2006 Commentary
on the World2006 Commentary
on the WorldThis is a running dialog giving me a place to comment upon issues of the day without cluttering up the primary dialog.
I have not written any political comments for 4 months or more. I have had too much to do. But the political landscape is more frightening than ever. More censorship of news. Voluntary censorship of TV shows for fear that the FCC will find them too something or other.
I would not have written this except that I saw Bush come to the microphone in Mexico City to comment on the release of the woman journalist. He was wearing a white sport shirt. Can you imagine Bush doing this in the United States? In the USA I have never seen President Bush without his bulletproof vest under his suit coat.
I was not there and so my opinion may be irrelevant. I hate cops and their authoritarian attitudes. But I lived down South. I hated every minute of it. Racial and sexual bigotry impact everything. I mean absolutely everything. Women are not women: they are "ladies". The yokels still fly the Stars and Bars. They still fight over placing statues of black people anywhere that you can see a statue of a Southern Civil War hero. What amazed me when we moved there was the black attitude toward the whites was worse than the white attitude toward the blacks. I was accused by my daughter's woman black high school counselor of addressing her with a racial slur. I had a meeting with the school administration over that. Without being told what I said and given a chance to deny it, I had to apologize to the woman or my daughter was in trouble. If you have read much of this page, you know that I am more likely to slur a Caucasian than someone of another race. And I hope I am never accused of racial or sexual bigotry again.
But. Knowing that statistically a black Southern woman in an authority position, such as a Congresswoman, already has a racial bigoted attitude, I am likely to side with the police on this one. When I hear that this same woman has had authority problems in the past, I am more sure of my position. Ms. McKinney went around a security screen and was appropriately stopped by a police officer. She should just apologize and leave the issue in the past. He did not hit her. She did hit him.
Why choose against the police officer? This particular location, the headquarters for all of the laws that guide our nation, is critical to our nation's security (the war in Iraq was not). Entry into our most critical law-making building is restricted for obvious reasons. We can survive the loss of a President. We have done it before -- and then we had a rational and honored President. We would have trouble if we lost our Congress. Even McKinney only claims to have been "touched". She does not claim to be hit. I suspect the reason for the "touch" was that she did not respond to a voice address. Even if there were no voice address, if she were already around the security screen, she needed to be stopped.
The police officer is supposed to visually recognize Congress members. Right. I would ot recognize my sister if she changed her clothes, hair style, and makeup -- and I saw her from the backside. This woman is unfairly representing women, blacks, Congress, the state of Georgia, and all of America. She owes each of these groups an apology.
I saw this on one of those update-able signs in front of a church
yesterday. It reminded me of the Scientology class that I
took. Your anger is either out of place or this man has done
something to control your life. If you are not in jail, you
probably have control over your life so you need to see why your anger
is out of place. A mother polices her home when the baby arrives
and puts everything dangerous out of reach. Baby-proofing the
house, per se. The adult can anger-proof his house but that may
mean having no wife. The adult can anger-proof his world but he
may find his life outside his control (e.g. jail). The better way
is for the adult to understand his anger and adjust his attitudes. Are
you angry when you see someone burn the flag? I am. This is
exactly why burning the flag is protected by the First Amendment to our
Constitution.
The President just announced his 4 steps to reduce the price of
gasoline. His claim that the United States is addicted to Oil is
the same as the California Governor saying that his state is addicted
to cars. They have confused cause with effect. If San Jose
had a usable mass transit system, I would have preferred it to
driving. The driving cost me 90 minutes a day to drive a total of
20 miles. The buss/street car cost me from 20 minutes to 3 hours
depending upon how close the bus driver came to making his
schedule. My daughter was late for school when she went to the
bus stop an hour before school started -- and the same bus went in
front of her school and ran every 30 minutes. I bought her a car.
What has this to do with the price of gas? Nobody has given us
a usable alternative. No mass transit. No fuel-efficient
cars. When President Bush got into office he rolled back the new
CAFE standards. CAFE? Something or other Fuel
Efficiency. 4 years later he made the gas guzzling SUVs into a
car class that made them almost exempt from the mileage
standards. So now when we are flooded with cars obtaining the
absolute worst mileages and the resulting gas consumption and other
causes has doubled the price to $3 per gallon.
This was unnecessary. But this administration has consistently
run our economy and political situation into the ground and then state
that the people caused the problems and they are going to need to fix
the problem they caused. Indeed, the problem could still be
addressed by new cars getting better efficiency -- that is the major
consumption vehicles having their standards match those of the standard
size cars. Not be the same, just proportionate would solve a lot
of problems. But then it is the people who drive them that put
the President in Office.
It is time to change regimes to one that has some interest in its
citizens.
A couple of months ago Bush's regime claimed that Skype
anti-American for not divulging its encryption algorithms so that
everyone's call could be listened to by the NSA. Skype's response
was that the NSA had no business listening in to any calls on its own
discretion. Skype also pointed out that the critical information
was the call database and not the content of the call. They also
pointed out that the NSA had this information.
So now when USA Today divulges this same information, people are
surprised? When President Bush denies specifically fishing or
trolling and we know that he is either directly lying or is playing
Alice In Wonderland games with words. We all laughed when Bill
Clinton stated that "that depends upon what is is". Clinton was
impeached about lying about sex. Bush is still belligerently
lying about national security and his role as king. We are way
past 1984 and there are still people who believe this man's lies are
necessary to protect us from people he claims are living in desert
caves.
They are really do it to us again. Maybe they (the
Republicans, radical Christians, etc.) are worried that the people
really will ge tired of their shit by the next election and they will
lose the regency.
