The Eighth Dimension

From Rachel Maddow Show

2012-01-26T14:34:00.001-06:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Jimmie Rodgers

2012-01-26T09:39:00.001-06:00

In December of 1967 Jimmie Rodgers was severely assaulted by an off-duty Los Angeles Police Department officer on the San Diego Freeway in Southern California, fracturing his skull. He later sued the LAPD and settled out of court for $200,000. The reason for the assault has never been established. Within a year or so it seemed that he had recovered from his injuries. However, years later he was diagnosed with Spasmodic Dysphonia.

From the New York Times

2012-01-26T08:45:00.000-06:00

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.

Color China Photo, via Associated Press

An explosion last May at a Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China, killed four people and injured 18. It built iPads.

SAFETY PRECAUTIONS After a rash of apparent suicide attempts, a dormitory for Foxconn workers in Shenzhen, China, had safety netting installed last May. Foxconn said it acted quickly and comprehensively to address employee suicides.

When workers in the cafeteria ran outside, they saw black smoke pouring from shattered windows. It came from the area where employees polished thousands of iPad cases a day.

Two people were killed immediately, and over a dozen others hurt. As the injured were rushed into ambulances, one in particular stood out. His features had been smeared by the blast, scrubbed by heat and violence until a mat of red and black had replaced his mouth and nose.

“Are you Lai Xiaodong’s father?” a caller asked when the phone rang at Mr. Lai’s childhood home. Six months earlier, the 22-year-old had moved to Chengdu, in southwest China, to become one of the millions of human cogs powering the largest, fastest and most sophisticated manufacturing system on earth. That system has made it possible for Apple and hundreds of other companies to build devices almost as quickly as they can be dreamed up.

“He’s in trouble,” the caller told Mr. Lai’s father. “Get to the hospital as soon as possible.”

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers’ disregard for workers’ health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning.

“If Apple was warned, and didn’t act, that’s reprehensible,” said Nicholas Ashford, a former chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, a group that advises the United States Labor Department. “But what’s morally repugnant in one country is accepted business practices in another, and companies take advantage of that.”

Apple is not the only electronics company doing business within a troubling supply system. Bleak working conditions have been documented at factories manufacturing products for Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others.

Current and former Apple executives, moreover, say the company has made significant strides in improving factories in recent years. Apple has a supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.

And Apple’s annual supplier responsibility reports, in many cases, are the first to report abuses. This month, for the first time, the company released a list identifying many of its suppliers.

But significant problems remain. More than half of the suppliers audited by Apple have violated at least one aspect of the code of conduct every year since 2007, according to Apple’s reports, and in some instances have violated the law. While many violations involve working conditions, rather than safety hazards, troubling patterns persist.

“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management at Foxconn Technology, one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.

“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.

Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Tuesday, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. Its sales would have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been able to produce more.

Executives at other corporations report similar internal pressures. This system may not be pretty, they argue, but a radical overhaul would slow innovation. Customers want amazing new electronics delivered every year.

“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”

“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked.

To read the entire article click here.

From The Daily Show (Elizabeth Warren)

2012-01-25T06:42:00.001-06:00

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

From The White House

2012-01-24T22:27:00.003-06:00

2012 State Of The Union Address

January 25, 2012 | 1:05:13 |

Watch the Enhanced Version

Read Transcript

From PBS

From The Daily Show

2012-01-24T19:11:00.004-06:00

Stewart Loses It Over Gingrich's Hypocrisy (VIDEO)

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

A Few Photos

2012-01-24T08:29:00.001-06:00

From The White House

2012-01-23T14:03:00.002-06:00

We Can't Wait

From NPR (Etta James)

2012-01-20T19:14:00.002-06:00

Remembering Etta James, Stunning Singer

by Neda Ulaby

January 20, 2012

The "Matriarch of the Blues" has died. Music legend Etta James died Friday morning at Riverside Community Hospital in California of complications from leukemia. She was 73.

She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles in 1938. Her first manager and promoter cut up Jamesetta's name and reversed it: Etta James.

Her talent was discovered when she was 14 — the same age her mother was when James was born. Within three years, the foster-home runaway had her first hit, with the girl group The Peaches. Back then, "Roll With Me Henry" was deemed too racy for radio, "roll" being a sexual euphemism.

Remembrances

Etta James: The 1994 Fresh Air Interview

Etta James was still a minor when she toured with Little Richard. Then, she signed with leading blues label Chess Records and bleached her hair platinum blond.

"What I was doing was trying to be a glamour girl," she told NPR's Fresh Air in 1994. "Because I'd been a tomboy, and I wanted to look grown and wanted to wear high-heeled shoes and fishtail gowns and big, long rhinestone earrings."

Darkness Beneath The Joy

James had grit in her voice that could melt like sugar or rub like salt in a wound. Between 1960 and 1963, she had 10 records on the R&B charts, including "Something's Got a Hold on Me."
Darkness runs beneath that joy — as does anger, says David Ritz, who wrote a biography of James.

"It isn't like she sings that song," Ritz says. "Sometimes, you feel she was going to war with the song."

By the mid-1960s, James was into hard drugs, and her career hit the skids. She bounced checks, forged prescriptions and stole from her friends. A judge finally gave her a choice: prison or rehabilitation. In 1974, she spent months in recovery at a psychiatric hospital.

"I was around nothing but a lot of white kids," James told Fresh Air. "They were all younger than I was. I remember on Saturdays, they would play rock 'n' roll records and I would say, 'That music is really happening.' My song, 'I'd Rather Go Blind' — they had a version by Rod Stewart, and they kept saying, 'This is the song you wrote!' And I'd say, 'All right!' "

Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones sent James a letter while she was in rehab and invited her to tour with the band if she stayed clean. In 1978, she joined the Stones on tour. By the '90s, she'd reached a new generation of fans and won a Grammy. The next challenge was jazz.

"[Jazz] was too disciplined and too confining," James said on Fresh Air. "I thought you had to be bourgeois to do that. I was a sloppy kid, wanted to be just wild. I think it took me maturing."

James said making her tribute to Billie Holiday, 1994's Mystery Lady, also honored her mother, who loved both Holiday and jazz. She said it helped make peace with the woman she idolized, and who had abandoned her.

It's often said of Etta James that you could hear her whole life in her voice. James told NPR in 1989 that that made sense, though she mostly sang for herself.

"When I sing for myself, I probably sing for anyone who has any kind of hurt, any kind of bad feelings, good feelings, ups and downs, highs and lows, that kind of thing," she said.

Etta James went to extremes, and owned them in her life, and in her music.

From The Rachel Maddow Show

2012-01-17T09:29:00.001-06:00

Huntsman Flip-Flops On Romney

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Remembering Dr. King

2012-01-16T09:45:00.003-06:00

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The image of him lying there mortally wounded on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel will forever be etched in my memory.

Dr. King’s March on Washington five years earlier was not merely for African-American’s civil rights. It was a campaign to confront the inequalities that existed then between the haves and the have-nots in jobs, wages and housing throughout our nation.

He had come to Memphis in support of a strike by eleven hundred African-American sanitation workers who had walked off their jobs after two of their co-workers had been crushed to death by a garbage truck's compactor. Their strike had been met with a great deal of opposition and violence.

Weeks earlier Dr. King had gone there for meetings and to lead a march through the streets of Memphis. The rally had ended in hostility. Upset by the violence, Dr. King returned to Memphis to try and bring a peaceful end to the enmity. The night before his death, he made his prophetic "Mountaintop" speech:

"Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land!"

The next day he was murdered. Eventually, the strike was settled. Begrudgingly, the garbage men's union was recognized by the city of Memphis. Their pay was increase by a mere 15 cents.

Though much has changed for the better, economically the disparities and injustices that exist today are perhaps even more profound. The recent economic meltdown and recession created by “trickled-down” economics left our nation teetering on the brink of another great depression.

While the top 1% enjoy inconceivable prosperity, the poor, as well as the middle-class, are struggling to survive.

The conservative free-market, greed-driven ideology of the ‘right’ has all but destroyed Dr. King’s ‘Dream’ and left our nation fractured and our economy 'fixed'.

Photos from the Narrows

2012-01-15T09:10:00.002-06:00

Olivia Munn for PETA

2012-01-13T09:23:00.002-06:00

From The Colbert Report (Bill Moyers)

2012-01-12T14:23:00.001-06:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Tuesday January 10, 2012 with Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers believes that capitalism is out of control and there can be no people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.

Bill Moyers is Back

2012-01-12T09:39:00.003-06:00

At age 77 Bill Moyers will premiere on public television stations across the country this weekend (check listings for time, day and channel) 'Moyers & Company'.

"We will not be doing the extensive field reporting; we will not be doing the high-production-value stories this time . . ."

"'Moyers & Company' will essentially be my probing other people's ideas, and intelligence, and experiences . . ."

From Jack

2012-01-12T05:24:00.002-06:00

THE ECONOMICS OF REVOLUTION

by Jack Reeves

A major fact, yea lesson, of history is that economic disparity is a dominant cause of revolution. Class warfare is the better designation.

Class, related to wealth and resulting power, creates disparities that cause revolutions. Examples: England, France, the 13 Colonies, Russia, Germany, Italy, India, China, Iraq, Argentina, etc.

Arguably, the United States could undergo a revolution. Our last attempt was the American Civil War.

"We are the 99%" is the slogan of "Occupy" protesters. It refers to the concentration of wealth since the 1970s among the top 1% of earners. The Congressional Budget Office says that between 1979 and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. During the same time, the 60% of Americans in the middle of the income scale saw their income rise by 40%.
There are economic forces of the 1%, the upper class, determined to strengthen this status quo.

We are not there yet, but the writing is on the wall. Wall Street et al. are not immune to revolution caused by economic disparity.

"Mene mene tekel upharsin"--the 'writing on the wall' interpreted by Daniel: The king's deeds have been weighed and found deficient, and his kingdom will therefore be divided.

The Bible. History. We learn from history or we repeat it.

Let Calcutta Surprise You

2012-01-12T05:13:00.001-06:00

From Jack

2012-01-11T12:10:00.003-06:00

WHAT DOES SOCIALISM MEAN?

by Jack reeves

Advocacy for government programs to broadly benefit Americans, e.g., universal health care, Pell Grants, unemployment insurance, are branded by some as "socialism"--akin to communism, even associated with godless.

Socialism so used is a scare word indifferent to definition and fact.

Socialism is governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

Through distorted denomination, Pell Grants and for the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes are made emblematic of such a society. Certainly not ours, though. Why?

Arguably, the word cloaks an underlying belief that societies consist of the deserving and the undeserving.

Socialism so declared means 'spreading the wealth'. In other words, giving the deservings' dollars to the undeserving.

Would that the self-designated deserving could speak their truth undisguised in their -ism.

But then the veil would be lifted on their racial, ethnic and economic beliefs.It seems class warfare.

Oops.

From the Daily Show

2012-01-10T12:10:00.001-06:00

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

e Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009

2012-01-07T14:51:00.001-06:00

Thanks Bob . . .

Lawrence M. Krauss

I was born in New York City and shortly afterward moved to Toronto, spending my childhood in Canada. I received undergraduate degrees in mathematics and physics from Carleton University, and his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982.

After a stint in the Harvard Society of Fellows, I became an assistant professor at Yale University in 1985 and Associate Professor in 1988. I moved in 1993 to become Ambrose Swasey Professor of Physics, professor of astronomy, and Chairman of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University In August 2008 I joined the faculty at Arizona State University as Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the Department of Physics in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Director of the University's Origins Initiative. In 2009 we inaugurated this initiative with the Origins Symposium… Read more

Spherical Flying Machine Developed by Japan Ministry Of Defense

2012-01-07T08:38:00.001-06:00

From Coal River Mountain Watch

2012-01-06T03:42:00.000-06:00

Take Action: Demand an End to Mountaintop Removal

Coal companies are pushing for more than 100 new mountaintop removal permits. Tell the Obama Administration to stand up for the health and safety of mountain communities and end mountaintop removal.

Mountaintop removal mining continues to devastate the health of communities across Appalachia. No one can survive without clean water, and scientific research shows that people living near mountaintop removal mines face greater threats to their health and their lives.

Cancer rates are two times higher in areas of mountaintop removal mining; babies born near mountaintop removal mining are 26 percent more likely to be born with birth defects as well.

Our allies in communities across Appalachia are fighting back against some of these permits.

For example:

These are but three examples from the more than 100 proposed mountaintop removal sites in Appalachia. Take action! Tell the Obama Administration to stand up for the health and safety of mountain communities and end mountaintop removal.

Ison Rock Ridge, VA: Ison Rock Ridge Mountain shelters five mountain communities of approximately 2,300 people, and many more rely on the streams that flow from this mountain. Wise County is already heavily impacted by mountaintop removal. In fact, 30 percent of the county has been blasted and flattened by mountaintop removal mining. Mountaintop removal on Ison Rock Ridge threatens the towns, homes, and waters below, but citizens in this area are coming together to fight to save the mountain.

Stacy's Branch, KY: Leeco Coal has applied for a permit to blow up 849 acres of this mountain ridge and create six valley fills, burying or polluting more 4 miles of streams between two counties, Knott and Perry, and contaminating the nearby waters and air with harmful pollution. Many Stacy's Branch residents spoke with EPA officials last spring about the impacts of the proposed mining.

Buffalo Mountain, WV: Consol Energy has applied for a permit to remove a six-mile-long stretch of mountaintops in Mingo County and dump its mining waste in the Pigeon Creek and Buffalo Creek watersheds, downstream from other mountaintop removal operations. Communities nearby are already living with the impacts of this type of destruction—water contamination, air pollution, loud blasting, flying rocks, shaking homes—but the 177 families living within a half mile of this proposed mine will face the worst of it.

Eliza Doolittle - Skinny Genes (Live At VEVO)

2012-01-03T01:06:00.001-06:00

From The Charlie Rose Show – Harry Belafonte

2011-12-30T19:20:00.001-06:00

An hour with Harry Belafonte taped before an audience at 92nd Street Y

From Geeky Muse (Temple Grandin)

2011-12-27T06:26:00.001-06:00

Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds

March 5, 2010

by Andrew

In her recent TED talk, Temple Grandin, diagnosed with autism as a child, tells us how her mind works. She gives an overview of how people on the autism spectrum think and makes the case that the world needs those people: visual thinkers, pattern thinkers, verbal thinkers, and all kinds of smart geeky kids. She describes autism as “a continuum of traits. When does a nerd turn into Asperger, which is just mild autism? I mean Einstein and Mozart and Tesla, would all be probably diagnosed as autistic spectrum today.”

