"Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own."
~ John F. Kennedy, U.S. President, 1960 - 1963
"If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair."
~ Shirley Chisholm, U.S. Congresswoman, 1969 - 1983
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NOTE: As of last evening, the Beatles' Rubber Soul album was available to listen, on You Tube. Don't know if it will stay up, or not....
NOTE: If you watch the October 30th edition of Hardball, you can hear Chris Matthews and Beto O'Rourke discuss the issues. This Beto person is very fast-thinking and fast-talking -- in a good way. He is really on the ball: very specific, and positive. (He quoted Bob Dylan -- "you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.")
He peppered his responses with references to the necessity of both parties working together. He described his friendship with a Republican member of Congress, how they took a cross-country trip together, and then co-sponsored some legislation....
This anecdote kind of supported what I've been thinking, which is that Congress has become dysfunctional, with members of the two parties viewing each other as "the enemy" partly because they don't live in Washington. They live in their state where they already lived when they got elected, and then they don't move for their work, they just fly in and fly out of Washington (and who pays for that?)...
That isn't how you learn and get acclimated and learn how to work together and get things done. It appears to me that today's Congress is alienated, both from other members of Congress, and from the very people they are supposed to represent.
To view the discussion, go on You Tube and type in
Hardball with Chris Matthews, 10/30/18.
You want the 40-minute one; that's the whole show. It's all this question-and-answer thing, at a university in Texas. (Those young people! Their enthusiasm and sweetness gives you hope.)
NOTE: It seems to me that the reason many American people are frustrated and grouchy is because so many living-wage jobs are gone. It seems like the decision-making people, Congress and Big Business (and Big Business's influence should shrink) in the 90s, just said, Well, to achieve globalization, let's give away some jobs to other countries, & the jobs we'll give away will be the blue-collar working-class jobs, not our own jobs.
We don't know those people, and we can just keep turning them against each other; keep them fighting, and distract 'em with drama and spectacle -- Look! Look over there!! It'll all shake out eventually, and meanwhile we grab all the dough.
------------------------------- A Reader Comment in The Guardian-UK last April reads: "It is certainly true that the wealthiest people trousered too many of the benefits of globalization, and the areas that lost their manufacturing industries were ignored."
That Comment was one of 1,558 (a lot, even for the Guardian) on an article titled, "Good news at last: the world isn't as horrific as you think" by Hans Rosling.
"THE AREAS THAT LOST THEIR MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES WERE IGNORED."
Why are none of our politicians mentioning this?
Because it's the only freaking thing that's TRUE??!!
Why are our leaders not addressing this problem, in word and deed?
And why did they let it occur in the first place? The process of globalization could have been much better planned. Instead, working people were "dissed." Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, western New York, West Virginia, Indiana, Wisconsin, and New England as well....
Decisions like that are what happens when "workers" in Congress are alienated from their jobs, flying back "HOME" all the time, and just going through the motions like zombies.
Pres. Trump should not have one single more pep-rally until he has effectively addressed three things --
1. jobs
2. infrastructure (and this could solve Item 1)
3. Tell Congress members they have to "move to where their jobs are" just like blue collar people have to do, and if they don't, they will be "left behind," as they like to condescendingly say about working people.
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After listening to the Oct. 30 Hardall twice, I was thinking, it doesn't matter whether O'Rourke "wins" the office he's running for or not, he has already "won" because he makes excellent points, and speaks well for the people. He calls on the students in his audience to "lead" on the important issues. He doesn't say "I will lead" -- he says, "Let's take the lead on this..."
Similar to President Kennedy in his Inauguration speech, where he said, "Let us go forth and lead the land we love."
Everyone can make their contribution by setting a good example. A president can set a good example, and so can a policeman, a mom, a dad, a sanitation worker, a talk show host, a guitar player, a neck cutter, and every other American who decides to make his or her contribution by
Setting a good example
and
"Leading the land we love."
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Mississippi John Hurt's next song, on "The Best Of" on You Tube (uploaded by Jim Blues Rock Channel) is Song 7,
"Coffee Blues"
...Good mornin' baby, how you do this mornin'?...
In this song, he uses the phrase, "a lovin' spoonful" -- the 1960s rock band The Lovin' Spoonful, famous for such hit songs as "Summer in the City" and "Do You Believe in Magic," took their group name from the Mississippi John "Coffee Blues" lyric....
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------------------------ [excerpt, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72] ---------------- Grossman ignored the obvious fact that he and other pro-McCarthy heavies had been beaten stupid, on the grass-roots organizing level, by an unheralded "McGovern machine" put together in Massachusetts by John Reuther -- a nephew of Walter, late president of the UAW.
I spent most of that afternoon wandering around the gym, listening to people talk and watching the action, and it was absolutely
clear -- once the voting started -- that Reuther had everything wired.
Everywhere I went there was a local McGovern floor manager keeping people in line, telling them exactly what was happening and what would probably happen next . . . while the McCarthy forces -- led by veteran Kennedy/Camelot field marshal Richard Goodwin -- became more and more demoralized, caught in a fast-rising pincers movement between a surprisingly organized McGovern block on their Right, and a wild-eyed Chisholm uprising on the Left.
The Chisholm strength shocked everybody. She was one of twelve names on the ballot -- which included almost every conceivable Democratic candidate from Hubert Humphrey to Patsy Mink, Wilbur Mills, and Sam Yorty -- but after Muskie and Lindsay dropped out, the Caucus was billed far and wide as a test between McGovern and McCarthy.
There was no mention in the press or anywhere else that some unknown black woman from Brooklyn might seriously challenge these famous liberal heavies on their own turf . . . but when the final vote came in, Shirley Chisholm had actually beaten Gene McCarthy, who finished a close third.
The Chisholm challenge was a last-minute idea and only half-organized, on the morning of the Caucus, by a handful of speedy young black politicos and Women's Lib types -- but by 6:00 that evening it had developed from a noisy idea into a solid power bloc. ------------------------------- [end, excerpt] -----------
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{Fear And Loathing: On The Campaign Trail '72, by Hunter S. Thompson. Simon & Schuster - 1973}
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