American Battlefields

Delaying the coronation

Bernie Sanders | Second interview | The Young Turks

27 May 2016

Which Hillary?

The Young Turks: Why Trump Will NEVER Release His Tax Returns

Tom Toles

Biden: No Democrat wins saying 'we can't think that big'

Confederates for Donald Trump | The Young Turks

Bernie Sanders speech on Democratic Socialism at Georgetown University

The Empire Strikes Out

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Home of The Brave, Not.

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JEB! wants another Bush War

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Fairness AND Growth: the Progressive Economic Alternative

Sep 28, 2015 ~ New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Sherrod Brown, Rep. Raul Grijalva, progressive movement advocates, and business leaders make the argument for a progressive economic agenda.

Bernie Sanders: In-depth explanation of Income Inequality

Chris Hedges: The Real Enemy Is Within

Chris Hedges | Truthdig.com
6 Sept 2015

If you are not dedicated to the destruction of empire and the dismantling of American militarism, then you cannot count yourself as a member of the left. It is not a side issue. It is the issue. It is why I refuse to give a pass in this presidential election campaign to Bernie Sanders, who refuses to confront the war industry or the crimes of empire, including U.S. support for the slow genocide carried out by Israel against the Palestinians. There will be no genuine democratic, social, economic or political reform until we destroy our permanent war machine.
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Militarists and war profiteers are our greatest enemy. They use fear, bolstered by racism, as a tool in their efforts to abolish civil liberties, crush dissent and ultimately extinguish democracy. To produce weapons and finance military expansion, they ruin the domestic economy by diverting resources, scientific and technical expertise and a disproportionate share of government funds. They use the military to carry out futile, decades-long wars to enrich corporations such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. War is a business. And when the generals retire, guess where they go to work? Profits swell. War never stops. Whole sections of the earth live in terror. And our nation is disemboweled and left to live under what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.” Libertarians seem to get this. It is time the left woke up.

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Hunter S. Thompson on Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72: George McGovern (1997)

Corporate America tried to kill Investigative Journalism: they didn't anticipate Social Media

K.J. McElrath
Ring of Fire
30 August 2015

Five years ago, the word in the media was that investigative journalism was dying. No longer would corruption and morality be kept in check through journalists such as Elizabeth Cochrane Seaman (Nellie Bly), Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, and Seymour Hersh.

Well, to paraphrase another famous news man, Samuel (“Mark Twain”) Clemens, reports of the death of investigative reporting have been greatly exaggerated.  Thanks to Progressive digital media sites like Huffington Post and The Intercept,that tradition is returning with a vengeance – and heaven help the corporate and political villains who attempt to hide under rocks and in the shadows.

What happened to investigative journalism in the first place? The short answer: it was about the money. Traditional investigative reporting is very expensive and time-consuming. It requires travel, research, extensive interviews with many people and rigorous documentation. It also entails risks; not surprisingly, investigative reporters are targeted by those persons and institutions who are the subject of their reports. Small wonder that Corporate America, which has been consolidating media under its control for years (and often the target of investigative reports), has been happy to see investigative journalism killed off.

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Rachel Maddow: Bernie Sanders' track record distinguished by consistency

The Next GOP Debate

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How to beat the senile old teabaggers

The city of Troy, Michigan was facing a budget shortfall, and was considering closing the Troy Public Library for lack of funds. Even though the necessary revenues could be raised through a miniscule tax increase, powerful anti-tax groups in the area were organized against it.

Koch Brothers built it

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The Bernie Sanders Moment

Todd Gitlin | New York Times
11 July 2015

"The white-haired politician stands before 10,000 cheering supporters in Madison, Wis., and calls for “political revolution,” denouncing a 'rigged economy' that produces 'a grotesque level of inequality,' returning to a theme that ’60s radicals have long been trumpeting.

"It may have seemed, only a few years ago, that the ’60s radical moment was consigned to documentaries on Woodstock, pushed out of the spotlight for Occupy Wall Street and a new generation of activists to enter stage left. But here it is again. And it is perfectly timed to crusade against what Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, calls an 'oligarchy.'

