"Jedi mind meld."
— President Obama utters those words during presser and Twitter explodes (via brooklynmutt)
Quentin Tarantino refuses to discuss any link between movie violence and real life violence during a heated interview with Channel4News‘ Krishnan Guru-Murthy about his latest film Django Unchained.
Two Years Ago, John Boehner promised to be “Laser Focused on Jobs and the Economy” So what has the GOP House been up to?
House Bills passed:
46 Bills on Abortion
113 Bills on Religion
73 Bills on Family Relationships
36 Bills on Marriage
72 Bills on Firearms
604 Bills on Taxation
437 Bills on Govt InvestigationsBills attempted and failed to be passed even by the GOP:
33 attempts to Defund Obamacare…..Failed
15 attempts to Cut Funding for Planned Parenthood……Failed
3 Attempts to Cut Funding for VA Hospitals…….Failed.GOP blocked bills:
Blocked bill to aid Small Business
Blocked Unemployment extension
Blocked Bank Reform Bills
Blocked Campaign Finance Reform and open Contributions Law
Blocked MULTIPLE Jobs Bills
Blocked Infrastructure Bill
Blocked Ending Tax Breaks for companies that Outsource Jobs
Blocked Wall Street Reform
Blocked Energy Legislation
Blocked Mine Safety Bill
Blocked Oil Spill Liability Cap increase
Blocked Bill to lower Oil Company Tax Breaks
Blocked Bill to impose charging American Oil Companies on Oil achieved in the GulfNumber of TRUE Jobs Bills even allowed to come to a vote in the House….NONE.
(via)
Liberals rejoice, financial sector weeps: With her election to the Senate, Warren became one of the most powerful people in the country; now, she’s headed to one of the most powerful committees in the Senate. Financial regulation is Warren’s specialty; she helped oversee the distribution of TARP funds in 2009 and essentially created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We can’t imagine the bank lobby wanted her on this committee, but then again, there’s probably not much they could have done to prevent it. (Photo: AP) source
\m/
![theatlantic:
What Obama Can Learn from Jay-Z
But how does a performer who earns $80 million a year and rhymes about his lavish spending on diamond-studded watches and Hermes shopping sprees continue to become ever-more popular with an audience that struggles to make ends meet? The challenge of how to bridge that gap—in wealth, in opportunity, in experience—now runs throughout every sector of American society, from finance, to sports, to intellectual and artistic life. The rapper’s insistence on honest reporting at every stage of his rise, his continuing drive to excel at his craft, his need to locate virtue in difficult and often twisted circumstances, and his ability to transform social distance into an emotional bond with his audience make him the consummate artist of a society in which the lives of a swelling but statistically tiny elite have become increasingly removed from the lives of 99 percent of their peers.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md6n6ugOx91qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
What Obama Can Learn from Jay-Z
But how does a performer who earns $80 million a year and rhymes about his lavish spending on diamond-studded watches and Hermes shopping sprees continue to become ever-more popular with an audience that struggles to make ends meet? The challenge of how to bridge that gap—in wealth, in opportunity, in experience—now runs throughout every sector of American society, from finance, to sports, to intellectual and artistic life. The rapper’s insistence on honest reporting at every stage of his rise, his continuing drive to excel at his craft, his need to locate virtue in difficult and often twisted circumstances, and his ability to transform social distance into an emotional bond with his audience make him the consummate artist of a society in which the lives of a swelling but statistically tiny elite have become increasingly removed from the lives of 99 percent of their peers.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
"Corporations aren’t people. People are people."
— President Obama (via barackobama)
"This is safer than Tylenol, and yet we’re going to put extra barriers to keep that young teen from preventing an unintended pregnancy when she’s already in that circumstance."
— Susan Wood, executive director of the Jacobs Center for Women’s Health at George Washington University, who in 2005 resigned her job as the top women’s-health official at the FDA, accusing the agency of refusing to allow emergency contraception because of political pressure by the Bush administration on the way out. (via newsweek)
(via newsweek)
You have a bought congress.
(Source: ocelott, via sistersunrise)
"
Let me tell you a wonderful old joke from communist times.
A guy was sent from East Germany to work in Siberia. He knew his mail would be read by censors. So he told his friends: Let’s establish a code. If the letter you get from me is written in blue ink ,it is true what I said. If it is written in red ink, it is false. After a month his friends get a first letter. Everything is in blue. It says, this letter: everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theaters show good films from the West. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.
This is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink. The language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom, war, and terrorism and so on falsifies freedom. And this is what you are doing here: You are giving all of us red ink.
There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then? I don’t want you to remember these days, you know, like - oh, we were young, it was beautiful. Remember that our basic message is: We are allowed to think about alternatives. The rule is broken. We do not live in the best possible world. But there is a long road ahead. There are truly difficult questions that confront us. We know what we do not want. But what do we want? What social organization can replace capitalism? What type of new leaders do we want?
Remember: the problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system that pushes you to give up. Beware not only of the enemies. But also of false friends who are already working to dilute this process. In the same way you get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice cream without fat. They will try to make this into a harmless moral protest.
