REFLECTIONS ON LIFE ... TOM HUSSEY

A photo series by Tom Hussey captures the elderly as they reflect on their younger selves.

You can see more of Tom Hussey's work by clicking here or here.

- Mark

WEEKEND READING (Oct. 17, 2015)

Too funny ... The Daily Show "obtains" surveillance footage of Ben Carson at Popeyes (Crooks and Liars).

Tennessee's first year of drug testing welfare applicants didn't go very well (Think Progress).

My night with a Nazi (Ozy).

Forget Harvard: Here's where to go to college if you want a high paying job (FastCoexist).


DOOMSDAY IDIOTS
Rick Joyner: I prayed for drought to strike California (Right Wing Watch).

Rick Wiles: Persecution of Kim Davis leading to America's destruction (Right Wing Watch).


THIS WEEK, ON BUFFOON WATCH ... TED CRUZ
Ted Cruz: Obama "Radical and Zealot" for welcoming refugees "coming here to commit jihad" (Right Wing Watch).

Ted Cruz demands Portrait Gallery remove bust of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger (Right Wing Watch).

Ted Cruz once again twists the facts about Planned Parenthood (Right Wing Watch).

STOP-LOSS LUNACY
Air Force quietly implements "stop loss" [a.k.a. forced conscription, or back-door draft] provision to fill deployments (John Q. Public).

Stop loss debacle exposes inverted Air Force priorities (John Q. Public)


DAVID BROOKS IN THE NEWS
The Republicans' incompetence caucus (David Brooks / NY Times).

The Republican Party is producing "leaders of jaw-dropping incompetence" (Vox).

Paul Krugman bursts David Brooks' fantasy land version of conservatism: "Actually existing conservatism is a radical doctrine (Salon).


REPUBLICANS BEHAVING BADLY
Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert to plead guilty in hush-money case (Mother Jones).

House Republicans voted against 8 bills to help veterans since Obama took office (Democratic Underground).

Second Republican congressman admits Benghazi Committee was 'designed to go after' Clinton (Think Progress).

Feds say Fox News' favorite CIA source turns out to be a total fraud (Mother Jones).


THE REAL WELFARE QUEENS
Report: Walmart workers cost taxpayers $6.2 billion in public assistance (Forbes).

It's Official: White folks in Red States are the biggest food stamp 'moochers' in the country (AATTP).


THIS IS GOOD NEWS
California will automatically register millions of voters (Think Progress).

Charges filed against woman who opened fire on suspected shoplifters in Michigan (Daily Kos).

Grand jury indicts 15 on gang terrorism charges for parading Confederate flags through black child's party (Raw Story).

California is building the country's largest solar desalination plant (FastCoexist).

LIBOR interest rate-rigging scandal: British bankers' trial begins in U.S. (The Guardian).


MISCELLANEOUS
U.S. government deporting Central American migrants to their deaths (The Guardian).

More Americans have died from guns in the U.S. since 1968 than on the battlefields of all the wars in American history (Martin Grandjean).

Why Sweden is shifting to a 6-hour workday (FastCoexist).

The Guardian view on Russian intervention in Syria: Mixed motives (The Guardian).

- Mark

ONE REASON WHY THE NRA IS WRONG, BIG TIME

The gun nuts won't get this, but the larger point here is clear.



- Mark 

BERNIE'S READY TO TAKE ON THE BILLIONAIRES

Via Politics USA we learn that 99% of Bernie Sanders' donors can give again; and they can do it multiple times over if they give what they gave the first time.

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Here is a statistic that strikes a blow against Citizens United and should worry the billionaire class who are attempting to purchase control of the United States government. Bernie Sanders raised $41.4 million, and 99% of his donors can give to his campaign again.

Here are the basic numbers from the Sanders campaign:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ raised $26.2 million during the third quarter of this year – all of it for use in primaries and caucuses – in a grassroots presidential campaign that has drawn 1.3 million small donations since it began. 

The average donation was $30 apiece. 

The campaign closed the books at the end of the Sept. 30 reporting period with almost $27.1 million in the bank after spending about $11.3 million, according to a report filed on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission. 

Since his White House bid was launched last April 30, Sanders has banked a total of about $41.4 million, according to the report. 

Only 270 of Sanders’ 650,000 donors gave the maximum $2,700 allowed.

That last sentence is what should scare the billionaires who are trying to buy the US government. Bernie Sanders was able to raise more money than every Republican presidential candidate, and he did it by not maxing out his donors. At thirty bucks a pop, his donors could give to him 90 times before they would max out and hit their contribution limit for the primary.

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In a few words, after the first Democratic debate this week, Bernie Sanders is sitting in a pretty sweet spot.

- Mark 

"GUNS WITH HISTORY" GUN SHOP

First time gun shoppers get an unexpected history lesson in New York City gun shop ...

