John Roberts you hoot. What do you mean health care consumers are not in the consumers' commerce stream? They are alive aren't they? They have unfettered access to every state in the union don't they?
Their form is subject to care, upkeep, acute and/or chronic illness which has to be addressed in any state where it may occur, right? Should the human body have less access to repair and preservation than a national building or a car, unless it can be directly taxed? Are you opening the floodgates to a dirty trick?
Are you saying you cannot pursue happiness if I am free to do it in the same place?
You are dead wrong buddy. I could very well be the one who is slumming. Either of us could leave; but we should not be ejected, one or the other, by statute.
I should have known your right-wing trickster spots would be showing in this ruling.
And you call yourself an impartial jurist, free of extremes of ideological thought in you rulings?
You had better be, mister; because you have made a lot of calls worthy of no respect whatsoever.
You are one of the few who don't understand, for instance, that when it comes to speech at the very least, free doesn't mean bought and paid for!
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
So Funty
I know the word funty doesn't exist. I was kidding! The word is like the thing House
Leader John Boehner and his prickling sidekick Eric Cantor are speaking about now:
a Republican health care reform law.
Republicans having any health care proposals which could help the middle class is
the same as Republicans each owning a big pink elephant. Too funty.
Leader John Boehner and his prickling sidekick Eric Cantor are speaking about now:
a Republican health care reform law.
Republicans having any health care proposals which could help the middle class is
the same as Republicans each owning a big pink elephant. Too funty.
Thank You SCOTUS!
I can't believe John Roberts has done the right thing. He put aside ideology for the
sake of his country. Who knew he had it in him at this most factious time in our
country's history?
John Roberts ... a real patriot. He just saved the lives of millions of people!
The mandate was read as a tax because that is how it will function, and our Supreme
Court has acknowledged this. Unbelievable. Congratulations to the U.S.A.
The Roberts' court will now go down in history for something other than "citizens
united".
Having insurance as the primary way to treat chronically ill, and suddenly ill people
is so immoral in the first place for, a rich country. Now we have at least righted some
of the access wrongs we tolerated for so many years, thinking capitalism was a
religion, rather than an economic ideology.
Can we get a break on no-fault car insurance now? All it was ever supposed to do
was ease the cost of hospitalizations and medical care for people who had little or no
health coverage but were injured in traffic accidents.
John Roberts ... an American hero. Sorry John ... today it's true.
sake of his country. Who knew he had it in him at this most factious time in our
country's history?
John Roberts ... a real patriot. He just saved the lives of millions of people!
The mandate was read as a tax because that is how it will function, and our Supreme
Court has acknowledged this. Unbelievable. Congratulations to the U.S.A.
The Roberts' court will now go down in history for something other than "citizens
united".
Having insurance as the primary way to treat chronically ill, and suddenly ill people
is so immoral in the first place for, a rich country. Now we have at least righted some
of the access wrongs we tolerated for so many years, thinking capitalism was a
religion, rather than an economic ideology.
Can we get a break on no-fault car insurance now? All it was ever supposed to do
was ease the cost of hospitalizations and medical care for people who had little or no
health coverage but were injured in traffic accidents.
John Roberts ... an American hero. Sorry John ... today it's true.
Walking For President
Gov. Romney should be running for president, but he isn't. He's walking. What is his problem?
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Nora Ephron, 1941-2012
I am sure I saw every movie her writing generated, and I marveled that she tackled subject matter
people hadn't explored aside from stances of either religion, morality, or pornography. She was, then,a master of thought, who could effectively put it into words, in a generally acceptable and exciting way, content which might have otherwise been too controversial for public consumption.
I tuned in to The Lawrence O'Donnell Show on MSNBC at 10pm eastern last night.
Both his eyes were half their normal size. I found this quite puzzling. He had a look, additionally,
of tremendous unhappiness.
A few minutes into his show, he announced Nora's death. He described her as a very good friend.
My heart went out to him. I surely know what it is like to lose a good friend.
A good friend is someone who validates life for all in a certain attachment,
in such a way that people involved feel life is to be celebrated- no matter what happens.
A friend is absolutely irreplaceable. Coincidentally, I turned my TV to a 48 Hours segment for a few
moments last night. A lady was telling one of the journalists how much she missed her friend, who was
being investigated at one time as a cold case missing person. She began to wipe away her tears,saying
how much she missed her friend, who had been missing twenty-eight years, and wished her friend was still
here. The missing lady had also left three youngsters very lonely.
I don't know Lawrence O'Donnell, but I am so so sorry for his loss anyway...truly sorry.
I more than appreciate his reporting on American life and culture. He seems knowledgeable and very
brave.
people hadn't explored aside from stances of either religion, morality, or pornography. She was, then,a master of thought, who could effectively put it into words, in a generally acceptable and exciting way, content which might have otherwise been too controversial for public consumption.
I tuned in to The Lawrence O'Donnell Show on MSNBC at 10pm eastern last night.
Both his eyes were half their normal size. I found this quite puzzling. He had a look, additionally,
of tremendous unhappiness.
A few minutes into his show, he announced Nora's death. He described her as a very good friend.
My heart went out to him. I surely know what it is like to lose a good friend.
A good friend is someone who validates life for all in a certain attachment,
in such a way that people involved feel life is to be celebrated- no matter what happens.
A friend is absolutely irreplaceable. Coincidentally, I turned my TV to a 48 Hours segment for a few
moments last night. A lady was telling one of the journalists how much she missed her friend, who was
being investigated at one time as a cold case missing person. She began to wipe away her tears,saying
how much she missed her friend, who had been missing twenty-eight years, and wished her friend was still
here. The missing lady had also left three youngsters very lonely.
I don't know Lawrence O'Donnell, but I am so so sorry for his loss anyway...truly sorry.
I more than appreciate his reporting on American life and culture. He seems knowledgeable and very
brave.
Sister Simone Campbell
Sister has instituted the Nuns On The Bus campaign to drive from city to city showing The Ryan Budget to be an immoral set of proposals. I am so proud this is happening. It shows that some
Catholics are active for the best and most human policy a citizenry can advocate.
When I was four, I was baptized Catholic because my parents became converts. My mom was
isolated with three kids too young for school. Two of them were toddler twins. The nuns from a
neighboring convent realized she was in trouble, and began to stop buy. They would sometimes,
if memory serves, wash dishes or wipe windows, and always sit a few moments. When mom is very
alone, some things blossom in a kid's memory at odd points in time.
A set of unusual happenings stands out.
I didn't much like the nuns in my school, but I liked the ones at Our Lady of Sorrows summer school.
I heard a story from one of my Catholic friends for the first time yesterday that the nuns at her school
were teachers in her all black elementary and middle school. I had never heard of an all black lower
school in our city. My sibs and I had a hard time in our neighborhood because most Catholic schools
where I lived taught a majority of white children. I didn't know my friend, though, until I was fifty.
My friend was freaky smart. She went to high school at twelve. She was valedictorian at the educationally precision-oriented all girls' Catholic high school from which she graduated four years
later. She then attended University of Michigan, at a time when women had not been admitted for
very many years at all.
Apparently, the nuns she knew were much more evolved than those I had encountered after nursery
school. The nuns at my school were both rigid and racist. My parents asked me to work around that
for the sake of a somewhat affordable private school education, and the freedom from buying a variety of school clothes. A uniform could last a year! Those nuns were crushing, though.
When I was a high school freshman, for instance, our principal, Sister Mary Roberts, got on the
PA system to announce that one of our seniors had gotten a four year engineering scholarship to a major city university. The student she named was a black guy, so I felt immense pride.
Then she went on to say, enunciating as she went, that she was not going to write the requisite
recommendations, and neither would the other teacher staff, because if he got that degree he would
find it useless since firms did not hire Negro engineers. This was at the start of the sixties. People
like her deserve a lot of the credit for so much of the upheaval and the urgent demand for rights of that
decade. She helped give a face and words to some of the hateful blockage people espoused in the
racism sector of our country.
That young man died before he had been out of high school five years. I don't know that his high school principal had a contributory effect; but I do know he left school without her help to study his
chosen field. Thanks a lot for a Catholic education, Sister.
When I was a junior, I tried to get the nuns in that school to help me get a job in one of the downtown
department stores. They were helping a lot of girls: but me they gave a job peeling potatoes at the convent. Poor me. I went every day and was happy for the vote of confidence. I thought they were
donating food, until they asked me one day why I kept showing up when there were only so many
potatoes they could eat.
I felt I had been begging, and should be ashamed of myself for so troubling these generous people.
Boy,was I dumb. I did get my state four year scholarship later, and in the ensuing years have met
more nuns, both awful and genuine. I realized at some point nuns were after all, just people.
Back to my friend, however, I was so glad to hear one of the nuns at her high school called her while
she was at U of Michigan to tell her she had gotten her a job at one of the two major newspapers
in our city. So (I'll call her J.) J added her last nine credit hours needed for graduation, got her degree
early, and took a newspaper job. That nun helped so many people with that one act of generous
kindness. J later went on to one of the Big Three auto companies, working in public relations.
