Now is the Time -- Plowshares of Possibility

Hillary Clinton scored an impressive victory in the New York Democratic primary. She significantly exceeded the expectations of the most politically knowledgeable. Now we must unite the forces in the Democratic Party which when united will win the White House and, with work, retake the Senate and even win the House. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King come to mind:

Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity … Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

This significant victory by Hillary Clinton in the New York Democratic primary should be the time for all those in Senator Sanders’s impressive movement to be united with Hillary Clinton to win the general election. Now is the time to unite the Democratic ranks, who as Secretary Clinton said, have more in common than the differences that keep us apart. Let us come together in unity of purpose most in the Democratic Party and others who support our causes share.  Not to do so invites more Republican obstructionism, more suppression of the vote, more money in politics, more racist hate, millions of cruel deportations, more persons of color imprisonments, economic politics and trade deals that are impossible to keep. It will mean alienation of important allies no matter the flowery Trojan horse sounds that emanate from the Trump campaign. He cannot and never will do what he says he can. In fact, his ignorance of foreign policy even invites nuclear war.
 
If that is not bad enough a Republican stranglehold on the U.S. Supreme Court would be entrenched probably surpassing my lifetime and yours. Last but not least a woman's reproductive control of her own body would cease taking us back to the glory days of illegal unsanitary abortions killing women who, out of desperation, sought them.
 
I said that if Senator Sanders was the ultimate nomination winner he would have my support and he would. Through this significant New York win by Hillary Clinton the path to the nomination for Senator Sanders is very difficult and, in truth, nearly impossible.

Those who vociferously supported Senator Sanders began a movement to erase the choke hold of money that corrupts the very nature of this nation, the democracy of which we try to advocate for others to attain. This movement Senator Sanders began will live long after the efforts he made. I know this movement is not lost on Hillary Clinton. She has heard it. Senator Sanders began a movement that will go beyond the 2016 election into the vast future of our nation if it survives Republican attempts to create a 1% winner take all country leaving nothing for the majority middle class who historically have been its true strength.

Now is the time for those who vociferously supported Senator Sanders and began that movement to have a lasting effect. Now is the time to unite with the other half of the Democratic Party who, I believe, want the same things and that is to make this nation true to the tenets of its origin the words of which lie in New York Harbor at Lady Liberty’s feet:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Now is the time, indeed, to turn the swords of discord into the plowshares of possibility, work together and live out the true egalitarian creed of our nation.

We can do this and we can do this together if we unite. We merely have to will it so by working for it and, I believe, we will mightily win the day.

A Place in Hell

This is, as I have said, what the world must confront in its Herculean attempt to eradicate polio. It is ignorance at its MOST sickening. Religious fanatics are attempting to interfere with those who valiantly try to stop the spread of one of the most debilitating viruses often occurring mostly in children. Is this possible?

I am usually not a vindictive person but I will confess I can only hope those who kill human beings who are attempting to eradicate the dreaded disease of paralytic polio, should know what it means to suffer permanent paralysis of their limbs and/or the ability to breathe that the virus causes. The global effort to permanently erase the disease from the face of the earth is miraculous but is roadblocked by noxious actions like those described in the article below.

May the killers of those risking their own lives to save others -- especially children -- from this potentially life-long ruinous disease have a special place in hell reserved for them. The story is here or below.



http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/police-officers-guarding-polio-workers-killed-karachi-pakistan-n559041

Polio could be history? I wonder

A vaccine swap is being enacted to use a new and allegedly better formulated polio vaccine. See link here or below for the complexity of the story all need to know.

When man tries to perfect biology that has heretofore worked I always ask what could possibly go wrong when such a Herculean effort as this is attempted. I know, too, that there are some in third world countries especially in the Middle East who will not give their children the vaccine as they think it a western plot, With that being said I simply HOPE the scientists involved in this polio vaccine swap effort know what they are doing.

All vaccines, no matter for what they are administered, carry risk. It is, however, ever-so-small compared to not being vaccinated at all. In our era of vaccination hysteria and misinformation I worry that some parents who have no idea the devastation the polio virus monstrosity can cause (ask me as I know well) and, therefore, will not trust a new vaccine for polio or, indeed, most anything else. This vaccine swap of a new polio vaccine in place of the old one better work. The task of doing this is massive.

I spoke at length about viruses to my relative who is a doc. I asked him if he thought the polio virus will always be there. He said an unequivocal yes. In other words if some refuse vaccination the virus will be there ready to enter its modality of transportation -- the gut. If one thinks the virus can be eliminated entirely I am quizzical. As Jurassic Park taught "life finds a way." Whether it's the AIDS virus or polio -- despite the simplicity of the polio virus -- it could mutate and evolve again to try to survive to live another day. I would hate to be at the bottom of Everest after I had just climbed that mountain only to see I must climb it again.
https://www.statnews.com/2016/04/18/polio-vaccine-the-switch/

Fear Of Aging Alone--Aging: NO WAY OUT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-solin/fear-of-aging-alone_b_9647362.html?utm_hp_ref=fifty&ir=Fifty

Damned if I do and damned if I do not. If I accept aging and death then all well and good, it still does not obviate the fear of it. Debilitating aging is unacceptable to me. I'd rather be dead? Maybe or maybe not. If old friends die or god forbid a partner does then all well and good I just make new friends. Sorry, not that easy. Old friends are made over decades and a LOT of effort and time goes into making them. If some die the pain is excruciating. If I make new friends the cold hard reality is they may die too. So it's a constant bereavement I may have to endure OR worse think on my own death and missing the life I had more while I'm living it. I see no way out!

Greased palms--"New Documents Show Oil Industry Even More Evil Than We Thought"

Remember the coverup by big tobacco when it knew its ugly product killed by cancerous torture millions and never would admit it? Aux contrare it hired "scientists" to cover it up saying there was no conclusive evidence that showed tobacco killed until decades later in our present time when no one could cover it up anymore. The evidence is overwhelming. Executives of big tobacco who lied before Congress should have been convicted of perjury and ultimately manslaughter. They have, though, happily so, been sued in the hundreds of millions, perhaps, billions of dollars. There were consequences to their misery-inflicting coverup.

Big oil has taken many pages out of big tobacco's book KILLING THE EARTH and us along with it by the consequences of climate change caused by man and his filthy fossil fuels. Climate change is melting ice caps responsible for rising oceans faster than anyone thought. It is responsible, too, for extreme weather events that number by multiples of hundreds each year all over the globe and in the US from Hawaii, and California to Maine. It is especially visible in our western states and in the American south. All life on earth, animals that inhabit it and its ecosystem that depend upon a clean environment have felt its impact.

Those CEO's of big oil who deny it are criminals and those legislators with other know nothings who support them are accessories to murder! As Naomi Klein says in the title of her new book "This Changes Everything!" Keep electing those immoral unconscionable Republican Cretans who deny climate change and hand a nation off to your progeny who will be decimated by it. See link here or below.

IN OUR TIME IT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER TO ELECT DEMOCRATS WHO WILL ACKNOWLEDGE MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE FOSSIL FUEL CONTRIBUTORS OF IT. ALL OF OUR LIVES AROUND THE GLOBE IN OTHER NATIONS, TOO, DEPEND UPON IT. THOSE NATIONS ARE WATCHING OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WITH FEAR AND TREPIDATION. THE ELECTION OF A REPUBLICAN WOULD BE UNCONSCIONABLE. ERASE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN ITS PRESENT FORM WHILE CONSIDERING ALL OF THIS AND WORK HARD FOR DEMOCRATS EVERYWHERE!  


 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.../oil-cover-up-climate_us...

