Good Morning!
Helleborus. Scott Arboretum. March, 2013. Photo by joanneleon.
Blue Oyster Cult: Hot Rails to Hell
News and Opinion
This is happening today. Look for a blogathon diary around noon to cover this. There will be a livestream. Bernie Sanders will be there along with a coalition of grassroots left organizations like Social Security Works (SSW), PCCC, NOW, DFA.
Save our Social Security (SOS)
It is time to bring our message to the President. But we need your help to make it happen. Here’s what you need to know:
Who: Progressive organizations representing millions of American who have rejected cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits
What: Delivery of hundreds of thousands petitions to the White House to reject the chained CPI benefit cut
Where: Lafayette Square in front of the The White House
When: 12:30 pm EDT, Tuesday, April 9.
This is an emergency. If the President proposes Social Security cuts in his budget, it can only get worse from there. Our parents, children, friends, and neighbors are counting on us.
Help us tell the President: No cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Join us this Tuesday, April 9th at 12:30 pm EDT to deliver hundred of thousands of petitions to the White House to remind the President why we elected him.
The excellent DS Wright.
Obama Budget Splits The Democratic Party
President Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security and Medicare has fueled a civil war within the Democratic Party. The social insurance programs are considered by many Democrats to be the party’s greatest achievements in the New Deal and Great Society, respectively. Obama’s alignment with Bush style Neoliberalism has provoked the progressive wing of the party to begin to openly defy the termed out president.
Why yes, yes they could and yes they would by opportunistic Republicans. In a New York minute. A lot of us have been pointing this out for a long time. But we are just hair on fire alarmists.
Could Democrats Be Rebranded As the 'Anti-Social Security Party'?
It's time to think the unthinkable: The leader of the Democratic Party is about to submit a budget which cuts Social Security benefits. Party officials are reportedly promoting candidates with no track record on key issues and no apparent interest in politics.
And Republicans are planning another double-cross, an undertaking for which they have demonstrated both talent and enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, a petition with more than two million signatures will be presented to the White House tomorrow at a rally in Lafayette Square. And yet, despite this massive outpouring of public sentiment, and despite widespread public support for Social Security, the Democrats may be setting themselves up for a 2014 Congressional race in which they're portrayed as the "anti-Social Security party."
The fearmongering in the media will really ramp up now (even more if that's possible), I guess.
No cannonballs did fly
No rifles cut us down
No bombs fell from the sky
No blood soaked the ground
No powder flash blinded the eye
No deafening thunder sounded
But just as sure as the hand of god
They brought death to my hometown
They brought death to my hometown
No shells ripped the evening sky
No cities burning down
No armies stormed the shores for which we’d die
No dictators were crowned
High off on a quiet night
I never heard a sound
The marauders raided in the dark and brought death to my hometown, boys
Death to my hometown
They destroyed our families’ factories and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains
The vultures picked our bones
So listen up, my Sonny boy
Be ready for when they come
For they’ll be returning sure as the rising sun
Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it ’til you’re done
Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well
Send the robber baron’s straight to hell
The greedy thieves that came around
And ate the flesh of everything they’ve found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Walk the streets as free men now
And they brought death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown
Bill Black: The New York Times Thinks Bleeding Cyprus is “Strong Medicine”
Yves here. I’m overdue for a post on the propagandizing against Cyprus. Black describes one element of this barrage.
[...]
I’m announcing the New York Times award for incompetence in macroeconomic reporting (IMR, pronounced like “screamer”). I suggest that the paper offer as a prize to awardees a two hour lunch with Krugman in which he provides a remedial economics lecture. My premise is that it is impossible to be a NYT reporter and fail to know that the paper has a Nobel Laureate in economics who writes a regular column for the paper and frequently discusses making economic downturns worse by inflicting self-destructive austerity. Even the most casual reader of Paul Krugman’s columns would know that opposition to austerity has long been the dominant view among economists and that over the last five years events here and in Europe have again confirmed that view.
[...]
What I do expect out of NYT reporters is critical thinking and refusing to accept as a purported “fact” that austerity in response to a Great Recession is a rational policy. They should certainly not present such an assertion as a fact. If they wish to argue in favor of austerity they should alert their readers that it is a minority view among economists and admit that its proponents have consistently been proven wrong – and then argue why they believe this time will be different.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/...
[...]