She worked there nearly thirty years, retiring for family reasons. I am ever so proud of her, and of the nun
who helped her get her first professional job. That is the way a Catholic girl is supposed to get a job, even
a black Catholic girl. So far, my friend has bought two really beautiful homes, highlighting two of her income
successes. So I am glad to know nuns like Sister S.Campbell continue to work for public policy equanimity
in our society.
I agree with Sister Simone's concept; but not with her solution that we all need to pay more taxes.
The middle class, and most especially the working poor, pay quite a punitive bunch of taxes now.
If the rich cannot pay their share, they need to get out, returning to our country, all their patents and licenses.
Think we could not replace every one of them in a DAY?
Think again.
Catholics are active for the best and most human policy a citizenry can advocate.
When I was four, I was baptized Catholic because my parents became converts. My mom was
isolated with three kids too young for school. Two of them were toddler twins. The nuns from a
neighboring convent realized she was in trouble, and began to stop buy. They would sometimes,
if memory serves, wash dishes or wipe windows, and always sit a few moments. When mom is very
alone, some things blossom in a kid's memory at odd points in time.
A set of unusual happenings stands out.
I didn't much like the nuns in my school, but I liked the ones at Our Lady of Sorrows summer school.
I heard a story from one of my Catholic friends for the first time yesterday that the nuns at her school
were teachers in her all black elementary and middle school. I had never heard of an all black lower
school in our city. My sibs and I had a hard time in our neighborhood because most Catholic schools
where I lived taught a majority of white children. I didn't know my friend, though, until I was fifty.
My friend was freaky smart. She went to high school at twelve. She was valedictorian at the educationally precision-oriented all girls' Catholic high school from which she graduated four years
later. She then attended University of Michigan, at a time when women had not been admitted for
very many years at all.
Apparently, the nuns she knew were much more evolved than those I had encountered after nursery
school. The nuns at my school were both rigid and racist. My parents asked me to work around that
for the sake of a somewhat affordable private school education, and the freedom from buying a variety of school clothes. A uniform could last a year! Those nuns were crushing, though.
When I was a high school freshman, for instance, our principal, Sister Mary Roberts, got on the
PA system to announce that one of our seniors had gotten a four year engineering scholarship to a major city university. The student she named was a black guy, so I felt immense pride.
Then she went on to say, enunciating as she went, that she was not going to write the requisite
recommendations, and neither would the other teacher staff, because if he got that degree he would
find it useless since firms did not hire Negro engineers. This was at the start of the sixties. People
like her deserve a lot of the credit for so much of the upheaval and the urgent demand for rights of that
decade. She helped give a face and words to some of the hateful blockage people espoused in the
racism sector of our country.
That young man died before he had been out of high school five years. I don't know that his high school principal had a contributory effect; but I do know he left school without her help to study his
chosen field. Thanks a lot for a Catholic education, Sister.
When I was a junior, I tried to get the nuns in that school to help me get a job in one of the downtown
department stores. They were helping a lot of girls: but me they gave a job peeling potatoes at the convent. Poor me. I went every day and was happy for the vote of confidence. I thought they were
donating food, until they asked me one day why I kept showing up when there were only so many
potatoes they could eat.
I felt I had been begging, and should be ashamed of myself for so troubling these generous people.
Boy,was I dumb. I did get my state four year scholarship later, and in the ensuing years have met
more nuns, both awful and genuine. I realized at some point nuns were after all, just people.
Back to my friend, however, I was so glad to hear one of the nuns at her high school called her while
she was at U of Michigan to tell her she had gotten her a job at one of the two major newspapers
in our city. So (I'll call her J.) J added her last nine credit hours needed for graduation, got her degree
early, and took a newspaper job. That nun helped so many people with that one act of generous
kindness. J later went on to one of the Big Three auto companies, working in public relations.
She worked there nearly thirty years, retiring for family reasons. I am ever so proud of her, and of the nun
who helped her get her first professional job. That is the way a Catholic girl is supposed to get a job, even
a black Catholic girl. So far, my friend has bought two really beautiful homes, highlighting two of her income
successes. So I am glad to know nuns like Sister S.Campbell continue to work for public policy equanimity
in our society.
I agree with Sister Simone's concept; but not with her solution that we all need to pay more taxes.
The middle class, and most especially the working poor, pay quite a punitive bunch of taxes now.
If the rich cannot pay their share, they need to get out, returning to our country, all their patents and licenses.
Think we could not replace every one of them in a DAY?
Think again.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Legalization...Not Immigration- Is Broken
Develop a path to legalization. Develop several paths to legalization. That would mean we are all
grown-ups.
Things will change, though.
Businesses will not be able to hire people for ten cents per day. They will not be happy. The middle
class wants some of those jobs immigrants have to do now to pay a living wage, or a part-time wage.
Immigrants don't all care that much about citizenship because then they would have to ask for real
wages, and like the rest of us, not get hired.
So if the business community doesn't actually want legalization, and immigrants themselves don't all
care about legalization, middle class America will have to find a non-violent way to push for it, to achieve it.
Average American citizens will have to actively agitate or legalization.
I suppose my ancestors worked hard to wrest my citizenship from the American Iroquois, Seminole,
Choctaw, etc. I myself, however, did nothing or my path to citizenship, save let my mom and dad
and nature and Dr. Dickson birth me. Wasn't I great and deserving to do that?!
grown-ups.
Things will change, though.
Businesses will not be able to hire people for ten cents per day. They will not be happy. The middle
class wants some of those jobs immigrants have to do now to pay a living wage, or a part-time wage.
Immigrants don't all care that much about citizenship because then they would have to ask for real
wages, and like the rest of us, not get hired.
So if the business community doesn't actually want legalization, and immigrants themselves don't all
care about legalization, middle class America will have to find a non-violent way to push for it, to achieve it.
Average American citizens will have to actively agitate or legalization.
I suppose my ancestors worked hard to wrest my citizenship from the American Iroquois, Seminole,
Choctaw, etc. I myself, however, did nothing or my path to citizenship, save let my mom and dad
and nature and Dr. Dickson birth me. Wasn't I great and deserving to do that?!
Monday, June 25, 2012
Hefe
Talk to your brothers, guys. You could be safe. Your families can be safe. Some police are poison. But- they are all laid off.
Go see Scarface. "Say hello to my leetl friend." You can't shoot, but you will become more brave and encouraged, culturally.
That movie is anthem among black men.
When police stop black men, they are not asking for papers. They are asking for drugs. In the black
community, we figure they must get high a lot.
Or you could just sue. If police disturb any civil rights while asking for "papers" the Supreme Court has said today, that those police have broken the law.
Duh. When police find someone is not legally in the U.S. they turn the person over to immigration
authorities.
Under the new court ruling, when the police find someone is not legally in the U.S. they turn the person over to immigration authorities.
The part that has changed is in effect: nothing unless some police person who stops a person for
something else, asks for immigration status, and holds that person long enough to find out that
immigration status, then gets sued.
The court has already indicated that if such a suit reaches them, they will rule against law of law
enforcement.
So, hefes, fear not. Jan Brewer really is legislatively challenged. SB 1070 has no American
exceptionalism.
Go see Scarface. "Say hello to my leetl friend." You can't shoot, but you will become more brave and encouraged, culturally.
That movie is anthem among black men.
When police stop black men, they are not asking for papers. They are asking for drugs. In the black
community, we figure they must get high a lot.
Or you could just sue. If police disturb any civil rights while asking for "papers" the Supreme Court has said today, that those police have broken the law.
Duh. When police find someone is not legally in the U.S. they turn the person over to immigration
authorities.
Under the new court ruling, when the police find someone is not legally in the U.S. they turn the person over to immigration authorities.
The part that has changed is in effect: nothing unless some police person who stops a person for
something else, asks for immigration status, and holds that person long enough to find out that
immigration status, then gets sued.
The court has already indicated that if such a suit reaches them, they will rule against law of law
enforcement.
So, hefes, fear not. Jan Brewer really is legislatively challenged. SB 1070 has no American
exceptionalism.
Attorney General Eric Holder
When I was about sixteen, I read The Enemy Within, by Robert Kennedy. The Teamsters, I learned while reading, wanted him dead. They sought a contract, he asserted, on his life.
He wanted a clean union, or no union at all.
Later, when he became U.S. Attorney General, he tried to make certain unions were leaving organized crime behind them.
An AG is supposed to attempt to curb the crime in our country anywhere in the country where crime has a tendency to become massive around a certain part of a criminality or set of criminal actions.
Our AG Eric Holder has curbed states who are breaking right to vote laws.
He has curbed incarcerations unevenly handed out to crack cocaine, rather than powdered cocaine offenses.
He is accused of enforcing gun laws.
How could an Attorney General stand for these kinds of laws? Horrible. These laws protect the public. Horrible.
He wanted a clean union, or no union at all.
Later, when he became U.S. Attorney General, he tried to make certain unions were leaving organized crime behind them.
An AG is supposed to attempt to curb the crime in our country anywhere in the country where crime has a tendency to become massive around a certain part of a criminality or set of criminal actions.
Our AG Eric Holder has curbed states who are breaking right to vote laws.
He has curbed incarcerations unevenly handed out to crack cocaine, rather than powdered cocaine offenses.
He is accused of enforcing gun laws.
How could an Attorney General stand for these kinds of laws? Horrible. These laws protect the public. Horrible.
Adolescence
When watching TV shots of Jerry Sandusky, I see a man who believes he himself to be a carefree young ten or twelve year old boy.
He doesn't entertain for one moment the idea that he couldn't think that way if he could be raped
by someone three times his size at the whim of an accoster.
His demeanor has changed, though.
At the start his jaw had the slack look of that of youngsters whose jaw muscles are not completely
developed yet.
He often held his mouth slightly open, the way children sometimes do when the roots of their teeth
are under construction growth spurts
His gait was often the loping stride of boys whose leg and arm muscles have not yet securely and
completely strapped their bones into their joints.
He had a habit of looking around a little bit as if to see if maybe anyone out in the crowd knew him.
After the verdict he seemed to look the way boys do when they believe they really are in trouble.
Their shoulders slump in the 'someone is mad at me now' posture, and their faces show something
that looks like the wary "uh oh" often use to warn themselves.
A little after the initial guilty announcement, the shoulder slump had been modified into something
a little bit more resolute, and the face and jaw were settled into an angrier look.
We say it all the time, but we don't always think of how thoroughly some fail at it: that is,
'grow up'.
He doesn't entertain for one moment the idea that he couldn't think that way if he could be raped
by someone three times his size at the whim of an accoster.
His demeanor has changed, though.
At the start his jaw had the slack look of that of youngsters whose jaw muscles are not completely
developed yet.
He often held his mouth slightly open, the way children sometimes do when the roots of their teeth
are under construction growth spurts
His gait was often the loping stride of boys whose leg and arm muscles have not yet securely and
completely strapped their bones into their joints.
He had a habit of looking around a little bit as if to see if maybe anyone out in the crowd knew him.
After the verdict he seemed to look the way boys do when they believe they really are in trouble.
Their shoulders slump in the 'someone is mad at me now' posture, and their faces show something
that looks like the wary "uh oh" often use to warn themselves.
A little after the initial guilty announcement, the shoulder slump had been modified into something
a little bit more resolute, and the face and jaw were settled into an angrier look.
We say it all the time, but we don't always think of how thoroughly some fail at it: that is,
'grow up'.
Papers
Principally in Germany of the 1930s, people were asked by enforcers for their "papers".
If stopping people for their "papers" is the way this country is headed, I think all of us should
get our children passports for their next birthdays.
If history can't teach us lessons as obvious as not to stop people to ask for documents, then a box
of wood is smarter than we are, because wood hails from an immensely intelligent system of life.
If stopping people for their "papers" is the way this country is headed, I think all of us should
get our children passports for their next birthdays.
If history can't teach us lessons as obvious as not to stop people to ask for documents, then a box
of wood is smarter than we are, because wood hails from an immensely intelligent system of life.
What About Prevention?
Why is it that more than one hundred years after therapeutic analysis found scientific success, we still
have no prophylactic measures against most behavioral defect?
Trials, sentences, appeals, incarcerations, civil awards, recidivist rates, are all after the facts of even awful childhood assault.
Medical schools might try to offer more psychiatric residencies and specialties, because we have known for decades that deviant sexual behavior costs childhood, and costs society immeasurable loss.
have no prophylactic measures against most behavioral defect?
Trials, sentences, appeals, incarcerations, civil awards, recidivist rates, are all after the facts of even awful childhood assault.
Medical schools might try to offer more psychiatric residencies and specialties, because we have known for decades that deviant sexual behavior costs childhood, and costs society immeasurable loss.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Do My Math
I know that America houses 11 million immigrants, endangered by their American political status.
We could develop many categories of paths to citizenship for that many persons.
When I do the math of lining 11 million people up at the borders, if we pass people through channels
at a rate of one every 30 seconds, it would take us ten years to get every person back to a correct
country of origin.
How much money per year would that cost?
Would the billionaires shoulder the cost? I can't see why they would. Who then would they be able to
hire for ten cents per day?
Of course ten years is not exactly right because it doesn't take into account children being born while
waiting in line to go 'home'.
It doesn't take into account time for the burials of those who will die waiting in line to go home.
It doesn't take into too account those who will need hospitalization or incarceration while waiting in
line to go home.
Actually, it doesn't take being human into account.
Be steady. Be slow. Be individual...especially if we need to spend millions of hours and hundreds of
millions, or billions of dollars pushing people out of America.
We could develop many categories of paths to citizenship for that many persons.
When I do the math of lining 11 million people up at the borders, if we pass people through channels
at a rate of one every 30 seconds, it would take us ten years to get every person back to a correct
country of origin.
How much money per year would that cost?
Would the billionaires shoulder the cost? I can't see why they would. Who then would they be able to
hire for ten cents per day?
Of course ten years is not exactly right because it doesn't take into account children being born while
waiting in line to go 'home'.
It doesn't take into account time for the burials of those who will die waiting in line to go home.
It doesn't take into too account those who will need hospitalization or incarceration while waiting in
line to go home.
Actually, it doesn't take being human into account.
Be steady. Be slow. Be individual...especially if we need to spend millions of hours and hundreds of
millions, or billions of dollars pushing people out of America.
The Muslim Brotherhood : Egypt
Congratulations. This win, this announcement, and the recent power curbs to the Egyptian presidency show that the Egyptian military knows, if they know nothing else, that they had better
proceed with caution regarding the revolutionary spirit of the Egyptian people.
The win by Mr. Morsi shows the former powers that be: the Egyptian people will not accept
the status quo.
Making the announcement shows those in power acknowledge the Egyptian people demand to
be able to hold their government accountable for election results.
The curbing of Egyptian presidential powers before the announcement of a president shows that the
military and 'Mubarak' infrastructure know not to leave room for religious or extremist dictatorship.
It also shows how reluctant the military and former power brokers are to have their own powers clipped.
The Egyptian people do not intend to be degraded or disenfranchised by anymore dictators.
The Egyptian people do not intend to be further degraded by any military hunta.
The Brotherhood has a mandate because they were the most democratic model available for the
changes people wanted. Muhammad Morsi, the world now knows, has won the election.
Mr. Morsi must know as well, to proceed with caution.
He is not wanted as a Supreme Leader, and he has to keep that in mind.
I listen to Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American journalist revolutionary try to explain the people's
position to political junkies, puzzled they don't readily understand the uniqueness of her cohorts'
positions.
In a nutshell, it takes a bit of time to dislodge sixty years of intractable political dictatorship, funded
year after year at rates of a billion plus dollars a year.
Why is that difficult for established political cheerleaders to understand? I get it.
I am so overjoyed there are people. The Egyptian people have shown us there is still such a thing as
'a people'. In America, we seem only to have factions of a people: factions, and factions, and factions.
Egypt has that as well; but many of those factions seemed to have come together with a common
purpose as regarded their becoming a representative democracy. Apparently, they will puzzle the rest
out later. Not everyone has or maybe ever will have a Tahrir Square moment. But I feel immensely
proud to have witnessed that of a people who do have it.
proceed with caution regarding the revolutionary spirit of the Egyptian people.
The win by Mr. Morsi shows the former powers that be: the Egyptian people will not accept
the status quo.
Making the announcement shows those in power acknowledge the Egyptian people demand to
be able to hold their government accountable for election results.
The curbing of Egyptian presidential powers before the announcement of a president shows that the
military and 'Mubarak' infrastructure know not to leave room for religious or extremist dictatorship.
It also shows how reluctant the military and former power brokers are to have their own powers clipped.
The Egyptian people do not intend to be degraded or disenfranchised by anymore dictators.
The Egyptian people do not intend to be further degraded by any military hunta.
The Brotherhood has a mandate because they were the most democratic model available for the
changes people wanted. Muhammad Morsi, the world now knows, has won the election.
Mr. Morsi must know as well, to proceed with caution.
He is not wanted as a Supreme Leader, and he has to keep that in mind.
I listen to Mona Eltahawy, an Egyptian-American journalist revolutionary try to explain the people's
position to political junkies, puzzled they don't readily understand the uniqueness of her cohorts'
positions.
In a nutshell, it takes a bit of time to dislodge sixty years of intractable political dictatorship, funded
year after year at rates of a billion plus dollars a year.
Why is that difficult for established political cheerleaders to understand? I get it.
I am so overjoyed there are people. The Egyptian people have shown us there is still such a thing as
'a people'. In America, we seem only to have factions of a people: factions, and factions, and factions.
