Hockey - Jane Siberry

Part of Charlie Pierce's tribute on the death of Jean Beliveau (his Favorite Canadian).

Winter time and the frozen river
Sunday afternoon
They're playing hockey on the river
Rosy
He'll have that scar on his chin forever someday his girlfriend will say hey
Where
He might look out the window or not
You skate as fast as you can 'til you hit the snowbank that's how you stop
And you get your sweater from the catalogue
You use your rubber boots for goal posts
Ah walkin' home

Don't let those sunday afternoons
Get away get away get away get away
Break away break away break away break away

This stick was signed by jean belliveau so don't fucking tell me where
To fucking go
On sunday afternoon
Someone's dog just took the puck-he buried it it's in the snowbank your turn
They rioted in the streets of montreal when they benched rocket richard it's
True

Don't let those sunday afternoons
Get away get away get away get away
Break away break away break away break away

The sun is fading on the frozen river
The wind is dying down
Someone else just got called for dinner
Rosy
Hmm sunday afternoon

Gas Prices Are Down? Dodd-Frank!

This is copied-and-pasted from an article at Smirking Chimp. I think it's by wizard2000, but it's hard to tell:

"A couple of weeks ago MSNBC host Chris Hayes had an oil industry expert on as his guest to ask him a simple question, "Why are gasoline prices going down?"

"Haven't you noticed? Fuel prices have dropped quite significantly over the past several months, not as much (yet) as when they plummeted in late 2008 and early 2009 following the crash and disruption in trading on the stock market, but still by a substantial amount. So, Chris Hayes wanted to know why.

"I expected the usual answer, oil glut, refineries up and working at full capacity, etc etc, but I was surprised when Hayes' guest said that certain provisions of Dodd-Frank (passed by Democrats and signed into law by President Obama in 2010) had finally kicked in a couple of months ago (after years of delay by Republicans suing Dodd-Frank in court and right-wing commissioners on the Commodities Futures Trading Commission refusing to enforce Dodd-Frank anti-speculative provisions). And then Hayes's guest said that these long-delayed Dodd-Frank provisions that restricted oil futures trading had caused Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan (and probably Koch Industries, and other speculators in oil futures) to shut down their oil futures trading desks.

"Now, you might ask why restricting oil futures trading would lead to lower oil barrel and gasoline prices? Well, just look at what happened in late 2008. The stock market crash (from an index over 12,000 to about 6,000, with 401-Ks taking a major hit) affected fuel prices (oil barrel prices fell from $150 to about $30 a barrel, while gasoline prices at the pump fell from over $4 to under $2 a gallon). Wow!! And all because trading on Wall Street was disrupted, including oil futures trading by the speculators.

"But I thought oil futures trading on the commodities exchange was primarily for heavy fuel users like airline companies, so they could lock in lower prices due to high volume purchases to keep ticket prices lower? Oh, this was the case until former U.S. Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) inserted a speculator-friendly provision into a 1999 bill which deregulated completely oil futures trading, opening the door to billionaire/millionaire speculators. Over the past 15 years, their speculative activity has driven up and kept high the fuel prices hitting hard the middle class in America. Several years back, someone did a study showing that in the 1990s, oil futures trading was 70 percent heavy fuel users (airlines companies, etc) with only about 30 percent of the trading being done by speculators. After Gramm's bill was signed into law, this percentage reversed over the years with over 70 percent of oil futures trading being done by the speculators (J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Koch Industries, etc) leaving the 30 percent or so to the heavy fuel users. In other words, U.S. car drivers and long-haul truckers have been pumping billions of dollars into the pockets of the speculators every time they've pumped gas into their vehicle...just the way the greed-driven speculators planned.

"Dodd-Frank in 2010 (along with other provisions) was meant to address this theft from Americans and America's middle-class by rapacious Republicans, which of course explains why Republicans tried every trick they could think of to stop it from being implemented and enforced, even though the Dodd-Frank restrictions are far less stringent than those in place during the 1990s regarding oil futures trading. This obstruction of Dodd-Frank is the same as Republicans trying to restrict the Affordable Care Act even before it went into effect.

"So, what can we expect from Republicans starting in about a month when they take charge of Capitol Hill? In between numerous House impeach hearings of President Obama (who has hardly done anything approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors," just like President Clinton before him never got close to "high crimes and misdemeanors"), Republican will no doubt try one trick after another to repeal (in part or whole) the Affordable Care Act AND also repeal Dodd-Frank, so that price-gouging Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan and price-gougers like the Koch brothers can return to speculating (rigging) the oil futures trading market like before, artificially driving up fuel costs in the process, making billions more for them and the other insatiable 1 percenters.

