Daily Music Selection
No, Ye Olde was NOT looking for a cathouse for himself. He was on assignment from Our End of (the Black Hole That is the) Net. Editor: Mr. Greencream N. Jeans wanted to know how a very special Tampa red lighted house was making due, considering the biggest Johns and political pimps were in town: Re-THUG-licans. Interview follows:
There’s a woman I know, an acquaintance, who epitomizes the people that I think most politicians, and many people forget or don’t even consider. Yesterday I watched as she tried to accomplish her daily routine. This woman is middle aged, maybe a little older. She is not physically fit, but she is not really overweight either. She is unkempt. She may not be the brightest bulb in the pack, but I don’t really know since I have never had an intellectual discussion with her. She is shy to engage in conversation. Like many who service our daily expectations, she is accustomed to being invisible. As I walked down the block I saw her exit her car with a quad cane. She then gingerly made her way up onto the curb with the aid of her cane and her car’s fender. She then carefully leaned over to extract a stack of newspapers from her car and attempt to carry them into the store. I hurried to catch up to hold the door for her. The store has a fairly high step up, and then a heavy door to open. I was pleased to hear that the building’s maintenance person assisted her with…
Beaver River Station: 2012. When your family goes back to the 1800s in the Adirondacks, and your early years were spent, in part, roaming the mountains while listening to your father’s tales of living for months in the woods, trapping so rich ladies in New York City could have their furs during the Depression, why would it be a surprise, as I spend two and a half months in my cabin, that many phrases and stories still echo inside the chamber that’s atop my rather awkward, aging body? No surprise at all. I gazed over yet another beatific sunset at the community dock called Grassy Point, much like the picture I took in 2010 at the top of this column, one phrase seems to bounce to me more than others…
Written by Juan Cole In spring of 2007, someone in the Bush administration (unindicted co-conspirator Richard Bruce Cheney? Neocons?) Sends uber hawk Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff to Oil Gulf with instructions to provoke a war with Iran. He allegedly toys with challenging Iran’s claim to half of the Shatt al-Arab. He certainly decided abruptly to bring two aircraft carriers to the Gulf, in hopes of provoking Iran into doing something stupid, and without telling the State Department or the White House. He also pushes analysis alleging that Bahrain Shiites intend anti-American terrorism on behalf of Iran. Adviser to the Navy Gwenyth Todd (former National Security Council staffer) rightly challenges this stupid conspiracy theory (Bahrain Shiites are mostly Arab Akhbaris who reject ayatollahs, and would not slavishly obey Persian, Usuli Iran!). I.e. Cosgriff was allegedly nearly making a coup in order to get up a war. Failing something so drastic, he may have (or his Neocon superiors may have) hoped to forestall direct talks with Iran that month. Todd blows the whistle on Cosgriff, letting State know about his intended insubordination. Word gets back to Neocons or whoever was behind the provocation and Cosgriff that Todd was the leak. She is…
By SEAN LENNON ON the northern tip of Delaware County, N.Y., where the Catskill Mountains curl up into little kitten hills, and Ouleout Creek slithers north into the Susquehanna River, there is a farm my parents bought before I was born. My earliest memories there are of skipping stones with my father and drinking unpasteurized milk. There are bald eagles and majestic pines, honeybees and raspberries. My mother even planted a ring of white birch trees around the property for protection. A few months ago I was asked by a neighbor near our farm to attend a town meeting at the local high school. Some gas companies at the meeting were trying very hard to sell us on a plan to tear through our wilderness and make room for a new pipeline: infrastructure for hydraulic fracturing. Most of the residents at the meeting, many of them organic farmers, were openly defiant. The gas companies didn’t seem to care. They gave us the feeling that whether we liked it or not, they were going to fracture our little town.
Written by Igor Volsky for thinkprogress.org Three Republican Federal Election Commissioners have found that unions or corporations to can compel employees to campaign for political candidates in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. In a Statement of Reasons memorandum signed on August 21, 2012, the commissioners contend that the United Public Workers union (UPW) was within its legal right to require employees to “provide support for Hawaii Fist Congressional District candidate Colleen Hanabusa’s candidacy in a special congressional election on May 22, 2010.” The case stemmed from a complaint in wich two employees alleged that they were fired after refusing “to comply with a UPW request to sign-wave, phone bank, canvass, and contribute to Hanabusa’s campaign.” The GOP commissioners found that current law and regulations do not prohibit employers from requiring participation:
