THE REPUBLICAN SOUL

Someday historians -- good ones -- will analyze our era, as most now do of my idol FDR’s internment of the American Japanese during WWII, as shameful. NPR broadcast a segment of a Japanese woman who, as a young child, was interned in a Japanese-American camp. What her family went through, like many Holocaust survivors, was heart wrenching. The psychological scars often did not heal and, like many who survived the German camps, her father could not and never did talk about it. Their property was confiscated and their lives wretchedly uprooted.

George Takei of Star Trek fame tells a harrowing story of his family and him bused to a Japanese relocation camp of an American variety. These were people who did NOT hold allegiance to Japan.  They were thoroughly American. Their only sin was to be born Japanese at a time when this nation was at war with Japan.  Interning them is an indelible stain on this nation's history that can never be washed away.  I thought when I heard the rendition of the American Japanese experience that our nation would never again do such a thing but, as the conservative icon Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again."  The rancid rhetoric and treatment of those Syrians who merely want to escape war with their lives in a nation whose Lady Liberty statue welcomes the huddled masses with open arms is an abomination.

The US Syrian refugee vetting process is in extremis complex and the ad infinitum requirements to get into this country many.  The fiery hoops Syrians must jump through to gain sanctuary let alone citizenship are daunting.  Why Syrian refugees would want to come to our exceptionally unwelcoming land I do not know.  It's hard enough for persons of color whose ancestors came here in chains. Those African Americans who were born here have had their voting rights taken away, many have been jailed and more than a few have been shot dead in the streets by over-reactive police. 

A pox on Republican heads whose racist rhetoric is reflected in what comes out of the mouths of the leading Republican candidates and is a national disgrace. When these mendacious Republicans die may their souls, if they have them, never rest in peace!

"Turkey Shoots Down Russian Military Plane Near Syrian Border" + a joke

"This complicates an already complicated situation in the Middle East"
here or http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/turkey-plane-syria_56541c75e4b0258edb32ce67

Points to remember: Russia's ally is Syria and our ally is the rebels trying to overthrow Syria's Assad. Russia is targeting the rebels, Turkey's enemy is Syria and Turkey is our ally. Turkey just shot down a Russian jet? Sounds like the bane of my existence -- an algebraic word problem:

"If I have 3 apples and you have 9 pencils then how many pancakes will fit on the roof? Purple. Because aliens don't wear hats!" Okay, just trying to see some levity in this horror show. http://weknowmemes.com

Welcome to war in the Middle East. If you thought World War One was too complicated to understand this makes that war seem like a sandbox dispute. This is utter LUNACY and we will be dragged into just what ISIS wants another war.

This is NOT good. I just hope it is not WWIII. Call me a pessimist -- that I am -- but I think there is some merit to the madness of my worried thought.

Mental Illness Madness: Babysitter in alleged Hamilton kidnapping held without bail

Babysitter in alleged Hamilton kidnapping held without bail
Abigail Hanna, 21, allegedly kidnapped 2-year-old: story here or below:

Tom Crosby and his wife should be given heroes' medals. Initially, as they drove down a sparsely-settled dirt road in Rowley, Mass, they thought they saw a doll lying face-down naked in the leaves at the side of the road but they had the good sense to turn around to make sure and by doing so found a little girl shivering from the cold, bruised with cigarette butt burns on her body. They called police and saved that gorgeous child's life. Kudos to them and kudos to all those who were and are involved in the investigation of this heinous crime.

Clearly, the alleged 21 year old perpetrator is saturated with mental illness and, who knows, an arm-chair diagnosis of possibly psychosis. Our nation is drowning in mental illness in so many ways. What happened to us or maybe it was always this way but never discussed. I do not know. We have so many fixes for diseases below the brain but little fix for the brain itself especially so for mental illness. It is very hard to treat and meds are often thrown into a hat to try with little or no measurement for their use. Mental illness, too, takes lives but our culture has little empathy for one who suffers from it. Is it genetics or environment -- nature or nurture? In the end it is a disease which needs an ameliorative fix as other diseases do. Unlike other diseases of the body like diabetes or even cancer mental illness affects behavior and therefore has implication for all of us who are at the other end of its ugly assault.

My heart goes out to everyone in this story. At least there is a happy ending win for the child victim but a probable ruined life loss for the perpetrator of this unconscionable act. Our collective nation should be benefiting from research into the causes and cures of mental illness so that those who suffer from or who are the victims of its onslaught will be spared its ruin.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/23/parents-kidnapped-hamilton-girl-expressed-thanks-child-found-safe-after-horrific-ordeal/2qDDMUkpAWEFr5xcHo01AK/story.html

If you want to hear something gorgeous listen--9 years old! "Hello"

She is 9 years old singing Adelle's "Hello" with a phenomenal voice.

here or http://www.drewoliviatillman.com/

Restores my faith in our species.

My letter to Dr. Malk M.A. Kahn of Islamic Center of Boston, Wayland

Dr. Malk M.A. Kahn wrote a condemnation piece of the Paris attacks for the Islamic center in the Middlesex News.  I paste it here and below.  I commented on his thoughts.


It is so disgusting and heinous that Dr. Kahn even has to write an opinion of the Islamic rejection of the Paris attacks and really even all attacks for which innocent Muslims are so grievously indicted. Dr. Kahn, truly I think there are more who harbor views as I do believing in our constitutional system which CLEARLY separates church from state. Your belief is your business and rejecting these unconscionable attacks should NOT have to be stated by you or any in the greater Muslim community.

It is a given through our Constitutional principles that a man is considered innocent and it is up to the state NOT you to account for guilt. Your statement is well received by me, a Jew, who would no more hold you to account for any crime not committed by you than I would for me. Painting the Muslim community with a broad brush of guilt for something most would never think of committing is simply morally reprehensible. Most acts of violence are committed by a few political extremists or psychopaths and most all in the Muslim community are not about that.

Personally, in Paris I loved the hugs given to each other that show love and caring of one another. One woman was a Jew and the man was a Muslim. They hugged proving we are all human. I am you, Dr. Kahn, and you are me. We are the same under the skin. It is sad, indeed, that in this nation we have carnival barker Republican candidates that would take us back nearly a century when Jews were forced to identify themselves as Jews by a star of David on their clothing. Trump makes me ashamed.

The day when someone forces you to enter your name in a data base or wear a crescent on your lapel is the day I leave what will be a God forsaken land that has gone temporarily insane!

THE ANTIDOTE FOR THIS HATRED IS TO KICK REPUBLICANS OUT OF OFFICE EVERYWHERE AND KEEP THE OVAL OFFICE, THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE IN DEMOCRATIC HANDS.  OVERTHROW ELECTORALLY REPUBLICANS IN STATE LEGISLATURES. REPUBLICANS ARE AN EMBARRASSMENT TO THIS NATION.  DO THIS BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.  GET EVERY DEMOCRAT OUT TO VOTE!

Read and Learn

CONFESSIONS OF AN ISIS SPY

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/15/confessions-of-an-isis-spy.html

A Deal Breaker

Glenn Greenwald: It's 'Irrational' To Blame Paris Terrorism On Snowden

"Many large scale terrorist attacks have been successfully perpetrated well before anyone ever heard the name Edward Snowden." Link here or below.

I used to be a Glenn Greenwald fan. I even heard him speak at Harvard where one person said to me he was "a national treasure." I wish I had written the name of that person down to see what he thinks now.