"And the Democratic Party better make this the central message of the Democratic Party over the next two years (and beyond), whether addressing rural or urban audiences, because anyone that drives a car has been paying enormous amounts of gas money over the past 15 years to a bunch of anti-American greed-driven thugs, domestic and foreign, with Repubilcan politicians and speculator front groups doing their dirty work. Hey, these Republican politicians and front groups are just another "investment commodity" in the eyes of the insanity insatiable 1 percenters, the best puppets their money can buy.

Frank Serpico

Click here for an article at Politico written by 78-year-old Frank Serpico, entitled The Police Are Still Out Of Control. I Should Know. Some quotes:

Forty-odd years on, my story probably seems like ancient history to most people, layered over with Hollywood legend. For me it’s not, since at the age of 78 I’m still deaf in one ear and I walk with a limp and I carry fragments of the bullet near my brain.

A few years ago, after the New York Police Museum refused my guns and other memorabilia, I loaned them to the Italian-American museum right down street from police headquarters, and they invited me to their annual dinner. I didn’t know it was planned, but the chief of police from Rome, Italy, was there, and he gave me a plaque. The New York City police officers who were there wouldn’t even look at me.

Times have changed. It’s harder to be a venal cop these days. But an even more serious problem — police violence — has probably grown worse, and it’s out of control for the same reason that graft once was: a lack of accountability.

Today the combination of an excess of deadly force and near-total lack of accountability is more dangerous than ever: Most cops today can pull out their weapons and fire without fear that anything will happen to them, even if they shoot someone wrongfully. All a police officer has to say is that he believes his life was in danger, and he’s typically absolved. What do you think that does to their psychology as they patrol the streets—this sense of invulnerability?

In some ways, matters have gotten even worse. The gulf between the police and the communities they serve has grown wider. Mind you, I don’t want to say that police shouldn’t protect themselves and have access to the best equipment. Police officers have the right to defend themselves with maximum force, in cases where, say, they are taking on a barricaded felon armed with an assault weapon. But when you are dealing every day with civilians walking the streets, and you bring in armored vehicles and automatic weapons, it’s all out of proportion. It makes you feel like you’re dealing with some kind of subversive enemy. The automatic weapons and bulletproof vest may protect the officer, but they also insulate him from the very society he’s sworn to protect. All that firepower and armor puts an even greater wall between the police and society, and solidifies that “us-versus-them” feeling.

All a policeman has to say is that “the suspect turned toward me menacingly,” and he does not have to worry about prosecution.

Many white Americans, indoctrinated by the ridiculous number of buddy-cop films and police-themed TV shows that Hollywood has cranked out over the decades—almost all of them portraying police as heroes—may be surprised by the continuing outbursts of anger, the protests in the street against the police that they see in inner-city environments like Ferguson. But they often don’t understand that these minority communities, in many cases, view the police as the enemy. We want to believe that cops are good guys, but let’s face it, any kid in the ghetto knows different. The poor and the disenfranchised in society don’t believe those movies; they see themselves as the victims, and they often are.

As for Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, they’re giving speeches now, after Ferguson. But it’s 20 years too late. It’s the same old problem of political power talking, and it doesn’t matter that both the president and his attorney general are African-American. Corruption is color blind. Money and power corrupt, and they are color blind too.

Christopher Walken

As Hook in Peter Pan:



In the Fatboy Slim video, Weapon of Choice:

Strange Fruit (Billie Holiday)

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

 Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Bernie Sanders For President!

Click here for an article by Heather at Crooks & Liars entitled Sen. Bernie Sanders Unveils 12-Point Economic Plan.

Nostalgia - Dial-Up Internet

Bobby Kennedy's Speech On The Assassination Of Martin Luther King

"I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee."

Read This Post!

This is an extremely important article by Mike Lofgren at Bill Moyers & Co. Lofgren was "a congressional staff member for 28 years specializing in national security and possessing a top secret security clearance ..."

His description of "The Deep State" would have been considered 30 years ago to be the raving of a wingnut conspiracy theorist; today, it's a harsh and unpleasant reality.

Click here for his article, entitled "Anatomy of the Deep State."

