Eminence Grise Indeed!

My writing guru and the love of my written word life is NYT preeminent editorialist, Maureen Dowd.  I wish I could express my thoughts as well as she.  She uses the English language like Mozart or Beethoven composed music -- creatively expressive and with passion.  I love how she combines sometimes obscure but definitionally perfect words sewing great works of literature into the formulation of a sentence crafting her artistic prose.

If you have not already read it, I am pasting below for your enjoyment, yesterday's NYT editorial by her entitled "Repent, Dick Cheney."  She weaves Shakespeare's Iago into her work and calls Dick Cheney the éminence grise.  I confess I had to right-click look up "éminence grise" where it is defined as "a powerful decision-maker or advisor who operates "behind the scenes" or in a non-public or unofficial capacity."  Yes, that surely explains Richard Bruce Cheney.

No one other than Maureen Dowd can create her unique symphony of sentiment by her brilliant use of words and in so doing makes me wonder “Now, why didn’t I think of it that way?!”

“Repent, Dick Cheney"

“Dick Cheney certainly gives certainty a black eye.

In a documentary soon to appear on Showtime, “The World According to Dick Cheney,” America’s most powerful and destructive vice president woos history by growling yet again that he was right and everyone else was wrong.

R. J. Cutler, who has done documentaries on the Clinton campaign war room and Anna Wintour’s Vogue war paint room, now chronicles Cheney’s war boom.

“If I had to do it over again,” the 72-year-old says chillingly of his reign of error, “I’d do it over in a minute.”

Cheney, who came from a family of Wyoming Democrats, says his conservative bent was strengthened watching the anti-Vietnam war protests at the University of Wisconsin, where he was pursuing a doctorate and dodging the draft.

“I can remember the mime troupe meeting there and the guys that ran around in white sheets with the entrails of pigs, dripping blood,” he said. Maybe if he’d paid more attention to the actual war, conducted with a phony casus belli in a country where we did not understand the culture, he wouldn’t have propelled America into two more Vietnams.

The documentary doesn’t get to the dark heart of the matter about the man with the new heart.

Did he change, after the shock to his body of so many heart procedures and the shock to his mind of 9/11? Or was he the same person, patiently playing the courtier, once code-named “Backseat” by the Secret Service, until he found the perfect oblivious front man who would allow him to unleash his harebrained, dictatorial impulses?

Talking to Cutler in his deep headmaster’s monotone, Cheney dispenses with the fig leaf of “we.” He no longer feigns deference to W., whom he now disdains for favoring Condi over him in the second term, and for not pardoning “Cheney’s Cheney,” Scooter Libby.

“I had a job to do,” he said.

Continuing: “I got on the telephone with the president, who was in Florida, and told him not to be at one location where we could both be taken out.” Cheney kept W. flying aimlessly in the air on 9/11 while he and Lynne left on a helicopter for a secure undisclosed location, leaving Washington in a bleak, scared silence, with no one reassuring the nation in those first terrifying hours.

“I gave the instructions that we’d authorize our pilots to take it out,” he says, referring to the jet headed to Washington that crashed in a Pennsylvania field. He adds: “After I’d given the order, it was pretty quiet. Everybody had heard it, and it was obviously a significant moment.”

This guy makes Al Haig look like a shrinking violet.

When they testified together before the 9/11 Commission, W. and Cheney kept up a pretense that in a previous call, the president had authorized the vice president to give a shoot-down order if needed. But the commission found “no documentary evidence for this call.”

In his memoir, W. described feeling “blindsided” again and again. In this film, the blindsider is the éminence grise who was supposed to shore up the untested president. The documentary reveals the Iago lengths that Cheney went to in order to manipulate the unprepared junior Bush. Vice had learned turf fighting from a maniacal master of the art, his mentor Donald Rumsfeld.

When he was supposed to be vetting vice presidential candidates, Cheney was actually demanding so much material from them that there was always something to pick on. He filled W.’s head with stories about conflicts between presidents and vice presidents sparked by the vice president’s ambition, while protesting that he himself did not want the job.

In an unorthodox move, he ran the transition, hiring all his people, including Bush senior’s nemesis, Rummy, and sloughing off the Friends of George; then he gave himself an all-access pass.

He was always goosing up W.’s insecurities so he could take advantage of them. To make his crazy and appallingly costly detour from Osama to Saddam, and cherry-pick his fake case for invading Iraq, he played on W.’s fear of being lampooned as a wimp, as his father had been.

But after Vice kept W. out of the loop on the Justice Department’s rebellion against Cheney’s illegal warrantless domestic spying program, the relationship was ruptured. It was too late to rein in the feverish vice president, except to tell him he couldn’t bomb a nuclear plant in the Syrian desert.

“Condi was on the wrong side of all those issues,” Cheney rumbled to Cutler.

Cheney still hearts water boarding. “Are you going to trade the lives of a number of people because you want to preserve your honor?” he asked, his voice dripping with contempt. “I don’t lie awake at night thinking, gee, what are they going to say about me?” he sums up.

