Winding down Guilty Pleasures week with a band who got unjustifiably ignored by a lot of the public, mostly because the 80's were all over the place and Retro-Psych wasn't quite in the picture yet. The Three O'Clock were at the forefront of a somewhat obscure movement know as the Paisley Underground. Having initially began life as The Salvation Army in 1981 they went in for a name change and emerged as The Three O'Clock. Fortunes didn't exactly pick up from there, but there was enthusiasm on the parts of a couple of record companies which sustained them as they went in search of an audience who were ready for them.

A very competent band who were just slightly ahead of what would become a major revival, they called it a day just as grumblings from Madchester were being reported from across the pond.

In 1985 they issued probably their most commercial album to date via IRS Records. Arrive Without Traveling got lukewarm response from the press but had promising sales. One of the tracks off that album is up tonight - Simon In The Park has been pigeonholed as a sort of homage to the Eastern influence (i.e. quasi-sitar laced) but it's an energetic track loaded with hooks and riffs.

Sort of makes you wonder who else has been ignored for a lot of years.

This is a picture of the board at Ian's Pizza in Madison, Wisconsin when people from all over the world called in to feed the protesters. It's call "solid dairy."

This has inspired us here at C&L and we've been raising funds for pizzas all day for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. You can donate here:

Open thread below....

It's Funk Friday with Detroit's Black Merda!

These kids are probably somewhat privileged to begin with, but I'm happy to see them take on the industry. From the New York Times:

Two men who worked on the hit movie “Black Swan” have mounted an unusual challenge to the film industry’s widely accepted practice of unpaid internships by filing a lawsuit on Wednesday asserting that the production company had violated minimum wage and overtime laws by hiring dozens of such interns.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan, claims that Fox Searchlight Pictures, the producer of “Black Swan,” had the interns do menial work that should have been done by paid employees and did not provide them with the type of educational experience that labor rules require in order to exempt employers from paying interns.

“Fox Searchlight’s unpaid interns are a crucial labor force on its productions, functioning as production assistants and bookkeepers and performing secretarial and janitorial work,” the lawsuit says. “In misclassifying many of its workers as unpaid interns, Fox Searchlight has denied them the benefits that the law affords to employees.” Workplace experts say the number of unpaid internships has grown in recent years, in the movie business and many other industries. Some young people complain that these internships give an unfair edge to the affluent and well connected.

For whatever their motives may be, this is a good thing. When these entry-level, career-path creative jobs pay a decent wage, they will be an option for applicants of all backgrounds, not just the children of the rich and well-connected.

Are you a Starbucks Rewards Member? If you are, you probably got this awesome warm-and-fuzzy feeling email today about how you could help Starbucks help needy schools by funding Bill Gates' DonorsChoose.org initiative.

It all sounds great, doesn't it?

msnbc's Morning Joe and Starbucks encourage you to support public schools through DonorsChoose.org.

Starting October 4th, Starbucks retail stores and participating grocery stores will feature a select number of marked bags of Gold Coast Blend®- Morning Joe Edition coffee with $5 DonorsChoose.org donation stickers*. To direct funding to the public school classroom project of your choice visit DonorsChoose.org/starbucks**.

[...and the fine print...]

**Offer only available through codes found on specially-marked packages of Starbucks® Gold Coast Blend® - Morning Joe Edition coffee. We will donate $5 for every code entered through 12/31/2011, until $600,000 has been given. Enter your code at www.donorschoose.org/starbucks then choose a classroom project to receive the $5 donation. Codes expire on 12/31/2011 at 11:59 pm EST. Donations can only be directed to existing projects on DonorsChoose.org. Coffee purchases and this $5 donation are not tax-deductible. For promotional details and restrictions, visit www.donorschoose.org/starbucks.

Awww, isn't that nice? A special blend for the conservative dude on the so-called "liberal" channel, and all you have to do is buy it to send five bucks off to DonorsChoose.org, which until recently I supported for the most part. The idea behind DonorsChoose is for teachers to put up a wish list for their classrooms, and small donors to fulfill it with...small donations.

This is all great except that it now includes charter schools, which already receive plenty of money from big donors, including a lot of very, very far right wing donors. It's also symptomatic of a larger issue, which is the abject underfunding of our schools. What's next? A $5 donation for every bag of Bill O'Reilly Decaf Blend? Or maybe the Erick Erickson Afternoon Teabag?