"In Mr. Sanders’s run — and in the absence of a White House bid from Senator Elizabeth Warren — progressives have found a candidate they can support wholeheartedly. To understand the moment that the 73-year-old Mr. Sanders is enjoying, we have to see how he got here, waiting for national politics to catch up.

"The road he took out of the 1960s student movement was not the most conspicuous one, but it was the widest. And Senator Sanders now represents a culmination of one of the primary currents of the left in the past half century."

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U.S. Marine Band - John Philips Sousa - The Stars and Stripes Forever

Still Flying

Luckovich

Senator Bernie Sanders on TPP Vote: Wall Street steals more from America and Obama promotes it

Bernie Sanders beats the Hell out of Wall Street dope Alan Greenspan in 2003

Charleston

Bernie Sanders on G.E. and The Five Chinas

Rick Perry's accomplishments

B.B. King on Austin City Limits in 1983

“B.B. King personified blues music for the whole world...He was larger than life, but a gentle man with a kind soul and big heart. His ACL performance ranks as one of my personal favorites, and I was never more proud than when he somehow slipped ‘Austin City Limits’ into the lyric of his classic rendition of Willie Nelson’s ‘Night Life.’ We’ve lost a giant.” – Terry Lickona, ACL Executive Producer

Birds of a feather

Traitors

The Great Texas Teapublican Freak Out

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Senator Sanders: "The American people are angry"

Senator Bernard Sanders Floor Statement - June 27, 2012

excerpt
"I think what the American people are saying is enough is enough. This country, this great country, belongs to all of us. It cannot continue to be controlled by a handful of billionaires who apparently want it all. You know, I, for the love of me, I cannot understand why people who have billions of dollars are compulsively driven for more and how many people have got to die because they don'€™t go to a doctor because you want to avoid paying your taxes?€œ

"Well, that is not what America is about. That is not what people fought and died to create. With that, we have got a fight on our hands. The job of the United States national is to represent the middle-class families of this country, all of the people, and not just the super-rich. I hope we can begin to do that".



Link to transcript

Subsidized

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Verily.

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We don't have emperors yet, but...

Johnny & The Hurricanes - Red River Rock (1959)

No connections

Not kidding

The overdue prosecution of Rick Perry

1 February 2015
Last August, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was indicted by a grand jury on felony charges of abuse of official capacity and coercion of a public official. Perry’s legal team has been trying to get the case dismissed, but has failed each time. The most recent denial came from Judge Bert Richardson, a Republican judge in San Antonio. After a second request made by Perry, a judge denied a motion to have a criminal case against the governor dismissed. America’s Lawyer, Mike Papantonio, appears on The Thom Hartmann Program to discuss Rick Perry’s claims of wearing his indictment as a 'badge of honor.' 

The Last Real Texas Blues Band

Bill Moyers: Fighting for FDR's Four Freedoms

April 11, 2014

If you believe America desperately needs a great surge of democracy in the face of fierce opposition from reactionary and corporate forces, then remembering and reviving the spirit of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died 69 years ago this week, is in order.

In January 1941, FDR’s State of the Union address made it clear that a fight was inevitable, a fight to preserve, protect and defend four essential freedoms: freedom from fear and want and freedom of speech and religion.

This week, Bill speaks with historian Harvey J. Kaye, author of the new book, The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great, about how FDR’s speech was a rallying cry to build the kind of progressive society that Roosevelt hoped for but did not live to see at war’s end.

Kaye says the president was able to mobilize Americans who created “the strongest and most prosperous country in human history.” How did they do it? By working toward the Four Freedoms and making America “freer, more equal and more democratic.”




Nine things people should understand about Lyndon Johnson

Julian E. Zelizer | www.vox.com
17 January 2015

For decades, Lyndon Johnson was reviled as one of the worst presidents in American history, the person who brought the nation into the disastrous war in Vietnam. More recently, there has been a revival of interest in Johnson's legendary ability to make Washington work.

During his presidency, Congress passed a huge agenda of domestic legislation — which he called the Great Society — that included Medicare and Medicaid, civil rights and voting rights, a War on Poverty, food stamps, immigration reform, federal aid to elementary and secondary schools, higher education funding, environmental regulations, and much more.

