As part of my continuing series of interesting and/or amazing music videos I come across on YouTube, here are four covers of of the Beach Boys “God Only Knows,” a song which Paul McCartney said “is one of the few songs that reduces me to tears every time I hear it.” So, grab some tissues and enjoy. 🙂
More after the “flip”
According to Senator Webb’s office, NY City Mayor Bloomberg is urging the NY Congressional delegation to vote no on Webb’s Taxpayer Fairness Act. According to Bloomberg, this bill (which “puts a one-time windfall tax on 2009 bonuses above $400,000 paid to executives of financial institutions that received $5 billion or more in taxpayer support from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) or the or the Housing and Economic Recovery Act 2008”) is “unfair…to New York” and would “badly… hurt at a time when we can least afford to lose jobs and tax revenue.” Here’s Webb’s response:
This is a carefully drafted, one-shot amendment, directed only to a small group of firms that received more than five billion dollars of bailout money. Its purpose is to give American taxpayers an upside in the recovery of our economic system, which became possible only because their tax dollars saved it. Scholars from across the philosophical spectrum agree: as a matter of equity, the rewards should be shared with the taxpayers who made it possible.
It’s ironic that the very people who caused this economic meltdown now believe they should receive billions in bonus payments that were made possible only because our taxpayers were required to save the economy from their errors in judgment. Some of these taxpayers don’t even own stocks.
Nor is this an attack on New York City. In fact, two of the largest firms that would be affected — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are located in Washington, DC and Virginia.
When regions of Virginia are experiencing more than 21% unemployment and the struggling economy is hurting so many working Americans, it is only just that America’s working people feel that they also are being looked after by our leaders.
Great news from Environment Virginia. For more, see the New York Times article, which reports that “the Interior Department has indefinitely suspended plans for an oil and gas lease sale off the Virginia coastline.” Sorry, Bob, there goes your “drill baby drill!” 🙂
Richmond – In a reversal of its recent announcement on offshore drilling off the coast of Virginia, the Obama administration today announced its decision to suspend Lease Sale 220 off the coast of Virginia citing the ongoing review of OCS safety issues. The announcement comes in light of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank in the past two weeks.
“The Obama administration has taken an important first step today by delaying lease sale 220,” said Environment Virginia Policy Advocate J.R. Tolbert. “We are optimistic that the Department of Interior’s review of this tragedy will convince them of what we know to be true, offshore drilling is a dirty and dangerous business.”
The Department of Interior postponed the public comment period on the proposed Lease Sale indefinitely and canceled a series of public meetings that were to be held this month due to safety concerns. The department has said that safety problems or other concerns raised in the reviews will be considered before moving forward with a new lease sale.
The Minerals Management Service (MMS) also canceled the upcoming public hearing scheduled for May 12 in Norfolk that was scheduled to solicit input on lease sale 220, as well as the environmental impacts associated with geological exploration off the Virginia coast. MMS reports that the environmental analysis will continue as planned and not be affected by cancellation of the lease sale.
“Unfortunately, today’s actions by the Interior Department will not permanently protect Virginia’s coast from drilling. By conducting seismic testing and only temporarily postponing the lease sale the administration continues its march towards the sea,” continued Tolbert.
Environment Virginia is campaigning across Virginia to involve the public on this issue. The group is conducting a citizen outreach campaign to generate public comments to the Obama administration and elevate the issue in the public eye. Their goal is to permanently protect Virginia’s coast from drilling.
“The recent disaster in the Gulf of Mexico needs to serve as a wakeup call. President Obama has the authority to protect our coasts from drilling with the stroke of a pen. Using that authority would deliver change that we can believe in,” concluded Tolbert.
I just got through tweeting this morning that it’s “Another day 4 Repubs to ridiculously blame problems (of the US and the world) rooted in Bushco on Obama. & claim they “kept us safe.” 😉 ” And, sure enough, here we go…
With great fanfare, they rolled out their effort to take back Congress this year and the White House in 2012. It was to begin with town halls all over the country, with the usual tired cast of characters (John McCain, Sarah Palin and others). Michael Steele seemed to shoot himself in the foot every time he had the chance. And one GOP elected after another just made stuff up, bragged about obstruction, and inflamed the so-called Tea Party fringe.
