Muse in the Morning

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 06 July 2012 06:00:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Muse in the MorningBow 1 I know you have talent. What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent. I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I'm a pretty darn good cook. :-)Let your talent[...]

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Housing Cures Homelessness - Who Knew

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 06 July 2012 06:00:00 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

By @KYYellowDog

Of course there are underlying causes. But here's the secret: addressing the immediate need makes fixing the underlying causes easier.

From the Smithsonian:

Homeless shelters became widespread during the 1980s, when an economic recession, the elimination of many single-room occupancy buildings and the closure of some mental institutions led to a homelessness epidemic. With strict curfews and spartan conditions, shelters were meant to be temporary. The logic was that people weren't ready for permanent homes until their addictions and psychological problems were addressed. For some, this strategy made sense. But many avoided treatment and shuttled in and out of shelters.
"It wasn't working," says Eric Belsky, a Harvard University housing scholar. "What you needed to do was get people into housing, then provide them with care." Known as "housing first," this approach was pioneered in the 1990s by New York City psychologist Sam Tsemberis and later helped to nearly eradicate homelessness in Times Square.
Today even some temporary shelters feel more like home. Michael Bell, a Columbia University professor of architecture, helped guide the redesign of the Andrews House, a 146-unit renovated building that provides short-term housing in New York City. A re-envisioned, state-of-the-art homeless shelter, says Bell, "can go a long way toward producing a psychic level of comfort that would allow someone to open up and begin examining their life."
When chronically homeless people are suddenly moved into their own apartments, many prefer at first to sleep on the floor. But within six months, most are so much better rested, nourished and dressed that workers from the nationwide 100,000 Homes Campaign have taken to snapping "before" and "after" photographs. "Something changes in their spirit," says Rebecca Kanis, the initiative's director. Before long, even those who had been homeless for decades may begin to reach out to estranged family members, seek mental health treatment and search for jobs.
A coalition of community organizations across the country, the 100,000 Homes Campaign aims to permanently house most of the country's 110,000 or so chronically homeless by 2014. (All told there are about 640,000 homeless Americans, but most are without housing for weeks or months instead of years.) Since 2010, the campaign has placed more than 12,000 people.
Paradoxically, providing permanent housing for a homeless person turns out to be cheaper than many of the alternatives, costing an average of about $15,000 annually-thousands less than a year's worth of shelter stays-and helping prevent expensive stops in prisons or emergency rooms. Better still, it's a lasting solution: 85 percent of participants stay in their homes, rather than returning to the street.

Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, employ the jobless, educate the ignorant - do that first, and the rest falls into place.

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Fox's Jenna Lee Ignores The Great Recession

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 06 July 2012 05:05:07 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

Fox News anchor Jenna Lee highlighted the extremely misleading statistic that the economy has lost more than 470,000 jobs since January 2009. In doing so, Lee ignored the fact that President Obama took office in the middle of a deep recession when hundreds of thousands of jobs were being shed each month.

Responding to the release of the June jobs report showing a gain of 80,000 jobs last month, President Obama highlighted the positive trend in private sector job growth, noting that "businesses have created 4.4 million new jobs over the past 28 months." After repeating Obama's comments, Lee said:

LEE: But remember, the president has been in office for roughly three and a half years, and according to the Labor Department, since the president took office in January of 2009, and private and public sectors combined have actually lost 473,000 jobs.

An error occurred with the video embed.

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Tomorrow On SiriusXM's Media Matters Radio

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 06 July 2012 04:32:13 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

Tomorrow morning on Media Matters Radio, host Bradley Herring and guest host Jess Levin bring you the major stories of the week in conservative media. You can listen on SiriusXM Left channel 127 every Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. ET, 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. PT. It is rebroadcast in full Sundays from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. ET, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. PT. You can follow the show on Twitter @MMFARadio.

Tomorrow's guests include:

Robert Borosage -- co-founder of Campaign for America's Future discusses Friday's employment numbers and what can be done to improve them.
Bill McKibben -- "the world's best green journalist" (Time magazine) looks at what the extreme heat, freak storms, and devastating wildfires demonstrate about climate change.
Caroline Fredrickson -- executive director of the American Constitution Society breaks down the Supreme Court's health care decision as well as Bill O'Reilly's quasi-apology for "being an idiot."
Ron Pollack -- executive director of Families USA explains the impact of the Supreme Court's Medicaid ruling on the uninsured.
Carlos Maza -- lead researcher for Equality Matters exposes new revelations about Chick-fil-A's anti-gay donations and the people behind NOM's "It Takes a Family to Raise a Village" conference.
Eric Boehlert -- senior fellow of Media Matters for America analyzes News Corp.'s split and the company's influence on Mitt Romney's campaign.

And as always, Jess Levin presents "The Week in Media," and the co-hosts deliver the latest in progressive messaging in the "Message Matters" segment.

(guests subject to change)

Last week, Christian Dorsey from the Economic Policy Institute exposed the "completely laughable" right-wing myth that government intervention in the economy is a bad thing.

An error occurred with the video embed.

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The new normal

post from Firedoglake on 06 July 2012 04:30:05 AM. © Firedoglake

As was noted here yesterday and I'm sure he's not the first one, FoxNews is always the first to declare "What Global Warming?" after a snow storm somehow do not seem to be pondering why it is so damn extraordinarily hot...in yet another year?[...]

