"Local news posted photo of arrested photog - all arrests were directed by Republican poll watchers. I don't nor does any other legal authority, know why it is illegal" to photograph - TV news cameras abounded. I will challenge it tomorrow. It was intimidation pure and simple and the people buckled after the arrest. I have taken photographs myself and will have them in a few hours. That's if I'm not arrested too!"
As Bernie Sanders's heroic performance on the Senate floor today demonstrates, sometimes endurance is necessary to represent Progressive values. This being the season for altruism as well as activism, here's another opportunity for tenacious performance to improve the lives of those most hard hit by the economic downturn.
The Second City That Never Sleeps is a tradition begun (and thriving) in Chicago, where a small group of comic improvisers perform for 24 hours straight to raise money for a good cause. In Los Angeles this year, we're about to perform for 24 hours to benefit Los Angeles Youth Network.
The sucktastic economic situation has hit all of us, but it's hard to find a more vulnerable population than homeless kids. Their situation in LA County is dire, as EVERY SINGLE OTHER youth facility of its type has had to close its doors in recent years due to a lack of funding. Schwarzenegger et al have slashed funding for social services to the bone, and it's up to the rest of us to pick up the pieces.
LAYN has a remarkable, unheard, crap-your-pants fantastic 80 percent success rate in getting its charges through high school and on their way off the streets. They provide 48 beds, counseling, tutoring, arts and academic education, and the support kids need to get off the streets. They're a spectacular shining star in an area desperately needing some light.
So if you're not in the LA area and can't come down and join us, please join us online. We'll be live streaming the event below (nothing fancy, a basic two-camera setup) from Hollywood starting at 10:30PM PST tonight, ending 10:30 tomorrow. We'll be there with some of the funniest people in LA, sweating it out for the kids.
So enjoy the weirdness, the show will feature veterans of shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, MTV's Wild N Out, Current Television, Groundlings, Second City, SNL, FrankTV, Reno 911, 30 Rock, Last Comic Standing, Colbert Report, Daily Show, Tonight Show, According To Jim, Heroes, Lie To Me. MAD TV, Parks And Recreation, and much much more.
I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated.
I hope this is not too insider baseball, but I am genuinely astonished by what the bloggers call "mainstream media." (In my youth, it was quaintly called "the Establishment press.")
The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all gone way out of their way to deny that the Downing Street Memos (it's now plural) are news. Like many of you, during the entire lead-up to the war with Iraq, I thought the whole thing was a set-up.
I raise this point not to prove how smart we are, but to emphasize that I followed the debate closely and probably unconsciously searched for evidence that reinforced what I already thought. Most people do that. I read some of the European press and most of the liberal publications in this country. I read the Times, the Post, the Wall Street Journal and several Texas papers every day. It's my job...read on
DAVEY D, FNV NEWSLETTER - For those of you reading this who live outside of Los Angeles you should note the that folks are on edge cause of increasing racial tension between blacks and Mexicans. Over the past month there have been a few brawls at local high schools which were widely reported on the news down here.
Now the tensions have been inflamed by a letter that has been circulating around the city claiming that in retaliation for some beef between black and latino gangs, 500 black kids wearing white t-shirts would be targeted and killed by Mexican gangs on Cinco de Mayo which is today. For the most part, the letter appears to be a hoax. Folks who work closely with the gangs down here have not heard of any craziness jumping off, but because the letter has been so widely circulated, it has led to some town hall meetings and increased police presence on all the high school campuses down here. A lot of parents are refusing to let their kids come to school...read on
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - ABC television, backed by Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) and other leading conservatives, sought on Thursday to keep nervous affiliate stations from deserting a Veterans Day broadcast of the acclaimed World War II film "Saving Private Ryan." Several ABC affiliates, including eight stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and four owned by the Belo Corp., scheduled other programming, citing concerns about profanity and graphic violence in the citing concerns about profanity and graphic violence in the film...
Reluctance on the part of some stations to show the film in prime time reflected heightened skittishness among broadcasters since an industry backlash sparked by Janet Jackson (news)'s breast-baring Super Bowl performance in February.
The FCC recently levied fines totaling $550,000 against 20 CBS-owned stations for airing Jackson's brief flash of nudity during her halftime show.
