chknltl
chknltl's JournalThe enemy of my enemy...maybe an unseen blessing?
Since Citizens United came out we on the left have been outraged. Many of us even here have called for the impeachment of Justice Roberts. After his historic vote on the Affordable Health Care program, we on the left and those who stand to benefit from it are not feeling so bad about our Chief Justice. (No, I have not heard anyone around here sing his praises either but you know what I mean)
On the other hand, those on the right, the teiabagger, the fox news indoctrinated, and those who call themselves conservative feel supremely betrayed. Thom Hartman speculates that this latest decision will replace Roe v Wade as a new rally point for these members of our electorate. The focus of the right's hate is one Chief Justice Roberts. Go look for yourself, right now he is a modern Benedict Arnold in their eyes some saying his decision equal to treason.
So all speculation aside as to why Justice Roberts did what he did, he is still the driving force behind one of the two worst Supreme Court decisions ever. (There was that other horrible decision regarding people being property prior to the Civil War you may recall). Do you REALLY think Chief Justice Roberts is undergoing some kind morality reversal-that he somehow developed a newfound love for We The People? I don't. I think he still serves corporate masters, I think the citizenry of this nation regardless of race, religion or political position mean nothing to him.
May I suggest, now is as good as it gets to start a groundswell movement calling on our government-(that is IF it is still OUR government), to bring about the impeachment of Chief Justice Roberts. You already know about the tenacity, the ferocity and the willingness of the masses on the right to get behind something and PUSH! Even though our reasons for doing this may differ, I believe that our joined forces-our joined voices-a true WE THE PEOPLES movement can make this thing happen.
Our government would be put into a position of doing the will of its citizenry or face a truly enraged electorat-one with but one mission, the replacement of that government! And if such a thing as I have just imagined were to occur, what great united endeavours could this new found partnership accomplish afterwards? Maybe resolve our election fraud problem, maybe accomplish campaign finance reform, how about stop a war and bring our fellow citizens home.
I guess what I am trying to point out is that we on the left want to take back our government, those on the right want to take back our government. Our government is being taken over by the corporatists. So....want to keep trying to take it back from those corporatists with our woefully unequal funds and with HALF OF THE ELECTORATE?
Look, I am tired of this fight, a fight that many here in the DU say we have already lost. I still have faith, faith in the system our founding fathers set up. Things don't really seem to be getting any better in this country. Frankly, since impeachment got taken off the table, I have lost a lot of faith in my Democratic leadership. That said, I still have faith in our democracy, but as someone else once said, "A house divided.... "
Well that's my rant, thanks.
Congress passes healthcare insurance mandate ......in 1798
Please forgive me if this was already posted. I heard about this on the Thom Hartman show yesterday and thought to share the link here.
From Forbes magazine:
In July of 1798, Congress passed –and President John Adams signed - “An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen.” The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance.
Keep in mind that the 5th Congress did not really need to struggle over the intentions of the drafters of the Constitutions in creating this Act as many of its members were the drafters of the Constitution. "
Much more at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/01/17/congress-passes-socialized-medicine-and-mandates-health-insurance-in-1798/
My message to those who get their news from the fox
You who choose to bury your head in the sand....
Present your ass to the world!
Furthermore, from that position,
You can have no idea
Who is really screwing you.
Attn. Wa. state photogs and birders
Location: Veterans hospital at American Lake, Lakewood Wa.
What: Eagles....lots of eagles.
There is at least one nest likely more on the waterfront on the hospital grounds. Today, in a ten minute period, I witnessed a half dozen or more eagles cavorting around me...some were as close as ....well I heard the wind in their feathers let's put it that way. nuff said.
just got into a verbal fight with a birther
He is a black male, about 50, served as an M.P. in the Army back in the mid-late '70s, is pretty much homeless and is sorta employed down at an automotive shop, where he sleeps at night.
He is not a stupid person and luckily slow to offend, (i know it took some doing but I DID anger him).
