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The words inherent dignity and equal and inailable triggers is very ambiguous. Can you please tell me specifically what you think those rights should be???
Constitutional rights are being swept away too. If you blink you might miss it. Recently I attended a NFL game. The park had a new policy of only allowing clear plastic bags to be used to carry items. No purses. No shopping bags. And, people were made to walk through a metal detector. It is as though old fashioned illegal searches and seizures simply take too much time.
Of course, I had to ask myself how this was going to stop someone with C4, nitroglycerine, plastic explosives, nanothermite or for that matter old fashioned dynamite or gun powder. Do they really think a suspect terrorist is going to put the explosives into a clear plastic bag? I have to conclude that these measures have little to do with keeping anyone safe and have a lot more to do with conditioning the public for a police state. There is no other explanation. There are too many ways to get around these "security policies" for anyone intent to do harm. The only people really affected are honest people with nothing to hide.
George Orwell may have been off by 29 years, but his vision was very accurate. We are all living in a Serf's classroom entitled Fascism 101. Even the ticket readers to these events use barcodes. On those barcodes are your name, credit card information, bank account information, phone number, address, the seat you will be sitting at, the gate you entered, and the time of entry. Make no mistake, just because a soldier with a gun didn't ask you, "Your papers please," doesn't mean you didn't just get shaken down. The only difference is a card reader and a computer did the shaking and you never realized it happened.
As I understand it, the US was one of the few nations to refuse to ratify the UDHR. We have far less regard for human rights today than we did 65 years ago. Bill Clinton's welfare reform directly violates the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights on a number of core points, yet the middle class, Democrats and liberals have all been fine with this. We're a nation that bases human worth strictly on income and employability. I think most (or many) Americans are well aware that US prisons are places that have always had little interest in human rights protections, and I don't even need to mention the atrocity known as Gitmo. Face it, the US simply isn't into human rights.
BTW...If MLK were alive today...
Ask yourself, If MLK were alive today, how would he be covered in the media? History would remember him as a terrorist who's roots were in the 'occupy' movement...or would he have been thrown in jail before he got the chance to be remembered at all? Todays MLK, Dr. Cornel West, is largely unknown and his work largely ignored. How many people you see day to day on the street even know his name? Can you imagine a 'Cornel West Day' being made a federal hoiliday? ...the media...without control of it, we're finished.
The Media's role in establishment of "inalienable" rights;
A free press, the media, is what got us our "inaliable" rights. Amendments to the US constitution ratified in the past were only implemented and added to the constitution because they were covered in the media. An educated public is what forces issues...an unbiased media fed to the public free of charge is what educates the public and directs the diologue. If commercial media doesn't cover an issue it gets ignored by congress and the White House. If all 50 states were on board w/ movetoamend.org , given the current state of the media, any proposed/ratified amendment would be ignored. Indeed, the constitution is already being shredded in the media. You just said as I write; 'We haven't had a serious conversation about ending poverty in 60 yrs...' that's because corp. media won't cover it.
Every social/environmental justice .org, including movetoamend.org, must unite to eliminate the commercialization of the media and return it to the people. Otherwise, no issue they hold dear will EVER be dealt with by congress or any White House.
Ronald Regan voted for FDR, 4 times.
When Government HelpedLearning from the Successes and Failures of the New Deal
Edited by Sheila Collins and Edited by Gertrude Goldberg
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199990696.do
Has anyone read any books by Valcav Smil? A friend of mine recommended Valcav, but since Bill Gates is a big fan of Valcav, I am suspicious.
The bidder who qualifies with the biggest debt wins, thereby raising economic rents (real rent or financial extraction) on workers who then have less to spend in the economy, leaving less for everyone at a compounding rate.
A great part of our society is, in fact, in a debt bondage of sorts. The rest are enslaved simply by their being underpaid or compensated just enough to surive until the next day to come and work some more and by being so disempowered as to have NO say whatever in the conditions of their employment.
Neither is there any much alternative opportunity for changing fortunes by switching jobs with the buyer's market for labor (indeed, if there was the worker would have some bargaining power just as an individual, without even uniting with their fellows) - and let alone for promotion. Naturally, the climate for entrepreneurship in such a situation, with such a low demand for goods and services, cannot be at all hospitable either.