She also joked that Silicon Valley would not exist today if it weren’t for those geeky neuroatypical minds, which drew a big laugh from the techie crowd. And she suggested that this next generation of kids with autism, properly mentored and motivated, could solve the world’s energy problems.

“The world needs different kinds of minds to work together,” she said. Check out the Ted Talk below. I also recommend the HBO original movie, Temple Grandin, starring Claire Danes.

TV: Jone Juliet Buck on Temple Grandin
“The film is a triumph for Claire Danes, who should win not only an Emmy but an Oscar for the jagged, unsentimental, utterly clear channeling of Temple Grandin. With a mop of curly hair, a mouth full of big teeth, the flat, skinny body of one who eats only pudding and Jell-O, and a voice that’s either a shout or a tumble of words, she’s transparent, luminous, ungainly, and wild. She gets us inside the head of the girl who hates French because it’s full of fish-”eels.” And she makes us understand that understanding is her version of feeling.”

From Think Progress

2011-12-27T06:12:00.001-06:00

93-Year-Old Tennessee Woman Who Cleaned State Capitol For 30 Years Denied Voter ID

By Marie Diamond on Dec 26, 2011 at 3:20 pm

Tennessee's Capitol building in Nashville.

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.

Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate:

Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk, he suggested she might be an illegal immigrant.
Thelma Mitchell told WSMV-TV that she went to a state drivers’ license center last week after being told that her old state ID from her cleaning job would not meet new regulations for voter identification.

A spokesman for the House Republican Caucus insisted that Mitchell was given bad information and should’ve been allowed to vote, even with an expired state ID. But even if that’s the case, her ordeal illustrates the inevitable disenfranchisements that result when confusing voting laws enable state officials to apply the law inconsistently.

The incident is the just latest in a series of reports of senior citizens being denied their constitutional right to vote under restrictive new voter ID laws pushed by Republican governors and legislatures. These laws are a transparent attempt to target Democrat constituencies who are less likely to have photo ID’s, and disproportionately affect seniors, college students, the poor and minorities.

As ThinkProgress reported, one 96-year-old Tennessee woman was denied a voter ID because she didn’t have her marriage license. Another senior citizen in Tennessee, 91-year-old Virginia Lasater, couldn’t get the ID she needed to vote because she wasn’t able to stand in a long line at the DMV. A Tennessee agency even told a 86-year-old World War II veteran that he had to pay an unconstitutional poll tax if he wanted to obtain an ID.

My Back Pages

2011-12-25T08:10:00.003-06:00

First recorded on June 9, 1964, under the working title: "Ancient Memories"

by Bob Dylan

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Girls’ faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

When Dylan first recorded this song on his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan I had just completed my freshman year at the University of Tennessee. Though it was stylistically similar to his earlier topical folk acoustic work, lyrically it was a departure, seemingly rejecting his earlier personal and political idealism. Dylan did not performed the song live until 1988.

The following video is from the 30th Anniversary Tribute Concert to Dylan at Madison Square Garden in 1992. This performance features vocals from Roger McGuinn, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, Dylan and George Harrison. There are also two incredible guitar solos by Clapton and Young.

Support Tribe of Heart

2011-12-23T13:04:00.001-06:00

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://www.tribeofheart.org/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;http://www.tribeofheart.org/&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;
Trailer for Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home** from Tribe of Heart on Vimeo.

Click here to go to Tribe of Heart

Support Kiva – Microfinance

2011-12-23T12:08:00.001-06:00

Click here to go to Kiva's site

From a Friend – ADVICE FROM DR. OZ

2011-12-22T14:08:00.003-06:00

I'm passing this on because it worked for me today . . . Dr Oz on TV said that to reach inner peace we should always finish things we start, and we all could use more calm in our lives during the hectic Holiday season. I looked around my house to find things I'd started and hadn't finished, so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiuminun scriptins, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum

ADAM SANDLER - CHANUKAH (HANUKKAH) SONG

2011-12-20T18:03:00.001-06:00

From BuzzFeed (2011 Protest Signs)

2011-12-19T18:15:00.006-06:00

The 40 Best Protest Signs Of 2011

Click on Photo

From About.com (Iraq War)

2011-12-18T09:15:00.000-06:00

Iraq War Facts, Results & Statistics at November 30, 2011

4,486 US Soldiers Killed, 32,226 Seriously Wounded

By Deborah White, About.com Guide

Dec 12 2011

For your quick reading, I've listed key statistics about the Iraq War and occupation, taken primarily from data analyzed by various think tanks, including The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index, and from mainstream media sources. Data is presented as of November 30, 2011, except as indicated.

U.S. SPENDING IN IRAQ

Spent & Approved War-Spending - About $1 trillion of US taxpayers' funds spent or approved for spending through 2011.

Lost & Unaccounted for in Iraq - $9 billion of US taxpayers' money and $549.7 milion in spare parts shipped in 2004 to US contractors. Also, per ABC News, 190,000 guns, including 110,000 AK-47 rifles.

Lost and Reported Stolen - $6.6 billion of U.S. taxpayers' money earmarked for Iraq reconstruction, reported on June 14, 2011 by Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen who called it "the largest theft of funds in national history." (Source - CBS News) Last known holder of the $6.6 billion lost: the U.S. government.

Missing - $1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces. (Per CBS News on Dec 6, 2007.)

Mismanaged & Wasted in Iraq - $10 billion, per Feb 2007 Congressional hearings

Halliburton Overcharges Classified by the Pentagon as Unreasonable and Unsupported - $1.4 billion

Amount paid to KBR, a former Halliburton division, to supply U.S. military in Iraq with food, fuel, housing and other items - $20 billion

Portion of the $20 billion paid to KBR that Pentagon auditors deem "questionable or supportable" - $3.2 billion

U.S. Annual Air-Conditioning Cost in Iraq and Afghanistan - $20.2 billion (Source - NPR, June 25, 2011)

U.S. 2009 Monthly Spending in Iraq - $7.3 billion as of Oct 2009

U.S. 2008 Monthly Spending in Iraq - $12 billion

U.S. Spending per Second - $5,000 in 2008 (per Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on May 5, 2008)

Cost of deploying one U.S. soldier for one year in Iraq - $390,000

TROOPS IN IRAQ

Troops in Iraq - Total 13,000 U.S. troops. All other nations have withdrawn their troops.
U.S. Troop Casualties - 4,486 US troops; 98% male. 91% non-officers; 82% active duty, 11% National Guard; 74% Caucasian, 9% African-American, 11% Latino. 19% killed by non-hostile causes. 54% of US casualties were under 25 years old. 72% were from the US Army

Non-U.S. Troop Casualties - Total 316, with 179 from the UK

US Troops Wounded - 32,226, 20% of which are serious brain or spinal injuries. (Total excludes psychological injuries.)

US Troops with Serious Mental Health Problems - 30% of US troops develop serious mental health problems within 3 to 4 months of returning home

US Military Helicopters Downed in Iraq - 75 total, at least 36 by enemy fire

IRAQI TROOPS, CIVILIANS & OTHERS IN IRAQ

Private Contractors in Iraq, Working in Support of US Army Troops - More than 180,000 in August 2007, per TheNation.com..

Journalists killed - 150, 98 by murder and 52 by acts of war

Journalists killed by US Forces - 14

Iraqi Police and Soldiers Killed - 10,125, as of July 31, 2011

Iraqi Civilians Killed, Estimated - On October 22, 2010, ABC News reported "a secret U.S. government tally that puts the Iraqi (civilian) death toll over 100,000," information that was included in more than 400,000 military documents released by Wikileaks.com.

A UN issued report dated Sept 20, 2006 stating that Iraqi civilian casualties have been significantly under-reported. Casualties are reported at 50,000 to over 100,000, but may be much higher. Some informed estimates place Iraqi civilian casualities at over 600,000.

Iraqi Insurgents Killed, Roughly Estimated - 55,000

Non-Iraqi Contractors and Civilian Workers Killed - 572 as of August 30, 2011

Non-Iraqi Kidnapped - 306, including 57 killed, 147 released, 4 escaped, 6 rescued and 89 status unknown.

Daily Insurgent Attacks, Feb 2004 - 14

Daily Insurgent Attacks, July 2005 - 70

Daily Insurgent Attacks, May 2007 - 163

Estimated Insurgency Strength, Nov 2003 - 15,000

Estimated Insurgency Strength, Oct 2006 - 20,000 - 30,000

Estimated Insurgency Strength, June 2007 - 70,000

QUALITY OF LIFE INDICATORS

Iraqis Displaced Inside Iraq, by Iraq War, as of May 2007 - 2,255,000
Iraqi Refugees in Syria & Jordan - 2.1 million to 2.25 million

Iraqi Unemployment Rate - 27 to 60%, where curfew not in effect

Consumer Price Inflation in 2006 - 50%

Iraqi Children Suffering from Chronic Malnutrition - 28% in June 2007 (Per CNN.com, July 30, 2007)

Percent of professionals who have left Iraq since 2003 - 40%

Iraqi Physicians Before 2003 Invasion - 34,000

Iraqi Physicians Who Have Left Iraq Since 2005 Invasion - 12,000

Iraqi Physicians Murdered Since 2003 Invasion - 2,000

Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 1 to 2 hours, per Ryan Crocker, U.S.

Ambassador to Iraq (Per Los Angeles Times, July 27, 2007)

Average Daily Hours Iraqi Homes Have Electricity - 10.9 in May 2007

Average Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 5.6 in May 2007

Pre-War Daily Hours Baghdad Homes Have Electricity - 16 to 24

Number of Iraqi Homes Connected to Sewer Systems - 37%

Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies - 70% (Per CNN.com, July 30, 2007)

Water Treatment Plants Rehabilitated - 22%

RESULTS OF POLL Taken in Iraq in August 2005 by the British Ministry of Defense (Source: Brookings Institute)

Iraqis "strongly opposed to presence of coalition troops - 82%

Iraqis who believe Coalition forces are responsible for any improvement in security - less than 1%

Iraqis who feel less ecure because of the occupation - 67%

Iraqis who do not have confidence in multi-national forces - 72%

See More About:

From The Sage of Bucksnort

2011-12-18T02:52:00.001-06:00

Catching fish doesn't pay the bills

by Jack Reeves

Sheila and Scott Chadwick’s daughter, Rene, is getting serious with Larry Barnes. He’s 21. The families haven’t known each other, but they’ve known of each other. That’s the way it is in Bucksnort. You either know a person or know of them — sometimes a lot more than you wish you knew!

We don’t hesitate to find out about a stranger. It’s common for a person who’s not recognized to be recognized — to let them know we’re aware of you!

In the Yesterday Cafe last week there were two people in line I didn’t recognize. Neither did Lois Anderson, who was ahead of them. As she picked up her tray and silverware, she turned her head a little more to the left and said, “Are you folks from around here?”

This is not chitchat, simply being neighborly. At root, it’s nosy! We want to know who you are if we don’t recognize you. “Where’re you from?” “What’re you doing in the Yesterday Cafe?” “Where’re you going?” “When?”

Scott wants to know more about Larry. He told Sheila he wanted to have a man-to-man talk with him.

“This isn’t the 19th century,” Sheila replied. “You’d embarrass Rene to death! Larry wouldn’t know what to think, either. You’re acting like Ozzie — and I’m not Harriet!”

“I still want to find out which way his compass points. If they’re serious, we’re talkin’ family, not a Sunday dinner guest.”

“I’ve talked with Rene about Larry. I’ve heard only good things about his family. Rene says he’s intelligent, considerate, has goals for his life,” Sheila said.

“Goals? I’ve got goals, too. Everytime I go fishing I have a goal — to catch fish!!

“But catchin’ fish doesn’t pay bills! I want to know what he plans to do in life — especially if they’re getting serious. What’s he doing now?”

“He and a friend are starting an air conditioning business. With all the new development in the region, it seems like a good idea,” Sheila said.

“He seems like a risk taker,” Scott replied.

“Okay. Suppose y’all talk. How do you, without looking like a nosy fool, talk to this adult about his personal life?”

“I’d ease into it. I’d say something like ‘I heard you’re trying to get a business going. You know, nine out of 10 businesses fail.’”

“You’re not going to say that!” Sheila said pointing a reprimanding finger at Scott.

“Then I’d say, ‘You know, Rene’s sort of a high-maintenance woman. How many air conditioners do you think you’re going to repair when there’s ice on the pond?”

“You’re not saying that either! This has already gone too far! I can tell, you’re going to embarrass Larry, Rene, and me. You have no shame! This could upset the relationship. No. You don’t want to do this. You really don’t. And I’m sure you’ll make the right decision!”

Scott sees the writing on the wall. If he pursues this, the dread of every of male of majority age in Bucksnorts is imminent: being nagged to death. He would become the protracted target of Sheila’s — even Rene’s — verbal repetitiveness.

“My compass just swung toward the stream. Maybe the trout are bitin’.”

Jack Reeves is a friend and an award-winning free-lance journalist.

From The Rachel Maddow Show

2011-12-17T05:57:00.001-06:00

40 % of Guns are Sold Through Private Sellers

62% of private sellers agreed to sale a firearm to a buyer who said he probably could not pass a background check.

NRA says there is no problem.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

From The BBC Christopher Hitchens Dies

2011-12-16T07:19:00.000-06:00

Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 after suffering cancer

British-born author, literary critic and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62.

He died from pneumonia, a complication of the oesophageal cancer he had , at a Texas hospital.
Vanity Fair magazine, which announced his death, said there would "never be another like Christopher".

He is survived by his wife, Carol Blue, and their daughter, Antonia, and his children from a previous marriage, Alexander and Sophia.

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter described the writer as someone "of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar".

"Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

Hitchens was born in Portsmouth in 1949 and graduated from Oxford in 1970.

He began his career as a journalist in Britain in the 1970s and later moved to New York, becoming contributing editor to Vanity Fair in November 1992.

"Prospect of death makes me sober, objective"

'Cynical contrarian'
He was diagnosed with cancer in June 2010, and documented his declining health in his Vanity Fair column.

In an August 2010 essay for the magazine he wrote: "I love the imagery of struggle. I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient."

Speaking on the BBC's Newsnight programme, in November that year, he reflected on a life that he knew would be cut short: "It does concentrate the mind, of course, to realise that your life is more rationed than you thought it was."

Radicalised by the 1960s, Hitchens was often arrested at political rallies and was kicked out of the Labour Party over his opposition to the Vietnam War.

Continue reading the main story

From Time.Com

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011): A Career in Quotes

By Megan Gibson | @MeganJGibson | December 16, 2011 | 5

Stephen Voss / Redux

Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens in his home in Washington on April 23, 2010.

After an arduous fight with esophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens — journalist, writer, intellectual and prominent atheist — died Thursday at the age of 62.

