Monday Mashup (8/22/11)

Remember here, when the teabaggers got all upset at Marvel because, in a Captain America comic, they were depicted as holding completely authentic signs, and in the face of criticism, editor Joe Quesada utterly caved and apologized?

Well, in a related story, as they say, I give you this (the correct way to handle such a dustup)…

This year, Marvel Comics announced that multi-racial Miles Morales would be the new man behind Spider-man’s red and blue mask in “Ultimate Spider-Man.” Right on cue, right-wing punditry erupted in a racist rage against the idea of a biracial hero. Defunct Fox News host Glenn Beck lashed out at Marvel, calling Spiderman “a stupid comic book” and attributed the change as an intentional nod to Michelle Obama’s apparent agenda to “change our traditions.” In response, “Ultimate Spider-Man” writer Brian Michael Bendis found reason to celebrate: “We pissed off Glenn Beck, and that was amazing. I don’t think Glenn Beck is an idiot because he’s a conservative. I literally think he’s just an idiot. Regardless of his belief system, he’s just a lunatic. So that was hilarious…I told my wife that she doesn’t have to get me anything for my birthday because nothing will make me happier than this made me.”

Wallopin’ Websnappers!

Also, Tyler Cowen opined as follows at The Old Gray Lady yesterday (here)…

THERE’S been a lot of bad economic news lately, yet we may be overlooking the most disturbing development of all: our economic productivity has been weakening. This isn’t just a problem for the United States. Because America remains a leader in technology and innovation, it is also a matter of concern for the entire world.

Cowen actually cites some legitimate sources for his claim; our ridiculous health care expenditures in this country which basically don’t equate to better patient outcomes, our “expenditures on the military and domestic security” which “generally doesn’t produce useful goods and services that raise our standard of living,” the fact that the Chinese aren’t “taking the lead in creating breakthrough products,” etc. Oh, and Cowen also says, “One problem may be offshoring by American companies” though “(his) point is not to attack offshoring” (of course).

But out of all of this, Cowen arrives at the following conclusion…

“…Americans have not been getting the job done…”

I don’t know what “Americans” Cowen is referring to here, but this tells us the following…

WASHINGTON — The United States is out of step with the rest of the world's richest industrialized nations: Its economy is growing faster than theirs but creating far fewer jobs.

The reason is U.S. workers have become so productive that it's harder for anyone without a job to get one.

Companies are producing and profiting more than when the recession began, despite fewer workers. They're hiring again, but not fast enough to replace most of the 7.5 million jobs lost since the recession began.

Measured in growth, the American economy has outperformed those of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan – every Group of 7 developed nation except Canada, according to The Associated Press' new Global Economy Tracker, a quarterly analysis of 22 countries representing more than 80 percent of global output.

Yet the U.S. job market remains the group's weakest. U.S. employment bottomed and started growing again a year ago, but there are still 5.4 percent fewer American jobs than in December 2007. That's a much sharper drop than in any other G-7 country. The U.S. had the G-7's highest unemployment rate as of December.

Also, this tells us how Americans are working part-time jobs to supplement their income.

This is pretty much what you’d expect from a “glibertarian” like Cowen, though, who blamed “immigrants who consume public services” for the deficit here and extolled our supposedly glorious private sector health care system in this country (as opposed to that baaad “big gumint” supposed Obama scheme of health care reform) here...so I guess what he says here about HCR basically constitutes a "flip flop," doesn't it?

Continuing, I give you the following inanity from The Daily Tucker (here)…

Barack Obama’s presidency is a disaster. But however low the Dow drops, however high unemployment goes, however many more times we engage in dubious foreign policy adventures like the Libyan war, one thing is for sure: Conservatives will never call for the assassination of the president.

Oh, that’s rich (would that it were true).

This tells us the following…

Since Mr Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service.

(Note: This must be a right-wing site…a tipoff is all of the typos. However, the source information looks credible.)

Also, as noted here…

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

Also, wingnut Repug U.S. House Rep Paul Broun of Georgia was just a little bit late in responding to the supposed “joke” from a constituent about assassinating Obama (here), and this idiot Rex Rammell in Idaho made a supposed joke about “hunting” Obama here (and by the way, we’re still waiting for an apology for this).

Make no mistake – I agreed with practically nothing that Former President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History said or did during his ill-fated term, but despite that, I never wished for violence against him physically or against any other public figure. There are plenty of ways to express disagreement without acting in that uncalled-for fashion, and we should all hope and pray for the safety not just of President Obama, but of all of our public officials.

Also, I know it’s hard to believe, but it looks as though the Republican Party has finally found a tax cut it doesn’t like (here)…

Republicans are balking at President Obama's proposal to extend the payroll tax deduction for another year:

"It's always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, "but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again."

And why aren't they eager to extend it?

The 12-month tax reduction will cost the government about $120 billion this year, and a similar amount next year if it's renewed.

That worries Rep. David Camp, R-Mich., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and a member of the House-Senate supercommittee tasked with finding new deficit cuts. Tax reductions, "no matter how well-intended," will push the deficit higher, making the panel's task that much harder, Camp's office said.

…

Here's why Republicans don't want to do it: it's a twofer. They get to screw the President and they get to screw the middle-class, all at the same time. It's what they refer to as a "golden opportunity" and they don't want to pass it up.

This is typical for the bunch who removed a middle-class tax credit in January here (without a lot of fight from the Dems as nearly as I can tell). And from the “looking into the crystal ball” dept., I give you the following from Dem U.S. House Rep Pete Stark last December…

If Republicans want tax cuts for the wealthy, we should demand that they explain how to pay for them right now. We know how they will be paid for in the long run -- once Republicans are in the majority and flip-flop back to caring about the deficit, they will insist on "deficit reduction" legislation that slashes important programs that help working families -- all to pay down the deficit that this proposal creates.

In addition, this confirms the fact that the Dubya tax cuts were a complete failure; we experienced the lowest increase of GDP under Dubya than under any other president since JFK. And this tells us that they’re not deviating from the script in any way whatsoever (memo to President Hopey Changey: beat them over the head with this, metaphorically speaking, from now until Election Day...and here is more proof).