They’re going to say you were a misguided power monger who, in a paranoid spasm, led this nation into an unthinkable calamity. Sleep on that.

The Distribution of wealth--one of the best explanations I have seen

This is one of the BEST videos I have ever seen on the distribution of wealth in this nation.   AMAZING does not begin to describe it.   Sickening is a better word!  I urge all to click on it here or below.  It is fascinating!

http://www.upworthy.com/9-out-of-10-americans-are-completely-wrong-about-this-mind-blowing-fact-2?c=upw1

My Letter to Rachel Maddow

Before you read what I wrote to Rachel Maddow last night (slightly reworked) I will put the link to her segment here and below which includes some emotional issues about which I shed tears as well as an interview of the retired first woman Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor.  You will be able to see how Rachel handled the interview of this supposedly rather moderate Supreme Court Justice appointed by Ronald Reagan.  I LOVE Rachel Maddow but occasionally something on her show, well, gets my goat.  The interview of Justice O'Connor by Rachel did just that.  

Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman justice appointed by Ronald Reagan who tipped the decision of Bush v. Gore in the 2000 presidential election between former VP Al Gore and George W. Bush handing George W. Bush the office of the presidency.  He was clearly a man not fit to be president.  His minions took over the reins of power and handed us a nation both economically, politically, internationally and racially a devastating legacy birthing an historically divided nation now coming perilously close to the civil war we see today.

I wrote the letter late last evening and was intent on simply getting my point across in a less than eloquent style which I hope, IF you read this, you will forgive.  I wrote the following:

Rachel, your show tonight was in part fabulous.  I cried as Representative John Lewis received a badge from the Chief of Police of Selma.  It was such an emotional moment.  

I cried knowing that the gay rights movement since 1971 has come such a long way -- a million miles as you said.  Yes, I cried several times as you conducted a wonderful show yet again.  You give credence to my view that you are the Edward R. Murrow of our time.  In fact, I believe you are better than even he.

I cried too to at the Sandra Day O'Connor interview but they were tears of sadness.  I rarely criticize you, Rachel, because I agree with nearly all you say.  I love you as a news commentator more than I could ever say.  You are the personification of excellence in broadcast news commentary.

I do, though, have a few words of disappointment for your interview of Justice O'Connor.  I do realize that respect, of course, must be given to her by you for the mere fact that she retains the majestic aura we hold for most of our Supreme Court justices.  I did though wish that someone would have held this woman's feet to the fire.  Just who does she think she is kidding that justices are not political?  Does she think we are idiots?  Her decision anointing the MISFIT nincompoop George W. Bush into the presidency when IN FACT that damned 2000 election was stolen and will go down as a decision from hell much like Dred Scott or Plessy.  That will be her historical legacy.

Shame on her for casting a MOST POLITICAL vote of her life and not treating the Florida vote of the 2000 election with the fairness it deserved.  The Supreme Court is not political she says!?  Really?

Does it keep her up at night, I would LOVE to know, when she realizes that she put into office one of the most lawless, disgustingly moronic and disastrous presidencies in our history?  Does she think about the fact that SHE could have held in her hands a vote of fairness by making sure, as the Florida Supreme Court ordered, to count EVERY damn vote?  If she did the election, of course, would have gone to Al Gore as academics in universities and respected news entities who have studied the Florida fiasco of that time have nearly unanimously said.  

Al Gore probably would NOT have ignored warnings of an impending 9/11 attack and 3000 lives would have been saved.  Al Gore NEVER EVER would have taken this nation to war under false pretenses killing HUNDREDS of thousands of innocents and five thousand of our own armed forces permanently disabling a towering MANY.  

Yes, does this keep her up at night that she put an idiot into the presidency who had NO idea  what he was doing, who destabilized an entire tinderbox Middle East region putting Iraq in the hands of Iran doing Iran a HUGE favor by anointing it hegemonic king of that region.

Yes, this is the Sandra Day O'Connor you accorded such respect when you questioned her instead of lambasting her for one of the WORST decisions in the history of this nation which took a nation to war that is UNENDING even unto this day.  No, Al Gore never would have taken this nation to an illegal Iraq war.  Al Gore NEVER would have tortured and importantly Al Gore would have realized global climate change and DONE something about it.  Al Gore was brilliant!

But you let Sandra Day O'Connor off easy and now justices that have been put in place by the idiot Bush and other know-nothing "conservatives" will possibly overturn the most justice-laden decision ever, the 1965 Voting Right Act, and KILL equality in this nation for a long long time.  Yes, as one of the  mendacious conservative Republican Supreme Court justices said, Supreme Court decisions involving race tend to last a long long time.

Thank you, Justice O'Connor.  Thank you for NOTHIN!  I WISH you, Rachel, could have been brave enough like John Lewis was when he walked across in 1965 the Edmund Pettus Bridge which nearly killed him as he confronted on the other end a MURDEROUS mob.  

