BartBlog

March 10, 2011

Wisconsinites flood Capitol after part of Walker’s bill is passed

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 7:19 am

Author’s note:
I was there last night and the scene was incredible. Within an hour after the bill was passed, there were hundreds gathering. In another hour, thousands. Eventually the Capitol police relented and let people in the building…but only after a few climbed through windows and opened other doors. There were no arrests that have been announced…yet. For hours people chanted, “This is what democracy looks like!” And cars circling the Capitol honked their horns in cadence with the chant. I am beginning to believe this is WAY bigger than Wisconsin.

Keep in mind that everything Hitler did followed the letter of the law, but that did not make it right. The WI Senate did NOT have a quorum and that means that the people of Wisconsin have grounds to refuse to accept this vote or the state government that uses such dirty tricks to defy the expressed will of the people.

Excerpt:
The bill passed at around 6 p.m. on March 9, 2011 in Madison, Wisconsin. In a modern version of the town hall criers that announced the “British are coming” back in the 1700’s, the blogs, emails and social networking sites of Wisconsin citizens who have subscribed to information regarding the ongoing labor protests lit up: “Head to the Capitol, NOW!”

By 7 p.m. there were hundreds of people around the Capitol building chanting, “This is our house, let us in!” By 8 p.m. several hundred were inside the building and thousands were outside. The signs that had been taken down earlier in the week reappeared on the walls. By 9 p.m. the building was packed, with many outside still waiting to get in. (See slideshow).

The measure approved 18-1 Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker. The bill will now go to the state assembly for a vote at 11 a.m. Thursday.

Wisconsin Republicans separated the part of the bill that strips public workers of nearly all collective bargaining (CB) rights and passed it in a sort of “end around” the 14 democrats that have been holding up the vote on the “budget repair bill.”

Because the union provision was part of a budget bill involving expenditures, Republicans in the Senate needed at least 20 senators present for a quorum to vote on the bill. By declaring that the part of the bill that addresses CB and worker contributions does not involve expenditures, it was able to be voted on and passed in a separate bill without the presence of the 14 Democrats that are absent.

This procedure raises ideological questions and legal issues. Firstly, if stripping public workers of most of their collective bargaining rights is not a fiscal issue, then why was it part of a “budget repair bill” in the first place? If making most CB illegal is not part of the fiscal budget, then it may be what public workers have said about it from day one – a direct attack on their unions.

State Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald may have provided insight into one ulterior motive behind this bill in an interview with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly. According to Think Progress, Fitzgerald explained that “this battle” is about eliminating unions so that “the money is not there” for the labor movement. Specifically, he said that the destruction of unions will make it “much more difficult” for President Obama to win reelection in Wisconsin (see video):

If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.

The legal issues that the passing of this bill raises may be even more complex and are almost sure to end up being decided in court.

According to the Wisconsin State Journal, attorney Robert Dreps, an expert in media and political law, said exceptions can be made if notice is “impossible or impractical. It raises a lot of serious questions,” he said. “I don’t think they can satisfy the standard for giving such short notice for that committee meeting.”

That is the near-term legal challenge – how the bill got passed. It was done in a way that may have violated open meetings laws, by not allowing 24 hours notice for a public meeting of the conference committee.

Enough speculation and back to reality. The people of Wisconsin are fired up about this issue, as was clearly seen at the Capitol last night and will be in days to come. It has become much larger than a state budget issue, because it epitomizes the struggle that the working class in America is facing after 30 years of assaults by the wealthy elite and the politicians they have bought. The people of Wisconsin are saying, “enough!”

Michael Moore, in his speech last weekend at the Capitol (see video in linked article) said, “Madison is only the beginning…The rich have overplayed their hand…There was no revolt, until now here in Wisconsin.”

Right now the powers that be may be winning the battle in Wisconsin, but the war is far from over.

Read more, get links, video and a slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Wisconsinites flood Capitol after part of Walker’s bill is passed

The Koch-Heads of the Lapdog GOP

cartoon-gop-koch-heads

March 9, 2011

Total access: Using the other 90% of our brains

Filed under: Guest Comment,Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Jane Stillwater @ 5:47 pm

For years, scientists such as Albert Einstein and William James have been telling us that we human beings only use 10% of our brain capacity.  Wouldn’t it be marvelous if we could use the other 90%?  Can you imagine all the great ideas that we might be able to come up with?

Great literature — we’d all become Shakespeares!

Great art — I wanna be Michelangelo!

Great science — Einsteins on every corner, they’d run out of Nobel Prizes!

Great music — your child would truly be baby Mozart.

Great humanitarians — would you rather be Buddha or Jesus?

Or perhaps the opposite might happen and we’d end up with more Hitlers, Stalins, Atilla the Huns and Dick Cheneys. Oh crap.

But how do you go about accessing the other 90% of your brain? Meditation? Dreaming? Hitting the books? LSD? Peyote?

At one point in time way back in the 1960s, I ate some mescaline down at Big Sur — and it was immediately revealed to me that NATURE is the most important thing in the world. According to Mescalito, living within the context of trees and grass and mountain vistas and fresh air offers the most meaning to the human brain that there is. As the day wore on, however, both Mescalito and I began to think that perhaps pancakes were the most important thing.

But taking mescaline didn’t make me a genius either. Don’t try it at home.

“Go to college! That will make you smarter!” my mother always told me — back during a time when women were just supposed to stay home and play-act at being June Cleaver. So I went off to college. Got a masters degree too. But did that make me a genius? I wish. And it didn’t make any of those Yale and Harvard graduates who run the Federal Reserve into geniuses either. It just made them better crooks and liars and helped them to figure out new and better ways to keep their butts out of jail.

In these crucial times, it is so very important for the human race to use more of its brain capacity and to evolve. We have been basically thinking like cavemen for all too long. For instance, take the situation in Libya. When confronted with a desire on the part of his people to obtain more democratic institutions, Muammar Gaddafi responded exactly like the most primitive caveman might have. He started killing people, his people.

