Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, remembering that it was once all that was humanly possible.
George Santayana
http://www.brainyquote.com/...
It is the time of year when we prepare to vote in our own Daily Kos kOscars.
I like to save diaries throughout the year to nominate and I love to vote, but I feel that the most important part is getting a chance to remember some of the truly great diaries of the year. We are blessed with good writers. Congratulations to all who were nominated in the categories this year.
Please take the time to read or re-read the diaries nominated for Best Diary of the Year.
Here are some small portions to lure you in to read and remember (some of the diaries have pictures and graphs as the main part and so are just listed by title):
Southern History Repeating Itself: Descent into Madness by Old Redneck
http://www.dailykos.com/...
In 1927, William Faulkner -- a contemporary of my grandfather -- submitted to his publisher a novel that he titled "Flags in the Dust," a chronicle of the deterioration of the Sartoris family from a grand old planter family through three generations to dust. The damnyankees at his publisher, not understanding the South, severely cut the manuscript and published it in shortened version as "Sartoris." Faulkner later paid for the full manuscript to be published and today "Flags in the Dust" can be found through sellers of old books. The Old Redneck has a signed first edition thereof that cost damn near six months pay.
In "Flags In the Dust" Faulkner described the ethos of the Southerner when he wrote this, one of the most magnificent sentences in the English language:
"Then together they spent the afternoon going quietly and unhurriedly about the grazing meadows and the planting or harvesting fields and the peaceful woodlands in their dreaming seasonal mutations -- the man on his horse and the ticked setter gravely beside him, while the descending evening of their lives drew toward its peaceful close upon the kind land that had bred them both." - - William Faulkner, Flags In The Dust
***I Apologise*** by LaFeminista
http://www.dailykos.com/...
SCREWED! Forty Years of Corruption and 'Conservatism' Come Home to Roost by One Pissed Off Liberal
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Many people are concerned about the possibility of a double-dip recession. We should be so lucky. What is actually coming our way (IMHO) is far worse. What we're actually headed for (again, IMHO) is extinction. A world renowned Australian scientist says we'll be extinct in a hundred years. I'm not sure I'd give us that long...and between now and then things are only going to get worse for as long as we continue down the path we are on.
Every President since Nixon has promised to break our addiction to oil and every one of them has caved to the greed and power of Big Oil. When the hippies in the 60s said we had to change our way of life to save the earth they were mocked, beaten, jailed and shot down like dogs. We have allowed the greedheads to run roughshod over the intelligent members of our species and we are now paying the price.
The GOP has identified the number one threat to our "Fredoms" Renzo Gasolini
http://www.dailykos.com/...
And evidently it is fiendishly disguised as a 260 mph train
Because the Chinese have one, and we don't. And by God the Republicans are going to make damn sure it stays that way.
China unveils 260mph train line
"A new high-speed rail line has been opened in China amid boasts from officials over the use of domestic technology to set world records...
...The China-made CRH380 train has been clocked at almost 262 mph - a world speed record - though it will usually operate at a maximum speed of 220 mph...
The line was opened as China prepares to have 10,000 miles of high-speed rail in operation by 2012"
Obama Eats Republicans' Lunch! by Blackwaterdog
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Criminal Injustice Kos: With Justice Aforethought : BEFORE there's a crime by Aji
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Yesterday was a difficult day. It's been that way for years now: October 12th is an anniversary indelibly etched with horror.
It's the day I got home from a political strategy session to a message on my answering machine from the police department in the next county, asking me to call immediately. No explanation; just "Call ASAP."
It's 9:30 at night. I don't even know whether anyone will answer at that number; all I can think is that it has something to do with an alarm where I work, which is just inside that county line.
A male officer answers, says, "Just a moment; let me put your brother-in-law on the phone." Huh? What does he have to do with any of this?
So he comes on the line. "Aji," he says. There was a robbery at the house today. And Kaye didn't make it."
And the floor drops out from underneath my feet.
The Melancholy Deconstruction of a Once Great Society by Pluto
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Also, it seems so poignantly appropriate tonight, as we have finally reached the threshold of austerity blackmail that is about to crush the middle class by way of the double whammy punishment of passing the tax cuts for the rich -- which will result in austerity for the rest of us. Behold your Deficit Commission gods, who will smite you come January, 2011.
Income Inequality and the Depraved Tax Haven Known as the United States of America
What pisses me off more than any other thing about the United States is its absurdly low tax rate and the tragic human damage it causes Americans. The tax rate in the US is so low, it's one of the world's most popular tax havens, where the wealthy come to dodge taxes in their home countries. Probably no one ever told you that before, but take a look at the international tax index, below [Source:Forbes) and notice where the US is -- at the bottom, among the low-life low-tax nations where the drug lords, defense contractors, and tax-evading Plutocrats hide their money.