Americans have learned a great deal about the president through the wonderful work of writers such as Robert Dallek, Robert Caro, and Randall Woods. The White House presidential recordings, which are now available to the public online, have provided people with a seat inside the inner sanctum of the Oval Office to hear LBJ interacting with his friends and foes. Last year a Tony Award-winning play starring Bryan Cranston, 'All The Way', brought LBJ's frenetic energy to Broadway. Johnson is currently in the news as a result of a vigorous debate over how he is depicted in the film 'Selma'.

But much of our understanding about Johnson is still based on misunderstandings about who he was and how he got things done. My new book, 'The Fierce Urgency of Now', provides a narrative history of the Great Society that challenges some of the popular myths about LBJ. While writing the book, I learned a great deal from the archives about Lyndon Johnson.

Here are nine things I wish people knew about the 36th president.
NINE THINGS HERE:

Jeff Healey Band - Sittin' On Top Of The World

Jeff Healey at the Islington Academy (2007)

Stevie Ray Vaughan - 'Cold Shot'

from 'Couldn't Stand The Weather' (1984)

Elizabeth Warren on fighting back against Wall St. giants | Bill Moyers

September 5, 2014

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her brothers grew up in “an America that invested in kids like us and helped build a future where we could flourish.” But, as she writes in her memoir, A Fighting Chance, “Today the game is rigged – rigged to work for those who have money and power… The optimism that defines us as a people has been beaten and bruised. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Elizabeth Warren on Fighting Back Against Wall St. Giants from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Gun sale time

Bill Moyers: The New Robber Barons

Washington continues to reward wealthy donors and Wall Street but what about everyday Americans? Author and historian Steve Fraser joins Bill to discuss.

The New Robber Barons from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

How Putin and his cronies stole Russia

Anne Applebaum | New York Times
18 Dec 2014

In her book Sale of the Century (2000), Chrystia Freeland memorably describes the moment when she realized that the confusing regulations and contradictory laws that hog-tied Russian business in the 1990s were not a temporary problem that would soon be cleaned up by some competent administrator. On the contrary, they existed for a purpose: the Russian elite wanted everybody to operate in violation of one law or another, because that meant that everybody was liable at any time to arrest. The contradictory regulations were not a mistake, they were a form of control.
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Stephen Colbert on Meet The Press

14 Oct 2012

21st Century Busy Town Jobs

Remembering the real Ronald Reagan – Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'

"The banks and the corporations had a simple plan: to remake America to serve them. But pulling it off would require electing a spokesmodel as president".

Remembering the Real Ronald Reagan -- Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story' from MMFlint on Vimeo.

Meh.

Clay Bennett

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One-Stop Shopping

Ted Cruz: Why GOP blocked Obama's surgeon general nominee

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday accused President Barack Obama's pick for Surgeon General of not being a "health care professional" because the doctor had backed a ban on military-style assault rifles.

Over yonder we are

BLUE TEXAS on Facebook

Obsession

2 Oct 1835: Texas Revolution begins at Gonzales

On this day in 1835, fighting broke out at Gonzales between Mexican soldiers and Texas militiamen. When Domingo de Ugartechea, military commander in Texas, received word that the American colonists of Gonzales refused to surrender a small cannon that had been given that settlement in 1831 as a defense against the Indians, he dispatched Francisco de Castañeda and 100 dragoons to retrieve it on September 27. Though Castañeda attempted to avoid conflict, on the morning of October 2 his force clashed with local Texan militia led by John Henry Moore in the first battle of the Texas Revolution. The struggle for the "Come and Take It" cannon was only a brief skirmish that ended with the retreat of Castañeda and his force, but it also marked a clear break between the American colonists and the Mexican government. – Texas State Historical Association

GOP House of Terror

Anthony Bourdain: Under The Volcano

3 May 2014
Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—as we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children.

As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs”. But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, provably, simply won’t do.

We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.
So, why don’t we love Mexico?

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Toons

Journalism simulators

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Frankln D. Roosevelt's "Second Bill of Rights"

Elizabeth Warren

No escaping Dragnet Nation | Bill Moyers

14 March 2014 | Corporations, data brokers and the government are collecting and selling A LOT of information on you, Julia Angwin, author of the new book Dragnet Nation, tells Bill this week. She was shocked to learn how much they had on her. 

What the Hell is Barack Obama's presidency for?

