Ran across this video today regarding health care reform.
Just a few points: Medicare IS government run & funded. So enough with the bullsh** whining about government run medicine. It's already a reality. D'uh!!!
If you have heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer and other diseases, your insurance provider can kick you out for any reason they want. That's called "rationing" too. Gee.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Is The US On The Brink Of Fascism?
I ran across this article at Truthout and felt it was worthwhile to share:
www.truthout.org/080909A
We must be careful to not let our country fall into fascism.
On second thought, sharing this is mandatory according to the dictates of my conscience.
www.truthout.org/080909A
We must be careful to not let our country fall into fascism.
On second thought, sharing this is mandatory according to the dictates of my conscience.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Evil Lies, Evil Behavior
Lets stop the lies and evil behavior around health care reform.
I've read the bill that is pending regarding health care reform and there is not one word in there to substantiate claims that the Republican right and health care industry is putting out against health care reform like 'death panels' or restricting access. It is evil of pundits like Rush Limbaugh and politicos like Sarah Palin to be acting on behalf of the health care industry against the common good of the average American citizen by fomenting violent protests at town hall meetings across the country.
It is evil to incite people to go into any town meeting with the goal of disrupting the proceedings and to cause such a ruckus that the meeting is silenced. Silence speech and you silence democracy. Sean Hannity says "Become part of a mob!" But should a mob form and become violent with people being injured, lemme tell ya, Sean Hannity will NOT be paying for the medical care of the injured. Sean Hannity will be able to claim "My hands are clean, I didn't do anything wrong." He just encouraged people to join a mob without any thought to what happens when the mood of the mob changes for the worse.
It is evil to incite people to the point that they are calling in death threats to congressmen because sure as the sun rises in the East, this will be some fool who will take it in their hands to try to carry out those threats.
Shame on you for encouraging evil for the sake of patronage and money from the health insurance industries. You're like war profiteers and you oughta be ashamed of yourselves.
I've read the bill that is pending regarding health care reform and there is not one word in there to substantiate claims that the Republican right and health care industry is putting out against health care reform like 'death panels' or restricting access. It is evil of pundits like Rush Limbaugh and politicos like Sarah Palin to be acting on behalf of the health care industry against the common good of the average American citizen by fomenting violent protests at town hall meetings across the country.
It is evil to incite people to go into any town meeting with the goal of disrupting the proceedings and to cause such a ruckus that the meeting is silenced. Silence speech and you silence democracy. Sean Hannity says "Become part of a mob!" But should a mob form and become violent with people being injured, lemme tell ya, Sean Hannity will NOT be paying for the medical care of the injured. Sean Hannity will be able to claim "My hands are clean, I didn't do anything wrong." He just encouraged people to join a mob without any thought to what happens when the mood of the mob changes for the worse.
It is evil to incite people to the point that they are calling in death threats to congressmen because sure as the sun rises in the East, this will be some fool who will take it in their hands to try to carry out those threats.
Shame on you for encouraging evil for the sake of patronage and money from the health insurance industries. You're like war profiteers and you oughta be ashamed of yourselves.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Cogitations
Good morning. How're you all doing today?
It's too bloody hot right now. Our NM weather has been near record breaking and our night time temps are not doing their usual 20+ degree drop from daytime temperatures. It seems like I've sweat more this summer than in previous ones.
I love camping. Some of the camping chores I'm not so fond of... like the post camping clean up. We discovered last weekend that a bottle of cooking oil had leaked into the camp kitchen box we use. There was a film of oil on most everything on the bottom of the box so, after getting home, I got to pull everything out and scrub the box out with hot soapy water. Then I got to scrub everything I pulled out of the box too! The bonus for doing this chore was getting to reclaim some wooden spoons that rightfully belong in my kitchen, not the camp kitchen! Ha!
Over the weekend camping I knit up a new washcloth. Just your basic square, knit stitch cotton wash cloth. Can't decide if I'll use it for a face cloth or for the kitchen. I'm also currently knitting up a couple cotton pads for my Swiffer. It is so hard to justify the expense of throwaway pads.
