Martha Coakley--A Governor who can Win

Someone asked me if there was a Republican in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race whom one could consider. I told her in our time the two Parties are, sadly, diametrically opposed to one another.  It means something now if one is a Democrat or if one is Republican.  There is, therefore, in my opinion, never a good reason to vote Republican because if one votes Republican one is voting for a conservative social agenda and destructive economic policies as well.  If one is Republican one must strictly adhere to the party line.  It means they are against marriage equality, against a woman's right to choose, pro NRA and the expansion of gun owners' rights even when it means the right to carry in a classroom and even in a church.  If one votes Republican one would be voting for a strong religious influence in government and away from the Constitutional Separation of church-state Clause. 

Adding to that, one would be voting science deniers into office, one would be voting for those who want to keep the division of wealth in favor of the 1% by supporting tax law that shrinks the middle class.  If one votes Republican one would be voting for taking an ax to government programs that support the poor, the disabled, and the elderly.  One would be voting for a Party that supports ultimately an end to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as we know it. 

Republicans are against the strict regulation of Wall Street and government oversight of the big banks.  They support trickledown economics which has never worked.  One would vote for a Party that shut down government and is threatening to do that again.  The Republican Party would even vote against raising of the debt ceiling so America could not pay its bills send us into default and the world into chaos.  It is a Party that wasted taxpayer money voting to eradicate the Affordable Health Care Act 57 times offering nothing to take its place.  It is a Party that cares nothing about most of you.

The Republican code words are "small government" but that really means few government programs and oversight agencies except for the military as most Republicans never met a war they did not like.

If one votes or is Republican one sinks or swims on one’s own with no one but no one to help you out in times of trouble in an economic system, mostly Republican-created that has provided plenty of trouble for the middle class with it. 

I want a Democrat in the Governor’s office who will oppose all those aforementioned Republican policies.  I want Martha Coakley as governor because she is an experienced Democrat, she is smart, and she is progressive.  She has proven that many times.  I think she is capable and best of all she is a Democrat who can WIN against the Republican Baker in the general election.  I, therefore, unequivocally and for all those reasons passionately support Martha Coakley for governor of Massachusetts.

The Seriousnes of Our Time

I am critical of US policy to a point.  History is necessary to know but, while understanding its message, it is important to live in its present.

 

However critical one might wax against the west one must make a value judgment for our time.  Is the west sinless?  Absolutely it is not.  Is western democratic free thought and its separation between church state crafted over Renaissance centuries better than anything else the world has seen so far? Yes, it is!

 

The penchant to gain so called caliphate power by those who are said to pervert Islam with unconscionable violence MUST be stopped.  There is no other way as their zest for compromise is nonexistent.  Nearly overnight the bestial ISIS/ISIL seemed to form as the Middle East through George Bush's so called "preemptive war" destabilized an already unstable tinderbox region and now is descending into madness. Worse, some very unstable states have nukes.

 

As man is prone the Islamic Spring which seemed so hopeful at first quickly morphed into the most extreme chaos since the barbarity of WWII.  It happened during the French Revolution, it happened after the Russian Revolution, and it happens after most revolutions where man wants to vie for immense power, wealth and change through revolutionary tactics and makes brutal war over it.  Revolution's propaganda for those who want to perpetrate it is their tool.

 

It is the Orwellian law of revolution the brilliant George Orwell in his book "Animal Farm" instructs.  Through his animal farm metaphor and the overthrow of Farmer Jones (a brutal and oppressive human) by the animals -- the pigs -- he creates their new world order with its rallying cry:  "All animals are equal!" That mantra quickly devolves into "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." As stated in Wiki:

Years pass, and the pigs start to resemble humans, as they walk upright, carry whips, and wear clothes. The Seven Commandments are abridged to a single phrase: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". Napoleon (the leader of the Pigs) holds a dinner party for them and local farmers, with whom he celebrates a new alliance. He abolishes the practice of the revolutionary traditions and restores the name "The Manor Farm." As the animals look from pigs to humans, they realize they can no longer distinguish between the two.