If there was a plot, he's lost it. If there was a point, few can remember it. If he had a big idea, he shrank it. If there's a moral compass powerful enough to guide such contradictions to more consistent waters, it is in urgent need of being reset.

Gary Younge | The Guardian
23 February 2014

His second term has been characterised by a profound sense of drift in principle and policy. While posing as the ally of the immigrant he is deporting people at a faster clip than any of his predecessors; while claiming to be a supporter of labour he’s championing trade deals that will undercut American jobs and wages. In December, even as he pursued one whistleblower, Edward Snowden and kept another, Chelsea Manning, incarcerated, he told the crowd at Nelson Mandela’s funeral: “There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Madiba’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people.”

...It was obvious what his election was for. First, preventing the alternative: presidential candidates in the grip of a deeply dysfunctional and reactionary party. His arrival marked a respite from eight years of international isolation, military excess and economic collapse. He stood against fear, exclusion and greed – and won. Second, it helped cohere and mobilise a new progressive coalition that is transforming the electoral landscape. Finally, it proved that despite the country’s recent history Americans could elect a black man to its highest office.

So his ascent to power had meaning. It’s his presence in power that lacks purpose. The gap between rich and poor and black and white has grown while he’s been in the White House, the prospects for immigration reform remain remote, bankers made away with the loot, and Guantánamo’s still open. It’s true there’s a limit to what a president can do about much of this and that Republican intransigence has not helped. But that makes the original question more salient not less: if he can’t reunite a divided political culture, which was one of his key pledges, and his powers are that limited, then what is the point of his presidency?

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Jon Stewart calls out Diane Feinstein's hypocrisy over CIA scandal

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart takes Sen. Dianne Feinstein to task for her hypocrisy over the latest revelations that the CIA was spying on members of congress and their staff.

Third World Health Care - Knoxville, Tennessee Edition

Aasif Mandvi visits an impoverished, underdeveloped locale with shocking health care conditions.

Big Vladdy - Semi-Delusional Autocrats

Conservative pundits are won over by Vladimir Putin's shirtless, horseback-riding antics.

Essay: Anatomy of The Deep State | Bill Moyers

MIKE LOFGREN | 21 Feb 2014
billmoyers.com
There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

During the last five years, the news media has been flooded with pundits decrying the broken politics of Washington. The conventional wisdom has it that partisan gridlock and dysfunction have become the new normal. That is certainly the case, and I have been among the harshest critics of this development. But it is also imperative to acknowledge the limits of this critique as it applies to the American governmental system. On one level, the critique is self-evident: In the domain that the public can see, Congress is hopelessly deadlocked in the worst manner since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the Civil War.

-snip-

Despite this apparent impotence, President Obama can liquidate American citizens without due processes, detain prisoners indefinitely without charge, conduct dragnet surveillance on the American people without judicial warrant and engage in unprecedented — at least since the McCarthy era — witch hunts against federal employees (the so-called “Insider Threat Program”). Within the United States, this power is characterized by massive displays of intimidating force by militarized federal, state and local law enforcement. Abroad, President Obama can start wars at will and engage in virtually any other activity whatsoever without so much as a by-your-leave from Congress, such as arranging the forced landing of a plane carrying a sovereign head of state over foreign territory. Despite the habitual cant of congressional Republicans about executive overreach by Obama, the would-be dictator, we have until recently heard very little from them about these actions — with the minor exception of comments from gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Democrats, save a few mavericks such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, are not unduly troubled, either — even to the extent of permitting seemingly perjured congressional testimony under oath by executive branch officials on the subject of illegal surveillance.


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85 Billionaires and the Better Half

Michael Parenti  | Common Dreams
18 Feb 2014

 The world's 85 richest individuals possess as much wealth as the 3.5 billion souls who compose the poorer half of the world's population, or so it was announced in a report by Oxfam International. The assertion sounds implausible to me.  I think the 85 richest individuals, who together are worth many hundreds of billions of dollars, must have far more wealth than the poorest half of our global population.

How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States.

