Pope Francis the Great--from Punnishment to Peace

Pope Francis's words to the Vatican bureaucracy were scathing much needed criticism. Why should I a Jew care about the Vatican? I care because because Papal history and the history of the Roman Catholic Church has been intertwined with not only world history but, specifically, with the history of the Jews. We could not escape it. The Pope sets the stage and the tone of the Church's essence and its essence affects people all over the world. What the Pope says matters to 1.2 billion Roman Catholics. Therefore, what he says should matter to all of us.

I have always been critical of the Vatican but under this Pope my position has changed by an order of great magnitude. He has the greatest acceptance for the least among us and no matter how much men/women are afflicted he has room for them in his heart and places them within in the many mansions of the supreme being in which he believes.

He has brought much needed change to the Vatican bureaucracy, its cardinals and its bishops in a Church guilty of so many egregious sins against the innocent over centuries. Could and should the Church change more? Of course, there is always room for change but Pope Francis has changed the aura of the Church from one of punishment to one of peace, love and forgiveness -- the true essence of what Christianity, as I see it, should be.

Blue Mood

The assassination in cold blood of two NYPD officers helps no one, and, yes, everyone should decry it. I have empathy for our police who put their lives on the line so we may live safely free of anarchy. I also have empathy for Mr. Garner who was ridiculously choked to death by out-of-control NYPD officers abridging their own codes of police conduct.  Their assault and killing of Mr. Garner because of a woefully minor offense allegedly selling "loosie" cigarettes should be an affront to all of us.

 

One does NOT have to say one cares less about one death and everything about another. All of the killings were bad. The pertinent question, of course, is if Mr. Garner were not choked to death by an NYPD officer and a sidecar of other NYPD pile ons would the assassination of the NYPD officers yesterday have happened? It could have as the killer of the cops was mentally deranged. He killed his girlfriend too. The question if the Garner police killing did not happen would the two assassinated police officers be alive today is unknowable.

 

My instincts tell me the shooting of the NYPD police may not have happened if the African-American community were not, all over the nation, so enraged at the perceived unjust treatment of them at the hands of law enforcement.  Moreover, the shoddy prosecution of police perpetrators who commit egregious crimes should be an embarrassment to the nation.  It flies in the face of prosecutorial justice and civilization's ethical codes of conduct for police who enforce the law.  The police are, after all, the only ones the public trusts to protect us and to carry weapons, the specific purpose of which is to threaten and/or kill.

 

While our blue mood nation may have lit the spark for the policemen’s deaths we can never know that for sure because a whole community did not kill the NYPD officers but one out-of-his-mind man did!

The Miracle Worker

 "Obama Ends 2014 With Swagger ... "

The article in Huffington by Sam Stein is linked here or at the end.


It is a miracle the President, as the article states, has done all he has done in his so called "lame duck session." It is the eighth wonder of the world that he did all the things he has done during his entire presidency despite an obstructionist Republican Party of very white racists who could not stand the sight of his melanin hue in the White House.  They stymied everything he wanted to do to lift the nation out of its 30 year mostly Republican induced and George Bush promulgated coma.   Barack Obama was handed a pile of lemons and the lemonade he made is settling our collective stomachs.

My father always said that you could not argue with success.  The President now has much to crow about, the ebullience of which, one could see at his pre-Hawaii Christmas vacation press conference.  From Cuba to health care to the economy to getting a formerly intractable China on board with a climate change fix and everything in between if Republicans want to undo all the good this president has done, okay, go ahead make my day.  They will sow the seeds of their own destruction in 2016.  A new color in the political spectrum rainbow should be called Republican Obsolete.  The people, too, must vote to usher out the Republican Party of mendacity. Republicans cannot love America as they say they do when they really want to stagnate and sink it keeping what remains of its monied carcass for only them, the 1% wealthiest.

What God giveth God can taketh away.  Republican victories can be turned into defeats.  As some say in Hebrew parlance "Baruch HaShem" translation: Praise God, let it be so. The Republican Philistines must be crushed if they destroy the many good things this president has done since he was handed the 2007 Bush nightmare economy in free fall and a brutal savage war made up of lies that killed so many. 

Barack Obama, I've stuck with you and can easily say I love you.  All my life I have looked for a new FDR whom my father, though a staunch Republican, loved.  This president may be my miracle answered even though in November I thought all hope was lost.  It wasn't.  It was lying there underneath the radar screen.  As the miracle worker, Annie Sullivan, the great teacher of her blind and deaf student, Helen Keller said after much struggle: "She sees" and, now, so do I!

ONWARD TO A 2016 DEMOCRATIC VICTORY--NEVER GIVE UP, NEVER FALTER and DO NOT FAIL!

