Friday, January 30, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Bailout money used AGAINST America's workers!
HuffPost Breaks Huge Corruption Story — And We Must Do Something About It
You can’t make this stuff up. Breaking news from The Huffington Post:
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative priority.Participants on the October 17 call — including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG — were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill.
…Donations of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to Republican senatorial campaigns were needed, they argued…”If a retailer has not gotten involved in this, if he has not spent money on this election, if he has not sent money to [former Sen.] Norm Coleman and all these other guys, they should be shot. They should be thrown out their goddamn jobs,” Marcus declared.
Not only are some of the most non-trusted companies in America blatantly trying to buy off Congress, but they’re using our bailout money to do it. Enough!
2 Million Jobs estimated to be lost...
More pink slips, pay freezes and other hits are expected to slam workers in the months ahead as companies desperately look for ways to survive.
"We're just seeing the tip of the iceberg — the big firms," said Rebecca Braeu, economist at John Hancock Financial Services. "There's certainly other firms beneath them that will lay off workers as quickly or even quicker."
Looking ahead, economists predicted a net loss of at least 2 million jobs — possibly more — this year even if President Barack Obama's $825 billion package of increased government spending and tax cuts is enacted. Last year, the economy lost a net 2.6 million jobs, the most since 1945, though the labor force has grown significantly since then.
The unemployment rate, now at a 16-year high of 7.2 percent, could hit 10 percent or higher later this year or early next year, under some analysts' projections.
Obama called on Congress Monday to speedily enact his recovery plan, warning that the nation can't afford "distractions" or "delays."
With the recession expected to drag on through much of this year, more damage will be inflicted on both companies and workers.
The mounting toll was visible Monday as roughly 40,000 more U.S. workers got the grim news...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
G-Drive!
Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals' personal data.
The Google Drive, or "GDrive", could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user's personal files and operating system could be stored on Google's own servers and accessed via the internet.
The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as "the most anticipated Google product so far". It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft's Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world's computers, in favour of "cloud computing", where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.
Home and business users are increasingly turning to web-based services, usually free, ranging from email (such as Hotmail and Gmail) and digital photo storage (such as Flickr and Picasa) to more applications for documents and spreadsheets (such as Google Apps). The loss of a laptop or crash of a hard drive does not jeopardise the data because it is regularly saved in "the cloud" and can be accessed via the web from any machine.
The GDrive would follow this logic to its conclusion by shifting the contents of a user's hard drive to the Google servers. The PC would be a simpler, cheaper device acting as a portal to the web, perhaps via an adaptation of Google's operating system for mobile phones, Android. Users would think of their computer as software rather than hardware.
It is this prospect that alarms critics of Google's ambitions. Peter Brown, executive director of the Free Software Foundation, a charity defending computer users' liberties, did not dispute the convenience offered, but said: "It's a little bit like saying, 'we're in a dictatorship, the trains are running on time.' But does it matter to you that someone can see everything on your computer? Does it matter that Google can be subpoenaed at any time to hand over all your data to the American government?"
Google refused to confirm the GDrive, but acknowledged the growing demand for cloud computing. Dave Armstrong, head of product and marketing for Google Enterprise, said: "There's a clear direction ... away from people thinking, 'This is my PC, this is my hard drive,' to 'This is how I interact with information, this is how I interact with the web.'"
Friday, January 23, 2009
BarackBerry...
(CNN) -- Self-confessed BlackBerry addict President Barack Obama may not have to kick the thumbing habit after all, despite the concerns of a notoriously technophobic White House.
Obama was a self-confessed BlackBerry addict during his White House campaign.
"The president has a BlackBerry," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday, clearing up weeks of speculation about whether President Obama would be able to hold on to a cherished method of communicating.
The decision to allow Obama to keep a smartphone is "a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff and a small group of personal friends," Gibbs told the media in his first press conference since the inauguration.
"Use will be limited and the security is enhanced to ensure his ability to communicate but to do so effectively," Gibbs also said. "And to do so in a way that is protected."
The press secretary refused to provide more details about the new president's device, already being called the "BarackBerry." Watch CNN's Errol Barnett reports on the president's new phone »
Obama was often seen hunched over the mobile e-mail cell phone device during his election campaign and even featured at No. 2 on one celebrity Web site's list of obsessive BlackBerry users.
But, like previous Oval Office incumbents, Obama had been expected to take a vow of technological celibacy following his inaugural oath on Tuesday, despite telling CNBC in an interview that security officials would have to "pry it out of my hands." He said a mobile device would help him stay in touch with the real world. Should President Obama be allowed to keep his BlackBerry? Tell us what you think
E-mail has long been treated with suspicion by the Secret Service because of fears it could be hacked into by foreign espionage agencies, or that sensitive information could reach the public domain via a single mistaken strike of the "send" key.
President George W. Bush was forced to give up using e-mail when he took charge, while President Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails during his administration -- one to test that the system worked and the second to veteran astronaut John Glenn before his trip into space in 1998.
