Lobenthal.com

So rather than let myself dwell on current political events, I’ll just sit back and let Dr. Krugman in the Times say it for me.

The President:

“kept drawing lines in the sand, then erasing them and retreating to a new position. And his evident desire to have a deal before hitting the essentially innocuous fiscal cliff bodes very badly for the confrontation looming in a few weeks over the debt ceiling.

If Obama stands his ground in that confrontation, this deal won’t look bad in retrospect. If he doesn’t, yesterday will be seen as the day he began throwing away his presidency and the hopes of everyone who supported him.”

And that means there’s sensitive analysis on its way.  For the Wall Street Journal, Laura Jacobs palpates the Diana Vreeland touch.

George Jackson wrote with some additional thoughts on the entrechats/brises conundrum I discussed in my Ballet Review piece on the Paris Opera’s Giselle.

“Albrecht’s Act 2 solo: entrechats were standard (Dolin, Franklin, Lifar, Zoritch, Eglevsky, Youskevitch, Fernandez, Bruhn et al,) until the Soviet younger generation introduced brisees and they became de rigeur in the West too, Now the entrechats are making a comeback.”

“David PA” at Dailykos.com pays tribute:

Krugman “pulls back the veil and shines the light of reality on the mainstream-spewed debt/deficit nonsense.”

Bill Berkowitz chronicles at Alternet.org

And what were the Democrats doing while it happened?  Why, nothing of course!

One more reminder that Fix the Debt is a posse of self-serving pirates without financial acumen, save the uncanny ability to grab off for themselves as much as possible—and the rest of the United States be damned.

Dean Baker at truthout.com is properly outraged, if a bit understated, by the New York Times’s  revelation of just who organized this demolition derby:

“Alan Greenspan will go down in history as the person who has done more damage to the U.S. economy and society that anyone who was not a foreign enemy. In fact the destruction he wreaked through his incompetence would also exceed the damage caused by almost all would-be enemies as well.”

Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald describes the “travesty” the President is brokering:

“Going over the cliff is bad, too, but less so. At least it doesn’t cut taxes on the wealthy while preserving entitlement programs, and at least it contains the military cuts and makes it easier for a more favorable deal to be reached in the new year, when anything Congress does will be a tax cut.”

I’ll be patronizing Starbucks even less than I usually do–my local organic coffee shop is far preferable–now that Howard Schultz–save us from the CEOs and the MBAs–is joining the Fix the Debit bullshit brigade.   With our government now so completely in the pockets of the colossally affluent and selfish, voting with our feet may be one of the last efficacious ways to maintain any semblance of representative government.

FAIR (FAirness and Accuracy in Reporting), Fair.org.,

awards it’s P.U.-litzer prize to those gaffes, omissions, distortions it considers the most egregious among the numerous committed by the “mainstream” commercial media over the past year.

George Jackson is a busy bee–he sent me this notice today, from the Brooklyn Museum:

Hilde Holger—Her Legacy

Sunday, January 27, 2013 at 2 p.m.
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Forum, 4th Floor

The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art presents Hilde Holger—Her Legacy (2012, dir. Primavera Boman, 60 min.), a documentary on the life of expressionist dancer and choreographer Hilde Holger. After fleeing Nazi Vienna, Holger founded dance schools in both Bombay and London, and pioneered inclusive dance. A discussion between Boman—the filmmaker and Holger’s daughter—and journalist Stephanie Genkin will follow. This program is free with Museum admission.