January 15, 2018

I've been blocked from participating in the Barack Obama group by one of its administrators.

I believe this is undeserved as I have said many positive things about Obama and believe history will look upon him as a great president and definitely a great man.

If reinstated into the Obama group, I promise not to (there) mention my opposition to the TPP, which is the major area of heartburn I had with Obama's policies. But the guy is arguably one of the best presidents we've had in my lifetime.

It's funny that I got banned from this group, because it says something about the inability of some on here to accept criticism of POLICIES as opposed to ad hominem criticism, in which I NEVER engage with the exception of Trump. I would never, and have never engaged in ad hominem criticism of Obama as a human being, a father, a husband, or a president.

So, can we please do something about this?

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

January 12, 2018

Concerning shitholes and snowflakes.

When she heard of Trump's comment asking why we take immigrants from 'shit hole' countries, I was shocked. My wife was shocked. She just kept saying, "This goes against everything we should stand for."

Hating Trump and the things that come out of the anus that acts as his mouth has gotten pretty easy, but what I really hate is this chest pounding white nationalism, isolationism and xenophobia, because it takes us backwards. According to the US Census world population clock, there are over 7.4 billion people living on this planet.

Those 'shithole' countries to which Trump was referring are poor because of capitalism and greed. The thing that is backwards about Trump, Bannon, DeVos, and the rest of his crappy, ignorant, anti-intellectual, white-supremacist administration is this:

- We all live on, and share, this one world.
- In order for this world to continue to support our species, we need to begin planning forward as a species, not a bunch of nations.
- Now, more than ever, the policies we set must necessarily organize us around human need, not human greed.
- Human need necessarily includes the state of this world's environment, because we all must live on this world.

I'm a progressive, and believe our tax dollars ought to be spent making our lives better, not making it so some billionaire parasites or shareholders in big corporations can get richer at the expense of the rest of us. I don't apologize for believing we need real tax reform, not a giant tax cut package for billionaires that necessitates cutting the services people depend on. We must have enough public revenue to fund the services that allow a decent quality of life and level playing field for everyone.

I want our taxes to be spent on childcare, early childhood education, elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, creating an infrastructure that serves us all and that we can all be proud of. I want healthcare and a strong old age pension so I can be financially comfortable after I have to stop working. I want my children and grandchildren to be able to take time off to care for their children, and for other family members, and not suffer financially. I want my children and grandchildren to be able to live in decent housing with clean water, broadband communications, heat their homes with clean energy and not have to risk disease caused by corporate pollution.

I want corporate charters adjusted so the fiduciary responsibility of the C-class corporate officers is not ONLY to shareholders, but to customers, the general public and the environment.

We need to rethink the need for wars, and for all the money that goes toward 'defense,' and as we retool our society, we need to retrain those who lose 'defense' related jobs and at the same time develop new and peaceful technologies and endeavors where they can be employed instead.

Yes, I am politically active in my local Democratic party. Yes, I caucus, vote in primaries, carefully review ballot referendums, and vote in every election. Yes, I write, call and speak personally to those elected to represent me locally, statewide and federally. I sign petitions, and do my utmost to drive local policies in directions that support human need.

I do not apologize for being a progressive, or Democratic Socialist or whatever you want to call me, and it is not my responsibility to try and change some anti-intellectual quasi-literate person's mind. It is time for those of us who are capable of imagining what we and this world can be if we work unselfishly together for the common needs of people to stand up and be active and peaceful change agents.

I do not apologize for being an idealist, and do not consider it my responsibility to bring you around to my way of thinking. Indeed, with the current and accelerating human-caused deterioration of the global climate, I believe events themselves will cause pressure in this direction.

I do not apologize for believing that reorganizing around human need is possible. Again, I do not take on myself the responsibility of convincing anyone else of this imperative. Events, I think, will do that for me.

Above all, personally, I believe in a society that reflects the 'golden rule.' In as far as possible in our consumer society, I try to do unto others as I would have them do unto me. I believe in hard work, out of the box thinking, cooperation and entrepreneurship, and I believe that people are motivated by MORE than profits and that most people would like to live comfortably, and do something for a living that has meaning. Like Obama, I believe that no one who works full time should have to live in poverty, without healthcare or other benefits that make life worth living.

