Pete Seeger (1919 – 2014)

Every summer in the 1960s, I traveled to Rhode Island - sometimes by car, motorbike, or hitchhiking – for the annual Newport Folk Festival, one of the most legendary musical events in the United States. The festival debuted many of our most celebrated performers, including Joan Baez (1959), Bob Dylan (1963), Jose Feliciano (1964), Johnny Cash, Arlo Guthrie, Linda Ronstadt, Judy Collins, and others too numerous to mention. The festival also raised from obscurity such legendary blues artists as Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Brownie McGee, and Sonny Terry. However, no performer was more loved and revered than Pete Seeger - folksinger, songwriter, activist, a founder of the Newport Folk Festival, and the conscience of my generation.  Here is a fitting farewell:

 

Things Go Dirtier With Koch

A friend from my hometown posted this on his facebook page:


"David and Charles Koch are in the process of hosting their biannual conservative training session for billionaires in Indian Wells, California. The effort this year is to raise millions to mislead the public about Obamacare and to use that information to defeat vulnerable Democratic representatives and senators in the upcoming mid-term elections. They have rented out the entire Hotel Esmerelda (558 rooms), closed the restaurants to the public for three days, and shut down the recreational facilities (see the picture). They have also surrounded the grounds and nearby golf course with telephone laden security guards, all dressed in black (see my new friend). It was truly eerie watching this unfold."


If anyone can refute this, feel free to do so.  But I don't think anyone will.




"Though the donors will funnel tens of millions of dollars into the election this year, they will not have to disclose a single cent. Using an elaborate array of foundations, nonprofits, and other legal entities, the Koch network sponsored bus tours, attack ads, think tanks, and hired Tea Party organizers to shape the midterm elections two years ago. 

Now it appears they are expanding the effort. The most that the public knows about these meetings has been culled from leaked audio tapes, reporting from journalists like Ken Vogel, and from an invitation I exclusively reported back in October of 2010. The document I posted over a year ago explained that during the meetings, strategy is discussed, from legislative campaigns to judicial elections, and money is raised from an assortment of executives from the oil, banking, manufacturing, and real estate industries." --SOURCE



Now what was all that whining about we hear from the GOOPers about George Soros?

Do they really know nothing about the conservative corporatist fascists plotting in their own backyards to forever alter our democracy?  The low-information voters were fed the lie that it is President Obama who would "fundamentally change" America, while, covertly, the billionaire Koch brothers are doing that very thing.  The Koch brothers cynically turn us against each other, while plotting to buy up every legislator they can to make this country into their own private empire.  It won't matter who the president is.  America will belong to the Kochs.

Subway Partners with Michelle Obama, Sincerely Ignorant respond with Hate

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."--Martin Luther King Jr.

Conservatives have gone rabid yet again and focused their animus on Michelle Obama. So what has them foaming at the mouth this time?

Last week, the Subway Restaurant chain announced on its Facebook page that it was joining First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign, and teaming up with the Partnership for a Healthier America. Nothing shocking in this partnership; Subway has offered healthy alternatives to fries and burgers for years. 

We've been bemoaning the fattening of America for at least the last decade, with a particular focus on the increasing obesity of America's children and adolescents. According to the CDC, childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years. So the addition of Subway's support to an initiative to provide information about eating healthy and to encourage all of us to make healthier food choices seems like a great idea unless you're a mad dog conservative. They're out in full force on Subway's Facebook page, decrying Subway's joining the First Lady's campaign against childhood obesity and vowing to take their business elsewhere. 

It's their right to do so, and I'd be the last person to insist that anyone is obligated to support any business. What I have a problem with is their racist insults directed at the First Lady and the President. The comments comparing Mrs. Obama to cows and apes, the comments denigrating her intelligence, the comments calling her a traitor to her country. Then there's Regine Wilson who calls the First Lady "ghetto trash," and Judy Stewart who can't seem to recall how to spell the First Lady's given name and calls her "Mooshell." (public comments, no expectation of privacy, ladies). Of course, Regine and Judy aren't the only ones using disparaging terms to refer to Mrs. Obama. They are joined by a chorus of the radically hateful. Hate feeds off hate.

I can only assume that the loony bin conservatives who are having conniption fits at the idea of the First Lady advocating for a healthier America felt that the Subway Facebook was too limited a forum, so they created their own page: "I Reject Michelle Obama and Subway." Read at your own risk; it's vile, contemptible, racist, and filled with stupidity.

What truly disgusts and offends me is that these lunatic, ignorant fools who are too worthless to even shine her shoes don't give a damn that they are not only insulting the First Lady but every African-American in this country. I have heard this type of crap my entire life. I'm long past childhood and I'm immune to words of ignorance causing me personal hurt any more, but it still pisses me off that black children in this country are regularly exposed to this type of sh*t. 

I grew up in an era where racial epithets and denigration of black people was common. Those who dared object risked being taught a lesson, from losing a job, to being dragged out of your house and beaten, to being killed. I learned as a child to keep my mouth shut and my eyes down because even a glance at a white person could be interpreted as being insolent.  

I had hoped that this country, my country, was beyond overt racism, but since Obama's election the ignorant have risen and feel free to to insult both the President and the First Lady with the most vile of racial insults and it's as if we have stepped back into an era that should have long been dead and buried. I have no patience for such people and quite frankly they're not worthy to shine my shoes either.

I vent here, using my words as a weapon, so that I can resist the impulse to slap the first white person that pisses me off on any given day with nonsensical talk of how they are victims of reverse racism and how President Obama has divided this country when it comes to race. I try to keep my anger and disgust down to a simmer rather than letting it come to a full, rolling boil. I work hard to ensure that my Aunt Dorothy's prediction fails to come true and my head doesn't explode one day because I think too much.

Mitt and Vlad sitting in a tree, K I S S I N G

Mitt Romney has a very large man-crush on Vladimir Putin because Mittens sez Vlad is better at being preznit than Obummer.

Comrad Mitt!  Is that a kalashnikov in your magic underwear or are you just happy to see me?

Loser Romney, who, incidentally, lost the presidential race to Obama, told NBC that the Russian leader “outperformed” the president “time and time again on the world stage.”  Did we mention Willard lost miserably to Barack Hussein Obama?  Well, in case you didn't know.  He did.

Excellent Mittens! But you, of the off-shore bank accounts, "outperform" every great Pay-Tree-OT in praising the former head of the COMMUNIST KGB over our American President.

BTW, Vlad blows you some of his bestest поцелуи!

Mittens' Commie hero said this about those icky gaiii Olympic athletes coming to Sochi:




Gays Are Welcome at Olympics as Long as They ‘Leave Kids Alone’


In addition, Vlad announced that clergy members (sorry) of the Catholic Church are also welcome as long as they... well you can finish it, I can't.  I'm very busy watching my bananas ripen.

Oh dear.  If the Gee-Oh-Pee-ers aren't tongue-kissing ex-Commie KGBers (Hello Mittens!), their gazillionaire supporters are writing cri de coeurs to the Wall Street Journal, telling the world that the 99 percenters are being meany Nazis to them. 

Tom Perkins sez he and his fellow gazillionaires are suffering just like the Jews and the millions who died horrible deaths by the Hitlerites.  Poor Tom Perkins!  His life is turning into one big Kristallnacht!

A Brief History of Misogyny in the GOP Universe

Huckabee's 'Uncle Sugar' Comment? Translation: 'Uncle Inquisitor'

According to Mike Huckabee: Women 'Cannot Control Their Libido' Without The Government.




Here is a shamelessly hypocritical exercise in projection: Mike Huckabee has opposed equal pay protection for women, opposed a woman’s right to chose, supports state-sanctioned vaginal probes to shame and humiliate women, supports an employers' right to veto contraception and healthcare benefits for women, and has made insulting remarks about rape and birth control. Time for Mike to SHUT THE HUCK UP!

