Masochists in our Midst: A quote from an MSNBC article which sums up my fear: "Some argue that Congress, for one, is likely to refuse to make changes to the law to develop alternatives to the mandate. “It isn’t going to get fixed,” said Robert Laszewski, who runs a consulting firm, Health Policy and Strategy Associates, in Alexandria, Va. “Republicans want to blow it up. They’re going to be happy that the Supreme Court threw a grenade in it.”

IN OTHER WORDS THE SUPREME COURT MUST NOT NEGATE THE MANDATE IN THE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT AKA OBAMACARE FOR IT TO WORK.

YOU MUST PRESSURE EVERYONE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY THAT THE SUPREME COURT DOES NOT NEGATE THE MANDATE. THIS IS SIGNATURE LEGISLATION FOR THE PRESIDENT AND REPUBLICANS ARE SALIVATING BECAUSE THEY THINK IF THE COURT NEGATES IT WILL SINK THE PRESIDENT AND HIS REELECTION LOST. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN!

I DO NOT CARE HOW YOU APPLY THE PRESSURE WHETHER IN WRITTEN WORD, CALLS TO THE SUPREME COURT AND ELSEWHERE OR GOING TO WASHINGTON TO PICKET WITH OUR GROUP BUT DO IT. YOU and YOUR CHILDREN'S LIVES DEPEND UPON IT. NOTHING SHORT OF LIVES ARE IN THE BALANCE!

WHY ANYONE ON PLANET EARTH WOULD OPPOSE SOMETHING THAT CAN AT LEAST HELP TO FIX OUR INSURANCE BLOATED HEATH CARE EMPLOYER-BASED INSANITY IS BEYOND ME. THERE ARE MASOCHISTS IN OUR MIDST WHO LOVE PAIN AND SADISTS WHO LOVE TO SEE IT INFLICTED ON OTHERS!

Not that Mad about Mad Men—Season Five: I LOVED Mad Men from the beginning. It was set in an era in which I worked for a large corporation and remember those times well. There was not a segment of Mad Men I missed. Just in case I had forgotten something I reviewed the prior episodes.

Having said that and respecting ALL the actors' craft (I love them all) the new episode left me cold. I simply do not know what it is trying to do. It seemed like it was a line up of great actors in search of a story. It was not coming through to me. Don Draper's hook up with his secretary left me head scratching. She is a younger woman who is so adept handling his children but clueless about the private nature of the man and throws him a surprise 40th birthday party -- oh yes we all love those turning of decades celebrations so much -- dances seductively in front of his co-workers in their own home and she thinks he will be thrilled at that? It stumped me. It was good to see the inclusion of the black experience in America but the rest of it seemed pointless.

I am a faithful viewer so I will go on no matter what but from first view of this new season I wonder if the writers can ever duplicate that which it was before.

My Week with Marilyn -- A Film Review: Rented the Academy Award nominated film for best actress, "My Week with Marilyn" and since I lived during the Marilyn Monroe era but never knew this particular episode of her life it interested me. She was the film sensation of the 1950's and reflected much about the crushing superficiality of that time. As a child I could not appreciate her artistry because I WAS a child and because she was used mercilessly by Hollywood and the public who sold her as a piece of ornament or satisfaction for the lust of men and as an object of envy of women for Hollywood to make a buck. She was, in the final analysis, only human; the product of her childhood which was empty of love and absent parental care.

Looking as an adult at the artistry of Marilyn Monroe I see something quite different and lament the fact, as I do about all film and theater genus who die before their time, that we are deprived from enjoying more of their excellence. Other films Marilyn made outside of the ones of fluff had substance. Her roles in "Niagara," "The Misfits" and "Some Like it Hot" reflected her once-in-a-lifetime talent.

I walk away from this non-fiction film sad because Marilyn Monroe WAS sad. She was intrinsically sad. I thought the film quite accurately showed that sadness. The role of Marilyn was played, I thought, as perfectly as it could by Michelle Williams. It is difficult to play larger-than-life figures.

Some of the other characters were to me forgettable because Marilyn absorbs one's attention whether in real life or fantasy like a sponge. Marilyn oozed beauty and vulnerability. It is only natural that men and some women too must have desired to rescue this damsel in distress. Alas, maturity tells us only we can be the rescuer of us.

There was no Oprah show then to show us how to overcome the impossible obstacles placed before us in life. I wonder what Marilyn would have been like if she could have experienced the social revolution of our time. We will never know. The child in Marilyn never got to become an adult and we as the adults never get to see her morph into one.

Of Supreme Importance: I happened to catch the news tonight. The Supreme Court is on the verge of a major decision on the president's Affordable Health Care Act. It looks like our obstructionist opposition is getting out to protest as they insultingly call it "Obamacare." They SHOULD have some company. There should be MANY Democrats and like minded people who realize the importance of the president's health care act. There SHOULD be MORE in number show up of those who SUPPORT the president as those who obstruct our president.

This bill WILL provide needed changes, bring down health care costs as stated by the CBO and ensure EVERYONE access to health care. Most especially it will mean that NO ONE, NO ONE be without health care again or kicked out because of preexisting conditions as minor as allergies. It WILL save lives.

We know the mean-spirited rancid nature of our opposition. We must NEVER let the forces of regression, racism and obstructionist interposition prevail nullifying that which we as a people so desperately need.

PLEASE tell those whom you may know to organize especially in Washington in front of the Supreme Court, to uphold our president's Affordable Health Care Act, hammered out tooth and nail over years. Pull people from ALL those who support the president's cause to STAND UP against these forces of Medieval torture. FIGHT BACK and show them there are MORE of us then there are of them!

Rejoice: The death of evil and the killing of the Anti-Semite murderer of Jews in France: Who takes pleasure in a death? When it is the killer of two Jewish children and their rabbi father in France I DO! The headline, although I have not read the entire story yet, made me cheer and I am NOT ashamed to say it. I have always said I am left of center in my political views BUT my eyes see what they see and it is because of what my eyes see I am a supporter of the Jewish people, in general the State of Israel and the west. I have to be. I see free states as opposed to religious fanatical tyrannies. Yes, there are fanatics everywhere BUT USUALLY orthodox and other religious Jews keep to themselves and do not export religion. Children, any children, everywhere hurt NO ONE.

I did wonder why it took so long for the French government to perfect the killing but I do not care because we do not know how difficult this was to do and how hard it must have been to make the innocent secure as they secure members of their own French force. The murderer was a mind saturated with violence and well armed to take down any Jew or any French authority walking.

I say KUDOS to the French government. There is one more dead anti-Semite. That is a good thing. In the Vichy years of the Nazi period they NEVER would have investigated the death of Jews but rather, France, replete with anti-Semitism, contributed to it. THINGS change. They better well have changed. NO ONE anymore can wage war on Jews and think Jews will not fight back. If the French did not get him the Israelis probably would have.

The Holocaust has taught Jews everywhere we need to know about who cares about Jews. Jews do and some righteous others who see the longest hatred for what it is. The anti-Semitism that was centuries old in Europe can be seen now as its baton has been passed all over the Middle East.

The Jewish people LIVE and will NEVER submit EVER again to the disgusting anti-Semitism that was rife in France and ALL of Europe for centuries. The death of the murderous anti-Semite does not bring back the dead children and their father BUT they killed evil today in France and I am rejoicing!

Crooked: If you read nothing else read Matt Taibbi's "Too Crooked to Fail" which appeared in Rolling Stone. It will tell you in language anyone can understand (including me who is math challenged to put it mildly.) It is funny, it is brilliant and written so you are guaranteed to laugh before you cry knowing EXACTLY what the Great Mortgage Fraud of 2007 was and its attendant Great Global Recession. Click here if you want to read the most entertaining rendition of an economic swindle you will ever read about this usually arid dry subject. If you cannot click on that I post the link below. 1000 pardons if I sent this before. I may have since it has taken me quite some time to direct my efforts!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314

The Eternal Jewish Constant: The very disturbing news story out of France is chilling. I post it here and below. An attack by a Neanderthal in black clothing on a motorcycle killed THREE Jewish children including a three year old at a school. It is sickening as an attack on anyone's child would be.

Because this dastardly act took place in France it seems remote but to me NOTHING is remote when it comes to attacks anywhere upon the Jewish people as the Holocaust history of the six million dead Jews of Europe proves.

I hope warnings go out to all Jewish schools and preschools in this state and even around the nation that they must always be vigilant and take necessary precautions against defilement or violence. Sometimes, though, especially in this country where the Jewish people feel relatively safe from the Jewish experience in Europe, we could let down our guard. We should not. We should treat every act of anti-Semitism anywhere in the world as if it were perpetrated on a house or in the town next door!


http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/19/world/europe/france-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

AARP Betrayal the TREASON of this century: I posted late last evening and did not do the best job of explaining what AARP may be doing surreptitiously to get cuts in Medicare and Social Security for their OWN greedy vile purposes so here is the link to the Huff Post story: See Here or go to:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/17/social-security-advocates-aarp_n_1355477.html#postComment

Let them KNOW you are on to them and let your Congresspersons know you are AGAINST Social Security and Medicare CUTS.