I thought it ok to chide him on being a republican which set the whole discussion/argument/shouting match off. I asked him if I could say a few minutes worth on why I felt that republicans were anti democracy which he agreed to listen to. I informed him that democracy requires an informed electorate, that the republicans want instead to diminish the electorate and furthermore to divide and propagandize the electorate.
He stopped me from expanding on this by pointing out that we do not have a democracy, that we instead have a republic. (Typical quote of the propagandized...democracy sounds too much like democrat for their tastes I guess).
I tried to go on with voter fraud vs election fraud and who was actually doing what...that ACORN was a a means to get the elderly and the impoverished to vote when he stopped me again and claimed that both sides were equally guilty of voter fraud. I tried to explain the difference between the two forms of fraud and who has been busted for what historically when he stopped me again to inform me that Chicago Dems were notorious for having the dead vote for Dems.
At this point I was agitated enough to ask if he could back up his assertions when he decided to change the whole discussion to his problem with President Obama-that he is not even an American! Ok so now I see that I am dealing with a birther. I think I can maybe set him straight on this....boy was I wrong.
So I ask him what evidence does he have to back up that President Obama was not born in Hawaii. He claimed that if he is asked by the police for his I-D, he shows it but the President when asked to show his longform birth certificate refused to do so. My counter to this was to ask where in the Constitution did it say that a specific document was required to be presented and to whom as a prerequisite to be POTUS. (I knew already the requirements, producing any documentation is not one of the three listed requirements).
This is where our argument stalled out. He being angry that I refused to budge in my reasoning that it was NOT listed that a potential candidate is required to prove ANYTHING, he required that the president did indeed need to provide the longform birth certificate, that the reason President Obama refused to do so was because he was born elsewhere than in America.
He was quite angry at this time and I was shaking with frustration. I even went to a webpage with my cell phone and physically showed him the three requirements. When he saw the requirement of being born an American he treated
that as proof that I was wrong....I of course pointed out that there was nowhere a fourth requirement that President Obama was required to provide ANY proof-that the burden of disproving his citizenship was squarely on those who said he was not a citizen.
I eventually left, our debate an angry shouting match, and he feeling that I was the propagandized idiot. He promised to vote for Romney because Democrats have done nothing to help him and who knows, maybe the republicans will serve him better.
Later I researched an anti birther site, (thanks to DUs antipropaganda subforum) and discovered the real reason that President Obama can not produce this longform birth certificate-it being the sole property of the records department of the hospital where he was born and not the property of the mother, father or the person born there. Not even the President of The United States can get it released! They gladly will provide a certificate of birth and by Hawaiian law they do not have to provide more than that. They don't even have to provide a photocopy of the original.
So I have access to a hardcopy of the birther debunk page which refutes my poor propagandized friend but at this point I am not sure the debate is worth pursueing. I have read studies that show that the conservative brain shuts out facts and data which conflict with their reality. I have even complained to them about their conscious ignoring of the facts but my complaints just fall on deaf ears.
I guess I've nothing further to say, outside of how angry I am at those who have so fucked up this guy's head. This poor soul is so lost to America and our democracy....and he is legion in numbers. I suppose I now understand why the Vietnameese government decided to send much of its citizenry to mandatory deprogramming after the fiasco that we called the VietNam war. Like the Germans who were made to see those death camps, we have our section of the population who refuse to face the facts until they get forced to face them. For those poor lost souls, I am truly confounded that I know not how to help them and that just sucks!
An inconvenient lawsuit, kids vs US Government
A group of high school kids has decided that our government has been delinquent in protecting their future from the ravages of global warming. They may be too young to vote but that is not stopping these brilliant high schoolers from taking action, that action is taking the US Government to court.
From THE ATLANTIC MOBILE:
"The Ventura, California, teen and four other juvenile plaintiffs want government officials to do more to prevent the risks of climate change -- the dangerous storms, heat waves, rising sea levels, and food-supply disruptions that scientists warn will threaten their generation absent a major turnabout in global energy policy. Specifically, the students are demanding that the U.S. government start reducing national emissions of carbon dioxide by at least six percent per year beginning in 2013.
