WHERE'S MY SHARE? If, as Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin says, collective bargaining is not a right but an expensive entitlement, why aren't I sharing in the profits of the work?

JAMES ENSOR

IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S KEYSTONE XL. Just when you thought legislation supporting the building of the Keystone XL pipeline was rejected by President Obama, Republicans are trying to include the same in another packet of legislation. Barring that, they're hounding Senate Democrats and the President for the necessary signatures by presenting them with false credit card bills at gas stations and autograph books everywhere.

WHO KNEW PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS SECRETLY THE POPE? While all Republican candidates were at the CPAC Conservative meeting yesterday and none repudiated its support of Nazi politics,Rick Santorum shines above the rest by claiming that entitlements are "the narcotic of government dependency", which of course brings to mind Marx's statement that religion is the opiate of the masses. With 50% of United States citizens on some type of governmental assistance since 2010, and with some ready to renounce assistance if it means an increase in taxes because it's not hard not to think things through, why not all pray the White House, Social Security and Medicare disappear in an incoming rapture or apocalypse, a heartfelt thanks for taking seriously what religion characterizes as love of one's neighbor on this planet? Those left behind are the current Republican candidates as they scramble for the approval of Some Tea Party of all Revolts.

I don't know how many children some of my neighbors have, but I know Anjelina Jolie is expecting twins. By the same token, there's also no headline announcing Brad Pitt's involvement in rebuilding houses in Louisiana for those harmed by Katrina because he's not bearing the twins.

NO THANKS TO MONTI, the Italian premier who visited President Obama yesterday, and his co-reformer Fornero, 700 thousand jobs were cut as part of the austerity measure. That included pension benefits. President Obama yesterday said Italy is still an important ally in Europe.

IRAN is planning on sealing itself off to tinker with nuclear power: will sanctions woo where holocaust denying and ersatz racial hatred dare to tread? Why not take into consideration the evaluations of a people targeted by millennia of malice who have retained unexploded nuclear stock?

PROPOSITION 8 DECLARED ANTI CONSTITUTIONAL. Ottenebration on vacation, the proposition banning gay marriages in California was declared anticonstitutional at last. Now if everybody would just stop staring in people's underwear saying they're concerned with gay marriage when all they're thinking about is sex.

DARWIN GAVE THE CACHET OF SCIENCE TO WAR AND GENOCIDE. KURT VONNEGUT

WINNING IS IMPORTANT: As on Fallon last night, in an effort to prevent childhood obesity, Michelle Obama favors competition as a means to bludgeon one less fit that you with a club while cutting the finish line.

HAMAS AND FATAH, sittin' in a tree. Both organizations have decided to embrace one another, for the pursuit of nationhood. I guess Nazis had to leave Germany at the end of World War Two because they were colonizing South America for their brethren.

PRESIDENT AMENABLE TO SUPERPACS: President Obama, objecting up to now to the creation of superPACs, has come to terms with the Democratic party's, Priorities USA Action. Now he and the First Lady won't have to coordinate via fundraisers or other events, but can get their closest supporters to.

"POWERFUL SPOT": the words chosen to describe the "It's halftime in America" Clint Eastwood Chrystler commercial by David Axelrod, one of President Obama's chief political strategists. What he didn't say is that the chief executive of Chrystler is also responsible for FIAT, an Italian automotive company that was sentenced for anti-union conduct in an Italian court. Last year, Marchionne made an ultimatum to liberal unionized workers: they either renounce in house union organizing or stand to be fired. Workers from FIAT have faced loss of work from outsourcing to Poland and the United States, just as recently all the white collar jobs affiliated with the company are being trasferred to the US, with no growth in Italy. In this country, unions endorse President Obama. I would ascertain the solidity of his endorsement of unions. Or the right of workers in other countries to work at union wages.

COMPETITON WITH RELIGION:Hippocrates begone, not to be left behind from forbidding abortions even to save a woman's life in Catholic hospitals as a future promise to step into the light, and away from enlightenment, all sorts of undocumented immigrant codicils are entering care at University of California San Francisco Medical Center: a man, Jesus Navarro, was just recently denied a kidney trasplant, even with a wife willing to donate hers, because he is an undocumented immigrant.

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FROM WHAT? In an effort to replace the State with its own lawmakers shouting it's our way or the highway, the religious freedom group has decided to impose its own views on all those employed by them and/or attending religiously defined universities, for one. Included in the morass are those needing help,previously characterized as a constitutional right, now as charity, such as intake shelter seekers, or those involved in finding help when in dire straights, or those seeking life saving procedures at the nearest hospital within range. On the grounds that even Christian Science is a religion, the congregation is donating funds to build a hospital with perennially shut doors.

UNITED NATION COURT DECIDES THAT GERMANY IS NO LONGER RESPONSIBLE FOR NAZI ATROCITIES. As our President celebrates National Prayer Breakfast with supporters of schools celebrating Hitler, after issuing a statement in solidarity with The Day of Remembrance for Auschwitz's atrocities, the United Nation court decided that Germany is no longer suable for war atrocities committed by Nazis. They recently denied the claim by Luigi Ferrini, who had been deported by Nazis to work as a slave for the weapons industry during the war. See Saturday's The New York Times, U.N. Court Upholds German Immunity From Suits by Victims of Nazi Atrocities.