And what has been America’s answer to problems in Afghanistan, Tripoli. Washington, Wall Street and Wisconsin? Pissing contests that involve violence and threats. That’s not evolution or wisdom. That’s Neanderthal.

But perhaps the next generation will do better than our generation has done. To paraphrase one of my favorite bumper stickers which now reads, “Imagine a world where EVERY child is wanted, nurtured, protected and loved: World Peace in one generation!” — maybe if we want and nurture and protect and love the next generation instead of just stealing its future, perhaps we can also get more geniuses as well as just more whirled peas.

Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain scientist who was given a rather strange research opportunity: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions — motion, speech, self-awareness — all shut down one by one. Then she worked really hard to get all of her brain functions back. Maybe we can learn something from what happened to her and build on her experiences as well. http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

I’ve also heard that art, music and other forms of creativity can also expand our brains — and make us better at math too. According to an article in the Harvard Educational Review by Eric Jensen, “Research from the studies discussed in [Arts With the Brain in Mind] and the experience of countless classroom educators support the view that visual arts have strong positive cognitive, emotional, social, collaborative, and neurological effects.”

And, given all this well-researched information, what are the powers-that-be in America doing with it right now? They’re making major cuts to funding for our art museums, school music programs and literature grants in order to have more Moolah to invest in their bloody, useless, uncivilized and paleolithic wars. Good thinking? Hardly.

Eating healthy stuff is supposed to be good for your brain too. Nothing processed. No sugar. No artificial sweeteners. Breast-feed your kids. That kind of stuff. http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2011/02/birthday-cake-blues-back-before-there.html

And while looking for ways to get a spacecraft to the moon, one NASA scientist used to deliberately work himself to exhaustion, fall asleep, dream about the answers to his problems, wake up suddenly, and have his wife hurriedly write down what he had learned from his dream before the solutions were forgotten.

But I don’t have a wife — so no deep thinking or going to the moon for me. I’m screwed.

PS: Speaking of music, I just starred — well, sort of — in a new punk-rock music video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF2be3NBB2I

img_3163

Non as blind as those . . .

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:42 pm

A forty year old movie that told the story of a group of criminals tried to cheat the operators of an illegal bookie operation out of some money may be a very appropriate piece of evidence for pundits who wish to evaluate the next American Presidential Election in the fall of 2112.

Movies about elaborate frauds are a popular theme for Hollywood and it was only after seeing the Robert Redford and Paul Newman movie that this columnist was advised to keep in mind, while seeing a film about con artists, that it will be the perpetrators who will get fooled. How many times have you seen a character get “killed” only to later learn that he was wearing a bullet-proof vest and wasn’t really killed?

What brought all this movie reviewing information to mind was that earlier this week; we saw two trend spotting stories about the competition for the Republican nomination for the Presidential Election in 2012. One was printed in the Los Angeles Times and the other was found online. (a href =http://articles.latimes.com/2011/mar/07/nation/la-na-gop-candidates-20110307>Paul West story on page AA) The story, by Paul Drake, on the Internets asserted that there was no clear front running Republican. The Times story tried to be a laundry list of potential winners.

Neither story mentioned JEB Bush and we thought that was very odd. Right after the 2008 Election it was reported that JEB was on a listening tour of the USA. JEB does not have an official website just yet but he is a member of a family that has been very prominent in American Politics. Why wasn’t JEB mentioned? There could be two possible explanations to the glaring omission: either the writers were dumb or they were part of an orchestrated effort to keep JEB’s name out of the limelight, for the time being.

Journalists don’t get assigned to be part of the political assessment team on a large daily newspaper by being dummies, so that leaves the other possibility as the most likely explanation.

Supposing that media could somehow be manipulated for an ulterior motive is absurd in a nation that has a free press as the life’s blood of a Democratic system, but we ask the reader’s permission to permit us that absurd assumption just for the sake of this column.

So what ulterior motive could there possibly be for “keeping JEB in the wings” as a stage director might put it?

If (subjunctive mood for the sake of an entertaining bit of columnistic reading matter) there was some imaginary Karl Rove type Svengali trying to orchestrate the Election Procedure, how would it play out with JEB being a stealth candidate at the one year away from the New Hampshire primary part of the count-down?

This is a hypothetical suggestion for such an imaginary scenario.

The master manipulator engineers a decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses and arranges for a subservient free press to greet such an “upset” with both amazement and extreme (but reluctant?) admiration. The most unexpected political comeback of all times!

This columnist can not imagine how such a mythical king-maker would arrange for the entire news media industry to “play along,” but in this fictionalized account (a stealth Hollywood “pitch” effort?) let’s just say that it happens.

Would America be gullible enough to read such Republican propaganda tripe and take it seriously?

Well, if Sarah Palin can be considered a serious contender for the Republican Presidential nomination, we will have to reluctantly concede the remote possibility that JEB could score a decisive win in Iowa and then further be ready to unquestioningly receive a torrent of “unexplained ground swell of approval” trend spotting stories in the ever cynical American free press.

If there is a massive display of “ground swell” spin in play after Iowa, would some subsequent early primary election wins be closely questioned? Not bloody well likely, mate.

If JEB gains traction and manages to somehow land the Republican Party’s nomination, wouldn’t America’s free press be on “condition red” alert regarding the possibility that just like in 2000 and 2004, the Republicans (and by an amazine co-inky-dink) and a member of the Bush family could again score a “stolen” victory? Wouldn’t the Conservative majority U. S. Supreme Court be over zealous in their efforts to prevent a sham election?

At this point would some hyper sensitive political critics might say that a minor clerical error on the part of one of the Supreme Court Justices would cause him to recluse himself from such a political death-match? Of course, but when the winds of paranoia are loosed in the realm of political speculation, all things are possible (especially if you believe in the power of prayer as most compassionate conservative Christians do).

