(Oh, how I miss CSPAN…even though it is slowly becoming mostly conservative views.)
Speaks his mind on President Obama using MLK’s bible to be sworn in. He has strong words about “using King’s fire” and not following up with actions, such as putting Wall St bankers in jail, putting Bush torturers in jail, getting rid of the drones, doing something about poverty...etc.
You know, there is a Canadian program on my public radio station here in FW that airs a part of a segment where a guy has said he had awards for “favorite food, TV program,” etc., and one of the categories is “best performance of impersonating a politician” (or something to that effect) “won by Dan Quayle three years in a row until Dick Cheney came along…”
I think there should just be a category for “best performance by a politician while trying to appear genuine”.
I think Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide….
No, I’m not going to link to any of the political sites that are praising her “performance” today. It really sickens me how they have annointed her Saint Hillary that can do no wrong and refuse to look at her and Bill’s records with any degree of unemotional critical assessment. They would be livid at that same stuff if it were done by a repub.
The fake break in her voice was the top of the performance. Not a tear in the eyes. Her eyes were not even red. My voice doesn’t usually break until the tears begin to fall and the emotions have bubbled to the top.
The anger at the question of what exactly happened? “It doesn’t matter!!” Really?
She didn’t read the memo. Didn’t read the memo….
I recalled that during the Clintons term in office, I always felt manipulated. It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually, it came to be a frequent feeling whenever a crisis would occur and once again they escaped accountability.
DS Wright has an update here.
But the general feeling is that Wall St. will still go unpunished…i.e., jail time. It’s kinda hard to stop these people when they see nothing wrong with what they did and none of them serve jail time.
…because we’d much rather go after computer wizzes who have legal access to files and download them for the public so that the public knows what their government is doing…
link here.
bgrothus has this link in the comments section. Remember, folks, the derivatives were the cause of the meltdown. They were betting on people losing their mortgages….these scumbags were betting on people like me losing their houses.
…and not only betting on people losing their houses, but on people dying. It’s amazing how they can make it seem….normal. Just coldly predict how long someone lives and apply a monetary value to it, i.e., insurance $$.
(crap, I have to go, and I wanted to explore this more….argh)
From Mike’s blog roundup on crooksandliars, a link to Perrspectives’ take on the Israeli elections and their importance.
From the link on the blog to the Clinton Administration’s view on Israel:
“So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.”
~~~~~~~~
Absolutely.
I found this interesting post on Aaron Swartz, which raises more questions than it answers…
I found another post on this site Saturday, but couldn’t find it again looking today. It mentioned a post by Marcy Wheeler on what was going on with Aaron Swartz and his suicide after being hounded by authorities. (Be sure to click on the NY Times link, which explains a little better.) More here.
This chills one to the bone. And what exactly was he downloading that caused such concern? The articles dance around it. Anyway, Aaron Swartz believed that the information out there that was paid for by taxpayers deserved to be easily accessed–that is, without paying high $$ to join JSTOR or any other program to gain access. It was noted that many documents are being electronically copied with limited access to the public. This is incredibly disturbing, as everyone knows that Information is Power. And knowledge can inform the American citizen what their government is doing. (This is why stuff like Kindle worry me–taking information off of physical books and putting them in electronic gadgets that require a battery and software to view is dangerous in that if either of those fail to work, the information is inaccessible. One can easily see how this can turn into denial of information–book burning a la the information age.)
The thing is…Swartz had legal access to the information, via Harvard! He had the legal right to access. He was trying to make a point that the copyright laws protected electronic information that the taxpayers paid for, but were denied access to. Now, think of the library books one checks out…they are copyrighted materials, but one can still access the information via a library card. I think Swartz was applying those same principles to his providing this information. Note that JSTOR refused to prosecute him once they learned he had legal access.
Susie Madrak has a post up on MLK’s birthday celebration. This is my view, too, on how everybody brings up “I Have a Dream” speech, and then fail to acknowledge his “Beyond Vietnam” speech (which he gave a year to the day before his murder).
He was expanding from the Civil Rights protests towards protesting the condition of the poor and of the terrible consequences of war. This was more of a threat to the status quo than anything he had done prior. Indeed, even his friends that had supported him during the Civil Rights era were abandoning him when he started advocating for the poor and protesting against war. According to those that knew him, he never felt so alone.
He knew that advocating those positions was dangerous.
And he did it anyway….
As I was walking the other day, I thought about the states that legalized marijuana in the past election…and something about it bugged me.
Something that David Crosby said in a 60s documentary popped into my head: while talking about the positives of the peace movement of the 60s, he remarked that cocaine had been the downfall of it all.
Whenever I see repubs suddenly change their opinions in a 180 degree direction, it gets my attention. A few of them have been advocating legalization of small amounts of pot in this conservative area…another reason to question their motives.
Now, you can call me a conspiracy theorist (wouldn’t be the first time), but there is something going on….and I don’t know about you, but I could see pot doing the same thing as cocaine did—stopping a positive movement by messing with people’s cognitive function. I’m not sure of all the effects of pot, but that is one of them, along with possible lung cancer and heart issues. I’m not looking down my nose, mind you, I tried it when I was seventeen. (I’m one of those who wonder what all the fuss was about–it really did nothing for me).
I’m just putting this out there because I think it needs to be said. I mean, I look at Timothy Leary, and see him as an under-the-radar drug pusher. I was pretty young when he was in his element of “Tune in, turn on, drop out” (or whatever version), but had the opportunity to revisit his mindset again when I started in college in the 90s. We read a bit of his assertions back in the day –he had used scare tactics, much as the conservatives are using now, to advocate for LSD and other drug legalization–saying that there would be agents in helicopters hunting down people using drugs and other scare tactics.
And I don’t get the videotaping his death…ego? Pfft. I don’t want to be videotaped, I want to go quietly, just me going to God. And I don’t even want a headstone—I like what my aunt did–she had her ashes spread over San Francisco Bay. After I’m gone, I hope that there will be people around to remember me…but if not, no stupid headstone and no video of me will truly speak of who I was and what I did while here….
(A side note–and this may or may not have anything to do with Leary, but he had a wife and daughter commit suicide. So much for finding happiness in drugs.)
So…I guess this post is about a warning not to repeat the same mistakes of the 60s….
Eagle 
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