- Mark

Hat tip to Agulia for the clip.

BERNIE SANDERS WON THE DEBATE, ACCORDING TO THOSE WHO ACTUALLY COUNT

The results are in. In spite of what the headlines and inside the beltway pundits say, Bernie Sanders won the debate according to the people who actually count. This CNN poll is typical ...

Click here for more details than you're probably looking for on the topic.

- Mark

Addendum: Here's one more ...

ROBERT REICH: THREE FREE MARKET MYTHS THAT PERPETUATE INEQUALITY IN AMERICA

The idea that the state should stay out of the marketplace and let market players do what they want is a myth. And it's perpetuated by - surprise, surprise - people and market players who benefit financially from no oversight or few regulations.

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In my book The Myth of the Free Market I explore the thoughts of Adam Smith (1723-1790), the intellectual Godfather of free market economics. It's clear Adam Smith believed people should be free to make their way in life, which meant they should be free of stifling feudal practices that maintained royal privileges and unearned life positions held by court sycophants. 

In order to achieve these freedoms Smith argued the feudal state - with all of its stifling customs and traditions - should stay out of the marketplace.  

While Adam Smith argued the state should stay out of the marketplace, he did not say market players should be free to do what they wanted. Rather, Smith argued the state should stay out of the market because of how it reinforced the stifling habits of feudalism (which undercut initiative), and because how it had historically - from Rome through 17th century Britain - intervened on behalf of those with power and privilege (which rewarded access). 

What really irked Adam Smith was how the state intervened on behalf of those who already had wealth and power.

To prevent the state from rewarding privilege Smith argued the government should not intervene in the market place. Just as significantly, Smith also argued that if the state did intervene it should be done only to maintain a level playing field, or what he called the "laws of justice." 

In simpler terms, providing subsidies and protection, or giving privileged market players a green light to do as they please, was not what Adam Smith was proposing. The real goal behind laissez-faire economics is to create a level playing field while preventing privilege from being unduly rewarded.

This simple message is lost on modern free market proponents. 

But wait, there's more.

We need to understand that Adam Smith's complaints about the feudal state in 1776 do not apply to the modern state. The modern state, with its liberal constitutions, is obligated to protect the interests of commoners, or the middle-class. Guaranteeing access and a level playing field - again, Smith's "laws of justice" - almost mandate state intervention. This is what the Enlightenment and the liberal revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries were all about. 

Most free marketeers don't understand any of this because - to be blunt - they are historical and constitutional illiterates. 

Their ignorance of history is what compels them to conflate or draw false equivalencies between the state Adam Smith described in the 18th century, and the modern liberal state we live in today. 

So, yeah, the idea that the state should stay out of the marketplace and let market players do what they want is a myth. And it's perpetuated by - surprise, surprise - people and market players who benefit financially from no oversight or few regulations.

I bring all of this up because former Labor Secretary Robert Reich provides us with three additional market myths in the modern world. Because we buy into these myths we allow policies to be created that help stifle the prospects of the middle class which, in turn, perpetuates and widens the gaps between those at the top of our financial food chain and the rest of us.

- Mark

DEBATE RECAP

If you're not smiling or laughing I'm pretty sure I know why ...

- Mark

Hat tip to Robin for the meme.

WEEKLY READING (Oct. 12, 2015)

You think the NSA is bad? Meet former CIA director Allen Dulles (Mother Jones).

Too funny (but not for those sensitive to creative language) ... UK reporter fed up with studio manager who wants him to report outside in the cold, finally reports "the f***ing news" as he's told (YouTube / Facebook).

Ben Carson's far from the only conservative saying gun control caused the holocaust (Vox).

The simple truth: President Obama is too intelligent for Republicans to understand (Forward Progressive).


CONSIDER THIS DURING GOP SPEAKER SEARCH-A-PALOOZA
Republican Rep. Charlie Dent calls for "bipartisan coalition" to select new speaker (Real Clear Politics).

Speaker Paul Ryan? Here's what you need to know about his biggest influence - the lunatic Ayn Rand (Raw Story).


WHAT'S HAPPENED TO AMERICA?
Donald Trump and the Republican descent into xenophobia (Truth Out).

Inglis, Florida: Home to the 1,000th U.S. mass shooting since Sandy Hook (The Guardian).

Neat interactive (and article) helps us understand elite theory in America ... Nearly half the cash in the 2016 presidential race comes from just 158 families (NY Times).

Facebook readers hand righteous smack down to Bakersfield Christian mom who won't let son learn about Islam (Raw Story).

Media silent as fake videos trigger four Planned Parenthood arsons in two months (Occupy Democrats).


TRADE DEAL NEWS
U.S.-Europe trade accord draws 250,000 protesters in Berlin (Bloomberg).

