Category Archives: politics

the lesson of comic books: The 99

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I got interested in reading and in mythology by reading comic books. Particularly Wonder Woman. And that was back in the 1940s, before the whole superhero thing really took off. My two kids grew up with comics. In the 1970s, my son had the expected monumental comic book collection, which I made him sell off when he went off to college. (Argh. Not very smart of me, since he had some first printing editions which became very valuable to collectors.)

Comic book heroes like Superman touted good ol’ American values: “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Other cultures have similar values, however, and the time has come to create heroes that can demonstrate values that are common to all humane cultures.

And someone just did.

The 99 is the brainchild of Naif al-Mutawa, and he recently gave a talk at TED about the origin of the idea. The gist of it is that he was inspired by the positive values imparted by the heroes of Marvel and DC comics. He wanted to create a more multicultural team of heroes who would extend those positive messages to people outside of the U.S., and expose American audiences to a more culturally diverse team of heroes. So here is a New Yorker—inspired by an American art form, who sees no difference between his Muslim and his American values—being vilified by the conservative noise machine for wanting to export those values around the world.

President Obama made a special mention about THE 99 superheroes and its creator, Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, in his speech given recently at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship held in Washington. The President commended THE 99 for capturing the imaginations of young people through the message of tolerance. Entrepreneurs from all over the globe are attending the summit, including Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, creator of THE 99 superheroes.

Go to the The 99 website to see an animated preview of the series and learn about the diverse group of 99 heroes whose combined adventures just might do more for multicultural tolerance and understanding among young people than any textbook on the subject.

You can also download a comic book that tells of their origins. How cool is that!

the Pakistanis laughed

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The Pakistanis laughed. So did “The Bangladeshis. The women with head scarves. The blondes. The Indians. The Palestinians. The Jews.”

It was that kind of night, actually, when for a moment you can believe that all the world’s problems could be solved if everyone would just lighten up a little bit (or a lot) and laugh together, at themselves and at each other. The lineup was packed. It was like there’d been an uprising at The Daily Show and Jon Stewart was stashed in a closet somewhere backstage bound in duct tape.

Go to Meera Subramanian‘s piece at Killing the Buddha and read about the night

Comedian Aasif Mandvi, correspondent for Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, began ….. “Stand Up for Religious Freedom” at Comix on W. 14th Street in New York …… reflecting on things he missed as a kid growing up Muslim. “Santa Claus. Bacon Bits.” (Pause, the critical tool of the comic.) “Seeing my mother’s face.”

Laughter. The best medicine.

The Kochtopus: one more reason to revolt

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The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

Read more in the New Yorker.

Like the robber barons of old, David H. Koch is a billionaire and very generous philanthropist, as though doing some good with some of his money makes up for all the bad he does with the rest of it — including the founding and support of supposed “grass roots movements” such as Americans for Prosperity Foundation. Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, said, “The Kochs are on a whole different level….. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”

The revolutionaries who held the original Boston Tea Party would never have stood for the machinations of the Kochtopus. These new Tea Partiers, manipulated by libertarians like Koch who spread disinformation and and stir up the disatisfactions of the people who will most suffer if their policies come about, are going to dismantle what is most good about this country. What these misguided citizens don’t realize is that they will ultimately suffer most, as the Kochs of this nation grind their lives to ash.

I like these comments left on a post of the blog of the Investigative Fund.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“I’m wondering if those who support that so-called Tea Party Movement really know where Republicans are leading them? It seems like the Tea Party rank & file are being USED by a bunch of vain, self-serving, evil, power mad, greed stricken, K-Street Con Artists. Paid for by wealthy silver spoon trust fund babies who want to turn the American PEOPLE into peasants. The scum of the earth who hide their hideous faces by using Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin as spokespersons. SUCKERS!

Just look at their agenda items. It‘s like wet dream for Ken Lay or Jack Abramoff:
1) Repeal Health Insurance Reform
2) Privatize Social Security or abolish it.
3) End Medicare
4) Extend Bush Tax Cuts for wealthy and Big Oil
5) Repeal Wall Street reform
6) Protect all those responsible for Gulf oil disaster and future environmental catastrophes
7) Abolish or cut funding to Department of Education
..) Abolish Dept. of Energy
9) Abolish Environmental Protection Agency
10) Repeal 17th Amendment
11) Rewrite Bible and school textbooks,
12) Replace JESUS with Glenn Beck, Frank Church with Joe McCarthy…
13) After USA is destroyed by Republican Party low grade thought processes, BLAME Democrats/Liberals
14) be flunkies, soldiers and slaves for silver spoon trust fund babies like George W. Bush, Saudi Prince Bandar and the Koch Bros.

Why aren’t the mainstream media falling all over themselves to unveil the Koch behind the curtain. Sell-outs. All of them.

c’mon Congress, give us a needed New Deal

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I have plagiarized from Ronni Bennett’s post and have sent the following message to my Congressional legislators. You can do the same, easily, by starting here, a site through which you can identify and email your legislators.

Please support Ohio Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur’s bill, HR 4318, which would authorize the president to re-establish the CCC, a program that put millions of young men to work during the Great Depression. Those young men were doing mostly physical labor. Kaptur’s bill eliminates the age and gender limits, and keep in mind that for every project involving manual labor, there are related support jobs that older people can do.