The exact cause of death was from pneumonia, itself a complication of his cancer, and he passed at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. The news was announced by Vanity Fair, where he’d written since 1992. He’s survived by his wife, Carol Blue, and his three children and, of course, his innumerable fans, colleagues and friends. Though his death was not unexpected — Hitchens was open about his illness, which he first learned about while on a publicity tour in 2010 for his memoir, Hitch-22 — it’s naturally been met with great sadness, as the British-born thinker is remembered by the many friends and admirers he made in the media and publishing world throughout his long and prominent career. Of course, as respected as he was, the often scathing writer was not without his critics, as he’d filled his career with critiques of many prominent figures such as President George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa (yes, really!), to name just a few.

(LIST: Hitchens in TIME’s Top 10 British Invasions)

We decided to take a look back at some of the most memorable, notable, shocking and, in spite of it all, thought-provoking statements from the prolific polemicist.

“Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

–From God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 2007

“Religion is man-made. Even the men who made it cannot agree on what their prophets or redeemers or gurus actually said or did.”

–From God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, 2007

“Will an Iraq war make our Al Qaeda problem worse? Not likely.”

– From, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, 2003

“[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”

–From “Mommie Dearest”, 2003

“Judaism has some advantages over Christianity in that, for example, it does not proselytise — except among Jews — and it does not make the cretinous mistake of saying that the Messiah has already made his appearance. However, along with Islam and Christianity, it does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing.”

– From Letter to a Young Contrarian, 2001

“Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. ‘All the News That’s Fit to Print,’ it says. It’s been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, why do they insult me and what do they take me for and what the hell is it supposed to mean unless it’s as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then at least I know I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my lifespan.”

– From Letter to a Young Contrarian, 2001

“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”

–From The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-believer, 2007

MORE: An Obit on Hitchens

A Few Photos from Miami Beach

2011-12-12T09:14:00.002-06:00

From Tennessee Citizen Action

2011-12-12T07:49:00.001-06:00

It's a busy month, so here are the 3 easy steps you can take to be a part of today's Day of Action to repeal the Photo ID to Vote law:

1) Sit in front of your computer.

2) Think of all the people you know - friends, family, co-workers, etc. - who believe our elections should be fair and equal.

3) Copy and paste the language and link below in an email asking them to sign the online petition:

"Please take a moment and sign the online petition to repeal the excessive photo ID to vote restrictions in Tennessee: http://www.ProtectTheVoteTN.org.

Why should you sign? The requirements necessary to comply with the law are excessive & restrictive and the law itself is very confusing. Basically, Tennessee lawmakers are taking away a person’s right to vote, telling them they have to have a very specific government-issued photo ID to get it back, & confusing them in the process.

Government-issued photo ID restrictions like the one we have in Tennessee will disproportionately affect people of color, young voters, seniors and people with disabilities. This law will disenfranchise those whose vote is very often the only voice they have in our democratic process.

Please take the time now and go to http://www.ProtectTheVoteTN.org to sign the petition."

Thank you!

Won't you take just a moment and join us today to help protect voting rights in Tennessee?

50 Vantage Way Ste 250 | Nashville, TN 37228 US

From The White House

2011-12-07T11:19:00.001-06:00

What a Fair Shot at Success Means

Posted by Matt Compton on December 06, 2011 at 06:47 PM EST

My Favorite Scene from Good Will Hunting

2011-12-07T10:53:00.001-06:00

TEDxNashville - Molly Secours - 3/21/10

2011-12-06T19:00:00.001-06:00

From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

2011-12-06T16:51:00.001-06:00

Just for Stickup

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

From The Rachel Maddow Show

2011-12-06T16:20:00.001-06:00

White Privilege Infects Presidential Pardons

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A Dangerous Method (Trailer)

2011-12-04T05:25:00.001-06:00

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family

2011-12-03T06:11:00.001-06:00

TENNESSEE LOCAL FOOD SUMMIT PSA

2011-12-01T08:23:00.001-06:00

The National Defense Authorization Act

2011-11-30T12:33:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, the Senate voted (61 to 37) to keep a controversial provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would allow the military to detain terrorism suspects (even U.S. citizens) and hold them indefinitely without trial.

As written, without ever being formally charged, an alleged terrorism suspect may only get one hearing from the military before being locked up for life. What happened to due-process?

Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite military imprisonment of U.S. citizens, without charging them, much like we did during WWII. Do we ever learn from our mistakes?

The President must exercise his power to veto this act. Call or email him and let him know what you think about this provision of the NDAA.

TEDxSF - Louie Schwartzberg - Gratitude

2011-11-30T07:00:00.001-06:00

Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose notable career spans more than three decades providing breathtaking imagery for feature films, television shows, documentaries and commercials.

This piece includes his short film on Gratitude and Happiness. Brother David Steindl's spoken words, Gary Malkin's musical compositions and Louie's cinematography make this a stunningly beautiful piece, reminding us of the precious gift of life, and the beauty all around us.

As a visual artist, Louie has created some of the most iconic and memorable film moments of our time. He is an innovator in the world of time-lapse, nature, aerial and "slice-of-life" photography - the only cinematographer in the world who has literally been shooting 24 hours a day, 7 days a week continuously for more than 30 years.

Louie was recognized as one of the top 70 Cinematographers for the On Film Kodak Salute Series. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Louie is credited by many with pioneering the contemporary stock footage industry by founding Energy Film Library, a global company with a network of 12 foreign offices, which was acquired by Getty Images in 1997. Motion picture clients of his cinematic artistry include Sex in the City, The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4, Syriana, Crash, Men in Black and classics such as American Beauty, Koyaanisqatsi and E.T. among others.

Louie went on to found BlackLight Films, a creative production company specializing in producing original theatrical feature, large format films, HD and TV programming.

In 2004, BlackLight Films completed production of the theatrical feature film, America's Heart &Soul, distributed theatrically by Walt Disney Pictures. In 2006, BlackLight Films completed a series of HD shorts, Louie Films, for the launch of Buena Vista Home Entertainment's Blu-Ray DVD releases. In 2007, the company produced a 1-hour special, Chasing the Light, which aired nationally on PBS.

Past projects include the 35mm film Seasons of the Vine for Disney's California Adventure Theme Park and a 26-half hour series, America!, for The Hallmark Channel.

Louie has won two Clio Awards for Best Environmental Broadcast Spot, an Emmy nomination for Best Cinematography for the Discovery Channel Special, Oceans of Air, and the Heartland Film Festival's Truly Moving Picture Award for Walt Disney Pictures' feature film release America's Heart & Soul.

Louie completed production on a feature length nature documentary, Wings of Life, to be theatrically released worldwide, under Walt Disney Pictures' new production banner, Disneynature. The film was released in France (March 2011) under the title Pollen and won the Roscar Award for Best Cinematography at the 2011 Wild Talk Africa Film Festival.

Louie spoke at the TED 2011 conference in Long Beach, CA and has been a regular presenter at the annual Bioneers Conference in San Francisco. Currently, Louie is in production with National Geographic to produce Hidden Worlds, a 3D Imax film.

I Didn't F*ck It Up - Katie Goodman of Broad Comedy

2011-11-29T18:47:00.001-06:00

From The New York Times

2011-11-28T16:43:00.001-06:00

November 27, 2011, 10:28 am

The Obama Spending Non-Surge

Blogging is a lot like teaching the same class year after year; you’re always encountering the same arguments you’ve refuted in the past, and you want to demand why they weren’t listening the last time.

Anyway, what I’m seeing in comments and reactions, once again, is the claim that Obama has presided over a vast expansion of government — a claim backed not by describing any specific programs, but by pointing to the share of federal spending in GDP. Indeed, federal spending rose from 19.6% of GDP in 2007 to 23.8% in 2010 (it was briefly 25 in 2009, but that was a number distorted by the financial bailouts). So there has been a roughly 4 points of GDP rise in the spending share. What’s that about?

Well, part of the answer is that the ratio is up because the denominator is down. According to CBO estimates, in fiscal 2010 the economy operated about 7 percent below potential. This means that even if what the government was doing hadn’t changed, the federal spending share of GDP would have risen by 1.4 percentage points.

Then, look inside the budget data (pdf), specifically at Table E-10. You’ll see a surge in spending on “income security”; that’s basically unemployment insurance, food stamps, and similar items. In other words, spending on safety-net programs is up because the economy is depressed, and more people are falling into the safety net.

You’ll also see a sharp rise in Medicaid; again, this is because the lousy economy has pushed more people into hardship, making them eligible for the program.

I’ve done a bit of number-crunching, and here’s my allocation of the sources of the rise in federal spending as a share of GDP:

So a depressed economy plus safety net programs that have grown as a result of a depressed economy are, overwhelmingly, the real story here.

What’s in that “other” category? Some of it is stimulus spending. Some of it is the leading wave of the baby boomers, who are starting to collect Social Security and enter Medicare. Some of it is rising health care costs.

What isn’t there, no way, nohow, is a massive expansion of government, which is a figment of the right wing’s imagination.

From Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (ASTT)

2011-11-28T16:33:00.001-06:00

Helping torture victims become torture survivors.

Dear Dee ,

Please take a few minutes help protect our fundamental American values. Call your Senators today and ask them to do the right thing.

Tell your Senators you want them to stand up for due process and liberty for all.

Ask them to vote FOR the Udall Amendment and AGAINST the Ayotte Amendment to the NDAA 2012.

This evening, the Senate will begin voting on the National Defense Authorization Act 2012 (NDAA). They will decide whether to make permanent the indefinite detention of individuals, which may include American citizens—without charge or trial. The Senate will also vote to authorize mandatory military custody of individuals, including legal US residents. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has made clear that mandatory military custody limits US ability to fight terrorism.

The Udall Amendment would strike these NDAA provisions.

The Senate will also decide whether we should roll back the protections against torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and allow interrogation techniques outside the Army Field Manual, which should be the gold standard. General David Petraeus, current Director of the CIA, believes such enhanced interrogation techniques are ineffective and wrong; however, the Ayotte Amendment would codify this roll-back and allow such techniques.

Please call your senators and tell them to stand up for due process and liberty for all. Please ask your senators to vote FOR the Udall Amendment (A. No. 1107), which strikes down these disastrous detainee provisions, and AGAINST the Ayotte Amendment (A. No. 1068), which authorizes enhanced interrogation techniques.

Physicians for Human Rights documented in the 2011 report, Punishment Before Justice: Indefinite Detention in the US, medical literature provides convincing evidence that the indeterminacy of an indefinite detention creates a degree of uncertainty, unpredictability, and uncontrollability that causes severe harms in healthy individuals.

That’s why we are asking you to take five minutes to tell your Senators to support the Udall amendment and oppose the Ayotte Amendment to the NDAA.

Quick Links

Our Website

Donate Now

Email Us

Brandi Carlile Sings Turpentine

2011-11-28T09:25:00.001-06:00

From The Smirking Chimp

2011-11-27T06:11:00.001-06:00

How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas

by John W. Dean | June 29, 2011

For good reason, there has been serious hand-wringing over what to do about the ethical lapses of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The fact that Supreme Court justices are exempt from the code of ethical conduct which applies to the rest of the federal judiciary; the problem of bringing a sitting justice before the Congress to question the conduct of a constitutional co-equal; the reality that justices cannot easily defend themselves against news media charges; the defiant, in-your-face posture of Thomas—the list goes on but it need not. There is clear precedent for how to deal with the justice. Thomas could be forced off the bench.

As the associate deputy attorney general in President Richard M. Nixon's Department of Justice, I was there when Assistant Attorney General William Rehnquist outlined how to remove a Supreme Court justice who had engaged in conduct not quite as troublesome as that of Thomas. Rehnquist, of course, would later become chief justice of the United States. His memorandum providing the process for the Department of Justice to proceed against then Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas remains solid precedent and the way to deal with Clarence Thomas. But before looking at the solution, I should explain the problem.

» article continues...

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

2011-11-25T16:47:00.001-06:00

Birds do it, bees do it

Even educated fleas do it

Let's do it, let's fall in love

From RollingStone

2011-11-23T05:47:00.001-06:00

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become.

By Matt Taibbi

November 10, 2011 8:00 AM ET

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty

I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street.

The first few times I went down to Zuccotti Park, I came away with mixed feelings. I loved the energy and was amazed by the obvious organic appeal of the movement, the way it was growing on its own. But my initial impression was that it would not be taken very seriously by the Citibanks and Goldman Sachs of the world. You could put 50,000 angry protesters on Wall Street, 100,000 even, and Lloyd Blankfein is probably not going to break a sweat. He knows he's not going to wake up tomorrow and see Cornel West or Richard Trumka running the Federal Reserve. He knows modern finance is a giant mechanical parasite that only an expert surgeon can remove. Yell and scream all you want, but he and his fellow financial Frankensteins are the only ones who know how to turn the machine off.

That's what I was thinking during the first few weeks of the protests. But I'm beginning to see another angle. Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.

The right-wing media wasted no time in cannon-blasting the movement with its usual idiotic clichés, casting Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of dirty hippies who should get a job and stop chewing up Mike Bloomberg's police overtime budget with their urban sleepovers. Just like they did a half-century ago, when the debate over the Vietnam War somehow stopped being about why we were brutally murdering millions of innocent Indochinese civilians and instead became a referendum on bralessness and long hair and flower-child rhetoric, the depraved flacks of the right-wing media have breezily blown off a generation of fraud and corruption and market-perverting bailouts, making the whole debate about the protesters themselves – their hygiene, their "envy" of the rich, their "hypocrisy."

The protesters, chirped Supreme Reichskank Ann Coulter, needed three things: "showers, jobs and a point." Her colleague Charles Krauthammer went so far as to label the protesters hypocrites for having iPhones. OWS, he said, is "Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters [denouncing] corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over." Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product – not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee – if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, there were scads of progressive pundits like me who wrung our hands with worry that OWS was playing right into the hands of assholes like Krauthammer. Don't give them any ammunition! we counseled. Stay on message! Be specific! We were all playing the Rorschach-test game with OWS, trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes, it was hard to see how skirmishing with cops in New York would help foreclosed-upon middle-class families in Jacksonville and San Diego.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning. There's no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it's 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.

That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.

There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system.

But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it's at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned "democracy," tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.

We're a nation that was built on a thousand different utopian ideas, from the Shakers to the Mormons to New Harmony, Indiana. It was possible, once, for communities to experiment with everything from free love to an end to private property. But nowadays even the palest federalism is swiftly crushed. If your state tries to place tariffs on companies doing business with some notorious human-rights-violator state – like Massachusetts did, when it sought to bar state contracts to firms doing business with Myanmar – the decision will be overturned by some distant global bureaucracy like the WTO. Even if 40 million Californians vote tomorrow to allow themselves to smoke a joint, the federal government will never permit it. And the economy is run almost entirely by an unaccountable oligarchy in Lower Manhattan that absolutely will not sanction any innovations in banking or debt forgiveness or anything else that might lessen its predatory influence.

