"Senate Republicans on Thursday beat back President Barack Obama's pick to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Democrats were able to muster only 53 of the 60 votes needed to advance to an up-or-down vote on the nomination of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray."

No surpise here. Obama should have stuck with Elizabeth Warren on this from the start.

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.

It's that time of the year again, eggnog, the tree, decorations, sharing warm time with family, while Roger Alies digs into his closet of hate and discontent to bring out...... ..........War on Christmas

and

Jon Stewart fries it to a deep, dark, tasty crisp! "Tree Fighting Ceremony"

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-dece…

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Want to learn a little more about Rep. Loy Mauch and what he stands for?

http://bluearkansasblog.com/?p=4643

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Rick Crawford questioned Jon Corzine under oath this afternoon about the $1.2 billion that MF Global stole from customer accounts - but didn't bother to ask about the $50,000 per month that Corzine was allegedly paying to Bill Clinton until a few weeks ago, or whether Clinton was relying on State Department advice about European sovereign debt. If the reports are accurate that MF Global had the arrangement for the last five months of the company's operations, that implies that Clinton took a quarter-million dollars from the firm as it was collapsing. What was Clinton doing for MF Global to earn that income while the customers were getting robbed blind? Although it would not be the first company to implode when Clinton touched it, it's apparent that Crawford lacks the intellectual capacity to ask the obvious questions.

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rs drake on AT's Street Jazz has a provocative post today

"Minority children in the clutches of Newt Gingrich and Donald Trump: sinners in the hands of an angry god, anyone?"

http://www.arktimes.com/StreetJazz/archive…

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"2010 Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States"
http://www.speedmatters.org/content/resour…
Arkansas, of course, ranks 48th, our default position in most polls. The report even examines county-by-county access.

On the same page, you'll find this report also:
"Benefits of Broadband"

The recent Verizon deal has detrimental effects.
http://www.speedmatters.org/blog/archive/v…

"The nation's top wireless operator, Verizon, signed a deal on December 2 with Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks to buy unused airwaves from these top cable operators. The move, if approved by regulators, crafts a deal with the cable operators to "combine their products and create partnerships around bundling wireless, voice, data and television," and would solidify Verizon's wireless position."

"So we have the worst of all worlds: no competition, and no regulatory oversight."

From "The New York Times"
"The New Digital Divide"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/opinion/…

" As our jobs, entertainment, politics and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind."
... " High-speed access is a superhighway for those who can afford it, while racial minorities and poorer and rural Americans must make do with a bike path."
... "So America, the country that invented the Internet and still leads the world in telecommunications innovation, is lagging far behind in actual use of that technology."
... "The new digital divide raises important questions about social equity in an information-driven world."

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Have a 'coming out party' for one is his kids or this:


CONCORD, NH (The Borowitz Report)– Troubled by his fading poll numbers, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is considering a bold strategy to reboot his Presidential campaign: engaging in a high-profile extramarital affair.

At a press conference in Concord, New Hampshire today Mr. Romney confirmed that he was consulting with senior advisors about the best way to proceed with an inappropriate relationship.

“Republican voters have sent the message that they want to vote for an adulterer and I have heard them loud and clear,” he said. “I promise that I will engage in a world-class extramarital affair that will make all of us proud again.”

According to one senior advisor, the Romney campaign was already holding focus groups and conducting special polling to determine the best person with whom Mr. Romney should conduct his extracurricular dalliance.

And in a sign that Mr. Romney is taking precipitous action to find an object for his adulterous intentions, today his campaign launched a new dating site, SexyTimeWithMitt.com.

But according to one female visitor to the site, Mr. Romney’s nascent career as a would-be lothario is still very much a work in progress: “When I first went on the site and he listed ‘tougher border control’ as one of his turn-offs, and five minutes later it was a turn-on.”

Still, an aide to Mr. Romney maintains that the former Massachusetts governor has “the right stuff” to be a world-class adulterer: “In the focus groups, the two words we kept hearing over and over again were ‘wooden’ and ‘stiff.’”

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Smith's Alternative Arkansas History on this date:

8-Dec 1834 Washington County Commissioner Samuel Vaughan begins public auction for sale of lots in original quarter section of land for Town of Fayetteville, 10% down and balance over 18 months.