To me, this a no brainer. We are in desperate times. Young kids just out school can delay their career dreams a few years (as they did in the Depression) to earn some money while helping rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, and it would be a lifeline for older workers who otherwise have few options.

I can’t think of a better way to spend the next “stimulus” now that the federal government has so munificently helped out Wall Street workers.

I’m with Michael on this

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On September 11, in memory of a co-worker he lost on that day, he wrote:

I believe in an America that protects those who are the victims of hate and prejudice. I believe in an America that says you have the right to worship whatever God you have, wherever you want to worship. And I believe in an America that says to the world that we are a loving and generous people and if a bunch of murderers steal your religion from you and use it as their excuse to kill 3,000 souls, then I want to help you get your religion back. And I want to put it at the spot where it was stolen from you.

I’m quoting Michael Moore, of course, that guy who has (and shows) the courage of his convictions.

He makes a great suggestion at the end of his piece quoted above, in which he argues that the mosque community center intended to be built near Ground Zero should be built AT Ground Zero:

I say right now. Let’s each of us make a statement by donating to the building of this community center! It’s a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization and you can donate a dollar or ten dollars (or more) right now through a secure pay pal account by clicking here. I will personally match the first $10,000 raised (forward your PayPal receipt to webguy@michaelmoore.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ). If each one of you reading this blog/email donated just a couple of dollars, that would give the center over $6 million, more than what Donald Trump has offered to buy the Imam out. C’mon everyone, let’s pitch in and help those who are being debased for simply wanting to do something good. We could all make a huge statement of love on this solemn day.

I never contribute money to any cause. This time I made an exception.

Health Care Reform Will Help Everybody

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This is a guest post by Barbara O’ Brien, who regularly posts at The Mahablog, Crooks and Liars, AlterNet, and elsewhere on the progressive political and health blogophere, and who has earned the notoriety of being a panelist at the Yearly Kos Convention and a featured guest blogger at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, DC.

Please feel free to re-post Barbara’s piece and let me know if you do by commenting here.

HEALTH CARE REFORM WILL HELP EVERYBODY

Many Americans assume the new health care reform act will benefit mostly the poor and uninsured and hurt everyone else, according to polls. As Matt Yglesias wrote, “Basically, people see this as a bill that will take resources from people who have health insurance and give it to people who don’t have health insurance.” Those who still oppose the reform say that people ought to pay for their own health care.

We all believe in the virtues of hard work and self-reliance, but these days it’s a fantasy to think that anyone but the mega-wealthy will not, sooner or later, depend on help from others to pay medical bills. And that’s true no matter how hard you work, how much you love America, or how diligently you take care of yourself. The cost of medical care has so skyrocketed that breaking an arm or leg could cost as much as a new car. And if you get cancer or heart disease — which can happen even to people who live healthy lifestyles — forget about it. The disease will not only clean you out; it will leave a whopping debt for your survivors to pay.

And the truth is, we all pay for other peoples’ health care whether we know it or not. When people can’t pay their medical bills, the cost of their health care gets added to everyone else’s bills and insurance premiums. When poor people use emergency rooms as a doctor of last resort, their care is not “free.” You pay for it.

Another common fantasy about medical care is that the “free market” provides incentives for medical companies to develop innovative new drugs and treatments for disease without government subsidy. It’s true that private enterprise is very good at developing profitable health care products. But not all medical care can be made profitable.

For years, the U.S. government has been funding medical research that the big private companies don’t want to do because there is too much cost for the potential profit. This is especially true for diseases that are rare and expensive to treat. An example of a recent advance made possible by government grants include new guidelines for malignant pleural mesothelioma treatment developed by Sloan-Kettering mesothelioma cancer researchers. Another is a blood screening test developed by mesothelioma doctors like thoracic surgeon Dr. David Sugarbaker. The health reform act provides for more dollars for such research, from which even many of the tea party protesters will benefit.

The biggest fantasy of all was that people who had insurance didn’t have to worry about health care costs. But the fact is that in recent years millions of Americans have been bankrupted by medical costs, and three-quarters of the medically bankrupt had health insurance. And yes, insurance companies even dumped hard-working, law-abiding patriots. But the health care reform act will put an end to that, and now America’s hard-working, law-abiding patriots are more financially secure, whether they like it or not.

Memorial Day is for the Dead

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I invite you to link here and read my son’s post, entitled as above, which begins thusly:

It says so right on the tin: “[Memorial Day] commemorates U.S. soldiers who died while in the military service”.

The key word in all of this is “died”, not “served” or, for that matter, “serves”. This day isn’t for anyone who ever found themselves in the military of the United States, or for those who find themselves there today. None of these truths dishonors living veterans (who have a day) or active duty personnel.

Death is different. Death is singular. Death is separate. Death is final. The point is to set aside a day in which we remember those whose service took them all the way past that final line. Whether or not they died for a just cause, they died in our name……..cont’d

And while I’m on the subject, I offer for your illuminination Mark Twain’s “War Prayer.”

America is not a Christian country

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adams

From here, where you should go and read the whole post:

That’s why I like very much what the Freedom From Religion Foundation is doing: they’ve created wonderful ads with quotes from the Founding Fathers showing precisely how they felt on this issue. The one above of JFK is cool, because his candidacy was attacked for him being a Catholic, of all things. The thing is, he was a religious man, and still understood that religion must be kept away from politics.

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