Charles, Price of Wales I would like to sit at my table because he is an organic farmer. While waiting around for his job title as King he as found a passion for farmer, ecology, horticulture, watercolor painting and design of cities and villages. His passions has replaced disappointing lack of opportunity to rule from the British throne. Being born in that dysfunctional family Charles seems to have make a career of searching for meaning in his life in the most common of occupations - a farmer, yes growing his own food.
Another royal I would like to spent time with one evening at a dinner table is King of Jordan for the opposite reasons as the British man. Hussein was born in 1962 educated extensively in the United States, lived around the world and very suddenly made King in the sea of whirl pools of politically dead ends. His blood line is connected to the religious founder of Muslims and his country's historic sites tells of very ancient people, yet his education was largely Western.
I would question his views of what the future holds for peoples in the region country by country with the mix of his genes and his education.
The last two gentleman are from the famous world of entertainment and California. Stedman Graham, life partner of Oprah and Steven Spielberg.
Graham has been the silent partner to the most singular successful Mississippian black woman this country has seen. There is no lower place of birth than being born in that state and with that skin color. Graham has been at her side for thirty some years and seen the raise of fame, wealth and international recognition showered on Oprah. What funtion has he played? What events and decisions did he play a capital role for her?
So little is known about his man Spielberg except the movies he produces. What are his guiding principles that makes that repeated success on film and in his personal life? Has he learn them over the years or are they basic to his personality? I once heard that he believes if others know of your charity then it will not count in the afterlife, credit was received here on earth! I wonder about other principles that guide him.
The evening will have a beautiful set table and simple food of perhaps Moroccans dishes. It would please the vegetarians along with those who eat meat and love spicy food. Water with mint and rose petals along with a selection of wine for drinking. Candle light and soft unidentifiable music will add to the evening.
This dinner party will be added to many ones I have hosted with less known people but just as interesting.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Younger Next Year
Reading an interesting book about ageing, perhaps the best I have run across. It is about 5 years old but it held my attention because of the science of one of the co-authors, Dr Henry S. Lodge. Younger Next Year for Women: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy - Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge M.D
There is the usual chapters on exercise, although it is explained by the Dr. Lodge in new and profound manners using our three different brains and how we have evolved more the million of years. The phase 'grow or decay' is used repeatedly. It seems beyond the age of forty our body is a wash is the tide of aging , slow and steady and we have to stand firm and fight the wash of this aging tide. We replace 1% of our cells each day we are alive but to help the distant sleepy cells of our body we have to use them. That is my picture of how it works. Dr. Lodge uses much more scientific imagine and facts. I was amazing by the science of this book way beyond the good tides of exercise, eating right and having loving relationships in one's life. Imagine that every three months all my thigh muscle cells are new! Imagine that lifestyle diseases kill most people, it is not bacteria or viruses spreading person to person. As individuals we can live healthy to the end of our lives instead of living years on a slide down hill we can die as a shoting star fast quickly at the very end of our life.
The messages of the book include six days of week of 45 minute exercise. Cold turkey start, no excuses and one day off! Then there is level two and three that move into things that include weight training and heart moderating.
There is the usual chapters on exercise, although it is explained by the Dr. Lodge in new and profound manners using our three different brains and how we have evolved more the million of years. The phase 'grow or decay' is used repeatedly. It seems beyond the age of forty our body is a wash is the tide of aging , slow and steady and we have to stand firm and fight the wash of this aging tide. We replace 1% of our cells each day we are alive but to help the distant sleepy cells of our body we have to use them. That is my picture of how it works. Dr. Lodge uses much more scientific imagine and facts. I was amazing by the science of this book way beyond the good tides of exercise, eating right and having loving relationships in one's life. Imagine that every three months all my thigh muscle cells are new! Imagine that lifestyle diseases kill most people, it is not bacteria or viruses spreading person to person. As individuals we can live healthy to the end of our lives instead of living years on a slide down hill we can die as a shoting star fast quickly at the very end of our life.
The messages of the book include six days of week of 45 minute exercise. Cold turkey start, no excuses and one day off! Then there is level two and three that move into things that include weight training and heart moderating.
Harry’s Rules
1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life
3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
4. Spend less than you make.
5. Quit eating crap.
6. Care.
7. Connect and commit.
1. Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.
2. Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life
3. Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.
4. Spend less than you make.
5. Quit eating crap.
6. Care.
7. Connect and commit.
To simply read this rules would short change the message of the book. The writings of Dr. Lodge should be reread periodically to understand the importance’s of our brain and our function as humans. His long chapters on caring connecting and committing are so well written, I am changing a few small things in my life. The heart of old age is living with these activities and it takes work and planning.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Saturday, December 8, 2012
Opinion is different tha fact
The 6 Economic Facts of Life in America That Allow the Rich to Run off with Our Wealth
December 5, 2012 |
Do you ever wonder why it takes the average family 47 years to make as much as a hedge fund honcho makes in one HOUR?
Does it bother you that in 2010, after the crash, the top 25 hedge fund chiefs made as much as 685,000 teachers who educate 13 million children?
Are
you worried that cutting government debt means raising your social
security eligibility age and cost of living adjustment, so that you have
to work longer and receive lower retirement benefits?
Have
no fear. The super-rich are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to
sell you their economic fabrications. Why so much inequality? They say
because the rich have the most important skills and you don't. Why so
much unemployment? They say it's because our skimpy unemployment
insurance keeps people from looking for work. Why so much government
debt? They say it's because you have too many "entitlements." Why the
Wall Street crash? They blame poor people for buying homes they couldn't
afford.
In short, the super-rich want
us to believe that any effort to tax them a bit more or control Wall
Street will only kill more jobs and harm our economic well-being. And
most of all they don't want us to know the six economics facts of life
that explain how the super-rich are running away with our nation's
wealth.
1. The super-rich are stealing our fair share of productivity.
The U.S. economy is enormously productive. Since 1947, the amount of
goods and services we produce per hour of labor has risen by nearly 300
percent. That's because as a nation, we blend together a potent mix of
effort, skills, technology and organizational capacities. Our enormous
productivity is why we are the richest nation on earth.
Yet, why don't we feel that rich? Why are we told we must tighten our belts?
Until
the mid-1970s, the more productivity increased, the higher the real
wages of the average working person (after taking out the impact of
inflation). As a result, our standard of living doubled in 25 years.
But, as you can see from the chart below, after the mid-1970s,
productivity (the red line) continued to boom, but the average wage
stalled.
It
wasn't an accident, or market forces, or an act of God. It was a result
of human polices designed by and for the rich. Tax cuts for the rich,
financial deregulation, support for moving jobs overseas and
union-busting combined to give the super-rich more and more of our
economy's productivity gains. In 1970, the top 100 average corporate
executive earned $45 for every $1 earned by the average worker. By 2006
it had jumped to a whopping $1,723 to $1. That's the very definition of
greed run wild.
Think
about this: If the average wage had continued to rise along with
productivity as it did after WWII, your real wage today (after
inflation) would be twice as high!
We've been had.
2. Americans really want a wealth distribution more like Sweden's. Here's
a nightmare fact of life the super-rich don't want you to know. Two
researchers recently tried to find out just how much economic inequality
Americans were comfortable with. Michael Norton of Harvard Business
School and Dan Ariely of Duke University conducted a nationwide poll
with more than 5,000 respondents to see how Americans saw our current
level of equality, and what level they wanted to see. (“Building a Better America – One Wealth Quintile at a Time [3]”)
The
results were startling. First, virtually all Americans greatly
underestimated the degree of inequality in our economy today. They had
no idea how extreme the U.S. wealth distribution really is -- which goes
to show you what a good job the super-rich have done in mis-educating
us.
Second, when asked to construct an
ideal distribution of income, 92 percent of Americans preferred
radically more equality – on a par with the social democratic state of
Sweden! What’s more, it didn’t matter whether the respondent was a
Republican or Democrat, rich or poor, black or white, male or female.
Everyone wanted more economic fairness.
Imagine
that! Americans, even Republicans who voted for Romney and Ryan, would
rather live with the Scandinavian distribution of wealth. Little wonder
that the super-rich and their minions do all they can to belittle
so-called "Euro-socialism." They don't want us to know that maybe we are
hard-wired for fairness instead of the staggering inequality that helps
no one but the super-elites.
3. Everything we hear about government debt is wrong. Right
now, the biggest target of public mis-education is the government debt
debate. And the biggest spender on the mis-education of the American
public is billionaire Pete Peterson (who personally has added to the
government's debt by dodging hundreds of million in taxes through the 15
percent "carried interest" loophole that blessed his private equity
fund). Having no sense of shame, he and other super-elites want to
convince us that government spending and debt will ruin us all.
Unfortunately, very little of what they claim is true:
- China owns our all our debt? Wrong! There's a chilling ad put out by a Peterson front group that features a Chinese lecturer in the year 2030 addressing (with English subtitles) a packed audience of Chinese students about the rise and decline of the U.S. The confident, smirking teacher describes how the U.S. abandoned its principles as it "tried to spend and tax its way out of a great recession" and then crumbled beneath its "crushing debt." He then provides the kicker: "Of course we owned most of their debt...ha ha ha, and now they work us," he says to the raucous laughter of the students. The ad is a complete Peterson lie. China owns only 8 percent of our debt. Most of our debt is actually owned by our own quasi governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve and Social Security.
- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting the country? Wrong! The current deficits are the result of two unfunded wars, the Bust tax cuts for the super-rich and the Wall Street crash of the economy that killed 8 million jobs, and led directly to the ensuing bailouts, lost tax revenues and increases in unemployment insurance payments.
- We will become like Greece if we don't balance our budget? Wrong! Greece can't print money to pay back its debt because it no longer has its own currency (and neither does Mississippi). The United States does. Also, our economy is more than 50 times larger that Greece's. The chances of the US ending up in a Greek debt crisis are about the same as finding a Martian in your bathtub.
