Title: Let’s Rap Artist: The Relatives Happy Sunday! Check this…
Continue reading …Okay, his viewership dropped by more than a million viewers in a year. Sure, 400 advertisers pulled their sponsorship of his program. If we were talking about any other media figure, conservatives would say that was the “free market” talking, deciding that the public wanted a different product than the one this media figure was selling. But not if you’re Glenn Beck. According to Howie Kurtz, radically losing viewership and advertising dollars has nothing to do with Beck losing his job. It’s all about him chafing under the restrictions of the suit (rather large suit, in the form of FNC President Roger Ailes) who provided all the chalkboards and underwrote and advertised your vanity rally in DC. How non-supportive of Ailes. Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik (who has also castigated MSNBC’s prime-time hosts as fascists ) thinks that Beck’s ever-expanding messianic complex (an accurate diagnosis by video if I ever saw one) just outgrew the confines of Fox News, especially when the legitimate newspeople (*cough, cough*) of Fox News felt more and more marginalized by Beck’s insanity. Howie acknowledges that the “liberal media” had it out for Beck. Yeah, that evil liberal media (which is apparently only Media Matters for Kurtz–wow, how overwhelming. Hard to believe conservatives had a chance against that ). But Amy Holmes is eager to point out that a similarly outrageous string of clips could be culled from MSNBC hosts. Really? Are there MSNBC hosts repeatedly making completely outrageous, fact-free claims night after night? Are MSNBC hosts agitating and fomenting violence? Take your false equivalency and shut the hell up, Holmes. It’s Bill Press who gets the money quote that will forever paint Beck’s tenure at Fox: Only Glenn Beck could make Bill O’Reilly look like a statesman. A-frakin-men. The simple truth is that news is a business now. Glenn Beck was bad for business and therefore, the management was no longer willing to keep him on the air. The free market, you tea-baggers, at work. Your ideas just don’t work in the marketplace of ideas.
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It's no great surprise when an Obama administration official takes a swipe at Fox News. But it is somewhat unseemly when one of the President's top advisers and campaign manager does it in front of Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: When the Republicans originally proposed some cuts like this, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer were calling it draconian and extreme and radical. And you ended up agreeing to about two-thirds of it. DAVID PLOUFFE, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: Well, again, you were just talking about the number. There were some cuts and there are actual cuts that were radical and draconian. They're not in the final package. So — WALLACE: Billions of dollars in cuts in infrastructure, research and development, high-speed rail? PLOUFFE: Well, there are some cuts and there are still a lot of investments. The president said Friday night, any compromise — and, by the way, “compromise” is not a dirty word. Even with a lot of your viewers, it shouldn't be. We're not going to move forward on anything — WALLACE: What do you mean a lot of our viewers? PLOUFFE: Well, my point is I think that most Americans believe, there may be some in the base of the Republican Party — and polls show this out — the American people want compromise. There's a slim majority that does not. Plouffe may have been referring to Republicans with that last comment, as Gallup reported Wednesday: With Congress facing a midnight Friday deadline to pass a federal budget before a partial government shutdown occurs, a new Gallup poll finds Americans rooting for a deal. By 58% to 33%, more Americans want government leaders who share their views on the budget to back a compromise and avert a shutdown rather than hold out for a budget they agree with. The slight majority of Republicans nationwide, 51%, want the people in government who share their views to hold out for a budget they agree with rather than compromise. This compares with 27% of Democrats and 29% of independents who say the same. As such, a slim majority of Republicans in this poll wanted their leaders to hold out for a budget they agree with, but that doesn't mean they consider compromise a dirty word. Instead, when it comes to certain issues currently facing the nation, conservatives at this moment are more steadfast in their views especially as members of their Party in recent years have abdicated core principles in order to pass legislation and budgets that were by no means appealing to the Right. Either way, it sure is strange for a member of the White House to go on a news channel and take a cheap shot at its viewers, although given the unprecedented arrogance of this Administration, nothing's surprising anymore. (H/T Mediaite )