You let this woman off the hook.  She could have ensured the safety of this nation but instead decided POLITICALLY yes, POLITICALLY because she, in fact, was a Republican, appointed by a Republican who placed into the highest office in the land political hacks of her own Republican party.  She probably was afraid her compatriots would be mad at her. I say SO WHAT!  Bravery is doing things most could not do because it requires us to face danger squarely in the face.  She was NOT brave enough to face the decision of her life with a fairness which would have enshrined her in history. She did the opposite because she could not face the ire of colleagues in the Republican Party and you, this time, were not brave enough to force her to confront that fact.

Shame on Justice O'Connor.  I hold her in contempt and I wish you had too.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26315908/#51014369

Rising Once More, Unconquered--History of Polish Jews

For those of you on my list who are not Jewish but who are interested in some untold and unknown-to-many history of Polish Jewry you may be interested in this (scroll down to the video).  Jewish culture need not only be memorialized by death but by the continuance of life as well.  For those of you on my list who are Jewish most likely if you are Ashkenazi (Eastern European) heritage then this most definitely will apply to you.

My heritage is, of course, Ashkenazi -- one set of grandparents from the Jewish shetyl (village) in Russia of Shepatovka/Slavuta and the other set of grandparents from Poland -- Minsk/Guberna so this particular video has great interest to me as the emphasis of it is continuance of a vibrant Jewish life in Poland and it is testament to the ultimate failure of Hitler's fascist attempt to annihilate.  

Museum of Jewish History in Poland http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tLeFIEg4z7U&feature=share

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So You Will Know and So You Will Remember!

NYT ARTICLE HERE IF YOU WANT TO READ THE OTHER ARTICLES AND SEE THE MAPS, OR Linked BELOW.  THE NUMBER OF JEWISH DEAD HAS REACHED THE 15 OR MORE MILLION MARK.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/sunday-review/the-holocaust-just-got-more-shocking.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0

Intransigence and a Rat's Petootie

We are living in an era of the most obstructionist, intransigent, malevolent Republican opposition dedicated to the failure of our first African American president EVEN if it means putting the country last.  The obstruction that is the most compelling piece of this Republican Party’s animus has been the most extreme possibly in the history of this nation.  I am so disgusted, so angry, so sad and so fearful for the future of this country and its impending leap toward insanity that I must wail against it.  

Like the Civil War era the Republican Party today with its Tea Party Republican base wants to severely fracture the nation.  The stakes of descending into anarchy are REAL and those right wing extremists who would perpetrate it are well armed.  

The threats of those outside of the country who want nothing more than to physically damage us are lying in wait.  If the current so called Sequester of draconian spending cuts are allowed to occur without revision it will take DECADES to repair the nation IF it can be repaired at all.   The annihilative ability of those who want to take this nation down both externally and internally is not the stuff of fiction!

You do not have to know how we got to this economic and social abyss to understand that the fault for it lay at the feet of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party, in Rooseveltian tradition, is the only Party capable of lifting this nation out of the economic sewer 30 years of nearly all Republican rule has created.  A weak economy recently returning to a semblance of strength is threatened yet again by austerity and spending cuts the Republican Party is forcing down our throats.  It has a sidecar of significant military cuts which compromise the security of the nation.  Moreover, it provides example to other nations that the democracy we are selling to them is a false notion since we cannot keep our own house in order.  The so-called Sequester will bring a very existential threat.  

If you want to know the etiology of the never ending economic crises the Republican Party has inflicted on this president Google the Rachel Maddow show from last evening (Friday, March 1) who presents, in her usual infinitely brilliant and cogent style, an easy-to-understand rendition as how we got to where we are.  Month after month of manufactured crises that the Republican Party has knowingly and deliberately thrown at the feet of this president to initially try to get him out of office.  When they could not do that, they now in his second term are trying to wound and fatally besmirch his entire presidency EVEN if it means the near death experience of the country. 

I ask you to send this to anyone you wish and tell them in 2014 to throw Republicans OUT of national and state legislatures the gerrymandered composition of which is responsible for the 2012 reduced Republican majority in the House.  It is obvious if Republicans cannot win fair and square they will try to win through every dirty trick in their electoral playbook no matter how unjust as their voter suppression of minorities in swing states in the 2012 election proved.  

I believe because this president is the first African American president that the Republican Party took special advantage of their own rabid right wing extremist base with its uber racist hue to lasso and hog tie its supporters so its elites can grab power any way they can.  The success of the Republican Party could mean the end of a democratic nation as we knew it.  Republicans are dividing it through the old rebel cause whoop of racist whites.

I stand for justice, I stand for humane policy, and I stand for equality. I stand with a relentlessly oppressed people who for centuries have had to endure the most humiliating and death wielding indignities at the hands of those whites who initially, centuries ago, brought the bondage of them to our shores.  Racist sentiment, it seems, in this country never dies and to use the words of Sup. Ct. “conservative” justice Antonin Scalia, “race entitlement” NOT for blacks BUT FOR WHITES is systemically, and possibly forever, bound into the material fabric of this nation. 