The people, fodder of revolutions, ultimately get jackbooted to the side and/or killed as power solidifies itself through Robespierreian terror and tyranny.  We cannot and we must not let this happen in our time yet again.

 

Indeed, I believe, with all our frailties this nation is the world's last best hope for civilized government no matter how many policy errors it makes.  It is amazing what our Founders wrought and that it has lived as long as it has where change can be perfected by law that civilizes man and averts violence.  Our Founding Documents are precious because they are a road map over time to peaceful change. I recognize even more their life sustaining importance when a threat to them is hovering over our world like the Angel of Death cloud and headed for our doorstep.

 

One must hope we with our allies are able to contain this latest Middle East menace for world domination taking humanity back to a new Dark Age with medieval tactics.  No matter how much my compatriots on the left are critical of our nation they are in error to always think it wrong. 

I paste a "Slate" article by William Saletan below to reflect the seriousness of our time and what we must do.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/09/don_t_watch_isis_s_murder_of_steven_sotloff_honor_him_by_remembering_the.html

The Artful Arti-T -- The Market Basket Miracle

I have lots of thoughts about American business or lack of it and a logarithm that supports  employees, the consumers that purchase goods and one that thinks of stockholders and CEO's bottom line after them.  The rich can live as well with less.  The worker bees and consumers can live decently if the rich accept just a little less.  A thriving middle class is formed exactly in this way and this above anything else is why people risk their lives to get here.

Market Basket is an example of a wonderful marketing coup which should be taught in business schools and copied by other big businesses and chains everywhere.  It was done with no unions just loyalty to a man CEO Arti-T who deserved it because he cared about those he employed and the consumers who buy what he sells.

I shopped there on Sunday and it was packed with goods and customers. I wanted to hug everyone -- Arti-T, the staff and the customers.  More goods will be filling the shelves completely.  I urge you to support this consumer friendly store and be the beginning of a movement!  My food costs are 1/2 less shopping there than shopping anywhere else. 

Arti-T is genius.  He and all of us have done something amazing.  Business may and should  never be the same.  Arti-T's formula WORKS to make millions and still be a caring and humane entity doing something for workers and consumers who need to save a buck. 

Change, I have been told, comes from the bottom up and Arti-T knew how important his staff and patrons were so he worked at giving us lower lower-than-any-other-market costs and excellent quality to boot while he offered good benefits to his workers. People beat a path to his door.  What could be bad about the success of that?

Arti-T thank you SO much!  The win of Market Basket's Arti-T is the first good news in a long, long, long time.Yes, it and he will need our support and I am betting that both Arti-T and Market Basket will get it.

Natalie Rosen
39 Swift Road
Framingham, MA 01702
(508) 879-4170

What Could Have Been

I try to hold the passion down but I just cannot help it. There is SO much at stake for Democrats to GET OUT THE VOTE IN NOVEMBER 2014 and I simply cannot stand that for which Republicans stand.  Sure I know that Democrats, too, are beholden to monied interests yes, people are often not in things for their health.   But no one can convince me that there is no difference between the two parties.  There is, it is huge now and white racism comprises much of the Republican Party of the 1% all one needs to do is look at it.  

IF the president in 2010 had a Democratic House and Senate think about all the things that could have been done.  It is big and a minimum wage would have been one of them and stronger reform of Wall Street.  There would have been no government shutdowns and no debt ceiling scare tactics, there would have been the wealthy paying more taxes and the middle class paying less so the deficit would have gone down even more than it already has and it HAS gone down under the president. 

Roads, bridges, and infrastructure would have been fixed, the national grid would have been updated AND climate change would have been addressed as would alternative energy sources.  Another stimulus would have created many more jobs and the economy would have improved more.  Most importantly a change of just ONE just one more progressive on the Court and gd Citizen's United would be reversed, unlimited money taken out of the political realm maybe the oligarchy government by the rich which we have now would not be.  Reform of the tax code and business avoidance of taxes rectified.  And maybe there even would have been single payer health system which REALLY would work for the people.  Women's rights would have been strengthened and the right to choose upheld.  More egalitarian judges installed and appointments not delayed.  AND A FAIR RIGHT TO CITIZENSHIP AND IMMIGRANT BILL PASSED!  Attention paid to state and local governments turning them Democrat blue.