At a moment in history when Libya seems to be participating in a reenactment of the Spanish Civil War and when Americans are blasé about torture, and when the unions are facing a political massacre in Wisconsin, one might have to concede that one more stolen (just to keep the conspiracy theory nuts happy) election might be a possible scenario.

Americans seem rather subdued when establishing a “no fly zone” in Libya is discussed. Why wasn’t a “no fly zone” established in the Guernica area during the Spanish Civil War? Why was the rest of the world so complacent back then, but not now? Can’t we all just ignore localized manifestations of civil unrest? Did the rebels make the same mistake that Erwin “The Desert Fox” Rommel made and overextend their supply lines?

If Obama fails to solve the Riddle-in-Libyan-politics correctly, will JEB get to say: “My brother predicted this would happen and Obama fumbled the ball.”? Why is the national political media ignoring the link between what is happening in the Middle East now and the George W. Bush prediction that a wave of pro-democracy sentiment would be unleashed by the American attempt to establish democracy in Iraq? Is the American media not free to say that? If so, who is muzzling them and why are they doing that?

Wash your hands and start rereading this column again.

Che Guevera said: “The laws of capitalism, blind and invisible to the majority, act upon the individual without his thinking about it. He sees only the vastness of a seemingly infinite horizon before him. That is how it is painted by capitalist propagandists, who purport to draw a lesson from the example of Rockefeller—whether or not it is true—about the possibilities of success. The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Red Rubber Ball,” “Ain’t we crazy,” and Wagner’s Gotterdammerung. We have to go hunt up enough information about the rumor that Che was seen in Tubruk recently (yeah, yeah, yeah we know about the photo on Felix Rodriguez’s desk. We refer the reader back to the “bullet proof vest” trick earlier in this column.) Have an “I was sure he was dead” type week.

March 8, 2011

Naming calling battle nears end?

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:27 pm

America’s two major political parties have been having scads of sophomoric fun accusing the opposition of being carbon copies of the Nazis who ran Germany in the Thirties. The childish fun of trying to out shout the opposition with cries of “You are Nazis!” seems to be approaching a final decision in Wisconsin. An integral part of the Nazi strategy was to arrest the opposition and eliminate them from the contemporary political arena.

If the Democratic Party in Wisconsin can mount several successful recall drives in blitzkrieg time, then they can have a temporary majority with the possibility that if they can then win the available seats they will have a longer time period to be in the majority position.

If the Republicans manage to pull some legal maneuvers and actually arrest the elusive Democratic politicians, and also reconfigure the numbers necessary for having a quorum to be able to pass their massive cuts budget, then it will be obvious to future historians that they had no qualms about using Nazi political tactics and therefore they will win the honor of being labeled the stealth modern American version of the “my way or the highway” German Political party.

If the Democratic State Senators cave-in and return to legitimize the Republican union busting power grab, it will be comparable to the fall of Poland in 1939.

The Republicans may have to use some slick judicial movements with some legal cases. It may look like they rigged the deal by (hypothetically) having a referee in center field make the call for a tag at home plate, but as Vince Lombardi reportedly said: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”

If the anti-union advocates hold on and destroy folks’ right to collective bargaining, then precedence will have been set and the other freshman governors around the USA will be comparable to sharks that smell blood in the water and their eagerness to duplicate a union busting move in their state will increase at the “cubed” level.

The Germans sanctioned invasions and torture and at this stage in the War on Terror both a Republican and a Democratic President have approved those measures so the game is tied up. If the Republicans can start the resurrection of the Gleichschaltung strategy and begin to arrest inconvenient Democratic members of the Wisconsin legislature, then they will score (metaphorically speaking) a walk-off grand slam home run and be the obvious team that deserves to wear the neo-Nazi title in contemporary American society.

If the Democrats can recall enough Republicans in Wisconsin, rapidly enough, then they can be portrayed as poor sports who are unfairly wiping the opponents chess pieces off the playing board, like a petulant child and they may be vulnerable to the charge of being the Nazi clones.

It’s rather curious to note that President Obama seems to be a spectator with no interest or enthusiasm about the final result of the Wisconsin political battle. Perhaps, his place is secure as the First American President of Pan-African heritage and the need for a second term is not essential to his self image.

Is it possible that the President could use the Justice Department and some RICO (Racketter Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) investigations to shut down the Republican shenanigans? If it looks like gangster politics, doesn’t it deserve a RICO investigation? Do the Republicans in Wisconsin look like they belong to a corrupt organization? Just ask a union member.

If the Obama Administration is impotent to prevent major efforts to dismantle the New Deal achievements, then future Democrats will be rather severe in their assessments of his legacy.

If the union movement is permanently crippled or completely destroyed on Obama’s watch, then it will be ironic that the Republicans will not give him any praise or credit for the accomplishment.

It will be quite ironic if historians declare Obama the winner of the Nazi look-a-like contest because that German Political Party espoused the supremacy of the Nordic race and so it would be very, very ironic for Obama to be labeled as one of their modern reincarnations.

The rookie Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, can firmly establish himself in the Republican Party if he succeeds in destroying unions and so he is quite likely to fight ferociously to achieve that goal.

On the other hand, he is playing with the budgets and therefore the lives of the union members, so they won’t give up easily and resign the game early. They will perceive the struggle as fighting for their lives and (presumably) push their effort to the limit. If the Democrats cave-in to the Republicans; it may seem like the surrender of Paris in 1940.

If neither side can or will quit, then it is a death match in the cage called Wisconsin and if the battle is for live or die stakes, then it won’t stop until one side is completely crushed by defeat.

If President Obama doesn’t give the Wisconsin unions ever bit of help he can muster, then he will be perceived as a weakling (a return of the “whimp” label?) and the far left Democrats disappointment in his response will be vitriolic in intensity.

If he throws all the help their way he can find, and the Republican Governor still manages to humiliate the sitting President, then the Republican strategy for the 2012 Presidential Campaign will be to offer voters the choice of more of the same “change” or a “change” that they can actually see? There should be no doubt that things will change if the unions are killed off like an extinct animal.