Well before the ISIS attacks, initially when Snowden spilled the beans he and his mouthpiece Glenn Greenwald made me, a civil liberties aficionado, uncomfortable. I saw his pitch BUT also see the realities of the world in which we live. I thought Snowden's leak was utterly dangerous, stupid and naive to a fault.

In an imperfect world one must be intellectually challenged to think that this country's adversaries would accord one the freedom that has been for years accorded to Glenn Greenwald. I always wondered what if Snowden and Glenn lived in Snowden's present residence, Russia, and Snowden had the same job for Russia that he held in the US. What if Snowden saw equal or even more egregious civil liberties abridgements, torture, jail for homosexuals and others who do not meet a patriotic test and even death for those who are deemed traitors to the state would Snowden have felt comfortable doing what he did here there and would Glenn, a citizen of Russia, too, have felt comfortable traveling all over the globe to get this story out?

I submit they would have been jailed without trial in a heartbeat second, probably tortured and then disposed of forthwith. Yes, I am willing, in view of the noxious attacks I have seen from ISIS and others to allow my government to do anything it needs to protect the homeland. I aver one does not appreciate what one has until one looses it and if both Snowden and Greenwald did what they did in Russia they would appreciate how good they had it here.

Snowden and Greenwald cannot pretend to know everything  Snowden released and if there were one shred of information that helped our nation's murderous adversaries -- which I am sure there is -- supporting both Snowden and Greenwald is a deal breaker for me.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/glenn-greenwald-irrational-to-blame-snowden-leaks-for-paris-terrorists_564b4005e4b08cda348a7d00?utm_hp_ref=hpl

A Metaphor for Darkness

"Massive Police Raid In Paris Suburb Targets Terror Mastermind

The seven-hour siege focused on Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks."  Link here and below.

 

The Paris plotters are killed or captured but there are oceans more to take their place.  This is the face of eternal war.

12 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia but the genius Bush was persuaded into attacking Afghanistan and Iraq.  Bombing Afghanistan possessed, perhaps, some justification because they provided a safe haven to train those who would and did attack this nation.  Attacking Iraq based on a WMD lie, a nation that did nothing to us, to warrant military invasion became not only insanity but a war crime.  It revived ancient tribal and religious civil wars between Shia and Sunni Islam about which Bush did staggeringly not know.  He did not even know the difference between Shia and Sunni.  Iraq's strong arm Hussein, the glue that kept Iraq together, was deposed and control of all the oil in that area was in the American neocons’ sights.

 

The neo con barbaric know nothings like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Pearle and others were salivating as their long-held vision for total American domination of that region was, it seemed to them, possible and Bush’s  cozy love relationship with Prince Bandar of the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia -- you know where massive amount of oil flows -- was the ticket to ride.

 

This nation dismembered a sovereign entity that did nothing to us, fractured an entire Middle East tinder box region, deposed dictators that kept the lid on revolution, killed innocents and created a million Iraqi refugees.

 

The Republican criticism of Obama is that he did not stay in Iraq long enough breaking the “Status of Forces Agreement” to leave, breaking the rationale for his electoral win and breaking his word to the American people that he would extricate us from Iraq but who cares about all of that?  If Cheney was alleged to have said "F___ the Constitution favoring warrantless wiretaps he could easily have said F___ the Status of Forces Agreement and remained in Iraq in perpetuity.

 

The Iraq War waged by Bush and his so called "coalition of the willing" is wholly responsible for the present chaos not only in the Middle East, Syria and elsewhere but for the carnage in Paris as well.   A straight line can be drawn from the Middle East destabilization of Iraq and other Middle East nations to the Paris attacks, the refugee Syrian crisis, the growth of ISIS, ISIL and Al Qaeda in Iraq now omnipresent all over the region (and even the world) where they never existed before.

 

The know nothing Republicans and their carnival barker so called "candidates" for the 2016 presidency will continue to spew their lies and short sighted cruelty of a now anarchic Middle East to elect another RepubliCON to the nation’s highest office with his finger on the nuclear black box button.  He will commit your children and your children’s children to eternal war.

Paris, now, is a metaphor for darkness in the city of light.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gunfire-exchanged-raid-in-paris-suburb_564c003ce4b06037734bb306

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN REPUBLICANS ARE ELECTED.  DO WHAT IS NECESSARY ELECTORALLY TO ENSURE THIS NEVER HAPPENS!

Robert H. Jackson (1945) Opening Statement -- Nuremburg 1945

Said to be one of the greatest pieces of oratory at the beginning of the Nuremberg trials of crimes against humanity and should be viewed and listened to among those of all nations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJj6NcWHkDE

Singularly Lucky

I cannot stop thinking of Paris. What can and should be done to ameliorate our fears? What can we do at this moment in our time? Would removing all western troops from the Middle East even help now? I suspect no it would not. It is much more complicated than that now and one blog or opinion cannot say it all so I summarize my thoughts.

I love the west which is no secret from those who know me. I love the freedom of expression, I love the freedom to believe OR not to believe in religion. The two most important freedoms -- the freedom to speak as one chooses and the separation clause of the US Constitution that implies you may say anything you want ... ANYTHING for or against religious belief and religion itself remains separate from the state.

One can say, most especially, anything for or against a political belief or for or against any political policy which god knows I utilize that freedom with consistency because I may do that here. I am not afraid of the NSA, the FBI, the CIA or any other government institution entrusted with this nation's security because I love and believe in this nation and the impenetrable Constitutional principles on which shoulders our way of life and our freedoms rest.

In elementary school I remember thinking how wonderful it was that I could ask my teacher anything. So young was I to appreciate even then the blessing that was bestowed upon me. I was singularly lucky and so are we all who were lucky enough to be born in the west!

Are there changes in Middle East policy we must address? To be sure there are many and our nation has done much wrong. Still, with all of our nation's faults at least we can discuss them and ultimately change them. Yes, we were singularly lucky to be born in the west! It is worth preserving and it is worth changing policy to ensure those freedoms, we often take for granted, do not disappear from our midst.

(Sunday Homily) Massacres in Paris: The Apocalypse Is upon Us

Brilliant, unique and interesting interpretation By Mike Rivage-Seul of the Apocalypse spewed in hundreds of fundamentalist churches throughout the land. I urge you to read it and THINK! Think about what your leaders are asking you to do. Ask the question why and who does it benefit.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Sunday-Homily-Massacres-by-Mike-Rivage-Seul-Apocalypse-Apocalyptic-End-Of-The-World_Empire_Isil_Jesus-151114-803.html

Dr. Irvin Yalom discusses Death

What I have not heard yet and what plagues me about death is not only the inevitably of it BUT worse for me losing those I love, family, friends, etc. Even though we are all in this together we face it really alone and especially alone if we are left but our family and friends have died.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMbkIYpZ1v8

Il n'y a pas de mots

There are no words!

My Letter to Senator Warren

Senator Warren, I just got through listening to your book "A Fighting Chance" on CD. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I am one of your ardent supporters from Framingham you mention in your book. I have been a supporter of yours since I first saw you on Bill Moyers PBS show. When you ran for the Senate to take back the seat Teddy Kennedy occupied for 50 years held after his death by a Republican the views of whom Teddy would have loathed, I cheered as it returned to Democratic hands.

