In the UK, the politicians cut education funding, the high school kids saw their future slipping away and took to the streets. Meanwhile, in the United States, people sit and wait quietly for crumbs to fall from the banquet table of the bankers. What is wrong with this picture?

LAS VEGAS - The gambling economy here has crapped out, but at the swelling community college, workers are in the grip of new aspirations.

In one small anatomy lab, there's a craps dealer training to become an anesthetist, a cocktail waitress who wants to be a dental hygienist, and a former stripper seeking to become a nurse.

"People are always going to be going to the dentist," explained Misty Stevenson, 36, the aspiring hygienist, a mother of three and a cocktail waitress for 16 years, explaining her career choice after her income plunged during the downturn.

The trouble is getting a seat in class.

All over the United States, community college enrollments have surged with unemployed and underemployed people seeking new skills.

But just as workers have turned to community colleges, states have cut their budgets, forcing the institutions to turn away legions of students and stymieing the efforts to retrain the workforce.

[...] Even as community college enrollments have climbed during the recession, 35 states cut higher education budgets last year, and 31 will cut them for next, according to survey data from the National Association of State Budget Officers. Those shortages are expected to worsen next year when federal stimulus money that had plugged holes in state budgets is no longer available.

In California, with a budget cut of 8 percent across the board, the community colleges turned away 140,000 students last year. In Colorado, the waiting lists for nursing programs at some of the state's community colleges have grown to as long as 3.5 years. In May, New York's community colleges stopped accepting applications for the fall semester and added students instead to a wait list.

Looks like David Gergen isn't done pimping for Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson yet. Gergen uses what's going on in Ireland right now as as excuse to tell Americans that we had better get ready for some "tough medicine" once the deficit commission comes out with their report next week and of course that "medicine" should start with going after Social Security. Heaven forbid the rich should have to pay back the government for those tax cuts. Gergen apparently thinks the peons should be paying for their excesses.

MALVEAUX: On Wall Street, investors did not buy into the excitement over Black Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial average was down 95 points when the closing bell rang earlier at 1:00 p.m. today. Now, I'll explain the slight in stock prices on worries about Europe's growing debt crisis. We're going to see new action next week to try to slash the federal deficit in this country. I want to bring in our senior political analyst, David Gergen, to talk a little bit about that.

Happy Thanksgiving, David. The president's bipartisan deficit commission are going to be releasing their formal recommendations next week. A lot has been leaked already and people are not happy about hearing the retirement age going up, Social Security benefits going down. One of the co-, Allen Simpson, said this. He says, I've never had any nastier mail or had been in a more difficult position in my life, just vicious.

People I've known, relatives saying, you son of a bitch, how could you do this? His language not ours, but clearly, I mean, to tackle the deficit here, if you can't tackle Social Security, I mean, how are these guys going to do this without just being slammed all around?

Continue reading »

Zandar Versus The Stupid: Wikileaks' Next Bombshell to Make International Diplomacy Like 'Survivor'

The Democratic Daily: Rep. Jan Schakowsky's Superior Deficit Reduction Plan Protects Poor, Middle-Class

The Reaction on Limbaugh's attack on those 'Socialist Pilgrims.' Next thing ya' know, the Wingnuts' War on Thanksgiving will claim that the "First Feast" was financed With food stamps.

Empire Burlesque: End-Game for the Elite’s One-Way Class War

Moridura:The New Media and its role and significance in political campaigning

And finally, on an uplifting note, a federal judge balances the scales for gender equality!

Guest post by Don Davis of The Satirical Political Report. E-mail tips to Don at satiricalpolitical AT gmail DOT com.

Apparently someone let the interns loose at Fox News with what they posted over the holiday weekend, or their "news" network just doesn't care that they're looked at as a joke more than they already are. From Mediaite -- FoxNation.com Reposts Anti-Obama Article From The Onion, Doesn’t Mention It’s A Joke:

Most people recognize The Onion as the Peabody Award-winning satire machine that it is. Some people, however, don’t. Which is why we get a story like this every few months. Of course, it’s sometimes easy to mistake an Onion article for the real thing since the writers make sure to skew as close to their targets as possible. It also doesn’t hurt when real news outlets reprint the satirists’ work and decide not to let their readers know it’s a joke, as Fox Nation did today.

Yes, the Fox Nation editors were apparently so enamored with an Onion piece from today entitled “Frustrated Obama Sends Nation Rambling 75,000-Word E-Mail” that they reposted the first two paragraphs in their culture section with nary a sign as to its fictional nature. The only clue that this wasn’t real (besides a quick peek at your inbox to confirm that Barack Obama hasn’t been emailing you) was a link at the bottom instructing readers to go to TheOnion.com for the real story. This tiny link was, unfortunately, not enough for the vast majority of FN readers. At least, that’s the way it seems from the comments section. [...]

