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ancianita
ancianita's Journal
ancianita's Journal
November 26, 2021
COP 26 Coalition's Vijay Prashard Kicks Some Colonizer Ass Re Climate "Work" and "Cost"
Start 00:29
November 23, 2021
Tell it, Reverend Barber!
https://twitter.com/RevDrBarber/status/1462781374893633536
I want to remind the White House to remember that scripture says, "Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of the their rights and make women and children their prey..."
In every battleground state, if just 20% of poor and low wealth people who have not voted would vote, and be organized together, they could determine every election in this country. That is the sleeping giant that they are literally afraid of...
Mr. President, we want you to succeed and we will stand with you but we need you to fight against the filibuster because the filibuster is being used to fight against us and to bring down the democracy....
You've met with the senators, you 've met with the corporate leaders, now meet with us who make this country run. We need you to understand that something is happening that is trying to deny people the right to vote and deny living wages, to deny the provisions in your own Build Back Better Program. It's all connected, it's not separated...
Republican extremists like McConnell changed the filibuster to put Supreme Court justices on the bench for life, Mr. President.
Now they and two Democrats are using the filibuster to destroy and undermine the life of this democracy and the daily needs of people.
There are three infrastructures -- there is the infrastructure of our daily lives... our democracy... our bridges... technology. And we don't want some of it. We demand all of it.
Mr. President, do you realize that if these plans get passed at the state level, 56 million Americans who used processes the last time in 2020, would be denied their right to vote or their vote would be supprressed... we better understand, this effort is not just an attack on black folk, this is not just Jim Crow, .... it is an attack on the progressive voice in this country. And we have to decide: Not On Our Watch.
The filibuster's being used to block policies that would lift from the bottom... 73 million of the 140 million poor and low wealth people in this country are women?
The filibuster is being blocked by the Chamber of Commerce. And the Chamber of Commerce is also blocking $15 living wages... we need to understand the unholy connection between money and greed and denial of the right to vote.
Mr. President, it's time for you to use all your weight... of the presidency. And if you do the American people will reward you with votes. But if you don't and let them stall your agenda, it will depress the electorate.
Mr. President, it's time to fight.
The filibuster is not constitutional. So you did not swear to uphold it. But you did swear to uphold equal protection under the law for all people. Mr. President, it's time to stand up.
And lastly ... this is a coward filibuster. Even Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond wouldn't use this kind of filibuster... where you hide in an office ... you [Mr. President] can't stand for it because you're not a coward.
It's time to have the fight now while Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. Because if the two senators in your party want to switch, let 'em do it now while Pelosi still has the House...
The filibuster was used to block anti-lynching ... women's suffrage ... labor laws ... civil rights laws ... equal employment opportunity commission ... the Consumer Protection Agency ... The filibuster was used to block the protection of women's health from corporate interference, but the men wanted to keep Viagra in the bill.
There is an unholy alliance between racism and sexism and classism and the pornographic sums of money behind the filibuster, and Mr. President, it's time to stop the cowards from controlling and undermining the country.
21 states with the fewest residents that make up only 11% of the total population can filibuster the whole country. That is not what democracy looks like.
When John Lewis and Martin Luther King were on that bridge, at the end of it, Martin said something, that we very seldom lift up ... this is what he said to Johnson and to the nation and we need to understand this. My brother said this is not just a black issue -- don't you make it that small, don't marginalize this.
Dr. King said, "The threat -- listen, now -- of the free exercise of the ballot by the poor Negro and the poor white masses is what created the segregated society.
The white Southern aristocracy is afraid of poor whites and poor blacks and Latinos coming together.
Because if they can come together and vote they will change the economic architecture of this nation.
That's the fear.
And guess what. We're coming. Like it or not, we're coming. Like it or not, we't not going to stop.
We're going to challenge the president, we're going to challenge the Senate or anybody in our way.
Because the right time to do right is right now! Our voting rights, our voice, our power, our strength, our ability.
We will not be filibustered! Not now! Not ever! Not now! Not ever! Not now! Not ever!
-----------
Amen amen, Reverend Barber!! America hears you! May President Biden hear you, also!
Rev. William Barber, II: Mr. President...
Tell it, Reverend Barber!
https://twitter.com/RevDrBarber/status/1462781374893633536
I want to remind the White House to remember that scripture says, "Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of the their rights and make women and children their prey..."
In every battleground state, if just 20% of poor and low wealth people who have not voted would vote, and be organized together, they could determine every election in this country. That is the sleeping giant that they are literally afraid of...
Mr. President, we want you to succeed and we will stand with you but we need you to fight against the filibuster because the filibuster is being used to fight against us and to bring down the democracy....
You've met with the senators, you 've met with the corporate leaders, now meet with us who make this country run. We need you to understand that something is happening that is trying to deny people the right to vote and deny living wages, to deny the provisions in your own Build Back Better Program. It's all connected, it's not separated...
Republican extremists like McConnell changed the filibuster to put Supreme Court justices on the bench for life, Mr. President.
