My Day Is Made

New Google Street View of Ernest Shackleton's hut, among other Antarctica landmarks....[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/_e8luIXXw_4/story01.htm

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Get Dirt-Cheap Critical Metals Exposure in
Mongolia: James Passin

The Critical Metals Report: James, in your last interview with The Critical Metals Report in February, you believed that there would be a large number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) this year. We have . . . → Read More: Get Dirt-Cheap Critical Metals Exposure in Mongolia: James Passin

Read The Full Article:
http://jutiagroup.com/20120717-get-dirt-cheap-critical-metals-exposure-in-mongoli
a-james-passin/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Campaign finance transparency Not on our watch,
Republicans reiterate

Democratic senators speak on DISCLOSE Act during "Midnight vigil" Monday night.Yesterday, Senate Republicans did what they're best at and filibustered a bill that their corporate overlords oppose with a 51-44 vote (five senators didn't vote). They want to keep the massive, unlimited corporate campaign donations they're getting absolutely secret, as if we didn't already know who's bought them and their votes.

Nonetheless, a core of Democratic senators pulled an all-nighter, speaking to each other and to the CSPAN cameras about the corruption that Citizens United is allowing in our political system. They spoke to themselves and to the diehard CSPAN audience, without debate, because no Republicans were present to defend their undefendable position. Not that they care that they are appearing increasingly corrupt; they're getting their money. That's what matters.

The Democrats just forced another vote on cloture on whether or not to even move on to considering the DISCLOSE Act. And, once again, Republicans filibustered. Today's attempt failed, 53-45.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Manning Defense: Govt Also Tried to Prevent NSA
Whistleblower Thomas Drake from Discussing Harm

The defense for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of releasing classified information to WikiLeaks, has compared the United States government's effort to preclude the defense from referencing information in damage reports to a similar tactic that[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/firedoglake/fdl/~3/hpKL1pxupP8/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Former Bush Speechwriter Wishes Obama Wasn't So
Partisan

Michael Gerson, who once wrote speeches for George "If You Vote for Democrats The Terrorists Win" Bush is pretty much the most reliable right-wing concern troller in the media, and he doesn't disappoint with his latest column.

Whatever his intentions or provocations, Obama is now engaged in partisan polarization on an industrial scale. His campaign?s latest round of Bain charges is not politics as usual. It is the accusation of criminal impropriety ? the filing of false government documents ? without real evidence, as various fact-checking outfits have attested. Obama?s recent attack ad, ?Firms,? reflects the sensibilities of a particularly nasty 13-year-old. It is difficult to imagine most Americans saying: ?That?s just what American politics most needs ? more juvenile viciousness.?

It seems quite clear that Romney, at a minimum, perjured himself about his role at Bain. And falsifying financial disclosures to the SEC is a felony, as Stephanie Cutter pointed out.

But obviously Gerson was taking a nap while his boss was running the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry, which were nothing but a bunch of lies and personal attacks -- and were thoroughly debunked. And speaking of "juvenile viciousness" maybe he forgot the Bush/Cheney "Windsurfing" ad. Because otherwise, he'd be a big fat hypocrite, right?

...according to Gallup, the gap between partisans? approval ratings of Obama has been ?historically high.? This does not mean the GOP bears no responsibility. It only means Obama has made Washington more broken and continues to make it more broken ? both responding to grievances and creating new reasons for grievance.

So Gerson's bosses spend 8 years flinging Rovian poo on Democrats. As soon as Obama is elected, Republicans compare him to Hitler and conspire to make him a one-termer. But Obama's made it worse because he's actually fighting back.

How much does Michael Gerson get paid to write this crap?

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Is Fox News now a liability for the GOP

Since its launch in 1996, Fox News has provided the Republican party with an unrivaled propaganda machine. Fox News was the principal engine of the Republican echo chamber giving endless coverage to GOP smears and wing-nut conspiracy theories which the establishment media would then report as if they were credible. Without Fox News there would have been no Tea Party, no Swiftboat liars and no...

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Midday open thread

• Today's comic is Pro-Corporate-Lifers by Matt Bors:
• Why, God, why?
  

  Pastor Rick Warren, whose 2008 inauguration invocation for President Obama caused great anger among progressives, will next month host a forum with the president and Mitt Romney.

• Kids these days aren't really into Twitter. They like their social networking without all that lame news stuff.
• The Boy Scouts like their bigotry, thank you very much:
  

  The Boy Scouts of America will keep their controversial policy banning gay scouts and leaders after a two-year review, the organization said Tuesday.

  The announcement comes amid a stepped-up campaign from activist groups urging an end to the membership guidelines.

