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Andrea McArdle, Original ‘Annie’, Wants African-American Annie For Revival
Andrea McArdle, who originated the role of “Annie” on Broadway back in 1977, is looking forward to the show’s revival scheduled to hit the Great White Way in 2012. But if she had her way, she would make one big change –- Annie would be African-American.
“I’ve been trying to do this and I actually got Ben Vereen involved. I’ve been trying to do this for years. …”
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Whatever happened to the bright future of “the Creative Class”? | io9 • by Charlie Jane Anders
Remember how the internet was going to create a whole new class of creators, who were going to be supercharging our economy by noodling on their laptops? Those people are hurting, thanks to a one-two punch of economic meltdown and the phasing out of old jobs like “video-store clerk” and “newspaper writer.” … Former io9 reporter Scott Timberg has a great rundown…
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[Tribute for Steve Jobs.]
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10 Stubborn Food Myths That Just Won’t Die, Debunked by Science | Lifehacker • by Alan Henry
We talked to a group of nutritionists and asked them to share the food myths they find most irritating and explain why people cling to them. …
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20 Colleges Costing Over $55,000 A Year | The Consumerist • by Ben Popken
In 2007, there was only one that had a total cost of over $50,000. Now, there are twenty that cost over $55,000. Here they are. …But it’s okay, clearly, the quality of higher education in this country has improved since 2007 at a rate commiserate to its cost.
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Job Numbers and How Lost Months Turn into Lost Years | Rortybomb • by Mike
Given the way they bounce around, following the job numbers month-to-month might not always be the best way to get a handle on the health of the economy. …
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Marines Heading to Wall Street to Protect Protesters – Salem-News.Com – Oct-03-2011 – Oregon
The protesters on Wall Street will soon have the protection of United States Marines who will form a human wall between the crowds of tireless protesters and the increasingly unpopular New York cops who continue to appear on YouTube in scenes that twist the insides of patriotic Americans.
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Faster-than-light neutrinos face time trial : Nature News
Less than two weeks after the revelation that ghostly particles called neutrinos had been spotted travelling faster than the speed of light, physicists are saying they have found flaws in the analysis that would stop the claim in its tracks.
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Notes On The Eurobubble – NYTimes.com – Paul Krugman
Alan Greenspan has written another deeply misleading, destructive op-ed. Also, the sun rose in the east. Greenspan is quickly establishing himself as the worst ex-Fed chairman of all time. But since he has introduced a brand-new fallacy into the debate, it’s worth taking on.
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Confronting the Malefactors – NYTimes.com – Paul Krugman
The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.
A weary cynicism, a belief that justice will never get served, has taken over much of our political debate … it has been easy to forget just how outrageous the story of our economic woes really is. …
When talking heads on, say, CNBC mock the protesters as unserious, remember how many serious people assured us that there was no housing bubble, that Alan Greenspan was an oracle and that budget deficits would send interest rates soaring. …
It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details.
Rich Yeselson, a veteran organizer and historian of social movements, has suggested that debt relief for working Americans become a central plank of the protests. I’ll second that, because such relief, in addition to serving economic justice, could do a lot to help the economy recover. I’d suggest that protesters also demand infrastructure investment — not more tax cuts — to help create jobs. Neither proposal is going to become law in the current political climate, but the whole point of the protests is to change that political climate.
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Bank Transfer Day: Remember, Remember the 5th of November | La Figa
Money-movers, who advocate changing from large corporate banks to credit unions or small local banks, are calling to make November 5 a nationwide Bank Transfer Day. …
Wire transfers cost $35, can take three to five days to clear, and require an existing account in which the funds will land. A better plan may be to simply go to the bank and close your account in person, ask for cash or a bank check, trot over to a credit union and open an account. 11/5/11 is a Saturday so make sure your bank is open that day!
[And other practical tips. -L]
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US Gains 103,000 Jobs in September | Firedoglake
…September was actually a worse month than August, by these projections. The unemployment rate remained steady at 9.1%.
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Quick Explainer On Last Night | Talking Points Memo
Here’s the nickel version of what went down last night in the Senate.
Set aside which bill was involved and what stage of the proceedings this all happened in. That’s basically irrelevant.
What Senate Democrats did is that they voted to overrule the Senate parliamentarian. …
[Bwuh? -L]
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Slovakia unsettles Europe’s rescue plan – The Washington Post
As European leaders scramble to stop Europe’s debt woes from triggering another global financial crisis, this sleepy little country known more for its medieval castles and fermented sheep’s milk is holding their grand rescue plan hostage.