Finally (and speaking of Republican congressional numbskulls), I give you the following from the web site of Mikey The Beloved (here)…

“The vast majority of jobs created in our economy today are by small and independently owned businesses,” said Fitzpatrick at the town hall. “So if the federal government is serious about finally reducing unemployment, it needs to listen to the people that are in this room today. The ideas I heard today, including reforming the federal tax code, reducing excessive and redundant regulatory burdens, enacting real cost containment for healthcare, and preventing excessive litigation, are important steps I will advocate for in Washington to help jump start our economy.”

Fitzpatrick is already a co-sponsor of the REINS Act, which would require that Congress approve federal regulatory action that is expected to have an economic impact of at least $100 million.

“Already”? He’s been in office for eight months. What, does he expect fanfare or something?

As noted here, however…

(The REINS Act) would stop any major regulation issued by any federal agency from taking effect until it receives approval from both houses of Congress and the president. Boehner justifies the bill as a “transparency” and “accountability” measure, but it clearly takes aim at the White House, which, with the GOP now in control of the House, is relying heavily on agency rulemaking to advance its agenda in areas such as health care, financial regulation, and clean energy.

Yep, with the gridlock created by the wretched 112th Congress, particularly in the House, Orange Man and his pals are trying to hamstring the only means the Obama White House has of carrying out its agenda.

Of course, a Dem’s notion of implementing change in the face of congressional obstruction is a Repug’s notion of “excessive and redundant regulatory burden,” isn’t it?

Where are the jobs, Mikey??!!

Sunday Stuff

The first 3:30 or so of this clip is good, but Bernie Sanders really nails it in the last 30 seconds here (yes, it's a broken record, and I'll keep repeating it as long as I have to)...



Update 8/22/11: Good job by Sanders here also...

...and I meant to include this on Friday, but I changed my mind at the time, so here it is now.

Friday Stuff

Happy 65th Birthday, President Clinton (what follows are remarks on behalf of the China Global Philanthropy Forum).

This was the last president under which this country thrived, experiencing genuine prosperity (Can't remember what it was like? I don't blame you; I barely can myself anymore - just Google it)...



...and it looks like Jon Stewart knocked 'em out again before going on vacation (speaking of missed economic opportunities - here is Part One)...

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...and here is Part Two (wrapup here)...

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...and I suppose thinking about Bill Clinton and the whole "economic prosperity lifting all boats" thing has put me in a '90s mood, and this was a bit of an anthem for yours truly back then (though the "means nothing at all to me today" line was debatable - apologies for showing a clip with that idiot Dennis Miller, but it's a good performance).

Bringing The Pain, Part 3

(Part 1 including the setup is here and Part 2 is here.)

Idaho

As noted here, the jobless rate remained at 9.4 percent in June. However, as noted here from May…

George Stewart hears how North Idaho’s jobless rate is slowly improving, but he’d prefer to experience it.

The Rathdrum man walked away from job searching for a construction position at the Idaho Department of Labor on Friday feeling shut out.

“There’s still not a lot out there,” Stewart said. “If this economy is turning, I’m sorry, but I’m just not feeling it yet.”

Kootenai County’s jobless rate was 11.1 percent in April, down from 11.2 percent in March, according to a report released on Friday by the Idaho Department of Labor.
“The number of people in the labor force decreased as well as the number of unemployed, driving down the unemployment rate itself,” said Alivia Body, regional labor economist.

Body said local initial unemployment claims decreased by 100 in April.

The trends in job openings have steadily been in health care and administrative services,” she said. “However, seasonal employment has trickled in and, as the weather starts to turn, we will start seeing those seasonal jobs ramp up.”

Hopefully when the third-quarter numbers come out, that prediction will be realized.

Also, this tells us that state Repugs tried to block an unemployment extension in March (figures), and this tells us how Idaho “shortchanges the unemployed” with fees on debit cards that are apparently used to collect benefits. Further, the Idaho Department of Labor sponsored a class in June here to help people whose federal unemployment benefits have expired.

Illinois

This takes us to “voices of the long-term unemployed” from Progress Illinois (and this tells us the following)…

Unemployment in Evanston and across Illinois soared in June, as more people, including many new college graduates, entered the labor force.

For Evanston the rate rose from 7.3 percent in May to 8.2 percent in June. That was even higher than the 8.1 percent level in June a year ago.

The statewide rate rose from 9 percent to 9.7 percent -- still below the 10.5 percent of last June.

As noted here, though, Dem Senator Dick Durbin and Repug Senator Mark Kirk have lobbied for the rail funds that Lex Luthor Scott pissed away in Florida in an effort to create jobs in the home state of our current president. And if Illinois can put the dough to work, it will lessen the burden on the federal government; it is one of the biggest borrowers from Washington to pay unemployment benefits (not surprising I guess given the total population, particularly around the Chicago area – here).

And from here…

Chicago Jobs with Justice is not the only organization to respond to the jobs crisis by organizing those directly affected by it. Unemployed people are building similar movements in Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, Rhode Island and other states, according to Hurley and Bill Fletcher Jr., a longtime labor activist and co-author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice. And UCubed, a project launched by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in early 2010, also aims to organize the jobless to create a “union of the unemployed” and demand a real economic recovery—exclusively through the Internet.

It’s gonna take “people power” to fix this in the end, as long as the Democrats in Washington keep trying to play nice with a political party that has utterly lost its mind.

Indiana

As noted here from April…

Indiana’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dropped 0.3 percent in March to 8.5 percent, below both the national average and all neighboring states for the second month in a row, according to figures released Tuesday by the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. In March 2010, Indiana’s unemployment rate was 10.6 percent.

Monroe County, whose nonseasonally adjusted rate for March dropped to 6.2 percent, has the fifth lowest unemployment rate among Indiana’s 92 counties.

Area counties also saw their nonseasonally adjusted unemployment rates drop in March: Greene, from 12.1 to 8.5 percent; Owen, from 10.6 to 8.6 percent; Morgan, from 10 to 9.1 percent; Lawrence, from 12.1 to 10.9 percent; and Brown, from 11.8 to 9.8 percent.

“We haven’t seen the (state) unemployment rate drop by 1 percent in a quarter since 1993,” said Mark W. Everson, commissioner of the Department of Workforce Development, in a prepared statement. “We also saw solid job growth in March, particularly in the manufacturing sector.”

