Digital Ink Los Angeles

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.“
Mark Twain – Autobiography of Mark Twain

The truth is not always fact. And truth is often stranger than fiction.

American “Indians” are not from India, because Columbus didn’t discover a western trade route after all.

Michael Jordan wasn’t “cut” from his high-school varsity team as a sophomore, when he was the leading scorer on his high school junior-varsity squad that same year.

Breached levees caused the flooding of New Orleans after Katrina, but the city is in a sunken bowl, at least five feet under sea-level, surrounded by large bodies of water on every side. Where’s all that water supposed to go in a Category 4 hurricane? And, it’ll happen again, unless New Orleans becomes like Amsterdam and Venice.

If aliens arrive on this planet tomorrow, who might they believe to be in charge? Dogs who live a life of luxury, or the owners who follow them around with pooper-scoopers picking up their, well, shit? Go fetch.

When liberals and conservatives line up on either side of the political arena, who is hit by the flying bullets? All the people standing in the middle, trying to get something accomplished instead of proving who is “right,” “left,” or “wrong.”

FactCheck.org is one of the best available for some truthful reflection of the facts, as their business is, indeed, fact checking.

Also, TruthDig is a well-done web site, with some genuinely informed people making solid statements about all things human and otherwise.

Another soundly presented, professional, and unbiased web site is Common Dreams, for the “progressives” looking to build a better, New America.

And, lastly, for a simple, humanitarian organization with some of the greatest minds in the world, try the Aspen Institute for a little change of pace.

Smart people, doing good things. As might be guessed, not political.

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“Prediction is very hard,” said famed Yankee catcher and Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, “especially about the future.”

Healthcare, Afghanistan, Foreclosures, Iraq, Wall Street, Pakistan, and Unemployment, oh my. And now Barack Obama is Hitler and the Anti-Christ re-incarnate, Van Jones is a white-hating communist, and Sonia Sotomayor is a racist revolutionary?

What befits a president looking to make his mark on history than the daunting tasks made apparent over the last nine months. The level of angered, passionate rhetoric has risen to visceral and acrid polemic. Hate foments hate, and no one wants to back off their high posts. For what? What’s the end game?

Read the Steve Lopez column on Glenn Beck Groups sprouting up around the country, with his popularity seemingly like an L.A. wildfire.

“Join, or Die” is a famous political cartoon created by Benjamin Franklin and first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. It was meant to align colonial states with a united cause — eventually becoming the United States of America.

Wonder if anyone recognizes the buffoonery of bi-partisan bickering when it comes to accomplishing meaningful results?

Educating children, reviving a comatose economy, bringing troops home, and re-structuring a health-care system that remains in the dark ages will require active, meaningful participation on both sides. C’mon , buddy, can you lend a hand?

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Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream, and it wasn’t that we would all have equality under the laws and resources of health-care. But, he might have had some ideas for the frivolous rhetoric surrounding the attempted implementation of health-care reform.

It’s been 46 years — to the day — since MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which challenged similar opposition to the Civil Rights Movement of his time.

Citizens think that an endowment of freedom is similar to the value of their insurance — even though the health-insurance industry and health-care system are antiquated, fruitless institutions. Don’t take what these citizens have, because fear dictates a hoarding effect and vehement defense of their nearly useless insurance. Even health-care co-ops would be a better, cheaper alternative to current health-care malfeasance and impotence.

Reality is that the great U.S. of A. CAN’T AFFORD to maintain the status quo.

With banks continuing to sputter and stall, a debt-laden Chinese relationship, and the rocketing price of health-care, a managed, regulated, and reformed health-care system is necessary. Just like Civil Rights was necessary, though many opposed it at the time. Ironically, many of these same folks don’t speak of this opposition to Civil Rights, but find new glory in the raucous Town Hall Meetings politicians have been hosting during Congress’s August recess.

Dreams of Civil Rights. Hope for Health-Care Reform. Progress with an emerging New America. And the Reality of a bi-partisan battle that has less to do with health-care and a healthy economy than the liberal vs. conservative bickering that muddies the water and pisses on the party. Tea Party Patriots? Digital Ink declines any invite to myopic ignorance.

The following quote from the 2008 Nobel Prize-winning economist, Princeton professor, and New York Times‘ columnist Paul Krugman sums it all up:

“At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.”

What would MLK say? Speak to the truth of the matter, and remove strong-principled beliefs in partisan politics for rational perception of a much-needed change. In order to emerge as a stronger, leaner, healthier nation, Health-Care Reform is necessary, just like Civil Rights are necessary. Anyone want to argue that? Ask MLK, he’ll tell you about his dream.

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The first known use of the word freedom in a political context dates back to the 24th century BC, in a text describing the restoration of social and economic liberty in Lagash, a Sumerian city-state.

Urukagina, the king of Lagash, established the first known legal code to protect citizens from the rich and powerful. Known as a great reformer, Urukagina established laws that forbade compelling the sale of property and required the charges against the accused to be stated before any man accused of a crime could be punished. This is the first known example of any form of due process in the history of humanity.

Sumer is also known as the “Cradle of Civilization,” or Mesopotamia. The Tigris and Euphrates are the fertile, nutrient-rich rivers that flow southward into modern-day Persian Gulf, which geographically separates Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, and the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.

The Iraqi government has been awarded autonomy and sovereignty of its laws and lands by the U.S. government, effective as of July 1, 2009. The tank-mounted machine-gun in this picture would have been an alarming image until “Operation Iraqi Freedom” liberated the country from its previous government.

The notion we have to celebrate July 4th, because of our adoption of the Declaration of Independence on this date in 1776, is ironic because it takes several long years before the loose confederation of colonies becomes a real nation.

Indeed, the Unites States’ Constitution Day is observed on September 17, the day the U.S. Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution in 1787. That’s eleven years of struggle and perseverance. Baghdad (New Sumeria) has their work cut out for them.

Happy JULY 4th Holidays! Live freely.

A professor of law at Harvard University, Elizabeth Warren is an expert on bankruptcy and an outspoken critic of consumer lenders. She is the author of several books including, most recently, The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke.

In a 2005 Frontline interview, she discusses the range of deceptive and unfair practices she says the credit card companies try to hide in the fine print of card agreements and she lays out the remedies that should be put in place to protect the consumer. She is especially outraged by those who argue that the debt problem facing Americans is really a tiny fraction of the overall economy and that such consumer spending has helped keep the economy afloat.

“Seventy percent of American families last year (2004) said that they are carrying so much debt that it is making their family lives unhappy,” says Warren. “Middle-class Americans, hard working, play-by-the-rules Americans, Americans who lost a job, who don’t have health insurance, who are in the middle of a divorce — those are the Americans who are carrying enormous credit card debts.“

That was 4 years ago. Now she’s in charge of overseeing bank and financial-investment companies with their compliance with federal regulations. On November 14, 2008, Ms. Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (TARP). The reports of the Panel are available at http://cop.senate.gov.

For Ms. Warren’s forthrightness and consummate courage in the face of bureaucratic malady and antiquated cronyism, she is a hero to the tax-paying people of the U.S. As the saying goes, she doesn’t candy-coat the facts, and she’s been the principal thorn in the side of Wall Street and big banking, asserting her authoritative will to impose strict oversight and truly effective regulation.

The entire video and transcript of Elizabeth Warren’s Frontline interview is available here. Of note would be her dissemination of the facts regarding her field of expertise: predatory practices in credit-cards that amount to simple, old-fashioned usury.