My petition requesting the Obama administration to commission a National Intelligence Estimate on climate change is 19 signatures shy of achieving visibility on the White House petitions system, meaning that it’ll start showing up when people search for climate change-related petitions. It is also a mere 24,869 signatures shy of mandating an administration response. . . . → Read More: Soon, my petition will be a real boy, plus: Canadians don’t want Canadians to know what they know about Tommy Douglas
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Disclaimer: this is not actually Barack Obama speaking at the site of the Loray Mill in Gastonia, North Carolina on Labor Day in 2012. Thank you all for coming to Gastonia today. When I delivered my Nobel Lecture in acceptance of the Nobel Committee’s prize for peace on December 10 of 2009, I did so in the knowledge that I had not earned it and did not deserve it. I told the assemblage that among those more deserving, “there are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women – some known, some obscure to all but those they help – to be far more deserving of this honor than I.” In retrospect, I should have ended my speech there and left the stage. Because just as I did not deserve that prize, those people, “jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice,” did not deserve to be subordinated to my cause that night, which was not justice but justification of state violence applied to an inexcusably wide range of situations. And I stand before you today to make some small amends, to celebrate and justify our own who across the years have been and still are jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice, and I ask you all, and all other Americans, to celebrate and justify them with me. A blogger in Philadelphia catches what nobody else has: Barack Obama finally, finally owned up to being a Socialist.
I know I missed it, and I’m attuned to these things. I guess I can relax now: the general election more than ever looks like Obama’s to lose, as the Republicans variously gnaw upon one another’s nether regions or collapse weeping by the roadside, so come January 21 of 2013, the workers paradise awaits us all. Meanwhile, what can you say about Mitch McConnell? Sometimes people chastise me for focusing so much on Obama’s sins, and Democrats in general, and hardly ever on the loyal opposition’s. My current understanding of the roles of everyone who holds elected federal office is that they’re all the opposition. My goal these days is to try to alter the perspectives of . . . → Read More: Yes, they’re despicable, and so are they From Lenin’s Tomb, a lefty Brit blog run by Richard Seymour, comes this on the recent London riots:
Continue reading Blogs on Parade: “The Negro’s Revenge” edition I never saw Lost, but I gather it’s about being someplace strange where strange things happen. Jack Crow’s Open Letter to A Registered Democrat
Americans Elect, the new internet-based plutocrat-powered political party, is calling for delegates to help determine the issues around which the party’s candidates will be selected. In theory this allows Everybody to participate because You debate among Yourselves to determine the party Platform and then You choose a presidential candidate from the pool “certified by an [I]ndependent [C]ommittee to meet a set of standard qualification criteria such as background checks.” Who chooses the Independent Committee? I dunno. Maybe another Independent Committee. Or God. Somebody centrist, in any event, so New Testament God rather than Rip Your Lungs Out On A Whim God. Tom Friedman has endorsed the idea. He’s well known to be insane. Run. Continue reading Calling all Greens, Reds, Pinkos, Paulites and Anonymi: Help fuck this up A guy called Bob Herbold has a column in the July 9 editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, entitled “China vs. America: Which Is the Developing Country?” Herbold is a former Microsoft honcho who now runs his own international buzzword consulting firm—”10 Bold Steps,” “Nine Traps,” “Eight Maids A-Milking,” that sort of thing—and has very definite ideas about how what must be done must be done. The day after Barack Obama was elected, I predicted that he would become the most disappointing president since World War II. I was confident that my prediction would hold. Man, was I wrong. Now it appears as though one may have to look back to James Buchanan, who presided over the dissolution of the Union, for a president who disappointed his partisans more. 40 years ago this month, on June 22, 1971, Richard Nixon’s historic plan to provide a guaranteed income for every American family sailed through the House of Representatives. I was reminded of this a few days ago when somebody on an email list in which I sort of participate mentioned the flak George McGovern took from all sides (including his chief rival among the Democrats, Hubert Humphrey) |
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