They do NOT need to be cut IF the 1% pay their fair share in their taxes they would not even feel. They are GREED personified. Social Security is solvent until 2037 and need NEVER be insolvent if our tax structure was equitable.

When I go into doctor's offices now I cannot BELIEVE all the seniors I see and incredulously to me am considered nearly one of them now. ALL those people or
most of them are being kept alive because they have Medicare. The conservative swine want to get rid of Medicare and replace it with vouchers you would have to buy from private insurance costing us exorbitant unfordable rates. As it is one must supplement Medicare anyway as it does not pay for everything as, of course it should! DO NOT LET THEM CUT MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY. Conservatives with their opposition to the president's Affordable Health Care Act spew utter LIES saying it would "kill granny" with death panels. If you really want to kill granny see how fast she dies with no Medicare.

Remember the 2000 campaign of the great Al Gore and his LOCK BOX for Social Security? Well, monies for Social Security and Medicare SHOULD be in there. Lock it in and throw away the key!!

AARP and Medicare Betrayal: Just posted on Facebook AARP: See link here for the story of AARP's POSSIBLE BETRAYAL: LISTEN UP AARP.. and those looking at this wall KNOW what AARP is trying to do. The AARP CEO's probably are a part of the 1% and they are betraying the very membership they are SUPPOSED to be about -- Seniors. They are behind the scenes advocating for cuts to Medicare and Social Security so the Congress won't take it out of the hide of the 1% wealthiest by taxing them like they SHOULD be taxed and save Social Security and Medicare. These are LIFEBLOOD safety nets. MILLIONS are alive today because of them. AARP, listen up and listen good ...when the 99% rise up we get what we want..we did in the Komens sickening plot to take down Planned Parenthood and we are getting somewhere with the 99% movement AND now we will take on AARP.

I will give up my AARP membership faster than I swat a mosquito if they aid in cutting Medicare and Social Security. They are greedy betrayers of those they are supposed to serve. TELL THEM DO NOT CUT MEDICARE AND SOCIAL SECURITY. There is NO NEED to. Seniors, GET READY TO SCREAM LOUD AND CLEAR. WE will CUT AARP membership in an INSTANT and get ready to join that which takes the place of this rotten to the core organization who is BETRAYING YOU!

Tell AARP you are mad as hell and you won't take it. Hit them in THEIR pocketbook before they try to take away your life.

A Letter to Bill O'Reilly--A response to something he blathered: Since when is the EXTREMIST right who watch Fox News AND you, Mr. O'Reilly, such democratic rational humanitarians?

No matter how you minimize MSNBC's impact and you spin whatever numbers you like it does not matter since no one questions you and those who do turn you off because they know they get nothing but lies and the spin of them.

MSNBC and Current too are the most excellent network commentary on the planet and whose broadcasters are unbelievably BRILLIANT.

Here is my day: Dylan Ratigan, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, the GREAT Rachel Maddow, and the WONDERFUL Larry O'Donnell are a must. I tape them all and watch two on Current TV -- Cenk Uygar The Young Turks and OF COURSE Keith Olbermann. On the weekend I watch UP with Chris Hayes -- a genius and after him Melissa Harris Perry -- brilliant and beautiful. Her verbiage is as wonderful as she is gorgeous!

For comedy its John Stewart. If I had 1/2 of the intellect of all of those commentators I would be a genius! I have one feeling when I watch them -- ENVY. I WISH I could be as intellectually astute as they. Even their fill-ins like Ezra Kline is cerebral dynamite.

You, Bill O'Reilly and your fellow right wing extremist commentators are nothing in comparison to them. What MSNBC and Current commentators have in their proverbial little finger you do not have, yes, you guessed, in your entire body. You only WISH you did. What the heck you take the money from Fox and live like a king; the same as those for whom you advocate.

At LEAST those on MSNBC are on the side of the 99% and guess what? The election is going to be decided right there. I cannot WAIT for November. Despite Fox's financial gargantuan status, despite your mouth dripping with your millions, despite the king of Citizen's United Mitt Romney and despite those racists who hate Obama NOT because of what he is about but because of an ethic status he had no hand in creating, HE will be reelected and you know it since the Republican field is an embarrassing Ringling Brothers circus. You and your alleged minions -- those lovely rational people whose spokesman you allegedly are -- will either get on board our train or be left in the dust! Your majority is slipping fast and you know it which is why, sir, you are the vitriolic blatherer you are!

For your Reading Pleasure: Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has written a very engaging article. I suspect PERHAPS someone at BOA has read it. I put the link for your review: It's called: Bank of America Too Crooked to Fail

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/bank-of-america-too-crooked-to-fail-20120314

Lovely story about the most damaging, corrupt, sickening, disgusting corporate behavior in the history of planet earth. Not only according to this article, in my opinion, are they a traitor to their own clients like a doctor subverting his own patient giving him a false well diagnosis when the patient has cancer BUT they are a traitor to the nation that gave them life. Throw in this bag ALL the politicians in Washington Republican and Democrat alike who have given them the green light as long as I am sure they STUFFED their coffers. Cute of BOA to put toxic instruments
in a small corner, blow them up, if they fail make oodles of cash from the FDIC insurance which WE the taxpayers give them or secure low interest loans at the bargain basement window no one else has access to and leave their clients in the street. SHAME on them. Didn't their mothers teach them ethics?

BOA should CLEAN UP THEIR ACT before they make Occupy Wall Street angrier than it already is. They and all their compatriots like Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and other Wall Street banksters nearly took the global economy down while they ate ALL the money we and their clients had to offer them when they fail. One would THINK it would make them nauseated to be SO stuffed. Well I can tell you it makes ME nauseated since its my and all taxpayers' money! For an interesting paragraph in the article that particularly grabbed me look below:

Anyone who wants to know what the Occupy Wall Street protests are all about need only look at the way Bank of America does business. It comes down to this: These guys are some of the very biggest #$%^ on Earth. They lie, cheat and steal as reflexively as addicts, they laugh at people who are suffering and don't have money, they pay themselves huge salaries with money stolen from old people and taxpayers – and on top of it all, they completely suck at banking. And yet the state won't let them go out of business, no matter how much they deserve it, and it won't slap them in jail, no matter what crimes they commit. That makes them not bankers or capitalists, but a class of person that was never supposed to exist in America: royalty.

Self-appointed royalty, it's true – but just as dumb and inbred as the real thing, and every bit as expensive to support. Like all royals, they reached their position in society by being relentlessly dedicated to the cause of Bigness, Unaccountability and the Worthlessness of Others. And just like royals, they spend most of their lives getting deeper in debt, and laughing every year when our taxes go to covering their whist markers. Two and a half centuries after we kicked out the British, it's really come to this?

I continue to believe what MLK said: The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice. I surely HOPE he was right.

The prospect of an even more right wing Republican choice-Please read. A stream of consciousness: Santorum the rightwingnut extremist won both Mississippi AND Alabama in the Republican primaries. You heard the audience at the Republican debates. They would rather a person with no health insurance who is ill die on the street than provide help. We are the ONLY first world nation that has a significant part of the population who believes that and where now before the president's health care legislation kicks in, 25,000,000 have no health insurance. Religion, our Founders specifically did NOT want to mix with the state, WILL. That is what you will get IF that rancid Republican Party nominates an even more-extremist-than-Romney candidate. I cannot imagine that but it’s true. The only thing more right wing would be The John Birch Society (they are in the mix of Republicans too), the KKK, or the American Nazi White Nationalist parties and do not kid yourself some are probably in the Republican Party today as well. The old establishment Republican party is nearly dead or on life support.

So what does that mean for us? There is NO question for us. If you thought you might not vote THINK AGAIN. Elections matter. I do not care what your criticism of Democrats has been. It is a FAR FAR better more humane party than the horrific opposition. On paper it SEEMS President Obama would have an easier time with a Santorum-like candidate and Romney still cannot be counted out BUT and it's a HUGE BUT we CANNOT, MUST NOT, take ANYTHING for granted. We must get out the vote as if our very lives depend upon it because they do. Your children's life and their children’s lives depend upon our president winning this reelection. It is a deadly serious serious matter. Not only is Republican White Land racist beyond belief they are war like beyond belief and the environment will cease to exist as well so our planet will die a slow death and so will we. They will ensure America continue on a war-like footing, partner with big corporate money (like the Nazi state did) and create a real oligarchy and a war with Iran which COULD -- I say COULD -- mean WWIII and a draft of your kids. I do not think I am being a fear monger.

The Republican Party is the most dangerous party since the Civil War. They are NOTHING I repeat NOTHING like the party of Lincoln. They are the party of the Dixicrats of old which did everything they could to deny black people equal rights. If the hard work of Dr. King and others who followed were not part of our country's history there would STILL be segregation in the south and elsewhere.

