I’ve got a new Think Again column called "Conservatives Turn to CNBC and the WSJ for Stimulating Propaganda" and you can find it here.

CHARLES PIERCE

NEWTON, MA.

Hey Doc:

"Therefore, Christian men, be sure/Wealth or rank possessing/Ye who now will bless the poor/Shall yourselves find blessing."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Eddie’s Gospel" (Eddie Bo)–The real lesson to learn is that, no matter how much you love New Orleans, and I do, it always manages to love you back.

Part The First: The little island nation of Tuvalu is SINKING into the ocean.

A sovereign country is disappearing from the face of the earth because ofthat climate change stuff that Dr. Sarah Palin, Ph.Dolt has assured us was invented by three British scientists over brandy at the Pig And Whistle.  So the folks from Tuvalu come to Copenhagen to talk about it and ABC greets them with a he said/she said exercise in sterile DISPUTATION. We’re all as screwed as they are.

Part The Second: In media news–just up the street from In MediaRes, a Native American newspaper bar–poor Dylan Ratigan gets shoved into the Family Feud hours of the afternoon in favor of a NEW MSNBC show that absolutely must be called Tweets ‘n Twits.

Part The Third: I guess, say, Josh Marshall’s invite blew off the PORCH. Drudge rules their world, and now they rule ours. Soon–the editor of Teen Beats elects next year’s Nobel Prize In Distinguished Letters.

Part The Fourth: In the immortal words of Lou Grant: "Murray? Be a good guy and go buy me a gun." Or, failing that, a melon-scoop with which I can remove my brain through by eyeholes. YEESH.

Part The Penultimate: I can live with Mark Ingram’s Heisman, but it was nice to see Ndamukong–whose name means "House Of Spears," as Iintend to remind people for the rest of his football career–Suh up there with the rest of the finalists. Given what he did to Texas in the Big-12 final, I hope he sat next to Colt McCoy and giggled a little horribly.

Part The Ultimate: Isn’t it time that we all realized that a lot of these people just don’t care? If all 45,000 of the people cited by that famous Harvard study who will die for lack of a decent health-care system dropped dead on his f**king lawn tomorrow morning, Joseph Lieberman would not CARE.

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He would step over their bodies to get to a fundraiser. He is a vindictive, wretched sack of pus and all that will ever matter to him for the rest of his sorry political career will be settling scores and fluffing his tush in somebody’s green room. There is no less excusable public man in America than this bitter old carny-whore; hell, Glenn Beck is either a genuine lunatic, or he masterfully portrays one on television. But either of those is a more honest transaction than that engaged in by Lieberman, who does not care if people die, and whose conscience long ago became the malignant servant of his baser nature. But he’s only the most garish one.The rest of them, fumbling away the last best chance to get this serious issue right, don’t care, either. About what, for example, does this president care so much that he will abandon his devotion to "bipartisan solutions"? The longer this goes, the more I’m convinced that the president insists on this particularly futile unicorn hunt, not because it makes for superior policy, but because abandoning it puts his political self-image atrisk, and for that, we’re supposed to let people sicken, go broke, and then die? About what does the Democratic congressional majority care so much that they will risk dissension within their ranks to do the things that clear majorities of the people who sent them to Washington have said, over and over again, that they want done? The Republicans care about nothing except turning the government into an ATM that spurts holy water. The courtier media of the Beltway might as well be living on Pluto, witness this wonderful Very Special Holiday EPISODE from the increasingly unmoored Washington Post opinion pages. But the point is that most of these people–and, alas, a substantially large portion of our fellow citizens–simply do…not…care. Not enough to do anything real about anything, that’s for sure. Come to think of it, after 40 years of battering from the political elite, the very concept of having "fellow citizens" has been worndown to an infinitesimal nub. I got mine, Jack. Well, nobody’s got theirs, Jack, and rich people are laughing about it while other people–"fellow citizens," my ass. Do you honestly believe Chuck Todd or David Gregory even think in those terms?–sicken and go broke and die. Don’t even get me started on climate change. God bless us all, every one.

Name: Jim Krizek

Hometown: Charlotte, NC

Eric,

Sorry pal, but I have to take issue and submit a complaint.

"Hot Tuna audiences contain some of the world’s biggest jerks: people who get a rise out of getting scarily wasted and yelling ‘Hot Fuckin’ Tuna’ over and over at the top of their marijuana-infested lungs."

I have to ask–if such defines the world’s biggest jerks–what were you doing there? Just waiting to hear Loudon Wainwright? Then fine, but please next time just sharpen your pen a bit more and make your points about his Krugman song without the reckless prerequisite. That was quite unnecessary. There are jerks at any live music show, and I know you know that Tuna’s music is more about peace and good vibes than otherwise. I’d say you owe Jorma and Jack, and maybe even Paul Krugman, an apology.

Eric replies: Dude, I go see Tuna every year at the Beacon, and have since I moved back to the city in 1995. I often see them in the Summer too, when they play Stephen’s Talkhouse. I’ve been going to see them since 1975. And their audience contains some of the world’s biggest jerks. You owe Jorma and Jack an apology for equating them with the jerks in their audience. I don’t see what Paul Krugman has to do with this.

Name: masher

Hometown: Seattle

Your article appears on the Center For American Progress. That is the same right wing corporatist group that supports federal intervention in the US labor market through H-1B work visas.

There are now over 2.2 million foreigners on H-1B taking jobs in the US. There are over 2.2 million unemployed American programmers and engineers.

Since H-1B started about 10 years ago wages for American programmers have been stagnant. Still Indians will enter the US for jobs because wages in India are much worse. So they will take the jobs at stagnant wages but Americans are forced out of these jobs. How?

At Microsoft in my group we use a Indian owned vendor to screen resumes. They are also an H-1B house. And to nobody’s surprise every resume they give us is on H-1B.

We had to fire the only African American female programmer when we started this because she wasn’t employed by a "qualified" vendor. Most of the hires at Microsoft start off as vendors. She was with a non-Indian vendor. So she had to be fired.

I guess that is the American you and the Center for American Progress want. Nice.

Eric replies: Yep, it is. Thanks.