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Jon Stewart rips Fox News for endless scandal mongeriing

4 Feb 2014 | The Daily Show's Jon Stewart once again gives the haters over at Faux "news" the treatment they deserve.



SOURCE

Bully Nation

1 February 2014
Yale Magrass and Charles Derber, Truthout | Op-Ed

Bullying is the means through which the corporate empires were built. Carnegie and Rockefeller intimidated and threatened their rival capitalists to cede them an ever-larger share of the market. They brought in Pinkerton goons to beat striking workers into submission. Workers were forced to either sign "yellow dog" contracts and pledge not to join unions, or be thrown into the street. Similar bullying practices continue today. Corporations warn entire communities they will shut down factories and undermine the local economy if they do not accept low wages and minimal regulations. Banks entice consumers to borrow through predatory loans and then raise interest rates and threaten foreclosure. The corporations are clear they have the power and will not tolerate challenges from weaklings who fail to know their place.

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The ancient cycle of sunset, to night, to sunrise

Milky Way time lapse video by Nicholas Buer.

Ancients from Nicholas Buer on Vimeo.

Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant responds to Obama SOTU address

TYT: Senator Bernie Sanders attacks Walmart

18 Jan 2014 - The Young Turks
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) demanded that a panel of experts justify why America’s shrinking middle class should continue to subsidize the nation’s wealthiest family in a heated exchange Thursday during a congressional panel.”

The Volokh Conspiracy and Washington Post's move to the right

JUSTIN BERRIER | MediaMatters.org
22 Jan 2014

The announcement that The Washington Post is partnering with and hosting the conservative and libertarian-leaning blog The Volokh Conspiracy is evidence that the Post may be moving to the right in the wake of the paper's acquisition by Jeff Bezos.

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The nation sleeps a dreamless sleep | Daily Kos

14 Jan 2014
In the end, the American Dream did not last very long. The modern version, the version with the two point five kids and the house in the suburbs, a nice modest house with a good lawn and a white picket fence (it was always a white picket fence, for some reason, white pickets being the go-to designator of middle class status) had its heyday in the post-war 1950s, and had suffered serious blows when the designated underclasses made themselves too visible in the 1960s, and survived the too-vapid 1970s and wealth-obsessed 1980s in tattered form, but by the 1990s the whole thing was looking a bit sketchy, and by the turn of the millennium it was dodgy, and before the next 10 years were out you were looked at as a bit of a rube if you still believed in it at all.

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The problem with Facebook

"Facebook is a complex ecosystem of individuals, creators, brands and advertisers, but I don't think it serves any of these groups particularly well because its top priority is to make money. Now, I don't think making money is a bad thing, in fact I hope to make some myself. The problem is the only way Facebook has found to make money is by treating all entities on the site as advertisers and charging them to share their content".

A supercell near Booker, Texas

by Mike Olbinski

A supercell near Booker, Texas from Mike Olbinski on Vimeo.

It was the year America stood up... and split apart: 1964 | American Experience | PBS

1964 was the year the Beatles came to America, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali, and three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. It was the year when Berkeley students rose up in protest, African Americans fought back against injustice in Harlem, and Barry Goldwater’s conservative revolution took over the Republican Party. In myriad ways, 1964 was the year when Americans faced choices: between the liberalism of Lyndon Johnson or Barry Goldwater’s grassroots conservatism, between support or opposition to the civil rights movement, between an embrace of the emerging counterculture or a defense of traditional values.

Rachel Maddow scorches Koch brothers on ‘correction’ demand

Rachel Maddow: "[W]e occasionally find people who have been mentioned in our coverage who are absolutely outraged that they have been mentioned in our coverage".

Thomas Cahill on the People’s Pope | Bill Moyers

December 27, 2013
In just a few months, Pope Francis has proven to be one of the most outspoken pontiffs in recent history, especially when it comes to poverty and income inequality. In a message to be sent to world leaders marking the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace on January 1, he criticized the “widening gap between those who have more and those who must be content with the crumbs.”
Thomas Cahill on the People's Pope from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

The Pathology of the Rich - Chris Hedges

On Reality Asserts Itself with Paul Jay, Chris Hedges discusses the psychology of the super rich; their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms.

David Simon: Some people are more equal than others

There are two Americas. In one, bankers get golden parachutes, insider traders return to society as well-paid consultants, and influence is for sale. In the other, opportunity is scarce and forgiveness scarcer, jail awaits those caught possessing recreational drugs, and cries for help are ignored. Society preaches forgiveness for the rich and retribution for the poor. Entrenched inequality and its companion, poverty, are the dark side of the American dream for a citizenry united by name, but not by rules.

