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| A Closer Look at Taxes on the Rich NEW YORK TIMES - Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor known as the Oracle of Omaha, pushed the issue to the forefront this week by urging members of the new Congressional supercommittee on deficit reduction to stop "coddling" him and other affluent Americans and raise their taxes. In an opinion article in The New York Times on Monday, Mr. Buffett said he paid just under $7 million in federal payroll and income taxes last year, about 17 percent of his income, a lower percentage than anyone else in his office. Read More |
Event Reminders:Oside Council Meets to Vote on Rent ControlWednesday, 08/17/2011 The Oceanside City Council will meet to discuss the successful petition against ending rent control for residents and vote on whether it will become law. They will be forced to address the issue because over 14,000 signatures were gathered, twice the amount required to possibly put the issue up for a special election ballot. Come to the meeting and watch the fireworks! Build the San Diego Community Radio Project Monthly SD stop the war demonstration Restoration Work at the BV Creek Reserve 40th Anniversary of Friendship Park NC Film Club offering: Another Year Breakfast for Liberals in Vista at Coco's OFA Phone Bank Calls to Join the I Am In Campaign Economic Summit for a Better San Diego Free Monthly E-Waste Collection in Encinitas Panel on the Status of North San Diego County ASD Presents: It's Radio Summer! List of Democratic events in San Diego County To read the best progressive newsletter west of the Mississippi, click on Jellison's EZINE here SD Nurses - Heal America event, feed the poor Talk & Book Signing with S. Brian Willson Lake San Marcos Dem Club Meets NC Film Club screens Exit Through The Gift Shop Free Monthly E-Waste Collection in Encinitas This 'N ThatJaw-jaw is better than war-war.- Harold MacMillan If you live alone, whose feet will you wash? Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience. The Christian fight for peace is not to be confused with defeatism. Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat. Since we are to be conformed to the image of Christ, how can we then fight our enemies with the sword? ... Spears and swords of iron we leave to those who, alas, consider human blood and swine's blood of well-nigh equal value ... 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. The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy. The maxim that people should not have a right till they are ready to exercise it properly, is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time. If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having. A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own. Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal. You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. 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. That's all nonviolence is - organized love. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of humans as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is not safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. Everything, everything in war is barbaric . . . But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being. If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for. The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty - it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. The soul of our country needs to be awakened . . .When leaders act contrary to conscience, we must act contrary to leaders. World peace is us....We are each walking agents of the vision of peace we carry inside us. A great many people think they are thinking when they are just rearranging their prejudices. When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others. I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift. At some ideas you stand perplexed, especially at the sight of human sins, uncertain whether to combat it by force or by human love. Always decide, "I will combat it with human love." If you make up your mind about that once and for all, you can conquer the whole world. Loving humility is a terrible force; it is the strongest of all things and there is nothing like it. While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart. There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. If you obey all the rules you will miss the fun. Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace. We must have research for peace ... It would embrace the outstanding problems of morality. The time has come for man's intellect, his scientific method, to win over the immoral brutality and irrationality of war and militarism ... Now we are forced to eliminate from the world forever this vestige of prehistoric barbarism, this curse to the human race. There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used...Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they though of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed. Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more. Taking the first footstep with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered paradise. A good end sanctify evil means; not must we ever do evil, that good might come of it. We are ready to retaliate, rather than forgive or gain by love and information . . . Force may subdue, but love gains. And one that forgives first wins the laurel. And then to each other. A bad peace is even worse than 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. 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. 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. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at at time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action in the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are, if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance. | Articles & News: Tim DeChristopher’s statement to the court News Remember Tim DeCristopher, the young man who disrupted a Bureau of Land Management auction by joining the bidding? Before being sentenced to two years in prison and slapped with a $10,000 fine, Tim DeChristopher made this eloquent statement to the prosecution and the judge: KUCINICH - Why I voted against debt ceiling bill San Diego County turns BLUE again CA Supreme Court nominee friend of liberals Damon defends teachers against a shi**y cameraman
Matt Damon gives a reporters and camera crew a piece of his mind during an interview at the "Save Our Schools" march that the actor attended and spoke at this week. The reporter comments that as an actor he needs an incentive like money to work harder and be a better actor, so why shouldn't the same go for teachers? Damon responds saying, "You think job insecurity is what makes me work hard? I want to be an actor." Damon stresses that a teacher wants to teach and isn't going to get lazy as soon as they're offered tenure. Having grown up with two parents that were dedicated teachers, I am loving the hunky actor for being so passionate and caring about this. During the interview an out of sight camera man comments that ten percent of teachers are bad and that it's true of any profession. This guy claims ten percent of people in any profession should think of doing something else with their career. Damon retaliates saying, "Well okay but I mean, maybe you're a shitty cameraman, I don't know," —burn. You just know that Jason Bourne would be so proud! Check out the video footage above: Brit professor on austerity's link to civil unrest
British Professor Richard Wilkinson on inequality and its link to this week's civil unrest. The public accepts the grand larceny of he banks and brokers, and the greed of politicians, but feel more threatened by the kids rioting in the streets of London. Las Vegas Church supports Anti-Gay Ugandan Pastor S.F. gay married couple loses immigration battle 2 Wisconsin Democrats keep their Senate seats Tea Party -political environment laced with lunacy The Truth About Recycling Plastic Managers Mowing Down Verizon Strikers London Riots explosion of pent up anger
The shooting of young Mark Duggan unleashed an explosion of pent up anger, especially from communities of color who feel they've been disrespected by their government. It's what Darcus Howe, a broadcaster and writer, told the BBC in this video: Corporatist Romney heckled at Iowa State Fair
"Corporations Are People," Mitt Romney Tells Iowa Hecklers Angry Over His Tax Policy on Aug 11. Romney was speaking at the Iowa State Fair’s soapbox on Thursday morning, but when it was time for the question-and-answer session, the mood turned heated, with a small group of angry hecklers calling on Mr. Romney to support raising taxes on the wealthy to help finance social entitlement programs. Rick Perry Promises Universal Hair Care Cartoons of the Week Obama, the negotiatorGay people can quote the Bible, too.Who broke Washington?Unions & the Middle ClassObama plays poker with GOP What is happening with the Prop 8 case? Late-breaking news: This just in ...
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Witty dialogue, profound explanation of today's economic conundrum, a spiral that could collapse the world economy.
Ted Olson Interview With Fox News Chris Wallace
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Wallace, insinuating that Gay Marriage is judicial activism, asks where is it in the Constitution that permits gay mariage. "Where is the right to interracial marriage in the Constitution" asked Ted Olsen of Wallace. Brilliant arguments by Olson. When Wallace insists the voters have the right to outlaw gay marriage, Olson asks if it would be constitutional for the voters to force blacks to drink at separate water fountains.
Environment: The wrong man is going to jail.
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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: "Why Is Tim DeChristopher Going to Jail While Massey Energy's CEO Walks Free? Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher is going to jail, but Don Blankenship isn't -- despite the fact that he illegally destroyed an entire mountain range. Why? Because he's the CEO of Massey Energy Company—and has completely bought off the judicial system in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky." (Time 4:25)READ DeChristopher's eloquent statement upon being sentenced to 2 years, in separate article in news letter.
Larry King to Obama: Will you say 'I do?'
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Emmy Award winning broadcaster Larry King, who has interviewed every U.S. president since Gerald Ford, has spoken up for the LGBT community by telling President Barack Obama to support marriage equality. In a video created by the NOH8 Campaign and Freedom to Marry, King says to Obama: "Many of your fellow elected officials have already taken a stand ... Please, Mr. President, support the Freedom to Marry."
Manning Video:American troops slaughter civilians
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Army intel analyst Bradley Manning faces decades in prison for allegedly leaking this video of a U.S. helicopter attack killing 11 civilians and wounding two children in Baghdad, Iraq. The Army covered up the evidence and declared the war crime "justified". Now they say that exposing the massacre is criminal.
INFO CLICK HERE:
Arlington West - Memorial to our dead soldiers
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Independence Day, July 4. View this short film. Remember our dead from the two present wars. Please honor the living vets. Invite one out to dinner. At least thank one for their service. May there be no more wars.
Late-breaking news: This just in ...
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