I ask you to support Democratic candidates throughout the nation and write those Republicans and their minions who are on the precipice of destroying hard fought for arcs of justice.  Tell them that you will support any and all opposition to them because you care whether people live in a just nation or die at the hands of malevolence in an unjust one. Make no mistake, the true power of the intransigent Republican Party does not care whether we live or die and does not, certainly, give a rat's patootie about you!

The impending Sup. Ct. Travesty -- the overturning of Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act

I cannot believe that those DESPICABLE conservative sick justices on the Sup. Ct. and what that JERK Scalia said.  He called the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- "racial ENTITLEMENT."   He is a SLOB and Thomas who benefited from all the liberal actions that made life better for African Americans and others is already on record as saying it is unconstitutional!!!!  He gives new meaning to the name Uncle Tom.  Roberts too said something like "things have changed in the south"  with what the RepublicRAT Party of racist bullshit [sorry, I'm angry] has done during the 2012 elections and with what they pulled to have the Sup Ct of conservative five MORONS overturn that law is a travesty.

I remember well the days and the deaths of the civil rights activists Goodman, Cheney and  Schwerner.  We fought hard and walked with our African brothers and sisters to erase discrimination from the face of this country.  

What seems to be coming down will be one of the most DISGUSTING DASTARDLY decisions this rancid court will make IF they deem the Act unconstitutional   It appears although I do not know for sure that they will turn the clock backward and do just that. 

Jesse Jackson said it does not matter what they do as we will FIGHT discrimination as we always did in the days of civil rights action.  This should NOT be over with a bad decision.   African Americans and those who stand with them should DEMAND that their right to vote be protected.

I HOPE African Americans and we who support everyone's quest for equality let the Sup. Ct. know in no uncertain terms and by any means legally necessary that declaring the 1965 Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional when many congresses have reinstated it and so much blood has been spilled over it is UNACCEPTABLE!

Republican leadership MUST be thrown out in the 2014 elections in both the state and the federal legislatures and return this nation to a fair and democratic nation that we can be proud of again.   ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!  Oh yes, by the way, if you are from Mass. elect Ed Markey as our next senator from Massachusetts.

To Serve Man -- Sequester the Republican Party

Our nation changed November, 2010.  The Congress passed the president’s landmark health care legislation and the Republican Party took over the argument infiltrating town halls, stirring up the white rage of racial animus and feigning economic reasons for it.  Those Republican economic policies favor the top 2% but those that formed the new Tea Party Republicans did not and do not, still, understand.  This rage won them in 2010 the House majority.  Although recently the 2012 re-election of the president brought more Democrats to the table in the Senate keeping the majority and even collectively winning more votes than the Republican Party in the House, gerrymandering districts in the House allowed this Republican Party and its vicious minions to continue to control and obstruct it.  Imagine, the Democrats control two bodies of a three tiered government and the nation STILL catapults from economic crises to economic crises like a skier tumbling down a hill. 

 

Republicans, through the Frankenstein Tea Party they created, fed racist hatred already embedded in too many of the white body politic against our first African American president.  I believed they perceived it was time to mount a previously thought insurmountable task of defeating this president.  The Tea Party rose up with their ugly signs spewing the angry rhetoric of race hatred, a sentiment which lies deep in the American sinew and like an inoperable cancer it could kill a country.  Republicans cannot now defeat the president electorally, of course, but they can defeat his historical legacy and they think when economic conditions return this nation to recession through Republican obstructionism it will in 2014 allow them to take it all no matter the cost to the nation.  Cancer, the emperor of all maladies, (the title of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s great book) could and WILL kill Republicans too.

 

Tea Baggers want austerity to end our deficit.  They want the nation to cut its spending on some of the most important functions that government provides and ones which the majority of people love such as airport security, clean water, clean air, roads, bridges, education, homeland security, and medical research to name a very few.  They think like a household one does not spend more money when one is in debt.  They do not know whether through their own ignorance or because of their persuasive masters’ mendacious arguments that their own lives, their children's lives, and generations after them, IF they exist, will depend on these programs too and that a country is NOT like a household.

 

IMPORTANTLY a nation does NOT thrive under austerity.  It dies.  It thrives when the nation creates jobs sometimes through government and its stimulus when needed.  We need only to look at Greece, Italy and much of Europe to see why austerity in a depressed economy makes that economy worse.  Many will succumb, including the families of Tea Bag Republicans, to the poverty and decay that austerity cuts will bring.

 

This is a tragedy because it does NOT have to happen.   When sequester cuts happen, if Congressional agreement does not evolve, they will NOT be for the faint (yes that is the correct word) of heart. The Tea Baggers do NOT realize it is they who WILL suffer as they are NOT a part of the economic top 2%. Those in the middle class and those who are poor will, of course, suffer the most.  Austerity, in truth, helps no one. Republican Speaker Boehner knows it but cannot seize control of the know-nothing part of his Republican Party that thinks a postage stamp size for government is a good idea.  Politics is after all about power and Boehner does NOT want to lose it even at the expense of the nation.