Egypt has that as well; but many of those factions seemed to have come together with a common
purpose as regarded their becoming a representative democracy. Apparently, they will puzzle the rest
out later. Not everyone has or maybe ever will have a Tahrir Square moment. But I feel immensely
proud to have witnessed that of a people who do have it.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
The Pain Is Real
Even during parts of end of the 20th century, child testimony in sexual abuse cases wasn't
admissible in New York courts. When I read about it, I could hardly believe it. 'Children can't
get away from something as heinous as sexual abuse, even in America', I remember thinking.
I bought Cosmopolitan Magazine for a while during the 80s, mainly because a lady M.D. wrote
an advice column on women's medical issues for that magazine every month.
By and by she went to jail, rather than turn over her little girl to an incestuous pedophile of a father.
No matter what evidence she presented in numerous, costly court appearances, the Virginia judge
handling her case insisted the man have access to the little girl.
Years later, when that child had become a woman, I saw an appearance she made on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She remarked about being incredulous that her mom had had to make that sort of
sacrifice for her, and yet admitted she was eternally grateful to her for having done it.
At the time, I wondered that in the richest, most 'democratic' country in the world, a woman, her
little girl, and the woman's mother were forced into incarceration and exile, even though there was
no actual reason such a thing should happen to a professional physician/writer and her family in modern times. What grandma wants to be gramma under those circumstances?
What sort of judges do we actually have to tolerate in this country, even now?
On a somewhat different subject...
Daryl Isa sits as judge and jury of Attorney General Eric Holder with really no excuse whatsoever.
What Mr. Isa could learn from Jefferson's 1783 address to the Virginia legislature, is that one reason
Jefferson wanted to preserve slavery was to stave off the immigration of further European persons,
even Western European persons Mr. Isa cannot claim among the principal parts of his ancestry. Thomas Jefferson would have been even less welcoming to his ancestors, and yet he and his cronies
wave copies of the constitution document around over all their goofy issues as though they had a
thing in this world to do with the "founding fathers".
Women in Virginia should not separate themselves according to class. They should just be women, as they were when they elected Douglas Wilder Governor in their state.
Back to children...
Again, during the 80s, some colleagues and I attended a little reunion for those of us who had
worked at a city university, teaching an English class in writing. Many of us had gone on to
pretty important things. One of the instructors, I will call him 'Bob', had gotten married to one of the women who'd also taught with us. But since he'd left university employ, he'd become a lawyer.
As we all chatted and ate, I either asked Bob, or heard him say, 'I won't work for Wayne county again.'
Wayne County is the county in Michigan which houses, Detroit, Dearborn and all five of the
Grosse Pointes. It should be a terribly schizophrenic county. But as far as that county's judicial system is concerned, it apparently has been both homogeneous and stable for quite some time.
Feeling boisterous at the little reunion, I said to 'Bob', "Oh that must be because you don't want to
work with black people. Why can't you work with Wayne County!?"
'Bob' was a thirty something white guy. He always seemed quietly unassuming guy to me. I was surprised he'd even chosen something so combative as the law for his profession.
"No," he calmly replied, " I don't object at all to working with black people. But Wayne County is a
really racist system to be working in, and I've gotten my fill of it."
"Racist how?"
"Virtually all the defendants are black in a mostly white county. Yet nearly all the lawyers, judges,
and referees are white, and it isn't at all true that other people in the county aren't committing crimes."
To Bob, the system seemed more a plantation than a courthouse.
"Oooh". Now I was obliged to be sheepish and apologetic. Then, knowing I'd been enlightened, I let
the activist in me wiggle. "And can't anything be done?" Actually, I was pretty much speaking in a wail at this point.
"I tried to see how to avoid or change some of the things. I finally couldn't be a part of it anymore."
"So what are you doing now?" More people began to listen to us talk.
"I'm in the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office now, but I am ready to quit there too."
Feeling both superior to and envious of anyone who could quit a job, I pressed him. "Well what's
wrong with Oakland County?!"
Of course I could have been big enough to ask simply, "Isn't that work interesting?" Later, I sure wish
I had been more polite. But he took no real offense...especially since he had much bigger fish to fry.
His wife, I'll call her R, turned fully around from our periphery to face him and said in front of everyone, "If you quit your job, I'm getting a divorce."
I was stunned, because I thought a divorce was something you got if you had to, not if you just wanted to do so. I supposed that since "R" was a nice woman, maybe she would have to move on with her life. But 'Bob' didn't seem fazed. Something even more weighty was on his mind. He and 'R'
must have already discussed divorce as related to career. He said, "I can't stand much more of it. I
have promised myself that if I get another child sex abuse incest case on my desk, I'm done with
Oakland County."
Again, I was floored. I thought 'Bob' was surely being overly dramatic.
"What do you mean," I felt obliged to ask, "you can't have that many can you?" I was terrified of getting this answer because he'd seemingly already thought through losing another job, and his wife to get out of the confines of these cases.
"I have enough of them," he assured me. " I try to convince these guys they have everything. They don't have to use their own children. I can't even figure them out. They are rich. They are powerful
in their communities. They are white. Isn't that enough? I can never seem to get through to them!"
"You just have to lock them up then, right? At least the children get that kind of relief."
"I can't do it. Even when I can get the kids to testify, even when I get the mother to testify, even when
I get expert psychiatric testimony that the child has been done serious harm, these guys call everybody
a liar, and pay for a more credentialed expert to say things may not have happened the way the victims are saying they did. I have just so much money to work with, and these guys have a lot more.
Even if I get a great expert at a discount, they go out and get three!"
"Oh my God," I had to exclaim. "So what Are you going to do?"
"I thought I'd try Macomb County. I can't see anything high profile that could be a recurring problem
there."
I haven't seen 'Bob' since. I saw R though. She got her divorce. He did go to work in Macomb County.
In a way, I wonder how that worked for him, because I subsequently met a lot of women from those
cities who were battered women. In those days, Senator Debbie Stabenow(in the Michgan legislature) had not yet worked all her magic for the protections against domestic abuse. And women who are pulling up stakes right now should think carefully before moving somewhere into the jaws
of a lion.
I currently know of a young twenty something woman who is horrified her husband is raping her in
Virginia, and the police think it's fine because she has no bruising. She actually doesn't have enough
musculature to resist this Navy MP. She locks her bedroom door, but has nowhere to live.
When she went to file for divorce she was told Virginia law says she has to be separated six months
first. Could that be a matter of money?
So she has been relegated to a women's shelter. At least there are shelters now. Soon, I hope she will
get back to Michigan.
Southern laws have been generated from a system of white males who raped at will because they owned everyone who worked, and every work product which resulted from the labor therein.
If they felt like raping, they raped someone. Though I am certain rape was prosecuted, it wasn't likely
to be unless the victim was considered the perpetrator's "equal". Perps were probably smart enough to
usually avoid those situations, especially if they believed the victim would come forward.
American males have tended to want to replicate the "all powerful" positions they have witnessed in
our society over the centuries, so being northern doesn't always help develop respect and power-sharing. I doubt it's a lot different in many societies. And yet a woman who stands up for herself and
her children reflexively, habitually, will effortlessly find a loud mob to call her "feminazi".
Sexualizing someone who is no match for you physically, and as far as maturation is concerned,
does involve physical pain for that person's induction. Pain generates ear. Normally, it will create
blood loss, infection risk, healing.What kind of person feels fine about inflicting pain, fear, bloody
wound, possible infection, and painful healing on a child? It defies understanding. I guess what we
can do is re-read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. That won't do it, but it's a start.
I consider all these things here and now because the broad scope, magnitude, and temporal sweep of
the J. Sandusky trial is most probably just the tip of one of plentiful icebergs of child sexual abuse.
How much relief are we as a nation going to be able to offer so many damaged people?
admissible in New York courts. When I read about it, I could hardly believe it. 'Children can't
get away from something as heinous as sexual abuse, even in America', I remember thinking.
I bought Cosmopolitan Magazine for a while during the 80s, mainly because a lady M.D. wrote
an advice column on women's medical issues for that magazine every month.
By and by she went to jail, rather than turn over her little girl to an incestuous pedophile of a father.
No matter what evidence she presented in numerous, costly court appearances, the Virginia judge
handling her case insisted the man have access to the little girl.
Years later, when that child had become a woman, I saw an appearance she made on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She remarked about being incredulous that her mom had had to make that sort of
sacrifice for her, and yet admitted she was eternally grateful to her for having done it.
At the time, I wondered that in the richest, most 'democratic' country in the world, a woman, her
little girl, and the woman's mother were forced into incarceration and exile, even though there was
no actual reason such a thing should happen to a professional physician/writer and her family in modern times. What grandma wants to be gramma under those circumstances?
What sort of judges do we actually have to tolerate in this country, even now?
On a somewhat different subject...
Daryl Isa sits as judge and jury of Attorney General Eric Holder with really no excuse whatsoever.