8-Dec 1848 The Little Rock Lyceum, noting "there is not in the whole state a public library worthy of the name," offered its 300-volume collection as the basis for creation of a public lending library.

8-Dec 1899 Miss Irene Lacer won the Hot Springs public school oratorical contest.

8-Dec 1917 Thirty-one craft unions in Fort Smith, with 1,100 members, go out on General Strike in support of telephone operators who were on strike against Southwestern Bell since September 19 and to protest the firing of union members.

8-Dec 1931 Hattie W. Caraway sworn in as United States Senator.

8-Dec 1938 Virginia Gardner, Fort Smith native, arrested during American Newspaper Guild picket against Hearst newspapers in Chicago.

8-Dec 1958 State Trooper Howard Chandler reported to Capt. Alan Templeton that a member of the Mothers League in Little Rock felt that the Rev. Wesley Pruden and Amis Guthridge "have sold out to the integrationists." No chance of that.

8-Dec 1985 Dr. Benjamin Spock and Mary Morgan announced plans to sell their Benton County home on Beaver Lake where they have lived since 1976 and to spend more time sailing in the Virgin Islands.

8-Dec 1986 Federal Judge George Howard enjoins Gene Raff, David Cahoon, and Circuit Judge Henry Wilkinson from retaliatory prosecution of Roy C. Lewellen, Jr. in Lee County Circuit Court.

8-Dec 1997 National Mediation Board, after finding that Arkansas & Missouri Railroad managers engaged in unfair labor practices by harassing and intimidating employees, certified the vote favoring representation by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

8-Dec 1998 Federal Judge Franklin Waters voided a state law prohibiting giving campaign contributions to legislators during legislative sessions as not narrowly tailored to stop corruption or the appearance of corruption. Quite a task that.

8-Dec 2000 Rodney Bragg freed from Cummins Prison after five years; federal magistrate held he was wrongly convicted on perjured testimony of a Nevada County drug task force officer that was "fabricated or intentionally distorted.”

8-Dec 2003 Congressman John Boozman bragged about having voted for the "Medicare Prescription Drug and Modernization Act of 2003," and did not admit it was a colossal mistake until January 9, 2006.

8-Dec 2004 Republican Constable-elect Joshua Dickens of Greenbrier arrested and charged with beating a woman, burning her with a cigarette lighter to coerce her to confess to an affair, and then raping her.

8-Dec 2005 Legislative Joint Auditing Committee revealed that Dermott School District superintendent Dennis Meins spent $3,487 in school funds for his country club memberships.

8-Dec 2006 Federal jury awards $320,000 in damages for sex discrimination to Kathryn Wedgeworth, a 31-year employee of Baxter Healthcare, where no woman had ever held high-level positions at the Mountain Home plant.

8-Dec 2006 Terry Rhodes, McNair Middle School geography teacher in Fayetteville, says his rights were violated by requiring more inclusive display with his classroom Christian Nativity scene.
.....

--compiled by Stephen Smith, PhD

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Heh, now Soros has swooped in and scooped up the MF Global bonds for $2 billion. Corzine had spent $4.8 billion to acquire them previously. Timing is everything.

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>>Timing is everything.

For George Soros a thorough and intimate knowledge of European history and finance
also helps understand what underlies it and hence any value to be had.

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What's On Your Cult Film List?"

Possibly some of this list of a 100 films seem too mainstream for "cult" consideration but that's just me. Several were box office hits but, here it is...

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/07/143296617/wh…

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eLwood - The thing I'm wondering is - Did Corzine believe that hiring the spouse of the current Secretary of State would be a favorable influence for his risky European bets? And did Clinton tell Corzine: Don't worry about Europe, there is no risk of a default - and I'm in a position to know ... if you pay my fee?

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Where is, "When You Comin' Back Red Ryder?", with grown-up child preacher Marjoe Gortner?

Did notice a nice sampling of 70s porn in there.

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notable worst legislators should include Percy Malone and the Jeffress brothers.

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Oh yes, the shame that they have brought to the state.

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Virginia Gardner's son, John Marberry, passed way Tuesday in California after suffering a stroke the week before. We had been email friends for the last few years and he thought well enough of me to ship me boxes of his mother's personal correspondence. Her political files were given to NYU many years ago. John had a love hate relationship with his mother, but never fully recovered from her death in 1992 and wanted the papers out of his sight.

