You say:
[...]
i have some antminers running on bitminterclient with no problems
[...]
So, if you have other miners running on bitminter, I doubt your problem is because of the pool uptime? The pool can not be "dead", if you can run other equipment on the exact same pool.
that;s the weird part it only shows dead in cgminer
if i try to point it at bitminter it shows waiting for work from pool for a few minutes then black's out.
when i point it to btcguild there's no problem and starts mining within a few seconds
edit/ up and running again found it was a classic workername typo

A buddy of mine had a similar problems for 3 days. He could connect n mine at other pool but not at bitminter, his mistake was... He fat finger the address "mint.bitmimter.com". Instead of bitminter...