Titanic Post

Vote Harry Teague for New Mexico Congressional District 2!

I lifted this from the Alamogordo Daily News Forum. It is post #20 and was posted by “Totally Tired.”

“Gore has been involved with the development of the Internet since the 1970s, first as a Congressman and later as Senator and Vice-President. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated in the 2000 article “Al Gore and the Internet”, that Gore was “the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.”[107] His High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991[108](often referred to as the Gore Bill) was passed on December 9, 1991 and led to the National Information Infrastructure (NII)[109] which Gore referred to as the “information superhighway.” (more…)

Published on Sunday, May 4, 2008 by PBS.org

by Bill Moyers

I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, “Who’s telling the truth over there?” “Everyone, he said. “Everyone sees what’s happening through the lens of their own experience.” That’s how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: “Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical,” one viewer wrote. A “nut case,” said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.

Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright’s transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I’m not a psychologist. Many black preachers I’ve known - scholarly, smart, and gentle in person - uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I’ve known many white preachers like that, too. (more…)

by Ken Nicholson

We have 12 million “undocumented” immigrants because there are 12 million illegal jobs open for them here and none available for them in Mexico. There is nothing in play but an unregulated free market and all your fences and all your Border Patrol will not stop them from coming here.

If you really want Mexicans to stay home in Mexico, write to your representatives and urge them to put pressure on the Mexican government that they do something about the corrupt monopolies, about their destruction of the middle class, about their destroying jobs for poor Mexicans.

Complain to this government about NAFTA and our flooding the Mexican market with crops and products Mexicans should be growing and manufacturing for themselves, such as corn and tortillas.

Quit blaming the victims for Mexican and U.S. political screw-ups and their lack of imagination and concern for working people. If you are for deregulation, this, and the World Trade Organization, is what you get.

Or is it that my friend Denise Lang is right and that this whole thing really IS about race? In that case, continue to blame the victims.

by Ken Nicholson

Much confusion amongst our right-winged cousins. Not only have they wandered off the path of reason, they mistake our flag for the country itself, the Pledge of Allegiance for patriotism, and shit for brains. The latter is, clinically speaking, not really an analogy, but something they demonstrate over and over again.

A symbol does represent something and we should focus our attention on that something and not on the symbol. When you go into a restaurant you first look at the menu to choose the meal that appeals to you. The menu contains the symbols of what you came for. You do not then eat the menu, but rather the food you selected, hopefully. (more…)

Published on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 by The San Francisco Chronicleby Bruce Fein

President Woodrow Wilson recanted his no-war pledge, President Franklin D. Roosevelt disowned his balanced budget promise and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should learn from those examples. She should reconsider her “impeachment [of President Bush] is off the table” pledge. As Ralph Waldo Emerson advised, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

The speaker’s reluctance is understandable. The president’s tenure expires on Jan. 20, 2009. An impeachment inquiry could embolden al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq’s insurgents and Iran’s nuclear-minded mullahs. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and a majority of Republicans in Congress would attempt to portray the exercise as naked partisanship. Their enthusiasm for impeaching President Bill Clinton over lying under oath about Monica Lewinsky would be no deterrent.

But countervailing constitutional concerns are more compelling. Bush has crippled checks and balances and protections against government abuses. If these claims and practices are not repudiated, the precedents will lie around like loaded weapons, ready for use by any White House incumbent to intimidate rivals or to destroy the rule of law. (more…)