Single Frames

Let’s Not Make a Deal

By PAUL KRUGMAN - NYTimes
Published: November 8, 2012

To say the obvious: Democrats won an amazing victory. Not only did they hold the White House despite a still-troubled economy, in a year when their Senate majority was supposed to be doomed, they actually added seats.

Nor was that all: They scored major gains in the states. Most notably, California — long a poster child for the political dysfunction that comes when nothing can get done without a legislative supermajority — not only voted for much-needed tax increases, but elected, you guessed it, a Democratic supermajority. 

But one goal eluded the victors. Even though preliminary estimates suggest that Democrats received somewhat more votes than Republicans in Congressional elections, the G.O.P. retains solid control of the House thanks to extreme gerrymandering by courts and Republican-controlled state governments. And Representative John Boehner, the speaker of the House, wasted no time in declaring that his party remains as intransigent as ever, utterly opposed to any rise in tax rates even as it whines about the size of the deficit. 

So President Obama has to make a decision, almost immediately, about how to deal with continuing Republican obstruction. How far should he go in accommodating the G.O.P.’s demands? 

My answer is, not far at all. Mr. Obama should hang tough, declaring himself willing, if necessary, to hold his ground even at the cost of letting his opponents inflict damage on a still-shaky economy. And this is definitely no time to negotiate a “grand bargain” on the budget that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. 

In saying this, I don’t mean to minimize the very real economic dangers posed by the so-called fiscal cliff that is looming at the end of this year if the two parties can’t reach a deal. Both the Bush-era tax cuts and the Obama administration’s payroll tax cut are set to expire, even as automatic spending cuts in defense and elsewhere kick in thanks to the deal struck after the 2011 confrontation over the debt ceiling. And the looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts looks easily large enough to push America back into recession. 

Nobody wants to see that happen. Yet it may happen all the same, and Mr. Obama has to be willing to let it happen if necessary. 

Why? Because Republicans are trying, for the third time since he took office, to use economic blackmail to achieve a goal they lack the votes to achieve through the normal legislative process. In particular, they want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, even though the nation can’t afford to make those tax cuts permanent and the public believes that taxes on the rich should go up — and they’re threatening to block any deal on anything else unless they get their way. So they are, in effect, threatening to tank the economy unless their demands are met.

Mr. Obama essentially surrendered in the face of similar tactics at the end of 2010, extending low taxes on the rich for two more years. He made significant concessions again in 2011, when Republicans threatened to create financial chaos by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And the current potential crisis is the legacy of those past concessions. 

Well, this has to stop — unless we want hostage-taking, the threat of making the nation ungovernable, to become a standard part of our political process. 

So what should he do? Just say no, and go over the cliff if necessary. 

It’s worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn’t really a cliff. It’s not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed. This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain. 

More important, however, is the point that a stalemate would hurt Republican backers, corporate donors in particular, every bit as much as it hurt the rest of the country. As the risk of severe economic damage grew, Republicans would face intense pressure to cut a deal after all. 

Meanwhile, the president is in a far stronger position than in previous confrontations. I don’t place much stock in talk of “mandates,” but Mr. Obama did win re-election with a populist campaign, so he can plausibly claim that Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent. 

Most of all, standing up to hostage-taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system. 

So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.

America didn’t vote for a “grand bargain” (2 articles)

Just a few short days after the election, and Obama is already going against the wishes of 60% of the elctorate who in exit polls want him to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. 60% of voters all over the country. And what is he going to do? Forget about raising taxes, he's going to lower taxes for corporations, against the views of 60% of the people who voted in 2012. Enter the bane of us all: the Grand Bargain.--jef

Thursday, Nov 8, 2012
Listen up, Democrats: Obama didn't win by promising a compromise on entitlement reform. He won despite it
By Rick Perlstein



By 10 p.m. on Tuesday, it was all over but the shouting — the shouting of Karl Rove, incredulous that Fox News’ “decision desk” would dare deploy the best statistical evidence at its disposal to call Ohio for the president; the shouting of wingnuts everywhere that — no fair! — Obama only won because of superstorm Sandy (because demonstrated competence in running the government is no reason to choose someone to … run your government); the shouting of the joyous throngs at McCormick Place waiting to receive their new second-term president. In my Hyde Park apartment just five blocks from the president’s home, soon all around me was jubilation. A second Barack Obama term! I alone seemed to feel the disquiet.

This reelection troubles me. It troubles me because of the signal it may send to some of the people running the Democratic Party, and to Barack Obama, a signal that may threaten the long-term health of the Democratic Party itself.

I heard Dick Durbin, the Illinois senator who is close to Obama, on the radio the next morning boasting that he was one of the Democrats on the Simpson-Bowles Commission to vote for its recommendations — recommendations that included, in addition to changes in the tax code meant to increase revenue (while also cutting tax rates), diminishing eligibility and benefits for Medicare and Social Security. Though the commission failed to reach consensus, making its proposals moot, it was aiming at just the sort of “grand bargain” that Obama has consistently and quietly spoken about as his sort of beau ideal for what a successful presidency would look like. Durbin went on to say he hoped a grand bargain might be wrapped up in the next calendar year, before congressmen and senators became preoccupied with reelection. And maybe it will. As the blogger Lambert Strether impishly put it on Election Day: “I’m betting the Ds, who wouldn’t abolish the filibuster for health care or the stimulus, will abolish it if that’s what it takes to kick the hippies and gut Social Security.”

