MOTHER JONES: It’s unfathomable why a conservative, but still mainstream, business magazine would publish something so reckless, false, and bigoted? For a clue to the answer, consider a data point from the Congressional Budget Office (PDF). If you are in the bottom 80 percent of American households, you’ve gained essentially no economic ground in the past three decades. Those of you lucky enough to be in the top 20 percent ($100,000+) might be heartened by the trajectory of the red line on the chart at right—but sorry: The vast majority of those gains have actually gone to the top 1 […]
SAY IT AIN’T MO: Velvet Underground Drummer Explains Why She Joined The Tea Party
RIVERFRONT TIMES: In April 2009, WALB-TV aired a story about a Tea Party rally in nearby Tifton, Georgia. About two-and-a-half minutes into the feature, one “Maureen Tucker, Tea Party Supporter” was quoted as saying, “I’m furious about the way we’re being led toward socialism. I’m furious about the incredible waste of money, when things that we really need and are important get dropped, because there’s no money left.” Eighteen months later, the news story somehow ended up posted on YouTube, and the blogosphere started buzzing. Could this actually be Moe Tucker [pictured, bottom left], former drummer for the Velvet Underground, […]
Wife Of Clarence Thomas Asks Anita Hill To Apologize
NPR: In a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction twist, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas earlier this month left a voicemail message for Anita Hill, asking Hill to apologize for her 1991 testimony accusing then Supreme Court nominee Thomas of sexual harassment. Virginia Thomas has confirmed through a spokesman that on Saturday, Oct. 9, she left a voicemail message at Hill’s Brandeis University office. News organizations, including <em>The New York Times</em> and ABC, have reported that they heard the recording, which said: “Good Morning, Anita Hill. Its Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask […]
KHYBER PAST: Two Of David Coleman Headley’s Three Wives Tried To Warn Officials Of Mumbai Attack
PRO PUBLICA: In three interviews with federal agents, Headley’s wife said that he was an active militant in the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba, had trained extensively in its Pakistani camps, and had shopped for night vision goggles and other equipment, according to officials and sources close to the case. The wife, whom ProPublica is not identifying to protect her safety, also told agents that Headley had bragged of working as a paid U.S. informant while he trained with the terrorists in Pakistan, according to a person close to the case. Federal officials say the FBI “looked into” the tip, but they […]
OP-ED: The NRA Took My First Amendment Away
BY REP. TIM BRIGGS Harrisburg is not for the weak of heart. During my first term in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, I have seen things that have made me think twice about running for re-election. If you are a wide-eyed idealist like me who believes in unicorns and reforming the Pennsylvania legislature, you need to be able to turn frustration and disbelief into passion for action. For the better part of the last two years I have been able to take many things in stride: bitter partisanship, entrenched colleagues, a legislative process that moves slower than a catcher […]
GAMBLOR: Like Candy From Smoking Babies
PAUL DAVIES: I’m not a fan of casinos, regardless of the design. It is a bad, insidious business that preys on vulnerable people who can least afford to waste their money. But I was curious to check out the first casino in the poorest, big city in the country. While the outside didn’t grab me, the inside was even more depressing. Row after row of slot machines were dotted with people slouched in seats aimlessly pushing buttons. Most gamblers appeared to be over 50. Several had canes. A heavyset woman wheeled around an oxygen tank with tubes going to her […]
POLI SIGH: The Wilmington Witch Trials
MEDIAITE: Hot on the heels of her “I am not a witch” campaign ad, and just in time for Halloween, Herobuilders.com is offering Christine O’Donnell witch dolls for the collectible price of $39.95. The site also offers an “Executive” version of the doll, in a smart business suit, for $29.95. If you live in a cave, the doll is a spoof of O’Donnell’s now-infamous claim to have “dabbled in witchcraft” as a teenager. The dolls just went on sale today, so when we contacted Herobuilders owner Emil Vicale, he was shocked to learn that his creation had already been […]
THIS JUST IN: Moe Tucker Is A Teabagger; Rick Sanchez Sez Jon Stewart’s A Bigot, CNN Run By Jews
PITCHFORK: Moe Tucker: pioneering self-taught drummer for the Velvet Underground, Tea Party supporter. Tis true. The 66-year-old Georgia resident was apparently interviewed at a rally for the controversial conservative offshoot party last April, and you can watch the news report below (fast forward to the 2:40 mark if you dare). MORE RELATED: In the mid-sixties, Long Island native Maureen “Moe” Tucker replaced Angus MacLise as the drummer in the fledgling Velvet Underground. With a beat-up four-piece drum kit and minimalist aesthetic, Moe brought an important like-mindedness to the VU. She shared, among other things, a disdain for hippiedom and a […]
GAMBLOR: We Are Coming To Get You
SUGARHOUSE CASINO: Catch a FREE ride on the Sugar Express! Starting October 2010, our official transportation, the Sugar Express will pick up and drop off SugarHouse guests around Center City and nearby access points. MORE PHAWKER: Why does this remind us of the story of Hansel and Gretel?
WITCHY: Christine O’Donnell ‘Dabbled In Witchcraft’
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Another unfavorable decade-old television clip of tea party favorite Christine O’Donnell has emerged, this time with the Delaware GOP Senate candidate saying she “dabbled in witchcraft.” The clip spread among websites as O’Donnell canceled appearances Sunday on two national news shows. Her campaign said she had to back out of the programs because of scheduling conflicts with events in Delaware. Since O’Donnell’s upset of nine-term Rep. Mike Castle, opponents have unearthed unflattering age-old television clips. The most recent was aired by comedian Bill Maher, who dug up one of O’Donnell’s appearances on his “Politically Incorrect” show in 1999. […]
New York Times Reviews Will Bunch’s Backlash
NEW YORK TIMES: By far the most compelling, if not terribly original, arguments in “The Backlash” concern the current media environment, which has amplified the loudest and most partisan voices, and helped spread fact-free theories about President Obama’s not being born in the United States or wanting to take away people’s guns. Mr. Bunch invokes Neil Postman — who argued in his seminal 1985 book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” that the entertainment values promoted by television are subverting public discourse — to explore the phenomenon of Mr. Beck and his shameless emotional appeals to his audience’s deepest fears about change […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR “[Jimmie Dale Gilmore‘s] voice would make even Hank Williams cry,” Nicholas Dawidoff once wrote in The New York Times Magazine. Gilmore, a singer from West Texas, writes songs that would be described as alternative country. But he sings honky-tonk country classics on his album Come on Back , which he discussed in a 2005 interview with Terry Gross. The album, a tribute to Gilmore’s late father, contains versions of his father’s favorite songs like “Walkin’ the Floor Over You” and “Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.” “[Pick Me Up] represents an entire style that I really associate […]
Stoking White Fright For Fun And For Profit
GLENN GREENWALD: Virtually every Fox News/right-wing-talk-radio controversy relies on scaring economically anxious white Americans into ignoring the prime cause of their economic insecurity — plundering by Wall Street bankers, abetted by the government they own — and focusing instead on some manufactured menace from powerless racial and ethnic minorities: black people preventing them from voting (New Black Panthers), stealing their elections (ACORN), and treating them unequally (Shirley Sherrod and Eric Holder’s Justice Department); Muslims who want to conquer their country and celebrate over their Christian corpses (the Triumphalist Ground Zero Mosque); invading, marauding Latino armies coming to steal their property and rape […]