The Conundrum-Staring us in the Face

 Ukraine, the casus belli of the moment, is a conundrum.

The problematic events in Ukraine, a Crimea Putin/Russia-US/the west standoff, evoked an oh-no-here-we-go-again sigh.  Will this be another Georgia (the country bordering Russia) and the one in which Russian troops remain to this day because the conservative darling of war George W. Bush simply let Russia take it?  No one cared about Georgia.  Of course, now when it is Obama facing his foreign policy emergency moment in Ukraine conservatives hopped on the anti-Obama train before it left the station.  They now care about it so much.  If the president is for something the Republicans will be against it excoriating him for, as some said, “feckless” leadership.  That’s a help--not!  Show the world how severely divided the US is as if it, especially Putin, did not know that fact already.  Did McCain of putrid politics without principles immediately want the US to rattle its sabers and invade yet another country?  Yes, sure, John, let’s have another 10 year war especially with a nuclear-armed nation.  We know how much the electorate loved the last illegal war in Iraq as the US invaded a sovereign nation based on a lie and how much fun it was. [A suggested note of community interest: The Rachel Maddow special tonight on MSNBC at 9:00 p.m. “Why We Did It” is being shown. My guess is she will show you why we are a war weary nation.]

Here’s a pop question for you:  How many wars has the US been involved since its inception?  Answer found among an interesting list of ad infinitum and ad nauseam wars athttp://www.loonwatch.com/2011/12/we-re-at-war-and-we-have-been-since-1776/ (I do not agree with all of the web’s slant but on US war making I think it correct):

“Since the United States existed she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence.  In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars.

To put this in perspective: Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year.”

Does this nation want yet another war?  I suspect it does not hence the furious diplomatic efforts to avoid one.

It is hard to wax critical of the speck in the other guy’s eye when one has a log in one’s own. -- Matthew 7:1-6

History has its shades of gray though.  This latest dust up (we hope it remains just a “dust up”) is no different.

My grandparents on my mother's side emigrated to the US from two small mostly Jewish Diaspora shtetls (towns) of Shepatovka and Slavuta near Kiev, Ukraine.  If they had not left those grandparents, one aunt and one uncle born there would have been killed as would all of the others in the family line.  They would have died either in the Nazi Holocaust or from the pogroms (violent actions against Jews by Russians and the vicious anti-Semites of those areas in Eastern Europe) from which they fled.  Their progeny never would have achieved the success it did containing numbers of Ivy League school graduates, one Harvard educated doctor, one Johns Hopkins graduate and Stanford University surgeon, one speech therapist, one graduate of Yale Law School, one speech writer in the White House, one Wellesley College graduate, teachers, professors and more.  This country offered them possibilities.

How anyone can defend Russia with its history of pogroms, anti-Semitism and murderous tyrants like Stalin who killed millions, arrested, condemned to exile in Siberia thousands I do not know.  Putin’s Soviet KGB legacy he wants so much to resurrect with his macho style, vicious dogs and Cossacks-of-old unleashed against any innocent who dares to question him, or simply desires to wear a rainbow T-shirt, or sing a song without being pummeled, jailed or worse is not a man whose support the west should aspire to court.  There are ways to isolate this brutal man and the Russia of old without hopefully a drop more bloodshed but if in the end Crimea wants to join with Russia I say let em and don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

The conundrum of my life continues.  While the west is not perfect I think it infinitely freer than anywhere else on earth.  I am, though, not unmindful of those who raise critiques and question western policy and its many often futile wars. It is a tribute to the west that we can critique it without fear of the thought police coming to get us in the night.

Man has had a long history filled with war, lies and death.  Indeed, life is nasty, brutish and short as Hobbs the 17^th century philosopher once said.  It is no less so in our time but the advantages of western culture and free thought cannot be denied.  It stares us in the face whether we want to look at it or not.

Who's the Crook and Who's the liar?

