BREAKING NEWTS

2012-01-28T13:10:00.000-05:00

THANKS TO ROMNEY'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NRA, HERE'S A JUMBLE OF COMMANDMENTS HONORING HIM (IT'S BEEN SO LONG, I DON'T REMEMBER THE NUMERICAL CORRESPONDENCE). FIRST COMMANDMENT: You must see how Mitt Romney's a viable candidate for the presidency of a country thanks to his father's humble Mexican origins.SECOND COMMANDMENT: You must accept that Mitt Romney has a thing for French Canadians. THIRD COMMANDMENT: You must not lust after French Canadians. They're all reserved for Mitt Romney. FOURTH COMMANDMENT: YOu must not vote for other candidates than Mitt Romney. FIFTH COMMANDMENT: You must steal from everybody earning $50,000 or less a year, then fire them and give a percentage to Mitt Romney. SIXTH COMMANDMENT: You must not murder corporations or Mitt Romney. SEVENTH COMMANDMENT: The most you can say to Mitt Romney, if you're miffed,is "heck". EIGHTH COMMANDMENT: You must donate to the same charities Mitt Romney donates to. NINTH COMMANDMENT: You must learn how to spell Mitt Romney's first name out in its entirety. TENTH COMMANDMENT: You must lie about watching Mitt Romney commercials.

2012-01-28T12:56:00.001-05:00

TURN OFF THE TV: TURN ON WHOSE IMAGINATION?

2012-01-28T12:54:00.001-05:00

AMBIGUITIES.Other words which originally demeaned those with mental disabilities: idiot; fool.And then, in terms of disabilities, there's always the whimsical spazz, the key cultural value here being the ability to run like a gazelle through the streets of Manhattan to catch a cab to the nearest clothes fitting.

2012-01-27T18:53:00.001-05:00

NAZI VERPISS DICH!

2012-01-27T16:49:00.001-05:00

TACO BEAU. Connecticut mayor Joseph Maturo, who expressed a wish to eat tacos in an effort to to build bridges to redeem himself and the racially profiling cops captivated by Latinos had his prayers answered: today 2,000 were delivered to him in person.

2012-01-27T13:38:00.002-05:00

ACCIDENTS IN LANGUAGE.Yesterday, at Printed Matters opening for Maurizio Cattelan. The usual chatter, like there is some interest he takes in his subjects that seems...the usual looks of disgust of elitism unbound from some of the staff toward me, which, when caught, turn into the fear of the loss of a sale, and the usual display of material with titles such as retard squad. I just kept on thinking how Kloisterman and Hodgman use the term, how there is really no word defining sadistic and brutalizing behavior other than terms inplying mental disability, such as psycho, retard, cretin, and how safe that was, as if a person with a clean bill of mental health couldn't gut another, and more, on purpose. So I mentioned how the term was ambiguous to the man at the register, who in tone of voice implied I wasn't on the scene. Then I said, I guess not, since by purchasing a copy of Charlie I was only there to sustain his rent habit, and left.

2012-01-27T12:53:00.001-05:00

THE COLONOSCOPY ON THE MOON......and from a perfected world, on his little colony far, far from home the Church of Gingrich can celebrate his own marriages as moonwalking cops provide funding via parking violations. Amen.

2012-01-27T12:02:00.002-05:00

RIGHT TO WORK AND YOU.People who choose to support Right to Work and not pay union dues now figure that by the time there are no unions left and wages are driven down to nothing by businesses, they'll be rich.

2012-01-27T11:58:00.002-05:00

JAN BREWER AND THE "INTIMIDATING" PRESIDENT

I don't know what the hullaballoo is about. Jan Brewer was just testing which way her wind was blowing.

2012-01-25T16:04:00.002-05:00

JOHN CHIARA

2012-01-24T20:48:00.001-05:00

Iain Baxter

2012-01-24T01:26:00.000-05:00

THE REPUBLICAN PRIMARIES. Glad to see the clowning isn't over even though Bachmann and Perry are gone. If Gingrich's answers are no as to whether he offends Americans with prejudicial views on African Americans, as to whether he wanted an open marriage with his second wife, and as to whether he was ever a lobbyist for Freddy Mac, let him just say no to an easier set of questions that have no ethical resonance: ask him if he's a woman, not inside or ask him if he's still in high school. In the meantime,for Cold War and inhuman interest votes he envisions new covert warfare against Cuba, even though that country presents no threat to us. To polish himself off as an anti-government pundit he referred to the Dobbs-Frank law concerning mortgage lending as "more corruption", not needed federal assistance. Enemies to the end, both he and Romney at least agree as well they should on some matters. The first is a brave new world of "self-deportation": starve illegal immigrants by denying them any employment opportunity, and they'll leave on their own. The second would allow their acceptance of the Dream Act if altered. Currently it would allow illegal immigrants's children to become citizens if they attend college or join the military. The Republican duo would allow them citizenship only by "taking a risk" and joining the military, nix on the old college try. To top this entire debate experience off, Gingrich generously allows even those falsely accused to reflect on the appropriateness of their legal rights: for him, people on death row in this country have an "extraordinary right to appeal". In a perfect universe, if you're on death row there must be a reason. By the way, just discovered in passing from reading the NYTimes: Gingrich is the same man who said in a debate that Catholics were anti-USA spies as well, sounding much like a Klan member, is the same man as the one who converted to Catholicism from Lutheranism to please wife number three.

2012-01-22T19:47:00.000-05:00

Verizon's at it again: The CWA union is protesting the firm's retreat from the negotiating table in terms of benefits and pensions. To add insult to injury 45,000 workers are at risk of losing their jobs: Verizon wants to contract the work out. Their policy for new hires are simple: No benefits and no pensions.look into www.UnityAtVerizon.org

2012-01-16T19:35:00.001-05:00

Maurizio Cattelan at the Guggenheim. A show worth seeing, even if the Guggenheim is at odds with workers fighting for their rights, so the pay as you wish from 5:45 to 7 something was fine. I paid a penny to the suggested ten dollars, which was worth it even more when I was condescendingly allowed to purchase three postcards by the gift shop hoity house help. The show lasts till January 22. All his work, sculptural and non, is suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the museum, amidst stuffed pigeons, and all of it is satirical, ridiculing among else the sacrality of art, such as Lucio Fontana's knife on canvas marks turned into a series of Untitled Zorro's signatures, or the cult of personality, as in a Picasso statue in seer stance, and the fascistic sacrality present in religion, culture and sexuality with a figure of Hitler on his knees, as if praying, or the billboard presentation of a new image of woman in a fascistic mausoleum white perfume bottle, presented as Which will be the next woman? in Italian, by a supposed firm ridiculing the Schiaparelli signature as tired and assish or, last but not least, his ridicule of the art world's presentations of plushies in various form and of alter sexuality in a plastic threesome with a male figure placing a flower's stem in a receiving female's anus. The crowd it drew was incredible. All were mostly serious and blankly pondering just how to simulate an artistic appreciation that reflected positively on themselves, with the exception of a man saying "Hold on Paco-I'll show you something funny: a horse's ass". There were a couple of racists struggling through a list of Italian names mispronouncing one and all, then finally giving up, saying "Jersey Shore" while walking off in frustration,and a woman in her twenties holding and caressing a stuffed animal simulating a white persian cat, misunderstanding the taxidermied work that dangled from the ceiling, such as one that brought to mind the Italian proverb sleeping dogs don't bite, also bringing to mind that perhaps they do. Talking about misunderstandings, a child pointed at a sculpture saying to a woman accompanying him: "look at that horse-it looks like its head is cut off", both then giggling sadistically, or a woman speaking of a taxidermied dog saying "that dog is disgusting", or a man with the learned intent stare of a connoisseur admiring as beauty the crassness of a nude female torso. These attitudes are exactly what the work is deriding, and it is interesting how a mere reference should draw closeted admirers desperate for a titillating which was far from there. Maybe they were all united by some degree of sincerely perverse masochistic affection for the caricaturistically realistic.