Can we do it?

The earth will be fine whether we organize ourselves to preserve its ability to support human life OR whether we fuck it up so bad we go extinct and it becomes a smoking cinder circling the sun. Our destiny is up to us, and to borrow again from Obama, we must rise to the 'fierce urgency of now.'

I suppose that makes me a

January 6, 2018

Mark Kelly: This year has been an unequivocal disaster for the future of the planet

This is an opinion piece from CNN just today, and I think it worth a read. I know I've been quite worried about the decades it will take to clean up the damage Trump and the Republicans have done to the earth, let alone fix the safety nets, the economic fabric, the social and moral fabric of the nation.

Here's the link: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/26/opinions/earth-from-space-climate-change-opinion-mark-kelly/index.html

January 2, 2018

Michele Bachmann eyeing run for Franken's Senate seat

Source: CNN

Bachmann, who was a member of Congress representing Minnesota until 2015, told "The Jim Bakker Show" that she's mulling over whether she should run. Franken announced he would leave the Senate following accusations that he had groped several women, and his final day as a senator is Tuesday.

"I've had people contact me and urge me to run for that Senate seat," Bachmann said. "The only reason I would run is for the ability to take these principles into the United States Senate," she said, later adding, "The question is should it be me? Should it be now? But there's also a price you pay. And the price is bigger than ever because the swamp is so toxic."

"We're trying to be wise," Bachmann continued, suggesting that Franken was dropped by Democrats because the party wants to be able to hurl false accusations against Republicans in coming elections.

"I'm not saying that he didn't do some bad boy things. I think he did. But he didn't do what Harvey Weinstein did. ... But the Democrat party, they even admit they threw Al Franken under the bus because they wanted to look pure," she said.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2018/01/02/politics/michele-bachmann-franken-senate-seat/index.html

---

So, there you have it. Let's hope the people in Minnesota vote for the Dem appointee instead of Bachmann.

December 29, 2017

Death threats are forcing professors off campus

Source: CNN

Comments weaponized

In the past year, more than 100 incidents of targeted harassment against professors have been reported on college campuses, according to the American Association of University Professors.
-- A California professor at Orange Coast College who was captured on video in the classroom criticizing President Donald Trump got death threats, according to The Washington Post.
-- CBS News reported a Princeton professor received death threats after giving a commencement speech in which she called Trump a "racist and sexist megalomaniac."
-- A University of Iowa professor was targeted after discussing white supremacy in the context of ancient statues and their use of white marble, InsideHigherEd.com says.

"Historically, it's been conservative professors who have faced retaliation and disciplinary threats, and harassment for offending people," said Ari Cohn, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program for the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
"I think over the course of the past year, as liberal faculty members have become increasingly outspoken with their criticism of the Trump administration, you have seen more professors on the left being targeted."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/21/us/university-professors-free-speech-online-hate-threats/index.html

---

Right from the start, Trump and the right wing have lied their asses off. Trump himself lies an average of 5.5 X per day. "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Adolph Hitler

The right wingers have openly marched in our streets with their stinking swastikas and hooded robes. "The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence." Adolf Hitler

Regulatory agencies in the executive branch have been gutted. Scientific studies from the government have been silenced, and there is even a list of words they cannot use. We've lost net neutrality.

Now, we have right wing hate groups employing the same forms of intimidation that Hitler's nazis did back in the 1930s. It's fucking sick.

December 26, 2017

There's a good chance your holiday returns will end up in a landfill

Each year, I rail against the commercialism of Christmas. The first time I did was when Bush was asked what we could do to help troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars I was against anyway. Bush answered basically that we should keep spending, being consumers, buying things.

Sadly, because of our 'patriotic duty' to consume, every year at this time...WE SPEND MONEY WE DON'T HAVE ON SHIT WE DON'T NEED.

Now, we find out the returns mostly end up in landfills.

Here's the link. I don't have too much more to say because I've been disgusted about this for a long time. But it's sick. Surely in this society we stand for something besides flamboyant consumption?

