As with most of you, I sat in shock watching the train wreck yesterday. Sarah Palin stood on her lawn and resigned as Governor of Alaska. As hard as I tried, I looked deeply into the background behind Palin and failed to see Russia, but I digress. I am one of those who thinks Palin is going to run for President. She mentioned how she wanted to change things form the outside… and I think that means the outside of Alaska and inside DC.

This strip pretty much sums up my thoughts on the issue.

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After today’s presser, I think the strip stands clearly on its own feet - ok, that was a bad pun!

Today’s strip is dedicated to Darrin Bell, creator of Candorville for teaching me the proper use of “dios mio.”

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I find it laughable when the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other neo-con side-shows claim von Brunn was a leftist. They further their train of thought to claim this was left wing violence.

In today’s strip… let’s just say it was a recent real life scene from a Berkeley restaurant.

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When Iowa takes the lead in civil rights in the 21st Century, when New England (the spot in America where that Revolution thing started) becomes the hotbed of Gay marriage, when states approve of Gay marriage and it doesn’t make the news, America may have turned the corner.

The hard core of right wingnuts seem to be all that is left of what was called the so-called Moral Majority. We are far away from equality from all, but we are closer to that goal than we are to the days of Stonewall.

It has been five years since Massachusetts approved Gay marriage and Hell still has not frozen over. Go figure.

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My day job is in advertising - coming up with new ideas to promote brands and save businesses. From a marketing communication POV, the whole teabagging meme from the GOP is a laughing stock of guilty pleasures. For those of you who have a cleaner life than mine, teabagging is urban slang to describe “To have a man insert his scrotum into another person’s mouth in the fashion of a teabag into a mug with an up/down (in/out) motion.”

Maybe more of you do know about this than I imagine. After eight years of Bush, I too feel like I have had a mouth full of musty balls. Although thoughts of Cheney moaning “wreck it” sends me running to hug some porcelain.

Back to the misguided meme. The Libertarians had a decent idea to protest taxes - tea, protest signs and genuine outrage. Then the GOP caught wind of the idea and took it right off the ship and into the deep murky waters if idiocy. “Let’s call it teabagging!” With whatever “brand movement” the Libertarians had generated with their protest idea was ruined overnight by the GOP, who only wants to lift taxes for the rich, no one else. Let’s all write on the chalkboard, Bart Simpson style, “Obama signed the largest middle class tax cut in history.” Yeah, do that several hundred times.

Then the true wingnut freaks were pushed over the edge by the Glen Beck’s on-air crying, Oral Roberts style. I kept expecting Glen to whimper, “Father I have sinned against you.” Maybe Glen has that nutsack taste in his mouth also? Once the winguts got involved, it all went to total hell. You have protesters with signs ranging from “The ONE was born in Africa” to “Hitler gave good speeches too!” and other assorted, full-throttled nonsense.

I have always said freedom of speech is a two-way street. Yes you can say anything you want, it will also let everyone around you know if you are an ass or not.

The GOP is showing you an example of who they really are (again) - miserable at coming up with ideas and miserable at giving a shit about the middle class. Remember what they are protesting today - “Obama signed the largest middle class tax cut in history.”

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The whole change thing is becoming unsettling. First Iowa voted for a Black guy with the middle name Hussein to become President of these United States and now gay marriage is the law of the land in Iowa.

And Vermont…

I am stunned, slack-jawed and left scratching my head. Oh, and I am speechless.

Not a lot to say other than Iowa and Vermont have just sided on the side of equal rights and approved gay marriage.

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My rage from the AIG pompousness has boiled away enough to type. Congress, however, still has me all a temper.

Yes there were some tough questions and accusations thrown at AIG but they were all formulated for the best play during their next campaign, not getting to the bottom of the debacle.

First of all, I want to know what we need to do to start getting rid of these guys. The severance question is still an unknown. I am pretty sure all these guys have massive golden parachutes that are outlined in bullet-proof executive compensation contracts. I am also pretty sure these severance packages will all run into the millions… just like the bonuses.