Today, Louis Gohmert pyled on with this comment: Government Lures Single Moms into Servitude with Welfare. His comment appears to be part of a larger Republican offensive to reverse their flagging fortunes. Except for this: His and the Huckster's counter offensive is patently offensive to women and more noxious than unfettered flatulence.

Since yesterday, another pale male from the Gee-Ohh-Pee has dribbled onto the public toilet seat: Rick Santorum Defends Huckabee. A devout Catholic, Frothy is no expert on Catholic women.  Why?  An estimated 98% of Catholic women of childbearing age use contraception. What Huckabee, Santorum, and other social conservatives are trying to accomplish is to turn government into an enforcer of religious doctrine. Has any spokesperson for the Gee-Ohh-Pee read the anti-establishment clause lately!  Uncle Sugar or Uncle Inquisitor? Funny how you can always re-frame an argument.

Glenn Beck haz a sad.

My blog, Progressive Eruptions, has written about conservative, self-identified "recovering dirt bag" , Glenn Beck, and his crazy rants that were featured every night on FAUX NOOZ.

Now, in a cynical attempt to sound penitent (for gawd only knows what financial advantage) he admits that his harangues and histrionics were divisive and that they tore the country apart.

Beck is a phony.  

Always was and always will be.  I remember listening to his corrosive screeds on AM radio when I lived in Florida. I never thought a blathering nincompoop like him would ever attract a national audience.

But, FAUX NOOZ. 

That cable station gave him a platform to spread his idiotic conspiracy tirades to galaxies of unthinking zombies.

Now he's sorry.

Cry me a "you-know-what-kind-of-" river, Glenn.  Now go away. And stay there.

"Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck, now an older and wiser and richer man, told Fox News' Megyn Kelly on Tuesday that he regrets having "played a role, unfortunately, in helping tear the country apart" during his tenure with the network. Beck was with Fox from shortly before the 2008 election until 2011, during which time he became notorious for his encouragement of the Tea Party and his far-reaching conspiracy theories about Socialist infiltration of the Obama administration. Or, as Kelly put it in introducing Beck for her interview, Glenn "had a very successful run here at Fox News, but also became a bit of a lightning rod."

A bit! It was indeed a successful run for the parent company — until Beck's assertion that President Obama was racist and had "a deep-seated hatred for white people" prompted advertisers to pull spots from his program. 

(Later, religious groups objected to Beck's claims that social justice work was associated with Nazism.) 

 But now Beck sees the errors of his ways, understands that these excoriations weren't helpful (like when a guy who'd heard Beck's repeated attacks on the non-profit Tides Foundation was arrested on his way to shooting the place up)."

About Drone Attacks, Politics, and Joshua Black

Maybe it's something in the water down in Florida. On Monday, while most of us were celebrating the Dr. King holiday, Joshua Black, a candidate for a seat in the Florida House (District 68) tweeted that President Obama should be hanged for treason, "I'm past impeachment. It's time to arrest and hang him high."

Black subsequently tweeted denials that he called for hanging the President, insisting that he merely agreed with a tweet posted by someone else. Of course the tweet with which he agreed advocated arresting and hanging the President. He also addressed how he has been misunderstood on his Facebook page.

Mr. Black is a 31-year-old African-American. On his Twitter account he has reacted with indignation to some suggestions that the tweet in controversy is racist. Upon giving it some thought, I am willing to concede that Mr. Black's attack on President Obama, his agreement with the tweet calling for the arrest and hanging of the President, may not be based on racial animosity. Mr. Black isn't a racist; he's just an idiot.

He appears desperate to curry favor from the Republican party in the belief that he will be the Republican nominee for a seat in the Florida House for District 68. His efforts aren't working. Chris Latvala, a Republican candidate for House District 67, tweeted a response: "You aren't seriously calling for the killing of Obama are you? I know you are crazy but good heavens. U R an embarrassment." On his Facebook page, Black alleges that Florida's governor has contacted him and asked him to withdraw from the race. Black refused, "Having done nothing illegal, I will not be withdrawing from this race. If I lose, I lose, but I will not cower away." 