Loathing Trump BUT

Dare I say, loathing Trump SO entirely as I do, I cannot disagree with him with respect to the insane, interminable and never ending primary process. It is SO convoluted and opaque that it takes an MIT degree and the memory of an elephant (pardon the pun) to figure out the so called delegate "rules" that can go on for 20 rounds if they cannot reach the ever powerful nomination number. I say MAKE IT SIMPLE and fair. Hold primaries, in states that want them with WINNER TAKE ALL. Delegates to the respective conventions should be sworn to uphold the tally of how the voters vote in each state.

The convention should be a formality simply totaling the primary votes. Do away with the remnants of the smoke filled room using the Jacksonian spoils system trading the spoils of war for a vote. We look like a third world nation which, in some respects, sadly, we are in this economic oligarchy that exists at the moment.

I want a Democrat who can win. Let the voters determine it. I want Hillary because she is the most capable, has endless experience and can do the job. In my opinion Bernie is too old, looks it, is a one issue candidate and appears as the scold some who know him say he is but if the voters choose him I happily will agree and the DNC should too. Alas, power. does not work that way. Will this endless presidential season of endless Trump never end? I hope it does end with the Democratic nominee as president!

Climate Change May Be Causing Earth’s Poles To Shift

Scientists solve mystery of why the planet’s axis is tilting eastward.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/earth-poles-climate-change_us_5706c52ee4b0537661892db4

Tennessee Passes Anti-LGBT Counseling Bill

This Draconian law here or below is INSANE.  This is what we face IF a Trump or any Republicrat is elected.  The bill is clearly unconstitutional times 10 but if a Republican is elected president he fills empty SCOTUS seats with Clarence Thomas type justices. I need not relate what could happen to MILLIONS of LGBT people all over the nation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tennessee-lgbt-counseling_us_570c4c4de4b0836057a23d63

IT DEFIES DESCRIPTION AND EMPHASIS AS TO HOW IMPORTANT IT IS THAT A DEMOCRAT BE ELECTED PRESIDENT CARRYING DOWN TICKET CANDIDATES AS WELL.  GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!

Feel free to send this to anyone and most especially to any LGBT human beings and their allies that you know!  The LGBT vote must get out TO vote as well!

Shakespearean Tragedy

The link here or below shows what the Republican beast has turned into. This from a man, Trump, who supposedly wants to "Make America Great Again." It is unfathomable what this man's candidacy is threatening to do. It makes the revolt of the 1968 left wing look like a birthday party.

Trump's campaign according to this article in The New Yorker is threatening delegates who will be attending the Republican convention that if they subvert his candidacy (by playing by the rules) in any way they will disperse all the delegates' phone numbers and hotel room numbers to the mob. Yes, read the article above or below but caution: do not let your jaw drop while reading.

If Democrats ever threatened something like that they would be horse drawn and quartered or arrested forthwith. If this is true as the article portends the Trump campaign  will get away with what amounts to criminal threat. If anything like that happens especially if someone gets hurt or god forbid worse the GOP is done, cooked gone from the American political landscape and none too soon for me. They are already in the fry pan waiting for the fire. This article in The New Yorker it is Shakespearean in its tragedy and epic in its potential consequence.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-convention-strategy-the-fix-is-in

FAKE FRONT PAGE

BRILLIANT BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL FAKE FRONT PAGE!!!! IT IS STUNNING IT IS CREATIVE INTELLECT AND UTTERLY ASTOUNDING. KUDOS TO THE GLOBE FOR MAKING THIS REAL. READ, LAUGH AND THEN CRY. INTO WHAT HAS OUR ONCE GREAT NATION HAS EVOLVED!

Boston Globe Hammers Trump With Fake Front Page
Kid Rock is going to be an Ambassador. To repeat, Kid Rock is going to be an Ambassador.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/boston-globe-trump-fake-front-page_us_5709b903e4b0885fb50d4f41

What Is Life?

My two cents:

Below is an interesting article the essence (pardon the pun) of which many if not most have contemplated. It is about much more than "my two cents" though so I urge one to read it all. I respond in one pertinent part that when those who claimed to have died say they came back from the dead I knew it was balderdash. I knew that was nothing more than a religious wish the truth of which could never be proven because that truth did not exist. If a person "came back from the dead" he/she was NEVER really dead in the first place. Seeing a "white light" or seeing dead relatives with their arms outstretched telling them "no it's not your time" is merely feel good fairy tales! It is their own brain seeing it because they are, in fact, not completely dead.

In our always have to feel good nation high on religious beliefs of all faiths we must always be "proving" that our beliefs are the right ones, that there really is a life after death and see proof of Biblical myths where there is none. No one has ever come back from the dead even if they say they have. They haven't.

My own mother, in a nursing home for years nearly choked to death. When I visited her after the mishap she said "Don't be afraid of death. I saw a white light." Sure you did mom -- NOT. I aver her brainwaves were still functioning and that is what saw the "white light!" It wasn't god or an angel or any other supernatural scientific impossibility. It was her own brain.

THAT is precisely why I could never be Republican even if I could in other ways which I could not. To be Republican one cannot reject religion usually Christianity and never question the existence of god. I question EVERYTHING ALWAYS and I wish everyone else did too. At least STOP shoving beliefs which cannot be proven true down our throats and denying rights because of those beliefs to human beings who should have those rights in the here and now!

What is Life
By Jeff Schweitzer Scientist and former White House Senior Policy Analyst; Ph.D. in neurophysiology



Westend61 via Getty Images


Zombies and the walking dead make for good copy, but do little to advance our understanding of life and death. Unfortunately, neither did the National Geographic with a cover article entitled, “The Science of Death: Coming Back from the Beyond.”

The article issues forth just about every misconception of life that permeates our national discussion. Sam Parnia, a critical care physician and author of the book Erasing Death, is quoted as saying that death “is a process, not a moment.” So far so good. But then he makes a common but critical error in thinking, which gets to the heart of our problem. In discussing a victim of a whole body stroke, Parnia writes that the patient’s organs can continue to function for a period after the heart stops beating. From this he concludes that “for a significant period of time after death, death is in fact fully reversible.”

Well, no, it is not. If a patient can be revived, the patient was never dead in the first place. But how can that be if we see no brain waves and the heart has stopped beating? Surely that is dead, isn’t it? If someone was revived from that state, clearly we must say he came back from the dead, no? That is certainly what is commonly believed, but no, we can’t. The success of reviving the victim means that during that state in which it seemed as if biological functions ceased, the functions essential for life in fact remained viable enough to be resuscitated — and therefore the patient never died. Reports of Mark Twain’s death were exaggerated only because he was not dead. The same is true for “miracles” like toddler Gardell Martin who was “dead” for an hour and a half after falling into an ice-cold stream. We are very happy to have him among the living, but he never left us in the first place.

We find this curious state of suspended animation difficult to accept as anything other than dead because we are asking the wrong question about life and death, without ever clearly defining what it means to be alive. Most of us hold deeply and unquestioned the idea that life is all-or-nothing , on or off, live or dead, one or the other, black and white. I mean, something is either alive or dead, end of story. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are in good company in failing to define life. Dating back to the early Greeks and across millennia to modern times, great minds have recoiled from the notion that life might be a matter of degree, because our intuition so strongly demands that something be alive or not. But our intuition serves us poorly here. The problem seems to be that the more rigorously we attempt to define life, the more we encounter ambiguous cases that test our assumptions, stretch the limits of our definitions, and demonstrate where intuition and common sense falter. With even casual observation, the essence of what makes something alive quickly becomes non-intuitive when we are presented by forms that defy easy categorization such as bacterial spores or crystallized virus capsules that can rest inert for centuries before being reanimated. Those viruses would appear to be no more alive than a pile of salt, but we know that only one can be re-introduced into the kingdom of the living.

