(Original post at DocuDharma; technically challenged on cross-posting)

If you can make it to Faneuil Hall in Boston around 11:30 this Thursday that'd be great. If you can do something locally wherever you are that'd be great. If you can take some time and write to your congress critters that'd be great. If you can take some time and write some LTEs that'd be great. If you can take some time and call your congress critters or local rag that'd be great.

If you can join one of the many protests that seem to be naturally occurring simultaneously that'd be really great. The longshoremen's union, the truckers and the immigrants will all be making a statement on the born-in-the-USA (Haymarket, Chicago, 1886, 8 hr workday movement) International Workers Day.

Don't look now folks but "teh Holy One" may be in the tank to the Big Pharma money. Just like Hillary. Call me a liar or a fool. Go Google "pharma obama" and come back and tell me I'm wrong.

Here are some links if you need help:

Big Pharma opens wallet to Dems

Liberals have lost their reputation as the long-standing foes to drugmakers as party lines become blurred with McCain.

Despite Rhetoric, Obama Pushed Lobbyists' Interests

Drug Money: Pharma Bets On Obama, So Far

A "Complicated Truth" About Obama Donations

Should Pharma vote for McCain, Clinton or Obama?

Draft Edwards!!!!!

May 1.

A lot of Americans have apparently been brainwashed during their formative years. The vast majority associate the first day of the month of May as a Soviet Communist celebration day. Then again a sizable number of Uhmericans think Saddam Hussein was complicit in the 9/11 atrocities. Oh, and the wiretapping started after 9/11 and not like late February or early March of 2001.

May first was a holiday before there was a May. It's a cross-quarter day. That means it falls about halfway between a solstice and an equinox. Back before keyboards, laser mice and high-speed internet connections people used to notice these things. The only thing that emitted light, besides fire, was in the sky. You can check out the sky anytime.

So back in the days of stone knives and bearskins, and I'm not talking about the Star Trek episode where Spock and McCoy have to build a time-machine thingie with 1930s tech, or even the dark ages of eight bit processors, RAM limits of 65536 bytes and machine code, I'm talking real stone and real bear. Hell, sabre-tooth tiger and wooly mammoth times. Back when chipped flint was high-tech. In the time of neo-pagans there was that day half-way between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice. It became May One. And it became special in many ways.

The original posting is on DocuDharma, 4 Apr 2008.

This is a simple proposal to not go to work for one day. If we do it individually and on random days, it matters not at all. If we do it together on one day by the thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, it will matter. The more who join, the more it will matter. United we stand, divided we fail to get their sufficient attention.

The theme of the strike is best expressed by the immortal words of Paddy Chayefsky. As the character Howard Beale in his screenplay Network proclaimed loudly:

   

"I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

There's more below the fold:

Somewhere a few weeks back I filled in one of those ready made reply e-mails with a long and impassioned plea to keep the National Mall - that open strip from the Capitol Building to the Lincoln Memorial - open and available for demonstrations. I dislike sending in the canned pleas for whatever the subject at hand is so I try to send a well-reasoned plea for sanity instead. They most likely would have sent the same response to a GFY e-mail but I got my two cents in anyway. It's the thoughts that count.

Below the fold I'll post The National Park Service's (NPS) canned feedback e-mail. It just came in today. I live south of Boston and I'd hate to see demonstration pens set up the way Boston did. With this Cheney-Bush administration you never know just what nefarious plan they may devise. So give it a read if you're so inclined. And by all means, attend demonstrations on the Mall if you can. Hell, attend them anywhere and any time you can. If you can't find one then start one. The numbers count as much or more than actual votes. Good street theater gets extra bonus points - sort of like super-delegates except they're only on YouTube.

Here in the Boston area it's a legal holiday. It's also a holiday in Cambridge and Somerville (right, mem?). Evacuation Day is one of only two celebrated in the U.S.

On March 17, 1776 the 11-month siege of Boston ended when the Continental Army, under Washington, fortified Dorchester Heights with cannons captured at Ticonderoga, forcing General Howe's garrison to attack or flee. To prevent what could have been a slaughter of his troops, Howe agreed to retreat to Nova Scotia via his ships without setting the city on fire as he left.

It's a double celebration day here.