There would have been much less criticism of the president making us stronger and more unified.  Sounds like heaven doesn't it?  Yep it does and that is why the Democratic Party must win as our nation is, I believe, in trouble.

Just think about what our nation COULD have been had Bush the moron not been illegally installed as president -- NO 9/11, NO Osama bin Laden, and especially NO fraudulent lying war in Iraq. And most of all a Middle East NOT in turmoil.  Thousands of lives would have been saved. Imagine....well, we must deal with what we have and Republican policies will create more gridlock and will add more fuel to the fire of an already nearly unrecognizably burned war weary nation! GET OUT THE 2014 NOVEMBER DEMOCRATIC VOTE AND YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL or AT LEAST SOME OF IT and do something with the two years left!!

GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE AND WATCH US WIN!!!

I have one sentence to all of you as I see and nearly explode as the Globe tries to make the NH senate race close by saying the NH Senate race between Shaheen and Brown "heats up."  

Heats up my posterior.  Jeanne Shaheen without question MUST win and WILL win SIGNIFICANTLY as Democrats CAN sweep all over the nation.  Republicans are a bankrupt party with NOTHING to offer.  So here is my one phase:  GET OUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE ALL OVER THE NATION.

DEMOCRATS WILL WIN IF YOU DO as we have the young, we have women, we have the elderly, we have African Americans, and we have Hispanics.  What more do we need?  WE NEED TO GET OUT THE [blank] VOTE, sit back and watch the Democratic victories across the nation if you do!!!

The Artful Arti-T and the Miracle of Market Basket

What the Market Basket has done was the GREATEST marketing coup of all time done with no unions just loyalty to a man Arti-T who deserved it.  I was just there shopping today in Ashland and it was packed. I simply wanted to hug everyone -- Arti, the staff and the customers.  More goods will be coming.  I urge you to support this consumer friendly store and be the beginning of a movement!

Get rid of the supermarket you shop at and find a Market Basket.  My bills are 1/2 less than everywhere else.  Arti-T is a genius.  I LOVE that man.  He and all of us have done something amazing.  Business may and SHOULD never be the same.  I have LOTS of thoughts about the sad state of American business and ideas of what the young and business savvy person can do about it. Arti-T's formula WORKS to make millions and still be a caring humane person and do something for people who need it!  Change comes from the bottom up and Arti-T knew how important his staff and patrons were.

Arti-T thank you SO much!  First good news I have heard in a long long long time.

The Journey of No Return

Written "off the cuff."

The purpose of my email is critical analysis.  Why I tune in every morning, afternoon and evening to Channel 7 local news I am not sure I know except that I like your weather forecasters and am too lazy to change my DVD.  There is another reason too in that it is nearly impossible now to find a local progressive news station.  In my view they are ALL either biased to the right or they are filled with candy coated comments and inane blather.  So I persevere with you.

The story about the president's foreign policy entitled "Damage Control" in and of itself connotes bias. The president, as usual, was trying to state the truth something which was alien to the former know nothing rancid foreign policy of Bush who could not ever do that or even know HOW to do it.  More local and even national stupid comments have been uttered about the color of the suit he was wearing than about policy itself.  Who cares what the color of the suit he was wearing was?

With respect to policy:  This man is dealing with a world imploding.  Why?  Because  George W. Bush decided to destabilize the Middle East and blow Iraq up over NOTHING but false "evidence" and lies.  Where were you when that jerk SHOULD have been impeached for taking a nation to war under false pretenses killing hundreds of thousands and creating a millions in exile?

