What is patriotism?
A veteran asks Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke (who is challenging Sen. Ted Cruz): Do you share my frustration when NFL players kneel during the anthem?
Recorded at the August 10, 2018 at Senate campaign town hall in Houston.
Why the U.S. Should Provide Universal Basic Income
America is the richest civilization in history. Why, then, are our living standards so low compared to those of other wealthy democracies? A universal basic income would help close the income inequality gap, eliminating poverty and increasing opportunity for all Americans.
David McReynolds 1929-2018
R.I.P.:
✓ David McReynolds: Peace Movement Titan Is Gone by Chuck Fager (A Friendly Letter).
✓ David McReynolds, socialist, photographer, and lifetime WRL member, passes at 88 by Ed Hedemann (War Resistors League).
✓ David McReynolds:Socialist Peacemaker by Paul Buhle (Nonviolent Activist).
✓ A socialist presidential candidate — no, not that one — looks back by Joseph Mulkerin (The Villager).
End: Less War
The Long War has dragged on for nearly two decades, with huge losses in lives and wealth inflicted on countries suffering our attention, but also at great cost to American citizens.
In Yemen alone, for example, since the beginning of the conflict there, more than 10,000 people have been killed and at least 40,000 wounded, mostly from air raids; the collateral deaths from damage to the infrastructure (hospitals, especially) and from "non-lethal" actions such as blockades and sanctions (from starvation, cholera, etc.) is immeasurable. This is just another illegal and immoral war racking up war crimes on our tab, crimes against humanity that have gone on far too long.
And yet there is no peace movement in the United States. Neither moral outrage nor the costs to the nation in lives, in quality of life and in reputation and influence has been enough to strike a spark of resistance.
What is wrong with us?
Must read: The War on Peace by Tino Rozzo (The Dissident).
A parody by a master, and a master parodied.
A take on the great Walt Kelly by the great Wally Wood in a Mad Magazine parody of Pogo from 1961.
The President of the United States hosts bikers at the White House
Donald J. Trump tries on his tough face:
These guys are perfect. Central Casting couldn't have done a better job.
Maybe if you never call a war a war, you never have to call peace peace.
North Korea wants a peace treaty before beginning denuclearization. South Korea wants a peace treaty, period. The U.S., which conducted the war in violation of the U.S. Constitution, is still resisting.
How the U.S. Helped Prevent North Korea and South Korea From Reaching Real Peace in the 1950s by Michael Pembroke (Time)
quote unquote
Man: "Well, baby, now we're poor again."
Woman: "No, we're BROKE again. We were already poor."
-- Overheard at Santa Fe Savers check-out.
Must read: War, war and more war
The War Party, comprised of nearly all Republicans and most Democrats, manipulated by the security-industrial state and the Pentagon, the craftiest lobbying operation inside the Beltway, must be stopped. Nothing can be fixed -- infrastructure, housing, health care, poverty, social services, the environment -- until military adventurism is brought to an end.
On one matter there can be no argument: The policies that sent these men and women abroad, with their emphasis on military action and their visions of reordering nations and cultures, have not succeeded. It is beyond honest dispute that the wars did not achieve what their organizers promised, no matter the party in power or the generals in command. Astonishingly expensive, strategically incoherent, sold by a shifting slate of senior officers and politicians and editorial-page hawks, the wars have continued in varied forms and under different rationales each and every year since passenger jets struck the World Trade Center in 2001. They continue today without an end in sight, reauthorized in Pentagon budgets almost as if distant war is a presumed government action.The rest of the story:
The Pentagon’s failed campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan left a generation of soldiers with little to fight for but one another: War Without End by C.J.Chivers (New York Times).
Down-ticket
California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom has amassed a massive money pile since starting his campaign more than three years ago. His total is nearly five times that of Republican John Cox.
Newsom can't lose.
Why isn't that dough being passed along to Democrats in tight congressional races?
Ron Dellums, R.I.P.
A Real News interview with Robert Scheer, editor of Truthdig, discussing Congressman Ron Dellums, who died recently of cancer. He was elected in 1971 to represent California's 13th District and was an unrelenting warrior for peace and civil rights. He launched Vietnam war crimes investigations, stood with the Black Panthers, and he was singled out by Nelson Mandela as being integral in the US for helping to end apartheid.
"Denialism...
"...is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions. It represents the transformation of the everyday practice of denial into a whole new way of seeing the world and – most important – a collective accomplishment. Denial is furtive and routine; denialism is combative and extraordinary. Denial hides from the truth, denialism builds a new and better truth."
The rest of the story:
From vaccines to climate change to genocide, a new age of denialism is upon us. Why have we failed to understand it? Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth by Keith Kahn-Harris (The Guadian)
The rest of the story:
From vaccines to climate change to genocide, a new age of denialism is upon us. Why have we failed to understand it? Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth by Keith Kahn-Harris (The Guadian)
Talk about mixed messages
"Do you have a story to share about Santa Monica, California?" asks an ad promoting tourism to Santa Monica. "Perhaps it’s about your first visit or something memorable you experienced. Submit it for a chance to win an electric bike."
Motorized vehicles are prohibited on the municipal bike path, but
Here's what the City's code says:
"3.12.550 Bike-path and beach promenade. "(a) It shall be unlawful to ride a bicycle or to coast in any vehicle upon the Beach Promenade; bicycle riding shall be permitted along the beach bike-path, within the City limits and in those areas where the Promenade constitutes a portion of the bikeway and are otherwise permitted by sign. All persons riding bicycles on the bike-path shall comply with all lawful signs and directional markings, including, but not limited to, painted, directional arrows, bike-path route boundaries, and signs designating permissible travel lanes. "(b) It shall be unlawful to operate a pedicab upon the beach bike-path.The City, despite its recent move against Bird scooters and their ilk, is seriously deficient in its maintenance of the bike path. Segways, Vespas, etc., are routine. Signage is confusing when it isn't wrong, misleading or absent. No effort whatsoever is made to control pedestrians and dogs. And pedicabs routinely troll for customers along the bike path, blocking traffic when people get on and off.
"3.12.560 Prohibited vehicles. "In the area where bicycle riding is permitted by Section 3.12.550, no vehicle of any type shall be permitted except unicycles, bicycles, bicycles with training wheels, wheelchairs, and single-person tricycles operated by a person eighteen years of age or older."
It's a tribute to the City's pr flacks that it has a reputation as pro-bicycle and pro-pedestrian.
Something to think about.
According to the National Education Association, the average salary of teachers in U.S. public schools has declined by 4% since 2008. At the same time, according the the National Center for Education Statistics, 94% of teachers spend their own money on school supplies, at an average per teacher of $479 per school year.
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