The Rag Blog | The Latest in News and Views from the Progressive Front

Alice Embree :
METRO EVENT | DSA to screen ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’ at the Alamo Mueller

Posted on March 31, 2018 by Alice Embree

By Alice Embree | The Rag Blog | March 31, 2018

Event: Screening of ‘She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry’
When: Tuesday, April 17, 2018, 7 p.m.
Where: Alamo Drafthouse Mueller
Address: 1911 Aldrich Street, Austin, TX 78723
Sponsor: Feminist Action Committee, Austin Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

AUSTIN — On Tuesday, April 17, 2018, there will be a screening of Mary Dore and Nancy Kennedy’s documentary about the rise of the women’s movement in the United States between 1966 and 1971, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry. It will be shown at the Alamo Drafthouse Mueller, 1911 Aldrich Street, at 7 p.m.

The film was highlighted on The Rag Blog when it premiered in Austin in 2015.
Continue reading →

Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged Alice Embree, Austin DSA, Feminist Action Committee, Film, Metro, Movie Screening, She's Beautiful When She's Angry | Leave a comment

Steve Russell :
Your money and your life: The politics of
VA medical care

Posted on March 31, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

VA motto at he Department of Veterans Affairs Building in Washington, DC. Image from JeffOnWire / Flickr.

Paleoconservatives have a long-range plan to destroy Medicare and Medicaid without attacking them directly.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | March 31, 2018

Editor’s Note: The Rag Blog published Steve Russell’s article, “Your Money and Your Life,” on March 31. The article claimed that the Koch brothers funded a fake veterans organization to agitate for privatization of VA medical care. We noted that when Democratic politicians made that claim, The Washington Post slapped them down by “fact checking” the claim as deserving of “three Pinocchios.”

A week later, on April 7, The Washington Post published an article titled. “How a Koch-backed veterans group gained influence in Trump’s Washington.” The central claim was that the Koch brothers funded a fake veterans organization to agitate for privatization of VA medical care.

Pinocchio was out watering his Astroturf and could not be reached for comment.

In the revolving door that is the Trump administration, you can no longer keep track of the players without a program, and it almost requires a personal interest to motivate inquiry beyond Stormy and Summer and Karen. Karen? I was expecting Autumn or maybe Cyclone.

Since I do intend to bypass President Trump’s treatment of women — excepting the women who serve in the armed forces — I should confess my personal interest in the Department of Veterans Affairs, formerly known as the Veterans Administration and still called the VA. I am a Vietnam era veteran of the Air Force with a service-connected disability rated 60 percent. My son is a veteran of the Marine Corps and the Air Force Reserve and is medically retired from the Army after two combat tours in Iraq. His service-connected disability is 100 percent.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Health Care, Paleoconservatives, Rag Bloggers, Socialized Medicine, Steve Russell, Veterans Administration | 3 Comments

cindy soo :
METRO EVENT | Lucky Chaos presents ‘A Festival of Arts, Diversity & Community’

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Event: ‘Our House’
What: A Festival of Arts, Diversity & Community
Who: Produced by Lucky Chaos
When: Sunday, April 8, 2018, 6-10 p.m.
Where: Motion Media Arts Center
Address: 2200 Tillery, Austin, TX 78702
Cost: Free to the public

AUSTIN — Lucky Chaos is inviting the public to Our House: A Festival of Arts, Diversity & Community on Sunday, April 8, 2018, from 2-5 p.m., at the Motion Media Arts Center, 2200 Tillery in Austin.

The highlight of the arts and cultural festival is the rarely performed “Dian Jing,” an “eye-dotting” awakening ceremony for the group’s 20-foot Chinese dragon.
Continue reading →

Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged Arts, Asian-American, Diversity, Lucky Chaos, Metro, Our House Festival, Performance | Leave a comment

Shepherd Bliss :
Thousands of students protest gun violence

Posted on March 15, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

California students carried signs like, ‘I should be writing my term paper instead of my will.’

Memorial arranged by the eighth grade class at SunRidge Charter School in Sebastopol, CA. Photo by Bill Shortbridge / The Rag Blog.

By Shepherd Bliss | The Rag Blog | March 15, 2018

SONOMA COUNTY, California — Driving through small-town Sebastopol on March 14 toward the Senior Center, this 73-year-old noticed groups of young students with signs gathering on downtown street corners and waving to motorists. These active participants in direct democracy joined thousands who walked out of schools across the U.S. and the world, organized by the Women’s March Youth branch.