- We have to solve the "debt crisis" right now or the economy will crash? Wrong! We have an unemployment crisis, not a debt crisis. Interest rates are at all-time lows because the world wants to park its money here in dollars. In fact, this is the time to borrow more to put our people back to work by rebuilding our crumbling, fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure and educating our children. If our people go back to work, the economy grows, unemployment costs go down, tax revenues rise, and the debt ratio shrinks without paying back one penny of it.
Why
so many lies? Because financial elites like Peterson don't want to pay
their fair share of taxes. They don't believe in funding a safety net
for all Americans. They don't want to the government to help put
Americans back to work. Instead, they want an economy by and for the
elites.
4. We are under-taxed, not over-taxed. The
super-rich want us to believe that taxes are too high and that those
taxes are harming job creation and economic growth. It's a fabrication.
First of all, taxes for most Americans have declined, according to a recent New York Times analysis [4]:
..... most Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.
Second, we have much
lower tax rates that our chief European competitors. For example,
Germany, an economic powerhouse, has an average tax rate of 40.6 percent
while the U.S. rate is only 26.9 percent. Germany uses that money to
rebuild its infrastructure, invest in education and find creative ways
to nearly eliminate unemployment.
Third,
the super-rich use a sleight of hand to make middle-class taxpayers
believe that lower-income people are moochers. Like Mitt Romney, they
are found of saying that 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes
and that the rich pay most of those taxes. But income taxes are but a
small portion of the tax bite on lower-income people who pay through
payroll tax deductions, sales taxes and property taxes.
Finally,
because our taxes are declining, it means that our public services are
decaying as well. This creates a downward spiral the super-rich want to
encourage: the more services decline, the less we want to pay in taxes,
the more services decline. If you're really wealthy you don't care about
public services since your life is entombed in private services --
private schools, private airports, private planes, private gated villas
and so on.
5. Government jobs are just as good as private sector jobs. Another
major con job concerns the attack on public employees. The greedy rich
are trying to pit public and private sector workers against each other
in large part because public employees still seem to have benefits the
rest of us have lost (and they have unions and vote mostly Democratic).
Corporate greed demands that we snuff out those benefits so workers
won't demand them in the private sector. To further denigrate
government, elites want us to believe that a private sector job is
somehow more righteous that a public one -- that public employment is
sort of like being on the dole because government workers are immune to
the rough and tumble of competitive pressures that drives the private
sector.
It's another hoax.
The
truth is that some jobs are better done by government on behalf of the
public. We learned almost 200 years ago that it didn't make sense to
have competing fire and police departments. We also learned that if we
wanted the average person to go to school, we needed public school
systems, and not just private ones. Most countries (but not ours) have
learned that much of the healthcare system runs better when it's
publicly financed and controlled -- that for-profit hospitals and
clinics do not provide the best care. In short, every modern economy is a
combination of private and public sector jobs that are valuable to our
society.
6. Wall Street needs to be shrunk (until we can drown it in a bathtub). The
function of finance is simple: moving our savings into productive
investments. By doing so, money supposedly moves to where it will do the
most good for our economy. This function is considered so simple that
most economics textbooks ignore Wall Street entirely.
However,
when Wall Street is left to its own devices, it tends to create vast
casinos that dramatically increase financial profits at the expense of
the real economy. Worse still, as the speculative casinos grow and grow,
the economy as a whole is endangered. Wall Street's grew rapidly just
before the great crash of 1929 and just before the Great Recession of
2008-'09. It was stock manipulation during the 1920s and it was the
housing casino over the last two decades. But in both cases it happened
because Wall Street was deregulated and got too damn big. As the chart
below shows, Wall Street is gobbling up more and more of our country's
profits.
We
learned after 1929 that economic stability required severe financial
regulation. We sat on Wall Street for nearly 50 years and it worked
beautifully, especially between WWII and the 1970s. There were virtually
no financial crashes anywhere in the world. But once we deregulated
finance again, all hell broke loose as the world suffered through more
than 150 smaller financial crashes. Finance grew and grew until it took
down the entire U.S. economy. Along the way, Wall Street offered the
easiest path to great riches for the few.
The
simplest solution is the one hated by the super-rich: a small sales tax
on each and every financial transaction involving stocks, bonds and
every kind of derivative. By taxing the casino, we shrink its size and
make it less dangerous to the rest of the economy. We also create new
revenues for our economy, nearly all of it coming from the top fraction
of the top 1 percent. No wonder they don't want us to know that.
Is Knowledge Power?
It's
not enough for the greedy rich to buy politicians. They also need to
buy our minds. That's why they pay for all this misleading economic
education. But if we master the basic economic facts of life, we won't
get conned. And we will have a much better chance at building a more
just and healthy economy.
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/les-leopold-0
[3] http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/us/most-americans-face-lower-tax-burden-than-in-the-80s.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/economy-0
[6] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Garden Notes
John is home all day on Wednesdays with me. Yesterday it was sunny and so we sat outside and get some sunlight on our skin. I arranged two chairs in a comfortable spot to watch the chickens roam the yard and dig around the apple trees. The chickens love to scratch and find morsels, perhaps more bugs than greens as they travel across the yard. They are just like running water or a fireplace- one can't take one's eyes off them They have not laid an egg, I believe, in six weeks but yet they hold my heart. Since they are older, the short daylight and the period of growing their new annual feathers, this is always a slow time of the year, so no eggs are not a problem. John sat quietly for the whole hour and occasionally I would walk around doing little jobs that caught my attention but also not too demanding or needing lots detailing.
This time reminded me of a line I read in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book that included her notes and letters. She said as we age we come to appreciate nature much more. Not the travel to Kenya type or the whale watch boat trip but what is at hand in our own environment. She went on about the change of the seasons, the light of the sun or the moon, the flying insects and birds. Since Olympia has not had a killing frost yet it is amazing to see the tiny flying spots looking toward the shadow. They were numerous and the sunlight made their bodies white sparkles moving in some strange pattern. I realized I am the person she was talking about, the older person noticing the smallest detail in my own yard.
Studying branches on a slow walk along the back fence I saw many buds on the Asian pears, truly don't need more of them. I could easily read my silver tags on the espalier trees this time of the year and I see that I can create another line/level for one of my apple trees. Trying something new, I am leaving all my leaves in place as nature placed them. The raked cleaned orchard look is currently out of style in this yard. There is an idea being put forth that nature knows best and we have been cleaning up and then artificially adding back to our soil. It will be interesting to see how broken down the winters rains will have on all the leaves in this yard. One thing I know for sure my ground is not being pounded by rain, the soil is being protected and maybe the critters are multiplying under all this cover.
I found last summer the transplanted kale plants that went from the raised beds to the open ground garden grow so much faster and bigger than the ones that remained in raised beds. I believe it has less to do with watering but more to do with the opportunity to grow deeper roots. These plants are over three feet tall and will be harvested all winter along. I have fenced them to protect them from the chickens but on the other hand I have allowed them to munch on some Swiss Chard and a few other kale greens. Surprisingly, also, in the same area are many parsley volunteers that are making it to my dinner table almost daily. In the summer I have cilantro growing that I use daily but it is nice to have a few herbs that can survive year around and that includes Rosemary , some mint in a pot along with a sage plants.
Pruning is a constant job with the varieties in this yard and as I sat there momentarily yesterday, I mentally ranked the order of how I should approach the winter job. A month ago I pruned one of my peach trees. I may have seriously limited my harvest for next year but on the other hand I could not allow it to get so large that I can't reach it with a short ladder- I am not donating a broken bone for a few peaches. The found joy of all those cut branches, I will be using in the spring for munch after they get chopped up, that is new to me. Of course, in the meantime, there is a pile of branches sitting there as an eye sore.
Jefferson said it for all of us gardeners, "Tho' I maybe old, I am a younger gardener." John and I walked into the house with some kale to chop for lunch and add to to a stir fry.
This time reminded me of a line I read in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's book that included her notes and letters. She said as we age we come to appreciate nature much more. Not the travel to Kenya type or the whale watch boat trip but what is at hand in our own environment. She went on about the change of the seasons, the light of the sun or the moon, the flying insects and birds. Since Olympia has not had a killing frost yet it is amazing to see the tiny flying spots looking toward the shadow. They were numerous and the sunlight made their bodies white sparkles moving in some strange pattern. I realized I am the person she was talking about, the older person noticing the smallest detail in my own yard.
Studying branches on a slow walk along the back fence I saw many buds on the Asian pears, truly don't need more of them. I could easily read my silver tags on the espalier trees this time of the year and I see that I can create another line/level for one of my apple trees. Trying something new, I am leaving all my leaves in place as nature placed them. The raked cleaned orchard look is currently out of style in this yard. There is an idea being put forth that nature knows best and we have been cleaning up and then artificially adding back to our soil. It will be interesting to see how broken down the winters rains will have on all the leaves in this yard. One thing I know for sure my ground is not being pounded by rain, the soil is being protected and maybe the critters are multiplying under all this cover.
I found last summer the transplanted kale plants that went from the raised beds to the open ground garden grow so much faster and bigger than the ones that remained in raised beds. I believe it has less to do with watering but more to do with the opportunity to grow deeper roots. These plants are over three feet tall and will be harvested all winter along. I have fenced them to protect them from the chickens but on the other hand I have allowed them to munch on some Swiss Chard and a few other kale greens. Surprisingly, also, in the same area are many parsley volunteers that are making it to my dinner table almost daily. In the summer I have cilantro growing that I use daily but it is nice to have a few herbs that can survive year around and that includes Rosemary , some mint in a pot along with a sage plants.
Pruning is a constant job with the varieties in this yard and as I sat there momentarily yesterday, I mentally ranked the order of how I should approach the winter job. A month ago I pruned one of my peach trees. I may have seriously limited my harvest for next year but on the other hand I could not allow it to get so large that I can't reach it with a short ladder- I am not donating a broken bone for a few peaches. The found joy of all those cut branches, I will be using in the spring for munch after they get chopped up, that is new to me. Of course, in the meantime, there is a pile of branches sitting there as an eye sore.