There was a story in Truthout about Bush & Rove and the firings of the six US Attorneys a couple years ago. Now, I worked as a temp in the city law office where David Iglesias once worked so I'm damned sure that Iglesias was doing a fine, ethically balanced job as U.S. Attorney. His character as a human being and as an attorney is exceptional and it saddened me to see politicos try to carry out the kind of hatched job on him that they did.
One of my favorite people on the planet, John Corbin, is suffering from cancer and dying. Some of you may know him from Sulpher Springs, NM, various SCA events, pagan events and Burning Man and even the military and NM Tech. If you know him, give him a shout before he passes to the Summerlands. His sons or daughters will read your messages of love and affection to him!
I got ditched by one of the people who watched this blog because I don't comment on his that often. Sigh. Do we really need to comment to each and every post someone makes in their blogs when we visit? Does that make us more real or valid?
It's too bloody hot right now. Our NM weather has been near record breaking and our night time temps are not doing their usual 20+ degree drop from daytime temperatures. It seems like I've sweat more this summer than in previous ones.
I love camping. Some of the camping chores I'm not so fond of... like the post camping clean up. We discovered last weekend that a bottle of cooking oil had leaked into the camp kitchen box we use. There was a film of oil on most everything on the bottom of the box so, after getting home, I got to pull everything out and scrub the box out with hot soapy water. Then I got to scrub everything I pulled out of the box too! The bonus for doing this chore was getting to reclaim some wooden spoons that rightfully belong in my kitchen, not the camp kitchen! Ha!
Over the weekend camping I knit up a new washcloth. Just your basic square, knit stitch cotton wash cloth. Can't decide if I'll use it for a face cloth or for the kitchen. I'm also currently knitting up a couple cotton pads for my Swiffer. It is so hard to justify the expense of throwaway pads.
There was a story in Truthout about Bush & Rove and the firings of the six US Attorneys a couple years ago. Now, I worked as a temp in the city law office where David Iglesias once worked so I'm damned sure that Iglesias was doing a fine, ethically balanced job as U.S. Attorney. His character as a human being and as an attorney is exceptional and it saddened me to see politicos try to carry out the kind of hatched job on him that they did.
One of my favorite people on the planet, John Corbin, is suffering from cancer and dying. Some of you may know him from Sulpher Springs, NM, various SCA events, pagan events and Burning Man and even the military and NM Tech. If you know him, give him a shout before he passes to the Summerlands. His sons or daughters will read your messages of love and affection to him!
I got ditched by one of the people who watched this blog because I don't comment on his that often. Sigh. Do we really need to comment to each and every post someone makes in their blogs when we visit? Does that make us more real or valid?
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Prof. Gates' Neighborhood
After many days of watching the news about Professor Henry Louis Gates arrest at home by the Cambridge police, I found myself wondering about the neighbor who called in the alleged burglary and wondering why the heck they didn't recognize Professor Gates as their neighbor. Why didn't they go up to him and his driver and ask him what was up? Why didn't the neighbor bother to have cultivated enough of a neighborly relationship to know he was their neighbor and that he had a legitimate right to be trying to get into his own home? So I'm just wondering what's up with that and why that particular element hasn't been part of the public discussion.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Put Up My First eBay Item For Sale Today
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Good Work Walter 1916-2009
Walter Cronkite. The best news anchor of my lifetime. Affectionately called "Uncle Walter" by so many of us even though we had no relation to him. Superlatives abound for him and his exemplary work. Rest In Peace, you did good. Thank you.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Some People Shouldn't Belong...
I was reading an article from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) Thursday about how the military has a deeply entrenched subculture of members who openly support or identify themselves as part of white separatist and/or neo-Nazi groups. If you click on the pics of the guys in the article, you will see some of their profiles stating their racist or national socialist leanings.
As a veteran, I got a real problem with that! I don't think those people should be part of the American armed forces. Their loyalties are not to the U.S. Constitution or the American people. I think they ought to be put out of the military with bad conduct and even dishonorable discharges for violating their enlistment oaths. Racist and neo-Nazi organizations *are* domestic enemies.
