The Worst Person of the 20th Century

No, not Adolf Hitler. This Chosen piece of shit:

Milton "Grand Vampire of Neo-Liberalism" Friedman

Chris Hedges and David Harvey with more on this malignant midget.

Changed

The best documentary so far on the Dallas background, mostly made from outtakes of Assassination Weekend: reporters primping themselves before going on-air; color home movies of the entire motorcade, not just Dealey Plaza; local security warnings announced before Kennedy's arrival; corridors of the panicked Parkland Hospital; the sinister suffocations of the police department and Sheriff's office. Rare and fascinating stuff from pre-Technology Land.

The movie takes no POV on what happened that day or why. One thing stands clear: Lee Harvey Oswald was a tough motherfucker. Through the two days under arrest and before his public execution and silencing, Oswald never backed down, never stopped complaining about his treatment or lack of legal representation, never lost his cool, never made a single political pronouncement, and never admitted guilt. This isn't a man who's just committed political murder. This is a man with terminal confusion.

Darkness at Noon

"Kennedy is moving toward something that is not shrewdness or craft, but what the politicians don't have: depth, humanity, and a certain totality of self-forgetfulness and compassion, not just for individuals but for man as a whole: a deeper kind of dedication. Maybe Kennedy will fully break through into that some day by miracle. But such people are before long marked out for assassination."

-- Thomas Merton, November 18, 1962

John Kennedy's decision to turn toward peace regardless of the consequences to himself is reason for gratitude. We should think of him around Thanksgiving Day, which always falls around the anniversary of his death. And sometimes, as it does this year, on the anniversary itself of the gift of his life. If he had not turned and given us that gift, the world would now be a nuclear wasteland. The fact that he did turn -- and was murdered by an unspeakable power which continues to rule us more strongly than ever -- raises profound questions about our own need to face the same darkness, and to accept the consequences. As he did.

100

And on a scale of 1 to 100, this episode hits the top: "One Hundred Terrible Hours" from 5/5/65.

Emily

I dwell in Possibility

A fairer House than Prose

More numerous of Windows

Superior of Doors

Of Chambers as the Cedars

Impregnable of Eye

And for an Everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky

Of Visitors, the fairest

For Occupation, this

The spreading wide of narrow Hands

To gather Paradise

-- E.D., 1862

Winding Lee