Friday Follies: Miley's tattoos, Limbaugh's NYT joke, and other "news"

I've been thinking for a while now of launching a new feature called "Friday Follies", where each Friday I would post some silly moments of the week past. Just some nonsense to pass the time.  Nothing earth-shaking, just a little fun.

So this morning, when I opened My Google and grabbed a look at the top CNN headline, I decided I shouldn't wait any longer.  Today was the day "Friday Follies" would begin:

• Miley Cyrus Gets Tattoo No. 5  You know, there used to be a time when you could depend on Miley for some real news.

• From Bradblog:  Limbaugh Jokes about NYT Detention until he Learns about Fox Reporters in Hospital.  Okay, there's nothing funny about reporters getting beat up.  Not a thing.  But how about Limbaugh having to eat his words?  That's funny, right?

• "What in hell is this man talking about?"  Chris Matthews has taken to calling Glenn Beck 'nuts'.  No big words, no explanations.  Just 'nuts'.  And then he gets into Frank Gaffney, who might require a word a little stronger than 'nuts'.

• NYC Mayor Bloomberg ♥ Bloomberg.  “I like what I see in the mirror, and I hope everybody here does,” the mayor said. 
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• Donald Rumsfeld's new book, "Known and Unknown" came out last week.  Howard Kurtz quotes from it: 

When Rumsfeld was serving as Gerald Ford’s White House chief of staff, he asked his friend Dick Cheney to serve as his top assistant. Cheney “reminded me about a couple of arrests he had had for drinking and driving after he got out of college and was working on power lines in Wyoming.” Rumsfeld briefed the new president. “Do you think this is the guy you need for the job?” Ford asked. Rumsfeld said he did. “Then bring him aboard.” The rest, as they say, is history.

(Okay, that's not funny.)

•    And lastly, I stole this from Mario Piperni (who borrowed it from Daryl Cagle), but I plan to put it back as soon as I'm finished:

This is a shortened version because I only just thought about it this morning, but watch next Friday for another installment of FF.   I'll be on the lookout for the best of the week, and I'll put them here.  If you have any ideas for this, send them on.  It's the least you can do.  (There's a smile in there.)
   

When prosperity preachers hustle, they're making your God a shill

  "And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not."  2 Peter 2:3

Apparently it's nothing new, using God's name to make one's fortune. But with the advent of television and the internet, it's become an art form--a lucrative if predictable art form.  It goes something like this: God spoke to me just this morning and told me he would perform financial miracles for X number of His people if they'll commit X number of dollars to my anointed ministry in X amount of time. 

"Quickly, quickly", they say, "Don't even think about it!  Get out your checkbooks, max out your credit cards if you have to. Yes, you heard me right!  God says MAX them out!  Send in your next mortgage payment--have faith that it will all return to you 10-fold, 100-fold.  Do it NOW!  Operators are waiting to take your call."  (Cue the tearing up, the catch in the voice.  Say the word "MIRACLES" emphatically, sharpen the S and hold it.)

These people are bloodsuckers.  They whip up their audiences, promising prosperity just around the corner if they'll make the supreme sacrifice and send in their last dollars.  Have FAITH that God knows what he's doing. (Insert Abraham's willingness to kill his own son if God so ordered it.)  They've latched onto the con to end all cons, perfected over centuries, and still going strong.  It must be startling even to them, how easily they can get rich just by pretending that God speaks to them.  It does indeed work never-ending miracles.  For them.

They get caught in their lies, they're exposed by countless sources presenting overwhelming evidence of their scams, and still they keep a following large enough to enrich their already lavish lifestyles.

"Pastor" Mike Murdock is the leader of the pack.  Other con artist preachers look up to him for guidance.  Tell us, Mike, how do you do it?  What's your secret?  The secret, as I see it, is that he plays on the desperation of his audience and never lets up.  Quickly!  Quickly!  Operators are standing by!  He throws in a few stories not to be believed by any thinking person about the money miracles arriving at doorsteps after those with the sorriest of lives, at the end of their ropes, see their last salvation in sowing the Murdock Seed.   Now and then you see that he can barely hide his disdain for the poor folks who take him at his Word.  At other times, an itty bitty tear starts to fall.  (You can do that if you're conscience-free.)