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/19/obama-2014_n_6354900.html

A Note to Chuck Todd and NBC

I quickly wrote this with no attention to prose.  It is to NBC, the Today Show and MSNBC:

I am nauseated by the absolutely ridiculous criticism of the president re: his Cuba relations miracle.  While some in the Cuban community .... some ELDERLY someones in the Cuban community in Florida are critical MOST are not.  So cut this president some slack IF it is in your DNA not to report excessively on unthinking critics of him.

Just how much more hostility to the so called "Cuban brothers" do people that Todd reports on think should be given?  Our record for ALL to see if the know nothings would simply look, is atrocious toward Cuba.  From assassination plots by the US to poisoning, to spies, to planned invasions over numerous presidencies of this small nation 90 miles to our south. 

NOTHING worked as the US strong arms wanted it to.  Just what WAS Cuba's egregious sin?  It did not do in our hemisphere what the US daddy wanted it to do economically.  It defied economically the US parent.  How dare it.  It nationalized industries and now US embargoes have brought the Cuban people to their knees.  HOW ABOUT REPORTING TRUTH FOR A CHANGE that does not make the US look so good.  We do not give a rat's petuti if the regime is democratic or not. We support right wing tyrannies all over the world even depose leaders we do not like and institute men who the US wants to do its economic bidding.  What the US does care about is how capitalist it can be and how much it can make for US corporate interests in the regions.

Without opening up relations with Cuba things will stay the same only hurting the Cuban people.  All I ask from the corporate media is TELL THE  WHOLE truth.  Watch Amy Goodman's interview about US policy toward Castro and GET the truth and READ the book below written by Saul Landau an expert on Cuba!

WATCH: Saul Landau on U.S.-Aided Anti-Castro Militants, the Cuban 5 and the “Real Terrorists”

These Republican beasts will in the last two years of the Obama presidency do NOTHING in bipartisan fashion. Will they ever build the embassy?  HELL NO they won't.  They will do everything they can to thwart the president.

Again I say it get DEMOCRATS into office with a Democratic president and watch the nation flourish!

It's only a movie--REALLY?

I would have supported Sony not bending to strong-arm computer hacking tactics of tyrannies which forced the company to cancel the film, The Interview -- a comedic spoof on the attempted assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un by two tabloid figures. How many spoofs of that caricature "leader" does one think are out there in public view? Answer: Many.

With the public and the theaters that could have shown it notified it seems to me adequate security could have been provided and adults could make their own decision whether to see it or not. Giving in to tyrants simply makes tyrannies want to do more tyrannizing. George Orwell (my favorite dystopian writer) could not have named the terrorist group perpetrator of the threat better "The Guardians of Peace" -- yeah right. Just like our George Bush war based on lies in Iraq called the war "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Has one taken a good look at Iraq today over ten years from the Operation? I might use a lot of words to describe it but free is not one of them. Don't you love it when the lions lie down with lambs at least on paper or one hears the fallacious oratorical mendacity of the political lies they speak? Isn't "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" just another euphemism for what it really is: torture. I digress. Let's not mince words. Freedom of speech is the oxygen of this nation that allows it to breathe and me to critique any policy and view anything artistic I want.

Of course, life must be protected but so does our Constitution as it is the life of our nation. When the Jewish Torah (the Law) is aged or burned it is buried in a cemetery as if it were a person. For some, it is considered life itself. I am not religious but that is exactly how I think about our First Constitutional Amendment. I loathe anything that abridges it. It is, I believe, the First Amendment for a reason as it gives life to all the other freedoms we are supposed to enjoy. Moreover, it gave birth to our nation wrapped within its protective amniotic fluid for all time. It is the most important Constitutional guarantee -- the pinnacle and the bedrock upon which all other freedoms exist.

If a human being can think there is nothing that should not be capable of artistic and opinionated expression unless one is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. I figured out the genius of our Founders in 5th grade. Evidently for Sony that lesson was seemingly not learned very well or subject to conditional restrictions.

I agree with Aaron Sorkin, the producer of "Newsroom," shame on Sony for pulling this film. If I did not want to see it before the brouhaha I want to see it now. Is it really only a movie or is it the life of our nation itself that is at risk!

Thanks to Pope Francis!

The Pope's efforts in Cuba along with the President's have been nothing short of miraculous and in time for Hanukkah too freeing Alan Gross after 5 years in a Cuban jail.  This man has made a difference for the better. 

I who have been an ardent critic of historic Vatican policy now say as I have often said after the Pope's many humanitarian efforts, I love this man who has made a positive impact in our sad world!

Cuba Libre

 Yet another reason to elect a Democrat to high office. This is BIG!

What are the odds this would have happened under Romney?

Cuba Frees American Alan Gross, Held for Five Years

Here or below!