C STREET SCHOOL. Yesterday Maddow reported that the President and his wife were at a National Prayer Breakfast hosted by the C Street House,a school run by a "the Fellowship" that teaches prejudice against homosexuals, holds relations with several dictators and believes that Hitler, Mao and Lenin are compatible examples to follow.That the President and the First Lady should have made an appearance there so soon after Holocaust Memorial Day is demeaning to the nation. That they should stress their daughter's education by limiting their time on the internet and then endorse a school that teaches revisionist claptrap is also demeaning to us as a nation. It doesn't take a rocket scientist, just interest, to know that Hitler wanted to exterminate both Slavs (Russians, Lenin's compatriots) and the Chinese (Mao's) whom he thought were mentally deficient as a people. And since Ms. Maddow's is out here's a speculation for her and the rest of us who take an interest: if homosexuality is hereditary, why wasn't the number reduced after Hitler's exterminations?

NAZI SYMPATHIZER RON PAUL ON A MAILING SPREE, THE PRESIDENT AND THE FIRST LADY AT THE NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST AND IS THAT EVER A DOOZY. Okay, Ron Paul's acolytes are in the neighborhood, spreading their Nazi word via pamphlets mailed right to here...the White House couple were spotted at the National Prayer breakfast, this after a campaign by Caroline Kennedy to ask for support of the president by email, and some denial of the Bay of Pig invasion on tee vee that was also supported by some Ron Paul fanatics on the internet. The National Prayer association supports a school that seems to be dedicated to brainwash you into thinking that Hitler Lenin and Mao not only were steadfast friends but are to be admired as a subsumed, squishable piece of agreeable poop. Endemic as this is, and justified by using the term totalitarian to make you quake in your boots, it's just ignorance wrapped in a fig leaf of revisionism.

MAURIZIO CATTELAN

BJORK OF THE PROVINCES.

Her shoulderpads slipped, it's not as if she were inflatable.

NEW YORK NASSAU COUNTY POLICE FACING FIRINGS THROUGH THE AGENCY OF COUNTY EXECUTIVE EDWARD MANGANO. The Police Benevolent Association, one of the biggest unions in the country, and Democrats are fighting against a realignment of 8 police precincts in Nassau that would result in cutting at least 100 jobs of officers, and render people more vulnerable to crime.

COLLECTING A VOTE FROM MINORITIES FOR THE SUPERMAN. Last night on MSNBC Rick Tyler, who works for the Superpac inspired by Newt Gingrich called Winning our Future, was confronted with questions on his favorite candidate's racism. Caught in a turbine of emotion mashing his white man's burden, birthing thoughts flashed into view on how to conquer votes for the malicious troll: choking, he explained how Democrats kill black babies, and have abandoned blacks to poor neighborhoods, food stamps and a lack of role models,proving that he was not speaking of the working poor, or the poor, but of all African Americans showing how they as a unit secretly hold leases in poor neighborhoods, using the mansions and middle class homes they are often seen in as fronts. He ended the diatribe by issuing out a call to vote for Gingrich, intimating that the way to a brighter future for everyone was in his hands. What was disappointing though is that he didn't put to rest the rumors that, through Great Society legislation, Democrats were able to decrease poverty rates for African Americans from 55% in 1960 to 27% in 1968.

DRIVEL THAT DREW CONSIDERABLE APPLAUSE: MITT ROMNEY "When the White House reflected the best of what we are, not the worst of what Europe has become"; RICK SANTORUM about Romney's wealth:" That's how capitalism works and I'm all for it." NEWT GINGRICH:This is "(...) not a Republican, not an establishment, not a Wall Street funded campaign, but a people campaign." RON PAUL: " The problem is too much government, we need more personal liberty." "We should have the right to keep the fruits of our labor as well." LOOSE TRANSLATION:ROMNEY: No health insurance benefits or lower premiums because the industry needs to settle on its own, like a house built on stilts. I'm doing okay so I don't care how much you have to pay, besides I want to dismantle Washington to favor states, with all that implies.RICK SANTORUM: I want to work for Romney as a vice president and I don't care that he went to Harvard Business school on his father's money. GINGRICH: (You needed to see his facial expression when he started talking aboout Israel and Jerusalem, so...)Hey wait...aren't small investors involved in Wall Street? Hey, wait a minute...Hey...RON PAUL: Same as state policies by Romney, and I still won't mention Sasha Baron Rothschild or the newsletters.

ETHICAL OR UNETHICAL ARGUMENTS: Isn't saying that Liberals have bogus arguments against Republicans a way of avoiding the ethical weight on which Liberal arguments are based and a way of attempting to secure the support of the least disingenuous of their constituency? Why and how would its constituency be willingly kept domesticated and ignorant by implying that any ethical concern is partial?