If you do not have time to read many, please read this one.
Pictures...wonderful pictures! (Note: This is one that I nominated.)
"The Other Tibet" ------Xinjiang, China------- DKos Travel Board #24 by Laughing Planet
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Wild Bactrian camels, Kyrgyz yurts, Tajik music. The far western frontier of China is as much a separate country as Tibet.
The term in the title is not mine, but one used by Matthew Teague in his article in last month's (Dec. 2009) issue of National Geographic:
"The Uygurs, Muslim people of China’s resource-rich far west, are becoming strangers in their own land as Han Chinese pour in. Like the Tibetans, who face similar pressures, some Uygurs see a chance for a better life, but others protest the disintegration of their culture, even at the risk of death."
The massive western region has become a flashpoint for unrest in modern China. Its natives, the Uyghurs, are increasingly unhappy with the heavy-handed governance by the Communists despite the dubious "autonomy" afforded to the region.
Join me for a look at the the Uyghur people, their ancestral land, and the current state of their plight...
For decades, the Uyghur were lacking a face that defined their struggle. In the 90s, however, they seem to have found one. Thanks to the Communist policy of brutally punishing dissent, a sort of Uyghur Nelson Mandela emerged in the form of Rebiya Kadeer:
"Rebiya Kadeer (Uyghur: رابىيه قادىر,) is a prominent Uyghur businesswoman and political activist from the northwest region of Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China (PRC), also known as East Turkestan. She has been the president of the World Uyghur Congress since November 2006."
The NY Times profile describes her
"the public face of an ethnic group that is little known in much of the world."
"Ms. Kadeer has come to personify the Uighur cause, and that status may only grow with China's denunciations."
Kadeer has been active in defending the rights of the largely Muslim Uyghur minority, who she says has been subject to systematic oppression by the Chinese government. Kadeer is currently living in exile in the United States.
Kadeer was convicted of "endangering state security" and subsequently spent fully two years in solitary confinement after sending newspaper articles about oppression of Uyghurs to her husband in the U.S. She was eventually released due largely to efforts by American politicians. From Amnesty Int'l:
"Attention by the US government and the scores of Members of Congress who had called for her release was critical to winning Rebiya's freedom."
She has recently received words of support from the most famous person living in exile in the modern world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama:
(Australian) Federal Labor MP Michael Danby says he discussed Ms Kadeer with the Dalai Lama recently. "He asked me to convey to you in Melbourne that she is another one of the national leaders who is a paradigm of non-violence," he said.
"He wanted to make it very clear to people that the claims of this woman being a violent person or instigating violence, is from his point of view, and with all of his authority, wrong."
FACE, FRONT, and RESPECT! by shanikka/black kos
http://www.dailykos.com/...
"FACE, FRONT, and RESPECT!"
When I was growing up in on the Crown Heights/Bed Stuy line in the Brooklyn ‘hood, long ago, we used to answer when asked what we wanted by someone who was getting in our face and getting on our nerves – "Face, Front & Respect, Brother (Sister!)" It wasn’t so much an answer as a retort. It is a retort that has been on my mind quite a bit this past week as we have watched President Obama make sausage and end up with what is now known as America’s Affordable Health Choices Act.
For those who have never heard of either Face, Front & Respect, let me break it down to you. The demand for "Face" is a demand to let us be recognized. At the time I was "throwing" it all around on St. John’s, I hadn’t given it much thought. With grown up hindsight I realize that our demand for "face" (as In "Saving Face") grew out of the human, deeply felt, need for most of us to be able to stand tall, to be proud of who we are, to be perceived as competent as qualified, as ready for the world. To have a positive "rep". To be trusted to be able to step up, and step up well.
Walk This Way by blueness
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Not many days go by when I do not think about William Moore, the Baltimore postal worker who set out in April of 1963 to walk from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi, to deliver a letter to Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett urging him to accept integration.
On his walk, Moore wore sandwich boards reading "Equal Rights For All & Mississippi Or Bust" and "End Segregation In America—Eat At Joe's Both Black & White." The cart he pushed bore, among other signs and sentiments, a "Wanted" poster adorned with a sketch of Jesus, captioned "Jesus Christ: Wanted for sedition, criminal anarchy, vagrancy, and conspiring to overthrow the established government."