There are also concerns that mobile devices such as the BlackBerry, which contain built-in GPS technology, could be hacked, revealing the president's location within a few feet.
But according to reports Thursday, Obama may actually have been issued a spy-proof alternative to his favorite toy.
Writing on his blog for the Atlantic magazine, Marc Ambinder reports that the National Security Agency has approved a $3,350 smartphone -- inevitably dubbed the "BarackBerry" -- for Obama's use.
The exclusive Sectera Edge, made by General Dynamics, is reportedly capable of encrypting top secret voice conversations and handling classified documents.
But Obama may have pushed his Secret Service handlers' technological patience far enough. Ambinder also reports that instant messaging in the White House will still be a definite no-no.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
2009 Rap Beef Joe Budden & Saigon....
Apparently this all stems over a line Joe used "I'm not just trying to hit and run like saigon" referring to Saigon's altercation with Mobb Deep...
Letter to Saigon - Buddens
Saigon Speaks...
Underachiever - Saigon
Pain in His Life - Buddens
Pushing Buddens - Saigon
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Change has come!
A trip to Washington had been the plan for Robbie Revis Smith, 73, twice jailed in the 1960s for her part in the civil rights struggle. But she can barely stand up now because of a bad back. So she took the bus at 7 on an atypically frigid morning to get a front row seat at the inauguration-watching event at the Boutwell Auditorium in Birmingham.
The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, the 86-year-old survivor of bombing, beatings and multiple imprisonments, is as much a part of civil rights royalty as anyone. But he had only recently gotten out of the hospital. He sat upright in his wheelchair a few feet from the stage.
And there was Colonel Stone Johnson, 90, sitting quietly in his brown pinstriped suit, his hat on his knee. He said he had done Washington anyway, many times.
"I been so much," Mr. Johnson said. "All the marches, I didn't miss none."
Across the country, at half-filled lunch counters and in Las Vegas showrooms, in break rooms and backrooms, Americans gathered to watch the rare sight of a dusty old cliché — that anyone, even a little black child, could some day be president — actually squaring up to reality. For many who continued to doubt up to the last minute that this was truly going to happen, the sight of a black man taking the oath of office seemed to be breaking news even if, technically, it was not.
And nobody, even Mr. Shuttlesworth, who was wheeled out as soon as Mr. Obama's speech was concluded, wanted to be alone as they watched this moment — which in large part began in the churches and living rooms of Birmingham.
"I started to stay at home and watch this and drink a cold beer or some champagne," said Willie Clements Sr., a burly 53-year-old former postal worker who grew up in a world of separate drinking fountains and Jim Crow. "But I got to thinking: this may not happen in my lifetime."
At that moment, Mr. Obama was preparing to be sworn in. "Excuse me, I got to make a call," Mr. Clements said. "My twin brother's watching this in Vegas."
Everywhere, people gathered. Store owners in the Bronx stole glances at television sets in backrooms in between helping customers. About a dozen Latinos stood in the lobby of a Los Angeles Y.M.C.A. watching the event.
The cars had been moved outside at the Uptown Body and Fender shop in Oakland, Calif., to make room for a projector, helium balloons, a life-size cutout of Mr. Obama and a crowd of about a hundred.
Among them was Leon Cross, a black carpet cleaner and janitor from nearby Hayward, Calif., who a couple of months ago had cast a vote for president for the first time in his 52 years. Now his Crosstown Carpet Care is offering a 44th president carpet-cleaning sale: forty-four dollars per room, which, he said, was practically giving it away.
"I'm happy to do what I can," said Mr. Cross, whose face was lined with tears by the end of Mr. Obama's speech.
All the swivel chairs at the Silver Star Barber Shop in Atlanta were turned to the television mounted high on a wall and all of the normal barbershop conversation — football, whiskey, unrealized diets — yielded to quiet at the start of the invocation.
The haircuts and trims continued throughout the ceremony, but at 12:06 pm, when Mr. Obama was introduced as "the 44th president of the United States of America," the shop fell into an even deeper hush.
Willie Edwards, sitting in the corner eating a hot dog and wearing an Obama shirt, shook his head.
"Ain't that something," he said.
But the moment did not belong to only one group, as personal as it may have felt.
"Maybe this means that someday we might see another historic day — a Hispanic president," said 27-year-old forklift driver Alex Gonzalez, one of several men gathered around a rabbit-eared television in a meeting room at a fire extinguisher plant in Elk Grove Village, Ill.
At a crowded viewing party of Inauguration Day hooky-players at the Royale, a popular bar on St. Louis's south side, Will Roth, a 61-year-old retired department manager at a grocery store, remarked on the day's meaning for gay men and lesbians "We'll finally have an ally in the White House instead of an adversary."
Even those who did not feel a personal stake in the inauguration or who opposed Mr. Obama on policy grounds remained in the company of others to watch one of the country's occasional concessions to the pomp and circumstance of royalty.