Martin Bashir Reminds Viewers Of Darrell Issa's Criminal Past

By karoli May 17, 2013 9:00 am

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Bashir spent some time reminding us all of Darrell Issa's past criminal transgressions just in case we had forgotten that the fox is in charge of the henhouse right now.

Now that we're all being treated to the sight of Darrell Issa puffing up and bloviating about his work as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, this clip with Ari Melber and Martin Bashir is an excellent reminder of which fox currently chairs the henhouse. Ryan Lizza's 2011 profile of Issa served as the basis for today's discussion.

There is the car theft, for example. Oh, alleged car theft, I should say. After all, the man who made his fortune from a car alarm company was accused of auto theft at one point:

A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”

Ok, maybe that was a prank, but after that, there was this:

On March 15, 1972, three months after Issa allegedly stole Jay Bergey’s car and one month after he left the Army for the first time, Ohio police arrested Issa and his older brother, William, and charged them with stealing a red Maserati from a Cleveland showroom. The judge eventually dismissed the case.

While the Maserati case was pending, Issa went to college. Just before 11 p.m. on Friday, December 1, 1972, two police officers on patrol in the small town of Adrian noticed Issa driving a yellow Volkswagen the wrong way down a one-way street. The police pulled him over, and, as Issa retrieved the car registration, an officer saw something peculiar in the glove compartment. He searched it, and, according to the police report, found a .25-calibre Colt automatic inside a box of ammunition, along with a “military pouch” that contained “44 rounds of ammo and a tear gas gun and two rounds of ammo for it.” Issa was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. The policeman asked why he was armed. “He stated in Ohio you could carry a gun as long as you had a justifiable reason,” the report said. “His justifiable reason was for his car’s protection and his.” Issa pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of possession of an unregistered gun. He paid a small fine and was sentenced to six months’ probation.

When Issa ran for the Senate in 1998, he rewrote his past:

"He had been a soldier, and he claimed that he was part of an elite bomb detecting unit that guarded President Nixon at the 1971 World Series," said Williams.

Williams called up the Nixon Presidential Library, and was told that Nixon hadn't gone to any World Series games that year. Then Williams looked into Issa's purportedly stellar career in the Army.

"The biography that he was providing the press in the context of his campaign was all wrong. He had a bad conduct rating. He was demoted, and a fellow soldier accused him of stealing his car," said Williams.

But probably the most suspicious and most uninvestigated event in Issa's checkered past is the mysterious 1982 fire at his factory at a time where he was buying out the owner of Steal Stopper, the predecessor to Issa's car alarm company. Issa quadrupled his insurance coverage and then boom! The place burned down. Lizza:

Joey Adkins, the former owner of Steal Stopper, provided the main evidence against Issa. On the afternoon of September 20, 1982, in a lengthy recorded interview with an insurance investigator, he described a series of suspicious actions by Issa before the fire. Adkins, who still worked for Steal Stopper, said that Issa removed the company’s Apple II computer from the building, including “all hardware, all software, all the instruction books,” and also “the discs for accounts payable, accounts receivable, customer list, everything.” According to Adkins, Issa also transferred a copy of every design used by Steal Stopper from a filing cabinet to a fireproof box. He also said that Issa put in the box some important silk screens used in the production of circuit boards.Insurance officials noted that, less than three weeks before the fire, Issa had increased his insurance from a hundred thousand dollars to four hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars. “Quite frankly,” Adkins told the investigator, “I feel the man set the fire.”

So did the insurance company. They finally settled out of court for about $20,000, which was a fraction of what Issa had sued them for.

Not mentioned in the Bashir discussion but equally interesting is this small nugget:

The insurance company, meanwhile, had found something peculiar about Issa, unrelated to the arson: there was no indication of where his initial capital came from. After interviewing a family member, an investigator reported, “She was unable to advise us as to his financial banking [sic] to become an officer in Quantum Inc.” A second report noted, “We were unable to find the source of his financing for the business ventures he is engaged in at the present time.”