I worry about the radicalization of Americans, I know I'm much more radical than I have ever been in my life....watching working people losing ground, young protesters beaten & pepper sprayed, seeing criminal member after member of the 1% walk away from their crimes not only scott free, but many receiving bonuses while millions of working people's houses are reprocessed. Not to mention America leading the way in invasion, kidnapping, torture, and killer drones.

Virginia Gardner came from an excellent Fort Baptist family. Her mother died when she was about 12 and it took her some time to get used to her brilliant but brittle stepmother. She went off to the U of Mo and earned a journalism degree and landed in Chicago working for the Chicago Tribune just in time to witness Chicago police open fire on a large group of union demonstrators. Scads of people died before her eyes, blood ran in the streets. It horrified her and radicalized her to the point she joined the Communist Party and worked for them until she became disgusted with them and quit in 1962.

The funny thing is that I can find no one in Fort Baptist who will admit to ever hearing of her. It appears to me that when it became known in the Fort that one of their fair maidens had turned Commie....they handled it by making Virginia dead to the city.

Chronology

June 27, 1904:Born in Sallisaw, Oklahoma. Has two older sisters, Gertrude Miller and Catherine Carson.

1910:Mother dies when she was 10 years old.

1921 to 1924:Attended University of Missouri, graduated with a Bachelor of Journalism.

Dec. 17, 1927:Married Jerome Butler, a socialist newspaperman and copy reader

1927:Employed at the St. Louis Times.

May 1927:Father dies.

1929:Hired by Chicago Tribune.

July, 1937:Married Marion (Red) Marberry whom she described as a leftist who never joined the Party. He was also a newspaperman and wrote three books:Joaquin Miller American Poet (1953); Vicky: A Biography of Victoria Woodhull (1967); The Golden Voice: A Biography of Isaac Kelloch (1947).

September, 1937:"Decided to join the Communist Party."

April, 1938:Joined the Newspaper Guild in Chicago.

1938:Active in Hearst strike in California.

1939:Joined the Communist Party.

1939:Filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board regarding unfair treatment at Chicago Tribune.

1939:Assisted in publishing the Tribunit, a publication of the Chicago Tribune workers.

March 22, 1940:Dismissed from Chicago Tribune, because of involvement in Guild activities at the paper.

1940:Moved to New York where she worked with the Women's Division of the Democratic National Committee.

1941:Voted as lifetime member of the Newspaper Guild.

1941:Acted as Executive Secretary of the Citizens Committee for Harry Bridges (President of the ILWU),in New York City in an attempt to prevent his deportation from the United States.

1942:Moved to Washington D.C.; Divorced Marion (Red) Marberry (January); Begins work at Federated Press, a labor news service; serves as Executive Secretary to the American Council on Soviet Relations, a precursor to the National Council of American Soviet Friendship (NCASF).

1943:Resigned from Federated Press. Began working as Washington correspondent for New Masses.

1947:Resigned from New Masses, and moved to Los Angeles; where she began working for The Peoples World

1948:Subpoenaed to appear before the Tenney Committee (California's Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities).

1949:Wrote a few articles for Masses and Mainstream.

1951:Dismissed from The Peoples World.

1952:Moved back to New York; employed in Jamaica, Queens in a meat packing plant.

1954:The Rosenberg Story, published by Masses and Mainstream.

1955:Began work at the Daily Worker.

December 1959:Resigned from the Worker.

Feb.-June 1960:Worked on staff of Factor, a monthly magazine which covers issues related to psychiatry.

1960 to 1962:Freelanced as a medical writer.

1962:Left the Communist Party.

1963 to 1971:Employed as editorial assistant to Corliss Lamont.

1982:Published Friend and Lover, a biography of Louise Bryant (New York:

1984 to 1989:Worked on her unpublished autobiography.

1989:Grandson, John Dorney dies; in failing health.

1992:Dies in San Diego, January 5th.

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Thank you DBI. Your post adds much understanding and history to Virginia's life and makes me think of how much real Arkansas and U.S. history certain interests have kept away from us by school and college boards controlled by the Chamber of Commerce.

