August 2011
3 tags
Nearly Half of Americans Are ‘Financially Fragile’ →
zeitgeistmovement:
Nearly half of Americans say that they definitely or probably couldn’t come up with $2,000 in 30 days, according to new research, raising concerns about the financial fragility of many households.
2 tags
4 tags
What's Happening With the Debt Ceiling Explained →
On the debt ceiling deal reached tonight:
The plan, according to an outline circulated by House Speaker John Boehner’s office, draws mostly on Republican ideas, mixing and matching pieces of previous debt ceiling proposals. It includes no new tax revenue. It would enact immediate spending cuts of $913 billion over ten years, in exchange for a short-term debt ceiling increase of $900...
6 tags
Democratic politics in a nutshell | Glenn... →
[A] slew of millionaire politicians who spent the last decade exploding the national debt with Endless War, a sprawling Surveillance State, and tax cuts for the rich are now imposing extreme suffering on the already-suffering ordinary citizenry, all at the direction of their plutocratic overlords, who are prospering more than ever and will sacrifice virtually nothing under this deal (despite...
4 tags
8 tags
“So far, the drones policy has been an unmitigated disaster. The handful of...”
– Mohammad Idrees Ahmad
Fighting back against the CIA drone war
4 tags
'Scores dead' as Syrian tanks storm Hama - Al... →
Syrian forces have killed nearly 142 people, including at least 100 when the army stormed the flashpoint protest city of Hama to crush dissent on the eve of Ramadan, activists have said.
Rights groups said it was one of deadliest days in Syria since demonstrators first took to the streets on March 15, demanding democratic reforms and the downfall of the government.
As reports of the brutal...
July 2011
“This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable...”
– Rep. Raul Grijalva heads the 74-member Congressional Progressive Caucus. - Liberal Democratic leader says won’t back debt deal - Reuters (via brooklynmutt)
5 tags
2 tags
Fact: The US spent over $15 billion on the drug...
lilmaj132:
pot-culture:
That’s $500 a second.
Harvard economist, Jeffery A. Miron, estimates that legalizing drugs would add $76.8 billion a year to the US economy.
Think about it.
For reference, that’s 4 times NASA’s budget (fy 2011).
7 tags
3 tags
6 tags
Why This Crisis Isn't Going Anywhere--And What To... →
Because the truly poisonous effect of industrial age institutions, by undercounting real costs, and overcounting real benefits, isn’t merely that they limit us to creating fake, thin artificial value and ponzi-like hollow “profit” today—but, more perniciously, that they shatter the incentives for great achievement tomorrow. They crumple the human spirit, smash the human psyche, dull the human...
9 tags
Walker Gave No-Bid Legal Contract to Major Donor,... →
quickhits:
wisconsinforward:
Scott Walker authorized payment to Michael Best & Friedrich of up to $500,000; to date, the firm has billed Wisconsin nearly $100,000. Scott Walker has provided no explanation for why this contract is appropriate and has yet to respond to open record requests seeking information. Not surprisingly, the state’s largest paper (and Walker endorser), the Milwaukee...
5 tags
3 tags
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great...”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
4 tags
3 tags
Large outbreak of violence in the Syrian city of... →
shortformblog:
evanfleischer:
every ten minutes, a car comes loaded with five wounded on a hospital-Hourani
URGENT: blood donation is now required to Hama for the arrival of many of the wounded to hospital and Badr Al-Hourani
A large number of wounded on the ground near the Duarmsadjad Bilal Habashi
Check out Evan’s coverage of the violence in the Syrian city of Hama.
3 tags
Planned Parenthood firebombed, right wing silent →
A potential incident of domestic terrorism this week got a yawn from most of the press — and the political right
“Our intellect assumes, instinctively, that the world is motionless: things are...”
– Leszek Kolakowski, Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? We know, from philosophy and physics and even rudimentary introspection, that the world as we perceive it is a mental construction, a collection of impressions and ideas so divorced from the structure of reality as to constitute a...
4 tags
6 tags
The Reason CEOs Make 350 Times More Money Than... →
In 1982 and 1991 the SEC - the US government agency which is supposed to protect stock-market investors from stock-price manipulation and short-swing profits by insiders — promulgated rule changes that gave the wolves free access to the chicken coop.
Under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, large-scale stock repurchases can be construed as an attempt to manipulate a company’s stock price. In...
beyondloveandhate asked: Can you explain to me how lobbist work,and how big business profits on our suffering? I know its a huge question, sorry
“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and...”