So what does that mean for the other half -- us? We MUST take this election dead seriously. We MUST MUST get out the Democratic and Independent leaning Democratic (which is a huge number) out to vote. That is how our president wins. Some sickening voter ID back-to-Jim-Crow legislation that REPUBLICAN state legislators put in has been stopped by the courts hopefully into November BUT we do not know for how long and how many will not be stopped. The Justice Department is working on it. STILL WE CAN DO SOMETHING about this DISGUSTING voter ID legislation which is geared for nothing but to stop minorities, the elderly and the disabled (eligible to vote) not to vote. We can ensure Democrats and others who care about the trajectory of this nation MAKE SURE THOSE WHO NEED AN ID GET ONE and head this criminal Republican Party off at the pass. BEAT them at their own game and CRUSH them in November. I do not care if you have to walk, email, snail mail, telephone or smoke signal the vote for the president MUST prevail. Gain your enthusiasm. Erase the 2010 horrific Republican obstructionist election and re-elect the president, give him a Democratic House and keep the Senate in Democratic hands. IF YOU CAN support monetarily the re-election of the president campaign OR give to the national Democratic Party link: http://www.democrats.org/splash/sotu-nation-is-great

Think of it this way. IF the rancid racists make it in November, I will be going to the North Pole or worse. PLEASE tell EVERYONE you know to work for the president and Democrats in November and most importantly get people who would vote for the president the proper ID one needs to vote (each state is different.) NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER GIVE IN. Your life depends upon it and so does mine!

Eternal War and other things: Since I purchased Tom Engelhardt's book "The Amercan Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" I have been receiving TomDisptach which is a well written blog of many different authors who write things about our nation's eternal wars, energy gluttonous activity, greed, the ultimate end of oil and many other realities of which one who has a vested interest in this nation should be aware.

It is an excellent web site if you are interested in these vital issues for you, your children if you have them and your children's children. The post of his web site is TomDispatch.com. The articles which were sent to me are below. Do NOT be a member of the mindless know nothings many in our culture who remain ignorant of national policy are. They are condemning this nation and your children to eternal war and to a possible early death as we drink the world's oil like a chocolate soda thinking there is an endless supply. There isn't.

Wikipedia gives a brief biographical sketch of Tom Englehardt:

Tom Engelhardt is the creator of the Nation Institute's tomdispatch.com, an online blog. He is also the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of the 1998 book, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation.

Tom Engelhardt graduated from Yale University and obtained a Master's Degree in Asian Studies from Harvard University where he was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars. He has written numerous articles and several books including The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's (Haymarket Books).

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Why High Gas Prices Are Here to Stay
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: TD has an offer today that shouldn’t be missed. The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, the new book of one of this site’s most popular regular contributors, Michael Klare, has just been published. Once again, on issues that couldn’t be more crucial to us (and to the planet), he is -- as has been true ever since he pioneered the concept of “resource wars” in the 1990s -- ahead of the curve.

Think about this for a second and if it doesn’t stagger you, I don’t know what to say: the U.S. military consumes as much oil every day as the entire nation of Sweden.

Or take a guess on this question of the week: How much did it cost Mobil and its partners to build the world’s largest oil-drilling platform, a 1.2 million-ton monster that sits in 300 feet of water in “Iceberg Alley” in the Canadian North Atlantic and is armored with 16 protective “teeth” designed to absorb the impact of those approaching bergs? The answer: $5 billion for the Hibernia platform, which is now producing 135,000 barrels of deep sea oil per day.

If you wanted, you could spend your time turning Michael Klare’s new book, The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, into an energy and resources version of Believe It Or Not that would stagger your friends. Klare has a way of landing us on a strange new planet called Earth, one stripped to its disappearing resources and filled with insatiable greed. It’s always a bracing experience, even when, as he assures us in his new book, the rush to the planet’s Iceberg Alleys to provide energy for the U.S. military and the rest of us fuel guzzlers may be the last "race" of its kind we are likely to undertake. Tom

A Tough-Oil World
Why Twenty-First Century Oil Will Break the Bank -- and the Planet
By Michael T. Klare

Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been -- except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to block oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, fears of a new Middle Eastern war, and turmoil in energy-rich Nigeria. Some of these pressures could ease in the months ahead, providing temporary relief at the gas pump. But the principal cause of higher prices -- a fundamental shift in the structure of the oil industry -- cannot be reversed, and so oil prices are destined to remain high for a long time to come.

In energy terms, we are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped. This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum -- “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.


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"Game Change," the HBO docudrama about the 2008 McCain/Palin presidential campaign, was excellent. The acting, in my opinion, was flawless. Since I am a political junkie and followed the McCain and Obama campaigns closely nothing that was illuminated came as a surprise to me BUT to see it played out gave a dimension that I never could have gotten unless I was closely working within the campaign, in this case, on the Republican side (a highly unlikely prospect.)

The production brought life to all the pages and pages of newspaper and other descriptions of the McCain campaign's minutiae I have read. At times I forgot that Julianne Moore was acting the part of Palin, the intellectually incompetent, inexperienced, grossly unqualified vice-presidential pick one heart-beat-away from an older medically compromised McCain. Moore brought much realism to the part. The same can be said for Ed Harris as John McCain and Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt, McCain’s campaign manager. All actors were brilliant.

For me, an ardent Democrat, it simply illuminates why I am one and how grateful I am that Obama won the 2008 campaign. It also illuminates why elections matter. What pabulum is fed to the media who feeds it to us is NOT, in truth, necessarily what happens behind the political scenes and the lack of veracity about it makes it all the more important to choose wisely those who would determine your life and death fate. Yes, elections matter but a sharp intellect of those who seek the high echelons of power through those elections, perhaps, matters even more!

Fukushima in Retrospect: The year anniversary of the devastating tsunami in Japan has arrived and it is no cause for celebration. Looking at my posts when the tsunami disaster and the Fukushima nuclear power explosions were occurring, I most humbly say, I was spot on correct. I STILL believe the information, horrific and apocalyptic, is mostly not being conveyed to an ignorant world. The amount of radiation leakage and its effects I believe are hidden and are STILL a significant reality.

It will take years to know the increase in cancer rate deaths of tech workers and cleanup personnel. Some believe it could be significant. Much of Japan's food supply and plant life is contaminated. It is a waiting game to see its conclusive effects over time. The larger question is how will it affect all of us? The power of government and the news media reveal little about it now. There is food contamination found even in Washington State and in California. Foods shipped east and winds which transport contamination particles from deadly Cesium and other lethal elements make it a factor. How much of a danger it poses to us in the long run no one yet knows. My personal opinion is it poses a consequential threat but because cancer takes so long to develop we may never know its direct correlation. My hunch will always say it is a direct one.

Since the American memory and attention span is measured in minutes, the story goes mostly unnoticed and under-reported. Even tsunami debris is from Japan washing up on our shores and more will. Heads here, as usual, are in the sand as attention MUST be but never is paid for more than a 48 hour news cycle -- and that's being generous. The fate of the nuclear power industry is at stake. Money in this country and the politics that are appended to it are all too often in our Citizens United culture the reason information is squashed.

I post a link to the MSNBC article here. I suggest reading it and demand that the nuclear power plants we do have are inspected, brought up to date and the ones we are thinking of building never are. The cumulative effects of radiation are known. The hour of nuclear madness has arrived and did so with the first explosion of a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima/Nagasaki in August, 1945. No amount of radiation is safe as the great Helen Caldicott stated. I quote from an article about her below and which in its entirety can be found here.

Helen Caldicott, the Australia-born American physician and anti-nuclear activist of the late 1970s and early 1980s, was a practitioner of pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston, U.S. A leading critic of nuclear technology and armament industries, she tried to raise the world's conscience through her almost solitary protest writings and TV and radio appearances against the dangers of nuclear technology for the environment. In the light of Fukushima (2011), Chernobyl (1986) and Three Mile Island (1979) nuclear accidents (all of which happened after 1978) and the great concern they generated in the world during the last four decades, Caldicott’s 1978 book Nuclear Madness assumes prophetic significance.

Enlightened Faith: On March 2, 2012 the Metro West Daily News printed an article entitled “Islamic Center in Wayland hosted talk on Founding Fathers.” It discussed the lecture given by Rev. Gary Kowalski, a graduate of Harvard College, the Harvard Divinity School and minister at the First Parish Church in Sudbury. I attended that discussion.

Rev. Kowalski gave an extraordinarily informative and riveting lecture on the connection between our Founding Fathers, their acceptance (or rejection) of faith and its place within the founding constitutional document of the American republic. He understood the historical etiology of the Founders’ experience and its relation to the constitutionally-constructed mandate of the church/state separation clause. He did not say that the Founders had no religion but he DID say that the Founders’ religion was a personal one wrapped in the cocoon of self separate from the political sphere except that the state could not interfere with any man’s freedom to believe (or not) as he chooses. That foundational edict is significantly different from government requiring specific religious mandates to which every person must subscribe.

The Founders, as he said and I know, were men of the Enlightenment who, while not eschewing the belief in a supreme Creator, wrapped that religious belief in their own sphere which was NOT a part of the larger governing body politic. Some Founders had religious doubts, some were not Christian, some were Deists, some loved science and were uncannily prescient about it. Most knew the lethal difficulty religious belief presented to a nation that fused it with the state. They saw and understood the wars it engendered in the European experience the embers of which branded fear and scars upon their consciousness. There would be in our nation’s founding document NO religious litmus test for citizenship or for the acquiescence of power.

