Please, please do something about this traitor! Here's the story on what the Twit said:
"Former president Donald Trump railed against his former vice president and admitted he wanted Mike Pence to 'overturn' the 2020 election outcome on 6 January last year."
Twitler admits coup plot. It's why the fascists are leery of him being their leader, since he comes right out and broadcasts their agenda. They try to keep it hidden behind their lying propaganda. Meme below from my Republican zinger kin.
The CP did an excellent job on this. A few comments though. They cited Lakoff on framing but have they seen how he recently and accurately framed the current US Republican Party? As it quite obvious they have absolutely no intention of joining their project "to allow for widespread learning and mutual understanding." We need to frame them accordingly and declare rhetorical war in defense of democracy or we'll lose it, not engage with them as if they are just another valid perspective to be included.
And according to Lakoff's description of real v. false reason the CP is engaging in the latter when it assumes the premises the former in that it re-contextualizes away the required emotional content for effective framing. It strives to make facts "as empirical as possible" by "engaging the emotional dynamics" of the context of a fact, as if those dynamics are opposed to framing instead of necessary. They also assume that one can "piece all the facts together and place them in the right context," not recognizing that any context one chooses by default will eliminate some facts to emphasize the agenda in its preferred context, i.e. also cherry-picking. Will it be 'right' and for whom? The elites who subscribe to their own false reasoning with good intentions? By now we all should know what the road to hell is paved with.
So what then do we do? Is the above just more so-called postmodern criticism with no solution (itself a falsely reasoned claim)? We realize that in our hope of taking more perspectives into account that some are falsely equivalent. Some are right and some are wrong, e.g. democracy v. fascism. We pick a side and we fight for it. We create a factual and emotional metanarrative around our side and try to defeat the enemy, not appease it. Otherwise we can end up being complicit with that evil by giving it the benefit of the doubt. History has shown us what the latter approach has done and will do again if we let it.
Rationalize that away by calling it propaganda. I call it effective framing.
This is what it took to get Spotify to take action. Strangely it was not the open letter of hundreds of medical professionals and scientists who complained about Rogan to them.
"In an act of solidarity between two veteran rock stars with a shared history of espousing progressive causes, Joni Mitchell has joined Neil Young in removing her music from Spotify in protest at it hosting a popular anti-vax podcast."
Parody in support of Neil Young removing his music on Spotify.
From their website:
"The Post Growth Institute is an international, not for profit organization working to enable collective wellbeing within ecological limits.
"Imagine your great grandchildren thriving, here on planet Earth. For this to happen, we need an economy that naturally circulates money rather than concentrating it, an economy that values people's needs ahead of corporate greed, and an economy that gives more than it takes from our life-supporting environment. Such an economy is possible. While our extractive, growth-dependent economy is driving us to collapse, a full circle, post-growth economy is emerging, offering a pathway to our shared thriving within ecological limits. At the Post Growth Institute, our goal is to help guide the way to that more beautiful world your heart knows is possible. To help shift the worldview, so that more people understand what's on offer when we look at our challenges through an empowered, post-growth lens. That's where you come in. By reading our research, attending our trainings, hiring us as consultants and sharing post-growth content, you help us shift the worldview."
Like when they didn't fight to preserve voting rights in this case. They put on a show but that's all that it was.
Remember history and recognize that we're on the road to it happening again. Wake up before it's too late.
Please indict this criminal and let's put him where he belongs: Prison for what's left of his miserable life. Same for all of his co-conspirators in Congress and elsewhere.
From his substack post. Below he describes what they are for and it ain't good. At the end of the post he reports that he will be doing a book discussion group on the updated book Don't Think of an Elephant.
"'What are Republicans for?' asked President Joe Biden during his recent one-year press conference.
"Today’s Republican Party has no interest in compromise or collaboration. The GOP has bloomed into a full-fledged enemy of the American idea of government and become an aspiring authoritarian organization. Fearing the power of the majority vote, Republicans are working feverishly to dismantle the machinery of democracy and make it harder for Americans to exercise the basic right to vote. The GOP has replaced loyalty to the country with the worship of one man, Donald Trump, who considers himself more important than the nation. Trump and his party demand that the Republican faithful be willing to sacrifice their lives on the altar of lies (as we have seen with the attempted insurrection of January 6 and the anti-scientific campaign against COVID vaccines).