And here's one more thing I was wrong about: I originally was very uncomfortable with the way the protesters were focusing on the NYPD as symbols of the system. After all, I thought, these are just working-class guys from the Bronx and Staten Island who have never seen the inside of a Wall Street investment firm, much less had anything to do with the corruption of our financial system.

But I was wrong. The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government "committed" to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off.

People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. I think I understand now that this is what the Occupy movement is all about. It's about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow. And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn't need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.

Amy LaVere - Never Been Sadder

2011-11-22T08:50:00.001-06:00

Neko Case "I Wish I Was The Moon" Live RAVE HD

2011-11-22T08:29:00.001-06:00

1400 YEARS AND COUNTING

2011-11-22T06:24:00.001-06:00

by Jack Reeves

It is almost two years since Iraq's national election. Still, unified government has not resulted because the country is divided by the theology of its Sunni and Shiite populations. Such since the Prophet Muhammed's death almost 1400 years ago.

Meanwhile, conflict and contention increase; US armed forces will be gone in a month.

That the United States invaded Iraq is tragic. Avowed reasons were to protect the US and enable democracy.

Even if containing an element of honesty, the action was uninformed. Democracy is not creatable overnight. In particular, 1400 years of animosity cannot be soon ended.

This reality was not respected in 2003. Instead, invasion was much motivated by economic and ideological interests.

The results--besides death and destruction--still affect us, contributing to our national debt and significantly causative of our extreme political division and dysfunction government.

Fourteen hundred years of same behavior is predictive. Honesty respects this.

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (George Santayana) is verifiable.

And, unfortunately, yesterday, today and tomorrow too often explained.

The Fight for American Jobs Continues

2011-11-22T05:49:00.001-06:00

Mike McCarry, a 59-year-old veteran who juggles two jobs to make ends meet talks about the veterans portion of President Obama's jobs plan. Congress passed it earlier this month and the President signed into law yesterday.Unfortunately, almost every single Republican still refuse to do the right thing for teachers, cops, firefighters, and middle-class families.

The Mountain House and Little Pigeon River (Photos)

2011-11-21T16:09:00.001-06:00

From NBC News: Bob Costas Interviews Jerry Sandusky

2011-11-15T06:30:00.001-06:00

Last night on NBC News "Rock Center," Bob Costas asked Jerry Sandusky by telephone if he was a pedophile. Sandusky's response was, "No."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Harry Belafonte Reflects on Life as a Singer, Actor and Activist

2011-11-15T05:58:00.001-06:00

From The News Hours: Gwen Ifill interview Harry Belafonte, a musical icon and lifelong political and social activist.

An Evening Walk at the Narrows (Photos)

2011-11-14T10:33:00.001-06:00

Tom Paxton sings "The Last Thing On My Mind"

2011-11-14T09:24:00.001-06:00

A Thought or Two About Penn State

2011-11-13T12:23:00.001-06:00

Sad but true, scientific research combined with objective evidence has determined that the vast majority of us who witness violent and abusive acts do nothing to stop them, yet, somehow, become ardent self-righteous prigs (after the fact), eager to condemn not only those who have been accused of an ‘alleged’ wrongdoing but those who we believe have failed to intervene.

In short, most of us (including our pious press) are hypocrites – reluctant to get involved until the lynch mob forms.

Both actions fail our children.

Once again, it seems, we all remain guilty until proven innocent.

Radnor Lake (Photos)

2011-11-12T15:30:00.001-06:00

Paul Sings "These Days"

2011-11-11T10:43:00.001-06:00

Odetta and Tennessee Ernie Ford Sing Woody Guthrie

2011-11-11T08:33:00.001-06:00

The People Have Spoken

2011-11-09T01:20:00.000-06:00

Two conservative ballot initiatives were defeated yesterday.

The Mississippi so-called "personhood" initiative was rejected by more than 55 percent of voters. If passed, it would have declared that life begins at conception and would have surely provoked a legal challenge to abortion rights nationwide since it conflicted with the 1973 landmark Supreme Court (Roe v. Wade) decision that established a woman's legal right to abortion.

The other initiative overturned an anti-union law in Ohio, delivering a crushing defeat to Republican Gov. John Kasich and a victory for labor unions.

The people of Mississippi and Ohio are not as stupid as I thought.

From The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC)

2011-11-08T09:32:00.001-06:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Infrastructure Investment

2011-11-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

The White House Blog

By the Numbers: 2 Percent

Posted by Megan Slack on November 02, 2011 at 12:04 PM EDT

The United States is falling behind on investing in the roads, bridges, airports, and transit systems that keep our economy humming. We spend just 2 percent of our GDP on infrastructure projects. Europe and China invest 5 percent and 9 percent of their respective GDPs on developing infrastructure.

Functioning infrastructure provides a critical backbone for a strong economy. Research shows that investments in creating, maintaining, or expanding transportation networks promote efficiency, productivity, and more rapid economic growth.

Today, President Obama is calling on Congress to pass a piece of the American Jobs Act that will invest $50 billion in our nation’s transportation infrastructure and $10 billion in a National Infrastructure Bank. Together, these initiatives will put hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job rebuilding our roads, rails, and runways. With 1.1 million constructions workers out of work, we can’t wait to invest in our infrastructure.

See more about Economy

A Walk in Honor of Paul (Photos)

2011-11-03T04:26:00.001-05:00

From Michael Moore's Blog

2011-10-30T11:08:00.003-05:00

October 27th, 2011 7:46 AM
Life Among the 1%
By Michael Moore

Friends,

Twenty-two years ago this coming Tuesday, I stood with a group of factory workers, students and the unemployed in the middle of the downtown of my birthplace, Flint, Michigan, to announce that the Hollywood studio, Warner Bros., had purchased the world rights to distribute my first movie, 'Roger & Me.' A reporter asked me, "How much did you sell it for?"

"Three million dollars!" I proudly exclaimed. A cheer went up from the union guys surrounding me. It was absolutely unheard of for one of us in the working class of Flint (or anywhere) to receive such a sum of money unless one of us had either robbed a bank or, by luck, won the Michigan lottery. On that sunny November day in 1989, it was like I had won the lottery -- and the people I had lived and struggled with in Michigan were thrilled with my success. It was like, one of us had made it, one of us finally had good fortune smile upon us. The day was filled with high-fives and "Way-ta-go Mike!"s. When you are from the working class you root for each other, and when one of you does well, the others are beaming with pride -- not just for that one person's success, but for the fact that the team had somehow won, beating the system that was brutal and unforgiving and which ran a game that was rigged against us. We knew the rules, and those rules said that we factory town rats do not get to make movies or be on TV talk shows or have our voice heard on any national stage. We were to shut up, keep our heads down, and get back to work. If by some miracle one of us escaped and commandeered a mass audience and some loot to boot -- well, holy mother of God, watch out! A bully pulpit and enough cash to raise a ruckus -- that was an incendiary combination, and it only spelled trouble for those at the top.

Until that point I had been barely getting by on unemployment, collecting $98 a week. Welfare. The dole. My car had died back in April so I had gone seven months with no vehicle. Friends would take me out to dinner, always coming up with an excuse to celebrate or commemorate something and then picking up the check so I would not have to feel the shame of not being able to afford it.

And now, all of a sudden, I had three million bucks! What would I do with it? There were men in suits making many suggestions to me, and I could see how those without a strong moral sense of social responsibility could be easily lead down the "ME" path and quickly forget about the "WE."

So I made some easy decisions back in 1989:

1. I would first pay all my taxes. I told the guy who did my 1040 not to declare any deductions other than the mortgage and to pay the full federal, state and city tax rate. I proudly contributed nearly 1 million dollars for the privilege of being a citizen of this great country.

2. Of the remaining $2 million, I decided to divide it up the way I once heard the folksinger/activist Harry Chapin tell me how he lived: "One for me, one for the other guy." So I took half the money -- $1 million -- and established a foundation to give it all away.

3. The remaining million went like this: I paid off all my debts, paid off the debts of some friends and family members, bought my parents a new refrigerator, set up college funds for our nieces and nephews, helped rebuild a black church that had been burned down in Flint, gave out a thousand turkeys at Thanksgiving, bought filmmaking equipment to send to the Vietnamese (my own personal reparations for a country we had ravaged), annually bought 10,000 toys to give to Toys for Tots at Christmas, got myself a new American-made Honda, and took out a mortgage on an apartment above a Baby Gap in New York City.

4. What remained went into a simple, low-interest savings account. I made the decision that I would never buy a share of stock (I didn't understand the casino known as the New York Stock Exchange and I did not believe in investing in a system I did not agree with).

5. Finally, I believed the concept of making money off your money had created a greedy, lazy class who didn't produce any product, just misery and fear among the populace. They invented ways to buy out companies and then shut them down. They dreamed up schemes to play with people's pension funds as if it were their own money. They demanded companies keep posting record profits (which was accomplished by firing thousands and eliminating health benefits for those who remained). I made the decision that if I was going to earn a living, it would be done from my own sweat and ideas and creativity. I would produce something tangible, something others could own or be entertained by or learn from. My work would create employment for others, good employment with middle class wages and full health benefits.

I went on to make more movies, produce TV series and write books. I never started a project with the thought, "I wonder how much money I can make at this?" And by never letting money be the motivating force for anything, I simply did exactly what I wanted to do. That attitude kept the work honest and unflinching -- and that, in turn I believe, resulted in millions of people buying tickets to these films, tuning in to my TV shows, and buying my books.

Which is exactly what has driven the Right crazy when it comes to me. How did someone from the left get such a wide mainstream audience?! This just isn't supposed to happen (Noam Chomsky, sadly, will not be booked on The View today, and Howard Zinn, shockingly, didn't make the New York Times bestseller list until after he died). That's how the media machine is rigged -- you are not supposed to hear from those who would completely change the system to something much better. Only wimpy liberals who urge caution and compromise and mild reforms get to have their say on the op-ed pages or Sunday morning chat shows.

Somehow, I found a crack through the wall and made it through. I feel very blessed that I have this life -- and I take none of it for granted. I believe in the lessons I was taught back in Catholic school -- that if you end up doing well, you have an even greater responsibility to those who don't fare the same. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last." Kinda commie, I know, but the idea was that the human family was supposed to divide up the earth's riches in a fair manner so that all of God's children would have a life with less suffering.

I do very well -- and for a documentary filmmaker, I do extremely well. That, too, drives conservatives bonkers. "You're rich because of capitalism!" they scream at me. Um, no. Didn't you take Econ 101? Capitalism is a system, a pyramid scheme of sorts, that exploits the vast majority so that the few at the top can enrich themselves more. I make my money the old school, honest way by making things. Some years I earn a boatload of cash. Other years, like last year, I don't have a job (no movie, no book) and so I make a lot less. "How can you claim to be for the poor when you are the opposite of poor?!" It's like asking: "You've never had sex with another man -- how can you be for gay marriage?!" I guess the same way that an all-male Congress voted to give women the vote, or scores of white people marched with Martin Luther Ling, Jr. (I can hear these righties yelling back through history: "Hey! You're not black! You're not being lynched! Why are you with the blacks?!"). It is precisely this disconnect that prevents Republicans from understanding why anyone would give of their time or money to help out those less fortunate. It is simply something their brain cannot process. "Kanye West makes millions! What's he doing at Occupy Wall Street?!" Exactly -- he's down there demanding that his taxes be raised. That, to a right-winger, is the definition of insanity. To everyone else, we are grateful that people like him stand up, even if and especially because it is against his own personal financial interest. It is specifically what that Bible those conservatives wave around demands of those who are well off.

Back on that November day in 1989 when I sold my first film, a good friend of mine said this to me: "They have made a huge mistake giving someone like you a big check. This will make you a very dangerous man. And it proves that old saying right: 'The capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with if he thinks he can make a buck off it.'"

Yours,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@MichaelMoore.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

P.S. I will go to Oakland tomorrow afternoon to stand with Occupy Oakland against the out-of-control police.

From CNN.COM (Marx)

2011-10-30T10:38:00.001-05:00

Who was Karl Marx?

By Mary Gabriel, Special to CNN

updated 10:42 AM EST, Sat October 29, 2011

Editor's note: Mary Gabriel is author of "Love and Capital, Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution" (Little, Brown and Company), a finalist for the 2011 National Book Award.

(CNN) -- There are few philosophers whose very name provokes more violent responses than Karl Marx.

His stern face, framed by a mass of gray hair, symbolizes for many Americans the costly battles of the 20th century: battles against communism, socialism, and authoritarianism fought in defense of democracy and free-market capitalism. As successive generations of Americans waged those fights, the philosophical disputes at the core of the conflicts embedded themselves into the American soul. So much so that when the "evil empire," whose seeds sprouted from Marx's doctrine, died as a result of the revolutions of 1989, the ideological battle did not.

Though the Soviet Union is but a memory, and that other communist behemoth -- China -- has mutated into a capitalist autocracy, the specter of Marx himself remains as potent as ever in 21st century U.S. political discourse. Since 2008 especially, with the fall of financial markets and the rise of Barack Obama, the charge "Marxist" has been hurled like toxic sludge against politicians seen as ready to redistribute wealth (to the advantage of most Americans), expand social safety nets, or ensure that all children receive a good education. Critics say these steps are merely the first along a slippery slope that inevitably ends in outright state control. Amid these warnings, the communist horrors of the 20th century float like dark apparitions, reminding us of the bad old days.

But I wonder how many of those who invoke the name of Marx in order to stifle political debate actually believe their own propaganda. Or are they conjuring up a convenient bogeyman at a time of great uncertainty. Do they raise Marx's image in order to deflect attention from slightly warmer bodies (Marx has been dead for 128 years)in positions of political or economic power who are actually more pernicious? I also wonder whether those who use Marx's name, and those who tremble at the thought of him, actually know much about the man. Are they reacting to Karl Marx or those things done in his name? I believe it is the latter. I also believe it is time to understand Marx so that we are no longer made to fear him.

When I began working on a biography of Marx's family in 2003, I was well acquainted with his theories. I knew, as most do, the history of the governments formed to reflect the state he had supposedly envisioned. I knew of the atrocities committed by those said to be his followers. I had not, however, been properly introduced to the man himself. What I discovered was not what I expected.

