Sometimes, Melissa runs her legs. Sometimes, she runs her mouth.

Tag: politics (Page 1 of 2)

Martin Luther King, Robert E. Lee, and me

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law. — Martin Luther King Jr. — from Letters from a Birmingham Jail

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Yes you can kill the dreamer. Absolutely you can kill the dreamer but you cannot, i must tell you, you cannot kill the dream. The dream is still alive– Reverend Billy Kyles”

The last time I went to Memphis, I went to the National Civil Rights Museum. It is a wonderful museum that gives the entire history of the civil rights museum from the day of slaves to the present. You can see Klan robes, notes from SNCC, pictures of the Freedom riders, pamphlets from the Black Panther party, and a whole host of other things. There is also a movie called “The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306” It is the story of Dr. King’s last day as told by the Reverend Samuel “Billy” Kyles. Dr. King’s “Mountain Top” speech. He was standing by Dr.King on the balcony when he was shot. He was the guy who tried to call the ambulance.

The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306 from Marc Altshuler – Human Music on Vimeo.

Today I was reminded that Arkansas celebrates Robert E. Lee day and Martin Luther King Jr. day on the same day. For some reason, I was shocked. You would think I wouldn’t be. And there were people who were disgusted and there were people who thought it was perfectly fine and thought Robert E. Lee was a great man.

People thought he was great because he didn’t believe in slavery. He was offered a leadership position with the Union army but instead fought for the Confederacy out of a loyalty to the state of Virginia when it seceded from the Union. Some people think that loyalty is honorable. I think he sold out black people and his own views for that loyalty. I don’t think that is honorable. I think it’s a little bit cowardly. Mr. Lee did promote his antislavery views afterwards. Also, Arlington National Cemetery is located on property owned by his wife. General Lee went on to be President of Washington and Lee.

I think Martin Luther King’s view on Mr. Lee’s predicament would have been that he should have resigned and fought for neither side if he couldn’t fight for the Union Army if he was against slavery. (see the Letter from Birmingham jail). With that conclusion, I find it very odd that a day celebrates both of their lives since their views on certain subjects are diametrically opposed.

okay that is the short version. Heck. MLK day is over.

Mr. McCance, You are a douchebag

Man when Mr.Sulu calls you a douchebag. You know you’ve hit a low.

Wordless Wednesday

NAACP

My NAACP membership card

Coloring all over the place

A while back, a couple of my Little Rock twitter friends wrote about race after reading a startling statistic about Arkansas. I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been. See, in what will be the ultimate cliche of all time, my friend who died a couple of months ago, Angela, was black.

october2007 034

There’s a picture of her at her daughter Alexis’s birthday in 2007. Crap, I can’t believe that was almost three years ago. Even more crap, I can’t believe my friend is dead. Well I’ve known . . . knew Angela since we were in kindergarten and we became good friends in high school. That’s a lot of years.

She wasn’t my only ethnic minority friend. I’m not even sure how many I have. I have enough that I would have to think about it to actually give a number. My first boyfriend’s parents came here from India and he was first generation. I’m not quite sure how I got to be so comfortable around different races other than to say that my single Aunt had a Laverne and Shirley type roommate situation with this black lady named Debra when I was growing up. Actually Debra is back at my Aunt’s house but apparently sometime during the late 80s, early 90s, Debra got married and moved out. Maybe I’m just easy going. I don’t know. I know for high school purposes most of the other white kids in my smart kid classes were also members of the country club and that added an interesting little twist to the whole small town social seven circles of hell known as high school cliques.

I do know that racism is alive and well. I saw what happened to my friend when she was in the running to be valedictorian. It was ugly and obvious. Ethnic students are given lower grades by white teachers, even if it is the exact same paper as the experiment in the link did. That study has been replicated so many times. I’ve heard all of the statistics about black people going to jail more than whites.

I’ve also seen what it does to individual people. I’ve seen the unfairness. I’ve seen how it slowly sinks in and how some people become bitter. some people become sad and yet others just quit trying altogether.

I don’t quite understand it. It’s something that should be so easy and yet it seems so hard. If you don’t know somebody, you don’t know somebody and assuming things about someone you don’t know is stupid. Why be mean to people you don’t know? Why go around assuming someone is lazy or stupid or anything because of their appearance? Putting other people down as a means to feel better about yourself is desperate and sad.

I wish I had some deep meaning prose that would inspire but I don’t. Others have done it better in other venues. People just want to be liked and appreciated. They want to be loved for who they are deep down underneath all the bullshit.

G20 protest shenanigans.

You’re sexy
you’re Cute
take off your riot suit.

Now that’s a way to protest.

The President's school speech

So here is the speech to the schools that Barack Obama is supposed to give tomorrow.

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community.

Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

So this is the socialist propaganda that has people about to pee all over themselves? really?

Sarah Palin has left the building

I heard about Sarah Palin resigning from her post as governor of Alaska in the same way that many people did: Twitter

I tried calling my friend Ang and got a voice mail so I texted her. “Palin’s out. Thoughts?”