Iron is Iron

History has failed to give us a good definition of life precisely because life was viewed not as this continuum from inanimate to animate, but as a huge leap from one to the other. To be alive meant having a special essence, something beyond the normal mechanisms that governed inorganic chemistry and physics. Invoking “vital forces” to explain life endures today in much of the general public. But vitalism, this endowing the living with a life force, is tautological, and explains nothing. If something is alive, it must have a life force; if it is dead, a life force must be absent. That is circular, not helpful.

We now know that no life force exists. The laws of physics and chemistry are indifferent to our struggle to define life, and operate identically on the same principles whether we deem something to be living or dead. The carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, iron and other atoms that come together to form our bodies are just that: the same elements that are found in the iron skillet in our kitchens and the nitrogen in the soil fertilizing our gardens. The atoms in our bodies are not special or endowed with any properties different from the atoms in every object around us. Iron is iron is iron, whether attached to hemoglobin in our blood or flaking off the hull of a rusting ship.

Continuum

A continuum describes a whole, no part of which can be distinguished from neighboring parts except by arbitrary division. The best example is visible light. You know without hesitation when something is green or blue, but cannot say exactly when one color yields to the next. Any attempt to define where one color ends and the other begins becomes arbitrary because green turns to blue across a smooth gradient of frequencies with no inherent boundaries. A pristine lake might be green-blue or blue-green or turquoise, but not clearly green or blue. This nature of the light applies to the idea of living and non-living as well. If we call green “dead” and blue “alive” we see that no boundary exists between the two because they transition one to the other with no intervening gap.

Atoms

Atoms deserve special attention since everything we know is an aggregation of atoms, the same in things dead or alive. The simplest and lightest atoms such as hydrogen, helium, and some lithium formed just moments after the Big Bang. A star derives energy from the combining of these lighter elements into heavier elements through nuclear fusion. Our own Sun is currently fusing hydrogen to helium, a process that will occupy most of its lifetime. After the hydrogen supply is depleted, the star will burn helium to form progressively heavier elements such as carbon, oxygen, silicon, sulfur, and iron. Up to a point, fusion releases energy and is therefore self-sustaining, which is why we see the sun shining every morning, unless you live in Seattle.

This all relates to life; just hold on a few more seconds. The creation of elements heavier than iron requires the input of energy, and is not self-sustaining. Some other source of energy is needed, and that comes from the explosion of a supernova. A massive star will eventually deplete its energy source of lighter elements. The star will collapse into itself when no longer supported by the release of nuclear energy through fusion. If the original star was sufficiently massive, the collapse will release a huge amount of energy in a spectacular explosion. The resulting supernova supplies the energy necessary to support fusion of nuclei heavier than iron. The explosion also causes a blast wave that ejects the elements into interstellar space. Some of this dust is eventually gathered up in planets, like earth, as new solar systems form. Every single carbon atom in your body, and every carbon atom in the charcoal at the bottom of your barbecue, comes from such interstellar dust.

Nothing Special

Derived from stardust, the elements in your body exhibit no special properties. Carbon is carbon. Nitrogen is nitrogen. Atoms are just atoms, so the old premise that life is made of some special stuff is wrong. But more modern efforts to describe life fall short, too. The most recent edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica offers a typical definition of life as a “state characterized by the ability to metabolize nutrients (process materials for energy and tissue building), grow, reproduce, and respond and adapt to environmental stimuli.” At first, that sounds perfectly reasonable, but the Britannica definition is in fact completely inadequate, as has been every previous attempt.

The Characteristics of Life

Broadly speaking, the following characteristics are usually invoked in various orders and degrees to define life: autonomy; reproduction; stability, change and evolution; resistance to entropy; conversion of matter and energy; metabolism; excretion; movement; autopoiesis; homeostasis; complexity; organization; growth and development; respiration; responsiveness; the presence of a genetic code. The fatal flaws in each of these characteristic called upon to define life all fall into just three simple categories: the traits assigned to life are present in some non-living systems (like growth, in crystals), the traits assigned to life are absent in some living systems (movement - think of sponges), or the traits can only be determined or defined across generations (like evolution or reproduction), depriving us of the ability to determine if the beast before us is alive or not. Every single character or trait that has been used to define life suffers from one or more of these three deficiencies.

Take the presence of a genetic code for example. That would seem to be a pretty good way of defining life because DNA is only found in living things. Wrong. We can extract DNA from fossils, and few would argue that an old bag of bones that has been in the ground for 100,000 years is alive. This type of defect in definition can be found in every one of those categories that so many have invoked to define life.

Beautiful Ambiguity

Let’s return to the idea of colors. Nobody would deny the existence of green or blue, yet nobody can define when one color becomes the other. That inability to draw a clear line between them does not diminish the reality of the two colors. We accept the existence of clearly identified colors even when the transition between colors of light are absent of any clearly delineated boundary. Life is no different. We know at the extremes when something is alive or not, with no ambiguity, just as we know something is green or blue. Other cases are ambiguous, just as we do not know when green becomes blue. A virus could be alive or not, simply depending on your perspective. In some cases, such as viruses, bacterial spores, and prions, defining matter as alive or not becomes arbitrary, an exercise in semantics, rather than a window into the deeper workings of nature. We might be obsessed with attaching a label of “living” to something, but that something simply sits somewhere along a continuum of complexity regardless of the label finally affixed, aloof to our discomfort.

The region along the spectrum of complexity where non-living transitions to living is a zone of ambiguity that exists because life is not an all-or-none phenomenon, and because the stuff of life is the same stuff as non-life. Previous definitions of life have fallen short because of a common commitment to find a unique spark that simply does not exist. Definitions struggled to capture something essential about life that was not found in the non-living world, rather than accept that no such distinction can be found. Definitions of life were meant to reflect something fundamental about nature, rather than serve as a useful tool for categorizing complexity. That is why all have failed.

There is no single unambiguous definition of life. Most examples of life are complex; most metabolize, grow, reproduce, and evolve over time. But not all do, and not all have all of these functions present. Some physical systems also share these same characteristics. That fact is not troubling; it reflects the reality of nature. “Life” is an arbitrary label we apply to distinguish extremes of complexity along a continuum. We know that a block of pure quartz is not alive and that a screeching kid in the restaurant is; whatever label we paste on all those cases in between is a convenient convention, but in no way reflects any fundamental break or division between the living and non-living.

These thoughts are not original, just widely ignored by those outside the field of biology. Josephine Marquand suggested in 1968 that we “avoid the use of the word ‘life’ or ‘organism’ in any discussion of borderline systems.” Norman Horowitz in 1955 and John Keosian in 1964 concluded much the same as here. Even the 1968 Encyclopaedia Britannica stated that “There is no point along the continuum of existence from the simplest atom to the most complex animal, at which a line can be drawn separating life from nonlife.” Notice, however that Marquand, Horowitz and Keosian are not household names, nor is the Britannica observation widely cited. The idea of a continuum of complexity, with simple inorganic systems at one end and the highest life forms at the other, is a bit difficult to digest, and does not satisfy the human need for easy answers. The idea also moves against the grain of our intuition about something being alive or not. So we put up some resistance. But resistance is futile.

With a new perspective on the phenomenon of life, we can look with a more jaundiced eye at claims of death and resurrection in cases like Gardell Martin. We can readily reject statements like “death is in fact fully reversible” when we know that life is a continuum along a spectrum of complexity, with no simple on-off switch. Those revived were never dead, the switch was never turned off - just dimmed to below our ability to see, waiting to be re-energized. Let’s move away from this rather silly idea of victims coming back from “the beyond” and leave Zombies, the walking dead and resurrection to Hollywood and Sunday sermons. You can’t come back from a place you’ve never been.