2012-01-12T15:00:00.003-05:00

The Supreme Court and contemporary society. In a bouncily overconfident effort to escape the pressures of current culture and its realities, the country's highest court declared that United States juridical concerns no longer pertain to those hired by religious organizations to represent their views, leaving the vast world of possible crimes committed by those members in some deity's hands because they have a right to be hired to proselitize exclusively based on their belonging to a particular faith. And, nothwistanding the evidence that at least 76% of eyewitness accounts were later disqualified by DNA analysis, the jury still has the right to be swayed by the malice or overconfidence of an eyewitness instead of allowing a judge to decide first whether the evidence should be presented as valid to jurors or not, unless in cases of police misconduct.

2012-01-02T18:35:00.001-05:00

MOMA's new photography 2011 same as no photography in any year. No, I'm not naming names of photographers, simply because they aren't. I wouldn't pay the admission to see it, so go on Free Fridays, courtesy of Target. Entry starts at 4:00. It's a rollercoaster of repulsive, prejudice and cult of the personal glitch. You get to see a seventy year old diva, culturally "nekkid" under a black leather jacket, lost in a room with an African-American plaster servant statue; then you're treated to a photographer's idea of her very own "family" of perfect strangers, mostly Hispanic and African American characters in various phases of inappropriate sexual behavior: a clothed mother portrayed with a daughter "nekkid" under a nylon stocking body suit; a woman, "nekkid" straddling a man in the same room as a sleeping infant. Things go from racist to culturally bigoted: there's the usual anti-communist anti-Mao spread serving a new anxious immigrant class of Asian, and a frozenly hostile Greek-English analysis of Turkish society, not easy to misread but enhanced by knowing of the deep enmity between Turkish and Greek cultures. The best of the worst were the pseudo-intellectual expectorations by others: a facile series of shots of cafe' and library details because one consolingly nourishes the body, the other the soul (Must not be the New York Public Library, with its current firings, future closings of Midmanhattan branch and another and the destruction of the consulting Main library building now inscripted five times with the name of an important donor); a series of ceiling bare lightbulb shots and a close-up of a male and female middleaged couple,not traditionally erotic, prone, staring. The titillating implications of sex in experiential bleak exhaustion leave you as nourished as eating frosting from a month-old cupcake would. In this vein of ponderosity, another pseudo artist offers us an unrequested insight in the land of her nightmares, which includes a bare tree with branches screechingly in focus. I mean, tell a therapist. At least you have to pay him or her to listen to you.

2011-12-30T20:40:00.000-05:00

John Hodgman, from The Areas of My Expertise.Georgia. NICKNAME: "Where every street is named Peachtree" STATE COCKTAIL: The "Georgia-on-My-Mind": equal parts Coke, Peachtree schnapps, and dry sherry. NOTES: Georgia is a bounteous state marked by the near supernatural production of two remarkably versatile crops: peanuts and peaches. The former is commonly trasformed into peanut butter, various roofing materials, and allergens; the latter are used to make Peaches 'n' Cream Lifesavers, accounting software, and glue. Both are made into schnapps. Martin Luther King, Jr.,was born in Atlanta, yet it would take a thousand clones of that great activist for peace and tolerance to erase Georgia's dark reputation as the birthplace of Stalin. Unfortunately, though, conservative anticloning ideologues within the U.S. government have conspired to keep MLK models #1-1000 in stasis in the basement of Georgia State University. Their fate is uncertain.

2011-12-07T17:43:00.001-05:00

Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Gay factor: it was cute and instructional listening to Mrs. Clinton speechify with ardor for the Human Rights of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender people in the world while The New York Times just published an article in which she states that she is still against gay marriage. Her speech received a standing ovation at the United Nations.

2011-12-07T17:22:00.001-05:00

Andrew Cuomo and Democratic Values. While New York's governor has been touting a more just taxation system that would have those in a lesser bracket pay less, those in a higher pay more, once the newspapers discovered that with the so called millionaire's tax (a tax surcharge) gone, the higher brackets would pay less of a percentage of taxes than they do with it still in place, the Governor has miraculously changed his statements, criticizing all increased taxation as a deterrent for the development of the economy (hell if I'll ever use the term grow). The loss in tax revenue will be a neat 2.1 billion. The millionaire's tax about to expire was 7.85% for those earning from 200,000 to 500,000 and for those earning $500,000 and up 8.97%. Here are the percentages, soon to diminish yes, but for whom?: $200,000 : now 6.85 in the future 6.65%; for those earning $350,000: now 7.85% in the future $6.85; for those earning 2.5 million: now 8.97%, in the future 8.82%. A way to improve things? Here's a quote from The New York Times:" The Public Employees Federation, the second largest union of state workers, produced a flier urging people to call Albany lawmakers and demand that any tax deal generate the same amount of money as the expiring tax surcharge." Hey, I'd go bolder and encourage a percentile increase in those earning $100,000 and over, this moderated by a peek into family composition too. Let's just see if there's a problem with the budget anymore.

2011-12-07T17:13:00.001-05:00

The Health Care Option.While the new Democrats seem to be searching for kudos, say, in an appearance of Nancy Pelosi's on Bloomberg's financial network saying that the administration and she were all for reducing spending, after all, hadn't they cut Medicaid for the new Helth Care Reform Bill? they also seem to have brought 1.5 billion dollars in prescription drug savings to 2,500,000 Medicare recipients ($569 per person)to satisfy a different class of people.

2011-10-27T16:01:00.001-04:00

No Section 8 housing vouchers, no city wide Advantage vouchers either.October is the last rental assistance formerly homeless people will receive since the State decided to cut funding for the citywide Advantage program, with the City's objections duly recorded. This was decided by New York State Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische. There is NO housing assistance in place on Federal, State or City wide levels AT ALL.

2011-10-27T13:15:00.001-04:00

The House of Representatives, in its glorious Republican majority, passed a bill that would prohibit abortion even in the event of a mother's death. This is it: if you're bleeding and go to a hospital, the hospital is not required to treat you or transfer you to a facility that could save you. This seems to involve Catholic hospitals in particular. So, basically, you would bleed to death rather than undergo life saving procedures. The bill is expected to encounter Senate opposition and a Presidential veto, if it takes that.