Under the rules governing the 17 nations that share the euro, an expanded rescue fund for Europe’s ailing nations and troubled big banks must be approved by the parliaments of every country in the currency union. A yes vote by the Netherlands on Thursday left small, stubborn Slovakia as the biggest holdout, giving it outsize power to upend the plan largely shaped by the major European nations of Germany and France. …
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NAACP disputes review praising N.J. state police – Philly.com
According to a report Wednesday from the state attorney general, the state police is a model agency now that it has emerged from the shadow of a racial-profiling scandal.
But the NAACP has raised questions about the agency’s recruiting efforts among African Americans.
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Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois lays out Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner over the issue of why most of the TARP bailout money went to Wall Street banks rather than homeowners who were foreclosed on. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have been unhappy with the Obama Administration for some of the same reason a few CBC members have.
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California and Bust | Business | Vanity Fair – Michael Lewis
The smart money says the U.S. economy will splinter, with some states thriving, some states not, and all eyes are on California as the nightmare scenario. After a hair-raising visit with former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who explains why the Golden State has cratered, Michael Lewis goes where the buck literally stops—the local level, where the likes of San Jose mayor Chuck Reed and Vallejo fire chief Paige Meyer are trying to avert even worse catastrophes and rethink what it means to be a society.
[Long.]
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Wanker of the Day: George Will | Booman Tribune
George Will should probably drag his sorry ass down to the Wall Street protests and ask some people about the “consent of the governed.” …This is what happens when you have sustained high unemployment and the country’s plutocrats and their political party refuse to even offer the hope that something can be done about it. We’ve had thirty years of Reaganomics in this country and nothing is trickling down… In 2009, when taxes were at their lowest level since 1950, the right decided we are all Taxed Enough Already and formed the TEA Party. Then they complained about the deficit. It’s so stupid you could cry. …after all the arguments have died down, taxes keep the pitchforks at bay.
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As the Occupy Wall Street movement gains steam, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) is standing beside the demonstrators and defending their right to speak their minds. …
[If you're going to attend an Occupy event, look for your region/state's ACLU and download a "know your rights" pamphlet.
http://www.aclu.org/affiliates
-L.]
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VIDEO: Occupy Portland March Draws 5000 Protestors | Balloon Juice • by ABL
My favorite sign? “The Beginning is Near”
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Co-option unnecessary | Hullabaloo – by David Atkins
The mini-brouhaha over the potential co-option of the Occupy Wall Street movement ranks among the sillier nontroversies of the last few weeks….there is strength in numbers and ideological variety. Part of the benefit of these sorts of protests…is the educational aspect. People come together and learn from one another: maybe a more traditional Democrat learns about the shady history of the Federal Reserve, while a Paulite learns why going back on the gold standard is a really bad idea. Cross-fertilization of ideas is a good thing….contra the widely held beliefs of many online progressives, most local Democratic club members and activists (including local party officials like myself) perform their volunteer efforts entirely pro bono. …We don’t receive much in the way of official diktats from national headquarters, and guidance even from state headquarters is fairly limited. As anyone who’s been much involved in Dem Party activism outside of certain machine cities can attest, Will Rogers’ famous quip about not belonging to an organized political party is on target in this respect. …So when MoveOn and labor groups join to help occupy cities, they’re often drawing from the same pool of activists. Yes, there are many Democratic activists at Occupy movement locations. Not because the Democratic Party orchestrated the protests, as right-wing conspiracy theorists are claiming. Not because the Democratic Party is trying to co-opt the protests, as left-wing conspiracy theorists are claiming. It’s just because many of the people most agitated against corporate control of the country were already volunteering to help Dems and Dem issues in the first place. The exception to the rule here is New York City, of course, where much of the Democratic infrastructure has been cowed by financial sector influence.
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Palin was Right About those Government Death Panels | Informed Comment • by Juan
…the death panel has nothing to do with universal health care. But apparently it does exist…I discussed the assassination of Anwar al-`Awlaqi last Saturday, just trying to reason through the moral, legal and constitutional issues as a layperson. When I got to the end of the posting, I just could not understand how what was done was legal or constitutional, since al-`Awlaqi was deprived of his 6th amendment rights to a trial.Of course, under the laws of war (e.g. Hague IV), virtually anyone can be killed who is contributing to the war effort. But I still don’t understand how a drone strike by the CIA on a civilian in Yemen, authorized by a civilian body, is part of a war …A friend suggested that the assassination was authorized under the two executive orders (Ford and Reagan) forbidding assassination, which have a loophole. …But now Reuters is reporting that President Obama did not even sign off on the kill order… Nor does Congress…seem to have been involved. So the loophole…did not come into play. Rather, a secret cell within the National Security Council…has drawn up a kill list, and gets an authorizing memo from the Department of Justice….the doctrine, if that is what it is, seems full of holes. If al-`Awlaqi were killed as an enemy officer, then why are the civilians at DOJ and the NSC making the decisions, and why is the order carried out by the civilian CIA? …how solid is the intelligence showing that al-`Awlaqi had an operational and not just a propaganda role in al-Qaeda? As good as the intel on Iraq’s mobile biological weapons labs? …If the Reuters report is correct, the US government has completely gone off the rails….