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a one sided deal to help the 1 percent (NY Times).

Hillary's record: Pretending to oppose trade agreements (Huffington Post).

The moral case against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (Nation of Change).


THINGS WE MIGHT WANT TO THINK ABOUT
U.S. interventionist policies in Iraq unleashed chaos, brutality and death still unfolding today (Truth Out).

After 1996 mass shooting, Australia enacted strict gun laws. It hasn't had a similar massacre since (Slate).

Record global sell-off of U.S. could trigger economic collapse ... with some good charts (Money Morning).

The right to bear arms is anti-democratic (Prospect Magazine).


THIS IS GOOD NEWS, I GUESS
Republicans finally admit Planned Parenthood did nothing wrong, investigation was a sham (Occupy Democrats).

Here come the Republican moderates (The Atlantic).


MISCELLANEOUS
"The Great Deception" ... A brief and very accessible historical overview of central banking in America (Shah Gilani / Wall Street Insights & Indictments).

No, your eco-vacation is not actually doing animals any favors (Mother Jones).

7 myths and atrocities of Christopher Columbus that will make you cringe (US Uncut).

What OPECs new romance with Russia means for oil prices (Money Morning).

Sanders vs. Clinton: Who has the best plan for college students (Nation of Change)?

- Mark 

AN INSPIRING STORY ... THE WHITE MAN IN THAT PHOTO

I was just going to provide a link to this, but it's such an inspiring story I had to post it in its entirety. From Griot Magazine we get "The White Man in That Photo." Enjoy ...

Peter Norman (L), Tommie Smith (C), and John Carlos (R).

Original text by Italian writer Riccardo Gazzaniga. Translation by Alexa Combs Dieffenbach.

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Sometimes photographs deceive. Take this one, for example. It represents John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s rebellious gesture the day they won medals for the 200 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, and it certainly deceived me for a long time.

I always saw the photo as a powerful image of two barefoot black men, with their heads bowed, their black-gloved fists in the air while the US National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” played. It was a strong symbolic gesture – taking a stand for African American civil rights in a year of tragedies that included the death of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

It’s a historic photo of two men of color. For this reason I never really paid attention to the other man, white, like me, motionless on the second step of the medal podium. I considered him a random presence, an extra in Carlos and Smith’s moment, or a kind of intruder. Actually, I even thought that that guy – who seemed to be just a simpering Englishman – represented, in his icy immobility, the will to resist the change that Smith and Carlos were invoking in their silent protest. But I was wrong.

Thanks to an old article by Gianni Mura, today I discovered the truth: that white man in the photo is, perhaps, the biggest hero of that night in 1968. His name was Peter Norman, he was an Australian who arrived in the 200 meters finals after having ran an amazing 20.22 in the semi finals. Only the two Americans,Tommie “The Jet” Smith and John Carlos had done better: 20.14 and 20.12, respectively.

It seemed as if the victory would be decided between the two Americans. Norman was an unknown sprinter, who seemed to just be having a good couple of heats. John Carlos, years later, said that he was asked what happened to the small white guy – standing at 5’6”tall, and running as fast as him and Smith, both taller than 6’2”.

The time for the finals arrives, and the outsider Peter Norman runs the race of a lifetime, improving on his time yet again. He finishes the race at 20.06, his best performance ever, an Australian record that still stands today, 47 years later.

But that record wasn’t enough, because Tommie Smith was really “The Jet,” and he responded to Norman’s Australian record with a world record. In short, it was a great race.

Yet that race will never be as memorable as what followed at the awards ceremony.

It didn’t take long after the race to realize that something big, unprecedented, was about to take place on the medal podium. Smith and Carlos decided they wanted to show the entire world what their fight for human rights looked like, and word spread among the athletes.

Norman was a white man from Australia, a country that had strict apartheid laws, almost as strict as South Africa. There was tension and protests in the streets of Australia following heavy restrictions on non-white immigration and discriminatory laws against aboriginal people, some of which consisted of forced adoptions of native children to white families.

The two Americans had asked Norman if he believed in human rights. Norman said he did. They asked him if he believed in God, and he, who had been in the Salvation Army, said he believed strongly in God. “We knew that what we were going to do was far greater than any athletic feat, and he said “I’ll stand with you” – remembers John Carlos – “I expected to see fear in Norman’s eyes, but instead we saw love.”

Smith and Carlos had decided to get up on the stadium wearing the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, a movement of athletes in support of the battle for equality.

They would receive their medals barefoot, representing the poverty facing people of color. They would wear the famous black gloves, a symbol of the Black Panthers’ cause. But before going up on the podium they realized they only had one pair of black gloves. “Take one each”, Norman suggested. Smith and Carlos took his advice.

