Thank you, George Bush ...

So they convinced another young man that his calling in life was a senseless act of violence, and the multi-billion dollar setup that George Bush invented and foisted on a then 'still reeling' American public, the one we pay for as a line item on every airline ticket...the one we wait in line for a few times on a typical trip; yes that one. It, that made a WWII veteran sit and take off his artificial leg to pass through a check point..ahhhh yes, I remember it all now; good George ..that one, who made us safe from terror. Each day that went by with a different color for fear was a victory in the war on terror. Least mind that despite the billions to contractor friends of his puny days mis-running the government. So you see, we really are not safer because we hassle every American citizen who gets on an airplane because...gasp shock... this wave of idiots is from largely somewhere else, the middle east, Yemen, those hot spots of 'noise', that the Bush system takes in and ignores. Like the troop of middle east men who wanted to learn to steer and fly but not land a passenger jet. This troubled young man in the air above Detroit, from a wealthy family in Nigeria, gives us a warning, like the people who blew a hole in the basement of the Towers, a warning to do better.

We now have to really do, what we have already paid billions to do, and this theme will repeat itself over the next several years; we will discover more and more things that were supposedly fixed --- --- in reality not ever touched.

But to rely on anything that George Bush's Administration did, is a far greater peril than the doubt-filled future..it's a mortal lock, something critical and vital...was left undone

Republicanation

As we get ready now for the real healthcare bill, we find the economy still held captive by an enemy, the same force that has gathered to oppose healthcare legislation.  It is an insidious force pretending with the coyness of the Devil that it does not exist.  But yes, there is a Republican Party, and yes they remain determined to win elections at the expense of the national good, the national best interests.  Theirs is simply a higher calling, answering to an higher authority than god, morality or the American people, they answer to the Lord of election and money.

To be sure the Democrats raise money too, and lately have done quite well even getting some small part from real people in small chunks. True they try,,,usually much more ineptly to win elections.  But no, they do not place that above the good of the country.  The try to make policies to reflect the needs of the people as well as the greed of the business sector.  That balance the people and the greed is vital.  The greed trickles down to a semblance of jobs or incomes for the middle and lower classes. The great siphon of the rich is part of our culture, the ladder to wealth seems to exist for those not born rich.  But the Republicans have sold their souls, they have lost their moral compass.  Now everything is a device for elections and paring money for their people.  Like the war in Iraq, we refused true international cooperation because our goal there was primarily to spend money with friends of the Bush Administration, and we did...probably $200 Billions in profits much to the allies of Bush, it would have been better spent on an American nation that needed so many things [ or am i the only one with bad roads, low employment, industries vanishing, more bad roads- streets too, creaky bridges, an ignored and growing poverty; poor prospects for college grads, broke cities, impoverished states and...no health insurance for millions...like those who send their children to die in places like Iraq].  Well a Trillion here a Trillion there, even when you are taking hundreds of thousands of lives, one can wonder what is the point...one also wonders of the benefit, Saddam did not bring down the Towers, and now Iraqis want to enjoy their oil wealth in peace, WITHOUT US unless you want to pay $4.00 a gallon again.
So Republicans, you are lucky to live in a place where people can so easily be led to spite their faces, but you should enjoy your little[virginia /new jersey illusion, I have a feeling they are wise-ing up!

Sad Puppets

 I am so reminded of the Civil War...when dirt poor farm boys went out and died so that rich men could buy, sell, and exploit to death... African slaves, same game is being played but here it is... billions in Iraq war profits and now...Healthcare.
 So it is the poor should pay so that the rich, wealthy, and well-to-do can have the choice of subsidy from wage earners.  A woman with children should support a wall street executive, pay for his Viagra, he who has received a bailout bonus perhaps a million dollars.  A poor working woman who cooks, cleans, washes clothes, nurtures small children when she is not at work, should pay health care for a man with two homes and a yacht docked at a Lake in Michigan, where her tax dollars are already at work repairing the low water levels. Oh, and the public golf course at $200 per pop that she also helps pay for, the employees who cut grass so forth for without  her help it would be $400 per pop and Mr. Yacht Guy would have to change his cigar brand from Rothschild to Bahia.
This kind of thing happens in America, land of wallet envy.  I see people driving Porsches sneering at a homeless vet with a "feed me" sign, saying look at that guy he has so much free time.  Ahhh Republicans, can't live with 'em can't send them to a deserted island...
 Many people who have taken the work of stopping progress towards health insurance do so because of political affiliation, political opposition has focused on this issue, but as usual there are real forces- money sucking forces- behind the scenes, like the war profits people [as if any sane person could argue against coverage for everyone and limits on how much money can be charged for medical care---i won't even remind them that every licensed practitioner only does so because the poor taxpayer woman has helped educate and train them, and the license itself is a  privilege granted by all of us, the public...and do you really want people to get rich by simply charging more and more for something like...life; haven't we learned anything from the OIL people... ] and speaking of high sulfur content

I give this friendly advice to my Republican fellow citizens, from concern for them all, it's hunting season soon, better shave them horns!

