February 20, 2016

Yes, it is.

I agree, ChiciB1, Jackson seems to constantly say what I'm thinking, only much better than I ever could. And he's been doing that since the early 70s. There's just nobody so consistently insightful about life as I've known it. He's 2 years older than me, so he's pretty much in sync with my experience of the years. I've bought most of his albums over again on LP, cassette tape, and CD, and now have them digitized. There are only a couple of his later albums that I haven't "taken to" as much.

The song 'Everyman' always comes to mind for me during elections, and that's a big reason why I chose this name because I jointed DU during the 2008 election, and it felt like that's what I was doing here -- waiting for Everyman to come to our way of thinking and join us in the election effort.

When it came out in real time, similar to Jackson's words, I had just given up on living with a bunch of East-coaster friends in California for several years. I don't know how he did it, but that guy always seemed to know where I was at, and what I was thinking. His songs have definitely helped me get through it all. I want to say he's the poet of our time and he is, except that we are fortunate enough to have several who could share that title.

Yes indeed, we do "have one" now! This is for you and him, all of us...

Everybody I talk to is ready to leave
With the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe
That they've heard their last warning
Standing alone
Each has his own ticket in his hand
And as the evening descends
I sit thinking 'bout Everyman

Seems like I've always been looking for some other place
To get it together
Where with a few of my friends I could give up the race
And maybe find something better
But all my fine dreams
Well thought out schemes to gain the motherland
Have all eventually come down to waiting for Everyman

Waiting here for Everyman --
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go, I understand
Waiting here for Everyman --
Don't ask me if he'll show... baby, I don't know

Make it on your own if you think you can
Somewhere later on you'll have to take a stand
Then you're going to need a hand

Everybody's just waiting to hear from the one
Who can give them the answers
And lead them back to that place in the warmth of the sun
Where sweet childhood still dances,
Who'll come along
And hold out that strong but gentle father's hand --
Long ago I heard someone say something 'bout Everyman

Waiting here for Everyman --
Make it on your own, make it if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go, I understand

I'm not trying to tell you that I've seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am --
But don't think too badly of one who's left holding sand
He's just another dreamer, dreaming 'bout Everyman


Gotta have a bonus track...



(For younger DUers, the Deluge was not water, it was an era of "cataclysmic" events -- one that ended a lot of things, and people. Following it on a playlist would be "Won't Get Fooled Again". Too bad we did though.)


Or two...



Jackson, Graham Nash and David Crosby, with David Lynley. Whenever I see Graham Nash I always think of an exceptional thing he did for me once, without even knowing me at all... he lent me the use of his house in LA for a few weeks while he was away, because he heard about a dire situation I was in through a friend of a friend -- I'll never forget his kindness and generosity.

February 18, 2016

Black icon namesake on the board of a huge private prison corp. maxed donation to HRC

Here's what I learned on Twitter yesterday (while looking up the subject of lobbyist Dem super delegates, another disgusting situation), and boy was I shocked right down to my toes. I thought I'd seen cold-hearted arrogance, but this tops everything:


Thurgood Marshall Jr., son of the first black Supreme Court Justice, sits on the board of Corrections Corporation, the private prison giant. For showing up at a couple of meetings, he is paid $178,546 per year, and has maxed out his donations to Hillary For President.

https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/700069893043978241


He is literally making money from slavery, and she is running for President on it.

(I wonder how many hours young black men had to work for free to put that $178K in his pocket, and that max donation in Hill's coffers? Betcha it was a lot of hours.)

Gee, the both of them must care so deeply about the plight of too many black men wasting away in prison. I bet they cry over it into their bank books every night. More likely they laugh over it at the country club.


Here's his bio on Corrections Corp.'s website, posted beside a smiling picture of him:

Hillary's remarks yesterday:



"Ending systemic racism"... oh really Hillary? Not likely while you're busy profiting from it via Thurgood Marshall Jr.

Thurgood Jr. openly sitting on the board of this private prison system 100% sickens me. I can't imagine what his father would think if he could see this. So what do you think DU, especially black DUers? Is this ok? Is the person who takes donations like this the one you want standing up for you?

As I see it, if this isn't a GIGANTIC SCANDAL for both of them, then it's the same as admitting that the huge number of blacks in prison is not a problem, everything is just fine as it is, and there's no legitimacy in bringing it up ever again.

IT CAN'T BE BOTH WAYS. Denial only goes so far.

February 17, 2016

This is so typical of Bernie.

Ever since he came to Congress I've watched him on C-SPAN too many times to even estimate, very often the only one or among very few standing up for everyday people, on any issue that needed it. On any given day, those videos show him doing the same thing. And it's never for publicity.

You'd think at least a "thank you" might be nice. But no. (And that doesn't even affect him, he keeps doing it.)

Bernie lives his principles, and always has done the same as long as I've been watching his career, which is since 1990 so that's 26 years now. He's the real thing.

I'm just pleasantly amazed that he's willing to run. We couldn't do better. Go, Bernie!

February 17, 2016

LOL at targeting the millionaires and billionaires "minority group"

That is TOO funny!!! OMG! Now I've seen it all!

