Monday Open Thread; Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Submitted by enhydra lutris on Mon, 01/15/2018 - 5:00amJanuary 15 is the 15th day of the year, there are 350 days left **
Today's number is 15
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Today's number is 15
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Most Americans don't know how to handle debt.
Proof of this can be found here.
Well-meaning lefties sincerely ask "Does the economy serve the people, or do the people serve the economy?"; as if asking that question will put the 1% on the defensive. But, clearly, the economy has been reduced to the stock market, the stock market has been reduced to a handful of massively overvalued tech companies, and the central banks supply zero-interest liquidity to keep those stock prices in the stratosphere. The real world? The massive unemployment, the crumbling infrastructure?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening an attack on Syria Kurdistan for months without action, but the moment appears to have arrived.
It's not a new idea that Trump's tweets are used to distract the public from his awful policies.
It's also not a new idea that Trump's tweets distract from specific policies. Consider this Mashable article.
"WE MUST SEE NOW THAT THE EVILS OF RACISM, ECONOMIC
EXPLOITATION AND MILITARISM ARE ALL TIED TOGETHER...YOU CAN’T
REALLY GET RID OF ONE WITHOUT GETTING RID OF THE OTHERS...THE
WHOLE STRUCTURE OF AMERICAN LIFE MUST BE CHANGED."
—The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., May 1967
I never met Martin Luther King, Jr. I was only 14 when he was murdered (perhaps by our own government). However, I later worked with many people who were his friends...so called foot soldiers of the movement. So although we never met, he influenced me. I think he influenced our nation, helping us reach for a higher morality and better society. He was a human, and like us all continued to grow and evolve throughout his life. I think he was really maturing and carrying the movement forward when he began the poor people's campaign. Today I want to look at the dream which has yet to be realized, and the new effort to revive the poor people's campaign.
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History
This feast may represent a Christian adaptation of the pagan feast, Cervulus, integrating it with the donkey in the nativity story.[2] In connection with the Biblical stories, the celebration was first celebrated in the 11th century, inspired by the pseudo-Augustinian "Sermo contra Judaeos" c. 6th century.
Has there been any one thing this century more divisive in this country than the President of the United States? From Bush to Obama to Trump, has anything divided the country more than having them as the singular head of 330 million people?
If you believe that it doesn't matter who is president and that Trump is just a byproduct of what came before him, why would you want to continue the practice of electing a president?
Should we really keep doing this?
The UN Security Council received a report on the horrific, man-made humanitarian disaster in Yemen the other day.
What did the report say? That depends entirely on which news source you read.
If you live in the U.S. the report was about Iran.
For example, look at the NY Times.
At around 8am on Saturday morning, Hawaii's emergency alert system sent out a shocking tweet: "Ballistic Missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek Immediate shelter, This is not a drill."
The emergncy alert was sent to all Hawaiian cellphones...
Saturday morning Hawaiian television shows were interrupted...