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LET THE WORD GO OUT
(Ed note: This article was submitted by Wendy Lohse)
Following the Iowa caucus win of Barack Obama, Deval Patrick outlines in the Boston Globe, the reasons America needs Obama.
Whilst looking up Obama on the internet yesterday I came upon the titles of his books and other written works. On the morning of the 3rd of June here in Tasmania, Australia I listened to a repeat radio airing of Andrew O'Hagan's , I was struck as I often am, by the origins of those who rise to fame in all kinds of unexpected fields of creative, social, political or personal endeavours.
The very first title Dreams From My Father: a Story of Race and Inheritance reminded me immediately of the one hour address I had listened to only days earlier. The Dreams and the Hope that is in all of Obama's words, the posture of his body and seeing him on his website with his family gives me an excitement and hope that I have not felt for the world, since JFK. God I was a farm kid milking cows on the morning he was shot. My brother and I. We worked the last hour in silence with the radio repeating the news over and over.
Crazy? Maybe. I've found American politics difficult to comprehend. But I suspect I'm possibly more aware than the average Flo Citizen on American streets across the country.
This is not Flo's fault. Nor is it my smarts. It is simply that I am in a situation to have the time to answer my questions. I have the facilities to find out all I want to know, at my fingertips. Flo possibly has one or two poorly paid jobs which, in this time of mortgage crisis and ever higher fuel prices and follow on goods and services, don't quite meet her costs to survive. Flo has neither the time nor the resources to search for the person who would best attend to at least some of her greatest concerns when she chooses a president. Anyway, she really doesn't believe that she's important enough to vote for anyone. Ever. She does everything she can to keep her children fed and hopefully healthy. But presidents and politicians aren't interested in her. She knows that. From experience.
Perhaps we can take Andrew O'hagan's advice and "get the word out".
In our house there weren’t many books, but there was a large yellow kitchen table where my mother sat at the centre of all her evidence. I grant you she wasn’t the Norton Anthology of Literature, but she knew every song that was ever sung in Glasgow. And my father, when he was there, would appear from his adventures with a crimson face and stories you wouldn’t believe. Except of course I would believe them, being sick in the head and the youngest of four.
Between them my parents barely read a book in their lives, but I’ve come to feel there was literature in everything they said. "I had a book once," my father once told me in a moment of pride. "It was green. Do you remember that book, Nancy? It was up on top of the fridge. Green it was. Stood there for ages. Greeny-coloured."
"Away ye go ya daft pig," my mother said. "That was the telephone book, that manky battered old thing."
She turned to me.
"He only uses it to get the numbers of people he can go and buy dogs off. Bringing them in here: as if I don’t have enough to clean."
"The book was definitely green," said my da. "Green as a pound note. And don’t listen to her: it wasn’t a phone book or anything like it. It had a story in it and everybody died, I remember that sure enough."
I just looked at him and went to the library to drown my sorrows – drown them and raise them again.
The Sydney Morning Herald's Julianne Schultz says that Barack Obama's first book
puts flesh on the bones of a young man who, by 30, was wiser than many twice his age. Unlike the dry treatise he planned, it is also a joy to read.
Obama's background and heritage could not be more different from O'Hagan's. And yet, they have both come to the same view of the future.
I grew up in a town on the west coast of Scotland. We lived on a housing estate outside Glasgow that looked into the waters of the Firth of Clyde. It was a colourful childhood informed by the regular heartaches, but to look at our houses you’d have thought we were the very height of optimistic fashion. Those housing schemes, as we called them, or Projects, as the Americans preferred, were the outcome of a certain kind of 1960s idealism in Britain. Those towerblocks were meant to bring us out of the dark slums and out of post-war austerity into a clear blue nirvana of fresh air and artificial godliness. Homes in the sky. That was our working-class inheritance: to be delivered brand new into the hands of the future, and there was always something space age about our 70s outlook.
But living close to the water gave us broader horizons. We looked out there and felt the dreadful load of those hopes at our backs – the very weight of that British idealism which seemed over-wrought and already failing. It would take several more years for us to find out that the housing experiment was a disaster, that our childhood filled with diggers and excavations and cement could not answer the problems of character and economy and history. That is something we could only do for ourselves, we’d find out, and no number of new airing cupboards or inside bathrooms could stand in for the revolution that was due to happen in our own consciences.
I have to tell you, I grew up to believe there is no other nation but the one you can build and honour in your head, and for kids growing up that way, in a Scotland filled with faded songs about the grandness of our destiny, the thought of new beginnings in virgin lands became a beautiful dream. To travel over the sea to a place free from the torpor of national attributes – not one without its own historical controversies, and one with its own deep traditions – but nevertheless a country that seemed built to be filled with high hopes. In the cold winter nights outside Glasgow, I often lay and imagined my grandfather Charlie having a hot Christmas somewhere near the Great Barrier Reef, eating strange fruits, surrounded by coloured fish, and hearing talk we’d never known. Australia was the dream state of our working class childhoods, the Xanadu of the wee small hours, and that dead old sailor, to my unquiet mind was a great engineer of imagined worlds, a crown prince of enchantment, the ultimate wizard of Oz.
It didn’t matter what reality had to say on the matter. Australia was the place to start again. I remember families going off from Scotland never to return. They were emigrating. And to my mind those small friends of mine are kind of legendary because of their early engagement with open possibility. It never occurred to me that Australia would stop them from growing, but I see now that they were infantilized in the minds of those they left behind. They grew Down Under, but not for us, who would always remember those emigrating heroes as boys we waved off in the knowledge we would probably never see them again. They were the high-flying flamingoes, those boys and girls who had followed my grandfather past the Cape of Good Hope, to a place that appeared, despite its own dark shadows, to make a virtue of BECOMING rather than a prison of BELONGING.