Mike Luckovich

Paul Krugman: Obama Gets Real

Paul Krugman | New York Times
5 Dec 2013

excerpt:

Much of our political and pundit class remains devoted to the notion that rising inequality, to the extent that it’s an issue at all, is all about workers lacking the right skills and education. But the president now seems to accept progressive arguments that education is at best one of a number of concerns, that America’s growing class inequality largely reflects political choices, like the failure to raise the minimum wage along with inflation and productivity.

And because the president was willing to assign much of the blame for rising inequality to bad policy, he was also more forthcoming than in the past about ways to change the nation’s trajectory, including a rise in the minimum wage, restoring labor’s bargaining power, and strengthening, not weakening, the safety net.

And there was this: “When it comes to our budget, we should not be stuck in a stale debate from two years ago or three years ago.  A relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit.” Finally! Our political class has spent years obsessed with a fake problem — worrying about debt and deficits that never posed any threat to the nation’s future — while showing no interest in unemployment and stagnating wages. Mr. Obama, I’m sorry to say, bought into that diversion. Now, however, he’s moving on.

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Digging In

How eating cornbread and beans taught me who I was -- and who we are as Texans.

PATRICIA SHARPE | Texas Monthly
December 2013

My mother  was not nostalgic about many things in life, but when it came to cornbread and beans, she was a sentimental fool. She and my father had been teenagers during the Great Depression, and the memory of those hard times was still raw when they married, in 1942. “Many a day, cornbread and beans was all we had to eat,” one of them was likely to say. Neither of them had ever gone to bed hungry, but they came close.

Since Mother firmly believed that those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it, she made sure her three well-fed children had an inkling of what the previous generation had endured. At least a couple of times a year, a big pot of pinto beans seasoned with salt pork would appear on the stove, slowly simmering down almost to mush, along with a pan of yellow cornbread, fragrant and steaming. We would gather around our fifties-era Formica dinette table and fill our cereal bowls and plates. I’m afraid that my two younger brothers and I rolled our eyes, although never so that Mother or Daddy could see us. Still, something must have sunk in, because I often find myself calling up remembrances of meals past as a way of understanding, if only a little, where I came from. Food is about many things—nourishment, pleasure, and culture among them—but it’s also about recognizing who you are, and why. 

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Clinton vs. Warren?

Hendrik Hertzberg | newyorker.com
15 Nov 2013

Warren was a Republican well into her forties (she’s sixty-four, just three years Hillary’s junior)—but, as the saying goes, that could be a feature, not a bug. It makes for a potentially useful party-line-blurring “narrative.” Reagan, too, switched affiliations in midlife. He knew how to talk the other side’s talk, and even as he won the hearts of the far reaches of his adopted party he remained politically bilingual. Warren may turn out to have a similar talent. After all, there are Republicans who are suspicious of the banks, just as there were Democrats who fretted about welfare.
[snip]

When Warren is on her game, she’s almost as good as Hillary’s husband (or Nancy’s) at ’splaining stuff in plain language, above all when she’s talking about her signature issue, financial reform—which, as it happens, is Clinton’s biggest ideological vulnerability with the Democratic-primary electorate. 

[snip]
Should Hillary Clinton end up heading the Democratic ticket in 2016, she would be the most qualified, most fully prepared, most thoroughly tested non-incumbent major-party nominee for President since Henry Clay. She has spent more than twenty years in the crucible. She didn’t while away her eight White House years walled up in the East Wing convent, First Ladylike. She was a full participant in every important political and policy deliberation and in every crisis, foreign and (in both senses) domestic. She was a successful senator, popular with voters and colleagues alike. While her tenure as Secretary of State yielded no spectacular diplomatic coups, she did the job competently and creatively. Her partnership with President Obama was a political masterstroke for them both. She is as Presidential as they come, and, as Scheiber writes, she sounds increasingly “candidential.” (A nice neologism, that.) 