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/u-s-cuba-relations/cuba-frees-american-alan-gross-held-five-years-n269926

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/u-s-cuba-relations/cuba-frees-american-alan-gross-held-five-years-n269926

130+ Children -- Angels' Lost Wings

The Pakistan school massacre of 130+ CHILDREN should strain the credulity of all of us; Australia, Canada, Boston, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Israel, Gaza, Pakistan, Newtown and so many more I am sickened by ALL and I do mean all the violence.  When a child dies like this or any way by the hand of man many angels lose their wings! 

What an unnecessary loss of life everywhere over the last 13 years.  It can never be justified.

The whole world mourns for these children, all children and everyone who suffers because of man's inhumanity to man.

Peace begins with us all.

Transparency through the Opaque

This latest budget 1.1 trillion buck madness bill stuffed with funds for our eternal wars and goodies for Wall Street has now somewhat transparently passed in Congress differently from its usual opaque nature, the contents of which are often hidden from the public. Eventually, we often find out when another social program or regulatory agency that worked for us has been dismembered and finally killed taking us, the 98%, with it. This time someone smart found the bank stuff out as Elizabeth Warren the Great of Massachusetts railed from the Senate floor against the stealth bombing.

Mostly Republicans (although not entirely) through corporate contributions to their war-chests, the massive minions of money intend to seize it all and eradicate, by any means necessary, those who would oppose them. Through their mendacious tactics, suppressing the minority vote and the use of gerrymandered electoral districts they will get all of it. As George Carlin in his oft-quoted-by-me "American Dream" soliloquy so accurately put it “…. they already have captured the Congress, have the courts in their back pockets, have the media that controls the news and information you get, and have most of the state legislatures and local governments.” They control it all with their legions of lobbyists filling bloated congressional coffers with unlimited amounts corporate Citizens United cash.

They defund education keeping us unquestioningly dumb, underfund regulatory agencies and anything that keeps a vigilant eye on our environment, our money and our health. Polluting oil, coal and fracing gas corporations for profit can do anything vile they want to us and get away with it. As Carlin said. “Soon they will be coming for your Social Security. And they will get that too ….”

Bank deregulation over decades brought you the Great Recession and soon you will be welcoming another. Congress approved the 1.1 trillion buck budget and at the same time took out one of the most important mandates of the Dodd/Frank bill passed after the 2007 Great Recession. Republicans continue to snow us with trickle down economic lies that really trickle up and not down. 

Dodd/Frank tried, at least somewhat, to ensure the crushed economy did not get crush again by prohibiting government bailouts to the banks if they engage in risky stock and hedge fund bets that tanked the US and the world economy in 2007 putting millions out of work, out of homes, out of health care and out of luck for years and still counting.

Our do nothing Congress finally did something. They slid this return to Wall Street deregulation under the radar into the middle of the budget bill nearly word for Wall Street word and then the good Christian hypocrites quickly got out of town for Christmas, the alleged birthday of the Prince of Peace, the nation celebrates. This move of madness by the corrupt swill that has paired money with power and has become Washington Corporate Lobbyist DC made me cringe.

The budget bill, yet again, allows banks another life at selling risky Wall Street bets to the woefully ignorant. If the bets fail not to worry you and I will pick up the tab for the multi gazillionaires while they walk away with our billions and bonuses to boot and the 98% walk away with a colossal headache.

In bipartisan fashion unheard of in our time there were many Democrats and Republicans who would not sign onto this bill but in the end it, of course, passed. The president to avoid another Republican threatened government shutdown unenthusiastically signed the horrific thing. That is what corporate money in the hands of Congress gets you – total access to unlimited power.

Add to the budget psychotic event the Republican electoral stomach turning result in November, the unjustifiable killing of unarmed Black men by white police everywhere and SCOTUS, their hearts made of unethical stone, declaring a "post racial" nation as the noxious five eviscerated the 1965 Voting Rights Act and I am temporarily yelling “uncle.” The film Network’s character, Howard Beal, said it best: “I’m mad as hell and cannot take it anymore. I'm a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE! Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!”

Unlike Howard Beal, though, for the moment, I must retreat from the cacophony of music screech blowing a hole in my eardrums -- okay maybe for a day or two or three. If I do not, for those of you who watch "Newsroom," I will end up as the ethically good ACN Newsroom boss Charlie did. [Spoiler Alert] He compromised with evil to keep the company afloat and ended up flat out massive heart attack dead!

Elizabeth the Great!

No time now BUT Elizabeth Warren showed why the great state of Mass. elected her and why I keep her picture up on my wall.  She is a force and that is an understatement.  Long may she occupy that seat.  What a great replacement for Teddy not that Markey is not good but Elizabeth is better and brilliant!

More later. 

NEVER GIVE UP!

