brothers, did more to help the working class have earth as it is in heaven than any pope or archbishop of Canterbury in my estimation. So, please accept my laurel and hardy handshake and nonpology.
As for caveats, for stinging critique by me of the Catholic Church’s anti-women, anti-GLBT, and in general anti-human policies, and its tendency to produce smarmy moralizing with little or no praxis to produce change, please see here and here, respectively, including ditty about:
the unelected Constantinian conservative RC majority of the SCOTUS, the Republican Party’s politburo, the vanguard in robes of U.S. political corruption and global neoliberalism, his humble flock, who put capital unction into the grotesque shunning of humanity that is institutionalized social repression
In a nutshell, while I have taken the gloves off with Pope Francis’s street cred, I believe in working with him too.
I do need to add one last preliminary sting:
No, Pope Francis, I do not buy that you did all you could to protect your own priests from right wing killers/torturers in Argentina’s Dirty War. I will not battle that history out in this post, but suffice it to say that you could have placed your prestige, and your body, on the line to protect them, but failed to do so.
To see how a real moral leader leads by example, please read Gramsci’s 1925 speech directly to the face of Mussolini and the Italian parliament.
Moving right along …
Jan 04 2015
Throwball Playoffs 2015: Wild Card Evening NFC (Lions @ ‘Boys)
Now normally I’d have no trouble at all rooting against the ‘Boys since their fans are the biggest assholes in professional sports- ignorant, loud, and irrational.
On the other hand I haven’t much forgotten the Lions’ Ndamukong Suh stepping on Aaron Rogers.
We won’t get a rematch of that if the Lions advance. As the lower seed they’ll face the Seahawks and the Packers will get the Panthers. If the ‘Boys advance they’ll face the Pack at Lambeau where General Winter will crush them as they deserve to be crushed.
Game time 4:30 on Faux. Consider this an open thread too.
Jan 04 2015
Throwball Playoffs 2015: Wild Card Afternoon AFC (Bengals @ Bolts)
I think we’re all pretty clear by now that I don’t like franchise shopping and extorting communities for stadiums that teams ought to be buying with their own money because, except on rare occasions, they sit like great white elephants on acres of parking that could and should be parks except for 8 days a year when they suck all the money out of the municipalities they’re supposed to be such an engine of prosperity for and deposit it all in the off the books coffers of the team owner’s concession stands.
And of course if I ever needed a team to illustrate that story it would be the Bolts.
Other than that there are only 2 teams I actually like, one because of geography who are not in the playoffs and likely never will be again as long as Tom Coughlin is coach, and the other is the Packers who get right what every other professional franchise in any sport get wrong.
So it’s not that I don’t like the Bengals, it’s that I don’t much care about them one way or another unless they’re playing a team I really hate.
Like the Bolts.
The Bengals could win. The Bolts defense is nothing special, but the Bengals Quarterback is a choke king who has 1 Wild Card win for 4 appearances in the last 4 years. In today’s game he has a $1 Million bonus riding on the outcome. It will be interesting to see if that motivates him.
The game starts on CBS @ 1. As yesterday there is no guarantee I’ll be around to live blog, so it’s open thread.
Jan 04 2015
On This Day In History January 4
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.
January 4 is the fourth day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 361 days remaining until the end of the year (362 in leap years).
On this day in 1987, Spanish guitar great Andres Segovia arrives in the United States for his final American tour. He died four months later in Madrid at the age of 94.
Segovia was hailed for bringing the Spanish guitar from relative obscurity to classical status. Born in Spain’s southern region of Andalusia–the original home of the guitar–Segovia studied the piano and cello as a child but soon became captivated with the guitar. Knowing of no advanced teachers of an instrument that was generally banished to the cafes, he taught himself and in 1909 gave his first public performance at the age of 15. To successfully render classical material, Segovia invented countless new techniques for the guitar, and by his first appearance in Paris in 1924, he was a virtuoso. His American debut came four years later in New York City.
Jan 04 2015
Six In The Morning
Sony cyber-attack: North Korea calls US sanctions hostile
4 January 2015 Last updated at 07:52
BBC
North Korea has described new sanctions imposed in response to a major cyber-attack against Sony Pictures as part of a hostile and inflammatory US policy.The US placed sanctions on three North Korean organisations and 10 individuals after the FBI blamed Pyongyang for the cyber-attack.
North Korea praised the attack on Sony but denied any involvement in it.
It came as Sony was about to release The Interview, a comedy about a plot to assassinate North Korea’s leader.
Sony initially cancelled plans to show the film, before deciding to release it online and at a limited number of cinemas.
Jan 04 2015
The Breakfast Club (Waist Deep in the Big Muddy)
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Waist Deep in the Big Muddy (Featuring Tom Morello, Taj Mahal)
Today in History
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffers a massive stroke; Louis Braille, inventor of the reading system for the blind, is born; Former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura is sworn in as the governor of Minnesota.
Breakfast News & Blogs Below