Hmmm, Mark Everson – I was wondering what had happened to this guy (here – first bullet).

Also, it looks like we have more “smoke and mirrors” here on unemployment from Gov. (and another former Bushie) Mitch Daniels (maybe the reason why he decided not to run for prez because he’d get called out for this stuff, instead of the supposed intrusion into his personal life as Smerky alleged here).

And from here…

Hundreds of thousands of Indiana residents are unemployed and underemployed. Although the state’s unemployment rate is slightly better than that of its neighboring states, a striking number of people here — a significantly greater percentage than in Illinois or Ohio — have simply left the work force altogether since the dawn of the recession.

For the second year in a row, Hoosiers ranked fifth nationally in personal bankruptcies, at 7.1 people per 1,000 residents. (Illinois came in 11th.) Indiana’s median family income is just 86 percent of that of the rest of the country.

Property tax caps, put in place over the past few years, offer relief to limping homeowners but have pushed school boards and city leaders, they say, into rounds of budget cutting and layoffs.

Well, it looks like the Genesis Casket Company may be hiring, as noted here (I’ll let you, dear reader, inject any symbolism you want into that).

Iowa

When it comes to the Hawkeye State, it’s really impossible to discuss much of anything without noting also that state’s chief U.S. congressional numbskull, and that would be Repug Steve King of course; as noted here, he compared electricians, teachers and other workers to bushels of soybeans and corn.

And from here in a story in March…

DES MOINES, Iowa - Improved unemployment levels made Iowa ineligible for federal funds.

The U.S. government told Iowa Workforce Development that the state did not qualify for $14.5 million in benefits because Iowa's unemployment rate is improving, according to Rep. Lance Horbach, R-Tama, chairman of the House Labor Committee.

The funds would have extended unemployment benefits to about 7,000 Iowa workers who have been unemployed for more than a year, according to Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque.

Benefits would have been retroactive. The federal government looked at revised unemployment numbers. Those numbers showed the three-month rolling average had dropped to 6.1 percent unemployment.

"That's good news unless you've been unemployed for more than a year," Jochum said.

I couldn’t determine how many Iowans fall into that category, but if you want more jobless numbers for the state, here they are.

Also, this tells us that Iowa was due to close 37 state unemployment offices in July, though the Iowa City office will stay open (here…and here is a link to the Iowa jobs center – good luck, all those who qualify).

Update 9/17/11: I've said it before and I'll say it again - somebody has to elect these clowns (here).

Kansas

This tells us that the state’s unemployment rate was 6.5 percent in July, which isn’t terrible. The problem, though, is that that gives Gov. Sam Brownback and his pals even more of an excuse to wage war on public sector employees (here) and cut back on unemployment benefits (here).

(And I’m sorry, but I must point out again the idiocy of electing governors like Brownback, Mary Fallin, John Kasich, Rick Snyder and Hosni Mubarak Walker by the voters of those states. Really, if these people had half a brain, what else did they think would happen?)

And as noted here…

Economic development and community leaders throughout western Kansas agree the challenges facing the region are four-fold: depopulation, few jobs, an aging population and drought.

But just remember that speaking of the climate crisis is “condescending elitism” according to Kansas Repug U.S. Senator Pat Roberts, as noted here (uh huh).

Kentucky

Another place where time has apparently stood still…

This tells us that the state’s newest senator, Rand Paul, lied in March (shocking, I know) when he said that public sector employees don’t contribute to their pensions and health care (like to know what his contributions are as a sitting U.S. Senator). And not to be outdone, his “mentor,” Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao himself, just loves himself those “stim” projects in his home state but hates them in DC (here).

Continuing, this tells us that Repug State Rep Lonnie Napier (Lancaster) and Dem (!) Greg Stumbo (Prestonburg) co-sponsored a bill to drug test welfare recipients, and…

Napier said he has no intention of drug-testing all of Kentucky's unemployed -- only those who receive "free handouts" from the state.

No, not much he doesn’t.

Oh, and by the way, this tells us that Kentucky’s preliminary unemployment rate fell below 10 percent in May for the first time in more than two years.

I kind of feel about this state the way I do about Florida – I’m sure a lot of good people live there, but man, does this state do nothing but elect lousy Repug politicians who do nothing but sell them out (for that reason, the state as a whole deserves very little of my sympathy).

Louisiana

The unemployment rate for the state was 8.2 percent last May, as noted here (and this tells us of a Raceland man who pled guilty to Katrina-related unemployment insurance fraud). Also, here is a list of job fairs in the state (some for September), and this tells us of the “summertime blues” for those employed on the Gulf Coast (this is about the only recent information I could find for the state).

I’ll try to pick this up again next week.

Thursday Stuff

Couldn't quite finish my post for today - hopefully tomorrow...

This young girl makes more sense here than most adults - so why is it absolutely no surprise that she and her like-minded friends have been targeted by Fix Noise?...



...and I like this tune, even if the video is a bit of a parody of that a-little-too-realistic creepy movie with Michael Douglas (and no, I don't condone the behavior in the film).

Wednesday Stuff

(Hopefully back to posting tomorrow...)

A real all-timer of a "Worst Persons" by K.O. here - love the impression of you-know-who at the end...



...and this goes out to our beloved corporate media and others who insist on taking "Goodhair" Perry seriously as a presidential candidate (and in a related vein, I give you this and this)...



...oh, and by the way, go ahead and secede, you ten-gallon asshat...



Update 8/19/11: Interesting Perry investment here (and great catch by Think Progress)...

...and harking back to K.O. and Moon Unit Bachmann again, I think that, if the King were still with us, he would dedicate this to her.

Tuesday Stuff

Hey, before anyone laughs at Professor "Space Aliens" Krugman, remember that we were once told we had to spend about a gazillion dollars because of a "missile defense gap," which made about as much sense (here - there was a lot about Bill Maher's summer finale that I ended up not liking, particularly from Sarah Palin's moviemaker, but world traveller Anthony Bourdain of The Food Channel Network also appeared and he pointed out how much of our infrastructure is a joke compared to other countries)...



