Sullivan's Travels, Preston Sturges' pre-war masterpiece, concerns a movie director (Joel McCrea) who has tired of making light comedies and wants to make a film about the downtrodden forgotten man. So, like William Powell in My Man Godfrey, he goes incognito as a hobo, but finds that no matter what he does, he winds up back in Hollywood. Several plot twists later with the help of The Girl (Veronica Lake), Sullivan succeeds in becoming a hobo only to wind up on a chain gang serving time for manslaughter. Here, he learns the value of laughter and decides that possibly he has been contributing after all. Like any Sturges film, Sullivan's Travels is satiric and sharply observed, though this time the satire informs a powerful social message. Many regard this as Sturges' best film.
In this famous scene, Jesse Lee Brooks leads a congregation in "Go Down, Moses" as the convicts arrive to see a Disney cartoon:
Dr William Hsaio, perhaps the world's foremost expert in the implementation of new health care systems, has delivered a report to the Vermont General Assembly recommending that the state adopt single payer health care based on a hybrid means of financing. Financing would stem from an employer-employee payroll deduction; benefits would be comprehensive and come with a low co-pay. It leaves Vermont Medicare and Medicaid intact, apparently because eliminating them would greatly complicate implementation. The General Assembly is expected to pass some version of Hsiao's proposal. The state would then request a waiver from the Affordable Care Act, which the Obama administration would almost certainly grant.
Implementation of a single payer program would be a health care reform development on the scale of Medicare and the Affordable Care Act. Hsiao estimates (conservatively, he says) that Vermont will save 25% of expected health care costs between 2015 and 2024. If the plan delivers as promised, pressure will grow on other states to reduce costs by expanding coverage and benefits. HealthMatters details the proposal here.
[The knight] had gone but a few paces into the wood, when he saw a mare tied to an oak, and tied to another, and stripped from the waist upwards, a youth of about fifteen years of age, from whom the cries came. Nor were they without cause, for a lusty farmer was flogging him with a belt and following up every blow with scoldings and commands, repeating, "Your mouth shut and your eyes open!" while the youth made answer, "I won't do it again, master mine; by God's passion I won't do it again...
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.
Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
The Washington Post reports that New Hampshire Republicans have prepared legislation limiting the voting rights of college students on the grounds that students are "foolish" and "just vote their feelings," causing them to inevitably vote liberal. This, apparently, must be suppressed for the good of the state and the country. Another Republican cites "youthful idealism" as justification, complaining that young people are inexplicably "...focused on remaking the world, with themselves in charge, of course, rather than with the mundane humdrum of local government."
Citizen K. sometimes can't resist shooting fish in a barrel and this is one of those times. One might forgiven for thinking that the the phrases "foolish," "just vote their feelings," and "focused on remaking the world, with themselves in charge" might, say, apply to the teabaggers behind all of this foolishness. One might also be forgiven that were the shoe on the other foot, conservatives would be screaming bloody murder and accusing liberals of eviscerating the Constitution.
Which brings me to another point: Once again, Republicanists mount a frontal assault on the document they profess to revere as much as the Bible. The Twenty-sixth Amendment is as clear on the matter of voting age as the Fourteenth is on citizenship birthright. It doesn't say, as New Hampshire Republicans would apparently prefer, that the voting rights of citizens eighteen are older "shall not be abridged unless they are college students." The meaning and intent is quite clear, and it's not "keep your mouth shut and your eyes wide open."
Voter suppression to prevent youthful idealism? God knows that we wouldn't want too much youthful idealism. That will kill a country, every time.
From the newly published Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Eltis and Richardson):
[The Africans are] so crowded, in such disgusting conditions, as the very ones who transport them assure me, that they come by six and six, with collars around their necks, and those same ones by two and two with fetters on their feet, in such a way that they come imprisoned from head to feet, below the deck, locked in from outside, where they see neither sun nor moon, [and] that there is no Spaniard who dares to stick his head in the hatch without becoming ill, nor to remain inside for an hour without the risk of great sickness. So great is the stench, the crowding and the misery of that place. And the [only] refuge and consolation that they have in it is [that] to each [is given] once a day no more than half a bowl of uncooked corn flour or millet, which is like our rice, and with it a small jug of water and nothing else, except for much beating, much lashing, and bad words. This is that which commonly happens with the men and I well think that some of the shippers treat them with more kindness and mildness, principally in these times...[Nevertheless, most] arrive turned into skeletons.