I remember watching a programme with my father in the 1970s about people in Adelaide who were trying to build a community of whitewashed houses. They were drinking pink wine and smiling. I’ll never forget it. The pink wine. The smiles on them. "In this part of the world," said the presenter, "the idea is to be all you can be."
The line seemed to me at the time like a thing out of Shakespeare. I’d never heard such a concept before – Be All You Can Be. The white houses. The pink wine. The smiles on them. It was like Keats, I tell you. Like Tolstoy or Virginia Woolf or F. Scott Fitgerald – all those people in their beautiful clothes at Jay Gatsby’s party, drinking this stuff – what was it called? -- WINE. Be All you Can Be. It was like an ancient Chinese proverb. A kind of haiku. A word from the lips of the great and bottomless pool of belief across the world.
"What did he say?" asked my father.
"Be All You Can Be," I said. He crushed a can of McEwan’s Export and threw it down by a two-bar fire.
"What?"
"Be All You Can Be."
"What a load of shite," he said.
Of course, it wasn’t really Australia. It was the thought of it. It was the imagining of it. And the great vehicle of such powerful imagining was literature. Shortly after we stopped haunting the piers, I began to find some of that magic I was looking for in books. The great American poet Wallace Stevens once said that literature helps you to live your life, and that’s it – there lies its wonder and its potency. Great literature never goes away and it never stops being surprising; it is there, as they say, at the going down of the sun and in the morning. Our power truly to imagine the world and the worlds inside us is what constitutes our moral sense. It is not the unexamined life that is not worth living, but the unimagined one. We each have a zone of pure imagining to inhabit and it need not be, as I used to think, a Xanadu or an Australia – "She is the Eldorado of old dreamers, The Sleeping Beauty of the world’s desire," wrote one of your own poets, Bernard O’Dowd around the 1910s, and Australia will always have something of that – it is a place where the life inside us and the world around us can make a bid for perfect harmony. Though never for every one – and that’s our challenge.
It is not policy or tradition but the everyday work of the imagination that can make us see both the rarity and the responsibility of being truly alive. And literature is the accompaniment to that sense: not something you do in your spare time, but the beat of time itself, and we will feel that pulse in every major area we turn to.
I put it you, ladies and gentleman: if we are truly alive, we have a duty to connect with the planet we inherited and that others will inherit in their turn. If we are truly alive, we have a role to play – every one of us – in the realization of peace and tolerance in our time. If we are truly alive, and if we know what the imagination can do, it will not be in us to sit dormant whilst the planet is ruined by unfettered commerce or whilst thousands are killed by the pre-emptive and ruinous urges of Christian or Islamic fundamentalisms.
If we are civilized, we imagine our way past political coercion or selfish pride. We speak truth to power. We question our media. We spring to the defense of liberty. We take care of the world’s resources. We interrogate corporations and we upbraid ourselves and our hungers and our needs. We listen to the past. We question our feelings of superiority. We teach our children the truth of our culture and what it has done and what it has failed to do. We keep a close watch on this heart of mine – yours and your and yours. And we never forget that we are moral beings and not machines. This is what we do if we are truly alive. This is what we do if we live close to our imaginations. And how do we do that, how do we keep company with our imaginations, what do we do to be so alive? It’s easy – we read books.
And so I will. I will read Obama's Dreams from my Father. This is a truly exciting time in world history. The world has a chance with the young and the fresh; with the hope and determination of youth for a future better than the last 11 years. The more I think about where the older, more experienced cynics who've lived at the white house, the more I think - it's time to toss all that same-old, same-old over for the new, the fresh, the intelligent. If America has the courage to take a risk and choose a president who is smarter than all the candidates on both sides; a president who appeals to the youth of America; a president who will work with all to undo as much of the damage done over the past decade as possible. O'Hagan had no idea that his address would be seen as relevant for the DCP blog more than 6 months after speaking. Possibly at that time he didn't even know of Obama's candidacy.
Let the word go out – as a man once said – the written word – that the torch of human imagination is being passed to a new generation, and let those lights shine nowhere so much as they shine over Sydney Harbour. Over 70 international writers and hundreds of Australian talents are here to put out the word: and in this great fortune of utterance we can be sure of their saying one thing together – we say, let us all unshackle the mind and prepare the world for peace.
Let the word go out.
When the guns of the First World War fell silent, when the arrogance of the generals had run its course, when the chatter of politicians had disappeared like smoke into the air about that blasted ground, when those fields of mud on the Somme and at Gallipoli had gone green again, it was the literature that was left to hold the memory of those men. It was Wifred Owen’s "Anthem for Doomed Youth" which gave lasting dignity to the fallen:
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds
Written in Craiglockart Hospital whilst suffering from shellshock, Owen later returned to the Front and his death. But he left this for all to read and know.
He left this so that we might understand what we do when we send boys from the shires to die in unknowable wars.
Let the word go out. Literature is the news that stays news.
…it is literature that carries human rights and wrongs better than anything. Literature may be entertaining and it may be diverting, but its role in a civilized world is neither for distraction nor diversion, but for engagement: every day is Sorry Day in the world of literature and every day is Humanity Day and Contemplation Day and Tolerance Day and Get Your Finger Out of Your Arse Day.
Let the word go out.
I believe it is a failure of the imagination that allows famine or terror to reign in the world. A man who throws half the contents of his fridge into the trash on a Monday morning fails to imagine, next time he visits the supermarket, that whole villages in Eritrea have children gasping for a droplet of milk. The politician or the general who orders a solider to release cruise missiles from 5000 feet does not imagine the innocent men playing cards in the teashop below. He does not imagine their loss or the grief of their loved ones. The terrorist at the controls of a plane cannot imagine the dreams of the secretary on the 102nd floor, planning her wedding and making a bid for life. Failures of the imagination are behind the conduct of our woes – and so as we gather here to salute literature and the imagination we also come to denounce those failures of the imagination that harm and betray and destroy life.
Let the word go out.
I find O'Hagan's words inspiring. I believe he and Obama are echoes, each of the other. And each brings a new and a fresh and a hopeful dream for our future. I feel extremely proud to have been around to witness Obama's win in Iowa last night. If he went no further, that was an achievement I really believed Impossible.
Here is the most wonderful Obama cartoon Nyc got from Mr. Drinkwater. I can't get the code to past it here so try this link.
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2008/01/mr-drinkwater-v.html
Mr. Drinkwater also has a website - I think he's a genius on the level of Jules Pfeiffer and needs to be discovered.
As you may know, I am light with critique of Dems on the internet, because Republican operatives love to "use" the best points for their own attacks. That said, I am never above a little attack ad for someone I consider ready for retirement, in this case John McCain. This is for the Independent voters of New Hampshire, and the people who love them (or are watching them).
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2008/01/nh-live-free-or.html
I could put the exact same content up here but it's quicker this way.
from our friends (with permission):
Social Security’s inequity borne by elderly women
By Teresa Heinz Kerry and Jeffrey Lewis / As You Were Saying . . . |
Saturday, January 5, 2008
The pundits in Washington are worried that the debate over cutting Social Security benefits has been postponed until after we elect a new president. As usual, they’re only half right. While the debate has been delayed, benefit cuts are happening every day, and the victims are almost exclusively elderly women.
The villains in this story are pernicious cuts known in bureaucratic jargon as GPO and WEP.
The GPO - Government Pension Offset - reduces Social Security survivor benefits by an amount equal to two-thirds of pensions received by retired federal employees. In plain English, that means if a retired government employee outlives a spouse, the Social Security Administration calculates what two-thirds of the surviving retiree’s pension is, and then subtracts it from the Social Security benefit to which he or she would normally be entitled. Obviously, this results in a vastly lower Social Security check - or no Social Security benefit at all.
If a woman worked for the federal government for 30 years and retired as a GS-9, step 5 (the average grade level for federal employees), her annual pension would be $28,125, and her monthly federal retirement benefit $2,343.75. Two thirds of that equals $1,546. On her husband’s death, the survivors’ benefit for which she would have been eligible had she worked 30 years in the private sector, would be reduced by that amount. If her husband was receiving a basic benefit of $1,000 a month - the average Social Security benefit - she would receive no Social Security Survivor benefit whatsoever - a big, fat zero for a life’s work.
The victims of GPO are largely women who retired as government workers and whose husbands worked in the private sector. In 2002, 75 percent of the people receiving the fully or partially offset benefits were women, with 66 percent of the women receiving no Social Security benefit at all.
Remember, if these women had worked in the private sector earning the same wages, they would be entitled to full, unreduced Social Security benefits. Instead, their reward for working in public service and outliving their spouse is at best a cut and - most likely - a complete elimination of Social Security benefits.
Like GPO, WEP - the Windfall Elimination Provision - affects only those who worked for the government. There is one additional proviso - the worker had less than 30 years of substantial earnings covered by Social Security. It’s important to remember that it only takes 10 years of substantial earnings to qualify for Social Security.
Without getting into the math, suffice it to say that for affected workers, WEP significantly lowers Social Security’s income replacement rate for retirement benefits. This lower replacement rate ultimately reduces the Social Security benefit. This means workers who qualify for both Social Security and for a government pension get lower Social Security benefits than someone with the exact same Social Security earnings history and pension benefits in the private sector. Because women spend less time in the workforce and earn lower wages, WEP has particular ramifications for their retirement well-being.
Let’s also not forget that women live longer than men and generally rely on Social Security for more of their retirement income. In fact, women age 65 are projected to live at least four years longer than men and on average they receive half of their annual income from Social Security compared to 33 percent for men. And women’s reliance on Social Security increases as they age. Thus, reductions in Social Security benefits hit them harder and affect them for a longer period of time.
It is an article of faith among the pundits that Social Security benefits must be cut, and it is true that the program faces a financial squeeze in the future that should be addressed in the present. But all of this talk - about reducing Social Security benefits - glosses over the fact that GPO and WEP have been reducing benefits for some time, saving a relatively small amount of money on the backs of the elderly women who can least afford it. The inequity of the current situation - and the disproportionate effect on women - is clear.
The cost of removing these six letters from the calculations used to determine Social Security benefits is small in comparison to the overall long-term financial deficit the program faces in the future. Hopefully, when the table is set for serious discussions about the future of Social Security, the elimination of WEP and GPO will be on the table so we can have a meaningful debate about strengthening, and not cutting, Social Security.
Teresa Heinz Kerry is the wife of U.S. Sen. John Kerry and the chairman of the Heinz Family Philanthropies. Jeffrey Lewis is president of the organization. Talk back at jlewis@heinzoffice.org.
© Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Media.
This is the most articles I've ever seen on a Google lead entry. The Bhutto assassination and problems with Israel/Palestine would get up to 6000. I have never seen more entries at a time than 6000.
Check this out. & this is for a domestic political primary almost a year prior to an election.
Turkish Press
A Campaign Retools to Seek Second Clinton Comeback
New York Times - 2 hours ago
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday in Nashua, NH After a loss in Iowa, her campaign is fine-tuning its approach. By PATRICK HEALY and JOHN M. BRODER MANCHESTER, NH - Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in career-threatening scrapes before, ...
Video: Obama, Huckabee win in Iowa reutersvideo
Clinton Camp's Challenge: How Hard to Hit Obama? Wall Street Journal
Los Angeles Times - Washington Post - San Jose Mercury News - Reuters
all 8,238 news articles »
Just read the THK/SS thing - glad someone is doing this.
It's wonderful someone people think of in terms of having a fortune is looking out for those who don't but we know what kind of person she is already! xo
Woz,
Thank you for writing this article.