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Garrison Keillor – anecdotalist, radio host and laureate of small-town wholesomeness – is publishing a book of poetry, 77 Love Sonnets . Interviewed about the book , Keillor found himself discussing the reaction to an anthology he published a few years ago; specifically, the admired modernist poet August Kleinzahler ‘s full-frontal assault on Keillor’s “appalling taste” . I looked it up: a dismissive review that took two and a half thousand words in the dismissing. It’s been said that criticising PG Wodehouse is like ” taking a spade to a souffle “. This was something similar; and if you hit a souffle with a spade, you get egg on your face. Keillor’s taste in poetry may differ from Kleinzahler’s, and his understanding of what it’s for may differ – caricaturally, he thinks it does the soul good, and that makes Kleinzahler wince with embarrassment. (Not that the does-you-good school of thought isn’t without well-respected adherents: FR Leavis , for instance, or George Eliot , who said: “If art does not enlarge men’s sympathies it does nothing morally.”) But it strikes me as odd that the response is not indifference but active rage: “The indefatigable and determined purveyor of homespun wisdom has wandered into the realm of fire, and for
Continue reading …While we pull in our belts at home, our leaders get carried away abroad. It’s time we turned our backs on our imperial past There are three ways to respond when the going gets tough : head in the sand, try to sort things out, or suddenly get very
Continue reading …While we pull in our belts at home, our leaders get carried away abroad. It’s time we turned our backs on our imperial past There are three ways to respond when the going gets tough : head in the sand, try to sort things out, or suddenly get very
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A new, deeply personal picture of the first man in space has emerged from a rare interview with his daughter Elena To the rest of the planet, he was a pioneer, a hero of galactic proportions and the ultimate propaganda weapon. But to his family, Yuri Gagarin was a poetic soul with a passion for Pushkin and Saint-Exupéry who wrote his wife a letter telling her not to remain alone in the very likely event that he never returned from the epochal flight he made 50 years ago on Tuesday. A fascinating and deeply personal picture of the first man in space has emerged from a rare interview with his elder daughter, Elena Gagarina. And while it comes as little surprise that the cosmonaut had no true conception of “internal pain” – and was so mentally and physically disciplined that he would take naps of exactly 40 minutes and wake up “on the dot” without an alarm clock – he was far more than a perfectly drilled machine. In the interview, which was conducted by Andrea Rose from the British Council and forms part of a documentary to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Gagarina recalls a man whose life was indelibly marked by the Nazi occupation of his village during the second world war. Perhaps because the Germans kicked the family out of their home and forced them to live in a dugout in the garden for three years, Gagarin became a keen student of history. “He was curious and interested in everything,” remembers his daughter. “He was part of a generation that had had so few opportunities open to them and then, after the war, they were avid for everything.” Literature, too, became a fascination. “He knew Pushkin very well, and Tvardovsky and Ivakovsky – poetry connected with the war. He liked a great deal of literature: Lermontov, and Saint-Exupéry, for example. He liked to read to us in a very loud voice. It was too difficult for us to understand at the time, but he still liked doing it.” Despite his fondness for the work of the French aviator and writer, Gagarin’s preferences were characteristic – and sadly prescient. “He thought of himself as pilot. His favourite book wasn’t The Little Prince, it was Night Flight [a novel about a doomed airmail flyer].” Before boarding Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961 for the flight that would propel him into orbit and history, Gagarin deployed a little white lie to try to protect his wife. “She knew what he wanted to do, and when he was leaving for Baikonur he told her what he was doing,” says Gagarina. “But he didn’t tell her the actual date. He told her the flight would take place a few days after the real date, so she wouldn’t be worried.” He himself, however, was under no illusions about his mission. “He wrote a letter for my mother saying that it was likely he wouldn’t return, because the flight was extremely dangerous, and that he wanted her not to remain on her own in that case. But he didn’t give her the letter. She found it by chance among his things when he came back. He hadn’t wanted her to find it, and told her that she should throw it away. But of course, she kept it.” But, after a 108-minute orbital flight of Earth, Gagarin did return – to a hero’s welcome, instant global fame and meetings with everyone from the Queen to Fidel Castro. In the seven years between his space adventure and his death in a plane crash at 34, though, the cosmonaut grew weary of recounting his experiences. “He talked about it so often, and with so many people, that it seemed to me he was rather tired of talking about it,” remembers Gagarina. “What he talked about to me was his childhood – about what it was like to grow up in Smolensk, and about the war.” As the world prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first man in space – the British Council will unveil a statue of Gagarin on the Mall in London later this year – Elena Gagarina ponders, in a fittingly matter-of-fact manner, her father’s extraordinary feat. “It was just a part of my life and growing up. He was always the First Cosmonaut of the World for me, and his whole life was connected with space and space exploration. There wasn’t a before and after for me.” • Random Edition , 1961 First Man in Space 50th Anniversary Special, is on BBC Radio 4, 11 April at 11am Yuri Gagarin Space BBC4 BBC Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
