Mayberry RFD -- Free?

Andy Griffith died but his show lives on. I loved him and the town of Mayberry even though that south which it was about never existed. I loved the goodness of Mayberry, I loved things always turning out right in the end and I loved Griffith's wisdom ruling the day. I loved the cast – Andy’s innocent young son Opie, their motherly protective Aunt Bea and the brilliant humor of Barney's Don Knotts. He was a centerpiece of the show that ne’er-do-well sheriff’s deputy who could never seem to get things right but was lovable nonetheless. He was slender, petite and powerless with little self-esteem but wanted desperately to have so much of it. All the other characters inspired the warmth and caring of a community who supported each other -- the naïve Gomer Pyle, Goober and Amos the good-hearted drunk who put himself in the tank when he had a little too much juice. He never ended up with cirrhosis, he never killed anyone driving drunk, he never went to endless rehabs and he never ended up dead in a back alley of booze. Andy was a widower but the audience never had to encounter the gut wrenching emotions of a loved one’s death.

The fictional Mayberry RFD was a deeply southern town but, curiously, in Mayberry there was not ONE person of color in residence. Therefore, there was no racial animus of division. There were no cross burnings, no religious oppressive philosophy of hate because, indeed, there was no racism at all. None of the issues that saturated the historical south was a part of Mayberry RFD. There were no literacy tests, no Jim Crow laws, no separate schools, no separate bathrooms or separate drinking fountains -- one for white and one for “colored.”

Mayberry the good was American fiction. The town never existed but many of us wished, if only for a moment, it did because we so desire an era of civility, of goodness, of kindness and of people who care about one another. A part of me spurns the stupidity of that sit com and a part of me yearns for it!

A July 4th Symphony

On the day of the celebration of our nation's birth, I know most of you understand the imperatives of our national condition. If we thought we could breathe a sigh of relief because the President's Affordable Care Act was upheld by the most unlikely conservative justice on the Court, I submit our relief is misguided.

Instead of Republicans acquiescing to the realities of our system of government resigning themselves to its dictates, Republicans along with their misguided, often uneducated and sometimes ignorant Tea Bag allies are energized like never before to overturn it all. If Republicans are victorious in November, hold the House, turn the Senate red, and win the presidency their guns will then be turned not only on the Affordable Care Act but on Medicare and Social Security as well. They will take our ship of state reactionarily back to the late19th century age of robber barons and steer us yet again toward the iceberg of another Great Depression.

Republican dedication to the election of Willard Mitt Romney as president and turning the Congress all red is in emergency mode. NONE of us should revel in the complacency of an important health care victory because Republicans will commit any fraud, commit attempts at voter suppression, commit any treason to usurp power no matter how illegal, no matter how perfidious and no matter how immoral to make voting for Democrats as difficult as possible ensuring Republicans win by any means necessary.

Our survival, our nation's survival and in actuality our planet's survival will be held hostage to know nothings who are ignorant of their corporate masters and who listen 24/7 to the continuous lies of the greatest media corporatist liar of all time, Fox News. Our president is the ONLY one especially if aided by a Democratic Congress who could save our nation from this impending catastrophe.

The fires in the west are a metaphor for a nation that is burning with the fires of climate change. The fires, too, are burning with words of interposition and nullification as some Republican controlled states are threatening to refuse huge federal benefits the health care law will bestow. It is burning with lies about Wall Street fraud and its nexus to our great economic hardship. Most especially, it is burning with outrageous lies about our president -- impugning his stature, insulting his person and defiling the office of the presidency itself. Mitch McConnell, Republican Minority Leader said it best -- "The Republican Party is dedicated to one thing and that is making Barack Obama a one term president." He says this with pride, he says this with glee, and he says this with determination no matter how many it would hurt. Republicans are impervious to the suffering middle class and the poor of our nation.

The right wing is violent, it is racist, it is science denying and it is composed of religious fanatics who, if elected, WILL destroy the fabric of our country -- the heretofore most advanced nation in the western world. Evolution will see to it that those who deny science will die by nature's own hand.

The Republican symphony of doom, a funereal fugue of descending notes that plays a cacophony of sour sounds is ruining all that is sweet and melodious about our nation gleaned and hard fought for over centuries. They stand poised to ruin it all for generations to come.


Onward to re-elect the president and the brilliant candidate from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren to US Senate.

Romney Has Some Splainin to Do

First a caveat:  On the issue of abortion, I am pro choice.  The issue is not even relevant to me directly BUT it is of maximum importance that women remain 100% free to make decisions about their own bodies free from the interference of big government; the same big scary government, I might add, the rightwingnuts say they loathe.  Obviously, they think government interference telling women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies is simply divine.  

Mitt Romney running on and embedded in a Republican Party that is firmly anti-choice so much so one could never hold a position with that Party if they hold a pro choice policy position.  It is one of their many tyrannical litmus tests for admission and is the magnetic force which attracts those who step on their own economic toes to sign up Republican even though that Party has nothing to offer them.