LAST NIGHT'S JOHN STEWART

LAST NIGHT'S JOHN STEWART -- THE DAILY SHOW Floor Show SEE IT.  IT IS AMAZING AND

even made me cry!   Here or below.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/12/11/jon-stewart-is-very-glad-that-john-mccain-defended-the-release-of-the-senates-report-on-cia-interrogation/

Torturous Examination of American Exceptionalism

I am trying to wrap my mind around the torture our nation has perpetrated on human beings in various Middle East black sites around the world during the last ten years.  It has done so in our name with seeming abandon allegedly in response to the horror of 9/11.  9/11 was, no one can doubt, a killing field monstrosity – 3000 innocents crushed into the dust of falling buildings that became their coffins on a sunny day in NYC.  It was destruction on a massive scale.   Many others were killed at the Pentagon with half a building taken down and in Shankesville, PA. in a plane on track to hit the Congress but crashed instead into a lonely field killing everyone on board.  The audio of passengers’ stating “Let’s roll” still rings in our ears as they tried valiantly to stop the perpetrators of the doomed flight.  We, over and over again, keep reminding ourselves of that day of its own infamy which prompted our nation to commit the illegalities of a war based on lies and torture on a scale most thought unthinkable.  The president and vice-president of the previous administration enlisted a host of eminent lawyers within the Bush Department of Justice to compose the legalese rationales for it. 

Never forgetting the reasons for the perpetration of torture by this nation, I try to think of other reasons for man’s history of Torquemada-like torture using Middle Ages techniques and the modus operandi of tyrannical Communist and Fascist regimes evidenced in modern history.  How, but more importantly, why would such things be done to human beings?  We could collect quite a menagerie of numerous instances of monstrous description but rather than disgust you with the unimaginable details we must find some other explanation for them besides a response to 9/11.

From the torture chambers of the Middle Ages and its religious wars, to the trenches of World War I and the use of poison gas, to the gas chambers of WWII Europe and its mass murder containers of six million dead Jews, to the Agent Orange of Vietnam, to the Iraq War based on lies, and to the ISIS beheadings man never stops killing brutally.  And yet some, perhaps most, put a brake on our basest inclination to perpetrate a violent act and, simply, refuse to do it.  Most would not nor could not hurt an innocent.  Most would not nor could not hurt an animal.  

What was done through torture by our nation in our name after 9/11 is repugnant to those of us who like to think we are humane.  It rises to the highest level of brutality and flouts Nuremberg jurisprudence a once great yardstick against man’s inhumanity to man.  Its ethical verdict was supposed to be universally applicable.  In history, though, examples of man's inhumanity to man are legion.  Human depravity perpetrated against another is commonplace. We ask how a man is ethically able to do the most repugnant things to another.  The salient question, though, we must ask is:  why is man capable of doing repulsive uncivilized things to his fellow man without becoming nauseatingly sick?

There are those among us who, I am convinced, incredulous though it may be, enjoy torturing.  Yes, they like it and take pleasure in the strength that torturing someone else allows them to feel.  Some take pleasure in revenge but it cannot be denied, I think, that some who signed up to inflict torture including, mind numbingly rectal torture, simply liked to do it and worse the more vicious the torture the more pleasurable it became to them.  Sadism is a word, a condition, and it is an illness which some men have but others do not. The larger question, therefore, becomes why can some do such heinously repulsive things and, indeed, rationalize it but others cannot. What separates some people from other people who enjoy the sadistic impulse to maim and kill?  Perhaps the answer to this cancer, lies in one’s DNA and the organization of one’s genetic code. 

What the nation has done in our name is surely not new but it is different.  What makes it different to those of us with at least a shred of empathy is that this nation was founded on principles that are supposed to ensure men with power not stoop to man's lowest madness. Our Founders knew the most important thing was to put a brake on man's most murderous instinct, government's legal authority to perpetrate it and man's ability, through government sanction to abuse power.  Our Founders gave birth to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – the fundamental bases on which our much touted exceptionalism rests.  The nation's perpetration of torture makes mockery of that.  No one will be held accountable for these egregious acts but a Black man allegedly selling loosie cigarettes is killed for it.  What is wrong with this picture?

I feel duped, I feel sad, I feel powerless and wonder if the nation can ever recoup our own Jacobian birthright to its exceptional character again.

Georgeous Poetry

A W.H. Auden poem though written in 1939 is for our
time as we await in fear the Torture Report.

December 1, 1939, W. H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offense
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
****Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. ****

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analyzed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
....
From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
....
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

The Bush I Knew and Loathed--Torture Unmasked

The Torture Defendants Fan Out
By Andrew Sullivan
The Dish

Everything the president (Bush--see video below) said  is untrue – and it appears that the looming Senate Intelligence Committee report on the torture program will soon prove it. The US did torture many many people with techniques devised by Nazis and Communists, sometimes in former KGB facilities. The CIA itself admits in its internal documents that none of it worked or gave us any actionable intelligence that wasn’t discovered through legal means. The torture techniques were not implemented by highly-trained professionals, but by goonish amateurs who concealed what they were doing and lied about it to superiors. All the techniques were and are clearly illegal under US and international law.