Sanders Digs In, Clinton Calls for Unity in Spat Over Qualifications

Good for her. She's what one calls in Yiddish a MENCH! Bernie is a scold and he just lost whatever chance he might have had to take the oval. He NEVER will because he stooped to Republican speak and refuses to ameliorate things which she is doing. It is in her interest and OURS, of course, to keep the Democratic Party in tact. For his sour punishing with no regret comments he just lost whatever chance he had to be president. Personally, although I like his views, I thought he had zero chance and now even more so.

IF there is a candidate who is more qualified than the Secretary of State Clinton I do NOT know who it is. Sanders is living in dream world much like Trump. As president one cannot waive a magic wand and wish things to be so. One has to be able to walk a line and negotiate. Am I telling Senator Sanders anything he does not know? I think I may be and THAT is reason number one he is not going to walk into the oval. I am voting Hillary and wish I could twice because she is so very experienced and pragmatic. One must be to get things done. Senator Sanders stop scolding and start exuding the humanity you say you have in policy but I do not see in reality. Do not alienate Democrats UNITE them!

My finance professor relative says this: "Bernie Sanders should not be President, he is too old and he is also not entirely correct; in a way, his mantra about breaking up banks is just as stupid as Trump demanding the Mexicans pay for a wall; unintended consequences. Banks will break themselves up- it is called divesting, or spinoffs, when market forces and regulations make it advantageous to do so. In the same way that Treasury just prevented a huge tax inveersion by changing the rules. You did not need Congress for that. Look up the Pfizer-Allergan deal that was just blown up; they planned to merge, move the HQ to Ireland (where Allergan is) and thus avoid paying US taxes, Treasury got serious and made, or enforced rules that require US Corporations to not do that. They could have done this earlier for other companies, too, and maybe they will in retrospect.

Now the M & A (mergers and acquisitions) guys will work on other deals, like breaking up Pfizer instead of merging it. Pfizer shares went up yesterday. The company will still do what it can to maximize profits, which is their job. Same thing with banks. Change the rules a bit and they will diversify all by themselves; no need the “break them up”, whatever that means- this was done to ATT in the old days BTW.

The size of the bank is not the main problem, it is what they might do to embrace too much risk that is."

The Conservative Abortion Conundrum

Donald Trump was asked a question by Chris Matthews he was not prepared to answer. Trump, having supported a woman's right to choose all of his life, was tripped up by his new-found right-to-life mantra considering a fetus the same as one would consider the murder of a fully-formed human being. The problem is the so called "Right to Life" position is rather difficult to defend. If Roe v. Wade is overturned then what should the punishment be if one disobeys the law? Who does one punish?

SCOTUS in 1973 extended the right of pregnancy termination to the woman in whose body the fetus resides. If this is overturned and abortion becomes illegal does the state punish the doctor performing the abortion, the mother having it, or the friends, partner or husband who brought the woman to it? Moreover, how much of a penalty would the "guilty" parties pay? Does the state punish her/them with a fine or imprisonment for 1 day, 1 week, 1 year or 2 or 3 or 4 or more? If a fetus is considered a "person" then should not the punishment for killing a person be death? Trump could not answer. He could not answer because he never thought about the question. When he did think about it Trump came up with the nebulous answer that there should be some punishment. When Matthews quickly pressed him who should be punished and for how long Trump grumbled out quickly "we have to figure it out but the woman, yes, she should be punished." The teen, Tanya Niemi, who asked the abortion question never knew she may have delivered a fast ball right over the plate to the candidate of the Narcissist Party for which he was unprepared and therefore, could not answer. She may have destroyed his campaign as he tried, for the first time, to walk his answer back.

Really, Donald, you believe there should be SOME punishment for the woman making this important decision? How much punishment, Chris Matthews asked, but the candidate of the Narcissist Party did not know. The Republican Party has made their social issues bed and now Donald Trump and the rest of the sad Republican group has to lie in a very uncomfortable one. To Republicans, ALL Republicans, abortion is murder and Roe v. Wade to them must be overturned. To court any other view is Republican heresy.

Please allow me to refresh memories of the glory days of illegal abortions before Roe v. Wade saved lives. In that era sex before marriage was taboo and verboten. In that era a woman who had unprotected sex lived in terror of becoming pregnant and worse that the man who made her pregnant would leave her. There were movies then where the most egregious sin was that the girl became pregnant before marriage. I take you on a trip down Scarlett Letter memory lane to Torquemada torture films like "Blue Denim" with Brandon DeWilde and Carol Lynley or "A Summer Place" with Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue where the sinners of sex before marriage were racked with guilt as to what to do when the girl became pregnant.

Abortion was illegal then except if one had money and connections one could find a doctor somewhere sometimes even in Europe who would perform it or another here who would say it was a D&C when it really was an abortion. Women who were poor and did not know those tricks or could not afford them were relegated to quack abortionists, unsterile conditions, coat hangers, future sterility and even death from poisoning or they could have a child when they could not afford one. There were even homes for unwed mothers like one in Boston called "The House of the Good Shepherd" where my mother said "bad girls went." Yes let's return to the STUPIDITY of that era when abortion was illegal.

Mores have loosened up since then. Pregnancy before marriage is not the egregious sin it once was and fathers through their DNA confessional legally bear some of the responsibility for support of their child -- unless, of course, they skip then the state (Republicans love so much--NOT) will help shoulder the burden.

NO ONE but no one is mandating one have an abortion if it is against one's belief system. It, though, is a personal decision choice and the Supreme Court said it was. If you do not want an abortion by all means do NOT have one but leave your conservative conundrums to yourself and my choice about my own body to me!

Arsenic or Ebola.

Hugh Hewitt, conservative extraordinaire, was on MSNBC commenting on the Wisconsin primary results. Why he was on not once but twice I have NO idea. He said Cruz is one who could win against Hillary Clinton.because the Supreme Court is in play.

Really?? Really MSNBC?. Why have that conservative Cretan on a progressive channel talking smack? If that ugliness happens that Cruz takes a cruise into the Oval Office I'm off to Antarctica. Cruz the right wingnut extremist will NOT take the presidency even IF Hillary does not win Wisconsin tonight.

In one week Wisconsin will be a distant memory that 1/2 the electorate will not remember. If you ask the man on the street who knows who won Michigan they would not know.. Cruz will NOT beat Hillary. That prediction I will not have to walk back. Perhaps I was a little too quick predicting Wisconsin. The exit polls were looking much better for Hillary which is why I made what looks like a rather inept Wisconsin prediction...Okay I'm wrong on Wisconsin but I will NOT be wrong on the presidency if Cruz is the Republican nominee.He will NOT walk into the Oval. It is a choice on the Republican side between arsenic and Ebola!

Ex-Trump Employee Speaks Out on his Treatment of Women

And this is who some Republicans want to elect as the most powerful man in the most powerful nuclear empowered nation in the world?



http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/ex-trump-employee-speaks-out-on-his-treatment-of-women-20160329

EVERY TIME I PRINT AN OPINION I WILL FOLLOW IT WITH "GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE EVERYWHERE."  EVERYTHING I WRITE AND ABOUT WHICH I TALK IS INSTRUCTION TO DO JUST THAT.  DO NOT PULL THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY APART LIKE THE INTRINSICALLY EVIL REPUBLICONS HAVE DONE.  STAY TOGETHER AND A SUPREME COURT WILL BE PUT IN PLACE TO KEEP ALL THE THINGS NECESSARY FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS AND POOR TO LIVE AND IMPROVE THEIR LOT WHILE IT WILL BLAST THE EVIL CITIZEN'S UNITED DECISION FOR THE 1% WEALTHIEST TO HELL WHERE IT BELONGS!