Now comes word from Huffington Post that the GOP has suspended its “rebranding effort”! This is a major defeat for Eric Cantor, who has a knack for playing stupid. (Again, how exactly did he get his law degree?)
Said Huffington Post:
Cantor’s office told CQ the “relentless attacks from the left” were to blame, but most high-profile criticisms of the effort to make Republicans seem more moderate came from figures within the party itself — Rush Limbaugh, Michael Steele and Mike Huckabee, among others — and the Republican base.
BWAHAHAHAHAH! As usual Dems are “to blame,” for everything, even what the GOP messed up during its own rule. Now we are responsible for running/ruining THEIR party too?
You would think that the supposed “accountability” folks could just once admit their own stupidity, incompetence at running the country, and failure to behave in a constructive manner even a single time since January 2009. There is no excuse for their infantile behavior. Yet they continue play-acting (like the legislature of California) that the lives they toy with and crush are trivial. Let the real grownups step forward and cooperate in running this great nation and the clowns and misanthropes go home.
If it were our fault that they failed, I’d be proud of that fact. But it isn’t. And the GOP looks more ridiculous than ever pretending it is so.
Anyone on the FBI terrorist watch list can be prevented from getting on an airplane, but he definitely can buy a gun, even an AK-47 assault weapon, without restraint say Congressional Republicans, according to a column by Gail Collins in today’s New York Times, where she says “There seems to be a strong sentiment in Congress that the only constitutional right suspected terrorists have is the right to bear arms.” She quotes Senator Lindsey Graham (SC, R), who spoke in opposition to a bill offered by Senator Frank Lutenberg (NJ, D) which would allow the government to stop gun sales to people on the watch list, just as it can already do to people with felony convictions.
Senator Graham’s Republican logic runs as follows: We can prevent terrorists from getting on airplanes because “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying,”but when it comes to keeping people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns, well, “I want to slow down and think about this,” Graham said, pointing out that “Some of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns. I don’t think banning handguns makes me safer.” What he really means, is: Don’t mess with guns or the National Rifle Association will skin my, uh, hindquarters, but airplanes are not mentioned in the Second Amendment, so we can restrict them. Writes Collins about Congress people, “….the subject of guns makes them act like a paranoid mother ferret protecting her litter.”
So we have the spectacle of Congressional Republicans complaining about reading his Miranda rights to Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square would-be bomber, and Republican talk show pundits howling to torture Shahzad and strip him of his citizenship—- but at the same time defending his right to have bought a weapon and munitions in order to carry out his car bomb effort. These are the very same people who are okay with the Patriot Act and data-mining of private communications, and okay with no-warrant wiretaps, and even with holding suspects forever without trial at Gitmo…. Behold the Republican Fungible Bill of Rights.
Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, himself pleaded for passage of Lautenberg’s bill, to no avail, although the Senators praised him for New York’s frustrating the Times Square bomber. In fact, the system worked very well, something that seems to irritate Republicans no end, since they are always looking for an excuse to accuse President Obama and Democrats of being soft on terrorism and namby-pamby soft-heart-soft-heads when Democrats insist on following the American legal system, and actually living the Constitution including the Bill of Rights when dealing with terrorists and suspected terrorists. How they dislike hearing that the system really does work—– not only did an smart civilian T-shirt vendor (who, I believe, was actually a Muslim himself) alert police to the smoking SUV, the security team connected the dots and captured the alleged bomber, but the alleged bomber himself, after being read his Miranda rights, is now talking with the FBI without being tortured. All this is upsetting to authoritarian-minded Republicans. Good grief, the system works!
Imagine how the Republicans would deal with a Democratic policy which blatantly said, “Terrorists are explicitly allowed to purchase however many weapons and munitions they want to because it is their sacred Second Amendment Right.” We’d never hear the end of it on Fox News, at rallies, probably even in sermons on Sunday, asking why Democrats hate America.”Be afraid, be very afraid of Democrats!”