Fellow Democrats, let’s hope not. Please, please, please, let’s hope not.

The goal, with or without a filibuster reform, would be to “correct” a supposed structural budget crisis that liberal economists like Paul Krugman and Dean Baker convincingly point out doesn’t actually exist. In fact, the increase in the deficit was caused directly by the financial crisis and the housing bubble, and had nothing to do with the middle-class entitlement programs a grand bargain would cut. What’s more, the deficit is perfectly sustainable in any event. As for the record national debt, in fact the rest of the world’s eagerness to lend to America at next to no cost is in fact a glorious opportunity to increase American well-being, something not to be feared but welcomed. (America’s debt to GDP ratio is about 70 percent. Japan’s is over 225 percent — and that island, with the world’s third-largest economy, has not sunk into the sea. In fact, from 2001 to 2010 its economic growth has generally surpassed ours.)

America’s government is not too big. It is not “out of control.” Measured by the number of public sector employees compared to the overall population, in fact, it is at its smallest size since 1968. The Democratic compulsion to take the lead in making it smaller, to “control” it, is in itself a serious historic problem —and a perverse one at that. For it doesn’t work. Bill Clinton tried it in the 1990s, working with Republicans in Congress both to obliterate the deficit caused by Republican budgetary mismanagement, and “end welfare as we know it.”

What happened to the resulting budgetary surplus they created? Republican mismanagement and ideological extremism obliterated it, and the public acted like no miracle save for drastic cuts in middle-class entitlements could ever bring it back; media gatekeepers immediately forgot that Democrats had been “responsible” fiscal stewards, just like much of the populace simply forgot what Clinton did with welfare. After Hurricane Katrina, the story was that black residents of New Orleans had become so enervated by their reliance on welfare checks they were too dumb to get out of the rain. It was as if America’s newly stripped-bare welfare system’s time limits, work requirements and block grants had been thrown down a memory hole — even as, seven years later in our current unemployment crisis, according to the nonpartisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, welfare reform now greatly contributes to increased rates of poverty.

A simple historical fact: There is no political payoff for Democrats in presiding over governmental austerity. The evidence goes far back to long before Bill Clinton. In the mid-1970s, the first superstar of the Democratic austerity movement, William Proxmire, a budgetary obsessive whose campaign bumper stickers read “Waste Will Bury Us,” began awarding a monthly “Golden Fleece Award” to the government expenditure he judged the most wasteful — a clown show that frequently had no more effect than making things difficult for scientists doing basic research that frequently led to revolutionary breakthroughs. Austerity was the ideology of Gov. Jerry Brown in California, too — and also the man who beat Brown for the Democratic presidential nominee in 1976, Jimmy Carter, who announced, in his 1978 State of the Union address that “Government cannot eliminate poverty or provide a bountiful economy or reduce inflation or save our cities or provide energy.”

What Carter said wasn’t even true; for instance, he did deploy the power of government to reduce inflation, by appointing a Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, with a mandate to squeeze the money supply, an act of deliberate austerity that induced the recession that defeated him. Like I said, there was no political payoff: Ronald Reagan, depicting Carter on the campaign trail as just another Democratic spendthrift, defeated him, reappointed Volcker, then harvested the political credit when Volcker’s governmental policies did slay inflation. And then came the amnesia: When, 18 years later, Bill Clinton gave much the same State of the Union address — “The era of big government is over” — people acted like no Democrat had ever said anything like that before.

Now Barack Obama, oblivious, may be barreling into a yet more dangerous austerity dare, perhaps squeezing the two most effective and popular government programs in existence — Social Security and Medicare. Credibly pledging not just to preserve them but to extend them has been how generations of Democratic politicians have turned millions into habitual Democratic voters.

Barack Obama didn’t win by promising a grand bargain to rein them in. He won despite it. Democrats won’t win in the future by “reforming” entitlements. If they do it, they will lose, precisely because of it, and possibly for generations. If he believes things to be otherwise, God help the party of Jefferson and Jackson.

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Thursday, November 8, 2012 by Campaign for America's Future
Voters Didn't Ask for Bi-Partisanship,
They Demanded Good Policies
After the Election, a New Mandate -- and New 'Fiscal Cliff' Math

by Richard Eskow

 

 

President Obama was reportedly planning to reach out to House Majority Leader John Boehner today to begin negotiating a deal to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff," a series of spending cuts and tax hikes scheduled take effect unless Congress rescinds the law that created it.

That overture is both appropriate and statesmanlike. The public expects its leaders to work together on important issues.

The question is, what kind of deal? Boehner's been acting as intransigent as ever, telling Reuters that Congressional Republicans will have "a mandate to not raise taxes."

Now Boehner's saying he's willing to raise "tax revenue," as long as tax rates are lowered even more. That's a coded way of saying he wants even more tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and that Democrats should expect to get that "revenue" by eliminating tax deductions for struggling middle-class Americans. That's likely to mean losing deductions for dependent children and mortgages, and tax changes that will lead to even less health coverage for working Americans. He says he'll also demand cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of any deal.

But Boehner isn't holding the cards in this situation. The president is. All the numbers say so -- in the election results, the polling data, and even in the stock market, if you read it correctly.

The New Math
As the Democrats were fond of saying this year: It's not politics, it's math. Here's some math that Congressional Republicans -- and austerity-minded Democrats -- are going to have to deal with:

A headline in the New York Times read, "Question for the Victor: How Far Do You Push?" The answer: As far as the voters have asked you to push.