Karl Marx was a middle-class philosopher, economist, and journalist (whose main employer was a New York newspaper). He was also flawed in the extreme. He drank excessively, behaved shamefully in his home life, and worked obsessionally, though he produced little that earned him money or recognition during his lifetime. These flaws, however, made him more interesting because, despite being in a state of near constant personal crisis, he was able to accomplish what he set out to do -- he changed the world.

Marx began his opposition activities as a youth in Prussia against an absolute monarch who could not see, or perhaps chose not to see, that society was changing. The industrial revolution was spreading eastward and Prussian businessmen were eager to expand with it. But the old system of government would not allow for such progress. The king would not allow the democratic reforms that were the handmaidens of the new industrial order.

This was Marx's first battle, to expose the contradictions between the centuries-old monarchical system and the world as it existed in the first half of the 19th century. According to Marx, it was only natural that as the means of production changed -- in this case a move from an agricultural base to an industrial one -- society would be altered. And if, as he believed, a government's sole function was to serve the people, then government must also change. Marx saw this social evolution as inevitable. It only became revolution when the kings and their minions refused to reform.

By the 1850s, the industrialists had gained political power after revolts across Europe in 1848 caused kings to view proto-capitalists as allies against radicalized lower classes. The wheels of industry were humming, as were the halls of finance, where a new breed of speculator was born, addicted to risk in his quest for ever greater profit.

Marx quickly recognized that capitalism would institutionalize social and economic instability. The system's inherent hunger for new markets, new consumers, new and cheaper methods of production in order to increase the flow of capital would result in a destructive system of boom and bust. After each cataclysm, he predicted, the number of capitalists at the top of the pyramid would be smaller, while the base of disaffected workers grew. Gradually even the middle class would be included.

Marx believed that industrial capitalism had also created a new system of repression and exploitation. Politically and socially men were no more equal under this new order than they had been under a monarchy. Rights belonged to those with money and property; those with only a strong back or skilled hands could not even vote. Financially, those filling the ranks of the industrial workforce were arguably worse off.

There was evidence aplenty to support Marx's assessment. He lived in London, the richest city in the world. And yet as great as was its wealth, much greater was its poverty. In Marx's neighborhood, some people rented a space in a bed and called it comfort. Others paid for a few inches on a stairwell and called it home. Marx summed up the situation saying, "There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery."

This is the field where Marx's ideas grew. He famously spent year after year in the British Museum Reading Room, trying to understand this new system, predict its course, and, finally, offer an alternative. Throughout the 16 years before he produced his greatest literary work Das Kapital, Marx's family lived in near continual destitution. Their sole consolation was that they believed Marx's work was noble and important, and that their suffering was small compared with the majority of people who sacrificed their lives so someone else could live in luxury.

Das Kapital and Marx's other political-economic writings were only one aspect of his work. He was also an organizer and educator. Through various small groups, he tried to teach workers, who had neither formal education nor viewed themselves as a political force. The courses included language, literature and history, but mostly politics and economics. Marx was convinced that the only way to successfully change society was to educate the population so that it could eventually lead itself.

In 1864, the most important of his many organizational endeavors was born, the International Working Men's Association. Its goal was to connect workers and trade unions throughout Europe and America to protect their rights in the face of an increasingly powerful capitalist system, whose tentacles had spread beyond individual nations and were encircling the globe. Marx recognized the working man's greatest power was his number.

Marx died in 1883, before his books gained a wide readership and before the workers he had been fighting for took their places in government as representatives of labor and socialist political parties. It had taken decades of struggle -- largely nonviolent -- for this to occur. But Marx knew the path to progress would be slow, and that ultimately the best way to re-balance society was through the ballot box. He also believed, however, that the working man had the right to revolt if those in power tried to deny him such political expression -- free speech, free assembly, freedom of the press -- and the vote.

Marx's actual vision for a government of the future was vague, which no doubt is why it has produced so many variants. But he believed ultimately mankind would naturally evolve out of capitalism and socialism, and embrace a communist society in which government was no longer necessary at all. It is a utopian dream that has occurred nowhere -- least of all in the countries most associated with his name.

Today, many people know Marx only through the crimes of the former communist countries. But Marx's ideas also helped give birth to mainstream political parties in Western Europe -- Britain's Labour Party, Spain's Socialist Party, France's Socialist Party, and Germany's Social Democratic Party. And yet, for some reason in America, these parties are generally not considered part of Marx's legacy.

In the United States, we have been taught to fear Marx for so long that we have forgotten those parts of his philosophy that have become integral to our own lives -- from free education to the right to bear arms. In fact, the era in modern American history that was most "Marxist" was the 1950s, when union membership was high, personal wealth spread more equitably, and the gap between the rich and poor relatively slim.

I came away from my Marx project believing that rather than demonizing Marx, it is better to understand him. If his name is used in political discourse, it should be done in the manner of other great thinkers: as a source of ideas. Whether or not we agree with him, there are lessons to be learned from Marx. To believe otherwise is to ignore a man and a period of history that are crucial to understanding our own.

The Flatwoods Phantom

2011-10-28T15:15:00.007-05:00

Years ago, back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I use to stay up with my mother late into the night and listen to WOR out of New York City and Long John Nebel's provocative and freewheeling radio talk show. The various and sundry characters (personalities, novelists, and numerous ‘crackpots’) he interviewed over the years made for a very entertaining and enlightening show.

One of the many and frequent paranormal topics he explored was Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Though he was obviously intrigued by certain UFO reports and sightings, he called himself a “non-believer” – a curious skeptic. He was not someone who suffered fools willingly. His questions were always piercing and to the point, revealing fallacies of logic and inconsistencies.

I remember the night that Long John and his guests discussed (argued about) a close encounter of the third kind – 'The Flatwoods Phantom’. As some of you may know, on the evening of September 12, 1952, three young boys, ages 13, 12, and 10, witnessed a bright object streak cross the West Virginia sky.

The boys immediately ran to the home of Kathleen May (the mother of two of the boys) and told her that they had seen a UFO crash land on a hillside on a nearby farm. Soon there after, Mrs. May accompanied by the three boys, along with several other children and a 17-year-old West Virginia National Guardsman, Eugene (‘Gene’) Lemon, and his dog hiked over to the farm to see if they could locate what the boys had seen.

Later they would report that after nearing the crest of a hill Gene’s dog ran ahead into the night. Suddenly, they heard barking. Moments later the dog returned with its tail between its legs.

When they reached the top of the hill they saw what they described as a “large pulsating ball of fire". They also reported smelling a pungent odor that made their eyes and noses burn.

They then observed beneath an old oak tree two small lights to the left of the ball of fire. Directing his flashlight towards them, Lemon exposed the phantom. According to their account, the creature released a shrill hissing sound and then glided towards them.

At that point the group turned and fled in fear.

When Mrs. May returned home she contacted the local Sheriff, Robert Carr, and a local newspaperman, A. L. Stewart. Before returning to the site that night with the Sheriff, Mr. Stewart interviewed a number of the eyewitnesses.

He later reported that when he and the Sheriff arrived at the site they experienced, "a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing". Though Sheriff Carr and his deputy thoroughly searched the area, they reported finding no trace of the mysterious creature or the unidentified flying object.

Many years later, UFO investigators learned that on the night of the Flatwoods sighting, September 12, 1952, a meteor had been observed over the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The meteor smashed into the side of a hill near Elk River, West Virginia, roughly 10 miles southwest of the Flatwoods sighting. The pulsating red light seen by the group, was most likely one of several flashing red aircraft navigation beacons that were visible from the area of the sighting. As for the mysterious creature, investigators believe that it was most likely a barn owl.

Every year around the 12th of September there is a three day festival in Flatwoods, West Virginia, to celebrate what they called the “Green Monster”.

From The White House

2011-10-27T13:07:00.000-05:00

Click here

From The Rachel Maddow Show

2011-10-27T12:52:00.002-05:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Alison Krauss & James Taylor "Hows The World Treating You"

2011-10-24T19:20:00.000-05:00

From Robert Reich. Org

2011-10-18T11:14:00.000-05:00

The Rise of the Regressive Right and the Reawakening of America

Sunday, October 16, 2011

by Robert Reich

A fundamental war has been waged in this nation since its founding, between progressive forces pushing us forward and regressive forces pulling us backward.

We are going to battle once again.

Progressives believe in openness, equal opportunity, and tolerance. Progressives assume we’re all in it together: We all benefit from public investments in schools and health care and infrastructure. And we all do better with strong safety nets, reasonable constraints on Wall Street and big business, and a truly progressive tax system. Progressives worry when the rich and privileged become powerful enough to undermine democracy.

Regressives take the opposite positions.

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and the other tribunes of today’s Republican right aren’t really conservatives. Their goal isn’t to conserve what we have. It’s to take us backwards.

They’d like to return to the 1920s — before Social Security, unemployment insurance, labor laws, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, worker safety laws, the Environmental Protection Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Securities and Exchange Act, and the Voting Rights Act.

In the 1920s Wall Street was unfettered, the rich grew far richer and everyone else went deep into debt, and the nation closed its doors to immigrants.

Rather than conserve the economy, these regressives want to resurrect the classical economics of the 1920s — the view that economic downturns are best addressed by doing nothing until the “rot” is purged out of the system (as Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, so decorously put it).

In truth, if they had their way we’d be back in the late nineteenth century — before the federal income tax, antitrust laws, the pure food and drug act, and the Federal Reserve. A time when robber barons — railroad, financial, and oil titans — ran the country. A time of wrenching squalor for the many and mind-numbing wealth for the few.

Listen carefully to today’s Republican right and you hear the same Social Darwinism Americans were fed more than a century ago to justify the brazen inequality of the Gilded Age: Survival of the fittest. Don’t help the poor or unemployed or anyone who’s fallen on bad times, they say, because this only encourages laziness. America will be strong only if we reward the rich and punish the needy.

The regressive right has slowly consolidated power over the last three decades as income and wealth have concentrated at the top. In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth. CEOs of the 1970s were paid 40 times the average worker’s wage; now CEOs receive 300 times the typical workers’ wage.

This concentration of income and wealth has generated the political heft to deregulate Wall Street and halve top tax rates. It has bankrolled the so-called Tea Party movement, and captured the House of Representatives and many state governments. Through a sequence of presidential appointments it has also overtaken the Supreme Court.

Scalia, Alito, Thomas, and Roberts (and, all too often, Kennedy) claim they’re conservative jurists. But they’re judicial activists bent on overturning seventy-five years of jurisprudence by resurrecting states’ rights, treating the 2nd Amendment as if America still relied on local militias, narrowing the Commerce Clause, and calling money speech and corporations people.

Yet the great arc of American history reveals an unmistakable pattern. Whenever privilege and power conspire to pull us backward, the nation eventually rallies and moves forward. Sometimes it takes an economic shock like the bursting of a giant speculative bubble; sometimes we just reach a tipping point where the frustrations of average Americans turn into action.

Look at the Progressive reforms between 1900 and 1916; the New Deal of the 1930s; the Civil Rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s; the widening opportunities for women, minorities, people with disabilities, and gays; and the environmental reforms of the 1970s.

In each of these eras, regressive forces reignited the progressive ideals on which America is built. The result was fundamental reform.

Perhaps this is what’s beginning to happen again across America.

From TED

2011-10-18T05:58:00.001-05:00

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement

Religion

2011-10-17T08:04:00.000-05:00

Jack Benny with Johnnie Ray

2011-10-17T07:44:00.000-05:00

This is the third clip of an old Jack Benny Show in 1953. It is about Jack's reluctance to pay Johnnie Ray the price Ray's manager set for his appearance on Jack's show. In the opening monologue which is not on this clip, Jack discusses his long ago football days. In the clip preceding this one there are some hilarious scenes about Rochester's day off. The final clip features Danny Thomas, Benny and Ray doing a bit together to the end the show. I remember watching this (possibly live) in 1953 on my family's first television set that my Dad purchased that same year when we lived in Norris, Tennessee.

Chapter Three of My Memoir

2011-10-15T04:54:00.015-05:00

If you have not read chapter one or two click here.

Normalization

The war ended three months before my first birthday. Though everyone was being told that Oak Ridge had helped to accomplish perhaps the most important scientific missions in the history of the world, I was too young to be influenced by such propaganda. Besides, the ‘Monkey’ was busy exploring the world from a new perspective and pace – no longer crawling I was running everywhere.

Swollen with pride, adults too were standing more erect. They had saved a million lives, they were told, and helped launch the Atomic Age that would one day provide an unlimited supply of energy. Within two decades homes, factories and automobiles would be powered by nuclear energy. Ships would sail the seven seas fueled by a nuclear capsule no larger than a chunk of coal. Even cancer would be cured.

They could not know what we know now: that hardly any of those claims would be realized. Instead, hundreds of billions of dollars would be spent for a nuclear arsenal large enough to destroy the world, the safe disposal of nuclear waste would remain unsolved, and the majority of us would believe nuclear power to be an unsafe alternative to our energy needs.

The jubilation did not last long. Once the horrific details of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exposed in newspapers and Fox Movietone newsreels, the celebration and pride plummeted. With the nuclear genie out of the bottle the future looked ominous.

_______________

In 1942 the city plan, designed by the architectural and engineering firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, provided for a population of only 13,000 residents. Within a year, estimates for residential housing had increased to 45,000, escalating to 65,000 by the spring of 1945. Later that fall, the population would peaked at 75,000.

In September 1945 single- and multiple-family units, including apartments, housed nearly 29,000 residents. Dormitories held another 14,000 single men and women. The remaining population of over 32,000 lived in barracks, trailers, hutments and old farmhouses. Tens of thousands commuted from surrounding communities.

Beside housing units, drug and grocery stores, barbershops, schools, theaters and a hospital had to be designed and built, including water plants, a water distribution system, sanitary plants, sewer lines and an electrical scheme. Though the normal working schedule consisted of two 10-hour shifts per day, road grading and other construction projects took place 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The scope and speed at which the construction was done challenges the imagination.

When John Merrill took charge of designing Oak Ridge, he wanted to make it easy for the city's new residents to find each other. The plan called for the city to be built on the south-facing slop of Black Oak Ridge, between Tennessee Avenue running east to west along the valley and Outer Drive along the ridge top. Beginning at the eastern end of the reservation, running from the valley to the ridge, avenues were given names of states, progressing alphabetically to the west, e.g., Arkansas, California, Delaware, etc.

The roads, circles and lanes extending off these avenues were given names starting with the first letter of the avenue. Roads and circles were usually through streets, while lanes were dead ends. All were constructed to follow the natural contours of the land, preserving the ecological beauty of the area.