I think they'll just have to learn to toughen up and take it.

I can't even get past that to the rest of it. Was this written by sombody over 15, I wonder?

Thanks for the comedy break, cali.

February 16, 2016

No "forward together" Bill, that means going your way.

This is where we're going; you, the ex-Goldwater-Girl and your honchos wouldn't be interested:

February 14, 2016

Requested in another OP in GDP: I remember what 1962 in the US was like

Several kind members asked that a post of mine from another thread be made its own OP. With the disclaimer I gave them that my posts always sink like rocks and this one probably will too (which is ok of course), here goes.



It was in this thread: Does anyone here remember what it was like in the US in 1962?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511228986#post32


#20

I do, in 1962 I drove from Maryland to Miami

with the family on vacation, and I saw poverty just from the roadway that I never imagined existed in America. I came from a blue-collar middle class neighborhood and was in the city of Baltimore on a regular basis, I went alone on the bus to pretty much every area of it (everywhere the bus went), and also was out in the boonies quite often as grandparents lived there... but I never saw anything like what the South was like then.

At first on the road trip, somewhere in Virginia, someone said something like, "wow, did you see that shack falling down over there with people actually living in it?!"... and then I gradually realized that this was not an unusual sight at all but the norm, as we saw the same thing time after time, after time, after time, for hundreds of miles -- pretty much the rest of the way to Miami ouside of the city areas, which weren't great either.

This was widespread poverty, on a scale and severity I had no idea was going on. The Southeast was nothing like the Northeast. I didn't understand everything about it, but it was clear to me after that, there were (at least) two different Americas... and not just to the level I had seen in the city and rural areas at home.

That was also the first time I saw facilities marked "white" and "colored". It may have existed somewhere at home, but I had never seen it before. I thought it was outrageously stupid.

The South scared me in 1962. I was shocked by it, in general.

I was too young to go that far alone to the March on Washington, but I was an avid news junkie even then, and it was covered live for hours on the local tv which I was glued to, beginning to end. Quite a bit of that video is now on Youtube, which I have watched numerous times, I still find it fascinating. (For one thing I'm always struck by how awfully young Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were, singing there.) More lawmakers were there than I remembered at the time, and so was Burt Lancaster among others whom I had forgotten too.

The first big racial "incident" I remember in the general area where I lived, was the desegration of Glenn Echo amusement park and the Buddy Deane show (depicted in Hairspray), but as I remember it that was a while after 1962-63. After the March there was so much action in the 60s the incidents began to run together in a blur. When I was in high school I'll never forget dozens of cities all over America burning down at the same time, and martial law in all those places. The 60s were no walk in the park.

I'm duly impressed by what Sen. Sanders and Danny Lyon (the photographer) and others like them, 5 to 10 years older than me, were doing in the early 60s. And no, as said in posts above, it was not the norm for white people then at all (putting it mildly, that came later), it was sticking one's neck out pretty darn far.

I'm pretty disgusted by those in the same movement then and since then who can't even acknowledge their contribution, and by those who benefit now from their actions then and since then, who can't even feel a tiny "thank you" in their hearts. It just goes to show the vast difference in people on the INSIDE -- that some are so big and some are so small -- and that's what matters to me.

https://dektol.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/john-lewis-bernie-sanders-what-is-the-truth/


(thank you! to those encouraging members)

February 14, 2016

I do, in 1962 I drove from Maryland to Miami

with the family on vacation, and I saw poverty just from the roadway that I never imagined existed in America. I came from a blue-collar middle class neighborhood and was in the city of Baltimore on a regular basis, I went alone on the bus to pretty much every area of it (everywhere the bus went), and also was out in the boonies quite often as grandparents lived there... but I never saw anything like what the South was like then.

At first on the road trip, somewhere in Virginia, someone said something like, "wow, did you see that shack falling down over there with people actually living in it?!"... and then I gradually realized that this was not an unusual sight at all but the norm, as we saw the same thing time after time, after time, after time, for hundreds of miles -- pretty much the rest of the way to Miami ouside of the city areas, which weren't great either.

This was widespread poverty, on a scale and severity I had no idea was going on. The Southeast was nothing like the Northeast. I didn't understand everything about it, but it was clear to me after that, there were (at least) two different Americas... and not just to the level I had seen in the city and rural areas at home.

That was also the first time I saw facilities marked "white" and "colored". It may have existed somewhere at home, but I had never seen it before. I thought it was outrageously stupid.

The South scared me in 1962. I was shocked by it, in general.

I was too young to go that far alone to the March on Washington, but I was an avid news junkie even then, and it was covered live for hours on the local tv which I was glued to, beginning to end. Quite a bit of that video is now on Youtube, which I have watched numerous times, I still find it fascinating. (For one thing I'm always struck by how awfully young Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were, singing there.) More lawmakers were there than I remembered at the time, and so was Burt Lancaster among others whom I had forgotten too.

The first big racial "incident" I remember in the general area where I lived, was the desegration of Glenn Echo amusement park and the Buddy Deane show (depicted in Hairspray), but as I remember it that was a while after 1962-63. After the March there was so much action in the 60s the incidents began to run together in a blur. When I was in high school I'll never forget dozens of cities all over America burning down at the same time, and martial law in all those places. The 60s were no walk in the park.

