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The progressive community knows whats RIGHT, so OBAMA should simply say what NEEDS TO BE SAID. Sooner or later the public will ultimately realize and cave to the True Progressive Agenda geared around the middleclass, seniors and lastly all the unequality which the 99% are faced with.
once again, the simplistic choices are frustrating. yes, he's lame duck, but so what?; the point is to get his proposals out to the public, then profit from gop opposition. it's politics, not idealistic posturing.
We should probably remove the prison exception from the 13th Amendment. It's serving as an incentive for private prisons to sell the labor of their captives. But even if we un-privatize the prison system there's still the possibility of abuse. In fact, I think California was dealing with that issue last year.
The truly horrible part of today's Ugly story is that they're basically offering an incentive for trying to peek at everyone else's genitals in the bathrooms.
"Password" is a common password because some systems set that up as a default until changed. At one job I had, almost nobody bothered to change it.
There's a lot of grumbling out there about Pres. Obama and the Congressional Democrats waiting until they can't get anything done before proposing meaningful legislation.
They had all 3 necessary parts of government for 2 years and didn't talk about things they're proposing now. They had 2 out of 3 for the next 4 years and still didn't do it. Only now that they're down to 1 out of 3 are they proposing major helpful legislation.
It looks to a lot of people like the Democrats only want to look like they care. Robert Reich said as much about Obama's coming State of the Union proposal on taxes.
Stephen Colbert's fireplace displayed the motto "videri quam esse"--"to seem rather than to be"--a reversal of the motto of North Carolina. It referred to how Republicans are all about how they say things, but never mean what they say. Now it would seem to apply to the Democrats saying the right things, but not when they'd have to back it up with action.
Yes, "Triumph Of The Will" is a documentary…a propaganda documentary about German exceptionalism. Most of the films that Clint Eastwood are in or that he has directed are propaganda dramas about American Exceptionalists that go after and get "the bad guys" where the ends justify the means.
Technically "Triumph of the Will" was a documentary, and a very good movie. Granted the subject matter was a tad disturbing....
it is very interesting to know that they are joining Thom Hartmann.. keep posting guys!
http://boostmyownviews.org/worldwide-views/
I don't think there is any question that we've moved further away from King's dream of equality and a level economic playing field. In fact, we now seem to have cases of reverse discrimination. Racial tensions should be a thing of the past; there are events of far greater importance happening than the color of someone's skin. As Txpeon points out, weve seen the dumbing down of America; the imposition of an oligrarcy in lien of our (now former) democratic republic; Moslem oriented terrorism, a lunitic in North Korea; climate change; declining sources of fresh water, decline of productive jobs, the growing inequality of wealth, "Citizens United" misruling, and so on. Yet, we get wrapped in in video games, so-called "reality shows" etc. As the ancient Romans used to say, "bread and circuses". Of course, as I've repeatedly written for years now, the "powers that be" want---need---us to be divided every way possible. If we're at each other's throat, so much the better; anything that keeps us from focusing on the real source of our problems---them.
It's pretty clear to me the 1965 Voting Rights Act exercised section 2 of the 15th Amendment and rightfully so. It's also clear that the extreme right-wing activists on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in order to aid the Teapublican Party at the polls and thus advance the interests of self-anoited rulers/billionaires who continue to concentrate wealth by manipulating our economy. This and Citizens United both blatant betrayals of the Constitution by the Supreme Court are further proof the Fascists are in complete control.
I used to watch All in the Family with my mother and we would laugh and laugh. I enjoyed the Jeffersons, as well. Only Mash and Taxi were as entertaining, and of course, Johnny Carson years before. I Love Lucy was a great one, too. It makes me happy just thinking about those old shows. Thanks, Norman Lear, and thanks Thom Hartmann. I'm reading The Crash of 2016 and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Another great book is The 7 Mysteries of Life by Guy Murchie, whom Buckminster Fuller appreciated.
John C. Anderson, Lucky
When good people do nothing ( like not Voting ). Bad things will happen...Benjamin Frankilin. The absolute dumbing down of America, it taking its toll, and seemingly, nobody cares. Sad, very Sad. We are now the laughing stock of the world, by letting hate, and stupidity, rule this country. We are becoming like those countries we criticize.
I couldn't help but notice the frightening terrible irony that on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, the movie "American Sniper" is breaking box office records. I heard on Morning Joe this morning one of the commentators commented that this is not a political movie…and I guess "Triumph Of The Will" was not a political movie either.