When candidates for office, especially the highest office of the presidency claims to be anti abortion and then attaches himself to a company that disposes of aborted fetal waste to make MILLIONS from that company it is the duty of the opposition to call his hypocrisy out.

I attach the following quote from Mother Jones Magazine a source of credibility.  One would think, as the Cuban accented Ricky Ricardo of "I Love Lucy" fame would say, "He's got some splainin to do!"  I quote:

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

Yes, Mr. Romney please SPLAIN we would all love to hear what you have to say.  Splainin is a rare commodity Romneyland where lies, skirting the truth, and contradiction rule the day!

TEMPLE ISRAEL OF HOLLYWOOD--What is means to be a Jew!

This YouTube speaks to me and, perhaps, gives rationale to my passion. For those who know me I am not religious BUT my heart is the heart of a Jew. This small documentary chronicles the Jewish lives of Hollywood. My story is their story without the glitz and monumental success!

I have in my latter years devoted myself to humanitarian causes and political thought. If I stand on the shoulders of some of these giants illuminated in the short documentary I am thankful for those shoulders. I am thankful that I came from an ethnic group often maligned but, against all odds, wondrous in achievement. My Jewish heart beats as theirs did, dedicated to humanitarian philosophy, political thought and good deeds. It is a rendition that says what I know to be true as Rabbi Hillel said centuries ago: "If I am not for myself who will be for me?" "If I am only for myself what am I?" "And if not now when?"

Click here or below for the short story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDp_KZvyXNo&feature=em-share_video_user

Heart of Hollywood 2012

Three Things about the Affordable Care Act You Should Know

When Republicans LIE, and they do ALL the time, about the Affordable Care Act or what they love to call disparagingly "Obamacare" the truth was told by the MIT health care expert who helped Romney write for Massachusetts essentially the same bill. All you need to know basically are the following FACTS about Obamacare or more properly called the Affordable Care Act:

1. INSURANCE COMPANIES CANNOT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST THOSE WITH PREEXISTING CONDITIONS OR CANCEL INSURANCE WHEN THE TREATMENT GOES ABOVE THEIR PREDETERMINED AMOUNT;

2. THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE WHICH IS SOMETHING CONSERVATIVE THINK TANKS WANTED AS POLICY will make the expense of it go down over time. Call it a tax, call it chicken soup, who cares the "tax" is minimal. If one cannot afford it one will NOT have to pay it. There is no penalty for not paying it. It accounts for a mere 1% of those who pay the tax in Mass. or will have to pay it nationally;

3. There will be subsidies to make insurance affordable if one cannot afford it i.e. exchanges.

THAT'S IT! That's paring down Affordable Care Act benefits to understandable levels.

Would I have preferred single payer -- of course but our obstructionist bought out by big money Congress -- mostly Republicans but some blue dog Democrats too -- would not hear of it.  I am happy with what we as progressives could get and think, like Medicare and fine wine, it will ultimately improve with age.

Onward to Re-Elect the President and Elizabeth Warren to the US Senate from Mass.!

The Enemy of the People -- Re-fighting the Civil War

If you watched the evening news then you know how imperative it is to work for the re-election of our president and for all Democrats throughout the nation. Give when you can, do as much as you are able and mobilize like we have never mobilized before. The nation is on fire and it is burning. The president with a hostile Congress will never be able to put the fire out because the insipid science deniers will not let him.

If you watched the evening news then you saw that there is absolutely NO loyal opposition left. The Republican Party is now energized, it seems, more than it has been since the 2010 elections. The Republican Party has become the enemy of the people and the enemy all of us who want humanitarian policy and the recognition of sound science. They are the enemy of truth, they are the enemy of science, they are the enemy of a suffering American population to whom the passage and constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act is life saving but if allowed they will repeal it even in the face of their own Chief Justice's affirmative decision upholding it. They are the enemy of a president whose skin color makes them see fire and want him removed with every fiber of their being.

We MUST fight fire with the fire of our OWN enthusiasm, never forgetting for one moment if God forbid Republicans take the presidency, the House again and the Senate as well, we are done as a nation. They will return, because they simply are not intelligent enough to realize it, our nation to the clutches of the 1% wealthiest who do not care about them and most certainly do not care about us, the elderly, the disabled and the poor to whom health care is NOT a luxury but a necessity and should be a right.

We have in the past week, achieved many victories BUT do NOT allow that to lull us into a sense of complacency. We MUST fight, we must never give in, we must never falter and we must never fail. We, as Democrats, as human beings with empathy for those whom life's good fortune has forgotten, must work until the last hour of the last minute of the last second until the polls close all over the nation in November. A defeat for the president is UNTHINKABLE!

The opposition is energized like never before because they simply cannot endure a black president and a black family residing in the White House. This is 2012 but it may as well be 1860. Our president is the Lincoln of our time. Win this election for the president as if you were re-fighting the Civil War because in many ways you are!