 So here I am, just another in a long line of outraged watchers trying to show the evil in these people.  Watch and be warned.  Or not:

  An $80 Passover offering will bring seven blessings--and a Mezuzah.


Jan Crouch says, "Little women, send your little grocery money":


Eddie Long on Tithing.

The anointing never ends.  Their followers keep sending money.  What a show!


But the last laugh's on them. . .


(There.  Not much accomplished, but I feel better on this Sunday morning.  But I'm warning you:  Don't get so excited by this that you'll want to send me money.  I'll slap you silly.)

Honoring Boundless Hearts

Sarge was an idealist, a man of boundless heart, and a hard-headed businessman who from the ground up built a government program—and he was never afraid to call it just that because he disdained anti-government stereotypes—that has become an enduring force for American purpose and compassion, vastly popular at home and around the globe.
George McGovern on Sargent Shriver,  1/19/11

Two years ago today, on the day President Obama was inaugurated, I published the first entry in my blog, Ramona's Voices.  When I woke up that morning I didn't know I was going to launch a blog.  It was only after the events started that I was moved to create one more sounding board where the voices of people I admired might be heard, where their actions could be encouraged and celebrated  (and where the movements of the people who seem bent on destroying the soul of this country could be recorded and exposed).

There was just so much good will floating around that day, mingling with hope and anticipation.  My heart was full.  I saw sunshine ahead; I was sure the dark days were behind us.  It was a day to remember.

Last year, on the first anniversary of the inauguration of both the president and my blog,  I wrote "I'm not ready to write Obama off.  I'm nervous about a lot of what's been coming out of the White House this past year--I admit it.  When I saw Wall Street move in, I chewed my fingers to the nubs.  When Rahm Emmanuel became the head whip-cracker, I felt a distinct shiver up my spine.  And when Barack Obama stopped talking about labor, even as hundreds of thousands of our workers were losing their jobs every month,  I gave up any inclination I might have had to genuflect.
I keep reminding myself that the Good Man took on what amounted to a national nightmare.  There were no easy fixes, and nobody pretended there would be.  But I would have slept better this past year if only I had been able to see the president as a "people person".   Was he ever that?  I don't know.  We might have made him into our own images, taking much needed comfort in an illusion of our own making.  Maybe he is what he is.  But what is he?  After a full year of hosting him in The People's House we're no closer to knowing where he stands, or, more importantly, where he's going.
And yet. . .  And yet.  I trust him"

I knew this anniversary day was coming and that I would want to write about it, but what would I say as I stood beside Obama saying farewell to Year Two, heading into Year Three?  That all of my wishes came true?  That all of my fears were justified?  That nothing much has changed?  That I now know what kind of man my president is?

I can't say any of those things.   I am at times proud of my president, disappointed in him, enraged by his actions or inaction, fearful of the direction he is taking us.

I'm impatient and feeling increasingly impotent as I'm forced to watch more and more jobless citizens give up, more and more home-owners become homeless, more and more of the sick and dying having to give over their lives to insurance company paper-pushers.  I want the wars to end.  I want the corporate giants to finally understand the consequences and do something about their destructive practices.  I want the GOP and certain members of the Democratic Party to fulfill their obligations to the citizenry--the entire citizenry--in a time of unparalleled crisis, and act like a responsible governing body.  I want our president to be a leader of the people.

I want us to be a country of boundless hearts.  I want the people who advocate goodness and mercy to be heard, and not looked on as quaint, anachronistic know-nothings.  There is a place for this kind of talk, just as there is a place for the analyzing and dissection of every political action, left or right.  It all leads to a greater understanding, and possibly real solutions.

As I'm entering Year Three of Ramona's Voices, this is how I view my blog:  It is what it is until it no longer is.  That's the beauty of this dazzling, dizzying world called the Internet(s)--we all have a chance at putting our voices out there.  Distinct and different, interesting or not--it's an equal opportunity world.  The ultimate exercise in free speech.  What's not to love?
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Why aren't these Two Women in Jail?