2011-10-27T13:08:00.002-04:00

Gilad Shalit has been freed by Hamas, and it's hard not to compare his conditions with those of the Palestinian prisoners released in exchange

2011-10-16T16:16:00.000-04:00

From The Nation's What's next for the global food movement? volume, dated October 3, 2011: "President Obama ordered " the EPA to delay new regulations on ozone emissions because rules pose undue 'burdens' on corporate polluters." The president has also created fuel efficiency standars that "will significantly lower air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But he has done bad things as well, including opening vast tracts of the West to coal mining and providing much more funding to nuclear and fossil fuel than to green alternatives." "sustenance has become a health hazard-with the US diet implicated in four out of our top ten deadly diseases." "Just four companies control at least three-quarters of international grain trade; and in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations-with boards totaling only 138 people-had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales. Conditions for American farmworkers remain so horrific that seven Florida growers have been convicted of slavery involving more than 1,000 workers. Life expectancy of US farmworkers is forty-nine years." "roughly half-billion small farms worldwide (...) produce 70 percent of the world's food." In the United States "The largest 9 percent of farms produce more than 60 percent of output. But small farmers still control more than half our farmland, and the growing market for healthy fresh food has helped smallholders grow: their numbers went up by 18,467 between 2002 and 2007." "Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta- control about half the proprietary seed market worldwide." In 2002 the Supreme Court allowed the patent of life forms. The opinion was written by once Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas. In 1992 the Food and Drug Administration stated that "the agency is not aware of any information showing that [GMO] foods...differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way" while in 40,000 FDA file pages GMO's can contain "unexpected toxins, carcinogens or allergens." "(...) now most US corn and soybeans are GMO, with genes patented largely by one company: Monsanto.(...) they could be in 75 percent of processed food."

2011-10-11T12:30:00.001-04:00

The law requesting a urine sample to collect benefits has been passed in Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, besides Florida. Legislators of thirty-six states proposed the law this year.

2011-10-11T12:27:00.002-04:00

An adjunct teaching history at the County College of Morris in New Jersy, Elizabeth Snyder, sent an email to a student who has a stutter requesting he ask questions before or after class and write in class question answers on a piece of paper.

2011-10-11T08:13:00.000-04:00

Italy's Berlusconi government has cut the budget for teachers of differently abled students.

2011-10-09T19:10:00.000-04:00

Why we would be better off celebrating Italian Day of Independence or Italian Day of Liberation (the end of World War II in Italy) instead of Columbus Day:"Columbus wrote:' As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. ' ", " Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, Portugal. Its population, mostly poor peasants, worked for the nobility, who were 2 percent of the population and owned 95 percent of the land. Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors. Like other states of the modern world, Spain sought gold, which was becoming the new mark of wealth, more useful than land because it could buy anything.", " In return for bringing back gold and spices, they promised Columbus 10 percent of the profits, governorship over new-found lands, and the fame that would go with the new title: Admiral of the Ocean Sea.", "The Indians, Columbus reported,"are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone..." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage ' as much gold as they need...and as many slaves as they ask.' " From A People's History of the United States. Howard Zinn.

2011-10-08T13:24:00.000-04:00

Here's a compendium of news from The New York Times: Kosovo organ trading ring paid as much as $20,000 for kidneys to people from Turkey or impoverished ex-Communist countries while selling them from $100,000 to $130,000; The United States Preventive Services Task Force no longer recommends mammographies for women under 40 or prostate cancer screening tests for men. These are still used in conjunction to the annual check-up regardless, thanks to many objections; The Pakistani government is thinking of filing charges against a doctor who ran a fraudulent vaccination program to try to locate Bin Laden; A Bedouin mosque was set on fire in Israel, probably by Jewish extremists. The government has already apologized. The Bedouins are a long time ally of Israel's; Alabama's Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn upheld what many consider the harshest law on illegal immigration yet: now people at routine traffic stops can be asked for immigration papers by state and local police, contracts involving illegal immigrants are no longer enforceable and schools are required to ascertain the immigration status of its population; an injectible hormonal contraceptive doubles the risk of HIV transmission than no injectable contraceptive at all; One of the Cuban Five was released from prison on probation after serving 13 years for nothing. He and the others were sent to the States legally thanks to an agreement between Cuba and the United States governments so as to infiltrate extreme rightist Cuban emigree terrorist organizations. The five instead were convicted by Federal Court decision; Severe schizophrenics show vast improvement on a variant of cognitive talk therapy.

2011-10-01T20:35:00.001-04:00

Not only are Al Shabaad militias cutting off hands and feet for attempted theft in Somalia, but, because of the drought, they are stealing food as well.

2011-10-01T20:32:00.000-04:00

Kurt Vonnegut. From Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons. Most of the true tales of masterfulness in new environments with new technologies have been cruel and greedy, it seems to me. The concepts of reality held by the masterful people have customarily been stupid or solipsistic in retrospect. Nobody has been remarkably secure, the masters have often ceased to be masters quickly. There have been tremendous messes to be cleaned up, ravaged landscapes dotted by shattered Earthlings and their machines. Stupid.

2011-09-30T16:39:00.002-04:00

Al Shabaad militias cut off hands and feet even for attempted theft.

2011-09-30T16:25:00.000-04:00

On last night's Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC):Gay couples are banned from marrying in 44 states, one of which being Mississippi with a disapproval rate of 86%; for that matter, in 2001 Mississippians voted 2 to 1 to keep the confederate image on the state flag, 46% think interracial marriage should be illegal, 40% legal and 14% don't know. They will also soon be asked to vote whether a person is so at the moment of fertilization, cloning or functional equivalent thereof. If even a cell is posited as a person, then how can slavery with its 2/3rds of a personhood have existed? What this means:Why did Mississippi join the Union again?

2011-09-30T14:49:00.002-04:00

" Germany continues to preach savings over stimulus to contain the debt crisis, withstanding sustained pressure from American policy makers and opting for the path of fiscal discipline supported by the Netherlands and Finland"From Germany Approves Euro Bloc Bailout Expansion, by Nicholas Kulish, in today's The New York Times.What this really means:You say you need money, we say we save money, but we still can't call it off...

2011-09-29T15:08:00.003-04:00

Governor Cuomo won't start new negotiations with members of the New York State Public Employees Federation who refused a deal that would have stopped salary increases, increased health benefit contributions and left the workers unpaid for absences from work. His and the administration's answer? Job cuts: 643 in Mental Health, 446 in the Department of Corrections, 386 in the Office for People with Developmental Disabilities and 361 in the Department of Transportation. With Democrats like this, who needs Tea Party Republicans?

2011-09-28T20:33:00.002-04:00

"Hello, it's a great day in South Carolina" is the new greeting state employees are required by law to say over the phone, thanks to Governor Nikki Haley.

2011-09-28T09:19:00.000-04:00

The town clerk of Ledyard NY refused to issue a marriage certificate to a lesbian couple because, at her say, doing so infringes upon her religious beliefs. If a lesbian couple holds so much power in the town clerk's life, imagine what members of other religions must do.See the article in today's New York Times: Rights Collide as Town Clerk Sidesteps Role in Gay Marriage.

2011-09-27T15:35:00.002-04:00

Saudi women now have the right to vote, but just recently one was sentenced to 10 lashes for driving a car. According to Islamic law, women need a male caretaker to travel outside of Saudi Arabia, to work, and to go to the doctor's.

2011-09-27T15:27:00.001-04:00

Neutrinos are faster than light by 60 nanoseconds.

