Who, and what, we are is not static. We are in this moment, but we were not a moment ago and we will still be a moment from now. The constant changes are subtle, there are no magic switches we may throw; enlightenment is in that moment: before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water, after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

This is the mystique of Ferdinand Waldo Demara. Oliver Burkeman writing in This column will change your life: self-perception theory for The Guardian, examines the psychology involved.

It’s tempting to conclude that we’re helpless puppets of circumstance, unable ever to know ourselves. But there’s an upside to self-perception theory: it supports a certain kind of “faking it till you make it”, dating back to William James and revisited in Richard Wiseman’s recent book, Rip It Up. If you want to think of yourself as generous – or happy or confident or patient – then act how generous people act; the self-perception will follow. (This isn’t the same as trying to fool yourself you’re feeling generous, happy, etc: that way lies misery.) Of course, the same goes for bad behaviour. Wilson quotes Kurt Vonnegut: “We are what we pretend to be, so we should be careful about what we pretend to be.” You’re constantly watching yourself. So you’d better watch yourself.

Who shall I pretend to be today?

A Keef Knight twofer…

The drive to extend the arts and culture tax could take $150 million from Cuyahoga taxpayers.

It will most likely hurt the poorest residents.

It is solely a cigarette tax and raises significant revenue with little attention to where that money goes.

And the worst part of the tax, which goes most heavily to the largest arts venues, not struggling artists, is the tax weighs most heavily upon the poor and working citizen.

It is one of the most convenient taxes but thoughtlessly damaging to the least able to pay the price, study after study shows.

It is a cruel tax. It should end. There must be a better way.

Why can our leaders not find a progressive rather than a regressive tax? It’s a lack of will.

This tax literally can take food from the mouths of poor children.

You also will hear the argument that the cigarette tax represents Continue Reading »

Friend,

As you know, I just announced my candidacy last Thursday—and what a few days it has been.

While we will never raise as much money as our opponents who receive huge donations from wealthy individuals and super PACs, I have been amazed by the outpouring of grassroots financial support that we have secured. While my opponents hold fundraising events in which a handful of millionaires make huge contributions, we are gaining extraordinary support with modest contributions coming from the working families and middle class of our country.

That’s what my politics is all about. That’s what I want to do throughout this campaign. And I want to thank all of you for your support.

This campaign will take on the biggest challenges facing our country. We must stand up and fight back. We must launch a political revolution which engages millions of Americans from all walks of life in the struggle for real change.

Sign on to endorse our campaign’s progressive platform. Here’s what this campaign is going to talk about:

Income and wealth inequality: In the United States today we have the most unequal wealth and income distribution of any major country on earth—worse than at any time since the 1920s. This is an economy that must be changed in fundamental ways.

Jobs and income: In my view, we need a massive federal jobs program which puts millions of our people back to work. We must end our disastrous trade policies. We need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. And we have to fight for pay equity for women.

Campaign finance reform: As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, American democracy is being undermined by the ability of the Koch brothers and other billionaire families. These wealthy contributors can literally buy politicians and elections by spending hundreds of millions of dollars in support of the candidates of their choice. We need to overturn Citizens United and move toward public funding of elections so that all candidates can run for office without being beholden to the wealthy and powerful.

Climate change: Climate change is real, caused by human activity and already devastating our nation and planet. The United States must lead the world in combating climate change and transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency and sustainability.

College affordability: Every person in this country who has the desire and ability should be able to get all the education they need regardless of the income of their family. This is not a radical idea. In Germany, Scandinavia and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.

Health care: Shamefully, the United States remains the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all people. The United States must move toward a Medicare-for-all single-payer system. Health care is a right, not a privilege.

Poverty: The United States has more people living in poverty than at almost any time in the modern history of our country. I believe that in a democratic, civilized society none of our people should be hungry or living in desperation. We need to expand Social Security, not cut it. We need to increase funding for nutrition programs, not cut them.

Tax reform: We need real tax reform which makes the rich and profitable corporations begin to pay their fair share of taxes. We need a tax system which is fair and progressive. Children should not go hungry in this country while profitable corporations and the wealthy avoid their tax responsibilities by stashing their money in the Cayman Islands.

And these are just some of the issues that we will be dealing Continue Reading »

There is nothing funny about the murder of a 12-year-old child playing in a park, yet, in the bizarre media universe in which we exist, a comedian, with a show on a cable network devoted to comedy, finds a way to make the absurdity of a mother still waiting for justice more than five months after her baby was gunned down and allowed to bleed out while police on the scene only grudgingly rendered medical assistance (and her distraught daughter tackled, handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police cruiser for the crime of rushing to her brother’s bleeding body) more immediate than all the talking heads pretending to be real journalists.

This is just fucked up.

In 1976, at the age of 21, I cast my first vote for president. Jimmy Carter was not anyone’s front runner, but he appeared in the national consciousness at a time when the American voters were rabid for change. Carter is the only Democratic Party presidential candidate that I still feel good about giving my vote.

To anyone who thinks Bernie can’t win next year I can only say I heard much the same message in 1976.

I want to feel good about my vote again.

Fox News comedian Geraldo Rivera came for the show and got shown the door.

Geraldo Rivera was an unpopular presence in Baltimore this week, and never more so than when he encountered Kwame Rose, a young protester whose interruption of a broadcast for Fox News on Tuesday night went viral.

As Rivera was setting up in West Baltimore to interview state senator Catherine Pugh about the protests—which erupted over the death in police custody of a 25-year-old man, Freddie Gray—he was surrounded by a crowd of protesters. Rose then stood in front of the camera and told the reporter to leave.

“This is my city. This is our city,” Rose was heard to say. “We want you gone.”