In a righteous world, someone in control would watch this video and then use it as evidence in a courtroom.  Instead, because the victim is a child and the perpetrator is her mother and they're participants in a reality show, it is aired as a part of a segment and nothing happens.

It was posted on Huffington Post early yesterday but I just got it in my email a few minutes ago.  I haven't seen it talked about anywhere else.  That's why I'm posting it here.  If this isn't the most abusive kind of torture, I don't know what is.  If you think I'm overreacting, please tell me why. (And also tell me how someone could stand there and film this without doing something to intercede?  What about the other patrons?  Could nobody step forward and help this child?  My God.)

Foreclosure for Fun and Profit

There is a lovely new residential-shopping complex in Myrtle Beach called "The Market Common".  We haven't been there yet this year, but last year we walked around it a few times.  In my wildest dreams I couldn't afford anything in their shops, but honestly?  I never saw anything I would be willing to give up my entire SS check to buy.  Still, I kind of took a liking to the place, faux as it was.

But this morning I saw an article in the paper titled "Familiar Face buys Market" and was surprised to see that Market Common had been in some trouble last year.  They weren't paying their bills.  Imagine that.  Now bear in mind that I know literally nothing about high finance or luxury real estate or anything, in fact, that has to do with money in the six figures, but something about this story stinks to high heaven.

Let's see if I got this right:  Company A takes out a construction loan for $105,000,000 in order to build the place, but after a couple of years prices drop and the place isn't worth that much so somebody makes the decision to stop making payments.  The entire complex goes into default and is foreclosed.  Then the parent company of Company A goes to the same bank that brought about the foreclosure and says how about we buy it back from you for. . .oh, I don't know--$19,000,000?

The bank (JP Morgan-Chase) says okay and everybody, including the Myrtle Beach city manager, is happy.  No pain--much gain.  The Sun-News says, "The owners of the Market Common probably would have been able to continue to make payments on the loan, but chose to default because the property is no longer worth what it would cost to build, said Dan McCaffery, president of McCaffery Interests in May."

The loan, it turns out, is what's called a "non-recourse loan", which means that in case of default the bank can't come back and claim either the company's or any company employee's assets. Handy.

McCaffery said the property's value has dropped, and there were better investments than continuing to pay on the loan, despite nothing being wrong with the project.

Tom Leath, the MB city manager is thrilled:  "We are pleased that the purchaser is tied to Leucadia [the defaulter] because we think obviously they know exactly what the issue is, and they understand the market having been here a few years.  There is no learning curve with them."

Leath also told the Sun News that companies throughout the country are choosing to walk away from properties that have substantially lost value and are no longer sound investments, so this situation is not unique.

"If you look at the foreclosure as a calculated business decision," he said, "then I don't think it's odd that they got back in line to buy it back."

So. . .you know where I'm going with this, don't you?  Say I'm Joe Blow and I took out a mortgage on a house a few years ago, but now it's worth far less than I still owe on it, and I want to get out from under it but nobody in their right mind is going to pay me what I think they should.  Not in this economy.  I decide I don't want to make payments on a losing investment anymore so I go to my bank and tell them,  "I owe you a whole bunch of money but I don't see any future in paying any more on that losing proposition of a house, so how about this?  We let it go into default, but you hold it for me and I'll pay you about a tenth of what I owed on it before."

What do you think they would say?

(Cross-posted at Dagblog here.)

No more pussyfooting: The Republicans and the C of C are trying to kill us

Historically, nothing has terrified conservatives so much as efficient, effective, activist government. “A thoroughly first-rate man in public service is corrosive,” the former president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued in an interview published in the journal Nation’s Business in 1928. “He eats holes in our liberties. The better he is and the longer he stays the greater the danger. If he is an enthusiast–a bright-eyed madman who is frantic to make this the finest government in the world–the black plague is a housepet by comparison.” 

Rick Perlstein, "Enemies of State"

My thanks to AmiBlue, who wrote about this in a piece called "Don't tell 'em, sell 'em" over at Dagblog.  This is powerful stuff.  The Big Business assault was (and is) even worse than we could ever have imagined.  The quote above by the C of C flack would be chilling enough today, but considering it was the battle cry already in 1928, it shows clearly the kind of relentless, never-ending  propaganda we're up against.