The Fox's Agents In The Henhouse

The Republicans have a long and unillustrious history of appointing chairmen of committees and heads of agencies who are bitterly opposed to the ostensible purpose of those committees and agencies. I recently came across the following article about the 2010 appointment of Spencer Bachus as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

The Republicans recently routed the Democrats in the 2014 Midterms, taking control of the Senate, where they will now appoint committee heads. Scheduled to be chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is one James Inhofe (R-OK), author of the 2012 book "The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future."

Bachus's Alabama colleague Richard Shelby (R-AL) is set to become Senate Banking Chairman. He has lambasted the Obama administration’s Dodd-Frank financial law and is expected to push to roll back powers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

John McCain (R.-AZ), on the other hand, is in line to lead the Senate Armed Services Committee. Far from being opposed to anything to do with the armed services, McCain is expected to seek to pursue new and exciting military ventures all over the globe.

Click here for an article by Mary Orndorf Troyan at blog.al.com/sweethome entitled "Spencer Bachus finally gets his chairmanship." Some illustrative quotes from the article:

House Republicans on Wednes­day promoted Bachus to chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which has wide juris­diction over banks, capital markets, housing, consumer credit and the overall health of the American fi­nancial system.

Bachus, in an interview Wednesday night, said he brings a "main street" perspective to the committee, as opposed to Wall Street.

"In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated, and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks," he said.

He later clarified his comment to say that regulators should set the parameters in which banks operate but not micromanage them. [Yeah, right.]

Influenza Season

Cover up!

Jon Stewart v. Koch Brothers

Krugman Hits Another One Out Of The Park

Click here for a recent NYT article by Paul Krugman entitled "Ideology and Investment."

John Oliver's Canine SCOTUS

John Oliver's canine take on SCOTUS:



And then the additional time on the web:

Eisenhower: Military/Industrial Complex

Video clip and transcription of Eisenhower's "military/industrial complex" speech.


Good evening, my fellow Americans.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time, and as required, make swords as well.

But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. How to do this? Three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.

Now, this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Shep Smith Goes Off The Fox Reservation Again

Say it, Shep! (But I frequently fear for your future employment at Fox.)

For the next few minutes, I'm going to give you the facts on Ebola. It'll take just three minutes.

But first, today, given what we know, you should have no concerns about Ebola at all. None. I promise. Unless a medical professional has contacted you personally and told you of some sort of possible exposure, fear not. Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and the television or read the fear-provoking words on line. The people who say and write hysterical things are being very irresponsible.

Here are the facts. A man contracted Ebola overseas. Tragically, he was dying in a Texas hospital. He was at his most contagious while showing the most severe symptoms; that's how Ebola works. And a healthcare worker at the hospital got the virus from him. She is doing well, she says, Skyping with her family from isolation just yesterday, saying she's blessed to have so much support and such great medical care.

The CDC director told us, all of us, yesterday, that he did indeed expect other health care workers at that hospital who treated that one dying patient to contract the virus, and that's now happened. Another health care worker at that same hospital now has Ebola. They tell us they're transferring her to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Now, before she showed symptoms, she flew from Cleveland to Dallas on Frontier Airlines. They say she should not have done that, but she did. But as we all now know, if you don't show symptoms, you are not contagious. She did not show symptoms, according to the doctors. Still, medical professionals are contacting everyone who was on that plane to make sure each person is okay. The CDC director says chances are very slim that any of those passengers is sick.

Now, big picture, and this is important: You have to remember that -- in the middle of all of this, you have to remember that there is politics in the mix. With midterm elections coming, the party in charge needs to appear to be effectively leading. The party out of power needs to show that there is a lack of leadership. So the president has canceled a fundraising trip and is holding meetings, and his political opponents are accusing his administration of poor leadership.

For the purpose of this fact-dissemination exercise, those matters are immaterial. Again, these are the facts. We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States, nowhere. We do have two health care workers who contacted the disease from a dying man. They are isolated. There is no information to suggest that the virus has spread to anyone in the general population in America: not one person in the general population in the United States.

Suggestions have been made publicly that leaders and medical professionals may be lying to us. Those suggestions are completely without basis in fact. There is no evidence of any kind of which we at Fox News are aware that leaders have lied about anything regarding Ebola.

I report to you with certainty this afternoon that being afraid, at all, is the wrong thing to do. Being petrified -- and that's a quote -- is ridiculous. The panic that has tanked the stock market and left people fearful that their children will get sick at school is counterproductive and lacks basis in fact or reason. There is no Ebola spreading in America. Should that change, our reporting will change. But there is nothing to indicate that it will.