Jefferson said it for all of us gardeners, "Tho' I maybe old, I am a younger gardener." John and I walked into the house with some kale to chop for lunch and add to to a stir fry.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
the story teller
http://www.ted.com/talks/
Monday, November 26, 2012
Shocking list
I found this article/this list shocking. As a child I went to twelve years of Catholic school, daily Mass, belonged to Church Choir from 5th grade to 12 grade. Raised in a Catholic Culture by Irish and German families there was never a thought to question anything connect to this Church and to this belief.
Each human being reading this has to question their values if they were raised in this Catholic culture.
This is all related to the rape and of an Irish nine year old girl by a step father and the death that followed in the hospital. All the documents are foot noted on Alternet News
50 Reasons to Boycott the Catholic Church
November 26, 2012 |
Last
month in Ireland, Savita Halappanavar died, and she shouldn't have.
Savita was a 31-year-old married woman, four months pregnant, who went
to the hospital with a miscarriage in progress that developed into a
blood infection. She could easily have been saved if the already doomed
fetus was aborted. Instead, her doctors did nothing, explaining that
"this is a Catholic country," and left her to suffer in agony for days,
only intervening once it was too late.
Savita's death is just the latest in a long line of tragedies directly attributable to the doctrines and beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. I acknowledge that there are many good, progressive Catholics, but the problem is that the church isn't a democracy, and those progressives have no voice or vote in its governance. The church is a petrified oligarchy, a dictatorship like the medieval monarchies it once existed alongside, and it's run by a small circle of conservative, rigidly ideological old men who make all the decisions and choose their own successors.
This means that, whatever individual Catholics may do, the resources of the church as an institution are bent toward opposing social progress and positive change all over the world. Every dollar you put into the church collection plate, every Sunday service you attend, every hour of time and effort you put into volunteering or working for church organizations, is inevitably a show of support for the institutional church and its abhorrent mission. When you have no voice, there's only one thing left to do: boycott. Stop supporting the church with your money and your time. For lifelong Catholics, it's a drastic step, but it's more than justified by the wealth of reasons showing that the church as an institution is beyond reform, and the only meaningful response is to part ways with it. Here are just a few of those reasons:
1. Throughout the world, Catholic bishops have engaged in a systematic, organized effort going back decades to cover up for priests who molest children, pressuring the victims to sign confidentiality agreements and quietly assigning the predators to new parishes where they could go on molesting. Tens of thousands of children have been raped and tortured as a result of this conspiracy of silence.
2. Strike one: "What did the pope know and when did he know it? [3]" The current pope, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was personally implicated in a case from the 1970s in which at least three sets of parents reported that a priest in his diocese had sexually abused their children. In response, Ratzinger assigned the priest to therapy, without notifying law enforcement, and washed his hands of the matter. That priest was back on duty in just a few short days and went on to molest more children.
3. Strike two: In 1981, again when the current pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he got a letter from the diocese of Oakland asking him to defrock a priest who had acknowledged molesting two children. Ratzinger ignored this letter, and several followup letters, for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back saying that more time was needed, and that they had to proceed very slowly to safeguard "the good of the Universal Church [4]" in light of "the young age of the petitioner" -- by which he meant not the victimized children, but the pedophile priest. (By contrast, when a rogue archbishop ordained married men as priests, he was laicized six days later. [5])
4. Strike three: In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter, De Delictis Gravioribus, to all Catholic bishops advising them how to handle accusations of sex crimes by priests. There was no recommendation to contact the police, but rather an instruction for them to report such cases only to the Vatican and tell no one else: "Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret. [3]"
5. Some church officials, like the American friar Benedict Groeschel, have blamed the epidemic of child molestation on sexually wanton boys who tempt priests into assaulting them. [6]
6. They threaten to cut off funding for immigrants' rights advocates because they sometimes work with gay-rights advocates [7]. Preventing immigrants from getting legal and medical aid is less important than ensuring the church isn't contaminated by even indirect contact with anyone who helps gay people.
7. In a sign of how ridiculously disproportionate and unhinged the church's martyrdom complex is, the current pope has compared expanding the rights of women and gay people to the murderous anticlerical violence of the 1930s Spanish civil war [8].
8. They've used their official UN observer status to team up with Islamic theocracies like Iran and Libya [9] to oppose calls for family-planning services to be made available in the world's poorest nations.
9. They've gone to desperately poor, AIDS-ravaged regions of Africa to spread the life-destroying lie that condoms don't prevent transmission of HIV [10].
10. In the mid-20th century, they appointed a special papal commission to study whether Catholicism should permit the use of birth control. When the commission almost unanimously recommended that they should, they ignored that recommendation and doubled down on their absolute ban on contraception [11].
11. They excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a pregnant 9-year-old who'd been raped by her stepfather [12].
12. They did not excommunicate the stepfather.
13. Savita Halappanavar wasn't the first: Catholic-run hospitals are willing to let women die rather than get lifesaving abortions [13], even when a miscarriage is already in progress and no possible procedure could save the fetus.
14. They refused to provide contraception or abortion to women who were abducted and forced to work as prostitutes [14], and then filed a lawsuit complaining it was violating their religious freedom when the government took away their contract [15].
15. In Poland, they ordered politicians to vote for a law banning IVF and threatened to excommunicate any who didn't comply [16].
16. They were a major source of the pressure on the Komen Foundation that led to its disastrous decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood [17].
17. They've announced an inquisition into the Girl Scouts [18] to get to the bottom of its association with morally suspect groups like Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam.
18. They've been one of the major forces attacking Obamacare, filing lawsuits arguing that non-church Catholic employers should be able to decide whether or not employee health insurance plans will cover contraception [19]. This is effectively an argument that a woman's employer should be allowed to force her to pay more for medical coverage, or even place it out of her reach altogether, based on his religious beliefs.
19. In Australia, they allegedly derailed a police investigation of an accused pedophile [20], putting pressure on higher-ups to get an investigating officer removed from the case.
20. They demanded that Sunday school teachers sign a loyalty oath [21] agreeing to submit "will and intellect" to the proclamations of church leaders.
21. Some top church officials, including the current pope [22], have advocated denying communion to politicians who support progressive and pro-choice political ideas [23]. Notably, although the church also opposes preemptive war and the death penalty, no conservative politician has ever been denied communion on this basis.
22. They've cracked down on American nuns for doing too much to help the poor and not enough to oppose gay marriage [24], condemning them for displaying a seditious "feminist spirit."
23. In Germany, where parishioners pay an officially assessed tax rate to the church, they've tried to blackmail people who don't want to pay the church tax [25], threatening to fire them from jobs in church institutions. In some cases, if the person opts out but later loses the paperwork, they demand on-the-spot repayment of decades of back taxes [26].
24. In America, bishops have compared Democratic officeholders, including President Obama, to Hitler and Stalin [27] and have said that it jeopardizes a person's eternal salvation if they don't vote as the bishops instruct them to.
25. They fight against equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. It's not enough for the Catholic church hierarchy that they refuse to perform church weddings for gay and lesbian couples; they want to write that prohibition into the civil law and deny marriage equality to everyone who doesn't fit their religious criteria, and have invested vast amounts of money and effort into doing so. In the 2012 election cycle alone, the church spent almost $2 million in an unsuccessful fight to defeat marriage-equality initiatives in four states [28].
26. They've compared gay sex to pedophilia and incest and called for it to be forbidden by law [29], saying that "states can and must regulate behaviors, including various sexual behaviors."
27. They've shut down adoption clinics rather than consider gay people as prospective parents. [30] The church's official position, apparently, is that it's better for children to remain orphans or in foster care than to be placed in a loving, committed same-sex household.
28. They barred an anti-LGBT bullying group, anti-teen-suicide foundation from a Catholic school ceremony [31], explaining that the group's mission is "contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church."
29. They told a teenager he wouldn't be allowed to go through confirmation because he posted a pro-gay-rights status message on Facebook [32], and they expelled a preschooler from a private Catholic school because his parents were lesbians [33].
30. They have a history of dumping known pedophile priests in isolated, poor, rural communities [34], where they apparently assumed that local people wouldn't dare to complain or that no one would listen if they did.
31. They've given huge payouts -- as much as $20,000 in some cases -- to pedophile priests [35], to buy their silence and quietly ease them out of the priesthood, after specifically denying in public that they were doing this.
32. When the Connecticut legislature proposed extending statute-of-limitations laws to allow older child-abuse cases to be tried, the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass instructing parishioners to contact their representatives and lobby against it [36].
33. To fight back against and intimidate abuse-survivor groups like SNAP, the church's lawyers have filed absurdly broad subpoenas demanding the disclosure of decades' worth of documents [37].
34. In the Netherlands, some boys were apparently castrated in church-run hospitals after complaining to the police about sexual abuse by priests [38].
35. When a Catholic official from Philadelphia, William Lynn, was charged with knowingly returning predator priests to duty, his defense was to blame those decisions on his superior, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, thus acknowledging that the corruption reaches to the highest levels of the church. [35]
36. When confronted with hundreds of complaints about child-raping priests spanning decades, a Dutch cardinal used the same "we knew nothing" excuse once given by Nazi soldiers [35]. Several months later, it was reported that this same cardinal had personally arranged to move a pedophile priest to a different parish to shield him from accusations.
37. In one case, Mother Teresa successfully persuaded the church to return a suspected pedophile priest to duty because he was a friend of hers [39]. Eight additional complaints of child abuse were later lodged against him.
38. In yet another case, they appointed a priest with a history of child molestation to a board that advises the church on what to do when they get reports of priests molesting children. [40]
39. And after all this, they've had the audacity to plead for money and ask parishioners to pick up the tab for legal costs and settlements [41].
40. They abducted tens of thousands of babies from unwed mothers who gave birth in Catholic-run hospitals all over the world [42] throughout the 20th century, forcing drugged or helpless women to give their newborn children up for adoption against their will.
41. They tried to have the Indian skeptic Sanal Edamuruku charged with blasphemy and imprisoned [35] for debunking a claim of a miraculous weeping statue.
42. They publicly supported the Russian Orthodox church's decision to have the punk band Pussy Riot charged and imprisoned for blasphemy. [43]
43. Their finances are a disorganized mess, lacking strong accounting controls and clear internal separations [44], which means parishioners who give to the church can have no assurance of what the money will be used for. According to an investigation by the Economist, funds meant for hospitals, cemeteries and priests' pensions have been raided to pay legal fees and settlements in several diocesan bankruptcies.