I sure don't want those people able to use the military to develop warcraft skills that they will then be able to pass along to others and that they are willing to turn against their fellow Americans.
What to do about them in the military? Call your congress critters and senators and demand an investigation and demand legislation banning these people from enlisting in our armed forces. Demand that existing military members who are parts of such organizations be discharged immediately.
To write your congress people: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
To write your senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Proportion: Iran and The Death of Michael Jackson.
The world is really topsy turvy to me right now. Michael Jackson's death is bigger news than what is happening in Iran.
There is plenty being written on Jackson's life (which I've believed was sad and lonely even when he was a child performer) and death -- by all kinds of folks who want to dig at the nut of 'what does it all mean now?' and that's not for me to figure out. I enjoyed his music and his huge talent and that will be missed. In some ways I think perhaps his death was actually a mercy to him, however premature.
But Iran is something for me to try to figure out since I like to think of myself as both an American and a citizen of the world. I was 25, fresh out of the Air Force and in my first semester of college when the 1979 revolution and Hostage Crisis in which American embassy personnel were taken on November 24th and held for 444 days. The hardliner Khomeni took power and we westerners started learning how little we really understood about American and British foreign policy in the Middle East not to mention the meddling we did to preserve our access to Iran's oil resources.
Some of my acquaintances at college were students from Iran and I remember them being scared of American backlash. They weren't at fault and didn't support the revolution or Khomeni's regime, but there was always some jerk willing to stop by their table at the Frontier restaurant were more than happy to demonstrate their own ignorance, bias and racism on a near daily basis with some vile spew.
It was embarrassing that my own country men and women were capable of such foolishness but it certainly was not surprising given the levels of racism against minorities that had existed here for so long. I suspected at the time that for Iran repression was going to become the norm and I sure didn't wish that on anyone. But for all of that, I was pretty ignorant myself. Really. All I knew about Iran was that it was a bit about the regional antiquarian art from back when it was the Persian empire, that it gave birth to Omar Khayam and his beautiful poetry, notably The Rubyiat, and that Islam was the dominant religion. The rest of what I knew was the usual stuff a kid learns when they study geography - languages spoken in the country, where the major cities were, general info on agriculture and other resources. I'm not a world traveller... I've always been a bit too poor for that kind of life, yet the rest of the world still matters to me.
So 'lo many years pass and Iran stays in the news, especially when there are new elections. In the mean time, there were semi-regular news stories about how repressive the government had become so when news of an election with the more moderate Mousavi was on the slate, I joined the many who hoped that -- if the election was fair -- it might lead to more freedoms for the Iranian people. Now we know different. The election was stolen on a scale that beggared either of Bush's stolen elections. Once the protests started in the streets, pro-Ahmadinejad supporters turned into thugs wielding truncheons, pipes and more against their countrymen and women. I think if the number of votes exeeded the number of elegible voters on the scale it did in Iran, I'd be out protesting in our streets too! Talk about insulting people's intelligence!
Some of the higher clerics are even saying that people who participated in the protests should be executed. And that should concern us -- it should concern people of goodwill everywhere. The bread and circuses of a celebrity's death does little to shape the world yet does much to divert our attention from larger things. What happens in places like Iran are much more important in the long run. I support a free Iran.
There is plenty being written on Jackson's life (which I've believed was sad and lonely even when he was a child performer) and death -- by all kinds of folks who want to dig at the nut of 'what does it all mean now?' and that's not for me to figure out. I enjoyed his music and his huge talent and that will be missed. In some ways I think perhaps his death was actually a mercy to him, however premature.
But Iran is something for me to try to figure out since I like to think of myself as both an American and a citizen of the world. I was 25, fresh out of the Air Force and in my first semester of college when the 1979 revolution and Hostage Crisis in which American embassy personnel were taken on November 24th and held for 444 days. The hardliner Khomeni took power and we westerners started learning how little we really understood about American and British foreign policy in the Middle East not to mention the meddling we did to preserve our access to Iran's oil resources.
