I just received an email from the ACLU about this woman’s story. I look forward to seeing the film.
Based on real events and set in small town Texas in the year 2000, American Violet tells the story of Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie), a 24 year old African-American mother of four who is swept up in a drug raid and falsely accused based on the uncorroborated testimony of a single informant. Despite the urgings of her mother Alma (Alfre Woodard), Dee rejects a plea bargain that would release her from jail but forever brand her as a felon. With the custody of her children at stake, she instead decides to take on the powerful district attorney behind it all, Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keefe). Roberts finds herself in an unlikely alliance with ACLU attorney David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson) and former local narcotics officer Sam Conroy (Will Patton). With inspiring courage and dignity, Dee overcomes seemingly insurmountable obstacles, forever changing her and the Texas justice system.
Things are coming along nicely here. I’ve made quite a bit of headway with the sorting, packing and tossing of junk. You wouldn’t believe the amount of crap one mom and one kid could have accumulated in just two short years in one place.
The kiddo and I spent the greater part of the day doing yard work. Our landlord is showing the house tomorrow and we want to make it as presentable as possible. I’ve done a fair bit more than I’m required or obliged to do, but that’s just the kind of saint person I am. Thank you, and please hold your applause.
We’ve got homeschooling down to a science. We usually get everything done inside a couple of hours. John is looking forward to going to a new school, though; he’s even decided to join the choir there.
Bonnie has been just great about everything, and she even helped prepare for John’s enrollment in his new school; I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to thank her and her husband properly.
When I was writing to her the other day, a line from the poem To Have Succeeded came to mind:
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; this is to have succeeded.
By this standard, these two dear people are already a huge success!
I miss being able to write every day. I have a few posts sort of brewing in my head. It’s not that I can’t make the time, it’s just that after a day of packing, cleaning, errands or whatever happens to be on the day’s agenda, I’m just too drained to focus. Most nights I can barely keep up my end of a conversation with Mike. I decided to stop early today and post a little something while I’m still able to form a few coherent thoughts.
Some things I want to write about when I’m able to concentrate:
More on the economy and stimulus bill
While I’m certainly no economist, some of the misinformation that’s being repeated ad nauseam could be refuted by anyone willing to pull his head out of his butt, apply a little common sense, and stop hanging on Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh’s every word.
News vs. commentary
The two are not mutually exclusive. At the end of the day, the important question is: Can the reporter and/or commentator pass a fact check? Commenting on the news or expressing opinions about it does not negate the facts being discussed.
Pleasant vs. rational
When I was a teenager, I knew a woman who called me Dorothy, introduced me to her friends who weren’t really there and served ‘us’ tea using an invisible tea set. She was a lovely woman whose company and imaginary tea parties I truly enjoyed. But that did not make her thought processes rational. Pleasant and rational are not synonyms.
(This is not a shot at the mentally ill. I’m really going somewhere with it. Please stay tuned.)
Well, that’s all for now. I hope you’ll keep checking in.
If I hear one more person ask how spending billions of dollars is supposed to stimulate the economy, I think I’ll scream at the top of my lungs while pulling every hair out of my head. After that, I will buy a wig, glue it to my head and continue with the hair-pulling.
I’m going to be as restrained as I possibly can here, but this is getting ridiculous. At the risk of sounding like a condescending jerk, when someone asks how spending money stimulates the economy, they show a complete ignorance of even high school-level economics. The question is as jaw-dropping to me as asking how billions of people having sex is supposed to stimulate population growth.
So then you get the argument, ‘well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.’ What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point! — President Obama
Exactly! I’ve been saying this, almost verbatim, for a couple of weeks now. Thank you, Mr. President!
But now we’ve got people saying, “So, he finally admits that the stimulus bill is about spending.”
President Obama no more “admitted” that the stimulus bill is about spending than a person could “admit” that air traffic is about planes flying around in the sky, or that ice is about frozen water.
But let me tell you where I think President Obama went wrong in all this: He gave too many people more credit than they deserved in assuming that they understood what the damn word means.
He didn’t “admit” to anything, as that would imply that he had previously denied or attempted to cover it up. I think he just finally realized that he was going to have to dumb it down for people who clearly weren’t grasping all the words or understanding the very basics of Duh Economics.
This is not simply a matter of perspective. This is not some sinister, liberal conspiracy to steal people’s money. The United States is in economic crisis. Police are being called to control the crowds at job fairs! This is the harsh reality of the situation.
Republicans may not like it but the way to create jobs fast is through spending. It matters when you’re wrong. A whopping proportion of the Republican rhetoric about stimulus is wrong – total economic bull puckey. It’s time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information.
For a crash course in what economists from both sides of the aisle are saying, please watch at least the first four minutes of this, though I do recommend the entire eight minute course.
Rambling On 