2 to 1: Voters have given Democrats two of three branches of elected government. Two out of three aint' bad. In fact, it's a mandate to govern. Memo to John Boehner from the voters: When you've only got one out of three branches, you may be a partner in the political process -- but you're the junior partner.

12,744,844: Democratic Senatorial candidates got 12,744,844 more votes than Republicans this year. According to my rough calculations, Democratic candidates got 57.44 percent of the popular vote. Republicans only got 41.57 percent.

Harry Reid's been saying all along that he doesn't want to cut Social Security. The voters agree with him. Deal with it, Republicans.

Zero: That's the approximate number of candidates whose embrace for the "Simpson Bowles" austerity plan was a pathway to victory. That plan would cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, and sharply cut into all forms of government spending, while lowering taxes even more for millionaires and corporations. It would almost certainly raise taxes sharply, however, for the middle class.

As Zaid Jilani notes, three highly-visible candidates who openly endorsed the Simpson Bowles plan -- or who were endorsed by one or both gentlemen themselves -- unanimously went down to defeat this week.

On the other hand, Virginia Senate candidate Tim Kaine of Virginia openly rejected the Simpson Bowles plan. He pulled off an upset victory.

303: That's the number of electoral votes President Obama received. He won a decisive victory around the country -- and he won the popular vote, too. You lost, Republicans, fair and square.

And about that whole "fair and square" thing: As the New York Times noted today, the reelection of House Republicans had a lot more to do with gerrymandering, incumbency and big-money corporate campaign financing than it did with any mandate not to cut taxes.
A headline in the New York Times read, "Question for the Victor: How Far Do You Push?" The answer: As far as the voters have asked you to push.

Inside Job
But that process seems to disturb a lot of pundits, press and political insiders. They'd rather things worked out behind closed doors -- "just send your man around to see my man," as J. P. Morgan suggested to Teddy Roosevelt. The president's going to be under a lot of pressure to preemptively surrender on his stated principles.The voters have asked President Obama and his fellow Democrats not to "shirk a fight" over economic issues. 

Americans for Tax Fairness compiled polling data which showed that 60 percent of voters wanted the Bush tax cuts ended for incomes of $250,000 and above. Voters said they wanted to see their Social Security and Medicare benefits protected, and the deficit addressed by increasing the rich instead, and they did so by the overwhelming margin of 64 percent to 17 percent. And 62 percent of those polled said that "the message [they] were trying to send to the next president and Congress with [their] votes this year" was: "We should make sure the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes."

And yet election-night commentary was filled with talk about the president's need to find "common ground," something we never heard about George W. Bush's two victories -- one of which came without either a popular-vote majority or an unequivocal electoral college win. Expect a lot more of this talk from insiders in the days and weeks to come.

These insiders don't seem to know or care that voters elected the president and his fellow Democrats because of those principles.

Rated X
The morally-compromised "ratings agencies" -- actually for-profit corporations that abused their obligations for years, directly contributing to the financial crisis of 2008 -- wasted no time getting into the act once the votes were counted. Fitch Ratings immediately warned the president that there would be "no fiscal honeymoon," saying that a failure to avoid the "fiscal cliff" would cost the U.S. government its "AAA" rating.

But international investors still love our government. They're essentially paying our Treasury to borrow money. And despite what the fearmongers are saying, the stock market didn't plunge because they're afraid we won't cut spending. While it's true that markets dislike uncertainty, what they really hate are austerity measures that shrink the economy.

Despite the mythology, the stock market didn't fall the last time credit agencies frowned on the the government's credit. It was the deal itself that dealt it a blow:

 You can see that the market began to fall in anticipation of a deficit deal, and fell even further when the deal was done. But it shrugged off a downgrade by S&P, another ratings agency and even climbed slightly. Why? Because investors know that spending cuts in this economic climate are recipe for disaster.

And after all those "agencies" gave all worthless mortgage securities a "AAA" rating -- apparently investors don't rate them very highly.

Stepping Up
At times during his first term, the president appeared to show disdain for ideology, for advocacy for the conflicts that are part of the political process. He sometimes spoke of emulating the compromises reached between Ronald Reagan and House Majority Leader Tip O'Neill, but without offering the fierce advocacy each of those leaders first gave for his own viewpoint.

But it was a newly energized president who addressed supporters on election night, saying "We will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there."

"I'm not talking about blind optimism," President Obama told the cheering Chicago crowd. "I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight."

That's the process the public needs to see -- the disagreement, the debate, and the conflict, as well as the compromise and the forging of consensus. Voters need to know why they're getting the policies that affect them, and which politicians are pulling for (or against) them.

That's a promising sign. The absence of disagreement and ferocity has sometimes robbed the public of the opportunity to make informed choices in the voting booth. Would voters have given the reins of power back to Boehner and Congressional Republicans if they'd been able to see just how extreme their positions have been for the last two years?

The voters have asked President Obama and his fellow Democrats not to "shirk a fight" over economic issues. We look forward to seeing the democratic process unfold over the coming weeks, months and years, as a much-needed fight against economic injustice is played out in the public arena.

That's not partisanship. It's math.

DC Comics cancels 'Hellblazer'

HELLBLAZER has long been my first or second favorite comic of all of them. It changes positions from time to time with my other favorite, Transmetropolitan (which ended back in 2002), but only for the past year has it ever really sucked like it does here at its end. And it does need to end, not be brought back as a lamer, weaker clone.

A dark day as DC rebrands the character, waters him down and eventually turns him from a blonde British mage into an American goofball pseudo-detective with “magic powers.