On April 23, on his third day out, and less than 70 miles into his walk, Moore in Alabama, about an hour northeast of Birmingham, was shot twice in the head and killed, his body left by the side of the road. No one has ever been convicted of his murder.
Moore's final walk was his third lone "Freedom Walk." He had earlier walked from Baltimore to Annapolis, the capital of Maryland. On his second walk he marched on the White House, arriving as Martin Luther King was released from Birmingham jail. His letter addressed to President John F. Kennedy announced his intention to devote his 10 days of vacation-time from the US Postal Service to walking to Mississippi, and offered "If I may deliver any letters from you to those on my line of travel, I would be most happy to do so." White House guards refused to admit him, or to accept his note.
Moore, a former US Marine, had previously been arrested for standing in line to a whites-only movie theater with black people; their crime—"trespassing." He also once marched around a courthouse, in 16-degree weather, with a sign reading "Turn Toward Peace."
Oh no! There's gays in the military! by Clarknt67
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The issue has been around as long as our country. Above, some of the earliest LGBT activists assembled in 1945 to protest the Navy's ban on gay sailors.
Many people think the clock started on the gays and the military issue in 1993. But truth is, that was just when Bill Clinton managed to reset the clock on the issue. It had of course been percolating in LGBT activist circles for a long time. And it had built up enough steam Clinton thought he could utilize it to win the Presidency.
The New York Times reported on November 5, 1992
Gay Areas Are Jubilant Over Clinton
After a bitter year in which homosexual issues figured in a Presidential election for the first time, men and women took to the streets Tuesday night in gay enclaves like San Francisco and West Hollywood, weeping, dancing and hugging to celebrate the victory of Gov. Bill Clinton.
Gay and lesbian leaders described the election of Mr. Clinton, an advocate of homosexual rights, as a historic moment in the history of gay politics. As recently as a decade ago, strong advocacy of gay rights was considered political suicide for just about any candidate, let alone one for the Presidency.
Yeah, that didn't really work out so well for us.
On 9/11: Palin And Beck Bash America, Praise Fox News by KingOneEye
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Visualization, Framing, and that War of Words by jamess
http://www.dailykos.com/...
This one was nominated, but another one of jamess' below got more nomination recs so this one will have to be taken down so the vote is not split. But it is worth reading.
Dream Deferred: Racism of the "Color-blind" Kind by soothsayer99
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The Dream remains unfulfilled.
Yes white supremacy - once writ large in the law via slavery and Jim Crow segregation - was now removed from its' legalized pedestal with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965 and finally, The Fair Housing Act of 1968. The law became "race-neutral" and it now suddenly was illegal to discriminate on the basis on race.
These strokes of the pen, of course, could not remove the bigotry that lurked in human hearts and minds long steeped in racist archetypes; nor could this legislation remove the nearly 400 years of white racial preference and cumulative advantage in the accumulation of wealth and property, education and housing, health and well-being, and all matter of social opportunities.
Racism, as both white supremacist ideology and institutionalized arrangement, remains merely transformed with its' systemic foundations intact. Segregation in housing and education persists at levels beyond that noted in 1954 in Brown, racial wealth gaps grow, and racial disparities in criminal injustice proliferate at a pace that has led to the label "The New Jim Crow".
This denial of The Dream is doubly bitter, for not only does systemic racism persist indeed with ever widening racial gaps, but King's own words have been subverted to construct the denial. "They will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," is not yet reality but instead now the rallying cry for those who would deny the persistence of racism in any and all of its' manifestations. These words have been expropriated to legitimate the newest racist paradigm - "color-blindness".
One of the major challenges of the post-Civil Rights era involves confronting the notion that racism is now over. Many whites are content to believe that once de jure segregation ended - that once the "colored only" signs were taken down from walls - everything was magically equal on a now level playing field."Color-blind racism" explains contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics and allows whites to equate racism with prejudice, ignoring the institutionalized and systemic racial structures that sustain and reproduce white racial privilege.
Certainly progress has been made and since much racial inequality is now embedded de facto in structural arrangements, it is certainly more invisible. It is easy to identify the overt racist, but much harder to see the racial dynamics that persist in institutional patterns. And, for many whites, it is harder still to see the more subtly coded appeals to racism that they may even unwittingly engage in. This is the goal the color-blind paradigm - to disguise the persistent racialized patterns of inequality and reduce racism to mere prejudice of the most visible sort.
Giving Up by BoiseBlue
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I have.
I have given up and there's no going back. Looking at the way things are, I have no other choice.
This is not the first time I've given up.
