Republican Governances

Our U.S. federal government should be an infinitesimally tiny slow moving particle.
Our state governments should be unimaginably gargantuan hegemonic behemoths.
This is the desired governmental impetus the Republican party wants for the U.S. population.
I have a question. Won't we then be the ancient European and Mediterranean city-states which caused centuries of wars? Oh...right...
Republicans like those aggression ideas as well!

Reform It

Hello. Let's reform education.  We can't throw money at it right?  Money won't help it, right?
So here is what we are doing...we are taking money out of it. What we can do to improve the
education outcomes in our schools, is crush the budgets professional educators and education researchers say is needed to keep up with and improve education world competitiveness in American
schools.
If we take all the money from all our schools, by degrees, we surely will have reformed them.
Any questions?

How Would He Know

Human beings don't record their own births. They rely on officials to do it for them. These officials
note the day and date, the time and place of any child's birth, pretty uniformly in Western civilizations.
I believe that like the rest of us, President Obama was a bit of a sack of potatoes when he was born.
However, officials did record the event. They know even better than he what the moment encircled.
And they had no reason to lie about a little black child born to an eighteen year old mom.

Oh! Let's Bank On It

If the U.S. banking commissions don't get banking under control in this country, U.S. taxpayers are
one day going to bail out a bank we've believed to be flying a U.S. flag, only to discover too late we
just bailed out a bank aiming to boost a foreign economy at the expense of our own.
What Chase and Morgan Stanley and Facebook do to smaller shareholders is going to be field practice for what some foreign banks are going to begin to do to us all as they co-mingle their funds with ours while the greedy here are sword fighting legitimate regulators.
Good luck to us separating our funds from those of foreign sources in time to avert one of the many crises I suppose we are to begin to get accustomed to these days. Is that what our government expects
of us? No wonder people are discussing class warfare. If we don't decide to exercise more cautions, ceding authority to legitimate elected watchdogs- well we could soon be talking Real warfare ... all our
classes against some class somewhere we cannot even properly or easily identify!

Corey Booker and Harold Ford

I don't see why any of us should be truly surprised. These guys have not seemed to me to be Obama surrogates before now. Did I miss something? A times Harold Ford has spoken in terms of support
for this administration- but he was normally on conservative early morning discussions shows.
What Booker and Ford may be attempting to say is a thing we have often heard as a commonly true
assertion, whether or not we believe the stories. We have heard them, however. They sound
this way: "Massa is a good ole massa ... yes boss..massa been a good ole massa."

The Community Bank

One downside of globalization has been the loss of  non-virtual community in banking interests.
Though it's kicking up my allergies, I decided recently to re-read Kingsblood Royal by Sinclair Lewis. It is dusty. The antagonists are incontrovertibly racist. Still...I learned from this book.
When I was a kid, I read a lot of Sinclair's books because they were forbidden for children in my house. I had gotten to that age where I was sure no one would notice if I snuck a book out of the bookcase to read, as long as the homework was done; but I could pretend it was ongoing. Sinclair seemed to have a dark, fatalistic, obsession-driven view of the world to me then. I needed him to set up opposite poles of that in my psyche. Of course, I had no idea what a "psyche" could be. However, I did know there existed in my thoughts and reactions, a set of decisions about what I wanted to do at any given moment in time. I would read, and read, hoping against hope I would never be a Lewis character. I did even more of that with the even more forbidden, Somerset Maugham. My dad kept
those novels in an old WWII army trunk in his closet. But I digress, aye?
Today, as I re-read Lewis, I realize how unique a thing a community bank has become since this novel was written. I remember that twenty years after this book was published, every bank I knew of in the Midwest was controlled by New York banks. I was shocked by that reality until I saw It's A Wonderful Life, even earlier in my childhood. I actually believed our street corner bank was our city's bank.
In the Lewis book, published in 1947, banks would be,central, in one character's imagination, to capturing new veterans, returning from WWII, encouraging them to deposit some funds, and take out
'hefty mortgages' for places to live.
Apparently, a veterans' center at that bank needed to enfold veterans as soon as they emerged from planes, trains, and automobiles in their home towns. Recent vets, and according to one Melissa Harris Perry show this week, especially female vets, have a high rate of homelessness and suicide.
Austerity be damned, Paul Ryan.
These vets do need to come home to families, not billionaires. Now whose children did you claim to be so worried about, because these people are someones children. Just because they are already born doesn't mean they deserve to be scrapped.
We need a lot of socially productive ideas in this country right now. And they are not going to be
generated or nurtured by profit motive alone, or by increasingly invasive austerity budget state
government. Grow up austerity mongers. You already know this country needs new investment, and you really don't need more people to starve before you admit it.
Mr. Ryan's good buddy, Mitt Romney,  should know it too. I can't be sure. He just seems to forge straight ahead with nonsense...wearing blinders.