What we get out of NYT reporters – as a typical practice – in reporting on Eurozone austerity is the opposite approach. They may acknowledge that austerity has proven self-destructive – but they normally do so in an overall presentation that implicitly asserts that austerity must be desirable because it is so harmful. This passes for logic among theoclassical economists. The usual austerity metaphor is to “medicine.” Medicine may taste terrible and cause one brief pain, but only the most childish would fail to take their medicine because it briefly makes our lips curl in distaste.
The economic truth, however, proved repeatedly during this crisis, is that austerity is to “medicine” as bleeding a patient was to “health care.” It violates the Hippocratic Oath’s central precept that the physician must “do no harm.” The bubbles cracked in 2006, and the Eurozone has been inflicting austerity on its population for over five years. No one serious, and honest, in their reporting can use the medicine metaphor.
fatster over at FDL. Will Harry suddenly decide that he likes filibuster reform after all just in time to cut Social Security and Medicare, so that no liberal senators can filibuster?
The Roundup for April 8, 2013
❖ President Obama says Margaret Thatcher was “a great champion of freedom.” A South Wales representative of the National Union of Mineworkers commemorated “the viciousness and ruthless way she attacked” the miners. “Alternative Eulogy”.
❖ Senate Leader Harry “Leader” Reid (D-NV) is once again threatening the “nuclear option” to stop Republican filibusters. No white flags seen waving from Republican senators’ desks yet.
❖ Amy Goodman summed things up nicely at the National Conference for Media Reform over the weekend, such as: ”This is no longer a mainstream media, it’s an extreme media beating the drums for war”, and much more. Video.
Action
Blogathon!
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DailyKos Blogathon -- Week of April 8th
(All times are Eastern, diaries published by the Pushing back at the Grand Bargain group)
Monday, April 8
10:00 a.m. Roger Fox
12:00 noon eXtina
2:00 p.m. Guest crosspost by Yves Smith
3:00 p.m. poopdogcomedy
4:00 p.m. Horace Boothroyd III
6:00 p.m. slinkerwink
8:00 p.m. joedemocrat
Tuesday, April 9
10:00 a.m. Guest crosspost by Bill Black
12:00 noon Livestream Event diary
2:00 p.m. joe shikspack
4:00 p.m. Roger Fox
6:00 p.m. Priceman
8:00 p.m. TomP
Wednesday, April 10
10:00 a.m. bobswern
12:00 noon Words in Action
2:00 p.m. One Pissed Off Liberal (OPOL)
4:00 p.m. puddytat
6:00 p.m.
8:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 11
10:00 a.m.
12:00 noon
2:00 p.m.
4:00 p.m.
6:00 p.m. cosmic debris
8:00 p.m. angelajean
Friday April 12
10:00 a.m. Reserved
12:00 noon Reserved
2:00 p.m. Reserved
4:00 p.m. Reserved
6:00 p.m. Reserved
8:00 p.m. Reserved
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1. Call your senators and representatives and tell them "Hell No!" with a priority on contacting senators. U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. You can find email contact information here
2. Contact the White House and tell them "Hell No!". Switchboard: 202-456-1414. Email contact page is here.
3. Petitions. There are a number of petitions available. Choose from the following or preferably sign them all.
a. White House petition calling for no cuts to Social Security.
b. AFL-CIO petition calling for no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and calling for more jobs, repealing the sequester and ending tax loopholes for the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
c. Sen. Harkin's petition telling Pres. Obama not to cut Social Security.
4. Social Media. Share this diary and promote this blogathon on Facebook and Google+ using the buttons at the top of the diary. Send this out on Twitter and add the hashtags #HellNo and #NoGrandBargain.
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April Days of Action Against Drones
APRIL DAYS OF ACTION 2013 – A National Uprising to Stop Drone Spying and Killing
April 4 – 6: Drone Manufacturing
Organizers around the country are encouraged to identify drone manufacturing facilities in their regions and organize demonstrations, teach-ins and other actions calling for an end to drone attacks and an end to the manufacture of weaponized and surveillance drones. Coordinator – Joe Scarry – jtscarry@yahoo.com
April 16- 18: Drone Research/Training
Organizers around the country are encouraged to identify colleges and universities in their regions doing drone research and/or training of drone pilots and to call for an end to research and training related to drone warfare. Coordinator – Marge Van Cleef – mvc@igc.org
April 27 – 28: Drone Bases
Organizers around the country will be encouraged to organize protests at drone bases in their regions. People will be encouraged also to participate in demonstrations planned during this period at the Reaper drone base at Hancock Air Base near Syracuse, NY.
Coordinator – Dave Soumis – davidso1@charter.net
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
MEATLOAF- bat out of hell