White House appears ready to drop ‘public option’
By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer – 1 min agoWASHINGTON – Apparently ready to abandon the idea, President Barack Obama‘s health secretary said Sunday a government alternative to private health insurance is “not the essential element” of the administration’s health care overhaul.
.The White House indicated it could jettison the contentious public option and settle on insurance cooperatives as an acceptable alternative, a move embraced by some Republicans lawmakers who have strongly opposed the administration’s approach so far.
.Officials from both political parties reached across the aisle in an effort to find compromises on proposals they left behind when they returned to their districts for an August recess. Obama has been pressing for the government to run a health insurance organization to help cover the nation’s almost 50 million uninsured.
.Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the White House would be open to co-ops instead of a government-run public option, a sign Democrats want a compromise so they can declare a victory on the must-win showdown.
.“I think there will be a competitor to private insurers,” she said. “That’s really the essential part, is you don’t turn over the whole new marketplace to private insurance companies and trust them to do the right thing. We need some choices, we need some competition.”
.Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said co-ops might be a politically acceptable alternative as “a step away from the government takeover of the health care system” that the GOP has assailed.
.Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate’s budget committee, pushed the co-op model as an alternative, saying it has worked in other business models.
.As proposed by Conrad, the co-ops would receive federal startup money, but then would operate independently of the government. They would have to maintain the same financial reserves that private companies are required to keep to handle unexpectedly high claims.
.Republicans say a public option would have unfair advantages that would drive private insurers out of business. Critics say co-ops would not be genuine public options for health insurance.
.Meanwhile, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he would return to the bargaining sessions to find a bipartisan solution to a health care problem that has long vexed Washington.
.“I’m always ready to go back to the bargaining table,” Hatch said. “Heck, I’ve probably helped pass more bipartisan health care legislation than anybody I know.”
.That legislation, however, seemed likely to strike end-of-life counseling sessions. Former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin has called the session “death panels,” a label that has drawn rebuke from her fellow Republicans as well as Democrats.
.Even so, Sebelius said the proposal was likely to be dropped from the final bill.
.“We wanted to make sure doctors were reimbursed for that very important consultation if family members chose to make it, and instead it’s been turned into this scare tactic and probably will be off the table,” she said. “And that’s not good news for the American public and not good news for family members.”
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White House appears ready to drop ‘public option’Posted by super sal
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16Aug 09 (0) Comments Andy Kessler – RIPPosted by super sal
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13Aug 09 ::sigh:: NYC skateboarding pioneer Andy Kessler dies at 48 By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 22 mins ago NEW YORK – Andy Kessler, a trailblazer during New York City‘s nascent 1970s skateboarding scene and a designer of skate parks who was admired by boarders on both coasts, died Monday. He was 48.
. Kessler died after suffering a heart attack following an allergic reaction to a wasp sting, Moose Huerta, a close friend and fellow skateboarder, said Thursday. . He was dismantling old wood on a shack in Montauk, Long Island, when he was stung, said Tony Farmer, a skateboarding friend and West Coast native who now lives in Brooklyn. . Kessler got his start in the 1970s with a loose-knit group of skateboarders and graffiti artists known as the Soul Artists of Zoo York. They skated all over Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where Kessler lived. Central Park’s Bandshell was a favorite spot. . In the 1990s, Kessler persuaded the city’s Parks Department to build a skateboard facility in Riverside Park. He went on to design other skate parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Montauk. . Huerta said Kessler also developed a zeal for surfing in the past decade. . “The two groups are completely different from each other,” he said. “But the level of friends, and how he transcended age and demographics with the people he touched, was amazing.” . Kessler had no health insurance in 2005 when he took a spill on his board and dislocated his femur. When he was unable to pay a $51,000 medical bill, several dozen surfers, skaters and artists — Julian Schnabel, Mickey Eskimo, Zephyr and Wes Humpston reportedly among them — helped raise the money with a benefit party, Farmer said. . When he healed from the injury, he hopped back on his board, Farmer said. . “Flowing through traffic, timing lights, shooting reds, dodging pedestrians … dude just had the streets so wired,” Farmer said. “Suffice to say, he was an amazing cat.” . Huerta, who was too young to have skated with Kessler during the early days, said the sport started as “a counterculture activity” but never carried the cache that California skateboarding did. But Kessler didn’t care. . “He did it out of love,” he said. “He didn’t receive anything out of it. It spoke to him.” . In 2008, Kessler was featured in a documentary, “From Deathbowl to Downtown: The Evolution of Skateboarding in New York.” The producers, NCP Films, described it as “an anthropological overview of skating’s epochal shift from the parks and pools of the 70′s, to ramp skating in the 80′s, to the street ascendancy of the 1990′s as seen from a New York-centric perspective. . It is scheduled for international release on DVD on Sept. 15. . In addition to his love for the sport, Huerta said Kessler’s first big success was orchestrating the building of the city’s first skate park, near the Hudson River. At the time of his death, he was trying to update the Montauk skate park he had designed about a decade earlier, Huerta said. . On Friday evening, surfers planned to paddle out together and circle around Ditch Plains Beach in Montauk in remembrance of Kessler, Huerta said. Friends also planned a get-together Saturday at the Autumn Bowl, a semiprivate warehouse facility in Brooklyn that was one of Kessler’s favorite hangouts. . Kessler’s burial is scheduled for Sunday at Cedar Park Cemetery in Paramus, N.J. Les Paul – Rest in PeacePosted by super sal
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13Aug 09 pulled from yahoo .
Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94AP, Aug 13, 2009 11:56 am PDT.
Les Paul, who invented the solid-body electric guitar later wielded by a legion of rock ‘n’ roll greats, died Thursday of complications from pneumonia. He was 94.According to Gibson Guitar, Paul died at White Plains Hospital. His family and friends were by his side.
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As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording. .
The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-’50s. .
“Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music,” Paul once said. “To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn’t think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system.” .
A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings. .
“I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape. .
In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar. .
Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin‘s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string. .
Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600. .
In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the mid-’70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of 1976 for their “Chester and Lester” album. .
With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records for hits including “Vaya Con Dios” and “How High the Moon,” which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul had helped develop. .
“I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished,” he recalled. “This is quite an asset.” The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters. .
Released in 2005, “Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played” was his first album of new material since those 1970s recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora. .
“They’re not only my friends, but they’re great players,” Paul told The Associated Press. “I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.” .
Two cuts from the album won Grammys, “Caravan” for best pop instrumental performance and “69 Freedom Special” for best rock instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical Grammy in 2001.) .
Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005. .
Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD radio in Chicago. .
In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and soon moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and bassist Ernie Newton. .
Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were amplified and the volume level was still too low. .
By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929. .
His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. Drawing on his earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines, Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo. .
Tape echo gave the recording a more “live” feel and enabled the user to simulate different playing environments. .
Paul’s next “crazy idea” was to stack together eight mono tape machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served as the forerunner to today’s multitrack recorders. .
In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder, later known as “Sel-Sync,” in which a recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous ones. .
He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced. .
In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Dire Straits‘ Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with him. .
“It’s where we were the happiest, in a `joint,’” he said in a 2000 interview with the AP. “It was not being on top. The fun was getting there, not staying there — that’s hard work.” Top songs for the weekPosted by Ankur
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12Aug 09 Top songs for the week What a week. Joe Budden drops “Escape Route” and the Slaughterhouse album drops. All I can say is damn. Drake feat. Saukrates – The Search
2 Real 2 Furious from jeff on Vimeo. Top songs for the weekPosted by Ankur
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30Jul 09 Top songs for the week Amerie – Why R U (Remix) (Feat. Jadakiss, Nas, Rick Ross & Cain) This is a really awesome video.
joe budden on tnt’s dark blue??Posted by super sal
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19Jul 09 Top songs for the weekPosted by Ankur
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18Jul 09 Fabolous – Everything, Everyday, Everywhere (Feat. Keri Hilson & Ryan Leslie) Tops songs for the weekPosted by Ankur
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7Jul 09 It’s been a good week. lol Joell Ortiz (Feat. The Kickdrums) – How To Change
Drake “Best I Ever Had” Video by Kanye WestPosted by Ankur
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2Jul 09 …another reason why i’m glad jay-z retiredPosted by super sal
up until he left jordan-style, i couldn’t stand jay-z. he had singles, he had talent, but i never respected him as one of the greats…until he stopped rapping. then i loved everything he put out, especially the rick ruben work and american gangster was in full rotation for a while. it’s come to the point where i actually look forward to his next move, well with fm radio completely a lost cause and all. now with claims of kanye ‘creating the greatest beat of all time’ for the blueprint 3, we’ll see (like ankur said, i believe in him)… Slaughterhouse is amazing…Posted by Ankur
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29Jun 09 Top songs for the weekPosted by Ankur
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28Jun 09 Willy Northpole – #1 Side Chick (feat. Bobby Valentino) it’s about music.Posted by super sal
pulled from the smoking section
Top songs for the weekPosted by Ankur
In music
18Jun 09 Jadakiss – Who’s Real (Remix) (Feat. Eve, Drag-On, Styles P, Sheek Louch & DMX) |
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