2011-09-27T12:06:00.000-04:00

2009 Pulitzer Prize Non-Fiction winner " Slavery by Another Name: The Reenslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War Two" by Douglas A. Blackmon is banned reading by Montgomery Alabama Kilby Correctional Facility staff. It's considered a "security threat" because it describes how prisoners were leased to what amounted to slave labor. The authorities in question claim that the book breaks a rule which bans material that "incites violence based on race, religion, sex, creed, or nationality or incites disobedience toward law enforcement officials or correctional staff." See "Alabama Inmate Sues to Read Southern History Book" by Campbell Robertson, in September 27, 2011 The New York Times.

2011-09-27T11:59:00.002-04:00

Republicans are balking at the President's new job bill because it also prohibits discrimination based on the person's unemployment status. To Texas Republican Representative Louie Gohmert the unemployed are simply a "protected class" there to make trial lawyers rich, since recognizing economic disparity is not his forte.

2011-09-27T11:56:00.004-04:00

In the Unites States, 46 million people live below the poverty line.

2011-09-27T11:56:00.001-04:00

From the recent United Nations speeches: Netanyahu mentions that Itan provides Palestinians with 10,000 missiles and Grad rockets.

2011-09-27T00:46:00.000-04:00

Edgar Lee Masters. Spoon River Anthology. Wendell P. Bloyd They first charged me with disorderly conduct, / There being no statute on blasphemy./ Later they locked me up as insane / Where I was beaten to death by a Catholic guard. / My offense was this: / I said God lied to Adam, and destined him / To lead the life of a fool, / Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good. / And when Adan outwitted God by eating the apple / And saw through the lie / God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking / The fruit of immortal life. / For Christ's sake, you sensible people, / Here's what God Himself says about it in the book of Genesis: / " And the Lord God said, behold the man / Is become as one of us" (a little envy, you see), / "To know good and evil" (The all-is-good lie exposed) : / "And now lest he put forth his hand and take / Also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever: / Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden." / (The reason I believe God crucified His Own Son / To get out of the wretched tangle is, because it / sounds just like Him.)

2011-09-26T17:27:00.002-04:00

A South Carolina woman flies a Confederate flag at her house in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. At the town meeting called for the event, she tearfully says she's not racist. The decision is that she has the right to the flight, and others the right to protest.

2011-09-26T11:55:00.000-04:00

Ahmad Shamloo. Iran.c.1959.Punishment. From This Prison Where I Live. The PEN Anthology of Imprisoned Writers.In this place there is a maze of prisons/and in each prison a myriad of dungeons/and in each dungeon countless cells/and in each cell scores of fettered men./*/One amongst these men,/persuaded of his wife's infidelity/plunged his dagger deep./*/Another amongst these men,/desperate to put bread in his children's mouths,/ slaughtered in the searing midday heat./*/Some amongst these men/on a quiet rainy day/ambushed the money lender./*/ Others, in the hush of the alleyway/crept stealthily onto the rooves./Still others/plundered gold teeth from fresh graves/at midnight./*/ But I, I have never murdered on a dark and stormy night./But I, I have never ambushed the money lender./But I, I have never crept stealthily onto the rooves./*/ In this place there is a maze of prisons/and in each prison a myriad of dungeons/and in each dungeon countless cells/and in each cell scores of fettered men./*/But I, deep in my reveries,/never lend an ear to them. No,/I listen out instead for a dim echo/ of the endless song of the desert grass/as it sprouts, shrivels, withers,/scattering to the winds./*/And I, were I not a fettered man,/one day at dawn,/like a dim, almost buried, memory,/I would leave this cold, contemptible place/*/And this,/This is my crime.

2011-09-25T21:49:00.000-04:00

Roberto Benigni. From Tuttobenigni. All of Benigni.The Middle East Question: I'd like to know what's going on in the Middle East? It's been going on since I've been five years old...I turn on the television: they're bombing in the Middle East...So what's going on there? How is it they don't explain what's going on? Nowdays the Minister of Foreign Affairs goes to the Middle East and says:-How is it going?-They're bombing.-Oh, thanks, goodbye,see you later, huh? That's the explanation...I'd like to go to the Middle East and ask them a question. I'd like to go in there and say: WHAT'S GOING ON? They say:-Why?-WHAT'S GOING ON? HEEEEY! It's been since I was six years old that I turn on the news and there's a mess...-WHAT'S GOING ON???

2011-09-23T21:22:00.005-04:00

President Obama does us honor: he said that if raising taxes equally is class warfare, he's a warrior for the middle class.

2011-09-23T21:20:00.000-04:00

A gay Army soldier had the humanness to ask all the presidential candidates for the Republican Party if they would repeal the ban on Don't Ask Don't Tell and was visibly moved. He was booed by the audience and Santorum urged the military to celibacy. This person is in Iraq risking his life to defend us and his emotions do him honor. The same can't be said for the booers and Santorum.

2011-09-22T20:17:00.000-04:00

Primo Levi. From Ad ora incerta.(At an uncertain hour). To friends.Dear friends, here I say friends/ in the wide meaning of the word:/ wife, sister,brotherhood, parents,/ school friends/people seen only once or associated with for an entire lifetime:/As long as between us, for at least a moment,/ a segment has been stretched,/ a well defined cord./*/ I speak for you, comrades of a way/ thick, not without its difficulties,/ and for you as well, that lost/ your soul, the spirit, the taste for life./ Or no one, or someone, or maybe only one, or you/ who are reading me: remember the time,/ before the wax would harden,/ when everyone was like a signet./ Among us everyone carries the mark/ of the friend met on the way;/ In everyone the trace of everyone./ For good or evil/ in wisdom or folly/ each stamped by the other./ Now that time is beckoning near,/ that events are ended,/ to all of you the soft wish/ that the fall be long and mild. December 16, 1985.

2011-09-22T10:25:00.001-04:00

What constitutionality is possible from a Supreme Court that discounts issues such as minimum doubt and access to justice by the poor in its decisions?

2011-09-21T23:16:00.001-04:00

U.S. Supreme Court refuses to block Troy Davis's execution.Italy and India refuse to sell ingredients for the lethal injection mix to the United States because they are used for lethal injections.Seven of the nine eye-witnesses that placed Troy Davis at the scene of the crime retracted.If there is the minimum doubt of culpability, charges are dropped.And what an inhuman, dead, removed monster is born to judge us all.

2011-09-21T19:53:00.001-04:00

From Elena Doni and Manuela Fulgenzi: Il Secolo delle Donne. L' Italia nel Novecento al Femminile. Women's Century. Italy in the Nineteen Hundreds in Woman.The extremely hard working conditions of rice workers became known when 180,000 women from the areas of Novara and Vercelli went on strike (and strikes had been outlawed by the fascist regime) to protest against cuts in salaries, to sustain the eight hour workday and to insure more humane food and places to live for themselves.What follows is a song they sung:Dear mother, come here/ since I have so many things to tell/ things that make me shake when I speak/ the awful life I have lived./ The awful life I have lived/ there in the moving and cutting/ my beautiful round face/you'll never see again like before./ In the morning those little flies/ that sucked all our blood/and at midday that awful sun/ that made us roast/at midday beans and rice/in the evening rice and beans/and that unnatural bread/that would take our hunger away./And at nine we'd retire/and at ten the inspection/the boss's inspection/all of us resting on bedsprings.