I discovered as I read it, and thought about it, and tried to figure out a meaningful comment to make to it, that I just didn't know enough about O'Hagan.
So since Google is our friend, I googled him. Wikipedia's article on him is short and sweet but really didn't give me enough information about him. Ok. So he he was born in Glasgow, won awards, and lives in London now.
But what makes him that powerful of an author, they didn't say. Luckily, they have links to additional articles at the bottom so I started clicking through those.
The first one that struck me was the one O'Hagan wrote about at the RNC called, "The God Squad." Through this article I have come to see how O'Hagan views the world or rather views America through the eyes of the RNC in 2004.
I will post some excerpts below but I highly recommend reading the whole article.
He starts it out with one heck of an opening statement about America.
Can you say, "Holy sh*t!"? That is one powerful paragraph right there! (bolded words are mine.)
Then he compares it to E.B. White from 1949. It's a stark comparison and one that proves exactly how awful America (NY) has become.
Here it is August 2004 to 1949 according to E.B. White:
He goes on to describe more of the convention and the Republican's cloak of 'patriotism'. He paints the patriotism as the dark, emotion it is--free of logic, free of morality, and free of compassion for others.
(Once again emphasis is mine.)Then he does something unusual. He put himself and his thoughts and words into the article and he is no longer an observer but a participant. (Almost as if he can not remain just a witness any longer.)
He describes a discussion with one of the Republican delegates:
He goes back to observer-witness again:
And then he reveals how the convention and the woman's comments affected him:
As you continue to read the article, you see how O'Hagan has woven the theme of the convention and his observations and then once in a while reveals conversations he had with participants that reveal their hypocricy or their fundamental lack of deep reasoning.
In reading that article, it brought to my mind how Obama ran the SFRC hearing when Sam Fox. Initially, Obama is an observer, letting Kerry ask Fox pointed questions about his actions in financing the Swift Boat Liars for Bush. But then, like O'Hagan, he interjects his opinions. Obama said,
Whether or not Obama and O'Hagan's background reflects their current views, I still am not convinced of. But for me the bigger part of this piece was to reflect on why O'Hagan and Obama touched you so deeply, woz.I hope I've added a few worthy thoughts to your thread.
I hope I've added a few worthy thoughts to your thread.
Woz Sparrow thanks for the threads, great.
Kangaroo,
You're welcome.
Now, this is an invitation for you or anyone else here who would like to write an article for the top. Please feel free to contact me. If you catch me in the irc, I can get my email address to you or we can chat about it in the irc.
Otherwise, feel free to ask around for it too.
What I suggest for now is that you write the article in word. And I will copy/paste add links or pictures (if you have any include them!). Then send it to me as an attachment. That way the coding from your email isn't picked up and transferred into the piece.
So if you might be interested...well, find a way to let me know. (irc, email, friend of a friend, etc...)
Most people around me agree that illegal immigration is a problem with no easy solution. The economy needs at least some of the illegals (without illegals, gardening will be prohibitively expensive where I am), and as long as there is a large difference between US and Mexican standard of living, people will continue to come.
@@@@@@@@
What, exactly, is the problem again??
1) too many Mexicans? overburdening the schools, government services, housing stock etc..
2) low wages for unskilled work? low salaries for high-skilled work?
3) "lawlessness", as one commentator on NPR recently argued??
Most people around me agree that illegal immigration is a problem with no easy solution. The economy needs at least some of the illegals (without illegals, gardening will be prohibitively expensive where I am), and as long as there is a large difference between US and Mexican standard of living, people will continue to come.
@@@@@@@@
What, exactly, is the problem again??
1) too many Mexicans? overburdening the schools, government services, housing stock etc..
2) low wages for unskilled work? low salaries for high-skilled work?
3) "lawlessness", as one commentator on NPR recently argued??
it is a society made menacing by a notion of God’s great plan. America is tolerance-challenged, integrity-poor, frightened to death, and yet, beneath its patriotic hosannahs, a country in delirium before the recognition that it might have spent the last three years not only squandering the sympathy of the world but hot-housing hatreds more ferocious than those it had wished to banish for ever from the clear blue skies.
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It is interesting to note that for all the fear and nervousness and hand-wringing and torturing and endless detentions and the two endless wars that,:
Osama Bin Laden
Al Zawahiri
Mullah Omar
are still alive and active
I am guessing that Bush will leave office in 2009 with these men still alive and free.
ralpheh - worse than that - they are alive, free and active - and how many innocents were tortured (their minds and bodies now forever damaged) as a side issue. Many many more innocents are now damaged than there are - the enemy. I find this most abhorrent of all. This is no better than Nazi Germany; or than the Japanese on the Burma Railway; or even in many African nations right now.
sparrow thanks for more words from O'Hagan. I didn't know him until I heard his voice with that great Glasgow accent. I intend to change that tomorrow, Monday, when I make a trip to the library. And Obama's book about the dreams of his father. I sent his address out to people who have responded to it with pages of comment, rather than the half dozen paragraphs of regular emailing. I'm glad I *heard*. Now I can receive his written words with the right accent and lilt that the Scottish have made their own.
This is about old conservative racist- type parents a guy has who would vote for Obama over Huckabee - interesting & strange
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/5/12243/06635/138/431080r
relates to some discussions we were having
My uncle is interesting too - he follows every candidate - follows the R's because he is/was one (?) but watched Ron Paul (R) and Kucinich (D) on Bill Moyers/PBS, sympathetic they aren't getting much air time.
What do you all think about the contentions on DKos that Edwards is getting a media blackout? I don't watch tv so don't know about that end but I do know that Kerry was blacked out pretty well more than he should have been. People have agendas. There is the corporate one that favors the corporate candidate such as Clinton or Romney and there is the infotainment one that favors the breakout candidates like Obama or Huckabee for ratings and so on. As for someone who has an issue like labor or health or environment or whatever .. they seem to perceive it as ..boring or something.
