beforewisdom

John Lennon

Today ( December 8th ) in 1980 John Lennon was shot to death by a mentally disturbed man.

All my life I’ve heard people talk about where they were when JFK was shot. I could never relate to that, not having been born at the time.

I do remember where I was when John Lennon was shot. I was a sophomore in high school. I remember talking about it in an English class with Mr. Truit and the “cool older kids”. At the time John Lennon had just released his “Double Fantasy” solo album which made me aware of his existence separate from The Beatles.

I remember a discussion about “Imagine” on an old sitcom called “WKRP In Cincinnati” . One of the DJ’s explained how the lyrics meant hope for the future. Lennon, having been influenced by Eastern meditation thought that visualizing such a future might help bring it about and he wrote that song. A station executive in the story read the lyrics and dismissed “Imagine” as communism.

That is always how I liked to think of “Imagine”, as a vision for a future we are all hungry for and how imaging it may bring it about, or a few minutes of joy at that vision.

Banned Books Week 2024

This year read a banned book week falls on:
Sunday 2024 September 22 – Saturday 2024 September 28

Every year for the past 38 years the American Library Association sponsors Banned Books Week: The Freedom To Read

Banned Books Week is an annual event celebrating the freedom to read. Typically held during the last week of September, it highlights the value of free and open access to information. Banned Books Week brings together the entire book community –- librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types –- in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.

By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.

The American Library Association maintains a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books by decade for your reading pleasure.

There is even a web site and a domain dedicated to Banned Books Week called BannedBooksWeek.org

Lastly here is a list of the Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2023:

All freedom and all progress is ultimately rooted in the free flow of ideas.

Project 2025: An Itemized List.

Source
The Heritage Foundation is a right wing think tank. It published Project 2025, a agenda for the next Republican president. Project 2025 was written by 20 former Trump appointees. The Heritage Foundation claims that Trump implemented or tried to implement 64% of their politicizes during his first year in office.

This is a partial itemized list of Project 2025 goals, in no particular order:

Source

1. calls for the Elimination the National Weather Service

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2. is for reversing student loan forgiveness
3. is for doing away with the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”)
4. calls for expanded executive power by the president
5. calls for the reinstatement of a Trump executive order augmenting a president’s power to hire and fire federal officials by replacing civil servants with political appointees throughout government
6. reverse the approval of abortion pills
7. increase the power of Immigration and Customs to deport undocumented immigrants
8. calls for an end to The Department Of Education
9. reverse the legality of same sex marriages
10. opposes adoption by gay parents

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12. the document labels the FBI as a bloated, arrogant, increasingly lawless organization.
13. increasing fees on immigrants and allowing fast-tracked applications for migrants who pay a premium.
14. proposes slashing federal money for research and investment in renewable energy
15. calls for the next president to “stop the war on oil and natural gas.
16. slash corporate and income taxes
17. abolish the Federal Reserve
18. considers a return to gold-backed currency.
19. pornography would be banned, and tech and telecoms companies that facilitate access to such content would be shut down.
20. calls for school choice and parental control over schools
21. proposes to eliminate a long list of terms from all laws and federal regulations, including “sexual orientation”, “diversity, equity, and
inclusion”, “gender equality”, “abortion” and “reproductive rights”.

Trump has endorsed a number of the Project 2025 ideas in his speeches and on his website, although his campaign has said the candidate has the final say on policy.

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22. calls for an end to the FBI efforts to curb the spread of misinformation.
23. calls for the next presidential administration to reexamine the balance between media demands and space constraints on the White House premises.

Project 2025 relies on what legal scholars call the unitary executive theory, which dismisses the idea that there are three separate branches of government for checks and balances