Onward to re-elect the president

A Flip-Flopping-Flounder Candidate and Party

The president is so far and above the best candidate, has proven his mettle, done some VERY good things of which progressives should take note, that to elect a man who has flip flopped more than a fished-out-of-the-water flounder, cannot connect to much of the American electorate and even to many in his own Party is out of the question. I heard a winger say he was moving to Canada if the president, because of the health care passage, was re-elected. I might remind that person Canada has nationalized health care!

The Republican Party is impossible for even an economic moderate to support. It was not always but has become a vicious, mean-spirited, uncompromising and extreme right wing Party. Moreover, and worst of all, its aura is racist and its composition nearly all white. Not only would I never vote Republican I would be ashamed to register as one.

When Nixon was president, because I needed a summer job, a nice Republican student I knew helped me secure one with the Republican State Committee of Mass. I was NOT Republican. I was a civil rights advocate, war protester and true left of center Democrat BUT needing a summer job prevailed. Even though I agreed with them on nothing they were some of the nicest people individually with whom I worked and had the pleasure to get to know. It was a wonderful experience and I grew to love many of the state committee workers there.

Today, not only would I NEVER consider working for a Republican organization even in a summer job I could not even TALK to any on policy or truthfully have any as close friends. The political milieu between us is that toxic, angry and sad! I am hoping rather than health care being the President's Waterloo, as the cerebrally challenged Republican South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said, that the vote in November will be the last gasp of a Party of white which bears no resemblance to the lovely people I once knew so many years ago and that November will be a big win for Democrats!

President Obama/Elizabeth Warren for Senate Needed Now More than Ever Before

I was elated as I am sure many of you were by the decision handed down yesterday by SCOTUS. In reality we know, I think, the decision hung by a thread and in the end who could know calling the mandate a "tax" instead of arguing it vis a vie the Constitution's commerce clause was the magic bullet for Chief Justice Roberts to red rover to our side. I have thanked him more than once across the blogs.

In reality the word tax in this nation is like saying Kryptonite to Superman. A negative aura was cast on that word practically from the country's founding BUT we all know taxes are eminently necessary for our nation to function to protect its people.

I am convinced effective taxation comes from electing good, ethical, honest, smart legislators and government workers appointed by them to avoid the rip off and con game that has reached Herculean heights especially by the odious decision of Citizens United. I went to a Bill Moyers blog and found the following:

Robert Kaiser, Associate Editor of the Washington Post, explains that as long as Washington is a center of money and power, it will tempt some people. He illustrates his point with the story that titled his book:

I went to [lobbyist Bob] Strauss, and I said, "Explain to me why the lobbying business has boomed so, in the years that you've been in it, 35 years." And he thought about it for a minute, and he said, "You know, there's just so damn much money … ."

It is why we need at least two or even three of the conservative justices responsible for the malignant decision of Citizens United turning Washington into the golden calf on steroids for the 1% supplanted by this Democratic president who works for the 99%. We hope these justices will be replaced when and if he is elected to his second term. It is WHY it is imperative for the reelection of the president to occur. Without that this nation will be taken down a path of oligarchic bought government – regulatorily anarchistic, unbridled and unrestrained in its reach to the goutian 1% whose appetite for all the money including yours and mine is impossible to satisfy. If we do not see these justices replaced we will not see in our time and in our children's time a nation we, as progressives, thought we knew.

I enclose a link here or below to some thoughts I developed about so called “originalist” justices after the decision was handed down.

Onward as the re-election of the president and the election of Elizabeth Warren for Senate is needed now seemingly more than ever before!

http://www.natalierosen.blogspot.com/2012/06/constitutional-essence-of-healthy.html

The Constitutional Essence of a Healthy Nation

I am thrilled by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Even more thrilling was Chief Justice Roberts of the conservative five breaking away from them and voting astutely with progressives. He encased himself in what I think will be one of US history's greatest decisions, perhaps, the Civil Rights Act of health care in our time. When the nation elects brilliant leaders chosen at the right time it does brilliant things. Elections matter! It was a great week for the president and was a happy day for me. 

Having said that, I think about the conservative perspective of judicial review -- the so called constitutional "originalists" often labeled "strict constructionists" who are philosophically consumed by wanting to deviate little from what they think the Founders in 1789 constitutionally meant and wrote. I am quizzical. The population of the US in 1776 was approximately 350 thousand people.  There were 13 fledgling former colonies and a psychology of individual states which the Founders were trying, with difficulty, to form into some sort of collective sovereign entity. 

It was a nation, too, trying to form a just construct while ironically retaining the unjust institution of slavery, the economic lifeblood of especially the south but the whole nation too, as powerful in its time, perhaps, as the military industrial complex is today.  It is a nation now of 50 states populated by approximately 350 million diverse people with a panoply of different interests forming a huge melting pot of ideas.  Could the Founders have envisioned this?
 
A document constructed then must change now in many ways as the social fabric of the nation changes. Does one really think, for example, that the Founders understood their Second Amendment to allow rapid-fire guns with double clip magazines, unlimited assault rifles or a powerful organization advocating for minimal gun control even when a House member or a president is nearly assassinated with ease? Could they have envisioned domestic criminal thuggish often psychotic violence which never ends placing millions of guns in the hands of the psychologically unbalanced who will be tempted to use them at any cost?  

