Open Thread
January 2010 archive
Jan 19 2010
Late Night Karaoke
Jan 19 2010
EcoJustice: How is the dream?
Forty six years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered I Have a Dream. In that speech, even one hundered years after emancipation, he spoke of black communities crippled by segregation and discrimination. They lived, ‘on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.’
Today, blacks participate in all levels of professional society and leadership. We have a beautiful first family, former Secretaries of State, and even Supreme Court judges. It is common to see black lawmakers, doctors, lawyers, business professionals, and professors. Perhaps that ocean is embracing the island. One might think that discrimination is a thing of the past — that America is a place that tends toward racial equality…
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them. –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
If Dr. King could return and look at America, would he say the same thing today?
Jan 19 2010
The Explanation of My Recent Escapades
Yes I have been making the most disparaging of comments in this current wake of Scott Brown vs Martha Coakley. I do such things in the attempt, however futile that may be, to wake people up. My name is on three US patents. I have attended conferences with scientists of world reknown, had a conversation with a NASA AI robot, have flown small planes, learned to savor the wine like a European can and my ears perk up when I hear an accent. We, America should have been the hope of the world. Give me your tired, your poor and all that jazz became Vietnam is the future investment opportunity. What did go wrong in the very short timespan of me, only the second generation “off the farm”.
Jan 19 2010
New Orleans is not Haiti
Ever since the Haiti earthquake happened, it has invited quite a few comparisons to the disaster brought about in New Orleans by the federal flood. There are even those in the mainstream media who have asked if this quake is going to turn out to be Obama’s “Katrina.”
This is not surprising because there are some similarities in the situations–for example, the slowness in rescuing and getting aid to the survivors–which reminds casual observers of the way New Orleanians had to wait a week for food, water and rescue after her levees failed. Also, these catastrophes are manmade–Haiti’s because of shoddily-constructed buildings, New Orleans’ because of poorly-built and maintained levees–both of which had been disasters waiting to happen.
Jan 19 2010
Smashing The Machine
“There’s been a coup – have you heard? It’s the CIA coup.The CIA runs everything! They run the military .. They’re the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on these Countries…It’s not even the Military that does it. The CIA runs this. …And, of course, the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve.
And yet, think of the harm they have done since they were established since World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They’re in businesses, they’re in drug businesses, and they take out dictators……We need to take out the CIA!”
-Congressman Ron Paul
Jan 19 2010
So No One Will Be Left Behind
A year ago, when Obama was inaugurated, when the new Congress began with huge Democratic majorities, I thought the Bush/Cheney years were finally over. But they’re not over. Nothing has changed.
I’ve supported Democrats for 40 years. Despite all their betrayals, I felt I had no choice. I told myself they were the lesser of two evils. I told myself incremental change is better than no change at all. But nothing has changed. Nothing will ever change if progressives keep supporting the Democratic branch of the Corporate Fascist Party.
During the Great Depression, Woody Guthrie traveled across America and saw the injustice, poverty, and despair of a nation suffering the consequences of economic and social injustice. In the city square, in the shadow of the steeple, by the relief office he saw his people. They were hungry, they were out of work, they were out of hope. As he was walking that ribbon of highway, he saw what America is, but he also saw what America can be. He never stopped hoping that someday, America would become a land of economic and social justice. So he wrote This Land Is Your Land, as an anthem of what America can be.
His story is our story, his anthem is our anthem, his land is our land, his cause is our cause. Woody Guthrie told the truth about America because someone had to. He told it across this country, as he walked through the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling, with a guitar on his back and the truth in his soul . . .
Jan 19 2010
C’mon, Joe, Take the Neutron Bomb to this Filibuster
Kossack slinkerwink tells us that Vice President “Amtrak Joe” Biden has spoken out against the filibuster:
Vice President Joe Biden said at a Florida fundraiser Sunday that the 60-seat threshold for passing legislation in the Senate put a dangerous new roadblock in the way of American government.
“As long as I have served … I’ve never seen, as my uncle once said, the constitution stood on its head as they’ve done. This is the first time every single solitary decisions has required 60 senators,” Biden said. “No democracy has survived needing a supermajority.”