The first time was back in the nineties, when I was struggling to come out. I was just about to jump into the shark infested waters, then Matthew Sheppard was killed.
So I gave up. I decided it wasn't worth putting myself in danger.
Then, having thought it over, I decided that as long as I hide in the closet it makes it that much easier for everyone in my life to continue down their path of ignorance or apathy regarding the LGBT community.
So I stood up and told my family that I'm a big ol' lesbian. I braced for the worst. It never happened.
So I decided it wasn't so hard to keep fighting after all, and I joined a few LGBT rights groups and kept fighting. I still get knocked down sometimes, but as long as I have my wonderful family and friends behind me I can get back up. I couldn't have if I had stuck to my decision to give up.
Now we're nowhere where we need to be on LGBT rights, but if I had told you back then that an openly gay woman would be representing me at the Idaho Statehouse you'd laugh at me. It's a reality now. So I'm glad I didn't give up.
The far-right in Dallas in November 1963 by devtob
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Seconds before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated 47 years ago in Dallas, Nellie Connally, wife of Texas Gov. John Connally, turned and said to him, "Mr. President, you certainly cannot say that Dallas does not love you."
Those were the last words JFK heard before he was shot and killed.
The reception at Love Field and along the motorcade route was indeed quite positive that day, as the photo at right suggests and all media reports confirmed.
Even though Dallas was one of the regional capitals of the far-right, with lots of active Birchers backed by billionaire oilmen who hated paying taxes and what little environmental regulation there was back then.
The Birchers welcomed JFK to Dallas with a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News and thousands of "wanted for treason" flyers.
"This is sedition in slow motion" by Troutfishing
http://www.dailykos.com/...
1 - Slow motion sedition is very hard to counter
As Campaign For America's Future Fellow Sara Robinson writes in an important new essay, two recent incidents - the arrest of nine members of the Hutaree Christian militia and the mailing, by a group calling itself Guardians of the Free Republic, of threatening letters to all sitting state governors in the US, should be a "wake up call for progressives."
As Robinson writes,
"They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
Follow the Money Part 2 (IRS filings) by Land of Enchantment
http://www.dailykos.com/...
OK, so you see an ugly attack ad on TV from some "committee" you've never heard of before. These things typically turn up in October, in the last few weeks before the election.
So, you've got the name of your committee (say, "Swiftboat Veterans for Truth"?) and you want to learn more about who's behind it. Just like in last night's diary (which focused on searching the FEC's public database), I'm going to continue looking into Americans for Honesty on Issues (AHI), which was active in the 2006 cycle in several Congressional districts, including one of particular interest to me: Albuquerque-based NM-01.
We already know that their only donor, to the tune of $3 million, was Bob Perry of Houston, who was also the biggest donor to the Swiftboaters in 2004 ($4.45 million!) So, lets look into AHI at the IRS.
FEC allows you to look up individuals. IRS, not so: individual tax returns (thank goodness!) are strictly private. Charities and political committees, not so much.
Requesting "Grace" by Deoliver47
http://www.dailykos.com/...
As some of you know, I’m one of the editors of Black Kos, a twice weekly community diary series here at Daily Kos which is on holiday hiatus and will return after the New Year.
I host the Tuesday section which is subtitled "Tuesday’s Chile" ...taken from the saying "Tuesday’s Child is full of Grace" but "child" is written as many of us pronounce it – "chile".
We opened the Tuesday series with a hymn that has become a universal symbol of the abolition of the slave trade and part of the theme music for the struggle for civil and human rights.
Community members of Black Kos are people who come together to discuss news, the arts and events which are presented about and from the perspectives of the varied people’s of the African diaspora and other communities of color. A majority of the regular readers and commentors in Black Kos are not African-American, which reflects the demographic make-up of the main site.
We come together each week in the spirit of Grace...
Amazing Grace.
The Asteroid called Us ... is on a collision course by jamess
http://www.dailykos.com/...
It's happened before (at least five times), indeed, many scientists think, it's happening again right now. Humankind, in our petty rush to get nowhere fast, are slowly killing the very thing that gives us life -- this Planet Home, this Web of BioDiversity, this Ecological stage, where the True Wealth of our Natural Heritage, is almost always WAY undervalued.
It's like an "Everything-Must-GO" Sale ...
and sadly the Planet doesn't have much say, in the matter.
She is just quietly ... going ... silently fading away.
Sadly she must think: "Good Stewards -- they're NOT! ...
Obviously they've learned how 'Move Mountains' -- only it's always the wrong kind of Mountains ... IF only they would have learned that 'Peak Oil', IS the Mountain, standing in their path.
