Update 3/3/05 - Wow! Has a week gone by already! Tonight's the night guys. We'll be there from about 7pm on. Cubik and Origami are on from 8-11pm.

These guys are really cool. Their equipment consists of three turntables, a couple laptops, and even a bass and other instruments that they play live -- all blended together in their set.

Hope to see you there!

Hey gang! I'm having a party next Thursday night (not tonight, but next week - March 3, 2005).

Well actually,
Wide Hive Records is having a party, but I'm taking the opportunity to invite all my friends and readers since I haven't seen so many of you for so long.

Cubik and Origami is the latest offering from Wide Hive. Their first EP (vinyl only) is due out in May. Their second EP (vinyl only) and first CD will be out in June. Here's a sample that's not even up on the website yet.

We'll be there from the early evening on.

I've got about 50 test pressings available. Djs should Email me at lisa@widehive.com to let me know you're coming and would like a test pressing so I don't run out on ya.

See you there!

These are from the February 14, 2005 program.

The first one is kinda funny, as well as being newsworthy and rather informative.

The second clip (movie on the DNC convention) just isn't all that funny, but it's still sort of informative.

Dean Wins The DNC - Daily Show (5 MB)

Audio - Dean Wins The DNC - Daily Show (3 Mb)

Daily Show Movie On DNC Conference (7 MB)

Audio - Daily Show Movie On DNC Conference (5 MB)

This is from the February 14, 2005 program.

The first bit is more informative than anything else.

The second bit with Stephen Colbert is totally hilarious.

First Daily Show Bit On "The Gates" (9 MB)

Audio - First Daily Show Bit On "The Gates" (MP3 - 6 MB)

Stephen Colbert On "The Gates" (9 MB)

Audio - Stephen Colbert On "The Gates" (MP3 - 6 MB)

The Repubs' latest fabrication is that Roosevelt himself personally endorsed private accounts, and presumably the cuts in benefits that go with them.

According to Roosevelt's grandson, James Roosevelt Jr., who is a former Associate Commissioner on Social Security, the quote was taken completely out of context. Keith Olbermann had him on the show to clear things up. The two of them go over the quote in question with a fine-toothed comb and provide the larger context in which it appears.

(see below for full quote within context)

Even a simple reading of the quote makes it clear that Roosevelt envisioned private accounts in addition to regular benefits, for those who could afford to invest in them, so they would have additional benefits later. (Not as a replacement for the current system.)

Video - Keith Olbermann and Roosevelt's Grandson Call Bush Roosevelt Claim A Fraud (14 MB)

Audio - Keith Olbermann and Roosevelt's Grandson Call Bush Roosevelt Claim A Fraud (MP3 - 9 MB)

Transcription:
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, father to the New Deal and, at minimum, mid-wife to the Social Security system, would have endorsed President Bush's plan to partially privatize it. Our third story of the countdown, that is the claim anyway of at least three conservative commentators and several Republican congressman, but it turns out, those guys pretty much just made it up...

At the risk of doing a little too much reading, just to put it on the historical record, let me read the entire quote from which those quotes were pulled (portion of quote misused by Brit Hume and others is in italics):

"In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles. First, non-contributory old age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is of course clear that perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amount received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supported annuity plans."

Hey, I just upgraded to a new Movable Type version, and I see I have email notification list capabilities now. So any of you who want to be on it, send me an email at lisarein@finetuning.com.

thanks,

lisa

Hey I never got around to posting anything on this category. But I can post some good news to it now: DEAN WON!

Perhaps there's a chance to revive this dying party after all.

This is from the February 6, 2005 program of Meet the Press.
Update 2/8/05: I've broken it down into 2 halfs, and made MP3s of it
I still have to break this down into smaller clips, but I wanted to make complete video and audio available for press folks and things that might need it asap.

Basically, Tim Russert is ruthless with the flinging of the fact.

Rummy loses it a couple time, although he quickly recovers. He admits that he may have "mis spoke" a couple times, and disregards those facts and figures that he wasn't prepared to respond to.

I will be putting up smaller clips and better analysis soon, promise.

For now, this stuff is here:

Video Of Rumsfeld On Meet The Press

Our latest release at Wide Hive is Plate Fork Knife Spoon. It's basically the Crown City Rockers' rhythm section with Eric Krasno from Soulive on guitar and David Boyce from the Brown Fellinis on Sax.