Our Founders, I believe, would wax aghast at the religious nearly Puritanical irrational frenzy creating a new Scarlet Letter for those, in present time, who do not subscribe to one particular faith. The Republican Party has now become, to the detriment of this nation which usually rejects extremism, a party constructed mainly of right wing extremists where religious subscription, particularly Christian, is mandatory doctrine for entrance into this political club. Our Founders did not mean this to be so. Many would be dismayed at how anti-science, anti intellectual and supremely ruinous the country has become because of issues of faith. They would, though, not be surprised at the toxicity religious belief can engender and knew the discord it could sow.

Religion, uncompromising and extreme, is destroying the very fabric of church/state separation from which this nation was stitched. Rev. Kowalski's book is a scholarly examination of the nature of what our Founders believed and what they envisioned for a new nation. Our Founders did not want to pound religious doctrinal faith into the republic’s sinew but to extricate religious doctrine from the marrow of its governing bones. Rev. Kowolski’s book Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America's Founding Fathers is an excellent read.

Why Primary Voting Matters:

Ohio primary results: This is why it mattered if Democrats voted in the primary. Can you imagine? The president in the all important Ohio running with NO opposition in a primary garnered more votes than any Republican. May this continue!! Keep urging your fellow Democrats and anyone else in other states to get out to vote in the primary despite the president being unopposed. ;-)


Barack Obama 547,588 votes

Mitt Romney 456,513 37.9%
Rick Santorum 446,225 37.1%
Newt Gingrich 175,554 14.6%
Ron Paul 111,238 9.2%

Robotic Romney -- Liar-In-Chief: Well I predicted a slight error. I thought Santorum at the end would squeak out an Ohio win BUT I was not wrong by much. Santorum may as well have won as Romney wins Ohio by 1% point. This was a state he was predicted to take significantly. He has HUGE problems now that it was a squeaker win for him. Okay, good let's see him work for it.

My God, America, what Obama has in his small pinkie finger the robo candidate Romney does not have in his entire body. He is a DISGUSTING candidate, -- utterly AWFUL, robotic and the worst of the liars on the Republican slate bar none and THAT is going some. He lies despite having TAPE -- TAPE I say -- showing otherwise for the health care mandate, he was ALL for it and for it federally as well. The tapes are there, the evidence is there. He would be a candidate for LIAR-IN-CHIEF! UGH. A worse Republican field I have never in my decades of life seen. Simply horrible! It COULD -- I say could -- be a brokered convention. I don't think so but it's possible.

As Obama/Biden email sent to me (and probably to you too but it's worth repeating:

We now know for certain that, no matter who the Republican nominee is, we're not only up against the same economic policies that helped create the worst economic crisis in our lifetime.

We're also up against a set of rigid social policies that would take us back almost a century.

What we've seen over the past few days is nothing short of terrifying. We're facing an all-out-attack on women's health care, and now is the time to pitch in and fight it!

The leading Republican candidates for president embraced a bill that would allow any employer to deny any employee coverage for contraception -- or any other medical service they personally object to.

And when one young woman spoke up about that bill's very real health risks, she was crudely and viciously attacked by their allies. Not a single one of the leading Republican candidates stood up for her.

There are 450 other state bills where this one came from.

This issue isn't going anywhere.

So if you want to make sure our next president isn't someone who wants to take us back to the Dark Ages and actually thinks a woman's access to health care is debatable, then it's time to take action and help build the campaign that's fighting back.

Obama 2012, Democratic House, and Democratic hold the Senate!

Rush Away from Rush: Here are companies with a conscience. They have suspended their advertising with Clear Channel's Rush Limbaugh. They are:

Quicken Loans, Pro Flowers, Carbonite, Citrix, Go To Meeting, Legal Zoom, Sleep Number and Sleep Train.

If you need anything that these companies have to offer DO buy from them. There may be others which boycott the gas bag and if so add them to this list. To the contrary, companies which do not care and decide to stick with this immoral piece of trash then pull your patronage from them.

We hit where it hurts. MONEY is Limbaugh's Kryptonite. Hit him and hit him hard. Show no mercy as he would show none to you. It is a miracle he even made his limp apology to Ms. Fluke. To quote a Yiddish word: Ms. Fluke is a MENCH i.e. a good person; Limbaugh is NOT!

To my Jewish Compatriots--Escape from Hasidism: Here is a link to an article from Salon.com below. It is about a formerly Hasidic ultra orthodox woman who escaped the tyranny of the Satmar Hasidic sect. She wrote a book entitled: Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots.

It is an excellent article. Perhaps when I have time I will read the book. As I have said frequently I do not criticize religion. Believe what you want. I DO, though, criticize ALL religion that is fundamentalist and extreme whose rules are made by men, for men and are about men even if those rules mean the subjugation, submission and brutality of women which even some women within the sect tolerate simply to get along.

It is shameful no matter what it is Hasidic Judaism, wingnut Protestant Fundamentalism or Islamic Fundamentalist. It is all bad and in many cases means the mental crushing of women if not in body then certainly in spirit.

Impeach Chief Federal Judge Richard Cebull: Richard Cebull is Chief Justice of the United States District Court for the 9th District of Montana. Last week he sent an email to several of his friends that was so racially disgusting and so inappropriately injudicious for a sitting Chief Justice to even think of sending it boggles the mind. It went viral on the Internet as one might expect. I refuse to print the contents of the email in my opinion piece because it is so offensive to me. If one wants to see what he said simply search for his name and the racially disparaging email he sent to his buddies about our president and the president’s mother. You will, of course, easily find it.

I first heard it on the constant stream of news I have on during the day. I was so infuriated that I called the Montana 9th District Court where he sits. I was unable to get through as I am sure others felt as passionate as I. However, I got through to another justice and left my opinion with his secretary to convey to Chief Justice Cebull.

The email Justice Cebull sent was so loathsome it calls into question his ability to serve on the court with temperate equanimity and fairness. He has written an apology to the president but, in my opinion, his apology is not enough. It rings hollow. Chief Justice Cebull of the United States District Court of the 9th District of Montana should resign or face impeachment, conviction and removal from this federal court. What he did was unbecoming of a Chief Justice of the US Federal District Court, unforgivable and worse dangerous because it feeds into the racist disgusting politics of the Republican Party and its Tea Party appendage. Our president must be saddened to hear the vitriol and racist comments, as he yet again receives another. He has received more racially tinged caustic and threatening remarks than any other sitting president in the nation's history.

This judge contributed to this verbal violence against our president as if he committed an act of violence against the president himself. No forgiveness is possible and no apology is sufficient. The Chief Justice should be impeached and made an example of what will happen IF you do not watch what threatening racist comments you say to a sitting president especially if you hold high office. Attack the president politically fine, for policy issues sure, BUT NOT because of his race. It is dangerous , demeaning, insulting and unconscionable. I hold these Republican men of power accountable for the compromise their words pose to national security. The words are an act of terrorism, unforgivable, and unbecoming a United States District Court chief justice or any justice. Chief Justice Cebull should be punished by the loss of his prestigious position because of them!

Dialing for Dollars: A phone scam perpetrated on our troops by BBG Communications is SICKENING. BOYCOTT BBG Communications. DO NOT USE THEM. Use anything but them. They tell NBC Today show that they are not responsible for the humongous fees for 2 minutes of calling time they charge our troops to call home and tell them that a German company is responsible. Another corrupt corporation passing the buck yet again. Just what we who think corporations are often SICKENING making big bucks off war. This is yet another example. Maybe they will think twice about their unconscionable practices when we ALL boycott them. USE anything else but BBG Communications.

These companies are IMMORAL UNETHICAL snakes who would steal their mother's eyeballs for a buck. BE VIGILANT. Do NOT let them do this to our troops and hit them where they feel it the most in their bank accounts!

Destroyer of Worlds: In response to the headline "Senators Offer License To Strike Iran Nuclear Program" story here: I Quote from Robert Oppenheimer physicist and director of the Manhattan Project which developed the first nuclear bomb for the US and used it on Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 1945. He said:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita... "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

Republican Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: The Republican PRIMARIES continue even after Romney's win yesterday. The Republicans will still be at each other's throats. It is indeed a long way between now and November. The president delivered a speech yesterday that was reminiscent of the power that he showed in 2008 and why many of us were smitten by his charismatic aura. I am STILL smitten when I hear him speak like that. I wish in 2010 he sold most especially his health care act to a nation that was staggered by the Bush bail outs of too-big-to-fail banks and to our devastating detriment colored the map red everywhere, took their racist anger out on President Obama, stepped on their own toes and voted in the most obstructive Congress and state governments since the Civil War.

