real shabby dee

A staggering amount of what the average person considers history is mythology. This is a hindrance to progress.

Reasonably, everyone would like to pay lower taxes. When politicians speak, it has special meaning. “Cut taxes” is code for “limit the government’s ability to help and protect you while channeling wealth into the hands of the already wealthy.” Be suspicious when you hear these words. It frequently has little to do with your tax burden.

Financial collapse, economic malaise, soaring debt. Corporate dominance, crumbling infrastructure, dangerous consumer goods. Protracted wars, environmental disasters, mining tragedies. Conservative chickens coming home to roost.

Given: Tennessee passed a “state sovereignty” resolution in 2009.
Given: The US Constitution has no explicit provision for federal disaster relief.
Given: The recent flooding in Tennessee is catastrophic.

Prove: Tennessee should have a reasonable expectation to receive federal disaster aid.

Svetlana Kirilenko: That’s the trouble with you Americans. You expect nothing bad ever to happen. When the rest of the world expect only bad to happen. And they are not disappointed.

Happy May Day! While the rest of the world commemorates, through International Workers’ Day, the courage and sacrifice of the American workers who struggled to advance labor rights, we dance around the maypole or more likely ignore it all together. Remember the martyrs of the movement and consider the need for a renewed commitment to solidarity, peace, and justice in light of contemporary society.

I may not light a bonfire today, but a bonfire burns eternally in my heart.

The problem with illegal immigration originates with the employer. Blaming workers drawn to jobs is like blaming iron filings for clinging to a magnet.

“Oh, the smell of those barbecues. It’s like, you should just put my nose in a saddle. ‘Mmm, whose saddle is this?’ ‘That’s Uncle Taint’s.’ ‘How long’s he been ridin’, Tex?’ ‘Oh, pert near three days.’ ‘Well, let’s eat, . . . buddy.’” — Killface

“Men are making speeches . . . all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.” — Henry David Thoreau

“A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: ‘What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.’ The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, ‘What is the tortoise standing on?’ ‘You’re very clever, young man, very clever,’ said the old lady. ‘But it’s turtles all the way down!’” — Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” — Albert Einstein