44. They've said in public that the sexist prohibition on women priests is an infallible part of Catholic dogma [45], and hence can never be changed.
45. They've silenced priests who call for the ordination of women and other desperately needed reforms [45], exhorting them to instead show "the radicalism of obedience."
46. They've excommunicated at least one priest for advocating the ordination of women [46].
47. They lifted the excommunication of an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying bishop [47] who also thinks women shouldn't attend college or wear pants.
48. When it comes to the question of who's financially responsible for compensating the victims of sex abuse, they argue that priests aren't employees and therefore the church bears no responsibility for anything they do [48].
49. They canonized Mother Teresa for doing little more than offering a squalid place for people to die. [49] Outside observers who visited her "Home for the Dying" reported that medical care was substandard and dangerous, limited to aspirin and unsterilized needles rinsed in tap water, administered by untrained volunteers. The millions of dollars collected by Mother Teresa and her order, enough to build many advanced clinics and hospitals, remain unaccounted for.
50. They announced that voluntary end-of-life measures, such as terminal patients' directives for when they wish to have a feeding tube removed, won't be respected at Catholic hospitals. [50]
Savita's death is just the latest in a long line of tragedies directly attributable to the doctrines and beliefs of the Roman Catholic church. I acknowledge that there are many good, progressive Catholics, but the problem is that the church isn't a democracy, and those progressives have no voice or vote in its governance. The church is a petrified oligarchy, a dictatorship like the medieval monarchies it once existed alongside, and it's run by a small circle of conservative, rigidly ideological old men who make all the decisions and choose their own successors.
This means that, whatever individual Catholics may do, the resources of the church as an institution are bent toward opposing social progress and positive change all over the world. Every dollar you put into the church collection plate, every Sunday service you attend, every hour of time and effort you put into volunteering or working for church organizations, is inevitably a show of support for the institutional church and its abhorrent mission. When you have no voice, there's only one thing left to do: boycott. Stop supporting the church with your money and your time. For lifelong Catholics, it's a drastic step, but it's more than justified by the wealth of reasons showing that the church as an institution is beyond reform, and the only meaningful response is to part ways with it. Here are just a few of those reasons:
1. Throughout the world, Catholic bishops have engaged in a systematic, organized effort going back decades to cover up for priests who molest children, pressuring the victims to sign confidentiality agreements and quietly assigning the predators to new parishes where they could go on molesting. Tens of thousands of children have been raped and tortured as a result of this conspiracy of silence.
2. Strike one: "What did the pope know and when did he know it? [3]" The current pope, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was personally implicated in a case from the 1970s in which at least three sets of parents reported that a priest in his diocese had sexually abused their children. In response, Ratzinger assigned the priest to therapy, without notifying law enforcement, and washed his hands of the matter. That priest was back on duty in just a few short days and went on to molest more children.
3. Strike two: In 1981, again when the current pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, he got a letter from the diocese of Oakland asking him to defrock a priest who had acknowledged molesting two children. Ratzinger ignored this letter, and several followup letters, for four years. Finally, in 1985, he wrote back saying that more time was needed, and that they had to proceed very slowly to safeguard "the good of the Universal Church [4]" in light of "the young age of the petitioner" -- by which he meant not the victimized children, but the pedophile priest. (By contrast, when a rogue archbishop ordained married men as priests, he was laicized six days later. [5])
4. Strike three: In 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a letter, De Delictis Gravioribus, to all Catholic bishops advising them how to handle accusations of sex crimes by priests. There was no recommendation to contact the police, but rather an instruction for them to report such cases only to the Vatican and tell no one else: "Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret. [3]"
5. Some church officials, like the American friar Benedict Groeschel, have blamed the epidemic of child molestation on sexually wanton boys who tempt priests into assaulting them. [6]
6. They threaten to cut off funding for immigrants' rights advocates because they sometimes work with gay-rights advocates [7]. Preventing immigrants from getting legal and medical aid is less important than ensuring the church isn't contaminated by even indirect contact with anyone who helps gay people.
7. In a sign of how ridiculously disproportionate and unhinged the church's martyrdom complex is, the current pope has compared expanding the rights of women and gay people to the murderous anticlerical violence of the 1930s Spanish civil war [8].
8. They've used their official UN observer status to team up with Islamic theocracies like Iran and Libya [9] to oppose calls for family-planning services to be made available in the world's poorest nations.
9. They've gone to desperately poor, AIDS-ravaged regions of Africa to spread the life-destroying lie that condoms don't prevent transmission of HIV [10].
10. In the mid-20th century, they appointed a special papal commission to study whether Catholicism should permit the use of birth control. When the commission almost unanimously recommended that they should, they ignored that recommendation and doubled down on their absolute ban on contraception [11].
11. They excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a pregnant 9-year-old who'd been raped by her stepfather [12].
12. They did not excommunicate the stepfather.
13. Savita Halappanavar wasn't the first: Catholic-run hospitals are willing to let women die rather than get lifesaving abortions [13], even when a miscarriage is already in progress and no possible procedure could save the fetus.
14. They refused to provide contraception or abortion to women who were abducted and forced to work as prostitutes [14], and then filed a lawsuit complaining it was violating their religious freedom when the government took away their contract [15].
15. In Poland, they ordered politicians to vote for a law banning IVF and threatened to excommunicate any who didn't comply [16].
16. They were a major source of the pressure on the Komen Foundation that led to its disastrous decision to cut ties with Planned Parenthood [17].
17. They've announced an inquisition into the Girl Scouts [18] to get to the bottom of its association with morally suspect groups like Doctors Without Borders and Oxfam.
18. They've been one of the major forces attacking Obamacare, filing lawsuits arguing that non-church Catholic employers should be able to decide whether or not employee health insurance plans will cover contraception [19]. This is effectively an argument that a woman's employer should be allowed to force her to pay more for medical coverage, or even place it out of her reach altogether, based on his religious beliefs.
19. In Australia, they allegedly derailed a police investigation of an accused pedophile [20], putting pressure on higher-ups to get an investigating officer removed from the case.
20. They demanded that Sunday school teachers sign a loyalty oath [21] agreeing to submit "will and intellect" to the proclamations of church leaders.
21. Some top church officials, including the current pope [22], have advocated denying communion to politicians who support progressive and pro-choice political ideas [23]. Notably, although the church also opposes preemptive war and the death penalty, no conservative politician has ever been denied communion on this basis.
22. They've cracked down on American nuns for doing too much to help the poor and not enough to oppose gay marriage [24], condemning them for displaying a seditious "feminist spirit."
23. In Germany, where parishioners pay an officially assessed tax rate to the church, they've tried to blackmail people who don't want to pay the church tax [25], threatening to fire them from jobs in church institutions. In some cases, if the person opts out but later loses the paperwork, they demand on-the-spot repayment of decades of back taxes [26].
24. In America, bishops have compared Democratic officeholders, including President Obama, to Hitler and Stalin [27] and have said that it jeopardizes a person's eternal salvation if they don't vote as the bishops instruct them to.
25. They fight against equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. It's not enough for the Catholic church hierarchy that they refuse to perform church weddings for gay and lesbian couples; they want to write that prohibition into the civil law and deny marriage equality to everyone who doesn't fit their religious criteria, and have invested vast amounts of money and effort into doing so. In the 2012 election cycle alone, the church spent almost $2 million in an unsuccessful fight to defeat marriage-equality initiatives in four states [28].
26. They've compared gay sex to pedophilia and incest and called for it to be forbidden by law [29], saying that "states can and must regulate behaviors, including various sexual behaviors."
27. They've shut down adoption clinics rather than consider gay people as prospective parents. [30] The church's official position, apparently, is that it's better for children to remain orphans or in foster care than to be placed in a loving, committed same-sex household.
28. They barred an anti-LGBT bullying group, anti-teen-suicide foundation from a Catholic school ceremony [31], explaining that the group's mission is "contrary to the teachings of the Catholic church."
29. They told a teenager he wouldn't be allowed to go through confirmation because he posted a pro-gay-rights status message on Facebook [32], and they expelled a preschooler from a private Catholic school because his parents were lesbians [33].
30. They have a history of dumping known pedophile priests in isolated, poor, rural communities [34], where they apparently assumed that local people wouldn't dare to complain or that no one would listen if they did.
31. They've given huge payouts -- as much as $20,000 in some cases -- to pedophile priests [35], to buy their silence and quietly ease them out of the priesthood, after specifically denying in public that they were doing this.
32. When the Connecticut legislature proposed extending statute-of-limitations laws to allow older child-abuse cases to be tried, the bishops ordered a letter to be read during Mass instructing parishioners to contact their representatives and lobby against it [36].
33. To fight back against and intimidate abuse-survivor groups like SNAP, the church's lawyers have filed absurdly broad subpoenas demanding the disclosure of decades' worth of documents [37].
34. In the Netherlands, some boys were apparently castrated in church-run hospitals after complaining to the police about sexual abuse by priests [38].
35. When a Catholic official from Philadelphia, William Lynn, was charged with knowingly returning predator priests to duty, his defense was to blame those decisions on his superior, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, thus acknowledging that the corruption reaches to the highest levels of the church. [35]
36. When confronted with hundreds of complaints about child-raping priests spanning decades, a Dutch cardinal used the same "we knew nothing" excuse once given by Nazi soldiers [35]. Several months later, it was reported that this same cardinal had personally arranged to move a pedophile priest to a different parish to shield him from accusations.
37. In one case, Mother Teresa successfully persuaded the church to return a suspected pedophile priest to duty because he was a friend of hers [39]. Eight additional complaints of child abuse were later lodged against him.
38. In yet another case, they appointed a priest with a history of child molestation to a board that advises the church on what to do when they get reports of priests molesting children. [40]
39. And after all this, they've had the audacity to plead for money and ask parishioners to pick up the tab for legal costs and settlements [41].
40. They abducted tens of thousands of babies from unwed mothers who gave birth in Catholic-run hospitals all over the world [42] throughout the 20th century, forcing drugged or helpless women to give their newborn children up for adoption against their will.
