Is there a Will?

1945, one month after V-J Day, the Oil Workers’ Union called a national strike 

I often wonder where the backbones of the Progressive movement and the Democratic Party have gone? We are the children of Kent State, of the War protests, of the civil rights movement and yet we seem unable to rise when the stakes get higher and higher. FDL had a book salon with Joe Burns, Author of Reviving the Strike.

In Reviving the Strike, union negotiator Joe Burns draws on labor economics, history, and current analysis to show how only a campaign of civil disobedience can overcome an illegitimate system of labor control that has been specifically constructed over the past thirty years to reign in the power of the American worker. The book challenges prevailing views within the labor movement that say that tactics such as organizing workers or amending labor law can resolve the crisis of the American worker. Instead, Reviving the Strike offers a fundamentally different solution to the current labor crisis, showing how collective bargaining backed by a strike capable of inflicting economic harm upon an employer is the only way for workers to break free of the repressive system that has been inflicted upon them for the past three decades.

It is time to stop waiting for sanity to prevail. Time to stop letting the corporate agenda dictate our lives and our fortunes. Time to stop waiting for things to get better.

I don't advocate violence but I do advocate rising up and refusing to be a part of the systems that are destroying america. The clock is definitely ticking.

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OSU Rolling preparing an O-HI-O "welcome" for the Speaker of the House

Speaker of the House John Boehner is speaking at OSU Graduation. Students are working hard to make sure he feels very welcome.

See more images here. 

and plans for the protest at ProgressOhio 

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I Honestly Don't Get It...

Sex scandals are ridiculous and distracting and I don't really care what consenting adults do. Seriously. Mostly it is just a device used by the media to keep you watching and keep their ad revenue stream flowing.

What I really wonder is why  while people like Vitter and Sanford, and Craig, etc etc etc. cling to office, Dems are all Off-With-Their-Heads about  people like Weiner. 

If it effects your job like say- when you disappear from office for 5 days and no one knows where you are (SANFORD) then you should go. If it hurts Kids or Women- (FOLEY) Then you should go. If you campaign on the sanctity of marriage, or an anti gay agenda and your sex scandal shows you to be an outrageous hypocrite (Craig) then you need to go!

If you DO get "caught" You shouldn't lie about it. But even that is not a deal breaker for me since most people lie when faced with the kind of media feeding frenzy that people face in this situations

But if you are not one of the above abusers and hypocrites
then

 I DON'T CARE. I never did. Sex is not the most important thing that we need to be worrying about when it comes to governance. not even close.

It is long past time that the American public care less about this kind of crap and high time that we focus on the real ills of social injustice, the killing of the planet, war, hunger, violence, racism. Don't those problems seem more important? Even typing them makes me feel like Weiner's tweet is a ridiculous distraction. The minority leader and other Dems should get back to work and leave Mr. Weiner's um... business to the pathetic focus of the GOP and the freakshow media.

Get to work and you get to keep your jobs, focus on this kind of thing and you are just like them except weaker.

Also to regular folks. If we stop buying maybe they will stop selling... 

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My Thoughts on Weiner-gate

actually... I have none.

Except that we should all remember that what we do and say and send on the internet is there for the world to see. Even if you try to hide it.

Therefore I recommend SHAME INSURANCE

Have  fun out there, but be smart and careful too. AND best bet is to keep your "Weiner" to yourself.

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How Quickly They Forget

Editorial Cartoon by David Stoll / The Lumberjack

The US and most world media outlets are nothing but fadists, the equvilent of midlife crisis skirt chasers. Guess what? I am sure there are still larger areas of New Orleans that have not been repaired and thousands who have not been able to return to their homes. I know that Haiti today is not much better than it was just after the earthquake. There is still little stability in Iraq and...

The radiation in the No. 1 Reactor buliding At the Fukushima Power plant is the highest it has ever been. 

Yes, that's right, worse now than it was when Anderson Cooper was running around screaming The Sky is Falling. Worse than when Diane Sawyer cried over the devistation, worse than when the lot of them were camped out 150 miles away in Tokyo discussing events like they were standing in the middle of the worst hit towns.

They are fickle, the viewers are fickle, the News is not the NEWS anymore, it is just "for entertainment" shock and awe. The sooner everyone accepts that and moves on the better. The News is gone. We are left with THE MEDIA. And they are not just a part of the problem, they are a CAUSE of the problem. They make it all worse and they do it on purpose. Tomorrow's news story is simply whatever they think will capture and keep people's attention.

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