2011-09-19T22:11:00.000-04:00

ENZO-THE-EARTH-REMAINS-IN-ITS-PLACE CUCCHI. From The Ceremony of things. Peter Blum editor.Efforts and explanations that are given while sitting and conversing, while walking on streets covered with gravel; facts from various periods of time; out in the country prevails a light that becomes hard to bear as events and things change. It's because all art has always worked "on its own eyes" , on what it sees. For this man, the work carried out " above and inside the earth" has been absolutely uncreative. A CONCEDED COSMIC LOSS BOUND TO TIME AND DURATION IS THE IDEA OF DRAWING: there is a time of drawing: it is the time of this drawing's replica.Drawing does not exist: it lives a double moment, the moment of the idea and the moment of its articulation; an artistic invention emerges " laterally" and does not mark the field of action of that knowledge of the thing which the thing had previously been designed to contain.

2011-09-19T22:02:00.003-04:00

One minute after midnight tonight is the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell Law...

2011-09-19T12:59:00.001-04:00

Picabia, Francis" NO BECAUSE..." Many people answer with " Yes, but..." With Francis it was always: " No because..."- the incessant discovery of each instant, a multifaceted explosion which cut short any argumentation. Francis also had the gift of total forgetting which enabled him to launch into new paintings without being influenced by the memory of preceding ones.An unceasingly renewed freshness makes him " more than a painter."Marcel Duchamp. From The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. Edited by Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson.

2011-09-19T12:54:00.001-04:00

Can one make works which are not works of art?Marcel Duchamp

2011-09-18T21:26:00.000-04:00

Rick Perry as Agriculture Commissioner in Texas.From an article in today's New York Times's Sunday Review by Gail Collins, " To Perry, everything comes back to Texas" in which she discusses his arrangement while still a Democrat to take Karl Rove's support and run against Jim Hightower, a liberal, for the post of Agricultural Commissioner: " Perry ran against a Hightower rule requiring farmers to get their workers out of the fields before they sprayed pesticide on them, and won."

2011-09-18T18:53:00.001-04:00

Republicans and class warfare.Tomorrow President Obama will present a new minimum tax rate for those who earn over one million dollars a year, one that reflects a similar percentage to that charged those who earn much less. The Republicans are talking of class warfare. So millionaires are actually a class apart by their own sustainers's admission?

2011-09-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

Rainer Maria Rilke. Duino Elegies. From the First Elegy.Oh and there's Night, there's Night, when wind full of cosmic space feeds on our faces

2011-09-17T14:26:00.001-04:00

See two posts down on how to save a life from an execution.

2011-09-17T14:25:00.000-04:00

Delmore Schwartz. The Dark and Falling Summer. From Selected Poems. Summer Knowledge.The rain was full of freshness/ and the fresh fragrance of darkening grapes,/ The rain was as the dark falling of hidden/ And fabulous grapes ripening, great blue thunderheads moving slowly,/ slowly blooming./ The dark air was possessed by the fragrance of freshness,/ By a scattered and confused profusion until/ After the tattering began, the pouring down came/ And plenitude descended, multitudinous:/ And everywhere was full of the pulsing of the loud and fallen dark.

2011-09-16T11:00:00.001-04:00

Barbara Kruger. Work and Money. From Remote Control: Power, Cultures, and the World of Appearances.Whether rendered by hand or caught by camera, a picture is never opaque. To say that it is, to speak of mysterious evocativeness, results in just another promotional mystification. We see an image and we start guessing meanings. We can embroider stories or supposed narratives. Photography's ability to replicate, its suggestion of evidence and claim to "truth" point to its problematic powers but also suggest a secular art which can connect the allowances of anthropology with the intimacies of a cottage industry. It is a trace of both action and comment. In my work I try to question the seemingly natural appearance of images through the textual commentary which accompanies them. This work doesn't suggest contemplation: it initially appears forthright and accessible. Its commentary is both implicit and explicit, engaging questions of definition, power, expectation, and sexual difference. Some of us, with one or two feet in the "art world", might think that our work is all cut out for us, while others are interested in changing the pattern and defining different procedures. Many of us work in areas outside of our art production. Whether out of necessity or adventure, we are at the same time secretaries, paste-up people, billing clerks, carpenters, and teachers. At times our jobs inform our work and vice versa. For instance, teaching, which is a collective process within the hierarchies of education and academia, intervenes in the production of cultural work. Art schools reproduce artists and, in turn, art. It's all work. And most people work for money. But unlike laborers who sell moments of their lives for a short reprieve at the end ( the awaited or dreaded retirement), artists buy work time with job money. Of course, whether this routine is really necessary depends on the good or bad fortune of your fortune: whether you must really work for your money or are merely waiting to inherit it. Money talks. It starts rumors about careers and complicity and speaks of the tragedies and triumphs of our social lives. It makes art. It determines who we fuck and where we do it, what food we eat, whether we are cured or die, and what kind of shoes we wear. On both an emotional and economic level, images can make us rich or poor. I'm interested in work which addresses that power and engages both our criticality and our dreams of affirmation.1981

2011-09-15T16:35:00.000-04:00

Save a life: contact the AFL-CIO to see how you can sign a petition to stay Troy Davis's execution in Georgia on the 21 of this month.

2011-09-15T16:33:00.000-04:00

Salvatore Quasimodo. You call a life. From Tutte le poesie.Labor of love, sadness,/ you call a life/ that inside, deep, has names/ of skies and gardens./*/ And were it be mine the flesh/ that transforms the gift of evil.

2011-09-15T12:32:00.002-04:00

Lamberto Pignotti. Poetry and Politics. From The New Italian Poetry. Feelings razed to the ground/ working in common/confronting/ truth with truth/ mistake with mistake,/ we rebuilt them, made them taller,/ but a leaf hesitates to give itself fully./ Even the sun and the sky,/ this sun and this sky, are recent./ Today a color is invented, tomorrow a dream completed/ and this assumes political value,/ a meaning in poetry./ Words like facts get wet in the rain,/ get scalded in the sun./ It's not an effort/ to extract life,/ to purify it from dross,/ it's to live, live more strongly./ With what is the wind meeting us?

2011-09-14T18:48:00.000-04:00

The AFL-CIO is involved in efforts to stay Troy Davis' s execution in Georgia on the 21st of September.

2011-09-14T18:45:00.000-04:00

Eduardo Galeano. 1944: New York Learning To See. From The Portable Lower East Side. Volume five. Numbers one and two.It is noon and James Baldwin is walking with a friend through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A red light stops them. "Look" says the friend, pointing at the ground.Baldwin looks. He sees nothing."Look,look."Nothing. There is nothing to look at but a filthy little pool of water against the curb.His friend insists:" See? Are you seeing?"And then Baldwin takes a good look and this time he sees, sees a spot of oil spreading in the pool. Then, in the spot of oil, a rainbow, and even deeper down in the pool, the street moving, and people moving in the street: the shipwrecked, the madmen, the magicians, the whole world moving, an astounding world full of worlds that glow in the world. Baldwin sees. For the first time in his life, he sees.

2011-09-12T23:23:00.002-04:00

Read the Change.org post three posts down: it's to save the life of a man.

2011-09-12T23:12:00.001-04:00

Semyon Kirsanov. The new heart. From City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. Edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.I'm busy!I am buildinga model, of an entirelynew heart!A heart for the future: to feeland love with. A heartto understand men with:And also, to tell me, whomI should freelyshake by the hand-and to whom I should never extend it.