Blue in Cambridge...

Would the police enter a house,  ask a white man  in his own home to prove he wasn't a burglar?
I mean in Boston, Cambridge, Mass.  what is the likelihood that it goes beyond...Is this your home sir?
There are race attitudes involved in policing, oh yes, and black men or latino men in blue hear the same drummer, blue is the color that matters...even in those cases where white men in blue have executed black men in blue...those mistaken undercover things, or shoot outs where suddenly the black man in blue...becomes just a black man, and police officer is gunned down by his fellow officers.

It is not an easy business, but i think the Cambridge police have it all wrong here.

They entered the house and infuriated the black owner by making him prove he was nt a burglar in his own home. They should apologize for in their blue hearts I think they know it doesn't go down that way elsewhere.  If the black man in blue goes into a home to investigate the burglary and comes across the white male owner, he too does not ask the white man to prove he is not a burglar... well mostly... unless the house is a drug kingpin's house and they want him to get angry and act out...so they can through him in the back of a padded wagon...you see, it is provocative...when the police treat us as if we are criminals, we all want to know what hell is on this man's mind...that he would come into MY HOUSE and ask me if I am a burglar.
the black man in this case, professor Gates is a tv personality, a famous scholar, has studied race in the US, observed upon these questions with scholarly moment and power, and now in the age of Obama... we see some things have not CHANGED.

Bin Laden's Kidney

A story in the news about a man in Pakistan, deeply in debt, faces a choice: sell his child or his kidney. Pakistan our staunch ally in the search for Bin Laden...remember him? Yes, the one President Bush promised to capture and bring to sudden justice, later a star of Republican Presidential Campaign ads, the one supposed to help us forget how the GOP brought the world's leading economy to its knees,

[no, not China ...US the conquerors of Iraq; the home of Saddam who was really behind the Trade Centers; oh...I will have to declare a Red Alert to bring this all back to your memory, or make an amputee war veteran take off his artificial leg before being allowed to get on an airplane...Take that you terrorists!!!] where was I...oh yes, Pakistan...

such extreme oppression there, it is nearly as bad as in the USA where credit card companies can drain the life from an unpaid debtor, and Corporate rights are so much more important than human rights, just ask any member of the solid five voting majority of our Supreme Court...oh that word "Supreme" meant so much more when Earl Warren and Thurgood Marshall , and Justice Douglass...or Felix Frankfurter... this group reminds me more of Justice Taney...or the 1896 group that decided Blacks were not people but property, now in Pakistan, people sell their children because the rights of a creditor are more important than the individuals.  That couldn't happen here. We know that corporations don't give their lives in combat, they just take the profits from war and elect people who think war is the way to solve problems.  In Pakistan that government, we gave them lots of our tax dollars, and military stuff too...well I hope they are better at finding Bin Laden than at taking care of their children, or... maybe we should be looking for his kidney.

The Supremes... without Love

And this is what is wrong with this Court, final Judge...only because we don't have a better one...

I have seen worse courts, but not by much, this group of people who seem hostile to understanding, prone to support corporate profits over people, so thorough in their disregard for logic...when gut level convenience is available.  Now comes the New Haven white firefighters and a promotion test in which whites passed and blacks didn't... a white learning disabled plantiff wants the test to stand...so the best person gets the job. 
I have some experience wuth eastern cities and their fire departments. The amazing way that tests and the right -things -to-do gets passed down like heirlooms from white father to son, uncle to nephew...all the time the "best man" getting the job...and I do mean "man"...as in "Oh Man do they really think the rest of us are that stupid!".  I knew a black man who was denied entry into an nearly all -white fire department because a white  dentist said he had too few teeth...must have been the proximity to darker skin that threw off his professional counting skills, [ of course in those days he found a black dentist, who was running an elevator in a department store because of another job test] ...well this man with the few teeth, and this man's son would have to compete with the "best men" from so many generations of "best men..." taking tests with "shibboleths" and winks and nods built in...don't you think we could make it so hard for whites to join the electric glide line, that your country folk music, river-dance histories would be a disadvantage...put James Brown Lyrics into the fire and rescue protocol...it would be about as relevant as that New Haven test, which has about the same chance of predicting the "best man" as the ability to recite "Gin and juice..."
We live in a world where reality is turned on its head [over and over] but unlike the past, the people of color have no reason to let it go by as if they had no choice... Days will come when the best people will be the result of testing, not blood lines... in public employment.  Thanks to this Court which will [ in the name of all that is Holy] must see some changes too....