The Founders' nation was originally composed of 13 colonies afterward states needing to maintain state militias because they had confronted the external force of British control. Who is going to overthrow a country of 350 million successfully now? HOPEFULLY, NO ONE will.  What external threat could be so powerful as to force millions of individuals in that complex sovereign nation to think they need and must have weaponry geared for internal and external war which could, in truth, be waged only by local police or the various military forces of government? 

Truly, though, what was the Founders' original intent?  I believe it was to form a document which could accommodate change and thereby withstand the test of time.  I do not think the Founders were so obtuse to believe their institutions should be quick-sanded in 18^th-century cement.

Progressives understand the nation changes. We understand its people through their institutions and its Constitution must reflect that change as well.  The brilliance of the document the Founders wrote about two and one-half centuries ago is that it is flexible enough to accommodate those social changes which, I believe, the Founders knew, eventually, would occur.  We are still a healthy nation.   I hope the essence of progressive thought and its humane Constitutional interpretation keeps us that way.

A HEALTHY AMERICA THIS IS A GREAT GREAT DAY!!!!

Sent to me by email: 

HUGE NEWS: The Supreme Court just upheld Obamacare—a law that is going to improve tens of millions of American lives and help millions of people get health insurance who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. This is a BIG deal.

In the coming days, people everywhere are going to be trying to make sense of what this decision means and the unfortunate truth is that most people don't know what's in the law that can help them—for example that it's one of the most pro-woman laws in recent memory. Further, studies show that the more people know about what's in it, the more they support it and more importantly, the more likely they are to use the great benefits in the law

This is an important opportunity to let people know how they stand to benefit—especially women. So we put together a quick list of what health care means for women and for all people. The list is below. Can you check it out and then forward this email to 10 of your friends?

Click here to share it on Facebook and Twitter

Here are some of the incredibly important protections and opportunities the Affordable Care Act offers women.¹

• Being a woman is no longer a "pre-existing condition." Yes, women were denied coverage for just being women before the Affordable Care Act was law.
• Insurance companies can't charge you more for being a woman either. Before the Affordable Care Act was law, women were sometimes charged up to 150% more than men of the same age.
• Breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, domestic violence counseling and screenings and a whole bunch of other preventive care measures must be covered by insurance companies.
• Birth control is now covered by health insurance.
• Children can stay on their parents' health insurance until they're 26 years old. And if you want to have kids, the law will help you get pre-natal care and counseling and help with breast feeding and supplies too.

And here are some of the important benefits for everyone.²

• Insurance companies can't take away your coverage if you become too sick.
• You cannot be denied insurance coverage because of a pre-existing condition.
• Seniors receive a 50 percent discount on prescription drugs when they hit the "donut hole."
• Small businesses get tax credits to purchase insurance.
• There are no more lifetime limits on your coverage.
• 15 million more people will receive coverage because of expanded access to Medicaid.
• Millions of Americans are going to receive tax credits to help them get insurance--people who wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise.
• 12 million seniors are currently receiving free preventative care through Medicare.

These are major benefits that will have a huge impact on millions of Americans' lives. Can you take a second to forward this list to 10 of your friends today?

Thanks for speaking out.

Nita, Shaunna, and Kat, the UltraViolet team

Sources:

1. "I Am Not A Pre-Existing Condition," RH Reality Check, October 14, 2009
"The Affordable Care Act Gives Women Greater Control Over Their Own Health Care." White House Fact-sheet
"Preventive Services Covered Under the Affordable Care Act," Department of Health and Human Services Fact-sheet
"Women's Preventive Services: Required Health Plan Coverage Guidelines," Department of Health and Human Services Fact-sheet
"Young Adult Coverage," Department of Health and Human Services Fact-sheet

2. Complete Transcripts of Supreme Court Hearings on the Affordable Care Act, The Washington Post, March 26-28, 2012

Fire -- No Time to Waste

The terrifying Colorado fires in the west are seemingly unstoppable and horrific. The fires, the floods and many many other weather extremes we have seen not only in this country but around the globe over this decade are yet more evidence of climate change. They emerge from a reality that is the spawn of the mendacity of big corporate everything (in this case the fossil fuel industry) creating the politics of superpaks tugging in tow cash and LOTS of it which rules the political day to cover-up truth. The force of the many cannot overrule this toxic force of the few as their HUGE money carves a tornado-like path through our nation cutting a swath through Congress, the courts, and now attempting to wrest control of the presidency.

This is what happens when rightwingnuts gain power, deny science and are hoodwinked to think that the 1% wealthiest are about them. They eschew truth in favor of child-like myth and, when, finally, it gets bad enough are forced to admit what progressives were iterating for years is correct. Now it may be too late. Global warming and the climate change it brings are NOT theories as common understanding of theory is defined by know nothings. They are FACT, indisputable and science-based fact as the Gorian truth "Inconvenient Truth" conveys. The burning of fossil fuels is killing us with its climate change inferno of poison ruining our earth and taking hundreds of thousands of humans with it on its journey to hell. Moreover, this scourge of the earth oil also is finite meaning it will not last forever. Then what?