If President Obama sends all the help he can find, and manages to turn the tide, it will seem to both Parties that he met the challenge and came away with a win and therefore will be a formidable 2012 Candidate for reelection.

So far, he has seemed to be using the old Muhammad Ali “rope-a-dope” tactic and he better get into the fight fast or he will be presiding over the next Democratic Party election effort and it will resemble the evacuation at Dunkirk. If he waits too long it will be a Democratic Party disaster and not about winning. It will be a struggle for the Democrats to manage to be alive enough to regroup in 2013 after the humiliating defeat. Much like it was after the 2010 Elections.

One of boxing’s most famous quotes is: “I forgot to duck!” Obama might be saying that in February of 2013. It’s time for Obama to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.

Now, the disk jockey will play “The Boxer,” “Stayin’ Alive,” and the William Tell overture. We have to go check on the progress (if any) being made by the football players union. Have a “finest hour” type week.

Pro-Walker issue ads flooding WI media come from…

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 1:20 pm

Author’s note:
This article may not reveal anything new for most of you that have following the corporate fascist takeover of America, but some WI workers may not know what they are up against…

Excerpt:
People in Wisconsin watching the local news or many other popular programs on local networks have been given a steady dose of advertisements both for and against Gov. Walker’s “budget repair bill.”

The sponsors of the ads against the bill are clearly disclosed. They are funded by various unions that represent state employees. But whose funds pay for the pro-Walker ads?

The “issue ad” groups and political action committees rushing to the aid of Gov. Walker do not disclose their funders in their commercials. The money behind the madness, however, can be traced. The list of out-of-state, big money attacking Wisconsin state workers reads like a “who’s who” of Republican national donors and corporate special interest groups.

Here are a few of them:

Americans for Prosperity

Let’s start with the “Who Decides Wisconsin’s Future?” ad run by Americans for Prosperity (AFP).

The group launched a major ad campaign in Wisconsin shortly after news of the prank phone call between Governor Scott Walker and a fake David Koch made national news. As many Wisconsinites are well-aware of, AFP is Koch-funded.

According to Mary Bottari, writing for PR Watch.org, the organization has:

…two political action committees, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFPF), a 501(c)(3) public charity that received over $10 million in financial contributions in 2009 (a nearly 50% increase over the preceding year), and Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a 501(c)(4), that received over $16 million in financial contributions that year (a more than 100% increase over the year before). The tax forms for AFPF and AFP for their funding and expenses during last year, a mid-term election year, are not yet available.

A quick visit to the AFP web site reveals that the ad does indeed ask state citizens, “Who decides Wisconsin’s future: voters or government unions? And concludes with, “Governor Walker has the courage to do what’s right for Wisconsin. Stand With Walker.”

The AFP’s web site also boasts that the $342,200 ad buy ran on network and cable channels across the state through March 1st is a part of Americans for Prosperity’s “Stand With Walker” initiative, urging citizens to support the Governor’s “commonsense” plan for budget reform.

Republican Governors Association

The name of the above organization (RGA) may sound benign, but guess who gave them a $1 million dollar check last summer? If you answered David Koch, you are correct.

Club for Growth and Club for Growth Wisconsin

Founded in 1999, the Club for Growth (CFG) is a 501(c)(4) “civic league” that seeks to promote public policies it describes as “fiscally conservative.” It does not reveal its donors.

Economic Freedom Alliance

Even Karl Rove has his grubby little Texas paws into Wisconsin politics and the middle class here.
The Republican National Committee: “Stop Obama and His “Union Bosses” Today”

Now that the muppet Michael Steele is history, the RNC can spend more money on manipulating a state like Wisconsin into thinking their governor talks to God and knows what’s best for him and everyone. Instead of spending funds on hookers in LA., the RNC ad “showcases the efforts by Democrats and government unions to obstruct Republican reforms to tackle the debt at all levels of government and move the country forward.”

Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks

According to Dick, some of the “Most Protected Coddled Employees in the Country are Teachers.” Or any other any state worker like RNs, firefighters, police, administration personnel, snow plow drivers, etc. Hey everyone who makes less that a Wall Street executive, millionaire Dick Armey says you’re a bunch of coddled babies.

Enough yet? The League of American Voters cannot be left out.

The “League of American Voters” (LAV) has radio ads up. Click here to listen to their radio ad. LAV is also funding robo-calls in the state. (LAV’s 2009 tax filings are not on Guidestar; and financial contributions to LAV are not tax-deductible.)

Once again, a short trip to a web site reveals a lot. Apparently Dick Morris has to stick something into this issue. Tongue, toes, anyone?

This is our line in the snow., and we say “Enough!”

On Wisconsin!

Read more, get links, a slideshow and a video of Michael Morre’s speech in madison here: Madison Independent Examiner – Pro-Walker issue ads flooding Wisconsin media come from…

Boycott Koch Products

As the Koch brothers cheesy little autocrat Scott Walker sinks in the polls, taking the GOP with him, and the Koch astroturf group Americans For Prosperity shows their contempt for the average Wisconsinite, and desperation, by dragging in dimbulb Joe the Plumber to call the Madison protestors commies (who pays attention to this idiot anyway?), here’s something those of us who can’t be in Madison can do to show our support — hit the Kochs right in the wallet and don’t buy their consumer products! And, if you feel really energetic, write to your local newspaper and other media and tell them you are boycotting Koch products because of their attempts to buy our government.

Here’s a list of the Kochs consumer products to avoid, courtesy of Lauren Kelley of AlterNet.org. (Also, read her story, “How You Can Boycott the Kochs“):

Here’s the colossal list of products being boycotted:

Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins and cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins
Georgia-Pacific paper products and envelopes

All Georgia-Pacific lumber and building products, including:

(more…)

Protestors Are Winning the Battle of Wisconsin

cartoon-battle-of-wi

March 6, 2011

Citizen Huffington

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 12:09 pm

The Wrap is reporting that Arianna Huffington dared writers to go ahead with a planned strike because no one would notice. Does she honestly think that if they did the folks who just paid $315 million won’t notice that the backbone of the online publication has been removed?

