The Call for Non-Violence: A Night and a Day with RFK

by Nomad

We look back at two particular days in April 1968 and two speeches by Senator Robert Kennedy following the traumatic murder of Martin Luther King in Memphis. The subject: whether senseless violence would triumph over peaceful change.

An Act of Blind Violence

Two days in early April forty-six years ago could perhaps be considered one of the darkest moments in the history of the United States. On April 4th, 39-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, shot down by a person or persons unknown. 

And for a moment, the Civil Rights Movement hung in the balance.

Would King's assassination in Memphis spell the end of the hopes of millions of black Americans? The question on many minds was whether they would now choose to forsake the non-violence King had advocated and match violence with violence and thereby destroy all of his efforts? 

On the evening of the assassination, President Johnson had issued a statement in which he asked every American to "reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence."

We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is only by joining together and only by working together that we can continue to move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people.

In an effort to head off expected rioting, the president contacted and advised a host of mayors and governors. He urged them not overreact and not to use any more force than necessary to keep the peace. Johnson was not impressed with the general atmosphere of fatalism.

"I'm not getting through. They're all holing up like generals in a dugout getting ready to watch a war."

Throughout the nation, there was a deep sense of foreboding. The nation held its breath.

Tomorrow's Headlines: Climate-Change Denying GOP House to Vote to Ban Law of Gravity

by Nomad

In honor of today's date, I present a sneak peek at tomorrow's headline. 

Later this month, the House of Representatives will be voting on controversial draft legislation which will deny the existence of gravity The Republican-led Congress expects little resistance to the proposed law in the upcoming vote.

The bill was sponsored by Rep. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), famous for his courageous stand on climate change.
In a press briefing on the Capitol steps, Inhofe said

"It's a win-win situation for the American tax-payers. For now on, we will not be held hostage by secular scientists. No offense, they were smart guys, but they are certainly not experts in Scripture. They shouldn't be able to go around trying to force their ideas on the rest of the nation. I still haven't seen any proof for the existence of gravity. After all, there's a reason why they call it a 'theory.' It makes about as much sense to me as the 'theory' of evolution."

According to the draft bill, from now on, all proposed federally-funded projects will be rejected automatically unless all participants sign an affidavit denying the existence of gravity "or any science supporting that theory."

Con-Artist Conservatives and The Great Hoodwinking of America 1/3

by Nomad

When can having a positive attitude be a negative thing? What happens when voters prefer to ignore the evidence and continue to vote for the same party despite false promises? It seems as if Americans prefer to be victims of a party of professional grifters.

The idea that opportunity to succeed is open to all of us goes back deep in American history and deep into the soul of the average American. It is one thing that makes the struggle worth it all. Knowing that things will improve has always been a mainstay of life in the US. 

The Faith and the Evidence

One recent study suggests that American economic mobility is something most of us still believe in. The problem is, according to the evidence, that belief system is largely contradicted by the evidence.

The Cornell study polled more than 3,300 Americans in all economic quintiles (20 percent income increments), from the poorest to the richest, and reached a few interesting conclusions:

• People believe there is more upward mobility than downward mobility. 
• Americans overestimate the amount of upward mobility and underestimate the amount of downward mobility. 
• Poorer individuals believe there is more mobility than richer individuals do. 
• Political affiliation influences perceptions of economic mobility, with conservatives believing that the economic system is dynamic – with more people moving both up and down.

The harsh reality is that while the real income of the top 1% of the population has soared a staggering 86% over the last twenty years, for the rest of us, it has increased by a mere 6.6 %. Those are the figures cited in the report.

According to the source:

"This rise in inequality has been accompanied by increasing hardship among those at the bottom," they write, noting that in 2010 the United States had almost 650,000 homeless people. And an additional 9.5 million families (46 million people) lived below the poverty line, a 50 percent increase since 1980.

The implications of the study are fascinating. American by and large simply haven't woken up to the fact that decades of failed policies have made matters worse of the shrinking middle-class. They should be angry- furious, in fact- but they are not.

The Iraq War and The Fine Art of Republican Revisionism

by Nomad

No matter how intense the barrage of propaganda and how constant the lies, Americans owe it to the 4,486 U.S. soldiers that died in Iraq to remember. Remembering the lessons of the war might just prevent the nation from making the same disastrous mistakes.

Margaret Meiers, in an op-ed piece for the Pittsburgh Post-gazette, asks how Americans can possible be so forgetful of recent events. 

Responding to an earlier newspaper opinion post, she states:

While Fox News and Bush administration officials try to rewrite history, it is known that faulty intelligence was drummed up and cherry-picked to be used to convince the people of the United States, Congress and the United Nations into supporting war.

Intelligence and Something Else

In case,  you need some reminders, Meiers provides us with a short list.

Remember Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame? Judith Miller’s reporting in The New York Times about aluminum tubes? Colin Powell’s address to the United Nations based on lies? The Downing Street memo? Remember “mushroom clouds,” duct tape and Curveball? And let’s not forget the Project for a New American Century, which openly pushed for war against Iraq before 9/​11 (the architects of whom are now Jeb Bush’s election campaign committee to keep him informed on foreign policy). Great.

Ignorance of events that happened, say in your grandfather's time may be forgiven but these things happened in 2003. We have a duty to those who died not to allow lies to mask the truth. We owe them that much at least.

Unitary Executive Theory: How the GOP in Congress is Destroying Cheney's Life Work

 by Nomad

Former vice president Cheney must be watching in dismay as the Republicans in Congress are tearing apart a doctrine that he has spent his whole life promoting.

The now-infamous letter of the 47 Senators  may not be treasonous although some on the Left may think so. The  unsolicited advice to the Iranians may not be a violation of the Logan Act and some lawyers might disagreed.

Nevertheless, in one aspect, there is something distinctly peculiar about what Congress did and has been doing since President Obama took office.

This new activism is a reversal of policy that has been the long standing hallmark of conservative principles. That principle is known as the Unitary Executive Theory and one of its chief promoters has always been former Vice president Dick Cheney.

According to this doctrine, all executive authority must be in the President’s hands, "without exception." The President and other members of the executive branch have special rights and privileges that come with the office. And the legislative branch, according to the proponents, has no authority to question presidential power. The president as the head of state and  that preeminence required Congress to recognize its lesser position.