She calls me later.

“WHAT HAPPENED?”
“I don’t know. She resigned.”
“Wow!”
“Yeah I know.”
“Somebody must have some dirt on her.”
“Did she say why?”
“She gave a statement but even the pundits are saying they still have no idea what she was saying.”

So I ended up going to Ang’s house and we found the video on the internet.

LORD! I do believe that Sarah Palin has lost her mind! The woman sounds like she’s about to cry or hyperventilate with all that gasping for air. Somehow she’s talking about Kosovo, her son Trig, and energy in the same speech.

I then found out about the Vanity Fair article. and found her written version of the speech on her website.

Now a hint on why she quit was this paragraph

Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I’ve been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations – such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions.

Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn’t been cheap – the State has wasted thousands of hours of your time and shelled out some two million of your dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money not going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” … Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources – spending other peoples’ money in their game.

Honey, if you had really read “ALL” the newspapers, you would have been able to predict that something like this would happen based on the Clinton years. Remember the Clinton years. Since the 90s, the Clintons have been accused of all sorts of ethics violations and other wrongdoings like “White Water,” “Travel Gate” “Mena Airport” “Paula Jones sexual harassment trial,” “Murdering Vince Foster” … and oh yeah… “doing dirty deeds with Monica Lewinsky and lying about it”

So how many of them turned out to be true? Only the last one.

So how can she or anybody else be surprised at how Ms. Palin was treated? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The whole vetting process that keeps being mentioned in the news is done for the sole reason that everybody and their mama knows that the minute someone hits the national stage, some investigative journalists will descend on the hometown like a swarm of locusts looking in every dog house, hen house, state house, out house, and governor’s mansion to find dirt or even something dark brown that can resemble dirt if held up to the light just right.

So honey, if you were surprised at how you were treated, the only person you have to blame is yourself.

So for Ms. Palin to get all up on her podium and talk about politics as usual and blood sports after accusing Barack Obama of being friends with terrorists and given tacit approval through her silence when people in the audience shouted “kill him” and going on and on about how he isn’t a real American. Bloodsport. “kill terrorist”

Oh honey. This is the part where you wink at the camera again like you’re shitting me, isn’t it? Am I being PUNK’d? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

So she’s gone and I’ll wonder but not too much. I figure someone else will find out something or they won’t.

Sunday Mishmash

A special thanks to Blake’s Think Tank for this hilarious rap from some Dartmouth conservatives. Oh yeah they have their own website . Oh, they’re not TRYING to be funny which only makes it more funny.

Athletes at the U of A cheating? hrmmm. Via Arkansas Times

All the drama and stress surrounding sick and dying kittens wore me out. I did, however, get some running in this weekend as well as a substantial amount of sleep. So for me, I guess the weekend was a good one. I signed up for National Blog Month (or whatever its called) so dammit. You folks get daily post for the month of June. OH ROCK!

Would You Slap Your Father? If So, You’re a Liberal WOW. Just WOW! I’m not sure what to say about that. (thanks to Blonde Justice)

It's official

Pat O’Brien is running for Arkansas Secretary of State.

Another episode of TOTALLY AWESOME VIDEOS

From the kids who bought you Dick in a Box, it’s “MOTHERLOVER” If you missed this weekend’s Saturday Night Live, well you missed out. This might be the funniest thing I’ve seen in 2009 so far. …. okay kids, I can’t embed the thing. You’re just going to have to click the link.

“MOTHERLOVER”

Wanda Sykes performed at the White House Correspondents Dinner, otherwise known on Twitter as “nerdprom”

Part II

There is quite a lot of controversy about this bit. Part of is due to Wanda saying that she hopes Rush Limbaugh’s Kidneys fail. It was in response to Limbaugh saying that he hoped the Obama administration fails. Her response:

“He just wants the country to fail,” Sykes said of Limbaugh. “To me that’s treason. He’s not saying anything different than what Osama Bin Laden is saying. You might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker but he was just so strung out on Oxycontin he missed his flight. … Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that’s what he needs.”

Strangely enough, the comparing speech that is harsh and questioning of the Presidency with treason was the mantra of the day every day during the Bush administration: “You’re with us or against us” Oh how times have changed. Some of the more fringe elements of the Right have been insinuating that Obama is Muslim and a terrorist for quite a while but when Wanda Sykes does it to one of their “hometown heroes” OH this is how it works.

As far as Rush Limbaugh personally, he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. He’s said nasty things about a lot of people. He said some HORRIBLE things about Bill Clinton. I’m not sure that he’s really a person who has much leeway to get offended by anything anybody else says about him. Strangely enough, Limbaugh himself hasn’t had any response to the Sykes comments.

“Teardrop” by Massive Attack. It’s the theme song to TV show HOUSE. Okay I just like it.

« Older posts

© 2024 Melissa Runs

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑

WordPress Web Hosting