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Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, otherwise known as our own Bluegal and Driftglass. I just want to wish our friend Driftie and some of my fellow contributors the best of luck with finding new employment, along with any of our readers who are facing similar circumstances. It's a tough time to be looking for a job out there, so many competing for the same jobs and with the Republicans determined to do everything humanly possible to make it worse so that President Obama doesn't get reelected.

Links for this episode:

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It's Funk Friday with Detroit's Black Merda!

One of the foremost business investors on the planet doesn't know much about capitalism, according to Governor Goodhair of Texas.

ANDREW SORKIN, CNBC: Governor Perry, real quick. Warren Buffett is going to be in New York tomorrow for an Obama fund-raiser. Curious about your thoughts on the Buffet Rule.

Gov, RICK PERRY: I think it's right down to the real problem that we've got in Washington, D.C. an administration that is listening to people who really don't have an understanding about what's going on out there in the real world. you think -- I respect -- I think Mr. Buffet is a really intelligent individual. I can promise you he doesn't know what's going on in places that where the job creation is at a zero because of overtaxation and overregulation. Dodd-Frank is strangling the small community banks across america. It needs to be repealed. We need to get Washington out of the business of overregulation. It's killing our country.

ANDREW SORKIN: Taxing millionaires? Do you believe ultimately is going to kill jobs?

GOV. RICK PERRY: I think taxing millionaires is such a fake way to talk about what's going on in this country.

Most people are aware that The Onion is a satirical site and should not be taken seriously. But apparently their recent post mocking the economic hostage-taking we've seen from members of Congress -- and taking that to its most absurd end -- with them literally taking schoolchildren hostage, didn't sit so well with the Capitol Police this Thursday.

While I can understand their agitation, since I'm sure they had to deal with many people that did not understand this was satire, I have absolutely no sympathy for our current members of Congress, who deserve to be raked over the coals as they were by The Onion.

Here's the story from The Onion that had them terribly upset -- Congress Takes Group Of Schoolchildren Hostage:

'We Need $12 Trillion Or All These Kids Die'

WASHINGTON—Brandishing shotguns and semiautomatic pistols, members of the 112th U.S. Congress took a class of visiting schoolchildren hostage today, barricading themselves inside the Capitol rotunda and demanding $12 trillion dollars in cash.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who has emerged as spokesman for the bipartisan group, informed FBI negotiators this morning that the ransom was to be placed in stainless-steel suitcases and left on the Capitol steps by 4 p.m. sharp. If their demands are not met in full, the 11-term representative announced, "all the kids will die."

"Bring us the money and we let the children go, simple as that," said Boehner, appearing in the East Portico with a serrated switchblade held to one of the fourth-grader's throats. "If you want to play games and stall for extra time, we're going to shoot one kid an hour, starting with little Dillon here."

"Tick tock," he added, vanishing back into the building with the terrified child in tow.

I won't share any more here because the next line is not safe for work, so just go read the rest. As humorous as their post was, reading their Twitter feed today was laugh out loud funny and possibly more humorous if you got the joke as well and I'll share some of that below the fold.

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On this day of September in 1934, Presidental Roosevelt was delivering one of his soon-to-become trademark Fireside Chats, a semi-regular report to the people on matters which affected them.

This Chat was about the unemployment situation and what possible role the Government would play in helping jump-start the economy and stimulating jobs.

Then as now, there seemed to be a vocal minority who screamed Socialism, Dictatorship and Government meddling in Private Enterprise. FDR heard it all before.

FDR: “Nearly all Americans are sensible and calm people. We do not get greatly excited nor is our peace of mind disturbed, whether we be businessmen or workers or farmers, by awesome pronouncements concerning the unconstitutionality of some of our measures of recovery and relief and reform. We are not frightened by reactionary lawyers or political editors. All of these cries have been heard before. More than twenty years ago, when Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were attempting to correct abuses in our national life, the great Chief Justice White said:

"There is great danger it seems to me to arise from the constant habit which prevails where anything is opposed or objected to, of referring without rhyme or reason to the Constitution as a means of preventing its accomplishment, thus creating the general impression that the Constitution is but a barrier to progress instead of being the broad highway through which alone true progress may be enjoyed."

In our efforts for recovery we have avoided on the one hand the theory that business should and must be taken over into an all-embracing Government. We have avoided on the other hand the equally untenable theory that it is an interference with liberty to offer reasonable help when private enterprise is in need of help. The course we have followed fits the American practice of Government - a practice of taking action step by step, of regulating only to meet concrete needs - a practice of courageous recognition of change. I believe with Abraham Lincoln, that "The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities."

Further evidence nothing much has changed.

Here is the complete Fireside Chat of September 30, 1934.