Category Archives: Uncategorized

April 27, 2011 · 8:12 pm

Debt proposals: The Courageous Progressive Caucus Budget | The Economist

I’m glad to see this proposal finally getting some attention….

This is the one that makes real sense and has the right priorities….

And this is from “The Economist” which is not exactly a left-wing publication…

Mr Miller’s column notes that “the  Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far; it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts.” Which is pretty interesting. Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus’s co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year.

Mr Ryan’s plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus’s plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.

I’m not really sure what “courage” is supposed to mean here, but this seems precisely backwards. For 30 years, certainly since Walter Mondale got creamed by Ronald Reagan, the most dangerous thing a politician can do has been to call for tax hikes. Politicians who call for higher taxes are punished, which is why they don’t do it. I’m curious to see what adjectives people would apply to the Progressive Congressional Caucus’s budget proposal. But it’s hard for me to imagine the media calling a proposal to raise taxes “courageous” and “honest”. And my sense is that the disparate treatment here is a structural bias rooted in class.

via Debt proposals: The courageous Progressive Caucus budget | The Economist.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:23 am

China’s Economy to Surpass that of the US by 2016

And Americans- who had to buy a bunch of cheap crap at Wal Mart have no one but themselves to blame….

Ever since Americans decided it was better to have a bunch of junk than a few nice, high quality things, we’ve been headed in this direction…

When price becomes the most important thing and people elsewhere can make it cheaper, well, you do the math…

This is really as much- if not more of- a failure of the American Value system as it is of American Politics…

From  Yahoo News and MarketWatch:

The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a bombshell, and nobody noticed.

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the moment when the “Age of America” will end and the U.S. economy will be overtaken by that of China.

And it’s a lot closer than you may think.

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China’s economy will surpass that of America in real terms in 2016 — just five years from now.

Put that in your calendar.

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the international security system is going to look like in just a handful of years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their privileged status as the liabilities of the world’s hegemonic power.

According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund’s website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year — Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? — will be the last to preside over the world’s largest economy.

Most people aren’t prepared for this. They aren’t even aware it’s that close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the mid-2020s.

via imf-bombshell-age-america-end-marketwatch: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance.

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April 26, 2011 · 7:48 pm

Jon Bon Jovi’s New Restaurant Is Pay-What-You-Can

This is really cool…

From TakePart.com:

For anyone who’s living on a prayer—or looking to give love a good name—a new opportunity is springing up in Red Bank, New Jersey: it’s Jon Bon Jovi’s Soul Kitchen, a restaurant where patrons pay what they can afford and volunteers help run the restaurant.

The Soul Kitchen, which will enjoy a grand opening this Spring, is founded on the principle that a healthy meal can feed the soul. Diners can pick any item on the menu and pay what they’re able. Patrons who don’t have money can volunteer an hour of their time in the kitchen to cover the cost of their meal, and anyone who can afford to give a little more than the recommended donation of $10 will be helping to feed someone with less means.

Most importantly, stresses the Kitchen’s website, the restaurant is a place for conversation and community. Volunteer staff serve diners with respect and friendliness, and patrons are encouraged to meet and greet new friends.

via Bon Jovi’s New Restaurant Is Pay-What-You-Can | TakePart – Inspiration to Action.

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April 26, 2011 · 6:35 pm

Goodbye, Phoebe Snow– ‘Poetry Man’ singer, Dies at 60

The amazingly gifted singer Phoebe Snow passed away today.  She was very special.

My partner, Steve, and I were privileged to see her perform at “Birdland” in New York just a couple of years ago.  We sat at a ringside table not more than a few feet from her.  That will always be a great memory for us….

She was an amazing singer and an amazing person….

Here is an excerpt from her obituary and a CBS Profile.

I’ll also post a couple of video clips of her performing…

NEW YORK – It wasn’t long after the release of “Poetry Man,” the breezy, jazzy love song that would make Phoebe Snow a star, that the singer experienced another event that would dramatically alter her life.

In 1975, she gave birth to a daughter, Valerie Rose, who was found to be severely brain-damaged. Her husband split from her soon after the baby was born. And, at a time when many disabled children were sent to institutions, Snow decided to keep her daughter at home and care for the child herself.

