My Politics Page

Being my small effort to counter the lies and infamy of the right.......

Make your own Bumper Stickers

Famously, Freedom of the Press belongs to him what owns one.  Similarly, Freedom of Expression could be said to be restricted when you can't find a bumper sticker that says what you want. 
Some two years back, I figured out how to make my own bumper stickers and have been "expressing myself"  (some would say making a fool of myself) by plastering my poor car with leftie bumper stickers



My take on the Right's 'ownership' of Godliness...the fraud of 'Moral Values'.  

This was an opinion piece I wrote for the local Public Radio station, WAMC in Albany, NY.

My mailings

I send out two weekday emails:
Send me a note (sdean *at* sdean.net), and I'll send either or both to you. Your name and email address will not be known to anyone else on the list.

Bush and Katrina

A blogger mused about Bush apparent inability to get competent, intelligent appointees (in just about any position, never mind FEMA) these days.
My response

Daniel Schorr, one of the last of the generation of classic journalists who followed in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow, made this trenchant commentary on 10/12/05 about Katrina relief.  He ends with these words:
"Eight times now, the president has visited the Gulf area to show the people that he cares.  The question is: How much caring alone can do?"
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4956161

This evoked my letter to Kingston Freeman

Some of my favorite political commentary blogs

Some particularly choice political links

On "Intelligent" Design, that wonderful fairy tale of the religious right...

Shufflin' Sam Thompson

When I was a kid growing up in Louisville, KY, we had black help.  My mother was almost completely paralyzed and my father was an eye surgeon.  Our family only worked because of the kind-hearted,  substantial and committed help of Queen Esther ('Queenie') Williams (who ran the house), Willie Mae Fuqua (who did the laundry).  On occasion, Sam Thompson would stop by to wax the floor or rake and burn the leaves in the autumn.
Sam was a target for the local (white) police...perhaps because they learned that it was 'fun' to push his button...they would lean on him, he would tell them to get off his back, and then they would throw him in jail for a week or two and fine him $10 on some bullshit  pretext.

I don't know that things got physical with the policel...Louisville was hardly the deep South, where a black man who stood up for himself was in mortal danger.  But there was no recourse for Sam, because the Kentucky Cosntitution doesn't allow appeals for a fine of $10 or less!  So the police would keep pushing Sam's button and doing it to him
This happened time and again over the years, and, when I was 13 and Sam had been victimized like this for more than 50 times, Dad got Sam in touch with the KCLU to finally get him some recourse.

This time, Sam had been in a (black) bar waiting for the bus out of the cold.  He had bought and paid for some food, the proprietor said he was welcome to be there, and Sam was sitting on a stool tapping his foot in time to the music on the juke box.  The white police came in and did their usual number, and Sam was charged, fined and put in jail for dancing (shuffling his foot) in an establishment without a dancing permit.
Since there was no recourse from the KY State Supreme Court, the KCLU took the case to the Supreme Court of the United States of the United States, where the Louisville DA defending the City action got his ass handed to him.  And the police left Sam alone after that.

Would to God we had a Supreme Court that cared about civil rights and the common man now...

The details of the case are here.....
or here....