What Mr. Isa could learn from Jefferson's 1783 address to the Virginia legislature, is that one reason
Jefferson wanted to preserve slavery was to stave off the immigration of further European persons,
even Western European persons Mr. Isa cannot claim among the principal parts of his ancestry. Thomas Jefferson would have been even less welcoming to his ancestors, and yet he and his cronies
wave copies of the constitution document around over all their goofy issues as though they had a
thing in this world to do with the "founding fathers".
Women in Virginia should not separate themselves according to class. They should just be women, as they were when they elected Douglas Wilder Governor in their state.
Back to children...
Again, during the 80s, some colleagues and I attended a little reunion for those of us who had
worked at a city university, teaching an English class in writing. Many of us had gone on to
pretty important things. One of the instructors, I will call him 'Bob', had gotten married to one of the women who'd also taught with us. But since he'd left university employ, he'd become a lawyer.
As we all chatted and ate, I either asked Bob, or heard him say, 'I won't work for Wayne county again.'
Wayne County is the county in Michigan which houses, Detroit, Dearborn and all five of the
Grosse Pointes. It should be a terribly schizophrenic county. But as far as that county's judicial system is concerned, it apparently has been both homogeneous and stable for quite some time.
Feeling boisterous at the little reunion, I said to 'Bob', "Oh that must be because you don't want to
work with black people. Why can't you work with Wayne County!?"
'Bob' was a thirty something white guy. He always seemed quietly unassuming guy to me. I was surprised he'd even chosen something so combative as the law for his profession.
"No," he calmly replied, " I don't object at all to working with black people. But Wayne County is a
really racist system to be working in, and I've gotten my fill of it."
"Racist how?"
"Virtually all the defendants are black in a mostly white county. Yet nearly all the lawyers, judges,
and referees are white, and it isn't at all true that other people in the county aren't committing crimes."
To Bob, the system seemed more a plantation than a courthouse.
"Oooh". Now I was obliged to be sheepish and apologetic. Then, knowing I'd been enlightened, I let
the activist in me wiggle. "And can't anything be done?" Actually, I was pretty much speaking in a wail at this point.
"I tried to see how to avoid or change some of the things. I finally couldn't be a part of it anymore."
"So what are you doing now?" More people began to listen to us talk.
"I'm in the Oakland County Prosecutor's Office now, but I am ready to quit there too."
Feeling both superior to and envious of anyone who could quit a job, I pressed him. "Well what's
wrong with Oakland County?!"
Of course I could have been big enough to ask simply, "Isn't that work interesting?" Later, I sure wish
I had been more polite. But he took no real offense...especially since he had much bigger fish to fry.
His wife, I'll call her R, turned fully around from our periphery to face him and said in front of everyone, "If you quit your job, I'm getting a divorce."
I was stunned, because I thought a divorce was something you got if you had to, not if you just wanted to do so. I supposed that since "R" was a nice woman, maybe she would have to move on with her life. But 'Bob' didn't seem fazed. Something even more weighty was on his mind. He and 'R'
must have already discussed divorce as related to career. He said, "I can't stand much more of it. I
have promised myself that if I get another child sex abuse incest case on my desk, I'm done with
Oakland County."
Again, I was floored. I thought 'Bob' was surely being overly dramatic.
"What do you mean," I felt obliged to ask, "you can't have that many can you?" I was terrified of getting this answer because he'd seemingly already thought through losing another job, and his wife to get out of the confines of these cases.
"I have enough of them," he assured me. " I try to convince these guys they have everything. They don't have to use their own children. I can't even figure them out. They are rich. They are powerful
in their communities. They are white. Isn't that enough? I can never seem to get through to them!"
"You just have to lock them up then, right? At least the children get that kind of relief."
"I can't do it. Even when I can get the kids to testify, even when I get the mother to testify, even when
I get expert psychiatric testimony that the child has been done serious harm, these guys call everybody
a liar, and pay for a more credentialed expert to say things may not have happened the way the victims are saying they did. I have just so much money to work with, and these guys have a lot more.
Even if I get a great expert at a discount, they go out and get three!"
"Oh my God," I had to exclaim. "So what Are you going to do?"
"I thought I'd try Macomb County. I can't see anything high profile that could be a recurring problem
there."
I haven't seen 'Bob' since. I saw R though. She got her divorce. He did go to work in Macomb County.
In a way, I wonder how that worked for him, because I subsequently met a lot of women from those
cities who were battered women. In those days, Senator Debbie Stabenow(in the Michgan legislature) had not yet worked all her magic for the protections against domestic abuse. And women who are pulling up stakes right now should think carefully before moving somewhere into the jaws
of a lion.
I currently know of a young twenty something woman who is horrified her husband is raping her in
Virginia, and the police think it's fine because she has no bruising. She actually doesn't have enough
musculature to resist this Navy MP. She locks her bedroom door, but has nowhere to live.
When she went to file for divorce she was told Virginia law says she has to be separated six months
first. Could that be a matter of money?
So she has been relegated to a women's shelter. At least there are shelters now. Soon, I hope she will
get back to Michigan.
Southern laws have been generated from a system of white males who raped at will because they owned everyone who worked, and every work product which resulted from the labor therein.
If they felt like raping, they raped someone. Though I am certain rape was prosecuted, it wasn't likely
to be unless the victim was considered the perpetrator's "equal". Perps were probably smart enough to
usually avoid those situations, especially if they believed the victim would come forward.
American males have tended to want to replicate the "all powerful" positions they have witnessed in
our society over the centuries, so being northern doesn't always help develop respect and power-sharing. I doubt it's a lot different in many societies. And yet a woman who stands up for herself and
her children reflexively, habitually, will effortlessly find a loud mob to call her "feminazi".
Sexualizing someone who is no match for you physically, and as far as maturation is concerned,
does involve physical pain for that person's induction. Pain generates ear. Normally, it will create
blood loss, infection risk, healing.What kind of person feels fine about inflicting pain, fear, bloody
wound, possible infection, and painful healing on a child? It defies understanding. I guess what we
can do is re-read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. That won't do it, but it's a start.
I consider all these things here and now because the broad scope, magnitude, and temporal sweep of
the J. Sandusky trial is most probably just the tip of one of plentiful icebergs of child sexual abuse.
How much relief are we as a nation going to be able to offer so many damaged people?
Friday, June 22, 2012
Israel Is Here To Stay
I cannot say I agree with everything Prime Minister Netanyahu decides to do. Why should anyone care whether I do or do not anyway?
I do understand, however, the basic precept by which the Prime Minister must both live and drive
policy.
Jews in the world of men are done running. Period.
I read Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. My mother insisted of course. I felt I had much better things to do with my summer. Still, I felt numb with horror as I read certain passages over and over again. I asked my mother to explain, and she tried; but I didn't read any other Shakespeare until I was assigned to read it in school.
I do believe the author was principally just one man, and he was a genius. But while giving the devil his due, I have always taken all his wondrous pearls with that inevitable grain of salt I knew I needed in order to have a correct conscience. I felt as a Catholic, that Catholics had a right to a conscience most fair to all people. That's smug. But I was a kid. (Later, when ma lost some faith in Catholicism, she would say: "How can you still be Catholic? They are Mafia! They are child molesters!"
I would say, "Ma. I'm not that kind of Catholic."
When I learned later that ancient Jewish people eventually got sick of Britain in great numbers of their faithful, I could not understand how an entire population could be fine with losing so many gentle, intelligent, citizens. I figured when I got older I would understand. Like that happened. I'm a boomer and...I don't get it.
I was so puzzled when I got to university, to see Jewish literature professors who were
pre-eminent Shakespeare scholars. They were brilliant; so I studied with them, hoping to better understand. Naturally, I wasn't going to be crude enough to ask them why they were willing to make a career of the work. I therefore, in the end, had to settle for their wisdom about the individual works.
I felt their insight would be better than any from of a majority point of view, because the injured may see many sides at once, simply from the point of view of having many senses of a thought as it comes into view. Someone less affected may naturally see a point only in hindsight, which is qualitatively
much different. In electronics an immediate recognition is called 'real time'.
I feel I have to listen to Wagner when I am listening to opera. Truly, though, separating the man
from the music is a constant struggle. Normally, when I can help it, I choose Mozart, or Verdi or some much less controversial, much less vile-thinking composer.
When I did begin my university studies, I visited the undergraduate library of my college. I was
eighteen. That library featured a photographic retrospective of the emptying of concentration camps
by Allied Forces in the 1940s. So, I went from photo to photo for a few moments, thinking I would
have to be able to take it in in some way. That didn't happen either. I skipped the rest of my classes
that day, so I could go home to cry. I knew that if people could suffer that way the least any of the
rest of us should be able to do is witness, acknowledge, and commit to any possibility of those things
for the future becoming and being an impossibility. I felt awful I was unable to stay that course.