Update 8/20/11: I think we have a completely accidental convergence of ideas here (you'd have to be a total idiot to take Fix Noise seriously).

...and I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood to rock out a bit.

Tuesday Mashup (8/16/11)

I give you Bernie Goldberg, of all people, trying to call out the civility police (here)…

Well, if it wasn’t obvious before it sure ought to be now. The liberal media elite have gone around the bend and over the cliff. The Crazy Train they’ve been riding has finally crashed.

And it’s all because of those nasty conservative Tea Party Republicans.

The same liberal journalists who won’t call a real terrorist a terrorist can’t go 10 seconds without calling conservative Republicans terrorists. Or “Wahhabis,” as Chris Mathews described them on MSNBC.

Or “Hezbollah,” as Tom Friedman described them in the New York Times.

Or as ‘suicide bombers” as Tina Brown the editor of Newsweek described them on “Morning Joe.”

And just in case you’re dense and still don’t get it, we can all thank Peter Goodman, formerly of the New York Times and now an editor at the Huffington Post, who didn’t mince words when he wrote: “They are acting like terrorists. Yes, terrorists.”

Oh yes, such name calling is some impolite, isn’t it (here – and that’s assuming that Goldberg is “shooting straight” in his remarks at Fix Noise today, which is a highly dubious assumption, especially since he doesn't link to anyone).

And on top of that, former Bushco flak Marc Thiessen tells us the following (here)…

President Obama is reportedly gearing up to “kill” Mitt Romney in the general election…

And when you click the link from Thiessen to Politico, you discover the following (the supposed attribution) …

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.

Got that? Politico printed a quote that should have been attributed to “a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House” by name (gee, that narrows it down to how many hundred people, I wonder?), which Thiessen promptly used to claim that Obama is “reportedly” gearing up to “kill” Romney.

And that’s exactly the same as Goldberg defending the teabaggers from the oh-so-nasty name calling of that elite liberal media (though Goldberg has nothing to say about this).

And that’s also exactly the same as Sarah Palin’s notorious “crosshairs” map that included the district of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Sure it is (and by the way, President Hopey Changey, I think a certain "prominent Democratic strategist" needs a visit to the woodshed...need to tighten up the message discipline a bit).

Update 8/17/11: Um, speaking of the Obama campaign, I wonder if anyone bothered to point out to this Ray Sandoval character that the "firebaggers" (huh?) have been pretty much ABSOLUTELY FREAKING RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING? (h/t Atrios).

I can see that Number 44 is going to do his best to make the 2012 presidential campaign as competitive for the other side as possible.

Next, I give you the latest straw man from Bill Huizenga (here)…

We didn't let the President take a single dollar from Social Security or Medicare benefits, or troop or veterans’ pay.

Proof? Anywhere in sight? Bueller??

This is typical for Huizenga who, as noted here (third bullet), took campaign funds from the family of Erik Prince, head of what was once called Blackwater. He also once suggested that US intelligence agents who claimed there were no WMDs in Iraq were terrorist sympathizers. Oh, and Huizenga, along with all of his other Repug pals in the House, voted for that horrific HR 3 bill from Chris Smith that attempted to redefine rape (dear God).

And here are his latest misadventures (as I continue to say, somebody out there has to elect these clowns).

Further, The Daily Tucker haz a sad over the latest wingnut movie escapade to bomb at theaters, this one from a former half-term Alaska governor who quit her job to cash in on her celebrity (here)…

Conservatives are up in arms that a film celebrating the Navy Seals who killed Osama bin Laden will hit theaters less than a month before the 2012 presidential election.

Hollywood routinely produces left-of-center content, but a cinematic reminder of the Obama administration’s crowning achievement smacks of an unpaid political ad, a cinematic October surprise.

Indeed, it’s just so awful when politicians use the arts to further their agenda timed for an election, isn’t it (a debatable claim anyway since it was the Navy Seals who got bin Laden and not Number 44).

Remember that horrible Citizens United ruling by The Supremes? Anybody remember how that whole thing got started? It was over something called “Hillary: The Movie” produced by the Roger Stone group “Citizens United Not Timid” (get it?). The group created ads to promote the movie, but the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the commercials violated provisions in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (McCain–Feingold) restricting "electioneering communications" 30 days before primaries. So the group appealed the ruling to The Supremes, and the High Court of Hangin’ Judge JR ended up enshrining corporate “person-hood” once and for all, opening up the gusher of corporate cash into our political campaigns that, IMHO, will drown us all one day (absent congressional legislation in response, which I definitely don’t anticipate from the bunch in power at the moment).

So basically, if I were a conservative, I wouldn’t bitch about how their movies are unpopular (though they are). One of their pieces of tripe has done far too much damage as it is.

Also, the following letter appeared in the Bucks County Courier Times yesterday…

In U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey's recent op-ed, "Overzealous state agency threatens Pa. jobs" (Aug. 8) he maintains that the Environmental Protection Agency goes too far in enforcing the successful Clean Air Act's health and safety standards that protect us from toxics and other pollutants.

Apparently, Sen. Toomey isn't persuaded by the fact that EPA's clean air standards saved an estimated 160,000 lives last year alone, or that economic studies by the independent Economic Policy Institute and the Office of Management and Budget show that updated clean air standards actually create jobs by spurring clean energy technology investments.

On the contrary, Sen. Toomey's idea for getting the EPA out of our hair with its life-saving and job-creating programs is to create more bureaucracy and gridlock in Washington, exactly what we don't need. He has introduced a bill to place more roadblocks in front of the EPA each time it issues rules enforcing the Clean Air Act and other environmental laws. That would mean that EPA enforcement standards, which already can take years to put in place and still more years to take effect, would drag on through a regulatory limbo even longer.

Certainly the federal government must take into account the effects of environmental protections. But the Toomey plan would give industry lobbyists new opportunities to stop or water down steps to protect children, older Americans and communities from dangerous pollution. And it's part of an all-out assault by industry to strangle EPA's ability to enforce laws against polluters.

To take one current example, Sen. Toomey and his industry allies are opposing new standards to reduce dangerous mercury and air toxics spewing from power plants and other facilities, doing their best to halt or at least drag out the process. Meanwhile, many of the more than 7 million American children suffering from asthma will remain at higher risk for asthma attacks, emergency room visits, or worse because they are breathing in these pollutants.