I am writing this while Romney is in the limelight. It cannot be overstated how unappealing he is. We MUST NOT and CANNOT take anything for granted. I do not care what anyone's reservations may be about the president. One must keep in mind that Republicans are banking (pardon the pun) on the fact that the ones who vote for them will not think through what they do. They will not remember it was the Republican politics over decades of do nothing government which wants one to sink or swim and live or die on their own in an anything goes Wall Street of unregulated economic fraud gone wild that nearly killed this nation and the world.

If they had had their way in 1932 Franklin Roosevelt would not have been elected and Republican Hoover politics would have prevailed. That would mean that you, your parents, your children and their children never would have had Social Security, Medicare nor other safety net programs that grew out of it. THINK and tell your friends who have a thought to vote Republican, what kind of life the elderly, the sick, the poor and the disabled without Social Security, Medicare, etc. would have now. Most would be dead well before their time and it could happen to you.

Those programs arose because there was a desperate need of a population that was crushed by a Depression so deep no capitalist, no banker, no megga rich could extricate this country from that black hole. FAST FORWARD to present time. Things are not that different. Barack Obama does not want human beings to live or die on their own because of forces that are beyond any one person’s control. THIS is what we risk by those who think voting Republican is a good idea. Those programs protect EVERYONE because NO ONE is immune from economic whims and the difficulties of life.

NO, Republicans are wolves in sheep's clothing RUDELY calling our president a snob because he wants others to have an educated chance at life. A Republican insulted a beloved assassinated president Kennedy, an ardent Catholic, who, as our Founders did, wanted religion OUT of the state. It is why they inserted the separation clause. Religion woven into the state kills and most especially this country's brand of southern Baptist fundamentalist insanity not only kills but does so especially by killing people of color submerged once again to a white tyranny so vile and so evil their efforts could be met with oppositional violence yet again.

All Republicans who are vying for the presidency want to dismember those programs that keep people alive. They will NOT tell you that but that is what they are about. And it is NO accident that the supporters behind them at the podium are almost entirely white. They want this black man out of the presidency no matter how they decimate American society to do it. It is why the opposition to him was so virulent. It was hijacked by an entire party which was appealing to that mantra over decades.

Romney, if elected, will change permanently the nature of the Supreme Court as well, the nature of Social Security and Medicare and will yet again make it possible for insurance companies to NOT cover you if you have a preexisting condition. This is deadly for all of us. Their foreign policy, too, will be even MORE bellicose based on lies than it had been under Bush. Our president is trying to carefully manage policies he inherited geared to the most explosive neighborhood on the map -- the Middle East.

Our president in his DNA wants to insert institutional change so that what happened to us in 2008 does not have short memory and wants also NO repeat of September 11. We MUST remember who the culprits were that brought us those devastating events -- the oligarchy of too-big-to-fail banks, the real estate market fraud and the rating agencies who threw our nation into the Greatest Recession which almost led to a second Great Depression and a Bush floundering administration that before September 11 IGNORED the warnings on a President Bush's desk telling him of an imminent bin Laden attack. Bush went fishing!

Go out and organize but most of all VOTE. Vote for our president and vote Democratic because we ARE our brother's keeper. Be a part of the Obama miracle again. The cause is the same except because of him our country is coming back and bin Laden is dead! Nothing less than your life and those lives you hold dear are in the balance.

NEVER give up, do NOT be duped, vote for the reelection of the president and spread the word to all you know and tell them what is at stake.

Oil Speculation--Treason by Any Other Name: Headline in McClatchy News: "Federal judge weighs whether to let regulators rein in oil speculators." The story is here.

I have been thinking about this since pumping my gasoline has become pecuniary torture. I'd rather be water boarded. The price at the pump is obviously staggering. The answer to the judge's contemplation as to whether oil speculation should be regulated is a resounding YES. It should be heavily regulated if not OUTLAWED entirely.

Any product which is the life blood of a nation and even the world should NOT be played with like a child's toy for personal riches. Oil (until we dump it as a source for energy) is necessary for life. It is, in truth, more important than any other object of speculation. Oil gives one the ability to conduct one's life, to move, to have health care, and to have goods transported. Everything on planet earth that man depends on depends on for its transmission oil. The heat that heats our homes depends upon oil as does our food, clothing and shelter. The necessities of life depend upon oil.

Speculators -- like the Koch Brothers -- on the oil market drive up prices and play with it to the detriment of everyone else except the corporate speculators of this life blood. They become millionaires and billionaires. Economies rise and fall on the price of oil. People live or die because of the price of oil. The fact that Republicans in particular think that they can defeat this president by making it a torturous experience for Americans to fill up their tank is unconscionable. That this judge, nominated by this president, has to think twice about implementing what is already in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 passed by Congress is unimaginable.

Anything that has influence over whether a culture or a nation lives or dies should NOT be the subject of Wall Street speculation. Treason by any other name is still treason!

A Different Spin of the Record "Bomb Iran": Wikileaks emails indicate Stratfor, a global intelligence company, allegedly discovered Israel already destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities described here puts a different spin on bombing Iran doesn't it? Why would it not surprise me that Israel already acted and did so covertly so much so that it did not cross the radar screen of most? It is amazing if true. I'll give kudos to the Jewish state. I LOVE it when Jews thumb their nose at the world and say Jews will take care of Jewish problems. In the final analysis they know from a 20th century perspective which presented the ultimate existential challenge and near elimination of them that showed they can depend on no one but themselves for protection.

Israelis are smart and utterly capable. Yes, I am a pro Israel lefty because I believe the proof before my eyes of cultures that are progressive. As a Jewish woman raised in a Jewish household I never felt women's power compromised. It simply was that my mother ruled the roost -- GOOD. In Israel they make better use of the entirety of their population and women make up at least 1/2 of it.

The Islamic world had better measure up and fast because no matter how much they scream "death to America and death to Israel" they will not prevail. I know where I as a woman would choose to live. My love for Israel is second only to my love for my own country, the US, because my eyes see what they see and what I see in Israel OR the US for a woman and for other minority groups is significantly more advanced, more progressive, less religiously ideological and, in my mind, that means I am able to make a qualitative assessment and that is that those cultures are a better place in which to live!

Life’s Lottery—The Good Fortune and Opinion of the Oscars: The Day after the night of Oscars many wax critical of the yearly extravaganza. We cannot believe we stayed up for it and need a pot of coffee to overcome our sleep deprivation from it. Much that follows are the superficial criticisms – laughter at the flops, scorn at or admiration of someone’s body/dress, anger at the unnecessary waste of time, and disappointment with some who won it. Later, we walk out our door and forget most of it until it appears on our TV screen once again next year.

In what room, though, in our cerebral hemisphere does criticism of The Oscars sit? Maybe it sits in the hall of envy. Who would not envy the talent and plethora of good fortune that many in the Oscar audience enjoy? Most are multi millionaires who win life’s lottery of a nomination and an even more selected few win the film's highest award itself. It translates into their ode to immortality and phenomenal fortune. Life is, indeed, easier if one is as gifted and wealthy as they. The money made from those gifts makes the vicissitudes of life most of us encounter significantly easier to bear. When Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep’s fashion mogul character in the Devil Wears Prada) is asked by her lowly secretary: “What if I don’t want this? “Oh,” Miranda says, don’t be silly – EVERYONE wants this. Everyone wants to be us.” There is some truth to that.

In our era when so many are homeless, jobless and struggling those selected few in the Oscar audience can make one covetous of their good fortune. Some say it is a bell curve. Those on one side of that curve have little; there is a big middle of average where most of us sit, but the cream of the crop lives on a small part of that curve whose luck resides within the DNA of their talent and at the mercy of fate. Some draw life's short straw or have life or the politics of it hand them an Occupy Wall Street 99% rock and that can make one sad and jealous.

Congratulations to those who won. I thought most deserved it. I wish there were a double best actress award to present an Oscar to Viola Davis too for her poignant role in “The Help,” a film about the plight of domestic workers in the Jim Crow era of the south. The best picture film, The Artist, may be good even great but I wanted “The Help” to win. There are some in black studies who criticize that film. I do not. At least that rancid part of our nation's history commanded attention that time might dictate memory forgets. Like the Holocaust and the Jews of Europe, the American Holocaust against the black man, must never be forgotten. Anything we can do not to forget it is a good thing!

In the end though, I admit it. Yes, Miranda, I would like to be you!

Loving: If one wants to see how difficult it was in this nation which prided itself on its so called "freedom" for two people who loved each other -- one black and one white -- to marry one should view this excellent documentary on HBO about the 1967 Supreme Court landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia which overturned the miscegenation laws of this country. It is eye opening, emotionally poignant and true.

A simple thing like loving a person of another race and marrying them could be and was illegal in nearly all of the states in this nation in the 20th century. It was, indeed, a felony in many states in the south. It truly is shocking. Watch and see how far we have come but what an indelible stain on our national conscience the struggle of the Lovings was. They simply wanted to be left alone but could not be until 1967 when the Supreme Court of the United States in a unanimous decision reversed all the laws against miscegenation in the nation.

