HBO's 2004's Iron Jawed Angels starring Hilary Swank (as Alice Paul) Frances O'Connor (as Lucy Burns) Lois Smith (as Rev. Dr. Anna Howard Shaw) Vera Farmiga (as Ruza Wenclawska) Brooke Smith (as Mabel Vernon) Patrick Dempsey, Julia Ormond as (Inez Milholland) and Anjelica Huston (as Carrie Chapman Catt.)
This movie will give you a glimpse into what our foremothers had to endure to gain the right to vote in this country.
So Please – GO VOTE!
Part 1 of 12
On January the 9th, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the Nineteenth Amendment:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any States on Account of sex. The Congress shall have the power by appropriate legislation to enforce the provisions of this article.
The next day the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment. The Senate, however, refused to debate the amendment until October.
In the 1918 midterm elections The National Woman's Party urged voters to vote against anti-suffrage Senators up for reelection. Somehow, following those elections, most members of Congress became pro-suffrage.
On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89 with the Senate following the House's lead on June 4, by a vote of 56 to 25.
Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan were the first states to pass the amendment.
Georgia and Alabama rushed to pass their oppositions. The anti-suffrage forces included both men and women. They were well-organized, and passage of the amendment was difficult.
Eventually thirty-five of the necessary thirty-six states ratified the amendment. Anti-suffrage and pro-suffrage forces from around the nation descended on Nashville, Tennessee. The final vote was scheduled for August the 18th, 1920.
Up to that time a young 24 year old legislator, Harry Burn, had voted with the anti-suffrage forces. But, his mother had urged him to vote for the amendment. When he saw that the vote would be tied 48 to 48, he decided to vote as his mother had urged him – for the right of women to vote. And so, on August the 18th, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th and deciding state to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Unfortunately, the anti-suffrage forces used parliamentary maneuvers to try and convert some of the pro-suffrage votes to their side. Eventually their tactics failed.
And so, on August the 26th, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution became law, and women for the first time were able to vote in the fall elections, including for the President of the United States of America.
No Copyright Infringement intended. I do not intend on making a profit selling to others; I do not own this material; I am not abusing the copyright in any way. All rights and ownership belong to HBO.
History has shown us, time and time again, when there are no restrictions on the accumulations of wealth other than the market itself, recession and/or depression are unavoidable. Capitalism collapses!
Why? Because free-market capitalism creates a climate conducive to greed, encouraging an unbalanced accumulation of capital, which inevitably leads to an economic pattern of boom and bust.
Over the last decade, conservative economic principles and policies, once again, nearly drove us to the depths of another Great Depression.
The truth is, President Obama inherited the worst financial crisis this country had seen since the Great Depression.
When the President took office his first and most urgent task was to stop the financial melt down and prevent the economic collapse from becoming another great depression.
And, he did it!
But not alone. As Treasury Secretary Tim Geithnerpoints out in an article in the Washington Post, titled"Five Myths About TARP" the Troubled Asset Relief Program, "perhaps the most maligned yet most effective government program in recent memory," was not created by President Obama, but was created by a conservative Republican president, George W. Bush and passed by the same Republican congressional leaders who are now denouncing it as a Democratic strategy to assert more government control over the economy.
Before President Obama took office, the Bush administration committed nearly $300 billion under the TARP, including investments in banks representing more than three-quarters of the entire sector, two of the three big American car companies and AIG. That support was critical to preventing a complete system collapse, but it also represented a level of government involvement in our economy not seen since the Great Depression.
Obama adopted a strategy designed to get the government out of the private sector as quickly as possible. To date, we have recovered more than $200 billion in TARP funds, as well as made $28 billion in profits. Our remaining investments in banks are a small fraction of what we inherited. And, in the end, 90 percent of that once-feared $700 billion TARP price tag either will not have been spent or will be returned to the taxpayers.
We will exit the AIG and automotive industry investments much faster than anyone predicted. General Motors is planning an initial public offering for later this year, and AIG has announced a restructuring plan that will accelerate the timeline for repaying the government.
The TARP is over. And as we put it behind us, it is worth noting that the financial security of all Americans is much stronger today than it would have been without the rescue strategy that the program made possible. It worked.
TARP was created to save us from the consequence of a very devious contrivance, "the sub-prime mortgage scam".
Real estate prices were artificially inflated by encouraging and allowing folks like you and me to buy homes on substandard credit and under terms that now seem not only ridiculous, but criminal.
The resulting mortgages were then fraudulently traded on the market as "AAA" securities.
Inevitably, this sham, like a house of cards, had to crash, and when it did, the economy of the entire world nearly collapsed with it.
Many of us here in the United States, particularly those of us who lost our homes and jobs, were greatly harmed by this calamity.
However, the culprits (the Bush Administration and the Republican controlled congress, all those corrupt conservative politicians and government agency regulators who turned a blind-eye to what was going on, the bankers and mortgage brokers who relaxed their credit rules and wrote all those ridiculous contracts, the rating agencies who lied about the value of all those packaged securities, and yes, the real estate agents who got rich peddling overpriced property to people who clearly could not afford it) remained, for the most part, as always, unscathed. In fact, many of them made out like bandits.