Instead of coming up with new schemes to create more gridlock in Washington, Toomey should support the EPA's efforts to protect our children and create more clean energy jobs at the same time.

State Rep. Steve Santarsiero
Lower Makefield/Newtown

Steve is “on the job” once more, and Toomey remains utterly wretched (and to contact our PA-31 state rep, click here).

Finally, last Saturday August 13th marked the 50th anniversary of the construction of The Berlin Wall, and in response, George Will gladly took the opportunity to bash President John F. Kennedy over it (here)…

Fifty years ago, a metaphor became concrete. Beginning on Aug. 13, 1961, along West Berlin’s 27-mile border, the Iron Curtain became tangible in a wall of precast slabs of concrete. It came down 22 years ago, but the story of how it rose, as told in Frederick Kempe’s book “Berlin 1961,” compels an unflattering assessment of John Kennedy. His serial blunders that year made it the most incompetent first year of any presidency.

As Wikipedia tells us here, the construction of the wall was the culmination of years of Communist brinksmanship on the issue of what to do about east and west Berlin; in 1948, Joseph Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin (the “Berlin Airlift” followed, in which the U.S. participated with other countries). Stalin lifted the blockade, but movement from east to west Germany continued. In 1955, Stalin and the Soviet Union gave East Germany control over the movement of its population to West Germany, and in 1957, East Germany introduced a new passport law to stem the flow to the west, which actually ended up increasing movement out of East Berlin (including a “brain drain” of middle-class professionals).

Am I going to tell you that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev didn’t sense weakness on Kennedy’s part from the Bay of Pigs fiasco and see an opportunity to build the wall? I’ll let historians decide that (a group that definitely excludes Will). What I am saying is that it’s typically ridiculous for a pusillanimous little toad like him to suggest that everything was just hunky-dory in East and West Berlin until JFK bungled everything.

And 1961 was “the most incompetent first year of any presidency”? Really?

As Wikipedia again tells us here, Kennedy established the Peace Corps on March 1st. Also, Alan Shepard became the first U.S. astronaut launched into space via the Freedom 7 rocket on May 5th (and on May 25th, Kennedy proclaimed our commitment to putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade). And for what it’s worth, Time Magazine named him Person of the Year for 1961.

See, JFK really doesn’t have the benefit of an echo chamber to come to his defense the same way The Sainted Ronnie R does, so it’s up to filthy, unkempt blogger types such as yours truly to “pick up that mantle” (and speaking of Number 40 and milestones, he signed the first of his ruinous tax cuts into law on August 13, 1981 – just sayin’).

Monday Stuff

Hopefully back to posting tomorrow - we'll see...

Also, want to know why unions matter? Check this out (more here)...



...and Robert Reich's hair is on fire, as it were, and rightly so, here (and President Hopey Changey is running out of time to get that whole "vision thing" on jobs and the economy - you can win over all the moderates and independents you want, but it doesn't make sense if you've given virtually nothing (hint: JOBSJOBSJOBSJOBSJOBSJOBS) to the core constituency that elected you)...



...oh, and here's another wingnut lie (more here)...



...and here's a late-summer number from some local kids - hope you like it.

Sunday Stuff

This should not have happened. It is an abomination that it happened at all, to say nothing of the numbers of times it has happened to our brave service people to date (and part of me would pay money to hear what those yammering idiots in Iowa would say about it, probably the same blather about "fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here," etc. And eight deployments??!!).

Oh, and by the way, the Democrats are hardly blameless here also, including Number 44...



...and shifting the mood, happy 70th birthday to David Crosby (sorry, no video).

Saturday Stuff

Oh well, time to say goodbye to gorgeous Gulf Coast sunsets, pan-seared grouper and pitchers of margaritas and resume that blogging thing again (geez, I go away for a week and the market goes insane - and of course, I wasn't able to take note of the brave sacrifice of our heroes in Afghanistan...I'm sure the Pentagon is doing a review to try and determine why the #@!! so many of them were in a single Chinook transport helicopter; I would hope so anyway).

In the meantime, here's some more spot-on commentary from Jon Stewart (hope the vid cooperates)...

The Daily Show - Lactate Intolerance
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...and Stephen Colbert (looks like Willard Mitt has given us one hell of a You Tube moment already)...

The Colbert Report
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...and for all that I care about the GOP presidential fashion show going on now, I thought this was still interesting (and I'm sure that opening remark had to do with the Stewart pic......and by the way, I wonder if I'll ever hear from our corporate media about Fred Karger being banned from the "debate" as many times as I've had to hear, falsely, that Bob Casey Sr. was denied the opportunity to speak at the '92 Dem convention because he was "pro life"? I'm not optimistic on that, for the record.)...

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...and I realize that this is meant to be tongue in cheek, but I still think it's a bit of an affirmation of sorts (and good luck to Meteor Blades of Daily Kos - this is apparently one of his favorites).

Thursday Stuff

(Remember when I said posting would be highly questionable this week? Well...)

Happy 50th birthday, Mr. President - here is some advice from Bill Maher...

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...and these may be the most shocking comments yet from Governor Bully - I nearly passed out when I heard them (I can't believe I'm actually giving him credit, but he deserves it)...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Update 8/5/11: Both of the MSNBC videos are acting up...just click the C&L link for Maher/Dyson and this one for Christie/O'Donnell.

...and let's not forget about next Tuesday in Wisconsin (click here)...



...and with that, I'm going to shut things down for about a week while I take a very-much-needed vacation. We had planned to journey up north as is our habit, but instead, we changed plans and will now journey to the land of Lex Luthor Scott (got in on a family deal that will allow us a choice between beach and pool and hopefully sunny weather). We're also trying to make sure Allen West won't make us afraid to come out of our house.

So, until the 13th or so, courage (and I leave you for now with a video).

Wednesday Stuff

RIP Bubba Smith, one hell of a defensive end with a neat sense of humor to boot (once again, athletes make a lot of dough, including football players, but their bodies pay a terrible price)...