  The Boy Scouts convened a committee of volunteers and professional leaders in 2010 to decide whether the policy was still in the organization?s best interests after a resolution was put forward to reconsider it, the private group said in a statement that was first reported by The Associated Press.

  ?The committee included a diversity of perspectives and opinions. The review included forthright and candid conversation and extensive research and evaluations ? both from within Scouting and from outside the organization. The committee?s work and conclusion is that this policy reflects the beliefs and perspectives of the BSA?s members, thereby allowing Scouting to remain focused on its mission and the work it is doing to serve more youth,? the statement said.

• BREAKING: Obama likes Thin Mints. Or, as the Right calls them, socialist feminazi abortion cookies.
• Also BREAKING: Obama kisses his wife. No word yet on whether it was a socialist terrorist Muslim kiss. Developing ...
• Gov. Oops demands an apology from the president Republicans say should never apologize:
  

  "Perhaps while the President is visiting Texas, he can take a break from big-dollar fundraisers to disavow his Attorney General's offensive and incendiary comments regarding our common-sense voter investigation law," Perry wrote in the statement.

  Perry continued: "In labeling the Texas voter ID law as a 'poll tax,' Eric Holder purposefully used language designed to inflame passions and incite racial tension. It was not only inappropriate, but simply incorrect on its face."

  Yes, and we all know how upset Mr. I-vacation-at-Niggerhead-Ranch gets about racial tension.
• Your feel-good headline of the day:
  

  Nazi war criminal, 97, allegedly found in Hungary

• The ancient precursor to Victoria's Secret?
  

  It is hardly racy by today?s standards but this skimpy lingerie has certainly shocked historians.

  The lace and linen undergarments date back to hundreds of years before women?s underwear was thought to exist.

  They had lain hidden in a vault beneath the floorboards of an Austrian castle since  the 15th century.

• Great day on the Kagro in the Morning show on Daily Kos Radio today! Bain, tax returns, the continuing filibuster of the DISCLOSE Act, Romney's Mississippi fundraiser, and Chris Christie's fading VP star. Best of all, it's all bookended by appearances from DemFromCT, Lizz Winstead and Shannyn Moore! Listen to today's show here.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

How Income Inequality Has Hurt Social Security

Inequality has been front and center this political season, but one relatively unexamined aspect of the problem is the way it has exacerbated the financial distress of Social Security. As work by Monique Morrissey at the Economic Policy Institute shows, the spike in income inequality in recent decades accounts for as much as half of the program’s long-term financial shortfall.

This is because the payroll tax meant to fund Social Security is capped: The tax currently applies only to income below $110,100 a year, while any dollar an individual makes over that amount is not subject to the tax. So the growth in inequality since the late 1970s has pushed ever more income out of the reach of the payroll tax. When the formula for setting the cap was reformed in 1983, only 10 percent of earnings in the country escaped the tax. By 2008, that had grown to 16 percent:

Restoring the taxable earnings cap to cover 90% of earnings would close 31% of the projected shortfall. Add in forgone revenues and interest from 1983 to 2008, and the trust fund would now be larger by over $850 billion, equal to 16% of the $5.4 trillion shortfall. All told, growing inequality accounts for roughly half (47%) of the projected shortfall that has emerged since the system was last restored to balance.

Eliminating the cap entirely would close 71 percent of the shortfall, even if benefits for higher income earners are increased to reflect their greater contributions.

Another way to tackle the question: What if the cap had remained the same as it is, but inequality had not taken off? Which is to say, what if wage growth had maintained its historic connection to productivity growth, instead of decoupling since the 1970s, and median wages had not stagnated?:

If real wage growth had kept up with productivity from 1983 to 2007, the trust fund would now be larger by roughly $450 billion, equal to 8% of the $5.4 trillion shortfall. Going forward, the Social Security actuaries project relatively slow wage growth of 1.2% above inflation, but wage growth of 1.8% above inflation (the average productivity growth rate over the past quarter century) would eliminate 43% of the projected shortfall, according to the trustees? 2010 report. All together, then, slow wage growth accounts for roughly half (51%) of the projected shortfall that has emerged since the system was last restored to balance.

In other words, America’s failure to maintain policies that support the wages of middle and lower-income Americans has contributed significantly to Social Security’s decline.