 From Perlstein's article:

Consider the famous December 2, 1993 memo by William Kristol entitled “Defeating President Clinton’s Health Care Proposal.” The notion of government-guaranteed health care had to be defeated, he said, rather than compromised with, or else: “It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.” Kristol wrote on behalf of an organization called the Project for a Republican Future. The mortal fear is that if government delivers the goods, the Republicans have no future. 

They have big money behind them.  They have the recent supreme court decision behind them.  They have the Republican Party, the right wing media and much of the mainstream media behind them.  And they have an astonishing number of just plain folks who just don't get it behind them.

Incredible, considering their goal has always been to do the rest of us in so that they can grow richer and stronger--but that's the enemy, that's the battle, and that's what we're up against.

We have to keep working at stopping them, and what worries me is I'm hearing from so many people on our side who say they're disheartened and discouraged and disgusted and are ready to quit.  This is not the time to quit!  They may have big money and big numbers on their side, but might, dammit, does not make right.

They'd like nothing better than to see us all surrender.  They're thrilled by the cave-in of the only other entities with enough power to puncture their armor--the White House and a solid number of  Democrats in Congress.

If you can read that stuff above and still walk away, then do me this one last favor:  Turn around and look out there.  Weep with me on the shore as we watch our beautiful ship taking on water, listing, groaning, losing power.  I see it as a battle ship.  You might be seeing it as a cruise ship.  Either way, it's ours and it's sinking and if there are lifeboats on the way, they're too little, too few, too late. 

But have a nice day.
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Cross-posted at Dagblog here.
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The New Year's Random Ramble

I'm in the midst of unpacking bins and boxes and suitcases and looking for the cord for the printer and for the thingy that lets me plug in a bunch of USB cords.  That is, I should be in the midst of those things.  Instead, I'm thinking about my dad on the 100th anniversary of his birth and I'm thinking about a couple of memorable quotes from Mark Twain and Spongebob Squarepants.  (I thought about quoting Joe Scarborough, who couldn't think of Walter Reuther's name this AM while he was knocking the unions, but I want this to be a positive, maybe even fun blog and tomorrow's another day.)

I jumped the gun and wrote about my dad last year on his 99th birthday.  I knew I should have waited for the Big One, but I was feeling it then (just as I'm feeling it now).  Out of a family of 12, only his two baby sisters are left.  One is 83 and the other is 91.  They have skin like velvet, even now, and if they ever lose their Italian sense of drama, I will just die.

My father, having been the only one in his entire family to move away from his birthplace, striking out on a life of his own, was a lapsed Catholic for most of his life.  My mother was a ho-hum Lutheran.  His background is Italian; hers is Finnish.  He was dark and she was blond.  In his family, no one had ever not married an Italian--until then.  In my mother's family, no one had ever not married a Finn--until then.  There was some concern about how my Italian grandmother was going to take the news, but she accepted it as graciously as an Italian mother of a son could do--and eventually grew to love my mom (and later, me and my brothers) dearly.

My mom learned to sing Italian songs, which thrilled my grandfather no end.  This man, Giuseppe, loved music.  I remember at an early age being stunned and frightened by the sight of him, Uncle Victor's cask wine in one hand, a foul Italian cheroot in the other, weeping, sobbing, in a self-inflicted agonizing ecstasy, as he listened to records of Enrico Caruso and Beniamino Gigli .  Music moves me in the same way--even worse, now that I'm older--and I love the fact that I got that trait from that old man who spoke little English, who loved his Italian tenors, and who, in other ways, was as strong as a bull and just as sure of himself.

My father--his son--liked but did not love music.  My mom did.  My mom loved to sing and was actually pretty good at it.  I was, too, as long as I didn't have to sing solo in front of anybody.  Then something besides music came out.  Oddest damned thing.  I could warble like a songbird as long as I was alone or my voice was mixed in with others.  But let me try and sing for you and the sound of a cawing crow would have been music to your ears.   A painful thing to admit, but it's better than not knowing and causing all kinds of grief for everybody.