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A new, deeply personal picture of the first man in space has emerged from a rare interview with his daughter Elena To the rest of the planet, he was a pioneer, a hero of galactic proportions and the ultimate propaganda weapon. But to his family, Yuri Gagarin was a poetic soul with a passion for Pushkin and Saint-Exupéry who wrote his wife a letter telling her not to remain alone in the very likely event that he never returned from the epochal flight he made 50 years ago on Tuesday. A fascinating and deeply personal picture of the first man in space has emerged from a rare interview with his elder daughter, Elena Gagarina. And while it comes as little surprise that the cosmonaut had no true conception of “internal pain” – and was so mentally and physically disciplined that he would take naps of exactly 40 minutes and wake up “on the dot” without an alarm clock – he was far more than a perfectly drilled machine. In the interview, which was conducted by Andrea Rose from the British Council and forms part of a documentary to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Gagarina recalls a man whose life was indelibly marked by the Nazi occupation of his village during the second world war. Perhaps because the Germans kicked the family out of their home and forced them to live in a dugout in the garden for three years, Gagarin became a keen student of history. “He was curious and interested in everything,” remembers his daughter. “He was part of a generation that had had so few opportunities open to them and then, after the war, they were avid for everything.” Literature, too, became a fascination. “He knew Pushkin very well, and Tvardovsky and Ivakovsky – poetry connected with the war. He liked a great deal of literature: Lermontov, and Saint-Exupéry, for example. He liked to read to us in a very loud voice. It was too difficult for us to understand at the time, but he still liked doing it.” Despite his fondness for the work of the French aviator and writer, Gagarin’s preferences were characteristic – and sadly prescient. “He thought of himself as pilot. His favourite book wasn’t The Little Prince, it was Night Flight [a novel about a doomed airmail flyer].” Before boarding Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961 for the flight that would propel him into orbit and history, Gagarin deployed a little white lie to try to protect his wife. “She knew what he wanted to do, and when he was leaving for Baikonur he told her what he was doing,” says Gagarina. “But he didn’t tell her the actual date. He told her the flight would take place a few days after the real date, so she wouldn’t be worried.” He himself, however, was under no illusions about his mission. “He wrote a letter for my mother saying that it was likely he wouldn’t return, because the flight was extremely dangerous, and that he wanted her not to remain on her own in that case. But he didn’t give her the letter. She found it by chance among his things when he came back. He hadn’t wanted her to find it, and told her that she should throw it away. But of course, she kept it.” But, after a 108-minute orbital flight of Earth, Gagarin did return – to a hero’s welcome, instant global fame and meetings with everyone from the Queen to Fidel Castro. In the seven years between his space adventure and his death in a plane crash at 34, though, the cosmonaut grew weary of recounting his experiences. “He talked about it so often, and with so many people, that it seemed to me he was rather tired of talking about it,” remembers Gagarina. “What he talked about to me was his childhood – about what it was like to grow up in Smolensk, and about the war.” As the world prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first man in space – the British Council will unveil a statue of Gagarin on the Mall in London later this year – Elena Gagarina ponders, in a fittingly matter-of-fact manner, her father’s extraordinary feat. “It was just a part of my life and growing up. He was always the First Cosmonaut of the World for me, and his whole life was connected with space and space exploration. There wasn’t a before and after for me.” • Random Edition , 1961 First Man in Space 50th Anniversary Special, is on BBC Radio 4, 11 April at 11am Yuri Gagarin Space BBC4 BBC Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Man, conservatives sure do want everyone to buy into the notion that the only answer to Medicare is to not have it. They go on and on about