Many of the soldiers who volunteered to serve under General George Washington to break the yoke of British colonialism were Irish Catholic. These soldiers and their families experienced first hand British occupation and suppression. Many of their sacrifices during the War of Independence were critical in bringing about the establishment of the United States of America. After a failed movement in 1876, the holiday was finally proclaimed on the 125th anniversary in 1901.

So a Happy March 17th to all of you and there's more...

From Webster's Online Dictionary:

Yahoo, Noun

1. Not very intelligent or interested in culture.

2. One of a race of brutes resembling men but subject to the Houyhnhnms in Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

In Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, a yahoo is a vile and savage creature, filthy and with unpleasant habits, resembling human beings far too closely for the liking of Lemuel Gulliver, who finds the calm and rational society of the Houyhnhnms far preferable.

More below the fold:

Of course this is all an assumption on my part. I didn't actually watch the debate. At this point in the campaign you can save a lot of time and put it to other uses by not watching the debates. You can save even more time by skipping over any news items or posts that may imply anything the least bit negative about Obama. It's a done deal. He'll be the nominee. So you can all relax now. Obama is the man!

The other forty-nine states could definitely use a healthy dose of the Aloha spirit. I've been there so many times visiting family that it feels like home (Big Island; "country" on the others).

More below the fold:

This is a first hand interview and is at least as believable as any case the  Executive Branch of the United States Government, the Most Powerful Government on the Planet Earth, has made for retro-active immunity for the major telecom corporations. Everything written here happened in a reality that may just be your own. I can pretty much guarantee that the majority of this did actually happen in a reality extremely much like the one you exist in right now. (Disclaimer - any and all legal actions will have to be settled in the version of reality in which the following is the absolute truth.)

That said, "Believe it if if you need it or leave it if you dare." R Hunter

Follow me over the edge here for more:

I stumbled across International Net News recently. If they have an agenda, it's spread very wide. Mostly I find news items posted there that just aren't worthy of the MSM. They're too mundane (xx dead Iraqis and yy dead Americans today) or too plain vanilla business stuff. After reading it for a week or so, there have been some threads that start to stand out.

One thread is the falling value of the US dollar and the economic havoc that is causing all over the Mid-East. Israel and the OPEC nations are having fits over it. The move to the Euro as the reference currency has already begun. Welcome to the third world of international currencies. The USD is about to join the SGD, HKD and NTD in the world of dollar denominated currencies. There's probably more dollar types out there, too.

Then there's another thread: InfraGard

He's on CNN right now and making his case forcefully as to why he is the obvious choice for the disrestpected and disaffected conservative Republican movement. He is artfully and skillfully punching every single one of their buttons. He has not missed a single hot button issue yet. The race is on.

Let John McCain go down in the inevitable flames of a failed ideology. Back out gracefully and set up for the next wave. No point in paddling into a total close-out macker.

I sent this in to TPM a couple of days ago:

I'm an unenrolled (Independent) voter in Plymouth, MA. It's not yet 2:30pm here and I still haven't decided which candidate gets my vote. So I'm asking for some input. My possible votes are Democratic - Barack, Hillary or John; Republican - McCain, Romney or Ron Paul. I get to pick which ballot.

Here are my thoughts (with a poll, of course):

Glad to see you're back, bonddad, and thanks for the charts in your returning diary. The charts and current events raise a few questions for me that someone out there may be able to answer.

The inflation chart smooths out circa 1980. This also marks the advent of personal computers and early internet connectivity for the common man. The same time frame brings massive data collection from advanced POS systems and coordinated manufacturing and inventory management. Basically a new capability and capacity to track enormous capital movement in real-time.

The point being made is that a lot of friction was being taken out of the economic flow simultaneously with Volcker's intercession via interest rate manipulation. An enormous amount of economic data and the tools to model that data seem to have made a profound difference in a Fed Chairman's ability to effectively influence rates of change. This may have a lot do with Greenspan's seemingly uncanny ability to contain inflation within such a narrow range over so many years.

As an aside, I also recall the Reagan crowd trying to defund data collection on things like new unemployment claims because they didn't like bad news being made public. Sort of like Cheney's crowd hiding the caskets coming home each week from Iraq.