I'm duly impressed by what Sen. Sanders and Danny Lyon (the photographer) and others like them, 5 to 10 years older than me, were doing in the early 60s. And no, as said in posts above, it was not the norm for white people then at all (putting it mildly, that came later), it was sticking one's neck out pretty darn far.

I'm pretty disgusted by those in the same movement then and since then who can't even acknowledge their contribution, and by those who benefit now from their actions then and since then, who can't even feel a tiny "thank you" in their hearts. It just goes to show the vast difference in people on the INSIDE -- that some are so big and some are so small -- and that's what matters to me.

https://dektol.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/john-lewis-bernie-sanders-what-is-the-truth/

December 24, 2015

Anyone who doesn't see the value of the Constitution has an awful lot to learn.

And if you think you can do without stable, sanely and representatively governed nation-states, you will end up with a one-world totalitarianism (or widespread anarchy which will eventually be the same thing), sure as shit.

But it isn't really my problem, it's yours, because thankfully I probably won't be around to see it. Your aspirations are too similar to the anti-government right for me. But to each his own. In this country, fortunately, we have a right to be wrong. We each have our own responsibility (to ourselves and the future) to think for ourselves and come to appropriate and correct judgments. If we don't, we pay for it that's all. There is a price-tag to being wrong, and it's high. But that's the way reality is too, isn't it, and there's no way to avoid that by enforcing our own supposedly correct beliefs on others. Constitutional democracy is a mess, but better than all the alternatives.

You're bright, you're articulate, and you're thinking. That's all wonderful. Someday (if you're fortunate enough to live long enough) you'll see things a lot differently, is all I can tell you. The situation isn't at all the way you think it is now. As a young person, that is unavoidable. It isn't at all what people blithely suppose it to be. Real vision doesn't come easy and it doesn't come quick, and it isn't common knowledge.

The main quality lacking, as far as I can see, is gratitude. You stand on some very tall shoulders, which you don't seem to recognize, let alone understand, the value of at all. That is a huge mistake. Self-hate, even collectively, does not lead to anywhere on the sanity spectrum. It's a chronic neurosis, which I have seen too often used as a very effective lever to lead people into some very dangerous cults (a major blight of the current time... there's a very good book on the cult phenomenon btw called Snapping by Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, everyone today should read it), and other manipulative, predatory relationships.

I couldn't agree more with what you've said about HRC though.

Good luck out there in the world, to you, and to all the millenials. You'll need it. Keep educating yourself and learn all you can about what happened before your time, and the cons that have been pulled before -- because the same ones are always pulled over again with a new generation who haven't seen them before, you'll be shocked at how true that is. I believe it's your only hope. (I mean "you" collectively, of course.) It's what each new generation has had to realize and then learn to do.

Life is not a John Lennon song. Too many people seem confused about that. Ask yourself, who does internationalism benefit... everyday people? or the mega-rich?

13 generations of my family went into this place, I sure hope those after us don't lose it once us oldsters are gone. But as I said, I won't be here to see it. I'd like to think this generation won't be the first one to fail as caretakers of what was given them.

December 5, 2015

ONE group of radicals has the caliphate angle going for them.

I guess that's insignificant. All radicals being equally dangerous, and all.

Religious leaders advocating the murder of westerners, and the violent overthrow of our governments, that's insignificant too. I just have the feeling that little things like that make Islamic terrorists kinda different.

A random mindless nut is pretty much alone. Once that nut is killed after a shooting, that's the end of the threat from that nut. But a percentage of a rather huge religious group being geared up in a very well funded death-cult to come murder us in the furtherance of their actual takeover of geographic territory, which they are increasing rather rapidly... that's a bit more of a threat in my book than the random nut. See, I have this odd idea that the organization and numbers involved in a whole death-cult MOVEMENT might be a significant difference. After one or two of this type of nuts are dead, as in this case in San Bernadino, numerous others are still coming and the threat is undiminished.

In case no one's noticed, this particular kind of Islamic nut is VIRAL, it SPREADS rather quickly and to previously seemingly unreceptive people. The mentally ill don't really have the ability to talk sane people into being mentally ill. it's TWO DIFFERENT THINGS, WHICH ARE UNEQUAL in nature, and unequal in danger to us.

A death-cult spreading virally through one of the world's largest religions, yes, that's a problem! It's a different kind of problem than has existed before, and we'd better get honest and recognize that.

At this point, ISIS is near the size and status of a nation-state. You think that's the same level of threat as a Planned Parenthood bomber, or any other sort we have?

I wonder why you're so interested in creating the false equivalency. It's a rhetorical wondering, as the answer isn't likely to acknowledge reality any more than the OP did. Besides, I think I know why.

November 22, 2015

We have lots of know-it-alls today

who don't know much of anything. They seem to think that all of reality shrinks to match the size of their awareness.

JFK's greatness was evident to all who lived then. Even his enemies hated him because he was formidable against them. That would make it unanimous.