Now they and two Democrats are using the filibuster to destroy and undermine the life of this democracy and the daily needs of people.
There are three infrastructures -- there is the infrastructure of our daily lives... our democracy... our bridges... technology. And we don't want some of it. We demand all of it.
Mr. President, do you realize that if these plans get passed at the state level, 56 million Americans who used processes the last time in 2020, would be denied their right to vote or their vote would be supprressed... we better understand, this effort is not just an attack on black folk, this is not just Jim Crow, .... it is an attack on the progressive voice in this country. And we have to decide: Not On Our Watch.
The filibuster's being used to block policies that would lift from the bottom... 73 million of the 140 million poor and low wealth people in this country are women?
The filibuster is being blocked by the Chamber of Commerce. And the Chamber of Commerce is also blocking $15 living wages... we need to understand the unholy connection between money and greed and denial of the right to vote.
Mr. President, it's time for you to use all your weight... of the presidency. And if you do the American people will reward you with votes. But if you don't and let them stall your agenda, it will depress the electorate.
Mr. President, it's time to fight.
The filibuster is not constitutional. So you did not swear to uphold it. But you did swear to uphold equal protection under the law for all people. Mr. President, it's time to stand up.
And lastly ... this is a coward filibuster. Even Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond wouldn't use this kind of filibuster... where you hide in an office ... you [Mr. President] can't stand for it because you're not a coward.
It's time to have the fight now while Nancy Pelosi is Speaker. Because if the two senators in your party want to switch, let 'em do it now while Pelosi still has the House...
The filibuster was used to block anti-lynching ... women's suffrage ... labor laws ... civil rights laws ... equal employment opportunity commission ... the Consumer Protection Agency ... The filibuster was used to block the protection of women's health from corporate interference, but the men wanted to keep Viagra in the bill.
There is an unholy alliance between racism and sexism and classism and the pornographic sums of money behind the filibuster, and Mr. President, it's time to stop the cowards from controlling and undermining the country.
21 states with the fewest residents that make up only 11% of the total population can filibuster the whole country. That is not what democracy looks like.
When John Lewis and Martin Luther King were on that bridge, at the end of it, Martin said something, that we very seldom lift up ... this is what he said to Johnson and to the nation and we need to understand this. My brother said this is not just a black issue -- don't you make it that small, don't marginalize this.
Dr. King said, "The threat -- listen, now -- of the free exercise of the ballot by the poor Negro and the poor white masses is what created the segregated society.
The white Southern aristocracy is afraid of poor whites and poor blacks and Latinos coming together.
Because if they can come together and vote they will change the economic architecture of this nation.
That's the fear.
And guess what. We're coming. Like it or not, we're coming. Like it or not, we't not going to stop.
We're going to challenge the president, we're going to challenge the Senate or anybody in our way.
Because the right time to do right is right now! Our voting rights, our voice, our power, our strength, our ability.
We will not be filibustered! Not now! Not ever! Not now! Not ever! Not now! Not ever!
-----------
Amen amen, Reverend Barber!! America hears you! May President Biden hear you, also!
November 16, 2021
Is it possible that a dirty dozen are shaping up for future bipartisan votes?
These R's voted with Democrats twice across three votes in both houses --
1. the electoral vote confirmation (17);
2. contempt of congress for Bannon (9),
3. the infrastructure spending bill (17).
I've got my hopes pinned on the Build Back Better Act, the For The People Act, or the John Lewis Act.
Think they'd budge? 
We'd just need two to make up for SineMa(nchin).
Richard Burr, NC 1,2
Bill Cassidy, LA 1,3
Liz Cheney, WY 1,2
Susan Collins, ME 1,3
Anthony Gonzalez, OH 1,2
Jaime Herrera-Beutler, WA 1,2
John Katko, NY 1,2
Adam Kinzinger, IL 1,2
Peter Meijer, MI 1,2
Lisa Murkowski, AK 1,3
Mitt Romney, UT 1,3
Fred Upton, MI 1,2
November 12, 2021
The United States of America vs Stephen K. Bannon -- for the record
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1447811/download
November 12, 2021
Honor veterans by not making any more of them.
Thought I'd share this dag-blasted beautiful essay of thoughts woven by Wonkette's Doktor Zoom, that puts Veterans Day in heartfelt perspective through Kurt Vonnegut.
https://www.wonkette.com/fine-here-is-your-kurt-vonnegut-on-the-first-armistice-day-since-the-latest-war-ended
"Wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them." Kurt Vonnegut
Honor veterans by not making any more of them.
Thought I'd share this dag-blasted beautiful essay of thoughts woven by Wonkette's Doktor Zoom, that puts Veterans Day in heartfelt perspective through Kurt Vonnegut.
... here at home, a substantial portion of the population thinks America can only be put right by a good civil war, or at least by terrorizing school board members and the folks who run our elections. Vonnegut had an especially low opinion of such bullies, and I can't help but think he would have been absolutely astonished that vast numbers of Americans would refuse to get vaccinated against a disease that has now killed three-quarters of a million of us.