The decision to be Valerie’s primary caretaker would lead her to abandon music for a while and enter into ill-fated business decisions in the quest to stay solvent enough to take care of Valerie.

Snow, who worked her way back into the music performing world in the 1980s and continued to perform in recent years, died on Tuesday from complications of a brain hemorrhage she suffered in January 2010, said Rick Miramontez, her longtime friend and public relations representative. She was 60.

Snow never regretted her decision to put aside music so she could focus on Valerie’s care. She was devastated when her daughter, who was not expected to live beyond her toddler years, died in 2007 at 31.

“She was my universe,” she told the website PopEntertainment.com that year. “She was the nucleus of everything. I used to wonder, am I missing something? No. I had such a sublime, transcendent experience with my child. She had fulfilled every profound love and intimacy and desire I could have ever dreamed of.”

After her stroke last year, Snow endured bouts of blood clots, pneumonia and congestive heart failure, said her manager, Sue Cameron.

“The loss of this unique and untouchable voice is incalculable,” Cameron said. “Phoebe was one of the brightest, funniest and most talented singer-songwriters of all time and, more importantly, a magnificent mother to her late brain-damaged daughter, Valerie, for 31 years. Phoebe felt that was her greatest accomplishment.”

Known as a folk guitarist who made forays into jazz and blues, Snow put her stamp on soul classics such as “Shakey Ground,” “Love Makes a Woman” and “Mercy, Mercy Mercy” on over a half dozen albums.

via Phoebe Snow, ‘Poetry Man’ singer, dies at 60 – Yahoo! News.

Here is a clip of a profile from CBS a couple of years ago:

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April 24, 2011 · 10:51 pm

The Problem With Gay Men Today : Salon.com Talks to Larry Kramer

Very interesting interview with Larry Kramer about the differences between the generations of Gay Men….

Hard as it is to believe, this generation really grew up in a different, safer, more accepting  time …

Those of us who are older had a very different experience- and they have no idea what it was like during the AIDS Crisis or growing up when it was still, as Lord Alfred Douglas said, “The love that dare not speak its name”.

And Gay Men, like most Americans, don’t really care about or want to know their history….

Larry Kramer’s ground breaking play from the outbreak of the AIDS crisis opens on Broadway this week….

From Salon.com interview with Thomas Rogers:

Rogers:  I saw a preview of the play last night with a friend. I think many of the ideas in the play will seem exotic and a little dated to a lot of young gay men.

Kramer:  Like what?

Rogers:  Like the idea of promiscuity as a political statement and that it would be treasonous or controversial for gay men to tell other gay men not to have sex, or to have sex with a condom. What do you think young people should take away from the play?

Kramer:  It’s our history. We’re gay. This was part of our history. This was the most horrible thing the gay population ever lived through. And yet it also represented — later on, with ACT UP, and the getting of AIDS drugs — the most spectacular achievement the gay population ever had. We gays did that.

I don’t know why so many gay men don’t want to know their history. I don’t know why they turned their back on the older generation as if they don’t want to have anything to do with them. I would like us to get beyond that.

Rogers:  But do you really think that lack of interest in history is particular to this generation?

Kramer:  You tell me.

Rogers:  Well, I’m 27, and I know that my formative images of gay life had nothing to do with AIDS. Ellen came out of the closet when I was in junior high and “Will & Grace” made gayness seem like a consumer identity more than anything else. Gayness wasn’t really linked with sickness is my mind, and so those early AIDS battles, I think, seem very alien to a lot of young people’s experiences.

Kramer:  I don’t know. I could understand what you’re saying. Sometimes when I go to schools, kids say that they’re taught to be non-confrontational or non-participatory now, almost like it’s not cool to have opinions and express them, which is sad. I hope we’re coming out of all that.

MORE:   The problem with gay men today – Interviews – Salon.com.

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April 22, 2011 · 7:45 pm

Donald Trump Takes Up 40% Of GOP 2012 Coverage As Sarah Palin Fades Away |

Like I’ve said, the GOP primary is going to be the best show in town…

I just hope none of these fools get elected are we are really in serious trouble.  The election of Bush to a second term proved anything is possible….