Avoidance of Dementia

The editorial in the March 25, edition of the Metrowest Daily News entitled "Hope on Dementia" (linked here or below) was, indeed, as interesting as it was a positive article about a malady which people of boomer age and even younger fear. There is nothing I value more than coherent intellect and thought -- not wealth, not physical agility or any other yardstick one uses to measure success. I fear a loss of one's memory and coherent thought more than I fear almost anything else.

I do try, as best I am able, through exercise, proper diet, weight control as well as expanding my mind to new ideas, concepts and realities in our ever-changing world in an attempt -- I hope not in vain -- to ward off the debilitating disease of dementia associated with aging.

In the end we are given the gift to view this life, short though it may be, for a limited time which seems to pass more quickly as one ages. We must make it count, I believe, for the betterment in the lives of the least of our co-occupiers of the planet and to make life count for more than one's occupied space on it. It is not, I think, what life gives to us that matters but what we give to help make the lives of others better.

http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/20160326/hope-on-dementia#loadComment

 IT IS WHY I AM A DEMOCRAT AND WHY I ADVOCATE VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS AND WHY I WANT TO GET OUT THE VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS ESPECIALLY BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.  WHOEVER IT TURNS OUT TO BE HILLARY OR BERNIE THAT IS THE DEMOCRATIC CHOICE DO NOT TAKE YOUR TOYS AND GO HOME IF IT IS NOT THE ONE OF YOUR CHOICE.  YOU CAN NEVER EVER GET IT ALL BUT ONE PARTY IN OUR TWO PARTY SYSTEM CARES ABOUT THE POOR, THE SICK, THE ELDERLY AND THE DISABLED AND IT IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.  THEREFORE I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH -- GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!

Science and the Proposerous Noah's Ark

Re: "Noah's Ark dinosaurs" in the Sunday Globe: Creationists can believe in the tooth fairy BUT when their beliefs impinge on my safety and hijack the houses of power then I have a big problem with them. They cannot take advantage of medical truth that has brought them cures for disease because of all the knowledge that science knows to be true. They cannot accept that and then stuff their untrue fantasy down my throat and prevent those who intellectually think from gaining the clear advantage that science including and most especially evolution bestows. The first time the so called creationists injected their kids and themselves with the polio vaccine or any vaccine to prevent the most heinous diseases they are tangentially accepting an understanding of the evolutionary process of disease. Because of that understanding we KNOW that even the lowly virus and bacteria mutate into something else for their survival. It's elementary now and why we must curb our use of antibiotics, for example. This is why those ignorant groups set my brain on fire. The minute one gets in an automobile science made it so. Science makes ALL of western progress so and an easier life and survival for all life everywhere so.

The ability that makes what science says is true that is the billions of years old earth is that TIME makes it so. All of these developments did NOT happen overnight. The essential element is TIME. And further the viciousness not to mention the size of, for example, the dinosaur beasts would make living side by side with them impossible. They had the advantage for a time and would have eaten humans out of existence. And on this Ark where would those animals have done their bodily functions such as eating the vast amounts of food they needed and eliminate it as all life does? Elementary questions but necessary ones for those who incredulously believe in untrue junk as truth. It isn't it's fantasy. A 5000 year old document written by men could NOT know the truth we have learned over millennia. TIME is the operative word and billions of years of it. [link below]
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/03/23/noah-ark-dinosaurs-and-theme-park/hvFXqmZIOffw7lC9R66yWL/story.html#comments

Incredulous

I am ANTI-Biblical nearly EVERYTHING. I do not know whether to laugh or cry that IDIOTS believe one milimicrometer of the Bible as inerrant fact. (See link below.)
Yep creationists think dinosaurs were on Noah's ark and that the earth was created 6000 years ago. They are building this ark to the tune of $150 MILLION bucks. Bet Ham (the owner of the park) will make a nifty profit off of stupidity.

This is knee slapping funny IF it were NOT so dangerous. How much of a moron does one have to be to believe the Bible as scientifically or historically for that matter true? Read the article "Noah's dinosaurs" and get a laugh or a cry.

Oh yeah and by the way Charleton Heston's "Ten Commandments" was on last night. I have one (only one?) question for it and also by the way I'm Jewish: When god allegedly hands down the commandments and says thou shalt not kill but did so when he murdered the innocent first born of every Egyptian and then if things could not be worse has the Red Sea drown the rest I would call that murder wouldn't you? What a pile of bullpucky! I want to form a Party: the BB Party standing for Biblical Bullpucky Party! And what I said goes for ALL religious texts not only the Old Testament but everything else especially of the so called "people of the Book." It is crackpot nuts.

I am trying to determine why it makes my blood boil and sets my soul on fire -- It has to do with science, its truth and man's progress. As Bill Nye the Science Guy said the Fundamentalists believe in a finality of belief as truth NOT even tested belief mind you but MINDLESSLY unquestioning Biblical belief. Science on the other hand leaves truth open ended. It's true if science proves it is until science proves it isn't.

Great book to read explaining this sick phenomenon of our national malady: "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" by Charles Pierce. Or get Bill Maher's movie "Religulous" and then go question everything! I may write a book entitled "Incredulous!"

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/03/23/noah-ark-dinosaurs-and-theme-park/hvFXqmZIOffw7lC9R66yWL/story.html#comments

The Other Side of the Story

There is another side to every story and before we are quick to jump into eternal war yet again we should think long and hard as to what it means to go to war. Clearly, the Bush administration 16 years ago thought about none of it but was perfectly willing to sacrifice American blood and treasure in their propaganda-laden war and Americans, with the exception of a few, did not question a micrometer of it. Clearly those that committed us to eternal war based on lies should pay the price of war criminals. They never will. The least this exceptional nation can do is to read about the other side and take note of what it really means to take a nation to war!

Highlighting Western Victims While Ignoring Victims of Western Violence

https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/highlighting-western-victims-while-ignoring-victims-
of-western-violence/

Suggested Viewing

	PM (2 minutes ago)
HBO Monday at 9:00 p.m.  ‘Only the Dead See the End of War’ by Michael Ware (link below) Americans should see what this nation's leaders have done in our name and should think twice before it calls itself exceptional. ISIS is this nation's creation as it landed on a sovereign country, bombed it, crushed it into submission and dismembered an entire Middle East region  based on LIES for oil.  Our nation became TRILLIONS more in debt from it, took showers in blood out of it and condemned our nation as well as foreign nations to eternal war because of it. There are GENERATIONS of Iraqis ... little children... who know nothing but war and hellacious violence. As Michael Ware said on Chris Hayes, Iraq has Belgiums at least twice a week while our candidates talk about whose hands are bigger and whose genitals have more prowess. It is DISGUSTING and we should know ALL that this documentary will tell us because you surely will NEVER know watching the Today show, Good Morning America or some other silly ass programming the networks feed us to keep us dumbed down and them in cash.  Elections matter and the Bushes were our poisonous asps spewing their venom into our veins and into the marrow of our bones. Imagine if Al Gore, the one who truly won the presidency, in 2000 had been president...Imagine. DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE again if we want our nation to survive. A Republic said Benjamin Franklin of the new nation the Founders created -- IF you can keep it! I hope we can.  http://variety.com/2016/tv/reviews/only-the-dead-see-the-end-of-war-review-hbo-iraq-documentary-michael-ware-1201733077/

Conservatives are destroying our future

Crackpots and Cranks

How far can our nation devolve into an "Alice In Wonderland" world where up is down and down is up? Every day, for all the world to see, a different insult is levied by one Republican candidate against another not over policy but over issues more prevalent on the playgrounds of juveniles than should exist in a race for the most powerful and serious office in the land. Are we really discussing the size of Trump's hands and relating it to his genital prowess or the posed nudity of Trump's wife and the inference that there is something about Ted's wife, as an employee of the investment firm of Goldman Sachs, that Trump threatens to expose? Are these men running for the highest office in the land; one in which someone will be entrusted with the nation's nuclear codes in the most dangerous world since World War II? There are such serious issues at stake. Have these Republican candidates lost their minds and will this nation lose its by electing one of them to the presidency? Trump is a Republican curse and Cruz is not far behind him.