The massive greed of Wall Street led to the Great Recession and the spending on trumped up non-funded wars led to the deficit about which the Republicans say they care so much.  George Bush put two wars on a Chinese credit card and THAT is responsible for a large part of our deficit about which deficit the Republican Party waxes insane.

 

As a remedy Republicans want spending cuts to those programs necessary for this nation to function.  NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR AUSTERITY.  Those who have created this monster within the Republican Party do not realize the monster will eat them too. The “Twilight Zone” episode "To Serve Man" is exactly what the Republican Party is advocating except the man that they will truly serve on a platter is themselves, taking this nation yet again into an economic quicksand that will swallow all of us if we let them! 

 

Write or contact those in the Republican Party who would do this to us and let them know if the sequester cuts go through they will get is their own sequester when they are thrown out of office in 2014.  It will be a savored just reward for an anything-but-just party!

 

Out Out Damn Spot -- Reworked

MSNBC headline from Britain:   "Britain's top Catholic cleric resigns amid allegations of inappropriate behavior."

Here or following is the link:  http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/25/17086012-britains-top-catholic-cleric-resigns-amid-allegations-of-inappropriate-behavior?lite

My intent is NOT to be critical of one religion over another but to be critical of ALL orthodoxy within the major organized religions.  The singularly male controlled hierarchical nature of orthodox religion is obvious.  Where one blots women out of positions of power and relegates that institution to solely male control one often gets monumentally sick often violent sexual and anomic social behavior.  In the face of SO much loathsome news about the Vatican's corrupt opaque essence it cried out to me for a response about it and I wrote:

Pope Benedict XVI is too tired and old so he must resign, he says.  It is the first resignation of a pope in 700 years. I suspect there is more to this resignation than that.  Why does this even matter to me?  Mostly, it does not as it surely has no influence in my life but in a way it does because this institution directs its clergy in hypocritical fashion from the pulpit in our country and around the world to advocate for political issues that suppress and most importantly oppress human beings by spending money in elections against policy it does not like. It has influence on voters.

Charles Dickens could not have given the Austrian born Pope Benedict XVI a better name – the former Cardinal Ratzinger.  There is, it seems to me, a poetic malevolence to this name.  He had a childhood in the Nazi Youth and I believe continued to hold some of the ideological and anti-Semitic views with which he was infused at a young age. It was evidenced by certain tolerances by him of priests who would be a part of a right wing extremist Catholic sect called Opus Dei and conduct in Latin the inclusion of centuries old anti-Semitic passages in the mass which had been long erased from its liturgy.  He was forced to apologize to the Jewish people more than once.

As an adult in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, he was in control of the hidden sex scandals and other corruptions which saturated the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, aka the Inquisition, a morphed Middle Ages papal institution he once led.  The church has tortured and slaughtered in its history many Jews and others it considered heretics. Now while it does not physically slaughter it emotionally still does.  It stands silent in the face of a great sin and crimes against humanity by the cover-up of the massive sexual abuse of children by hundreds of its priests around the world.  The Pope himself was named in a lawsuit suing the church for its alleged decades-long and ugly cover-up of priest pedophiles.

Many popes, including this present one, ignored these crimes.  The church tried to keep this evidence behind its walls through its silence while it moved those accused priests around the world like pawns on a checkerboard and did nothing except when forced to do a little for its victims of this dastardly abuse.  This corrupt and disordered celibate institution will probably conduct business as usual, select a new pope and its great perversion of justice will go on.  Since we are not living in the Middle Ages resignation of this pope will make no difference to most but the church in its infinite odious wisdom will continue to advocate for policies against women and advocate against, in mind numbing hypocrisy, all forms of gay rights even though the institution of the church contains many adult homosexual priests who are NOT pedophiles.  It did nothing about the true crimes it perpetrated and would still be doing nothing, hiding in the dark to this day if not for the press blowing the scandal sky high to see the light of day.

I suspect there is more behind this pope's resignation as the Vatileaks whistle blower, the Pope's butler, revealed in documents he released.  The documents showed a church saturated with scandal from pedophile sins to the theft of millions by some of the Vatican hierarchy. We may never know the true extent of all of this perversion of justice and illegality even though the church could finally, now, have an opportunity to remake itself, ultimately reopen churches to their faithful and in so doing fill its coffers with the gold it lost.  I am sure, however, it will not remake much.

I submit Pope Benedict and the Church he led will surely take advantage of his age in its explanation of his resignation but I suspect he is resigning because of something much more heinous.   The pope has soaked his hands in blood by his own acquiescence to his Church’s abuse of children.  Where this will lead I have no idea but this damn spot, like Lady Macbeth's, cannot be washed out.  

Now this is a shockeroo -- NOT. There are gay priests at the Vatican who use male hookers!!? Holy shitsky Batman, who'd have thunk it?

I am NOT anti-Catholic but I am anti Vatican.  What a total hypocritical joke that is the Church. Who on this earth would give up their good money to join this sewer of theft, pedophilia and the visitation to male prostitutes by priests?!

