Main Stream Media just reported (6:30 AM CT) that the Groundhog saw his shadow today (2/2/12) and that means that there will be at least five more weeks of winter (it used to be six weeks, but with global warming and all...) and billionaires will continue to fund people like Newton Gingrich.

So the more things do not change, the more things stay the same (what?).

http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/groundhog-day-12947

Al Franken is a despicable guttersnipe

BILLO

How much do you have to pay to get outta goin through all these things twice?

BOB DYLAN

I recently took the time to view Groundhog Day again.

I have, of course viewed this classic film again and again and again.

I recall thinking, when I first saw this film:

Bill Murray is a terrible actor.

Up until about five or ten years ago I would have stuck with that assessment.

But the thing about Groundhog Day is that it points out what bad actors we all are in the end. hahahaha

The Wiki link brings back memories if nothing new.

Which brings me back to my original theme:

How much do we really have to pay to get outta going through all these things twice?

14 years ago we as a nation decided that it was time to get ridda the Newt.

39 years ago we as a nation decided that an imperial Presidency was not in the national interest.

48 years ago we decided as a nation, again, that all men are created equal.

49 years ago we decided as a nation that all citizens in the United States of America have a right to vote.

57 years ago we decided as a nation that a national highway system was necessary to spur commerce between the states and that that highway system needed to be reexamined and repaired from time to time.

78 years ago we decided that a pension system available to all American Citizens was necessary so that our aged would be provided with some assistance in their waning years.

81 years ago we decided that the Coolidge/Hoover theory of economics no longer worked.

88 years ago we decided as a nation that Spencer Tracy had proved that the ages of rocks were in fact more important than the rock of ages.

93 years ago we decided as a nation that women are people and therefore are citizens of these United States of America and have equal rights with men and have a right to vote.

Over the last 123 years, we as a nation decided that the Bill of Rights actually applied to all American citizens.

123 years ago, we as a nation decided that the worker has some rights with regard to the blood, sweat and tears shed as a member of the national labor force.

152 years ago we decided as a nation that a progressive income tax was necessary to sustain us as a people.

155 years ago we decided as a nation that a divided house cannot stand.

211 years ago we decided as a nation that there would be a separation between church and state.

237 years ago we decided as a nation that all men were created equal.

Here are some examples of new legislation that seem to contra act or at least fly in the face of some of my findings with regard to these basic tenets, principles and beliefs that were a part of our national heritage.

13 states, on their own, would infringe upon the rights of American Citizens to vote in state and Federal elections.

Several states, on their own, would infringe upon the right of employees to organize as a union

The Bill of Rights no longer has any applicability to the citizens of the United States of America.

We now imprison more Black folks than White folks; thereby making a large number of  Black folks slaves once again.

One percent of our national population is in prison and making profits for corporations as slave labor.

The Coolidge/Hoover theory of economics wins out.

How much do we have to pay to get outta going through all these things twice?

Oh and here is a sacred psalm epitomizing the spirit of this post better than anything else I have come across; Truth, Justice & the American Way! I just cannot think of a more patriotic song to express my real feelings; my emotional epiphany; my very soul! An homage to Arp as it were!

(No this is not Obama, this is 1982 and the guy just looks like Obama; only whiter! DADADA)

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ADDENDUM

Mike really saved my ass. I have been blogging for over four years and after going through four computers, I lost scores of posts. Thanks to Mike and Dagblog, I have not lost that much. And since I now have an external hard-drive that contains everything I have written since April of 2011 things are looking better—missing some comments but believe me, I have lost far more than that in six decades. Just an added note, I might edit ten times on my Word clone, but as I posit my classics on this site, I edit another five or ten times. So Dagblog saves it all! Ha

This has been an encore presentation of my post dated February 2, 2012. I just updated it a bit. And what better event to run again than Groundhog Day? Ha

It is still bad out there and the struggle for individual rights continues, but there has been some better news lately (although I aint ready to call it good news! Yet.)

RIGHT TO VOTE

It appears that the most recent election results dampened the fascist-like fires that had been blazing in this country from 2011 to January of this year.

There are some repub Governors showing some intuitive concern over Constitutional Rights.

There are issues concerning long lines (for the peasant voters anyway), ID demands that simply focus on the lower classes and recalcitrance at the fact that the lower classes can vote at all; and this new attempt to use gerrymandering as a tool to fraudulently cheat the dems at the Electoral College.

Do any of these morons take the time to actually read the 15^th Amendment to the United States Constitution?

Key Republican officials in Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and Michigan are coming out against a RNC-backed scheme to rig the electoral vote in Democratic-leaning states in order to boost Republican presidential candidates. That leaves just Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as the remaining blue states with Republican statehouses actively considering the idea.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/01/electoral-college-reapportionment-congressional-districts-republicans.php

WOMEN'S RIGHTS

The Violence Against Women Act is coming back to the fore once again in both the US Senate and US House. Women might have more going for them these days than just the ASPCA!

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/24/16678168-violence-against-women-act-proponents-get-to-work?lite

RIGHTS RELATING TO THE SANCTITY OF A WOMAN'S BODY

If I chose to, I could receive all the Viagra I wished (but then my keyboard would mean much less to me) but women are threatened with loss of abortion rights, rights related to pregnancy counseling and rights related to birth control. I think the repubs are scared following the results of the most recent election. But we need to be eternally vigilant in this area as well as all areas concerning other rights provided in our Constitution.

The worst example of this violation involved that Virginia legislation (which kind of fell by the wayside) whereby a doctor would have been forced to violate a woman's vagina with some type of technical vibrator (but without any ensuing pleasure for chrissakes!)

I wont even get into the examples of Virginia repub politicians laughing over the entire issue!

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/22/169975954/states-become-battlegrounds-for-nations-deep-abortion-divide

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/02/virginia_ultrasound_law_women_who_want_an_abortion_will_be_forcibly_penetrated_for_no_medical_reason.html

http://www.lifenews.com/2013/01/28/virginia-kills-bill-denying-women-pre-abortion-ultrasound/

Or all women should move to Oregon!

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/01/31/1521991/oregon-no-abortion-restrictions/

FREE SPEECH

Well nothing is free; anyone over the age of 7 knows this I would imagine. But damn, the Patriot Act which follows the pattern of Adams' Alien & Sedition Act.

http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/debate-on-patriot-act-and-first-amendment-continues

FOURTH AMENDMENT GUARANTEES?

http://www.aclu.org/national-security/surveillance-under-usa-patriot-act

14^th AMENDMENT CONCERNS

The Tea Partiers were attempting new proposals to 'amend' the single most important clause in the U. S. Constitution. Whether the amendments would deny citizenship to those born on our soil or whether a 'Right to Privacy' would be specifically denied or whether a fertilized egg would be defined as a human being or....

http://teapartyamerica.blogspot.com/2010/08/change-14th-amendment-no-more-anchor.html

I think these attempts have gone by the wayside (for now) but they will never be erased—so the war is still being waged.

I will end this addendum with the thought that the 14^th Amendment is the only tool that can be used to give all citizens rights as contained in the BILL OF RIGHTS or the first Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Abolishing slavery was not enough to solve the problems relating to tyranny AND slavery in this country. That the 15^th Amendment should not have shut down the recent state threats to voting rights by repubs is beyond me.

Anyway, Happy Groundhog Day Dagbloggers!

THE FIGHT CONTINUES!