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Ted Kennedy: Run for the White House 1980. PBS' The American Experience, November 1980.

Open convention: 1980 Democratic National Convention. From Wikipedia,

The 1980 National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party nominated President Jimmy Carter for President and Vice President Walter Mondale for Vice President. The convention was held in Madison Square Garden in New York City from August 11 to August 14, 1980.

The 1980 convention was notable, as it was the last time in the 20th century, for either major party, that a candidate tried to get delegates released from their voting commitments. This was done by Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Carter's chief rival for the nomination in the Democratic primaries, who sought the votes of delegates held by Carter.

Kennedy's concession speech to Jimmy Carter is on YouTube in four parts here, with the caption, " It is widely recognized as the last of the famous Camelot speeches by the Kennedys. " Full transcript and audio (mp3) of the speech.

Courtesy of Steve Lubetkin, part of his copyrighted Democratic National Convention 1980, New York (Set) . That's a young Sam Donaldson at the center bottom of the photo.

Silly: Can You Guess Which Facebook App Is Making A Million Dollars A Month?

...Friends For Sale!... This app lets you "buy and sell your friends as pets" and includes a virtual gift shop as well. It boasts 4.5 million monthly active users, making it one of the biggest apps on Facebook.

Could it be the million-dollar app?

Here's how Friends for Sale Describes itself:

Buy and sell your friends as pets! You can make your pets poke, send gifts, or just show off for you. Make money as a shrewd pets investor or as a hot commodity! Friends for Sale is the bees knees!

Half empty: What will America look like in two years? Joe Bageant.

America is now a totalist state. This seems not so apparent because of the glossy "commercial skin" over everything. Shining goods, much meaningless commercial activity, the energy of every able person dedicated to profit making activity in the name of "the economy," which has become god, yet no one can define it except in the language of Wall Street and the stock market -- a faceless god in itself. Interestingly, the stock market goes up when people are paid less or more people are unemployed, etc., yet people have accepted its terms as the definition of their well being.

The rise of this state has required increased police forces and heavy-handed enforcement, thus we hold one-quarter of the world's prison population, though we are only six percent of the earth's population.

The elections are an illusion. A totalitarian state loves nothing more than elections, which gives the illusion of choice on the part of the people. The people, after so many generations of this illusory choice, believe it themselves.

America is already a second world nation, but the aforementioned shiny commercial skin and charming digital gizmos leads the citizenry to believe otherwise. No health care, no guarantee of anything really, except competitive struggle with one another for work and money...