After reviewing Smith's Alternative Ark History daily it's pretty damn easy to see how we've become a nation of sheep. Organized Arkansas workers moving in solidarity over 100 yrs ago is rarely mentioned, if ever, in any history book.

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"Arkansas, of course, ranks 48th, our default position in most polls. The report even examines county-by-county access."

I guess it's because I can remember being excited about upgrading to a 56k modem, but I find some definitions of "fast" Internet connections absurd. That NYT piece uses 105 Mbps. Thats enough to watch several full HDTV streams simultaneously. The odds are good your computer hardware can't handle that much bandwidth. The 4 Mbps from the speedmatters website is more reasonable, but I'd still consider that really fast. Other than being able to stream higher resolution video, I don't see any advantage over my 1.5 Mbps connection.

The bigger choke point is up stream anyway.

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"Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details..."

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/…

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Gyl, my partner is doing online course work for advanced practice nursing. She must download then upload large quantities of graphic pages and be able to do it regularly. If we stay at 5 Mbps all is ok. She must also be able to do it live, real time analysis on hypothetical patients. That my friend takes some bandwidth.

Locally, Mds must pay extra for extra bandwidth to transfer Xrays and scans of patients from place to place. It would be wonderful if such services and access were available to rural areas. Delivery of medical services to less populated areas would be greatly enhanced.

Sat nite I had an emergency trip to the hospital..almost quit breathing...and if there was enough wireless capacity the EMS crew could have Xray or scanned my throat/lungs and fwd the images via wireless to the hospital whereupon my treatment would have begun the moment I entered the ER. This not to say that some treatment did not take place, it did and it helped.

Another friend processes insurance claims at home. She sends and receives large quantities of data several times daily. The local company for whom she works is doing the same thing on a 24/7 basis with several associates so if the bandwidth is not there someone is not going to get their assignments or get them returned during peak hours when a simple 1.5 or 5 Mbps connection slows down to a crawl. She and her hubby, who is retired, would love to move outside the city but they can't because bandwidth is not available.

The large number the NYT put out for bandwidth capacity may seem large to you but when commerce is running it's really not large. Similar to water pressure/capacity problems when most folks are showering, laundering and cooking during certain time frames and then another subdivision is added to the feeder line. If city planning looked far enough ahead then growth could happen with disrupting lives. But if they stayed with four inch lines instead of six or eight inch lines not much is going to happen in the future without greater expenditure/taxes.

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Gylippus - The choke point is upstream? Not in Arkansas. Here, the choke point is the "last mile", mainly due to AT&T's broadband service policy for our state, namely: Piss on Arkansas. Ed Drilling's job is to deploy lobbyists and bogus organizations under his control (the state Chamber of Commerce, Connect Arkansas, the Broadband Advisory Council, the Internet Innovation Alliance, etc.) to tell us that our citizens need more education and intelligence before AT&T can upgrade our antique copper-based infrastructure to modern standards. Ed knows how to spread a little money around to politicians and preachers and milk Arkansas like a cash cow, while avoiding upgrades to service. For a tiny fraction of the money that Ed wants to spend for the T-Mobile merger, AT&T could do a reasonable upgrade here - but that won't happen because AT&T is more interested in destroying competition than providing good-quality, affordable service to rural customers.

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Noticed that when cops hauled Jerry Sandusky away this time he was -- very visibly -- wearing a Penn State jacket. Wonder if he school would like to buy that coat back?

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We will all be well and truly fracked before the Arkansas lege does anything. Only Texas and Colorado legislatures are "considering" laws to force gas drilling companies to reveal what is in their fracking fluids.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/12/08…

From the story, emphasis mine.

"The EPA also emphasized that the findings are specific to the Pavillion area. The agency said the fracking that occurred in Pavillion differed from fracking methods used elsewhere in regions with different geological characteristics.

The fracking occurred below the level of the drinking water aquifer and close to water wells, the EPA said. ELSEWHERE, DRILLING IS MORE REMOTE and fracking occurs MUCH DEEPER THAN THE LEVEL OF GROUNDWATER THAT ANYBODY WOULD USE."

I can't find any information on the size of the Wind River Aquifer which is the one serving Pavillion, Wyoming. And how far from a water well is considered "remote". Relative to Arkansas, Wyoming is very sparsely settled.