Ultimately, with everything spinning out of control in the world, this doesn’t matter, but the character meant so much to a handful of people—and it was sad to see the character of John Constantine disintegrate due to the horrible writing of the series’ current and last writer ever, Peter fucking Milligan. Some people loved his run, but I question their love of the character if they have enjoyed what Milligan has inflicted upon him.

People can argue all day long about what really killed Hellblazer—the fact that the character has existed in comics for 25 years, changed only by the POV of certain writers: the rebranding will water the character down and make an adult character into a palatable mush suitable for children. But the poor writing over the past few years under Milligan was the stake to its heart. In the past few issues, Milligan made the character cheat on his wife in a casual flippant way and on the same page, murder someone outright. John Constantine IS a bastard, but not that kind of bastard. After so many bad issues of the comic, many of us thought it was time to end the book. But with the cancellation of Hellblazer comes the introduction of the new series, John Constantine (no longer pronounced “-TYNE (rhymes with sign)” but now “-TEEN (rhymes with and is for teen).” It is based on the long running VERTIGO character, but stripped of all his most appealing qualities and made into a PG character who no longer says “fuck” and will probably stop smoking and drinking as well. Not a healthy image for teens, after all.

It is my humble prediction that John’s current nemesis in Justice League Dark (step two in DC’s rebranding of the character, a wholly uninteresting book of occult-type characters who fight occult-type criminals), Nick Necro (who is exactly like the character of John in the film Constantine[-teen]) will somehow switch bodies with John in order to bring the comic up-to-date with the 2006 film—because re-branding means consistency across the board, and consistency across the board is needed for marketing purposes, and marketing is an industry devised by the devil himself and comprised of demons.

So, a year from now, John Constantine, Hellblazer will probably have gone from this:



to this:



in order to more closely resemble this:



A pathetic effort that should have been avoided by casting the character correctly for the film.

There lies the body of John Constantine, Hellblazer soon to be exhumed and reanimated as New (now more palatable and non-threatening) John “Constanteen,” Pseudo-Detective by an American writer. (Understand, the difference in the name pronunciation is the least of anyone’s complaints, but it DOES help to differentiate the old classic John from the New 52 soda pop John). And like the entire roster of DC’s 2011 reboot of every one of its characters (including Superman, Batman, et al), this too will be doomed to fail—because when you strip a character of the qualities that made him interesting and compelling to read, the character logically becomes uninteresting and no one will care to follow his exploits in the funny pages. DC’s reboot is a failure as far as I’m concerned. They may have gained more fans, but they lost many in the process. So, to basically break even, they ruined everything that used to be good about their comics. Even the writing of Grant Morrison couldn’t make the new Superman interesting. And that’s saying something.

RIP old son.

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DC Comics cancels Hellblazer, announces new Constantine series for 2013

November 8, 2012
By: Adam Bernstein

Bittersweet news today for John Constantine fans as DC Comics announced that Hellblazer, the longest running Vertigo title that first began as a spinoff of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, will soon be wrapping up its run with #300 in February of next year. Featuring the chain-smoking character of John Constantine, the British occult expert and mage, "Hellblazer" first launched in 1988 and has since grown to become one of the most successful books in Vertigo's stable of titles.

Fortunately for fans, Constantine won't be gone for long as the publisher also revealed that a brand new series is set to arrive next year for the current Justice League Dark member.


DC Comics has confirmed that Robert Vendetti and Renato Guides will be launching a new ongoing series for the anti-hero detective that will be set within the DC's relaunched universe.

Titled Constantine, the upcoming series promises to keep many of the strongest elements that have helped to define the character in the past while adding additional twists too as he finds his way in the New 52 universe.

"He's going to be the same age that he is in "Justice League Dark" and the same character that people know and recognize — the drinking and smoking, the con man aspect of him — that's going to be very much part of the series," said Robert Vendetti. "I like the idea of him being so layered. There's always machinations going on underneath with Constantine and that's what makes him such an enjoyable character to read and write."

View the official press release below:

John Constantine has been a constant presence in the pages of DC Comics, having first appeared in SWAMP THING in the 1980s and up through his current adventures in the pages of JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK, ANIMAL MAN and SWORD OF SORCERY.

Now, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS announced this morning that the chain-smoking British occult detective will headline his own ongoing comic book series as part of DC Comics-The New 52.
Launching in March 2013, CONSTANTINE will be written by upcoming DEMON KNIGHTS writer and New York Times bestselling author of The Homeland Directive and the sci-fi graphic novel series The Surrogates, Robert Venditti, with incredible art by Renato Guedes (SUPERMAN).

"Few characters in comics are as complex and entertaining as John Constantine, and I'm finding him to be every bit as enjoyable to write as he is to read," says Venditti. "It's my goal to have the new CONSTANTINE series be equal parts familiarity and surprise. This will be the Constantine we all know and love, but facing new and unexpected challenges from both inside and out."

HELLBLAZER, Vertigo's longest-running series which currently headlines John Constantine, will end with issue #300 in February.

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Hellblazer Ends, CONSTANTINE Begins - In The DCU!

By Lucas Siegel, Newsarama
posted: 08 November 2012

Hellblazer, the long-running Vertigo series that follows occult detective John Constantine through his darkest adventures, is coming to an end with February's issue #300, the AP reports. The series finale will be handled by writer Peter Milligan, who has been with the title for several years, and drawn by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Stefano Landini.