"This is all happening in public view, with full-throated participation from all but a handful of Republican leaders. In fact, one of the most terrifying aspects of today’s Republican Party is the utter shamelessness with which it peddles lies, conspiracies and anti-democratic ideas (with help from the Fox channel and other propaganda operations). This is not a political party that is planning for a future in which it must reach 'across the aisle' to build coalitions and find agreement with the opposition.
"Today’s GOP seeks to destroy democracy. It wants a future in which voters, laws and the Constitution no longer matter. If these Republicans get their way, the only thing that will matter is the opinion of an authoritarian leader who will dictate the definitions of right and wrong, legal and illegal, true and false. This authoritarian outlook has already devoured the GOP. The only question now is whether it can conquer the rest of the country.
"What are Republicans for? A world in which voters wield no power over political outcomes. A world in which the law is whatever the strongman leader says it is. A world in which lies become truth and truth becomes lies. A world in which the rights and freedoms of the majority are systematically stripped away to empower the tyranny of the few. A world in which the white, the male, the Christian, the rich, the straight and the old wield maximal power over everyone else."
Heim et al. (2017). "Hierarchical complexity and the size limits of life." Proceedings of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences), 284.
The above article was referenced in Koonin et al (2021) as one that described the hierarchical organization of biological life. It distinguishes between two forms of complexity, vertical and horizontal. The former "is the number of levels of nestedness or levels of organization in an organism," whereas the latter "is the number of part types within a given level." In that sense it is much akin to the Model of Hierarchical Complexity's (MHC) distinctions.
This study explores the sizes of various life forms relative to their vertical complexity: "(i) virus, (ii) single-celled prokaryote, (iii) single-celled eukaryote and (iv) non-colonial multicellular eukaryote." Obviously the more complex an organism is, meaning the more components it has to coordinate, requires a larger size to accommodate it. Their "results suggest that there are constraints on both the minimum and maximum sizes for each level of complexity," but also with "the hypothesis that minimum size constraints arise from physical factors while constraints on maximum size arise from physiological factors."
"In summary, body size data spanning all major branches on the tree of life reveal discrete macroevolutionary modes for different levels of vertical complexity. The individual size distributions for multicellular eukaryotes, protists, prokaryotes and viruses are approximately unimodal and symmetric, but the combined distribution is multimodal and highly asymmetric. Evolutionary innovations associated with new levels of complexity therefore appear to be fundamentally different in nature from those that arise within complexity levels."
The MHC's levels are purely abstract and not grounded in this sort of biological complexity. Hence in the abstract such levels can increase ad infinitum without the biological constraints noted above. And yet our bodies and brains do have these constraints, therefore our own complexity is indeed limited by our embodiment. My previous article (Berge 2019), using our embodied cognitive constraints, contextualized the MHC's limitations given its abstract divorce from that embodiment.
I suggest that if we are to have a more meaningful measure of hierarchical complexity it must be tied to our biological constraints. Our models themselves have to operate within these constraints. Infinite abstract complexity and growth seems more a sign of dysfunctional growth like we're seeing in our current crises. And per above and Koonin (2021), each level, while unimodal and symmetric within itself, is different from the other levels and multimodal when comparing the other levels collectively. Hence we need much more that a self-similar fractal measure to model it. That is, if it's to remain human.
I've also suggested that perhaps there is a time for us to decomplexify. It might be appropriate given that our current socio-economic system is depleting natural resources faster than they can be regenerated. This on top of the fact that our fossil-fuel energy system is destroying the atmosphere and oceans at an alarming rate. All of which is directly tied to this notion of unlimited growth, as is not coincidentally our models of complexity. Hence the degrowth movement advises us to live within our means and our ecological limits. All of which might very well require us to take a step back on our complexity obsession to survive. As both articles make clear, biological evolution has repeatedly become simpler when necessary. Instead of thinking that more complexity is the answer to our so-called meta-crisis it just might be that it is the cause and that we might need to engage more voluntary simplicity at this point in our evolution.
I can hear the cries already. But that would be a regression! It would be going backwards! But only if we unconsciously accept the premise of unlimited growth and complexity in one direction. It would after all be in line with evolution itself, which the complexity crowd purports to claim as their own premise. Perhaps we should listen to what evolution actually does instead of following our current dysfunctional obsession with ever-increasing complexity and growth? There's a move in Tai Ji Quan called Step Back and Repulse Monkey. This seems the right time to practice it.
