Intellectual theft by Stan

There’s nothing to sweat in the land of the free, the home of the brave, the country of reasonable folks, is there?

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Alex Jones emails us
We received this by e-post by Alex Jones.
Fall Of The Republic & The Rise Of The Resistance!
This is a special alert from Alex Jones reminding everyone out there that my latest documentary movie, Fall Of The Republic, lands on October 21st and that we need everyone to see this film, make copies, [...]

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Noted on Talking Points Memo
John L. Perry, writing on Newsmax, opines that our military leadership may be contemplating a coup. His words:
Obama Risks a Domestic Military ‘Intervention’
Sep 29, 2009
There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic. If a [...]

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from Brave New Video

Here are Robert Reich’s comments urging support for the public option. He says it’s not demonic. He seems to be avoiding mentioning how socialistic and pinko-lefty it would be.

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From Barry Horn, Director
The Brownsville Museum of Fine Art is the result of the dedication and inspiration of eight artists who gathered together almost 75 years ago in Brownsville to develop their artistic talents and to provide educational and exhibition opportunities. These eight women would marvel at their legacy.

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A comment
Congratulations to Melissa Zamora and Rose Gowen, newly elected members of Brownsville’s city commission. We appreciate the strengths you’ve shown through the election cycles and wish you well in your new positions. We also look forward to your efforts to improve the city’s business and to a healthier atmosphere at city council meetings.
-Stan Raines

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A history lesson
Editor’s note: This piece was run in it’s entirety in this month’s Harper’s Magazine. It is such a poignant statement, however, that we wanted it to be available to our readers in it’s entirety. This and other documents on the Soviet’s slow recognition of a reality outside its mythology and ideology are available [...]

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Recommended reading
The New York Times Magazine ran quite a rundown by Charles Duhigg on what we had suspected has been up with the credit card companies for quite some time: psychological profiling of its customer base.
The Obama administration has proposed to do something about credit cards. We’ll see whose side it’s on. The rhetoric has [...]

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Video from Media Matters
Apparently Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Mark Steyn and the rest of the Wingnuts have identified a previously un-noted key to American manhood — ketchup on your burger. Listen to the rants:

We’re glad, as a public service, to help unmask yet another key to Barrack Obama’s unmanliness. Somebody wake up Colonel Ray [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
How wonderfully self-centered!
Scarcely a word from the developed world when it comes to: contaminated water; diarrhea; AIDS; malaria; malnutrition; general sanitation and hygiene; starvation; birth difficulties; factory farming and its unhealthy spin-offs …and the list goes on and on ….
Why worry! Those health issues only affect about half or more of the [...]

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Opinion by Gene Novogrodsky
I am addressing this to the mainly erroneous TEA Party and secessionist adherents – though they have at least two good points.
The current federal tax code is written with favors to the rich at its core, so the Tea Party folk have a gripe there – not that I heard [...]

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A video by Edgar Clinton, Jr.
Here is some documentation of the TEA party in Harlingen.

The text of the accompanying song:

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By Gene Novogrodsky
Before the urban animal control truck
Came to take the dark grey possum
To the still-wild brushland,
A white possum came to the trap -
A visit – and then ran across a cracked yard,
Slanted street and under a rotted-board
House when the truck stopped ….

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A comment
I’ve been trying to get some information on a tax protest that’s supposed to come to fruition at Noon, April 15th at the Federal Courthouse, according to the KURV afternoon shock jock Colonel Ray (last name unposted on KURV’s Web site). Of course, there’s the problem–the source, this repeater in the Great Right Wing [...]

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by Gene Novogrodsky
I went to the south end of Palm Boulevard in Brownsville prepared to be angry, and was probably already angry; The Wall had come to that beautiful river’s edge, its scrub fields, coyote scat, Gulf winds, but I left sad, sad that very misguided governmental officials, past and present administrations, had decided [...]

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by Stan Raines
We noted an advertisement this morning in the Brownsville Herald from the Brownsville City Commission District 3 candidate and incumbent Carlos Cisneros which consisted of a letter from a constituent describing how she had contacted Mr. Cisneros about her recent discovery of potholes (potholes!! in Brownsville!!!) in the street where she lived. Someone [...]

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Intellectual theft by Stan Raines
Couldn’t help it. Part of our current situation connects right back to the 1990’s debacle over health care which ended pretty much like this from Pat Oliphant.

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A response from Gene Novogrodsky
State Representative Rene Oliveria contends that West Brownsville needs a road.
It does not!
But it does need repairs to Military Highway, West Elizabeth Street, West
Jefferson Street and Boca Chica Boulevard.
And it also needs a bike, hike and nature trail when the railroad is relocated.
As for traffic, you impatient drivers, leave several minutes [...]

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Opinion from Ruth Wagner
Having read the recent spate of incendiary anti-abortion letters in local newspapers, I am compelled to respond.
Pro-choice means that a woman has control of her own life and her own body.
Having been raised a strict Catholic, I left the organized church over contraception, not abortion.
The issues that we should be discussing are: [...]

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Opinion by Gene Novogrodsky
OK, here it is, a chance to vote for space, trees, bike paths, hiking paths and mini-parks, or more asphalt, wider roads, faster roads and longer roads.
The event, place, time and date: Brownsville Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) meeting at the Brownsville Public Library on Central Boulevard at 6:15 p.m, Wednesday, March 11th.
I’ll [...]

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A poem by John Goggin
When they came, they came as friends
Blessed by the king, with new learning to impart.
We all prospered, it is true; grew fat, built new houses,
Mortgaged our futures, became blind.
Wondrous, wasn’t it?
When the wind shifted and a storm blew up,
In just a big city moment we were not so smart.
They pillaged to [...]

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an opinion from Gene Novogrodsky
I would love to be able to say, “Brownsville, Texas, where I live, is a unique city because its officials refused to cooperate with the United States government’s plan to build the border wall.”
Such a stand would let the nation, Mexico and the rest of the World know that my city [...]

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An announcement from Virginia Gause

On Monday, February 23, at 8 pm KMBH, the local PBS station, will air “A Class Apart” as the title of the documentary on the program American Experience.
A Class Apart
In 1951 in the town of Edna, Texas, a field hand named Pedro Hernández murdered his employer after exchanging words at a [...]

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A letter from Gene
EDITOR:
Yes, by all means, pay your taxes, you who wish to serve the nation via government appointment. But let’s put tax theft or neglect or deceit in perspective.
A trillion has gone down a hole in Iraq, enriching those in the war business, and billions have been given away to bankers [...]

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from Gene’s Notebook

…and isn’t it a lot like the women’s softball team from work?
No men around, women laughing, women going out for beer, sweaty,
No make-up, dirt-stained shorts , the women, the girls, their time ….
No women, rifles, trucks, barracks, talk, music,
Marching, sweating, no women, soldiers ,,,
And tell the brutal truth, you like it,
No women, [...]

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