So. . . for Christmas I always get a book or two from my oldest grandson.  He was hinting for suggestions early on, but since I already owned "Blowing Smoke", and hadn't really made a list, I sort of put off answering him.  He winged it and gave me the new "Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1".

I have to say, it is the most amazing gift!  First off, it weighs exactly four pounds and looks to be about six inches high.  (When it's not a book, it's a footstool.)  It holds 738 pages and is printed in what looks like a teeny tiny 8 pt. font.  And this is just Volume One!!

But I love Mark Twain AKA Samuel Clemens, and as soon as I devise a carrier for the thing, I'm going to do some serious reading of what I just know is some funny, witty stuff.

Already I'm finding this funny:  The actual "Autobiography of Mark Twain" fills only 264 pages!  The book's remaining 474 pages cover a 58 page introduction, 142 pages of "Preliminary Manuscripts and Dictations", 182 pages of "Explanatory Notes", Appendices, Notes on the text, Word Division, references (31 pages) and an index.

There are photographs of manuscript pages, which are more exciting to me than those teeny tiny printed pages.  This, after all, is Mark Twain's own hand.  On one page I found this:

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and words!  His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.  All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things are his history.  His acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water--and they are so trifling a part of his bulk!  A mere skin enveloping it.  The mass of him is hidden--it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day.  These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.  Every day would make a whole book of eighty-thousand words--three hundred and sixty five books a year.  Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man--the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

An odd comment coming from a man who was, in fact, directing his own autobiography at the time.  But I get what he means.  We tend to choose carefully the parts of us we're willing to expose.  But sometimes we just say to hell with it.

So while I was looking at the Mark Twain book, counting the various sections and finding that alone quite amusing, I was eating a frozen Yoplait Gogurt.  My method is to push the frozen yogurt slowly up to the top and them lop it off little by little.  Then when I'm almost done, I press the tube flat from the bottom up, getting the last little bit out of it, like a toothpaste tube.  Normally, the next step would be to toss the flattened tube into the trash and be done with it, but I happened to glance at the package and saw that Spongebob had issued a challenge:  Fill in the missing word from the quote:  "I smell the smelly smell of something that smells __________."

Rancid!  Putrid! Fishy!  No, wait. . . .smelly!  I got it!  Yes, I got it!  Or rather, Spongebob got it and gave it to me.  I had been vaguely trying to think of a one-liner to describe the newly Republican-dominated House and all that goes with it, and there it was:

I smell the smelly smell of something that smells smelly.

It really kind of made my day.  It takes nothing away from either my dad or my mom or my grandfather or even Mark Twain, no matter what you're thinking.  They all would have got a laugh out of it.  (Okay, maybe not Giuseppe.  I'll give you that.)
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Cross-posted at Dagblog and Open Salon

The Quiet Joy of Christmas

December 25, Christmas Day, is reserved by Christians as the day they celebrate Jesus Christ's birth.  There is no real indication that the Christian Messiah was actually born on that day, but it was decided long ago, and there it is.   But little by little the reason for the season was crowded out; St. Nicholas came along and then morphed into Coca Cola Santa.  Pine trees were brought into houses and decorated with ornaments having more to do with sweet and cute than with Jesus.  Mistletoe hung over doors, candles twinkled in windows, and Currier and Ives made a fortune with their prints of winter scenes--a far stretch from the birthplace in Bethlehem.

The complaints about the secularization of Christmas have a certain legitimacy.  The celebration of a sacred birth has been usurped and turned into a holiday that bears no resemblance to the original intent.  Shopping is a major proponent of the new Christmas.  Drinking is right up there, too.  It wouldn't be Christmas without the traditional overindulgence.

But I maintain that there are enough joyous moments, quiet moments, loving moments--in fact, memorable moments at Christmas to keep the holiday sacred (as in protected and defended) in the hearts of Christians and non-Christians alike.   We love the lights and the music, the laughter of little kids, the connections with friends and family near and far away.