I felt a bit vindicated when years later I bore witness to Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. I knew I had
contributed next to nothing. However, I wanted to try. Lanzmann showed things which aid the flow in all effective plans. He outlined the ways in which Germany raided Jewish property in order to pay for train fares to camps, to pay for the poison gas, to pay soldiers wages; so that we know before any
planned mass murder, we can follow the money, right from the start. The more of us who understand,
the better the chance more of us will play a part in recognizing and standing against forces dead set
against the family of man.
At some point in my studies, I read about the Russian pogroms, and other European atrocities. They were unbelievable to me. Jewish people fled it all. Yet Christ never made any declarations of wanting a different nationality. He surely had the power to do that. He was Jewish. And He always will be. What about that do people chose to ignore? But Jewish people fled the pogroms, fled the Gulag. As late as the 1960s and 70s Jewish Ph.D.s fled the Russia they thought would be more just after WWI, after the Czars, and after WWII- sometimes going to the Near East (even at times the Far East) to be maids and waiters in Israel, where so many citizens had an advanced education, professional jobs were scarce.
Whenever Jewish people returned to their lands, they did so under duress. Galilee was said to have been an unmanageable swamp during much of the 20th century.
British White Papers restricted Jewish immigrations into Palestine, and Israel last century.
Jewish people who left Europe in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s often had to leave loved ones and property
behind never to be reunited or made whole again.
During WWII, David Ben Gurion is said to have declared he wasn't going to entertain the ideas of Jewish citizenship in his country espoused by either Hitler or the British. Many Jewish citizens smuggled people into Palestine and its environs continuously during that war. That was Israeli advocacy.
We know insanity when we we see it because decent people don't attempt to 'round up'
any group, even groups who have perpetrated the most heinous of crimes against humankind.
And so when Prime Minister Netanyahu says he intends to protect Israel's right to exist, he may often
seem prickly to peaceful people. However, he means, and Likud means, that each of them in their own country, is the last man standing. The pharaohs are dead. The Ayatollahs who would like to be pharaohs are out of luck.
Israelis are in Israel to stay, no matter what that may come to mean.
It may mean one thing to you, another to me. What it means to Bibi Netanyahu is that he will constantly, and vigilantly assess the safety, the lives, the livelihoods of Israeli citizens for as long as there is breath in any Jewish person.
Jewish people are, for good or for ill, done with flight, save in religious commemorations.
I do understand, however, the basic precept by which the Prime Minister must both live and drive
policy.
Jews in the world of men are done running. Period.
I read Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. My mother insisted of course. I felt I had much better things to do with my summer. Still, I felt numb with horror as I read certain passages over and over again. I asked my mother to explain, and she tried; but I didn't read any other Shakespeare until I was assigned to read it in school.
I do believe the author was principally just one man, and he was a genius. But while giving the devil his due, I have always taken all his wondrous pearls with that inevitable grain of salt I knew I needed in order to have a correct conscience. I felt as a Catholic, that Catholics had a right to a conscience most fair to all people. That's smug. But I was a kid. (Later, when ma lost some faith in Catholicism, she would say: "How can you still be Catholic? They are Mafia! They are child molesters!"
I would say, "Ma. I'm not that kind of Catholic."
When I learned later that ancient Jewish people eventually got sick of Britain in great numbers of their faithful, I could not understand how an entire population could be fine with losing so many gentle, intelligent, citizens. I figured when I got older I would understand. Like that happened. I'm a boomer and...I don't get it.
I was so puzzled when I got to university, to see Jewish literature professors who were
pre-eminent Shakespeare scholars. They were brilliant; so I studied with them, hoping to better understand. Naturally, I wasn't going to be crude enough to ask them why they were willing to make a career of the work. I therefore, in the end, had to settle for their wisdom about the individual works.
I felt their insight would be better than any from of a majority point of view, because the injured may see many sides at once, simply from the point of view of having many senses of a thought as it comes into view. Someone less affected may naturally see a point only in hindsight, which is qualitatively
much different. In electronics an immediate recognition is called 'real time'.
I feel I have to listen to Wagner when I am listening to opera. Truly, though, separating the man
from the music is a constant struggle. Normally, when I can help it, I choose Mozart, or Verdi or some much less controversial, much less vile-thinking composer.
When I did begin my university studies, I visited the undergraduate library of my college. I was
eighteen. That library featured a photographic retrospective of the emptying of concentration camps
by Allied Forces in the 1940s. So, I went from photo to photo for a few moments, thinking I would
have to be able to take it in in some way. That didn't happen either. I skipped the rest of my classes
that day, so I could go home to cry. I knew that if people could suffer that way the least any of the
rest of us should be able to do is witness, acknowledge, and commit to any possibility of those things
for the future becoming and being an impossibility. I felt awful I was unable to stay that course.
I felt a bit vindicated when years later I bore witness to Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. I knew I had
contributed next to nothing. However, I wanted to try. Lanzmann showed things which aid the flow in all effective plans. He outlined the ways in which Germany raided Jewish property in order to pay for train fares to camps, to pay for the poison gas, to pay soldiers wages; so that we know before any
planned mass murder, we can follow the money, right from the start. The more of us who understand,
the better the chance more of us will play a part in recognizing and standing against forces dead set
against the family of man.
At some point in my studies, I read about the Russian pogroms, and other European atrocities. They were unbelievable to me. Jewish people fled it all. Yet Christ never made any declarations of wanting a different nationality. He surely had the power to do that. He was Jewish. And He always will be. What about that do people chose to ignore? But Jewish people fled the pogroms, fled the Gulag. As late as the 1960s and 70s Jewish Ph.D.s fled the Russia they thought would be more just after WWI, after the Czars, and after WWII- sometimes going to the Near East (even at times the Far East) to be maids and waiters in Israel, where so many citizens had an advanced education, professional jobs were scarce.
Whenever Jewish people returned to their lands, they did so under duress. Galilee was said to have been an unmanageable swamp during much of the 20th century.
British White Papers restricted Jewish immigrations into Palestine, and Israel last century.
Jewish people who left Europe in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s often had to leave loved ones and property
behind never to be reunited or made whole again.
During WWII, David Ben Gurion is said to have declared he wasn't going to entertain the ideas of Jewish citizenship in his country espoused by either Hitler or the British. Many Jewish citizens smuggled people into Palestine and its environs continuously during that war. That was Israeli advocacy.
We know insanity when we we see it because decent people don't attempt to 'round up'
any group, even groups who have perpetrated the most heinous of crimes against humankind.
And so when Prime Minister Netanyahu says he intends to protect Israel's right to exist, he may often
seem prickly to peaceful people. However, he means, and Likud means, that each of them in their own country, is the last man standing. The pharaohs are dead. The Ayatollahs who would like to be pharaohs are out of luck.
Israelis are in Israel to stay, no matter what that may come to mean.
It may mean one thing to you, another to me. What it means to Bibi Netanyahu is that he will constantly, and vigilantly assess the safety, the lives, the livelihoods of Israeli citizens for as long as there is breath in any Jewish person.
Jewish people are, for good or for ill, done with flight, save in religious commemorations.
The DR Show
Today is the last day of The Dylan Ratigan Show. I think DR is a Jesuit priest but doesn't realize it.
He should probably contact Cheryl Dorsey for a series of collaborations. He should channel
nevernothere.com.
He happens to be right about a lot of things. Germany and Greece, for instance, do need to contact
New York and D.C. for a Marshall Plan. This time, though, they might have to wait until said
geographies have gotten back on their feet.
He should probably contact Cheryl Dorsey for a series of collaborations. He should channel
nevernothere.com.
He happens to be right about a lot of things. Germany and Greece, for instance, do need to contact
New York and D.C. for a Marshall Plan. This time, though, they might have to wait until said
geographies have gotten back on their feet.
So Clever
I see now that the Republicans are incredibly clever.
They forced POTUS to deport Latino citizens in record U.S. numbers every year. So the Latino people are supposed to be stupid?
I guess Latino people were to have thought of our president as someone who wanted to deport part of
his own voter base.
So since that wasn't working, they decided to disenfranchise the Latino vote.
That wasn't going over so well, so they decided to tackle the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder.
When the AG kept the Bush administration plans in place to track guns at the Mexican border, it may have been in part because then President Calderone of Mexico came here to plead with the U.S. to stop the illegal guns from saturating that country, contributing mightily to the murder rate and drug cartel lawlessness there. Now, it does not behoove the U.S. to contribute to murder or illegal drug trafficking so close to our own borders.
Republicans, though, decided Eric Holder simply continued the border surveillance and covert plans
to exercise gun control.
Something went wrong in the right wing political political diseases. A border agent was killed.
Now Daryl Isa is pretending the DOJ wanted a mishap, again, so that gun control would be more popular.
So Daryl, does the Obama administration want gun control on the border to succeed, so your guns could be taken away?
Or Daryl, does the Obama administration want gun control on the border to fail, so your guns could be taken away?
If you are about to lose your 'precious' no matter what happens, why can't the administration have the
private communication all administrations need in covert operations?