2011-09-12T23:10:00.000-04:00

Yevgeny Yevtushenko. FROM A TALK. From City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. Edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.They tell me: " Man you are brave!"And I'm not-bravery never was my vice.I just didn't feel low enough to be quite as cowardly as some I saw around.But I never tried to push the world out of orbit.I just wrote.So what?I never informed, though.And I laughed at what was too much-poked fun at the Bogus-tried to say what I thought-loud enough to be heard.But a time will come to remember and burn with shame:When we shall have done with dishonesty andplain lieswith those strange times when a man who was simply honestwas called "brave"!

2011-09-12T23:04:00.000-04:00

Kenneth Patchen. ' The sea is awash with roses'. From City Lights Pocket Poet Anthology edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.The sea is awash with roses O they blowUpon the landThe still hills fill with their scentO the hills flow on their sweetnessAs on God's handO love, it is so little we know of pleasure Pleasure that lasts as the snowBut the sea is awash with roses O they blow Upon the land.

2011-09-12T14:42:00.002-04:00

Change.org presents petitions by individuals. There is also one to save the life of Troy Davis, falsely accused of the crime for which he will be executed in days. He is innocent, even for 7 witnesses.

2011-09-12T14:40:00.003-04:00

Ghana's Attorney General and Justice Minister Martin Amidu recently claimed that " the criminal law against same-sex relationships will not be revoked, since the majority of Ghanaians do not approve of it."

2011-09-11T20:05:00.003-04:00

Schematic Nocturne.Fennel, serpent and rush.Aroma, scent and penumbra.Air, earth and solitude.(The ladder reaches to the moon)Federico Garcia Lorca

2011-09-11T20:03:00.005-04:00

green grass-between, between the blades the color of water.Kaga No Chiyo

2011-09-11T01:35:00.000-04:00

Franco Fortini. Translating Brecht.A great stormfor the entire afternoon curled on the rooves before breaking into lightning, water. I was staring at cement and glass verses where there were shouts and walled sores and limbs even of me, who survive them. With care, looking now at the battled shingles now at the dry paper, I listened the word of a poet die or change into another voice no longer for us. The oppressed are oppressed and quiet, the oppressors quiet they speak on the telephone, hatred is cordial, I myself believe I no longer know whose fault it is. Write, I tell myself, hate those who with sweetness drive you into nothingness the men and the women that go with you and I believe I do not know. Write your name as well along with those of the enemy. The storm ended with emphasis. Nature is too weak to imitate battles. Poetry doesn't change anything. Nothing is certain, but write.

2011-09-11T01:24:00.000-04:00

Andrea Zanzotto. Alive.World, exist, and good: exist goodly, let, try, tend to, tell me everything,and here I was backtracking eludingand all inclusions were active none less than all exclusions; come, good one, exist, don't crumble in yourself myselfI thought that the world so conceived with this super-falling super-dying the world made such was only a badly budded I was an undigested badly fantasizing badly fantasized badly paid I and not you, dear, not you "sainted", and "saintly" a little more over there, on the side, on the side Try to (ex-de-ob etc.) ist and other all the known and unknown prepositions take some chance make it goodly so a little; that the machinery have play. Come on, dear, come on. Come on, munchausen.

2011-09-10T23:14:00.001-04:00

Peter Orlovsky. Collaboration: Letter to Charlie Chaplin. From City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. Edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.Our Dear Friend Charles:Love letter for you. We are one happey poet & one unhappey poet in India which makes 2 poets. We would like come visit you when we get thru India to tickle yr feet. Further more King in New York is great picture,-I figure it will take about 10 yrs before it looks funny in perspective. Every few years we dream in our sleep we meat you.Why dont you go ahead & make another picture & fuck everybody . If you do we could be Extras. We be yr Brownies free of charge.Let us tell you about Ganesha. He is elephant-faced god with funney fat belley human body. Everyone in India has picture of him in their house. To think of him brings happey wisdom success that he gives after he eats his sweet candey. He neither exists nor does not exist. Because of that he can conquer aney demon. He rides around on a mouse.& has 4 hands. We salute yr comedy in his name.Do you realize how maney times we have seen yr pictures in Newark & cried in the dark at the roses. Do you realize how maney summers in Coney Island we sat in open air theatre & watched you disguised as a lamp-shade in scratchy down stairs eternity. You even made our dead mothers laugh. So, remember everything is alright. We await your next move & the world still depends on yr next move.What else shall we say to you before we all die? If everything we feel could be said it would be very beautiful. Why didnt we ever do this before? I guess the world seems so vast, its hard to find the right moment to forget all about this shit & wave hello from the other side of the earth. But there is certainly millions and millions of people waveing hello to you silently all over the windows, streets & movies. Its only life waveing to its self.Tell Michael to read our poems too if you ever get them. Again we say you got that personal tickle-tuch we like-love. Shall we let it go at that? NO, we still got lots more room on the page-we still to emptey our hearts. Have you read Louis Ferdinand Celine?-hes translated into english from French-Celine vomits Rasberries. He wrote the most Chaplin-esque prose in Europe & he has a bitter mean sad uggly eternal comical soul enough to make you cry.You could make a great picture about the Atom Bomb!Synops:a grubby old janitor with white hair who cant get the air-raid drill instructions right & goes about his own lost business in the basement in the midst of great international air-raid emergencies, sirens, kremlin riots, flying rockets, radios screaming, destruction of the earth. He comes out the next day, he cralls out of the pile of human empire state building bodies, & the rest of the picture, a hole hour the janitor on the screen alone makeing believe he is sociable with nobody there, haveing a beer at the bar with invisible boys, reading last years newspapers,& ending looking blankly into the camera with the eternal aged Chaplin-face looking blankly, raptly into the eyes of the God of Solitude.There is yr fitting final statement Sir Chaplin, you will save the world if ya make it-but yr final look must be so beautiful that it doesnt matter if the world is saved or not.Okay I guess I can end it now. Forgive us if you knew it all before. OkayLove & FlowersPeter Orlovsky, Allen Ginsberg 1961 Bombay

2011-09-10T22:52:00.001-04:00

Wassily Kandinsky. Seeing. From Sounds.Blue, Blue got up, got up and fell.Sharp, Thin whistled and shoved, but didn't get through.From every corner came a humming.FatBrown got stuck-it seemed for all eternity.It seemed. It seemed.You must open your arms wider.Wider. Wider.And you must cover your face with red cloth.And maybe it hasn't shifted yet at all: it's just that you've shifted.White leap after white leap.And after this white leap another white leap.And in this white leap a white leap. In every white leap a white leap.But that's not good at all, that you don't see the gloom: in the gloom is where it is.That's where everything begins...............................................................................With a.............................................................Crash................................................

2011-09-10T22:46:00.000-04:00

Wassily Kandinsky. In Two. From Sounds.The little man wanted to break the chain in two and of course he couldn't do it. The big man broke it very easily. The little man wanted to slip right through. The big man held him by the sleeve, bent down and whispererd in his ear: " we'll keep this to ourselves." And both of them laughed heartily.

2011-09-10T16:11:00.000-04:00

One wall, one overwheening purpose.A protective wall outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo was pulled down, the building vandalized internally. The New York Times interviewed a demonstrator, and this is what he had to say:" They can't lock us out in a wall in our own country. Nothing will stand in the way of Egyptians again."