Yes, I am a strong Democrat, BUT I do see the necessity of the two Party system and think if I were Republican I would stomp my feet and say "STOP IT" just "STOP IT" before you inflict the death knell of the Republican Party.

The Republican Party needs an extreme makeover. I would want this Party if I were in it to stand for a difference in the views of the economic system and not the exclusion of the vote for one group or another. I see a rationale even for the representation of the 1% who are after all Americans. Yes, they deserve representation too.

The cancer in the Republican Party's bone marrow is its rejection of science even when the science is clear. Democrats and Republicans alike should be on the same page when the issue is one of scientific certainty like global climate change is. It is true, it is fact, 98% of scientists agree, with the exception of those few who work for big oil, our planet is melting and the extreme weather events we have seen all over our nation and around the globe is evidence of that fact. 70 degree days in Colorado one day and a blizzard white out leaving 20 inches of snow the next is further proof. One cannot deny it as one could not deny that viruses and bacteria cause disease. If I were Republican I would demand my Party NOT eschew science but welcome it.

I would, too, want my Party to do as the Founders wanted and separate church from state. This is imperative as they saw in their time and we see in ours what fanatical religious belief, unyielding and extreme, can do. It places one foot on the neck of another with hands ready to kill for a belief not of scientific veracity but of personal unprovable adherence.

I once read a book entitled "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free" by Charles Pierce. I ask as he did how did stupidity become a virtue in our nation? Something must change in the Republican Party or its death knell will be a certainty. Our nation must NOT be run by crackpots and cranks with someone's hand on a nuclear bomb. The face of the Republican Party in our time is a frightening face and it needs to change or the body politic of that Party will succumb to the cancer invading it.

AS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IMPLODES HILLARY CLINTON IS LOOKING BETTER AND BETTER. THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS THE ADULT IN THE ROOM. A REPUBLICAN MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED INTO THE HALLS OF POWER. GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE, TAKE THE PRESIDENCY AND OVERTURN THE CONGRESS. THERE IS SO MUCH AT STAKE!

Magnificence

I enclose the text of the Democratic front runner for president, Hillary Clinton's speech on terrorism at Stanford University today here or below. I thought Secretary Clinton's speech at Standford on the Brussels terrorist attack was nothing short of MAGNIFICENT. I was so proud of her and to be an ardent supporter of her candidacy. She will, if she is our Democratic nominee, and I think she most definitely will be, run rings around any of the Republican candidates who are so far from being qualified for the oval office it is stunning.

Secretary Clinton was brilliant, completely knowledgeable, serious and succinct about issues concerning the Middle East and terrorism. Why shouldn't she be? She has the experience in triplicate that is needed to assume this difficult job. No one in the Republican Party of know nothings can compete with her.

Thank you for the wonderful speech, Secretary Clinton, you gave at Stanford. I am going to try when the Secretary wins the Democratic nomination to work my heart out for her and sing the praises she so justly deserves.


http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/We-Will-Defeat-ISIS-Hillary-Clinton-Gives-Counterterrorism-Speech-at-Stanford-in-Wake-of-Belgium-Terrorist-Attacks-373265291.html

Deadly Explosions Rock Brussels Airport And Subway--Fuel to Trump

Explosions in Belgium will give fuel to Trump who will advocate for increased uber violent policies that will embolden those who perpetrate these brutal revenge acts on the west and on other Muslims who do not agree with its ludicrous beliefs! The electorate must not be bamboozled again.

Lay the creation of ISIS and its violence at the feet of George W. Bush who conducted an entire trillions of bucks Iraq war based on lies, killing hundreds of thousands, destabilizing the entire Middle East, creating refugees by the millions and in the end creating ISIS and groups like it that perpetrate mayhem right back on us.

The more virulent talk by Trump and those who support him puts ALL of us at risk. It does one thing for sure: It EMBOLDENS those who want to destroy western culture and worse may have access to nuclear devices all over the world. THINK on that before you pull the lever to vote for Trump!

Trump off the Phone -- My email to MSNBC

FINALLY, Chuck Todd does something smart and will not interview Trump for "Meet the Press" on the phone probably for Todd's conservative "establishment" buddies. Why does MSNBC keep Todd? I don't see Fox keeping any liberals or progressives as commentators but MSNBC is so fair doncha know -- NOT!.

Chuck Todd is absolutely one of the most UNAPPEALING commentators on the air and slips by HE THINKS conservative clap trap erroneous analyses LIKE Nancy Reagan was the best first lady in this nation's history. I don't forget that and wonder if Todd ever took a history course and if so why did he omit Eleanor Roosevelt who really WAS the greatest first lady ever walking miles for her husband. She was her husband's legs better than "just say no" Nancy? YES!

Oh then there was Edith Wilson who ran the White House for her husband after his stroke and, oh yes, since Todd does NOT know history, there was Dolly Madison who was the toast of Washington and saved George Washington's famous portrait during the War of 1812, a copy of which hangs in the East Room of the White House where it presumably is today. Too much to ask Todd to know that.

Saying Nancy was the greatest first lady in our history frosted me. I BEG TO DIFFER, Chuck. Do you think he cares? No, he just walks away with his unearned god knows how much salary to hell with getting things right and being progressive like MSNBC is SUPPOSED to be!

And BY THE WAY, I HATE his beard that makes him look like the devil. 

The media is absolutely promoting Trump. They had Trump on for one hour doing a press conference after meeting with Republicans like he was the president. They want Trump on because he raises bucks for the corporate media of course. To hell with the American people who could vote for a man for the presidency who could kill us all!

Trump FREE Time

The networks must have devoted a HOUR to Trump after his meeting with a few Republicans. Where does he get off to command such an amount of time in front of the media? He is getting FREE air time. He is NOT the nominee ... yet. He is NOT the president, he is merely a candidate. You gave him the amount of time you would give the president at a news conference.

Shame on you and most ALL the big media for making Donald Trump into the threat to our republic that he is!

Bill Moyers: The Republican establishment has been infecting the body politic for years.

By Bill Moyers:

From their “Dark Money” bagman Karl Rove to their philosophical guru David Brooks, the GOP elites are in a tizzy over saving the Republican Party from Donald Trump and the other intruders, extremists and crackpots who have fallen in behind Trump as if he were the Pied Piper of Hamelin. But who will save the party from the elites?

Look around at just some of the other sheer lunacy their party perpetrates when it’s not trying to shut government down, redistribute wealth upward, and prevent the president of the United States (who, the last time we looked, has the constitutional right and mandate) from filling a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

The Republicans in southern California just got a 7-6 majority on the region’s air quality board and have set out to reverse all of its safeguards, “reaffirming new smog rules backed by oil refineries and other major polluters,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

Mary Lou Bruner, a Republican crank in Texas who claimed that a young Barack Obama had worked as a black male prostitute, is on track to become a key vote on the state’s board of education, the group that, as Matt Levin at the Houston Chronicle writes, is, “already drawing intense criticism for textbooks that, among other issues, downplayed slavery and racial segregation.”