How sickening it is as Republicans today have organized a party of mainly whites who try to convince us of American exceptionalism. Perhaps, they mean exceptionally racist. Moreover, how comparable it is to homosexuals in this country who simply want to be able to do what is taken for granted by other citizens of this land and that is to marry. Loving v. Virginia established that marriage is a civil right and cannot be taken away because of race. Some day, I hope, laws against homosexual marriage will be overturned by the US Supreme Court. The selection of Supreme Court justices is one important reason why a Democrat must be kept in the presidency. This president, if re-elected, may have at least two Supreme Court picks which could turn a court with extremist rightwing political views into a decidedly more progressive and historic court bending the arc of freedom toward justice once again. I thirst for it.

We as a nation still have a long way to go in our struggle for civil rights. Click here to see the documentary on UTUBE or search on HBO TV for it. The documentary was shot often in black and white and is actual film footage during its occurrence in the late 50's, early 60's up to and including the Loving decision in 1967. It is very moving and ironic that the individuals bringing the case all the way to the US Supreme Court were, in Dickensian fashion, named Loving. They truly were just that.

Enlightened Facts: A Letter to Rev. Gary Kowalski*: I had the pleasure last evening of attending a lecture/discussion at the Islamic Center of Wayland featuring Unitarian Universalist Reverend Gary Kowalski. A short impressive biography of him can be found here. He spoke on his book entitled "Revolutionary Spirits: The Enlightened Faith of America's Founding Fathers." A poignant take-away from the lecture by me was the astounding intellect and prescience of our Founding Fathers. I knew they were smart, perhaps, very smart men but I did not know how extraordinarily smart men of phenomenal vision they, in fact, were.

They were men hewn out of the Enlightenment who put religious belief in the cocoon of one's personal sphere. That is they kept relgion from entanglement with the state since they knew the danger from Europe's many wars over it. That the Republican Party in particular, in our age at this time has sought to rope and hog tie one segment of a very gullible and ignorant part of our public is, to me, sad for all of us, indeed. It was, I believe, and as I think Rev. Kowalski believes too not our Founders' intent to use a religious litmus test, specifically a Christian litmus test, as a mandate for the presidency. I post my email to him below.

Dear Dr. Kowalski: I thoroughly enjoyed the lecture/discussion at the Islamic Center last evening. I searched your name on Amazon to see the other books you have written. There are, indeed, many. Of particular interest to me, as one who sees an oxymoron in the coupling of science and belief, is entitled Science and the Search for God. I personally am a fan of the Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" school of thought. I think religion -- all religion -- has no place in the company of science and vice versa. The more apt analogy to this is science is to god as climate change is to the devil. I hope I have the time to download your book as I have a pile of 1/2-read others I must finish.

There were many more things I would have loved to discuss with you. For example, what if the Founders could magically return to see the truths science has discovered i.e. all of the archeological, biological, understanding of physics, the mathematical determination of the age of our earth by radiological decay, bacteria's evolutionarily changing organisms confounding medicine's attempt in the use of antibiotics to cure infection, the archeological discoveries of ancient creatures whose age we are able to date and the germ understanding of disease. How would those truths have affected our Founders' thought? Would they have been more religious or less? Personally I think -- although I know this is conjecture and we cannot ever know -- most would be even less religious than most were.

Our knowledge of all scientific fact is not supposition or conjecture. Certain principles are rock solid fact the study of which has been duplicated by hundreds of scientists over time. If we prove something and then it is duplicated over and over and over again by scientists who all come to the same conclusion we fairly, I think, can see it as credible truth. Science is always, though, open to change if the evidence dictates but the emphasis is on evidence.

DNA is truth, evolution is truth, bacteria/viruses cause illness, the earth rotates around the sun, the age of the earth is 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old, the fact that the universe is much larger than we thought, etc. are indisputable basic truths of science. There is disagreement as to certain things within those truths but the basic truths we now know are indisputable fact.

There has been no one absolutely no one who has shown proof that a supreme being exists and all of the gobbledygook that goes along with the various belief systems is man-made myth. Nothing or very little whether in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or anything else is based on fact. There is little fact but some of it can show us how better to treat our fellow beings. The rest of it, in my opinion, is unproven nonsense. The fact that 1/2 of our political order in this country holds the Bible as truth and inerrant truth at that, is its own psychotic insanity out of touch with proven reality and makes the strict separation of church and state all the more imperative. We who love academic analysis, science and the progressive thought it advances are held hostage by those who regress our nation and who would catapult us into a new inhumane Dark Age.

I believe religion -- all religion -- kills more than it saves, retards man more than it advances him and is simply man's way of explaining easily that which he does not know and most of all that which he fears -- illness, death and loss. The many who gain prominence like the Billy/Franklin Grahams, Pat Robinsons, Jimmy Swaggarts of the world capitalize (emphasis on capital) on just those fears. It's a great gig if one can get it as religion makes them very very very rich! Just my opinion.

I LOVED the lecture/discussion and could have stayed another three hours! Thank you for an enjoyable evening.

*NB: List of Rev. Kowalski's books is here

Dozens killed in Iraq--This is what I mean (short opinion): Here is the link to the reporting above:

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/23/10483416-dozens-killed-as-at-least-14-bombs-rock-iraq-over-2-hour-period?threadId=3352871&commentId=62737004#c62737004

This is what I mean when I have discussed US foreign policy and why the "preemptive" Iraq War was SO disastrous: I quickly off the cuff posted the following opinion in part on an MSNBC blog:

Organized uncompromising and extreme religion kills. This is why the Iraq War and America for a host of irrational reasons -- including Neocon delusion -- inserting its footprint into Iraq to remove the dictator Hussein was the greatest most costly mistake in US history. THIS is the violence we have wrought. Religious fanaticism and intractability is often inbred in a culture and now violent upheaval is in nearly every Middle East state.

One cannot mold people into democracies which have immovable dissenting rigid uncompromising religious ideological disputes over centuries sometimes millenia. A dictator is needed at times to promote stability as much as I personally abhor that. Democracy is not for everyone. We have our own intractable Congress and to me a faction of Republicans sounds like the religious fanatics of the Middle East which will not compromise under any circumstance.

Not ONLY did the US destabilized Iraq it destabilized an entire region -- a tinderbox of horrific violence has followed in nearly every state with Pakistan in real time possessing 100 nukes. There are nukes in other nations in that neck of the woods as we know. All it takes is one flash point to insert the unspeakable outcome. If one wants to know what the explosion of a nuclear device looks like search Hiroshima on Utube for a rational view.

I know lets invade Iran to promote democracy -- NOT. Just what we need an insertion of more US forces in Iran twice the size of Iraq. Are they kidding us?? It is NUTS just plain NUTS.

How the FCC Can Take the Money Out of Politics by Professor Juan Cole. Juan Cole has yet again written what I think is a brilliant article on the insane money bought campaigns and the toxicity of the Citizen United decision. I post it here for your reading pleasure!

Worries: Lately I've been positive about our President’s re-election because the Republican slate is SO severely (to use Romney’s own word) awful and even hilarious. They are better than Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey Circus unless you contemplate a win by them then it becomes bone chilling. I think that Romney will win the Republican nomination as he seems to be pulling ahead in Michigan. These are some of the things about which I worry.

Gas prices: Obviously, they are bad and, perhaps, will get worse. This, of course, is NOT our president’s fault. It has to do with more complex matters – something the Republican brain cannot seem to understand – such as Middle East political explosive dismemberment (in part the Iraq War gift) and market speculators in oil allowed to drive up prices through the roof by the money maniacs of Wall Street. They know that they will get tremendous returns if they short the oil market and, as a side benefit, drive up gas prices to hurt the president. We understand that the Know Nothings will blame the president because, well, they know NOTHING!

My other worry, among many, is Romney's pick for VP. It will probably be Rubio so he can take Florida in the general. I may be in error but I worry about this possibility. If his VP pick is not Rubio than Gov. McDonnell of VA whose ambitions know no end could be the more-than-horrific Romney choice. Many do not much love him in Virginia as they do not much love Republicans like Walker in Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, Scott of Florida who must, of course, govern when they are in office. When Republicans govern the people economically lose. It does not stop the electorate from again and again voting them into office as they become bamboozled by their moronic social issues agenda and flimsy but feel good patriotism. They elect uber religious governors who add millions to the unemployment roles by laying-off state workers.

Moreover, McDonnell is the governor who will probably soon sign the vaginal probe anti choice legislation tantamount to the rape of women by the state so they can torment them by forcing them to view their fetus not only by ultrasound but by the more invasive and sometimes dangerous vaginal probe! It is draconian legislation at its worst but McDonnell is set to sign it for Virginia.

McDonnell is the worst of the worst right wingnut fanatic radical Republicans but is a prototype of extremist Republican Party politics of this era. He is anti women, anti choice and a religious wingnut crusader who cares nothing for the middle class unemployed, the poor and the sick but he does care about a woman’s uterus. He attended Pat Robinson's religious wingnut college—need I say more. It’s not Harvard!

This is how Republicans “govern.” Not only are they Know Nothings but they are DO nothings as well except to impose the tyranny of the big government, they say they loathe, not for economic repair but for the so called social issues of abortion, your contraception choice and the selection of a partner with whom to spend your life. They would regress this nation to a different century hurting millions.