They are passing a law to stop funding for the Public Broadcasting
System (PBS) and NPR. Why? PBS influences our children with
shows like Sesame Street and NPR influences adults with objective new
reporting. With honesty fighting their hypocrisy, they know there
is a contest. Eliminate the enemy and maybe they can stay in
power. The Republicans are always afraid of a real contest so
they are taking action, a little late, so that people will not see them
for what they are.
The other thing is far worse and my daughter explained to me the
roots. It is more frightening than the TV funding. It is
the banning of same-sex marriages. I knew there was more to this
than just the Christians trying to get it passed before their time ran
out. Permitting same-sex marriages would level the great
Christian tax break: the marriage discrimination in our tax code.
It is not a penalty to be married, it is such a strong tax preference
that people get married just for the tax break. But only the
man-woman marriage could get it. Same-sex marriage levels the tax
playing field.
I thought the tax advantage would be sufficient to justify same-sex
marriage. But there is so much more to it. Inheritance is a
biggie: the states and the Feds will lose large amounts of undesignated
moneys because the surviving spouse can claim it. With same sex
marriages, children will no longer be removed from their loving home to
satisfy the morally self-righteous. These children have already
suffered the lose of one parent and without the same--sex marriage law
will lose the other parent and their home. This happens
now. If they ban permanently same-sex marriages, then all of
these families will be lost when their birth parent is incapable of
caring for them. When the child needs love the most, it is stolen
from him by the state.
But Megan pointed out the real problem here. The social issues
aside, the bottom line is money. The corporations can drive this
law home all by themselves when you have them invisibly behind the
scenes funding the Christian Right. Corporations will have to pay
benefits to these families. They do not now. With insurance
costs skyrocketing adding a substantial number of dependents will cause
these costs to go up sharply. The corporations cannot afford
this. The real solution is to fix our broken medical
system. The Republican solution is to cut the expense to the
corporations. They really believe that what is good for General
Motors is good for the country. It is really sad when we are
draining the health and welfare of our population to create positive
bottom lines for our corporations. Positive bottoms lines that
could not happen if they had to live by the same rules as the people
who buy their products.
If you finally understand how Medicare Part D has cost you dollars
and not just confusion headaches, wait until you see how the mentality
that produced landfall profits for the drug companies will now produce
the same expenses and headaches for our families. Especially
those families who can afford it the least. I really wonder about
the mental capacity of the general population when there is light at
the end of the tunnel for democracy and equal rights and all of those
things we claim to cherish and the Christian Right paints the tunnel
black.
Under the proposed laws, I would not have had the family that I
have. I have had the opportunity to raise two daughters and see
them grow into the world. Under the new system, I would have lost
them to my ex-wife without regard to the wishes of the daughters, their
financial well-being, or their well-being at all. You can put the
dominoes in place. You do not need me. When the same-sex
marriage ban goes into place, single fathers will lose the rights they
have fought for in maintaining access to their children. After
all, the Christians believe strongly in the "man of one wife" concept
of family. If you cannot keep your wife at home you deserve the
loss of your children. Do you really want this travesty? A ban on
same-sex marriage destroys absolutely the democratic principles upon
which our nation was founded. This level of equality has taken
200 years. Setting us back 200 years would harm not only our
children and our families, it would destroy our image in the
world. An image already seriously tarnished by military
aggression and snubbing our noses at diplomacy.
“Hitler had a good 20 to 30 IQ
points on Bush, so comparing Bush to Hitler would in many ways be an
insult to Hitler.” Kevin Barrett,
Wow. I think I said it before the pundits: Bush is the Hitler
of the 21st century. But this Barrett guy has opened a whole can
of worms.
<>First off, I cannot buy into the conspiracy theory that Bush created the 911. Two reasons. First off, I do not believe he is sufficiently competent to pull something like this off. Second, Bush is a flag-waving, born-again, ideocratic, right-wing radical patriot. I do believe that his incompetence opened the door and a smarter president would have stopped 911 back in the 611 time frame. But we have been through this.
<>
The problem here is the State of Wisconsin government. The
question: Is the great University of Wisconsin strong enough to stand
up to its misdirected state government. I attended the U of W
back in the '60s. I did poorly. I doubt if any other person
graduated from the U of W with total grade point of less than
2.0. But nobody worked harder for their degree than me. One
party in seven years. Many all nighters trying to get through
theoretical meteorology or contemporary foreign policy.
Interesting courses for a math major. Yes, I spoke at the 3-day
sitin at the Admin building and I marched up the hill to demand the
Selective Service information. I was also on a friendly basis
with Dean Kaufman and President Herrington, Fred. You can read
about all that somewhere else in my history.
But every day I passed South Hall. On the outside wall of
South Hall is a placard. I do not remember all of it. I do
remember the "Sifting and Winnowing" that every student, except maybe
engineers, knows about. Back in the 20th century a professor was
advocating National Socialism. He was making statements and
teaching in class the advantages of what became to be known as
Nazi. The state legislature and governor wanted him fired.
They put tremendous pressure on the university to do so. But the
university, as it should have, stated that a university is a learning
environment and all positions must be explored and explained as no one
person had yet been able to know all truths. Until such sifting
and winnowing of the truth could be completed, the university would
continue to explore knowledge in all forms.
In the '60s, the governor called out the National Guard to protect
the classes which were not held. This was an expensive sad
joke. People were hurt, guardsmen left their posts, and money was
spent. But going and coming from classes was not impeded because
the students would not let the antics of a governor interfere with
their learning. 80% of the 'protected' classes were not held but
those that were were attended by those who wanted to attend them.
A few did not go. My roommate did not. He was a freshman
and he put on a red cross arm band and helped those who had been
injured by the bayonets or the local police. He became known
across campus as Phil the hippy.
In other words, either the University of Wisconsin stands up for the
educational rights of its students or it loses a serious chunk of its
integrity, spits on its history, and loses the confidence of the
student body in their own education..