That’s important because the school board is such a major buyer of books its decisions affect editorial content in texts all over the country. So remember that Bruner is an eccentric whose Facebook declarations include “School shootings started after the schools started teaching evolution” and “The dinosaurs on the ark may have been babies and not able to reproduce. It might make sense to take the small dinosaurs onto the ark instead of the ones bigger than a bus.” Huh? Yet Republican elites seem quite satisfied to have a Mary Lou Bruner as the arbiter of what their children read in schools.

And while we’re talking about education, travel over to Texas neighbor Louisiana and look at the legacy that former Republican governor and presidential candidate Bobby Jindal has left behind for his Democratic successor, John Bel Edwards.

At The Washington Post, Chico Harlan reported:

“Louisiana stands at the brink of economic disaster. Without sharp and painful tax increases in the coming weeks, the government will cease to offer many of its vital services, including education opportunities... A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will be canceled. Students will lose scholarships... Since the 2007-08 school year, Louisiana has cut funding for higher education by 44 percent, the sharpest pullback in the nation.”
Part of this can be attributed to the precipitous drop in oil and gas prices and loss of fossil fuel industry revenue crucial to the state’s economy. But the real problem, according to the Associated Press, is that:

“Jindal, burnishing his fiscal conservative credentials for his failed presidential campaign, refused to hike taxes or approve any action that even resembled a tax hike, including trimming expensive business tax credits, even amid an economic downturn... Legislators are hearing that cuts described by the Jindal administration as ‘efficiencies’ actually went much deeper, striking at services. They’ve learned about borrowing practices that increased state debts and about threats to Louisiana’s cash flow because it spent down reserves.”
The result? A calamitous budget crisis in the second most impoverished state in the country, a $900 million shortfall that has to be fixed by June 30 and another amounting to around two billion that will need to be closed next year.

So that’s how you govern when you have the power. Thanks, Republicans!
“This is the party whose elites deceived America into war after cutting taxes on the wealthy so they wouldn’t have to pay for it.”

And while we’re at it, ponder, too, the once-great state of Kansas, where, under the right-wing ideology and bumbling leadership of Republican governor Sam Brownback, the clowns are running the circus. The state legislature there is moving toward passage of a bill that would allow the impeachment of Kansas Supreme Court justices for, among other newly-thought of high crimes and misdemeanors, “attempting to usurp the power” of said same legislature or the executive branch.

The reason? As per Edward Eveld of The Kansas City Star, “A recent state Supreme Court decision, citing the Legislature’s constitutional duty to properly finance public schools, has demanded that lawmakers fix a school funding formula by June 30 or risk the shutdown of public schools for the 2016-2017 school year.”

The court also has overturned death sentences and is considering a case that would void anti-abortion rules. The Republican legislature doesn’t like any of this one bit — not to mention that four of the seven judges were appointed by former Democratic Governor Kathleen Sebelius. So in a classic, don’t-raise-the-bridge-lower-the-river solution, the GOP legislators — who outnumber Democrats by three to one - have decided that the answer is to do away with the judges they don’t like and to hell with checks and balances.

In the words of Esquire‘s inimitable Charlie Pierce, “They recognize no limits to their power, no curbs to their desire. There are few frontiers in democratic government that they will not work to violate, or to twist to their own purposes. And they absolutely will not stop. Ni shagu nazad, as Stalin said to his army. Not one step backwards.”

What happened to Kansas? A coup against common sense, sound principles and the “general welfare” hailed in the preamble to the US Constitution. And as it all has gone down, Republican elites seem to have developed a case of laryngitis.

We could go on. Let’s not forget what Governor Scott Walker has done to Wisconsin and Michigan Governor Richard Snyder to Flint. Check out how Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner is endeavoring to “fix” higher education there. Will Republican elites please tell us where they stand on their man’s ax-wielding mania?

And what Republican poobah has dared call out Grover Norquist, whose monomaniacal crusade against government has thrown public education into crisis, turned streets and highways into bottomless potholes, and produced stratospheric deficits? (Bobby Jindal, by the way, was just one of the many who signed Norquist’s no-tax pledge, a major reason why his state is barely holding on by its fingernails.)

Finally, this is the party whose elites deceived America into war after cutting taxes on the wealthy so they wouldn’t have to pay for it. And so it goes. All of which leads us to the conclusion that what’s wrong with the GOP ain’t just about Donald Trump, apoplectic, mendacious miscreant though he is. Over decades, the Republicans have built castles of corruption and citadels of crony capitalism across the country and now the angry villagers are climbing over the ramparts. Not one step backwards? Too late.

Trump Meets the Honeymooners

If you remember this program (who could not) with the great Jackie Gleason you will LOVE this. It is a brilliant, clever and short Youtube starring Ralph Kramden, Alice and Trump. Enjoy!!
here or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XriXDtfqCg

BEWARE THE IDES OF TRUMP

84 year old Woman who fled Nazi Austria and who denounced Trump is mailed KKK symbol


By Travis Andersen Globe Staff March 18, 2016


An Arlington woman who wrote a letter to the Boston Globe denouncing Donald J. Trump’s initial reluctance to disavow a former Ku Klux Klan leader said she received a copy of the KKK’s symbol in the mail.



Louise Mayerson, 84, who left her native Austria as a child when her family fled the Nazis, said she received an anonymous envelope in the mail shortly after her letter to the editor was published in the Globe in March



In her letter, Mayerson described herself as “an Austrian refugee from the time of Hitler” and said the Republican presidential frontrunner’s “failure to immediately repudiate [former Klan leader David] Duke chilled my blood.”

Days later, Mayerson said, she received an envelop containing a copy of the KKK symbol that featured a square white cross set against a red backdrop. The envelope was postmarked from Boston, she said.

“I believe somebody just read that letter, it touched a nerve, and that’s the way they reacted,” Mayerson said.

Mayerson contacted Arlington police, who are investigating the incident, Chief Frederick Ryan said. He declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.Arlington police have increased patrols on streets in Mayerson’s neighborhood. The department also reported the incident to the town’s Human Rights Commission, which assists hate-crime victims, Ryan said. Mayerson praised police for their response. She lamented the “poisonous atmosphere that has been created” in public discourse that “can lead to some pretty unpleasant things for all of us.”Robert O. Trestan, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, echoed her sentiment.

“The more that hateful and denigrating speech becomes commonplace in the public realm from leaders, the greater the likelihood that people will start acting up, whether it’s harassment via the mail or violence,” he said.

Asked for comment, a Trump spokeswoman did not comment directly on the Arlington incident, but said the candidate has disavowed Duke.

“Mr. Trump has disavowed David Duke, the KKK and all other groups that espouse similar views. He will continue to do so,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks wrote in an e-mail to the Globe.

Mayerson wrote the letter in response to an interview Trump gave to CNN last month when he was asked about Duke, a former Louisiana legislator and vocal supporter of the businessman’s campaign.

“Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke,” Trump told the network. “I don’t know anything about what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists.”

Trump later said on Twitter, “I disavow.”

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY A DEMOCRAT CAN WIN THE PRESIDENCY AND OVERTURN CONGRESS AND THAT IS TO GET OUT THE VOTE EN MASSE--GET OUT THE AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTE, GET OUT THE HISPANIC VOTE, GET OUT THE ASIAN VOTE AND GET OUT ALL PROGRESSIVES, MODERATES AND LIBERAL VOTE. TRUMP IN FACT COULD WIN. THAT IN AND OF ITSELF SHOULD PROD EVERYONE TO GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE!!!

My Political Purchases

Sanders's strategy is to win the western states which he thinks are more progressive than the ones Hillary won last Super Tuesday. The big kahuna, California, of course, is in the mix. Moreover, he says that matching up Donald Trump and him in the general his stats are much better than Hillary's to defeat Trump. I must think about that. I am not sure he is right in that she swept all five contentious states Tuesday including the big one, Ohio.