There were 109,524 new cases during this period, 46.2% of them among the vaccinated (50,650). 22.2% of the vaccinated were hospitalized and 6.7% died. Be safe out there.
But at what they do. And that is despicable. Where they're headed is obvious.
It's something that's easy to do anytime this charlatan speaks on any topic outside his expertise. In this case it's Peterson's comments on climate science when visiting another inept commentator on any subject except MMA, Joe Rogan. I won't repeat Peterson's nonsense but rather provide some of the scientists' responses:
"'To say that climate model errors increase like compound interest is
laughable,' John Abraham, a climate scientist at Minnesota's University
of St. Thomas, tells the Guardian.
He likens the episode to 'a word salad of nonsense spoken by people who
have no sense when it comes to climate.' Australian climate scientist
Dr. Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick adds Peterson 'seems to think we model the
future climate the same way we do the weather. He sounds intelligent,
but he’s completely wrong. He has no frickin' idea.'"
Koonin, E.; Wolf, Y.; Katsnelson, M. (2021). "Conflict driven evolution." New Horizons in Evolution. Cambridge MA: Academic Press. pp. 77 - 96.
"However, contrary to some claims, evolution of complexity is not guaranteed by SOC [self-organized criticality] alone. Indeed, SOC does not result in hierarchical complexity because fractal patterns produced by SOC are not genuinely complex inasmuch as, by definition, they appear the same across all spatial and/or temporal scales (and hence can be produced by a simple algorithm). As an alternative to SOC, evolution of biological complexity has been studied in abstract models based on Highly Optimized Tolerance which emerges via robustness tradeoffs, such as competition between specialists and generalists in unstable environments. Frustrations caused by competing evolutionary factors, such as adaptation to a broad or a narrow range of conditions, seem to underpin this model as well.
"The patterns of complexity at different levels of biological organization, such as macromolecules, cells, multicellular organisms, populations, and ecosystems, substantially differ. Evolutionarily, these hierarchical levels of organization are linked through MTE [major transitions in evolution] that, as we argue, are driven by competing interactions and the resulting frustration. Indeed, this appears to be the universal driver of the evolution of hierarchy in nature. The actual mathematical theory of frustration-driven evolution remains to be developed and might require mathematical ideas and techniques beyond those currently available" (89).
A recent video of them just dancing for those of us who can't dance right now because of the pandemic.
Those providing pandemic misinformation and lies should also be charged with crimes against humanity and sentenced accordingly.
His FB post follows commenting on his Substack post. Remember when you hear politicians framing the center as some sort of common sense compromise what they really mean is the status quo. Same goes for the BS term bi-partisanship. We have to be partisan to democracy and against fascism. That is the real choice for which there is no center.
From their website:
"We
have spent the last century harnessing enormous amounts of fossil
energy to build a world of complexity like nothing seen before. In the
coming century, humanity will experience A Great Simplification,
beginning with the onset of financial and economic turbulence, followed
by contraction. The ensuing simplification will be among the most
significant events ever experienced by our species. Those who look
through a systems lens can serve as early visionaries of a simpler life
with new ways of relating to technology, to consumption, to each other
and to Earth’s ecosystem."
It seems it is the rage that these two concepts are synonymous. Therefore complexity is the answer to every problem and situation. It's even to the point that an every increasing hierarchical complexity is the goal of evolution itself.
But is it? Can we learn something from evolution about our obsession with complexity? Where does it functionally fit in our current need to adapt to our problems? Can it indeed contribute to them? Is there a time for degrowth? How can simplicity figure into the equation?
This is from the Scientific American article "Evolution: The Rise of Complexity":
"Of course, while I focused this post on how complexity arose, it's important to note that more complex doesn't necessarily mean better. While we might notice the eye and marvel at its detail, success, from the viewpoint of an evolutionary lineage, isn't about being the most elaborate. Evolution only leads to increases in complexity when complexity is beneficial to survival and reproduction. Indeed, simplicity has its perks: the more simple you are, the faster you can reproduce, and thus the more offspring you can have. Many bacteria live happy simple lives, produce billions of offspring, and continue to thrive, representatives of lineages that have survived billions of years. Even complex organisms may favor less complexity - parasites, for example, are known for their loss of unnecessary traits and even whole organ systems, keeping only what they need to get inside and survive in their host. Darwin referred to them as regressive for seemingly violating the unspoken rule that more complex arises from less complex, not the other way around. But by not making body parts they don't need, parasites conserve energy, which they can invest in other efforts like reproduction. When we look back in an attempt to grasp evolution, it may instead be the lack of complexity, not the rise of it, that is most intriguing."