...and Rachel Maddow brings us the latest on Wisconsin, including the most recent Repug garbage (to do something about it, click here)...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

...and remember when the news networks with initials for names actually produced prime-time programs called "documentaries," such as the "CBS Reports" series, including "Harvest of Shame"? Well, it takes Al Jazeera doing it here since our corporate media won't touch this stuff with the proverbial ten-foot pole (except maybe Scott Pelley's report on "60 Minutes" about the unemployed...and by the way, Todd Akin is full of shit - and only a Repug would actually be happy about the fact that this country is "deeply divided." And yes, Paul Ryan really is that big of a dick, as witnessed at about 11:15.)

..."oooh, you and you're name-calling - you're so mean." No I'm not. I've just been watching this garbage play out unabated for years and years and years and I'm sick of it, that's all (and please pay particular attention to the very end here)...



...and happy 85th birthday to Tony Bennett, performing here with John Legend (an apropos selection for some of those Harvard graduates in the prior clip who profess to hate government so much, or at least want to see it diminished).

Wednesday Mashup (8/3/11)

Today is the 30th anniversary of the day that The Sainted Ronnie R fired the striking PATCO air traffic controllers; this column by Joseph A. McCartin tells us, in part, the following…

Although he opposed government strikes, Reagan supported government workers’ efforts to unionize and bargain collectively. As governor, he extended such rights in California. As president he was prepared to do the same. Not only did he court and win Patco’s endorsement during his 1980 campaign, he directed his negotiators to go beyond his legal authority to offer controllers a pay raise before their strike — the first time a president had ever offered so much to a federal employees’ union.

But the impact of the Patco strike on Reagan’s fellow Republicans has long since overshadowed his own professed beliefs regarding public sector unions. Over time the rightward-shifting Republican Party has come to view Reagan’s mass firings not as a focused effort to stop one union from breaking the law — as Reagan portrayed it — but rather as a blow against public sector unionism itself.

In the spring, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin invoked Reagan’s handling of Patco as he prepared to “change history” by stripping public employees of collective bargaining rights in a party-line vote. “I’m not negotiating,” Mr. Walker said. By then the world had seemingly forgotten that unlike Mr. Walker, Reagan had not challenged public employees’ right to bargain — only their right to strike.

With Mr. Walker’s militant anti-union views now ascendant within the party of a onetime union leader, with workers less able to defend their interests in the workplace than at any time since the Depression, the long-term consequences continue to unfold in ways Reagan himself could not have predicted — producing outcomes for which he never advocated.

I don’t think this column absolves Reagan under any stretch of the imagination, but it’s interesting reading anyway (and from the “past is prologue” department, I give you this).

Next, I give you last week’s Area Votes in Congress (here)…

House

Speaker Boehner's debt plan. Voting 218-210, the House on Friday passed a bill (S 627) written by Speaker John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) to immediately raise the $14.3 trillion national debt ceiling by $917 billion and require both houses of Congress to soon pass a balanced-budget constitutional amendment.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate.

Voting yes: Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Michael Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), Joseph R. Pitts (R., Pa.), Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), and Christopher H. Smith (R., N.J.).

Voting no: Robert E. Andrews (D., N.J.), Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), John Carney (D., Del.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), and Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.).

Cut, “crap” and balance Mikey strikes again, as noted here (so bad a deal that even Tim Holden voted against it).

Oh, and by the way, it recently occurred to me that I’ve gone all of this time since the thoroughly wretched 112th Congress convened and I haven’t had a word to say about Jon “How Much Tax Can I Get Away With Paying On My Farm” Runyan. And that’s because he’s pretty much voted like the total Repug shill I knew he would be.

U.S.-Canada oil pipeline. Voting 279-147, the House on Tuesday set a deadline of Nov. 1 for President Obama to act on a Canadian firm's application to build a 2,000-mile pipeline for shipping crude oil extracted from tar sands in the province of Alberta to U.S. refineries in Texas. The bill (H.R. 1938) is nonbinding because this is solely an executive-branch decision. The administration says it could decide by year's end whether to allow TransCanada Corp. to build the Keystone XL pipeline, which would be in addition to its existing oil pipeline between Alberta and Cushing, Okla.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

Voting yes: Brady, Dent, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Carney, and Schwartz.

Another utterly wasteful, non-job producing exercise sponsored by the ruling gaggle of idiots…

Endangered Species Act. The House on Wednesday upheld, 224-202, existing procedures for listing plants, animals, and their habitats as candidates for protection under the Endangered Species Act. This killed language that sought to use a funding cutoff to prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2012 from taking this first step toward potentially protecting certain declining species. About 260 species are listed as potential candidates for protection under the law. The vote was taken during consideration of a GOP-drafted Interior Department budget (H.R. 2584) that remained in debate.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Dent, Fattah, Fitzpatrick, Gerlach, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Runyan, Schwartz, and Smith.

Voting no: Pitts.

In my perfect world, Pancake Joe would be the only “endangered species” in PA-16 for a whole mountain of ridiculous votes like this one.

Greenhouse-gas regulation. Voting 235-191, the House on Wednesday cut in half the fiscal 2012 budget for the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, under which power plants, refineries, and other major polluters must disclose emissions data to the Environmental Protection Agency. The amendment to H.R. 2584 (above) shifted $6.2 million of the program's approximately $13 million budget to deficit reduction.

A yes vote backed the amendment.

Voting yes: Dent, Holden, LoBiondo, Meehan, Pitts, Runyan, and Smith.

Voting no: Andrews, Brady, Carney, Fattah, Gerlach, Fitzpatrick, and Schwartz.

Hmmm, I smell another “safe” vote for Gerlach and Mikey the Beloved to hone some pro-environmental bona fides while this awful pro-Greenhouse gases bill passed anyway (this tells you how Hal Rogers of Kentucky is partly to blame, though he has plenty of company).

Senate

FBI Director. By a vote of 100-0, the Senate on Wednesday confirmed Robert S. Mueller 3d to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation for two more years. Mueller began a 10-year term as FBI director on Sept. 4, 2001, as a George W. Bush appointee. President Obama retained Mueller for a shortened term to add continuity in his national-security team after the recent additions of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus.

A yes vote was to confirm Mueller.

Voting yes: Thomas Carper (D., Del.), Bob Casey (D., Pa.), Chris Coons (D., Del.), Frank Lautenberg (D., N.J.), Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), and Pat Toomey (R., Pa.).