You would think that this economic crisis would cause everyone in congress, Democrats and Republicans, to come and work together, to collectively confront the crisis in a non-partisan and cooperative way. It was obviously a time for statesmanship. Unfortunately, as we all know, Republicans decided to pursue another path, a path of pure partisan politics, becoming the party of obstructionism and no.
The self-described champions of the "free market", the culprits of this catastrophe, remain resolute. Their goals have not changed; they continue to desire and push for lower and lower taxes on their income and investments, while pushing for fewer and fewer regulations on their business interests.
In spite of what this country and the world is now enduring, they have refused to admit or take any responsibility for the economic crisis. Nor have they offered any plausible or new approach to solving our nation’s economic problems. In fact, they have done nothing, except to propose the same old failed policies of the past, the same old conservative philosophy that led to this mess in the first place: trickle-down economics, touting, once again, de-regulation for Wall Street and corporate America.
Unfortunately, according to the polls, the massive negative “message repetition” by the GOP, assisted by their far-right media machine and their corporate cronies, has, once again, triumphed over the facts.
It is amazing how easily ignorance and fear can be used to manipulate and hoodwink large constituencies into disregarding their own health, happiness and well-being for the benefit of the well-connected and the well-to-do.
Is it, I wonder, really possible, after what these lying scumbags did to all of us during the Bush years, for the American people to hand them the reins, again?
When the last of the 33 miners was pulled to freedom late last night celebrations erupted in Chile and around the world. The men were all thought dead when the mine caved in on August 5th. But miraculously, 17 days later, after boring a 2,000 foot hole (the width of a grapefruit) rescuers found them all alive. That tiny hole became their life line as water and food began to be lowered down the long narrow shaft, keeping them alive until a larger hole could be bored to bring them up.
Once that larger hole was completed (in record time) and the final operation began, it took only 22 hours for the Chilean miners to be pulled to the surface and another 2 and half hours for the last of the rescuers to emerged from the copper and gold mine late last night.
I too, like much of the world, have been transfixed on this human drama. And yet, over the last two months my mind has often flashed back to the coverage of other mine disaster rescues – some of which were performed far less proficiently and successfully.
During many, if not all, of these rescue efforts, my mind has often recalled Billy Wilder's 1951 film Ace in the Hole, staring Kirk Douglas. The film is an uncompromising portrait of human nature at its worst and a searing examination of the press, the news it reports and the manner in which it is reported.
Why is it, I wonder, that a significant number of us are so perversely attracted to these horrific events?
If you had 90 days to prevent another Darfur, what would you do?
On January 9th, Southern Sudan will vote for its independence. The country is currently led by an indicted war criminal, Omar al-Bashir. Both north and south are preparing for war, leaving civilians at grave risk of major human rights violations.
The U.S. Secretary of State has called the situation a "ticking time bomb." The CIA has said that "mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan." President Obama has said that "the stakes are enormous."
We have a brief window of opportunity to do something that has rarely been done: stop a war before it starts. But if the international community is too hesitant or too late in its efforts -- as was the case in Darfur -- hundreds of thousands could die. The last war between the North and South was ended by a U.S.-led peace process, but not before two and a half million men, women, and children perished.
Republicans and Democrats stand arm in arm for this cause, a cause which does not require sending US troops or billions of dollars. In fact, a combination of international pressure and robust diplomacy ended the last North/South war in 2005. It can work again.
Tell President Obama that we support every effort to use robust diplomacy -- in coordination with all our diplomatic partners -- to ensure a successful referendum, and peace in the South and Darfur. Our President has the power to gather the political will to stop a genocide before it starts, and we must demand that he do so.
The international community was late to Darfur. Late to the Congo. Late to Rwanda. Late to Bosnia. Tell our President that the people of South Sudan can't afford for us to be late again.
An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio's 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.
Rich Iott, second from right, in a Nazi SS Waffen uniform.
Iott, whose district lies in Northwest Ohio, was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking, whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott's participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign's website, and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website.
When contacted by The Atlantic, Iott confirmed his involvement with the group over a number of years, but said his interest in Nazi Germany was historical and he does not subscribe to the tenets of Nazism. "No, absolutely not," he said. "In fact, there's a disclaimer on the [Wiking] website. And you'll find that on almost any reenactment website. It's purely historical interest in World War II."
Rich Iott and his wife, as shown on his campaign website.
Iott, a member of the Ohio Military Reserve, added, "I've always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things. I mean, they took over most of Europe and Russia, and it really took the combined effort of the free world to defeat them. From a purely historical military point of view, that's incredible."