– Martin Luther King Jr. , Beyond Vietnam (via lilmaj132)
2 tags
5 tags
Obama's Options →
From Jack Balkin, regarding the 14th amendment:
Like Congress, the president is bound by Section 4 of the 14th Amendment, which states that “(t)he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” Section 4 was passed after the Civil War because the framers worried that former Southern rebels returning to Congress would hold the federal debt hostage...
2 tags
“We know that the end game is the Democrats will blink, but uncharacteristically,...”
– Team Obama Fiddles While Debt Ceiling Fires Burn (via azspot)
Are They Aiming For Impeachment? →
vruz:
by Andrew Sullivan, The Dish / The Daily Beast
—via moorewr
vruz: They’ve always been.
They did the last Democratic president; and they feel even more strongly that this one is illegitimate, depite his thumping majority in the last election. Here’s the scenario. The House GOP pushes for completely unserious Boehner plan (including a balanced budget amendment) that they know will be...
5 tags
4 tags
“I think marriage in general is not a healthy institution in our society. If...”
– bell hooks (via queeraspie)
I’ve been thinking this. but haven’t been able to put it in words this well. This is short, sweet, and to the point.
(via palatial-bear-messages)
2 tags
The 7 Stages of Internet Grief →
langer:
people tweet about dead celebrity
people tweet about what dead celebrity meant to them
people tweet insensitive jokes about dead celebrity
people tweet about how it’s too soon to be tweeting insensitive jokes about dead celebrity
people tweet about how other people tweeting about dead celebrity aren’t tweeting the right way about dead celebrity
people tweet about how people tweeting...
2 tags
7 tags
6 tags
6 tags
Syria: Violence in the dark →
Meanwhile, in Syria:
When widespread protests broke out in Syria in March, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime turned to its feared security services to smother the anti-government movement.
The bloody response has so far succeeded where other attempts to put down the “Arab awakening” have failed, and President Assad remains in power.
Verifying the toll of the crackdown is difficult, since the...
4 tags
Proposed Saudi Arabia "Anti-Terror" Law Would... →
bethefoodoflove:
(New York) – Amnesty International has obtained copies of a secret draft Saudi Arabian anti-terrorism law that would allow the authorities to prosecute peaceful dissent with harsh penalties as “terrorist crime.” Under the draft law, the definition of terrorist crimes is so broad that legitimate dissent would, in effect, be criminalized.
The organization obtained copies of...
2 tags
This Is The Right One: What I See →
lilmaj132:
This whole protracted self-inflicted debt debacle has truly revealed the state of affairs in this country. Journalism is being reduced to he-said-she-said publicity while talking points have been camouflaged as the heart of the matter. Ignorant ideology has been peddled as sensible solutions. What is flaunted as compromise is in fact caving. The lack of a moral outcry against the...
5 tags
McConnell Tells Reid He Will Not Negotiate With... →
moorewr:
Apparently McConnell just told Leader Reid that he will not negotiate directly with him, and will only negotiate with President Obama.
McConnell also told Reid that he would not allow Reid’s bill to pass with a simple majority vote, so in other words, he’s going to allow the Senate to filibuster. This means that the Senate would not be allowed to vote on Reid’s bill until Sunday at...
2 tags
House finally gets Boehner's bill through; dies... →
quickhits:
House Approves Speaker Boehner’s Revised Debt Plan (C-SPAN)
7 tags
The allure of Afghanistan | Pepe Escobar →
Afghanistan is not often perceived as a mineral Holy Grail.
But, as it turns out, between $1-3 trillion in mineral wealth lies unexplored across the Hindu Kush. There’s enough uranium, lithium, copper and iron ore to potentially turn Afghanistan into a commodities powerhouse.
The Pentagon knows all about it - how could it not? And the Russians have known about it since at least the 1970s,...
4 tags
5 tags
Burnt out →
A well deserved respite for Iona Craig. Her stories and nearly-live tweeting of the events in Sanaa throughout the Yemeni revolution have been crucial to my understanding of what’s truly going on in that tinderbox.
ionacraig:
The view of a pitch black Sana’a skyline from my flat in Old Sana’a
From the Frontline Club
Tomorrow marks 250 days since daily protests began in Yemen. I,...
7 tags
$22 trillion Social Security surplus revealed on... →
When Peter Coy, the Bloomberg Businessweek Economics Editor, appeared this morning on “Washington Journal,” he brought along a chart for his discussion of the magazine’s cover article, “Why the Debt Crisis is Even Worse Than You Think.” But, the chart, purported to show a national fiscal gap, did not match Coy’s talking points. As Coy concluded commenting that...