TIP of the iceberg? Me thinks SO! Watch the Vatican and the press cover this putrid story up!”

Here is the link below or simply go to Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

'GOSSIP, MISINFORMATION, AND SOMETIMES SLANDER'

Vatican Slams Report That Gay Scandal Led To Pope's Resignation... But Doesn't Deny Rumor

Sorry half gets cut off..go to the site link.

A Letter to Rachel Maddow re: Documentary "Hubris"

I have sent a copy  of the notification of the airing of "Hubris."    Just when I think you cannot get any better than you are, Rachel, you yet again surpass yourself.  I cannot wait to watch your documentary and only wish it aired tonight.

It is of course recorded by me as all of your shows are. Mostly I watch them as shown but record them just in case I miss it.

You are the GREATEST thing to happen to progressive journalism.  What a find you were for MSNBC.  You are in my mind beyond great, you are life saving.  This documentary on the as Tom Ricks called it "Fiasco" of Iraq that killed and devastatingly wounded thousands of human beings including thousands of our soldiers was a travesty of justice that had implications not only for the deaths it perpetrated, if that were not bad enough, but all but erased our nation's standing in the world.  Worse than even all those things has been the utter devastation and instability in the Middle East which, in pertinent part, I believe we can lay at the feet of the Iraq War impolitic policy.

I dare anyone, John Country Last McCain included, to debate you on every point.  They never would allow themselves to get into the ring with you.  Your lethality to conservatives is well known and I applaud in the most emphatic way your brilliant success.  We as progressives owe a debt of gratitude to you we could not possibly repay.  

Thank you for your brilliance, thank you for all you do, thank you most of all for being!

May I remind you -- the prescience of George Carlin!

I selectively sent this because some cannot take it.  It has profanity.  But let's face it our system is profane so what's a little verbal profanity to explain it.  George Carlin had it right over five years ago before his death. But it's truth and everyone should know it!

here or 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-14SllPPLxY

The Last Gong Show

I direct your attention to an article in today's Boston Globe entitled "Shale oil helps revive East Coast refineries. Offers cheaper gas; US could top Saudi output" See link to this article here or below:

A rightwinger says one thing; a progressive says another as to the efficacy of the various energy alternatives.  What is one who really wants the truth without an ideological bent to think?  

From the articles I have read fracking seems simply awful and lethal since SO much ground water is polluted by the chemicals used to extract the oil and gas from the abundance of shale within the earth.  It is so polluting it causes tap water to become flammable.  It increases cancer rates, immunological problems, and pulmonary diseases of both animals and people who have been duped by corporate power to sell their land or parts of it for this nefarious purpose.  Fracking seems fantastic for the US economy because it could propel us to be the premier energy producer in the world.  That seems absolutely dazzlingly wonderful but I suspect it is not so because getting to the shale is, so far, unsafe at any speed. 

Nuclear energy comes with huge risk especially as the plants that make it age. God knows oil is climate change polluting.  It is, whether the wingnuts want to believe it or not, changing our planet’s climate and not for the better.  We can see that all around us every day of every month of every year.  

Those who are invested in the immense corporate power of oil want the digging of the oil pipeline from Canada to Louisiana to proceed and they want the fracking of shale to be explored no matter the cost to human life.  

The lamestream media keeps the negatives of these things out of the news except for a paucity of sensationalist headlines here and there. The Chernobyl-like Fukishima disaster in Japan, which is still emitting radioactive material, has gone off the media's radar screen.  The Fourth Estate should be critical of power but are wimps who bow to the presence of the almighty buck.  Beware of those bearing Trojan Horse gifts.  They may not be gifts at all but a one-way ticket to an early grave for those of us who are not born into vast sums of money to escape the devastating disasters these pollutants bring. 

What to do?  We could use those energies we have now as long as we have a plan to minimize them and develop endless alternative sources of energy in the form of wind and solar that could be made available now.  But we do not, of course, have a plan as we hold off until the last gong show which may, in fact, ultimately, for all of us, be too late.  

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/02/18/shale-oil-reviving-east-coast-refineries/mkFoGwSYUtqTYPNfTiib7O/story.html

Little Girl holding sign NRA KILLS OUR KIDS

The Despicable John McCain and an Email to him

YOU of all people, Mr. McCain, are angry at Senator Hagel since he ideologically split with your party because of a PHONY TRUMPED UP war killing THOUSANDS and creating unbelievable instability in that neck of the woods? SHAME ON YOU, Mr. McCain. Once you were thought to have a mind of your own now you fault Mr. Hagel for having one himself and on moral grounds objecting to a disastrous war. HE WAS RIGHT about it maybe that's what gets you. SHAME ON YOU! 

IF we EVER on planet earth thought Republicans would be willing to compromise with this president we can see now finally what a mistake it was to think that. Lindsay Graham and YOU, who professed your adoration for your war compatriot Hagel, NOW stab him in the back to hold up the process. This is DESPICABLE. This obstruction has NEVER been done before to a president's choice for Secretary of Defense. 