What elicited Black's agreement with the tweet that President Obama should be hanged? According to Black, the President is guilty of treason, a modern incarnation of Benedict Arnold (Contrary to Black's belief, Arnold was not executed; he died at the age of 60 in his own bed.) He is emphatic that the President should have a trial first, then we should hang him. Black points specifically at two drone attacks in which two American citizens, a father and son were killed, the son was 16-years-old. A sad and nasty affair, in which the father, Anwar al-Awlaki, had taken his son with him to Yemen where the father worked with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Two weeks after the father was killed in a targeted drone strike, his son was also a victim of a drone strike. The administration has stated that the son was not a target and was an unintended victim of the second attack. 

Black seems particularly concerned about what he views as Obama's criminal attacks on American citizens, and calls on Jesus as justification for killing Obama for the crime of treason. There would be a bit of dark humor in the rantings of a novice who has never before held a public office if it weren't for the Tea Party members who are gleefully celebrating Black's attack on the President, offering praise for the black man speaking out against the President and in doing so, somehow prohibiting any characterization of the rabid right's ongoing attack against the president as racist. 

I find it fascinating how there is so much outrage at the use of drones by this administration and how little outrage has been expressed in the past when the U.S. has engaged in creative methods of killing that have resulted in substantial deaths of men, women, and children. 

I don't like war, whether declared by Congress or entered into based on a lie at worst or at best, massive misinformation about nonexistent weapons of mass destruction or some other imagined threat.  People die in wars because everyone involved uses weapons to kill each other. War is about killing. Amazing how outraged people who had no problems with previous administrations killing people, including civilians, are willing to go so far as to call for the hanging of the president of the United States for alleged war crimes. Of course he is the first black president. But wait, I'm just imagining that his race has anything to do with it. 

After all, there has never been another U.S. president who ordered the military to take military action against our perceived enemy. Oops, I'm wrong. There was Truman and I'm certain that Obama's critics would also want Truman lynched. Under Truman's orders, on August 6, 1945, the United States used a massive, atomic weapon against Hiroshima, Japan. This atomic bomb, the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT, flattened the city, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Three days later, the United States struck again, this time, on Nagasaki. This was the big bang but the U.S. had been bombing cities in Japan for some time wiping out cities of 100,000 with conventional bombs. Rumor has it that subsequent Presidents ordered military actions that killed civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan. Then there were the wars prior to WWII.

War is a nasty, evil thing and by its very definition it results in deaths, hundreds of thousands of deaths. Obama didn't start this trend and he won't be the last president to order strikes that result in the deaths of civilians, the young and the old, and even American citizens who happen to be giving aid to countries that are waging terrorists attacks against the U.S.

I don't like the U.S. use of military might and I believe that we have failed to devote sufficient effort to using diplomatic channels to resolve differences among nations. I support a stronger UN with the authority to resolve disputes among disagreeing countries. 

I reiterate: I don't like war. But what I like even less are hypocrites who look for any excuse to declare that President Obama is evil personified, the anti-Christ president, all under the pretext of being appalled at his exercise of the same powers as every commander-in-chief that has preceded him. Such hypocrites aren't anti-war; they're anti-Obama. They are so shallow that they cannot bring themselves to confront their own animus toward his position as President of the United States. They get hyperactive about his use of military force as if he invented the concept. Frankly, I have more respect for the blatant racists who don't hide their beliefs. At least they're honest and I know not to waste my time on attempting to communicate with them.

As for Joshua Black, he's seeking his 15 minutes of fame. Let's hope that his moment in the spotlight is over.

Wisconsin hates workers

Thanks to Sheria for calling my attention to this one.  I've long been amused at conservatives who insist we should all get our health insurance from employers so that we lose it when we need it most, but the laugh is that these folks are the descendants of the head bashers who fought the labor movement of the last century to protect employers from having to provide any benefits at all, such as paid vacations, sick days and of course a 5 or 6 day work week.  The reason they'd prefer employer based insurance only is that it's the gateway to no insurance at all.