Let's face it; Christmas is prime time for cliches.  Even the hardest hearts succumb to Christmas.  (There is a reason Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" is dragged out, re-read, or re-made year after year.  We need to pretend the Scrooges will come around, if even for one day. )

I love the memories of candle-lit Midnight masses.  I'm still thrilled by Christmas hymns; in fact, this old heathen's dream is to sit in the Mormon Tabernacle and listen up close and personal to the Tabernacle Choir singing "O Holy Night". 

Besides family images, it's the quiet winter scenes that, oddly, remind us of Christmas.  There is nothing religious about them, nothing having to do with the birth of a Messiah, but they stir feelings in us that we can't seem to do without this time of year. 

 

I wish love and joy and wonder to all.  I wish the weight of the world would come off the shoulders of those who are suffering, even today. I wish our memories would include them, even tomorrow.  I wish this wasn't just wishful thinking.

Merry Christmas.

The Amazing Endurance of Remarkable Words

Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness. . . Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. . Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?  Have you no sense of decency?    Joseph Welch to Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Army-McCarthy hearings, June 9, 1954

My mother and I were watching the hearings on our small black-and-white TV set that summer day in 1954--the day Joseph Welch calmly but forcefully challenged Joe Mccarthy's hold on the depths of the baseless paranoia both Washington and Main Street had been wallowing in for almost a decade.  I was sixteen years old but I've never forgotten the sound of Joseph Welch's voice--the mix of rage and sorrow as he spoke those words.

Something big happened then, and I'm remembering the look of amazement on my mother's face and my own feelings--of absolute joy and shuddering fear--when Welch finished talking.  The hearing room erupted into wild cheering.  Within minutes the room had emptied, every reporter rushing out to file the story.  I didn't know until I read it recently that afterward McCarthy looked around the empty room, threw up his hands and said, "What did I do?"  Within days the Senate voted to take his power away and, for all intents, he was done.

There are some who will always believe that Joseph Welch's words were what brought down McCarthy, stopping those meaningless, hateful hearings once and for all.  The fact is, for many years before there had been scores of people at work trying to expose the insanity of McCarthy's crusade against Communism--"The enemy within" that had all along been essentially toothless. (In 1952 Jack Anderson and Ronald May wrote "McCarthy: The Man, The Senator, the "Ism", spelling out his tactics, exposing his lies, and warning of the consequences if he wasn't stopped.)

Edward R. Murrow's "See it Now" program on March 9, 1954, broadcast three months before the Welch/McCarthy blow-up, was made up entirely of  footage and quotes by Sen. McCarthy himself--more damning than any second-hand account could have been.  On that same day, President Eisenhower wrote a letter to a friend criticizing McCarthy's approach (later telling an aide that McCarthy was a "pimple on the path to progress").

But what we remember today are Joseph Welch's words, used as a kind of easy shorthand to put a stamp on Joe McCarthy's downfall.

 Throughout our history, we've given certain quotes almost magical attributes in order to condense and clarify the stories behind them.  We want to believe that all it took was a single utterance and--poof!--life changed.

When Lincoln delivered his speech at Gettysburg in 1863, he said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. . ."  He was wrong, of course.  Nearly every schoolkid learned "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. . ."   I thought for years that it was the speech that ended the Civil War, and, by rights, it should have.  The speech contained phrases of such heartbreaking beauty, it should have ended any signs of conflict.  In fact, the war went on for more than two years--the final battles fought many months after Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. 

In 1933, when FDR told the country during his first Inaugural speech, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself", there was plenty to fear that was much more tangible, but it was exactly what he needed to say at exactly that moment.  Did that one sentence ease the pain of the years to come?  No.  But it's a sentence etched into the American psyche, pulled out as needed, even now.

In 1961, John. F. Kennedy said in his Inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country."   Fifty years later, we're still repeating those words, hoping everyone else is listening.

In the summer of 1963, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered his "I have a dream" speech.  The entire speech is quotable, but he ended with these words:

. . .When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:   Free at last! Free at last!Thank GodAlmighty, we are free at last! 

The speech was widely covered (and was recently called the top American speech of the 20th Century), but racial inequality didn't end on that August day.  Some would say it hasn't ended yet.

