Monday, January 17, 2011

MLK Day, Baby Doc Surprises Haiti...

Paul Krugman
Eric Pape
"Last year, looking at claims that we can cut taxes, avoid cuts to any popular program and still balance the budget, I observed that Republicans seemed to have lost interest in the war on terror and shifted focus to the war on arithmetic. But now the G.O.P. has moved on to an even bigger project: the war on logic." - Paul Krugman
"Sarah Palin's reality show will not be returning as she contemplates a possible run for president in 2012. When a candidate walks away from a reality show, that's when you know they're serious about being president of the United States." – Jay Leno
"In his first speech as Speaker, Boehner thanked his loved ones – tobacco lobbyists, the oil companies, the CEOs." – Jay Leno

Happy MLK Day... We use this day as a teaching device, to illustrate the struggles and sacrifice it has taken to get some ethnic equality in our country, honoring a man who dedicated his whole life towards achieving that goal, ultimately sacrificing himself to an assassin's bullet. The Rev Al Sharpton pointed out that having Barack Obama as the first Black President, and Oprah Winfrey as a female Black billionaire, are signs that King's legacy has almost been accomplished. So far, the Secret Service has received more death threats against Obama than any other politician in history, and we're only half-way through his term in office. And every Latino politician and rights worker breathed a sigh of relief that it was a crazy white boy that shot at the Congresswoman in Arizona...

When I was but a fledgling, I was more inspired by the Autobiography of Malcom X, Cassius Clay becoming Muhammed Ali, and the music of Bobby Womack. It says something about our society that it took a man like Martin Luther King becoming a martyr before we changed our attitudes and habits of behavior. Even worse that the state of Arizona refused to observe MLK Day. Even worse that it has taken a vibrant woman Congressman and the threat of turning her into a vegetable for the rest of her life, just to get the Republicans to stop saying NO to everything Barack Obama utters as our leader. Oh, wait, the shooter isn't a right-wing nutcase, so there's no linkage here. So now we can go back and schedule those townhall meetings for the rest of the year? Even more ironic, while all of your rappers and hip-hop thugsters record about their imaginary lives, an old folkie from the Bronx wrote one of the best songs about our American Martyrs sacrificing their lives on a different battlefield, an excerpt from Abraham, Martin, and John:

Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
He freed a lot of people,
But it seems the good they die young.
I just looked 'round and he's gone.

Didn't you love the things that they stood for?
Didn't they try to find some good for you and me?
And we'll be free
Some day soon, and it's a-gonna be one day ...



White people being polite...

Fulfilling MLK"s Dream, Mr Sharpton?

Lots of interesting events happened over the weekend, with the US and Israel's retiring head of the Mossad admitting that the Stuxnet  computer virus that has set back Iran's nuclear program by another five years, was a joint hacking effort by the US and Israel. That was my second choice. I had thought that it was made by Eastern European - German - Israeli hackers instead, just because it favored attacking Siemens controllers, and the only people who had access to Iranian computers at that time to upload the virus from a thumb drive, were inspectors from the IAEC... Iran has pledged something as devious and diabolical in return, to avenge against the US and Israel, so we'll just have to wait and see what they come up with. Al Qaeda is trying their best to recruit Caucasians to serve as jihadists in the US, and they purportedly are currently training 11 Canadians at secret sites in Pakistan for this purpose...

Guess Who's Come To Dinner? The strangest event was the appearance of Baby Doc Duvalier, back in Haiti after 25 years of exile, resembling at times street theater of the absurd: "Returning to his homeland after 25 years in the political wilderness, most of them spent in exile in France, Duvalier did not explain the reason for his return on Sunday, simply saying: "I've come to help".


Duvalier's partner, Veronique Roy, described to the AFP news agency how he bent to his knees and kissed the ground as he set foot on home soil for the first time since his violent ouster in 1986. Roy suggested the couple's return had been prompted by the devastating earthquake almost exactly a year ago that killed nearly a quarter of a million Haitians. "That was the trigger," she told AFP. "It's so emotional. We were not expecting this welcome."

Duvalier's father was a tyrant, nicknamed Papa Doc, who ruled through violence and intimidation to wring every dollar from one of the poorest nations in the world. He used voodoo rituals and maintained a private militia called to TonTon Macoutes, and his son, Baby Doc, continued to do the same for another 15 years. He fled the country with his wife and moved to France, whereupon she filed for divorce and took all of his money that hadn't been frozen by those claiming he had stolen over $100 million. He spent the next few years roaming the French bars at night, looking for his soulmate...

It's unclear what plans he has to help, he seems to have an alcoholic's unnatural affection for his maudlin past, and he faces the real danger of being arrested and sentenced to trial. It's likely that he's broke and can't sustain a living in France, so he's back to sponge off of the Haitian population again, what with all of the new aid money flowing into the country... To give him some credit, I'm sure that watching the devastation from the hurricane on Haiti made him wish that he could do something to help, it's just that he doesn't have any tools or skills that is helpful. Zilch. Maybe he envisions that everyone is so grateful that he has returned and they will automatically give him the presidency and turn to him to lead them out of misery and bad economic conditions...


Arnold Schwarzenegger crunched the numbers and figured out that being the Governor of California cost him $200 million in potential earnings, while being the butt of so many jokes, priceless...

Pat Buchanon feels that there is a campaign against conservatives going on in our country right now. No Pat, you don't get it. There is a campaign against crazy behavior as exhibited by some extreme conservatives, who are mentally ill. They should never be encouraged, ever, yet we still give them their 15 minutes of fame. What a Democracy, what a country...

1 comment:

  1. When Haiti is at her weakest, is the best time for the "Baby Doc" to come back and take over. They are hungry enough to support and follow him again.

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