Friendship

My very best friend in all the world died this morning. I thought she was getting better. Forty-seven
years of a best buddy is a  terrible loss to endure. Poor best buddy, and poor me.

Marriage?

Really? OK then, don't blame us if you wind up on ID TV.
Didn't all that DOM (Defense of Marriage) stuff give you a clue?
No one has to defend ice cream, except maybe to the lactose intolerant. Ever think of that?
No marriages was the only reason you had a somewhat stable community.
But what do I know. I'm a (somewhat) bitter divorcee.

I Can Rest My Case

Yesterday Mitt Romney was shown in TV clips saying he was glad to take credit for the auto industry's
current success. He apparently means that saying the auto industry would die if bailed out meant it wouldn't die if bailed out. Thank you so much President Obama, for not making us have to constantly decipher double talk.
And thank you so much for not ever discriminating against gay persons, lesbian persons, bi-sexual persons, or transsexual persons. I don't believe you are exactly wrong if you do believe civil unions are the distinction partners outside heterosexual relationships should embrace.

Hundred Thousand Billionaires

Perhaps the money people really are obsessed with the world's billionaires.
I can't see why.
China doesn't own all our debt.
Several Chinese billionaires do have 90 billion dollars; but what will they be allowed to purchase with it?
Is the U.S. going to allow them to purchase the Federal Reserve Bank?
Will our country sell them the U.S. Patent Office?
If Republicans are truly obsessed with foreign billions, and they want to keep money flowing only to the
top, they will have all our children playing Hunger Games within a decade or two. 
We need to remind our children, if they ever do prefer to worry about paying down the deficit, that when
people in this world have money, they get the best money can offer by getting from the U.S. of A. in the
main.
I cannot say truthfully that we produce champagne. We do not.
I cannot say truthfully that we can make a suit on Saville Row. We cannot.
Other economies have strengths too.
But I can say with all certainty that when a billionaire wants both quality and uniqueness in a variety of products,
he or she has to come to America.
Nearly every other group is ...perpetrating.

POTUS: A Hanbook List

1. Helicopters don't always work.

2. Republicans don't work.

3. Hedging isn't the same as working.

4. Leveraging builds a monument which has clay feet.

5. Manufacturing means working.

6. Managing means working  fingers.

7. Construction is work that builds with bona fide.

8. Bundling can topple building, and working.

9.Massive cuts  x  no accelerated growth = no work whatsoever.

10.Cutting can cause hemorrhaging in  existing work.

Republicans Are Ignoring Other Americans

If Republican leaders cared about the American public, we wouldn't need polls
to tell us who was planning to vote for Republican policies.
If these legislators know how to create jobs, they should create them; then take the
credit for doing so. They constantly take credit for accomplishments which are not
their own, like gathering the intelligence they actually neglected to gather for eight
years in order to capture Bin Laden. Surely they would be able to tout the credits they
 did earn for being the famous job creators they claim to be and know.
If we had the full employment Republicans seem to say they can direct, the deficit
would begin to go down very quickly.
Apparently, the full employment Republicans seek is that of most Americans working
at or near minimum wage levels, and only when they are in charge of everything-
even wombs.

Afghanistan War Is Over! Or Nearly So--

I don't know why anyone would think Afghanistan is ever going to go back to being a harmless
wilderness.
Why Americans believe we can leave Afghanistan completely because the conflict there is a terrible
war and an uncomfortable place is beyond me. It became a 'staging ground' for those who hated
the west after its war with Russia left it in more ruin than it had before that long war. Do we recall?
The next group allowed to fester there until attacks against the U.S. are completed may not be able
to be defeated in such a way that we don't become Afghanistan before all is said and done.
President Obama gets a briefing every day on what America has to do to be safe from violence on
our shores which might originate in Afghanistan.
What part of being safe from Far East threat do Americans not understand?
Our President has no reason in the world to want troops in Afghanistan. A lot has to be done 24/7 to
keep America safe in this post Al Queda world.
Those are the facts. We'd better begin to understand how to absorb them.
We don't start these wars; but we have to end them in the best way possible to ensure they are not left
as embers about to start smoldering into another hot zone.
We have to be glad boots on the ground are now going to begin to fade away in this war, and the
previously frequent, repeated, deployments won't be necessary going forward.
Instead of the far right claiming this is not enough of a victory, today it's the far left's claim.
I know POTUS must wonder if we ever 'understand the words coming out of his mouth'.
This is in fact a great victory for those Americans who think practically and responsibly about the fact that President Obama did not invent war. Neither did he invent Al Queda or its offshoots. And still,
he has to keep us safe even after we actually become safe. Gosh!