The 2010 Republican electoral horror is the greatest impediment to the 2012 re-election of the president and to the return of the House to Democrats. Analysis can give clarity but ACTION to reverse the malevolent Republican extremist turn to the fringe right is imperative. We who advocate for progressive causes, acceptance of human diversity, who love science, intellectual and human advancement MUST push forward to get the vote out for Democrats who across the nation represent our point of view.

A last note: The “conservatives” have the Supreme Court in their cross-hairs. It is soon poised to overturn civil rights legislation which has been stare decisis i.e. settled law for decades. They will stop, if Republicans get a significant majority on the court, the advancement of civil rights, the pillar upon which our nation stands, for other minorities as well. Those cross-hairs could be directed at you and directed at me. I know that and it is why I write so furiously!

Time is of the essence. Work to re-elect the president and once again turn the House blue in November. Nothing short of our republic and YOUR rights are at stake.

Oil Anyone?: This was just posted by Prof. Juan Cole on his blog "Informed Comment." We do not always agree but I cannot match his historian's intellectual expertise in argument.

This post I believe has merit when one contemplates the why of an impending Iran hit. When one asks the omnipresent question why, think on what he says below. It is by far the most prescient rationale for the reason behind Middle East/US power politics. It does not take a genius to figure it out. All roads, of course, lead to oil and one can see that simply by the maps Professor Cole shows and the explanation in his opinion below.

For me the issue has never been an ignorance about the politics of oil but rather the ability of the US to wage permanent, never ending war killing and displacing hundreds of thousands and spending trillions of our treasury for it.

He states:

I had grabbed an earlier version of this graphic* off a Democratic Underground bulletin board from 2005. It made the point that the United States, which professes itself menaced by Iran, rather has Iran encircled by military bases. I have tried to update the map a bit, though this area is a moving target and the map no doubt isn’t perfect. It is expressive enough, however, of the reality. Iraq and Uzbekistan no longer have American bases, but the US military now has a refueling station in Turkmenistan.

Some critics complained that forward operating bases are not much of a base. But actually, this map* vastly understates the case. It shows only a few of the estimated 450 US military bases and outposts in Afghanistan, e.g. And it does not show drone bases, of which the US has 60 around the world.

Iran has 150 billion barrels in petroleum reserves, among the largest reserves in the world, but they cannot be exploited by US corporations because of ... US congressional sanctions on Iran. US elites, especially Big Oil, dream of doing regime change in Iran so as to get access to those vast reserves. Likely the most important US objection to the Iranian civilian nuclear enrichment program is that it could give Iran “nuclear latency,” the ability to construct a bomb quickly if it seemed to Tehran that the US planned to attack. That is, the real objection in Washington to Iranian nuclear know-how is that it makes Iraq-style regime change impossible and so puts Iranian petroleum out of reach of Houston for the foreseeable future. This consideration is likely the real reason that Washington does not, so to speak, go ballistic about North Korea and Pakistan having actual nuclear warheads, but like to has a fainting spell at the very idea of Iran enriching uranium to 3.5 percent (a bomb takes 95%). North Korea and Pakistan don’t have oil.

http://www.juancole.com/2012/02/ring-of-iranian-bases-threatens-us.html

*NB: Graphics not shown

The Winds and Words of War: I was sent by the writer of "Informed Comment" Juan Cole, the University of Michigan historian, Part 1 of an an opinion written by Noam Chomsky entitled “Losing” the World
"American Decline in Perspective," at TomDisptach.com here

Part 2 of Noam Chomsky’s discussion of American decline, “The Imperial Way,” is here. I offer both as an alternative view to prevailing propaganda.

Prefacing his remarks I add: Current Cable TV Channel 192 on FIOS is the only network to call a ratcheting up of war with Iran for what it seemingly is -- the twin of Iraq. We have done this before. Some of those who are the leftovers still in Iraq and those who now fight in Afghanistan were children when 9/11 happened and often do not know the truth of what occurred after it. Many have NO idea how the Iraq War was pushed with lies, deceit, excuses and the utter complicity of the mainstream media including even the most prestigious New York Times and Washington Post. Few have any idea that we lost Iraq to the destabilization of civil war the conclusion of which we do not yet know. There is civil war violence still and millions of refugees from it. The US is probably losing Afghanistan too according to accounts of certain military heroes who would risk their careers for honesty about a failed never-ending policy of lies by men at the highest echelons of power. They whistle blow because war means death and the shattered lives of thousands. In a worst-case scenario it could cost the life of the entire fabric of our nation.

To begin another war with Iran is pure insanity as our army is spent along with our burgeoning deficit about which the conservatives claim they care so much. We would POSSIBLY need a draft for this war. We must call these brokers of war policy out who push this killing machine for what they are -- power crazed lunatics who have the corporation CEOs of war jumping up and down with glee for the money they will make while our youth is slaughtered and our weak economy lay in ruins.

It is my opinion and has been for a long time that we need to significantly rethink our Middle East policies and live with that which we loathe. We managed to get through the Soviet era of abundant nukes and, perhaps, it must be that way now concerning an Iran which does not yet have even one. I believe a strike on Iran at this time is lunacy as gas prices will go through the roof when the strait of Hormuz is blocked by the Iranian government and a weak US economy will tank again. If you think gas prices are exorbitant now wait until a war with Iran begins. Obama risks his presidency if that happens!

Thousands of lives are in peril if this policy is not SIGNIFICANTLY examined and we are told, however difficult, the TRUTH a thing unfamiliar to our Pentagon, Defense Department and various Commanders in Chief. I supported the Afghanistan War and even the Iraq War in the very beginning because I was filled with rage at 9/11 and stupidly believed my government as to Hussein possessing WMD even nukes which we now know he did not have. Looking back at 10 years of continual war I would like to know what we have to show for it. The Middle East is utterly destabilized and we still fight. Whether or not the Arab Spring would have happened without US military engagement no one can know but a foreign US occupier surely did not help NOR did it help Israel, a nation I support and not only because I am a Jew. I do NOT want to see Israel in more peril then it already is. We need call this insanity out for what it is -- the naked aggression of power hungry mad men who post WWII simply are addicted to war and the corporations they feed who make bundles of cash because of it. We stand, I believe, on the precipice of WWIII. I reserve the right to change my opinion in the face of REAL not fabricated evidence.

The Not-So-Gay Marriage of Church and State: I was sent the post below by Juan Cole, a professor of history at the University of Michigan. He quoted a piece written by a guest columnist, Anouar Majid, for Professor Cole's blog “Informed Comment.”

Mr. Majid’s writing is entitled Greek Lessons for the Arab Spring. I agree with it in total. In our own alleged democracy there is an all-too-frightening history of powerful religious fundamentalist phenomena which is worrisome and distressing. I always knew, from my own political awakening many years ago, that a nationalist toxicity intertwined with populist religiosity existed but until this time I did not realize the extent of its madness.

The wedding of religion and state is much too close for comfort. The two entities are mutually oppositional and our Founders, men of the Enlightenment, knew it. Mr. Majid concentrating on the so called Arab spring, I believe, thinks so too. It made for interesting reading about the history of the Arab world little known in the west. He states as follows:

Greek Lessons for the Arab Spring

As the Arab Spring enters its second year and the whiff of democratic possibilities hovers in the air of many an Arab nation, a question that continues to be left unanswered is whether an Islamist worldview and democracy can truly co-exist in this climate of heightened expectations.

Revolts in Tunisia, Egypt, and Tunisia, as well as reforms in Morocco, with their insistence on Islamic solutions, have brought to the fore the twin but clashing heritages of the Arab world. Most of this world is part of the Mediterranean, but it is, by the same token, light years away from what the Romans once called their mare nostrum–our sea. The birth of Islam in the seventh century placed an insurmountable wedge between the northern and southern shores of this ancient basin and propelled both sides toward very different historical trajectories. The Romans learned from the ancient Greeks and laid down the cultural foundations of what we nowadays call the West; the Muslims, with the exception of a brief period when they built on Greek science and adopted parts of Greek philosophy, sought refuge in theology. Christian Europe did that, too, but the re-introduction of Greek thought (thanks, partly, to the Moorish philosopher Averroes) loosened the grasp of the Church and Europe was able to rediscover the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome.

Muslims have yet to do that. Most never study the ancient world and have a very foggy idea (at best) about the contributions of ancient Greece and republican Rome to political theory. Muslim religious scholars reject the entire pre-Islamic period as one of ignorance, while progressive intellectuals dismiss any reference to Greece and Rome as a Eurocentric plot, one that smacks of modern colonialism. Instead of claiming Greece and Rome as part of their Mediterranean legacy, they have surrendered such cultural rights to Germans and Americans, who are thousands of miles away from Athens. Greeks had no problem crediting Egyptians and Phoenicians with much of what they discovered, but contemporary Islamists are too sensitive about authenticity issues to do the same. The pathologies of this kind of thinking cannot be exaggerated. A terrorist organization that bombs churches in Nigeria is named Boko Haram, which, according to the New York Times, translates as “Western education is forbidden” or is a “sacrilege.”