41. They tried to have the Indian skeptic Sanal Edamuruku charged with blasphemy and imprisoned [35] for debunking a claim of a miraculous weeping statue.
42. They publicly supported the Russian Orthodox church's decision to have the punk band Pussy Riot charged and imprisoned for blasphemy. [43]
43. Their finances are a disorganized mess, lacking strong accounting controls and clear internal separations [44], which means parishioners who give to the church can have no assurance of what the money will be used for. According to an investigation by the Economist, funds meant for hospitals, cemeteries and priests' pensions have been raided to pay legal fees and settlements in several diocesan bankruptcies.
44. They've said in public that the sexist prohibition on women priests is an infallible part of Catholic dogma [45], and hence can never be changed.
45. They've silenced priests who call for the ordination of women and other desperately needed reforms [45], exhorting them to instead show "the radicalism of obedience."
46. They've excommunicated at least one priest for advocating the ordination of women [46].
47. They lifted the excommunication of an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying bishop [47] who also thinks women shouldn't attend college or wear pants.
48. When it comes to the question of who's financially responsible for compensating the victims of sex abuse, they argue that priests aren't employees and therefore the church bears no responsibility for anything they do [48].
49. They canonized Mother Teresa for doing little more than offering a squalid place for people to die. [49] Outside observers who visited her "Home for the Dying" reported that medical care was substandard and dangerous, limited to aspirin and unsterilized needles rinsed in tap water, administered by untrained volunteers. The millions of dollars collected by Mother Teresa and her order, enough to build many advanced clinics and hospitals, remain unaccounted for.
50. They announced that voluntary end-of-life measures, such as terminal patients' directives for when they wish to have a feeding tube removed, won't be respected at Catholic hospitals. [50]
Sunday, November 18, 2012
wisdom from a writer/gardener
Carol’s
Rules for Introspection
by
Carol Deppe
2.
When you do look into your own soul, remember to be gentle. Nobody’s
soul can take all that much examination.
another interesting idea not in the national media
http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-ways-most-americans-are-blind-how-their-country-stacked-wealthy
November, Nuturtion and Nuts
This month marks a time that diets of many of us changes along with the weather. I look at every store what they are pricing their potatoes and squash at and if it is organic and priced favourably I buy. They both keep so well in my garage. The work bench has been cleared in the garage to store my assortment of squashes. Plastic milk cartons are used to store my potatoes and then I cover them with old coffee bean bags made of burlap.
Squash, I have learned that they should have a stem on them, no soft spots and can not touch each other. The author from Oregon, Carol Deppe's book, THE RESILIENT GARDENER - FOOD PRODUCTION AND SELF-RELIANCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES writes about the skill of gardening but also about nutrient and storing food and eating during the winter. Granted, she is wheat sensitive she relies on potatoes and squash more than some of us but then again she maybe wise like the native Americans were live on this land. Her favourite squash is sweet meat but she covers more than I have ever heard of or seen in stores. From her I have grown to respect the humble vegetable and understand the value of it.
A week ago I saw a display of organic potatoes priced right. It must be my Irish blood but I like potatoes, more in the winter perhaps, but I really feel that this is one vegetable that should be organic or home grown. That great recipe that Irish invented, colcannon, using cabbage and potatoes with cream and butter is over the top good. I modify it some what but still enjoy on a winter's night. Add a slice of squash, I am eating well.
Last week, Dr. Weil on an afternoon show and this is a man that I have read for 20 years. He had his top list of staying health and simple adjustments to make for a longer healthier life. Iodine is a mineral he suggested that many Americans should be made aware of and watch for the signs of needing it. If one is very sensitive to cold, puffy eyes along with a tireness, the lack of Iodine maybe the problem. Consuming more dairy, ocean fish, sea weed or kelp would take care of the shortage in our body. That sardine and cracker lunch our parents had is still a wise idea or the Asian idea of miso soup or a little sea weed in the soup pot takes care of this iodine problem.
Weil went on to say that an all raw diet is not a great idea as some foods are better consumed cooked like tomatoes but other foods are most beneficial if raw like garlic and asparagus. That garlic news, about eating raw is new to me. I throw garlic into my beans, potatoes and just about any pot on the stove. Now I will learn to crush garlic, leave time and air work it's magic and then put it into olive oil and use it on food.
Finally pistachio nuts, a serving of 47, calories of 158 and it gives us 85% of our need of Vitamin C for the day. This is a good low fat nut and we burn calories opening up the nut, doesn't get better than that.
Squash, I have learned that they should have a stem on them, no soft spots and can not touch each other. The author from Oregon, Carol Deppe's book, THE RESILIENT GARDENER - FOOD PRODUCTION AND SELF-RELIANCE IN UNCERTAIN TIMES writes about the skill of gardening but also about nutrient and storing food and eating during the winter. Granted, she is wheat sensitive she relies on potatoes and squash more than some of us but then again she maybe wise like the native Americans were live on this land. Her favourite squash is sweet meat but she covers more than I have ever heard of or seen in stores. From her I have grown to respect the humble vegetable and understand the value of it.
A week ago I saw a display of organic potatoes priced right. It must be my Irish blood but I like potatoes, more in the winter perhaps, but I really feel that this is one vegetable that should be organic or home grown. That great recipe that Irish invented, colcannon, using cabbage and potatoes with cream and butter is over the top good. I modify it some what but still enjoy on a winter's night. Add a slice of squash, I am eating well.
Last week, Dr. Weil on an afternoon show and this is a man that I have read for 20 years. He had his top list of staying health and simple adjustments to make for a longer healthier life. Iodine is a mineral he suggested that many Americans should be made aware of and watch for the signs of needing it. If one is very sensitive to cold, puffy eyes along with a tireness, the lack of Iodine maybe the problem. Consuming more dairy, ocean fish, sea weed or kelp would take care of the shortage in our body. That sardine and cracker lunch our parents had is still a wise idea or the Asian idea of miso soup or a little sea weed in the soup pot takes care of this iodine problem.
Weil went on to say that an all raw diet is not a great idea as some foods are better consumed cooked like tomatoes but other foods are most beneficial if raw like garlic and asparagus. That garlic news, about eating raw is new to me. I throw garlic into my beans, potatoes and just about any pot on the stove. Now I will learn to crush garlic, leave time and air work it's magic and then put it into olive oil and use it on food.
Finally pistachio nuts, a serving of 47, calories of 158 and it gives us 85% of our need of Vitamin C for the day. This is a good low fat nut and we burn calories opening up the nut, doesn't get better than that.
Monday, November 12, 2012
Flying solo in a developed world
I was having lunch the other day with a couple friends and we were discussing the state of the world and particular the United States. The comment was made that often new items are shipped to developing countries that could be a great help right here for our poor or less fortunate.
Remember those computer that cost about a $100 and are used as a light for the family in rural areas of Africa and Asia, featured on 60 Minutes. The guy was from MIT that design it. That was a few years ago. Then there are water purification kits simple to use and very inexpensive. Right now there are many spots in the U.S. that are having issues with unclean water. Are these items even available for those people?
Yesterday I heard the background story about the insurance whistle blower, Wendell Potter. This man witness a free clinic, Remote Area Medical, in rural Virginia and realized that they have been sending medical supplies overseas to help when in fact this country needs that same help. People have travelled 200 miles, stood in the rain to get treatment outdoors for illnesses because they did not have insurance. Remember, one gentleman recently that said anyone can go to the emergency room and get taken care of in this country. Well, shortly after that event in 2007, Potter resign his position with CIGNA and become a whistle blower. Later on he apologized to Micheal Moore for the industry's attack on him personally and his movie Sicko. I had always wondered why Wendell Potter had a change of mind and heart about his profession. It shows how many people live as they do in third world countries right here among us.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/10/warm-up-cook-recharge-a-smart-tool-born-of-hurricane-sandy-aftermath.html This item has come to the public attention because of Sandy and the two weeks without electricity in some areas that is going on right now. With all the weather changes going on in this country we should all prepare like we are flying solo and self sufficient. With this item you can cook, get a little heat and charge up the phone. The interesting comments after this article are worthy of reading.
Remember those computer that cost about a $100 and are used as a light for the family in rural areas of Africa and Asia, featured on 60 Minutes. The guy was from MIT that design it. That was a few years ago. Then there are water purification kits simple to use and very inexpensive. Right now there are many spots in the U.S. that are having issues with unclean water. Are these items even available for those people?
Yesterday I heard the background story about the insurance whistle blower, Wendell Potter. This man witness a free clinic, Remote Area Medical, in rural Virginia and realized that they have been sending medical supplies overseas to help when in fact this country needs that same help. People have travelled 200 miles, stood in the rain to get treatment outdoors for illnesses because they did not have insurance. Remember, one gentleman recently that said anyone can go to the emergency room and get taken care of in this country. Well, shortly after that event in 2007, Potter resign his position with CIGNA and become a whistle blower. Later on he apologized to Micheal Moore for the industry's attack on him personally and his movie Sicko. I had always wondered why Wendell Potter had a change of mind and heart about his profession. It shows how many people live as they do in third world countries right here among us.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/10/warm-up-cook-recharge-a-smart-tool-born-of-hurricane-sandy-aftermath.html This item has come to the public attention because of Sandy and the two weeks without electricity in some areas that is going on right now. With all the weather changes going on in this country we should all prepare like we are flying solo and self sufficient. With this item you can cook, get a little heat and charge up the phone. The interesting comments after this article are worthy of reading.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Book Review
I have recently read a collection of letters and journals entries of Anne Morrow Lindbergh. It is a new publication using materializes from the years of 1947- 1986, basically her age from 40 though 80. The book is titled AGAINST WIND AND TIDE.
I have always found her writing to be thoughtful and well written but this book gives a chance to see how an individual grows and changes over a life time. As a wife, a mother and a writer she explores which demands she focuses on and writes of her successful or failures as the years go by. Anne Lindbergh always though of herself as a creative person and a writer in equal part to the role of wife and mother.
