The Beginning of the "Third Act".

On this, the inauguration day of President Barack Obama, and after more than 14 hours of listening to the TV, I finally heard somebody capture the significance of this presidency. The famous PBS documentary film maker Ken Burns was a guest for Keith Olberman, and this is what he said:

"First act...Thomas Jefferson says 'all men are created equal', but he really means...'all white men of property; free of debt'!

Four-score and seven years later, Abraham Lincoln says, 'Look, we really mean it, but its going to be another hundred years!'

Today, when Barack Obama took the oath of office, that was the beginning of the 'Third Act' of real possibilities, and it also means that the civil war is over."

Ken Burns' interview with Keith Olberman is quite possibly the most cerebral analysis of what we can all hope for with President Obama at the helm. I recommend that you watch the whole video clip at this link.

That which makes Bill O'Reilly popular also makes America broken.

I don't know where Bill O'Reilly rates in the most watched news shows, but he is up near the top, and that should be a crime. The link at the bottom of this post is to the full critical review about O'Reilly's memoirs, A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity, but I want to post an excerpt:

[excerpt]
"In this slight, self-indulgent memoir, Bill O'Reilly tells us how he got so "bold" and "fresh." A humble man [tongue in cheek], he attributes his success to his own innate greatness, with honorable mention going to his solidly rock-headed upbringing in Levittown, N.Y. For all his generous praise of Levittown, O'Reilly is very clear that most of the credit should go to himself: "Looking back, the reason I have succeeded in life is that I relied on myself."

This typical piece of self-congratulation comes in a bizarre 10-page digression about Hurricane Katrina, in which O'Reilly contrasts his bold, fresh childhood in Levittown 50 years ago with the disastrous government-dependency of those New Orleans residents who spoiled Bush's presidency by getting themselves drowned: "If I had lived in New Orleans, I would have gotten in my car and driven the hell out of there as soon as the national weather service gave warning." In case the reader missed the point, Bill says that the dead in New Orleans were "either too dumb, too lazy, too mentally challenged, or too unlucky to have provided themselves with basic protections."

Stupid and callous as that may sound, it's the sort of proclamation that helped O'Reilly "succeed in life." In fact, this sort of non sequitur is the most powerful rhetorical device in O'Reilly's part of the ideological spectrum. O'Reilly's real function is to say out loud, on television, this sort of thing -- and get away with it. His fans don't argue; they hate argument or discussion on principle. They simply glory in the fact that O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have found a way to blurt out their long-nursed spite on national TV and get away with it -- in fact, "succeed in life" by doing it. So, the raw boasting that characterizes this book is something that O'Reilly's nameless fans can share, knowing that O'Reilly's success, such as it is, represents the fact that their long-choked spite has at last found its voice."
[end of excerpt]

How pathetic is that?

The full story is at this link.

Homelessness and Hunger Among Working Poor

These following is an excerpt from an extensive article that I recommend you all link to so that you can read the full details (link at the bottom). The story was researched by truthout.org, a email news service that I highly recommend to anybody who aspires to be informed about social justice issues without getting any political "spin".

"Meanwhile, the number of people seeking food assistance for the first time was up in all 21 cities with data on the issue, and was "particularly notable among working families stressed by the increase in food prices and the slowdown in the economy," the report said.

Officials in Philadelphia told the survey that "new people coming to food cupboards are people that are employed with children.

"With food prices increasing as much as 30 percent and incomes either staying the same or decreasing, it is impossible for them to feed their families," the report said.

When asked to identify the three main causes of hunger, 83 percent of cities cited poverty, 74 percent cited unemployment and 57 percent cited the high cost of housing."

The issue of poverty in America has now grown beyond the typical scenarios that we all think of when we see a panhandler on the street corner. It is also happening in a time when grant makers have seen their corpus funds drop in value if they were based on real estate or the stock market.

Please link to the full story.