First Susan Rice with your mendacious FAUX charges on Benghazi because of words she said on a talk show when it first happened. Rice had NOTHING to do with Benghazi and YOU knew it. Republicans did that to poke a stick in the eye of the president and for nothing more. Hagel is eminently qualified.  

If the president is guilty of Benghazi which he was NOT then how come Republican HYPOCRITES did not indict George Bush for taking us to a PHONY Iraq war killing THOUSANDS. One can see how SICKENING the minority racist bastard extremists who control the Republican Party are and YOU are controlled by them. Yes, I believe much if not most of the opposition Tea Baggers will do anything in their power to defeat this sterling African American president. This fuels their animus and you go where the power is despite your own one time singularity. 

ONCE you were a moral man but NO more. If we do nothing else for our Democratic humanitarian cause we WILL remember this -- Our lives, OUR children's lives and ALL those who come after them WILL be cut short because of your party's vicious bastards' attempts at pulling Medicare and Social Security out from under them. Republicans have wanted to do that since FDR. If the nation keeps electing Republican mendacious vipers like you never were BUT are now we are in BIG trouble. Republicans are gunning for our money and everyone else's money to give to Wall Street to invest, then have the market fail like it did in 2007 and the Wall Street BUMS will take it all. Hagel is just a symbol of what the obstruction is about. How could YOU do that to your good friend for George Bush, a little despicable man who killed thousands for a lie? If allowed these inanimate object Republicans will see to it that they, their corporations, the pigs they feed at the trough and their racist cronies will take it all. 

You are forewarned. We WILL do anything one can that is legal to tell these monster Republicans we KNOW what they are up to and that we the Democrats, Independents and even fair minded Republicans of humane thought WILL do everything in our power to defeat these know nothings come 2014 and beyond. YOU a war hero, are compromising national security by not confirming the multi-qualified Hagel. Tell your cronies in no uncertain terms Republicans WILL pay the electoral price in the not to distant future. We WILL not forget and say NEVER AGAIN!

A PROGRAM NOTE OF GREAT INTEREST: Rachel Maddow Monday, Feb. 18 -- Hubris 9:00 p.m. Selling the Iraq War

As stated on the TRMS web site – "Join Rachel Maddow for the step by step true story of how the American people were sold on the Iraq War – Premiers February 18, 2013 at 9:00 p.m. on MSNBC.”

If one cares about whether or not a president takes a nation to war, the most solemn decision he can ever make, then this is, I think, a MUST see.  Rachel Maddow is to me an American treasure.  She is brilliant, she is thoughtful, and she is an MSNBC star of progressive political commentary.  She makes astute and correct assessments of political history made in our nation.

In my experience over decades watching the news from Cronkite to the present, Rachel Maddow is one of the BEST that news commentary has to offer.  My world is influenced in the best way possible by this extraordinary host.  I am thrilled she is on our side.  What did our country do without her?  I can tell you.  It was led into useless wars killing hundreds of thousands of human beings no questions asked by a feckless media.

Rachel saves lives and influences politics in a humane and compassionate way.  Long may she do this, for me, for our country and, indeed, for the world.

A Title for the President's Administration

I had a thought (only one).  Maybe it's been said before I do not know but John Kennedy had the New Frontier, LBJ had the Great Society and Franklin Roosevelt had the New Deal.  I think this presidency should be perfectly characterized as 

THE FAIR DEAL

I like it 

I am sure that most have heard because of the difficult time Republicans are giving the president on the Hagel nomination as they did for Susan Rice they will need now 60 votes for cloture.  Send a message to ESPECIALLY the senate Republicans that this is unacceptable and they are slowly but surely ruining their chances for 2014.  

I am sure Republicans will try to block a plethora of additional presidential cabinet posts.  How much does that frost me?  A LOT.  They will not let this president breathe.  I want them electorally DEMOLISHED in 2014!

REPUBLICANS LIE, THEY STEAL AND THEY SUPPRESS THE MINORITY VOTE.  THERE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH REASON WHY WE NEED TO CRUSH THOSE REPUGLICAN RACIST TROJAN HORSES IN 2014 AND BEYOND. 

ONWARD

Rubio's Burried Headline.

Very poignant email by Arshad Hasan scroll down. She gets to the crux of the Republican agenda of cuts to benefits which are the foundation for 98% of our country. Republicans would DECIMATE the middle class of our nation, kick the poor in the teeth, eat all of it and leave the bones to be buried ... literally. DO NOT BE DUPED by how nice Republicans sound. They are NOT nice. 

In practice what the Republicans want to do would be devastating! Remember 2007 when the Republicans brought this country to its knees and nearly into the abyss. They are in pertinent part responsible for why our nation has tragically for the middle class economically nose dived. We are coming back but Congress must act and give an assist to a Democratic economic agenda which, if not fought tooth and nail by the Republican Party of division, hate and discord, would heal our wounds.

DO NOT LET IT. 2014 is the year of the CRUSH. Crush the Republican -- split down the middle composed of know nothings -- Party before we have no country left!

