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Event Reminders: Same-sex marriage hearing to be shown on C-SPANMonday, 12/06/2010 The 9th Circuit Court hearings on the constitutionality of Prop 8, which begin in San Francisco on Monday, Dec. 7 will be telecast on C-SPAN. Prop. 8 supporters are asking the court to overturn Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling in August that found the 2008 measure unconstitutional. November 24, 2010 is NATIONAL OPT-OUT Day NVA New Play Festival: A Christmas Carol AIDS pill helps gay men avoid HIV infection Many Gay student awards at CSUSM Dec. 3rd Escondido Democratic Club Meets List of Democratic events in San Diego County To read the best progressive newsletter west of the Mississippi, click on Jellison's EZINE hereThis 'N ThatFondly do we hope, ferverently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.- Abraham Lincoln The world will not be inherited by the strongest, it will be inherited by those most able to change To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace. The first principle of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating. Compromise does not mean cowardice. Those things of real worth in life are worth going to any length in love and respect to safeguard. War does not determine who is right - only who is left When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be. In History, stagnant waters, whether they be the stagnant waters of custom or those of despotism, harbour no life; life is dependent on the ripples created by a few eccentric individuals. In homage to that life & vitality, the community has to brave certain perils and must countenance a measure of heresy. One must live dangerously if one wants to live at all. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways: the point is to change it. If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love. When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity. Very few people chose war. They chose selfishness and the result was war. Each of us, individually and nationally, must choose: total love or total war. True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. In 1989, thirteen nations comprising 1,695,000 people experienced nonviolent revolutions that succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations . . . If we add all the countries touched by major nonviolent actions in our century (the Philippines, South Africa . . . the independence movement in India . . .) the figure reaches 3,337,400,000, a staggering 65% of humanity! All this in the teeth of the assertion, endlessly repeated, that nonviolence doesn't work in the 'real' world. I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity. To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice. Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting. Instead of tug o' war, let's play hug o' war. We are convinced that non-violence is more powerful than violence. We are convinced that non-violence supports you if you have a just and moral cause...If you use violence, you have to sell part of yourself for that violence. Then you are no longer a master of your own struggle. None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice. The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy. All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what the do not want to do. If you see good in people, you radiate a harmonious loving energy which uplifts those who are around you. If you can maintain this habit, this energy will turn into a steady flow of love. Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities, which we usually reserve for war. The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. In all things it is better to hope than to despair. Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men. Nothing could be worse than the fear that one had given up too soon, and left one unexpended effort that might have saved the world. Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers. You can no more win a war than win an earthquake. And all good things are yours. Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. Respectful dialogue, in the interest of searching for more complete truth, is considerably more productive than arguing for the purity of position. He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has a need to be forgiven. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Only the poor knew the meaning of life; the rich and the safe had to guess. | Articles & News: Scientist: Airport body X-rays are dangerous News SCIENTIST: The majority of the energy directed by these scanners "is delivered to the skin and the underlying tissue. Thus, while the dose would be safe if it were distributed throughout the volume of the entire body, the dose to the skin may be dangerously high." For that reason it is "misleading," the scientists say, to compare these scanners' radiation dose to those of airplane travel or a chest X-ray. "Because this device can scan a human in a few seconds, the X-ray beam is very intense," the scientists write, and warn that a hardware glitch with one of these scanners could shower a traveler with "an intense radiation dose to a single spot on the skin." Small Town Politics and Zen - from Fallbrook Don’t extend the Bush tax cuts for ANYBODY ! Cartoons of the Week Teaching an old elephant new tricks Ron Paul blasts TSA abusive body scans
Texas libertarian congressman Ron Paul introduces legislation to rein in abusive and invasive body searches by airport TSA. . . Chalmers Johnson: the Military-Industrial Complex
"Blowback" and "The Sorrows of Empire" author Chalmers Johnson and his take on the Military-Industrial Complex, American defense spending and the coming downfall of the Empire. Ted Olson: Why Prop 8 is a loser's position
Constitutional lawyer, Ted Olson, in his victory over Prop 8 speech, calls this a great victory for individual and civil rights under the U.S. Constitution. A short, but great speech. Gay couple gets married in Dallas via Skype
Through the power of Skype, a gay couple in Texas, where same-sex marriage isn't legal, can be wed by an official in the District of Columbia, where it is legal. It’s called "E-marriage," and it's a high-tech version of the proxy wedding traditionally held when one of the parties can’t be physically present — because, for example, they’re in the military stationed overseas. Here is the video of the Dallas couple being married. Kamala Harris widens lead slightly over Cooley Warren Buffett says Raise taxes for the rich!!