Bushed Doctrines

President Obama just saved the country, and you thought it was just a crew of brave men hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia, no it was the country and perhaps western Europe too.  How?  Well just imagine if Bush were still the embarrassed President of the US and these hostages presented  the opportunity for military action to show strength [ and funnel money to  political allies and supporters].  The US and any needy economies with similar minded leaders would have sent an armada into the Indian Ocean, begun construction of new fleets; a military buildup of amphibious forces like the world has not seen, prepared for a ten year stay to protect America... the cost would have dwarfed the limits of governments spending on anything in history, the trillion dollars  wasted in Iraq would not even make a down payment on keeping an entire ocean safe from terrorists ...yes the pirates would be converted to terrorists... the nation would be on "Puce alert"... puce is the level used when brimstone falls from the skies.
For if Iraq were a threat to the US for the fictional weapons of mass destruction, these pirates would be the barbarians at the gates. More dangerous than the illegal immigrants from Latin America who come here like we all did ...  well like most of us except for the African slaves, and the Amerind peoples... anyway the pirates would be so much worse, more deadly than the killer bees , more toxic than Chinese imports, able to leap small Republicans in a single sneer... you know, truly dangerous.  We would spend until the printing presses at the national mint failed and then we would order more...from China.

But President Obama was in office, and the pirates were dealt with on that day, and tomorrow's pirate threat will be dealt with on that day, with reason, cooperation, and measured use of force...and they will still be "pirates", people who go to sea to steal wealth from others. The freedom at stake is the use of international shipping lanes, it is a nasty problem...might get worse; but we don't need to spend thousands of lives, trillions of dollars to hurt the pirates or to help our friends.

Personally, I have disliked the Pirates since they beat the Yankees in the World Series...but that is another blog...

Oh, Republicans...

Recovery is a long road filled with regrets over how we have let things go so out of hand.  Republican leadership has taken the country into a deep recession, the bottom has not yet been seen with everyday seeming to bring a mix of hopeful and ominous signs...now so many more jobs to be cut.  Republican leadership policy is evident in the corporate world too, and some of the reductions in forces have the ulterior benefit of worsening the economy while strengthening corporate profits.  It is somewhat extreme to attribute political motivations to economic policies but recent years have taught us: a trillion dollar war in Iraq had preeminent political purposes, and benefits for friends of the party in power..set aside contracts for Cheney's old firm was just a cube of the ice berg, the rape of the taxpayers in the wall street bailout, people who managed so faulty a way being the recipients of unaccounted federal funds, [some of which might just sit in a vault until taken as a profit in the future] all of the denials of things needed by the people: education, infrastructure, new jobs, new industries, health care for all... all were denied because we could not afford it...then a trillion for Iraq put the lie to all of the denials.
So Republicans seem to give the nation a choice...its us or them; as we watch their opposition to the stimulus program...the one thing in recent years aimed at helping the American people where they need it most... a government, investing in its people... MORE to come...

January 20...

President Obama has already made a great degree of success...he has made people forget  about Bush, the worst Presidency in memory...and that covers quite a long time.  It is like filling in the Grand Canyon, making people believe in the positive power of the US Presidency, yet somehow it has been done.  And speaking of the Grand Canyon, the depths of the problems inherited by President Obama...is a depth that seems to grow as more and more truth is revealed.  And yet, he seems up to the challenge and the need to innovate, solve crises and handle the routines too.  Like walking and chewing gum at the same time while spouting beautiful poetry...following a non leader with a bright new star for many to simply find and be guided.   January 20 will come and go ...so will the hangovers and sore throats from laughter and applause... but the beginnings will grow into days of achievement for a nation so accustomed to getting things done...but recently so accepting of a syndrome of failure.
Now suddenly we can have jobs, and peace. Prosperity and new businesses that stay in the US; friends overseas among our sister nations, respect without threats and fear.  January 20 will roll with the calendar but some things will stay in our thoughts and perhaps in our hearts.