This is the guy holding himself out as the crusader for What is Right and Just. Or as Bashir called him, a "paragon of virtue."

Wise Beyond Her Years

I enclose a YouTube speech here or below played by Larry O'Donnell on his show last evening given by Lupita Nyong'o when she accepted an honor from Essence Magazine's 7th Annual Awards for Black Women in Hollywood. The speech is as gorgeous as she is matched only by the humanitarian beauty of her heart. It is why she won and should have won the Academy Award for "12 Years a Slave."

"12 Years a Slave" is a film as poignant to me as "Schindler's List" and as meaningful to my human spirit as those who survived the Holocaust.

Every now and then someone comes along whose words, actions and compassionate essence change the world. I believe Lupita Nyong'o is such a person. Enjoy this fantastically beautiful and moving speech from a woman who is wise well beyond her youthful years.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPCkfARH2eE

An Award for the Awards -- A Short Comment

This is the first time I can say I loved and was entertained by the Academy Awards. Everything seemed to work and was done in good taste. There were no outfit malfunctions, no outrageous costumes, little profanity, often limited thank you's and buckets of talent. I saw most (not all) of the films.

Ellen DeGeneris was, I thought, wonderful. She makes the famous and non famous feel at ease. She has a gift for the ability to connect even to the everyman like me. I wanted a piece of that pizza she doled out to Meryl, Brad, Jennifer, et al and a bit of the money in the collection hat too! I commit one (only one) of the seven deadly sins when I watch the Oscars -- envy. Their talent is a gift from the DNA god or goddess that creates us all. They win life's lottery by having its genes of creativity and talent in seemingly perfect order.

I thought all who won deserved to win in a field of choices that were stunningly competitive. A special place in my heart is reserved for "12 Years a Slave," a film that shows each one of us who saw it one hopes the true malevolence of slavery's history and why this nation suffers from its massive impact the consequences of which we experience to this day. That "peculiar institution," so noted by the French historian de Tocqueville in his 1835 classic "Democracy in America" was democracy's antithesis to itself. It provoked discord and hypocrisy's division woven into the fabric of the nation's construct in that time and bestowed to us in ours.

The rage slavery invokes is emphasized by a film that reflects its magnitude so necessary for all to see. Perhaps, now, more will see it who need to see it and those of us who know it will keep working to ameliorate its sin and perfect the justice for which it cries out and to which the foundation of this nation speaks.

Kudos to all the winners -- well done, indeed!

I've Got a Secret

PBS's "Frontline" here or at the link below is the most revelatory, the most complete, the most damaging report on an institution, the Catholic Church, so corrupt and so bestial over centuries it surpasses the boundaries of credulity. Pedophile sex abuse by priests within the Catholic Church has been reported in our time but, in fact, it has gone on for centuries. It is revealed in documents hidden within the Vatican archives in Rome. The Vatican has never been compelled to produce them by virtue of the Vatican's state status. To open the archives, which the Church refuses to do, would shed light on their historical malodorous contents and staggering hypocrisy of a Church that claims its liturgical basis on empathy for the poor and the dispossessed but was and still is, in fact, a vehicle for unbridled passions of sex, money and power. Jesus would be appalled.

These documents should be revealed to scholars and law enforcement for the asking. The PBS program "Secrets of the Vatican" if you choose to watch it is NOT easy viewing. It is left to adult discretion, of course, but I believe it too mature for children while an imperative for every adult to see.

It is only if light is made to shine upon the morass of filth and corruption the Vatican has for decades, indeed centuries, covered up that we will be able to gain in our modern era a modicum of justice for the thousands of its abused victims within this unnaturally celibate institution.

The Church hierarchy's hands are dripping with the blood of their crimes against innocents hidden by a church that has cared more about its power and its money than it does about the true teachings of its God and His alleged Son in whom they say they so ardently believe.