To the extent that Hillary has a problem, though, it may not be only the liberal and populist unease with the Clintons’ history of chumminess with Wall Street—and their role in creating the deregulatory regime that was an indispensable precondition for the 2008 financial crisis and the economic ruin that it has wrought. 

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Audience laughs at Ted Cruz for claiming he 'didn't want a shutdown'

14 Nov 2013 - Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) faced howls of laughter from an audience in Washington, D.C. on Thursday when he claimed that he "didn't want a shutdown" over President Barack Obama's health care reform law.

At The Atlantic's Washington Ideas Forum, Fox News host Chris Wallace pointed out to the Texas Republican that many of his colleagues thought he hurt the party by forcing the government shutdown instead of letting Obamacare fail on its own.

"That ignores who I think was responsible for the shutdown," Cruz replied. "I didn't want a shutdown. Throughout the whole thing, I said we shouldn't have a shutdown."

That remark elicited laughter from the forum audience.


SOURCE

How Big Money and Big Media undermine democracy

8 Nov 2013 | BillMoyers.com

“Democracy means rule of the people: one person, one vote. Dollarocracy means the rule of the dollars: one dollar, one vote. Those with lots of dollars have lots of power. Those with no dollars have no power,”  Robert McChesney tells Bill.

 SOURCE:

Want to pay zero taxes? Become a large corporation

Trans-Pacific Partnership is the answer to the question: How can we make the rich richer?

Dean Baker, Truthout | 28 Oct 2013

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) stands at the top of the Obama administration’s trade agenda. The argument from its supporters is that this agreement is part of the never-ending quest for freer trade. The evidence from what we know of this (still secret) pact is that the TPP has little to do with free trade. It can more accurately be described as a pact designed to increase the wealth and power of crony capitalists.

[snip]

The TPP is about crafting rules that will favor big business at the expense of the rest of the population in both the United States and in other countries. For example, we can expect to see limits on the ability of national and sub-national governments to impose environmental restrictions, such as requirements that companies engaging in fracking disclose the list of chemicals they use. There may also be limits on the extent to which governments can restrict the sale of genetically modified foods, with rules on labeling. And, the TPP may prevent governments from imposing restraints on financial firms that would prevent the sort of abuses that we saw during the run-up of the housing bubble. 

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Jon Stewart to The Media for using him to attack Obamacare: 'Go F*ck Yourselves!'

31 Oct 2013 | Wit Happens
The media uses Jon's lampooning of the Affordable Care Act as evidence of its impotence. (05:51)

Russell Brand's revolutionary interview

Actor-slash-comedian-slash-Messiah Russell Brand, in his capacity as guest editor of the New Statesman's just-published revolution-themed issue, was invited to explain to Jeremy Paxman why anyone should listen to a man who has never voted in his life.

"I don't get my authority from this preexisting paradigm which is quite narrow and only serves a few people," Russell responded. "I look elsewhere for alternatives that might be of service to humanity."



SOURCE:

Oasis in a Food Desert | Bill Moyers

An Oasis in a Food Desert

24 Oct 2013 | BillMoyers.com

Since opening last month, America’s first nonprofit grocery store is bringing fresh and affordable fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy to Chester, Pa., a community that has struggled to find healthy food options since the city’s last supermarket closed in 2001.

Chester, home to 35,000 people, has been designated a food desert, a low-income area lacking easy access to healthy food, by the US government. For the residents of Chester the Fare & Square grocery store — seven years in the making — is a welcome relief: “It’s a beautiful supermarket,” said employee Geraldine Carter.

The store is the brainchild of Bill Clark, the executive director of Philabundance, a nonprofit hunger relief organization. Chester has a 36 percent poverty rate and unemployment is 13 percent. Clark said at one time Chester had five grocery stores, but they all closed when the city fell on hard times after manufacturing virtually disappeared.



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Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream - Why Poverty?

740 Park Ave, New York City, is home to some of the wealthiest Americans. Across the Harlem River, 10 minutes to the north, is the other Park Avenue in South Bronx, where more than half the population needs food stamps and children are 20 times more likely to be killed. In the last 30 years, inequality has rocketed in the US -- the American Dream only applies to those with money to lobby politicians for friendly bills on Capitol Hill.



How much inequality is too much? To find out more and get teaching resources linked to the film, go to www.whypoverty.net