But the bigger news, at least when it comes to reaction from the fans of the character and series, is that Robert Venditti and Renato Guedes will be launching Constantine, a new solo series for the character that takes place not in the mature subset of DC Comics, but instead in the "New 52" DC Universe. That means his solo adventures will now take place alongside characters like Superman and Batman, instead of being isolated to his own little corner of the world.

John Constantine rejoined the DC Universe shortly before the relaunch that reset the entire line of titles to first issues, and has been a member of the Justice League Dark team of supernatural and magical characters since its launch in September 2011. Venditti said that he'll be drawing from both Hellblazer and JLD for his take on the character.

"He's going to be the same age that he is in Justice League Dark and the same character that people know and recognize - the drinking and smoking, the con man aspect of him - that's going to be very much part of the series," Venditti told the AP. He added that the character's depth will be a large focus.

 "I like the idea of him being so layered. There's always machinations going on underneath with Constantine and that's what makes him such an enjoyable character to read and write," said Venditti.

Venditti recently relaunched another character at the reborn Valiant Entertainment, X-O Manowar, which he says makes him uniquely suited to the job of handling Constantine's new series.

"The mission is very much the same," he said in the AP's article. "While I'm aware of all the rich history, I can't look at it from 'How am I going to compete with that?' I am going to come to the book and tell the best stories that I can."

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HELLBLAZER Canceled at Vertigo, Industry Reacts Strongly

By Lucas Siegel, Newsarama posted: 08 November 2012

The news of Hellblazer #300 being canceled, to be replaced by Constantine #1 set in the DC Universe has set twitter ablaze with reactions from those who've written and drawn the series, as well as those who aspired to. We've also reached out to several folks and will have those comments later, but for now, here are some reactions from around the twitterverse. In the spirit of Vertigo, we're leaving these comments uncensored.

Rob Williams
"Kind of sad to see Hellblazer ending."

Andy Diggle
"Desperately sad to hear that HELLBLAZER will be coming to an end after 300 issues. I cannot overstate the importance of that book, and the character of John Constantine, not only to my work but to my worldview. I was lucky enough to write Hellblazer a few years back, and it was like meeting up with an old friend. I just *knew* him. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way. Just that I’d been following him since his first appearance in Swamp Thing when I was 15 years old. True fact: John Constantine is the reason I started reading (and eventually writing) American comics. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing led me to my first comic shop to hunt for back issues. Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing led me to my first comic shop to hunt for back issues. Fuck, I feel like I’ve lost an old friend. (we have---Jef)

Trish Mulvihill
""Hellblazer" is ending? :("

Joshua Hale Fialkov
"one of my great regrets is never getting to write the "real" John Constantine."

Warren Ellis
HELLBLAZER cancelled, replaced by PG version. Sad to see that place for British horror stories go.

Brian Wood
"Ugh! [in reply to Ellis]" "Seems very likely if I had launched The Massive at Vertigo as originally conceived, they would have cancelled it by now."

Ryan Kelly
"The only Hellblazer I'll ever get to draw is crappy fan art. I'll be at the bar, sobbing."

Kieron Gillen
"RIP Hellblazer. One of the greats. The end of Planetary 7 comes to mind. "Time to be someone else".

(Part of me also thinks "You're not a real British Comics Writer unless you've written Hellblazer". So that's me doomed)"

Declan Shalvey
  "What the...... god dammit"

Jock
"sad news about HELLBLAZER."
"would it be crass to say that HELLBLAZER: PANDEMONIUM, by @jamiedelano and myself is still out, full of swearing, politics and blood?"

Dave Gibbons
"[in reply to Andy Diggle] Know what you mean. I wrote a couple of short stories and it's a cliche, I know, but Constantine just spoke for himself."

Jordan White
"I cannot tell you how upset I am that Hellblazer is ending. It's probably my favorite book DC is doing. I hope they give it a good ending."

David Gallaher
"Bummed about the loss of Hellblazer. Image Comics has largely made Vertigo irrelevant. Can't say I'm surprised."

Paul Cornell
"I guess I always sort of assumed that one day I would write Hellblazer."

Si Spurrier
"[in reply to Cornell] Me too, mate. Closest I ever got was a pisstake in Bec and Kawl. Now I feel bad."

Tim Seeley
"That's kinda the nail in the Vertigo coffin, yeah?"

Mark Millar
"WTF? Hellblazer CANCELLED"

Ian Rankin
"Just heard Hellblazer comic book is for the chop. Only series I've ever written for. Only one I wanted to write for. Constantine RIP..."

Leah Moore
"Really don't see point of ending Hellblazer. Really doubt Constantine will replace it."

Axel Alonso
"Vertigo "Hellbazer" cancelled for DCU relaunch!? NOOOOOO!!!!!"

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Committed: Hellblazer – DC Shoot Themselves in the Foot (again)

November 8, 2012

by Sonia Harris

Today I found out that Hellblazer is cancelled, and John Constantine is moving into the main, general DC universe (see the CBR piece for more about the mechanics on that.)

Unable to come up with any decent new ideas, DC has gone from fiddling with one 30 year old Alan Moore creation – Watchmen – to messing up another: Hellblazer. 

Of course DC has forced itself to continue this practice of pillaging it’s own powerful history of creations because it has hobbled the creation of new ideas. A champion against creators rights, and infamously instituting a policy of marketing-driven, decision-making-by-committee, the comic book publisher has become a bastion of tired ideas and restrictively tedious comic books. In this brave new world, there is obviously no space for a renegade division like Vertigo, and the gradual dismantling continues apace, as they hand the reigns of Constantine over to an American writer and place John Constantine (a character who’s very raison d’etre is the juxtaposition of his own very British strangeness) within the mundane “real” world.

