mushinnoshin

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

His current woes regarding pay-to-play accusations notwithstanding, those of us who think it’s anathema for the state to commit murder (and unless you think the state is infallible, you can’t escape the reality that it sometimes does) still have to love this guy:

Richardson, a Democrat who formerly supported capital punishment, said signing the bill was the “most difficult decision” of his political life but that “the potential for … execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings.”

[...]

“Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe,” Richardson told a news conference in the state Capitol.

[...]

“If you’re going to put somebody to death, the … criminal justice system has to be perfect, and it isn’t,” he said.

Thanks to jaxn for the alert.

A nice shot across the bow on both geonomic and anti-corporate issues, via The Progress Report:

Today the citizens of Shapleigh, Maine voted at a special town meeting to pass a groundbreaking Rights-Based Ordinance, 114 for and 66 against. This revolutionary ordinance give its citizens the right to local self-governance and gives rights to ecosystems but denies the rights of personhood to corporations. This ordinance allows the citizens to protect their groundwater resources, putting it in a common trust to be used for the benefit of its residents.

(more at afterdowningstreet.org)

Somehow I had not until now gotten around to watching Spike Lee’s excellent biography of Malcolm X. Meanwhile, a few weeks ago I saw the Ken Burns PBS documentary on Thomas Jefferson. Together the two films suggest an interesting comparison of the two men, as regards their curiously intersecting natures as great flawed heroes.

We see Jefferson, the eloquent and passionate advocate for equality, liberty, and justice, who penned arguably our country’s greatest creed in the opening of our Declaration of Independence, who yet was a slaveholder, and a racist who believed African-Americans to be genetically inferior. Though, to his credit he was an abolitionist, just one who knew the day had not yet come to cross that bridge.

Then we have Malcolm X, the eloquent and passionate advocate of a long oppressed people, who quoted those lines from Jefferson as he fought for equality, liberty, and justice for his brothers while challenging and inspiring them to raise themselves up to their own worth, who yet was a separatist, a racist who charged each individual white person with the sins of the collective. Though, to his credit, he repudiated these views in later life after witnessing brotherhood in Mecca.

I don’t know, I don’t really have a strong point to make here, I’m just feeling that between the two we find some sort of karmic balance, as if by taking the two together we can erase what was wrong with each and magnify that which was right. And also in their shared complexity we catch a uniquely singular portrait of the best and worst of this nation’s soul.

Via S-Town Mike we find out that apparently, the conservative movement is finally coming to terms with the inescapable conclusion that free market principles mandate communal ownership of the earth’s resources, by embracing the thoroughly Georgist anthem “This Land is Your Land” –

As I was walkin’ – I saw a sign there
And that sign said – no tress passin’
But on the other side …. it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Or do they listen to lyrics as selectively as they do facts?