Protesting journalists cry out over the arrest and detainment of ten AlJazeera journalists in Egypt this week.
What will Glenn Greenwald do in 2014? He's contributing with NBC to tell some stories on Anonymous UK today.
Today is William S Burroughs 100th birthday, local KCUR NPR reporter Frank Morris had a piece on him and his chosen midwest town of retirement, 5 min audio
Fantastic walk around Istanbul with native dissident Orhan Pamuk in nytimes mag, Sunday
Following Michael Beschloss on twitter @BeschlossDC who posts several photos of famous people, daily I'm often surprised by what he finds. Oftentimes it is 20th century filmstars and last week there were many from early sixties, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, Joe DiMaggio, The Beatles, the Kennedy and LBJ White House, cityscapes, etc. Here's one from 95 years ago today, when Charlie Chaplin and a number of other stars of the day, officially opened their own studio:
Here DWGriffith, Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks, fed up with Hollywood studios, form their own 95 years ago today: NARA pic.twitter.com/CYfVsDxKbe
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) February 5, 2014
The Congressional Budget Office gave an update on its projections of the effects following implentation of the Affordable Care Act, the massive health care exchange program, commonly known as Obamacare. The CBO is known for being non-partisan and is generally accepted by both US political parties as being 'neutral'. The rightward leaning press began claiming yesterday that the update proved 'for a fact' that the ACA would push jobs out of the economy, and later 'kill' two, then three, then millions of jobs. The left leaning press began calling foul on this characterization. So I went looking and found the update, here.
Reading only the first 2.5 pages (at most) of this single section, I felt I had enough info to counter the claims I was seeing from Reps and Senators on the right. It was that obvious to me, the kind of spin they were putting on this ball. The effect, the CBO says is that it will likely give workers more options, rather than less. Not surprised, I replied to a number of congressmen directly, to their tweets supplied by @LawMDF. Today, media like the Washington Post are blaming the 'error' on the media, not the right's purposeful manipulation.
@SenatorWicker w/out healthcare coverage more ppl wld have to stay longer in jobforce 2 maintain same living standard; #ACA eases costs4most
— neditsimple (@neditssimple) February 4, 2014
Meanwhile the Right in Washington and across the country are planning their strategies for the year. At the end of the month the US Gov will again need to have the debt ceiling raised. Supposedly earlier this week the right had a huddle to determine one of two directions. One, whether to encourage Obama to sign off on - meaning demand that - the Keystone XL tarsands pipeline from Alberta to Oklahoma be at last begun. And two, keep hammering on the failures of the ACA. It seems they opted for the latter. In November there will be elections for many in Congress. A number of Senate seats are opening up with many longterm Democrat Senators retiring. Many House of Representative seats are up for grabs as well. The Right are also predicting a sweep of all these and more. Like they always do. They did well in 2010. Many but still a minority, are already saying that the Obama Administration is a 'lawless' one, and that he should be impeached. This tack is not likely to gain traction with most voters.
Far away, affairs seem beyond desperate in the Central African Republic. Bombs in Baghdad continue to disrupt everything there and Al Qaeda still claims Fallujah and other spots in Iraq. President Karzai of Afghanistan has been refusing to cooperate with the US and its allies, flirting with ideas of negotiating with the Taliban. In Pakistan an uncertain government wakes up to more bombings and the son of Benazhir Bhutto looking intently at the PM position. The Olympics in Sochi, on the Black Sea in Russia will start soon.
UPDATE: A string of banker suicides and a missing journalist in the last 20 days make some wonder if they are related.
No comments:
Post a Comment