Ann Reinking, Donna McKechnie, and Chita Rivera — Let Me Entertain You (Gypsy), from the Emmy award winning PBS special Broadway Sings: The Music of Jule Styne (1987).

Rick Perry makes so much more sense here! If he were gay, Rick Perry –at least this version– would be Rimbaud. Or Allen Ginsberg. Instead in real life, he’s a sweaty-lipped, bad suit wearing, hair-dying, uptight creep.

This week, Michele Bachmann tries to convince us that Hezbollah is going to use Cuba as a missile base.

Over the past ten days, hundreds of people have occupied Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan in New York as part of Occupy Wall Street. Citizens have faced down a city that has fortified Wall Street with blockades so corporate criminals responsible for the economic collapse in 2008 can avoid confrontations with angry, passionate Americans.

Jobs.

Although the official time frame for “The Great Recession” was December 2007 through June 2009, for the millions of long term un and underemployed, the daily reality is that not only has the recession never ended, it is more applicable to The Great Depression than it is to any of the various acknowledged recessions since the end of WWII. One of the articles of faith from the always surprised Economists is that job creation lags other indicators, yet here we are, over two years since the “end” of the last recession and the official unemployment rate is still at 9.1% with the underemployed figure at 16.2% for August 2011.

Health insurance premiums for a typical employer-provided family policy grew by an incredible 9 percent this year according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation study. Not only have premiums increased for employers, but the employee cost sharing has gone up as well. But forcing employees to have more skin in the game doesn’t seem to be driving down health care costs.

A teachers union and a postal workers union are now reportedly taking an interest in Occupy Wall Street. The PSC union at the City University of New York has already shown support for the occupation, as have members of the Industrial Workers of the World.

A few major segments on Occupy Wall Street ran on Monday night. “Countdown” hosted by Keith Olbermann interviewed a protester, who had been pepper-sprayed (someone who was not involved in the incident with Officer Bologna, which has become well-known). “Piers Morgan Tonight” had Michael Moore on the show and Moore discussed American capitalism and Occupy Wall Street. The most compelling segment, however, came from MSNBC’s The Last Word hosted by Lawrence O’Donnell. O’Donnell used the incidents of unprovoked police brutality by the NYPD on Saturday to make a larger point about police brutality in America and why police doing this is nothing new to communities of color.

As fighting continues in Libya, a disturbing new report reveals that over 20,000 surface-to-air missiles have gone missing in the country. This is a Brian Ross special, so take it with a huge grain of salt, but the White House basically confirmed the report in a morning press gaggle.

We have known for years about the dangers of being a trade unionist in Colombia, of the murders of organizers and labor officials. The murders have increased in frequency in the years since the US negotiated a trade deal with Colombia. They are well documented. Now Rich Trumka has sent the President a list of victims.

Reducing our spending on overseas military commitments is the deficit reduction idea that has the broadest public support across all partisan groups, according to new Pew Research Center poll. Solid majorities of regular Democrats, Republicans and independents all want to see America stop wasting so much money on foreign military commitments.