Keep electing those who are in bed with big oil/fossil fuels and keep thinking that the 1% care about you. They do NOT. The money they have already made, BILLIONS, is not enough. They want it all, they want yours, they want mine, they want everyone’s and they may just get it IF we let them. Keep electing them to high office duping you with their long-proven and many-times-tried false economic ideology with its social anti-human stupidity going along for the ride. Keep thinking the sky god will come down from some mythical heaven and whisk you away to safety. It will NOT. You WILL die unless you wake yourself up from fanciful dogmatic nightmarish mythological lies and face the truth. Science rules, as it always has. Fossil fuels heat the planet and cause cancer to boot. Soon it will destroy life entire on planet earth if we do not find alternative means to drive our cars, heat our homes and make our products. Moreover, fossil fuels are NOT infinite and extracting oil from shale, otherwise known, as fracking is lethal as is nuclear power witnessed by the Fukishima/Chernobyl catastrophes. And, if nuclear power is not bad enough there is absolutely NOWHERE safe to bury its waste. Would you like that waste in YOUR backyard? No? Neither would I.

More inconvenient truths of science: Bacteria and viruses cause disease, hand-washing reduces disease, tobacco causes cancer, evolution IS truth, the sun is the center of our solar system, the earth is approximately 4.5 BILLION years old, and a force called gravity prevails upon it. The Timeline of human evolution as science knows it and is stated correctly in Wikipedia:

Great apes (humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans) 15,000,000 years ago, subfamily Hominae Humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas 8,000,000 years ago, tribe Hominini Humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos 5,800,000 years ago, bipedal apes (Australopithecus and descendants) 3,000,000 years ago, genus Homo Humans, Neanderthals, homo erectus, and their direct ancestors 2,500,000 years ago, species (archaic) Homo sapiens Humans 500,000 years ago Homo sapiens sapiens Modern humans 200,000 years ago.

Science deniers and religious fanatics WILL kill us all unless a country, the most powerful on earth and, indeed, the world sees reality as it is and not as they would like it to be. How the greatest power on earth contains some of the most irrational stupidity on earth I do not know.

America, look at the truth of science, stare it in the eye and then eschew things rightwingnut political that simply are not true or you will be responsible for much misery and even could end life on earth and, perhaps, even the earth itself as we know it. Do it fast as the end is in sight if not for you then for the next generations' posterity. The fire approaches and there is no time to waste!

One more thing about the Mafia Wall Street scam -- VENGENCE IS SWEET!

Just so you will know, that article by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone "The Scam Wall Street learned From the Mafia" is about  ongoing trials of THREE men connected with the big banks who committed the illegal fraud of bid rigging and more.  One, I believe, has been found guilty and will be going to jail.  The point is at least some are being brought up on charges and MORE will so things ARE being done albeit slowly and NOT reported well by the lame stream media. The are being prosecuted in NY.   My point: 

This article should not leave you hopeless -- although I can see why many of us are -- some of the perpetrators will go to jail and it is just the beginning and that is the ONLY way these malodorous corrupt jerks will KNOW that they cannot do this again.  Fines do nothing because when you are with a firm making trillions a fine of say 50 or 100 million is a slap on the wrist.  NO they need to know these Wall Street banksters AND the big CEO's who run them will be sitting in a cell where their hundreds of million dollars will not matter.  The convicts they will be with will be in part made up of the of the lower rung of the 99% and will  NOT look kindly on the banksters and that is an understatement.  Do I want a pound of flesh -- YES I want a TON!

They need to suffer as the WORLD has desperately suffered for one of the most egregious economic Wall Street crimes in history of this country maybe even all history of mankind because we are a globalized world and when America sneezes the world catches not a cold but diphtheria.  People die revolutions occur especially in Europe and ... MANY of those affected will continue to die.  THIS is the stuff of which Nazism and other social revolutions are born. 

For those who think your lives are too filled to pay attention I humbly suggest you DO as your children and your grandchildren and you too will suffer on a scale heretofore unknown.  In my novice opinion as in Paul Krugman the NYT academic economic genius's opinion what happened in 2008 and continues is a Depression and in another humble opinion of mine it is BIGGER by FAR than the Great Depression of 1929.  The market does NOT regulate itself but it requires those in government of the HIGHEST ethical standards to be elected and it requires those on the Supreme Court who are not tied to Wall Street's unethical hip creating a rancid decision like Citizens United or that making corporations people putting BILLIONAIRES in charge who know no ethics.  It's NOT, understatedly, fair.  Vet, ALWAYS vet backgrounds. 

