demwing
demwing's JournalJuly 28 - Burn the Rebel Flag for the 14th Amendment!
July 28, 1868 -- the day that the Secretary of State certified the 14th Amendment had been approved by the required 28 of the 37 states. In a little more than a month, we'll see the 148th anniversary of that day.
I say that in honor of the 14th, we orchestrate rallies in the capitols of all former Confederate states, have a group reading of the 14th Amendment, and burn a Confederate flag.
Popcorn is optional...
Think that will send a message to anyone?
This Ain't 1972
I just read a post here on DU where a kindly soul warned us all that Bernie Sanders was our modern George McGovern, having absolutely zero chances of winning an election.
Though I'm sure that the warning was given out of the goodness of his/her heart I started counting all the ways that this election was like that election.
What a task! I had to stop when I got to Zero!
I just don't see how 2016 compares to 1972...we've lived through a generation of profound changes since that year. As Bill Nye the Science Guy used to say: "Consider the following..."
- In 1972, a black man had no chance of running for the Presidency, let alone winning it twice.
- In 1972, a woman had no chance of getting the Democratic party nomination, let alone being the front runner.
- In 1972, being in favor of gay marriage was a career killer.
- In 1972, banks were regulated and couldn't destroy the economy.
- In 1972, we had not already lived through 20-30 years of trickle down economics.
- In 1972, there was no Citizens United to act as a lightning rod.
- In 1972, there wasn't a clown car full of insane Republicans running against us (and each other).
- In 1972, there was no Internet to organize the troops.
- In 1972, these thing's didn't all come together to create a perfect storm for populist reform.
- Most importantly, in 1972 we didn't have Bernie Sanders to kick some corporate ass!
So hey all you worry warriors? While we appreciate your sincere concerns, we really don't share them.
This ain't 1972. Bernie Sanders isn't repeating history. He's making history.
Hillary Clinton IS A Liberal? So What?
I don't doubt her credentials on that front.
I'm just saying that at this place and in this time, being liberal is no longer enough.
We are in an economic fight for our lives, and we need an economic populist to lead that fight. Despite Clinton's impressive resume, despite her liberal street creds, she has never really been a populist.
Despite her progressive words, she has never really stood with the 99%.
Despite her campaign rhetoric, she has never really been willing to fight for the middle class, not when doing so might jeopordize her relationship with the same Wall Street interests that underwrite her campaigns.
She's a great Lefty Liberal, in an America that can no longer choose candidates based on their Left-Right differences. Times have changed. The rules of engagement have been rewritten.
To paraphrase another Clinton campaign: "It's the Economic Justice, Stupid!"
There's only one candidate in this race that can draw a real comparison to the New Deal policies of FDR.
There's only one candidate in this race that could stand on Roosevelt Island and give a speech about economic justice, without bringing up the spectres of Glass-Steagall's repeal and Goldman Sach's donations.
There's only one candidate in this race that can really lead a battle against Wall Street.
Ask yourself honestly if you think that candidate is Hillary Clinton, or if that candidate is Bernie Sanders.
In honor of our choice, I'm changing my populist icon from Warren to Sanders, and am sending Bernie another $50.
No hate for Hillary, I just want someone whose desire to defend the 99% outweighs their fear of offending the 1%.
The Long Game - A Lesson In Creative Genius
I ran into a DU thread yesterday where the OP, refering to the job market, stated:
"If you are over 50 usually you are going to the bottom of the list"
If you have ever felt that way in your personal life, I urge you to watch these two videos...
Part 1 - Da Vinci Was a Loser?
vimeo.com/84022735
Part 2 - Our Obsession With Youth
vimeo.com/87448006
Overnight success often takes years, don't sell yourself short.
With Apologies to Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Populist Manifesto No. 2016Democrats, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
Come down, come down
from your Russian Hills and Telegraph Hills,
your Beacon Hills and your Chapel Hills,
your Mount Analogues and Montparnasses,
down from your foothills and mountains,
out of your teepees and domes.
The trees are still falling
and well to the woods no more.
No time now for sitting in them
As man burns down his own house
to roast his pig
No more chanting Hare Krishna
while Rome burns.
San Franciscos burning,
Mayakovskys Moscows burning
the fossil-fuels of life.
Night & the Horse approaches
eating light, heat & power,
and the clouds have trousers.
No time now for the liberal to hide
above, beyond, behind the scenes,
indifferent, paring his fingernails,
refining himself out of existence.
No time now for our little literary games,
no time now for our paranoias & hypochondrias,
no time now for fear & loathing,
time now only for light & love.