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This Is Why Valerie Jarrett Blames Fox News For
Class Warfare

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 06 July 2012 03:09:31 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

Fox News and its counter-parts in right-wing media pounced on Senior White House Adviser Valerie Jarrett for pointing out that Fox News has a long history of using "class warfare" to attack President Obama. But despite the attacks from the right-wing media, Jarrett is right that Fox has a long history of resorting to charges of "class warfare" to attack President Obama while waging war itself against struggling Americans.

During a July 1 appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival, former Time editor Walter Issacson asked Jarrett about the notion held by "so many business men and others" that Obama is "attacking the rich, attacking people who make a profit, people who make jobs." Jarrett responded by noting that the class warfare narrative may be emanating from a "particular" network, one that isn't CNN and presumably not MSNBC.

Fox News, and other right wing media outlets attacked Jarrett's comments. Fox News host Greta Van Susteren in a July 6 tweet and blog post asked, "is she drinking?" Fox Nation and Breitbart.com, both highlighted Jarrett's comments. Newsbusters, a conservative media blog, in a July 6 post went a step further, accusing Jarrett of "reflexively bash[ing] Fox News" and "relentlessly shovel[ing] all the Obama talking points."

But despite the right-wing media's complaints, Fox News has made itself the home of "class warfare," both in their willingness to use the label to attack President Obama, and in their attacks on both the poor and policies designed to alleviate poverty.

FOX'S HISTORY OF ACCUSING OBAMA OF CLASS WARFARE

Fox Labeled A Proposed Minimum Tax Rate Increase For The Wealthy "Class Warfare." Responding to Obama's call to implement the so-called "Buffett Rule" which would have raised the minimum tax rate for the wealthy back to levels before the Bush tax cuts, Fox News figures accused Obama of waging "class warfare."

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OC Register's Science Editor Acknowledges Global
Warming In Break From Editorial Board

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 06 July 2012 03:09:27 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

Earlier this week, the Orange County Register's Pat Brennan, the California paper's science editor, broke from the editorial board's established (and dismissive) opinion regarding the effects of global warming. In a news article discussing the massive wildfires in the West and the heat wave scorching the Midwest and the East Coast, Brennan looked at the two events and asked, "Are we feeling the effects of global warming?" The article cited scientific evidence supporting the existence of global warming and the dangers carbon dioxide emissions pose to the environment.

Brennan provided a look at the global warming reality that has been consistently denied or ignored on the paper's editorial page. For example, the editorial board of the Register claimed that global warming is a non-threat and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a "highly questionable, perhaps meaningless, goal." The editorial page has been filled with columns attacking efforts to reduce carbon dioxide in our atmosphere instead of acknowledging what the vast majority of scientists concur upon -- that man-made climate change is real.

The Register's editorial section has also provided a place for writer Mark Landsbaum to attack global warming. He called greenhouse gases "harmless" and claimed that those who believe humans have contributed to increased global temperatures are committing a logical fallacy.

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Late Night Karaoke

[...]

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UPDATE: CNN's Erickson Defends GOP Rep's Attack
On Wounded Veteran

post from Media Matters for America - Latest Items on 06 July 2012 01:40:55 AM. © Media Matters for America - Latest Items

CNN contributor Erick Erickson came to the defense of Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) today after Walsh attacked his opponent, wounded veteran Tammy Duckworth, for supposedly discussing her service too often on the campaign trail. Erickson claimed the largely negative reaction to Walsh's comments are a "manufactured scandal." In his comments Walsh contrasted Duckworth, who lost both legs in a helicopter attack, with "our true heroes."

The line Erickson chose to defend Walsh over came from a campaign speech on July 1, in which Rep. Walsh claimed that Duckworth was unlike "our true heroes" because her military service is "all she talks about":

WALSH: Understand something about John McCain. His political advisers, day after day, had to take him and almost throw him against a wall and hit him against the head and say, "Senator, you have to let people know you served! You have to talk about what you did!" He didn't want to do it, wouldn't do it. Day after day they had to convince him. Finally, he talked a little bit about it, but it was very uncomfortable for him. That's what's so noble about our heroes. Now I'm running against a woman who, my God, that's all she talks about. Our true heroes, it's the last thing in the world they talk about. That's why we're so indebted and in awe of what they've done.

After Walsh received widespread criticism for his comments, Erickson wrote a post on RedState.com: "I support Congressman Joe Walsh a thousand percent and you should too. Pony up your checkbooks while you are at it. He's in the midst of a manufactured scandal because he dared utter an inconvenient truth." Erickson claimed that "the left went into overdrive" when Walsh "pointed out that Duckworth's service in the military is about the extent of her public campaign platform" and concluded that "[a]ll he did was tell it like it is. That's what is so refreshing about Joe Walsh."

But Erickson's defense of Walsh misses the point of the controversy . Walsh didn't limit his attack to Duckworth's record on policy issues, his comments explicitly created a distinction between Duckworth and "our true heroes" in the military. In fact, after given the chance to walk back his statement, Walsh called Duckworth a hero but qualified it by stating, "unlike most veterans I have had the honor to meet since my election to Congress, who rarely if ever talk about their service or the combat they've seen, that is darn near all of what Tammy Duckworth talks about."