Charlie, her husband, the record now shows had numerous lady friends and fathered seven other children while having two relationships in Germany with two sisters. I read this book and there is not a hint of these events but there is a sense that he is gone more than he is home. I conclude in the end that it is not that he is running from this marriage but it is his nature of restlessness and his need for movement that keeps him from any settled home life. The letters over the years show that Anne becomes more interested in Charles as an editor to her work than a companion to her daily life. In the reality of life, she finds companionship with others and learns to enjoy being alone.
In the course of reading the book there are examples of how to write a thoughtful letter for each of life's tragedies, comforting letters, long letters of encouragement for young people in doubt of their own worth or abilities or going though misfortune. Her journal entries explores her feeling about unwanted pregnancies, endless demands of being famous and how to find that balance. The book ends as she is facing the loneliness of widowhood.
Half way though the book, I read sentences that something made me stop and reread them, then I started to write some down. Some examples are "her efficiency in too many ways tempts her in too many things"... or this one describing a gathering of people "everyone is in a honeymoon stage of excitement over each other" . Another example is "she just seems to have a music box playing in her all the time--very happy". My favorite " I feel I am wading through molasses, I do it so inefficiently and slowly. " This last one, about molasses, is the current period on my life.
After knowing the clear, hard fact about this woman and her marriage, the surface question would be why did she continue to stay married, my conclusion, they had a very deep respect for each other. They shared fame, tragedies and the early experiences of flying together, these formed a bond that carried them for a lifetime. In the end this shows, Anne keep Charles's secret about his terminally ill condition from everyone, as he wanted it. Charles planned out each and every detail about his finial year and days, they spend much of the last year together. He choice to be buried before the world knew of his death. No one explains the pain of being famous better than Ann has in this book.
This collection includes a copy of a speech she delivered at the Cosmopolitan Club, the topic was, ' Tasks at the End of Life'. Anne Lindbergh up in her years, suggested that life is like the game of musical chairs. "Life is full of starts and stops, stumbles and jerks, and suddenly confused by standstills." The speech goes on, how at times in life, we are confident about who we are and then they are times we stand alone. The periods of no movement at all, movement of panic, moments of insight and renew, they are all there, over a life time.
Lindbergh then continues the speech with her place, at that moment, of living alone and being a widow. She closes with the beauty of quoting poetry and reaching for the meaning of what life is about for her. The pure joy of the simplest things has the most meaning to her and she writes it so elegantly that for the rest of us, it is a piece we can reflect on and treasure.
I have always found her writing to be thoughtful and well written but this book gives a chance to see how an individual grows and changes over a life time. As a wife, a mother and a writer she explores which demands she focuses on and writes of her successful or failures as the years go by. Anne Lindbergh always though of herself as a creative person and a writer in equal part to the role of wife and mother.
Charlie, her husband, the record now shows had numerous lady friends and fathered seven other children while having two relationships in Germany with two sisters. I read this book and there is not a hint of these events but there is a sense that he is gone more than he is home. I conclude in the end that it is not that he is running from this marriage but it is his nature of restlessness and his need for movement that keeps him from any settled home life. The letters over the years show that Anne becomes more interested in Charles as an editor to her work than a companion to her daily life. In the reality of life, she finds companionship with others and learns to enjoy being alone.
In the course of reading the book there are examples of how to write a thoughtful letter for each of life's tragedies, comforting letters, long letters of encouragement for young people in doubt of their own worth or abilities or going though misfortune. Her journal entries explores her feeling about unwanted pregnancies, endless demands of being famous and how to find that balance. The book ends as she is facing the loneliness of widowhood.
Half way though the book, I read sentences that something made me stop and reread them, then I started to write some down. Some examples are "her efficiency in too many ways tempts her in too many things"... or this one describing a gathering of people "everyone is in a honeymoon stage of excitement over each other" . Another example is "she just seems to have a music box playing in her all the time--very happy". My favorite " I feel I am wading through molasses, I do it so inefficiently and slowly. " This last one, about molasses, is the current period on my life.
After knowing the clear, hard fact about this woman and her marriage, the surface question would be why did she continue to stay married, my conclusion, they had a very deep respect for each other. They shared fame, tragedies and the early experiences of flying together, these formed a bond that carried them for a lifetime. In the end this shows, Anne keep Charles's secret about his terminally ill condition from everyone, as he wanted it. Charles planned out each and every detail about his finial year and days, they spend much of the last year together. He choice to be buried before the world knew of his death. No one explains the pain of being famous better than Ann has in this book.
This collection includes a copy of a speech she delivered at the Cosmopolitan Club, the topic was, ' Tasks at the End of Life'. Anne Lindbergh up in her years, suggested that life is like the game of musical chairs. "Life is full of starts and stops, stumbles and jerks, and suddenly confused by standstills." The speech goes on, how at times in life, we are confident about who we are and then they are times we stand alone. The periods of no movement at all, movement of panic, moments of insight and renew, they are all there, over a life time.
Lindbergh then continues the speech with her place, at that moment, of living alone and being a widow. She closes with the beauty of quoting poetry and reaching for the meaning of what life is about for her. The pure joy of the simplest things has the most meaning to her and she writes it so elegantly that for the rest of us, it is a piece we can reflect on and treasure.
Friday, October 26, 2012
vote
The political farce has reached the point I could not turn on the
t.v. yesterday. Now I believe the election will not be clean and
decided so the results will be a period of confusion and shouting for
days. This is the last election of the old white male race in this
country and they know it. ...why else so much voter suppression?
GOP has used that tactic for the last three cycles. FL. in 2000 with 60,000 blacks knocked off the voting roles by Jeb Bush,,,the the machines in Ohio in 2004 that were counted in TN. and the computer expert died in a plane crash before the investigation really got under way. Each of those state made the difference in those elections. If the votes was not overwhelming for Obama in '08, he would have not won. There is strong evidence that some of the same things when on but the vote margins were too big to allow the upset to happen.
How is it that one of the candidates of a major party doesn't speak out about this voter suppression.
The Hispanic are fastest growing voting block, hardest working group with the most drive and they will not vote for a GOP this time. The Old Men's Club only see brown skin and don't even care about their interests.
Any woman that votes GOP believes in a man dominated, patriarchal society. This rape/abortion/birth control/ virginal probing/ front is really about control of women and their bodies. If any of these men were grabbed in the street, dragged into an alleyway, thrown to the garbage strewn ground, and multiply sodomized perhaps they would have a clearer idea about what rape really is. They probably would also know HIV for the rest of their lives. God wants this. What kind of head injury do these men have?
If the issue was truly about the value of life then these old white men would financially help young families raise children. There will be the money for head start, healthy food and great education for the poor. They would put the value of a child's life as the most important item on the budget each year aong with help t all families. The pentagon is the top money spender in the budget now. Those old white men are the ones, Jesus spoke about in the bible, the Pharisees.
There is a quiet but solidly growing chatter about taxing religious property now and it going to catch hold because of the loud voice the churches have had politically in this election. Church leaders know about the separation of church and state in this country and they have pushed it to the limit with most people out there. There is a minority of people that believe their morality is more important, superior to others, they don't understand the difference personal morality and legislated law.
GOP has used that tactic for the last three cycles. FL. in 2000 with 60,000 blacks knocked off the voting roles by Jeb Bush,,,the the machines in Ohio in 2004 that were counted in TN. and the computer expert died in a plane crash before the investigation really got under way. Each of those state made the difference in those elections. If the votes was not overwhelming for Obama in '08, he would have not won. There is strong evidence that some of the same things when on but the vote margins were too big to allow the upset to happen.
How is it that one of the candidates of a major party doesn't speak out about this voter suppression.
The Hispanic are fastest growing voting block, hardest working group with the most drive and they will not vote for a GOP this time. The Old Men's Club only see brown skin and don't even care about their interests.
Any woman that votes GOP believes in a man dominated, patriarchal society. This rape/abortion/birth control/ virginal probing/ front is really about control of women and their bodies. If any of these men were grabbed in the street, dragged into an alleyway, thrown to the garbage strewn ground, and multiply sodomized perhaps they would have a clearer idea about what rape really is. They probably would also know HIV for the rest of their lives. God wants this. What kind of head injury do these men have?
If the issue was truly about the value of life then these old white men would financially help young families raise children. There will be the money for head start, healthy food and great education for the poor. They would put the value of a child's life as the most important item on the budget each year aong with help t all families. The pentagon is the top money spender in the budget now. Those old white men are the ones, Jesus spoke about in the bible, the Pharisees.
There is a quiet but solidly growing chatter about taxing religious property now and it going to catch hold because of the loud voice the churches have had politically in this election. Church leaders know about the separation of church and state in this country and they have pushed it to the limit with most people out there. There is a minority of people that believe their morality is more important, superior to others, they don't understand the difference personal morality and legislated law.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Election
If the news about Free Port, Ill. and their connection to Bain Capital was not enough bad news last week this is worst. Bush got the Whitehouse twice under a cloud of illegal/questionable means. In today's climate with so many living on credit and under employed - a stolen election this time could be a revolution in the streets.
Romney family buys 2012 voting machines
Tagg Romney, the son of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney,
has purchased electronic voting machines that will be used in the 2012
elections in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington and Colorado.
"Late last month, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis at FreePress.org broke the story of the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital which, in July of 2011, completed a "strategic investment" to take over a fair share of the Austin-based e-voting machine company Hart Intercivic," according to independent journalist Brad Friedman.
But Friedman is not the only one to discover the connection between the Romney family, Bain Capital, and ownership of voting machines.
Truth out reports:
"Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.
In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who "owns" the White House."
Both The Nation and New York Times confirm the connection between the Romney family, Solamere and the Bain Capital investment in the voting machine company, Hart Intercivic, whose board of directors serve H.I.G. Capital.
"Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney.
The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes." Truth out added.
There are also political connections between Solamere and the Romney's. "Matt Blunt, the former Missouri governor who backed Mr. Romney in 2008, is a senior adviser to Solamere, as is Mitt Romney’s brother, Scott, a lawyer," according to the New York Times.
