Category Archives: Misc

An Independent judiciary…

Well… this is not the one I was thinking about earlier in the day but it is a topic that needs to have some light shone on it after the recall of three judges in Iowa this election. If you didn’t read, there were three judges that voted for equal protection under the law in ruling that gays and lesbians have the right to marry in Iowa. What the crazy right wingers are saying that judges should reflect the will of the people and because they are against it, the rights of gays and lesbians should be suppressed until they say it okay to grant them the same rights as the rest of us. The founders established the independent judiciary specifically as a counterbalance to popular opinion to ensure that the majority couldn’t repress other citizens…what’s next…when judges vote to protect minority rights will they be recalled? These are the same people that thought “separate but equal” was just fine and it took an independent judiciary to end segregation and the many other instances of discrimination that “popular opinion” thought was just great. Again…it just another instance where the righties are all for the constitution unless it goes against their ignorant opinions….geez…

The noose is closing…

Well…an interesting day in the news yesterday and Ole GW should start sweating a little…if you didn’t hear, the mayor of London issued a warning to GW about any idea for a book tour that would include Europe…with the victory tour to support his new book, the idiot has gone on record with Matt Lauer of NBC and even in the book that he authorized torture…the waterboarding of a couple of prisoners over 100 times when waterboarding is torture in both international treaties that the US has signed, and in a 1994 US law that makes it a felony to approve or participate in torture. This moron thinks that just because his hand-picked lawyers said it was okay to torture, that he is protected by the law…when it is clear in the treaties that there is no hiding behind lawyers; as Augusto Pinochet discovered when he was arrested for approving torture and murder in Chile, as he traveled to Europe for medical care. Now, the outcry to hold Bush and Cheney responsible is rising across Europe and Canada as a result of the decision of Obama to not investigate or prosecute these clear violations of the law…this lack of commitment to uphold our international obligations is another black eye on the Obama administration and on us, the people of America and have further destroyed our moral standing in the world.

I hope both Bush and Cheney decide to flaunt their lawbreaking by traveling to one of the countries that is a signatory to these international laws against torture….they deserve to be prosecuted for their role in the torture and the ruination of our country’s traditional role as the leader on human rights….we are supposed to be a nation of laws and we used to be…now, we are a society that Orwell described in “Animal Farm”…that everyone’s equal…but some are more equal than others…

It will be a shame if we have to be taught our obligations to the world by Europe and Canada…geez…

If it sounds like I take this stuff personally, you’re right…

It’s come to my attention…

Well…it’s come to my attention through some comments that some of you may be having trouble downloading the novel…I just tried it using another provider and it worked using Word as the program…but I’m using firefox so I don’t know if that makes any difference…let me know if any of you are still having trouble and I’ll get the IT geek son on it….thanks for looking…and I hope you like it…

Oh…and the spam filter on my e-mail has been deleting some comments and I think I have that fixed, too…at least I hope so…it’s important to hear from everyone….agree or disagree….

A little civil disobedience can be a good thing…

Well…it’s about time that we Americans started to say “enough” to the actions of government as embodied in the TSA and their new passenger screening techniques that are being rolled out at US airports. First, it was the pilots that started to rebel at being fondled or blasted with radiation so they could do their jobs, now, ordinary people have started to do the same, to say “enough” to the gradual chipping way of our freedoms to the overreaching god of security. But, as you could easily predict, the masses…that great group of the easily led who have bought into the lie that there is danger under every bush, who have bought into the lie that by giving up the basic freedom to be let alone, they can be safe, have vilified these individuals. How has safety come to trump freedom and those who stand up for it?

I want to encourage this kind of behavior that says “enough”, that says just wait a minute, that says no one asked me if I wanted to be afraid….that no one asked any of us whether the American people are such wusses that we can’t take a little danger in exchange for freedom. All of the generations before us made the right decision, that freedom from government interference is a core value that we will not give up because some danger befalls us…we have always stood up as a nation and said we are tougher, we are greater than that…there is no power on earth that could make us give up our freedom because we are afraid and these times are no different.

I have to pass on one of the quotes from Benjamin Franklin that I always believe goes to the core of the balance we need to remember in America…and points out the danger we are in succinctly….”those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither”. Thanks, Ben…

We’re tougher than this…

Well…after the release of the new TSA screening processes, I feel heartened that there is a growing group of us that are saying enough. We do not need to be molested in the name of safety by a government agency that has become as much a terrorist organization as al-Queda. Well…that is a bit of hyperbole but these folks use fear to change peoples behavior just like the terrorists; the TSA continues to inflate the threat of attack to raise their budgets and consolidate power over the people. But, as I said earlier, the people are starting to revolt, they are starting to actually think and realize how much of their freedom they have given up…completely disproportionate to the chances of any danger to any traveler from the terrorists. I think this is the pendulum starting to swing back to the American values of toughness…and people are seeing that fear is no way to live their lives and want to challenge these cave-dwelling idiots that want to do us harm. I, for one, am completely willing to take increased risk to protect the values that made this country great..after all, life is a risk…you are 100 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist attack. Are you going to stop driving?