It is the Asteroid, that they must figure out how to avoid. The Ride, THEY must learn, how to step-off of ...
Silly Humans ... it takes them so long to learn the simplest things sometimes!"
Hetero privilege, yet again by indiemcemopants
http://www.dailykos.com/...
This year, I was happy and relieved that only one single comment was made and the conversation only lasted about three minutes. My mom and even a fifteen year old cousin joined in saying stuff about "queers". Nobody said that's probably not a nice thing to do. But I was relieved. It only happened once. Have you ever felt relieved that your family only attacked your very identity for just a few minutes rather than for hours? If you've never had to deal with that, that's a form of heterosexist privilege. Being able to sit down comfortably at a family dinner without fear of being attacked, either physically, mentally or emotionally is a privilege I am denied access to because I happen to be gay.
I've written before about this rainbow arm band that I wear all the time. Once I finally came out to everyone I was so freaking proud that I survived all the bullshit, so on a sentimental level it was important to me to express that even with something as silly as wearing an arm band. So, my mom saw it, and I am forbidden to wear it around the kids in our family. I can't even wear a freaking rainbow arm band, just a colored band, nothing sexual is on it. I still can't even express my own feelings about my orientation through a benign arm band. Yet I got to watch my cousins and their girlfriends suck faces the whole time. If you've never had to feel like your orientation is such a threat to your family that you can never, ever express it even in the most benign ways, that's another form of heterosexist privilege.
In the Second Year of The One by Unitary Moonbat
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Book 3, Chapter 1, Foreword
In those days, The One was lifted up by the people of The Land, and was seated upon the throne of power. And yea, there was great rejoicing among the People of the Donkey, but at the moment of their triumph, the People of the Olifant fell upon them with a loud cry. Men of reason were seized by the daemon Plumbeus and became as ravening beasts. They fought with harsh words for the praise of their fellows, and spoke with poisonous tongues of The One and His followers.
And yea, was the Duchy of Orange in league with the People of the Donkey, but the people of Orange were an unruly lot, prone to fighting amongst themselves. When The One proved a king of equal parts inscrutability and patience, some of Orange rose in rebellion against their brethren, who were the Loyalites.
Community by teacherken
http://www.dailykos.com/...
...
We expect a theophany of which we know nothing but the place, and the place is called community.
Those words by Martin Buber, from Between Man and Men, serve as the epigraph for an essay titled A Place Called Community, the fourth chapter of the recently revised new edition of Parker Palmer's 1980 book The Promise of Paradox
Recently I have been thinking lot about community, especially about this community, as once again we have people offering angry explanations about why they are leaving it. Once again - we went through that in each of the two recent primary seasons.
At the same time we see examples of things which bring this community together - the various quilt diaries, offerings of thanks from members well known and until then barely known. We have parts of this community that come together for common tasks - IGTNT, Feeding America, and the other diary series that are a key part of the larger community for many.
The subtitle of Palmer's books is "A Celebration of Contradictions in the Christian Life" but the words he offers on community are more broadly applicable. Today I would like to invite you to keep reading as I share some of them.
The Baby Boom Generation, Part I of III - The Wonder Years
by JekyllnHyde
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Sooner or later, all wars come to an end. When World War II ended after six long years in August 1945, the United States alone among war combatants emerged largely unscathed with enormous international prestige and domestic prosperity that was about to be unleashed in spectacular fashion. It would set into motion unprecedented cultural and social changes, the repercussions of which are still being felt today in American society.
Next week: The nominations for Best Teaching Diary.
For all the nominations and many other diaries to read, look here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Diaries of the week:
Write On! Evicting Mary Sue
by Tara the Antisocial Social Worker
http://www.dailykos.com/...
History for Kossacks: Martin Van Buren - Before the Presidency
by Unitary Moonbat
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early. Watch for extra editions on Sundays!
sarahnity’s list of DKos authorshttp://www.dailykos.com/...
Note: Over at the DKos4 Beta site and after the change, to recommend a diary you must click on the little star by the title that looks like this *(it is larger over there):
Band-Aid for the Lakotas: But a directly applied one+ *
by navajo ♥ (to follow navajo's diaries click on the heart)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The poll this week is just to be a reminder of the need for people to help by watching for the kOscar diaries and helping to rec them and to vote.
Many, many thanks to Laughing Planet who began the whole thing and to all those who worked so hard to create the kOscar diaries this year so we could nominate and vote for our favorites. It really takes a lot of time and effort by the people who volunteered. Kudos to them!