Voter ID and voter fraud have been top issues in the 2012 race, as have claims of Republican voter suppression. Mr. Romney's campaign has also been the subject of controversy over misleading ads, false claims, sketchy math on his tax plan, and overall vagueness on women's rights and other hot button issues.
Raising further questions of legitimacy in the Romney campaign is an audio recording recently made public, where Mitt Romney is heard asking independent business owners to apply pressure to their employees to influence their votes. What has also been made public are the emails those employers have sent to their employees with an implied threat that if they don't vote for Romney they may lose their jobs.
What it all says is that Mitt Romney, with the help of his family and Bain Capital connections, is more than willing to try to take the White House through illegitimate and highly unethical, if not specifically illegal means.
With each passing day, the character and campaign methods of Mitt Romney cast an ever-darker shadow over free and fair American elections.
Yet there is an irony in the Romney campaign that cannot be ignored. For all the noise the right-wing has made in questioning the legitimacy of Obama's presidency, there have been so many questionable efforts made to help put Romney in the White House, if he wins, there should be great dispute over whether his election could ever be called genuinely illegitimate.
The nagging question is why, if Mr. Romney truly has the qualities that American voters want in their president, does he have to go to such great and questionable lengths to try to win the election.
Romney family buys 2012 voting machines
"Late last month, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis at FreePress.org broke the story of the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital which, in July of 2011, completed a "strategic investment" to take over a fair share of the Austin-based e-voting machine company Hart Intercivic," according to independent journalist Brad Friedman.
But Friedman is not the only one to discover the connection between the Romney family, Bain Capital, and ownership of voting machines.
Truth out reports:
"Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.
In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall's election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who "owns" the White House."
Both The Nation and New York Times confirm the connection between the Romney family, Solamere and the Bain Capital investment in the voting machine company, Hart Intercivic, whose board of directors serve H.I.G. Capital.
"Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt's brother G. Scott Romney.
The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes." Truth out added.
There are also political connections between Solamere and the Romney's. "Matt Blunt, the former Missouri governor who backed Mr. Romney in 2008, is a senior adviser to Solamere, as is Mitt Romney’s brother, Scott, a lawyer," according to the New York Times.
Voter ID and voter fraud have been top issues in the 2012 race, as have claims of Republican voter suppression. Mr. Romney's campaign has also been the subject of controversy over misleading ads, false claims, sketchy math on his tax plan, and overall vagueness on women's rights and other hot button issues.
Raising further questions of legitimacy in the Romney campaign is an audio recording recently made public, where Mitt Romney is heard asking independent business owners to apply pressure to their employees to influence their votes. What has also been made public are the emails those employers have sent to their employees with an implied threat that if they don't vote for Romney they may lose their jobs.
What it all says is that Mitt Romney, with the help of his family and Bain Capital connections, is more than willing to try to take the White House through illegitimate and highly unethical, if not specifically illegal means.
With each passing day, the character and campaign methods of Mitt Romney cast an ever-darker shadow over free and fair American elections.
Yet there is an irony in the Romney campaign that cannot be ignored. For all the noise the right-wing has made in questioning the legitimacy of Obama's presidency, there have been so many questionable efforts made to help put Romney in the White House, if he wins, there should be great dispute over whether his election could ever be called genuinely illegitimate.
The nagging question is why, if Mr. Romney truly has the qualities that American voters want in their president, does he have to go to such great and questionable lengths to try to win the election.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Self destruct
I attended a support group for Caregivers last night. The take away from it was that it is depressing to get old in this country. The structures of our society are not in place to care for seniors unless you have unlimited funds to pay for them. It is assumed that, each person, each family has a private bank to fund what is necessary and those that are not in that situation, should be faceless. The same for the jobless, the returning VETs, the poor that can not afford a higher education or the young that need head start. The key to quality of life in this country based on owning a bank.
For twenty years my GOP friends has commented, "well the science is not sure on global warming". That propaganda of the oil company has been so successful, the lie is a main stream truth in the American conversation. It is stopped the research and development of progressive ways of living our lives on a massive scale. Now our globe has a fever and it probably is going to be sick for decades if not centuries.
Take one part of that picture and focus on our bodies. I am, 77% water, if I remember biology correctly. So everything that is in our oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water can pass though my body. I need that water to live. All those chemicals of Monsanto, DuPont, Jet fuel, the pharmaceuticals, the plastics, all that is in my 77% body water now. Each of us is a water reservor walking around consuming the nearest water. The neighbour using weed and feed, the spray on orchards, the plastic lining that soup can, the chemicals on my clothes to make it fire retarded, the pills the guy down the street takes, they are in my water supply now and in the food I eat.
How does a society fail so badly to protect itself from destruction?
For twenty years my GOP friends has commented, "well the science is not sure on global warming". That propaganda of the oil company has been so successful, the lie is a main stream truth in the American conversation. It is stopped the research and development of progressive ways of living our lives on a massive scale. Now our globe has a fever and it probably is going to be sick for decades if not centuries.
Take one part of that picture and focus on our bodies. I am, 77% water, if I remember biology correctly. So everything that is in our oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water can pass though my body. I need that water to live. All those chemicals of Monsanto, DuPont, Jet fuel, the pharmaceuticals, the plastics, all that is in my 77% body water now. Each of us is a water reservor walking around consuming the nearest water. The neighbour using weed and feed, the spray on orchards, the plastic lining that soup can, the chemicals on my clothes to make it fire retarded, the pills the guy down the street takes, they are in my water supply now and in the food I eat.
How does a society fail so badly to protect itself from destruction?
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
wired Brains
I know that our brains are wired by the time we are 20 or so and we become conservative or liberal in our thinking but just the same I have to post this I found.
Voters need to ask who Ryan represents. It is people who make a million dollars a year or more. Everything he says is intended to produce policy that benefits them, and which hurts working people. Millionaires don’t like having to pay for government-provided infrastructure, or health care for workers, and don’t like having to put up with unions. The rest of us like driving on roads without potholes, over bridges that don’t fall down, and not being bankrupted when we need an operation. Since most Americans would be crazy to vote for policies that only benefit our three million wealthiest, out of 310 million, Ryan tries to appeal to workers with religion (banning abortion). He needs to put together a coalition of millionaires and some religious workers in order to win. But even that wouldn’t be enough. He has to get people on his side who would be hurt by his policies. And that requires that he simply lie to them.
So here are some new lies he just retailed, along with a reiteration of my earlier refutation of points drawn from his stock speeches, which he put right back in his Convention speech.
1. Ryan blamed the US credit rating downgrade on President Obama. But it was caused by the Republican Congress’s threat not to raise the debt ceiling. [3]That is, the fault for the credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA belongs with… Paul Ryan.
2. Ryan continues to claim that President Obama said business owners did not build their own businesses. Obama said that business owners benefit from government infrastructure and programs, which they did not build. No small business owner has built an inter-state highway or bridge, but those are the means whereby their goods get to market. Ryan’s (and the GOP’s) talking point in this regard is a typical Karl Rove Big Lie, and among an informed electorate it ought to discredit them.
3. Ryan depicted Obamacare as virtually a turn to Soviet-style totalitarianism, as incompatible with liberal freedoms for the individual. But the logical conclusion is that Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, turned Massachusetts into a Gulag.
4. Ryan slammed President Obama for not implementing the deficit-cutting measures recommended by the Simpson-Bowles commission. But he himself voted against Simpson-Bowles. [4]
5. Ryan keeps attacking Prsident Obama’s stimulus program now [5]. But in 2002 when then President George W. Bush proposed stimulus spending, Ryan supported it. “What we’re trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed,”Ryan told MSNBC in 2002. Ryan says that the stimulus had not positive effects, while economists say it saved or created millions of jobs and pulled the US out of a near-Depression.
6. Even more embarrassing, in 2010, Ryan asked for $20 million in stimulus money from Obama for companies in his district, then repeatedly denied requesting stimulus funds. [6] He finally admitted he had done so, but continues to slam the stimulus program as a failure (even though the economy pulled out of a Depression as a result of it).
7. Ryan slammed President Obama for the closure of an auto plant [7] that closed in late 2008 under George W. Bush. Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, opposed Obama’s actual auto bailout, which was a great success and returned Detroit to profitability.
8. Paul Ryan charges that Barack Obama has ‘stolen’ $700 billion from medicare for his Obamacare. In fact, these expense reductions do not cut Medicare benefits, and, moreover, Romney and Ryan supported these reductions! [8] The difference is that they would give the savings to the affluent, whereas Obama uses them to cover the presently uninsured.
9. Ryan continues to push his longstanding plans for a steal-from-the-elderly-and-give-to-the-rich medicare plan, which President Obama warned would cost ordinary recipients over $6000 a year extra. Politifact checked and rated Obama’s charge as correct, though they noted [9] that the figures referred to CBO analyses of Ryan’s last plan, not his ‘new’ one, which hasn’t been subjected to similar analysis. Ryan certainly recently put forward a plan that would cost ordinary people that much extra.
10. Ryan neglected to note that under the tax plan he favors, Gov. Mitt Romney would pay less than 1% in annual federal taxes, highlighting Romney’s already low rate compared to ordinary Americans (slightly lower than Ryan’s own!) and putting the spotlight back where Ryan’s appointment was supposed to misdirect it.
Voters need to ask who Ryan represents. It is people who make a million dollars a year or more. Everything he says is intended to produce policy that benefits them, and which hurts working people. Millionaires don’t like having to pay for government-provided infrastructure, or health care for workers, and don’t like having to put up with unions. The rest of us like driving on roads without potholes, over bridges that don’t fall down, and not being bankrupted when we need an operation. Since most Americans would be crazy to vote for policies that only benefit our three million wealthiest, out of 310 million, Ryan tries to appeal to workers with religion (banning abortion). He needs to put together a coalition of millionaires and some religious workers in order to win. But even that wouldn’t be enough. He has to get people on his side who would be hurt by his policies. And that requires that he simply lie to them.
So here are some new lies he just retailed, along with a reiteration of my earlier refutation of points drawn from his stock speeches, which he put right back in his Convention speech.
1. Ryan blamed the US credit rating downgrade on President Obama. But it was caused by the Republican Congress’s threat not to raise the debt ceiling. [3]That is, the fault for the credit rating downgrade from AAA to AA belongs with… Paul Ryan.