The Huffington Post writers are on strike! People are starting to notice.

If the deal has been signed and witnessed, obviously Arianna can do the Liberace routine and cry (about the strike) all the way to the bank. If the deal hasn’t been finalized the folks shelling out the money might have cause to wonder if they should sign on the dotted line.

It’s a cliché to say that the Internets is a vast new frontier that is still trying to define itself and so a writers’ strike now will be historic no matter what the outcome.

There is no mention of the strike (that we can find) on the Huffington Post site. This brings to mind the strike at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in the late Sixties.

The comic strip La Cucaracha, done by Lalo Alcaraz, has been parodying the Huffington Post strike by depicting events at the fictional “Riffington Post.”

At this point some folks may want to post a troll comment that says that if an online columnist reports on the Huffington Post strike, it is just a case of sour grapes because he never got an offer to join their posse.

As a rogue/rebel/loner columnist, who wants to buck the Internets trend and imitate the old newspaper concept of “three do journalism” as done by Walter Winschel and Herb Caen (it’s perfect for the new skim fast media), we could also sign up to go provide photo coverage of local high school games in the Berkeley area for some local news sites. We know we would do a good job because we’ve done that for various small daily newspapers and our efforts pleased the editors, but we were getting paid. Doing it again (for practice?) just doesn’t appeal to us. We’ve been to the Academy Awards and are not very much interested in seeing if we could get a media pass to do it again.

There are some things we would like to do and see and know that we could subsequently bang out an online column that would be of acceptable level quality.

We noticed that there has been some recent student protests in Berkeley last week. If we were there, we would hike up to the campus to see what’s happening, but since we are on location (reporting live from the Cow’s End Café in Venice CA, today) we’ll have to send folks to the local Berkeley news sites such as Berkeley Side and Berkeley Daily Planet.

If Aggregator Websites get the chance to cross post some demonstration arrests news from Berkeley, fine. If they don’t, “Sen loi G. I. (as the natives used to say in Saigon)”

Sure, it might be fun to win the Internets “Prom King” popularity poll and get some wider readership, but there is a certain freedom available to one of the few adherents to the three dot school of columning that appeal to this particular writer. If we get a plug from (for example) Mike Malloy on his radio show, or from Brad Friedman on his Bradblog site, that means we will see a higher number of hits listed for our efforts. It’s just a different number to us. If not, well, (as Ned Kelly once said), “Such is life.”

The folks who contribute (or should that be past tense “contributed”) to Arianna’ big online aggregate site, had to please the master, but it probably required a good amount of close proof reading, polishing, and html-ing. We can be much more loose and informal and jump from topic to topic. We don’t have a “beat” to report. We have the luxury of being able to pick items we think fit in the day’s effort, write it up, copy, post, and depart.

We extend sincere good wishes to the writers on strike and the union supporters in Wisconsin. (Is there a link to a place where we can send pizzas to the striking writers?)

We note that Keith Olbermann posted an item, on Fok News (his new blog) mentioning how much easier it was to deal with management when he had a union to back him up.

We can say we second the motion from personal experience. Do Republicans honestly believe that an individual employee could have fought unfair treatment by management at a large International News Service (that comes early in the alphabetical listings of such organizations) all alone? Do they really think an individual could get a company to say “Yes, that was unfair” and recant and relent with no one else on their side? Well, it a different ball game when the union shop steward says “when he backs down, let him save face” because if he doesn’t back down, they will strike just to protect you from unfairness regarding working on a holiday. (He did back down, they didn’t strike, and the day after my holiday, I waked in and handed in my resignation.)

Perhaps we will do a future column about how wonderful the world looks to self reliant Republicans who have completely lost touch with the reality.

What if all the striking writers from their own Aggregate website and make it a big success? Would some company offer to buy them for $315 million, and if they did would the writers reap the rewards of their labor? We hope they do because it might teach some greedheads to respect the workers.

Additonal links for more information about wrtiers’ strike

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Union-of-Huffington-Post-Writers-and-Bloggers/137190046314897

http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/huff-puff-it-down.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/mar/05/huffington-post-aol

Walter Winchell has said: “Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leave practically nothing unsaid.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Ally Oop,” “Take the money and run,” and the Peanuts theme music. We have to go get the information we will need to know for a visit to the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard CA. Have a “do not cross the picket line” type week.

Gram Damns the GOP!

cartoon-gram-damns-gop

March 4, 2011

Rewarding non-violence in Palestine: Send pizza to the West Bank as well as Wisconsin

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Jane Stillwater @ 11:59 am

Yeah well, talking about injustice in Palestine is always a thankless task. But we still gotta do it because Palestine is still a big thorn in the foot of the Middle East and if the Middle East ain’t happy, then ain’t nobody happy — at least nobody who likes to drive cars.

If you want Middle Eastern gas in your tank without having to spend a bunch of trillions of dollars more on war toys in order to steal it at gunpoint, then you are gonna have to come to terms with ending the illegal Palestine occupation.

“But Palestinians send rockets into Israel! And they have suicide bombers! We have to support the occupation because Palestinians are violent!” you might say. But are they? Violent? Not really. Not any more. That’s just old-skool thinking.

For approximately the last ten years, more and more Palestinians have become non-violent in the tactics they have used to protest against being illegally occupied by one of the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world. But are Palestinians getting any kind of recognition, kudos or rewards at all for having gone all non-violent? No. Hell no. Nothing, zip, nada.

For over fifty years, Palestinians had already tried the old “Red Dawn” armed-resistance scenario and it hadn’t been working. And so in approximately the last ten years they have noticeably changed their tactics and given non-violent protests a try instead. But so far the only results that have resulted from Palestinians’ non-violent protests have been to get shot at — and shot at and shot at — by one of the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q7RQGuOzvw.

