Jan 21 2011
He was inaugurated fifty years ago yesterday, on January 20, 1961… and he said something that day I’ve not heard from any politician since:
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.
Feb 05 2010
Can you remember who I was? Can you remember what I once stood for?
I gave America the New Deal, I gave America Social Security, I gave America the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare. I had vision, I had courage, I had integrity. I was the Democratic Party. I stood there boldly, sweating in the sun, felt like a million, felt like number one.
The height of summer, I’d never felt that strong . . .
Like a rock.
I was the party of working Americans, the party of the middle class, the party of social justice. Long ago, before Baucus and Conrad, before Landreau and Nelson, before NAFTA and Blue Dogs and Harold Fucking Ford, I was the Democratic Party.
My hands were steady,
My eyes were clear and bright.
My walk had purpose,
My steps were quick and light.
And I held firmly to what I felt was right . . .
Like a rock.
In the days of your parents, in the days of your grandparents, in the days of FDR and Truman and JFK, I was the Democratic Party. I led America through the Great Depression, I led America and her Allies to victory over Fascism, I rebuilt the shattered nations of Europe with the Marshall Plan, I defended the Constitution, I upheld the rule of law, I hauled Richard Nixon’s thugs into the Watergate Hearings and shut down that freak show he called a Presidency.
I was the Democratic Party.
I was strong as I could be.
Nothing ever got to me.
You wouldn’t know it now . . .
But I was something to see.
Oct 26 2009
The Center reserves the right to search it property and premises, including but not limited to,offices,desks,lockers,computers,file cabinets,mailboxes,vehicles,etc at any time and for any reason. By accepting employment with the Center, you are consenting to announced and unannounced searches of your work area and personal property (e.g. purses,briefcases,lunch bags,vehicles) while on duty and/or on the Center’s premises.
Oct 22 2009
One thing I really like about this place is how most of the folks here aren’t in the junior-high-school style rah-rah-rah bullshit mode of “The Dems are OUR team and that other team sucks and is the cause of all our problems!”
Most of us have outgrown that. It’s why we’re here and not at that other place, where that attitude prevails.
So this is why I wanted to share something I saw today, it’s a most fantastic documentary on the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. It’s called “RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy” and was made by a filmmaker named Shane O’Sullivan, and broadcast on the BBC. You can rent it, or buy it now. I happened to catch it, quite by chance, on The Documentary Channel, which is right next to CNN (ha!) on Dish TV.
The reason I’m sharing this is because many of the conversations here, about such things, always seem to lead to “well, who exactly ARE the men behind the curtain”?
This film doesn’t answer as to exactly these people are specifically, but lets you know who they are in a general sense.
As many people have pointed out, there are a great many parallels between 9/11 and the JFK assassination, such as Peter Dale Scott in this article here (highly recommended). And it’s obvious whoever was behind the JFK murder also committed RFK’s.
Oddly enough, I had actually written about this documentary a little while back at DK, when I stumbled across the following:
MASHANTUCKET, Conn. — New forensics evidence presented Tuesday during a symposium at Foxwoods suggests Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the fatal shots that killed Sen. Robert Kennedy in 1968.
The essay I wrote went on to discuss a few other details, such as this:
These guys aren’t the first to consider a “second gunman”. The first was probably the Los Angeles corner who did the autopsy, Thomas Noguchi. In his autobiography, he reports:
“Until more is precisely known…the existence of a second gunman remains a possibility. Thus, I have never said that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy.”Why would he say such a thing? Well, even before these new recordings came out in which 13 shots are heard (and Sirhan Sirhan’s gun only held eight bullets), Noguchi discovered that there were more bullet wounds than there were bullets — considering that RFK had been shot with four bullets, and there were five people also wounded, presumably by five more bullets. The LAPD rationalized this by saying that some of the wounds must have been caused by one bullet hitting more than one victim, and they even presented an extremely convoluted case as to all the whacky trajectories the bullets must have taken. However, the main sticking point, the point that probably haunted Noguchi, and many others, is the fact that the shot that killed Kennedy was fired from just a few inches away from the back of his head, behind his ear — powder burns proved it. Yet Sirhan Sirhan was never closer than five or six feet away, and always facing Kennedy.
Dec 02 2007
It would seem now that the only people who ever supported Joe McCarthy were John Birchers and other rightwing loons far out of touch with sanity. Somehow Tailgunner Joe not only got elected himself but struck terror in the heart of liberals. A recent book described the ability of Joe McCarthy to destroy Democratic politicians who opposed him. Oddly it was a Republican, Eisenhower, who really did Joe in.
I was young and foolish once, instead of old and foolish as I am now. I believed. I believed in Joe McCarthy, the virgin birth, heaven and hell, everlasting fire and torment for sinners. And then I volunteered for Vietnam.
