A New Face on the Twenty Dollar Bill

Dr Ben Carson favors retaining Andrew Jackson on the twenty dollar bill because “Jackson was a tremendous secretary”.   Carson wants Harriet Tubman on the two dollar bill.  Now I guess slavery champion of Indian oppression will not be popular in the South rather than have a Negro on US currency.  There are civil rights scenes planned for the backs of the five and ten dollar bills.  Alexander Hamilton was saved because there is a Broadway musical out about him now.  Today is Thursday April 21, 2016 and tomorrow is Earth Day.  Yesterday was marijuana day.  That’s a new one.  They say a majority of US citizens now favor an outright legalization of marijuana.  Up till now the latest person to die was Grant in 1885.  Tubman died in 1913 so she’s been dead for a hundred years.  President Jackson is responsible to dismantling the national bank and also of completely paying off the National Debt, which according to Thom Hartman threw us into one of the worst economic depressions we've ever had in the late 1830's.  As to the "trail of tears" and the Indian relocation act affecting the "five civilized tribes" the members of those tribes were NOT given a choice about "obeying the constitution and acting like good Americans".  This was a unilatteral ruling in 1830 without conditions that these tribes had to be driven off their land.  Previously to that Jefferson and other President had advocated that these tribes be "Americanized" but by the time of Andrew Jackson it was too late for that.  So the conservative caller is wrong.  I think they should bring back the five hundred dollar bill.  But big bills are suspect now because it’s primary illicit drug money.

There is an excellent summary video piece on Hillary Clinton and her campaign for President that lasts a half hour and I watched it.  About the only place where they overtly stepped over the line was in calling Barry Goldwater a hardened racist.  That isn’t true.  Barry Goldwater had philosophical issue with aspects of the Civil Rights bill.  Maybe there were one or two other things I would have rephrased but basically it hit the nail on the head and went into all her finances and worst of all her consistent war monger record, capping it off with her long held desire for war with Iran.  She didn’t just make a “mistake” about Iraq in 2003 but double down on her stance every chance she got.  And the piece certainly pointed out all of the quid pro quo stuff she did for the big corporations and rolled out an unbelievable tale of her finances and how basically her whole life was waiting right for this moment when she could run the world. 

Prince, the pop singer died this morning at age 57.  He died at his home and apparently had been battling a bad case of the flu for seven weeks.  Some of these new viruses can be real killers.  Prince recently has been an advocate of various Black causes.

The big "Revolution" was supposed to be in the Democratic 1992 platform, which couldn't get away from using the word "revolution" many times.  I would imagine that Hillary's platform will NOT contain any liberal "pledges" or whatever like the 1988 platform did.  Hillary won't pick Elizabeth Warren as VP for a lot of reasons but will probably go for a "safe" moderate.  This eqivelency between "moderate" and "safe" as in one who can win is a misplaced one.  The Democrats in 1960 went left in their platform and won.  The democrats went left in 1992 and won and went left in 2008 and won.  But after 1992 and after 2008 theswe Presidents lurched to the political right once they got in office.  So neither of these campaigns was any kind of Revolution.  But the real revolution of the Clinton administration came in 1994 and Bill Clinton surrendered whole hog to it.  One thing accomplished prior to that date was the raising of the Federal Income Tax, which was instrumental in eventually eliminating the deficet.  Since the economy took off at the end of 1994 one can hardly argue that the rise is because Republicans just got elected.  

 Bernie Sanders is dejected after his big loss in New York. Sanders seemed almost shocked at the magnitude of his loss. Hillary beat him by sixteen points 58% to 42% or something like that.  Now he has to win 78% of the remaining votes but Hillary Clinton still has to get 56% of the remaining votes, so show how messed up the super-delegate thing is. Donald Trump won big winning 89 out of 95 delegates.  He’s a happy camper.  Yesterday Shawn did not have a good interview with Ted Cruz.  Twice as many democrats voted in New York as Republicans. John Kasich beat out Ted Cruz for second place. I was too tired to go out for a cigarette before three so I just lay on the bed.  When I did go out I felt like a fifth wheel anyhow. The lady with her teddy bear was out there.  She used to be a smoker. I had Norman Goldman on.  Escaped slave Harriet Tubman will be on the twenty dollar bill dispossessing Andrew Jackson.  It’s the biggest change in our currency in a long time. 

There is some new book on the creation of ISIS where the book preview stated that it was all part of some "Anglo-Zionist conspiracy" to keep the Mideast warring among themselves.  Of course we have yet to hear of a conflict between ISIS and Israel.  We come to wonder who profits the most from the creation of ISIS and the answer is of course the war industry.  Someone wants constant war in the Mideast.  This is the theory.  Hillary Clinton admitted her desire is for the US to go war with Iran over conflicts with Israel.  I tried looking up the original source but I couldn't find it.   It's clear though that the Saudis are not exactly unhappy about the existance of ISIS.  Nobody is going to attack the Saudis directly.  The Saudis are still said to be upset about the shift of power in Iraq when Iran got a strong influence in Iraq due to the instalation of a pro Shiite government there in 2006.  The Saudis never got over that.  But George Bush made a big thing about restoring democracy to Iraq.  He's made his bed and now we all have to lie in it.  

The Financial Times reported yesterday:

The Saudis could never reconcile themselves to the US-led invasion of Iraq, not because it toppled Saddam Hussein but because it led to Shia majority rule in an Arab country. When Hosni Mubarak was toppled by Egypt’s popular revolt in 2011, Riyadh accused Mr Obama of betraying a US ally. Saudi perceptions of US complacency in the face of Iran’s advances in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen are a grievance far outweighing western perceptions of Isis jihadism as the main threat in and from the Middle East. After the Iraqi city of Mosul fell to a lightning Isis offensive in 2014, even the late Prince Saud al-Faisal, the respected Saudi foreign minister, remonstrated with John Kerry, US secretary of state, that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni] response to your support for the Da’wa” — the Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of Iraq.