Bummer.

So. If Americans truly want peace in the Middle East and cheap gas in their tanks, perhaps instead of continuing to give billions of dollars in military aid to one of the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world as it illegally occupies Palestine, perhaps we should try something else and actually start REWARDING Palestinians for their efforts to be non-violent — while still trying to express their deep frustration with being constantly under the thumb of a violent and illegal occupation force.

And if we truly want to reward and encourage Palestinians for trying to be the next Gandhis, then what can we do?

“Order Pizza!”

Hey, it worked in Wisconsin.

I have friends in the small Palestinian town of Ni’lin and every Friday for the last several years, they have bravely gone out and non-violently protested the seizure of their small quiet town by one of the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world — and these ordinary towns-people are getting gassed, shot at and killed one by one. However, non-violence, while heroic as hell and very New Testament and all that, isn’t really working for them so far because one of the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world clearly doesn’t give a rat’s behind about Palestinians.

So I am suggesting that you do to my friends in Ni’lin the same thing that the people of Egypt did for the people of Wisconsin. “Order Pizza.”

Is there a pizza place in Ni’lin that takes credit cards? If so, give me its e-mail address and, instead of waiting patiently for Hillary Clinton to do it, I’ll reward these non-violent protesters myself — and order them pizza.

And imagine if everyone else in the world who could afford to spare a few dollars also barraged one of the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world with pizzas as well? Problem solved. Cheap gas for all.

And then what if we also barraged Wall Street, K Street, the Federal Reserve and even the Taliban with pizzas? It’s the volume that counts.

PS: Everyone’s always talking about ending America’s huge deficit. Hey that’s easy to do. Just make major cuts in our out-of-control military spending, duh. And then let’s replace all those pricey Bradley tanks and luxurious F16s with pizzas.

Let’s build a huge wall of pizza (deep-dish Chicago-style with anchovies and olives) all around our shores and forget about the rest of America’s “empire”. And then let’s turn America back into a country that is self-sufficient in manufacturing again. And let’s start by manufacturing pizzas.

“But Jane, that’s just crazy!” Not as crazy as wasting our country’s resources and patrimony on manufacturing weapons — cold merciless steel weapons designed only to kill, maim and hurt.

PPS: In his recent article on US polices toward Israel, Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper stated that, “Israel is the number-two supplier of arms [in the world].” http://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/working-around-america-a-new-strategy-on-israelpalestine.html?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=d30ed960da-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email#respond.

And of course we all know who is the Number One supplier of arms.

So why is everyone relying on the United States and Israel to be in charge of keeping the peace — both in the Occupied Territories and in the rest of the world?

Isn’t that a bit like expecting two very hungry bears to be in charge of guarding a honey tree?

PPPS: Even Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has a few unkind words to say about Israel, believe it or not: “Israel’s previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, had to resign because he was accused of illicitly taking envelopes stuffed with money from a Jewish-American backer. An Israeli court recently convicted Israel’s former president Moshe Katsav on two counts of rape, based on accusations by former employees. And just a few weeks ago, Israel, at the last second, rescinded the appointment of Maj. Gen. Yoav Galant as the army’s new chief of staff after Israeli environmentalists spurred a government investigation that concluded General Galant had seized public land near his home. (You can see his house on Google Maps!)” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/opinion/02friedman.html?_r=1

Perhaps we should be sending the Israelis some pizza too.

PPPPS: What if all of us little people from all over the world who are sick and tired of being bossed around by military thugs, bullies and sadists for the sole reason that their, er, guns are bigger than our guns — what if we all got together and refused? Refused to be soldiers, refused to make weapons, refused to murder, refused to…just refused. Then what would happen?

Ultimately it’s all in the numbers.

For every one of the bullies, sadists and thugs that hide behind the largest and most combat-ready armies in the world, there are at least 99 more of us who are sick of all this bloodshed.

Tunisia, India, Egypt, South Africa, Jesus and the American South have all shown us that non-violent tactics really do bring about peace — if you have the numbers. In fact, Tunisia and Egypt apparently even consciously took a leaf from Ni’lin’s non-violent playbook. So. Let’s put all of the world’s largest and most combat-ready armies on notice. “Chill out now — or else risk ending up like Mubarak, Bull Connor, apartheid and the British Raj.”

We’re armed and dangerous too — we’ve got pizza!

img_2603

March 3, 2011

Madison protests bring out solidarity and sense of community

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 11:21 pm

Author’s note: I’m not putting a spin on this…it really is like this at the Capitol square in Wisconsin.

Excerpt:
The call reportedly arrived from Susan Sarandon. Pizza for the protesters, the voice said. It was Tuesday, March 1, and by then Ian’s Pizza on State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, was barely managing to keep up with the orders, while reopening for normal business operations.

Since Feb. 15th, Ian’s has been flooded with orders in the form of donations from all over the world. In they came, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, from Cairo, Egypt, Morocco, Haiti, Turkey, Belgium, Uganda, China, New Zealand, and even a research station in Antarctica – more than 50 countries around the globe. Ian’s couldn’t make pizza fast enough.

While there is no way to verify where all of the orders came from, it is clear that the generosity of distant strangers with credit cards paid for it. Nick Martin and Staci Fritz, assistant managers at Ian’s agreed, “February was our best month ever. We are doing two to three times more business daily, and sales are up more than two times for February.”

Nick mentioned that Feb. 26th was the busiest day in the history of Ian’s, and that “we went through 3 tons of flour! It is difficult to understand the sheer volume.”

Staci added that, “While we do get occasional calls from celebrities or from overseas, most of the people that donate pizza to the people around the Capitol are just ordinary Americans that want to contribute to the same cause that the demonstrators are here for.” Ian’s takes donations by phone for accounting purposes, according to Staci, “in order to ensure that whatever we take in terms of dollars directly corresponds to what we deliver to the Capitol.”