I talked to my niece and her husband in Norman, OK yesterday. Earthquake activity (which he attributes to fracking) in the last few days has him spooked. I have not read anything about the quakes in the media. I guess it is not as important as the Duggar tragedy, which made national news.

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"Locally, Mds must pay extra for extra bandwidth to transfer Xrays and scans of patients from place to place. It would be wonderful if such services and access were available to rural areas. Delivery of medical services to less populated areas would be greatly enhanced."- eLwood

"The choke point is upstream? Not in Arkansas. Here, the choke point is the "last mile", mainly due to AT&T's broadband service policy for our state, namely: Piss on Arkansas."-RC

This would seem to be the "killer" on the whole concept of tele-medicine where doctors in rural parts of the state (roughly 50% of this state) send and receive data and medical advice from UAMS and what may save the rural area from the "death panels" which may include ATT from RC's comment.

I had a friend whose daughter in Alaska had a problem pregnancy and her doctor there consulted, including test results , with doctors in Seattle and they sent a lot of data back and forth. I guess AK is better equipped than AR?

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I have been trying to understand what is going on with the debt and Euro crisis. I listened to this yesterday:

http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/40265

It seems the British Prime Minister is trying to bollix up the works.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/09…

If the Eurozone implodes economically, the ramifications for us are dire.

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"Gylippus - The choke point is upstream?"

Upload speeds. Probably stuck for most of us at 728 kbps or less.

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“Locally, Mds must pay extra for extra bandwidth to transfer Xrays and scans of patients from place to place. It would be wonderful if such services and access were available to rural areas. Delivery of medical services to less populated areas would be greatly enhanced.”

eLwood, it’s gonna happen. About a year ago, UAMS announced that it had received $102 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce to create a high-speed data network that will link 474 sites in Arkansas, including health-care providers.

It was said at the time that engineers were already designing a route to lay hundreds of miles of fiber-optic cable throughout the state, the first step of a three-year process that will greatly improve healthcare access for our rural brothers and sisters.

In addition to enhancing delivery of care in rural areas, members of the state’s Trauma Advisory Council say that doctors are excited about using the new network to send MRI and X-ray images to hospital emergency departments while patients are being transported. This will enable ER and trauma docs to have treatment plans prepared and ready to implement before the patients arrive.

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Gylippus - I remember my first 'puter having a 2400 baud modem and surfing America On Line. Then I put in a 12K baud modem! Now I could hear "you've got mail" followed by the hiccuping "g-goodbye" 5x faster! I kinda miss hearing the modem connecting and knowing from the tones approximately how fast the connection was going to be after it rained and the lines were wet. I was going to get a 56K modem next when they got cheaper, but my computer tech friend told me the phone lines were so noisy here that I'd be smarter to get a 36K because the max speed possible here was 40K or so.

Now I'm spoiled with 6mps DSL.

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Big "L",

I think you missed one on your cult list. I'd like to recommend:
"The Kentucky Fried Movie" John Landis
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076257/

It played on HBO and Cinema forever, stayed on the shelf in the comedy section as a tape then DVD at my Blockbuster from 1977 until the Blockbuster closed in 2008. 31 years available for rental and getting enough rentals to prevent being sold on the cheap discount Christmas table indicates "cult classic" to me, as well as some very memorable lines such as Sheila and John - Point/Counterpoint on AM Today and . . .

". . . Although, so far there's no known treatment for death's crippling effects, still everyone can acquaint himself with the three early warning signs of death: one, rigor mortis; two, a rotting smell; three, occasional drowsiness. . . ."

". . . In the past year, over 800,000 Americans have died. Despite millions of dollars of research, death continues to be our nation's number one killer. . . ."

Where else can you see Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, Donald Sutherland and Henry Gibson in a film with the coming attractions of "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble," where the narrator says, ". . . Never before has the beauty of the sexual act been so crassly exploited! . . . Brutal! Savage! Beyond Perversion! . . . "

It might have been the clueless seventies, but you do not get writing and honesty like this anymore.

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MarcKyle64,

You missed all the fun. The 2400 baud modem was proceeded by the 1200 baud and 300 baud, however back then the content on ARPANET and CompuServ was so limited it did not seem to make too much difference.

I got my first 40 MB hard drive, color card and monitor at about the same time as the 1200 baud modem.

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