Docs We Like: Brothers On The Line
This documentary about the three Reuther brothers of the United Auto Workers, tells, through one very important union, the remarkable story of the rise and fall of organized labor. It also addresses the crucial symbiosis between unions and the civil rights movement. There's even a curious connection to the deaths of JFK, RFK and MLK.

NYT'S Rhodes To Nowhere: A Cipher In The Oval Office
Weird just keeps getting weirder. A close read of the New York Times's profile of a mysterious top Obama speechwriter and advisor raises questions about the media, the presidency, and power itself.

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Here it comes again. This holiday weekend we'll see a lot of media coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr. But we'll hear very little about what he really was -- a brave and visionary leader whose vision is as relevant today as ever.

One year ago I listed ten quotes by Dr. King, and mourned the lack of a movement that would advance his kind of vision. Then came the uprising in Madison and the Occupy movement, which began a long-overdue national debate about economic, as well as racial inequality.

Once again, Dr. King's insights offer insight and vision for today's movement activists -- and tomorrow's.

1. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech.

"Bain Capitalism" - a.k.a "vulture capitalism" -- didn't happen out of nowhere. It was made by politicians. It should be un-made by politicians. The system is the problem and it needs to change.

A long list of corporations and banks enriched itself by triggering the events that led to the Great Recession, and many of them took Federal bailout money when it happened. Each of them has a Corporate Social Responsibility policy, designed to show they're good citizens who give back to the community. And each of them has a fleet of lobbyists working to protect their privileged status and tax benefits.

Meanwhile the poverty rate, which had been declining, started to rise again in 2000. That year it stood at 11.3 percent, but by 2009 the Census Bureau reported that it had climbed back to 14.3 percent. At last count, 46 million Americans lived in poverty, more than 15 percent of the population. More than 16 million of them are children, which means that nearly one in four American kids (22 percent) is living in poverty.

Is that OK with you?

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Photos of the April 4 Day of Action rallies via http://www.we-r-1.org/

Yesterday was the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, the third of four assassinations in fewer than five years of inspiring progressive leaders. Those years were the strangest combination of hope, progress, joy, grief, bitterness, and despair than any other time in American history. Those five years gave us the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the School Lunch program, Legal Services; and they gave us 500,000 troops in the most pointless and wrongheaded war in our history, and all the bitter divisions that resulted. They gave us the biggest landslide a progressive Democrat ever won for President, and the election of a dark-souled race baiting conservative who would be forced from office for blatant violations of the law. It brought us the rise of the modern feminist movement, the flowering of the biggest student movement in our history, and the ugliest reactionary backlash imaginable. The contradictions and battles of those intense years have never left us.

Although hopefully with less violence, this moment in history is feeling like it has much of the same drama and contradictions, hope and bitterness, change and backlash. We elect as President a mixed-race man with an African immigrant father and a Muslim African name; we finally pass a comprehensive health care reform bill that puts us much closer to a system of universal coverage; we make the biggest investments ever in green jobs, public education, universal broadband, and a variety of other public programs; in spite of reformers being outspent more than 500-1, we passed a bill that has begun to re-regulate the financial industry. At the same time, we see the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and a bipartisan political class that still seems locked into conventional views on the unalloyed virtues of the free market; a vicious backlash and the coming to power of the most extreme conservative movement since the Social Darwinists in the 1880s; we see far too much compromise and capitulation to the corporate powers that be by the Democratic establishment; and with the Ryan budget, we see the most dangerous and far reaching attack on the fundamental gains of the 1900s — especially Medicare and Medicaid, which he wants to not only radically slash but totally destroy by his “restructuring” — that we have ever seen; we see the most radical attacks on the very idea of unions that we have seen since the flowering of the modern labor movement in the 1930s.

What is most fascinating about the contradictory times we are living in is that both the extremist right-wing movement and the progressive movement are taking to the streets to an unprecedented level. We all saw the tea party movement capture the frame over the last two years, but progressives are now fighting back. Yesterday, on the anniversary of King’s death, our side took to the streets once again. There were more than 1,000 events yesterday — 1,000! — around this great country. People are fighting back in — to paraphrase Dr. King — every state and every city, every village and every hamlet, every mountain and every hill and every molehill of our great nation.

Unqualified Offerings: American culture, or the human race?

Dissent: The Hundred Years' War over Toxic Chemicals. And let's remind everybody that "toxic" means, "It Can Kill You." (h/t MaryK)

Balkanization: Marshall, Kagan, and MLK.