Crown City emcee Raashan Ahmad guests on one track, Wonder.
(MP3 - 6 MB). It's my favorite track on the record.

Give it a listen...

Wonder is only available on the CD and 12" (not the LP. The 12" also contains an Exclusive beat, "Sabado."

This is from the February 3, 2005 program.

In this clip, Time magazine's Joe Klein talks about the State of the Union address and the truth behind the Shrub's Social Security overhaul: it's all about benefit cuts, not increased payments due to shrewd investment of private accounts.

Joe Klein On The Daily Show (Small - 12 MB)

Audio of Joe Klein On The Daily Show (MP3 - 8 MB)

Joe Klein:

Here's the cool thing about Social Security. Yesterday, before the speech, the White House explains it the "torters," the private investment accounts, and here's the way it works:

You put your money in your own private investment account. And then, when it's time for you to retire, you give a whole lot of it back to the government so that they can dribble out little benefits to you that are the equivalent of Social Security as it now stands.

Jon Stewart:

That's really what this plan is?

Joe Klein:

If you make more than a designated amount, you might get a little bit extra. Yes.

Jon Stewart:

That's it?

Joe Klein:

It's an annuity.

Jon Stewart:

But here's what I don't understand...

Joe Klein:

It's really remarkable.

Jon Stewart:

But how does that save Social Security? Because the government still has to dish out the same amount of money, no?

Joe Klein:

Well, they're going to lower our benefits it was they're gonna actually do, and the President said he would last night.

Bush to Propose Billions in Cuts
Farm subsidies and food stamps are among the targets in the 2006 budget plan, to be sent to Congress on Monday. Opposition is building.
By Joel Havemann and Mary Curtius For The LA Times.

President Bush will propose a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing...

In addition to the cuts proposed in the 2006 budget, Bush is expected to ask Congress to approve in principle many billions of dollars in additional, unspecified cuts...

The lower-income Americans who benefit from food stamps and Medicaid do not typically provide the Republican Party with many votes or campaign contributions.

The proposed budget will give states less flexibility to include working poor families with children as beneficiaries, sources said.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cuts6feb06,0,5530657.story?coll=la-home-headlines

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/020605Y.shtml

Bush to Propose Billions in Cuts
By Joel Havemann and Mary Curtius
The Los Angeles Times

Sunday 06 February 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush will propose a 2006 budget Monday that, despite record spending of about $2.5 trillion, will call for billions of dollars in cuts that will touch people on food stamps and farmers on price supports, children under Medicaid and adults in public housing.

Even before the budget is officially sent to Congress on Monday, resistance to Bush's proposals was welling up Saturday from interest groups that benefit from federal aid and from the members of Congress who represent them.

Powerful agricultural interests were among the first to label Bush's proposed budget cuts as unfair and shortsighted. Farmers receive about $15 billion annually in federal farm program payments to help produce major commodities, including corn, cotton, rice and wheat.

California farmers could end up bearing a disproportionate share of the burden if the cuts in crop subsidies were enacted, said economist Daniel Sumner. "Rice and cotton are very important to this state," said Sumner, who is director of the Agricultural Issues Center at UC Davis.

The cuts are being proposed as the president is striving to keep a campaign promise to rein in government spending and halve the federal deficit in five years. The deficit has soared since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war on terrorism - and as revenue has fallen as the economy has slowed and tax cuts have taken effect.

In addition to the cuts proposed in the 2006 budget, Bush is expected to ask Congress to approve in principle many billions of dollars in additional, unspecified cuts.

Bush has seemed to challenge congressional Republicans and Democrats to make the tough choices necessary to achieve the deficit reductions that members on both sides of the aisle have called for recently.

"I welcome the bipartisan calls to control the spending appetite of the federal government," he said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "On Monday, my administration will submit a budget that holds the growth of discretionary spending below inflation."

Deficit hawks outside the government welcomed Bush's tone but warned that members of Congress would fight to maintain spending for programs popular with their voters.

"It's going to be a tight budget," said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group that lobbies for smaller deficits. "That doesn't mean it's going to be a realistic budget."

Bush's budget will cut "where the money is," Bixby said Saturday, "but it's also where the resistance is."

The lower-income Americans who benefit from food stamps and Medicaid do not typically provide the Republican Party with many votes or campaign contributions.

The proposed budget will give states less flexibility to include working poor families with children as beneficiaries, sources said.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said he was willing to trim farm subsidies if other programs suffered proportionately.

