A revolution is coming —
a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough;
compassionate if we care enough;
successful if we are fortunate enough —
But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not.
We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability
Robert F Kennedy
Filed under Quote of the Day, Uncategorized
Elections- and Laws- have consequences….
These Racist Tea Party Republicans better be careful what they ask for; they just might get it….
They need to be aware of the consequences of putting their slogans into laws and actions….
But then, Alabama probably forgot slavery was now illegal and figured they would pick the cotton, er, tomatoes
These little facts keep getting missed by the home schoolers……
At least they still have Mississippi to make them look good….
From Wonkette.com:
Alabama is just the latest backwards state to legally codify its crusader witch hunt against the illegal immigrant wizards working their back-breaking field labor black magick on Alabama’s giant agriculture industry, but the state’s recently-enacted set of draconian worst-ever anti-immigrant laws are working a little too fast: zillions of Alabama tomatoes are rotting away in the fields this harvest season as undocumented immigrants flee like hell. Tomato farmers got together to protest these vicious dingus laws and make GOP state senator Scott Beason — the same creepy racist turd blossom who called African Americans “aborigines” — haul around one of the tomato buckets for five seconds to see how heavy they are. Beason felt he was too good for this and refused to pick it up, which is…hey, exactly like every other legal worker in Alabama!
The AP has the details of the Tomato Bucket Incident:
Tomato farmer Brian Cash said the migrant workers who would normally be on Chandler Mountain have gone to other states with less restrictive laws.
After talking with famers at the tomato shed, Beason visited the Smith family’s farm. Leroy Smith, Chad Smith’s father, challenged the senator to pick a bucket full of tomatoes and experience the labor-intensive work.
Beason declined but promised to see what could be done to help farmers while still trying to keep illegal immigrants out of Alabama.
Smith threw down the bucket he offered Beason and said, “There, I figured it would be like that.”
Oh well, at least Alabama and Scott Beason got to make their Important Point, about being dicks. [AP]
via Dumb Alabama Immigration Law Working So Well Its Crops Are Rotting.
Filed under Immigration, Jobs, Politics, Uncategorized
It seems like this is just getting bigger and bigger…I think it’s already bigger than the Tea Party movement started out to be and much more open and supportive of Democracy.
I’m also so very glad to see so many young people involved and trying to bring so much positive energy to the process- as opposed to the old, bitter, mean Tea Party crowd….
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and even more interesting to see if the mainstream media covers it….
I wish these guys luck!
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has already spread to Washington D.C., Boston and Los Angeles. On Wednesday it will reach college campuses. On a Facebook page called Occupy Colleges, student organizers are planning protests — without specifying much in the way of goals, other than expressing “solidarity” with the left-wing protests that have gripped lower Manhattan.
A related website advertises a national student walkout: “Wednesday, October 5th, countrywide student walkout 12PM your local time. Do not go to school Go fight for yours and everybody else’s rights at Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Los Angeles or your nearest Occupation. The time is now to join our fellow %99!”
The site includes a list of 24 campuses where student groups have organized walkouts.
Student walkouts are generally forms of nonviolent protest, but students who skip class out of laziness are often lumped in with those who did so with the protest in mind, making it difficult to gauge any such effort’s success..
The “Occupy” movement has largely used Facebook and Twitter to organize its ranks.
via Campus Walkout | Occupy Wall Street | Solidarity Movement | The Daily Caller.
Filed under Uncategorized
Very nice article from Bill Maher over on Huffington Post about being over 50….
God, I hope he’s not getting soft in his old age….
We need his feisty outrage too much….
The thing about your fifties is, you’re not nearly over (if you’re lucky) — in fact, lots of ambitious people are peaking — but it is the first time in your life that you can see over the crest of the mountain and down into the Valley below — you know, Death. Death is the monster we all fear, yet with each day, we walk toward it, and can’t help doing so; we can’t help but walk toward the one thing we’re most trying to avoid.
Little things remind you of this all the time — like minor cuts taking longer to heal than they used to. It doesn’t cause you any health problems, but it reminds you your body is not replacing cells as fast as it used to, and the ones it is sending are inferior copies of their predecessors. That’s why we age, and look progressively worse as the years pass: just like a photocopy or a video tape that looks slightly worse each time its copied, we are constantly copying ourselves and coming out a little inferior every time. Merry Christmas.
However… the one thing that does seem to get better, at least so far, is the brain — you know, so you can be more aware of the depressing physical part! But hey, the depressing physical part also gives you an urgency to life that is really quite irreplaceable. When you’re young, you don’t appreciate! And learning to appreciate life is almost better than being young and ignoring it.
At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.
MORE: Bill Maher: On Being Over 50.
Filed under Politics, Uncategorized
I loved “Absolutely Fabulous” back in the 1990’s and am so glad to hear they are making three new episodes for this season on BBC.
But I never considered it a cultural milestone or a predictor of future societal behavior. I guess I thought it was a fairly honest depiction of my friends and I as we dealt with our 3o’s and the last gasp of our shallow, out-of-control youth.
It was our “thirtysomething”.
Guess I was wrong, again!
Great article on AbFab from the Guardian in the UK
Edina, the hard-boiled, label-hungry PR guru, and Patsy, her addiction-fuelled magazine editor sidekick, now look like prescient visions of the future. When they first emerged on screen they endeared through preposterousness. With their minute-long obsessions and faux-ethical bandwagons, the pair cascaded from one catastrophe to the next. Yet what was once recognisably absurd has become absurdly recognisable.
A preponderance of Ab Fab-type figures now clog the cultural landscape. It is almost as if there is nothing left to ironise. Simon Cowell, Mary Portas, the Beckhams, Gok Wan, Nigella Lawson and any number of Premier League footballers all come replete with their own free-floating relationship with comic cliche.
