The light will come again!
Solstice is my favorite holiday, with its assurance that spring will arrive again, even if it seems far off at this moment. When darkness is at its strongest, the tide turns and the sun begins its inevitable return. From here on out, the days slowly grow longer. It’s a powerful metaphor.
And I love the 2011 White House Holiday Card. When we were in D.C., and took a White House tour, we got to see both Bo and President Obama in person. It was great fun and a real honor. This card is warm and loving, and I hope that this holiday season, you and yours are safe and warm as well.
Grace under pressure
Not the police obviously, but the students in this video are the very embodiment of creative nonviolence. I would be proud to have them at my university, if I were the chancellor there.
It isn’t nice!
I know I’ve posted this before, but a friend reminded me of it today, and it’s perfect for N17 and the 99% movement, so here it is again.
Leaves of Grass
From the introduction, for the 99%.
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman
RIP Heavy D
A message from Anonymous to the 99%
What’s really going on
From a comment in the NYTimes:
Letter to the Peasants of America from the Top 2%,
You asked, Where did all the money and jobs go? We took the money. We can never have enough. We shipped the jobs overseas. We started international corporations where we seek out the cheapest labor and the least stringent regulations. We Invested in scams which produced nothing but debt for you.
We crashed the economy. Now Americans are just as desperate to have a low paying job as anywhere else in the world. We arranged the largest theft in history and stuck you with the bill.
We set up offshore businesses and accounts. We deposited our money in Swiss and Cayman Island banks. We bought enough politicians and judges to write the laws. We implemented free trade, free markets, low taxes for us, and no taxes for our corporations.
We used the military (you pay for) to take over any competition thatcan’t be stolen or bought. We will destroy anyone in our way.
We bought TV networks, radio stations, newspapers, and Internet providers. We propagandized our point of view to convince enough of you to vote against your own interest. We will go after civil rights, education, environmental laws, unions, Healthcare, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare …any group or law that stands in the way of us controlling the economy and government. This allows us to profit as much as possible. That’s our goal. That is all that matters.
Looking down on you.
The Top 2%
Not quite
I stole this from Think Progress, and I like it but it’s not quite right. It should be signed by the Tea Party as a whole, because that’s who is holding Boehner and our economy hostage.
What Gets Paid? You Choose
I’m very fond of little gadgets like this one at the Washington Post. It gives you the amount we’ll have if the debt limit isn’t paid, and then let’s you decide which programs get cut or not. It’s clunky in that you have to keep or defund entire programs—there’s no partial option. But it gives you a good overview of what is at stake if we default, and how much we can actually afford without borrowing.