"But if they try to single out the farm bill," Chambliss told reporters on Capitol Hill last week, "then we are going to have one heck of a fight."

The administration will propose a 5% across-the-board cut in price supports for crops and a reduction from $360,000 to $250,000 in the annual cap on subsidies that farmers can receive.

Under the current system, some farmers evade the limit by dividing farms into several separate corporate entities, a practice that the budget also will seek to eliminate.

A Senate Agriculture Committee aide, saying evasion of the cap was extremely rare, argued that farmers needed the safety net of federal aid for the years when they could not sell their crops for the cost of producing them.

In a letter Thursday to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, a coalition of more than 100 organizations led by the American Farm Bureau Federation, said that Congress, in the 2002 bill that authorized farm subsidies for seven more years, had already cut subsidies by $4 billion a year by imposing the $360,000 cap.

"A budget that requires further cuts or structural weakening in these important programs will put at risk the promising environmental benefits of the bill and the nutritional health of some of the poorest populations in our country," the letter said.

In California, 1.5 metric tons of rice is grown a year, second only to Arkansas, said Tim Johnson, chief executive of the California Rice Commission, which has about 1,500 farmer members. Approximately 600,000 acres of farmland in the state were planted in rice in 2004.

"It's not just farmers that benefit - rice plays an important role in the economy of California," Johnson said. "We are an important export crop - about 40% of what's produced in the state is exported to Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other countries."

Daren Coppock, chief executive of the National Assn. of Wheat Growers, said the budget must not be balanced on the backs of farmers. Referring to the $360,000 maximum payment, he said: "If they change it now, that's not terribly helpful to those who made purchasing decisions over a seven-year planning period.

"The other thing to remember: The president always proposes, but Congress writes it and puts it into law," Coppock said. "There is a lot of work to be done and a lot of people to be heard from before this gets finished."

Rumors of the proposed farm subsidy cuts had been widely circulating in Washington for days before officials at the Department of Agriculture confirmed them in a background briefing to reporters. But the food stamp cut, expected to be about $1 billion in a $32-billion program, received less notice.

States must provide food stamps to people on cash welfare. But this is a much smaller population since Congress overhauled welfare in 1976.

A larger number of people now receive federal job-related aid, such as child care for working women with small children. The budget, sources said, gives states less flexibility to provide food stamps to these working poor people.

The nation's governors can be expected to lead the opposition to this proposal, just as they fought a 2003 proposal to cut their federal Medicaid support in return for greater flexibility in administering the program.

Administration officials made public Friday their proposal for increasing access to health insurance, and critics said they expected the budget itself to make another try at giving more flexibility and fewer dollars.

As announced Friday, the administration said it could save $60 billion in Medicaid over 10 years without service cuts. About $40 billion would come from changes in the way Washington pays the states for Medicaid services. The administration says states are gaming the Medicaid program by unfairly inflating costs.

Amid the welter of spending cuts, a few domestic programs were singled out for increases. Among them: community health clinics and aid to schools in low-income neighborhoods - although those schools are slated for a smaller increase than Bush proposed last year.

The budget also will seek $3 billion for the Millennium Challenge Account, the president's signature effort to help poor countries boost their economic growth. That is $500 million more than was sought for 2005 - but $2 billion less than was promised last year for 2006.

And the budget would expand Pell grants, which help the lowest-income students attend college, at the expense of the Perkins loan program for low- and middle-income college students. The $6-billion loan program would be eliminated.

Eighteen housing and community development programs would be consolidated and cut by about 40% to a total of $3.7 billion.

The budget also proposes eliminating federal subsidies for Amtrak, the national passenger rail carrier. Subsidies totaled $1.2 billion this year.

Update 2/7/05 - found it! It's called
Callin On Sunday by Party Ben. thanks guys!

I heard a mash-up of Lyric Born's "Calling Out" and U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" the other day on San Francisco's Live 105.

I want to hear it again, but it doesn't seem to be anywhere. Can you guys help me out?

It's cool to hear Lyrics Born blowin up on Live 105. It reminds me to plug our
DJ Zeph 12" (and CD) that features Lyrics Born:
Hands Up. (MP3 - 5 MB)

You can also buy it on iTunes.

Hey I got busy this week and kinda didn't check mail all week.

I'm just going through it now.

So if you wrote me a letter and I didn't respond. That's why. I'm catching up now.

I love to hear from you guys, so I didn't want you to think I wasn't writing back.

talk soon!

lisa