Then at this stage the small guys (see Paul, Kucinich, bye bye Dodd, Biden etc) are also squeezed out but maybe prematurely - due to the money thing. The media has way .. too .. much .. say.
It's ALL THAT FREE MEDIA
Rasmussen Reports's fresh new poll
Barack Obama, fresh from his victory in Iowa, now holds a ten point lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the race found Obama with 37% of the vote while Clinton earns 27%. John Edwards is the only other candidate in double digits, with 19% support. Bill Richardson is the choice for 8%.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/
LET THE WORD GO OUT!!!!!!
Paul Supporters Fight Back-- Dump Fox News Stock Intent on Sending it Tumbling
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Paul Supporters Fight Back-- Dump Fox News Stock Intent on Sending it Tumbling
by Rob Kall
Striking back at Fox News for leaving him out of a debate in New Hampshire, Ron Paul supporters have dumped their holdings in Fox News. The graph shows their success.
Michael McDonnough comments,
This is fair compensation to Fox in my opinion for their slighting of Ron Paul by not inviting him to the Jan 6th forum sponsored in part by the New Hampshire Republican Party and Fox News. From what I have read of the boycott effort it will include all advertisers that are currently sponsors of Fox news as well as encouraging the sell off of NWS stock for the forseable furture. The stock was kind of a dog from what I have seen so this is not going to help the situation for certain.
Fox has been most biased and unfair to Ron Paul and that is quite clear. This might be a further lesson for Fox News in what Dr. Paul referenced in that now famous first Fox Republican debate as what the CIA teaches and talks about. Blowback. I think he called that one. I hope that holders of NWS are short calling their holdings at about $18 that would be my bet.
Glen Greenwald comments,
News Corp. stock has been declining steadily for the last three months, but the plummeting of the last several days is more severe.
Fact is, when presenting statistics on Republican candidates, Fox News routinely fails to include Ron Paul as a candidate. The Paul campaign seems to have good reason to take steps to attempt to correct the injustice.
Perhaps this Republican and his supporters can teach a lesson to progressives who have long been unhappy with Fox News
That statement is already illogical and impossible to accomplish. How many progressives that you know own stock in Fox to dump?
I don't know any.
I know some Dems will appear on their talk shows and there is dissent over if they should do that.
But in terms of hitting them with the pocketbook, it's like protesting McDonalds by not going to McDonalds when you never went to McDonalds anyways!
nmp - I hadn't heard of Bill Richardson. If he looks like staying in the race I'll check him out. I wasn't impressed by that quiz to determine the candidate who most represented me - on the last thread I think. Maybe. It was Hillary! How on earth?
DEAFENING CORPORATE-MEDIA SILENCE ON EDWARDS GOOD SHOWING IN IOWA IS A DIRECT STAB AT EDWARDS' POPULISM.
Noticing how the 'lamestream media' is already trying to marginalize John Edwards
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_john_lor_080104_deafening_corporate_.htm
John Edwards Speech after Iowa Caucus
Woz
Bill Richardson will try to stay in through New Hampshire and try to remain viable enough to hit the Western states such as New Mexico where he's from. He's Hispanic, he was an Ambassador, he's a Governor. He's good. Another reason is that he could end up in someone's Cabinet or as a VP or Secy of State or something. I've seen him speak a couple of times. I like him.
Yeah - I think they're freezing out Edwards and certainly Kucinich (not letting him debate) and it's probably because they advocate for organized labor. There are plenty of "right to work" states, mostly red states, and they love cheap labor and dependent workers.
Sparrow
I heard yesterday that NewsCorp stock was down 3%. There are some Microsofties here with quite a bit of money that support Ron Paul. It may not have a huge impact but I still like to see people try this sort of thing. One of these days something could get big enough and organized to have an impact.
The problem is - there are alot of us and not many of them but they have alot more money. I read Christy's bit about the south and got the picture real quick when she used probably percentages. It looked like maybe 10% who owned the most were holding the other 90% hostage, partly by intimidation - making it so even though most didn't agree with the distribution of wealth, they were afraid to rock the boat. It doesn't take huge numbers to have power, but it takes alot of money in the hands of a few.
I heard the NPR broadcast about "Free Lunch" and I'll be writing about it, along with some other books and videos having to do with crony capitalism and consumerism. Essentially, more and more, fewer and fewer people are living better and better - off the spoils of the lower, lower middle and middle classes. We pay our taxes into what are essentially government-subsidized scams.
For a start, avoid "big box" stores. They get breaks that are robbing our communities of roads, firehouses, libraries and schools, as well as running small businesses out. The other bad one is sports franchises and sports stadiums. WHo pays? Alot of people don't even attend yet still they pay. THink of who used to own the Texas Rangers.
That statement is already illogical and impossible to accomplish. How many progressives that you know own stock in Fox to dump?
I don't know about stock, but if there is a will there is a way.
There are plenty of ways to marginalise Faux News if the people are only willing to give it their best shot.
I know on here, on this site, we took on whoever it was trying to put out that movie on JK, and we sure as hell won, Their stocks fell big time, so it can be done if people are willing to try.
Another poll. I might warn you. I am a massive poll watcher but I need to know all the details about the polls and pollsters so take them with a grain of salt but still watch them obsessively at all times. I have to watch something since I don't watch tv or political commercials, generally. I also don't mind being polled and frequently am.
http://americanresearchgroup.com/
It wouldn't be just progressives that would own or not own Fox stocks. Ron Paul isn't a progressive anyway. He's a conservative but he's a libertarian. Conservatives only go to war to defend this country, in the original formulation, and do not like big government, so are against social programs, for the most part.
It wasn't just the Fox shares that were involved. It was supposed to be a boycott of all Fox sponsors. Even the threat of a boycott can have an effect.
