Learning from the Protests of France

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There's a bit of an uproar in Paris these days. What with the flying rumors of threats from Al Qaeda in Yemen. And then there's that second-volcano-in-Iceland that was supposed to happen following past models, spewing ash hither and yon for weeks.

But what poked through my hectic, multi-layered life these days is the protests against raising the retirement age from 60 to 62. The shallow thinker might say, hey, what are they whining about? We're going from 65 to 67 to .......

It took the students to get me to thinking.

The more countries raise retirement age, the more they strangle the job prospects of students entering the work force.

Because big corporations have already outsourced a ginormous share of the job market. And the struggling economy and reduced buying power of middle class incomes have forced some seniors to work long beyond retirement age to pay their rising costs that don't show up in the COLA stats, while workers are downsized, laid off, early-retired, half-timed, part-timed, two-timed out of their previous standard of living.

And banksters on Wall Street have cynically, criminally, corruptly enriched themselves at the private trough while calling themselves masters of the universe.

So the current generation of American students and recent grads are already facing the fate the French students protest.

Unless we make election day our firewall — because as frustrating as the pace of change is for some of us, the alternative is more of the de-peopleing of democracy, the Constitution, and this country.

But rather than take to the streets, I hope America's students and all the rest of us* will take to the ballot box. I'm counting on you. And so are my grandkids comin' up behind....
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* Yes, I have voted already.
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Dear A.I.G., He Quits.

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Some must reading today, this op-ed in the New York Tmes: Dear A.I.G., I Quit!

Add this to Matt Taibbi's Rolling Stone article that cuts through the jargon b.s. and smoke and mirrors to explain so even I can understand how we got where we are.

And, this commentary over at Oxdown Gazette from Selise: Dear Congress, Your Hearings Suck! [and isn't that Dilbert cartoon great]

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We have tons of school kids and college students in the process of saving Fargo from going underwater even as I type...they're coming in on buses over 100 miles away, too... we owe the next generation bigtime, and Fargo's experience truly shows that.

Paying them back starts with fixing the same ol' same ol' crap in Washington.

Talk the Talk

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Words mean something, says Barack Obama, challenging Sarah Palin and the rest of the hate-spewing McCainiac team. "You can't just make stuff up."

Yes, words mean something.

Caroline Kennedy talked about how her children influenced her. How she sees in Barack Obama a sense of purpose and a quality of leadership that she has not seen in decades...a quality of leadership, she has been told, that reminds people of her father.

Words mean something.

So how about you? Have you had the conversation? Oh, I don't mean with other bloggers or commenters who agree with you. Nor with the folks you've met volunteering or canvassing for Obama.

Have you had the conversation with your own family? With your parents? With your grandparents?

The Sunshine family is now four generations strong...crossing party lines...but united in support of Barack Obama.

Because words mean something.

And images and "character" can be tissue thin--whether moose leather or $300,000 crass couture--while issues must be faced with honesty and truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, and no dissembling. Hypocrisy must be called out and rebuked. Racism and race-baiting must be shamed and shunned.

And it's not easy. The words don't slip off our own tongues as glibly and grinningly as a speech-written teleprompter's script. We struggle sometimes, telling our own parents or grandparents, aunts or uncles, why words mean something.

And honesty, as well.

And it may seem sometimes that we're in this alone, mocked by the Republicans, with a self-important puffed-up McCainstream media that too often shows that it is either hopelessly gullible and stupid and easily guiled or caring more for the face in the mirror than the face of real journalism instead of stenography or infotainment "news."

Because to think the agents of change will be the ones who got us in this mess for nearly eight long years is to be as vapid...and fearful...and self-dishonest...and flat-out screwed-up shallow as the cravens on the right are hoping that voters will be.

Their drumbeat will be loud, but we have the chance, each and every day, to have dinnertable conversations and talk the talk.
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