Two weeks ago, when I wrote about my distaste for the liberties Justice League Dark #0 had taken with John Constantine and then saw that laughably bad storyline continued in Justice League Dark, I knew what it meant. It was obvious then that DC was gearing up for something stupid, and today they did it. Now that I have stopped buying Justice League Dark, my consumption of DC comic books has dropped to zero. Clearly they did a great job on their bloody relaunch, in that they completely pissed off most of their existing readers.

I understand that DC wants to make more money from Hellblazer, so here are some ideas, but primarily I want to say that if DC wants to make money out of Hellblazer, stop messing about with the comic book and spread out:

1. Make a GOOD movie
A Chris Nolan type of thing. Dark and adult. Use Warren Ellis’s storyline. Make it look like a Tim Bradstreet drawing. British writers are working on tons of DC titles, yet they won’t be letting a British writer write this established British character? Realistically, how is it possible that Superman, Spider-Man, and Batman have ALL been played by British actors, yet they cannot make a film with a British actor playing John Constantine?

2. Make a TV show
Think about licensing it as a TV show. If Grimm, Supernatural, and Elementary can make money, why isn’t an old-school mage like John Constantine out there?

3. Package entire runs as digital bundles
Make it simpler for digital readers to catch up and collect. Try selling digital packages of storylines in bundles for new readers who want to catch up.

4. Number the trade paperbacks
I know, crazy idea, but people ALWAYS ask me about that. It would make it much easier for new readers.

5. Repackage the trade paperbacks for an older, broader audience
Give them covers which look more like a novel, more appealing to people who read horror. Look at popular novels in the horror genre and go for that market in regular book stores.

 

 

6. Repackage (and commission more) premium books for the book store audience
A nice little number – Dark Entries – was produced by Ian Rankin not so long ago, but a black and white graphic novel has a narrower audience, even if I do prefer it myself. Another beautiful one – Pandemonium – by Delano and Jock, suffered from targeting only a comic book reading audience. If money is to be made by a mature-readers horror book, it has to aim for a wider audience.

These aren’t revolutionary ideas. I’m sure other have thought of them, I’m just trying to be constructive and positive here. The main thing I’m trying to get across is that the way comic books make money is no longer purely through the direct market and not just on the current book itself. The monthly, ongoing comic book is really just the tip of the iceberg and should be treated as such. By trying to flog comic books and make money like they did in the past DC is screwing them up a lot. 

Move on, DC! The world has changed and your inability to deal with that is totally fucking up my comic books. Your marketing department is delusional, the money you can make from comic books directly is very limited. Be realistic, no print media market is growing right now, the entertainment market is disseminating. Deal with it and stop flogging a dead horse. 

You can take all of your marketing ideas and channel them away from the comic book and into various other areas of entertainment like licensing and publishing options, making money from the comic books indirectly, and letting the comic books be the rich, unfettered breeding ground for the ideas to grow in. Alan Moore was right, you’re still picking over things he made 30 years ago and it is embarrassing. Just stop it, please.

 

And here's a better eulogy for Hellblazer than mine.

Red State Spex

U.S. Elections: Will the Dead Vote and Voting Machines be Hacked?

November 3, 2012 | Paul Craig Roberts

 

“He who casts a vote decides nothing.
He who counts the vote decides everything.”
-Joseph Stalin 

 

Whether or not he said it, Stalin’s quote has entered into folklore. For a vote to mean anything, those counting the ballots must have a greater respect for the integrity of democracy than they have lust for power.

Since Stalin’s time, the technology has changed. With electronic voting machines, which leave no paper trail and are programmed with proprietary software, the count can be decided before the vote. Those who control the electronics can simply program voting machines to elect the candidate they want to win. Electronic voting is not transparent. When you vote electronically, you do not know for whom you are voting. Only the machine knows.

According to most polls, the race for the White House is too-close-to-call. History has shown that when an election is close and there’s no expectation for a clear winner, these are the easiest ones to steal. Even more important, the divergence between exit polls, perhaps indicating the real winner, and the stolen result, if not overdone, can be very small. Those who stole the election can easily put on TV enough experts to explain that the divergence between the exit polls and the vote count is not statistically significant or is because women or racial minorities or members of one party were disproportionately questioned in exit polls.

There have been recent reports that, because of costs, exit polls in the 2012 presidential election will no longer be conducted on the usual comprehensive basis in order to save money. If the reports are correct, no check remains on election theft.

Digital Votes

In a fascinating article in Harper’s Magazine (October 26, 2012) Victoria Collier notes that in the old technology, election theft depended on the power of machine politicians, such as Louisiana Senator Huey Long, to prevent exposure.

With the advent of modern technology, Collier writes that “a brave new world of election rigging emerged.” The brave new world of election theft was created by “the mass adoption of computerized voting technology and the outsourcing of our elections to a handful of corporations that operate in the shadows, with little oversight or accountability. This privatization of our elections has occurred without public knowledge or consent, leading to one of the most dangerous and least understood crisis in the history of American democracy. We have actually lost the ability to verify election results.”

The old ballot-box fraud was localized and limited in its reach. Electronic voting allows elections to be rigged on a statewide and national scale. Moreover, with electronic voting there are no missing ballot boxes to recover from the Louisiana bayous. Using proprietary corporate software, the vote count is what the software specifies.

