I imagine a lot of editorial cartoonists are kicking themselves for not having thought of it.

That's heavy!

[img][/img]

I don't think I can add anything to this one. This young woman's sign says it all.

N/t

I just can't get this image out of my mind. Found it here weeks ago, and I think I've reposted it a dozen times or something. It just SO speaks to me. I feel the same exact way! I feel it strongly regarding the uphill struggle we STILL have to safeguard a woman's right to choose!

The very idea just is unbelievably and impossibly stunning and shocking and so deeply frustrating. If I had a dime for every woman I've heard saying her own version of this, regarding the severely threatened woman's right to choose, I could almost out-donate the koch brothers. HOW MANY TIMES I've heard it uttered - and muttered!
"But... I thought this was settled!"
"This is the 21st Century forcryingoutloud. WHY are we still fighting this?"
"I can't believe we're still fighting this battle!"
"WHAT is going on? Why do we still have to fight this?"
"Didn't we already settle this? Like YEARS AGO???"
"I thought this struggle was over!"
"I thought we won this one."
"I can't believe this is STILL a problem!"
"Wasn't this already settled - a LONG time ago?"
"My mother fought for this. I never dreamed I'd have to fight for it too."
"I can't believe they're still trying to take this away from us! (And after how hard we fought, too!)"

MULTIPLE versions of this frustration. Voiced again and again. I can so relate to what African Americans have to endure, and struggle through, if even in this very small indirect way. And I think about our LGBT brothers and sisters, too, and THEIR struggle - which, despite how it looks, is NOT over. NOWHERE NEAR over. Don't get complacent, dear friends and fellow fighters! Even now there are huge and powerful forces conspiring different ways to take that newly-won, hard-fought, and only partially-secure marriage equality right away from you - and as soon as possible. They don't want you to have that right or keep it, any more than they want to get out of women's doctors' offices and bedrooms. And they're GONNA take it away from you if there's any way they can figure out how.

and submitted a claim to my employee-benefit insurance company even though abortions were still talked of in whispers. I was ready to fight if they refused to pay. It was legal, medical procedure, and my husband's vasectomy, performed a week before, was covered, so I was ready for battle. Fair is fair, I thought. And hell, I hadn't fought in the trenches only to be categorically denied.

They covered it. Not a peep. But I've been saying since 2001 (yelling it, actually) that we can't take this hard-won right for granted, ever. An entire generation hadn't experienced the panic of an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy. Now, horrifyingly, many do. And more will.

... and this is one of them. The Kochs, the Chamber Of Commerce, and ALEC actively seek social issues of "controversy" (or that they can drum up controversy over) that might cause further fragmentation of the left. I say "further" because, unlike the lock-steppers on the right, we progressives are capable of independent thought, and getting us to act together has been likened, in the past, to an attempt at "herding cats".

So, THAT's why we still have to fight the battles we'd thought were already won - because when the opposition is funded by billionaires, the war, quite literally, NEVER ends - and that applies to the domestic war for the rights of the masses as well as the overseas wars for expansion of empire.

That sign and that look = TRUTH

where NYC cops unloaded 50 bullets into his car killing him and injuring several of his groomsmen in the very early a.m. before his wedding as they were leaving a bachelor party at a club.

cause, this:

http://nypost.com/2013/11/30/former-cops-still-reeling-7-years-after-sean-bell-horror/

?w=680&h=450&crop=1

a bunch of pigs feeling sorry for themselves, and how the incident has affected themselves. Even though all but one are collecting pensions. Not one word for the victims.

Stunning and scary

A state I like a lot, for the very reasons that I liked growing up in small towns in the 1950's.
Living here today is much like the 50's...low housing costs, an air of timelessness that is soothing to us retired people

and yet....I read the news...and it feels like 1955 when Ms. Parks defiantly took her seat on the bus
or 1965 when Dr. King led the march from Selma to Montgomery ( Selma is only 40 miles north of here, as the crow flies)

and it is if Johnson had never signed the Civil Rights Act into law.

The Republicans have rolled and stole us back to those earlier times.

did it for them. We need to rebuild our unions to have a fighting chance.

They are using the churches to give (divine) authority to their message. That's why you see pictures now with someone holding a gun in one hand and a Bible in another. They get Fox every night and a sermon on Sunday so they are awash in racism, fear and hatred.

Something must be done about the Churches.

"Constantine's Sword"
http://www.amazon.com/Constantines-Sword-Church-Jews-History/dp/0618219080/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418005413&sr=8-1&keywords=constantines+sword

I just re-read it a couple of years ago.

And yes, the Repig takeover of the fundy churches is a HUGE deal. The solace of pie in the sky when you die has an enormous appeal to those without a lot of intellectual horsepower to deal with the world as it is.

take over Washington. Another CC member said they are going to bring America to its knees. What he meant by that, I can only guess.
In the end, the money faction saw that the Christian right wasn't working anymore, so they got rebranded as the Tea Party. Less religion, more guns.

"How did you make your money, sir?"

"The old-fashioned way - extorting it from the peasantry at the point of a sword."

targets of the revolutionaries. And they deserve it. Their hate message with come back on them.

the churches have long been used (or perhaps the using goes both ways) by the folks in authority as a means of controlling the masses. Looks like a book I need to add to my reading list.

to Carroll's book.

Going down Westheimer or Post Oak?

More info please. Thanks for the picture!!

So no details beyond what is in my OP.
Sorry.

...my favorite version is recited by John Trudell (below).

The Torn Flag

At midnight in a flaming angry town
I saw my country’s flag lying torn upon the ground.
I ran in and dodged among the crowd,
And scooped it up, and scampered out to safety.

And then I took this striped old piece of cloth
And tried my best to wash the garbage off.
But I found it had been used for wrapping lies.
It smelled and stank and attracted all the flies.

While I was feverishly at my task,
I heard a husky voice that seemed to ask:
“Do you think you could change me just a bit?
Betsy Ross did her best, but she made a few mistakes.

My blue is good, the color of the sky.
The stars are good for ideals, oh, so high.
Seven stripes of red are strong to meet all danger;
But those white stripes: they, they need some changing.

I need also some stripes of deep, rich brown,
And some of tan and black, then all around
A border of God’s gracious green would look good there.
Maybe you should slant the stripes, then I’d not be so square.”

I woke and said, “What a ridiculous story.
Don’t let anybody say I suggested tampering with Old Glory.”
But tonight it’s near midnight, and in another flaming town
Once again I hear my country’s flag lies torn upon the ground.

Words and Music by Pete Seeger (1969)

I miss Pete Seeger..he was an important contribution to many generations.

...dixiegrrrrl, for posting the flag photo that stirred my memory of the song.

I hope that Pete's songs (and those of many other social conscience songwriters and singers) will survive for generations to come.