As I got closer to the students, a variety of feelings, thoughts, and memories emerged. Tears of appreciation began to drip from my eyes, as I learned why they were protesting.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Gun Laws, High School Walk-Outs, Rag Bloggers, School Shootings, Shepherd Bliss, Student Activism | Leave a comment

Alice Embree :
METRO EVENT | International Women’s Day Music Fest in Austin

Posted on March 1, 2018 by Alice Embree

Event: International Women’s Day Music Fest
What: Benefiting Lilith Fund
Who: Music and Spoken Word
When: Thursday, March 8, 2018, 6-10 p.m.
Address: Inks Ave., Austin 78702
Suggested Donation: $10
Sponsors: Feminist Action Committee, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)

AUSTIN — In celebration of International Women’s Day the Feminist Action Committee of Austin’s Democratic Socialists of America is putting on a Music Fest featuring bands and spoken word. A $10 donation is suggested and will benefit the Lilith Fund.

This will be the third year that DSA socialist feminists have fundraised for the Lilith Fund, an organization that supports the right of all Texans to make their own reproductive choices, regardless of income.
Continue reading →

Posted in Metro, RagBlog | Tagged Alice Embree, Austin DSA, International Women's Day, Lilith Fund, Metro | Leave a comment

Thorne Dreyer :
RAG RADIO PODCASTS | Interviews with Bill Minutaglio, Alice Embree, James Cole & Nicole Stasek, Harry Targ, Bruce Melton, Roy Casagranda & Glenn Smith, Alex Coke, Spencer Perskin & Shawn Siegel, and Lee Carter

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Our guests include the author of a cool new book about Timothy Leary, health justice and climate change activists, a Virginia Democratic Socialist, an acclaimed jazz musician, and classic Austin rockers.

Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer, left, and author Bill Minutaglio in the KOOP studios, Feb. 2, 2018. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | February 7, 2018

The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows with host Thorne Dreyer. The syndicated Rag Radio program, produced in the studios of Austin’s cooperatively-run KOOP-FM, has an international audience and has become an influential platform for interviews with leading figures in politics, current events, literature, and cutting-edge culture.

The show first airs Fridays, 2-3 p.m. (CT) on KOOP, 91.7-FM in Austin, and streams here: http://www.koop.org/listen-now, and here: http://www.radiofreeamerica.com/show/rag-radio-koop-radio.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Alex Coke, Alice Embree, Bill Minutaglio, Bruce Melton, Glenn Smith, Harry Targ, James Cole, Lee Carter, Nicole Stasek, Podcasts, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers, Rag Radio, Roy Casagranda, Shawn Siegel, Shiva's Headband, Spencer Perskin, Thorne Dreyer | Leave a comment

Alan Waldman :
FILM | Alan Waldman’s 20 favorite movies seen in 2017

Posted on February 6, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Plus his pick of TV shows, American & foreign, best stand-up specials, and, gulp, porn stars!

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | February 6, 2018

The year 2017 was a pretty good one for movies. Half of the ones I liked best were foreign — 30% British. World War II featured in four of them. Two featured dogs, one centered on an eagle, and another was set in a zoo. I didn’t see the big Oscar-candidate films that came out at the end of the year but am really looking forward to The Post, The Leisure Seeker, Darkest Hour, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

As usual, I saw lots of good, smart TV. Many of them were reviewed in my Rag Blog column and appear in my book, 89 Smart, Foreign TV Series). I list this year’s small screen crop (78 series) below, along with 16 stand-up comedy specials wife Sharon and I enjoyed — and a little something extra.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Alan Waldman, Best Films of 2017, Criticism, Film, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers, Television | Leave a comment

Jonah Raskin :
INTERVIEW | Are those typewriters still smoking?

Posted on February 5, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Jonah interviews John Campbell McMillan, author of ‘Smoking Typewriters,’ the definitive work on the ’60s underground press.

Historian John McMillian and his Oxford Press book about the Underground Press of the ’60s.

By Jonah Raskin | The Rag Blog | February 5, 2018

An associate professor of history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, with degrees from Harvard and Columbia, John Campbell McMillan is the author of the best book about the underground press. Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University Press) looks at the past though the lens of the present and the present though the lens of the past.

Written with real elegance and a keen appreciation of rebel journalists and reporters, McMillan’s book has appealed to both students and teachers and elicited praise from Tom Hayden, Susan Brownmiller — the author of a distinguished memoir about the Sixties — and Todd Gitlin, the author of the classic, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Interview, John McMillian, Jonah Raskin, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers, Sixties, Smoking Typewriters, The Rag, Underground Press | 1 Comment

Bruce Melton :
Feedbacks kick in: 2017 is second warmest without El Niño influence

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Recent observations strongly suggest that climate change may soon push some systems past tipping points, with global implications.’