The city was divided into three distinct neighborhoods: Elm Grove, Cedar Hill and Pine Valley. Each area had a shopping center and an elementary school within walking distance. There were five single-family home designs, ranked according to size from ‘A’ to ‘F’. Most of them were two- and three-bedroom cemesto homes made of fiberboard coated with a mixture of cement and asbestos. The majority were built on spacious wooded lots. They all had hardwood floors, fireplaces and porches, furnished with coal-fired furnaces and new electrical appliances. They were assigned according to family size and a person's importance to the project’s mission – primarily for VIPs (scientists, engineers, Army officers, doctors and those in executive/management positions).

As the population grew, small prefabricated flattop houses began to arrive on trucks from outside the gates. They had new electrical appliances, beds, coal-burning stoves, built-in bookcases and cabinets.

Electricity, water, trash pickup and coal delivery were free, as well as bus transportation throughout the reservation. During the war most streets remained dirt (mud) and gravel. There were over 150 miles of wooden boardwalks.

Though living conditions were confined, overcrowded and uncomfortable, for ‘Negro’ residents they were worst. Consistent with discriminatory practices and customs, schools and housing for Blacks were rudimentary and segregated. Blacks were assigned the worst jobs and had to ride in the back of buses. The Army’s mission was to complete the project as soon as possible, not to encourage or advance social change.

Even after President Truman order the desegregation of the Armed Forces on July 26, 1946, the federal reservation remained segregated. Blacks could only live south of what is now Tuskegee Drive, known as Gamble Valley. Housing remained inadequate. Black workers and their families predominately lived in un-insulated, one-room ‘hutments’.

Black elementary school children could only attend the all-Black Scarboro Elementary School. Black high school students were bussed 50 miles round-trip to the segregated Austin High School in Knoxville.

When the war was over and the Army had left, there were attempts by the Oak Ridge city council in the early 1950s to desegregate the public schools. However, it was not until the fall of 1955 (a year after the 1954 landmark decision by the U. S. Supreme Court, declaring “separate but unequal” public schools unconstitutional) that Oak Ridge High School was finally integrated. To its credit, the city was the first in the South to integrate its public school system and did so with little resistance.

The war’s end led to a mass exodus. In three months the population of Oak Ridge dropped from 75,000 to less than 60,000. By June 1946 the population had plunged to 34,000, turning the once over crowded city into a more relaxed and settled community.

As Oak Ridge began to transition from a temporary military town to a permanent municipality, residents began to demand more authority over their lives. They wanted to be treated as citizens rather than subservient government employees. After years of working six, even seven days a week, living in cramped uncomfortable accommodations, they felt they deserved better working and living conditions.

Workers immediately began to petition for union representation. Though the military was far from enthusiastic about the postwar unionization of the Clinton Engineering Works (CEW), by the spring of 1946 it was resigned to the inevitability.

Once the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) was officially notified by the War Department that the CEW complex could be unionized, six national unions – one independent, two affiliated with the CIO and three with the AFL – sought recognition from the NLRB. The union my father belonged to, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Works (IBEW), was under the umbrella of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Though workers had a long list of grievances and demands, ranging from raises to compensate for wartime inflation to health and safety issues, the real struggle that summer was over which labor federation would ultimately represent them.

In the end, the 1946 NLRB elections in Oak Ridge did not lead to the promised sweeping changes at the CEW plants that workers desired. Instead, the AFL and CIO victories were merely the beginning of a long, often frustrating process of bargaining between the unions and contractors over workers compensation, seniority and working conditions.

In January 1946, while waiting for a house to become available, we moved from Happy Valley to a trailer camp within the city limits of Oak Ridge. It was located on Alpaca Way, south of the Oak Ridge Turnpike and east of Gamble Valley Road.

Directly behind our trailer was a small recreational area. There were metal swings, monkey bars, seesaws, and a huge slid. Even now, after all these years, the memories of that playground for my sister who was eight at the time remain vividly nostalgic. There, in eyesight of our trailer, she was able to exercise her independent spirit and innate athleticism.

Just north of the trailer camp and the Oak Ridge Turnpike was the Oak Ridge municipal swimming pool. A year earlier the Army Corp of Engineers had lined the old Robertsville Cross Springs Lake with concrete, converting it into one of the largest spring-fed swimming pools in the nation. Inspired by the large outdoor pool, my sister over a period of days painstaking excavated near our trailer her own ‘swimming pool’. To this day she has fawn memories of playing with me in that rather large self-made mud puddle.

The grammar school my sister attended was in walking distance. Regrettably, her only recollection of the school is somewhat traumatic. One day, her second grade teacher asked to talk with her after school. Leading my sister to the girl’s restroom, the teacher asked if she knew who had written “Alice” on the wall? My sister vehemently denied knowing anything about it. Despite her protests, her teacher told her that she would need to return the next day with something to scrub-off her name.

When my sister got back to our trailer that afternoon, she told our mother, indignantly, that her teacher had unfairly accused her of writing her name on the restroom wall. Mom listened carefully, observing Alice’s demeanor, and then told her that she would return to school with her the next day and talk with her teacher. She assured Alice that she would not have to make amends for something she had not done.

Immediately, my sister broke down and began to cry, admitting that she had indeed written her name on the wall. Mom’s ploy had worked and a lesson had been learned without a confrontation – a successful strategy that both our parents would use throughout our childhood.

Photo of the Day: Actions Speak Louder Than Words

2011-10-14T05:16:00.000-05:00

From The Tennessean (Minda Lazarov)

2011-10-12T12:57:00.001-05:00

Minda Lazarov

| Visit Guest Book

Minda Lazarov, age 56, born in Memphis, TN, died in her home in Nashville on October 6, 2011. She is survived by husband, Barry Sulkin; daughter, Shea Sulkin; mother, Matilda Lazarov; sister, Reva Stern. She was preceded in death by her father, Israel Lazarov. Minda devoted her life to helping people raise healthy children through her work as a nutritionist and as a children's health advocate for the state of TN, UNICEF and Vanderbilt. She cared deeply about Tennessee's natural resources and led land preservation efforts in the Scottsboro/Bells Bend area. She radiated power and peace. Her graceful spirit will live on in the many lives she touched. Services were held at Congregation Micah this past Monday 3:30 p.m. October 10th. In lieu of flowers, please send donations to: Beaman Park To Bells Bend Conservation Corridor, 5268 Old Hickory Blvd. 37218, or St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

From Jeff

2011-10-11T07:25:00.000-05:00

The Last Sing-Along

by Jeff Shannon

It was anything but an ordinary Saturday night. My father had been in the I.C.U. at Saint Thomas Hospital for the better part of three weeks, and had been intubated and sedated for much of that time. He had suffered his second heart attack in thirteen years and had a ninety percent blockage to one of the arteries that fed blood to his heart.

Bypass surgery might have been an option if not for other health factors. Dad was sixty- nine years of age, and had lived with a slowly degenerative form of muscular dystrophy for most of his adult life. In its earliest stages his disease had caused muscles to atrophy in his legs and shoulders. Over time it robbed him of his ability to walk and exercise, which led to a host of other health issues. By the time of this heart attack it had affected his abdominal muscles and his diaphragm. Surgery was out of the question. To say the future was uncertain was an under-statement.

It was April of 2003, and the news networks were filled with non-stop coverage of the War in Iraq. In the days prior to this particular Saturday, Dad’s condition had stabilized enough for him to be moved into a private room, and to have the breathing tube removed. There was still a revolving door of doctors and nurses coming back and forth, but he was relieved to feel less like he was on display. He was even more relieved to be able to speak again instead of having to write messages to us on a tablet. There was a strange contrast between the war playing out on television and the fight Dad was waging for his life.

That Saturday evening found Mom resting at home, exhausted from days of coming back and forth to the hospital. I was tired from having worked the night before, but was determined to go to the hospital and keep a musical promise I had made earlier in the week.

When I exited the elevator on Dad’s floor, I had my black song notebook in one hand, and a gig bag in the other that contained my Samick acoustic guitar. This guitar was plain looking and rather small – more like the size of an antique parlor guitar, only without the antique value. I had purchased it as an inexpensive writing guitar that would be portable, yet expendable if lost or stolen.

Dad’s hospital room was typical: Upon entering there was a bathroom and a short hall that opened into the main room. The bed was on the left side, with a TV mounted high on the opposite wall, and a myriad of family pictures taped to the empty space below. My uncle Dee was already there visiting when I arrived, seated in a chair on the other side of Dad’s bed near the window. Dad was still hooked up to an array of equipment measuring heart rate, oxygen saturation, and blood pressure. The data gathered was conveniently displayed on a monitor by the bed. This device occasionally made a beeping sound to remind us of its presence, just in case we were able to forget that we were in a hospital, and why.

I sat in a chair on the near side of the bed, in order to better see both Dad and Dee. After we visited for a bit I tuned up my little guitar and began to play. We stumbled fearlessly through a variety of songs. I performed several of my originals, then Dad and Dee joined in singing others: “My Girl,” “All I Have to Do is Dream,” “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” as well as “Yesterday,” which was one of Dad’s favorites. After the stress of the previous few weeks it was a pleasant reprieve, and just for a moment we were family members enjoying singing together, instead of family members singing together for the last time.

By Tuesday, April 15th, the doctors felt that Dad’s condition had stabilized enough for him to be discharged. Both my mother and I were concerned that he wasn’t being sent to a rehabilitation facility to recuperate further. Dad was just happy to be going home. It was late in the afternoon before the paperwork was in order for us to leave. I spent that Tuesday evening at the pharmacy getting the truckload of prescriptions that he would need at the house. I dropped off the medications and said goodnight before dragging myself back to my apartment. It had been a long day and I was exhausted.

I was awakened by my wife at ten after six the next morning. Mom was on the phone – Dad was gone.

We honored Dad’s wishes and allowed his remains to be used for research. We would have to wait two years before his ashes were returned to us. During that time I struggled with how to process my grief.

Sixteen months passed before I was able to write about the loss. When the words finally came, I was sitting on my back deck playing the same inexpensive guitar I had played at the hospital. The song I wrote was entitled, “Distant Shore,” and I credit that writing experience with helping me come to terms with Dad’s death. In April of 2005, I used the same guitar when I performed that song at his funeral. I still have that little guitar, and its value to me cannot be measured.

From Jack (Job Creators)

2011-10-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

THE MYTH OF JOB CREATORS

by Jack Reeves

Mom and pop businesses, including major corporations, are not job creators. It could be called a myth: an unproved or false collective belief used to justify a social interest. Befitting today, the popular pontification is a scam for political purposes.

Imagine that you own a business, say, a souvenir shop. It could just as well be Sears or Home Depot.

All businesses in capitalist societies create income by offering goods or services. The number of employees (jobs) directly corresponds to sales. Sales depends on demand; demand depends on customer need and sufficient income, and the willingness to expend it, to purchase goods or services.

Consequently, businesses--regardless of their capital--do not "create jobs" unless there is demand for their offerings.

Conclusion: Consumers do.

The cynical, politically motivate deception of job-creators being businesses is not only a lie but a "damn lie" (Mark Twain).

Consumers are the job creators. Think about it, please.

Thanks Bob

2011-10-07T11:26:00.003-05:00

A store front in Berlin in 3D

JUST CLICK ON THE PICTURE…this is pretty amazing.

From Jack (Class Warfare)

2011-10-06T19:13:00.000-05:00

OUR HISTORICAL CLASS WARFARE

by Jack Reeves

To denigrate legislation requiring the wealthy to pay more taxes, "class warfare" is the watchword. This political strategy is itself "class warfare," or classism, the belief that people from certain social or economic classes are superior to others. Such, though, characterizes our history.

The Constitution permitted only real estate-owning white males to vote--about 15 percent of us when George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock distinguished the wealthy list.

Compare: When my mother was born 125 years later, her mother could not vote--females being inferior. It took years of confrontation to change.

Gender since aside, wealth, race and power, i.e., classism, rule. Wall Street is salient. We the people, the remaining 99%, are submissively ruled.

Fifty percent of the US Congress are millionaires--many worth hundreds of millions. Sen. McConnell's wealth at least $20 million, Rep. Cantor's $7 million.

Politicians and pundits, playing the "class warfare" card to defend that "the rich are different" (F. Scott Fitzgerald), continue our history of ignored and/or denied classism.

Examples: In 1880, Florida was the first state to pass a poll-tax law--10 years after the 15th Amendment granted former slaves the vote. Ten Southern states followed. Racism, classism.

Today, nationwide legislation to restrict voting in the name of preventing fraud--with Florida much in the fore--continues the pattern. Those affected are least able to comply, thereby advantaging the superior classes.

Class warfare is as American as apple pie. A new revolution is overdue.

From Hulu (Why Richard Dawkins Does Not Debate Creationists)

2011-10-06T19:04:00.001-05:00

Betty White

2011-10-06T13:43:00.000-05:00

Remembering Steve Jobs

2011-10-06T07:08:00.002-05:00

From Salon (Voting Machines)

2011-10-05T10:52:00.002-05:00

2012 Elections

Tuesday, Sep 27, 2011 7:01 AM CDT

Diebold voting machines can be hacked by remote control

Exclusive: A laboratory shows how an e-voting machine used by a third of all voters can be easily manipulated

By Brad Friedman

Topics:2012 Elections, Computers

It could be one of the most disturbing e-voting machine hacks to date.

Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an 8th grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. The experts say the newly developed hack could change voting results while leaving absolutely no trace of the manipulation behind.

“We believe these man-in-the-middle attacks are potentially possible on a wide variety of electronic voting machines,” said Roger Johnston, leader of the assessment team “We think we can do similar things on pretty much every electronic voting machine.”

The Argonne Lab, run by the Department of Energy, has the mission of conducting scientific research to meet national needs. The Diebold Accuvote voting system used in the study was loaned to the lab’s scientists by VelvetRevolution.us, of which the Brad Blog is a co-founder.

Velvet Revolution received the machine from a former Diebold contractor

Previous lab demonstrations of e-voting system hacks, such as Princeton’s demonstration of a viral cyber attack on a Diebold touch-screen system — as I wrote for Salon back in 2006 — relied on cyber attacks to change the results of elections. Such attacks, according to the team at Argonne, require more coding skills and knowledge of the voting system software than is needed for the attack on the Diebold system.

Indeed, the Argonne team’s attack required no modification, reprogramming, or even knowledge, of the voting machine’s proprietary source code. It was carried out by inserting a piece of inexpensive “alien electronics” into the machine.

The Argonne team’s demonstration of the attack on a Diebold Accuvote machine is seen in a short new video shared exclusively with the Brad Blog [posted below]. The team successfully demonstrated a similar attack on a touch-screen system made by Sequoia Voting Systems in 2009.

