The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    THE HERO'S CALL

    By Dennie Briggs on Tue, 05/03/2011 - 9:23am |

    Crossposted from Dennie's Blog

    Everyone is a Hero, merely by the fact of having been born. The hero’s shape, however,  is largely up to each ordinary individual when found under extraordinary conditions. In contrast is the idea of a role model—imitating another’s behavior. The media offers an opportunity to expand our notions, or by the same token, to firm up our preconceptions.

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    Some Observations On Today's Osama Overkill Coverage

    By oleeb on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:40pm |

    The media paroxysms began last night just before the late local news programs were to begin. Since that time we have gotten very little substantive information that one could say really sheds any light on how the US finally was able to locate and kill Osama Bin Laden.

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    CANADA VOTES 2011: DECISION DAY

    By acanuck on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 10:00pm |

    Fresh thread. Polls have closed across Canada, and it's finally legal to post election results nationwide. Counting has just begun in the western provinces, and voting in Quebec and Ontario ended only about half an hour ago. Too fragmentary to report for now.

    So we're left to look at results from the Atlantic Provinces, and extrapolate (if we can) from that.
    I know quinn hates poll aggregator ThreeHundredEight.com, But I'm going to use its predictions as an arbitrary baseline, and try to weigh how real-time results vary from them.

    cmaukonen's picture

    How te rest of the world reacts to the killing on bin Baden

    By cmaukonen on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 7:58pm |

    I was wondering after all the hoopla, what do some of the other countries and people feel about this. Most especially Pakistan. Well here is what the Guardian has on this.

    We've heard a lot of reaction from the US and a bit from the UK and elsewhere, but what are Bin Laden's followers and sympathisers saying? A snapshot of their feelings can be found here on the Jihadology website, which monitors Jihadi commentary. Here's a taster:

    Aca-quinn . Who'll be the weather man

    By Flavius on Mon, 05/02/2011 - 2:48pm |

    tonight who tells us which way the wind's blowing ? If need be after the poll close in BC..

    Ryan wants the elderly poor to die early and painfully

    By Flavius on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 7:46pm |

    Ryan wants to replace medicare with block grants with which the poor  obtain health insurance.

    Can carriers charge less for health insurance than the Government?

    No. the Govt doesn't have to earn a profit to provide an ROI for its shareholders.

    Will carriers be able to provide health insurance at a loss because it will be offset by profit on the premiums from  the healthy young?

    quinn esq's picture

    Lippy Kids.

    By quinn esq on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 5:42pm |

    The Royal Wedding's over.

    As always, however, a learning experience. For example, the media told us repeatedly that the one thing the Brits do well is... pomp.

    Well, that and ceremony. Two things, I guess. (Probably a bit more on the pomp, though. 60/40, I'd say.)

    cmaukonen's picture

    Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

    By cmaukonen on Sun, 05/01/2011 - 3:29pm |

    I came across this presentation while watching MHZ networks on Sunday. Unfortunately I cannot embed it here but here is a link to this program from The Carnegie Council.

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    Taking Our Country Back

    By Barth on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 2:54pm |

    Imagine John Adams, marked by the same man for hanging a decade earlier, for his role in the rebellion of the English colonies against the Crown. Yet now it was June, 1785 and he was presenting himself to King George III as the Ambassador of the United States to the Court of St. James. It is one of the most gripping scenes in David McCullough's magnificent book, and its dramatization in the television version was almost as good.

    Arizona GOP Governor Takes Guns Away from Republicans

    By NCD on Sat, 04/30/2011 - 2:36am |

    Ron Gould (Republican-AZ) will have to disarm when he goes to public events, sporting events, or enters libraries or government buildings in Arizona. Yes, he will have to leave his gun in his car, friends. Is this an outrage??  The Bill involved, dutifully passed by the Republican Legislature and sent to the Governor for her signature, has been vetoed.

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    The Strengths and Weaknesses of American Exceptionalism

    By coatesd on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 11:26pm |

                The Center for American Progress issued a fascinating and important PolicyLink paper early in April 2011: Prosperity 2050: Is Equity the Superior Growth Model?[1] Written by Sarah Treuhaft and David Madland, both its content and its title raised a central question of our time: whether it is “possible that the traditional assumption that there is a tradeoff between growth and equity is wrong, and that broadly shared growth is ultimately better for the economy?” The tentative Treuhaft/Madland answer to this question was that

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    CANADA'S ORANGE REVOLUTION: FINAL WEEKEND

    By acanuck on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 5:03pm |

    Quinn's Tuesday post has almost slipped off the page, so consider this a new open thread.

    The New Democratic tsunami rolls on, picking up almost one percentage point of support over the past 24 hours, and finally ThreeHundredEight.com is showing that translating into seats. Six new ones added overnight to the party's projected total, which now stands at 53.