With the lessons of 9/11 still clear in our minds, I wouldn’t want to be a terrorist going up against a planeload of pissed off Americans…please government…let us take care of ourselves…geez…

Life’s been weird..

Well…have been feeling out of sorts lately, even more than normal which is a lot for me. The peace that I had found a few weeks back has eluded me and I don’t know what to do about it…because I don’t know how it happened in the first place. Oh, well…I am glad to not have the filth in the political ads bombarding me anymore…damn…I don’t know if this is writers block or not but I can’t seem to get going…there were weird dreams last night…but all I can remember is giving all my stuff away…okay, this one is crap…need to take a break and try, try, again…

A Special Comment on Keith…

Well…a couple of thoughts on the suspension of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC for make unauthorized political contributions in the last election. First, if it’s in his contract that these donations have to be approved before they are made, then MSNBC has the right to do exactly what they did…in corporate owned America, even workers as well-known as Keith still have to honor the contracts they sign no matter how much they disagree with them. This kind of thing happens every day across the country and no one should be surprised at the flexing of the power of the modern corporation…and I might not be fair in castigating the parent company NBC for trying to protect the brand they have spent years creating; especially with the media’s false equivalency that MSNBC is just as biased as Fox….but there were no multi-million dollar donations to the Dems from NBC as Fox did for the repubs so that explodes that little myth.

One of the traps that I think Keith has fallen into is that he has gotten big and feels like the rules don’t apply to him…but, one other thought came to mind in my coffee fueled mind today…what if he did it on purpose? What if he did it to highlight the differences between his company and Fox…I certainly think he at least did NBC a favor..it gave their management the opportunity to put to rest the idea that MSNBC is the mirror of Fox on the left….and I feel that the old model where news was news and opinion was opinion is a better one than we have today…today’s news world makes it too hard to discern between the two and people don’t like to work that hard…making it easy for the demagogues to rule…geez…

Where have the nice guys gone?

Well…with the passing of Sparky Anderson this week, the title question came to my mind…”where have the nice guys gone?” When I was younger, there were nice guys in every avenue of life here in America; there were nice sports figures, politicians, and newsmen who did their jobs with an innate goodness that didn’t make them any less effective. What happened? Why are today’s versions of those people so nasty and brutish…why do we now have guys like Boehner and McConnell in politics who believe that the only way for them to win in politics is to demonize and crush their opponents? Then, to gloat about their wins and play to their troglodyte bases that they have created by making it acceptable to be an ass in public…making it a virtue to be unreasonable. And, we see this kind of behavior in sports where it is looked on as quaint to show sportsmanship; to let their play talk for them on the field…and this is compounded by the epidemic of inflated self-importance from guys that just play child’s games for a living.

I don’t know where this country went wrong…but I sure liked it better when guys like Sparky Anderson were in it…when politicians understood that compromise is the life blood of any democracy…and that we the people understood and supported people who could be reasonable….like Jerry Ford from our neck of the woods…geez…

November 5th

Well…another day of feeling like crap yesterday but it’s much better today…at least for now but I do have the grocery shopping to do since there is only a bag of frozen peppers in the freezer and I don’t think it’s enough to get through the weekend. I did have HH with K last night and that was fun…I need to get out of here more but I don’t want to spend any cash right now…so, a conundrum…I just love that word…not much to do today, as always, but C may be coming into town to hang out so that may be something for later. And, of course, cleaning, but I’m not too motivated to do that..we’ll see. I do have some topics for later but I’m not sure what they are yet..you’ll have to come back to see…more later…

There is still beauty in the world…

Well…this one is a change of pace from the normal stuff, but it is something I wanted to pass along..was watching “countdown” last week and there was a segment about a violinist who had just purchased a Stradivarius violin for $3.5 million dollars..but that is not the remarkable thing…because, how do you really value a treasure like that? It’s provenance? I really don’t care who owned it before…what I do care about is that majestic sound…that, even through the tiny little speakers on my tv, it was one of the most glorious things I have ever heard. Luckily, the segment is still available on the “Countdown” site and it is worth seeing…and I have added “hearing a Stradivarius in person” to my list….those of you who know me know that getting on my list is important…to me at least…

I know this one is a little different but I have to take time off to see and hear the beauty that still exists in the world and I have to remind myself that this Strad will still exist even if the repubs win the election…and Steely Dan won’t disappear, and Led Zeppelin won’t disappear….at least I hope they won’t…