Elizabeth Warren and Occupy Wall Street

This Rachel Maddow clip is long, but covers good ground.
I especially like the framing of Scott Brown's fundraising sources and the right wing media's HOWL about Elizabeth Warren's message.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Our Media

These are the nice people who are helping to frame the debate around the economy, taxes, and the deficit—all sturdy middle class Americans.

Net worth:

Tom Brokaw   70 million

Bill O'Reilly   50 million

Katie Couric   55 million

Diane Sawyer   40 million

Charlie Rose   23 million

Wolf Blitzer   16 million

Joe Scarborough   12 million

George Stephanopoulos   8 million

A Diversion

Russell Means and Wes Studi in The Last of the Mohicans

This film has always appealed to my "born in the 50s" childhood (as did Cooper's book).

Growing  up in Wisconsin, a state filled with Native American place names—remnants of a disappeared people—and later in Oldham County, Kentucky, on a farm above the Ohio River—my imagination and play were always about the Indian—never the cowboy.

Set aside the (now odd) matinee idol role of Daniel Day Lewis—Russell Means and Wes Studi are fantastic in this visually beautiful film.

Makin'em Work

Canadian Cheney fans seem perplexed at all the fuss.
One well dressed attendee remarked; "It's just torture to get a good seat."

This is long, but worthwhile.

Occupy Wall Street Protest/Livestream

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

80 to 90 non-teabaggers arrested yesterday.

Updated:



This is disgraceful. NYPD spokesmen claim that the use of pepper spray in this instance was appropriate. Fucked up.

Bad Touch

“No other candidate on that stage has the record that I have,” Perry said. “Yep, there may be slicker candidates and there may be smoother debaters, but I know what I believe in. And I’m gonna stand on that belief every day. I will guide this country with a deep, deep rudder.”

Rick Perry is a "hold you down, daddy it hurts" Dominionist.

The Season

Western Massachusetts

It's beginning to turn in the Berkshires.

The Truth Hurts...Too.

The cheeseheads should watch it, America's job-creators are a sensitive bunch.

From here

The Butt-Hurt Keeps Hurting

Scott Walker

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's (R) spokesman, plus two supporters, have now been granted immunity in the ongoing campaign finance investigation of former aides to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), from Walker's time as Milwaukee County Executive.

From here

The Republican governors, who came in on what they thought was a wave election in 2010, immediately revealed their Republican playbook—gut public/private sector unions, continue to dismantle The Great Society, place government in the service of their corporate donors, develop legislation that appeals to the Republican's lizard brain (drug testing the poor and unemployed)...and so much more.

If it unravels, it couldn't happen to a better bunch of assholes.

Friday Soundtrack

John Coltrane Afro Blue, 1963


John Coltrane Vigil, 1965

John Coltrane is depicted as one of the ninety saints in the monumental Dancing Saints icon of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. The Dancing Saints icon is a 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) painting rendered in the Byzantine iconographic style that wraps around the entire church rotunda. The icon was executed by iconographer Mark Dukes, an ordained deacon at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church, who has painted other icons of Coltrane for the Coltrane Church.

From here

Cy Twombly, RIP (belated)

NYT Obituary

Cy Twombly, 1940s
I've always loved this image—Virginia boy uses kitchen chair as an easel.

Untitled I, 1972

Apollo and the Artist, 1975

You Didn't Get Rich Without The Rest Of Us

I can't wait for her debate with Scott Brown.

Tuesday Soundtrack

Hank Williams I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive

Bush's Second Term

OUCH!

From here.

Sunday Soundtrack

For all your Sexadelic Sunday Dance Parties.


Vampyros Lesbos The Lions And The Cucumber

Nothing To See Here

The Invisible Hand reach around.

Read—Weep

From here.

Saturday Soundtrack

Everything is superbad (except for the weather in New England).

Delicate Flowers and The Confidence Fairy

John Boehner:

But he repeated his belief that the government is overregulating, overtaxing and overspending. He said private businesses that would like to create jobs had been hampered by Mr. Obama’s administration.

“They’ve been antagonized by a government that favors bureaucrats over market-based solutions,” he said. “They’ve been demoralized by a government that causes despair when we need it to provide reassurance and inspire confidence.”

                                   .          .          .

“Job creators in America are essentially on strike...”

Maybe we should dig up Ronald Reagan to fire them.

Remember: The Vampire Squids Are Vampires*

The crash of 2008 could happen tomorrow—congress and the Obama administration simply want to pretend the problem has been solved.

Privatize profit and nationalize loss.

*Matt Taibbi

The 20th Century Got Undone

It only took 30 short years of Democrat-enabled Republican ideology.

What kind of shithole will this place be like in 30 more years?

From here.

Updated: Only 46.2 million living in poverty.

At The End Of The Day

After a decade of tributes, words,(and spectacles) devoted to those lost on that day, I've always thought Neil Young's performance was the most moving and true.


Neil Young performs John Lennon's Imagine, September 21, 2001

As They Say...Paul Krugman Is Shrill

The Years of Shame

Is it just me, or are the 9/11 commemorations oddly subdued?

Actually, I don’t think it’s me, and it’s not really that odd.

What happened after 9/11 — and I think even people on the right know this, whether they admit it or not — was deeply shameful. The atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue. Fake heroes like Bernie Kerik, Rudy Giuliani, and, yes, George W. Bush raced to cash in on the horror. And then the attack was used to justify an unrelated war the neocons wanted to fight, for all the wrong reasons.

A lot of other people behaved badly. How many of our professional pundits — people who should have understood very well what was happening — took the easy way out, turning a blind eye to the corruption and lending their support to the hijacking of the atrocity?

The memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And in its heart, the nation knows it.

I’m not going to allow comments on this post, for obvious reasons.

Paul Krugman is stirring up the hornets.

Never Forget

The 9/11 Decade

This weekend we're witness to wall to wall memorials for 9/11—thinly disguised marketing ploys from our media outlets—a desire to recreate the viewership and relevance they believe they generated from the event in 2001. All impossible to watch.

What's missing, in addition to genuine sobriety, is any real acknowledgement of the death filled and costly hole this country put itself in as a response to that day's terrorism.

We now have an enormous and secretive security state that sits far beyond our democracy and its citizens—and an American people that continues to be tweaked and leveraged into a coarse and uncaring tribe.

Huzzah.

How Bad Can Things Be...

...when there's funk?

Les Baxter Hot Wind


The Soulfadelics The Big Chase


The Boris Gardiner Happening Ghetto Funk

Friday Soundtrack

Miles Davis Straight, No Chaser

This Place Is Broken

Rick Perry executes thousands—America cheers.

Happy Labor Day

Billy Bragg

325 to 1—Happy Labor Day

Upside down:

The study looking at CEO pay and tax-dodging corporations was done by the Institute for Policy Studies. The same study found the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average worker in the United States jumped to 325-to-1 last year.

Happy Labor Day

John Sayles wades into the tricky waters of race and labor.

I've Got Nothin'