Baltimore is a better place for having Rose stand up and letting Faux Snooze lookie-loo Rivera know that he isn’t welcome.

Ta-Nehisi Coates comments on when the violence began (hint: 2015 is not the right answer):

Now, the reason why I say [his May 2014 piece: The Case For Reparations] was incomplete was because there is a methodology, a tool that has been used to make sure that black people are available for plunder. And a major tool in making that process happen has been the criminal justice system. It’s very, very important to understand. I read the governor in the New York Times today and he was saying in the paper that—you know, because it’s going to be a big day tomorrow—he was saying “violence will not be tolerated.” And I thought about that as a young man who’s from West Baltimore and grew up in West Baltimore and I thought about how violence was tolerated for all of my life here in West Baltimore.

When I was going to school, I thought about every little article that I wore when I walked out the house. I thought about who I was walking with. I thought about how many of them there were. I thought about what neighborhoods they were from. I thought about which route I was going to take to school. Once I got to school I thought about what I was going to do during the lunch hour—was I actually going to have lunch or was I going to go sit in the library. When school was dismissed I thought about what time I was going to leave school. I thought about whether I should stay after-school for class. I thought about whether I should take the bus up to my grandmother’s house. I thought about which way I should go home if I was going to go home. Every one of those choices was about the avoidance of violence, about the protection of my body. And so I don’t want to come off as if I’m sympathizing or saying that it is necessarily okay, to inflict violence just out of anger, no matter how legitimate that anger is.

But I have a problem when you begin the clock with the violence on Tuesday. Because the fact of the matter is that the lives of black people in this city, the lives of black people in this country have been violent for a long time. Violence is how enslavement actually happened.

Previously…

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Neil Young, Ohio, 1970.

Previously…

Where do I sign up for Ohioans for Bernie Sanders?

Listening to WCPN’s Sound of Ideas this morning with Rick Jackson, I experienced one of my rare skid-mark moments, the flip side of NPR Driveway Moments, those times where you sit in your driveway listening to the end of an interesting piece on the car radio. A skid-mark moment comes when someone on the radio says something so outrageous that you want to slam on the brakes to make sure you heard what you think you heard.

This morning, at about the 6:14 time mark, I heard this exchange.

Chris Quinn: They brought in an expert on eyesight to say that he may have been compromised in his vision because of the flashing lights in the dark. There was weird [Emphasis mine, JH] testimony about why pirates wear patches because it allows them to see in the dark when they jump onto boats by flipping them up they’re already adjusted.

Rick Jackson: I never knew.

Chris Quinn: I did not know that either.

All Quinn and Jackson could say about this bizarre testimony was to call the fabrication weird?

Sheesh.

There has been some talk about what will happen in Cleveland after the judge decides on the court case of Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo in the shooting deaths of two people.

The reason for this concern, of course, evolves from the violent reaction in Baltimore to the death of Freddie Gray while in custody of Baltimore police.

How Cleveland has avoided more national attention on the police-black issue is a mystery to me.

I thought for sure the 137-bullets fired, some 60 car chase—all visibly caught on film as police cars screeched in pursuit with flashing lights (and shown repeatedly on TV here)—would have been used over and over by national TV as examples of police over-reaction. It was a classic example of irrational police behavior.

Then the dramatic film—showing Tamir Rice shot dead in seconds as he merely approached a police car. The officer firing as he opened the car door—would have surely been national media fodder in a time of violent police treatment of young blacks. (And unexpectedly all on film). But I would read national stories of police atrocities and at time the 12-year old Rice and Cleveland wouldn’t even make the expanding story list. (The New York Times eventually used the film).

Add to this to this the strange behavior of Mayor Jackson simply blowing off Atty. Gen. Mike DeWine’s clearly correct report assessment of “systemic failure” of the multi-car chase at high speeds, ending in two deaths, through Cleveland city street followed by the mayor’s promotion of the two top police officers in charge of his police department and one wonders if Cleveland is in a bubble of its own.

Or does this mayor think he’s above Continue Reading »

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and “nonviolent.” These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. To understand the question, it’s worth remembering what, specifically, happened to Freddie Gray. An officer made eye contact with Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?

Freddie Gray is dead because he was born Black and male.

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is “correct” or “wise,” any more than a forest fire can be “correct” or “wise.” Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Phillip Agnew made the case very well (time-mark 14:10) last evening.

I’m not sure what is going on with the embed code, but here’s the direct link…

*Nathaniel “Magnificent” Montague, 1965…

(Montague is still alive. Has anyone talked to him in 2015?)

In 1968, three years after the Long Hot Summer of 1965, the Kerner Commission:

presented its findings in 1968, concluding that urban violence reflected the profound frustration of inner-city blacks and that racism was deeply embedded in American society. The report’s most famous passage warned that the United States was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” The commission presented evidence of an array of problems plaguing the African American community with particular severity. These crippling conditions included not only overt discrimination but also chronic poverty, high unemployment, poor schools, inadequate housing, lack of access to health care, and systematic police bias and brutality.

Slouch forward to 2015:

[Freddie Gray’s] funeral on Monday was followed by violent scenes. Crowds were shot at by police using teargas grenades, so-called “less lethal” bullets and pepper balls, which explode to release an irritant.

Passersby and reporters were among those struck. At least one officer was seen throwing a brick back at protesters.

Maryland governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency, activating the state’s 5,000 national guard personnel with an executive order declaring the need “to protect the lives and property of citizens”. Batts said the troops would protect buildings. President Barack Obama was briefed on the crisis in Washington by Loretta Lynch, his new attorney general.

As night fell several fires burned across the city. In one instance firefighters trying to extinguish a blaze at a pharmacy were set back by a rioter with a knife who slashed a hose connected to a hydrant.

So, will the Clinton/Bush report of 2018 find a single difference?