Earlier this week, FRONTLINE explored the shady world of online, for-profit education. One of my favorite quotes relates to how this industry is milking the federal government as a “cash cow”: “The taxpayers are essentially funding this industry; something like 75% of their revenue comes from federal grants and loans.” According to FRONTLINE, “This is a subject of increasing concern to the Obama administration, which, last month, remade the federal student loan program, and is now proposing changes that may make it harder for the for-profit colleges to qualify.”
So, who’s at the center of all this? That’s right, none other than our old pal, Harris Miller, last seen in 2006 calling Jim Webb a racist, misogynist, and anti-Semite. Here’s a transcript from Part 3 of the FRONTLINE story with Miller:
We talked to the chief Washington lobbyist for the for-profit schools, Harris Miller.
Frontline: “The industry has a black eye, has been struggling for credibility, why?
Harris Miller: “I don’t think the industry has a black eye, I think [they] are doing very well, growing by 25% a year, 2.8 million students attending our schools. We have some challenges because there have been some allegations that everything is not perfect, I wish it were.
Frontline: “But what about the pressure of Wall Street to have them grow.”
Harris Miller: “The pressure is to deliver a high education quality for their students. Our schools know that any time they step out of line, there’s a huge risk and there’s a large focus on compliance at all times, including on enrollment issues.”
Yeah, right, I’m sure that’s what Wall Street cares about regarding the for-profit education industry; not profit, but “education quality for their students.” Uh huh.
Anyway, Frontline then goes on to discuss the tremendous pressure put on recruiters to meet quotas, and how this “challenges anyone’s integrity.” The message in the industry is to create a “sense of urgency” among potential students, “Dig deep, get to their pain, get to what’s bothering them, so that that way you can convince them that a college degree is going to solve all their problems.”
It gets worse, though.
[more after the “flip”]
For instance, Frontline reports, “Graduates of another for-profit school — a college nursing program in California — tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by prospective employers.”
Slimy, slimier, slimiest. So how does this industry’s chief lobbyist defend the indefensible? Later in the FRONTLINE story, Miller states (with a straight face, amazingly): “We educate the students that traditional higher education has given up on. Traditional higher education has become a very socio-demographically elite group of people; if you’re not wealthy or upper middle class, you’re not going to get into a traditional higher education system. So, the only options lower income students and working adults have is either to go to a community college, some of them can go to minority-serving institutions, and our option is the third option.” One of the problems with this “third option,” FRONTLINE explains, is that “the debt load of for-profit students is more than twice that of students at traditional schools.” And that, according to FRONTLINE, is “troubling.”
In sum, the for-profit education industry, at least as portrayed by FRONTLINE, is about as slimy as you can get. At the minimum, they’re leaching off the taxpayers and the federal government while providing “education” of questionable quality and value to their “students.” I find it fascinating – but sadly, not surprising – that Harris Miller, who used to spend his days lobbying to facilitate the outsourcing of American IT jobs, now is the chief lobbyist for this shady industry. Of course, this is the same guy who liked to brag that he was a “genius” and a “visionary” while patting his wallet to draw attention to how much money he makes. Thank god we “drafted” Jim Webb and defeated this guy in June 2006, that’s all I have to say.
The recent municipal election in Lynchburg resulted in placing a far different group of city council members in power than Liberty University Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr., thought he could engineer. The university, a far-right bastion of religious and political conservatism, had attempted to pressure the Lynchburg City Council to move the voting precinct for its students onto its campus, to the point of secretly recording a conversation between school officials and the mayor and city manager.
(How far-right is LU? Well, the speaker at their commencement this year is Glenn Beck, the crybaby clown who pretends to be a “commentator” on Faux News!)
For this election Liberty also conducted an on-campus voter registration drive, informed students that they were expected to vote, and provided buses to take them to their polling place. The expectation was that three Republicans could be elected and would then give Falwell enormous clout on city council since he has the student votes to control one city ward. Things didn’t turn out that way.
These same actions were behind the narrow defeat of Del. Shannon Valentine last November, so I suppose Falwell thought he could pull off another coup…Not this time.
Lynchburg has a modified ward electoral system, in which four seats are elected from wards and three are at-large. This election was for the three at-large seats
Mayor Joan Foster, who ran as an independent but was endorsed by the Lynchburg Democratic Committee, and incumbent council member Randy Foster, also endorsed by the Democrats, got the largest number of votes. They were joined in victory by lone Republican Hunsdon “H” Cary, a 30-year resident of the city and retired CEO of a large Lynchburg retirement community. Council thus retains a four-vote majority of Independents.