In June, 1987, Ronald Reagan stood at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and shouted "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"  Fully half our nation still believes that's all it took to tear down that wall, magically  ending the Cold War and easing any remaining misery.

Magic words.  Enduring words that live on through generations, through the shudderings of history, pristine and precise, owned by their creators without fear of creative editing or plagiarism. 

I thought about these words and their ultimate impact last week as I listened at different times throughout the day to Sen. Bernie Sanders as he stood at a Senate podium delivering his 8 1/2 hour marathon speech, knowing in his heart that the end result would be the same, with or without his mighty efforts.  As I listened, enthralled and grateful (wishing my mom could have been there), I wondered which of his words, if any, would be the magic words still resonating generations from now. 

Bernie Sanders is a plain-spoken Vermont man.  His words are rarely lush or even memorable.  I do not swoon when I hear Bernie speak.  I sit up and take notice.  Bernie had facts, he had figures, he had charts, he had tragic, poignant stories told to him by real people.  He repeated himself and apologized for it.  He wasn't reaching for the perfect sound bite. 

So will it be these lines that end up in Notable Quotes?

Eighty percent of all income in recent years has gone to the top 1 percent. The richer people become much richer, the middle class shrinks. Millions of Americans fall out of the middle class and into poverty.   That is not apparently enough for our friends at the top who have a religious ferocity in terms of greed. They need more, more. It is similar to an addiction. Fifty million is not enough. They need $100 million. One hundred million is not enough; they need 1 billion. One billion is not enough. I am not quite sure how much they need. When will it stop?

Or these?

If there is anything we can say about the American people, we work hard. We, in fact, work longer hours than do the people of any other country, industrialized country, on Earth. We are not a lazy people. We are a hard-working people. If the jobs are there, people will take them. If people have to work 60 hours a week or 70 hours a week, that is what they will do. But we have to rebuild this economy. We do not need tax breaks for billionaires. We need to create jobs for the middle class of this country so that we can put people back to work.

Or maybe these:

We all have our share of addictions. But I would hope that these people who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars will look around them and say: There is something more important in life than the richest people becoming richer when we have the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. Maybe they will understand that they are Americans, part of a great nation which is in trouble today. Maybe they have to go back to the Bible, whatever they believe in, and understand there is virtue in sharing, in reaching out; that you can't get it all.
   I think this is an issue we have to stay on and stay on and stay on. This greed, this reckless, uncontrollable greed is almost like a disease which is hurting this country terribly. How can anybody be proud to say they are a multimillionaire and are getting a huge tax break and one-quarter of the kids in this country are on food stamps? How can one be proud of that? I don't know.

This is good:

I think one simple thing we have to do is tell the crooks on Wall Street--and I use that word advisedly--history will prove that they knew what they were doing. They were dishonest. The business model is fraudulent. There are honest people who occasionally make a mistake, but there are other businesses that are based on fraud and assume they are never going to get caught. When they do get caught, the penalty they have to pay is so little that it is worth it because they end up getting caught 1 out of 10 times, but they make a whole lot of money, and then they pay a fine and somebody goes to jail--very rarely, though--for a year. That is what you are seeing on Wall Street.

 And this:

  So it seems to me we have to defeat this proposal, and that in defeating this, we are going to tell the American people there are at least some of us here who understand what our jobs and obligations are; that is, that we are supposed to represent them, the middle class of the country, and not just wealthy campaign contributors or bow to the interests of the lobbyists who are all over this place.

 Bernie Sanders, fortified with nothing more than a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee, stood on principal last week and spent an entire day talking to his colleagues, talking to the American people, talking to anyone who would listen.  He stood at a podium, never leaving for even a bathroom break, and talked until he could barely get the words out, until he could barely stand.  He wasn't filibustering; there wasn't anything yet to filibuster.  He was giving it all he had, because he believed purely, strongly, that giving a tax break extension to the top one or two percent of income earners was the absolute wrong thing to do.

You might not have known it if you were simply watching mainstream media that day, but the internet universe was erupting, exploding--passing messages all day long about Sen. Sanders and the fact that he was still speaking.  Twitter overloaded a couple of times (the top hashmark being #FiliBernie) even into the next day, as quotes from his speech were relayed. It was one of those moments.