This week, both chambers took up fiscal 2012 appropriations bills and measures to raise the national-debt ceiling (uh, yep).

And speaking of that circus, I give you an opinion column from former Clinton and Obama econ guru (supposedly) Larry Summers, of all people, on the whole debt ceiling fiasco (here)…

There will be no first default in U.S. history; no economy-damaging short-run austerity; no attack on the nation’s core social protection programs or on universal health care; and no repeat of the last month’s shabby spectacle for at least 15 months. All of this was in doubt even a week ago as Congressional intransigence threatened to make the problem of acceptably raising the debt limit insoluble. The Hippocratic Oath applies in economics as well as medicine and so it is no small thing for the Administration to have reached an agreement that does no immediate harm. It may well be that no better agreement was achievable given the political dynamics in Congress.

In response to the "austerity" remark, this post from Think Progress tells us that 1.8 million jobs could be sacrificed as part of the debt deal (sounds pretty “austere” to me).

Summers also tells us that “The United States’s current problem is much more a jobs and growth deficit than an excessive budget deficit.”

As noted here, though, Summers has favored reduction of capital gains taxes as opposed to infrastructure investment as a financial stimulus, with the latter being a much more effective job creator. Also, Summers told former Dem CT Sen. Chris Dodd to remove caps on executive pay for firms receiving TARP funds, including Bank of America and Citigroup.

Summers had the opportunity to advocate for policies that would have created more good jobs for those seeking work (and in the process, advocate also debt reduction for real). And we know what happened, as Stirling Newberry reminded us in the October 2009 post…

Anyone who believes (Summers) when he pats himself on his back should remember that Summers' record of being wrong about everything of significance is awe inspiring in its completeness. This is the man who helped create the necessary preconditions for the financial crisis through radical deregulation of financial markets, then didn’t see the crisis coming till it was already well underway.

…

Welcome to endless war, money for rich people, and trickle down for you. The future looks an awful lot like the past, doesn’t it?

It did then, just as it does now (sigh).

Tuesday Stuff

A truly memorable Special Comment from K.O. on that stinking debt "deal," which codified, among other things, Repug hostage-taking as apparently acceptable negotiation (lots to do in response, and deciding to primary our "hopey changey" POTUS who went along with this instead of acting on some supposed 14th amendment option is a start, along with getting as royally pissed as Keith is, and rightly so)...



Update 8/3/11: Still think it's nuts to primary Number 44 after reading this?

...and here's another "fathers and sons" tune.

Tuesday Mashup (8/2/11)

I know I’m a little late with this, but The Old Gray Lady was guilty of some genuine journalistic malpractice over the weekend in this New York Times Sunday Magazine report on, of all people, James O’Keefe (here, currently sentenced to three years’ probation and 100 hours of community service for that stunt of illegally entering the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu)…

O’Keefe wasn’t happy about spending his Memorial Day turning rocks into pebbles to pay his debt to society, but what really bothered him were the terms of his probation. He couldn’t leave New Jersey, his home state, without court approval, and the court in New Orleans, where he was sentenced, had turned down a travel request. At first O’Keefe feared revealing this bit of information — “my enemies will use it against me,” he said darkly — but indignation overcame caution. “I have to get government permission to accept speaking dates, which is how I make my living. I can’t travel to work on new projects. And I can’t leave to train others.”

WAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!

“I’m not comparing my situation to the gulag,” he said. “But I speak truth to power. You’d think liberal baby boomers would support me. Isn’t that what the ’60s were all about? Do we really want political prisoners in America?”

Oh, that’s hilarious (with O’Keefe actually comparing himself to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for good measure).

There’s all kinds of ridiculous attempts here to whitewash O’Keefe’s garbage, working in concert with Hannah Giles, Andrew Breitbart and the rest of that foul ilk. That includes quotes from Brooke Kroeger, director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, calling what O’Keefe does “undercover journalism.” It also includes someone named Dean Mills, dean of the University of Missouri’s school of journalism, who actually equates O’Keefe with Michael Moore.

Oh, and speaking of the director of “Roger and Me” and “Fahrenheit 9/11” (mentioned at the end here)…

O’Keefe grew up in Westwood, N.J., and still lives with his parents. His father is an engineer, his mother a physical therapist. In high school he was a theater guy, but Rutgers radicalized him. He was incensed by what he considered the political correctness on campus. Soon he began writing biting columns in the college newspaper, The Daily Targum, which caught the eye of Morton Blackwell, the head of the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Va., which he founded 32 years ago. The institute trains young conservative activists and budding journalists (including Ainsley Earhardt and Adam Housley of Fox News). In all, Blackwell says that there are some 90 institute graduates working in local and network news around the country. The institute has also helped establish more than 100 conservative alternative campus newspapers and magazines, and it gave O’Keefe seed money for The Centurion. O’Keefe’s last editorial, “I Have a Dream,” set forth a vision of a college where, among other things, conservative views were respected, Christian tradition was honored and people realized that “guns are no more responsible for Columbine than spoons are responsible for Michael Moore’s obesity.”

Note to O’Keefe – nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green and Federal Judge John Roll were killed by a nut with an assault rifle containing a 30-round clip; Jared Loughner didn’t carry out these crimes with a gallon container of Haagen-Dazs (to say nothing of critically wounding Gabby Giffords also).

There’s all kinds of ripe stuff in this mess from Zev Chafets, who apparently is angling for a book deal with another right-wing icon, but I’ll focus on this item for now (as noted here)…

…Chafets leads the reader to conclude that the core controversy is whether it's ever okay for a journalist to mislead his subject. But the mortal sin that O'Keefe commits in the ACORN videos is misleading the audience. His videos are presented to the public in less than honest ways that go far beyond normal "selectivity." Instead of quoting a former Times public editor (who wrote two columns about the ACORN controversy) as his expert source, Chafets should've consulted the report from the California Attorney General's Office. The staffers who wrote it interviewed everyone involved, saw all the raw video footage, and issued a lengthy accounting with detailed descriptions of the misleading edits O'Keefe made.