The new findings of the Vulnerability Assessment Team echo long-ignored concerns about e-voting vulnerabilities issued by other computer scientists and security experts, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (an arm of the Department of Homeland Security), and even a long-ignored presentation by a CIA official given to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

“This is a national security issue,” says Johnston. “It should really be handled by the Department of Homeland Security.”

To read entire article click here.

Remembering Paul

2011-10-03T09:44:00.006-05:00

Precious Memories

As I travel down life's pathway,

Know not what the years may hold.

As I ponder, hopes grow fonder,

Precious memories flood my soul

Precious father, loving mother,

Glide across the lonely years.

And old home scenes of my childhood

In fond memory appears.

Precious memories, how they linger,

How they ever flood my soul.

In the stillness of the midnight,

Precious sacred scenes unfold.

Chapter Two of My Memoir

2011-10-01T13:20:00.011-05:00

When completed my entire memoir may be read here: From a Narrow Ridge

Happy Valley

After being discharged from Oak Ridge hospital, following my birth, mother and I returned home to our trailer. It was located near the east end of the K-25 construction camp, dubbed ‘Happy Valley’ by the workers and families living there. The camp was south of and across Gallaher Ferry Road from the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant, eleven miles west of Oak Ridge.

Life at the camp was fairly primitive when the first 450 hutments were built for construction workers in the fall of 1943. The square residences were 16 x 16 feet, un-insulated plywood structures with no plumbing, heated by pot-bellied stoves.

A year later when I was born the camp had become a sizeable provisional satellite city with a population larger than Clinton, Tennessee, Anderson County’s seat of government. Along with the original hutments housing 2500 construction workers, there were 900 families living in trailers, eight huge barracks accommodating both men and women in separate wings, 12 large dormitories for 1200 men and 100 ‘victory homes’. In all, nearly 15,000 people lived in Happy Valley.

This hastily established community had a large cafeteria, several recreation halls, a movie theater, barbershop, bathhouses and even a bowling alley. In addition, there was a dispensary, a drug store, a service station and a bank. Across the road there was a Town Hall with a Post Office, Laundromat and icehouse. Several hundred yards east stood the old Wheat School that served as the education center for the children living in the camp and as a training facility for incoming Carbide supervisors.

It was there I spent the first year and half of my life. The impressions of that time are vague. I was told I was a very active and agile child even before I began walking at nine months – although not as precocious, spirited and strong-willed as my sister who began walking at six months.

The defining tale about me from that period is how I came to be called ‘Monkey.’ My seven-and-half-year-old sister, Alice, was instructed by my parents to keep an eye on me while they visited with friends in a neighboring trailer.

Positioned so that my parents could easily see us, I was put in my playpen outside our trailer. It was not long, though, before some other children distracted my sister. Seizing the moment, I used the monkey-bar hanging from my playpen to swing out of my enclosure.

When my sister returned, I was nowhere to be seen. Frantically, she began calling my name. Hearing her cries, my parents came running. The search began.

Believing that I could not have gone far since I had not, as yet, started walking, the range of their search was limited. That was a mistake. When they finally found me, six trailers away, I was still crawling.

For over a year my father had supervised the splicing and laying of miles of underground cable throughout the massive K-25 complex. The pace of the work was unrelenting, 24 hours a day, seven days a week; the complexity and scope, unimaginable.

When completed in 1945 in just 270 days without blueprints, the gigantic U-shape structure, consisting of 50 huge connected, four-story buildings, measured a half-mile long by a 1000 feet wide. At the time, it was the largest building under one roof on the face of the earth, covering 44 square acres.

The separation process used at the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant was based on Graham’s Law, where by, molecules of a lighter isotope pass through a porous barrier more readily than the molecules of a heavier one. The process required a massive facility to house the myriad cascades, pumps and membranes to separate the lighter u-235 from the heavier u-238. The plant also consumed enormous amounts of electricity, while producing only minute amounts of weapons-grade material. To accommodate the electrical needs of the gaseous diffusion plant the largest steam plant in the world was designed and built next door, with a 238,000-kilowatt capacity.

The residents of Happy Valley were constantly reminded that the facilities being built across the road was crucial to ending the war and “bringing the boys home.” No one, however, except a few in top-level positions, really knew what the mission entailed. Most of the workers at K-25 knew little to nothing of or about any of the other enrichment facilities.

Security throughout the Oak Ridge reservation was extremely tight. Workers were forbidden to talk to anyone about their jobs, even their spouse. Periodically, polygraphs were given to those in sensitive positions. Although no one knew at the time, everyone was under the watchful eye of military intelligence and government informants. There were agents everywhere watching and listening, posing as coworkers, bus drivers, shopkeepers and teachers.

There were large billboards with the Three Wise Monkeys reminding workers and residents:

What you see here
What you do here
What you hear here
When you leave here
Let it stay here

Those living in surrounding communities had no idea what was going on behind the barbwire fence and security gates. They saw trains hauling in hundreds of boxcars loaded with ore and other raw materials, yet never saw anything leave the compound.

The Manhattan Project was so secret that when FDR died on April 12, 1945, his Vice President, Harry Truman, had no knowledge of the project. It was nearly two weeks after Truman took office that he was informed of the project and its mission.

The first covert deliveries of weapons-grade uranium, u-235, left Oak Ridge for Los Alamos in the winter of 1945. The radioactive material was delivered in specially made briefcases hand-cuffed to couriers. Though the quantities of the shipments were measured in grams, by July of 1945 Los Alamos had received 30 pounds of the enriched uranium. At last, it was time for the bomb makers to test their design theories.

On July 16, 1945 the first nuclear weapons test, nicknamed ‘The Gadget’, lit up the morning sky in a remote area of central New Mexico above the Jornada del Muerto Desert. As the fireball shot upwards at 360 feet per second, the characteristic mushroom cloud blossomed at 30,000 feet. All that remained of the soil at the blast site were shards of green radioactive glass created by the heat of the explosion. The Atomic Age was born.

Eight days later, on July 24, 1945, in Potsdam, Germany, the United States and Great Britain demanded that Japan unconditionally surrender.

Four days later, Japan refused.

On August 6, 1945, President Harry S Truman made a radio announcement that the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, equivalent to 20,000 ton of TNT. During his address, Truman revealed that the atomic bomb was developed at several sites in the United States, including the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville.

As soon as Truman finished his address, the sounds of car horns and fire hall sirens began to wail. People spilled into the streets, dancing with one another, forming long snake lines. They were, at last, free to talk without fear of jeopardizing their unknown mission. The secret had been exposed – to them, as well as the entire world.

In a special edition that evening, the headline in the Knoxville News-Sentinel, read “ATOMIC SUPER BOMB, MADE AT OAK RIDGE, STRIKES JAPAN.” The account gave workers at Oak Ridge their first official description of the top-secret project on which they had all been working.

In his address, Truman described the development of the atomic bomb as “the greatest achievement of organized science in history” and that it should give the Japanese the necessary impetus to surrender unconditionally to Allied forces, warning that if they refused, “they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

The code name for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber, was “Little Boy”. Even though the simple gun-type nuclear bomb had never been tested, the eventual death toll was estimated to be nearly 150,000 people. The bomb’s explosive energy and massive shockwave flattened the entire city, igniting a raging firestorm and bathing every living thing within miles in deadly radiation. Sad but true, the weapons-grade uranium-235, used to make the bomb was partially processed across the road from my family’s trailer home in Happy Valley.

Despite the carnage and Truman’s warning, Japan still refused to surrender.

On August 9, 1945, ‘Fat Man’, code name for the third man-made nuclear device, a plutonium implosion-type atomic bomb much like the ‘Gadget’, was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan. Fortunately, because of poor visibility due to cloud cover, the bomb missed its intended target, diminishing the damage and death toll. Nevertheless, 39,000 innocent people were killed, instantaneously. Thousands more died later from blast injuries and radiation illness.

On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered. At Last, World War II was over.

While the citizens of Oak Ridge and the rest of the world celebrated, the ‘Monkey’ stood erect and began to walk.

Harry Chapin - What Made America Famous

2011-09-27T22:32:00.001-05:00

From Alan Grayson

It was the town that made America famous.
The churches full and the kids all gone to hell.
Six traffic lights and seven cops and all the streets kept clean.
The supermarket and the drug store and the bars all doing well.

They were the folks that made America famous.
The local fire department stocked with shorthaired volunteers.
And on Saturday night while America boozes
The fire department showed dirty movies,
The lawyer and the grocer seeing their dreams
Come to life on the movie screens
While the plumber hopes that he won't be seen
As he tries to hide his fears and he wipes away his tears.
But something's burning somewhere. Does anybody care?

We were the kids that made America famous.
The kind of kids that long since drove our parents to despair.
We were lazy long hairs dropping out, lost, confused, and copping out.
Convinced our futures were in doubt and trying not to care.

We lived in the house that made America famous.
It was a rundown slum, the shame of all the decent folks in town.
We hippies and some welfare cases,
Crowded families of coal black faces,
Cramped inside some cracked old boards,
The best that we all could afford
But still too nice for the rich landlord
To tear it down and we could hear the sound
Of something burning somewhere. Is anybody there?

We all lived the life that made America famous.
Our cops would make a point to shadow us around our town.
And we love children put a swastika on the bright red firehouse door.
America, the beautiful, it makes a body proud.

And then came the night that made America famous.
Was it carelessness or someone's sick idea of a joke?
In the tinder box trap that we hippies lived in someone struck a spark.
At first I thought I was dreaming,
Then I saw the first flames gleaming
And heard the sound of children screaming.
Coming through the smoke. That's when the horror broke.
Something's burning somewhere. Does anybody care?

It was the fire that made America famous.
The sirens wailed and the firemen stumbled sleepy from their homes.
And the plumber yelled: "Come on let's go!"
But they saw what was burning and said: "Take it slow,
Let 'em sweat a little, they'll never know
And besides, we just cleaned the chrome."

Said the plumber: "Then I'm going alone."

He rolled on up in the fire truck
And raised the ladder to the ledge
Where me and my girl and a couple of kids
Were clinging like bats to the edge.
We staggered to salvation,
Collapsed on the street.
And I never thought that a fat man's face
Would ever look so sweet.

I shook his hand in the scene that made America famous
And a smile from the heart that made America great
You see we spent the rest of that night in the home of a man I'd never known before.
It's funny when you get that close it's kind of hard to hate.

I went to sleep with the hope that made America famous.
I had the kind of a dream that maybe they're still trying to teach in school.

Of the America that made America famous...and
Of the people who just might understand
That how together yes we can
Create a country better than
The one we have made of this land,
We have a choice to make each man
who dares to dream, reaching out his hand
A prophet or just a crazy God damned
Dreamer of a fool – yes, a crazy fool

There's something burning somewhere.

Does anybody care?

Is anybody there?

Harry Chapin. Musician, author, playwright, humanitarian. Congressional Gold Medal Winner. Died in 1981, at the age of 38, in a head-on collision with a truck. This is what it says on his tombstone, from a song he wrote:

Oh, if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world.

Harry, we miss you. And we sure could use some more folks like you today.

First Chapter of My Memoir

2011-09-26T08:12:00.034-05:00

From a Narrow Ridge

A Memoir by Dee Newman

Chapter One

Preface

Sometime around the turn of the 20th century, according to a number of documented accounts of eyewitnesses, an eccentric spiritualist by the name of John Hendrix told a group of his neighbors at an old country crossroads store that he had experienced a prophetic vision of what the future held for Bear Creek Valley. He informed them that their remote rural area would one day be filled with a vast complex of buildings to help win the greatest war every to be waged and that a city would be built along Black Oak Ridge.

“The center of authority will be on a spot mid-way between Sevier Tadlock’s farm and Joe Pyatt’s place. I've seen it," he told them. "It's coming."

John Hendrix (“The Prophet of Oak Ridge”) died in 1915. He was only 49 years old. He is buried on a hilltop in a subdivision of Oak Ridge named “Hendrix Creek.”

I Owe My Existence

As far back as I can remember my sister Alice has insisted that I owe my existence to her: had she not persistently and persuasively begged my parents for a little baby brother, I would not have been conceived, much less born.

According to our mother my sister did in fact plead “relentlessly” for a little baby brother. Nevertheless, I maintain that I am more beholden to Adolph Hitler, Hirohito, Albert Einstein and Franklin Delano Roosevelt than I am to my sister.

In early August of 1939 after hearing from Danish physicist Neils Bohr that Nazi Germany was trying to develop a nuclear weapon, Albert Einstein, in collaboration with and encouragement from physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, sent a letter to President Roosevelt. Expressing his concerns, Einstein advised the president that the United States should begin its own nuclear weapons research program immediately. That same year a small, highly classified research program, later to be known as the Manhattan Project, was initiated by the president to determine the feasibility of producing a viable nuclear bomb.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the top-secret project became an urgent national priority. In September 1942, Colonel Leslie R. Groves was made a brigadier general and appointed military director of the fledgling Atomic Bomb Project for the US Army Corps of Engineers. He replaced the first director, Col. James Marshall, who it seemed lacked the necessary impetus to get the project moving beyond the research stage.

General Groves, while overseeing the construction of the Pentagon in 1940, had developed a reputation as a ruthless, yet highly skilled and intelligent engineer with tremendous drive, energy, and organizational skills. As director of the Manhattan Project, Groves soon acquired an enormous amount of power, involving himself in nearly every aspect of the bomb’s development. All three of the principle sites throughout the country that were to be used for theoretical research and materials production were chosen by Gen. Groves (site-Y in Los Alamos, New Mexico, site-W in Hanford, Washington and site-X in Oak Ridge, Tennessee).

Within days of taking charge of the project, Gen. Groves ordered agents from the Army Corps of Engineers to secure 56,200 acres of a remote sleepy little ridge and farming valley in East Tennessee. A thousand families from five small rural communities (Wheat, Scarboro, Elza, Robertsville and New Hope) who had lived on the land for generations were given little explanation for the government's sudden, intrusive and forced acquisition of their land.

Abruptly, without warning, thousands of highly educated people as well as highly skilled and experienced construction workers (carpenters, welders, and electricians) from all over the United States and other parts of the world ascended upon that remote rural area. It was an area where change had always been resisted, where most folks lived in houses with no electricity or indoor plumbing and whose children rarely received more than a seventh-grade education.

As they began to apply their skills to build a series of secret facilities, no one, except for a small group of nuclear scientists, knew the mission of the project – to separate, produce and purify large quantities of uranium-235 and plutonium from the natural uranium-238 for use in developing a nuclear bomb.