Further, and worst of all, Iraq, where there was NO Al Qaeda since Hussein loathed them, there now is and even worse than that is the anarchy of ISIS!  So George W. Bush, the know nothing president and his immoral cronies are responsible for the Middle East mayhem today!  Our president has been handed a kettle of dead fish and a basket full of worms.  How would YOU deal with such horrific conflicts?  These conflicts are there because George Bush destabilized Iraq and put them there and now our adversaries world wide and even our friends perceive us as war weary and spent.

In nature the scavengers and hawks hover when they see an opportunity and Putin, ISIS, and Al Qaeda see it in us.  They merely had to wear us down.  This is the rancid state that our president was handed.  Add to that a Republican-induced global recession near depression and I would say to you and ALL the media to cut our president some slack.  He does not want to go in with guns blazing, firing wildly as John the never met a war I didn't like McCain would.  Our president is thoughtful and carefully crafts policy.  Oh my a new concept.  Why don't you put that in your newscasts?  And oh yes, wasn't it under Obama that bin Laden was killed and so many other enemies of the US were neutered as well even IF they were American citizens.  And did not THIS president dig us out of a deep recession -- amazing given the virulent disgusting Republican opposition he received throughout his besieged presidency.

The US media keeps the electorate dumb and historically blind.  You should think twice about your critical commentary of our president who won TWO terms handily beating his Republican opponents thank God.  If not for him we would be fighting eternal war and still may have to since George W. Bush the man who NEVER should have been president took the world on a journey from which there may be no return.  Pitiful!

Primordial Uzi

 In the state of Arizona it is legal for a nine year old to shoot a gun.  And so it is no surprise when a nine year old girl getting instruction on an Uzi machine gun killed her instructor by accident when she could not control the strength of this formidable weapon of war.  (See news report and video minus the actual death below.)  She was "learning" to shoot and now must carry the burden of this horrific death at her hands as long as she lives.

The Uzi machine gun was designed and redesigned to streamlined perfection over decades by the IDF (the Israeli Defense Forces.)  It is a lethal rapid fire killing machine and its design has been copied the world over for it use in war.  Yes, I said "IN WAR" and NOT for use by a nine year old girl "for fun" at a shooting range.  A young girl or boy does not have the mental maturity to handle this weapon no matter how smart she or he may be at nine years old nor does any child of that age have the muscular development necessary to be able to handle the hard quick-fire movement of this gun as it is pressed into the service for which it was designed.

This story is not only about the unnecessary death of an instructor by nine year old girl using an Uzi machine gun who was simply "having fun" learning to fire it and employ her Second Amendment right at a shooting range. I am sure our Founding Fathers meant the Second Amendment for that purpose -- NOT. It really is about that part of the nation's wild west mentality that spawns a violence so deadly that in time it could take this nation down.

People of good will, rational and humane politics must NOT let this happen.  We must mount a campaign against the NRA and its pathological Cretans who think everyone should carry a gun even if they want to carry it into church, a school, a restaurant, a bar or really anywhere even on a children's playground. What could possibly go wrong?

What on this earth is wrong with this nation?  How did violence wrap itself in its umbilical cord and give birth to a violent monster whose body can be seen everywhere -- in books, in magazines, in film, in movies, on television and computer games. Its DNA has seeped into the marrow of this nation's bones and courses through its body like the cancer it is.  We have honed a gargantuan savage. 

Elections matter and if one does not care what those with money and inordinate clout do they will take over the reins of power and the direction of your life.  It is your life, it is your children's lives, it is our nation's life that is at stake if the forces of NRA fascistic-like right wing extremist power win.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust perhaps we may war ourselves into extinction, take the earth as we know it with us and creation will have to begin anew emerging again out of the primordial ooze from whence it came.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11058025/Nine-year-old-girl-accidentally-kills-gun-instructor-with-Uzi-fatal-shot-not-shown.html

You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia

Fascinating link that gives a very good understanding of the etiology and history of ISIS.  If one wants to understand its appeal one should read the link below so that we count ourselves as one of the more informed and not the plethora of ignorant in our nation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/isis-wahhabism-saudi-arabia_b_5717157.html