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    Petraeus as CIA Chief: A Neo-con’s Wet Dream and/or the Road to the Presidency?

    By we are stardust on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 11:38am |

    When Harry Truman created the CIA in 1947 out of the Office of Strategic Services that had been formed during WW II to coordinate espionage activities against the Axis Powers, Truman wanted a civilian intelligence organization that would bring raw data to him as President, unadulterated by the bias that wouldn’t be “slanted to conform to established positions of a given department.”

    It appears that the following year Congress expanded the role of the CIA to include "sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures...subversion [and] assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation movements, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world” [snip]  including “an active Black operations mission has been launched deep under cover into Bolivia.  (Wikipedia asks for citation for the expansion claim.)

    By 1963 Truman expressed public dismay at the directions the CIA had evolved:

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    Ayn Rand - The Sociopathic Hero of the Republican Party

    By cmaukonen on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 5:57pm |

    Much has been written about the current republican budget put forth by the likes of Paul Ryan and his committee. Straight from the texts of Ayn Rand. A self involved, self centered sociopathic personality that bears a strange resemblance to such historical figures as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Most people today probably do not remember very well her unapologetic diatribes against anyone who she deemed less that her self.

    GotToBeMe's picture

    Political Cartoon: Extreme Birther Movement

    By GotToBeMe on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 8:20am |

    The next step for the Birther movement is an extreme one.

    Crossposted at www.Kavehadel.com/blog

     Artwork 2011©KavehAdel.com

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    The Eyes of Orly "Tammy Faye" Taitz

    By tmccarthy0 on Thu, 04/28/2011 - 12:08am |

    Taitz learned the art of facial shellacking from the goddess of too much makeup herself, yes, Tammy Faye Baker Messner.

    Anyhoo... I caught this on the Lawrence O'Donnell and The Last Word tonight.

    So here is the question, is she crazy or not? I am voting for crazy.

     

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Liberal Anthem for our Time

    By arc400 on Wed, 04/27/2011 - 5:44pm |

    One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: A Liberal Anthem for Our Time

    President John F. Kennedy defined the American Liberal as  "... someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties" [cited by Eric Alterman, Why we're Liberals: a political handbook for post-Bush America, 2008]

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    White House's Sperling Weighs in on Fracking

    By we are stardust on Wed, 04/27/2011 - 2:18pm |

    We’ve been watching Josh Fox’s documentary Gasland about hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’) , the method used to release natural gas from shale deposits.  Millions of gallons of water, sand  and proprietary chemicals are pumped under high pressure into a drilled well to release the gas.  Many of the 80-300 tons of chemicals per frack are highly toxic and carcinogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene, and a veritable host of others.  A well can be fracked up to 18 times.

    We’re bombarded lately with television ads claiming that natural gas is the clean and safe alternative to coal, and known deposits could provide us with safe energy for the next fifty years, la la la… It seems that the industry is pushing back hard against the public awareness that Fox’s film has generated over the dangers involved with fracking methods.

     Now there appear to be some pretty major problems with fracking, including the potential to poison water wells when the well casings crack, and it appears that has happened plenty.  The toxic water used has to be disposed of; estimates are that only half the water is recovered.  Typically the VOCs are evaporated off, then the water is trucked to wastewater treatment facilities, none of which is supervised or regulated either.

    cmaukonen's picture

    Do Americans Live Within Their means ? The president seems to think so.

    By cmaukonen on Tue, 04/26/2011 - 11:25pm |

    This however is generally not the case. Most people in this country are in hock up to their eyebrows. Ted Rall - a columnist I like to read - has some good points on this here.

    "VOUCHER" RHYMES WITH "OUCH" AND "SLOUCHER"

    By Oxy Mora on Tue, 04/26/2011 - 10:58am |

    Frank Luntz must be working overtime to re-brand the Ryan Budget.

    Always the cockeyed optimist about the fortunes of Democrats, I think the Ryan Budget spells doom for Republicans in 2012-- because of Republicans' serious miscalculations about what voters expected of them and then--egads, in what is normally a Democratic style faux pas, going on record on the thing with a HR vote by 235 members.

    Recent polls are very convincing that the public hates the idea of killing Medicare and substituting VOUCHERS.  OUCH!--sudden pain--what to do.

    quinn esq's picture

    Canuckistan About To Be Overrun By Socialist Hordes

    By quinn esq on Tue, 04/26/2011 - 12:09am |

    Acanuck is supposed to be covering this, but I thought you'd all be delighted to hear that Canada's socialists are a week away from what would be an historic election upset. Hell, THE election upset of all time up here in the Great White North.

    i.e. WINNING!!!1

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