And we’re told there is some exculpatory evidence in the report, suggesting that Bush and Cheney and even Addington were misled as well – giving the former president some lee-way to explain how he came to create a torture program that will forever taint this country and has already done so much to damage its soft power. Maybe he could tell the truth and say that the extent and nature of the torture was kept from him and that he can now see what went so horribly wrong. But nah:

Some former administration officials privately encouraged the president and his top advisers to use the report to disclaim responsibility for the interrogation program on the grounds that they were not kept fully informed. But Mr. Bush and his inner circle rejected that suggestion. “Even if some officials privately believe they were not given all the facts, they feel it would be immoral and disloyal to throw the C.I.A. to the wolves at this point,” said one former official, who like others did not want to be identified speaking about the report before its release.

The question I posed publicly to the president back in 2009 – whether he could come to terms with the reality of torture and explain how it occurred – has therefore been answered a second time. In his own book, Bush owned the torture and took full responsibility for it. Now, he has decided he will not allow a sliver of daylight to come between him and war crimes. You can chalk this up to admirable loyalty, even to those who lied to him. Or you can simply reflect on a president who cannot admit to being the first in that office to authorize such an assault on core American values and decency. Which means to say he does not have the fortitude or character to deal with reality.

And now, we’re seeing a full-court press for those Bush loyalists who want to permanently suppress the evidence of war crimes under the program. If you want to get a clue about how devastating the forthcoming report might be, just observe the pre-emptive strikes:

The defense of the program has been organized by former C.I.A. leaders like George J. Tenet and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, two former directors, and John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy C.I.A. director who also served as acting director … General Hayden added that the former C.I.A. team objected to the Senate’s characterization of their efforts. “We’re not here to defend torture,” he said by email on Sunday. “We’re here to defend history.” General Hayden appeared earlier on Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS News to say that any assertion that the C.I.A. “lied to everyone about a program that wasn’t doing any good, that beggars the imagination.”

Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who ran the C.I.A. interrogation program, said Sunday that critics now assailing the agency were pressing it after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to do whatever it took to prevent a recurrence. “We did what we were asked to do, we did what we were assured was legal, and we know our actions were effective,” Mr. Rodriguez wrote in The Washington Post.

Rodriguez was so sure that he did nothing wrong that he destroyed the tapes recording the torture sessions! Nothing to see here … so move long. A reader writes:

I just watched the CBS Morning News report on the SSCI report, featuring two persons: Michael Hayden was featured in excerpts from Sunday’s Face the Nation, then “CBS News terrorism consultant” Juan Zarate. Both offered an identical analysis: the release of the report would “fan the flames of violence against America.”

On CNN, Candy Crowley still could not say the t-word, and let Mike Rogers argue that evidence of the gravest crimes by government officials should be suppressed because … they will inflame opinion abroad, and possibly lead to demonstrations and violence. Notice that for Rogers, the fact that the US government committed barbarisms more commonly associated with Nazi Germany or Communist China is of no concern. No one should be prosecuted, because, well, because American officials cannot be subject to the Geneva Conventions, which must be observed by every state actor – except the US. And no evidence of crimes by government officials should be released, for fear of undermining faith in said government. Those arguments belong in a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Then this detail from this morning:

Mr. Bush and his closest advisers decided that “we’re going to want to stand behind these guys,” as one former official put it. Mr. Bush made that clear in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the C.I.A. serving on our behalf,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.” These are “really good people and we’re lucky as a nation to have them,” he said.

“Whatever the report says …”

Denial doesn’t get much clearer than that – and it is of a piece with the reckless disengagement, sickening indifference and grotesque negligence that marked his catastrophic time in the Oval Office. In the wake of the shock of Abu Ghraib, Bush disavowed the atrocities, insisting that they did not represent America, that they were counter to American values, and that he was shocked and disgusted by them. And yet, when a report is imminent outlining acts of torture and abuse far worse than Abu Ghraib, and directly under his own authority, he insists that whatever is detailed in the report, the culprits are heroes and patriots, and “we’re lucky as a nation to have them.”

How does one begin to square that cognitive dissonance? How to explain how a believing Christian can describe brutal torture sessions as things to defend and be proud of? And how can the torture of human beings – and the cover-up of the same – be part of American “patriotism”? This is a man not just without a conscience, but a man proud of it. He had a chance to reflect on what his fateful decision to waive the Geneva Conventions after 9/11 produced; and he has decided to own all of it. And we shall soon see what exactly that is.

My 2 cents: Ah, Republicans, can't live with em can live without them!

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/12/08/the-torture-defenders-fan-out/

Obama Africanus the First -- an article FOR Justice Roberts

When the "conservative" five in particular Justice Roberts called our nation a post racial society as they eviscerated Affirmative Action and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, I would have loved to send this article "Obama Africanus the First" by Geoffrey Stone of the  University of Chicago Law School to the illustrious Justice Roberts.  Along with the immoral killing of two unarmed black men Eric Garner and Michael Brown by white cops with no accountability, I think it says it all!