They forced POTUS to deport Latino citizens in record U.S. numbers every year. So the Latino people are supposed to be stupid?
I guess Latino people were to have thought of our president as someone who wanted to deport part of
his own voter base.
So since that wasn't working, they decided to disenfranchise the Latino vote.
That wasn't going over so well, so they decided to tackle the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder.
When the AG kept the Bush administration plans in place to track guns at the Mexican border, it may have been in part because then President Calderone of Mexico came here to plead with the U.S. to stop the illegal guns from saturating that country, contributing mightily to the murder rate and drug cartel lawlessness there. Now, it does not behoove the U.S. to contribute to murder or illegal drug trafficking so close to our own borders.
Republicans, though, decided Eric Holder simply continued the border surveillance and covert plans
to exercise gun control.
Something went wrong in the right wing political political diseases. A border agent was killed.
Now Daryl Isa is pretending the DOJ wanted a mishap, again, so that gun control would be more popular.
So Daryl, does the Obama administration want gun control on the border to succeed, so your guns could be taken away?
Or Daryl, does the Obama administration want gun control on the border to fail, so your guns could be taken away?
If you are about to lose your 'precious' no matter what happens, why can't the administration have the
private communication all administrations need in covert operations?
Thanks Too Hawaii
Now that Wisconsin is all but bought and paid for, watch out Illinois. Renewed efforts for billionaires
to own Lake Michigan itself are going to come down hard on you once again.
And since a big part of Hawaii is now just a company,(the plaything of an Oracle billionaire) well this country could be well on its way to a new identity altogether. Why shouldn't we be
The Billionaire States of America?
Fifty billionaires could argue amongst themselves about the worth of everything, and fight wars they
feel like fighting all over the world forever and ever with the blood of ordinary citizens. Sound OK?
What in the world would we need any federal government, any regulation. any public policy, any Congress, any Supreme court for anyway. As a matter of fact Congress and most of the Supreme Court are nearly useless right now as it is. All they seem to do is try to figure ways we can live in the
17th century forever. Yet they criticise Afghanistan mercilessly for attempting to remain in the 15th
century. I suppose two hundred years means less to an older society than it does to one barely 500 years young in the first place.
Perspective can be difficult to discern standing on the outside of nonsensical things looking into them. Good.
to own Lake Michigan itself are going to come down hard on you once again.
And since a big part of Hawaii is now just a company,(the plaything of an Oracle billionaire) well this country could be well on its way to a new identity altogether. Why shouldn't we be
The Billionaire States of America?
Fifty billionaires could argue amongst themselves about the worth of everything, and fight wars they
feel like fighting all over the world forever and ever with the blood of ordinary citizens. Sound OK?
What in the world would we need any federal government, any regulation. any public policy, any Congress, any Supreme court for anyway. As a matter of fact Congress and most of the Supreme Court are nearly useless right now as it is. All they seem to do is try to figure ways we can live in the
17th century forever. Yet they criticise Afghanistan mercilessly for attempting to remain in the 15th
century. I suppose two hundred years means less to an older society than it does to one barely 500 years young in the first place.
Perspective can be difficult to discern standing on the outside of nonsensical things looking into them. Good.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Are We Already Educated?
The insidious implication in current Republican politics is that anyone in this country who votes,
and who should have an education, already has one.
People who would need a public school education are not worth educating in the average
In the Republican idyll of an elitist ownership society, a permanently underprivileged
class of people provide a consistent supply of cheap labor, whether or not that cheap pool
is intelligent, educated, or intellectually challenged.
It seems the owner class feels able to afford to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Discarding workers one has not had to invest in will usually be an uneventful shrug of the
shoulders.
Presently, and for decades now, the rich have decided they pay for public education
without ever considering the "privilege" of using it. For that, the public they have to abide
owes them all its first born sons and daughters, along with any intellectual heft those offspring
happen to have developed, or to have innately.
Conservatives believe populations exist for their usage, not for the development of societies
in which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are to flourish.
Life, in the conservative estimation, is the same for the poor, as the reality of being a
living, breathing organism. No other sense of living need be considered, because for an
unprivileged person, only those definitions and gradations of being alive offered by
a privileged elite need be considered.
A middle class is then completely superfluous. Middle classes are conduits to some better
access to privilege, earned by the merits of work and study.
The already elite have decided their ideas of work and how it should be compensated are
to reign supreme in America forever. Study, in addition, should be compensated
according to how a boss or COO (Chief Operating Officer) wants to employ a particular
skill- that 'how', in itself becoming part and parcel and then the total of that compensation.
Liberty, according to the ideas of the most conservative of the rich, is another finely-tuned
concept to be elucidated by their ideas of what it should be for all of us. Liberty, in their estimation,
is the privilege of living in a right to work state. It need consist of no more than that; most
certainly not for women. Women, as far as the privileged are concerned, comprise millions and millions of people who are costly to legislate for if they are not already rich.
The pursuit of happiness is the most elusive concept of the three American tenets of
basic societal rights. Pursuit for the non-rich will consist of pursuing the rich. The not rich must ...
Hope the rich are the happy ones.
Hope they will hire.
Hope they will pay fair wages. .
Hope they will otherwise compensate all working classes fairly, safely.
Hope against hope that your government will completely abandon you and your loved
ones to the whims and qualms of owner elites.
For any government to attempt to get between you and the fervent desires of billionaires will make the billionaires angry, and then themselves abandoning. Oh...no...those aren't the hopes we wanted.
and who should have an education, already has one.
People who would need a public school education are not worth educating in the average
In the Republican idyll of an elitist ownership society, a permanently underprivileged
class of people provide a consistent supply of cheap labor, whether or not that cheap pool
is intelligent, educated, or intellectually challenged.
It seems the owner class feels able to afford to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Discarding workers one has not had to invest in will usually be an uneventful shrug of the
shoulders.
Presently, and for decades now, the rich have decided they pay for public education
without ever considering the "privilege" of using it. For that, the public they have to abide
owes them all its first born sons and daughters, along with any intellectual heft those offspring
happen to have developed, or to have innately.
Conservatives believe populations exist for their usage, not for the development of societies
in which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are to flourish.
Life, in the conservative estimation, is the same for the poor, as the reality of being a
living, breathing organism. No other sense of living need be considered, because for an
unprivileged person, only those definitions and gradations of being alive offered by
a privileged elite need be considered.
A middle class is then completely superfluous. Middle classes are conduits to some better
access to privilege, earned by the merits of work and study.
The already elite have decided their ideas of work and how it should be compensated are
to reign supreme in America forever. Study, in addition, should be compensated
according to how a boss or COO (Chief Operating Officer) wants to employ a particular
skill- that 'how', in itself becoming part and parcel and then the total of that compensation.
Liberty, according to the ideas of the most conservative of the rich, is another finely-tuned
concept to be elucidated by their ideas of what it should be for all of us. Liberty, in their estimation,
is the privilege of living in a right to work state. It need consist of no more than that; most
certainly not for women. Women, as far as the privileged are concerned, comprise millions and millions of people who are costly to legislate for if they are not already rich.
The pursuit of happiness is the most elusive concept of the three American tenets of
basic societal rights. Pursuit for the non-rich will consist of pursuing the rich. The not rich must ...
Hope the rich are the happy ones.
Hope they will hire.
Hope they will pay fair wages. .
Hope they will otherwise compensate all working classes fairly, safely.
Hope against hope that your government will completely abandon you and your loved
ones to the whims and qualms of owner elites.
For any government to attempt to get between you and the fervent desires of billionaires will make the billionaires angry, and then themselves abandoning. Oh...no...those aren't the hopes we wanted.
Property Taxes
North Dakota should be heartily congratulated. Voters there rejected the option to
pay no property taxes.
Wouldn't that be a neat trick?
People would vote themselves cheaper housing so that they could dispose of their
own trash and garbage every week, teach their own children every day, and pay for
private security rather than a police force.
People don't need a fire department. All they need to do is pay the private sector to
install a multitude of 'smart' smoke alarms that will identify the type of fire, and signal
what sort of retardant to disperse in any giving structure.
What? Savings on property taxes won't pay for all that?
Well aren't you just too smarty pants for the preferences of the Libertarian tricksters
North Dakota?!
They will continue to get the 'no property taxes' garbage (pun intended) on your
ballots- in denser and denser language, no matter what that costs you voters. I hope
you will continue to 'dump' the suggestions each and every time.
pay no property taxes.
Wouldn't that be a neat trick?
People would vote themselves cheaper housing so that they could dispose of their
own trash and garbage every week, teach their own children every day, and pay for
private security rather than a police force.
People don't need a fire department. All they need to do is pay the private sector to
install a multitude of 'smart' smoke alarms that will identify the type of fire, and signal
what sort of retardant to disperse in any giving structure.
What? Savings on property taxes won't pay for all that?
Well aren't you just too smarty pants for the preferences of the Libertarian tricksters
North Dakota?!
