DC Vote’s Executive Director not a DC resident?
Wash Syndicate
At a recent gathering of DC’s establishment and emerging journalists a discussion about DC Vote’s tactics and lack of success in securing DC a vote revealed an interesting point of contention; DC Vote’s Executive Director Ilir Zherka is not a DC resident and taxpayer. WTF?
That’s not cool. This issue is known to fire up, even more than usual, one of DC Voting Rights’ most go hard/ die-hard and reckless advocates according to one of the city’s most storied print and broadcast journalists of recent and contemporary memory.
The Syndicate will only address DC Statehood further when city politicos, media, and advocacy organizations get the last laugh on the 1976 Academy Award winning film, “All The President’s Men.”
Until the film’s mocking of DC Statehood efforts is no longer current, who cares about this, really? Besides the crazies.
West VA Sentor Robert Byrd dead at 92; “barbaric!”
Robert Byrd, first elected to the US Senate in 1951, has died at 92 according to the AP.
Sen. Byrd, a Democrat, was famous for admitting he was a member of the KKK on national television and for going after Michael Vick’s “barbarism” on the Senator Floor. Along with folks such as Strom Thurmond, who died in 2003, Byrd represented a time in American history when Jim Crow was the law of the land in the South. The people of West Virginia, who have benefited in Federal dollars being returned to their state via Byrd, will surely miss him. Jay Rockefeller IV is now the senior Senator from West Va.
Byrd, who was known as a scholar of American government and would carry a pocket-version of the US Constitution with him at all times, raised issue with President Obama over his use of “Czars“, one of which was the faux pseudo neo radical and empty suit Van “Give them the Wealth” Jones. Known as an “anti-war Lion”, Byrd also famously took on Code Pink at a Senate hearing a couple years ago. Video below…
Photo of the Day “Riding Metro in the dark”
One a blue line train last week that went “lounge” for about 2 or 3 stops. This has happened before while riding metro rail. It will most likely continue to happen as fares go up tomorrow.
Wash Syndicate
GAO report “demagnetizes” Obama led green movement
When riding metro don’t put your paper fare card in the same pocket as your cell phone — if your paper fare card meets your cell phone it will be demagnetized and no longer work.
An April report, “Rare Earth Materials in the Defense Supply Chain,” released by the Government Accountability Office has demagnetized the dogmatic rhetoric of the green energy movement.
Rare earth materials, derived from the chemically similar metallic elements that run from 57 through 71 on the Periodic Table, are essential to commercial, military, and green technologies — iPhones and flat screen TVs, laser guided munitions and night vision, and wind turbine and hybrid batteries.
In 2009 China controlled 97% of the world’s production of rare earth materials and now China is imposing a moratorium on all new mining licenses until June 30, 2011. With its own domestic demand and consumption increasing, China is further restricting exports.
As an official with the Chinese Society of Rare Earths told The New York Times earlier this month, “We want a higher price on our rare earth minerals.” US Trade Representative Ron Kirk indicated to the Senate Finance Committee this week that President Obama intends to pressure China on this issue at the weekend’s G-20 summit in Toronto.
Although according to the US Geological Survey the US has 13 million metric tons of rare earth oxides, our domestic production was zero metric tons last year.
Let me be clear, this has not shaken Obama’s zealous determination towards empty green oratory.
“For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires,” said Obama in his Oval Office address, “The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America.”
Instead of leading, the Obama administration is legislating. On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported the US, with cooperation from the business and labor community will explore the possibility of filing a case with the World Trade Organization claiming communist China is hoarding its natural rare earth resources.
According to the GAO, the Mountain Pass mine in California produced the majority of the global supply of rare earth materials for nearly three decades from 1965 until the mid 1990’s when regulatory problems and China’s flooding of the world’s rare earth market lowered prices. In 2002 the mine closed but has recently been re-opened by privately held Molycorp Minerals LLC.
The GAO reports Mountain Pass “lacks the manufacturing assets and facilities to process rare earth ore into finished components, such as permanent magnets.”
With the notable exception of Representative Mike Coffman (R-CO) who has requested the House Armed Services Committee hold a hearing on the looming rare earth crisis, leaders in our government and the Obama Administration have ignored this issue.
This silence is deafening.
Facing state and federal regulations, large start-up costs, and patent restrictions the GAO estimates rebuilding a domestic supply chain could take up to 15 years.
