crossposted at www.denniebriggs.com/wp/

The New Year will see California all set for an execution. Nothing new, even though five federal court judges argue that Kevin Cooper was framed by the police. Aside from guilt or innocence, the verdict again raises the issue of the death penalty.

In 1960 Bobby Kennedy was addressing a lunch/rally in Cincinnati  when in the middle of some comments about the impact of religious prejudice on Jack's campaign.  His voice broke and he began crying. 

Can humanity stand up for the Truth?

Crossposted at www.Kavehadel.com/blog

These days we see a lot of folks bringing up the class war, the working class folks versus the wealthy elite (corporate or otherwise) and their servants in D.C.  And in attempting to show just how much Obama and his administration has sold out the working class, people will turn to FDR as example of someone who took on the powers to be and the kind of leader Obama should be.  In a OrionXP's recent blog Effectively Skewering the Tea Party, SleepingJeezus makes such a point.  I t

The founders of this nation did not, we have often been told, envision the formation of political parties and there remains a resistance to the idea that the party is more important than the actual office holder. There have been times, indeed, when the party label meant less than than the politics of the time. Stephen Douglas, for instance, was a Democrat when that party stood for slavery but, at best, it was unclear whether he did.

No this is not from The Onion. Its from Fox News.

You can read the December 9th paean to the rich in print on Bernard Goldberg's website at this link, "Thank God for The Rich", or watch it on video it at link.

Is Goldberg's contract coming up with Rupert Murdoch or does he emit worshipful blather about how heroic and wonderful rich people like Rupert Murdoch are all the time?

Hats off America to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont who is trying his damndest to save the country and stop the rotten deal the Republicans and Obama are trying to foist upon the nation!

I urge one and all to call his office in Washington or in Vermont and literally voice your support for his effort to save the New Deal from it's longtime enemies and from the corporate/centrist Democrats. 

The number in DC is: 202-224-5141

Even though the U.S. Constitution is a short and plainly worded document, I have to admit that I’m not as familiar with it as I should be.  So last night I went through it looking for this filibuster that has made the Senate completely useless for the last decade.  It’s not in there.

“Ah ha!”  I said, startling my 8 month old son, who then became less startled and went back to banging his hands on the coffee table.

The community college in my small North Carolinian city received a  presidential visit on Monday. The President came, spoke and left, in a visit that would have been only locally newsworthy but for the importance of what he said. Barack Obama came to Winston-Salem to celebrate America’s community colleges and to stress their importance in the re-energizing of the American economy. In a characteristically long and carefully constructed speech, the President made the case for greater spending on both education and research as the way to avoid U.S.

I came across a nice little essay looking back at the Civil War in the Washington Post. Philip Kennicott concluded his short essay as follows:

Cross posted at www.denniebriggs.com/wp/

Democrats and Progressives may have the best platform in a generation.

I accept the President's jobs compromise deal. The main reason is that it is, with old GOP support, an end run on the Tea Party whose aim is a continuation of the poor economy which spawned it. The package on the other hand gives assurances the economy will grow and gives Democrats a good shot in 2012. Bob Greenstein of CBPP estimated the package would take a full percentage point off unemployment--and without the package the uncertainty of getting any stimulus or unemployment benefits out of the new Congress could tip the economy back into a "double dip". By my calculations, 1% off unemployment is about 1.5 million people.I think of them as particularly vulnerable hostages.

The big question in my mind is what's next. Much depends on Obama's committment to regulate the financial industry and fend off Republican budget attacks which will be designed to undo every piece of progressive legislation since the New Deal. But leave Obama out of the picture and look at the package as a tutorial. Not in the sense of what Obama might have done right or wrong but in the sense of how the package demonstrates the essential guts of how the system works.

In all the debates over keeping the top run of Bush tax cuts, one pertinent fact kept getting dropped:

The rich received the same tax cuts up to $250K or $1 million.

The proposal was simply to rescind the tax breaks for income over that amount.

But that wasn't enough, apparently - we can freeze federal employee pay because as fearless leader says:

Out of the gate, let me just say it pains me to call this hacking. Might as well go out like a total /tard with it ... "Do you want to know how the 3771 haxors took down Visa?" ... barf. However. Damn script kiddies and MSM screwing up the brand aside, this is what they're calling hackers these days so ... you might be wondering what exactly the guys "hacking" Visa/MC/Sarah Palin/Various Swiss/Swedish institutions/etc. are actually doing...