Walsh left the Party because it now promotes lies, hate and fascism. And he joins a growing list of those who have also done so.
Snarlson defends traitor Flynn's support of a Russian invasion into Ukraine.
She explains how ruling interests, including corporate media, feed us propaganda that is designed to make us feel powerless, withdrawn and apathetic. She encourages us to fight back by sharing stories where the working class is winning, like strikes where we gain better wages and working conditions. It is vital that we the people keep up the fight. And sharing our victories widely and regularly keeps our spirits up for that fight.
In his blog post today he cites the Freedom House evaluation of US democracy:
"One of those countries they identified as a place where democracy itself is under assault is the USA, where virtually the entire Republican Party has rejected supporting democracy at home and supporting democratic governments abroad."
Note also that the US is regressing on the Democracy Index. The 2021 report has yet to come out but if they factor in all the Repugnacon laws suppressing the vote and giving partisan committees the power to overrule the vote then it seems likely the US will regress even further.
Will US democracy survive? Since the Democrats punted on federal legislation to override those State laws when they could have won, it seems it will now be up to the US Attorney General to challenge those State laws. And of course then the Supreme Corp will have to weigh in, and given their current partisan propensity it seems unlikely democracy will survive.
According to a poll cited in the NYT Morning Newsletter, one's political Party is a key indicator in one's level of concern about the pandemic. As expected, Democrats are more concerned, Republicans less so. The former is based on the scientific evidence while the latter is more about identifying with a partisan ideology. Which of course is confirmed in the vaccination statistics and hospitalization and death rates, which are far higher in the latter.
They're going after Twitler and now they have a grand jury that can subpoena Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The latter said he wouldn't cooperate with the investigation without one so now he'll get one.
Recall that part of this is about Twitler's call with Raffey demanding that the latter find votes which didn't exist. The walls are closing in on the Biggest Political Criminal of All Time and it's about time. Lock Him Up!
It's an apt comparison to past fascist regimes and it's happening again, here and now in the US. Rick Wilson of TLP said in an email today of the Repugnacon Party, a Party of which he used to be a proud member:
"It's about the emergent
authoritarian state shambling its way toward the end of small-d
democratic politics. [...] The new GOP is
nationalist, populist, and increasingly fascist. Yeah, I went there.
The f-word. [...] Stop thinking this is about
anything else but unalloyed fascism."
Gingrinch told Pox Views that if the Repugs regain control of Congress than Cheney and Kinzinger could face criminal charges for participating in the Jan. 6 committee's search for the truth. I fully support her on this issue and her apt response:
And continuing to try to convince them only proves your own inability to accept this truth.
Continuing this post, the following is an excerpt from the exegesis in the Ning IPS forum:
Hammer that the Repugnacons are crazy, pro-insurrection, pro-Trump, anti-democracy, anti-vax and fascist. Shout it passionately from the rooftops. It also happens to be true. I'm doing my part every day.
In this interview psychotherapist Fraad-Wolff compares the staid, boring establishment Democrats who try to be overly rational but devoid of passion with the overly passionate Twitler devoid of any discernible reason. The latter used our feelings of helplessness and rage negatively to blame and hate others. However some progressives like Bernie and AOC address those same emotions positively to elicit feelings of solidarity, compassion and love. Like Lakoff she maintains effective framing must touch us on the deeper, emotional level. We can of course use truth and facts but they must be framed in this deeper way for genuine connection and motivation.
In this New Rule Maher uses an absurd and funny example of how Dems need to play dirty like the Repugnacons if they ever want to get anything done.
Orlando Floorplay New Years Eve 2021/2022. Really nice Jack and Jill performance. Lots of spontaneous musicality and form. The move at 1:35 - 1:42 was a Big Wow.
Report here was released 1/21/22. The summary follows. See the link for the details.
What is already known about this topic?
Although COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness decreased with emergence of the Delta variant and waning of vaccine-induced immunity, protection against hospitalization and death has remained high.
What is added by this report?