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“I expended a lot of political capital to keep the banks afloat, and I have the scars to prove it. And I still think it was the right thing to do, because otherwise our economy would have been worse off.” This is the President taking ownership of TARP, which did not pass under his Presidency but which he whipped as a candidate for President in 2008. He took ownership of the extraordinary financial support given to banks as they teetered on the verge of collapse. And this is a central grievance of the protesters on Wall Street and across the country.
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There are plenty of grounds for legal action [against alleged Wall Street crooks]. Contrary to the Obama/Geithner position, this is a target rich environment. And some of the violations were persistent and deliberate enough that they might well raise to the level of being criminal. This is a mere illustrative tally: [specific list of regulations which have probably been broken] …
As readers know, it isn’t that there is no case against the major banks, it’s that the Administration is determined not to make it. …
Pretty much everyone who is not part of the problem instinctively knows that [a slew of public arrests] needed to happen. Yet Obama and other members of the elite keep trying to placate the protestors by acknowledging that they have legitimate concerns while refusing to take needed corrective steps.
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Video: Police Brutality Against Wall St. Protesters? | The Root
Thanks to cellphone videos, you can assess the conduct of law-enforcement officers for yourself.
In one, posted by the OccupyWallStNewYork Twitter account, a police officer says he wants to “beat” Occupy Wall Street protesters and wants his “little nightstick” to “get a workout tonight, hopefully.” Then he pantomimes a beating.
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T-Boz Reveals Brain Tumor Battle | The Root
…is finally speaking out about the health challenges she has faced since her days as a third of the popular group TLC. The singer (real name: Tionne Watkins) revealed to CBS news correspondent Michelle Miller that these issues are even more serious than the sickle cell anemia she’s suffered from since she was a child. Three years ago, her doctor discovered that she had a brain tumor.
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Energy Dept. Loan Chief Resigns in Wake of Solyndra Scandal – Pulse of the Bay – The Bay Citizen
Meantime, Republicans continue to attack the Obama Administration for investing taxpayer dollars on Solyndra.
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Bay Area Adopts Historic Climate-Change Rules – The Bay Citizen
New developments on the shores of San Francisco Bay won’t be approved unless they offer economic or environmental benefits that outweigh the cost of protecting against rising seas, under rules adopted Thursday by regional leaders.
The new rules, written to reduce the risk of flooding as the climate changes, are the most advanced and detailed of their kind in the nation.
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Feds’ New Crackdown on Medical Marijuana – The Bay Citizen
The U.S. Department of Justice has ordered landlords to evict at least four Bay Area medical marijuana dispensaries or face criminal charges, The Bay Citizen has learned.
The move is part of a “concerted effort” by the federal government to crack down on the state’s medicinal pot industry, marijuana advocates and criminal defense attorneys say.
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BBC News – Nobel win for crystal discovery
The Nobel prize for chemistry has gone to a single researcher for his discovery of the structure of quasicrystals.
The new structural form was previously thought to be impossible and provoked controversy.
Daniel Shechtman, from Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, will receive the entire 10m Swedish krona (£940,000) prize.
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BBC News – US insists on immunity for troops in Iraq after 2011
US defence secretary Leon Panetta has insisted that any US troops remaining in Iraq beyond the scheduled pull-out at the end of this year must remain immune from local prosecution.
Talks are continuing for several thousand of the 43,000 US troops to remain to train Iraqi forces.
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BBC News – What lessons from history’s climate shifts?
Earlier this week, the journal Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a study on climate change that is at the same time scary, comforting, insightful and a statement of the obvious.
To be more accurate, I should probably say that the paper is capable of being interpreted in all of those ways, rather than risk implying that the authors intended to do more than run the numbers and see what popped up.
What they’re talking about is climate change in Europe, specifically between 1500 and 1800 AD – a period that encompasses the so-called Little Ice Age.
