Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens. Photo by joanneleon. January, 2010
Scrooge (1951)
First Collector: At this festive time of year, Mr. Scrooge, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute.
Ebenezer: Are there no prisons?
First Collector: Plenty of prisons.
Ebenezer: And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?
First Collector: They are. I wish I could say they were not.
Ebenezer: Oh, from what you said at first I was afraid that something had happened to stop them in their useful course. I'm very glad to hear it.
First Collector: I don't think you quite understand us, sir. A few of us are endeavoring to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.
Ebenezer: Why?
First Collector: Because it is at Christmastime that want is most keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. Now what can I put you down for?
Ebenezer: Huh! Nothing!
Second Collector: You wish to be anonymous?
Ebenezer: [firmly, but calmly] I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish sir, that is my answer. I help to support the establishments I have named; those who are badly off must go there.
First Collector: Many can't go there.
Second Collector: And some would rather die.
Eartha Kitt - Santa Baby
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News and Opinion
Washington's Austerity Plan Threatens the 50 Million Americans Already in Poverty
Our nurses see dire need every day in the ER, but the growing gulf of inequality in the US has made such deprivation ubiquitous
With a compromise on social security now unmasked – costing the elderly an estimated 6.2-7.7%, according to business writer Doug Henwood – America becomes more and more a place of poverty. Warnings that austerity begets poverty will go ignored, but the nation's deteriorating condition cannot so easily be overlooked.
No surprise, in this milieu of victimizing the most marginal, that one anniversary has received far too little attention. This year, 2012, marked the 50th anniversary of a ground breaking book, The Other America, by Michael Harrington, a searing examination of rampant poverty in the richest nation on earth. A prominent review of Harrington's work in the New Yorker magazine, reportedly brought to the attention of then President John F Kennedy, ultimately helped influence the Great Society reforms later launched by his successor Lyndon B Johnson.
But half a century later, we seem to be back to square one in this country.
Liberals Back to Giving Obama a Pass
If I were to describe a president who escalated a cruelly pointless war, raised more than twice as much campaign money from large individual donors as from small ones (including more than $27 million from lawyers and lobbyists), engaged in widespread violations of civil liberties and the Constitution, and whose most vaunted legislative achievements were to protect banks and pave the way for transfers of large amounts of money from the public treasury to private insurance companies, you would probably assume I was talking about a right-wing Republican.
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But once Obama embarked on his openly antiliberal first term as president, I began to wonder if my “redemption” analysis really explained such obsessive fealty from his militant backers. The insults directed at liberals by Obama and his inner circle — for example, the Cabinet appointments of the free-market deregulators Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s characterization of liberals as “retarded” — were so blatantly provocative that I asked myself what it is that liberals have been getting in exchange for their stalwart support. Does Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage make up for the drone strikes that have killed so many women and children in Afghanistan? Are American liberals in fact not liberal. Are they masochists? Or, as Chris Hedges has written, is the “liberal class” quite simply dead?
[...]
As Robert Caro’s latest installment of his Lyndon Johnson biography relates, a very regular, organization Democrat like Lyndon Johnson can makes good things happen if he puts his mind to it. When in the wake of the Kennedy assassination “wise” advisers told the new president to go slow on civil-rights reform — “that a President shouldn’t spend his time and power on lost causes, no matter how worthy those causes might be” — Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”
Today, we might ask what the hell are liberals for? Apparently, not a hell of a lot.
“Zero Dark Thirty” is indefensible
As a director, I respect "Zero Dark Thirty's" artistry. But its underlying message is wrong -- and dangerously so
It’s difficult for one filmmaker to criticize another. That’s a job best left to critics. However, in the case of Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, an issue that is central to the film — torture — is so important that I feel I must say something. Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow have been irresponsible and inaccurate in the way they have treated this issue in their film. I am not alone in that view. Senators Carl Levin, Dianne Feinstein and John McCain wrote a letter to Michael Lynton, the Chairman of Sony Pictures, accusing the studio of misrepresenting the facts and “perpetuating the myth that torture is effective,” and asking for the studio to correct the false impression created by the film. The film conveys the unmistakable conclusion that torture led to the death of bin Laden. That’s wrong and dangerously so, precisely because the film is so well made.
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Whatever happened on ZD30, we can be sure of one thing. The CIA PR team must be delighted, particularly those who were supporters of the EIT “Program.” As former CIA director Michael Hayden noted, “I was happy the film was in the hands of such talent.”
Boal and Bigelow, by all accounts, are frustrated that the discussion of their film has been bogged down in a political debate that they want no part of. I would say, in response, that the debate is not political at all. The subject of torture is one of the great moral issues of our time. Boal and Bigelow shouldn’t run from it. They should engage it.
After all, the goal of Osama bin Laden was to provoke Americans to undermine our most fundamental values. Why is it not important — in a film about the hunt for bin Laden — to confront whether we, as Americans, allowed ourselves, in our lust for revenge, to lose our moral, legal and political bearings instead of trying, as Tony Lagouranis, an Army interrogator, told me, “to be as good as we can be.”
Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
Wherein President Obama Begins To Explain: "How Democrats Became Liberal Republicans"
Yes, putting Social Security on the table is a betrayal.
Lady GaGa - Christmas Tree
Remember when progressive debate was about our values and not about a "progressive" candidate? Remember when progressive websites championed progressive values and didn't tell progressives to shut up about values so that "progressive" candidates can get elected?
Come to where the debate is not constrained by oaths of fealty to persons or parties.
Come to where the pie is served in a variety of flavors.
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." ~ Noam Chomsky
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