Muslims need to overcome this mental barrier and not be fooled, once again, into renouncing the rich heritage of the ancient Greeks and Romans. It was the Greeks who first created democracy and explained the reasons for doing so; they also coined much of the terminology we use today. Even though the Romans invaded Greece, they learned from them and built the republic that inspired America’s Founding Fathers. The latter were deeply immersed in this ancient history; they read Roman authors and quoted them in conversations, essays and letters. One can’t imagine the American Republic without the Founding Fathers’ knowledge of Greece and Rome.

Yet the call for democracy in the Arab world today is unfolding without any education in Greek and Roman political histories. This is why I am not sure about the outcome of the Arab revolts and the rise of Islamic parties. Democracy and republicanism arose in pagan, polytheistic cultures, ones whose people could live with many gods; they came to an end with the domination of Christianity. Similarly, the American Revolution was the culmination of the 18th-century Enlightenment, when religion was being questioned by philosophers and tested by scientists.

Ancient Greece and Rome, much like 18th-century America and modern Europe, have understood that democracy and religion cannot mix in public affairs. Islam doesn’t make such distinctions and neither do many Muslims calling for democracy today. If you believe that God’s truth is final and nonnegotiable, you will have a hard time listening to others with different beliefs.

My sense is that Muslims and Arabs crave social justice but would care less about democracy, properly understood. Yet, without a culture of religious pluralism and cultural diversity, the life of the mind, which is the prerequisite for progress, cannot reach its full potential. And Muslims need development as badly as they need social justice. This is yet another reason why Arab and Muslim nations need to overhaul their curricula and rediscover, much as medieval Europeans did, the long-lost traditions of ancient Greece and Rome.
_________________

Anouar Majid is the author, most recently, of Islam and America: Building a Future Without Prejudice (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). He is director of the Center for Global Humanities at the University of New England.

Crackpots and Cowards -- The Conservative Liberal Chasm: The following is, in my opinion, one of the most excellently written pieces I have read on the conservative/liberals divide which exists in this country today. It was written by Kurt Stone (not related to I.F. Stone) who is a rabbi, writer, lecturer, political activist, professor, actor, and medical ethicist. He was educated at the University of California, the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University and the Hebrew Union College, Stone holds a B.A. in American Political History, a Master of Hebrew Letters, and a Doctor of Divinity.

The main thrust of his article and contained in his quote is: "The conceptual stupidities of conservatism are more than matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism. In short the conservative whole is simply not that bright. But if the conservative populous is not that bright then liberals who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity are, in fact, often cowards.

Mr. Stone sends me his weekly opinions. You can view his website and other opinions of his by clicking on the link http://www.kurtfstone.typepad.com/

He sent the following piece:

An Essay With Something For Everyone to Dislike

If, God forbid, America ever becomes a second-rate nation, it will undoubtedly be because the cupidinous morons on the right have been aided and abetted by the weak-kneed cowards on the left. You read me correctly: the conservatives are morons; the liberals are cowards. The former is scientifically verifiable; the latter, anecdotally conjectural.

Last month, Gordon Hodson, a widely respected Professor of Psychology at Brock University in Ontario (Canada) published a long-awaited study in the journal Psychological Science. Entitled Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes, Professor Hodson's controversial study compared childhood intelligence with political views in adulthood across more than 15,000 people. Hodson and his colleagues came to the conclusion that " . . . lower general intelligence in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and [that] this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology." In other words, as summarized by the Daily Mail's Rob Waugh, "Right-wingers tend to be less intelligent than left-wingers, and people with low childhood intelligence tend to grow up to have racist and anti-gay views . . . . Conservative politics work almost as a 'gateway' into prejudice against others . . . . People with low intelligence gravitate towards right-wing views because they make them feel safe."

This by no means is meant to suggest that all conservatives are stupid. Goodness knows, it certainly takes clever people to convince a fearful segment of the American public of such patent inanities as:

· Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

· Those who claim that climate change is man-made are elitist members of an eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy.

· A tax break for the 1% is the only hope for the 99%.

· Any regulation that claims to prevent big banks and corporations from exploiting us, is in reality, an assault on working man and woman.

· The federal deficit results largely from the greed of the poor.

· The President of the United States is waging a war on religion.

Writing about the new conservatives in the online journal Truthout, former longtime GOP congressional staffer Mike Longren noted, "To be sure, the [Republican] party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots . . . . But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman . . . Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy."

Not to be outdone, former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum (who coined the phrase "Axis of Evil") wrote in a recent New York article:

Backed by their own wing of the book-publishing industry and supported by think tanks that increasingly function as public-relations agencies, conservatives have built a whole alternative knowledge system, with its own facts, its own history, its own laws of economics. Outside this alternative reality, the United States is a country dominated by a strong Christian religiosity. Within it, Christians are a persecuted minority. Outside the system, President Obama, whatever his policy errors, is a figure of imposing intellect and dignity. Within the system, he’s a pitiful nothing, unable to speak without a teleprompter, an affirmative-action phony doomed to inevitable defeat. Outside the system, social scientists worry that the U.S. is hardening into one of the most rigid class societies in the Western world, in which the children of the poor have less chance of escape than in France, Germany, or even England. Inside the system, the U.S. remains (to borrow the words of Senator Marco Rubio) the only place in the world where it doesn’t matter who your parents were or where you came from.

Creating and selling (if not fully believing) this right-wing reality takes a lot of craftiness, if not downright intelligence; it also takes a trainload of cash and a cadre of folks who have no problem taking advantage of millions upon millions of what Lofgren calls "low-information voters." What the likes of the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Foster Friese and the other right-wing billionaires (among those possessing the trainloads of cash) have discovered is that there is no pool too shallow in which millions cannot and will not drown.

But beyond the creating, the funding and the selling of this "alternate knowledge," there is the cowardice and downright complaisance of America's liberals and progressives. As Thomas Frank notes in his latest book, Pity the Billionaire much of the blame rests with liberals and progressives, who suffer from what he calls "terminal niceness." As the Guardian's George Monbiot describes it, the Democrats, ". . . fail to produce a coherent analysis of what has gone wrong and why, or . . . make an uncluttered case for social justice [and] regulation." Instead, he argues, they "triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate."

Indeed, the conceptual stupidities of conservatism are more than matched by the strategic stupidities of liberalism. If ever the American political system is to right itself, the Right will have to stop feeding caustic misinformation to a haunted, fearful, low-information public, and the Left will have to overcome its reticence and shout STOP!

Enough of this even-handedness! Let us end with one last quote . . . from John Stewart Mill:

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

I could not have said it any better than he!

A Letter to Daniel Goldhagen: Dear Professor Goldhagen: I came across several Utubes of your conversations with Mr. Heffner about your brilliant book "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust." I had the distinct pleasure around 1996 to listen to you lecture at Facing History in Brookline. Ever since that evening I have been smitten with your articulate expression and analysis of not only German history during the Holocaust period but also how it relates to our contemporary experience as well. I did buy your first book and at some point when I finish my stack of reading I would love to read your work A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair as well as current writings on contemporary antisemitism.

I am 63 years old, born in 1948 in a suburb of Boston. Since my first introduction to the Holocaust by my parent's discussion of it and how it related to our experience as American Jews to the first documentary I saw at age 10 on the Nazi death camps with all the infamous pictures of the mountains of skeletons, piles of shoes, spectacles and other gruesome Holocaust detail not a day goes by that I am not thinking in some way about the experience of the Jewish people -- the six million. When the weather is hot, when the weather is cold, when springtime arrives ultimately followed in time by the chill of fall I think about the Jews of Europe. I think about the camps and how they survived the harsh elements with no food, no water, living and dying in unspeakable conditions. I think about my grandparents who immigrated to America at the turn of the 20th century. They came from Kiev and Minsk. The shtetls where they were born, of course, were cleansed of Jews. Had they stayed there I would not be writing this email.

As the years pass, as human beings are inclined memories fade, generations pass and those skeletons long since turn to dust and are gone with the wind. I am glad and hope that you keep our people's memory alive never ceasing to talk of the onslaughts we faced, how we endured and indeed prospered so that never again truly means never again and Jewish memory of our tragic history and perseverance under great assault goes on. It is not only a lesson for our time it is a lesson for the ages. When we have long passed the ever present phenomenon and questions of man's inhumanity to man, his ethics, morality and the power of the state over him will remain. The questions of what is good, right and permissible are eternal and will never die.

Thank you for writing some of the most insightful, complete, and eminently articulate books of our time. You are a joy to all who have the pleasure of hearing and reading your words and to those who yearn for a more just world.

I heard this fellow speak at "Facing History" in Brookline. He wrote and spoke on his book: "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust".

Great discussion on PBS by a brilliant young Harvard scholar, Daniel Goldhagen, of the Holocaust period and after. This is Part I. There are two more dialogues "More about Hitler's Willing Executioners and then Part II. Fascinating discussion with one of the most articulate scholars I have ever had the pleasure to hear.

Here is the link: http://video.pbs.org/video/1512022073