Meanwhile, increasing the retirement age or cutting benefits ignores the reality that Americans in the lower half of the income distribution missed out almost entirely on the gains in life expectancy, and that Social Security benefits as they currently stand kept 13.8 million seniors out of poverty in 2010.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

From ‘The Shield’ to ‘Breaking
Bad’: How Anti-Hero Shows Make Women Do the Hard Work

I’ve written many, many posts about what it means that we’re obsessed with television’s anti-heroes, the archetype that’s dominated and defined the medium’s decade-long rise to serious critical acceptance and analysis. Whether it’s a demonstration?and test?of our moral flexibility, as in The Sopranos, an exploration of what our obsession with an archetype means when taken to its logical conclusion like The Shield, or a tool for illustrating what our political preconceptions blind us to, as in The Wire, there are good reasons to be fascinated with men from Tony Soprano to Walter White. But those good reasons also mean that women have been locked out of the rise of television, whether because we’re uncomfortable seeing women behave as pathologically and methodically as men, as with Patty Hewes on Damages, or because while we find active male anti-heroism fascinated, we’re repulsed by the feminized version of inactive, self-undermining indecisiveness, as some viewers were with Girls.

So yesterday in Slate, I wrote about a lesser-explored figure in the anti-hero universe: the anti-hero’s wife. Specifically Breaking Bad‘s Skyler White, and why people hate her so much:

I think Skyler sees Walt as we’re meant to see him: a self-deluding, pathetic man, but a dangerous one. She punctures the fantasy that there’s anything admirable left about Walter White, that we should still root for the man who fought back against illness and emasculation with a pork pie hat and chemistry. But even if Skyler has a moral clarity that those of us who want to identify with Walt as a badass would like to deny, she can’t easily act on it. She has an infant daughter and an ill son to protect, and her husband is a man who boasts of killing legends, who’s used physical force to establish his dominance over her before. It’s hard enough for women who aren’t married to evil geniuses to leave abusive relationships. Skyler is attempting to negotiate a livable existence for herself in highly unusual circumstances. And her steel is hardening every day.

Women in anti-hero shows may be voices of morality, but they’re also cast, to a certain extent, as spoil-sports. It’s Claudette Wyms who’s a constant reminder that there’s nothing cute or charming about Vic Mackey’s behavior, even as he makes busts and acts as catnip for an endless string of babe. In Sons of Anarchy, part of the tragedy of Tara’s experience is the capture of her independent voice by SAMCRO?in smashing her repaired hand and giving up her career as a surgeon, she’s also relinquishing her chance to act as a reminder to Jax of the other life he could be having. This is a critically important role, but it’s one that makes some people itchy and irritated because it’s not fun, it’s a reminder that you’re indulging, maybe even falling prey to something ugly and unpleasant that you wish you could just enjoy.

Deadwood‘s one of the few prestige shows where the women get to be at least as fun as the men, and where male brutality is presented as ugly rather than witty. Watching Cy bully Joanie is never fun?her depression is more sympathetic than his violent need for control. Francis Wolcott’s compulsions aren’t some Dexter-ian fascination: they’re vicious and pathetic. When he’s confronted, Hearst doesn’t marvel at Wolcott’s evil, he’s disgusted. The show doesn’t pull us into a romance with a bad person and then make a woman do the work of puncturing our fascination with him.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Britain’s Largest Black Newspaper Denied
Credentials To Cover London Olympics

The organization in charge of issuing media credentials at the 2012 London Olympics, which begin in 10 days, has denied the request filed by Great Britain’s oldest black newspaper, sparking outrage across the country. The Voice, which is celebrating its 30-year anniversary this year, published an article last week notifying readers that the British Olympic Association, which is in charge of credentialing, had denied its request to cover the Games.

The paper was denied because of an “extraordinary interest and demand from UK media,” the BOA told the paper, even as the organization has “led a high-profile campaign highlighting London’s cosmopolitan culture, and the games itself were won on the back of the city’s rich diversity.” The decision sparked protests on social networks and a petition drive led by activist Zita Holbourne, who told the paper she was “furious” over BOA’s decision:

Holbourne said: “I was furious. There has been a catalogue of errors and issues around the Olympics and this is just one more thing.

?If the BOA are using blanket criteria to assess whether or not a publication is suitable for accreditation has a disproportionate negative impact on smaller and specialist publications and, obviously, The Voice is a specialist publication.

?Given the number of black athletes that are competing in the Olympics that Team GB rely on for Olympic success, no accreditation for the biggest-selling black newspaper is just atrocious.?

The International Olympic Committee has fought to make the London Olympics the most diverse ever held. For the first time in history, every Olympic team has at least one female member after the IOC negotiated the addition of two female athletes to the Saudi Arabian team — the kingdom’s first-ever female representatives. South African runner Oscar Pistorius, meanwhile, will try to become the first person with artificial legs to win a medal since 1906.

But for Britain’s black journalists and the community they serve, the decision harkens back to past fights with British authorities. Lester Holloway, a former Voice reporter, told the paper it reminded him of times when “we had to fight the parliamentary authorities to get accreditation to cover for the House of Commons. There were no black journalists at that time. It was a hard fought battle that went on for number of years and eventually we were allowed in. The fact that we are here again in 2012, shows how behind the times the Olympic authorities are.?

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!