From the Middle Ages Pope Innocent II, first to demand Jews don the Star of David, to the silent-on-the- Holocaust, Pius XII to John Paul, the alleged saint and enabler of the sex abuse cover-up to Pope Benedict the ineffective lightweight who could not shoulder the demands of punishment nor effectively cleanse the stain of sex abuse and monetary corruption from so many church vestments, the Vatican should answer for its crimes against humanity.

The final nail in the coffin of corruption that appears in this documentary is the so called "Vatileaks" exposure of thousands of hidden papal documents the crime for which the pope's butler was made scapegoat, arrested and convicted. The Pope pardoned him. Pardoned him for what -- for exposing the truth about the slime under Peter's rock upon which the papacy was allegedly built?

The Church stands at a crossroads and wisely, it seems for now, has chosen Pope Francis, a Vatican outsider -- a different kind of pope -- to lead it out of its den of thieves, sexual predators and hypocrisy into the sunlight of its savior. If it does not its house and the cards upon which it stands are doomed to fall. It is only when all of the secrets of the Vatican are addressed and punishment levied for the heinous sexual and corporate crimes the Church has perpetrated that justice could in our time prevail.

If you want to see a riveting "Frontline" documentary click on the link above or below.


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/secrets-of-the-vatican/

You Bet Your Life

My letter to the Boston Globe

In response to the "Sunday Globe" February 23 article "Mass. is easing rules for some pollutants" linked here or below when I first read this story I thought I must have read it wrong. Alas, no. Is this possible and possible with support of a Democratic Governor I supported in 2008 when Obama first ran for the presidency and there was so much hope? Yes, it is possible as money the corporate tyrant of politics rules. It reminds me of the tobacco wars when scientists were paid handsomely by tobacco companies to say that scientists believe the level of nicotine in their cigarettes is safe or scientists have not found a correlation between cancer and smoking until they did and millions world wide died and continue to this day.

So increase the amount of lead and arsenic that can be placed in soil as long as it is arbitrary feet deep and oh yes, we just know no construction will occur or soil will be dug up with that in it and tap into the extra lead and arsenic. I am stunned with incredulity of the utterly insane corporate driven new rules increasing the levels of arsenic and lead that this Democratic governor for whom I worked so hard now turns on the progressives who elected him and supports it. Why am I not surprised but sickened? Many more will be sickened literally. Sure, it will not happen right this minute but it will happen and the limited American attention span being what it is the electorate will never remember or know why their child got cancer while living in a new visibly pristine condo complex.

What I do NOT understand about the environmental immoral stands of most of political/corporate America is that these people have children too; do they not care about even them? This issue reminds me of the recent reporting of the fracking billionaire CEO who does not want fracking in his upper class neighborhood and has sued to prevent it but if it is in working class neighborhoods all over the country dug by his company it is AOK with him.

Are we an insane species? If we are we are doomed to evolutionary extinction. No one but no one's cells can withstand increases in lead and arsenic. You and your children will eventually die before their time and to add to that your kids, if they live, will be born with birth defects if their parents were contaminated by those poisons and transmit mutated genes from those contaminants to them. They and/or their parents will die if one parent was a construction worker who dug just a little too deep on that project for which he was hired and low and behold the arsenic and lead he could not see and his corporate employer ignored will be the invisible culprit.

But sure in the name of "progress" why not loosen environmental restrictions on corporate America? What could possibly go wrong and what have we got to lose --- everything even your life!


http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2014/02/23/environmentalists-worry-about-raising-arsenic-and-lead-levels-allowed-under-building-sites/JE8OA4eaEEtQgBPA6FtNUL/comments.html

The Re-emergence of polio? -- an astounding story to me please read

You may not think this is a political opinion when you scroll down to it but it COULD be in the final analysis.  As one who understands the onslaught of polio my mind quickly tries to understand this phenomenon from the transference of this polio-like virus from a developing country OR to evolution at work.  