-----Original Message-----
From: Arshad Hasan

Sent: Wed, Feb 13, 2013 12:22 am
Subject: Marco Rubio buried the headline

Natalie -

Republicans just launched a new attack on Social Security.

Marco Rubio's response to the President's State of the Union buried the headline: Republicans want to make devastating cuts to Social Security benefits. Maybe you missed it because Rubio awkwardly took a sip of water and then tried to sell those cuts to the American people as a plan to reduce the deficit and "save" Social Security.

The Republican plan to "save" Social Security? It's just another scheme to push down working families and prop up subsidies for big corporations.

That's why we're joining Rep. Alan Grayson and our friends at the PCCC in telling Democrats to take any and all benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid off the table and pass a jobs bill that will put Americans back to work.

Tell Democrats in Congress: Vote against any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Republicans can't cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid on their own -- they'll try to use the next budget showdown to force Democrats to join them in passing these cuts.

We can't let that happen. We need to get Democrats on the record right now -- we need them to pledge to vote no on any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. We get enough Democrats to do that, and we win.

Join Rep. Alan Grayson and tell Democrats in Congress to take Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid off the table.

Thank you for all that you do.

-Arshad

Arshad Hasan, Executive Director
Democracy for America


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[NOVA] "Earth from Space" -- a suggestion to watch -- with a caveat below

This program looks utterly fabulous.  We will be taping it and watching it all. This is television at its most profound and a force for good.  It is a force for intellectual curiosity and instruction as to who we are and what transpires on our beautiful beautiful planet.  It makes one want desperately to be a steward of this one earth on which we miraculously reside and especially to stop earth's killer -- polluting and climate changing fossil fuels!

A Caveat must be mentioned:  PBS is now funded and its programming perhaps overseen by the Koch Brothers, who are right wing funders of right wing extremism and the Republican Party.  Their fortune is in oil and many other things.  Still, that does not mean all programming is tainted and it means some programming has worth.  BUT one should always know that this right wing slant has taken over what USED to be one of the best public stations on earth and, in my opinion, because of that fact, it no longer is.  I no longer give money to support its broadcasting but I will watch certain things I deem have merit.  

It is a sad fact and reality of the world in which we live that money buys it all and NOT for humane purposes.  It extends far and wide even to the media.  Beware and if you give to PBS I suggest you stop and tell them exactly why.  The Koch Brothers are major funders of the Tea Baggies, are major deniers of global climate change going against 98% of scientific expertise in the subject.  Beware of ALL things bearing their name!  --WHY WE MUST ELECT DEMOCRATS IN 2014 AND BEYOND!

-----Original Message-----
From: NOVA <novanewsletter@wgbh.org>
To: natalierosen <natalierosen@aol.com>
Sent: Tue, Feb 12, 2013 7:21 am
Subject: [NOVA] "Earth from Space"

If you have trouble viewing this email, read the online version.

NOVA PRESENTS Earth from Space Airing Wednesday February 13 at 9 pm on PBS (Check local listings) Watch a Preview "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth. Viewers witness how dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon; how a vast submarine "waterfall" off Antarctica helps drive ocean currents around the world; and how the Sun's heating up of the southern Atlantic gives birth to a colossally powerful hurricane. From the microscopic world of water molecules vaporizing over the ocean to the magnetic field that is bigger than Earth itself, the show reveals the astonishing beauty and complexity of our dynamic planet. WEB FEATURES Watch a Preview Watch a preview of the program online now.  The Uses of Satellite Imagery Images from near-Earth orbit help us with everything from weather forecasting and disaster management to archeology. "Earth from Space” is now available on DVD from shopPBS.org.NOVA email subscribers receive an exclusive offer of 20% off your order of $60 or more at shopPBS.org. Enter promotion code: NOVANEWSLETTER to receive your discount. Cannot be combined with other offers. Valid thru 2/31/13. NOVA Launches New Energy Lab  NOVA is excited to announce the launch of the Energy Lab, the second Lab in a growing collection of research offerings on the NOVA Labs site. In this Lockheed Martin-funded site, students design renewable energy systems for cities across the U.S. and compete with Lab participants nationally. Visit the site now to design your own renewable energy system. 2012 Visitor/Viewer Survey Message Calling all NOVA scienceNOW viewers and/or digital content explorers! We rely on your feedback to learn and improve. Please take 5-10 minutes to complete this survey being conducted by our external evaluation firm. Become a NOVA and NOVA scienceNOW fan on Facebook, follow us onTwitter, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Thank you for your interest in NOVA. We welcome your questions, comments, and feedback. You can send a message directly to nova@wgbh.org, or use ourfeedback form.  TWITTER  FACEBOOK  ITUNES  YOUTUBE  RSS  INSIDE NOVA      Major funding for this program is provided by The Kendeda Fund. Additional funding for this program is provided by Millicent Bell, through the Millicent and Eugene Bell Foundation.Funding for NOVA is provided by David H. Koch, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS viewers.