I could not be with everyone at the Copley Plaza Hotel cheering your Senate victory because I am disabled from polio. Yes, I was one of the unlucky ones who contracted the dreaded disease inducing paralysis before Dr. Salk and Sabin freed humanity from its terror. FDR who began the March of Dimes to find a vaccine for it proved to me government can work for the greater good. If my legs are not so well functioning my mouth surely is and my pen writes, I humbly say, rather well.

I cried at the end of your book out of sadness and empathy when your beloved dog Otis died and I cried out of happiness when you won that seat back for the people of Massachusetts. Teddy would have been so proud.

I have watched you closely over the years and every time Rachel Maddow has you on I am glued to the interview. I will work hard for any Democrat who wins the 2016 presidential primary as I did for you for the Senate. I am hoping, one day, you will take a seat in the oval office and I will live to see that day too.

I love you Senator Warren. You give me hope and instill the same for the powerless and hopeless many. May you be in our political midst for many years to come. Finally, you have proven, despite all odds, we the people have a fighting chance!

Yalom's Cure

This clip below is in English and hit a bulls-eye to so much about which 
 I have given thought. It's short.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=B_PGY3eN6Xw

Wrong

I confess, I did not watch the Republican debate last night. I could not because it hurt too much to hear their spewing that passes for policy truth when I know they are the Trojan Horse waiting to strike and kill a nation. I could not watch those who are the most unqualified for the highest office in the land burp policy as though they knew what they were talking about. I could not look at a Ben Carson, the most unqualified in the group, whose belief in fantasy which included hitting his mother with a hammer in his youth, stabbing someone and whose ego makes him think he, the most unqualified of the sad Republican slate, could handle the Herculean task of assuming the presidency of the strongest nation on earth and who will hold the nuclear keys to the box that could annihilate the globe.

These science denying know nothing Republican candidates are poised to destroy this nation if not by weapons then by doing nothing to stop the climate disasters we have seen with frequency so vividly across the nation. Science denial is their most egregious sin as man's knowledge of science is the key to our species' survival. The key to Republican survival is to court the richest oil, gas and bank barons who support their candidacy with oodles of cash.

The Republican Party genius is that it has made their Tea Bag and other middle class income supporters think they are all about them. They surely are not. They are, as I and others much smarter than I, have said so many times about the top richest 1% and care nothing for most of you.

All the Republican tax plans will add trillions to the debt, take programs away from those who need them most and nearly all pledge this nation to eternal war in the Middle East. If this is what you want for your children and succeeding generations then by all means vote Republican. Vote for a Republican Party that is mendacious – lying ALL the time and doing so with impunity.

Republicans will never have an immigration plan as they will NEVER deport 11 million Hispanics and others or build a wall and make Mexico gleefully pay. They will never round up 11 million human beings who will go happily into the night like Jews to the German slaughter. Hispanics and others will fight back and it will be bloody sending millions to their graves or jails in privately owned prisons that are already stuffed to the gills belching humanity that cannot fit into their crowded cells.

I have sat on the left humane side of the political spectrum and have been a strong Democrat all of my adult life. I did so not because I think Democrats are always right but because Republicans in times of significant economic upheaval and war are nearly always wrong. You simply have to look to modern history to believe it.

Ben Carson and the Truth by Charles Blow

This serves to emphasize my point.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/opinion/ben-carson-and-the-truth.html?comments#permid=16611904

Eighth and Ninth Wonders of the World

"Dr. Ben Carson Plays Defense as Biographical Questions Pile Up" -- link here or below.

After what has been uncovered about the probable fabrications of Dr. Ben Carson’s life by him, it is the eighth wonder of the world that this man has gotten to be a Republican front-runner for the presidency, the highest most powerful office in the land arguably the world.

It is the ninth wonder of the world that Fundamentalists and other humans cannot accept truth scientific or otherwise in the face of unmistakable falsehoods of Biblical myth or the mounting evidence of the personal lies a presidential candidate tells about himself.

Those who support him will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the truth even if the truth is in front of their nose because it is so important to their mental health that all of these fabrications and untruths are really true. If they are not true, which a rational mind would know they are not, then I am guessing the Fundamentalists and their world with them would collapse. It is frightening, indeed, when in the face of Carson’s obvious lies he gains not loses support within mostly Republican ranks.

Carson promotes these lies, in my opinion, to make money and oodles of it. One should never give money to charlatans whether it’s people peddling religious falsehoods or snake oil salesmen trying to sell you junk. You may think they care about you but they don’t. What they do care about is their own bank accounts and making millions off the suckers who swallow their tripe. Carson, it appears, is smart enough to float a made up story about his own life that sells to Fundamentalists and others gullibles.

The truths of science and its experts cannot be denied as they ensure survival of only the fittest when its laws are known, admitted and followed. Those who reject the truths science tells us will die out. It is the evolutionary law of nature and it has been billions of years correct!

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/dr-ben-carson-plays-defense-biographical-questions-pile-n459411

Democratic Forum--Auditory Excellence

 If you want to hear policy at the adult's table then I paste for your enjoyment the questioning by Rachel Maddow the Great of the three Democratic candidates for the presidency. I have never seen or heard more professional, brilliant political programming than the one led by Rachel tonight.

It was a pleasure to listen to it and entertaining to boot. If you did not catch it on MSNBC I paste it below or you can get it on the Rachel Maddow online site. It was a gem and could not be more different from the Republican Barnum Bailey Circus. How anyone in this nation can even contemplate being Republican and worse voting Republican I will never know.

Listen to excellence here or below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrat-forum-msnbc_563d4e8fe4b0b24aee4a7fc8
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrat-forum-msnbc_563d4e8fe4b0b24aee4a7fc8

Gran Mal Seizures

Ben Carson admits fabricating West Point scholarship. Carson's campaign on Friday conceded that a central point in his inspirational personal story did not occur as he previously described. Linked here or below:

What a LYING charlatan to fabricate all that and think he is going to get away with it that no one is going to check as he runs for the highest most powerful office on earth. Carson, you JERK, if they checked W. Bush's draft dodging status they will SURELY check everything you say.

The press needs to report the allegedly 8 medical malpractice lawsuits two of which have apparently been adjudicated. He LOST but they have non-disclosure of fee agreements. They have pics, however, of the patient and it is tragic. Makes me think the payment was hefty. Well if you were a brain surgeon and allegedly left a sponge in someone's skull or allegedly diagnosed a malignancy where there was none I might want a little cash for those gran mal seizures!

Just shows to go you you do not have to be brilliant to be a brain surgeon. Kind of makes me think of Leonardo DeCaprio in "Catch Me If you Can" based on a true story of a man who fabricated many occupations which included being a doc. Now just what does Johns Hopkins have to say?


http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/ben-carson-west-point-215598

Vote Distribution In Kentucky Is A 'Significant Anomaly'

What you should know: Republicans steal elections and think nothing about the ethics of doing it. Just ask Al Gore in 2000 and if you research it I am sure there are many instances of more Republican fraud. Funny they are the ones who prevented persons of color and other Democrats from voting to "reduce fraud." Oh sure. Believe that and I'll tell you another lie.

The election in Kentucky was an anomaly. Here is the link that casts doubt on it. The problem is proving it now is difficult and in my opinion Conway conceded too soon.

Moral for 2016: Watch YOUR voting booth and make sure things are ethically pristine. Do so all over the nation!

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/11/we-may-never-really-understand-what

Citizen Charlatan

Carson is a charlatan times 10 and has had six medical malpractice suits against him during his tenure at Johns Hopkins.  I have on good authority Carson is NOT all that great a physician and not really that respected in his field. He got lucky because he was on a team there that separated conjoined twins but after that things went south (pardon the pun)  including a case when he left a sponge in the brain of a woman he operated on and erroneously operated on another for a brain tumor she did not have. I have not read the links in their entirety but I will post them for you below.

In sum Democrats, progressives and liberals must get off their asses and vote. Only 30% voted yesterday and while Rome was burning Democrats fiddled since 2008 and even earlier than that to maybe 1972 when Nixon planned his southern strategy. This horrendousness is done by mainly older whites but the country will NOT stay that way. The Republicans knew that and did their homework; Democrats made up of the youth vote concentrated on the next IPhone or tech gadget and did not think it was important enough to vote in off year elections. 

These idiots in Kentucky just took 400,000 off of health car and these Baggers fail to see the Republicon (sic) Party is NOT about any of them. They care about racist conservative social issues more than they care about universal health as a right or if someone goes to bed hungry it is society's obligation to feed them. That's the domain of Democrats who FAIL miserably to tell their truth!

http://www.occupydemocrats.com/ben-carsons-long-history-of-medical-malpractice-will-shock-you/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3264044/Ben-Carson-sued-malpractice-six-times-including-girl-suffered-facial-disfigurement-woman-claimed-left-SPONGE-skull.html#ixzz3qZIrQwDb

Worries -- BIG Worries

I have worries -- big worries -- about our nation. Since the late 60's when I was imbued with great hope, when voices like the late Howard Zinn influenced me like no others could I had the bright enthusiasm of a 20 year old who thought all things humane were possible. Prof. Zinn always said change comes from the bottom up but judging by yesterday's 2015 state/local elections and if one wants to use it as a bell-weather election which I did, very very few bottom up efforts won. In Kentucky my yardstick for a bell weather state saw a Republican governor elected for the first time in many years, turning Kentucky more red than ever. Other states hopeful of obtaining Democratic majorities in state legislatures did not such as Virginia. Moreover, equal rights including LGBT rights lost in Houston as did the legalization of marijuana lose even for medicinal purposes in Ohio.

Where is this nation headed with its steeped in gerrymandered Republican districts and a Republican Party soaked in cash and allowed to use it?

When I look at the 2016 presidential slate especially on the Republican side I turn white with fear nauseated by what I see and hear. It could happen that either a wild Trump appealing to our nation's worst racist instincts actually could win. Even worse than he, in my opinion, is the horrific brain surgeon Carson proving that you don't have to be a brain surgeon to be smart. He is simply the worst of the worst and more frightening because he is a person of color who just may take some African Americans votes who voted for Obama away because they do not realize how extremist Evangelical fanatic this guy really is and many persons of color are very religious which may be his appeal to them. Imagine a man of science believing in Biblical creationism and eschewing the science based truth of evolution. Is that possible? I say only in America.

Is there hope or should I simply take my toys and go home, hide under the covers and forget the hope that once burned so brightly in me?

I WILL NOT SAY AGAIN AFTER THIS AS I AM TIRED OF SAYING IT GET OUT AND VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS AS IT SHOULD BE CONSUMMATELY OBVIOUS BY NOW WHAT WE ALL WILL LOSE. IF YOU DON'T YOU WILL GET THE VIOLENT, RACIST, HEALTH CARE AND MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY REPEALING NATION ONE DESERVES IF ONE DOES NOT VOTE DEMOCRAT ACROSS THE NATION!!

The Preeminence of Science

Ben Carson Leads 2016 Republicans In New National Poll. See story here or below.
 
Why is this nation the laughing stock of nations that value intellect, science and the truth they bring to the advancement of man?
 
How is it possible that Ben Carson, a man SUPPOSEDLY of science, indeed, a neurosurgeon, denies what even my 9th grade biology high school teacher and all preeminent scientists especially in the fields of biology, virology, infectious disease, chemistry, archaeology, and more know to be true and provable multiple times over? Evolution is NOT theory as is our popular definition of theory. Evolution is FACT and Carson denies it.

One cannot understand the mutations of bacteria, viruses, the progression of infectious disease and these microscopic beings' evolutionary ability to survive despite all drugs thrown at them without understanding evolutionary DNA mutation. Evolution explains ALL life on earth.

How is it possible that a man, SUPPOSEDLY acknowledged in his field of neurosurgery, holds the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial backward belief in the anti-intellectual reactionary era of Tennessee and Appalachia at that time?

It has been said by some that Carson, when he does NOT become president, and he will not, will earn millions from the religious fundamentalist science denying communities through book deals, religious lectures, Christian TV and many other venues of the truth denying Evangelical religious extremist environs. Carson knows he can make millions from them and from those who ridiculously and erroneously think the Bible science.

Those who value intellect, academics, science and its proof should NOT allow him to get within an inch of White House power! We who love the truths of science should research his medical background at Johns Hopkins to see how a science-denying charlatan can overtake even Trump. Both men are preeminently unqualified for the presidency.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ben-carson-nbcwall-street-journal-poll_5637e8cce4b00a4d2e0b97f7?ref=topbar

TransCanada Shelves Its U.S. Keystone Application

YEEEEEHAAAAAA!! Activism works!!! I just said when the story broke that the Canadian NEWLY elected VERY LIBERAL Justin Trudeau government probably had as much to do with the sinking of this disgusting tarsands trans oil pipeline as did the very effective opposition here. Rachel Maddow just said that was so. I cannot believe I called it I say humbly. A BIG WIN for the planet and a big loss for filthy, disgusting, polluting, climate destroying rancid oil!!


 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/transcanada-suspends-us-permit-application-for-keystone-xl-pipeline_5637fafee4b027f9b969d94d

Sweet Sweet People

Metrojet Crash: What Could Cause a Plane to Break Up in Midair? Story here or below:

My vote: A BOMB on board creating an explosion. Why? 1. It is being said by many experts that the plane was solid -- lets out mechanical failure; 2. A missile? No, ISIS does not have the capability of shooting a missile that far up. 3. EXPLOSION? -- YES either a suicide bomber which these fanatics think will get them 152 virgins in heaven or someone surreptitiously left it on-board and then got off the plane. My final vote: A suicide bomber. Sweet sweet people -- NOT! 

Mr. Putin:  Your move!

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/russian-plane-crashes-in-the-sinai/metrojet-crash-what-could-cause-plane-break-midair-n455591

What a World

Curious, a Russian passenger plane en route from Egypt to Russia crashes in the Sinai probably killing all on board. Story here or below. I have questions. Sure, it could have been mechanical failure or weather events or even a bird but now that Russian bombers are working their magic in Syria and given the proclivities in that neck of the woods to be so utterly chaotic anything is possible. Yes, I do mean anything.

Simple answers are a thing of yesteryear and even then information was controlled. Remember the Maine, remember Gulf of Tonkin, remember the vanishing WMD of Iraq -- lies, lies, lies, and more lies. We the people of innocence pay the price. It, I am sure, is no different in Russia maybe even in triplicate.

The power brokers think they have unlimited control over every quixotic event in which they sink their boots. They don't. Others have a say in the matter and the innocent pay with their blood. Is that true in the case of the Russian passenger plane? I do not know but because the plane was flying from Egypt to Russia and Russia is bombing Syria to prop up Assad my warning lights of sabotage are blinking.

I could be wrong and proof with its revelations must determine the verdict IF one could only get at the truth.

As the wicked witch said in the Wizard of Oz as she was melting: "What a world, what a world!" What a world indeed.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russian-passenger-plane-disappears-radar-n454971

CNBC Republican Debate Performance

The Republicans are kvetching (complaining) about the debate moderators and CNBC. The RNC as of this writing fired NBC.

I believe, however, the questioners must have planned the questions they would ask a bunch of carnival barkers who should never be near the oval office. I believe the moderators were dedicated to giving what they THOUGHT the Republican primary voter would want -- low on substantive policy (the most important thing for analysis) and heavy on gotcha sensationalist nonsense that has nothing absolutely nothing to do with how a candidate would govern and what, importantly, POLICY they would implement to perfect their vision.

This is a nation of about 350 MILLION human beings. Is it important for the questioners to stress poll numbers and insults? I think NOT but obviously CNBC came into the "debate" thinking that would make for riveting entertainment which translates into money. After all most news is entertainment.

If one wants hard hitting, smart good news, one should turn to "Democracy Now." That's an idea how about having Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales deliver the questions in the next Republican debate? Oh, of course not, God forbid presidential contenders should answer challenging questions even if they are not from the right wing extremist part of the spectrum!

Family Pride -- My Cousin with John Kerry

This is my cousin Jon Finer (second from the left) the great grandson of those who made it out of the pogroms of Eastern Europe and certain death for the Jewish people of that area.  He now stands with our Secretary of State negotiating with Iran to prevent nuclear war.  Imagine!  THIS is what makes our nation great.  Do not let a small hateful segment of our population ruin it!

The Republican "Debate" -- The Vice of Extremism

The Republican Party cannot get its act together. It is impossible because they ARE what millions saw on stage -- Extreme, more extreme and most extreme.

One lonely Republican, Kasich, realizes the moderation and normality it takes to govern. The rest are trying to outdo each other and seek the most extreme right wing perch on which to land. Normality and moderation are not words in the Republican lexicon in our time. Even the extremists are split between more extreme and most extreme. Hence it is an impossible mix the views of which the nation itself does NOT reflect.

Moreover, the Republican extremist game on immigration, 11 million Hispanic Roundup, or a variation thereof will lose them the Hispanic vote and thus lose the election as Mitt Romney so astutely predicted.

Reality speaks. If Republicans do not wax right wing extreme they lose their base and the primary vote. If they win through extremism and enter the general election they lose it to the Democrat.

Republicans and Republicans alone have created the combative barbed wire prison in which they live and the key of moderation to exit they do not possess.

Baby Deer does not want to leave the man that saved her life :)

Scroll down. It has a happy ending.


https://www.thedodo.com/little-deer-leave-her-rescuer-1418770786.html

The Interview

Rachel Maddow's interview of Secretary Clinton was spellbinding excellent. I am smitten. Bernie Sanders is wonderful. I am not disputing that BUT he reminds me of the fervor progressives (including me) had for George McGovern. Up against any Republican McGovern was eminently superior. McGovern captured the base of the Democratic Party but that is all he captured and in the general lost every state with the exception of DC and wonderful Massachusetts.
Bernie Sanders is popular, even very popular, among the base BUT he simply, in my opinion, cannot win. Hillary can win AND I am predicting, she will.
Her persona on Rachel Maddow was as relaxed and informative as I have ever heard or seen her. If you get a chance to see the interview with Rachel, do so. She and Rachel too were superb. This is what excellence looks and sounds like. Secretary Clinton is seasoned, polished, articulate and ever-so-smart.
If any Republican in that Barnum Bailey Circus excuse for a Party crosses the oval office I am applying for Canadian citizenship.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is qualified and then some for the highest office in the land!

EXACTLY NOTHING -- HILLARY ON THE DOCK

The Republicans created, though their 47 million taxpayer buck hearings on Benghazi and the latest 11 hour marathon questioning of Secretary Clinton, exactly nothing. The anemic Benghazi Committee made other committees like Watergate look like the Nuremberg trials. Thousands upon thousands of hours of testimony taken over the past two years about an event that took four lives less than were taken in the Lebanon bombing killing 241 marines during the Reagan years, the USS Cole which took 17 lives in 2000 or on 9/11 that took three thousand lives.

Republicans may have just handed Hillary Clinton the presidential victory she wants for their barbaric badgering of a very dignified witness under Republicans' own admittedly political questioning solely designed to take the presidential candidate down. Secretary Clinton handled herself with dignity, reservation, maturity and aplomb during 11, let me say that again, 11 straight hours of testimony. She more than stood up to the plate. She hit it out of the park.

This was an investigation in prime time that could have concentrated on issues surrounding the Benghazi tragedy that mattered and ones that had universal foreign policy appeal. The question should be how a nation – an exceptionally expansive one – protects its State Department officials in the war zones to which it sends them. How is foreign policy made, who orders it and at which desk does the buck stop?

The issue for me is why we are in Benghazi in the first place and why is the electorate so far removed from its nation’s war policy? Who ordered the Libyan overthrow of Qaddafi, why was it ordered and what can we do to safeguard our personnel in dangerous milieus like it?

Why is this nation involved in the taking down and propping up of regimes in which the indigenous people of those regions have little or no say? In short, why do we bomb them, take out and put in leadership like quarters in a slot machine agreeable to us but with no consent of the governed. It seems to me, historically, this nation has some experience with the idea of no representation.

Why is this nation sowing upheaval in a part of the world filled with tribal conflict, fractured by internecine relationships and constant acrimonious religious war? Whose side are we on and why? What ammunition gets into the hands of those who ultimately kill us with it when loyalties shift like the desert sand? Finally, why should a nation let any bully on the block control its interests?

The Middle East has been saturated with those who think the west is trying to undermine its religion and its civilization. It is angry when in 1953 the US overthrows by coup a beloved Iranian leader, Mosadeq, because he wanted to nationalize the oil and keep the profits for Iranians. The American oil magnates did not like this particularly and its CIA put a friendly tyrant in place -- the infamous Shah with his deadly secret police, Savak, that wreaked mayhem on the masses and prompted the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Western boots are all over the Middle East, all over their holy places and all over their deserts to collect the western oxygen -- OIL. That is what Middle East politics is all about post WWII -- drilling for, getting and selling oil, making billionaires more billions while the poor stay poor. That is why our soldiers die while poor people see little of that for which they die. Maybe Middle Eastern ire is incurred because western boots are on their holy lands. Why is this nation all over the Middle East like mud on the bottom of a shoe? Because we need their oil and we take it because we can.

Secretary Clinton could have been asked far more poignant policy questions than she was. The issue has been and always will be oil as long as it is the energy source de jour, vital to the western world’s life force.

Should we have deposed Mosadeq and put the Shah in his place, should we have deposed Kadafhi, Mubarak, Hussein and now depose Assad? All these strong arms kept the lid on their respective prone-to-warring nations. Now that they are gone an environmental vacuum of anarchy and continual war takes their place. Refugees flee to Europe and beyond by the soon-to-be millions. Ask Secretary Clinton about that why doncha? No, Republicans do not want to upset the American foreign policy apple-cart. They like it that way. They simply want to upset Secretary Clinton. Well, they failed miserably at that.

