PRESIDENT OBAMA RECEIVES THE JFK PROFILE IN COURAGE AWARD

From The President:

"...Sometimes we forget how fundamentally the story they told us about ourselves changed the trajectory of America.

That's often where courage begins. When we tell ourselves the story about who we are, what's important, and about our own capacity to make a difference...."

AI Is Here, Part 2: President Barack Obama on What AI Means for National Security

Imagine what 45 thinks about these issues.

AI Is Here -- 7 Days of Artificial Intelligence, and Sam Harris On AI Control -- What? Me Worry?

Some of this is covered in Homo Deus by Yuval Harari (2015). I highly recommend this be read soon, and by as many people as possible.

FRONTLINE + NPR On America's Housing Crisis -- "Poverty, Politics and Profit"

We need to keep focused on how budget priorities are not just national but local.

Good old philanthropy reveals that public money for housing gets siphoned off.

I hope this series does more than "explore."

In a nine-month investigation that takes them from Dallas to Miami, to an upscale resort in Costa Rica, FRONTLINE’s Rick Young and NPR’s Laura Sullivan explore why jus"t one in four households eligible for Section 8 assistance is getting it, and why the nation’s signature low-income housing construction program is costing more and producing less.

HAPPY MAY DAY! BILLY BRAGG -- THERE IS POWER IN A UNION

Thoughts On Why 45 & Supporters Believe THEY Are American and We Are Not.

I'm describing and clarifying here, not endorsing; I'm raising questions, not being definitive.

Trump and supporters' belief in their "real" Americanism comes from their view of the Other in American history (and even before):

1. Winning against the Other, without caring how -- or even caring -- is completely American.

Undocumented whites and migrants fought by hook or crook for control of this "new world" land base, and passed on their very identity in a) survival, and b) their holding onto control of this land by any means necessary.

(Sidebar: More than one old dude in the South has told me about the knock-down-drag-out fight as a certain type of combat that people set up and bet on in frontier towns. Men would fight, other men would bet the outcome, everyone else, children included, would cheer it on.
An American form of recreation.)

Conservatives believe
Guerilla warfare was American.
Genocide was American.
Slavery was American.
Witch-hunting/burning was American.

Chest beating warrior values ensured that winning, dominance and survival are American. Recently, they see counter insurgency operations against Occupy, Black Lives Matter or the NoDAPL protests as completely American.

Into the 21st Century they expect people to accept the (win-at-all-costs-cheating) outcome of the stolen 2000 presidential election as American. "You lost, get over it," "The past is past," are their consolations to opposition.

2. What conservatives have always hated about liberals is that liberals repudiate -- in the name of something that's somehow larger, or even alien, yep, alien -- cruelties that conservatives consider truly American.

Conservatives don’t necessarily embrace those cruelties, but they don’t mind them, either, because they think they are natural, part of how we got to be American. Liberals who reject our past are not American. They traffic with the Other.

3. What Conservatives figure is that, if Americans killed off the native population, then so be it. They figure Americans are as Americans do -- their violence, wars are natural, darwinian, whatever -- and since we today benefit from past Americans doing it, it must be okay. Their attitude forms the unspoken (or unspeakable, to us) basis of their land control entitlement and any civilized "order" that follows.

4. Their definition of American is ineradicable. Their logic is immovable, baked into this country's conservative generations to the point where their exclusionary assumptions don't even have words; instead, they operate from just "feelings" which don't translate well in public discourse. We know from our exposure to Trump's speeches, and from his network "spokespersons."

5. Conservatives' more articulate spokespersons, in rare moments of honesty, say it’s funny that the main thing we liberals want is for them to see themselves as we see them, when that’s exactly the very thing they claim none of us can do, either. Now we're called snowflake. Now our protests harden them. Alt is their world; fake is ours.

I'm forced to concede, even in a general sense, that we are never going to get this world view change from anyone. It doesn’t matter who they are, they get to have that one thing, their own point of view. Conservatives won't legislate or negotiate anything that compromises that. No compromise.

Generally, as Hollywood and dark money PAC fronts well know, the only non-coercive method of changing conservative hearts and minds is with story. But conservatives know how hard it is to change the historical story of what defines Americans.

6. Conservatives say living with warrior exceptionalism is the price we ALL pay for being here. They support a culture of "warrior" honor as American (one daily example is the opening military ritual in "American" stadiums across the U.S.).

If you or I disagree -- or send messages that make them feel disrespected, dishonored, or lower in status (any refusal to stand, pledge, etc., ) -- we aid and abet the Other (or other countries), and are subject to suspicion, surveillance or counter insurgence tactics by their hallowed security forces.


When I consider that 489 of the wealthiest counties in the U.S. voted for Clinton; the remaining 2,623 counties, mostly small towns, suburbs, and rural areas, voted for Trump...Slightly fewer than fifty-five per cent of all voting-age adults bothered to vote, and 45 and his supporters now run the downsizing of government and rough up 'Others' of the planet.

When I consider that Trump sits at the end of a U.S. history of fighters motivated by their own exceptionalism; that their attitude, hundreds of years in the making, is ineradicable, and conservatives consider it the price Americans pay to live here...

I realize -- as I familiarize myself with the Bannons, Kochs, Trumps or other conservative flavors of the day -- that any clear set of principles conservatives abide by are grounded (pun or no pun intended) in resource entitlement and warrior exceptionalism.


Our best future chance to get anywhere with them, politically, is to stop believing in mutual compromise with them. For eight years all manner of conservative types have shown us they won't compromise. Current "cracks" in their loyalties are no guarantee of future bipartisanship.

Between us and them, there are only concessions to be extracted from them.

We didn't ask for this. Until someone else here or in the party's leadership can lay out a non-binary and/or bipartisan political future for this country, this is what we face.

We also face a contest of ideas:

Was America ever really based on unity through diversity?

Is America still an idea?

Are Americans what they do?

And is America what it does?


If America has spent centuries acting in contradiction to its founding ideas -- because the "win" ends have justified the "any means necessary" -- then perhaps we've become a well-armed military central command, CentCom, of the planet, and little else.

I say all this to DU in order to work out any in-party differences, help us see ourselves as others see us, and maybe improve our communication stance in some hard years ahead.

I love you guys. Be gentle with me.

Can Trump Pardon Himself? You Ask, We Answer

Alan Neff, a lawyer, writes occasional pieces for this site that explain the legalities that frame our politics.

My take on his latest piece here is that it conveys an official historical development of all-American exceptionalism -- shown by secessionists, Founders, slavers and Indian killers on up through federal government -- which drives the context of this administration.

Now, I can't un-see a dark future of pardons all around. Not to mention the millions of 45 supporters all around us who won't mind.

http://crooksandliars.com/2017/04/presidential-pardons-age-orange

The New Yorker -- "One Hundred Days"

Editor David Remnick best sums up this president's character and the 2016 election within the larger frame of democracy's diminishment, even endangerment.

Pope Francis TED Talk: Three Important Lessons For Life

I can't wait for the full translation to come out in subtitles.

I'm sure this gets traction by this Sunday.

NASA LIVE -- Our Home. We Must Not Destroy Her.