11 SHOTS AGAINST BROWN ON TAPE

SHOTS ON TAPE:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/michael-brown-audio_n_5714287.html

The Song of Racism--Wikipedia--16th Street Baptist Church Bombing:

"In the early morning of Sunday, September 15, 1963, Bobby Frank Cherry, Thomas Blanton,[1] Herman Frank Cash, and Robert Chambliss, members of United Klans of America, a Ku Klux Klan group, planted a box of dynamite with a time delay under the steps of the church, near the basement.[2] At about 10:22 a.m., twenty-six children were walking into the basement assembly room to prepare for the sermon entitled “The Love That Forgives,” when the bomb exploded.[3][4] Four girls, Addie Mae Collins (age 14), Denise McNair (age 11), Carole Robertson (age 14), and Cynthia Wesley (age 14), were killed in the attack,[5] and 22 additional people were injured, one of whom was Addie Mae Collins' younger sister, Sarah.[6] The explosion blew a hole in the church's rear wall, destroyed the back steps and all but one stained-glass window, which showed Christ leading a group of little children.[7]

Civil rights activists blamed George Wallace, the Governor of Alabama, for the killings. Birmingham was a violent city and was nicknamed “Bombingham”, because the city had experienced more than 50 bombings in black institutions and homes since World War I.[8] Only a week before the bombing Wallace had told The New York Times that to stop integration Alabama needed a "few first-class funerals

https://en.wikipedia.org/.../16th_Street_Baptist_Church...

I am Trayvon Martin and I am Michael Brown

When Trayvon Martin was killed I called "Make it Plain" progressive talk hosted by Mark Thompson, the African American talk show host, and iterated as caller after caller did that "I am Trayvon Martin." I did this because I truly believed and still do the slaying of Trayvon was unjust, affected all of us and that the acquittal of Zimmerman, a violent man, that followed was and remains one of the most enraging verdicts in our long national nightmare of racial injustice.

Again we are faced with a very similar circumstance -- an African American man was gunned down, in my opinion, unjustly this time not by a vigilante-police-wanna-be thug but by a constitutionally legal white police officer.  Constitutional police officers are imbued with power by the state the rest of us do not have.  There can be no doubt their job is a difficult one but they signed up for it.  It is, therefore, especially incumbent upon police to use lethal force as a last resort when other means are available to arrest an unarmed man.  Yes, the decisions must be made quickly.  I understand that but I believe Michael Brown was an unarmed man running away from an officer whom Mr. Brown knew possessed a firearm that could and we know did ultimately kill him.

Reality speaks: we are a nation divided by race and a nation divided by class.  The divisions are stark and they are written indelibly on the tapestry that is the American soul.  If one is honest, and I do believe I am, one cannot deny the racist reflection one sees in the American mirror.  Racism has been here when the first slave ship transported in chains and against one's will the first African American and pressed him into involuntary servitude.  Racism has been here since the Missouri Compromise, it has been here since the Kansas-Nebraska Act, it has been here since the Dred Scott decision and it has been here during many racist slave-holding presidents of these United States.  It has been here through the Jim Crow laws of segregated drinking fountains, schools, movie theaters and more.  It has been here since the abrogation of the black vote through literacy tests and grandfather’s clauses of Reconstruction and by other means of minority voter suppression today. And it has been here through the cross burnings of the KKK.

It has been here, too, through the assassination of the hope of Lincoln and through the assassination of the arc of justice, Martin Luther King. It has been here since the Alabama bus boycott and Rosa Parks. It has been here through the entering of the University of Mississippi by the first black man, James Meredith.  It has been here through the vicious racists of Bull Connor, George Wallace, and the white noxious hypocrite Mississippi Senator John Stennis who voted against rights for African Americans while he fathered a black child.  It has been here since the brutal slaying of Emmett Till because he had the perceived temerity to look at a white woman, it has been here through the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist church in Alabama and the killing of four innocent young black girls Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair in it.  It has been here since the slaying of three civil rights workers -- Goodwin, Cheney and Schwerner, and it has been here through the hundreds of hangings of black men memorialized in Billy Holiday's lachrymose rendition of "Strange fruit hanging from the Poplar trees " (YouTube below.)