Combined with the Democratic sweep of three council seats in Roanoke, local Republicans may want to rethink their expectations of almost guaranteed electoral success for 2010.
The Liberty power grab was complicated by the entry into the race of a Liberty student, Brent Robertson, who identified himself as a Republican. Thus, four “Republicans” were vying for three open seats on council. Republicans blamed that for their poor showing. I don’t agree with that assessment at all because the Independents who had been endorsed by the Democratic Party also had a fourth Independent candidate in the race, J.P. Vaughn, a highly respected member of the community.
Voter turnout in Lynchburg was 32%, certainly much better than the 12% turnout in Roanoke, where a slate of three Democrats were elected out of a field of seven candidates, three of them Republicans.
While he lived, Jerry Falwell, Sr., was more careful not to throw around his political clout so blatantly, but his son, who somehow inherited the elder Falwell’s position as chancellor, is not so circumspect.
At least, this time Falwell’s desire for complete city control was thwarted by the voters.
Stephen Colbert takes on right-wing, anti-gay activist George Rekers (aka, “stereotype come to life”), who apparently looks for people to help him schlep his luggage around on Rentboy.com. Of course, where else would anyone think to look for a good bellhop? Heh.
Eighty years ago, Josef Stalin found a scientist he liked. This was bad news for the scientists who were not so popular with the Soviet leadership.
Trofim Lysenko, with Stalin’s approval, directed the Soviet Institute of Genetics. He promoted the theory that characteristics acquired during an organism’s lifetime can be passed on genetically to future generations.
This fit well with the communist objective of creating a “New Man”. It did not fit quite so well with the truth.
Lysenko’s theories would have been laughed out of the lab had he not found a sponsor willing and able to apply the full coercive power of government to reward those who supported Lysenko and punish those who disagreed. Thousands of scientists suffered under Lysenko, losing their jobs and often being imprisoned.
It takes enormous courage to “speak truth to power” when you have a tyrannically-minded leader using power to threaten the truth. Which brings me to Ken Cuccinelli.
The state has an important role in science: to fund research and education, to use and promote science, to ensure it is freely conducted. It is not the role of the state to dictate, for political reasons, which scientific theories may be considered right or wrong.
When governments do take such a stance, and get away with it, it is a sign of a deep sickness in the body politic. Nothing is more important to democracy than the free and open pursuit of the truth. Politicians who don’t respect or protect that pursuit represent the greatest danger a democracy can have. Because when you take away the ability of citizens to appeal to reason, truth and common sense, you open the door to arbitrary rule – which means that those in power can ultimately get away with anything.
Some may see it as a small thing that Attorney General Cuccinelli is demanding information from the University of Virginia about the work of climate scientist Michael Mann to determine if he was “defrauding” state taxpayers – that is, by publishing peer-reviewed scientific research that Mr. Cuccinelli and his donors in the fossil fuel industry (such as Massey Energy) found inconvenient.
This is no small thing. It is one of the most shocking acts I have witnessed in over three decades of studying, observing and participating in politics and government. Cuccinelli is crossing a line that democratic governments only cross at their peril. This action cannot stand – it must not stand.
It is time for Virginia’s campuses to rise up in outrage at this attack by the state on their academic freedom. It is good to see University of Virginia faculty denouncing this action. But others need to join them in solidarity – students and faculty at the rest of Virginia’s universities and at other institutions across the country; associations of academics, scientists, etc., nationally and internationally; protectors of the First Amendment, like the ACLU; perhaps, I don’t know, Amnesty International? (Will Professor Mann become Cuccinelli’s first prisoner of conscience?)
The key to maintaining democracy is that when governments overreach, the people slap their hand. It’s time for us to stand up and do so again – all hands on deck, people! This is serious.
Watch this video by NBC 12 and judge for yourself. Key quotes:
1. “I’d have to let you defer to the attorney general on that on that one, on what he is doing and why he is doing it. He is seperatley elected.”
2. “What the Attorney General’s theroies are, I only know what I read in the paper about it. I have not spoken to him about it.”