Benghazi Baloney

What a PILE of horse manure the RepububliCONS are loading on to Secretary Clinton. It's much ado about nothing only dedicated to ruining Clinton as their leadership has said. Guess what? She comes out smelling like a rose to have endured this tripe. Chairman Gowdy, et al look like the IDIOTS they are.

Does one think for one minute after ALL that was said from Republicon leadership that this was merely to get back at Clinton NOT to find out how better we can protect our agents? It is crystal clear and they are waterboarding the secretary FOR NOTHING now all day for the 8th time and 47 million bucks later! I cannot believe she takes it with such aplomb. I would want to take something and throw it at the RepublCONS in this faux committee! What a joke they are.

Keep doing it, Mr. Gowdy. I feel bad she has to go through this swill but she is strong as heck and is doing a GREAT job. Thank you, Sec. Clinton, the soon to be President of the US!

MAKE HER PRESIDENCY A REALITY AND FLIP THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE TO GET THESE REPUBLICON ALBATROSS BEASTS OFF OUR NATION'S NECK!

Compassion -- "A Thousand Miles in Their Shoes"

"Syrian refugees risk everything for a chance at survival" see link  below

My heart breaks for them, the Syrian refugees. After the Holocaust I vowed and I thought it would NEVER happen again; that the world would not turn its back on those desperate fleeing for life. I put my feet in their shoes and can do that easily because I know, as a Jew, what it is like for the world (including this nation at that fateful time) to turn its back and through its inaction act as if we did not matter. But we DID matter.

Yes, in this context, ALL life matters ... ALL of it. We must try each and every one of us in our own way to say NO to cruelty, NO to inhumanity and YES, to our fellow humans who are in trouble and need our help. The refugees are in trouble and need many to help; to extend their hand and say I understand and will help you. We must put our feet in their shoes and if someday each one of us needs help it will be there for us too.

We are human after all, the species with the big brains capable of compassion. Nature put that ability to be compassionate in us for a reason -- we do better as a group when we care about not just a religion, not just a tribe, not just an ethnicity but we are better when we care about all who need help and we all do better if we lend a hand.

Be kind, says the Old and New Testament, to the stranger because you were strangers once in a strange land! Compassion is a lesson for the ages but it is especially a lesson for us now in our never ending atmospheres of violence and hate!

http://testkitchen.huffingtonpost.com/1000-miles/

My Letter to the Vice-President

Mr. Vice President. My sincere condolences for the loss of your son, Beau.  I am amazed at your special strength with which you deal with this tragedy. 

I will preface my opinion by telling you I am a STRONG (emphasis on strong) Democrat.  I have been so nearly all of my adult life.  It is because of this passion for humanitarian politics I place myself squarely in the Party that most reflects my views, the Democratic Party.  We have, I think I can correctly say, divided politics.  Democrats now stand for one set of principles and Republicans another.  The thought of another Republican in the highest office makes me want to run as far away from the country I love as possible.

It is because of this I believe your running for the presidency now is ill-advised.  The wait for your announcement has been too long; it is almost anger provoking long. Either make a decision or do not.  I do not think things will change all that much as Thursday I expect Sec. Clinton to knock the Benghazi hearings out of the park and the Republicans on their posterior.

I do NOT want one thing to upset the Democratic race as nightmares of the Bush presidency haunt me daily.  A Republican means loss of life, loss of treasure and loss of our ethical humanity. 

I believe at this time Hillary Clinton has the best shot (assuming nothing sinister is found in the emails which I doubt) of the ever-so-important reality to keep the presidency in Democratic hands.

I do not want your candidacy to create a threat of ensuring a Republican victory.  IF you do run please be mindful that Democrats -- and ONLY Democrats MUST win in 2016!

Climbing the Hill Toward Everest

Paul Begala, Democratic political consultant and commentator was asked prior to the Tuesday Democratic debate his feelings about Hillary's assent to the presidency. He said that he liked Hillary, he will vote for Hillary but, he asked, is he excited about it? His answer was no. He pretty well summed up my thoughts at the time. The Democratic Socialist, Sanders, as I see it, cannot win due to this nation's Maynard G. Krebbs-like allergy to the word "work" but this time to the Sanders word socialist (to understand this analogy see 1950's TV sit com Dobie Gillis.) What a difference a day and a debate make!

Hillary surpassed my expectations as she slid into home plate to win the game for herself and I would aver to the intellectual-superiority-by-far of the Democratic Party. Way to go, Hillary! She now at this time is, in my opinion, the Democratic Party's number one best shot to reach the presidential peak of Everest.

The debate itself was light years better than anything the two Republican debates put together had to offer. Republicans are a vessel of hate; maligning and impugning even nature's DNA roll of-the-dice composition of the faces and hair of their fellow Republican candidates. It was short, no it was minuscule if non-existent, on policy and long on looks and hair. It was an embarrassment to the nation if not to the world for its carnival barking stupidity in its quest for the highest office in the land better left by the Republicans to a Ringling Brothers circus.

I have never in my life seen such verbally moronic Republican "debates" in attack mode throwing each Christian colleague on their stage to the lions. The lesser candidates in the Republican field stood in glassy eyed catatonic fear of the pummeling egotist-in-chief, Trump, with his two other front runners making up stories and telling lies. No one in Republican land researches the truth as to what their candidates say. Why look for truth when lies work so well for them in Republican primaries?

The Democrats, the other party of American political pugilism, could not have been more opposite to Republicans if they practiced it longer than the Lion King performed on Broadway and to my eyes, it was just as entertaining. It was an enthusiastic but polite, multi-layered and detailed exchange with enough emotional excitement to light the lights of New York City. In my view Hillary Clinton won her Kentucky Derby well beyond my expectations. Will she win the triple or the quadruple crown? I do not know but my Las Vegas bet is on her to do so.

Hillary Clinton made me proud to be a Democrat as they intelligently and quickly shot out policy like an AK47 shoots out the bullets Republicans with their NRA mountains of cash propping them up seem to love so much.

In short, the Republican Party is not about most of us. It isn't even about most Republicans. Unfortunately the white, racist, nativist and extremist so called "freedom caucus" cannot figure that simple fact out for themselves. Republicans are about protecting the wealth of the 1% while they push for government control, they say they hate so much, with attacks on Planned Parenthood, a woman's right to choose the life she wants, the Republican repeal ad infinitum of the much maligned Obamacare, and lest we forget, Hillary's email. Why should Republicans hate health care for the American people so much and every other government policy that helps human beings in trouble? When it's the Party of hate that is what they do and they do it so well. Their uber loud voice for what they want is Donald Trump. As Bernie Sanders said: "Damn the email. Let's talk about policy!" Republicans cannot because they have none.

Republicans have not made it to even the Mountain’s base camp while the Democrat, Hillary Clinton, is climbing the presidential hill to Everest’s summit and I cannot wait to see her make it!


TO SAY THE NATION IS DESPERATE FOR MORE INTELLIGENT LEADERSHIP IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT. GET YOURSELF, YOUR FRIENDS, AND YOUR RELATIVES OUT TO SIGN UP DEMOCRATS TO VOTE. THEN MAKE SURE THEY GET OUT TO DO SO AS WELL! OUR NATION CANNOT SURVIVE ANOTHER BUSH-LIKE LEADERSHIP OF THE INTELLECTUALLY STARVED AND SCIENCE DENYING REPUBLICANS. MAKE SURE WE DO NOT GET IT.