“Mean” is the statistical term for “average. The “running mean” averages each successive periods like, January through December, February though January, March through February, etc. The 12-month running mean shows the peak of El Nino in early 2017 at about 1.34 C.

By Bruce Melton | The Rag Blog | February 1, 2018

Listen to the podcast of Thorne Dreyer’s January 11, 2018 Rag Radio interview with Bruce Melton on Climate Change 2017, here.

Global temperature 2017

NOAA, the UK Met, and World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have all stated that 2017 was third warmest. But these three organizations use data that only averages temperature in the Arctic out to 150 miles from reporting stations. This is a big problem when thousands of miles of Arctic Ocean have no weather reporting stations and we know from those reporting stations that the Arctic is warming at least twice the global rate.

In 2010, NASA began using a polar temperature averaging approach that looks out 750 miles from reporting stations to better capture polar warming. The result is that other estimates are biased warm and therefore the reason why NASA ranks 2017 second warmest instead of third.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Bruce Melton, Climate Change, Climate Science, Global Warming, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers | Leave a comment

Lamar W. Hankins :
1968: A personal retrospective 50 years later

Posted on January 31, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

It both challenged and strengthened my desire to make this a better world, and it caused me to wonder if a better world was even possible.

Demonstrators form human pyramid at Chicago’s Grant Park during 1968 Democratic Convention. Historical image from Sky Dancing.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | January 31, 2018

There was one year — 50 years ago — that had more impact on me than any other year in my 73-year life. To say 1968 was a seminal year in the formation of my adult life would be an understatement. It both challenged and strengthened my desire to make this a better world, and it caused me to wonder if a better world was even possible.

But I also learned that there are many good and decent people in the world — and maybe they outnumber the exploiters, the greedy, the self-centered, the unfriendly, the racists, the war-mongers, the mean, the back-stabbers, the hypocrites, the dissembling, the dishonest.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged 1968, 1968 Elections, Chicago Democratic Convention, Civil Rights Movement, Concientious Objection, Lamar W. Hankins, Martin Luther King, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers, Vietnam War, VISTA | 4 Comments

Philip L. Russell :
2017: Peña Nieto’s swan song

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

“Mexico’s crisis manifests as violence, but it is rooted in the corruption and weakness of the state.” — Max Fisher, Amanda Taub, and Dalia Martínez, 2018

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, 2017. Image from Flickr /
Creative Commons.

By Philip L. Russell | The Rag Blog | January 30, 2018

Philip Russell will join Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio, Friday, February 9, 2018, to discuss this article and the Peña Nieto presidency. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program that first airs on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and is streamed live here.

Philip Russell writes about Mexico for The Rag Blog. This is the fourth in his series about the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto.

The good news for Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto of the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI) is that during 2017 — his last full year in office — his approval ratings doubled.

This was in part due to his not making any major missteps relating to the big events of the year — two strong earthquakes and the ongoing renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Peña Nieto’s improved approval ratings were also due to, as The New York Times reported in December, his administration’s spending nearly $2 billion to buy ads extolling various agencies of his government. Of course there’s a quid pro quo. Media outlets which refrain from or soften criticism of government receive an ad revenue stream. Critical media don’t receive government ads.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican Politics, Mexico, Peña Nieto Series, Philip L. Russell, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers | 2 Comments

Steve Russell :
Calculating our losses: Hugh Masekela, Rosie the Riveter, Ursula K. Le Guin

Posted on January 27, 2018 by Thorne Dreyer

Some days, everything you need to know from the newspaper is in the obituaries.

Creative Commons Images of Hugh Masekela and Ursula K. Le Guin. Original Westinghouse Rosie from the National Museum
of American History.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | January 27, 2018

Some days, everything you need to know from the newspaper is in the obituaries. So it was on the day we lost Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, Hugh Masekela, and Rosie the Riveter. To notice this sad news is to gaze back over the three powerful social trends that remade the world after World War II.

It’s a fine bit of irony that these three waves of change swept away the handiwork of the totalitarians offered by the right in the person of Adolf Hitler and by the left in the man charged with turning the Bolshevik Revolution into a governing praxis, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Both Hitler and Stalin promised to remake the world in ways that did not happen after the German and Russian bloodbaths.
Continue reading →

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Hugh Masekela, Obituaries, Rag Blog, Rag Bloggers, Rosie the Riveter, Steve Russell, Ursula K. Le Guin | 7 Comments