If We Can But Learn From All This... And Then Change

A friend sent me this yesterday. Wonderful video.


Here's hoping.

Quote of the Day -- Guest Post

A Facebook friend of mine, Kent Hartland, wrote and posted this today. I couldn't agree more.

My country has decended into a quagmire of wickedness where somehow prominent, self-important people strive to outdo one another in their shitty diatribes to achieve ever-higher status among the hate-baiters that own my nation.

I grew up in a God-loving home, as most folks did. Most of the truly good people in the world were also of the same cloth. I was taught from infancy to love and respect others, whether a different skin, disabled, mentally challenged or poor. We are all alike. Love your brothers and sister. Hold the door for a lady, say "Please" and "Thank you", "Yes, Ma'am" and "Yes, Sir." One of my earliest memories was taking food to old people in what we used to call a poor house or old folks home. I remember the dirt floors in some of the cabins.

Since when did religious folks, i.e. "Conservatives", identify with the same crowd that burns crosses, loves guns, defends the slaughter of first-graders as "unfortunate", says teachers need a fist in the mouth, blows up women's health clinics, assassinates doctors, bombs buildings where dozens of babies lie in their nursery, scream obscenities at immigrant children trying to escape the horrors of war, beat homeless people because "Trump is Right" or "Rush is Right" and who thirst for ever more war and spend fortunes seeking ways to further stigmatize, disenfranchise and decimate the poor?

Indeed. Wth, America?

On individuals, individuality and government

"Society does not want individuals who are alert, keen, revolutionary, because such individuals will not fit into the established social pattern and they may break it up. That is why society seeks to hold your mind in a pattern, and why your so-called education encourages you to imitate, to follow, to conform."  --Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”  ― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”
― Albert Einstein

“Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual you have an obligation to be one.”  ―Eleanor Roosevelt

“The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too.”
― Malcolm X

 

Right down to George Carlin :

 

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else." 

 

"But I'll tell you what they don't want.  They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. 

 

"You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

Why is this apparently a difficult concept for the Right Wing, Conservatives and business people to grasp?

Huge Kansas City, Hallmark and Society news

 

Adele Hall, noted Kansas City civic leader, dies

On our modern society

A Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways ,but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

--George Carlin

Quote of the day

"These days, facts seem overmatched by falsehood, too slow to catch them, too weak to stop them.

Indeed, falsehoods are harder to kill than a Hollywood zombie. Run them through with fact, and still they shamble forward, fueled by echo chamber media, ideological tribalism, cognitive dissonance, a certain imperviousness to shame, and an understanding that a lie repeated long enough, loudly enough, becomes, in the minds of those who need to believe it, truth." --Leonard Pitts

The entire, great article here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/06/30/2876574_when-lies-triumph-over-facts-were.html#storylink=addthis#storylink=cpy

Quote of the day

"Europe is headed for deep turmoil because Europeans have something to defend. They’ll fight to keep a decent social welfare net. The Americans don’t even know what a minimally just society looks like or feels like. We’ll have to create that society through struggle, and almost from scratch." --Glen Ford, Black Agenda Radio(www.BlackAgendaReport.com).

Link: http://blackagendareport.com/content/united-states-impoverished-delusional-society

Quote of the day

"It's interesting how we understand secrets of the universe, but we do not now how to make good functional society in which all people have food to eat and roof on there heads." --Tomislav Veg (Friend of a friend on FB from Croatia).

Quote of the day

“We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy, where right and wrong is determined not by fairness, but by profitability — and where the law no longer dictates corporate behavior, but corporate behavior dictates the law” --Kelly Overton

Quote of the day

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil." --Albert Einstein (1949)

Quote of the day--from Ted Haggard?

"The word marriage is a big deal to people of faith. We’ve made it sacred. That’s why I believe that churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples should have total freedom to have whatever types of unions they believe as godly. But I think that we as a democratic society, as a constitutional republic — if we don’t respect individual civil liberties, then we’re making a horrific mistake. The church is in the early stages of another ‘the earth is flat’ crisis. I say to all religious people that we should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry on the subject. Or we’re going to be embarrassed in another 10 or 20 years."  -- Ted Haggard

Quote of the day--on being a "Liberal"

"If by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal,' then I'm proud to say I'm a 'Liberal.'"   --President John F. Kennedy

Quote of the day II--from the same earlier article

"... from Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to John Adams: 'Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.'"  --Dr. Jean Houston

Link to original article:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-jean-houston/beyond-the-pathology-of-h_b_721610.html?ref=fb&src=sp

Quote of the day--on gender roles

"We live in a society where the nation's leading universities' enrollments are majority female, and it's time the media started recognizing that women and men should no longer feel pressured to follow strict, dated guidelines of gender behavior." --Daniel Koh, MBA Student at Harvard Business School

You owe it to yourself to watch this video