2011-09-10T11:54:00.000-04:00

Pablo Neruda- It Means Shadows. From Residence on EarthHow silly to think about it, what pure omen,what a definitive kiss to bury in the heart,to yield in the origins of helplessness and intelligence,soft and safe upon the eternally troubled waters?What vital, rapid wings of a new angel of dreamsto lay upon my sleeping shoulders for perpetual safety,in such a way that the road among the stars of deathshall be a violent flight begun many days and months and centuries ago?Perhaps the natural weakness of suspicious and anxious beingssuddenly seeks permanence in time and limits on earth,perhaps the tediums and the ages implacably accumulatedextend like the lunar wave of an ocean newly createdupon shores and lands grievously deserted.Ah, let what I am go on existing and ceasing to exist,and let my obedience be ordered with such iron conditionsthat the tremor of deaths and births will not trouble the deep place that I wish to keep for myself eternally.Let what I am, then, be, in some places and in every time,an established and assured and ardent witness,carefully destroying himself and preserving himself incessantly,clearly insistent upon his original duty.

2011-09-09T16:56:00.000-04:00

Italo Calvino. People from Biella are a hard people. From Italian Fables.A farmer was going to Biella one day. The weather was so bad the streets were impassable. But the farmer had important business to attend to so he lowered his head, and went on, in the rain and storm.He met an old man along the way who said:" Good day! Where are you going in such a hurry, my good man?"-To Biella,- said the farmer, without stopping.-You could at least say:" lord willing".The farmer stopped, looked the old man straight in the face and answered:" lord willing I go to Biella. Lord not willing, I go to Biella anyway."Now, that old man was the lord. -Then you'll get to Biella in seven years,-He said.- In the meantime go jump in that marsh and stay there for seven years.The farmer was suddenly changed into a frog, then jumped in the marsh.Seven years went by. The farmer came out of the marsh, became a man again, pressed his hat on his head, and started on the street to the market.After a couple of steps the old man appeared again.-"Where are you going, good man?"-To Biella.You could say " lord willing"If the lord is willing, good, if not I know the deal, and by now I know the way to the marsh too.It was impossible to get more from him.

2011-09-09T10:35:00.000-04:00

What Bipartisan really means:Being the first Democratic president to cut Medicare by $500 billion for your own Health Care Program, to plan cuts in Medicaid and Social Security and to offer a break from loopholes to corporations for a better tax rate in the future all with stats clamoring a 56% percent of people not wanting Social Security cut at all, and a good 80% wanting these creeps out of Congress. Thank God for collective bargaining.

2011-09-07T21:54:00.001-04:00

Secessionist to the endWhen asked about the 234 people he executed as Governor of Texas, Perry supported his decisions to a hooting and applauding GOP room at the Reagan library tonight. When asked what he thought at upholding his decisions to a room full of hooters and hollerers, he said that executions were a " state by state issue".

2011-09-07T13:37:00.000-04:00

The banning of domestic partner benefits is now illegal in ArizonaThe United States Supreme Court of Appeals put an end to the banning of domestic partner benefits signed into law in September 2009 by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. The law was shot down before it could come into effect.For more information, see www.hrc.org

2011-09-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

House of Representatives Republican majority votes to cut Emergency Food Assistance by 75%.This when 750,000.00 people stand to die of starvation soon in Somalia.As a country, the Unites States has led the effort for relief, followed by Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Australia.The Senate Appropriations Committee is to vote on the bill. Go to the Lawrence O' Donnell blog "The last word" on msnbc.com to see who the Senators in question are and send an email or make a call to sustain famine relief.

2011-09-06T15:42:00.001-04:00

New York State Department of Health like Arizona's : If not covered by Medicare, no help from Medicaid with anti-retrovirals and anti-rejection drugs. You need a transplant or are HIV-positive and are poor, you die.Here is the actual information:" Beginning October 1, 2011 Medicaid will no longer cover the following types of drugs when your Medicare prescription drug plan will not pay for them: antidepressants, atypical antipsychotics, antiretrovirals used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS and anti-rejection drugs used for the treatment of organ and tissue transplants. Medicaid cannot cover these drugs on and after October 1, 20111, because of a new State law."How aren't these drugs essential to the welfare and lives of American citizens, so how is this law not anti-constitutional?

2011-09-05T22:53:00.001-04:00

Resistance to lynchers on Labor Day !Well, it actually begins a little early with Maxine Waters' s comment some days ago sending the Tea Party to hell. Today James Hoffa, the Teamsters leader, finally said what is on all our minds:" Let's take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong! "and" We gotta keep an eye on the battle we face: the war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They got a war, and they got a war with us, there is only going to be one winner and it's going to be us."There was much regurgitating crime tactics by Blakeman, an ex-Bush employee, who knows but won't say how cutting off income for a worker is harmful to the worker more than it is to his or her boss, and an equiparating of Hoffa's supposed violence to that of the Tea Party by a Democratic Party Chair from South Carolina, Harpootlian. But, saying that self-defense, standing up for justice and equality is the same as lynching in terms of violence is news to me. Since when is willful cruelty, oppression and torture the same as stopping it? For Bush's waterboarders, maybe. Tell that to World War Two veterans, for one, since Civil War fighters are long gone.What the critics really mean: if you want to clean this up, you're on your own, it looks messy and dangerous. So, unless we absolutely have to back you, you're on your own. Divide and conquer. But can we say it without getting off sadistically by demeaning you with our comments?Oh, the Tea Party wants Obama to apologize for Hoffa's words. Tell them to go to hell, Hoffa!

2011-09-05T17:48:00.004-04:00

Well, I just checked my profile, and the favorite books post was hacked into. Now it just lists In Praise of Folly...

2011-09-05T13:40:00.002-04:00

Psychological torture based on ideology averred

A Texas anti-abortion law included in its provisions from women seeking abortions that abortionists perform a required ultrasound and have the women listen to the fetus's heartbeat, should there be any.

US District Judge Sam Sparks struck the provision down (not the one requiring an ultrasound) by stating that it was based on ideological beliefs that the doctors or the clients might not share.

So they're not madmen anymore.

2011-09-05T13:39:00.002-04:00

New HIV-positive leaders

UN Women, ASEAN Foundation and UNAIDS have coalesced to mentor HIV-positive women into positions of leadership to fight against the disease.

2011-09-05T13:31:00.002-04:00

AT&T and the Justice Department

The company, wanting to merger with T-Mobile, making it part of only three other national companies involved in wireless services, is raising anti-trust concerns from the Justice department, which is seeking to sue.

AT&T is ready to accept monitoring and regulation by the anti-trust division, sell assets and have customers transfer to other providers to secure the deal.

AT&T also contributes heavily to the Tea Party, as does Verizon. Both companies hire unionized workers. The latter's just concluded a strike to secure benefits and pay that Verizon was considering undermining.

2011-09-05T13:15:00.003-04:00

Work News, thanks to Make or Break, by Jon Gertner, in August 28th's New York Times Magazine:

In 2009 the United States produced 2% of the world's lithium-ion batteries for cars. The expected production for 2015 by the Department of Energy is 40%. This thanks to the Stimulus package, which also contributed part of the $375 million along with state grants to the automotive battery industry.

The amount set aside for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was $787 billion.

Information companies provide fewer jobs than other industries:

Facebook has 2,000 employees globally,
Google 29,000
while General Motors 200,000.