We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at Democracy readings.
Democracy isnt a secret society,
It isnt a temple either.
Secret words & chants wont do any longer.
The hour of oming is over,
the time of keening come,
a time for keening & rejoicing
over the coming end
of industrial civilization
which is bad for earth & Man.
Time now to face outward
in the full lotus position
with eyes wide open,
Time now to open your mouths
with a new open speech,
time now to communicate with all sentient beings,
All you Democrats of the Cities
hung in museums including myself,
All you Democrats Democrats writing Democratically
about Democracy,
All you Democracy workshop Democrats
in the boondock heart of America,
All you housebroken Ezra Pounds,
All you far-out freaked-out cut-up Democrats,
All you pre-stressed Concrete Democrats,
All you cunnilingual Democrats,
All you pay-toilet Democrats groaning with graffiti,
All you A-train swingers who never swing on birches,
All you masters of the sawmill haiku in the Siberias of America,
All you eyeless unrealists,
All you self-occulting supersurrealists,
All you bedroom visionaries and closet agitpropagators,
All you Groucho Marxist Democrats
and leisure-class Comrades
who lie around all day and talk about the working class proletariat,
All you Catholic anarchists of Democracy,
All you Black Mountaineers of Democracy
All you Boston Brahims and Bolinas bucolics,
All you den mothers of Democracy,
All you zen brothers of Democracy,
All you suicide lovers of Democracy
All you hairy professors of poesie,
All you Democracy reviewers
drinking the blood of the Democrat
All you Democracy Police -
Where are Whitmans wild children,
where the great voices speaking out
with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
where the greatnew vision,
the great world-view,
the high prophetic song
of the immense earth
and all that sings in it
And our relations to it -
Democrats, descend
to the street of the world once more
And open your minds & eyes
with the old visual delight,
Clear your throat and speak up,
Democracy is dead, long live Democracy
with terrible eyes and buffalo strength.
Dont wait for the Revolution
or itll happen without you,
Stop mumbling and speak out
with a new wide-open Democracy
with a new commonsensual public surface
with other subjective levels
or other subversive levels,
a tuning fork in the inner ear
to strike below the surface.
Of your own sweet Self still sing
yet utter the word en-masse -
Democracy the common carrier
for the transportation of the public
to higher places
than other wheels can carry it
Democracy still falls from the skies
into our streets still open.
They havent put up the barricades, yet,
the streets still alive with faces,
lovely men & women still walking there,
still lovely creatures everywhere,
in the eyes of all the secret of all
still buried there,
Whitmans wild children still sleeping there,
Awake and walk in the open air.
Read the real poem here:
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/populist-manifesto-no-1/
Will Rogers Talks Trickle UP Economics in 1932
Rogers discusses his thoughts about Roosevelt's defeat of Hoover. Lengthy, but well worth the read, if only to see the way that the language has changed in the last 85 years, but the Republicans are peddling the same exact brand of bullshit!
Nationally syndicated Column: #518, Page: #183, as published in the Tulsa Daily World, 5 December 1932
http://www.willrogers.com/papers/weekly/WA-Vol-5.pdf (search for Page 183)
Well all I know is just what I read in the papers or what I see as I prowl hither and thither. With the election over everybody seems to have settled down to steady argument. The old Hide Bound Republicans still think the world is just on the verge of coming to an end, and you can kinder see their angle at that for they have been running things for all these years.I got a letter the other day from a very very prominent business man in Los Angeles, Mr. Frank Garbutt, the man that has made running of clubs a science, and not just a business.1 He owns every club from the great Los Angeles Athletic Club to Beach Clubs, to Golf Clubs, to Polo Clubs.
Now Frank is the longestheaded man you ever saw. Yet he said there wouldnt be a bank open in five months after Roosevelt took office. I dont know what these fellows figure the Democrats are going to do with the Country. You would think a lot of folks would have their passage booked to some foreign land till the next election when they could get these Democrats back among the unemployed. Why they was in for eight years here not so long ago, from 1912 to 20. Course I was just a boy and cant remember back that far but I have heard my dear old Dad say there was some mighty good times including a war thrown in for good measure.