We are treated to tales that sound as if they were plucked straight from an Absolutely Fabulous storyboarding meeting. There’s Alex James, the former coke-addled rock star who opened a cheese farm in his countryside pile. Here’s Angelina Jolie, displaying her global awareness one adopted baby at a time.
There’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s commercial repositioning with a holistic self-help website. Sex and the City has built an entire franchise out of repeating Patsy’s mantra: that nothing cannot be solved by the purchase of a fancy pair of shoes. The Financial Times’s How To Spend It magazine has become a latter-day Ab Fab manual.
What started as a sly poke at ridiculous figures of fun has become a new aspirational model. Patsy’s cries of “Bolly!” and “Lacroix!” in response to any impending crisis predated the late 90s snowballing of branding culture, from smart phones to handbags.
MORE: Why Absolutely Fabulous now looks absolutely prescient | Paul Flynn | Comment is free | The Guardian.
Filed under Entertainment, Television, Uncategorized
This is why the GOP is pushing all these new “voter” initiatives in so many states.
It’s a coordinated effort to deny people the right to vote.
Republicans know they only win as long as turnout is low. They also know the demographic trends are against them. Therefore, their goal is to drive down turnout and find ways to disenfranchise groups of people who traditionally vote Democratic.
I’m afraid we’ll only see more of these efforts to steal elections. The GOP is the real driver of voter fraud– defrauding people of the right to vote….
Restrictive voting laws in states across the country could affect up to five million voters from traditionally Democratic demographics in 2012, according to a new report by the Brennan Center. That’s a number larger than the margin of victory in two of the last three presidential elections.
The new restrictions, the study found, “fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election.”
The study found that:
These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012.
The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012 – 63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.
The total number, according to the Brennan Center, is the sum of the 3.2 million voters they estimate will be affected by new photo ID laws, “the 240,000 citizens and potential voters who could be affected by new proof of citizenship laws, 202,000 voters registered in 2008 through voter registration drives that have now been made extremely difficult or impossible under new laws, 60,000 voters registered in 2008 through Election Day voter registration where it has now been repealed, one to two million voters who voted in 2008 on days eliminated under new laws rolling back early voting and at least 100,000 disenfranchised citizens who might have regained voting rights by 2012.”
“These voting law changes are radical and completely unnecessary,” Wendy. R. Weiser, a co-author of the report, said in a statement. “They especially hurt those who have been historically locked out of our electoral system, like minorities, poor people, and students. Often they seem precisely targeted to exclude certain voters.”
Filed under Elections, Politics, Uncategorized
“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”
Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve been wondering for several years now, exactly what it would take to get Americans to take to the streets, in protest, like they did in the 1960’s. Or in other countries earlier this year….
I may be getting my answer…
I’m going to be watching this much more closely…
These Police tactics are really starting to worry me. This is sounding more and more like a story from Tiananmen Square in China than from New York City in the USA.
Now, the protests are spreading to DC and LA. This may really be getting interesting.
Hundreds of people protesting Wall Street abuses were penned in and arrested by police Saturday, two weeks into an ongoing demonstration that has become known on Twitter as #OccupyWallStreet.
Centered at Zuccotti Park since September 17, the gathering that began as a call to arms from anti-consumerist magazine AdBusters has shown no sign of a slowdown.
The movement aims to “express a feeling of mass injustice,” according to the group’s declaration for the occupation of New York City released Friday. The injustices include the foreclosure crisis, work place discrimination and student loan debt, among a list of others.
As HuffPost reported recently, the movement is less about specific policy demands and more about an expression of opposition to ever yawning economic inequality driven by Wall Street and its allies in Washington.
Calling themselves an American revolution, the protesters say they plan to stay in the park indefinitely.
George Basta, an official with New York Communities for Change, said that the organizers were encouraged by police on Saturday to march on the street area of the Brooklyn Bridge, instead of the walkway, then subsequently arrested them for marching in traffic. Two lead organizers, Jonathan Westin and Pete Nagy, were penned in by police. Westin managed to exit the police pen, but Nagy is missing and presumed detained by police, Basta told HuffPost.
“Police say some demonstrators spilled onto the roadway Saturday night after being told to stay on the pedestrian pathway,” the Associated Press reported.
Similar demonstrations started Saturday in Washington and Los Angeles.
Shon Botado, a protester staffing a first aid station in New York, told The Huffington Post on Friday that he’s not leaving “until change is made to the financial structure.”
More, From the Huffington Post Story: Occupy Wall Street: NYPD Arrests 700 Protesters On Brooklyn Bridge [LATEST UPDATES].
Filed under Politics, The Economy, Uncategorized
Great video from Bill Maher’s “Real Time” last night….
He talks about the “promiscuous” Republican electorate that falls in love with a new Candidate every month- until they get to know them.
Then, he closes with how even Jesus of Nazareth wouldn’t be able to please these people….
Which should give the GOP voters something to think about.
But if Republicans really thought-and felt- well, would they be Republicans?
Filed under Elections, Politics, Religion, Uncategorized
No surprises here– to me, at least.
Based on their survey, NM Incite determined that the main reason people use social media is to “find and maintain” relationships with family and friends, with 88 and 89 percent of users, respectively, saying they used social networking sites for this purpose. The next most popular activity is connecting with new friends (70 percent do this), followed by accessing product reviews (68 percent) and online entertainment (67 percent). Just 16 percent said they use social media for dating and less than a third reported using social networks to find a job.
Filed under Internet, Uncategorized
Lost in the 21st Century 