The automotive industry contributes to 20% of all the jobs in manufacturing in the U.S..

There's a need to create 17 to 20 million jobs to match the next ten year's demand.

" US corporations, by offshoring so much manufacturing work over the past few decades, have eroded our ability to raise living standards and curtailed the development of new high-technology industries"
Gary Pisano, Willy Shih, Harvard Business School professors

2011-09-04T22:23:00.003-04:00

Regional elections in Germany show gains for the left and the Green Party.

The Social Democrats won 36% of the vote, up 6% from 2006 and the Green Party also gained. It's up to 8.5% from 3.4% in 2006.

Angela "multiculturalism is a failure" Merkel and her coalition lost in today's election: her center rightist Christian Democrats are at 23.3% from 28.8% in 2006 and her coalition allies lost as well.

Those who also slid down the percentage ladder were the new Neo-Nazi party, or NPD, who in 2006 had a 7.3% and is now at 5.9%. This group consider Auschwitz's Concentration Camp commander Rudolph Hess a "martyr", extended a friendship to Iran's holocaust denying president Ahmadinejad while wanting at the same time to ban Turkey's inclusion in the European Union, are on friendly terms with an American Nazi Party leader and also consider President Obama's election a result of "the American alliance of Jews and Negroes". Not happy, they also consider support for the American President in Germany to "resemble an African tropical disease".

In the meantime, considering, on these oh so loved shores of ours, it'll be interesting to see when and how the Tea Party will refuse admission into its ranks to Marco Rubio and Sarah Palin after courting them.

2011-09-04T11:18:00.002-04:00

Ignore your enemy or kill him- Roger Rosenblatt. From Rules for Aging: A Wry and Witty Guide to Life. Harcourt 2000.

Rosenblatt is also the author of Unless It Moves The Human Heart: The Craft and Art of Writing. Ecco 2011.

In this world you have to be oh-so-smart or oh-so-pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. -Harvey the Rabbit

So do I, generally. There is a special context, though, in which one can be smart by being pleasant. It occurs in one of those very unpleasant situations in life when you recognize that you are faced with an enemy of a particular sort - someone to whom you have done no harm, yet who, nonetheless, seethes with a hissing fury at the mere mention of your name, yips like a terrier whenever you enjoy good fortune, and bites the newspaper when there is a report of your success. Now, here is one person who is thinking about you. In an odd way, he lives for you. Your every move gives definition to his existence.
Ayn Rand created such a character in her nutty novel, The Fountainhead, with the critic who relentlessly savages the work of Howard Roark the architect, no matter how demonstrably wonderful Roark's work is. Rand painted the critic as one who would have no reason for being if he could not attack Roark at every turn. In Roark's presence, he glowers at the architect like a hungry rat - eyes squinting and burning - knowing that he is too small to devour his quarry, yet desperate to do damage, or, in the very least,to be noticed by Roark for the damage he attempts to inflict.
For his part, Roark ignores the man entirely. He goes about his work unconscious of this critic or of anybody who might interfere with his vision. HIs attitude has a kind of Nietzschean charm, but it protects him from bothersome disturbances. Finally, the critic cannot take being ignored any longer, so he confronts Roark with all the awful things he has written about the architect. He asks, half plaintively: "What do you think of me?" Roark, as if seeing the man for the first time, responds: "I don't think of you." The critic withers and slinks off.
It is Rand's version of the scene in Casablanca where Peter Lorre says to Bogart: "You despise me, don't you?" and Bogart replies: "I would if I bothered to think about you."
In the realm of normal human behavior (whatever that may be), it is probably impossible to be as oblivious as Roark is when there is someone around continually seeking to do you harm, indeed, whose bitter happiness seems to depend on it. Only a person with the hide of an elephant could really pay no attention when such an enemy is relentlessly firing insults and slinging mud. Who would not feel some slight hurt, if only because someone exists who is consumed with the desire to bring you low?
And yet, here - as in so many rules of aging - the trick is to do absolutely nothing. Nothing is everything. Ignore your enemy or kill him. If you pay no attention to him, he may not slink away, but he will grow increasingly desperate, increasingly incoherent, and (best of all) increasingly unhappy. The happier your life, the more miserable his. The truth is, that people of this peculiar stripe are their own worst enemy (admittedly, they have heated competition), and it constitutes one of life's delights to watch them go at themselves with all the bitterness and disappointment of which they are composed. To enjoy this, however, one must never give them a scintilla of assistance.
Of course, as the rule suggests, one can take a different approach, and, instead of ignoring one's enemy, one can murder him. If he is really getting to you, I advise that you do it. But you must kill quickly, suddenly, and anonymously, or it's no good- with a bomb, perhaps, or a flamethrower shot from a great distance. You want him dead, but you do not want him to see that it was you doing him in. If he knows it is you, all is lost. In that billionth of a second, he will die content that he got your goat and that all his efforts have finally paid off - which is the last thing you want.
For myself, I favor giving one's enemy life without parole instead of an execution. Think of it, the beauty of it: You are his obsession, and he is merely a bark in the night. The idea is not to care, not to pretend that you don't care, but to really not care. Trust me. You have just extended your enviable life.

2011-08-31T19:53:00.003-04:00

What are two White Supremacists doing at a screening of The Help and at the first day of The Debt?

Well, I thought I'd finally see the blockbuster and so did this couple in the row in front of me: he, a baseball-cap-wearing kind of dude, with an American flag waving in the wind of his cellphone screen;she, a submissive quiet-toned dudette with a boyish-short hair cut. So anyway, in a scene when the discussion is about the means to build a for-coloreds-only outhouse for a couple of White Supremacists who can afford a domestic worker at Segregationist prices but not house additions, I groan, and then see the short haircut turn to profile, searching for whoever emitted the sound. I felt, hey, my feelings are being squelched for no good reasons,I'm not loud,she must have radar, but said nothing. At another particularly grueling scene, I groan again. A "Shh!"comes out. At another, the profile pops again, I ask what is it, she answers something as to me having to be quiet, I say shut up and that's a wrap. After that the entire theater started groaning (loudly), making indignant noises (loudly), laughing(loudly), sniffling(not too loudly), one laugh precipitating another, and another, all reactions over the sound. No one said anything when a character was asked what she thought of whites, the answer a silent not much. All, except the social engineering haircut profile who looked at me again, to see if what she thought I might not know might kill me.

As for The Debt, only the main outside theatre sign listed it. At the box office, there were no signs, no showing hours, this on opening day, and the ticket seller gave me a ticket for the wrong time. When I went into the unmarked projection room, there was a faint smell of insecticide, which two women in the crowd commented about. Old habits die hard.

2011-08-29T19:59:00.002-04:00

Bachmann and Divine Portents

If it's god text messaging us through Bachmann to cut government spending by sending us an earthquake and a hurricane, what's the devil to do?

2011-08-29T11:40:00.002-04:00

Liberal Democracy and Multiculturalism

How are the two mutually exclusive? If one begins from the premise that we are all equal, how does multiculturalism mean the upholding of bigoted and racist beliefs of one culture above all others? How is multiculturalism not the work of constructing the possibility for multiple strata of cultures to work together on an equal standing of inclusiveness? Isn't a qualitative evaluation favoring one culture over another oppressive, and, regardless of intentions, isn't disregarding the fluidity of different strata of cultural identity typical of immigration, even generational, an inaccuracy?