Personally I never could see much difference in the two gangs. They used to be divided by the tarriff. The tarriff was originally supposed to aid the man that manufactured things. Well, the Democrats of those days dident
manufacture anything but arguments, so they was against the tarriff, but the South woke up one day and saw some spinning looms advertised in a Montgomery-Ward menu card, so they sent and got some and started spinning
their own cotton. Well they had cheap water power, cheap coal, cheap labor, and the Yankees started moving their shops down from the North. Well the Democrats woke up on another morning with a tarriff problem on their hands. The South had gone industrial in a big way. Well they started talking about a tarriff in bigger words than the North, so now that the South has got em some smoke stacks where they used to have some mule sheds, why they are just tarriffing themselves to death. So, that left the principal dividing line between the two parties shot to pieces. You cant tell one from the other now.
Course the last few years under Mr. Coolidge and Mr. Hoover there had grown the old original idea of the Republican Party that was the party of the rich. And I think that was the biggest contributing part in their defeat.
I think the general run of folks had kinder got wise to that. In the old days they could get away with it, but of late years the rich had diminished till their voting power wasent enough to keep a minority vote going. Thiis last election was a revulsion of feeling that went back a long way ahea of the hard times. Mr. Hoover reaped the benefits of the arrogance of the party when it was going strong. Why after that twenty-eight election there was no holding em. They really did think they had hard times cornered once and for all. Merger on top of merger. Get two nonpaying things merged and then issue more stock to the public. Consolidations and Holding Companies.
Those are the Inventions that every voter that had bought during the Cockoo days were gunning for at this last election. Saying that all the big vote was just against hard times is not all so. They was voting against not being advised that all these foreign loans was not too solid. They was voting because they had never been told or warned
to the contrary that every big consolidation might not be just the best investment.
You know the people kinder look on our Government to tell em and kinder advise em. And many an old bird got sore at Coolidge, but could only take it out on Hoover. Big business sure got big, but it got big by selling its stocks and not by selling its products. No scheme was halted by the Government as long as somebody would buy the stock. It could have been a plan to deepen the Atlantic ocean and it would have had the indorsement of the proper department in Washington, and the stocks would have gone on the market.
This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.
No Sir, the little fellow felt that he never had a chance, and he dident till November the eighth, and did he grab it? The whole idea of Government relief for the last few years has been to loan somebody more money, so they could go further in debt. It aint much relief to just transfer your debts from one party to another adding a little more in the bargain. No, I believe the Boys from all they had and hadent done had this coming to em.
Martin O'Malley On the Record
On the Issues:
http://www.ontheissues.org/Martin_O%60Malley.htm
Ballotpedia Page
http://ballotpedia.org/Martin_O%27Malley
Funding
http://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/67009/martin-omalley#.VWWpc3GCOK0
Campaign Site
http://martinomalley.com/
Bernie Sanders On the Record
On the Issues:
http://www.ontheissues.org/senate/bernie_sanders.htm
Ballotpedia Page
http://ballotpedia.org/Bernie_Sanders
Funding
http://votesmart.org/candidate/campaign-finance/27110/bernie-sanders#.VWWoLXGCOK0
Campaign Site
https://berniesanders.com/
UPDATED: Robert Reich - (10) TWELVE Ideas to Save the Economy
Idea #1: Fight for $15Idea #2: Help Working Families
Idea #3: Expand Social Security
Idea #4: Tame Wall Street
Idea #5: Reinvent Education
Idea #6: End Corporate Welfare
Idea #7: Strengthen Unions
Idea #8: Raise the Estate Tax
Idea #9: Make Polluters Pay
Idea #10: End Mass Incarceration
Idea #11: The Medicare Solution
Idea #12: Get Big Money Out of Politics
The Backwards Brain Bike (and why you shouldn't give up on your conservative relatives!)
first, watch this video, it sets the stage for discussing how we program our brains:
https://m.
Now relate this to our conservative relatives (I think we've all got one) who keep watching FOX news, forwarding wacky CT emails from their "church groups", and voting in the Republican ratfuckers who don't serve the interests of the people they pretend to represent.
Like the people who try to ride the BBB (backwards brain bicycle), they base their actions on behavioral algorithms that were programmed long ago in life. They're not aware that someone has changed the rules, and that the step they followed in the past -- which once helped steer their lives -- now sends them into a dangerous spiral and an inevitable crash. Even after crashing several times, their behaviors are so ingrained that they can't recalculate.
The good news for all of us is that time and persistence CAN change even the most fundamental behaviors, and though the programming takes time, the "Aha!" moment can happen in a sudden swoop.
If we can learn to reverse the way we choose between right and left as we ride a bike, we can do it when we vote.
Profile Information
Gender: MaleHometown: Venice, California
Current location: St. Petersburg, Florida
Member since: Fri Jul 2, 2004, 04:55 PM
Number of posts: 16,916