"Description of Africans on a Slave Ship (1627)," in W. D. Phillips, Jr. Slavery from Roman Times to the Early Transatlantic Trade (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
The Atlas is a remarkable volume, everything a reference book should be: Focused and detailed with informative and ideally designed graphics and maps that explicate its six parts: Nations Transporting Slaves from Africa, 1501-1867; Ports Outfitting Voyages in the Transatlantic Slave Trade; The African Coastal Origins of Slaves and the Links between Africa and the Atlantic World; The Experience of the Middle Passage; The Destinations of Slaves in the Americas and Their Links with the Atlantic World; and Abolition and Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
One map shows that the direction of sea currents and prevailing winds caused slavers to take a longer but easier voyage from central Africa as opposed to points further north. Another details the flow of slaves from specific African ports (and the number of slaves from each) to their destination ports in the New World. Still another breaks down the demographics of age and gender of captives on typical voyages.
Each page is the turn of a screw, slowly revealing until undeniable the official complicity of European nations in the deliberate design and perpetration of a horror that lasted for over three-and-a-half centuries. For the captives who survived the Middle Passage to be sold into slavery, the horror had only begun, and would be passed down from generation to generation.
The slavers and their investors, though, pocketed their profits and began preparations for more voyages to the central African coast. This included taking out insurance that protected "The Insurers from any loss or damage from the Insurrection of Negroes" but that otherwise specified a precise value for human life "computed on the nett Amount of the Ship Outsett & Cargo -- Negroes valued at Thirty Pounds p Head." Of course, to the slavers and slaveowners, these were not human lives: They were nothing more than commodities of labor valued at 30 pounds per unit.
They looked so domestic. Just a young couple crazy about each other, strolling a New York City street with the confidence that the world was their oyster. The near mundaneness of the image belied the brilliance of the music within, but once you heard the music within, you took a second look at the cover. Suddenly, it portrayed something else: A portrait of a young man as an artist who had just changed popular music forever and his (somewhat reluctant, it turned out) muse. She clings to him smiling and proud as he whispers something secret -- a private witticism, perhaps, a sweet nothing, or a tale of the Village night. The images of the cars behind them futilely attempt to freeze the image in late 1962 or early 1963, but the music had already demolished the mere temporal pretensions of a camera: It's already immortal. And Suze, you feel, knows it. The smile says, "This record? He couldn't have done it without me."
Suze Rotolo is gone, succumbing to lung cancer at age 67. She inspired Bob Dylan's interest in the political world and became the subject of some of his greatest songs. Here's, Dylan's friend Ramblin' Jack Elliot sings one of them (music begins around 3:30):
A unionized public employee, a member of the Tea Party, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO reaches across and takes 11 cookies, looks at the tea partier and says, "Watch out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie.
This is not just some academic exercise for me. I am trying to actually shrink scope and size of government. If Harry Reid comes back and says no spending cuts, no nothing, at that point I feel I have no choice given what I ran on, given what I got 70 percent of the vote on, I have to shut down the government.
Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN)
I? I?! I have to shut down the government?! Who died and made Todd Rokita king?
Rokita, all of 40 years old, has apparently crowned himself King of the United States of America. During the day, he's the freshman representative from Indiana's 4th district, a gerrymandered sprawl wrapped around the spine of western Indiana. Rokita, who claims to oppose gerrymandering, represents -- according to the Cook Report -- one of the most Republican districts in the country.
Moreover, while no doubt opposing every piece of legislation important to African-Americans, Mr Rokita has urged Republicans to reach out to that constituency. Pointing out that 90% of African-Americans vote Democratic, he once wondered aloud, "How can that be? Ninety to 10. Who's the master and who's the slave in that relationship? How can that be healthy?" (He later apologized for the remark.) However, as a stalwart opponent of nonexistent voter fraud: As Indiana's Secretary of State, Rokita instituted a requirement that voter's produce a photo I.D., which has the effect of suppressing African-American turnout. How can that be healthy?
The boy king has apparently decided that getting the vote of 139, 788 Hoosiers in one most Republican districts (94.8% white) in the country entitles him to personal free rein to shut down the government. This is not only a signature of teabagger provincialism and self-importance, it shows how disconnected from reality these people are. More than 75,000 of Rokita's constituents receive Social Security; his casual threat to personally shut down the government threatens each and every one of them with not receiving their monthly deposit. But, I suppose you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and King Todd does have an imagined potential personal affront from Harry Reid to stew about.
The rest of us, though, have to worry about the man who would be king.
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