On A Positive Note

Despite PBS being Koch Brother influenced there are SOME things it does well and this is one.

My cousin recommended this documentary "How We Got to Now" that sheds light on how far we have come even in a mere 150 years. It is on Netflix too.

As one who sees the glass half empty more often then full it is good to realize how far we have advanced to live a life attempting to be free of disease and hardship that killed other generations early in life. It throws cold water (pardon the pun--you will see why) on us to sometimes accentuate at the positive. I began to watch it last night and positively hope to complete it all.

Here is the link or below: 

http://video.pbs.org/program/how-we-got-now/

Yes, I blame him for the disastrous election of a war criminal administration that of George W. Bush in 2000 by taking votes away from Al Gore. What a different world this would have been. What is done, however, is done and we must play the ball where it proverbially lies. The following article by by Ralph Nader hits one in the face with its accuracy. Read and heed is what this nation should do but will it?

Article by Ralph Nader

The photographs in the New York Times told contrasting stories last week. One showed two Taliban soldiers in civilian clothes and sandals, with their rifles, standing in front of a captured U.N. vehicle. The Taliban forces had taken the northern provincial capital of Kunduz. The other photograph showed Afghan army soldiers fully equipped with modern gear, weapons, and vehicles.

Guess who is winning? An estimated 30,000 Taliban soldiers with no air force, navy, or heavy weapons have been holding down 10 times more Afghan army and police and over 100,000 U.S. soldiers with the world's most modern weaponry -- for eight years.

ISIS forces from Syria have taken over large areas of northern and western Iraq, including its second largest city, Mosul, and the battered city of Fallujah. ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria are estimated to number no more than 35,000. Like the Taliban, ISIS fighters, who vary in their military training, primarily have light weaponry. That is when they are not taking control of the fleeing, much larger, Iraqi army's armored vehicles and ammunition from the United States.

Against vastly greater numbers of Iraqi soldiers, backed by U.S. weapons, U.S. planes bombing daily, 24/7 aerial surveillance, and U.S. military advisers at the ground level, so far ISIS is still holding most of its territory and is still dominant in large parts of Syria.

The American people are entitled to know how all this military might and the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, since 2003 and 2001 respectively, can produce such negative fallouts.

Certainly these failures have little to do with observing the restraints of international law. Presidents Bush and Obama have sent military power anywhere and everywhere, regardless of national boundaries and the resulting immense civilian casualties, in those tragic, blown-apart countries.

The current perception of the U.S. in these countries is that of invaders on a rampage. Recruiting motivated fighters, including a seemingly endless supply of suicide bombers, is easier when the invaders come from western countries that for over a century have been known for attacking, carving up boundaries for artificial states, intervening, overthrowing, propping up domestic dictators, and generally siding with oligarchic or colonizing interests that brutalize the mass of the people.

It hasn't helped for these invasions to be supported by an alien culture rooted in the Christian crusades against Islam centuries ago, whose jingoism in the U.S. continues among some evangelical groups today.

But of course more contemporary situations are, first and foremost, the wanton destruction and violent chaos that comes with such invasions. With the absence of any functioning central governments and the dominance of tribal societies, the sheer complexity of the invaders trying to figure out the intricate "politics" between and within tribes and clans turns into an immense, ongoing trap for the western military forces.

When the U.S. started taking sides with the Shiites against the Sunnis in Iraq, or between different clans and tribes in Afghanistan, U.S. soldiers, not knowing the language or customs, were left with handing out $100 bills to build alliances. Our government air-shipped and distributed crates of this money. With the local economies at a standstill, public facilities collapsed, fear gripped families from violent streets and roads, and all havoc broke lose in the struggle for safety and survival.

Afghan soldiers, who are paid only $120 a month, will do almost anything to supplement their income, including selling weapons. At higher levels, bribes, payoffs, extortions create an underground economic system. The combination of lack of understanding, the systemic bribes, and the ensuing corruption has produced a climate of chaos.

Then there is the reckless slaughter of civilians -- wedding parties, schools, clinics, peasant boys collecting fire-wood on a hillside -- from supposedly pinpoint, accurate airplanes, helicopter gunships, drones or missiles. Hatred of the Americans spreads as people lose their loved ones.

Our "blowback" policies are fueling the expansion of al-Qaeda offshoots and new violent groups in over 20 countries. On 9/11, the "threat" was coming from a corner of one country -- northeastern Afghanistan. The Bush/Cheney prevaricator frenzy led to local bounty hunters taking innocent captives, falsely labeled as "terrorists," who were sent to the prisons in Guantanamo, Cuba. These actions have damaged our country's reputation all over the world.

All this could have been avoided had we heeded the advice of retired, high-ranking military, national security, and diplomatic officials not to invade Iraq and their advice not to overreact in Afghanistan. But the supine mass media, and an overall cowardly Congress let the lies, deceptions, and cover-ups by the Bush regime go unchallenged and, as Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) put it, Bush/Cheney "lied us into the Iraq War."

It isn't as if the Taliban and ISIS are winning the "hearts and minds" of the local people. On the contrary, while promising law and order, they treat local populations quite brutally, with few exceptions. But the locals have long been treated brutally by the police, army, and militias jockeying for the spoils of conflict. Unfortunately, there is still no semblance of ground-level security.

All empires fail and eventually devour themselves. The U.S. empire is no different. Look at the harm to and drain on our soldiers, our domestic economy, the costly, boomeranging, endless wars overseas and what empire building has done to spread anxieties and lower the expectation level of the American people for their public budgets and public services.

Not repeatedly doing what has failed is the first step toward correction. How much better and cheaper it would be if years ago we became a humanitarian power -- well-received by the deprived billions in these anguished lands.

What changes are needed to get out of these quagmires and leave a semblance of recovery behind? Press those gaggles of presidential candidates, who war-monger with impunity or who are dodging this grave matter, for answers. Make them listen to you.

Why Ben Carson's Rant About Gun Control and the Holocaust Is So Dangerous

Read this link here or below from The Forward and learn "Why Ben Carson's Rant about Gun Control and the Holocaust is so Dangerous."  Know why the Republican Party's "presidential" candidates, this one in particular, Ben Carson, are SO idiotic, ignorant and border on the insane!  The article says it all.

Many Jews, when they heard Ben Carson’s recent remark that if Jews had owned guns, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened, probably said to themselves (to use the vernacular): “WTF?”

Those familiar with Carson’s long history of bizarre, ignorant and just plain weird pronouncements were likely less surprised, but have probably chalked it up to just another Weird Carson Moment. The only mystery, they probably mused, is why 20% of Republicans think this guy should be president.

But both are wrong. In fact, Carson’s outrageous and offensive claim is part of a long crescendo of pro-gun rhetoric that invokes Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. That theme, unlike Carson, is deeply rooted in the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association. And it is profoundly anti-Semitic, immoral and disgusting.

Here’s what Carson actually said: “The likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” he told CNN on Thursday. Today, he doubled down, explaining that “Basically, what I said is when tyranny occurs traditionally around the world, they try to disarm the people first.” 