Aliceinwonderland and Palidromedary ~ Amen to those sentiments. In the future, let us fight fire with fire!
Aliceinwonderland: When the northwind blows, there be fireshadows.
By the way Marc, I appreciated Senator Grayson's essay about austerity. Thanks for sharing that. It's a scary, unpleasant subject, but like the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed!
I sure hope enough people will be sufficiently fed-up by next November to send a bunch of those fascists packing. I never thought I'd live to see an entire nation swindled, robbed, run into the ditch, but... this is where we are my friends! What a freak show... good god y'all. We can't change the channel, so let's jump in and raise hell. - AIW
Wow what a trip, Palin! You found me on the NC blog?! Did you actually recognize me in there? (I don't go by "Aliceinwonderland"; I go by my birth name in most places, including that blog.) Regardless, I think you'd find it interesting. Nice thought provokng, intelligent conversation; disagreements handled in a civilized manner; no personal attacks, sophomoric mind games or recycled FOX sound bytes. Oh yeah, an occasonal wing nut... but heck, even the wing nuts are civilized. And I love that blog's name, Naked Capitalism, which is what attracted me to it in the first place. With a name like that, one needn't wonder where those guys are coming from! Whatever frustrations and discord might come with the territory, visiting blogland and getting involved, such dialogue helps me stay sane. I can learn, discuss, debate, vent, commiserate... you know, what I do with you guys, with enough likeminded folks to satisfy me. Anyway PD, glad you found it! If you think you recognize me among the troublemakers in there, tell me the name. Guess it right and you win the grand prize; you get to have me over for dinner! (Yuk, yuk...) - AIW
Paul Ryan is not looking as great as you may think. Boehner as well. The GOP is having a full blown civil war due to the budget deal. I hate the deal being a liberal. Hal Rogers, Boehner,Paul Ryan and Rand Paul spewing vile towards outside money as the main reason proves the overall point that the GOP/TEA is brought off. Been fussing about it on my c-span/facebook all day long on the topic, WHO HAD THE WORST POLITICAL YEAR. I said Boehner, for his total lack of leadership. That proves CITIZENS UNITED is bad for this nation. The democrats should run on it all day long up to November of 2014.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/12/politics/budget-boehner/index.html The reason why i say Boehner gave plenty of ad information democrats can run on in 2014. Youtube has great footage as well.
I hate the budget deal as well. Not to extend unemployment that runs out on the 28th and zero revenue is better than having another government shutdown. Despite a part of me saying shut it down due to extreme austerity measures. However Boehner exposed hiself enough for democrats to run ads in 2014 by stating the real problem. OUTSIDE MONEY.
Nope !
Pure insanity in my opinion. John Boehner change the rules on the HOUSE FLOOR and he had the votes to keep the government open and the media said very little. It cost us 24 billion but Reid changing the rules in the senate gets full attention. Both chambers can change the rules. Just a plot to get more funding from the supreme court ruling from CITZENS UNITED from the likes of FREEDOM WORKS and ALEC buying up our freedoms and duping the base that votes for them.
There you are! I found you. Thanks for mentioning that site. Except some people are using two different names on that site. ;-}
OOPS! Sorry, Palin. I forgot that when I do an edit, my post jumps down to the end of the line... Oh well! So now what you're replying to comes after, rather than before, your response. Guess I spaced that particular quirk with this blog.
However I've started gettin' involved with another blog I stumbled into by accident this weekend, imbedded in an e-mail message I received last week. It's called Naked Capitalism (Love that title!). I'm having trouble adaptng to their quirks because they operate very differently from this blog. Talk about quirks! Compared to Thom's blog, Naked Capitalism is a confusing, bewildering pain in the butt to engage with. Drives me crazy. So far it's been a love-hate sort of thing for me. (SIGH) But it seems well worth the effort 'cuz there's some highly intelligent, articulate posts in "Naked"; very thought-provoking, from a crowd that is vastly more mature and way smarter than I've encountered on so many other blogs. (Not this one though; I love Thom's blog!)