I think Paul and Kucinich are being left out and that it is an example of not-a-democracy.
Rossi,
We went after the advertisers on that network (St Clair Network) and their advertisers pulled their ads. Then that caused the stock to tumble.
And we still fight those networks by telling people that Fox is Fake. And finally people are understanding. But in terms of hurting them financially, it's the Republicans who owned the stock in it--even the Paul supporters, because it suited their purpose to have that network. But now that it doesn't suit their purpose, they can dump the stock causing financial distress.
But I still liken it to the McDonald's analogy. I can go tell people that McD's uses rehydronated oils, their animals suffer, they have minimum wage employees who do this or that...and maybe some will listen and stop going. But the difference I and we make is a drop in the bucket compared to the investers who prop up sales and advertise there and so on...
What I Told My Sons About Last Night
The instant Barack Obama is elected president.
That instant, the world will look at us differently.
Over the last seven years, it's often been hard to be filled with national pride. It required a lengthy explanation: "I love my country, but hate what my government is doing. I'm proud to be an American, but not proud of things happening in the name of America."
Well, I have never been prouder to be an American than I was last night. Watching Obama's speech took me back to my childhood in Chicago, going downtown with my mother to take part in civil rights demonstrations.
Last night, I was the parent, explaining to my sons that they were witnessing a groundbreaking moment in the history of our country. A moment filled with promise, and hope, and the power to remake America's tattered image in an instant. The instant Barack Obama is elected president. That instant, the world will look at us differently.
I can't wait.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-emanuel/what-i-told-my-sons-about_b_79896.html
Kangaroo said::January 4, 2008 6:26 PM
It was beautiful to watch. And now that he has a REAL chance, everything is subject to change.
Can you imagine it happening with the world watching on, Man just Obama taking the White House would take away so much of the Ugly feelings for America around the world, and knock Osama and the Terrorists on their asses big time. They won't have Georgie to feed hatred around the world, to help them, bringing more terrorists into the fold.
But the difference I and we make is a drop in the bucket compared to the investers who prop up sales and advertise there and so on...
I understand that, but we need to try sparrow, we can't just say, it can't be done.
nmp - there's no doubt that there's a media blackout on Edwards. Every headline I saw after the Iowa caucus was about Obama (1st) and/or Hillary (3rd). Within the article - in a list was Edwards (2nd). I can't believe it. These are papers all over the world - even here in Australia.
If Obama and/or Edwards get anywhere in the primaries they will have worked easily twice or thrice as hard as all of the others. Edwards won't spend anywhere near as much as the others. Hillary's spending is obscene. Just shows what obsessive greed for power is willing to shell out. This in itself should make voters beware. The Edwards blackout is a disgrace. But so is the blackout on all the other candidates. I only heard of Kucinich and Biden here on the dcp, although I did see some of the others interviewed on the News Hour. The media is only interested in celebrity.
Looks like we are back.
oh good - it seems like we are in business again
Paul Supporters Fight Back-- Dump Fox News Stock Intent on Sending it Tumbling
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Paul Supporters Fight Back-- Dump Fox News Stock Intent on Sending it Tumbling
by Rob Kall
Striking back at Fox News for leaving him out of a debate in New Hampshire, Ron Paul supporters have dumpe
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Fox News supports HIllary and, who on the Republican side...?
oh that's right, Rudy G.. I think I heard some where that Fox News and Rudy's rise were simultaneous and symbiotic.
I was happy to see that ABC Australia had a headline that named only Edwards and his success. After the blackout that seemed to be, this was good to see his name actually in a positive headline.
The eventual winner will replace Mr Bush, who is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7173183.stm
gee, Bush has never let a little bit of paper called a constitution stand in the way for getting everything his criminal heart desires.
I'm not sure if Dwahzon fixed the blog or if it had been a server problem. So a big thanks to Dwahzon or whoever helped get the blog back online.
Regarding the DCP2...another big thanks to Dwahzon for setting it up. It is really great to do all these new things with it.
Now back to my regular commenting...
Rossi and Nmp...
Oh. I don't say it can't be done! But what I do say is that we shouldn't say, "Progressives can learn from this..." when clearly the progressives and the activists are practically beating their head against a brick wall to keep fighting.
They're getting arrested. They're getting the crap beat out of them by the capital police. They have fought to get impeachment on the table, to stop the FEC from their crooked elections, and to stop the FCC from more media consolidation. They've fought against torture, an occupation, and they've fought to even get people in DC to listen about what WE the PEOPLE need out here!
So I'm not saying we shouldn't fight. I'm just saying that a snippy comment against progressives doens't cut it for me. I KNOW what is happening out in the 'blog world' and how people are feeding their own. So perhaps, the lesson isn't what progressives should do--ie dump stock--but the lesson should be to work together--teamwork!--and not opt to hold the spotlight on yourself or your friends only.
I found lots of 'goodies' while offline.
President Obama will you prosecute Bushco?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/5/15551/21708/37/431173
O'Rielly roughs up Obama's aid and former Kerry aid, Marvin Nicholson.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/oreilly-involved-in-shoving-match-at-obama-event/
Nice to be back on-line
Woz
Obama and Clinton have pretty equal funding, both obscene amounts. Both have to have creepy people on their side to compete. Edwards and McCain are opting for government matching so can only raise $45 million and wouldn't get those funds unless they last til March. Huckabee had much less money than Romney but now donations are pouring in. Alot of money sits on the sidelines or some wealthy donors hedge their bets by contributing $4600 to a couple of different candidates.
I predict McCain will win in New Hampshire but I hope not as if he is the best they can do, they're sick. On our blog I recommended that Independents vote Obama if they're lefty and Ron Paul if they're righty but never McCain, who recommends staying in Iraq for another 100 years. Huckabee is the darling of the religious set and Romney of the business set so they will be forever at war. Guiliani will be hoping to last til Florida. Would love to see him knocked out too.