It was done by a combination of Wall Street anarchy, greed, hubris and an unethical bastion of sinful behavior, fueled by HUGE money, an utterly corrupt American political system of big money owning the Congress and the courts worst of all the no ethics five on the Supreme Court and astounding public ignorance -- including my own ignorance then.  Well, I am ignorant of economics no longer.  I may not get all the minutiae and mathematical algorithms but I get the general excremental-beyond- words behavior.

PAY attention to elections!  They matter especially local AND most especially Congressional federal elections.  If you care about your economic condition you would NEVER EVER EVER put the party of these greedy bast$%#s of the 1% in power again. AND you should make your voice known to the president (hopefully a Democratic one) that you WILL watch his behavior scrupulously and who he hires for the most important financial cabinet positions.  The foxes CANNOT guard the chicken coup.   Look for candidates like Elizabeth Warren who truly do like Krugman KNOW what happened, want to fix it with honesty and ethics and NEVER NEVER let this happen again!!

The Mafia of Wall Street

Here is the greatest most amazing complete BRILLIANT article written so interestingly by
Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone Magazine.  In jaw-dropping detail he illuminates for you what these banksters on Wall Street did to all of us.  They did it to every state, city and municipality in this country, they did it to Europe, they did it to EVERYONE.  If you want to know why states with mainly Republican governors are introducing "austerity" cutting hundreds of thousands of state workers, firemen, policemen, teachers to name a few, read this article and you will have fun while you read who REALLY should be made to pay and restore jobs to the innocent.  Afterward you can cry as you watch jobs dry up, your 401K dry up, people die with no health care, and all the rest of the myriad bad luck that befell everyone it should NOT have befallen.

Then you can cry some more and wonder why these sons of b&tc#$%s ran away with HUMONGOUS salaries and bonuses to boot with OUR money for themselves and their greedy posterity.  It is sickening but fascinating at the same time.  The moral of story:  TRUST NO ONE and read the fine print.  KNOW what you are getting yourself into because one thing is for sure, the banksters and many if not most of your elected officials do NOT care about you!!!

As Sherlock Holmes would have said "You've been had, Watson, properly had!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scam-wall-street-learned-from-the-mafia-20120620

Obama mostly victorious on Arizona immigration law--one vote USE IT OR LOSE it!

This decision today on Arizona's draconian immigration law is an 85% WIN for Obama. Law enforcement CANNOT simply arrest anyone because they think he has brown skin and is illegal but rather they can check immigration status only IF another crime has been committed and they cannot hold someone AD INFINITUM while they "check."

Moreover, the Court allowed revisiting S.B. 1070 or the "papers please" Arizona law once this abhorrent-to-humanitarians-everywhere law goes into effect. The entire thing COULD be gutted as it is not the state's prerogative it is the Federal Government's domain. The state is NOT a sovereign entity in and of itself. Remember, we had a civil war to PROTECT the union. States cannot go around wily nily doing there own thing whether it's segregation OR immigration!!! Scalia and his four other merry men are utterly off base. Well, we knew that anyway.

To get back to a union of the people one nation and NOT for the corporation over human beings who have no money the conservative AT LEAST FOUR OLD MEN (FDR called his wrecking crew SCOTUS of the New Deal his nine old men) on this court they must be replaced!! To do that by law we MUST have a Congress willing NOT to be obstructionist when our Democratic president (I hope) replaces other justices. We need an ALL blue Congress and a Democratic president because the Republican Party is the party of oligarchic extremists. We need to get HUGE money OUT of politics, make a corporation NOT a person and protect the civil rights of human beings. Now at this moment in history it is ONLY the Democratic Party that is the vehicle to do this! Replace the House and turn it blue, keep the Senate and of course re-elect the president!!!

BTW, just thinkin, if a corporation is a person does not that mean that an individual gets TWO votes IF he is a member of a corporation--one as an individual and one as a corporation to influence politics by HUGE money which the average person does not have? We should have but one vote -- USE IT!

Sandusky -- A Metaphor for Our Time

One parent of a victim at the end of the Sandusky trial and guilty verdict said "no one wins here." To me that was the most poignant truth. Everyone loses -- the many who were the victims, Penn State, The Second Mile a place for troubled youth, and those who made the egregious error of not reporting the crime. The dastardly offense was committed against the innocent who had the glory of youth stolen, and also committed against those around Sandusky whose crime was that they were there, observed the unobservable, did not want to see and did not know what to do. The crime had tentacles reaching far and wide like a cancer spreading to all things near it even to us removed by distance but who had our senses assaulted merely listening to the evening news.

Why does man perpetrate on his fellow man so many egregious and intolerable things violent in extremis in deed AND word; unacceptable to humane men? The never-ending 24/7 media talk about it will make our ears bleed from the assault on our senses. But we must talk about it.

The brilliant MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes's book "Twilight of the Elites" illuminates that our institutions we heretofore trusted have failed us. We have been betrayed. From the church, to institutions of higher learning, to Wall Street, to our courts and to Congress we have been abandoned. Sandusky is a metaphor for all of it. If we do not care about one another as a species we are, indeed, like Sandusky, doomed by our own hand.