In truth, I like Bernie Sanders but I cannot manage to whip up enthusiasm for him. My heart is with Hillary who has experience times ten that makes her the most qualified for the presidency. There is no movement in the Democratic Party that is viciously against one candidate or the other ... yet. The wonderful thing about those who are in the Democratic Party is that however it shakes out, and I do think it will happen for Hillary, we can be sure we will have no problem voting for either of the two candidates who may prevail. That is a pretty good place to be. 

Having said that I just purchased a Hillary 3/4 length sleeve T shirt and two bumper stickers. My political radar says those purchases will not be in vain.

Power to the Party

My opinion at this moment in time is that Trump cannot be defeated as the Republican Party's nominee even at the convention. If the convention is brokered denying him the nomination after he has gained so much support I close my eyes and shudder as the power in the Republican Party, weak and ineffective, folds like a paper tiger fearful of the violence that is behind Trump.

The rise (and hopefully ultimate fall) of Trump is reminiscent to me of the rise to power of the Nazi state. One by one responsible power brokers in Germany at that fateful time caved and through the Enabling Act in response to the Reichstag fire (lit surreptitiously by Nazis themselves but blamed on Communists and, of course, Jews,) gave the elected Chancellor Hitler all the power that he needed to assume totalitarian control. The Nazi rallies at Nuremberg foretold the portents of doom.

Trump's rallies show us in living color the violent nature of their supporters' essence and the encouraging remarks by Trump himself who easily admits if he is challenged "rioting will break out" show his tolerance of it.

It is up to ALL of us to stand with those in the Republican Party who have the power to challenge the delegate count which ultimately selects the nominee. In this case, unknowing by most, the Party has enormous power to choose the nominee. Whether they have the will use it is surely up for conjecture. I personally doubt that they will.

A Lesson for All Time

Renée Graham's excellent Globe editorial "Anti-Trump protesters are Patriots" see link here or below is one to which I wholeheartedly agree. Not only is it not treasonous to oppose the likes of the egomaniac racist Trump it is OBLIGATORY and patriotic to vociferously oppose him.

I am reminded of the great Spencer Tracy in his brilliant performance of an Allied tribunal judge, Dan Haywood, in "Judgment at Nuremberg" which centered on the trial of Nazi judges guilty of war crimes. Burt Lancaster plays Ernst Janning, a former German judge of some intellectual heft and moral compass before the rise of Nazism. He realizes his egregious crimes during the Nazi period sentencing the innocent to imprisonment and even death. He is seemingly the only former Nazi of conscience. He asks to see Spencer Tracy at the end of the film and says:

"The reason I asked you to come. Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. YOU must believe it, YOU MUST believe it."

Judge Haywood says "It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."

The film speaks of conscience and of personal guilt. It speaks of one man's obligation to protest and refuse to commit inhumane acts of bigotry and monstrous acts of inhumanity. Nuremberg is not just applicable for that era but for all eras and man's duty not to commit unconscionable acts against the powerless in the name of the state.

The protesters at Trump rallies are doing just that and my heart is with them as they do a moral good and make judgment at Nuremberg and its lessons a lesson for all time for all men.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/03/16/anti-trump-protesters-are-patriots/AYf5RW9hzpJB0UnqJTDMgI/story.html#comments

Youtube: Chomsky on What if Trump Wins?

What if Trump wins? --


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVqO3r3ugVo

OH HAPPY DAY

HOLY GOD I JUST FOUND OUT AS I TURNED ON THE TV NEWS THAT HILLARY DID SWEEP!! SHE GOT MISSOURI. I WAS RIGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE. OH HAPPY HAPPY DAY.

Spread the Word

I am forwarding the links below. Hillary did better it the Super Tuesday Democratic primary than I ever could have hoped. I understand all may not feel as I do about taking the presidency by a Democrat who can win but in case you do I send what I was sent below from Secretary Hillary Clinton's campaign. If you want to contribute to a Democrat who can win go to HillaryClinton.com to do so or you have the option of going to the links below.

Donald Trump must NEVER come even NEAR the oval office. The consequences of a Trump presidency would be national suicide. A nation is not a business. It is composed of all of us who must work together with those nations around the globe without Trumpian bluster and shoot-from-the-hip rude madness. Nation states who are our allies will be alienated and those who are our adversaries will not submit to his authoritarian dictates. Our nuclear world demands prudence and careful analysis for which Trump has NO ability nor the temperament.

I urge you to be smart and to be pragmatic for you, your children, your children's children, and for all of us. The stakes are enormous. I share what the Clinton campaign sent to me. Scroll below.

Thanks for sharing why you’re a Democrat. It’s important that we spread the word about how Democrats are moving our country forward, and sharing your story is a huge part of that.

Another way to help get the word out is through social media. When you share official Democratic Party news, you’re helping our candidates reach the widest audience possible.

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Thanks for helping spread the word.

The Better Angels of Our Nature

In 1968 I thought a candidate like the segregationist George Wallace was frightening but I knew he would never be president and he wasn't. He was, though actually paralyzed by an attempted assassin's bullet that relegated him to a wheelchair all of his life.  The violence of the sentiment George Wallace engendered was epic.  The fact he did not win reflected that as much as race played a part in American politics it was not the only part and as Anne Frank said of her time I said in mine:  -- in my heart I believed Americans were basically good.

 

It is sometimes said that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.  When a nation belches forth a candidate, like Trump who, despite his denying the essential violence of his campaign, serves to divide and not to unite then the dark history of another era shows its possibility again.  Trump pits race against race, men against women, religion against religion, and nativist nationalism against the policies of inclusion.  He is playing with dynamite and the explosive fuse is ready to be lit as minorities will not sit quietly by while they are attacked.  Trump pits African Americans, Hispanics and other peoples of color, and religion as well as sexual orientated minorities against its majorities of white Christian men.  Soon the Republican Party will become the Party of Christian whites no others need apply.  The danger is obvious.

 

The forces of the right share a proclivity for violence because their message is one of hate and hate knows no promotional restraint. The right wing extremist can do anything he wants, including violence to secure often poorly thought out crackpot policies with a plethora of lies supporting their advocacy.  The extremist right will gladly commit violent acts even murder to get what it wants. Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was an example extraordinaire of that and there are many more.  McVeigh brought down the federal building of that city while it housed a nursery school and killed 168 innocent human beings including children. The extremists of the right even the populist right like those who support Trump are incredibly violent and will stop at nothing to advance the cause of an anti-federal government and a white power nativitist agenda.  It is why Trump could not vociferously and immediately deny the support of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan. He gets their votes.

 

The left, especially decades ago, has shown its violence too BUT the philosophic underpinning of the left is one of racial inclusion and not exclusion. The two sides are mortal adversaries.  I stand with those who are for inclusion and not exclusion of the “other” because I know what it is like for one to feel excluded and not a part of the society in which one lives.  I stand for justice and fairness for the minority and the oppressed. It is why I could never be a member of a Party that wants to reject human beings and not accept them, often because of the color of their skin, their religion or the person whom they choose to love and with whom they want to share a life. The right wing is simplistic and authoritarian in its understanding of issues that require not simplicity but the complexity of questioning and thoughtful analysis.

 

I say walk in another oppressed man's shoes and maybe history, with the repulsive Donald Trump heading for bone chilling victories, will not repeat itself and doom us all to eternal domestic conflict, war and international violence.  The only one who can stop him is you.  I believe we are a better nation than those who support Trump and one which shows, as Lincoln said, “the better angels of our nature.”  I believe in my heart Americans are still basically good.  Truly, the fate of nothing less than western civilization depends that we are.