Clinton has more than twice as many superdelegates as Obama but there are more delegates from the caucusses and primaries combined so it's still a fluid race, I mean we don't vote for almost a year! I do think Edwards and Kucinich (and even Gephart in 2000) didn't get too far yet because they're pro-labor and in an era of multinationals and globalization that is an unpopular position with business. That's also why I think immigration is just a wedge issue. If big business needs foreign laborers, they get them. I am surprised the Democrats even got Minimum Wage through and it seems people were too busy bitching because they didn't impeach Bush/Cheney or end the war to even notice.
I hate infighting so that's why 2006-present was interminable and election year primaries are even worse. I am enjoying seeing my son so excited about Obama but I can't jump on til he wins more primaries and proves his viability because I have turned from an idealist to a pragmatist over the years.
I'm sorry about the long sentences. I know there were a few people who used to skip over all my posts and I know who they were.
Anyone watching the debate?
Did Hillary lose her cool?
Not me, nmp! I find you rock solid.
Fe called earlier tonight and we reminisced about NH four years ago--FREEZING--and agreed that it is actually nice to be occasionally inspired by a candidate without the feeling that the heart and stomach are twisting when one of them is criticized.
We all fought so many battles in 03/04. I miss JK and THK, but I do not miss the trolls and the stupid people and the lies and the f***ing media. I miss the passion of that community (many still here), but not the management of it!
Ah well, I feel like a granny on the porch, rocking away and remembering for the young 'uns.
John Edwards just gave the most impassioned answer in a debate I think that I have ever heard from a major candidate.
As a mathematician friend pointed out, Huckabee won Iowa with nearly 36,000 votes.
Hillary lost Iowa, and came in 3rd, with 29% of the vote. A projected 220,000 people turned out to vote in the Democratic caucuses, meaning Hillary got 29% of those voters, or an estimated 63,800 - nearly twice the number of votes that Huckabee got. (Actually, the Des Moines Register's latest numbers show Hillary getting just over 67,000 votes)
So our 3rd place candidate beat their first place candidate by almost a factor of two!
WE NEED TO GET OUT THE YOUNG VOTE AGAIN AND AGAIN!
Huckabee played "Fortunate Son" at a campaign rally - did he do it innocently or ironically - who knows?!!
By the way, Malkin, Limbaugh etc. are freaking about Huckabee because he is not their kind of evangelical. Coulter even ignored him completely and rehashed last year's antiKwanzaa column, even though that is two weeks old.
I predict McCain will win in New Hampshire, even though he wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years or maybe 1000. He has Lieberman at his side. How repulsive.
Obama and Clinton are neck and neck in New Hampshire and he has climbed 10 points average in two days.
Any good recaps of the debates?
Karen
I do not miss that kind of sensation - the gut wrenching and knife twisting. I am surprised I got involved again after the days of McCarthy and McGovern and Hart, but Bush was so heinous & the Kerrys were/are cool.
Nice though to have waited this time. There will be a time to jump in and for me it was not the primary wars.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/4/23284/58312/340/430870
Edwards is a good debater. He should be. He's a lawyer. So many people I know support him so they are going through a wringer. I like him but I just .. can .. not .. will .. not get excited this year. I admit I got a little twinge of .. something reading on the front page of the New York Times about how some blacks who had waited to see how Obama would do were daring to get excited. It said he was running a different campaign than Jackson or Sharpton in that he happened to be black vs race being a big deal and race should NOT be a big deal.
I did/do like the idea of a woman president and I love having a woman governor and two women Senators in WA. HOWEVER, being a woman is not good enough - look at Condi. Remember Maggie Thatcher. Bad policy cannot be excused. Yet due to sexism and the glass ceiling it's hard to wait so long for a woman president. We shall see. What I do not want is a Republican white male.
I'm not getting excited either. I was going to work for Edwards, but I backed away early on, once I found out that I didn't have the energy to go through another 15-18 month marathon.
Bert has done some sort of linear regression with candidate experience and found an inverse correlation with caucus position.
http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/silenced_majority_portal/2008/01/the-next-presid.html
What a nerd!
He needs to be on your nerd video!
Sparrow
He is totally a nerd!
Ok my American politico experts:
What's a progressive? Am I one????
I know what a nerd is and I'm sure I'm not one.
What's a Liberal (again-sorry)? Here I would be shattered to ever ever be called a liberal.
And dwahzon - if you did the magic and got us reconnected - thankyou!! I was going through withdrawals here.
It should be illegal for temperatures to go above the forecast tops! Damn. 29 again - so far and it's only early.
huh? Romney wins Wyoming caucuses. ????? According to ABC. Is he the only one in Wyoming for a caucus? I didn't hear about that one.
Wyoming is a state with very low population and few delegates so it didn't get much play. It's where Cheney is from. Unfortunately, each state gets two Senators regardless of population, and the the number of Congresspersons is proportional to population. Therefore, a state like California has the same number of Senators as a state like Wyoming. But for President, like I said, a state like Wyoming wouldn't have many delegates and it's also an overwhelmingly Republican state, except that most of the west is starting to "purple up" a little, it's said.
I think "liberal" and "progressive" overlap but "progressive" is a newer term, because in the Reagan era, "liberals" were demonized by Republican framing. I am a "proud liberal" and alot of my friends consider themselves "progressive" which I've been told encompasses both liberal Democrats and Greens etc. I'd rather be a "liberal" and I love to see an elderly person with a "Proud Liberal" lapel button.
It's strange to cross the border to Canada and people are not wearing lapel buttons nor do their cars have bumper stickers. Here we are so polarized and also conditioned to think in terms of visual advertising.
Sparrow, it rained here some today, but right now it is not.
Even so it is pitch black outside and 65 degrees.