""
We’re talking about a democratic awakening. We’re talking about raising political consciousness, so it spills over; all parts of the country so people can begin to see what’s going on through a different set of lens. And then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be, because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution; a transfer of power from oligarchs to every day people of all colors, and that is a step-by-step process. It’s a democratic process, it’s a non-violent process, but it is a revolution, because these oligarchs have been transferring wealth from poor and working people at a very intense rate in the last 30 years, and getting away with it, and then still smiling in our faces and telling us it’s our fault. That’s a lie, and this beautiful group is a testimony to that being a lie.
When you get the makings of a U.S. autumn responding to the Arab Spring, and is growing and growing—-I hope it spills over to San Francisco and Chicago and Miami and Phoenix, Arizona, with our brown brothers and sisters, hits our poor white brothers and sisters in Appalachia—-so. it begins to coalesce. And I tell you, it is sublime to see all the different colors, all the different genders, all the different sexual orientations and different cultures, all together here in Liberty Plaza; there’s no doubt about it.
"—
Cornel West, interview. Democracy Now!, 29 September 2011
A good response to people who keep demanding that the OWS protestors draw up some sort of platform of demands. That rarely happens in the early stages of liberation movements. At the moment, it’s about raising the consciousness of everyday Americans who have thus far accepted the notion that the U.S. is a democratic, fair, and equal society. It may be a strange notion to most Americans, but our country is one that—like the countries involved in the Arab Spring—is crying out for a democratic revolution.
(via downlo)
Yup.
(via raptoravatar)
Thank you, Mr. West. Sounds a lot like fostering a protest culture. It’s time to normalize this type of dissent, because it doesn’t just belong to easily mocked stereotypes. It’s for everyone. Think about it.
(via youngmanhattanite)
(via youngmanhattanite)
"
We’re talking about a democratic awakening. We’re talking about raising political consciousness, so it spills over; all parts of the country so people can begin to see what’s going on through a different set of lens. And then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be, because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution; a transfer of power from oligarchs to every day people of all colors, and that is a step-by-step process. It’s a democratic process, it’s a non-violent process, but it is a revolution, because these oligarchs have been transferring wealth from poor and working people at a very intense rate in the last 30 years, and getting away with it, and then still smiling in our faces and telling us it’s our fault. That’s a lie, and this beautiful group is a testimony to that being a lie.
When you get the makings of a U.S. autumn responding to the Arab Spring, and is growing and growing—-I hope it spills over to San Francisco and Chicago and Miami and Phoenix, Arizona, with our brown brothers and sisters, hits our poor white brothers and sisters in Appalachia—-so. it begins to coalesce. And I tell you, it is sublime to see all the different colors, all the different genders, all the different sexual orientations and different cultures, all together here in Liberty Plaza; there’s no doubt about it.
"—
Cornel West, interview. Democracy Now!, 29 September 2011
A good response to people who keep demanding that the OWS protestors draw up some sort of platform of demands. That rarely happens in the early stages of liberation movements. At the moment, it’s about raising the consciousness of everyday Americans who have thus far accepted the notion that the U.S. is a democratic, fair, and equal society. It may be a strange notion to most Americans, but our country is one that—like the countries involved in the Arab Spring—is crying out for a democratic revolution.
(via downlo)
Yup.
(via raptoravatar)
Thank you, Mr. West. Sounds a lot like fostering a protest culture. It’s time to normalize this type of dissent, because it doesn’t just belong to easily mocked stereotypes. It’s for everyone. Think about it.
(via youngmanhattanite)
(via youngmanhattanite)
Government Orders You Tube To Censor Protest Videos
In a frightening example of how the state is tightening its grip around the free Internet, it has emerged that You Tube is complying with thousands of requests from governments to censor and remove videos that show protests and other examples of citizens simply asserting their rights, while also deleting search terms by government mandate.
The latest example is You Tube’s compliance with a request from the British government to censor footage of the British Constitution Group’s Lawful Rebellion protest, during which they attempted to civilly arrest Judge Michael Peake at Birkenhead county court.
This is what’s called Fascism.
(via alexklinger)
There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave. […]
Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets. They have their metal barricades set up on every single street leading into the New York financial district, where the mandarins in Brooks Brothers suits use your money, money they stole from you, to gamble and speculate and gorge themselves while one in four children outside those barricades depend on food stamps to eat.
Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged. Today they run the state and the financial markets. They disseminate the lies that pollute our airwaves. They know, even better than you, how pervasive the corruption and theft have become, how gamed the system is against you, how corporations have cemented into place a thin oligarchic class and an obsequious cadre of politicians, judges and journalists who live in their little gated Versailles while 6 million Americans are thrown out of their homes, a number soon to rise to 10 million, where a million people a year go bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills and 45,000 die from lack of proper care, where real joblessness is spiraling to over 20 percent, where the citizens, including students, spend lives toiling in debt peonage, working dead-end jobs, when they have jobs, a world devoid of hope, a world of masters and serfs.
(Source: kateoplis)