2. Ryan continues to claim that President Obama said business owners did not build their own businesses. Obama said that business owners benefit from government infrastructure and programs, which they did not build. No small business owner has built an inter-state highway or bridge, but those are the means whereby their goods get to market. Ryan’s (and the GOP’s) talking point in this regard is a typical Karl Rove Big Lie, and among an informed electorate it ought to discredit them.
3. Ryan depicted Obamacare as virtually a turn to Soviet-style totalitarianism, as incompatible with liberal freedoms for the individual. But the logical conclusion is that Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, turned Massachusetts into a Gulag.
4. Ryan slammed President Obama for not implementing the deficit-cutting measures recommended by the Simpson-Bowles commission. But he himself voted against Simpson-Bowles. [4]
5. Ryan keeps attacking Prsident Obama’s stimulus program now [5]. But in 2002 when then President George W. Bush proposed stimulus spending, Ryan supported it. “What we’re trying to accomplish today with the passage of this third stimulus package is to create jobs and help the unemployed,”Ryan told MSNBC in 2002. Ryan says that the stimulus had not positive effects, while economists say it saved or created millions of jobs and pulled the US out of a near-Depression.
6. Even more embarrassing, in 2010, Ryan asked for $20 million in stimulus money from Obama for companies in his district, then repeatedly denied requesting stimulus funds. [6] He finally admitted he had done so, but continues to slam the stimulus program as a failure (even though the economy pulled out of a Depression as a result of it).
7. Ryan slammed President Obama for the closure of an auto plant [7] that closed in late 2008 under George W. Bush. Ryan’s running mate, Mitt Romney, opposed Obama’s actual auto bailout, which was a great success and returned Detroit to profitability.
8. Paul Ryan charges that Barack Obama has ‘stolen’ $700 billion from medicare for his Obamacare. In fact, these expense reductions do not cut Medicare benefits, and, moreover, Romney and Ryan supported these reductions! [8] The difference is that they would give the savings to the affluent, whereas Obama uses them to cover the presently uninsured.
9. Ryan continues to push his longstanding plans for a steal-from-the-elderly-and-give-to-the-rich medicare plan, which President Obama warned would cost ordinary recipients over $6000 a year extra. Politifact checked and rated Obama’s charge as correct, though they noted [9] that the figures referred to CBO analyses of Ryan’s last plan, not his ‘new’ one, which hasn’t been subjected to similar analysis. Ryan certainly recently put forward a plan that would cost ordinary people that much extra.
10. Ryan neglected to note that under the tax plan he favors, Gov. Mitt Romney would pay less than 1% in annual federal taxes, highlighting Romney’s already low rate compared to ordinary Americans (slightly lower than Ryan’s own!) and putting the spotlight back where Ryan’s appointment was supposed to misdirect it.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Tell big lies
The biggest lie of them all the past week was when M.Romney said we all wanted Obama to succeed. His VP attending a meeting on Obama's first day as president as part of a group that cared more about their party that the middle class, the economy of the US, pain of housing market or college cost.
Fri Apr 27, 2012 at 09:26 AM PDT
Darrell Issa: Hold Hearings To "Expel" Ryan, Cantor & Other GOP Who Plotted To Undermine U.S Economy
It's no secret now that GOP in Congress literally plotted to undermine U.S. economy during President Obama's Inauguration.
In Robert Draper's book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives" Draper wrote that during a four hour, "invitation only" meeting with GOP Minister of Propaganda, Frank Luntz, Senior GOP Congressmen plotted to undermine and destroy America's Economy.
In Robert Draper's book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives" Draper wrote that during a four hour, "invitation only" meeting with GOP Minister of Propaganda, Frank Luntz, Senior GOP Congressmen plotted to undermine and destroy America's Economy.
The Guest List:During the four hour meeting, the senior GOP members plotted to bring Congress to a standstill regardless how much it would hurt the American Economy by pledging to obstruct and block President Obama on all legislation.
Frank Luntz - GOP Minister of Propaganda
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA),
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX),
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX),
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)
Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA),
Sen. Jim DeMint (SC-R),
Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ-R),
Sen. Tom Coburn (OK-R),
Sen. John Ensign (NV-R) and
Sen. Bob Corker (TN-R). Non-lawmakers present Newt Gingrich
These members of Congress were not simply airing their complaints
regarding the other party's political platform for four long hours. No,
these men were literally plotting to undermine and destroy the U.S.
Economy.
On that date, January 20, 2009, America had been losing over 750,000 jobs per month because of policies these Congressional Leaders had enacted and their goal, their goal that night, was to plot ways to undermine any and all legislation that would pull American families up and out of the economic calamity they had helped create.
Everyone of these members of Congress supported the very Bush/Cheney policies that caused America to teeter on the brink of the 2nd Great Depression and caused the 2007 US Economic Meltdown.
These guys can't say they were sitting at dinner for four hours discussing any objection to Stimulus Legislation and raising the Debt Ceiling because of political ideology as each one of them voted yes on Bush/Cheney Stimulus Bills and yes every time Bush/Cheney wanted to raise the Debt Ceiling.
America had been at war since 2001. The Constitution says a person can only be guilty of "Treason" while America is engaged in war -- we are at war. The Constitution says "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. I believe that plotting to undermine the President of the United States by destroying and weakening the US Economy directly aids the enemy. Treason?
As for impeachment, only one Senator has ever been impeached.
These members of Congress, are paid to do The People's work. They are not paid to plot ways to undermine American families by destroying the US Economy.
Their acts that night are disgusting, repulsive, unbecoming of a member of Congress and they should be expelled from Congress for their covert plot to destroy and weaken America's Economy and for obstructing The People's work from getting done.
I urge everyone to contact Darrell Issa and tell him to:
Oh, the next time you hear the GOP say "Obama wants to destroy the economy" or "Government Shutdown" ... remember ... as Newt Gingrich said after their four hour dinner on January 20, 2009 "You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown."
On that date, January 20, 2009, America had been losing over 750,000 jobs per month because of policies these Congressional Leaders had enacted and their goal, their goal that night, was to plot ways to undermine any and all legislation that would pull American families up and out of the economic calamity they had helped create.
Everyone of these members of Congress supported the very Bush/Cheney policies that caused America to teeter on the brink of the 2nd Great Depression and caused the 2007 US Economic Meltdown.
These guys can't say they were sitting at dinner for four hours discussing any objection to Stimulus Legislation and raising the Debt Ceiling because of political ideology as each one of them voted yes on Bush/Cheney Stimulus Bills and yes every time Bush/Cheney wanted to raise the Debt Ceiling.
Here's how they all voted:Ahhh ... but at their dinner they plotted to suddenly stop supporting any stimulus legislation:
-- "Yes" to Bush/Cheney January 2008 Stimulus
-- "Yes" to Bush/Cheney bailing out Bear Stern
-- "Yes" to Bush/Cheney bailing out AIG
-- "Yes" to Bush/Cheney TARP (sept 2008)
-- "Yes" to Bush/Cheney TARP (oct 2008) And these same members of Congress:
-- Supported Bush/Cheney keeping cost of two wars out of the Budget
-- Supported Bush/Cheney spending $4Trillion on Top 1% Tax Cuts while trying to pay down Debt on Two Wars
"Show united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies." Rep Kevin McCarthy said,Not only did these Senior members of Congress plot to destroy the American Economy more than it already was destroyed? They actually carried out their mission:
"We've gotta challenge them on every single bill."
- Every one of these Senior members of Congress have threatened Government Shutdown over things like:
not funding planned parenthood, not raising the Debt Ceiling which, in-and-of-itself, would cause US Economic turmoil. ... oh, and stay current, these same House GOP members of Congress are still, today, threatening a Government Shutdown.
- Senators: Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn, John Ensign, and Bob Corker have
- Filibustered more Bills than any Congress combined in US History.
- Voted NO on every single piece of Legislation brought to the Floor including: NO on Al Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment, NO on Lilly Ledbetter, NO on Fair Pay Act.
- Representatives: Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Pete Sessions, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra and Dan LungrenYes, these Republican Congressional leaders used Karl Rove's playbook and falsely accused the President of what they were guilty of: Intentionally Undermining the US Economy. And, again, in keeping with Karl Rove propaganda, they chant the same lie over and over and over again.
- Voted NO on every single piece of Legislation; including NO on increasing FEMA during natural disasters.
- Have been on tv constantly chanting the lie that they were guilty of ... the lie that "President Obama's policies undermine the US Economy."
America had been at war since 2001. The Constitution says a person can only be guilty of "Treason" while America is engaged in war -- we are at war. The Constitution says "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. I believe that plotting to undermine the President of the United States by destroying and weakening the US Economy directly aids the enemy. Treason?
As for impeachment, only one Senator has ever been impeached.
These members of Congress, are paid to do The People's work. They are not paid to plot ways to undermine American families by destroying the US Economy.
Their acts that night are disgusting, repulsive, unbecoming of a member of Congress and they should be expelled from Congress for their covert plot to destroy and weaken America's Economy and for obstructing The People's work from getting done.
I urge everyone to contact Darrell Issa and tell him to:
Hold Hearings to Expel the following people from Congress for plotting to undermine the President by destroy to the US Economy:I don't know if they committed Treason, but I do know they are Traitors and Traitors have no business writing or voting on US Laws.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA),
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX),
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX),
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)
Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA),
Sen. Jim DeMint (SC-R),
Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ-R),
Sen. Tom Coburn (OK-R),
Sen. John Ensign (NV-R) and
Sen. Bob Corker (TN-R).
Oh, the next time you hear the GOP say "Obama wants to destroy the economy" or "Government Shutdown" ... remember ... as Newt Gingrich said after their four hour dinner on January 20, 2009 "You’ll remember this as the day the seeds of 2012 were sown."
To Translate GINGRICH:
"You'll remember this day as they day we became Traitors to the United States."
Originally posted to cc on Fri Apr 27, 2012 at 09:26 AM PDT.
Also republished by ClassWarfare Newsletter: WallStreet VS Working Class Global Occupy movement.
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