I am not an infectious disease specialist or a doctor of any kind but the thoughts about this new virus run rampant.  The polio virus itself COULD, I say could, have morphed into another enterovirus again showing the cunning of evolution's ability to get around all that human beings can throw at it and as we witness in the world of overuse of antibiotics.  We, homo sapiens, are minuscule compared to the viral world and its ability to survive in some form despite man's big brain attempt at thwarting it.  They were here long before us!

It will take those in government who attain power who believe in science and specifically possess the knowledge of the TRUTH of evolution to be elected.  Evolution is NOT a hypothetical but a truth and we MUST absolutely MUST elect those who understand its truth if we enjoy living.  So far those people in government exist exclusively within the Democratic Party in this country and yet another reason to elect Democrats across the country.  

I urge you to scroll down to read the article.

This story, sent to me by my physician relative, astounded me as one who knows the onslaught of polio from the 1950's.  Doctors today often know nothing of it and one young woman when talking about it to me said how can Polo do that.  I said no not Polo the game, POLIO the virus.  I laughed but it is really no laughing matter.  I urge everyone to read the story below on an FYI basis as polio OR something like it, at least in the enterovirus category which is what polio is, seems to be emerging again.  All knowledge is good.  No knowledge is fatal.

Here is the link since my blog cuts off part of the article with no ability to 

reformat the margins.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/23/polio-like-illness-california/5703827/

Mysterious polio-like illness affects kids in California

Elizabeth Weise, USATODAY4 p.m. EST February 23, 2014

Doctors believe they've identified as many as 25 California children suffering from a mysterious, polio-like virus capable of paralyzing limbs.

(Photo: Jessica Tomei)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• New polio-like syndrome has struck as many as 25 children in California
• Doctors don't know the cause but believe it's linked to an unknown enterovirus
• Public health officials are looking to see if there are more cases both inside and outside the state

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A mysterious polio-like syndrome has affected as many as 25 California children, leaving them with paralyzed limbs and little hope of recovery.

"What's we're seeing now is bad. The best-case scenario is complete loss of one limb, the worst is all four limbs, with respiratory insufficiency, as well. It's like the old polio," said Keith Van Haren, a pediatric neurologist at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif.

The first known case appeared in 2012. Sofia Jarvis in Berkeley began to experience wheezing and difficulty breathing. The 2-year-old spent days in the intensive care unit at Children's Hospital Oakland. Doctors thought she had asthma.

On a follow-up visit, her mother Jessica Tomei, 37, realized something else was wrong.

"As we were leaving the doctor's office, I noticed that she went to grab something with her left arm and she stopped, midway," Tomei said.

Eventually Sofia was brought to Van Haren's clinic with "a unique set of symptoms." She was treated with steroids and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy, used to reduce the severity of infections by giving the body antibodies to protect against bacteria and viruses. "None of it helped," said Van Haren, a neurology professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

"He told us right away that the prognosis was really poor and that she's not going to get better," Tomei said.

The diagnosis proved correct. Today, at age 4, Sofia's left arm is paralyzed and she has some weakness in her left leg as well as slight breathing issues.

Still, parents shouldn't panic. "This is really very rare," Van Haren said. "But we are asking any families who notice a sudden onset of weakness to see their doctors immediately. Their doctors should contact the California Department of Public Health."

California is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta to see if there are cases outside California. So far none have been reported.

Overall Sofia's family is grateful. "She's still with us, she's still running around, she's going to preschool," her mother said.

The case galvanized Van Haren and other neurologists, who worried a new disease had appeared. When they began to go through recent medical files, they found two more cases, both in the San Francisco Bay area.

"We don't have a final case count, but it's probably in the neighborhood of 25 cases, all in California," said Van Haren. The median age of those stricken is 12.