Why should white people and why should ALL people care about the homicide of a boy, Michael Brown, whom most never knew?  What does it mean to me, a white Jewish woman if an unarmed Michael Brown was shot dead by a white police officer?  It means something because we know the truth and we who know the truth must tell it. Burt Lancaster in his role as a Nazi jurist on trial at Nuremberg for war crimes in the great film "Judgment at Nuremberg" in pertinent part said in his soliloquy:

What about those of us who knew better, we who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country. ... What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights?

And then one day, we looked around and found that we were in an even more terrible danger. The ritual begun in this courtroom swept over the land like a raging, roaring disease. What was going to be a 'passing phase' had become the way of life. Your Honor, I was content to sit silent during this trial. I was content to tend my roses. I was even content to let counsel try to save my name.  Until I realized that in order to save it, he would have to raise the specter again. You have seen him [defense counsel] do it. He has done it here in this courtroom. He has suggested that the Third Reich worked for the benefit of people. He has suggested that we sterilized men for the welfare of the country. He has suggested that perhaps the old Jew did sleep with the 16 year-old girl after all. Once more, it is being done for love of country. It is not easy to tell the truth. But if there is to be any salvation for Germany, we who know our guilt must admit it, whatever the pain and humiliation.

And so, I say that as it applies to this nation, to us and yet again to admit the hard truths of my nation's sins with respect to its citizens of color.  I do iterate yet again another name to add to Trayvon's "I am Michael Brown" and it is in the interest of what is fair and what is just that I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Web007rzSOI

There can be NO doubt what we of good conscience must do.  Yes, voting matters so GET OUT THE MINORITY VOTE EVERYWHERE AND ELECT DEMOCRATS EVERYWHERE INCLUDING IN STATE LEGISLATURES.  TAKE BACK THE HOUSE, KEEP THE SENATE AND IN 2016 KEEP THE PRESIDENCY IN DEMOCRATIC HANDS.  It is only then that we can receive the justice we so richly deserve!  Ferguson was 67% black and that should be reflected in the police, in the schools and in all positions of power.  The only way one can get that is through the vote and YOU must ensure that we get that vote!

Perceptibly Ignorant

There is no mysterious subliminal or sub conscious explanation for those who step on their own toes and vote against their own interests.  Their lack of the ability to critically think is perceptibly evident; their ignorance clear for all the world to see.

Our nation is filled with know nothings and getting worse as higher education becomes unaffordable and the education one receives in elementary and high school, sometimes by equally ignorant staff, is often junk.  Experience the torture of watching a Tea Party or Republicon rally to see how serious the dearth of perceptual understanding of – well – most everything from science to the use of expressively correct English is.  Moreover, an understating of our nation’s history with a critical and questioning eye is nearly nonexistent.

I recently wrote an opinion on Dred Scott and its application to the racial events in Ferguson, MO. A friend said he would be willing to bet if one asked people as they walked by on a busy street if they knew and understood the importance of the Dred Scott decision or if they even heard of the name Dred Scott they would say "NO." 

The ignorance of history and the contemporary events of the nation in which our population lives and its electorate votes is staggering and that is why so many vote against their own interests.  They swallow the party line because they know nothing and do not want to know anything else.

Ferguson Protests Erupt Near Grave of Ex-Slave Dred Scott, Whose Case Helped Fuel U.S. Civil War

Why history is relevant!  Dred Scott, the former slave vying for his freedom in 1846 in an 11 year legal struggle ending in 1857, was the recipient of the ugliest, most malevolent and worst decision in the history of the United States Supreme Court, rises now from his grave in our time in Ferguson, Missouri.