Some of my acquaintances at college were students from Iran and I remember them being scared of American backlash. They weren't at fault and didn't support the revolution or Khomeni's regime, but there was always some jerk willing to stop by their table at the Frontier restaurant were more than happy to demonstrate their own ignorance, bias and racism on a near daily basis with some vile spew.
It was embarrassing that my own country men and women were capable of such foolishness but it certainly was not surprising given the levels of racism against minorities that had existed here for so long. I suspected at the time that for Iran repression was going to become the norm and I sure didn't wish that on anyone. But for all of that, I was pretty ignorant myself. Really. All I knew about Iran was that it was a bit about the regional antiquarian art from back when it was the Persian empire, that it gave birth to Omar Khayam and his beautiful poetry, notably The Rubyiat, and that Islam was the dominant religion. The rest of what I knew was the usual stuff a kid learns when they study geography - languages spoken in the country, where the major cities were, general info on agriculture and other resources. I'm not a world traveller... I've always been a bit too poor for that kind of life, yet the rest of the world still matters to me.
So 'lo many years pass and Iran stays in the news, especially when there are new elections. In the mean time, there were semi-regular news stories about how repressive the government had become so when news of an election with the more moderate Mousavi was on the slate, I joined the many who hoped that -- if the election was fair -- it might lead to more freedoms for the Iranian people. Now we know different. The election was stolen on a scale that beggared either of Bush's stolen elections. Once the protests started in the streets, pro-Ahmadinejad supporters turned into thugs wielding truncheons, pipes and more against their countrymen and women. I think if the number of votes exeeded the number of elegible voters on the scale it did in Iran, I'd be out protesting in our streets too! Talk about insulting people's intelligence!
Some of the higher clerics are even saying that people who participated in the protests should be executed. And that should concern us -- it should concern people of goodwill everywhere. The bread and circuses of a celebrity's death does little to shape the world yet does much to divert our attention from larger things. What happens in places like Iran are much more important in the long run. I support a free Iran.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tidbits
Did any of you see that pic of the Iranian soccer players with the green wristbands showing their support for Mousavi? I thought to myself, "When they get home, they're gonna be in soooo much trouble." I was right. Saw in the news today that four of them have been "retired" for life. That's just wrong. I know its wrong, you know its wrong, the world knows its wrong. Just as wrong as the life bleeding out of a young woman after a single shot to the heart. It sure makes me wonder why we Americans didn't have the guts to take to the streets nine years ago when Bush stole the election.
Earlier in May, I was just sick and depressed about everything. Even the disarray in our home. The household disarray has been cleared up significantly and it is a more relaxing environment to be in. I'm trying to keep on top of it so it doesn't revert back.
Camping is going to be the activity of the summer. Jim and I have already gone out once with our coven to a sweet spot up past Pena Blanca and I found a wonderful old volcanic hoodoo there that I got a nice picture of and this last weekend we went to the Paliza group campgrounds in the Jemez (pron.: HAY-mez) mountains for the summer solstice. Jim did a workshop on solar ovens Saturday morning, but we were unable to do a demonstration of solar cooking because it was raining! We got nearly an inch of rain. Luckily the pavilion we were under kept us plenty dry.
Earlier in May, I was just sick and depressed about everything. Even the disarray in our home. The household disarray has been cleared up significantly and it is a more relaxing environment to be in. I'm trying to keep on top of it so it doesn't revert back.
Camping is going to be the activity of the summer. Jim and I have already gone out once with our coven to a sweet spot up past Pena Blanca and I found a wonderful old volcanic hoodoo there that I got a nice picture of and this last weekend we went to the Paliza group campgrounds in the Jemez (pron.: HAY-mez) mountains for the summer solstice. Jim did a workshop on solar ovens Saturday morning, but we were unable to do a demonstration of solar cooking because it was raining! We got nearly an inch of rain. Luckily the pavilion we were under kept us plenty dry.
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