"The California Department of Public Health has asked health care providers to report any polio-like cases they might identify and send specimens so that we can better assess the situation," said Carol Glaser, chief of the encephalitis and special investigation section of the California Department of Public Health in Sacramento.

The children don't have polio, but their symptoms look much like the disease that terrified generations of parents beginning in the 1890s.

Patients lose the ability to move their arms or legs, which "just dangle, like empty balloons," Van Haren said. Because the children can't move their limbs, the muscles atrophy and the limb shrivels.

Polio is a highly infectious disease caused by the polio virus. It invades the nervous system and in one in 200 cases causes irreversible paralysis, according to the World Health Organization. It was not until the introduction of the Salk vaccine in 1954 that any protection against it was available.

Testing confirmed that the children in California "definitely do not have polio," Van Haren said.

"The cause of most of these cases is not known. Some clinical and laboratory features, such as the pattern of inflammation seen in the spinal cord on MRI, are consistent with a viral process," said Glaser.

Van Haren suspects the culprit is an enterovirus. That is a family of viruses that includes polio but also the milder hand, foot and mouth disease, common in infants and children.

Unfortunately while there's a vaccine for the polio virus, "we don't have vaccines for the other enteroviruses," Van Haren said.

"In the past decade, newly identified strains of enterovirus have been linked to polio-like outbreaks among children in Asia and Australia," he said. The California cases highlight the possibility of an emerging infectious polio-like syndrome in California.

While there haven't been reports of the illness outside California, Van Haren thinks that's only because no one is looking for it. He believes once doctors nationwide begin to, they'll find other cases.

"My goal is to get the word out to other neurologists, to make them aware of this," he said.

The Stanford group will be presenting a case report at the American Academy of Neurology meeting in Philadelphia in April.

Tomei wants parents to be aware of this new outbreak because it took so long for doctors to think of polio or polio-like diseases in Sofia's case

"The younger doctors have just never seen polio," she said. "Maybe collaborating between the younger generation and the older generation who actually went through polio will help us catch more cases."

Richard Engel, Brilliance in Motion

I was struck reading the short biography and credentials below of Richard Engel, the NBC News foreign correspondent. Engel has reported on and from the most dangerous war-driven nations on earth to bring those of us who could not and never would dare to see those nations and events for ourselves.

His educational credentials speak for themselves. He is brilliant, accomplished and so very very good at what he does. I look in the mirror and see a hue of green in my reflection. Yes, it is the green of envy that this man possesses that of which I could only dream!


BIO TAKEN FROM NBC NEWS:

HTTP://WWW.NBCNEWS.COM/STORYLINE/UKRAINE-CRISIS/RICHARD-ENGEL-DOWNTOWN-KIEV-OPPOSITION-HANDS-GOVERNMENT-FORCES-MISSING-N36126

Richard Engel is widely regarded as one of America’s leading foreign correspondents for his coverage of wars, revolutions and political transitions around the world over the last 15 years. Most recently, he was recognized for his outstanding reporting on the 2011 revolution in Egypt, the conflict in Libya and unrest throughout the Arab world.

Engel was named chief foreign correspondent of NBC News in April 2008. His reports appear on all platforms of NBC News, including “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” “TODAY,” “Meet the Press,” “Dateline,” MSNBC, and NBCNews.com.

Engel, one of the only western journalists to cover the entire war in Iraq, joined NBC News in May 2003. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, most notably during the initial U.S. invasion of Iraq. He remained in Baghdad as NBC's primary Iraq correspondent until his appointment as senior Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief in May 2006. Engel also covered the war between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer of 2006 from Beirut and southern Lebanon. 

Prior to working for ABC News, Engel served as the Middle East correspondent for "The World," a joint production of BBC World Service, Public Radio International (PRI) and WGBH-Boston radio from 2001-2003. He has also written for USA Today, Reuters, AFP and Jane's Defense Weekly, a British publication in which he authored the magazine's in-depth profiles of Egypt, Yemen and al-Qaida.