Readers are never alerted to that report, or its most damning section: the story of Juan Carlos Vera. He was an employee at ACORN's San Diego office. O'Keefe and Giles came in, pretended to be a pimp and prostitute, and asked for help smuggling underage girls across the Mexican border.

In the ACORN videos, it appears that Vera is willing to be an accomplice in the made up smuggling plot. O'Keefe may well have thought so at the time. According to the California Attorney General's investigation, however, Vera didn't know what to make of the pair at first, tried to elicit as much information as possible from them so that he could contact law enforcement, and called his cousin, a police officer, as soon as they left. Phone records confirm the call to his cousin, and Vera was soon directed to a San Diego police officer who specializes in human smuggling. He spoke to that police officer too. As Vera was cooperating with police, the ACORN sting videos began to appear, portraying him as a willing child smuggler. He was fired from ACORN during the PR fallout, and has since filed a lawsuit against O'Keefe and Giles.

Chafets mentions none of this, but it's relevant for three reasons. First, it highlights one of the reasons that it is ethically questionable to take hidden video and air it without ever confronting the subject with its contents first. Second, you'd think that after phone records confirming that Vera called the police were made public -- and after an investigation by a state attorney general suggested his probable innocence -- O'Keefe would apologize, or at least correct his original story. But he didn't. Finally, if a magazine story is setting forth a controversy about a journalistic story, isn't it relevant to include the fact that one of the subjects filed a lawsuit against the reporter?

Here is more on this from Eric Boehlert of Media Matters.

I’ve been holding back on saying this for a little while, but no longer – though it still provides interesting content on occasion, the Sunday New York Times has fallen off a cliff since Frank Rich has left (and Joe Nocera has tried ably to fill in for Bob Herbert, including today, but Nocera’s niche is more business than political commentary). Basically, the “common-sense-reality” point of view is disappearing. And it’s being replaced by more and more fawning cult-of-personality “coverage” such as the type Chafets provided here.

And that is truly sad.

Next, this recent story tells us that it’s time for another “Friedman Unit”…

ASPEN, Colo. — President Obama’s top adviser on Pakistan said Friday that the United States had six months to deliver “a knockout blow” to Al Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan while the group was still in turmoil after the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The adviser, Douglas E. Lute, a deputy national security adviser, said the United States needed to increase covert action in Pakistan to take advantage of the disarray within Al Qaeda’s senior ranks.

As noted here, Lute said in August 2005 that "Everything in a counterinsurgency has to do with the political outcome, not the military outcome." He also said we need an “information war” to fight “bin Ladenism” and the enemy was “Islamic extremism.” And he was right.

Lute also said, however, that the Iraqi “leadership” would “step up,” there was no "hard factual evidence" of a "clear link" between Afghanistan's drug profits and "extremists," and the Iraqi insurgency was “90 percent home grown.” And he was wrong.

Wonder if Lute will return after another “F.U.” for a progress report?

Finally, this story tells us the following…

LOS ANGELES — In a major victory for Marvel Entertainment and its parent, the Walt Disney Company, a federal judge in New York granted them summary judgment in their legal dispute with the heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby, while denying the Kirbys request for judgment against Disney and Marvel.

The ruling, by Judge Colleen McMahon of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, declares comics and characters created by Mr. Kirby — who helped give birth to the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, all of which now underlie valuable movie series — were works for hire under the Copyright Act of 1909, and cannot be reclaimed by the Kirby family.

In 2009, Mr. Kirby’s heirs sent Marvel and Disney 45 notices of a plan to reclaim copyrights in a series of Marvel comics that were published from 1958 to 1963. The comics included issues of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “The Avengers,” “Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos,” and others. In her ruling on Thursday, however, Judge McMahon said the notices “did not operate to convey any federally protected copyrights.”

Marc Toberoff, the Los Angeles lawyer who represents the Kirbys, said, “We knew when we took this on that it would not be an easy fight given the arcane and contradictory state of ‘work for hire’ ” case law under the 1909 Copyright Act. “We respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling and intend to appeal this matter to the Second Circuit. Sometimes you have to lose to win.”

And as noted here…

“My favorite thing about Kirby’s artwork was his storytelling,” Lee said. “He was really a film director doing comics.”

In that, Kirby was certainly ahead of his time. Comics are a huge part of Hollywood now, thanks to the modern era of computer-generated special effects that, finally, can match the galactic visions and super-powered mayhem that Kirby put to paper in the 1960s. Kirby’s influence is nothing less than massive on several generations of artists and filmmakers.

“There was power in the work of Jack Kirby that changed the way I looked at things,” said Guillermo del Toro, writer-director of “Pan’s Labyrinth.” “There was no one else like him and there never will be.”

Nevertheless, Kirby remains a distant second to Lee in name recognition, which Lisa Kirby said rankles. “A lot more people know the name Stan Lee than the name Jack Kirby,” she said. “I’m not putting down Stan Lee’s talents but it’s difficult for us to see that he does dominate the credit. That doesn’t reflect the work or the reality. To see Jack Kirby in small letters and Stan Lee in big letters, that’s hard for us.”

As someone who was weaned on Marvel Comics from an early age, I think it’s sad that the estate of Jack Kirby has to scrape for crumbs by comparison to what Stan Lee has earned through the movies, TV shows and other promotion and merchandizing of Marvel’s characters and stories. Yes, Lee deserves his reward also, but he’s a member of perhaps the most successful duo in comic book history, not a solo act (and the over-hundred-year-old copyright law be damned – Lee should find a way to make good with the Kirby heirs without getting the “suits” involved).

What a shame that the spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice exemplified by Marvel’s most iconic characters is apparently nowhere to be found from one of its founding fathers.

Monday Stuff

(Posting is very questionable for this week, by the way.)

God bless Gabby Giffords - as shown in this clip, she returned to D.C. to cast her vote in this debt ceiling nonsense...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

...and MTV debuted with this tune on this day in 1981.

Sunday Stuff

Robert Greenwald and Sen. Bernie Sanders bring us more on the Kochs and how they fund our corporate media punditocracy to speak against our best interests (here)...



Update 8/1/11: More garbage from the Kochs here...

...and when it comes to Chuck and Dave, I think this song fits; happily, those guys will be worm food one day - of course, they could still do a lot of damage until we get to that point.