The first two presidential elections in the 21st century are infamous. George W. Bush’s win over Al Gore was decided by the Republicans on the US Supreme Court who stopped the Florida vote recount.

In 2004, George W. Bush won the vote count although exit polls indicated that he had been defeated by John Kerry. Collier reports:

“Late on Election Day, John Kerry showed an insurmountable lead in exit polling, and many considered his victory all but certified. Yet the final vote tallies in thirty states deviated widely from exit polls, with discrepancies favoring George W. Bush in all but nine. The greatest disparities were concentrated in battleground states – particularly Ohio. In one Ohio precinct, exit polls indicated that Kerry should have received 67 percent of the vote, but the certified tally gave him only 38 percent. The odds of such an unexpected outcome occurring only as a result of sampling error are 1 in 867,205,553. To quote Lou Harris, who has long been regarded as the father of modern political polling: ‘Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen.’” 

The electronic vote theft era, Collier reports, “was inaugurated by Chuck Hagel, an unknown millionaire who ran for one of Nebraska’s U.S. Senate seats in 1996. Initially Hagel trailed the popular Democratic governor, Ben Nelson, who had been elected in a landslide two years earlier. Three days before the election, however, a poll conducted by the Omaha World-Herald showed a dead heat, with 47 percent of respondents favoring each candidate. David Moore, who was then managing editor of the Gallup Poll, told the paper, ‘We can’t predict the outcome.’”

“Hagel’s victory in the general election, invariably referred to as an ‘upset,’ handed the seat to the G.O.P. for the first time in eighteen years. Hagel trounced Nelson by fifteen points. Even for those who had factored in the governor’s deteriorating numbers and a last-minute barrage of negative ads, this divergence from pre-election polling was enough to raise eyebrows across the nation.” 

“Few Americans knew that until shortly before the election, Hagel had been chairman of the company whose computerized voting machines would soon count his own votes: Election Systems & Software (then called American Information Systems). Hagel stepped down from his post just two weeks before announcing his candidacy. Yet he retained millions of dollars in stock in the McCarthy Group, which owned ES&S. And Michael McCarthy, the parent company’s founder, was Hagel’s campaign treasurer.” 

Vote theft might also explain the defeat of Max Cleland, a Democratic Senator from Georgia. As Collier documents:

“In Georgia, for example, Diebold’s voting machines reported the defeat of Democratic senator Max Cleland. Early polls had given the highly popular Cleland a solid lead over his Republican opponent, Saxby Chambliss, a favorite of the Christian right, the NRA, and George W. Bush (who made several campaign appearances on his behalf). As Election Day drew near, the contest narrowed. Chambliss, who had avoided military service, ran attack ads denouncing Cleland – a Silver Star recipient who lost three limbs in Vietnam – as a traitor for voting against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Two days before the election, a Zogby poll gave Chambliss a one-point lead among likely voters, while the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Cleland maintained a three-point advantage with the same group.” 

Rigged Game

“Cleland lost by seven points. In his 2009 autobiography, he accused computerized voting machines of being ‘ripe for fraud.’ Patched for fraud might have been more apt. In the month leading up to the election, Diebold employees, led by Bob Urosevich, applied a mysterious, uncertified software patch to 5,000 voting machines that Georgia had purchased in May.” 

“We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn’t do,” Diebold consultant and whistle-blower Chris Hood recounted in a 2006 Rolling Stone article. “The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done. . . . It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state. . . . We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from [Bob] Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level.” 

When the Republican Supreme Court prevented the Florida recount in the deciding state between George W. Bush and Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election, the Democrats’ response was to acquiesce in order not to shake the confidence of Americans in democracy. Similarly, John Kerry acquiesced in 2004 despite the large disparity between exit polls and vote counts. But how can Americans have confidence in democracy when voting is not transparent?

For now Republicans seem to have the technological advantage with their ownership of companies that produce electronic voting machines programmed by proprietary software, but in the future the advantage could shift to Democrats. Early voting aids electronic election theft. Successful and noncontroversial theft depends on knowing how to program the machines. The victory needs to be within the range of plausibility. Too big a victory raises eyebrows, but if the guess is wrong in the other direction theft fails. Early voting helps the voting machine programmers decide how to set the machines.

Voting 2.0

The absence of transparency is a threat to whatever remains of American democracy. In the Summer 2011 issue of The Trends Journal, Gerald Celente made the point that “if we can bank online, we can vote online.”

Think about it! Across the globe, trillions of dollars of bank transactions are made each day, and rarely are they compromised. If we can accurately count money online, we can certainly count votes accurately online. The only obstacles blocking online voting are entrenched political interests intent upon controlling the ballot box.

The lack of transparency has given rise to election litigation. On October 29, The Washington Post reported that “thousands of attorneys, representing the two major presidential candidates, their parties, unions, civil rights groups and voter-fraud watchdogs, are in place across the country, poised to challenge election results that may be called into question by machine failures, voter suppression or other allegations of illegal activity.”

Voting online, if properly arranged, can provide the transparency that the current system lacks. While the GOP might remain active in voter suppression, the Democrats could no longer vote graveyards, and the count of those who do manage to vote would not be subject to secret proprietary software.

In 2005 the nonpartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform concluded that the integrity of elections was compromised by those who controlled the programming. Proprietary private ownership of voting technology is simply incompatible with transparent elections. A country without a transparent vote is a country without democracy.