The number to place pizza orders at Ian’s is 608-257-9248.

Lt. Dave McCaw of the Madison police department said, “there has been very little litter, other than protesters abandoning signs for whatever reason, and usually someone will pick them up.”

Regarding crime and vandalism, Lt. McCaw stated that “there have been no arrests that I know of. As a matter of fact, ordinary crimes such as car break-ins are way down since the protests began. My fellow officers have been assisting a lot of people who are lost, such as children who get separated from their parents in the crowds. If this were a football game celebration with the same amount of people, detox and the jail would be full, but we have had none of that with this demonstration. It has been very peaceful.”

As expected, right-wing and corporate media is beginning to paint a false picture of the demonstrators in Madison as being unruly, unemployed, homeless, dirty and disrespectful of the Capitol. A simple visit there clearly shows otherwise.

Dave Ornstein and Dave O’Connell, both firefighters from Milwaukee, were on their third day of attending the rally as of Tuesday, March 1st. Both agreed that they are standing in “solidarity” with fellow public workers. Ornstein said, “as firefighters we have a sense of community, and even though we are exempt from the collective bargaining restrictions in the bill, our fellow public workers are not and if we let this happen, I know we’ll be next.”

O’Connell added, “this bill will affect not only public workers, but also all surrounding people. It affects the standard of living of all people as a whole. We are here on our own volition, against our own union, because even our local union supported Gov. Walker in the election. I think it means something to be able to stand up for what I believe as an individual as well as a member of our community. You can call me an anarchist for that. Besides, I’m kinda diggin’ the free pizza…” (He was kidding, I think).

As night fell on March 1st, some demonstrators remained. On an amplified microphone, Matt Curry was asking CNN why they don’t interview the police and firefighters instead of celebrities. Matt, a political science and economics major at UW-Madison has been at the Capitol every day since February 16th. Matt slept in the Capitol building for 7 nights and is well aware of the negative reports in the media regarding the activists that remain in the building.

According to Matt, “it is absolutely not true that we have trashed the Capitol building. In fact, we have assisted the clean up crew every night and thanked them every night. We have picked up after ourselves and cleaned up the restrooms. We have mopped the floors. We had hand sanitizer dispensers everywhere. Everyone who wanted to speak on the public mic was asked to use hand sanitizer before doing so. All of the signs on the walls were hung with painters tape so as to not leave residue. There was a medic station, child day care, a food court, sleeping quarters…kind of like a little city, until the police stopped allowing those things in.”

In other words, Matt may have described a sense of camaraderie and purpose that you may struggle to find in most American cities, possibly anywhere else in this country. Of course, a lot of people may fall for the “divide and conquer” rhetoric that politicians and the corporate media use to try to pit working class Americans against one another. But the truth is that the protests in Wisconsin are bringing out something not seen in a long time – solidarity and a sense of community.

Thank you for that, Scott Walker, and thank you for reenergizing the progressive base here in Wisconsin.

Read more, get links, video and a slideshow here: Madison Independent Examiner – Madison protests bring out solidarity and sense of community.

The Koch Bros. Corporate Crime School

cartoon-koch-corp-crime-school

Inverse Logic takes over in America

Filed under: Guest Comment — Tags: , , , — Bob Patterson @ 6:59 pm

Since we had always meant to see “The Magnificent Seven,” but have failed to catch it for fifty years, when the recent chance to see it in downtown Berkeley popped up on our amusement radar screen a little while back, it only took a New York minute for us to jump at the chance to fill that gap in our cultural accomplishments list.

It tells the story of how a bunch of loners band together to respond to an appeal by a group of Mexican peasants whose village is being periodically pillaged and robbed by some nasty bandits who act as if they have a divine right to the fruit of the poor people’s labors. The story is based on an earlier Japanese film about how some freelance samurai warriors helped out some poor farmers in their country.

“The Magnificent Seven” featured a young Steve McQueen and some ideals that have disappeared from the contemporary American culture.

We tried to imagine how a realistic new remake of that old film would look.

A collection of beleaguered American home owners reach the breaking point via a budget that is stretched to the limits by employers who exploit the workers by refusing to increase wages for years and years yet add unreasonable increases in production goal figures and by local merchants who have to boost prices just because they can. The victims see a bunch of banksters ride into town and offer to protect the worn out workers and their little remaining cash . . . by taking it all and keeping it for themselves.

In the new version, the Seven Cardinal Virtues would be lying, cheating, stealing, etc., etc. Hypocrisy would be something a Boy Scout honors and practices so that he can become a successful politician or bankster himself.

Honesty and Diligence would be a sucker’s idea of attractive qualities.

Bushwhacking and ambushes would be clever winning moves. Robert E. Howard, creator of “Conan the Barbarian” wrote a few obscure western novels in which the bad guy might mysteriously wind up dead when the lights were suddenly doused and no one could see what happened or who did the shooting. It wasn’t Garry Cooper waking down the middle of the street to confront hired thugs, it was very different in Howard’s books and the color of a hat didn’t tip off the audience to who was good and who was “one of the bad guys.”

The Zen of a continual war would produce a peaceful addictive complacency that would be expressed by hipsters via the slogan “War is Peace.”

At the end of a remake, the banksters would take everything they could get from the villagers, kill them all – maybe take scalps to use for boasting in the next boardroom meeting – and then so that there could be no final trace of the wasted lives, burn the foreclosed homes to the ground.

The cavalry would be assigned to protect the raiders from the workers and assert that they were there to uphold law and order.

Isn’t pulling the covered wagons into a circle to hold off an Indian attack comparable to forming a union to help maintain possession of worldly goods that the attacking capitalists want to strip away from the pioneers in this new inverted logic world?

Are the teabaggers the backbone of the new Republican Party? Does that mean that “Ignorance is Strength”?

Freedom is Slavery! If you let people have freedom of speech they will abuse it and you will have to listen to their hate-speech just as if they were the plantation master and you were their eager and enthusiastic slaves.