Obama Africanus the First

Posted: 12/06/2014 7:42 pm EST Updated: 12/07/2014 12:59 pm EST

I've been thinking lately about the persistently vituperative and insulting attacks on President Obama since 2008. It is, of course, commonplace in American politics for presidents to be lambasted for their policies, their programs, their values, and even their personal quirks. Sometimes the tone crosses the line. John Adams was accused by a political opponent of "swallowing up" every "consideration of the public welfare ... in a continual grasp for power." James Madison was demeaned as "Little Jemmy," because he was short. James Buchanan, who once declared that workers should get by on a dime a day, came to be mocked as "Ten Cents Jimmy."

John Tyler, who assumed the presidency after the death of William Henry Harrison, was ridiculed as "His Accidency." Congressman Abraham Lincoln castigated President James K. Polk as a "completely bewildered man." Opponents of Woodrow Wilson's reinstitution of the draft in World War I accused him of "committing a sin against humanity." Critics of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal attacked him as an "un-American radical." Richard Nixon was famously known as "Tricky Dick," and of course he was not "A Crook." At the height of the Vietnam War, Lyndon Johnson was excoriated by his opponents as a "Murderer" and a "War Criminal."

But no president in our nation's history has ever been castigated, condemned, mocked, insulted, derided, and degraded on a scale even close to the constantly ugly attacks on President Obama. From the day he assumed office -- indeed, even before he assumed office -- he was subjected to unprecedented insults in often the most hateful terms.

He has been accused of being born in Kenya, of being a "secret Muslim," of being complicit with the Muslim Brotherhood, of wearing a ring bearing a secret verse from the Koran, of having once been a Black Panther, of refusing to recite the pledge of allegiance, of seeking to confiscate all guns, of lying about just about everything he has ever said, ranging from Benghazi to the Affordable Care Act to immigration, of faking bin Laden's death, and of funding his campaigns with drug money. It goes on and on and on. Even the President's family is treated by his political enemies with disrespect and disdain.

If one browses even respectable websites, one can readily find bumper stickers, coffee cups, and tee-shirts for sale with such messages as: "Dump This Turd" (with an image of President Obama); "Coward! You Left Them To Die in Benghazi" (with an image of President Obama); "Somewhere in Kenya A Village Is Missing Its Idiot" (with an image of President Obama); "Islam's Trojan Horse" (with an image of President Obama); "Pure Evil" (with an image of President Obama); "I'm Not A Racist: I Hate His White Half Too" (with an image of President Obama); "He Lies!" (with an image of President Obama); and on and on and on.

Now, don't get me wrong. Every one of these messages is protected by the First Amendment, and people have a right to express their views, even in harsh, offensive, cruel, and moronic ways. We the People do not need to trust or admire our leaders, and we should not treat them with respect if we don't feel they deserve our respect. But the sheer vituperation directed at this President goes beyond any rational opposition and is, quite frankly, mind-boggling.

In part, of course, this might just be a product of our times. Perhaps the quality of our public discourse has sunk so low that any public official must now expect such treatment. Perhaps any president elected in 2008 would have been greeted with similar scorn and disdain. But, to be honest, that seems unlikely.

Of course, there are those who say that this phenomenon is due in part, perhaps in large part, to the fact that President Obama is African-American. But surely racism is dead in America today, right?

One fact that might lend some credence to the theory that racism has something to do with the tenor of the attacks on President Obama is that only one other president in our history has been the target of similar (though more subdued) personal attacks.

In his day, this president was castigated by the press and his political opponents as a "liar," a "despot," a "usurper," a "thief," a "monster," a "perjurer," an "ignoramus," a "swindler," a "tyrant," a "fiend," a "coward," a "buffoon," a "butcher," a "pirate," a "devil," and a "king." He was charged with being "cunning," "thickheaded," "heartless," "filthy," and "fanatical." He was accused of behaving "like a thief in the night," of being "the miserable tool of traitors and rebels," and of being "adrift on a current of racial fanaticism." He was labeled by his enemies "Abraham Africanus the First."

But, of course, race had nothing to do with it then, either.

The Genius Disrupting Cancer -- Sixty Minutes amazing sement

This was the most excellent "Sixty Minutes" segment (see link below) or any other informative news broadcast on cancer I have ever seen. It centered on an amazing man, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who is at the cutting edge of cancer treatment.

I am not a biologist nor do I have any degree in science related subjects but I will give myself a kudo as I have loathed the slash, poison and burn Medieval-like treatments of cancer for a very long time. I loath, too, the pink ribbon phony walks for cancer as that money often goes into administrative pockets and into big pharma as well. Cancer drugs are crushingly expensive and I believe cancer research money generally does not go where it should to find the cancer treatment key -- the cancer gene(s) and individual human genome.