Well, if this is about the survival of our Democracy, I say it may be time to recall the parliamentary maneuver threatened by the Republicans in 2005, dubbed the “nuclear option”. Since this is a more precisely targeted version of that parliamentary maneuver, I refer to it as the “Neutron Bomb”.
Jan 19 2010
Some anathemas with which to pass the time
I just thought you all ought to know of some developments going on in the blogosphere as regards, well, not a whole lot, maybe this special election in Massachusetts or something. All I have to offer are a few observations on voting strategy and on Orange’s attempt to whip the Martha Coakley thing before tomorrow’s election.
I guess they’re going to elect a Senator for, what, two years or something? And if they elect a wingnut (I guess the guy’s name is Scott Brown), the Senate will use reconciliation or the “nuclear option” to pass “health insurance reform,” just like the Senate leadership told the progressives they couldn’t do that during that month-or-so they wasted pandering to Olympia Snowe. Ha ha, Harry Reid fooled you again. The solution is of course to organize a political movement to throw these people, the corporate Democrats, out of office — the serious question to be raised at this point, however, is if the raw material for this movement is bright enough to hold together.
(NOT crossposted at Orange)
Jan 18 2010
Afternoon Edition
Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread
| From Yahoo News Top Stories |
1 Haiti fears grows despite surge in relief effort
by Sophie Nicholson, AFP
1 hr 28 mins ago
| PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) – Haiti relief efforts stepped up a gear Monday with the arrival of thousands more US Marines, while doctors and aid workers struggled to save lives and stave off disease six days after the quake.
Despite the massive international effort spearheaded by the United States, security fears grew as television pictures showed troops in combat gear firing off rounds and hauling looters to the ground in the capital Port-au-Prince. The Red Cross warned that violence by desperate Haitians was growing, although Lieutenant-General Ken Keen, the top US officer on the ground, insisted: “The level of violence we see now is below pre-earthquake levels.” |
Jan 18 2010
What Would MLK …SAY… Day
No one, of course, can speak for a dead hero.
But today as everyone honors his memory…..and seems to forget what he stood for…
I would rather take this second to have us all ask ourselves what Martin would be saying about the issues of the day.
What would he say about escalating AfPak and Drone killings?
What would he say about Wall St. preying on the weak?
What would he say about there STILL being a permanent underclass in America….and it still consisting of a disproportionate number of people of color? 40 years after his death.
Etc.
And what would he be DOING about it?
And how, lol, would the Dem establishment be reacting?
We all have only our subjective answers to these questions.
But I am guessing that Martin would not be heeding the calls to STFU for “the Good of the Party,” lol.
Thank You, Martin. RIP.
Jan 18 2010
Boston Globe reports: “Nearly half polled say Obama not delivering on promises.”
According to the Boston Globe, nearly half of Americans polled believe that U.S. dictator Barack Obama is not living up to his campaign promises.
Nearly half of the Americans surveyed said Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority had some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country’s future.
More than a third saw the president as falling short of their expectations, about double the proportion saying so at the 100-day mark of Obama’s presidency in April. At the time, 63 percent said the new president had accomplished a “great deal” or a “good amount.” The percentage saying so in the recent poll dropped to 47 percent.
Although the article does not mention the loss of left-wing support as reason for the drop-off, choosing instead to focus on right-wing discontent, the overall attitude indicated by surveys is that he is either incapable or unwilling to make good on public expectations of change away from the institutionalized horrors of the Bush-Cheney regime.
The signs are everywhere that at least one chamber of Congress will revert back to Republican rule, though the public is unlikely to notice the difference. Obama really shot himself in the foot by raising people’s expectations without having any intention of meeting them. No one thought he would be able to work miracles, and no one has claimed that he would end eight years of devastation overnight. But with a year now behind his dictatorship, Obama has not made even token efforts to undo the policies of the Bush-Cheney regime – and in some cases, such as government secrecy and illegal spying on Americans, he has exceeded them. The public is not stupid. We do not enjoy being lied to, used, taken for granted. And we will punish those who do so.