Chief Justice Taney of that era uttered to the nation the Court's infamous decision eventually culminating in the blood soaked deaths of 620,000 human beings in the American Civil War by ignominiously stating that:

... the authors of the Constitution had viewed all blacks as "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

This nation has committed a plethora of dastardly acts over centuries against its citizens of color.  I am afraid now the entire nation reaps again what has been sowed.  Are the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost?  Perhaps, simply said, violence is an option for people who have no other options. 

History matters and whom we elect surely does.  It is why I consistently and without equivocation or reversal steadfastly believe the nation will live or it will die if we do not recognize the right of all to equality under the law.  Voting rights is the oxygen of that equality and breathes life into our democratic way life.

Register to vote all persons of color, Hispanics, the young, the elderly, the disabled and all those who can vote and should.  Overturn the Republican vicious and racist stranglehold of the U.S. House, keep the Democratic majority in the Senate and by all and many means necessary hold the White House in 2016.  Forward this to anyone you choose.
 
I post the Utube of the relevance of the Dred Scott decision below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kubhN6dXvk&list=PL50BDB9BCCFAF09CA&index=6

BLAME -- Ferguson, MO

The racial violence in Ferguson, Missouri is dismaying. It is dismaying, in part, because of what our illustrious Supreme Court five in error have said.  They took a vital limb of the 1964 Civil Rights Act amputated and dismembered it.  The Solomon-less-than-wise five incredulously said we are in a post racial society so the special vigilance of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is now irrelevant as the old issues of race simply do not apply.  What they said and what they did is hilarious if it were not so serious and consequential.  The Republican five on SCOTUS got it wrong but who of us is surprised?

Some -- mostly whites -- are saying that the robbery photo of Mr. Brown is important to see because, after all, character counts.  They say the photo has an implication in the shooting and killing of the victim by police because it may serve to verify the officer's accusation that the victim violently accosted him.  There may be some truth to that BUT however "evil" the stealing of a box of cigars is it does not speak to nor justify the killing of a man by police even if that man stole the box of cigars and then stood in the middle of a street.  I aver history's evil is of larger consequence.

Persons of color in this nation have been treated unjustly for not only decades but centuries. The issue of the shooting and killing of Mr. Brown by a white policeman is seen by many persons of color as business as usual and just another stone on the mountain of discriminatory injustice whites have, historically and continually, even in our era, built against them.

Those people of Missouri that are on the other side of town, the white side, who say looting is unheard of on their side have never experienced decades of unequal justice that persons of color have known.  They never have to worry if they go into a neighborhood that they might be killed simply because of the color of their skin.  I need not enumerate the centuries of injustices perpetrated by whites against blacks to prove my point. The black discriminatory experience in this nation has been like no other and still is.  The Supreme Court, yet again, was consummately wrong. 

The essence of the issue as to why people become violent is because nothing else works.  Whites say to vote but even the vote is made harder for persons of color by Republican whites.  Voter suppression is legally approved racism across this allegedly "democratic" nation.  What is left?  Answer: Anger and lots of it because a selected group of people feel systemically left out of the arc of justice even after all these years of struggle and you know what?  I do not blame them because the arc of justice is bending away from and not towards them all the time!

The Fault

I blogged the following in response to a news report entitled "Should Obama Do More on Ferguson and Other Racial Issues?"  Link below.  Sorry for the less than pristine prose.  My anger got the best of me.  Drat that anger.  The article I blogged about is critical of the president on matters of race!  My anger welled up and my head exploded.

Those who criticize our president should get OFF just GET OFF his back.  This man gets opposition no matter WHAT he does.  Do you think he knows we live in a racist nation?  YOU BET HE DOES.  So what should he do?  Provoke a race war, just what the moron right wingnuts and NRA gun nuts are dying to have.  Sure play into their rancid hands.  Stand your ground laws are a state thing so what should he do get this venomous House to pass a law abandoning it in all 50 states?  Right and I can climb Everest (I can't!)  Republicans control state legislatures and governors' offices.  Good luck trying to have control over them.

How ANYONE on this planet can criticize this president for TRYING at least TRYING to do what his heart has wanted from day one and that is be a UNITER not a divider.  It is IMPOSSIBLE with a white Republican racist House that does NOT want to unite but wants to divide and take the president down. 