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/26/news/retail-returns-landfill/index.html

December 15, 2017

Late breaking OPINION from CNN. The silent majority of America just roared.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/14/opinions/alabama-virginia-suburbia-polarization-mitra-kalita-opinion/index.html

This is a provocative article. I live in the suburbs, am very active in the local political arena, and this article makes sense to me. I just don't see the polarization that we see from these nimrods in DC. Here, even the Republicans (mostly) are sane; by that, I mean we can sit down, hash out some solutions to problems we both can live with then roll up our sleeves and get things done.

I'm posting this because it is worthy of discussion. There are some really innovative and encouraging things happening at local levels. It has been an interesting study for me in terms of how local regions manage high economic growth. But I especially posted it because it makes us think in a new way - I get tired of people trashing certain groups, such as white working class people, because in my suburb WE ARE NOT ALL WHITE, BUT WE ARE ALL WORKING CLASS.

My hope is some of the heavy hitters on this site can maybe digest this information and see things in a new way.

******************************
Here are four paragraphs from it as excerpt.

Most Americans are neither coastal elites nor inhabitants of flyover country (both objectionable tropes on their face). Most Americans live in the suburbs, a geographic term the US government is curiously loath to define. But suburbanites are not; a survey by an economist at Trulia, the online real-estate site, finds that 53% of Americans say they live in one. The suburbs mirror US demographic trends; minorities represent 35% of suburban residents, and in 2010, the share of blacks in large metro areas living in the suburbs surpassed 51%, meaning the majority of black Americans are suburbanites, according to Brookings.

The political upsets we've seen this year in New Jersey, Virginia and Alabama represent not so much a blue wave as an affirmation of moderation and civility and neighborliness. It's a far cry from the polarized America of tweets, headlines and political rhetoric. In fact, it is a rejection of that -- and a window into what the suburbs have become. Most Americans do not live in such extremes. Like Doug Jones, the incoming Democratic senator from Alabama, they might support the right to bear arms (with background checks). Or like Virginia's governor-elect Ralph Northam, they might not want to outright demolish Confederate statues but move them to museums.

...the collision of different groups of people eventually creates a certain fluidity and unity among them...A recent University of Pennsylvania study finds the use of political words on Twitter were concentrated among a small group of people who are either "very conservative" or "very liberal." Moderates simply do not wade in. This reticence on the internet could extend to voter turnout -- and perhaps it did in 2016.

But America does not live on Facebook, even if it sometimes feels that way. Americans live in places that care about jobs and schools and taxes. Issues such as health care and anti-corruption efforts seem to matter to suburban voters more than immigration. Brookings also reports the suburbs are growing faster than urban areas, partly because of the lack of affordable housing in cities, making them younger, more diverse. Their outlook -- and values -- feel increasingly cosmopolitan.

October 21, 2017

Let's go back a moment in time to the 'storm' Trump jokingly alluded to.

Friday night, last night, he quietly signed an executive order amending the one that allowed Bush to call up reserves and Guard for up to 24 months of service, and to call a limited number of military retirees back into service.

Here's his amendment: The consequence of this is the amendment to (Executive Order) 13223 signed by Trump, extends the state of emergency and allows the federal government to recall into service any “retired member of the Regular Army, Regular Navy, Regular Air Force, or Regular Marine Corps.

So...what does this mean? Will Trump attempt to play the 'war card' to stay in power?

Here's a link to an interesting opinion piece in Daily Kos: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/21/1708645/-Forget-the-war-of-words-the-EO-Trump-signed-Friday-night-anticipates-a-war-with-massive-casualties

I bring this to all of your attention not to encourage we all get tin-foil hats, but to make the point that we are being battled by the forces of the Mercers and Charles Koch on a thousand different fronts. The idea is to get us, and our sense of moral outrage, to become jaded, to numb us, and to make all this 'the new normal.'

Never have we been this close to losing our republic.

Never.

October 17, 2017

Trump and the double standard

This morning, I watched some CNN videos to get going.

I played the one where Trump solemnly intones that he met with 'the president' of the Virgin Islands.

After that vid had played, I turned it off, and thought about what would have happened if Obama had said this. I mean, the entire Republican noise machine would be in high gear, screaming about it.

But Trump says it, and we have a few jokes on late night...

October 14, 2017

Today is Friday, October 13.

Factoid for you:

On Friday, October 13, 1307, Knights Templar throughout France were rounded up for 'heresy.'

Just saying.