I have been saying as a layman for as long as I can remember when thinking about cancer that the key(s) are in the genetics of cancer and what happens to the individual cell when it cannot put on its brakes and often (not always) metastasizes.

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire genius, who is at the center of the segment uses his own money and is nothing short of wonderful. I wish I could work in his milieu. I might even work for free!

Keep going, Dr. Soon-Shiong, your genius amazes me.

The link to the "Sixty Minutes" segment is here and below and is worth the short time it takes to view it.
 
Also worth reading is: "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/billionaire-doctor-fights-cancer-in-unconventional-way/

Congratulation Voters

Tired of saying vote Democrats into office.  It is obvious but I will say it anyway. Get the message out and vote Democrats into office.  It is clear what will happen if you do not!

Peter Pan Grows Up--A Review

Allison Williams as "Peter Pan" was astoundingly good and eminently multi-talented in this modern day version of the classic.  Watching her was worth watching the epic long show.  She was as wonderful as she is lovely to watch.  She combined, an ability to act, an ability to sing and an ability to dance (and fly) with ease. 

The biggest question for me, a lover of the black and white 1950's show staring Mary Martin and the great Cyril Richard, was would it measure up to that historical treasure.  I think, in large part, with its vibrant color alternative to the black and white dull of yesteryear it did. 

Christopher Walken, while talented and decent for the role of Captain Hook did not, for me, compare with the great Cyril Richard.  Who really could?  There was only one tall, haughty, hateful, and frightening character of Hook.  Richard who, in very Shakespearean fashion, uniquely captured Hook's essence and is, I believe, historically cemented in that role. 

Small criticism goes to the character of Smee, Hook's pirate servant on the ship Jolly Roger.  The criticism is not so much for his performance but rather for his essence.  I thought the role, as in the 1950's version, belonged to a more elderly and physically feeble man instead of the tattooed young body builder who could take Hook down physically in a heartbeat.  I was hard pressed to see this Smee subservient to anyone.  It is though small criticism in an otherwise excellently played "Peter Pan" and Allison Williams contributed in no small part to that. Kudos, too, to the rest of the cast.

Peter Pan, I am glad to see, still lives even though the production is all grown up!

The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone

I LOVE Matt Taibbi. I just bought his book "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap" and I have a hard copy of "Griftopia." If anyone knows how Wall Street has utterly fleeced America he does and how hypocritical it is to make the poor pay for trivial matters by legions of police descending on their neighborhoods while the rich on the upper east side rarely see a cop on the beat.  The rich who put us and the world in a whole heap of dung get off scott free--no one was jailed for the Wall Street perpetrated Great Recession. There oughta be a law. Oh there is? As the great Gilda Radner would say "Never mind."

Matt is a brilliant writer and one of the most articulate journalists on the scene today. I could not have written this piece better myself .

I post it here or below for your reading pleasure.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-police-in-america-are-becoming-illegitimate-20141205?page=2

The Laws That Killed Eric Garner

EXCELLENT ARTICLE I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU READ IT TO MAKE SENSE OF THOSE THINGS THAT MAKE NO SENSE!

The Laws That Killed Eric Garner

From Ferguson to Staten Island, America's Failure of Justice

By Jay Michaelson

No Justice, No Peace: Demonstrators protest a grand jury’s decision not to indict a New York police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner.

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• An Unjust System Cannot Produce Justice

My hands are quaking with rage right now, but I will choose to write rationally. I can’t believe this has happened again, and happened here, in my own backyard.

“This” being a grand jury failing even to indict a white police officer for killing an unarmed black man. Not even a trial. Not even a public hearing of the evidence.

And this time with a video of the entire incident, which is your moral responsibility to watch.

But I fear that my own city is soon to be engulfed in violence, and the violent people are right. So for that reason, I will try, if I can, to take refuge in reason, and in law.

It’s true that the forces that killed Eric Garner include white supremacy, racism, anger, violence, fear, a broken criminal justice system, a broken healthcare system, and ignorance. And yet another overreacting white police officer.

But I want to focus on law, because it’s something we can do something about. Right after the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, after all, the Bible famously goes into a thousand tiny details of mishpatim, laws. By detailing everything from rules of evidence to the damages for a stolen lamb, the book of Exodus makes a strong claim: that the lofty moral imperatives of Sinai only have meaning if they are translated into just laws. The God is in the details.

American law, however, helped kill Eric Garner – and it will kill more black men like him in the future. Specifically, there is a lethal nexus between judicial deference to police officers on the one hand, and the expansion of police power on the other. Each alone is problematic, but together, they make justice nearly impossible.