I bet the Republicans are glad the AIG meme is moving off the table this week, this will allow them to get back to their tax cut theology.

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Birth Of A Notion Disclaimer

From Wikipedia:

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was a large political rally that took place in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech advocating racial harmony at the Lincoln Memorial during the march.

The march was organized by a group of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, under the theme “jobs, justice, and peace.” Estimates of the number of participants varied from 200,000 (police) to over 300,000 (leaders of the march). About 80% of the marchers were African American and 20% white and other ethnic groups.

The march is widely credited as helping lead to the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the National Voting Rights Act (1965).

The march was initiated by A. Philip Randolph (international president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, president of the Negro American Labor Council, and vice president of the AFL-CIO), who had planned a similar march in 1941. The threat of the earlier march had convinced President Roosevelt to establish the Committee on Fair Employment Practice and bar discriminatory hiring in the defense industry.

The 1963 march was organized by Randolph, James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality), John Lewis (president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), Martin Luther King, Jr. (president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), and Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League). Bayard Rustin, a civil rights veteran and organizer of the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, the first of the Freedom Rides to test the Supreme Court ruling that banned racial discrimination in interstate travel, administered the details of the march.

The march was not universally supported among African-Americans. Some civil rights activists were concerned that it might turn violent, which could undermine pending legislation and damage the international image of the movement and they were self conscious. The march was condemned by Malcolm X, spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, who termed it the “farce on Washington”.

March organizers themselves disagreed over the purpose of the march. The NAACP and Urban League saw it as a gesture of support for a civil rights bill that had been introduced by the Kennedy Administration. Randolph, King, and the SCLC saw it as a way of raising both civil rights and economic issues to national attention beyond the Kennedy bill. SNCC and CORE saw it as a way of challenging and condemning the Kennedy administration’s inaction and lack of support for civil rights for African-Americans.

The speakers included all six civil-rights leaders of the so called, “Big Six (civil rights)”; Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious leaders; and labor leader Walter Reuther. The one female speaker was Josephine Baker. James Farmer, who was imprisoned in Louisiana at the time, had his speech read by Floyd McKissick

Media attention gave the march national exposure, carrying the organizers’ speeches and offering their own commentary. In his section The March on Washington and Television News, William Thomas notes: “Over five hundred cameramen, technicians, and correspondents from the major networks were set to cover the event. More cameras would be set up than had filmed the last Presidential inauguration. One camera was positioned high in the Washington Monument, to give dramatic vistas of the marchers”.

On August 28, more than 2,000 buses, 21 special trains, 10 chartered airliners, and uncounted cars converged on Washington. The regularly scheduled planes, trains, and buses were also filled to capacity.

The march failed to start on time, because its leaders were meeting with members of Congress. To the leaders’ surprise, the assembled group began to march from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial without them.

Representatives from each of the sponsoring organizations addressed the crowd from the podium. Floyd McKissick read James Farmer’s speech because Farmer had been arrested during a protest in Louisiana; Farmer had written that the protests would not stop “until the dogs stop biting us in the South and rats stop biting us in the North.”

Musician Bob Dylan performed several songs, including “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” about the culturally-fed racial hatred amongst Southern whites that led to the assassination of Medgar Evers; and “When the Ship Comes In,” during which he was joined by fellow folk singer Joan Baez.

King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech, which was carried live by TV stations.