They will continue to get the 'no property taxes' garbage (pun intended) on your
ballots- in denser and denser language, no matter what that costs you voters. I hope
you will continue to 'dump' the suggestions each and every time.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Wanted: Women In Public Office
So many women in this country are needed in public office.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, convince your friends.
FLOTUSA is still young. We need her desperately, asap.
Debbie Stabenow...recruit girls and women.
Alexis Goldstein, and friends,. please run!
Hillary, if you have it in you- get back out there.
And there are more of you out there .Each of you...
'Screw your courage to the sticking place.'
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, convince your friends.
FLOTUSA is still young. We need her desperately, asap.
Debbie Stabenow...recruit girls and women.
Alexis Goldstein, and friends,. please run!
Hillary, if you have it in you- get back out there.
And there are more of you out there .Each of you...
'Screw your courage to the sticking place.'
The American Economy
Yes, children, wages ARE stagnant.
Police, firemen, and teachers have lost enough jobs in America to cost our economy a minimum of
$1 billion dollars, plus what interest it could earn, nearly every decade. That can add up, right? Especially when those doing without that money are doing without basic quality of life quantities of goods and services for lack of that money... The absences of it not only add up, but can create generational, community, family, and personal deficit.
Those persons who do have jobs are NOT apt- under the circumstances of the average citizen having no right or access to the most basic of protections and education- to get appropriate raises...ever.
That means whatever I buy I have to pay more and more for it each year unless those employed in
service industries get back to work and buy some of it as well. What if I live on a fixed income?
Those people back to work would also help the Social Security fund.
The payroll tax breaks working people got recently, are coming from social safety net tax deductions in ordinary take-home pay from weekly and bi-weekly paychecks. FICA deductions and Medicare
deductions are smaller. So down the line working people will have eaten now so they can starve later.
Who will they have been working for? People who refuse to pay their affordable taxes.
Why should that continue just so 1% of the American population can be assured of paying no higher taxes, and in some cases no taxes at all- and even in some absurd cases, get tax refunds and continued subsidies galore?
Police, firemen, and teachers have lost enough jobs in America to cost our economy a minimum of
$1 billion dollars, plus what interest it could earn, nearly every decade. That can add up, right? Especially when those doing without that money are doing without basic quality of life quantities of goods and services for lack of that money... The absences of it not only add up, but can create generational, community, family, and personal deficit.
Those persons who do have jobs are NOT apt- under the circumstances of the average citizen having no right or access to the most basic of protections and education- to get appropriate raises...ever.
That means whatever I buy I have to pay more and more for it each year unless those employed in
service industries get back to work and buy some of it as well. What if I live on a fixed income?
Those people back to work would also help the Social Security fund.
The payroll tax breaks working people got recently, are coming from social safety net tax deductions in ordinary take-home pay from weekly and bi-weekly paychecks. FICA deductions and Medicare
deductions are smaller. So down the line working people will have eaten now so they can starve later.
Who will they have been working for? People who refuse to pay their affordable taxes.
Why should that continue just so 1% of the American population can be assured of paying no higher taxes, and in some cases no taxes at all- and even in some absurd cases, get tax refunds and continued subsidies galore?
Peter Schiff
What Peter? Oh, you say the sky is falling?
'Yes, I said the sky is falling!'
'The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The sky is falling.'
Why is the sky falling Peter?
Well, because companies pay salaries!
'Yes, I said the sky is falling!'
'The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The sky is falling. The sky is falling.'
Why is the sky falling Peter?
Well, because companies pay salaries!
Friday, June 8, 2012
Thank You Wisconsin
Now we know what happens when a Scott Walker wins, principally by outspending Mr. Barrett 8 to 1.
At least the rest of us can take heart in the fact that the democratic opponent was difficult to beat. I guess the Republicans had the money, but it took spending a boatload of it for them to actually win.
Sad for the remainder of us too, that now must listen to these love of European-type austerity
depression politicians talk about what brave, outstanding public servants they are for cutting social
programs.
Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and the like, will all be slapping each other on the back with so much gusto the noise will keep me up nights.
A little old lady about to take a bite of a sandwich will have it snatched out of her hand by Mr.Ryan, who will replace it with a spoon of dog food...the on sale brand. And Ryan will be So proud of himself.
A child whose fever won't break will be kicked out of an E.R. with some substitute for medicine, like a bag of ice.
Mr. Romney will be grinning when he forecloses on the home of a young vet, while he shows him the way to the old rental buildings his new "capital" corporation is land lording..
Banks will continue to believe it doesn't matter how they make money, or who gets trashed by their
practices, as long as they can claim it is capitalism. But I thought when everyone in a country brought home about the same amount of money every week, that was communism.
If only 1% of a population has economic autonomy, how is that democracy? We were taught in school that a representative democracy could never resemble a communist form of government, and that is why we must protect it.
Well, we are slip-sliding into some sort of hegemonic dictatorial rule of the billionaires. How is that any different than communism for the average working citizen?
We know now that in Wisconsin, at least, the vote can be bought. In 2000, and 2004, we learned the vote could be illegally certified twice in Florida, and in 2004 in Ohio.
What I want to know, is: what can we do about it? Is every state in this union really supposed to be
Mississippi? Right to work is right to be exploited. I guess that is what half of Wisconsin wants.
Maybe half of that state is already retired, and believe their pensions are safe. Wasn't that what we
all believed about pensions in the fall of 2008? Oh my were we Wrong.
These voters must be the citizens who can answer that question- "What's The Matter With Kansas?"
I guess Wisconsin could care less about the jobs in their state which go to teachers, policemen, firefighters, nurses, etc.
So when those jobs, pay scales, benefits, and safety and quality of work issues get stomped in the public sector, I hope all prescient citizens realize the private sector won't be far behind. Private employers will not be any more inclined to pay more or spend more on benes than any other employer group.
And unless you are one of their stockholders (where would you get the cash) don't count on any of their increased profits trickling into your family budget. Nothing they control trickles. They make
great strides to stop things from trickling, as do all humans. (Well, we can do nothing about mountain
streams.)
Working people will get what they always got before they organized. A hard way to go, and a short
time to make it there.
For instance, the work week of women and children being shortened to 54 hours per week ... not until
circa 1913, in New York state and that was not done by employers. Surprised? I wonder now when that law even began to get enforced!
At least the rest of us can take heart in the fact that the democratic opponent was difficult to beat. I guess the Republicans had the money, but it took spending a boatload of it for them to actually win.
Sad for the remainder of us too, that now must listen to these love of European-type austerity
depression politicians talk about what brave, outstanding public servants they are for cutting social
programs.
Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, Paul Ryan, and the like, will all be slapping each other on the back with so much gusto the noise will keep me up nights.
A little old lady about to take a bite of a sandwich will have it snatched out of her hand by Mr.Ryan, who will replace it with a spoon of dog food...the on sale brand. And Ryan will be So proud of himself.
A child whose fever won't break will be kicked out of an E.R. with some substitute for medicine, like a bag of ice.
Mr. Romney will be grinning when he forecloses on the home of a young vet, while he shows him the way to the old rental buildings his new "capital" corporation is land lording..
Banks will continue to believe it doesn't matter how they make money, or who gets trashed by their
practices, as long as they can claim it is capitalism. But I thought when everyone in a country brought home about the same amount of money every week, that was communism.
If only 1% of a population has economic autonomy, how is that democracy? We were taught in school that a representative democracy could never resemble a communist form of government, and that is why we must protect it.
Well, we are slip-sliding into some sort of hegemonic dictatorial rule of the billionaires. How is that any different than communism for the average working citizen?
We know now that in Wisconsin, at least, the vote can be bought. In 2000, and 2004, we learned the vote could be illegally certified twice in Florida, and in 2004 in Ohio.
What I want to know, is: what can we do about it? Is every state in this union really supposed to be
Mississippi? Right to work is right to be exploited. I guess that is what half of Wisconsin wants.
Maybe half of that state is already retired, and believe their pensions are safe. Wasn't that what we
all believed about pensions in the fall of 2008? Oh my were we Wrong.
These voters must be the citizens who can answer that question- "What's The Matter With Kansas?"
I guess Wisconsin could care less about the jobs in their state which go to teachers, policemen, firefighters, nurses, etc.
So when those jobs, pay scales, benefits, and safety and quality of work issues get stomped in the public sector, I hope all prescient citizens realize the private sector won't be far behind. Private employers will not be any more inclined to pay more or spend more on benes than any other employer group.
And unless you are one of their stockholders (where would you get the cash) don't count on any of their increased profits trickling into your family budget. Nothing they control trickles. They make
great strides to stop things from trickling, as do all humans. (Well, we can do nothing about mountain
streams.)
Working people will get what they always got before they organized. A hard way to go, and a short
time to make it there.
For instance, the work week of women and children being shortened to 54 hours per week ... not until
circa 1913, in New York state and that was not done by employers. Surprised? I wonder now when that law even began to get enforced!
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