Last-Minute Ohio Directive Could Trash Legal Votes And Swing The Election

By Judd Legum on Nov 3, 2012
 Think-Progress

A last-minute directive issued by Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) could invalidate legal provisional ballots. Ohio is widely viewed as the most critical state for both presidential campaigns and — with some polls showing a close race — the 11th-hour move could swing the entire election.

The directive, issued Friday, lays out the requirements for submitting a provisional ballot. The directive includes a form which puts the burden on the voter to correctly record the form of ID provided to election officials. Husted also instructed election officials that if the form is not filled out correctly by a voter, the ballot should not be counted.

According to a lawsuit filed by voting rights advocates, this is “contrary to a court decision on provisional ballots a week ago and contrary to statements made by attorneys for Husted at an Oct. 24 court hearing.”

Indeed, it also appears directly contrary to Ohio law. From the lawsuit:

Ohio Rev. Code § 3505.181(B)(6) provides that, once a voter casting a provisional ballot proffers identification, “the appropriate local election official shall record the type of identification provided, the social security number information, the fact that the affirmation was executed, or the fact that the individual declined to execute such an affirmation and include that information with the transmission of the ballot . . . .” (Emphasis added.)

The law “ensures that any questions regarding a voter’s identification are resolved on the spot or, consistent with due process, the voter is informed that he or she needs to provide additional information to the board of elections. This protects the integrity of the voting process, and provides a reasonable opportunity to resolve deficiencies.”

The last-minute directive changes this and switches the burden to the voter, greatly increasing the chances that legal provisional ballots will be discarded.

The court gave Husted until Monday to respond to the lawsuit and indicated it will resolve the dispute before provisional ballots are counted on November 17.

Husted has also tried to limit voting in Ohio by reducing early voting hours.

Live. From new york. Its saturday night.

"Hello. Its louis here. I’m clacking this to you on my phone in my dressing room here at studio 8H, right in 30 rockefeller center, in Manhattan, new york city, new york, america, world, current snapshot of all existence everywhere.

"Tonight I’m hosting Saturday Night Live, something I zero ever in my life saw happening to me. And yet here it is completely most probably happening (I mean, ANYTHING could NOT happen. So we’ll see).

"I’ve been working here all week with the cast, crew, producers and writers of SNL, and with Lorne Michaels. Such a great and talented group of people.

"And here we are in the middle of New York City, which was just slammed by a hurricane, leaving behind so much trouble, so much difficulty and trauma, which everyone here is still dealing with every day.

"Last night we shot some pre-tape segments in greenwich Village, which was pitch black dark for blocks and blocks, as it has been for a week now.

"Its pretty impossible to describe walking through these city streets in total darkness. It can’t even be called a trip through time, because as long as new york has lived, its been lit. By electricity, gas lamps, candlelight, kerosene. But this was pitch black, street after street, corner round corner. And for me, the village being the very place that made me into a comedian and a man, to walk through the heart of it and feel like, in a way, it was dead. I can’t tell you how that felt. And you also had a palpable sense that inside each dark window was a family or a student or an artist or an old woman living alone, just being int he dark and waiting for the day to come back. Like we were all having one big sleep over, but not so much fun as that.

"This is how a lot of the city is still. I know people in queens, brooklyn, Staten Island, new jersey, all over, are not normal yet. And not normal is hard.

"And here at 30 rock, these folks are working so hard this week. There are kids in the studio every day, because members of the crew and staff had to bring them to work. Many people are sharing lodging. Everyone is tired. But there’s this feeling here that we’ve got to put on a great show. I’m sure it feels like that here every week. But wow. I feel really lucky to be sharing this time with these particular good folks here at SNL.

"In about 5 hours we’ll be going on the air. I’ll do a monologue. And we’ll show you some sketches that we wrote and try to make you laugh. I’m gonna look really dumb in some of this stuff. But I don’t care. Its awfully worth it. And I’m really excited.

"Anyway. I just wanted to let you know. If you watch the show tonight, when Don Pardo says my name and you see me walking out, all the shit in this email is what ill be thinking. I’m a pretty lucky guy. I hope you enjoy the show.
Thanks.

"Louis C.K.
Live. From new york. Its saturday night."

- Louis CK, in am email sent Saturday afternoon, Nov. 3 2012

A History of the US Congress

Sleep Positions

BBC - Reblogged from http://geneticist.tumblr.com/

Professor Chris Idzikowski, director of the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service, has analysed six common sleeping positions - and found that each sleep position is linked to a particular personality type.

Thinker: Those who curl up in the foetus position are described as tough on the outside but sensitive at heart. They may be shy when they first meet somebody, but soon relax.

Log (15%): Lying on your side with both arms down by your side. These sleepers are easy going, social people who like being part of the in-crowd, and who are trusting of strangers. However, they may be gullible.

The yearner (13%): People who sleep on their side with both arms out in front are said to have an open nature, but can be suspicious, cynical. They are slow to make up their minds, but once they have taken a decision, they are unlikely ever to change it.

Soldier (8%): Lying on your back with both arms pinned to your sides. People who sleep in this position are generally quiet and reserved. They don’t like a fuss, but set themselves and others high standards.

Freefall (7%): Lying on your front with your hands around the pillow, and your head turned to one side. Often gregarious and brash people, but can be nervy and thin-skinned underneath, and don’t like criticism, or extreme situation

Stargazer (5%): Lying on your back with both arms up around the pillow. These sleepers make good friends because they are always ready to listen to others, and offer help when needed. They generally don’t like to be the centre of attention.