Engel’s work has received numerous awards, including seven News & Documentary Emmy Awards. In 2011, he was honored with the Daniel Pearl Award, the David Bloom Award and the Overseas Press Club Award in recognition of his coverage of the war in Afghanistan. In 2010, Engel received a Gracie Award for his work on “Unlikely Refugees,” a “Nightly News” story about Afghan women who are treated as criminals for attempting to leave abusive marriages. Engel was honored in 2009 with the George Foster Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Society of Professional Journalism Award for “Tip of the Spear,” a series of reports from Afghanistan that focused attention on the hardships and dangers faced by American soldiers. Engel also received the 2008 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, the first ever given to a broadcast journalist, for his report "War Zone Diary." The one-hour documentary, compiled from Engel's personal video journal, gave a rare and intimate account of the everyday realties of covering the war in Iraq. In 2006, Engel received the Edward R. Murrow Award for his report "Baghdad E.R.," the first ever to win in the category "Feature – Hard News."

Engel has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996 with a B.A. in international relations. He speaks and reads fluent Arabic, which he learned while living in Cairo. Engel has also traveled extensively in the Middle East and can comfortably transition between several Arabic dialects spoken across the Arab world. He is also fluent in Italian and Spanish. He is the author of two books, “A Fist in the Hornet’s Nest” and “War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq,” which chronicle his experiences covering the Iraq war.

Mute

Yes, it has finally happened.  I am at a loss for words.  The reason is simple.  I like to keep my blood pressure at an even 100/76 and my pulse rate at 62.  When it soars to 180/100 with a pulse of 110 it spells trouble.  There is only one thing, outside of family health issues, that can raise my numbers that high and it is spelled R-E-P-U-B-L-I-C-A-N voter suppression so when I hear about so much Republican corruption and lies I pull away and watch reruns of "Leave it to Beaver" and remain mute.  Obviously, that is NOT the way to fix the wrongs of this nation.

The issue is thus:   Since Citizen's United, the Supreme Court’s malodorous decision, the flood gates of gargantuan Republican money have opened wide pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into Republican super pacs.  This means humanoids like Sheldon Adelson supporter of Mitt Romney, Citizen Kochs, Karl Rove, and many more millionaires and billionaires like them use their ungodly sums of cash to take political control of and buy everything.  

They can and do pollute elections all over the nation. Republicans rigged districts in states to take power and gerrymandered votes to take over the Congressional House.  It is why the deceitful Chris Christie, Scott Walker, LePage of Maine, Rick Scott of Florida, McCrory of North Carolina and many others bring corruption to the heart of the nation.  It is how the 1% intend to gain humongous power federally as well.  It is chilling, it is hateful and it is threatening to our democracy's foundational fabric.  The annihilation of our nation’s middle class through Democratic voter suppression by Republicans cannot stand. 

In a few words:  The 1% COULD have it all: the states, the legislatures, the courts, the educational system, the media’s message, the economy and, yes, EVEN SCIENCE ITSELF if we do not ACT!

All the money and control it brings cannot match the power of the people’s vote.  Republicans know this and it is why they try so hard to subvert the Democrats' vote wherever they can.  If they cannot capture elections fairly and squarely they will rig and/or steal them.  Our vote is our only avenue to sane, humane and progressive policy. It is our only weapon against the control of a nation by a very few at the top. There is no compassionate conservative.  The top 1% are an economic and social malignancy -- a cancer -- on our nation and its middle class.  The gap between rich and poor has never been so huge as it is now.  Without a strong, vibrant and economically secure middle class our nation, as we have known it, will cease to exist.

