From NOEBIE.net
“On the day of his release, the warden ignored prison regulations and opened every cell-block to allow more than 2,000 inmates to gather in front of the main jail building to say good-bye to Eugene Debs,” according to Howard Zinn. “As he started down the walkway from the prison, a roar went up and he turned, tears streaming down his face, and stretched out his arms to the other prisoners.”
Read More: Eugene Debs: Dreaming of a red Christmas » peoplesworld.
From the St. Louis Post Dispatch:
Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has been bumped from the influential Congregation of Bishops — a post that gave him say in the selection of bishops.
Some observers of the Roman Catholic Church said the move by Pope Francis is yet another example of his effort to tone down highly publicized stances on divisive social issues such as gay marriage, contraception and abortion, on which Burke has made strong remarks.
Burke was the one who stated publicly that he would deny Eucharist to John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election.
Read More: Pope Francis removes former St. Louis Archbishop Burke from Congregation of Bishops : Lifestyles.
Read the interview: Bill Ayers Talks Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Toni Preckwinkle | Chicago magazine.
Ayers is the authentic voice.
I’ve never had any use for the likes of Dave Ramsey and his little cult of prosperity. It was nice to see somebody stand up to his recent un-Christian stereotyping of poor people, although it is always saddening to be reminded of the daily struggles of our brothers and sisters.
“To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.”
This was originally posted in December of 2010. I suppose I’m being pushy in reposting it every year, but here it is.
Our subject today is “The War On Christmas” and, once again, I feel compelled to note that people on the extreme edges of such discussion have more in common with each other than they do with the vast majority of us who get caught in their crossfire.
I have been wishing people “Merry Christmas” for nearly five decades. I have been wishing people “Happy Holidays” for roughly the same length of time.
When I say “Happy Holidays” I don’t say it to be polite, nor to be inclusive, nor to be accepting of anyone’s agenda, beliefs or point of view. It is a straightforward and heartfelt expression of goodwill, and that is all. I might say it to a fellow Christian, and if it is offensive to him then I shall take comfort in the fact that there is at least someone in the world who has more time for trivia and who is less well-adjusted than I.
When I say “Merry Christmas” I don’t say it to make a political statement. Again, it is a straightforward expression of goodwill, and, again, if people should take offense then I wish them well, and am grateful that I an unencumbered of such thin skin.
The two greetings are not interchangeable, in that I wouldn’t say “Merry Christmas” on Thanksgiving Day or on New Years Day. I also wouldn’t be likely to say “Merry Christmas” to an individual who I know doesn’t celebrate it, any more than I would be likely to say “Happy Hanukkah” to someone who doesn’t celebrate it. This is not a matter of political correctness, or a matter of politics at all. It is a matter of simple courtesy, and also of using language precisely to express a coherent and appropriate thought.
Two of the worst things about what passes for political discussion in our society today, in my humble opinion, are the dogged determination to corrupt our language and the equally dogged determination to focus our attention on insignificant bullshit when there are serious problems that ought to be rationally discussed. I can, perhaps, do precious little to nudge the debate toward things of true importance, but I certainly can (and most stubbornly shall) own my own words. They belong to me. They express my own thoughts and feelings. Speech police on all sides are unwelcome.
So, should you feel the need to correct my speech because it does not support your agenda, however noble you deem that agenda to be, I will reply in the only manner I can think of that seems appropriate.
“Bah! Humbug!”
P.S. If I should happen to say “Gesundheit” (i.e., “good health to you”) it’s not that I don’t also wish you “God Bless.”
Happy Holidays!
I happened to run across a video from a late night TV show where they went into the street to interview people about the new health care law. They asked a simple question. “Which do you think is better, Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act?” Not realizing that the former is merely a nickname for the latter, the majority of those interviewed disliked Obamacare and liked the Affordable Care Act. When asked why, the interviewees expressed a laundry list of reasons, at the top of which seemed to be something about free choice.
This video may seem like it was a stunt, rigged for maximum comedy value, but polling in recent months has suggested that a large chunk of the U.S. electorate favors the policies set forth in the Affordable Care Act when they aren’t identified as Obamacare, but the same large chunk opposes the law when it is given that name. The ridiculous justifications people in the video made for their preference of ACA over Obamacare is fairly reflective of broad sentiment throughout the land.
How can this be? How is it that so many Americans can express such strongly felt opposition to a thing that they actually favor? This question has puzzled me since I first heard of the polling results awhile back. In pondering it, I believe that I may have identified not only what is at its root, but what is at the root of much of the acrimony in our politics today.
For nearly fifty years now, beginning with the Presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater in 1964, the GOP has pursued a strategy that exploits racial hatred and fear. Here’s how President Nixon’s political strategist Kevin Phillips described the “Southern Strategy” during an interview with the New York Times in 1970.
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
This strategy of racial polarization was successful in realigning our nation’s electoral politics, and it placed race at the center of the Republican Party’s agenda for the decades that have followed. In 1980, Lee Atwater (who was an adviser to Presidents Reagan and Bush, and chaired the Republican National Committee from 1989 to 1991) explained politics in the South like this.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Whether coded or more direct, the thrust of the strategy is to portray government (and particularly the federal government) as an entity that takes something away from hardworking (white) people who have “played by the rules and earned everything they have” in order to give it to undeserving, lazy, promiscuous (not white) people. Here’s a quote from President Reagan during his first run for President in 1976 where he describes a mythical “welfare queen.” He places her on the South Side of Chicago, a thinly veiled code to let his audience know her color.
“She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.”
Or there is Senator Jesse Helms’ re-election bid in 1990, where he attacked his opponent for support of “racial quotas” using a television ad depicting a white person’s hands, crumpling up a letter notifying him that he was denied a job because he was white.
Even when race is not explicitly mentioned, it is rarely unclear who these “undeserving” recipients of the government’s largesse are.
Whether the issue is terrorism, public assistance, Affirmative Action or the Affordable Care Act, the message from the Republican party is always the same. White Americans (i.e., “real” Americans) are having their rights, their livelihoods, their health and their safety endangered by a government that is intent on favoring people of other races.
Now, consider, for a moment, how President Obama’s opponents have portrayed him – even prior to his election in 2008. Remember Jeremiah Wright? Remember the birth certificate shenanigans? The fist bump controversy? Secret Kenyan Muslim Socialist bogeyman…
From the beginning of his first term in office, the Republican party has called into question not only Obama’s policies, but the very legitimacy of his Presidency. They have cultivated a base that is preoccupied with race, and they are now bound to play to that base. Also, this is successful. One need look no further than the hysteria over “Obamacare” for an example.
Lest you accuse me of being a partisan “playing the race card” let me point out that I have been very critical of President Obama over these past few years. I did not vote for him in the last election, and have publicly denounced his policies (both domestic and foreign). I have not refrained from criticism of the Democrats at large either. As to the Affordable Care Act, I see it mainly as a law that was written by the lobbyists for big health care providers, insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms. In other words, I am not a fan.
Still, when I see people portraying their stand against Obamacare as the moral and historical equivalent of taking a stand against the Nazis as they came to power, I have to ask myself what could possibly inspire such insane hyperbole. If there’s a better explanation than race baiting, I’m sure that I don’t know what it is.
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Here’s a link to the Jimmy Kimmel video Six of One mentioned above.
“It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn’t happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president.”
Seymour Hersh talks about Obama, the NSA and the sorry state of the media. Read more.