Of course there's no way this information wasn't available to the Defense Department, and the White House, three weeks ago. The story isn't just based on soldiers in the field. Mark Mazzetti reports:
"That site was just abandoned by the 101st Airborne, and there was never a physical handoff by the 101st to the Marines. They just left," said a senior officer who worked in the top Marine command post in Iraq at the time. "We knew these sites were being looted, but there was nothing we could do about it."
No, the White House and the DoD civilians covered it up, telling various lies on the way (which their journalistic and blogospheric allies duly relayed to the public) just long enough to get the Beloved Leader past the election. And now they expect, almost certainly correctly, that everyone will now treat it as old news. The warbloggers will ignore it if they can't figure out some cockamamie way to convince themselves they've discredited it, while patting themselves on the back about how much more responsible and fair-minded they are than the mainstream media.
In the end, this one cover-up almost certainly didn't make the difference. But of course this wasn't the only cover-up. The cover-up of how Ken Lay and his friends got to write Administration energy policy worked. The Valerie Plame cover-up worked. And the result was that the Administration went back before the voters looking much cleaner and much more competent than it was or is.
Just remember, if their lips are moving, they're lying.
Was Robert Heinlein talking about me? because I didn't know I lived in a foreign land.
Hanratty: Something needs to be done in this country and Los Angeles is probably not the best indication of how we should fix our budget, manage our local municipalities. You know LA is a land unto itself.
Digby has it right.
Therefore, I propose that our country pass a law that allows us to deport Karen Hanratty if she tries to work here. I'm sure a lot of attractive blond women will be stopped and harassed, but that's just the way it goes. After a little training the police will be able to tell her by which season of Jimmy Choo's she's wearing.
LOS ANGELES - Audiences will get another opportunity to view Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” on the eve of the elections when video-on-demand firm CinemaNow will make the controversial documentary available Monday via the Internet.
Most Americans outside Los Angelenos who follow local politics have probably never heard of Eric Garcetti. 8 years ago at age 30, Eric was elected to the 13th city council district. He ran the race like the community organizer that he is-- as he puts it, he bought a pair of shoes and walked door to door in his district until there were literally holes in them-- and ended up winning a June run-off by 4%. Four years later Eric was re-elected without any opposition and then in 2006 became President of the LA City Council. This past Tuesday, he was just re-elected to his third and final term as Councilman with 72% of the vote. He's the most progressive member of the City Council, many think the most progressive politician in Los Angeles-- and not in a knee jerk way. A startlingly brilliant guy, Eric manages to look at problems that need to be solved and gets busy working on real-life solutions.
As councilman he's tripled the number of parks in his district; crime is down, graffiti has been reduced by 50% and Hollywood is back. He's also trained 1500 future leaders at his Neighborhood Leadership Academy and has made government more accessible and relevant to average citizens through his Government 101 workshops. Last year, Eric served as a California co-chair of the Obama campaign. As head of the LA City Council he's been a real champion for Los Angeles around the country and the world but is also a champion of cities as a crucial economic driver and progressive hub of our nation. He believes that with the right management and the right amount of local control, the stimulus money can be a boon not only for our cities but also for the progressive movement because it has the potential to radically change how people perceive government. This is the opportunity to really show people that government works and the only way to do that is to make sure this stimulus money is not wasted and works at the most local level.
Eric has been a passionate advocate for marriage equality, a champion of greening L.A. and encouraging alternate modes of transportation other than your car and has worked tirelessly to keep people in their homes through this devastating foreclosure crisis. John and I have been eager to introduce everyone to Eric and if you join us in "Comments" between 3 and 4 you'll have a chance to chat with Eric live, someone we think will eventually be deciding if he'd rather run for governor or senator.
Water with trace amounts of radioactivity may have been leaking for months from a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine as it traveled around the Pacific to ports in Guam, Japan and Hawaii, Navy officials told CNN Friday.
The leak was found on the USS Houston, a Los Angeles class fast attack submarine, after it came to Hawaii for routine maintenance last month, Navy officials said.
Navy officials believe the amount of radiation leaked was virtually undetectable. But the Navy alerted the Japanese government because the submarine had been docked in Japan.
I'm sure it's no big deal. Pay no attention to that three-eyed fish, that's what they're supposed to look like.