Although one of the officially stated purposes of the march was to support the civil rights bill introduced by the Kennedy Administration, several of the speakers criticized the proposed law as insufficient.
John Lewis of SNCC was the youngest speaker at the event. His speech—which a number of SNCC activists had helped write—took the Administration to task for how little it had done to protect southern blacks and civil rights workers under attack in the Deep South. While he toned down his comments under pressure from others in the movement, his words still stung:

We march today for jobs and freedom, but we have nothing to be proud of, for hundreds and thousands of our brothers are not here—for they have no money for their transportation, for they are receiving starvation wages…or no wages at all. …

We come here today with a great sense of misgiving. It is true that we support the administration’s Civil Rights Bill. We support it with great reservation, however. … Unless title three is put in this bill, there’s nothing to protect the young children and old women who must face police dogs and fire hoses in the South while they engage in peaceful demonstration. In its present form this bill will not protect the citizens of Danville, Virginia, who must live in constant fear of a police state. … As it stands now, the voting section of this bill will not help the thousands of people who want to vote. … We must have legislation that will protect the Mississippi sharecroppers, who have been forced to leave their homes because they dared to exercise their right to register to vote.

We need a bill that will provide for the homeless and starving people of this nation. We need a bill that will ensure the equality of a maid who earns five dollars a week in the home of a family whose total income is 100,000 dollars a year. We must have a good FEPC bill.

My friends let us not forget that we are involved in a serious social revolution. By and large, politicians who build their career on immoral compromise and allow themselves an open forum of political, economic and social exploitation dominate American politics. … what political leader can stand up and say, “My party is a party of principles”? For the party of Kennedy is also the party of Eastland. The party of Javits is also the party of Goldwater. Where is our party? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march on Washington? Where is the political party that will make it unnecessary to march in the streets of Birmingham? Where is the political party that will protect the citizens of Albany, Georgia? … We must say wake up America, wake up its now 2:00 in the afternoon! For we cannot stop, and we will not and cannot be patient.

Cut from his original speech at the insistence of more conservative and pro-Kennedy leaders were phrases such as:

In good conscience, we cannot support wholeheartedly the administration’s civil rights bill, for it is too little and too late.

I want to know, which side is the federal government on?

The revolution is a serious one. Mr. Kennedy is trying to take the revolution out of the streets and put it into the courts. Listen, Mr. Kennedy. Listen, Mr. Congressman. Listen, fellow citizens. The black masses are on the march for jobs and freedom, and we must say to the politicians that there won’t be a “cooling-off” period.

We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground—nonviolently…

Many activists from SNCC, CORE, and even SCLC were angry at what they considered censorship of his speech.

BIRTH OF A NOTION WALLPAPER is now available for your computer. Click here.

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A friend of mine was recently discussing what you can do with Citigroup stock since it is priced a tad over a dollar. Well… not much it seems.

It isn’t too far of a stretch to imagine the stock getting delisted soon due to being priced under a dollar a share.

I think it is a market declaration of how worthless Citigroup and its kin truly are. Yes, most stock prices have dropped horribly in price over the months, but one thing the Bush Depression has given us, is a clear view of what is valuable and what is not. Apple and Google are still priced well over $1 per share. Clearly companies that structured their business models around neo-con fantasies aren’t even worth the price of a movie ticket.

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Bobby Jindal, the GOP governor of Louisiana delivered the Republican response for Obama’s Joint Session of Congress speech. You know it didn’t go well when Fox talking heads calls it lackluster. You are certain it sucked bad when folks over at Little Green Footballs, Free Republic and Red State think he made “Palin look smart,” “guarantees 8 years of Obama” and “anti-science.”

Yeah, Republicans complaining about a candidate being too anti-science. I was shocked too.

But Jindal actually called out volcano monitoring as wasteful, pork barrel spending. The first thought that entered my tree-hugging liberal mind was “there goes his support in the American West.”

According to the US Geological Survey Circular, the US states that have active or possibly active volcanoes are New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. Wyoming is an especially troubling issue since it has Yellowstone - one of the largest volcanoes in the world. 640,000 years ago, Yellowstone erupted and it ejected 240 CUBIC MILES of rock and dust into the sky.

In late 2008 and early 2009 Yellowstone experienced quake swarms - one swarm had over 500 earthquakes in a seven day period.

If Yellowstone goes, most of the midwest would be unlivable and the effects would be felt globally. Mass famine and death would result.

Maybe Jindal is right, we don’t need to monitor anything that dangerous. Just like we ignore hurricanes. What’s the worst that could happen?

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