If it were not such a beautiful night I would be highly disturbed.
thanks again nmp - I've been through this one before. Here in Australia, GWB would be a Liberal. And I don't come close to that!! Howard's party is the Liberal Party.
There's not one good thing about that party.
I'm sorry about the long sentences. I know there were a few people who used to skip over all my posts and I know who they were.
Not me either
What's a Liberal (again-sorry)? Here I would be shattered to ever ever be called a liberal.
=======
We're definitely LIBERALS here woz
We are just have friking flash flooding, coming home cars where under water nearly to their roofs, darn I nearly went off the road coming through some of the water.
State GOP withdraws as FOX debate partner
Source: NH Union LeaderManchester – The New Hampshire Republican Party has quit "with regret" as a co-sponsor of tomorrow night's nationally televised GOP forum on FOX News.
The 8 p.m. event at Saint Anselm College -- the last debate before Tuesday's primary -- became controversial when FOX refused to include Ron Paul.
http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=State+GOP+withdraws+as+FOX+debate+partner&articleId=fecf75e6-240c-4ef4-80f0-637736adf6fd
I was also going to say woz that Obama is riding high with 100 million, which is obscene, when children are dying without health care, ect, ect, ect.
To me Liberal has a literal definition.
I will be as LIBERAL with your rights as you are with regards to my rights.
A liberal is willing to allow a free man his freedom.
Secret Service Restrains Out-Of-Control O'Reilly
shooting--was screaming at Obama National Trip Director Marvin Nicholson "Move" so he could get Obama's attention, according to several eyewitnesses. "O'Reilly was yelling at him, yelling at his face," a photographer shooting the scene said.
O'Reilly grabbed Nicholson's arm, said "move" and shoved him, another eyewitness said. Nicholson, who is 6'8 said O"Reilly called him "low class."
Secret Service agents came after O'Reilly pushed Nicholson and the agents flanked O'Reily.
Read more here.
O'Reilly & Obama
Hey there girlfriend. love what your doing to the house.
Ailing 9/11 Workers Confront Giuliani In New Hampshire
Good for them!!!!
Rudy Giuliani abandons 9/11 heroes
Here's a really good primer of Liberal/Conservative in American politics, with examples and origins. As far as I know, it's pretty right on.
http://www.balancedpolitics.org/ideology.htm
Thanks for writing about Marvin Nicholson and O'Reilly and providing the link. I wrote about it at our blog because Marvin is a very good guy and I met him several times when John Kerry came. It was by talking to Marvin and explaining who I was that I was able to meet John Kerry several times, talk to him and be photographed with him. Marvin was just exceptional, loyal, kind, friendly, dedicated etc. It's good to know he's working with Obama now. I put a bunch of links about Marvin with our little story and of course there was one NewsMax one who dissed him, obviously jealous, making fun of him and his work with Kerry etc. O'Reilly is part of that crowd (NewsMax etc.) Got to hand it to Marvin for not punching O'Reilly. Of course, it looked better for Obama if he didn't. That O'Reilly/Falafel boy is a hothead and shouldn't be any where near a camera let alone a candidate.
No way kangaroo - in the dcp I guess I must be a liberal - but certainly not in Australia! I shudder at the thought of it.
My middle initial is L - for Liberal.
It fits like a tight t-shirt.
http://www.balancedpolitics.org/ideology.htm
Wow! That must have been one helluva debate! They are definitely on a totally different road.
glad you got home roo. I hope it dries up soon but I think there's worse to come.
OMG. Isn't Ghouliani (thanks Christy) disgusting? The 9/11 workers, the vets - all - out in the cold. No one wants to know. A bloody disgrace!
nmp, since I first came to this blog in November 2006 I've looked to you for your explanations. I've needed them. You cleared up many an issue.
And it was good to see the post at dailykos about President Obama, will you bring legal action against GWB? I've been asking that question here - twice. At least I'm not alone in that thought. And hope. Hillary couldn't bring action if she became president - too much baggage - it would be seen as payback; sour grapes. His appalling crimes would be trivialised and Clinton's indiscretions made much of once again. And once again GWB would laugh off into the sunset whilst his victims grow ever colder under the earth and under bridges.
No - Hillary cannot win the nomination. Surely. Please.
Ok - I looked at balancedpolitics.org nmp and roo. I wear a big L too - for LEFT. That I can handle. I cannot associate myself with the likes of John Howard.
Am I the first one awake this morning?
Ok. So GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!!! (Wake up and smell the coffee!)
Just to add a little laughter to your day, here's an article I discovered on the O'Reilly attacks Marvin rumble. Enjoy!
NOW...that type of action from their own 'base' will cause Fox to fumble.
John Edwards on the debate last night:
Woz, Rossi, Christy, and nmp,
I have a difficult time getting my head wrapped around the international ideas of 'liberal' or 'conservative' and which party is which. Sorry, but I just don't understand why Thacher was bad. I'm sure someone explained it to me, but I guess I just tend to think that she did some things 'bad' and some things 'good'.
Same with the French politics. Maybe I'm just not decisive enough to know that one side or the other is doing the right or wrong stuff.
It's just not as clear to me. That's one reason why I feel that our current American system of corporatists and Republicans is soooooo bad that even I get it, so it must be really bad!!!
Christy,
It's foggy here (this morning) and it's suppose to be 45 degrees today. It was raining this morning.
However, we had a foot of snow on the ground next week, so for me, it's the perfect time to go out and play in the snow! I may just grab my cross country skis or the sled and play in the snow while it melts.
THAT is the ONLY TIME I can ever enjoy the snow! When it's above 35 and it's like a beautiful spring day.
So it's January, right? Well, I know we've had warm up days before in January. So I'm sure by next week it will be below zero and I will be crying in my winter wonderland.
Carol,
I only watched snippets of the Dem