The Department of Defense, using rare earth in lasers, satellites, radar and communication systems, and avionics has begun its own review on its dependency to be completed in September.
When analyzed critically, China’s near worldwide monopoly on rare earth materials and our dependence on these materials to build magnets which are critical to the development of green technologies, has demagnetized the green movement.
The magnetism and cult of personality of the world historical President Obama will not change this.
Tupac’s “Dear Mama” among 25 recordings added to 2009 National Recording Registry at Library of Congress
The Library of Congress announced yesterday that ‘Pac’s “Dear Mama” from his 1995 Me Against The World album is one of 25 recordings selected for the 2009 National Recording Registry. The recordings must be at least a decade old and culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Mobbing with ‘Pac on the 2009 list is Paul Wing’s 1949 narration of “The Little Engine That Could.”
From the LOC…
In this moving and eloquent homage to both his own mother and all mothers struggling to maintain a family in the face of addiction, poverty, and societal indifference, Tupac Shakur unflinchingly forgives his mother who, despite a cocaine habit, “never kept a secret, always stayed real.” The song displays further evidence of hip hop as a musically sophisticated and varied genre which can artfully encompass a wide variety of themes and musical influences.
DC Punk Documentary 6:30pm Thursday, June 24 at Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan
Thanks for the info H-DC!
Dance of Days: A Visual History of Punk in DC
Affinity Lab
2451 18th Street, NW
Washington, DC
The history of D.C. punk and hardcore is littered with legendary bands that most music fans have heard of — the Bad Brains, Minor Threat — but broke up in the early ’80s, or seminal acts that formed in the late ’80s or early ’90s but haven’t played together in years (Fugazi, Bikini Kill). Get a multimedia history lesson — or a walk down memory lane — tonight at the Afinity Labs, where Marc Andersen, the author of the scene biography “Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation’s Capital,” will be hosting a video presentation with 70 minutes of classic concert footage and offering commentary about important musical acts from Rites of Spring to the National of Ulysses.
Throw in DJs from Smash and Crooked Beat spinning D.C. bands and free light refreshments and you’ve got one heck of an evening. As D.C. concert-goers might expect, this is a benefit, raising money for We Are Family, a charity that provides groceries, transportation and other assistance to low-income seniors. A $8 donation is suggested.
General McChrystal aide calls “wimps in the White House” the “real enemy”
The staff of Four Star General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US Forces in Afghanistan, in a scathing profile in Rolling Stone to hit newsstands Friday call out top officials in the Obama Administration and National Security team as “wimps.”
No drama Obama and his crew have some “message” problems now, but more importantly our troops on the ground have problems from a White House that does not fully support them or their mission. As an observation, isn’t it interesting how Code Pink and other anti-war groups protest a Republican President but are nowhere to be seen with Obama in office. Hmmm.
This is not good news for anyone. For a day or so British Petroleum will be on the back-burner. Tomorrow Gen. McChrystal heads to the White House. This meeting should be a little more intense than last October when Obama gave Gen. McChrystal 25 minutes on Air Force One while in Copenhagen on his failed effort to get Chicago the 2016 Olympics.
Although Gen. McChrystal has apologized. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.
Vincent Orange Headquarters on 4221 Conn. Avenue empty
Yesterday The Syndicate happened by Vincent Orange’s campaign headquarters on Connecticut Avenue NW (where there used to be a KFC / Pizza Hut) across the street from UDC’s prison looking campus. When we peeked through the doors and windows of his large office space we observed not a single person anywhere inside.
Orange’s website is here and pretty much empty. Although we have seen Orange campaign signs all over the city, so what. His signs mean nothing if he has no campaign staff. We must remember Orange is he the color coordinated candidate for losers.
The obligatory press coverage of his campaign kick-off event June 8th here from the G”Town dish and so far 41 folks (?) have watched Orange on the Kojo Nnamdi show on youtube here.
Can’t DPW or DCRA just fine Orange for littering the city with his worthless signs?
Wash Syndicate
Wash Syndicate
DC History _ Apollo Theatre @ 624 H Street NE
According to Cinema Treasures DC’s Apollo Theatre opened in 1913 at 624 H Street NE and was eventually knocked down in 1955. The photo below is from the collage on the upstairs second floor of the Avalon Theatre.
Wash Syndicate
Nice photo from LOC here, and a run down of old theatres on H Street NE from Frozen Tropics here, a nice post from Greater Greater Washington here.
1 comment