Zaius Nation: I am Actually Rather Fond of Giant Atomic Insects

Guest Roundup by Blue Gal. Send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

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Glenn Beck has been working hard to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King for conservatives like himself. He's even planning a big Tea Party event for the anniversary of King's march on Washington "I Have a Dream" speech. (Wait, let me guess: Glenn Beck, too, has a dream. Yegh.)

Thursday on his Fox News show, he tried to deny that progressives had any right to the mantle of civil rights:

Beck: Who were the Civil Rights marchers? They were people with a profound belief in God. They were trying to set things right. They weren't crying for social justice! They were crying out for equal justice!

Well, actually, Glenn ...

"Social justice" was a common rallying cry for the Civil Rights movement. Indeed, your newly adopted hero, Martin Luther King, gave a famous speech in Michigan titled "Social Justice and the Emerging New Age", on December 18, 1963, at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse at Western Michigan University.

I think with all of these challenges being met and with all of the work, and determination going on, we will be able to go this additional distance and achieve the ideal, the goal of the new age, the age of social justice.

The speech may best be remembered for its stirring conclusion:

In spite of the difficulties of this hour, I am convinced that we have the resources to make the American Dream a reality. I am convinced of this because I believe Carlyle is right. "No lie can live forever." I am convinced of this because I believe William Cullen Bryant is right. "Truth pressed to earth will rise again." I am convinced of this because I think James Russell Lowell is right. "Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne; Yet that scaffold sways the future, And behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, Keeping watch above His own." Somehow with this faith, we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new life into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. This will be a great day. This will be the day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God, Almighty, we are free at last!"

Of course, this all kinda raises the point we've made previously with Beck: If progressives really are a cancer destroying America, what about the cause of civil rights they championed?

It's a joke and an outrage that Beck is trying to claim MLK's mantle for conservatives -- the people who were MLK's lifelong enemy. I hope folks in the civil rights community start making a stink about this nonsense.

Alternate Brain: BWA HAHAHAHA...Rethugs claim they're upholding the legacy of MLK

Scott Horton: The Guantanamo "Suicides": A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle

Main Justice: The FBI invoked non-existent terrorism emergencies to illegally collect phone records betweem 2002 and 2006

One Penny Sheet: What Bush did to Haiti

Seeing the Forest: Health Care

HOLY CRAP: Killing ragheads for Jayzus...Tea Party same as old party...The Family that prays together...The Book of Moron...When Timmy met Jimmy...Dawkins vs Creationist...Ministerial propriety...Cult ...What would God say?...Oh noes!...What's God got to do with it?...God and Steele..Last word on Holy Hume...Goldberg's religion problem...

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The conservatives are in deep mourning over the passage of the healthcare reform bill. I have some empathy (not sympathy) for how bad they feel, considering how many things the Bush administration did (starting with the bombing of Iraq civilians) made me sick to my stomach.

And like most liberals, I'm well aware of the bill's many weaknesses. But I know how craven politicians are, and I'm convinced they will react to constituent concerns. (Because they do like to keep their jobs.) That's why I predict the 2020 version of this bill will be a lot better than this one. Now the real fight begins.

In the meantime, here are some representative comments on Twitter:

The DEMS have brought shame on America Abort the DEMS NOW

PLEASE #killthebill for my 12 year old who wants 2b a doctor! With Obamacare she might choose 2b a vet instead!

Paul Ryan just gave the best speech of the night. The guy is a freaking rockstar

Re: pelosi... Is this bitch for real? I bet she groups herself with Lincoln, MLK, Jesus

healthcare is not a right Nazi Pelozi!!

PIMP NANCY IS PASSING THIS BILL BY COMMITING BRIBES THAT SHE FINANCED WITH MY MONEY!!!! WTF!!!

And no, I don't thank @BarackObama. Except for RUINING my country.

We are selling our heritage for the lies and empty promises of a handful of radical liberals.

I have one word to describe this legislation "tyranny".

Monday take your money out of the banks

N. PigLosi looks like a "babbling idiot" who uses random Hand Gestures like a swinging monkey

Nancy milking the pre-existing conditions issue. Extend competition across state lines and watch pre existing conditions go away.

You are witnessing the death of the Democratic party

Good Job Nancy, Chairman Mao would be proud.

NOT MY PRESIDENT! NOT MY CONGRESS! NOT MY GOVERNMENT!!!

I'm not sympathetic to Pelosi's old guy in Michigan 2embarrassed 2ask his kids 4help. He doesn't mind stealing from mine!

March 21. Happy dependence day!

Listening to Pelosi live makes me want to puke. How could anybody of right mind believe a single word? Wicked witch.

This vote tonight is nothing short of a declaration of war by Dems & their freeloader base against responsible self-reliant Americans.