On first blush, this statement fails the rules of rational political discourse in three ways. First, and perhaps this goes without saying, it is ludicrously false. If Jews in Nazi Germany had owned guns, they would have been rounded up, sent to labor camps, gassed and burned by an authoritarian regime with many more guns, and with the support of at least half the general population.

Even if said Jews had today’s advanced armaments, the Nazis would surely have had more advanced ones, including tanks, an organized army, and a machinery of death unprecedented in human history. In the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, for example, armed Jews killed roughly two dozen Nazis. The Nazis, during the same uprising, killed 13,000 Jews.

This is why the Anti-Defamation League has long called such claims “historically inaccurate and offensive.” 

Oh, and another thing, the Weimar Republic, which preceded Nazi Germany, actually had strict gun control laws . The Nazis relaxed them, for everyone except Jews. In other words, the Nazis sought to arm the populace in order to further their totalitarian, anti-semitic goals. Oops. 

Second, Carson’s statement is so offensive as to beggar the imagination. Most of my great-grandparents, and many of my grandparents’ generation, died when the Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators rounded up entire villages and massacred them in the forest. So, Dr. Carson, what killed them was gun control?

No, what killed them was anti-Semitism, bigotry, hatred and extreme nationalism — all of which, incidentally, are far more prevalent on the Right than on the left. In the ADL’s words, “Gun con­trol did not cause the Holo­caust; Nazism and anti-Semitism did.”

To suggest otherwise is to desecrate the memories of my relatives. And non-Jews should know better than to invoke them in the first place. For shame.

Third, Carson’s statement is a perfect example of Godwin’s Law, which posits that once Hitler and the Nazis have been invoked in conversation, the conversation is over. Which really is the point: pro-gun zealots have long been completely unhinged from reality. Obama’s coming to take our guns, they say. And, in Carson’s words, “there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first,” implicitly linking President Obama with the Fuhrer.

But we err if we suppose that Carson’s statement is just a WTF moment, or another example of the surgeon-candidate acting like the dullest scalpel in the drawer. Because this is an old, deep, and broad theme among America’s right wing.

Carson’s exact argument has been made by morons as disparate as Matt Drudge, Ted Nugent, Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano, racist ex-ballplayer John Rocker (now a favorite on the Tea Party circuit), current NRA President David Keene and former NRA President Wayne LaPierre. 

Carson is one of the more prominent people to have openly made this argument, but to gun nuts, it’s as familiar as the muzzle velocity of an AK-47.

Amazingly, according to historian Neal Knox, it appears that this crackpot theory originated with Jews — in particular, the firearms dealer turned gun rights activist Aaron Zelman, who founded the fringe group “Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership” in 1989.

I remember getting the JPFO’s mailings back in the nineties. They resembled lunatic manifestoes, like the Unabomber’s or the one in the background of Dr. Bronner’s Soap packaging. And they made about as much sense.

But this particular idea has thrived. It deflects what gun extremism is really about — compensating for a sense of lost control or impotence, plus fear, racism and paranoia — into Tea Party style patriotism. Guns are to protect us from tyrants, not black men from the ghetto. We are defenders of liberty, not property. We’re not paranoid, we’re proud.

And by now, it’s everywhere in the Radical Right, complete with false quotations from Hitler praising gun control (he never said them), false constitutional theories (the second amendment has nothing to do with individual gun ownership), false histories and false implications for contemporary policy. The lie has grown so big that it’s begun to resemble the truth.

Inside the right-wing echo chamber, that is. What Carson’s statement really represents is — rather like his and Donald Trump’s entire candidacies — a sudden outing of the Right wing’s crazy aunt in the attic. In the case of Trump, the cray-cray is a weird xenophobia detached from all notions of economics, sociology or morality.

In the case of Carson, it’s what “everyone” knows to be true about Hitler, the Holocaust, and guns. Thanks to Carson, now the rest of us now know what “everyone” thinks. And we should be very, very afraid.

There is a very decent Republican Party out there, that is fiscally conservative, strong on Israel and fundamentally reasonable. Likewise, there are actual gun owners out there, who may own a hunting rifle or two, or even a small handgun, but who agree that we ought to keep the psychologically disturbed from buying assault weapons as easily as they grab a case of beer.

But these groups are in the minority when it comes to the actual Republican Party, which is now (post-Kevin McCarthy in particular) increasingly ruled by the Fox News-is-too-liberal crowd. They, not a few smart Jewish Republicans inside the beltway, are what the modern G.O.P. is really all about. They are the ones enamored of Trump and Carson. And they all know that guns could have stopped the Holocaust.

Read more: http://forward.com/opinion/national/322394/why-we-shouldnt-ignore-ben-carsons-rant-about-gun-control-and-the-holocaust/#ixzz3oATTQRGN

A Trip Down Memory Lane

I am watching the PBS documentary Frontline about the Lockerbie terrorist bombing of Pam Am Flight No. 103 in 1988 over Scotland. It is looked at, in part, through the eyes of one of the brothers who was killed on that terrorist-struck plane.

I also took a trip down memory lane as I came across my high school year book from the Class of 1966. I read the principal's message and the message of the president of my class. Both messages were full of optimism and hope that our class would make a difference in the world for the better.

Everyone who was in the class with the exception of, perhaps, three were white. One of those three was an intellect and received no recognition for her brilliance. She ran for Secretary of the class and told me she would never make it because she was a Negro (the nice word in that era for persons of color.) I could not believe it then.

I looked at my own picture, of course, which described me as "openhearted and friendly. She will surely reach her goals." Well the openhearted and friendly part, perhaps, they got right.

Then I thought of our nation and how low it has sunk, how divided it is and how US foreign policy was Machiavellian in which political expediency is placed above morality more than it was humane and selfless as we, in our naiveté, were told it was. But I did not know all of those things then nor did I know anything about the Islamic world (or Moslem, the appellation of the time for Muslim) nor did I know anything about terrorism and how the two are so inextricably intertwined. I did not know those things then.

I wonder if the Holocaust had never happened and Palestine was shared or if the Jewish people did not create the Israeli state as a refuge for the millennia of anti-Semitism suffered by them that led to the murder of at least 6 million Jews, if the US had not financed a coup in Iran in 1953 deposing a beloved leader, Mosadeq, and put in his place, the brutal Shah with his murderous secret police, Savak, had not taken place, if we did not have to greet every single opposing nation with force, if Vietnam did not happen, if the burning of the Vietnamese country side with cancer-causing Agent Orange did not happen, if My Lai did not happen what would our nation – no what would the world look like now?

Are Muslims by nature simply beasts (see link below) no matter what another nation did to them? I wonder about all these things as I look at that brutal link entitled “The Islamic State (ISIS) Is Raping 8-Year-Olds. And the World Is Doing Nothing.”

Who would do such a thing to an 8 year old? Then again who would do such a thing as to bomb and kill doctors of neutral political stripe who save lives and risk their own in a war zone? Who would kill innocent patients bombed and burned in their beds? Who would do such a thing as to invade a nation like Iraq that did nothing to it and kill god only knows how many innocents? Who would do such things?

Those are the questions I ask. Could it all have been so different; so much better than the political decay we see before our eyes in our time?

Maybe if I write about this and send it to a newspaper it will give me another Warholian 15 minutes of fame. What if that, in the long run, will mean nothing and the world will keep on going on as it has for thousands of years and my principal’s and the class president’s messages were wrong? What if it all ends in a flash?

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/vian-dakhil-yazidis-islamic-state-213226