Of course I use the word "amusement" cynically. It seems that not only should employees not be allowed to ask "please sir may I have some more" without being thrown out in the snow, Wisconsin Republicans, Bibles in hand, think there should be no rest on the seventh day, except for Congressmen, of course.

You see, Wisconsin workers really want to work more days to make more money say Sen. Glenn Grothman of West Bend and Mark Born of Beaver Dam.  I mean, this is the land of opportunity, right?   And what's more productive of opportunity than to reduce the men, women and children of  the Dairy State to abject serfdom so these useless parasitic slugs may receive knighthoods from the lords of industry?  I mean when you're at the bottom, any direction is up. We're putting Americans on an upward path!

Are we at the point where Republican Freedom is indistinguishable from Feudalism, where Freedom is indistinguishable from Slavery?  Are we listening to people who don't believe in human rights, decency or civic responsibility -- to people who think do as you're told should be the law?

Why is America so clueless?

Bloody revenge

"Oh, my God," said Amber McGuire as she watched her father die, strapped to a table like a sacrificial victim snorting and  gasping for air for almost 25 minutes. Dennis McGuire was guilty of  the rape and murder of a pregnant woman, there's no doubt about it.  The only doubts, and there are quite a few, is whether killing him was so urgent a matter to the State of Ohio that they had to use a new method, yet untried and without any particular regard to the chances of yet another, screwed up execution or should I say, state murder.

No pig or other animal was harmed in this experiment, only a human. Since the manufacturer of the three-drug killing machine drugs refuses to sell to executioners and Doctors refuse to administer far more humane injections, it's left to the kind of loathsome creeps that manage executions to choose how to kill people and besides, as Assistant Ohio Attorney General Thomas Madden said over the objection of McGuire's lawyers that while the U.S. Constitution bans cruel and unusual punishment, "you're not entitled to a pain-free execution." Not any more than you're entitled to humane imprisonment, entitled to be protected against unwarranted search and seizure or due process these days. And apparently we like it that way. We won't give it up. We won't stop finding lame excuses for doing it.  Unusual?  Sad to say, no. Cruel?  Well not if you're angry enough 

I have no idea whether the electric chair produces severe pain.  I suspect that in some cases it does and of course it's so gruesome to observers that the very first time it was tried, the witnesses fled the scene sobbing and vomiting, but that was then. This is now.  We are a far more hard hearted country, or at least the negative pole of our polarized country is. Read any news report that allows public commentary, watch Anderson Cooper with the viewer comments crawl and you skin may begin to crawl at the bloodthirsty rage of Americans.  It's as though we were still the land of barbaric public executions cheered on by the drooling bloodthirsty multitudes.  America treasures it's rage.  I'm sick at listening to people so in love with killing that any chance for doing it legally is a necrodesiac. They want death, they want it NOW and they want it as gruesome as those effeminate, whining, WWJD bleeding heart liberals will let it be.   Mad dogs are treated with far more compassion that mad humans in Ohio. A simple injection and the dog drifts painlessly away. 

So when the family of McGuire's victim says they have forgiven them but he still has to pay, I once again have to give up on Homo Americanus. Payment after all is not punishment. the offended party is not reimbursed nor made whole and the dead remain dead no matter what you do to the man, strapped helplessly to a cross, arms spread wide for the nasty accomplices to pump him full of agony.  While America smiles at the divine bookkeeping entry.  One family feels better, another has to live with having sat by and watched the state of Ohio kill her father. Surely that makes God smile in approval, seeing his books balanced.

Only a few countries execute people.  We're taught to see those countries as barbaric tyrannies.  Statistics don't show any preventative value, we do it because we can and because it's a chance to indulge our blood lust without guilt and so may of those who try to tell us this is a Christian Nation are firm supporters of killing people in cold blood.

I've never been closer to simply getting on a boat and sailing away