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Tag: Politics

October 21: Can’t pass up this opportunity, because…

Well!

Someone’s been a busy, busy boy today. And look what we get because of it.

Thanks, “Weird Al!”

Presenting BAD HOMBRES, NASTY WOMEN (ft. “Weird Al” Yankovic), staring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

If you haven’t already swallowed, put the drink on the other side of the room before hitting play.

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September 21: We interrupt this wholesale revision of posts for an important message…

Today, this crossed my social media feed. Not only is it an important message, but time is running out.

The Cassie Times has a timer. Today’s the 48th day before election day. In a little over a month, we will know whether we’ve preserved our democracy or blown it straight to hell.

Your vote matters.

If you aren’t registered, WHY NOT?

If you THINK you’re registered, go check. If you didn’t bother to vote in the primary, you might not have noticed that you’ve dropped off the roll. That’s not okay.

Don’t be a provisional voter. Make your voice heard.

The world’s biggest celebrities explain why it is Important that you vote on November 8!

Visit: http://www.savetheday.vote to find out how you can register to vote.

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January 13: Tax the Rich: An animated fairy tale

Originally posted on December 5, 2012, this short video hasn’t gotten nearly enough air time, and I think it’s important enough that I’m gong to share it under History. Today’s history lesson comes from Fred Glass for the California Federation of Teachers, narrated by Ed Asner (of Lou Grant and Mary Tyler Moore Show fame, among others).

The perils of a tax-free society have made the rounds recently, as the Tea Party fights harder than ever for deregulation and tries to shelter ever increasing amounts of funding from social programs. The cost is already profound, but it’s going to get a lot worse if we don’t find  way to loosen the grip of Corporate America.

Sorry – in a soapbox-y mood this week!

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November 9: Cabaret ~ Tomorrow belongs to me

Months ago, when I picked out this video, a clip from the movie version of Cabaret, I had quite fresh in my mind all the ghastly conversation that led to unfriending more than a dozen people I knew in person and on Facebook, many of whom fell squarely in the Tea Party’s political camp.

I thought then and I still think today that these might be good people except that they are driven by an ideology which could easily bring about the same sort of violence in the name of Nationalism and supremacy that makes our political conversations today virtually impossible.

Take this challenge. Put the word Nazi into Google. You won’t get the Wikipedia article about the Germans as the first entry in the list. No, you will see a link to the American Nazi Party. No, I will not provide a link. You can do the search yourself.

Every time I hear someone refer to our president and his advisors as fascists, every time I hear someone call for exterminating a group of people for views that differ, I think back. Don’t think for one moment that these are isolated pockets. The Germans had concentration camps and mass graves in far, far more places than just the camps we thought we knew about, throughout occupied territories like Poland as well as in Germany. And the United States was not immune – we held innocent Japanese Americans in our own camps, out of fear that they would somehow reject their country’s values and join those in Japan, acting against those who were not Japanese in the United States.

To be sure, we managed to make those camps more humane, but really? I have heard talk that women who choose abortion should be locked away. That gays should be rounded up. We already do this with people whose families come from across the Mexican border. Have a look at what’s going on in Arizona and you’ll understand just what I mean.

I lost family in Germany in the 1940s and in England as well (soldiers fallen to battle, or family rounded up into the camps). My heritage lies squarely in Europe, though I am third generation. With one quarter’s exception, my family was the target of the Nazi movement.

Almost 30 years ago, I graduated with a newly minted tech theatre degree, inspired in part by this musical. I discovered a way to express important information through a medium that encompassed all of my artistic abilities. Two and a half years earlier, I heard this song sung in our New Paltz production of the show, after spending over a hundred hours working on the show (to the exclusion of my other classes).

If you have the stomach for it, this is a beautiful, chilling song. It is sung by an intensely proud people. A people who have not yet moved to mass incarceration and murder but whose views on the superiority of their race would soon rip their world apart.

On November 9 and 10, 1938 in Austria and throughout Europe, began Kristallnacht, the systematic rounding up and pulverization of a group of people considered outside the Aryan race. Jews, gays, Roma, in fact anyone who failed the National purity test became targets for extermination. In spite of the Schindlers and their like, the insanity was sufficient to imprison or murder an estimated 15 to 20 million people.

That’s the entire population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix and San Antonio combined.

On this, the 75th anniversary of that terrible event, I take this opportunity to remind you that in some areas of the United States we are a hair’s breadth of this same sort of terror. The Neo Confederacy wants our world back the way it was, all comfy with slaves.

I suggest remembering and listening to the song and paying attention to its singers.

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September 11 (Patriot Day): Faith Restored In Humanity

This video includes many of the clips I’ve already highlighted, but by compiling these clips and adding background music, the creator conveys a message about the human condition and our ability to express compassion.

Out of all the videos and stories about today’s anniversary, this speaks loudest to me and should to you as well, because humans were killed and injured in the fall, but oh, so much more damage has been done to our faith and society than can be encompassed in a single video on the incident.

Heavy material on a heavy memorial day.

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August 28: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ~ I Have a Dream

We interrupt the highlights of comedy to bring you something deadly serious.

1963 was important to me (aside from being my birth year) because the year represented a major turning point in our path to modern history. The March on Washington was of such significant historical importance that no matter which version you meant, Wikipedia redirects you to here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Washington_for_Jobs_and_Freedom

I  believe it’s true. All the other marches on Washington pale in comparison to this massive, human show of support for a movement that was over 200 years in the making. Dr. King’s speech that summer day marked a milestone on the path to freedom and equality for everyone in this country.

Whenever you look up the term Equal Opportunity, you will find the concept inextricably linked with the speech Dr. King gave at 3pm in front of the Lincoln Memorial that day. There were other speakers, there was music, and there were hundreds of thousands of people, but none of the activities struck more of a chord than what Dr. King had to say that day.

We have come very far since then, but we have a long, long way to go before we truly can say that everyone is equal in this country and that all are treated fairly and with respect.

This version, with far fewer hits (and likely fewer problems with viewing), has Close Captioning for the hearing impaired.

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