We Already Had A Health Care Mandate

Once again, auto no fault did not, does not exist, save to stem the tide of money flowing into
emergency rooms as a result of car accidents.
Before health care associated with traffic skyrocketed, U.S. citizens were not required to buy car
insurance. Car insurance is not for cars. No fault car insurance is for the medical care of persons.
No fault insurance is a health care mandate.

The Potus And Jimmy Fallon

The White House Press Core Dinner was as funny as could be.
POTUS had impeccable timing.

The U.S. GNP And American Women

Last year's GNP was a bit over 14 trillion dollars. The aggregate work product of American workers was more than $14 trillion!
The American woman, on average, earns $.77 for every dollar a man earns.
In order for American women, then, to earn, on average, $1.00 for every dollar a man earns, by
May 1st of 2013, our business community would have to dump a bit over 3trillion dollars into their aggregate payrolls within the next twelve months.
They won't do it.
Yes, they would much rather go to war, no matter what other word we might want to use for the possible conflict which could ensue.
In America, when someone dies because money was the lacking resource to keep that person alive,
most don't call that war.
However, when workers earn the money and benefits which would prolong the lives of loved ones, and
make the lives of loved ones more fulfilled, more self-activated; yet the money earned is not the money
paid...yes, that is something countries go to war in order to rectify. American women are not a separate
country, though there are enough of us to get the respect America gives any group.
The barbarians at the Roman gates of civilization were there originally because they needed back some of  the grain the Romans won from them in battles, in order to feed their families. Sacking wasn't the
original intention. Maybe a lesson to be learned is ...
Women, a civilized group in our country,  need to feed their families, as urgently as do men.

Trayvon Shines His Light In The Dark Places

A New York Times writer shrugged off Trayvon's killing in an interview saying, 'So many people are
killed in this country every day.'
I thought I had a jaundiced view.
Are under aged children killed by men openly stalking them, who drop by the police station after the
kill, presumably to be patched up and sent home without a pending arrest, booking, or investigation?
If so, why are we attempting to raise children in this country as though it were a peaceful nation?
I personally owe Trayvon a debt of great measure. I hate being blind-sided. But that is exactly what
happened to Sabrina Fulton's boy right before he was killed. Anyone human would easily back off a
child screaming like that, especially anyone armed and human. That  killer remains a dangerous,
menacing, threatening creature. He will never be anything different. Sadly, it took Trayvon to show us that. Trayvon has had to warn us to continue studied vigilance. Policing may be something not done so much for us, but to us.
Of course, I say all this as a matter of what I see in humanity as a whole. I see Trayvon's murder as an inhuman act perpetrated by a creature in human form, something quite apart from any act a real person could conceive when seeing a young person strolling down the street, distracted by an apparently excited phone call.
Only since hearing the Sanford, FL Police Department considered a proper response to the
killing of a child was to test only the child's body, have I seen what can still happen in America, even
worse than the killing of Medgar Evers- because the coward who killed Medgar Evers at least
attempted to evade the police.
Now when I drink a Coke or Pepsi, for instance, I think about how I would have had no more than
a sketchy view of ALEC and the insidious partnership it forged with the NRA in order to get 'stand ground' laws enacted in every state possible.
Since this is an election year, I am especially relieved to know what things are possibly at stake when
I wonder why some of the companies whose products I purchase are involved with organizations like
ALEC in the first place.
I realize now more and more how many politicians can be lethal in our governmental policy-forming
citizen advocacy functions.
Thinking of the political non-reactions to your dad's pleas for an attempt at justice, I am paying more
attention to representative philosophies like that of the atheist Ayn Rand, in the public admirings
of officials like Paul Ryan in the U.S. House of Representatives.  He could be a U.S. Vice President?
Then we will be suffering a reactionary government.
We could have a Hispanic vice president who has no particular inclination to advocate for other Hispanics, or even admit that his heritage is akin to theirs.
We could be looking at a very reactionary government.
The governor of the state where you were killed signed, under protest of citizens and law enforcement eschewing vigilantism, the very law the predator who killed you is using to get away with his assault. A great many people want him as a U.S. President or Vice President.
We'd have an increasingly hostile-to-citizens-rights government.
Many of the other candidates for office are famous for wanting to legislate the rights of citizens back to 1950 or earlier, while removing modern legislation from the most destructive practices of corporations.
Had it not been for your sacrifice, Trayvon, and that of your beleaguered family, I would have noticed
a lot fewer egregious attack dog practices on U.S. citizen tendencies to erroneously equate U.S. laws
with justice, in American society.
Your light, Trayvon Martin: let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.