History's Milieu

The president's speech before the Latino community, the same group in front of which the Republican opposition spoke yesterday, was GORGEOUS. The president's speech was passionate and it was from the heart. I had more than one lump in my throat as tears streamed down my face.

He hit a grand slam as he continues to solidify our base increasing the Latino and other base votes. He needed to deliver this great speech and he hit it out of the park. I don't care about the political calculation I care about the results and the results today were breathtaking.

There is NO comparison between the president and his ineffective and mendacious Republican opponent. Give the president a Congress he can work with, turn the Congressional House blue, keep the Senate and you will see a second term that WE dreamed of in 2008. His opposition has been intractable, his opposition has been racist, his opposition has been the cruelest I have ever experienced in many years of watching politics. This may have been the hateful environment in which President Lincoln governed in 1860. In this era in our time history's milieu repeats itself. DO NOT LET IT!

THIS IS WHY WE MUST SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT in any way we can. His second term awaits!

ONWARD to re-elect the president and Elizabeth Warren to the Senate

In Sickness and in Health

Most who have awaited breathlessly the Supreme Court's verdict on our nation's healthcare by its decision on the Healthcare Affordability Act suspect what will happen. I certainly do. In general, no matter which institution one turns to for help in this nation one worries if help will be there when one needs it and those who have help now hope it will be retained.

I must have dreamed 2008. I thought the president would be supported like no other. Instead, he is road blocked at every corner. The heart-of-stone-five on the Supreme Court – Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and more often than I would like to think the more rational Anthony Kennedy – seem to have little humanity. It is a sad thing. I do not know how to NOT pay attention as it affects me in profoundly negative ways. It is to me like a bad accident one cannot look at it but one cannot look away. A segment of our nation is uncompromising and extreme. These intractable five on the Court reflect the right wing extremism of that part.

I know what is coming. I click onto the news with fear that they will do what should not be done and that is leave millions without health care at the mercy of an insurance industry that cares only for its profits but that determines the life or death of people. It is a system that works only if one can pay for it or IF one is lucky enough to have a job.

It would be fine if one were buying a shirt to say the government cannot and should not dictate how it is sold but it is not a shirt. The Court's decision is about our health and our lives. Everyone will need health care and, too, ultimately everyone will be in a life or death situation. Health care, indeed, is not like buying a shirt and one half of our nation perhaps understands that. We understand, too, that policy reflects the heart of a nation and it seems this nation in our time has little of that heart.

When our generations are long gone I hope scholars will judge those egregious five, who like the Torquemadas of Inquisitional Europe hold lives in their hands, and historically relegate those five, quoting Ronald Reagan in pertinent part, “to the ash bin of history.”

A nation, as the traditional marriage vows dictate for individuals, should protect its people in sickness and in health. Right now most of our institutions fail at that social contract. As John Kennedy said “We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." When a nation ceases to care about its people we the people are not protected at all and nations composed of those people die too.

The Disloyal Party of NO and Know Nothings

The Huffington Post headline is:  "Bloomberg Poll Shows Big But Questionable Obama Lead"

Why questionable?  It would NOT shock me at all if Bloomberg's poll with the president enjoying a big lead is correct. The president SHOULD be ahead even more.  HOPEFULLY finally the American people have seen how HORRENDOUS this disloyal opposition is. 

They are dastardly even near treasonous as their one goal is to take this president down by any means necessary and do often more than hint of violence. They are DESPICABLE.  The president has tried over and over and over again to compromise but they put one road block after another in front of him. The latest is this Holder contempt fiasco. Where were the Republicans when Bush took humanity to war on a lie destabilizing the entire Middle East? Where were they when Bush and his cronies exposed a CIA agent? Where were they in the Bush US attorney scandal?   

THEY ARE SIMPLY DISGUSTING racist hypocrites when the Republican State Convention of Montana constructed an outhouse with such profanity on it I cannot even bring myself to describe it here and Romney who spoke at the convention said NOTHING about it.  They called it "The Barack Obama Presidential Library," riddled it with bullets and wrote things the enumeration of which I cannot write.  These white trash Tea Party types held their white babies and laughed near the outhouse they constructed, and continued the celebration into the next morning.

I cannot believe the president remains so cool and dignified in the face of such racist insults, onslaughts, rudeness, disrespect and vicious obstructionism no president outside of Lincoln has had to endure.  I do not know how he does it.  It is no longer the Republican Party it is the Racist Party of White Christian.  They may as well have swastikas on their shirts.

Hang in there, Mr. President, and watch this rotten, disloyal party of NO and know nothings get creamed. I pray every day that they do! 

A Prayer

In case you have tuned out international and national politics allow me to introduce you to three stories which, three hundred years later from the founding of our nation by men of luminary genius, proves without question the toxicity of mixing religion and state. They knew its slaughter within centuries of European history and presciently understood religion’s divisive, uncompromising and extreme nature. Our Founders placed the so called “Establishment clause” within the Constitution in the important very First Amendment to the nation’s Bill of Rights saying:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion … ”

In my opinion those ten words and the ten Amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, are responsible for creating a nation which has withstood for nearly 225 years some of the most contentious eras, divisive politics and even a Civil War. It has at times, perhaps, even in our time, teetered on the edge but standing nonetheless by our fundamental belief that there is something within worth saving and worth all the blood spent to save it.

