MLK saved Star Trek

Nichelle Nichols Tells Neil deGrasse Tyson How Martin Luther King Convinced Her to Stay on Star Trek | Open Culture

I didn't think I could have a higher opinion of Martin Luther King, but this story just raised the bar. 

Angry Left Can Step Off

Interesting Alternet article called "Enough of 'Barbituate' Left Cynicism, Obama Is a Victory over White Supremacy" by Tim Wise for the neo-lefties out there....you know that kind of liberal that's always a downer. I particularly liked this part:

At some point, the left will have to relinquish its love affair with marginalization. We'll have to stop behaving like those people who have a favorite band they love, and even damn near worship, until that day when the band actually begins to sell a lot of records and gain a measure of popularity, at which point they now suck and have obviously sold out: the idea being that if people like you, you must not be doing anything important, and that obscurity is the true measure of integrity. Deconstructing the psychological issues at the root of such a pose is well above my pay grade, but I'm sure would prove fascinating.

The simple fact is, people are inspired by Obama not because they view him as especially progressive per se (except in relation to some of the more retrograde policies of the current president, and in relation to where they feel, rightly, McCain/Palin would have led us), but because most folks respond to optimism, however ill-defined it may be. This is what the Reaganites understood, and for that matter it's what Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement knew too. It wasn't anger and pessimism that broke the back of formal apartheid in the south, but rather, hope, and a belief in the fundamental decency of people to make a change if confronted by the yawning chasm between their professed national ideals and the bleak national reality.

In other words, what the 60s freedom struggle took for granted, but which the cynical barbiturate left refuses to concede, is the basic goodness of the people of this nation, and the ability of the nation, for all of its faults (and they are legion) to change.

I know a lot of U2 fans that did this....once Rattle & Hum came out, U2 was crap. Too bad they didn't stay tuned, what a great ride it's been in the U2 camp since then.
Let's hope we get a similar ride from Obama. We can all at least hope, right?

40 Years

John Legend performs PRIDE (In The Name of Love)
by ElectricArtists

Mama Coretta, Sleep Tonight

"He wasn't just talking about the American dream," Bono said. "It was a much bigger idea, actually, an idea that could fit an African dream, an Irish dream. And it certainly wasn't a daydream. It was a call to action."

At the dinner, which had a sellout crowd of 1,900 at the Hyatt downtown, Coretta King called Bono "another son for me now. We officialized that today."

May Your Dreams Be Realized

MLK, In His Own Words: "'I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government.'

'Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.'

'A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.'

'I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.'

These words ring equally true today concerning our failed aggression in Iraq. As a nation, we have learned very little from King's powerful words nor from our own failed foreign policy in Vietnam. Clearly the crimes that King valiantly and heroically struggled against have not gone away. It is up to us to honor the legacy of King by continuing the struggle."