I remember when the Democratic Party was proud of their conservatives. They used to brag that the Democratic Party embraced all points of view unlike the Republicans who were purely for the wealthy. All this changed after the rise of the Black Panthers and the civil rights movement. Having lived in Texas, I have great admiration for LBJ and all that he did for the state of Texas.
The article below details LBJ's involvement in restraining Gov Wallace during the Selma marches. Ellington Buford is clearly the hero of these negotiations.
http://millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom/exhibits/lbj-governor-wallace-and-buford-ellington-in-selma-alabama
Not only are we moving away from MLK's dream but MLK would be disgusted with Barac Obama. Read Chris Hedges.
What is it with the 'greatest democracy' the world has ever seen?
"Ever was" would be the dirogatory
Hard to figure how the most literate, educated individuals of the time left opression in Europe hundreds of years ago to become slaves under new masters in the 21st century
Seems like a willing 'dumbing down' with the UK following suit
Are pupeteers involved?
We're moving backwards in our efforts to resolve racial integration and bigotry. I hear it everyday in the press re police brutality and in our congress people particularly the extreme T-partiers and faith-based legislators. Our Christian right is so unchristian. I am a Caucasian living in a community that is 80% Hispanic and I find I am discriminated against. Bigotry works both ways.
As you might expect, the wannabe do-gooders want to take from the rich, give to poor, instead of stop creating the rich in the first place, something we’re all responsible for, but the truth remains hidden beyond shallow analyses. See "7 Immense Transfers by Tax-Collectors that Create the Super Rich" at Progress.org.
All successful movements for justice necessarily are from the bottom up, they are otherwise illegitimate. People have an absolute right to speak for and represent themselves and not have someone else speak for them.
The Democrats are sometimes absurdly tagged as the"party of segregation". What that, of course, ignores is that those "Democrats", like LBJ predicted, are now Republicans.
Tom has admitted the goal of progressives is a tobacco free world. On the surface it appears this to be a commendable goal. The problem with it is that it is nothing more then a utopian fantasy (as was prohibition of the last century). Making public policy based on a fantasy is a very bad idea and always makes for very bad policy.
The other problem is that tobacco is not the problem. Inhaling smoke is what is killing people, not tobacco. Smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes are several orders of magnitude less harmful then cigarettes. Tom appears to want to get rid of all nicotine, even though nicotine is nearly harmless (it has essentially the same negative health effects as caffeine), and is a real relief to people with cognitive issues. For many people tobacco and nicotine has real tangible benefits. If people weren't getting something out of it they wouldn't do it.
Progressives need to step down from their prohibitionist tendencies and start supporting tobacco harm reduction, which is the only rational approach to tobacco. If smokers simply switched to tobacco/nicotine products that are far less risky then smoking the health issues we now associate with tobacco would essentially disappear.
On November 9th last year, I outlived Martin Luther King. I wish I had accomplished a thousandth as much as him in that time.
According to Wikipedia, Pettus was Grand Dragon of the Alabama KKK.
How did I not know this?
People think of the parties as uncontrollable, monolithic and perpetual. But the reality is that the parties are made of very small numbers of regular people -the ones who show up. In my congressional district there are about a million people and there's maybe a few hundred on a good day who do anything within the party. These are precisely the people who get off their asses, go to caucuses or show up at party meetings and become delegates and eventually endorse candidates. Look at the GOP, where whacked out extremists took over the party by showing up and changing their party from within.
Not that it's a cakewalk to change things, but it's way easier than most people think. Over two election cycles a decade ago, my friends and I -all low level volunteers- took over our congressional district leadership, trained people in issue framing and ran people for office, some of whom won. Other progressives did the same and now Minnesota is more progressive than just about anywhere -and we're still just regular unpaid volunteer shmoes.
The sad reality is that anyone can do this, everyone should, but only a vanishingly small number of people ever do. I guess it's just easier to sit back and bitch about how powerless they feel.
Giancarlo (above) is right -the blame lies squarely with the disengaged. Voters can vote out bad politicians anytime they want to. If they care enough to do so.
I'll quibble about "designed to steal votes away from third party candidates". I'm active in the Democratic Party and no one gives a rat's ass about third party challengers except for the very few who occasionally might pose a threat.