Whether Fox Nation reposted this story without a disclaimer accidentally, as a prank, or because of something more sinister, we’ll leave up to you decide. However, Fox Nation should be aware that, sad as it may be, not everyone is familiar with the brilliance that is The Onion. And for every one of my aunts who forwards me this article today, I’m going to be very, very angry at them.

I included an Onion video linked above which apparently one of the commenters here might not have realized was satire as well. If they did they forgot to put the words satire or snark into their response.

I'll just leave one last note on Fox and this story. If they were actually just incompetent or lazy instead of intentionally misleading their readers, it means their network is even worse than I thought. They're not only feeding their listeners and viewers a line of B.S. when they mean to, but by accident as well. Bravo Rupert and Roger. You've managed to take your propaganda network to a new low.

Grifty McQuitter learns that it takes a little more than fancy pageant walking to impress "our North Korean allies."

Open thread below....

Black Friday!

Looks like David Gergen isn't done pimping for Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson yet. Gergen uses what's going on in Ireland right now as as excuse to tell Americans that we had better get ready for some "tough medicine" once the deficit commission comes out with their report next week and of course that "medicine" should start with going after Social Security. Heaven forbid the rich should have to pay back the government for those tax cuts. Gergen apparently thinks the peons should be paying for their excesses.

MALVEAUX: On Wall Street, investors did not buy into the excitement over Black Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial average was down 95 points when the closing bell rang earlier at 1:00 p.m. today. Now, I'll explain the slight in stock prices on worries about Europe's growing debt crisis. We're going to see new action next week to try to slash the federal deficit in this country. I want to bring in our senior political analyst, David Gergen, to talk a little bit about that.

Happy Thanksgiving, David. The president's bipartisan deficit commission are going to be releasing their formal recommendations next week. A lot has been leaked already and people are not happy about hearing the retirement age going up, Social Security benefits going down. One of the co-, Allen Simpson, said this. He says, I've never had any nastier mail or had been in a more difficult position in my life, just vicious.

People I've known, relatives saying, you son of a bitch, how could you do this? His language not ours, but clearly, I mean, to tackle the deficit here, if you can't tackle Social Security, I mean, how are these guys going to do this without just being slammed all around?

Continue reading »

On this day in 1947 the world was still recovering from the affects of World War 2. The austerity plan was in full swing and the argument on Capitol Hill was how much we were going to be giving over for European recovery. Meanwhile, the glacially creeping Cold War got a notch colder with accusations of Imperialism being leveled by the Soviet Union during discussions on the Marshall Plan.

On the domestic front there were still arguments for and against rationing as we geared down from a war footing and tried to gear up for peace. As Thanksgiving loomed (remember, November 26, 1947 was a Wednesday) we were still in a celebratory mood, with a report from Hollywood on the Santa Claus Lane parade and even the Alka-Seltzer commercials of the time were geared up for the occasion.

Here are two newscasts - the first one being the evening news and the second one being a Special Edition of the evening news of the day for November 26th.

Finishing up our week of MySpace Shoegaze/Alt/Psych/Indie/Experimental bands who haven't been signed yet. Tonight's entry is from This/Broadcast, a band who have been together since 2008 and come from a town known for its experimental leanings; Coventry England.

In case you didn't know, Coventry gave birth to a whole genre of Progressive artists in the 1960's. Caravan, Soft Machine, Hatfield and The North and a lot of others. It was a hotbed of experimentalism back then and it's nice to know it's still going on, some forty years later. It must be the water.

So our track from This/Broadcast tonight is Days In Wonder which is off their Myspace page and if you're interested, check them out and also check out their band page and their Facebook page (they're all over the place). They've been gigging around quite a bit lately and have been doing a stint in Australia. So the future is looking good.

Hopefully you'll think so too.

In my post on the TSA and The Nation article, I wrote this:

To many, it seems to be a zero-sum game. If one doesn't choose to accept the premise that this entire brouhaha is an organic swarm commanding attention because of self-inflicted TSA incompetence -- malevolence, even -- from a government intent on invading every single aspect of our lives and killing the constitution, then in Greenwald's estimation we must be "centro-facist" (see below) party hacks falling into lockstep and yessing every move with no regard for facts, liberties, or any combination thereof.

The term "centro-fascist" was one used by The Nation authors in their response to Glenn Greenwald here:

One disturbing part of Greenwald’s attack is when he accuses us of being some kind of Democratic Party centro-fascist goon duo patrolling the public, out to repress any citizen who doesn’t declare fealty to the two-party system:

To be clear, that term is not one Glenn used. The phrasing I used after removing the quote made it appear to be attributable to him when it was not. I had originally quoted the authors use of that term, and removed the quote for space limitations. In so doing, it left readers with the impression that he had used that specific term, which is incorrect. I'm very sorry for this mistake and want to personally apologize to Glenn for doing so.