By the way, Palin... before I go, I must thank you for turning me onto Text Edit. It's been extremely helpful. No more gobbildygook gibberish! Yay! Thanks for the tip, my friend. - Aliceinwonderland
"ckrob", now you've got me confused. I'm not sure exactly what I said that you're not getting. The Rethugs couldn't care less about Social Security. The discrepancy between their claim that it is "worthless" (which is a lie), and that "poison-pill" law they created out of thin air, is quite simple to understand; at least from my view and Thom's. The "poison pill" is not really to ensure the retirement security of USPS employees who aren't even born yet (another reich-wing lie!). Beyond this being an attack against the largest unionized workforce in the country, it is simply the reich's attempt to destroy - and privatize - yet another part of the commons by imposing a financial burden on the U.S. Post Office that is impossible to sustain, so that they eventually implode. Both FedEx and UPS have lobbied for this aggressively, as they would just love to snatch the post office's business for themselves! Oh boy! Yum-Yum.
If these toadies get their way, it will be a friggin' nightmare for the rest of us, the 999.999% of the U.S. population who depend heavily on our non-profit postal service just to function day-to-day; who (I might add) now take it totally for granted. If the USPS goes bye-bye, we won't be taking it for granted anymore my friend. Kinda reminds me of that old Joanie Mitchell lyric, the one that says: "Ya don't know what 'cha got 'til it's gone... " If UPS and FedEx take over the mail service, we're screwed... Again. In a big, big way. No longer will we be able to send a letter anywhere in the country for just fifty cents! Nope; the price of postage will shoot through the stratosphere. No longer will mail be delivered to every nook & cranny of civilization, no matter how remote! And the service will suck, mightily. Many if not most rural areas will be deemed "unprofitable" and thus abandoned. Residents of such areas will suddenly find themselves stranded without postal service, having to drive long distances just to pick up their friggin' mail.
Seems to me the Rethugs must assume the "masses" are awfully stupid if they think we'll accept their lame rationale at face value, and/or fail to notice the gaping holes in their logic. Or maybe they don't care about that either. Perhaps they've already created a reality where We The Peons, what we need and want, aren't relevant anymore. God help us... (if Palindromedary will excuse that expression! tsk...)
Anyway that's the best I know how to explain it, "ckrob". Hope this helps. - Aliceinwonderland
I watched the video again and I noticed that all those things that seemed to float off into the air were in what looked like a roughly made wooden box. I noticed that there seemed to be a kind of vibration...the camera shook in a manner that suggested a vibration that would be consistent with the camera attached to a box being slung around like a centrifuge. In the beginning of the video...there were a few items that just tended to float around just barely, or not at all, leaving the surface. One could put ferrous material inside various items made of materials not affected by magnetic flux fields to give the illusion that it wasn't someone underneath with a strong magnet moving those items around.
In watching that movie you recommended, I got an idea of how that video I recommended, showing the illusion of things rising up into the air (including that ice cream slowly oozing out of the cup followed by the cup floating up into the air), was created. A fixed camera could have been placed adjacent to what appeared to be a table top at the inside periphery of a centrifuge. The items were loosely held to the table top with some sort of sticky substance.
When the centrifuge spun at a certain speed it would have created an artificial gravity also keeping the items on the table. Did you notice that the ice cream tended to ooze out favoring one side of the cup? As the centrifuge was made to slowly reduce it's speed, the items would begin to fall away from the tables surface.
Or, conversely, the table top could have been placed not at the periphery but somewhere closer to the center of the centrifuge, or even on the outside of one. The items could have been held in place by a tacky surface. And with a fast enough speed, the items would break loose and fly outward. The background could have been shrouded with a screen that would look like a stationary wall. If this was all filmed in high speed and played back at a slower speed it would give an eerie feel of levitation.
You've seen those old movies where a tap dancer starts off dancing on the floor of a room and he then tap dances on the walls and then the ceiling. It was all done using a room sized cubical that had furniture and a camera fixed to the floor and the room would rotate.
Thank you Aliceinwonderland for that correction..and, of course, I did know the difference between "lute" and "loot" but I obviously didn't catch it. I really do appreciate it. One cannot learn to be better at anything unless someone else with a keen eye tells one about it. By the way, I just shocked my sleepy self..thinking I did a horrible thing...I accidentally clicked on "Flag As Offensive" and thought there would be no way to unclick it. But, joy to the world, that box changed to "Flag As Unoffensive" which, of course, I was able to fix my mistake. Whew! Maybe they are making good changes in this Drupal software. Now if they can only fix the occasional "Reply" numbering problem.....