MAURIZIO CROZZA: MA E' SCODINZOLARE LO STESSO SE NON SI VEDE? MAURIZIO CROZZA: IS IT WAGGING YOUR TAIL IF YOU CAN'T SEE IT?

FROM THE BOTTOM OF HIS HEART: VERIZON'S NON-UNIONIZED VERSION OF A STRIKE. While the real workers strike fighting planned job, benefit and pension cuts, one of their faithful or those who can't find work elsewhere is busy emasculating himself with inexplicable comments, such as " Thank you for blowing the President" at the end of a conversation on technical problems. This so called "Mike" wanted my voice mail password, which he did not get, and jumbled the banter at the end of the conversation. Since the applicability of this puzzles me, "Mike" has some in depth issues he needs to take to a therapist in a hurry. Guess who's switching services at the end of the bundle deal.

EVEN YOU CAN ANIMALIZE YOURSELF LIKE WOMEN AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLE WITH THE PROPER ATTIRE IF YOU ONLY TRY! ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS CLOSE YOUR EYES AND GRIMACE!

Image by Jiri Georg Dokoupil. In a 15 minute long self-proclaimed relaxation video I just saw there was one interpreter, a close to nature brunette in various floaty evening gowns traipsing around deserts, beaches and Mexican ruins, bending over backward while accompanied by feral animals.Disregarding the fact that most were carnivore,she walks continuously around the various primal landscapes and then stops abruptly, all to place her head against each and every bear or jaguar,close her eyes and fall into a trance with the animal following suit while annoying canned New Age music plays. At times indigenous people in indigenous or campesino dress would substitute the animals instead,not falling asleep but standing next to her,since they were less appealing. Only one man on the sand celebrated the video-maker's something by simulating sleep during a small ceremony. Our heroine walks right past it. There was also one shot of a meaningful head-on glance exchanged between a young buck and the interpreter,as she walks past, assembling within it all the vibrantly formulaic qualities of a wild countryside Latin American male shaman. He didn't say hello because A) you couldn't hear it over the music, B) he was on a train in passing and C) the woman in evening wear was in the video possibly on a friendship mission with the director and these things take awhile to clear out.

CHANGING DIAGNOSIS IS EXPECTED TO LEAD TO CUTS IN GOVERNMENTAL ASSISTANCE TO PEOPLE WITH AUTISM. Yesterday Newsday reported that the updating of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatrist Association due in 2013 will change the definition of autism enough to exclude thousands from benefiting from governmental assistance programs that include training for work, independent living, and the development of social and academic abilities. Dr. Fred Volkman, a former panelist for the Manual, stated that 1/2 of those who were defined as "higher functioning" could be excluded. Dr. Von Bergeijk, Dean of the New York Institute of Technology and Director of the Vocational Independence Program noted that 40% of his students are considered "higher functioning" and some of them are smarter than the instructors themselves, quoting as an example one student with an IQ of 143. Just to be contentious, two studies conducted by the Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Massachussets and Stanford University in Palo Alto California found instead that there would be an increase in diagnosis for 1%, while for the other the drop would be 4 to 5%.

ALLEN WEST AND BORDERLINE BILE. This is what the Republican said of President Obama: " You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America." He obviously has been away from the military for so long he forgot that the Commander in Chief doesn't go offshore to war.

REPUBLICAN RELIGION: AN OXIMORON. It's not that Republicans object to President Obama on religious grounds, they don't like anyone not sharing their application of religion.

"YOU'RE SEXY! YOU'RE CUTE! TAKE OFF YOUR RIOT SUIT" Occupy Oakland chant.If for Mitt Romney his politics ain't beanbags it's not as if they're bean bag pellets shot at Occupy Oakland participants, but riot suits and the bad decision making behind them.

GINGRICH AS A CANDIDATE LEADER FOR THE INSURRECTION. Gingrich feels like picking a fight: " I think the Republican establishment believes it's OK to say and do virtually anything to stop a genuine insurgency from winning because they are very afraid of losing control of the old order." While one could only estimate the appeal of a "genuine insurrection" to the Republican establishment, where would Gingrich lead it? To the moon collecting rocks in his ice bucket? To my back yard? I'll call 911. There are plenty of good cops around.

BOEHNER IN TEARS. I hear Boehner is in tears because Kansas House Speaker Mike O' Neal secretly transcribed his invective against the President, signed it Ready and Willing and forwarded it to Michelle Obama. In order to heal his wounded pride, in pain at the Republican candidate choices for the presidency and knowing that no one had heard a wink from the First Lady, he proceeded to shout at any available Democrat saying they could be treasonous too if they tried. He explained, still shouting, that all they needed to do was burn a moppet of ex President Bush on a small pyre in each and every back yard or street corner. Please.

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.

TURN OFF THE TV: TURN ON WHOSE IMAGINATION?

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.

NAZI VERPISS DICH!

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.

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 Charley I was only there to sustain his rent habit, and left.

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.

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.

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.

JOHN CHIARA

Iain Baxter

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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."

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

" 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...

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?

"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.

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.

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.

Neutrinos are faster than light by 60 nanoseconds.

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.

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.

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

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

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.)

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.

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.

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???

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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?

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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