In the antique film, when the villagers don’t have much money to offer the renegade knights and they react to the attempt to short change them for their labor by saying: “We fight for the principles not the coins.” (or words to that effect.) These days the prevalent good guy philosophy is: “Show me the money!”

Don’t some conspiracy theory crazies suggest that the guy who pulled off the Enron scam, faked his death and after the best witness protection program style disappearance, went to Tahiti to live out his life in decadent splendor? Would the President of the USA authorize such a travesty of justice for an old friend? If you think that, then you might want to consider enrolling in a rehab for cynics program.

Is it truth or an urban legend that Owen Wister offered to pay good money for a newspaper article reporting a “High Noon” style draw-down in the middle of the street encounter. The shoot-out at the O. K. Corral was a brief intense close quarters fire-fight and not a variation of the slap leather and shoot-in-self-defense reaction of an attacked victim. No one ever collected the money from Wister.

(Note: according to one historian the contemporary newspapers which carried the account of that skirmish contained ads indicating that there were four telephones in the town at that time.)

The Western movies painted a distorted view of history. When the Sioux nation was restricted to South Dakota, it was assumed that it was OK to let them have that bit of geography because the American settlers couldn’t imagine any use for that land . . . until they discovered gold in the Black Hills. Then, it was time to rip up the peace treaties and take away the gold!

Reportedly only one tribe did not get a peace treaty which was broken by the Great White Father in Washington, all the Nez Pierce Indians were killed before they could sign a treaty.

Don’t forget the disease ridden blanket chapter of American charity for the Native Americans.

American strategy has remained consistent from the massacre at Wounded Knee to Mi Lai, so tell the Libyans: “The Marines are coming!” and they better get while the gettin’ is good. Don’t Republicans believe that American can never have enough wars?

Some folks will tell you that things have changed around completely since “The Magnificent Seven” was filmed and released in theaters and others will say that things were never like that at all. It’s just putting spin on history to catch a new generation of victims off-guard.

The American business man adheres strictly to the W. C. Fields’ famous business maxim: “If a things worth having; it’s worth cheating for.” In the Magnificent Seven one finds this line: “If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.”

Now the disk jockey will play “Do Not Forsake Me” (the Oscar winning song from High Noon), the theme from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” and Cher’s “Half-breed.” We have to go count coup. Have a “smoke the peace pipe” type week.

March 2, 2011

The Tattlesnake – Top Ten Neocon Republican Hits Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:42 pm

These top ten lists get tedious, and this one’s no different.

1. “This Land Ain’t Your Land, This Land Is MY Land”
Scotty and the Koch Brothers

2. “America The Profitable”
Moe Greenback and the Wall Streeters

3. “Take Your Job And Shove It”
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce

4. “Dead Man’s Curve”
Chris Christie and the Budget Cutters

5. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”
The Palin Family Choir

6. “Viva Low Wages!”
Wal Mart and the New Peasants

7. “It’s My Party And I’ll Cry If I Want To”
Long John Boehner and the Wailers

8. “Liar, Liar (Pants On Fire)”
Mike Huckabee and the Birthers

9. “He Got The Gold Mine And I Got the Shaft”
Glenn Beck’s Suckers

10. “(Here It Comes Your) 19th Nervous Breakdown”
Michele Bachmann and her Teabaggers

©2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

Blocking access to Capitol building defies court order and violates constitution

Filed under: Uncategorized — Greg in cheeseland @ 5:52 pm

Author’s note:
I was there at the Capitol in Madison yesterday. Despite what the DOA and local news says, no one was being allowed into the building. That is a clear violation of the state constitution and now, a court order. The Walker administration has gone WAY too far.

Excerpt:
Demonstrators in Madison have been given limited or no access to the Capitol building since Sunday. That is a clear violation of the Wisconsin state Constitution, and now it is a violation of a court order issued yesterday.

On Sunday, the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA) closed the state Capitol building for cleaning and stated that it would reopen to the public the following morning at eight. The building has since remained closed to the general public. Activists who left the building claim that windows are being bolted shut and the ends of the bolts cut off to prevent food from being passed in to the remaining demonstrators.

Reports of limited access to the building by the DOA and local media remain somewhat contradictory with those of activists at the scene, who claim that the general public is not being allowed into the building. Strangely, this request was also posted on the DOA’s web site on Tuesday:

The King Street entrance to the Capitol has become congested. Capitol police request the assistance of the people in the area. People in the area of King Street need to exit the immediate area so that we can facilitate the public entry into the building.

Apparently no one informed DOA officials that the people outside of the Capitol are trying to get in.

Blocking, and in most cases, even limiting access to the Capitol building is illegal under the Wisconsin state Constitution:

Article I, §4 – ANNOT.
The legislature cannot prohibit an individual from entering the capitol or its grounds. 59 Atty. Gen. 8.

Article I, §4
Right to assemble and petition. Section 4. The right of the people peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good, and to petition the government, or any department thereof, shall never be abridged.

At hearing Tuesday afternoon in Dane County Circuit Court, Judge Daniel Moeser ruled for the people and the Constitution when he issued a temporary restraining order to reopen the Capitol building until a trial court can schedule a hearing. The order says the building must be open to the public during business hours and when “governmental matters, such as hearings, listening sessions, or court arguments are being conducted.”

For some “leaders” and government officials, abiding by constitutional law and complying with court orders are useful only when that serves their agenda. If not, then the constitution becomes a useless piece of paper and court rulings are relegated to the realm of opinion.

The Walker administration has crossed another line. That building does not belong to him or the legislature. It belongs to the people of Wisconsin and as long as they are not violent, he has no right not to let them into their building. In locking the doors of the peoples’ capitol building, the peoples’ rights are being usurped.

Read more, get links, slideshow and video here: Madison Independent Examiner – Blocking access to Capitol building defies court order and violates constitution.

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