The US supposedly sells the wares of its democracy all over the Middle East. Time after time what do people there do with the concept of democracy? They elect theocratic tyrannies. The Middle East, of course, provides us with crystal clear visionary evidence of the destructive nature of religion when made a part of the governing fabric of its ruling class. If Iraq is not enough to persuade one of the violent civil wars religious fanaticism creates, then perhaps one can look now to Egypt which has elected, by democratic majority, the Muslim Brotherhood in its president Mohamed Mursito, an advocate of state sponsored Sharia law (religious law), anti western, anti-Israel and anti women political/religious sentiment. The destabilization that began with the US invasion of Iraq spread to the revolution in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and, perhaps, beyond. A friend of mine asked “Why is it that in those extremely rare instances when the Arab world actually has a free election, they always seem to vote in dictators?” My only answer: religious toxicity.

Israel, a country I happen to love, too, has its religious fanaticism which paralyzes any progress toward a genuine peace by religious edict refusing to abdicate settlements on the West Bank which could pave that road. It is in the Bible, you know, that God ordains one people and nobody else to have that particular West Bank land. Even worse, if that were possible, recently as stated by Alex Klein in the Daily Beast a progressive blog:

… vandals scrawled Hitler-friendly hate speech across Israel’s most sacred memorial [to the Holocaust], Yad Vashem. The culprits were likely extremist Jews [from the haredim, or ultra-orthodox sect].

It was deduced that it was probably they from the error-strewn Hebrew writing usually written by an orthodox sect who speaks mainly Eastern European Yiddish and not well-versed Hebrew. The extremist orthodox Jewish sect claims Israel should not exist until the Messiah arrives. They do not say which plane he will be on or even WHY, indeed, THEY are there.

Our own democracy, which pays at least lip service, to the Founders’ separation clause, harbors our own threats of religious insanity by creating a religious party in the form of one of the two main parties, the Republican Party, whose membership requires a litmus test of an unquestioning Christian fealty in the extreme. No one could, within this Party, rise in its ranks if their belief is not deemed Christian enough. It seeks the conversion and strict adherence to its Christian religious principles (whatever those are) enmeshing it tightly within the fabric of the state.

We are close to becoming, in pertinent part, that which our Founders, men of the Enlightenment, loathed – a religious fanatical state as our country is ripped in two separating one half from the other. I pray every day that this does not happen but I fear every day that it will.

Mount Everest of Money

Someone on the Huff Post blog had a GREAT IDEA HOW TO FIGHT THE CHOKING OF OUR ELECTORAL PROCESS THROUGH OBSCENE MONEY GIVEN BY REPUBLICAN DESTROYERS OF DEMOCRACY -- DO THE OPPOSITE of what these treasonous obliterators of our country’s democratic processes are doing. I hear from Democrats AND Republicans alike about how much they loathe humongous money in politics. To HAVE to spend 2 billion for a presidential campaign is MORE than obscene it is ruinous. Think of what good could be done with that Mount Everest of money for the jobless or the sick.

This is what this ruinous Supreme Court has done. Even Anthony Kennedy, a fairer justice of the unconscionable five, had NO conscience on the Citizens United decision. The five will have a legacy of those poisonous justices who decided the historically embarrassing Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions and it will NOT be a proud one. They may have the conservative money dogs salivating and bearing their teeth but to those who look to this country as an example of equitable thought and fair play they will forever go down as contributors to the evisceration of American democracy. Conservatives are NOT about loving this country because if they did they would want at least a relatively level playing field and at least some democratic fair play.

IT IS TIME TO THINK ABOUT DOING THE OPPOSITE. THE ONLY WAY MONEY CAN SUCCEED IS IF THE POPULATION IS SWAYED BY THE COMMERCIALS MONEY BUYS. I CANNOT IMAGINE THAT ANYONE WOULD VOTE FOR A PERSON BECAUSE OF A SKEWED AD AND I ESPECIALLY CANNOT BELIEVE THAT ANYONE EXCEPT THE 1% RICHEST WOULD STEP ON THEIR OWN TOES AND VOTE REPUBLICAN!

IF YOU LOVE YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN, HAVE A VESTED INTEREST IN THE NEXT GENERATION OR SIMPLY FOR YOUR OWN CONSCIENCE BOYCOTT POLITICAL COMMERCIALS BY USING YOUR MUTE BUTTON AND BOYCOTT THOSE COMPANIES AND GAMBLING CASINOS THAT ARE TIED TO KOCH, ADELSON AND OTHER MULTI-BILLIONAIRE REPUBLICAN MOGELS WHO HAVE BOUGHT OUR COUNTRY.

BIG MONEY ONLY WINS IF WE THE PEOPLE LET IT.    DON'T!!