how Medicare is going to go bankrupt. But what is never mentioned is the actual end of that sentence “…under current spending levels.” Let’s remember that there are two sides to that coin. One way to deal with rising costs is to drastically cut benefits. But that doesn’t reduce the existence of the need for those benefits, it simply transfers the costs to the individual, who is on Medicare because they cannot afford private insurance. As in our current system with those who are uninsured, if those individuals can’t pay those costs, they get passed on to everyone else in the form of increased premiums and bloated medical charges (nothing like paying for a $20 box of tissue during a hospital stay). But the other way to deal with it– which is apparently unthinkable to George Will and Chrystia Freeland–is to increase spending, in the form of tax increases. Yes, I said the dreaded phrase: tax increases. At the time that Medicare was enacted in 1965, the top marginal tax rate was 70% . Now it’s less than 40% . Of course there’s no money…we’re too busy allowing the uber-wealthy and corporations to skate on their share of the social fabric to create huge population-sized holes in the safety net. I do have to credit the GOP with the talking point that it won’t affect anyone currently getting Medicare or scheduled to receive it for the next ten years. *Wipes brow* whew! I guess that leaves me–in my mid-40s, with a history of cancer and without a steady paycheck for 15 years, so I’m imminent competitively hire-able–in the perfect spot to afford private insurance policies as a senior? I guess it’s a good thing I had children…I’ll need somewhere to live when my IRA (since Social Security is in the crosshairs as well) goes almost exclusively to my medical needs. Multiply that over tens of millions of Gen X-ers and Y-ers and Millennials and suddenly, that doesn’t seem so sustainable for the economy, does it? And can we please call a moratorium on calling Medicare and Social Security “entitlements”? I’m so sick of that bull excrement. There is nothing “entitled” about having taxes taken out of every paycheck to a trust fund that will enable one to live through one’s golden years without resorting to eating catfood or wearing a Walmart greeter’s vest because the idea of a true retirement is out of the realm of possibility. The only entitlement I see is the white privilege of the Beltway establishment, unwilling to actually be honest about the consequences of such destructive Republican policies.
Continue reading …Man, conservatives sure do want everyone to buy into the notion that the only answer to Medicare is to not have it. They go on and on about how Medicare is going to go bankrupt. But what is never mentioned is the actual end of that sentence “…under current spending levels.” Let’s remember that there are two sides to that coin. One way to deal with rising costs is to drastically cut benefits. But that doesn’t reduce the existence of the need for those benefits, it simply transfers the costs to the individual, who is on Medicare because they cannot afford private insurance. As in our current system with those who are uninsured, if those individuals can’t pay those costs, they get passed on to everyone else in the form of increased premiums and bloated medical charges (nothing like paying for a $20 box of tissue during a hospital stay). But the other way to deal with it– which is apparently unthinkable to George Will and Chrystia Freeland–is to increase spending, in the form of tax increases. Yes, I said the dreaded phrase: tax increases. At the time that Medicare was enacted in 1965, the top marginal tax rate was 70% . Now it’s less than 40% . Of course there’s no money…we’re too busy allowing the uber-wealthy and corporations to skate on their share of the social fabric to create huge population-sized holes in the safety net. I do have to credit the GOP with the talking point that it won’t affect anyone currently getting Medicare or scheduled to receive it for the next ten years. *Wipes brow* whew! I guess that leaves me–in my mid-40s, with a history of cancer and without a steady paycheck for 15 years, so I’m imminent competitively hire-able–in the perfect spot to afford private insurance policies as a senior? I guess it’s a good thing I had children…I’ll need somewhere to live when my IRA (since Social Security is in the crosshairs as well) goes almost exclusively to my medical needs. Multiply that over tens of millions of Gen X-ers and Y-ers and Millennials and suddenly, that doesn’t seem so sustainable for the economy, does it? And can we please call a moratorium on calling Medicare and Social Security “entitlements”? I’m so sick of that bull excrement. There is nothing “entitled” about having taxes taken out of every paycheck to a trust fund that will enable one to live through one’s golden years without resorting to eating catfood or wearing a Walmart greeter’s vest because the idea of a true retirement is out of the realm of possibility. The only entitlement I see is the white privilege of the Beltway establishment, unwilling to actually be honest about the consequences of such destructive Republican policies.
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