The world's 2nd richest man, investor Warren Buffet, explains how government saved the U.S. from a major Depression & that the rich should be paying a lot more in taxes. He admits he pays a lower percentage of his income on taxes than anyone in his office. America is increasingly becoming a Corporatocracy/Plutoctracy. In 1979 the wealthiest 2% of the U.S. took in 9% of our GDP. 30 years later in 2009 they took 24%. London mayor Warns Bush He will be arrested
Keith Olbermann talks with Jonathan Turley (law professor) about a piece in the conservative Daily Telegraph where Boris Johnson, Mayor Of London, advises George W. Bush not to bring his book tour to Britain, because he could face arrest as a war criminal. Bush 'The Decider' - now the lying 'Explainer'
George W. Bush, in his new book, tries to re-write history, but "Today Show" host Matt Lauer and MSNBC anchor Lawrence O'Donnell make him squirm in this powerful interview about false statements Bush wrote in his new book. Bush becomes defensive, unrepentant of his handling of gross failures in Katrina and attacking Iraq for WMDs. He smirkingly defends Karl Rove ("Bush's Brain") and Dick Cheney (the "real president"). Democrats: A smaller but stronger army of liberals You heard it first from ProgressivePost:
(By Joe Howard Crews)
Feingold's legal
credentials:
Harvard University Law School, Juris Doctor with Honors, 1979
- Rhodes Scholar, Final Honours School of Jurisprudence, Magdalen College, Oxford .University
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"Plutocracy and Democracy don't mix", states Bill Moyers. It is the rule of the rich, which is anathema to democracy. It is buying up and enslaving the political and spiritual soul of America. It greatest threat is controlling the minds of the weak and vulnerable segment of the populace though media propaganda. It uses the sacred tools of democracy to destroy democracy from within.
FBI demands more spying authority on Americans
Article
ACLU: The FBI is lobbying tech companies including Google and Facebook to win support for an Obama administration proposal to expand its Internet wiretapping capabilities. The ACLU remains very concerned that this proposal is a clear recipe for abuse and will make it that much easier for the government to gain access to our most personal information. Americans should not simply surrender their privacy and other fundamental values in the name of national security.
GOP may wind up killing the recovering patient
Article
By Paul Krugman: "Our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize," wrote Paul Krugman, Nobel economics prize winner in his latest column. America is a weak patient coming out of intensive care, and the new Republicans in Congress can't wait to bludgeon America and draw blood." This may have tragic unintended consequences for the economy.
Maggie Gallagher imposing her kind of marriage
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A clever cartoon spoof on Maggie Gallagher explaining to St. Peter why he should let her through the Pearly Gates. St. Peter subjects her to a tough grilling on same-sex marriage. Quite clever, indeed!
A couple for 44 years, still denied right to marry
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Edith "Edie" Windsor, who shared her life with her late spouse, Thea Spyer, for 44 years, filed a lawsuit against the federal government for refusing to recognize their marriage. The lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the "Defense of Marriage Act", a federal statute that defines marriage for all federal purposes as a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife. Windsor and Spyer were married in Canada in 2007 and were considered married by their home state of New York.
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