It also encompasses a period that historian Eric Hobsbawm dubbed the General Crisis, when Europe was beset by a number of wars, inflation, migration and population decline.
So did the cold cause the chaos?
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BBC News – Men At Work lose final court bid
Australian band Men At Work will not be allowed to make a final appeal against a ruling which found they partly copied 1983 hit Down Under from a folk song.
The High Court of Australia denied a final bid to quash a July 2010 ruling that a flute line from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree was copied.
They had been ordered to pay 5% of song earnings since 2002, as well as future royalties, to the copyright owners.
Australia’s Federal Court upheld the decision at an appeal in March.
Publishers Larrikin Music bought the rights to the classic Kookaburra folk song in 1990, following the death of its composer Marion Sinclair two years earlier.
It had sought 60% of royalties from chart-topping track Down Under, the story of a backpacker touring the world which famously makes references to Vegemite sandwiches and “chunder”.
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BBC News – Tokelau to join Samoa and leap forward over dateline
The South Pacific community of Tokelau says it will jump to the other side of the international dateline, following a similar move by Samoa.
A tiny New Zealand-administered territory of three islands, Tokelau lies to the north of Fiji, approximately half-way between Hawaii and the Australian coast.
It lies to the east of the line, putting it 23 hours behind Wellington.
Once it jumps it will be the first part of New Zealand to see the sun rise.
In May, Samoa announced that it would jump from east to west of the line in a bid to improve ties with its biggest trading partners, Australia and New Zealand.
It is due to make the move in December, and Tokelau is likely to switch at the same time.
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BBC News – Aid group MSF ends Thailand operations amid row
International aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is ceasing its operations in Thailand because of a disagreement with the authorities over medical treatment for migrant workers and unregistered foreigners.
About three million migrants, mostly Burmese, are thought to be in Thailand.
At least a third remain without formal documents despite a recent government registration scheme.
MSF said the decision to leave was taken reluctantly.
In a statement MSF (also known as Doctors Without Borders) confirmed what many had anticipated.
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BBC News – Break up fears for ship aground off New Zealand
There are fears that a large container ship which is stuck on a reef off the coast of New Zealand could break up and leak more oil.
The Rena struck the Astrolabe Reef about 12 nautical miles from Tauranga Harbour on Wednesday.
If the ship breaks up, it could release 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel oil into the Bay of Plenty, one of New Zealand’s top tourist destinations.
Australia is sending experts to New Zealand to help mop up the spill.
The Rena has already created an oil slick more than 5km (3 miles) long.
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BBC News – Libyan Sami al Saadi to sue UK over rendition claims
A Libyan man who claims MI6 arranged to send him home to be tortured in Colonel Gaddafi’s jails has begun legal action against the UK government.
Sami al-Saadi, a member of a Libyan mujahideen group opposed to Gaddafi, is claiming damages for the ordeal he, his wife and four young children suffered.
CIA documents recently found in Tripoli provide evidence of the UK’s alleged involvement in the 2004 “rendition”.
The UK Foreign Office confirmed it had received “pre-action” legal papers.
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BBC News – Nobel Peace Prize recognises women rights activists
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to three women – Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen.
They were recognised for their “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work”.
Mrs Sirleaf is Africa’s first female elected head of state, Ms Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist and Ms Karman is a leading figure in Yemen’s pro-democracy movement.
“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women achieve the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” said Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland in Oslo.
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BBC News – Profile: Nobel peace laureate Tawakul Karman
The 32-year-old mother of three founded Women Journalists Without Chains in 2005.
She has been a prominent activist and advocate of human rights and freedom of expression for the last five years, and led regular protests and sit-ins calling for the release of political prisoners.
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BBC News – Hamid Karzai admits Afghanistan ‘security failure’
President Hamid Karzai has said his government and Nato have failed to provide Afghans with security, 10 years after the Taliban were otherthrown.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Karzai also accused Pakistan of supporting the insurgency, saying sanctuaries there still needed to be tackled.
He vowed to step down in 2014 and said he was working on the succession.
His comments come as the ex-commander of coalition forces said Nato allies remain far from reaching their goals.
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BBC News – Bin Laden death: ‘CIA doctor’ accused of treason
A Pakistani commission investigating the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden says a doctor accused of helping the CIA should be tried for high treason.
Dr Shakil Afridi is accused of running a CIA-sponsored fake vaccine programme in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was killed, to try to get DNA samples.
He was arrested shortly after the 2 May US raid that killed the al-Qaeda chief.
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