The site was chosen for several reasons: the small population of these rural farming communities made the acquisition of the land affordable; the long valley was naturally partitioned, allowing each facility to be separated by a series of ridges, providing security and protection from both external attacks and internal nuclear disasters; the area was accessible by both rail and highway; and it had an abundance of clean water from the Clinch River, including hydro-electricity from the nearby recently completed Norris Dam by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

On December 2, 1942, two months after Gen. Groves took charge of the project, in a squash court beneath the old Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a group of researchers led by Enrico Fermi achieved the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.

Two months later, on the second of February 1943, along Bear Creek Valley between Black Oak Ridge and the Clinch River, construction began on Y-12, the code name for the facility that would enrich uranium using electromagnetic isotopes. Nine months later, Y-12 began separating uranium-235 from uranium-238.

Nine miles to the east, on Nov. 4, 1943, 14 months after the first parcel of land had been purchased in Tennessee, the world's first full-scale graphite nuclear reactor went critical at X-10. A year and half later the gaseous diffusion separation plant (K-25) also began turning out weapons-grade uranium, U-235.

In just 30 months, three plant sites were constructed within what was known as the Clinton Engineer Works (CEW) and the secret city of Oak Ridge, unable to be found on any map until (1949) after the war had ended, emerged as the fifth largest city in Tennessee, with a population approaching 75,000. By November 1944, Oak Ridge was using 20 percent more electricity than New York City and had the sixth-largest bus system in the nation.

Security was tight. The huge CEW complex (including production sites and residential areas) was completely surrounded by a barbwire fence with guard towers and seven gates. Everyone 12 years and older were required to wear a government identification badge. Access to the city was restricted to workers and residents with authorized government IDs. Five thousand security personnel manned the gates and patrolled hundreds of miles of fencing. It was imperative that the complex not be infiltrated.

The Clinton Engineer Works: The Y-12 electromagnetic separation plant (upper right), the X-10 plutonium production reactor (center), and the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant (lower left) with the "Happy Valley" housing area.

___________________

Twelve years earlier in Atlanta, Georgia, my parents met, fell in love and were married on January 2, 1934 (1-2-34). At the time my mother was a photographic retoucher and colorist.

My father was the chief floor judge and trainer for a series of Dance Marathons (promoted primarily as Walkathons) which had begun during the later part of the roaring 1920s.

Throughout the 1930s and the Great Depression, these dance endurance contests persisted to some degree as partially staged performances and genuine endurance events, often pitting a mix of local hopefuls and seasoned professional marathoners against one another. A 25-cent admission fee entitled an audience member to watch the show as long as he or she wished.

During their glory days, though they were very controversial, Walkathons were among America’s most widely attended forms of live entertainment. By the time they began to fade in popularity in the late 1930s nearly every American city of 50,000 people or more had hosted at least one dance marathon.

The endurance contest business directly employed tens of thousands of people during the Great Depression – as promoters, masters of ceremonies, floor judges, trainers, nurses as well as contestants. Indirectly, Walkathons also helped to create thousands of jobs for local economies, keeping small businesses, newspapers and radio stations viable with their promotional and advertising dollars, paying for license fees, renting countless venues, providing local sponsors publicity for their businesses, and utilizing local food concessions for spectators, employees and contestants.

With Atlanta as home base, my parents began traveling throughout the United States, primarily in the South, Northeast and Midwest working for the contest endurance entertainment business. My father was the chief floor judge and my mother a “sitter” or nurse’s aide.

It was during this time they met and became friends with a 19-year-old comedian, Red Skelton and his first wife, Edna. Red was the emcee of the show/contest and used my father and other floor judges as “goats” for his antics. Red would do most anything for a laugh – from drenching my dad with ice water to shooting him with a blank pistol. The last time my parents saw Red and Edna was in Waukegan, Illinois, in 1935. As they hugged goodbye, Red told Dad, “Chink, the next time you’ll see me I’ll be in the movies.” His statement was prophetic.

Between his Walkathon engagements, my father was also a professional pugilist, an established and reputable heavyweight prizefighter. He was managed by Maw and Paw Stribling, who were the parents of Young Stribling.

“Scrib” as he was known to his family and friends was one of the great heavyweights of the 1920’s and early 1930s. He died on October 3, 1933, when his motorcycle was hit by an automobile. Though he was only 28 he had knocked out more opponents and fought more professional rounds than any other fighter in history – a total of 286 recorded bouts, losing only 12. He was never knocked out except when he lost to Max Schmeling, the heavyweight champion of the world, on July 3, 1931, by a technical knockout in the last 14 seconds of the 15th round. The bout was the first major fight to be broadcast live over national radio.

During his short career, he set numerous records, including most fights by a heavyweight (286), most fights by a heavyweight in a single year (55), most knockouts by a heavyweight (127), as well as the fewest number of times ever to be knocked out (1) and that was a TKO. Gentlemen Jim Corbett called Young Stribling "the best heavyweight fighter for his pounds that ever lived."

In the fall of 1935, after suffering several months with malaria and unable to find work, my father jump a series of fright trains west to Boulder City, Nevada, to work on the massive construction project of what was then called Boulder Dam. It was there that my father fought his last professional fight.

One Saturday night after hearing about a nearby boxing event outside of Las Vegas, my father drove over with several coworkers. While hanging out backstage visiting with some old boxing buddies, news arrived that the principal contestant for the main event had been injured in an automobile accident and would be unable to fight. Someone told the promoter that my father was there and suggested that he might be willing to fill in for the disabled fighter.

Out of shape, still suffering from the aftereffects of malaria, my father consented to fight for four rounds of the eight-round bout and give the audience a good show, but would take a dive in the fifth round if he lasted that long by leaving himself open for a knock out. His opponent agreed to the fix.

When the bell to end the fifth round rang my father was still standing. His opponent had not delivered a convincing punch. My father was exhausted and angry. Fighting now only on adrenalin, he continued to leave himself open to take the dive. By the middle of the sixth round, in order to make his opponent angry, my father spit in his face. Still no convincing blow was delivered. When the fight ended in the eighth round my father won a unanimous decision.

Missing my mother, my father, after working six months on the dam, drove back to Atlanta with a coworker. He soon found work as an apprentice with the Georgia Power Company in Atlanta and became a highly skilled electrician, specializing in the laying of underground cable.

The experience and competence he acquired served him well. When many other men and women were standing in soup and bread lines unable to find work, my father with help from his union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), was able to secure temporary positions primarily in the South, in Tennessee cities like Chattanooga, Memphis, Kingsport and Spring City. Traveling with his young wife and infant daughter, towing their small trailer home behind them, he earned a living wage for his family when millions of Americans remain destitute.

In the fall of 1943, after returning to Atlanta from a job in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my father through the IBEW heard about a project near Harriman, Tennessee, that needed experienced electrical workers and specifically underground cablemen. Leaving my mother and sister in Atlanta with relatives, he drove 200 miles north to inquire about employment. He was hired on the spot.

For several weeks my father lived with his brother-in-law, Loran Jennings and his sister, Mary, in Knoxville, Tennessee. During that time my father commuted to work and back nearly 90 miles a day. On September 21, 1943 my father wrote to my mother:

Hello Honey,

I received your letter today . . . sure was glad to here from you. I’ve been waiting to see what this job turns out to be. Because of the weather I have only worked 4 days since I got here. It has been raining a lot. I’m working for $1.50 an hr. This will be the biggest cable job I have ever seen. It will be about 2 months before the cable splicing starts.

Go ahead and paint the trailer. I will come and get you in about 2 weeks and you and Mary can go over to Harriman and see about a school and a place to put the trailer. It is 43 miles one way from here to work. Harriman is only 17 miles from the job.

I will try to send you some money Friday night. I hope I will be able to work tomorrow.

Give the booger a big hug from me.

Lots of love to you both,

Chink

Within weeks, my father drove to Atlanta to move my mother and my five-year-old sister, Alice, to Harriman, Tennessee. For six months they lived in a trailer park in Harriman. It was there I was conceived, thanks in no small way to the fact that my father, at last, had steady work and a good paying job. In short, I was conceived not because of my sister’s constant nagging for a baby brother, but because my parents could finally afford another child, thanks to the government’s secret efforts to develop a nuclear weapon – an atomic bomb.

Eventually, in the Spring of 1944, they move to a temporary community that came to be known as “Happy Valley”, an on-site construction camp near K-25, consisting of trailer homes and hutments built by the Army Corp of Engineers that in time would housed over 15,000 people.

On November 24, 1944 I was born in the newly built Oak Ridge Hospital.

From My Good Friend Bob Highfill

2011-09-25T19:03:00.003-05:00

Dee

Richard Dawkins points out that the scientific method was formulated only 350 years ago.

From "The First Ten Years" in A Hundred Years and More of Cambridge Physics:

The systematic teaching of practical physics is a modern development. Until the second half of the nineteenth century was well begun, no teaching laboratory and no regular course of instruction were known . . . All the immense amount of scientific knowledge built up before the 1870's was the result of individual work in essentially private labs.

And, for much of the 150 years that science has been taught, it was only available to the academic elite. The real impact on the thinking of the masses is only just now beginning with the availability of the internet.

Given the dramatic changes that science has brought to our lives in just the last 100 years, one wonders what will happen in the next 200 or so years. And, what will be the impact of scientific thought processes on the religious views of the masses once the majority have been exposed to the teachings of science and the strength and productivity of clear, rational thinking? Will the fables and mysticism of religion be able to sustain respect?

I don't think so.

Bob

From The White House (Weekly Address)

2011-09-24T10:29:00.002-05:00

Strengthening the American Education System

Posted by Nikki Sutton on September 24, 2011 at 05:30 AM EDT

President Obama explains that states will have greater flexibility to find innovative ways of improving the education system, so that we can raise standards in our classrooms and prepare the next generation to succeed in the global economy.

Creative Writing Weekend and Book Arts Class

2011-09-21T09:28:00.007-05:00

Kelly Falzone (a friend) is an awarding-winning poet and teaching artist. This weekend she will be offering a workshop at Art & Soul on creative writing and book making. If you have an interest and the opportunity, I highly recommend the workshop.

From Poet People:
Kelly’s poetry has appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Poets On:, Squaw Valley Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Journal of Poetry Therapy, and the anthologies: Essential Love, Not Your Mama’s Cookbook, and Afterwords: writing on grief and loss. Kelly’s work has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, was a semi-finalist in the “Discovery”/The Nation contest, and has been awarded prizes and recognition from the Tennessee Writers Alliance, the Knoxville Writers Guild, and the Chester H. Jones Foundation. Recent theatre projects showcasing her work have included Nashville Actors’ Bridge Ensemble’s New Works Lab, and Green Room Projects’ Conjure Women. She regularly appears with spoken-word artists Ami Mattison and Minton Sparks, and has read her work at festivals such as the Southern Festival of Books and Ladyfest South. A member of both the Key West Writers Workshop and The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Kelly has studied under the guidance of such master poets as: Sharon Olds, Lucille Clifton, Gerald Stern, Tom Sleigh, Brenda Hillman and Kate Daniels.

To read some of Kelly’s poems click here.

	Creative Writing Weekend and Book Arts class

The Deep Dive

taught by Kelly Falzone

Plunge in head first!

Writing is a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual practice which provides an incredible opportunity to dive down into the unconscious and hear the voice of the Soul. Spread out over three days, and facilitated by award-winning poet and teaching artist Kelly Falzone, this workshop will be an invigorating weekend of exploration and experimentation. Through prompts and creative play, you will learn how to more easily ignore your internal editor, tap into the unconscious, and follow your writing to its depths. Participants will have an opportunity to share drafts in an encouraging circle, and leave the workshop inspired, with a bagful of new ideas and resources. Sharing aloud is always optional and no prior workshop experience is necessary. All writing levels welcome. Class limited to six to twelve participants.

Students should bring notebook, water bottle, and a sack lunch on Saturday.

Time & Date
September 23, 24, 25
Friday 5:30 - 8:00 pm; Saturday 10:00 am - 2:30 pm; Sunday 12:00 - 4:00 pm

Fee
$165 (Co-op $140)

Registration Deadline
Friday, September 16

Click here to register!

www.eartandsoul.com/current_classes.php#DeepDive

The Eighth Dimension

From Rachel Maddow Show

Jimmie Rodgers

From the New York Times

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad

From The Daily Show (Elizabeth Warren)

From The White House

From The Daily Show

A Few Photos

From The White House

From NPR (Etta James)

From The Rachel Maddow Show

Remembering Dr. King

Photos from the Narrows

Olivia Munn for PETA

From The Colbert Report (Bill Moyers)

Bill Moyers is Back

From Jack

Let Calcutta Surprise You

From Jack

From the Daily Show

'A Universe From Nothing' by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009

Lawrence M. Krauss

Spherical Flying Machine Developed by Japan Ministry Of Defense

From Coal River Mountain Watch

Take Action: Demand an End to Mountaintop Removal

Eliza Doolittle - Skinny Genes (Live At VEVO)

From The Charlie Rose Show – Harry Belafonte

From Geeky Muse (Temple Grandin)

From Think Progress

My Back Pages

Support Tribe of Heart

Support Kiva – Microfinance

From a Friend – ADVICE FROM DR. OZ

ADAM SANDLER - CHANUKAH (HANUKKAH) SONG

From BuzzFeed (2011 Protest Signs)

From About.com (Iraq War)

From The Sage of Bucksnort

From The Rachel Maddow Show

From The BBC Christopher Hitchens Dies

Related Stories

A Few Photos from Miami Beach

From Tennessee Citizen Action

From The White House

My Favorite Scene from Good Will Hunting

TEDxNashville - Molly Secours - 3/21/10

From The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

From The Rachel Maddow Show

A Dangerous Method (Trailer)

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family

TENNESSEE LOCAL FOOD SUMMIT PSA

The National Defense Authorization Act

TEDxSF - Louie Schwartzberg - Gratitude

I Didn't F*ck It Up - Katie Goodman of Broad Comedy

From The New York Times

From Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (ASTT)

Brandi Carlile Sings Turpentine

From The Smirking Chimp

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

From RollingStone

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Amy LaVere - Never Been Sadder

Neko Case "I Wish I Was The Moon" Live RAVE HD

1400 YEARS AND COUNTING

The Fight for American Jobs Continues

The Mountain House and Little Pigeon River (Photos)

From NBC News: Bob Costas Interviews Jerry Sandusky

Harry Belafonte Reflects on Life as a Singer, Actor and Activist

An Evening Walk at the Narrows (Photos)

Tom Paxton sings "The Last Thing On My Mind"

A Thought or Two About Penn State

Radnor Lake (Photos)

Paul Sings "These Days"

Odetta and Tennessee Ernie Ford Sing Woody Guthrie

The People Have Spoken

From The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC)

Infrastructure Investment

By the Numbers: 2 Percent

A Walk in Honor of Paul (Photos)

From Michael Moore's Blog