In 25 U.S. jurisdictions, decreases in case incidence rate ratios for unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons with and without booster vaccine doses were observed when the Omicron variant emerged in December 2021. Protection against infection and death during the Delta-predominant period against infection during Omicron emergence were higher among booster vaccine dose recipients, and especially among persons aged 50–64 and ≥65 years.
What are the implications for public health practice?
COVID-19 vaccination protected against SARS-CoV-2 infection, even as the Omicron variant became predominant. All eligible persons should stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination.
Updated today. Here's an except directed to the vaccinated, since in NM they are now 43% of all new cases. You can spread this disease to others and not even know it, so why take chances?
"According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Omicron likely spreads more easily than the original COVID-19 virus. It appears to be much more contagious compared to the Delta variant, as it’s quickly become the dominant strain in the U.S. The CDC said it expects that people can spread Omicron even if they’re vaccinated or don’t have symptoms."
Note that the above CDC data is date stamped 12/20/21. As of 1/15/22 Omicron is now 99.5% of cases in the US.
Even on vote-hater Ron Johnson's Twitter. It's exactly why his fascist Party is trying to prevent it. They know they cannot win if everyone truly eligible to vote does it.
How we got into this mess and how we can get out of it. As usual he packs a whole lot into this 6 minutes that succinctly lays out the problem and the solution. We've done it before and we can do it again.
Why do we no longer believe Dem promises? Why do we no longer believe it when they use Manikin and Sinema as scapegoats? Biden has numerous Executive Orders he can sign that make a real difference in our lives but has chosen not to. And Dems pretending to be for our rights, knowing that their proposals won't pass due to their own caucus, is just performance.
A reminder of the facts. All of these laws are based on a proven Big Lie. How about reporting that corporate media? Last updated 1/12/22:
"Between January 1 and December 7, at least 19 states passed 34 laws restricting access to voting.
More than 440 bills with provisions that restrict voting access have
been introduced in 49 states in the 2021 legislative sessions. These
numbers are extraordinary: state legislatures enacted far more
restrictive voting laws in 2021 than in any year since the Brennan
Center began tracking voting legislation in 2011.
More than a third of all restrictive voting laws enacted since then
were passed this year. And in a new trend this year, legislators
introduced bills to allow partisan actors to interfere with election processes or even reject election results entirely."
It's a plain as day fact that Repugnacon controlled States around the US are sabotaging voting rights. And Biden said so, that without voting rights legislation vote counts in those States will be questionable. So instead of the media acknowledging that fact they blame Biden for casting doubt on election results. It's obvious they aren't up to the task of defending democracy and fighting fascism.
Psaki had to issue a clarification to something the media should have understood in the first place if it wasn't so busy trying to 'frame' Biden:
He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it.
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) January 20, 2022
Hardly. Corporate media could care less about the loss of democracy as long as it doesn't hurt their bottom line. In fact they feed fascism with this sort of shit.
There were 81,072 new cases during this period, an average of 2895 per day. 43% of those were breakthrough cases among the vaccinated, which also had 19.3% of the hospitalizations and 6.2% of the deaths. We're still in the Omincron spike so be careful out there.
Here's her scathing and accurate analysis of the failed neoliberal policies of Biden and the Democratic Party. And she also beats up the neoliberal 'pundits' who are now blaming Bernie for Biden's failures. The problem is neoliberalism, whereas progressive populism is now more popular than ever and is the solution. Unfortunately the corporate status quo in government and the media will never admit it but rather fight it until its dying breath.
For both him and Dimena it doesn't matter if fascists take over our government as long as they keep getting the blood money. Scumbag is another apt description.
So testified former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham. The meetings were held in the residence because Twitler was paranoid about staff. Those meetings were scheduled by Chief of Staff Meadows. Grisham did not know the identity of those in the meetings but said Harleth, former chief usher, likely would.
"The Guardian previously reported that Trump made several phone calls from the Yellow Oval Room and elsewhere in the White House residence to lieutenants at the Willard hotel in Washington the night before the Capitol attack, telling them to stop Joe Biden’s certification."
The walls are closing in on the Biggest Traitor in History. The sooner he's prosecuted the better.
This is where I learned of it and what set me off on this inquiry. She explains it much more simply and succinctly than I do.