But Uncle Kurt would certainly recognize the people who are calling for dirty, anti-American books to be pulled out of the schools, and perhaps even burned. People who think their mission is moral improvement have been at war with Slaughterhouse-Five since it was published fifty-two years ago. No doubt it will eventually get caught up somewhere in the current enthusiasm for cleansing the schools, although it may be spared in some of the early rounds because it's primarily about the cruelty of war, not about America's internal cruelty to Americans or about gay people.
In 1973, Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't merely removed from library shelves in Drake, North Dakota. The school board ordered a custodian at the high school to burn all 32 classroom copies of the novel — and later, others — in the school's furnace, prompting Vonnegut to write to Charles McCarthy, the chair of the Drake School Board, to remind him that Vonnegut was an American, a veteran, a good citizen who had never been arrested, and a human being. The full text of the letter can be found here; to save space, here's a video of the letter being read by actor Benedict Cumberbatch:
But Uncle Kurt would certainly recognize the people who are calling for dirty, anti-American books to be pulled out of the schools, and perhaps even burned. People who think their mission is moral improvement have been at war with Slaughterhouse-Five since it was published fifty-two years ago. No doubt it will eventually get caught up somewhere in the current enthusiasm for cleansing the schools, although it may be spared in some of the early rounds because it's primarily about the cruelty of war, not about America's internal cruelty to Americans or about gay people.
In 1973, Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't merely removed from library shelves in Drake, North Dakota. The school board ordered a custodian at the high school to burn all 32 classroom copies of the novel — and later, others — in the school's furnace, prompting Vonnegut to write to Charles McCarthy, the chair of the Drake School Board, to remind him that Vonnegut was an American, a veteran, a good citizen who had never been arrested, and a human being. The full text of the letter can be found here; to save space, here's a video of the letter being read by actor Benedict Cumberbatch:
We can't resist copy-pasting at least this paragraph, which is every bit as true nearly forty years later:
If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don't damage children much. They didn't damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
Vonnegut did not receive a reply.
But like his spiritual forbears Mark Twain and George Orwell, Vonnegut definitely did know that people could be better, or he believed it strongly enough to keep from despair, if we would just remember that other people are indeed people...
If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don't damage children much. They didn't damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
Vonnegut did not receive a reply.
But like his spiritual forbears Mark Twain and George Orwell, Vonnegut definitely did know that people could be better, or he believed it strongly enough to keep from despair, if we would just remember that other people are indeed people...
https://www.wonkette.com/fine-here-is-your-kurt-vonnegut-on-the-first-armistice-day-since-the-latest-war-ended
November 9, 2021
President Obama's Speech at COP26
President Biden and President Obama are who we are.
Because of them, the world will follow our lead, for all our faults.
For all America's faults, we are the world's climate leaders.
November 3, 2021
The "narrow vision" is a racist vision. Let it never again prevail.
'America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy' Is a Dangerous--And Wrong--Argument
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-constitution-democracy/616949/Dependent on a minority of the population to hold national power, Republicans such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah have taken to reminding the public that “we’re not a democracy.” It is quaint that so many Republicans, embracing a president who routinely tramples constitutional norms, have suddenly found their voice in pointing out that, formally, the country is a republic. There is some truth to this insistence. But it is mostly disingenuous. The Constitution was meant to foster a complex form of majority rule, not enable minority rule.
The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.
Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The crucial difference was that a republic relied on representation, while in a “pure” democracy, the people represented themselves.
At the time of the founding, a narrow vision of the people prevailed. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. What this generation considered either a democracy or a republic is troublesome to us insofar as it largely granted only white men the full rights of citizens, albeit with some exceptions. America could not be considered a truly popular government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which commanded equal citizenship for Black Americans. Yet this triumph was rooted in the founding generation’s insistence on what we would come to call democracy.
The founding generation was deeply skeptical of what it called “pure” democracy and defended the American experiment as “wholly republican.” To take this as a rejection of democracy misses how the idea of government by the people, including both a democracy and a republic, was understood when the Constitution was drafted and ratified. It misses, too, how we understand the idea of democracy today.
Madison made the distinction between a republic and a direct democracy exquisitely clear in “Federalist No. 14”: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Both a democracy and a republic were popular forms of government: Each drew its legitimacy from the people and depended on rule by the people. The crucial difference was that a republic relied on representation, while in a “pure” democracy, the people represented themselves.
At the time of the founding, a narrow vision of the people prevailed. Black people were largely excluded from the terms of citizenship, and slavery was a reality, even when frowned upon, that existed alongside an insistence on self-government. What this generation considered either a democracy or a republic is troublesome to us insofar as it largely granted only white men the full rights of citizens, albeit with some exceptions. America could not be considered a truly popular government until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which commanded equal citizenship for Black Americans. Yet this triumph was rooted in the founding generation’s insistence on what we would come to call democracy.
The "narrow vision" is a racist vision. Let it never again prevail.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: New England, The South, Midwest
Home country: USA
Current location: Sarasota
Member since: Sat Mar 5, 2011, 12:32 PM
Number of posts: 36,055