It is a pre-Civil War era type obstructionist House, immoral and rotten to its roots.  How is a president going to overcome that?  YOU the voter did that to him and to the rest of us when you put in the ugly white tea baggies to spew their venom and obstruct policy on every level. Our president can barely get an office appointment through. And what did REPUBLICRATS want in 2010?  To take away health care.  Yes, health care so people can die without it because their Republicon heart made of a rock does not care.

The fault dear Brutus is NOT in the stars or with our president but with YOU the voter who voted these poisonous snakes into office to stop the president at every corner because they simply do not like him and his skin color that comes with him. GET RepubliCONS OUT OF OFFICE in November BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY and then he will get something done for our nation in the process.

REGISTER DEMOCRATS, INDEPENDENTS AND ANYONE ELSE WHO WILL VOTE DEMOCRATIC IN NOVEMBER!

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/should-obama-do-more-ferguson-other-racial-issues-n180921

The Gift - Robin Williams Honored On Broadway

Broadway yesterday dimmed its lights in tribute to this amazing man. The cast of Aladdin and its audience paid homage. (See link below.)

My challenge is accepting the loss of the cultural and the personal icons of my life. One by one they seem to leave me with the truth that my greatest challenge is the acceptance of the transitory mortal coil that wraps us all and the necessity, as Robin Williams if he could as other wise men have said, to love one another, be good to one another and treat one another as you would want to them to treat you.

In addition to Robin Williams's monumental talent his kindness to animals and humans alike was, I think, his greatest gift.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/13/robin-williams-broadway-aladdin-tribute_n_5677028.html

Lauren Bacall -- A testament to perseverance

Her name was Betty Joan Perske.  I thought, because of the antiSemitism of the day this Jewish woman changed her name to Lauren Bacall but no.  While her first name Lauren may seem a bit anglicized Bacall was not.  It was her mother's maiden name dropping the name of her father who left her mother and her at a very young age.

We lost two greats this week, one before his time (whatever that time was) and one of natural causes at 89.  Lauren Bacall is a testament to perseverance losing the love of her life to cancer at a very young age.  She persevered and married again even having another child. 

Bacall worked well into her senior years significantly through an actress's looskist fear when the beauty of youth fades and the mirror of career death stares one in their face.  Bacall, though, kept on going. 

Williams and Bacall are testaments to two different reactions to the vicissitudes of life.  We can give up when treatment does not work and end our suffering or we can persevere through it taking one more breath each day grateful that we won the lottery of life by simply being born. 

Both were giants of American culture and I will miss them as I miss all who contribute and advance so much good in a world filled with so much observable anger, discord, violence and hate.  They are a welcome calm, if just for a moment, through the storm of life.

Robin Williams -- A Tribute

Robin Williams resides in my own category of comedic brilliance among the greats I have loved including George Carlin, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball and the amazing Gilda Radner. Williams possessed, perhaps, even a touch more than anyone else.  He could do it all. His comedy like Mrs. Doubtfire was side splitting hilarious but serious drama, too, was included in his excellence.  Good Will Hunting was an example of that excellence for which he received an Academy Award.

When the artistic greats of our nation leave us either before their time or by natural causes I mourn their deaths.  A piece of our American family, for me,  dies with them. We, as a people, are more than war and more than ugly divided politics. These talents are a global gift.  Great performers from the Bette Davises and Charlie Chaplins of another era to the Robin Williames of our own time provide another facet of our people known as much for our talented genius as for our military might.

They allow us to laugh at life and at ourselves while letting us forget, for a moment, the sad violent state of mankind. I will, indeed, miss him!

Islamic State beheads, crucifies in push for Syria's east

Funny, I can't recall ever hearing reports of the Israeli or American armies beheading or crucifying Muslims or doing that to their own people!!
 
Scroll down to see link below:

 http://news.msn.com/world/islamic-state-beheads-crucifies-in-push-for-syrias-east