In this clip Manchin asks Merkley about the proposed rule change to the filibuster. He wonders if it's possible to enter into a talking filibuster now without a rules change. And that's exactly what Rule 19 allows for. However Rule 19 also allows for Amendments and points of Order, whereas the change to the filibuster rule would not allow for any of that. The latter is what Manchin opposes.
If the Senate had not moved for Cloture (Rule 22) and instead just continued to keep the debate open under Rule 19, then Manchin is right that in effect that would itself be a talking filibuster. The Senate could have kept up that debate, along with all the Republican proposed Amendments and objections, which would indeed have taken several weeks. But it would also extend that debate to be covered in the media for an prolonged period and allowed we the people to become much more aware of the voting rights issue. And the result at the end of all of the Republican's obstruction, when they finally wore out due to exhaustion and public outrage, would then be under Rule 19 a simple majority vote. There would then be enormous pressure on Manchin and Sinema to vote for it since they claimed to support the Bill but not the rule change.
So why did the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot by doing it this way, knowing it would be defeated by those two in their own Party? Were they too lazy for the prolonged fight it would have taken under Rule 19? Perhaps Wallner was right after all when he laid out exactly how the Dems could have won this fight under Rule 19:
"They want legislating to be easy,
convenient. The president referred in his remarks to the election
officials and voters who do 'the hard work of democracy.' [...] Senators must be willing to do 'the hard work of democracy' if they want
to make democratic self-government work."
They took the easy way out instead and the result is that there will be no federal curb on the fascist State laws destroying our right to vote and democracy along with it. Self-righteously accepting defeat under these conditions is tantamount to complicity. Which is exactly why many of us progressives are sick and tired of their loser bullshit.
As discussed previously, Rule 19 can bypass the filibuster altogether. But instead of sticking firm to its implementation Schumer has forged a hybrid, part Rule 19 combined with a rule change for a talking filibuster. And the two corrupt Democorp Senators refuse to go along with the rule change for the latter.
So why the f___ doesn't Schumer just force the issue by sticking with Rule 19 that requires zero rule changes and forces a kind of talking filibuster in effect anyway? Is he trying to pretend he's for voting rights to say he tried but failed? If he's really for them he has the means to get it done right now so why is he screwing this up?
She provides example after example that Pox is nothing but a giant propaganda machine hell bent on lies and misinformation. There should be a law about the media lying but apparently there is not.
This story confirms the meme. And yet will the US Attorney General prosecute? Let him hear from you.
You can read or download it here. The chart of the first 29 follows. The US continues to place lower and yet we've been brainwashed to think we're so happy.
One is for equal rights, one is not. One is for everyone voting, one is not. It is a grave mistake to think there is some middle ground between them. One is right and one is wrong. One is healthy and one is sick. Choose.
You've likely seen the chart below by Ad Fontes Media circulating on Facebook. As an avid fan of Thom Hartmann I find his placement absurd at best. Yes, Thom is undeniably liberal but meticulously fact checks all of his data. And they put him opposite Hannity and Pox Views on the scale! I cannot take the rest of this farce seriously.
Speculation swirls that Dimena is supporting the filibuster because she thinks it will serve her best as a 'bi-partisan' politician in her bid for the Presidency. Think again. Oh wait, you have to think in the first place and that certainly is not the case.
What Naomi Nagata tells James Holden in the end of the finale is similar to a speech I've repeatedly given myself to curb my expectations about my passionate purpose. She said:
"You followed your conscience in the hope that others would follow theirs. You didn't do it for a reward or a pat on the head. The universe doesn't tell us if we did right or wrong. It's more important to try to help people and to know that you did. More important that someone else's life gets better than for you to feel good about yourself. You never know the effect you might have on someone, not really. Maybe one cool thing you said haunts them forever. Maybe one moment of kindness gives them comfort or courage. Maybe you said the one thing they needed to hear. It doesn't matter if you never know, you just have to try."
This story confirms the meme. I just hope it's true and not more wishful fantasy from Democratic leaders to distract us from the fact that indeed crime pays and fascism proceeds.
Boycott their stores:
I use his eloquent words as further moral justification for my blog and methods. From his "letter from Birmingham jail":
"Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I just referred to the creation of tension as a part of the work of the nonviolent resister. This may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, we must see the need of having nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."
Here are about a dozen songs I've recorded at YouTube.* And this link is to my lyrics and poems folder at Google docs, mostly from my ...