I half expected Bernie to finish with the words of Joseph Welch:  "Have you no sense of decency, sirs, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"  Because if anyone knows from decency, it's Bernie Sanders

So what do you say, Toopers. Can we get a little help here?

The tax cut deal rewards Republican obstructionism by giving the wealthy the tax breaks they demanded.  It throws away precious resources needed for investments in jobs and our economy on upper income tax cuts that will do very little to propel economic growth—setting up excuses for the deficit hypocrites to argue for even more cuts to programs serving working families.  It lards the tax cuts for the top 2 percent with an indefensible cut in the estate tax – giving yet another bonus to the super-rich.  Taken together, this package locks in the growing income inequality that has plagued our country for at least another two years – and quite possibly much longer. 

It is unconscionable that the price of support for struggling middle class families and workers who have been unable to find jobs for months and months and months is yet more giveaways for our country’s wealthiest families.  Millions of jobless workers have lived in fear for months while Senate Republicans had the gall to use their hardships as political leverage for the benefit of the rich.
AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka

The Toopers, or the Two-Percenters,  the over-the-top Lords and Ladies of the Land (along with every single one of their Republican toadies and even a few Democrats--all of them high up there on Santa's Naughty List), just got the gift of their dreams from America's so-called leaders.  They got exactly what they wished for--again.

Rocks in their stockings is what most of them deserved, but instead, we the peons, the peasants, the huddled masses, the mythical "of the people, by the people, for the people", get to foot the bill for this wildly extravagant cave-in to the usual suspects.

President Obama said he had to give in to tax cuts for everyone because it was "abundantly clear" that the GOP wouldn't agree to anything else.  So that's it, then.  The marauders have taken over the village and the mayor, shaking in his boots, has handed them the keys.

Come out of the shadows, peasants, it's up to us now.  We can't physically fight them; they're too strong and the only ones with weapons are afraid of them. Multitudes who should be with us are victims of a crazy Stockholm Syndrome and are siding with the enemy regardless of some big time royal screwing.  Nobody is going to help us.  We're on our own.  We could use a Hobbit or two.   A Shrek would be good.  Inigo Montoya, where are you?  Paging Robin Hood.  Waiting. . .


In the War Room we've spread the constitution out on the table, pored over it 'till our eyes have gone fuzzy, looking for the one loophole that will stop this thing, this invasion, this onslaught.  Turns out the only loopholes are the ones the Toopers found.

Bugger! Foiled again!

But there is one thing we haven't tried.  We haven't appealed to the Toopers themselves.  (Face it:  We've never appealed to them, but we're out of options here.)  We've been ignoring them lately, but there are signs that at least a few of them feel at least a little guilt about taking it all and giving only crumbs back.

A group of them, Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, even sent a letter to the president:

Dear Mr. President, we are writing to urge you to stand firm against those who would put politics ahead of their country.
For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as scheduled.
We make this request as loyal citizens who now or in the past earned an income of $1,000,000 per year or more.
We have done very well over the last several years. Now, during our nation’s moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don’t need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. The country needs to meet its financial obligations in a just and responsible way.
Letting tax cuts for incomes over $1,000,000 expire, is an important step in that direction.

I admit I don't recognize many of the names on that petition,  but there are some high-profile gazillionaires who have made the same obvious argument:  Gazillionaires should pay taxes, and lots of them, because--boy howdy, they've sure made the profits.   (Some of them even audaciously say their Big Bucks should stay right here in the U.S.A instead of going abroad, but that's another story for another day.  First things first.)

A week before Obama's capitulation to the rich,  Warren Buffett told Christiane Amanpour,  “If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further.  But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it. The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you,  but that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.”

Well, yeah, Warren, plenty of us did catch on.  We're here, waiting for a real leader, and getting pretty antsy about it.  You may not be it (in fact, I'm pretty sure you're not), but if we don't find someone pretty soon who can twist arms and make those Toopers holler "Tax me! Tax me!  Make me be good!" there will be no happy ending for any of us.