Iott says the group chose the Wiking division in part because it fought on the Eastern Front, mainly against the Russian Army, and not U.S. or British soldiers. The group's website includes a lengthy history of the Wiking unit, a recruitment video, and footage of goose-stepping German soldiers marching in the Warsaw victory parade after Poland fell in 1939. The website makes scant mention of the atrocities committed by the Waffen SS, and includes only a glancing reference to the "twisted" nature of Nazism. Instead, it emphasizes how the Wiking unit fought Bolshevist Communism:
Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a "New and Free Europe", free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other eastern European and Balkan countries as the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life, despite the true underlying totalitarian (and quite twisted, in most cases) nature of the movement. Regardless, thousands upon thousands of valiant men died defending their respective countries in the name of a better tomorrow. We salute these idealists; no matter how unsavory the Nazi government was, the front-line soldiers of the Waffen-SS (in particular the foreign volunteers) gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.
Historians of Nazi Germany vehemently dispute this characterization. "These guys don't know their history," said Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., a retired history professor and author of "Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-45," which chronicles an SS division. "They have a sanitized, romanticized view of what occurred." Sydnor added that re-enactments like the Wiking group's are illegal in Germany and Austria. "If you were to put on an SS uniform in Germany today, you'd be arrested."
Christopher Browning, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said, "It is so unhistorical and so apologetic that you don't know to what degree they've simply caught up innocent war memorabilia enthusiasts who love putting on uniforms."
Iott says he does not recall exactly when he joined the Wiking group (his name appears on a unit roster as far back as 2003), but did so with his son "as a father-son bonding thing." He says his name and pictures were removed from the Wiking website not out of concern that they would harm his political career, but because he quit the group three years ago, after his son lost interest.
Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias "Reinhard Pferdmann," which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. "Part of the reenactor's [experience]," Iott said, "is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. 'Reinhard' of course is 'Richard' in German. And 'Pferdmann,' 'pferd' is a horse. So it's literally 'horse man.'"
Asked whether his participation in a Nazi re-enactor's group might not upset voters, particularly Jewish voters, Iott said he hoped it would not: "They have to take it in context. There's reenactors out there who do everything. You couldn't do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn't play the role of the Confederates. [This] is something that's definitely way in the past. ... [I hope voters] take it in context and see it for what it is, an interest in World War II history. And that's strictly all."
Iott at Nazi re-enactment.
Rabbi Moshe Saks, of the Congregation B'nai Israel in Sylvania, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo that sits in the 9th district, disagreed. "Any kind of reenactment or glorification of Nazi Germany, to us, would be something unacceptable and certainly in poor taste, if not offensive," he said. "I think the reaction here will be very negative. And not just among the Jewish community, but the broader community."
In a follow-up email today, Iott seemed at pains to address concerns that his conduct may have alienated veterans groups but made no specific mention of possible offense to Jews or human rights groups: "Never, in any of my reenacting of military history, have I meant any disrespect to anyone who served in our military or anyone who has been affected by the tragedy of war. In fact, I have immense respect for veterans who served our country valiantly, and my respect of the military and our veterans is one of the reasons I have actively studied military history throughout my life." He added that he has participated in re-enactments as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I dough boy and World War II American infantryman and paratrooper.
The actual Wiking unit has a history as grisly as that of other Nazi divisions. In her book "The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945," Eleonore Lappin, the noted Austrian historian, writes that soldiers from the Wiking division were involved in the killing of Hungarian Jews in March and April 1945, before surrendering to American forces in Austria.
"What you often hear is that the [Wiking] division was never formally accused of anything, but that's kind of a dodge," says Prof. Rob Citino, of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas, who examined the Wiking website. "The entire German war effort in the East was a racial crusade to rid the world of 'subhumans,' Slavs were going to be enslaved in numbers of tens of millions. And of course the multimillion Jewish population of Eastern Europe was going to be exterminated altogether. That's what all these folks were doing in the East. It sends a shiver up my spine to think that people want to dress up and play SS on the weekend."
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
Posted by Jesse Lee on September 30, 2010 at 06:30 AM EDT
Today we're trying out something new -- White House White Board, in which one of our key players on the White House team will cut through the political back-and-forth you hear every day and break down an issue affecting American families into simple, understandable terms. Today, Austan Goolsbee, the new Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers here at the White House, tackles the tax cut fight and what it means that Congressional Republicans are "holding middle class tax cuts hostage" as the President has said:
The progress of social justice is slow and measured. Its growth depends on an increasing number of us becoming aware of the truth and consequences of our actions.
I believe that it is morally wrong to allow our wanton desires to interfere with the basic needs and interests of other sentient beings.
I believe the physical and psychological abuse – confinement, social deprivation, mutilation, genetic and reproductive manipulation, and profit exploitation – imposed by us on other animals is morally wrong.
I believe the suggestion that the exploitation of other sentient beings by humans can be achieved without cruelty, violence, or injustice is false and misleading.
As an advocate for all life, committed to compassion and justice, I refuse to take part in the exploitation of other sentient beings or to collaborate with those caught up in such injustice.
I pledge to do my best to live a life that conveys a clear, sincere and uncompromised message that is free of resentment, fear, exploitation, anger, cynicism, and manipulation.
Furthermore, I pledge to continue to support a broad range of nonviolent initiatives and programs that will hopefully one day eliminate the needless pain and suffering we inflict upon all the many wonderful creatures with whom we share this planet.