First, courts have held for decades that the rules of engagement change in the context of an arrest. For example, police officers need a warrant to search your car – but if they’re arresting you, they don’t. They perform a “Search Incident To Arrest” (SITA), and are given wide latitude by the courts.

This doctrine makes sense, at its core. If a criminal has a shiv in his pocket, a cop shouldn’t need a warrant to pat him down. But the courts have expanded the doctrine so that all kinds of searches, not merely those protecting the safety of police, are now allowed.

Likewise the use of violence. So far at least, cops can’t just beat up anyone they see on the street. But once they make an arrest, and a suspect resists in any way, then most rules get tossed out the window. Chokeholds, for example, have been banned for 20 years by the NYPD, but that’s just a department policy, not a legal rule.

Legally, it’s very difficult to convict a police officer acting in his official capacity. As we saw in Ferguson and now again in Staten Island, the standards are all out of whack. If there’s some objectively-cognizable reason that an officer might feel in danger, s/he’s off the hook.

That is true, apparently, even in Staten Island. Watch the video again, and it’s painfully obvious that Pantaleo should at least be tried for his misconduct. Yes, Eric Garner is yelling and gesturing – although at a respectful distance from the police officers, before they try to cuff him. His only act of force is putting his hands up, shouting “don’t touch me.” The time from first bodily contact (0:34) to chokehold (0:38) is four seconds.

There is no way that Pantaleo’s chokehold isn’t at least manslaughter. But because of the structurally broken laws surrounding police conduct, disproportionate force that you can see with your own eyes isn’t even prosecuted.

Add to that the structural disincentives for prosecutors to go after police officers. As Rev. Al Sharpton said today, “we have no confidence in the state grand juries, whether in Ferguson or in New York, because there is an intrinsic relationship between state prosecutors and the police; they depend on the police for their evidence, they run for office and depend on the unions for endorsements.”

We certainly saw this in Ferguson, where prosecutor Bob McCulloch departed from accepted practice and, basically, didn’t prosecute at all, opting instead to lay out all the evidence and let the grand jury reach its own conclusions.

Can you imagine that on a Law and Order episode? “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I’m not going to make a case. Here is the evidence. Reach your own conclusions.”

So far, we have no inkling of what Daniel Donovan, the District Attorney, said or didn’t say to the grand jury. But we do know that Sharpton is right about the structural incentives in place. District attorneys need police cooperation to do their jobs – law and order, after all – and to keep them. The conflict of interest is obvious, even without race playing a role.

That’s the first jaw of the trap: wide deference to police officers, and a justice system incapable of holding them accountable.

The second jaw is “Broken Windows.”

When police were given such wide latitude by the courts, they were mostly arresting dangerous people. But since the 1990s, police tactics have changed. “Broken Windows” policing, first described in a 1982 article but pioneered in New York in the 1990s, rests on the theory that cracking down on small crimes, especially those that set a disorderly tone in neighborhoods, helps prevent big ones.

The evidence suggests that this practice doesn’t work. But whether it does or not, it unquestionably catches more small fish in the law enforcement dragnet.

As we should all know by now, Eric Garner was arrested for selling cigarettes on the street. Not entirely legal, but hardly a serious crime. It shouldn’t even be an arrestable offense – it should be a simple citation.

But then, “Broken Windows” wouldn’t achieve its real goal, which is to get people like Garner off the streets entirely. People like Garner: big people, loud people, slightly ‘off’ people, black people. Can anyone really search their hearts and say that race was not part of why Eric Garner was targeted? And why Officer Daniel Pantaleo so obviously overreacted?

“Every time you see me, you want to mess with me,” Eric Garner said to the police, a few minutes before they killed him. “I’m tired of it.”

Garner was right, of course.

So, add the two pieces together. Thanks to ‘Broken Windows,’ cops are arresting nonviolent, disproportionately black petty criminals all the time. And thanks to the laws governing police conduct, they then get wide latitude to beat the hell out of them, even kill them.

I’ve focused on these two elements, rather than race, because we can fix them. ‘Broken Windows’ policing must end, full stop. Even if it does marginally reduce the crime rate (which it appears not to), the costs – loss of life, perpetuation of racism, increased violence – are not worth the benefits.

And the legal standards of review for police conduct must change as well. All cops should wear cameras – even though clearly that didn’t help in Garner’s case. Legal rules with little common-sense meaning must stop giving carte blanche to those meant to protect and serve.

Let me add that this should be done for the benefit of police officers as well as those they police. Most cops aren’t bad cops. They deserve the trust of the neighborhoods they police. But they won’t get that trust when the legal decks are so stacked in their favor.

Having gone through this legal exercise, I now find it lacking. I don’t feel any less angry than I did at the beginning. I’m supposed to feel a sense of Jewish purpose now – we can fight for these changes, and be prophetic, tikkun olam, and all that. Here’s how we put our values into laws, and bend our laws toward justice.

But actually, all I feel is rage.