At the sparsely populated Cross Keys Diner in Republican-heavy Adams County, Pa., 83-year-old Leo Lunger, who works for his son-in-law's carwash and concrete businesses, expressed disgust for Mr. Obama's bailout plan and what he sees as a continuation of Clinton-era policies.
"You can't buy your way out of this," Mr. Lunger said. "I knew he was going to spin us blind."
But he stayed at the counter and watched the swearing-in, as the restaurant owner's wife, Vickie Saltos, an ecstatic Obama supporter, sent text messages to her daughter in Washington.
Whatever the feeling was about Mr. Obama's politics, most agreed that this one-hour ceremony marked a kind of new phase in the country's 233-year history. Few would know about that better than Florence Beatrice Stevens Smith, 104, who lives at the Heartland Health Care Center in Kendall, Fla.
The community room was already packed, with residents peeking behind walkers, when Ms. Smith entered, with a red, white and blue lei around her neck. The ceremony had begun. Although several in the room dozed peacefully, the television was turned up loud enough for people down the hall to hear it from their beds.
Ms. Smith did not say much. But an employee at the home confirmed what stories in the newspaper had said: Ms. Smith had been a typing teacher at Tuskegee University in Alabama, and her father, a former slave, had served in the Union Army.
When Mr. Obama appeared on screen and began his oath, she moved forward in her wheelchair and adjusted her glasses.
"He is really president," Ms. Smith whispered, as others in the room applauded. "That's nice."
Monday, January 19, 2009
RIP MLK.... We still have a long way to go...
NOTORIOUS ACTOR CAUGHT UP IN SHOOTING
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/gossip/view/66417/
NOTORIOUS B.I.G. STABBINGS
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/notorious_big_stabbings/celebrity/66064
Former U.S. cop involved in fatal shooting is charged with murder
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/15/content_10659996.htm
3 Detectives Acquitted in Bell Shooting
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/nyregion/26BELL.html?hp
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Israel Bombed the UN Headquarters...
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.
U.N. workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris after the Israeli attack, which was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Dense smoke billowed from the compound.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, demanded a "full explanation" and said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a "grave mistake."
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the U.N. compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location. Three people were wounded.
"It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," he said. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."
A senior Israeli military officer had also said Israeli troops shelled the compound after coming under fire from Palestinian militants there _ an account dismissed by a U.N. official there at the time as "nonsense."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/15/israel-shells-un-headquar_n_158078.html
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Had to pass this on to the people
Monday, January 12, 2009
Bush in Isreal's pocket until the end...
JERUSALEM (AFP) – US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was left shame-faced after President George W. Bush ordered her to abstain in a key UN vote on the Gaza war, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Monday.
"She was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favour," Olmert said in a speech in the southern town of Ashkelon.
The UN Security Council passed a resolution last Thursday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the three-week-old conflict in the Gaza Strip and an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza where hundreds have been killed.
Fourteen of the council's 15 members voted in favour of the resolution, which was later rejected by both Israel and Hamas.
The United States, Israel's main ally, had initially been expected to voted in line with the other 14 but Rice later became the sole abstention.
"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favour," Olmert said
"I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now'. He got off the podium and spoke to me.
"I told him the United States could not vote in favour. It cannot vote in favour of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favour."
Bush has consistently placed the blame for the conflict on Hamas, telling reporters on Monday that while he wanted to see a "sustainable ceasefire" in Gaza, it was up to Hamas to choose to end its rocket fire on Israel.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
Early 09 Monday!
And a little Neptune advise for the up and coming producers...
Video Provided by DatPiff.com
Friday, January 2, 2009
FOX: HAPPY NEW YEARS MAGIC NEGRO....
NOW IF ALL OF THE TEXT MESSAGES WERE SCREENED BEFORE AIRING HOW MUCH OF A COINCIDENCE IS IT THAT THIS ONE GOT PAST....
Viewers were allowed to text in messages that scrolled across the bottom in lieu of the news.
One message read:
HAPPY NEW YEARS!
What's up good folk?! I hope all have had a great and wonderful new years experience, as many of you know that is one of the official Drunkmonkey Holidays to be celebrated!
This year in 2009 I have alot of big plans, and will be doing alot more all around. I've added a drunkmonkey fitness blog located to the right. I'm in talks to redevelop the site to make it a little more category based, gonna see what the templates look like.
Politics, definitely will be on top of events, and important issues as usual!
Hip-Hop - I'll be reinvesting efforts to bring you the Best artists, and those that need to be seen!
MyspaceBeatJacking! this has really begun to take off and we will step up the movement as well!
DrunkmonkeyTV - I will be adding more and more video entries through the www.youtube.com/drunkmonkey1906 and make sure to check out the favorites!
Myspace - I've been really low key with myspace movement, as I have my own personal issues with the site, but by popular demand I will be more Myspace friendly in 2009!
www.myspace.com/drunkmonkey1906
LET'S MAKE 2009 A YEAR TO REMEMBER!