But then Norman did something else. “I believe in what you believe. Do you have another one of those for me”? he asked, pointing to the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the others’ chests. “That way I can show my support for your cause.” Smith admitted to being astonished, ruminating: “Who is this white Australian guy? He won his silver medal, can’t he just take it and that be enough!”.

Smith responded that he didn’t, also because he would not be denied his badge. There happened to be a white American rower with them, Paul Hoffman, an activist with the Olympic Project for Human Rights. After hearing everything he thought “if a white Australian is going to ask me for an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, then by God he would have one!” Hoffman didn’t hesitate: “I gave him the only one I had: mine”.

The three went out on the field and got up on the podium: the rest is history, preserved in the power of the photo. “I couldn’t see what was happening,” Norman recounts, “[but] I had known they had gone through with their plans when a voice in the crowd sang the American anthem but then faded to nothing. The stadium went quiet.”

The head of the American delegation vowed that these athletes would pay the price their entire lives for that gesture, a gesture he thought had nothing to do with the sport. Smith and Carlos were immediately suspended from the American Olympic team and expelled from the Olympic Village, while the rower Hoffman was accused of conspiracy.

Once home the two fastest men in the world faced heavy repercussions and death threats.

But time, in the end, proved that they had been right and they became champions in the fight for human rights. With their image restored they collaborated with the American team of Athletics, and a statue of them was erected at the San Jose State University [located in the heart of California's Silicon Valley]. Peter Norman is absent from this statue. 

His absence from the podium step seems an epitaph of a hero that no one ever noticed. A forgotten athlete, deleted from history, even in Australia, his own country.

Four years later at the 1972 Summer Olympics that took place in Munich, Germany, Norman wasn’t part of the Australian sprinters team, despite having run qualifying times for the 200 meters thirteen times and the 100 meters five times.

Norman left competitive athletics behind after this disappointment, continuing to run at the amatuer level.

Back in the change-resisting, whitewashed Australia he was treated like an outsider, his family outcast, and work impossible to find. For a time he worked as a gym teacher, continuing to struggle against inequalities as a trade unionist and occasionally working in a butcher shop. An injury caused Norman to contract gangrene which led to issues with depression and alcoholism.

As John Carlos said, “If we were getting beat up, Peter was facing an entire country and suffering alone.” For years Norman had only one chance to save himself: he was invited to condemn his co-athletes, John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s gesture in exchange for a pardon from the system that ostracized him.

A pardon that would have allowed him to find a stable job through the Australian Olympic Committee and be part of the organization of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Norman never gave in and never condemned the choice of the two Americans.

He was the greatest Australian sprinter in history and the holder of the 200 meter record, yet he wasn’t even invited to the Olympics in Sydney. It was the American Olympic Committee, that once they learned of this news asked him to join their group and invited him to Olympic champion Michael Johnson’s birthday party, for whom Peter Norman was a role model and a hero.

Norman died suddenly from a heart attack in 2006, without his country ever having apologized for their treatment of him. At his funeral Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Norman’s friends since that moment in 1968, were his pallbearers, sending him off as a hero.

Tommie Smith (L) and John Carlos (R) as pall bearers at Peter Norman's funeral, 2006.

“Peter was a lone soldier. He consciously chose to be a sacrificial lamb in the name of human rights. There’s no one more than him that Australia should honor, recognize and appreciate” John Carlos said.

“He paid the price with his choice,” explained Tommie Smith, “It wasn’t just a simple gesture to help us, it was HIS fight. He was a white man, a white Australian man among two men of color, standing up in the moment of victory, all in the name of the same thing”.

Only in 2012 did the Australian Parliament approve a motion to formally apologize to Peter Norman and rewrite him into history with this statement: This House ...  

“[R]ecognises the extraordinary athletic achievements of the late Peter Norman, who won the silver medal in the 200 meters sprint running event at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, in a time of 20.06 seconds, which still stands as the Australian record”. 

“Acknowledges the bravery of Peter Norman in donning an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on the podium, in solidarity with African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who gave the ‘black power’ salute”. 

“Apologises to Peter Norman for the wrong done by Australia in failing to send him to the 1972 Munich Olympics, despite repeatedly qualifying; and belatedly recognises the powerful role that Peter Norman played in furthering racial equality”. 

However, perhaps, the words that remind us best of Peter Norman are simply his own words when describing the reasons for his gesture, in the documentary film “Salute,” written, directed and produced by his nephew Matt.

“I couldn’t see why a black man couldn’t drink the same water from a water fountain, take the same bus or go to the same school as a white man.

There was a social injustice that I couldn’t do anything about from where I was, but I certainly hated it.

It has been said that sharing my silver medal with that incident on the victory dais detracted from my performance.

On the contrary. I have to confess, I was rather proud to be part of it”.

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- Mark