From TalkingPointsMemo.Com:

Statistics wiz Nate Silver analyzed media coverage of possible GOP 2012 candidates and his results paint a dramatic picture of Donald Trump’s meteoric rise and Sarah Palin’s equally spectacular collapse in the press.

According to Silver’s research, Donald Trump has occupied 40% of all coverage of the GOP primaries in blogs, newspapers, television, and radio stations over the last month. His share of the spotlight by far outpaces any other likely contender, only one of whom breaks into double digits — barely.

That runner-up would be Palin, who has seen her press coverage rapidly decline in recent months along with her credibility as a candidate. Palin occupied only 11% of primary coverage in April, the same percentage as March, when she was eclipsed by Newt Gingrich — who announced his exploratory committee — at 19%.That represents a huge drop since November 2010, when Palin dominated the conversation with 51% of all coverage, providing some statistical evidence to the case pundits have made in recent weeks that she no longer holds the same buzz she used to. Apparently it’s getting to her staff, who have taken to complaining on Twitter about the lack of coverage.

via Donald Trump Takes Up 40% Of GOP 2012 Coverage As Sarah Palin Fades Away | TPMDC.

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April 21, 2011 · 10:40 pm

Tyler Perry To Spike Lee: ‘Go Straight To Hell’

This is an interesting dynamic….

All I’ll say is that I tried to watch the first Tyler Perry Madea movie on HBO and thought it was just awful.  I couldn’t believe the stereotypical characters and the bad acting and writing….

I couldn’t watch the whole thing it was so bad….

But this isn’t my fight…

From The Huffington Post:

The long-simmering war of words between Tyler Perry and Spike Lee is heating up again.

Perry, in both a message on his website and a press conference to promote “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” hit out against Lee, who in 2009 said, among other things, that Perry’s films “harken back to ‘Amos n’ Andy’.” While Perry’s website message was vague and resilient, defending his work as both spiritually uplifting and fun, his words for Lee were blunt and harsh in the press conference.

“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said during the press conference (via Box Office Magazine). “Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’ I am sick of him talking about black people going to see movies. This is what he said: ‘you vote by what you see,’ as if black people don’t know what they want to see.”

Perry’s films are consistent high performers at the box office; all independently financed, they’ve taken in over $520 million in ticket receipts over the past six years. He recently extended his deal with distributor Lionsgate, with whom he has worked since 2005. Lee was critical in spite of that success.

“Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors, but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is coonery and buffoonery,” he said in ’09. “I know it’s making a lot of money and breaking records, but we can do better. … I am a huge basketball fan, and when I watch the games on TNT, I see these two ads for these two shows (Tyler Perry’s ‘Meet the Browns’ and ‘House of Payne’), and I am scratching my head. We got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep ‘n’ Eat?”

via Tyler Perry To Spike Lee: ‘Go Straight To Hell’.

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April 21, 2011 · 10:34 pm

Happy Birthday, Patti Lupone

Broadway’s original Evita is 62 today….

Here are a couple of clips of her at her best….

Here she is in her first Tony Award winning performance in “Evita 32 years ago…

I won’t post her second Tony Award winning performance as Moma Rose in “Gypsy” because I just hated her performance….

She was on a total ego trip in that show….It was over the top and out of control.

But I have also seen her in concert and found her  quite charming…

But here is a taste of her in better form today…

Say what you will, the woman sure knows how to own the stage….

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April 20, 2011 · 9:29 am

A Day in the Life of Joe Middle Class Republican

There are several versions of this floating around the internet.

This seems to be the original, written by John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio….

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance — now Joe gets it, too.

He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

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April 19, 2011 · 11:53 pm

Happy Birthday, Tim Curry. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s” Sweet Transvestite from Transylvania is 65

So many stars I grew up with seem to be ready for Social Security.

I must have been an infant when I saw this for the first time…

It was quite mind-blowing to see this in ultra conservative Danville, Virginia in the late 1970’s.

I’ll never forget one of my friends mother’s helping him with his panty hose before we went to see it.

He has two children now…

And another musical moment that’s a little more mainstream….

From “Annie” in 1982 with Carol Burnett and Bernadette Peters.

That really should have been a better movie….

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