Best advice for you and your family at this moment: Get a flu shot. Unlike Ebola, flu is easily transmitted. Flu, along with resulting pneumonia, killed 52,000 Americans last year alone. A flu shot will reduce your chance of getting flu. So get one.

Britain Votes (274-12) To Recognize A Palestinian State,

Click here for an article by Susie Madrak at Crooks & Liars entitled British Parliament Votes Overwhelmingly In Favor Of Recognizing Palestine State, 247-12.

According to Labour member Andy Slaughter, Israel has engaged in a new “barbarism”:

I think that the British people have been on the same sort of journey as the Right Hon. Member for Croydon South [Conservative Sir Richard Ottaway] described. It is certainly true of the Labour movemen -- from being very sympathetic to Israel as a country that was trying to achieve democracy and was embattled, to seeing it now as a bully and a regional superpower. That is not something I say with any pleasure, but since the triumph of military Zionism and the Likud-run governments [Netanyahu] we have seen a new barbarism in that country.

Madrak says:

One lawmaker says that the occupation is “much worse” than apartheid in South Africa. Another says that the Balfour Declaration of 1917 now seems like a “sick joke,” because it never guaranteed freedom to Palestinians. Many members offer frank descriptions of Israeli detention of children and unending settlement expansion. Several describe Israeli actions in Gaza as war crimes. One mentions the use of terrorism by Mandela and Begin long before Palestinians used the tactic. Labour and Conservative members alike speak about the role of the Israel lobby in the United States.

I seldom read comments to blog posts, but here's just a quick sample of the first of the comments:

* Chris L'Hommedieu • a day ago
So here's how I look at it. You go to war. You win. You put the losers in a very small box. No-one else helps them out either. You build walls. You occupy every inch of their box. You periodically make their box smaller as "settlers" move into the box. You prevent them from either moving around inside the box, or ever leaving the box. Every now and then the people in the box get really really pissed and throw things at you, but don't do much actual damage. But its scary as hell when they do it. So you blow the crap out of the box, killing piles of them. Then you send in more settlers and take more of the box.

And you're shocked, amazed, and appalled that the people in the box hate you and want to kill you.

Repeat. Decade after decade.

* Bill Lumbergh • a day ago

And the sick thing is that Israeli/U.S. govt. propaganda asserts that it's Israel that's in the box.

* Gil Randall • 12 hours ago
It was, but only in the earliest years.

By the mid-50s or so, after Egypt got the Soviet Union to support them, that was when Israel got the US involved to back them and, initially anyway, Israel and the Arab states were just more countries used by the US and the Soviet Union to fight proxy wars as a dick-waving contest against each other for the next forty years.

But as soon as the "religious" people got involved in the 60s, that's when the politicians (and Israeli leaders) starting merging more and more so that even after Egypt made peace (1979), then the Soviet Union collapsed (1991), then Jordan made peace (1994), they still look at Palestinians with contempt.

By today's standards, with the Soviet Union gone, two of the Arab state former antagonists out of the equation (including the largest and strongest one, Egypt), Syria and Iraq too embroiled in chaos and/or civil war, and Lebanon having absolutely no chance on its own if they even think about trying anything, there should be no reason for the US to be SO closely tied to Israel anymore beyond just allies (much less billions of dollars in equipment and such), and religious dogma is really the only reason.

FOX NEWS FLASH: Obama Will Give Iran Nukes In Exchange For ISIS Help!

Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland (born c. July 24, 1951) is an American communications consultant. She served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 to 1985. She also served as a speech writer to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate Republican nomination in New York in 2006 and is currently a Fox News contributor on foreign policy and national security issues.

McFARLAND: Or, I think the more likely, he's going to partner with Iran and he's going to say, you know, you, the pro-Iranian, Iraqi army, the Shiite militias,we're all going to work together to get rid of ISIS and Iran will have a price tag on that, and that will be nuclear weapons.

As karoli says at Crooks & Liars:

That's right, folks. After spending years on delicate negotiations and heavy sanctions on Iran to keep them from developing nuclear weapons, KT McFarland actually thinks the most likely scenario is that President Obama will sign over a few nukes in exchange for their participation in the eradication of ISIS.

Jon Stewart v. Hank Greenberg (AIG)

When's the last time you got good and angry about the financiers that tanked the world economy in 2008?

Want to?

Helping The Little One ...