"I think a lot of young people realize that this is an urgent time, and that we're not going to solve this problem just by riding our bikes more," Loorz said in an interview.
The youth -- represented, pro bono, by the Burlingame, California, law firm of former U.S. Republican congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, a co-founder of Earth Day -- filed the suit, Alec L. et. al vs. Lisa P. Jackson, et. al, in May of last year. Defendants include not only Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson but the heads of the Commerce, Interior, Commerce, Defense, Energy, and Agriculture departments. This Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Wilkins, an Obama appointee, will hear arguments on the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint."
More at:
http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/an-inconvenient-lawsuit-teenagers-take-global-warming-to-the-courts/256903/
edited to add link for further background info:
http://kids-vs-global-warming.com/Home.html
"When Stand Your Ground Failed"
Earlier today on The Norman Goldman Show, Norm and David Sirota discussed this case while the events in Florida were developing.
BY RANIA KHALEK
"As the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the failure of authorities to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman, continues to grab headlines, many conservatives and gun rights advocates insist that race has nothing to do with it. Some have also rallied to the defense of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the self-defense legislation under which Zimmerman was able to avoid arrest. Yet not all stand your ground claims are so successful. Not too far from Sanford, Fla., a black man named John McNeil is serving a life sentence for shooting Brian Epp, a white man who trespassed and attacked him at his home in Georgia, another stand your ground state....."
the rest of this story at:
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/11/when_stand_your_ground_fails/singleton/?mobile.html
This felt appropriate today:
Dr. King's Dream:
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹
I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
(i still believe in that dream, yes WE can.)
i agree
The nation is focused on this case, let the nation continue to focus in this area by debating the pros and cons of stand your ground including its history and results.
I am reminded of Germany as the war ended and the citizens local to the death camps were forced to view a reality they strongly wanted to pretend never occurred. I say our nation needs to see our realty, the who, where and why's of the stand your ground law, who is ALEC and what is their involvement, why was the right wing so rabidly pro zimmerman, what about the many many other stand your ground cases, and most importantly, how does racism figure in to all of this.
The right wing and their corporatists puppeteers are watching in horror as a bright spotlight is aimed right at their ugly paradigm. The very last thing they would want is for that spotlight to look deeper. Jefferson said that democracy REQUIRES an enlightened electorate, with an election looming a national review of the stand your ground law would be VERY ENLIGHTENING.
Speech by Joeseph Goebbels regarding women.
I recently began researching the radio broadcasts of nazi propaganda minister, Joesep Goebbels in order to compare his works with right wing propagandists today. One of the first items that caught my attention was this speech goebbels gave on 18 March 1933, just six weeks after Hitler took power.
Considering the ongoing gop war on women I thought this would make for an interesting read here in the DU. I'll quote the opening of his speech, there is a link below that for the rest of it, grab a cup of coffee and a comfy chair.
The occasion was the opening of a women’s exhibition in Berlin.
(The source: “Deutsches Frauentum,” Signale der neuen Zeit. 25 ausgewählte Reden von Dr. Joseph Goebbels (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1934), pp. 118-126.)
" It is a happy accident that my first speech since taking charge of the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda is to German women. Although I agree with Treitschke that men make history, I do not forget that women raise boys to manhood. You know that the National Socialist movement is the only party that keeps women out of daily politics. This arouses bitter criticism and hostility, all of it very unjustified. We have kept women out of the parliamentary-democratic intrigues of the past fourteen years in Germany not because we do not respect them, but because we respect them too much. We do not see the woman as inferior, but rather as having a different mission, a different value, than that of the man. Therefore we believed that the German woman, who more than any other in the world is a woman in the best sense of the word, should use her strength and abilities in other areas than the man."
more at:
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb55.htm
Profile Information
Name: chris chickGender: Male
Hometown: Between Mt. Rainier and McKenna Wa.
Home country: Hanging in there but just barely
Current location: I am right here! (location subject to change depending on the weather).
Member since: Thu May 19, 2005, 07:43 PM
Number of posts: 10,558