The Remedy:  SECURE VOTING RIGHTS NOW FOR ALL AND ESPECIALLY FOR MINORITIES, WOMEN, THE ELDERLY AND THE POOR IN EVERY STATE whom Republicans have targeted for electoral elimination.  If our voting rights cannot been secured by November’s time then we must beat these unconscionable excuses for humanity at their own game.  We must pay any price and conform to any electoral obstructionist rules they have enshrined into policy.  We must obey them and by any means necessary register to vote.  Where we can we must, with the help of Attorneys General, overturn Republican illegal policies sorely wounded by the elimination of an important element of the 1965 Voting Rights Act rendered by the unmerciful activist five allegedly "conservative" Supreme Court justices who think prejudice is eradicated in our nation as we see the Ted Nugents of the Republican Party wave Confederate flags while they vilely and profanely impugn the dignity of our first African American president.

President John Kennedy’s inaugural words ring as true in our time as they did in his:

... [We are] unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today ... .

... we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

The issues facing our nation are existential and threatening the only planet we know of that sustains all life.  The Republican Party would return this nation to centuries past where under the cover of "states' rights" African Americans had no rights, where segregation occurred at lunch counters and drinking fountains because property rights prevailed over human rights, where human beings were the low hanging fruit murdered for the most trivial matters, where women were chattel, where quack abortionists killed women by the infection of quack medical procedures, where gay people committed suicide in large numbers, where government was for rich white men only and where the unequivocal laws of physics and the truths of science were denied.

We must beat them at their own game and do whatever is legally necessary to ensure our vote counts and register those we know who vote in Democratic droves.

The hour is late, the time is now and none of us should remain mute!

Shut up, Mitt Romney

My sentiments exactly: here or below



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/16/1278028/-Hey-Mitt-Romney-Shut-the-Up?detail=email

Rethinking Dunn

I am trying to come to a rational decision on the verdict of this case. I am second guessing myself because so many persons of color and others who share my political slant are upset with the verdict. I keep wondering if I should be furious too. I am not because I continue to be thrilled Dunn will never see the outside of a jail cell again. It is as if he were found guilty of the murder charge in that each attempted murder charge puts him in jail for life.

What happened, as I review it on a clear morning instead of the fog of evening, is that the prosecution, same one as Trayvon, over charged the case and stand your ground should have been a part of the prosecution which again it was not. Racism was never considered and there was clear evidence that it existed because the moron defendant actually wrote racist letters while in jail awaiting the trial and its conclusion. That is why, I believe, others of my political persuasion are having trouble with this verdict. An institutional statement against the racist "stand your ground" legislative malevolent law which is used as an excuse for hate and the murder of black males was never addressed. I agree with that but the man is still behind bars and will be for the rest of his life.

The case, as I see it, should have been a second degree murder case or a manslaughter case against Dunn not a first degree murder one because it is difficult to determine the malcontent Dunn's motive. The important thing to me is Dunn will spend the rest of his life in jail.

As I said before, I feared another Trayvon Martin miscarriage of justice. We did not get another Trayvon because unlike Zimmerman this man will never see the light of day. I thought, although not a first degree murder guilty verdict, the guilty verdicts on the other charges will diminish the open season on a black man mindset because of the consequential status of the defendant. He is in jail for life. I was happier with the outcome than I thought I would be as I feared his getting away with all of it. But No. Thank God he did NOT get away with it all.

I breathed a sigh of relief when a guilty verdict on all four attempted murder and other counts was delivered. I can see where the jury had a problem with murder in the first degree but this was so serious and sentencing justice had to prevail in that he could not get away with not serving significant time. He will serve significant time in that a guilty verdict on the other counts running consecutively will mean life in prison.

This racist defendant is going to spend over 75 years in jail and, although still not a statement against racism, that, for now, is good enough for me!

Stand your ground should be relegated to the ash heap of history and is yet another reason Republicans must be electorally crushed on the local, state, and national levels. Justice will never prevail if they remain in positions of power caring only for white rich men and caring nothing for the poor. While Democrats are surely not perfect (no one is) they do not come with discrimination, ignorance and hate flowing through their veins as Republicans do. November, 2014 should ensure it never does.