So, here we go again. Another Senator is being investigated on bribery charges. This time it is the Senate’s senior Republican (oh, another republican!), Ted Stevens of Alaska.
He has been implicated by Bill Allen, the founder of VECO, Corp, an Alaska-based oil field services and engineering company. His company has reaped tens of millions of dollars in federal contracts. Gee, do you think it is possible that some of this money he ‘reaped’ from Washington might have been redirected into Stevens pockets?
Stevens has been under federal investigation for a 2000 renovation project that more than doubled the size of his home in Girdwood, Alaska. And guess who ‘oversaw’ the project, Bill Allen. Mr. Allen has already pled guilty to bribing Alaska state legislators. Now, we are seeing the other part of the bribery scheme. We have the person who wants the money, Bill Allen, the person who can provide the money, Senator Ted Stevens, and the means to make it all ‘look legitimate’, a construction project. It’s a classic as far as schemes go.
You can bet this is not the first “project” these two have put their scheming heads together on.
And lets not forget the ‘vital’ link in getting these two greedy thieves together. The ‘pimps’ of Washington’s game of ‘funds misdirection’. The lobbyists. There is always a lobbyist involved. This time it is Anchorage lobbyist William Bobrick who already pled guilty to federal corruption charges.
There are also three current and former state legislators who face bribery and conspiracy charges as a result of this probe.
A little history on Ted Stevens shows that in 2005 he backed legislation to build a $223 million dollar bridge that would have allowed the residents of Alaska’s Gravina Island, all 50 of them, to drive to the mainland instead of having to take the ferry. What a great guy this Ted Stevens is that he would direct that kind of money towards 50 people. Of course, this was more than likely a ‘cover’ for him and his buddies in the construction ‘services’ field to collect some additional monies for themselves. Luckily someone in Congress was able to get this piece of ‘pork’ rescinded and that money was not wasted on this project. Although, it was probably wasted on something else.
Stevens had, at one time, been the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where he no doubt ‘learned’ how to dole out large sums of money and began to see how easy it would be to send some in his direction. A person in that position collects a lot of ‘friends’ and ‘opportunities’ to ‘use’ the money available to him. After all, it isn’t any good if you don’t spend it.
We as taxpayers are paying way too much in taxes as indicated by the amount of money that can be wasted on things like ‘bridges to nowhere’ and renovating Senators homes and ‘beautification projects’ in neighborhoods that already have more than enough money to pay for it themselves.
Ted Stevens has represented Alaska since 1968. He was probably a good man with good intentions when he was first voted into office. But after holding this position for this long a person starts to get so comfortable that he begins thinking he is invulnerable and beyond reproach. This leads to the belief that he can ‘get away with’ what ever he wants to. And this, of course, feeds the greed.
The fact that it took him this long to get caught is a tribute to how well he has played the game of politics. Apparently he did not ‘execute’ his plan well enough, because he got caught. Maybe he spent the money too blatantly, too quickly and it caught someone’s attention. Maybe he involved too many people and the word got out. Whatever it was that got him noticed, other thieves in Washington will heed these lessons and therefore become a little more difficult to catch.
While we are discussing this, latest in a long list of crooked senators, there are others sitting back smugly smiling to themselves because they have not yet been caught. And I am sure they are convinced they won’t be. Hopefully, that situation will change, soon.
Hmmm, I wonder how ‘close’ to Bush this Stevens guy is. Well, we will know soon enough if Bush stands behind him no matter what.
Now lets see how long justice can be dragged out before punishing these characters.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sensors to tell you that you forgot your child?
This is just unbelievable. Someone is advocating that car makers put sensors in new cars to remind parents that they ‘forgot’ their child in their car.
This is so ludicrous, that it is laughable.
This someone is Janette Fennell, president and founder of Kids and Cars. She founded this company because there are stupid adults out there passing themselves off as ‘caring’ parents who are leaving their kids in cars to die from hypothermia and heat exhaustion. I’ll bet if they left a pet in their car they would at least leave the window down a little bit for them.
I think it is great that someone wants to do something to prevent this tragedy from happening in the future. But forcing everyone to pay a higher price for a new car because some careless twit cannot be bothered to ‘remember’ they have a child is just wrong.
Educate these ‘clueless’, ‘careless’ adults. Punish these ‘neglectful’ stupid people who obviously don’t take parenting seriously enough to raise a child. Don’t give them some device to blame their ‘short-comings’ on when they ‘forget’ their own child.
Their 'forgetfulness' is ‘reckless homicide’ plain and simple.
There are already devices on the market to remind these selfish morons that they have a child in their car.
I cannot imagine being so caught up in anything else that I would forget my child in my car. This is the height of self-involvement.
First of all, if this parent was truly ‘caring’ how could they ever possibly ‘forget’ they have a child in their car? How the hell can this ‘accidentally’ happen?
People this stupid should not be allowed to procreate.
This is so ludicrous, that it is laughable.
This someone is Janette Fennell, president and founder of Kids and Cars. She founded this company because there are stupid adults out there passing themselves off as ‘caring’ parents who are leaving their kids in cars to die from hypothermia and heat exhaustion. I’ll bet if they left a pet in their car they would at least leave the window down a little bit for them.
I think it is great that someone wants to do something to prevent this tragedy from happening in the future. But forcing everyone to pay a higher price for a new car because some careless twit cannot be bothered to ‘remember’ they have a child is just wrong.
Educate these ‘clueless’, ‘careless’ adults. Punish these ‘neglectful’ stupid people who obviously don’t take parenting seriously enough to raise a child. Don’t give them some device to blame their ‘short-comings’ on when they ‘forget’ their own child.
Their 'forgetfulness' is ‘reckless homicide’ plain and simple.
There are already devices on the market to remind these selfish morons that they have a child in their car.
I cannot imagine being so caught up in anything else that I would forget my child in my car. This is the height of self-involvement.
First of all, if this parent was truly ‘caring’ how could they ever possibly ‘forget’ they have a child in their car? How the hell can this ‘accidentally’ happen?
People this stupid should not be allowed to procreate.
Film footage of police chase.
Do we really need to watch the police chasing a ‘suspect’? Are we really that starved for the possibility of carnage resulting from a traffic accident that these bozos will more than likely cause?
Is this what is passing for ‘hard’ news these days?
Do we really ‘need’ six helicopters filming the same chase?
The NTSB is investigating why two news helicopters crashed into each other in Phoenix AZ and tragically (senselessly) killed four individuals while filming a car chase, of all things. Okay, let’s see if we can help. Six helicopters crowded the sky trying to get ‘exclusive’ film footage of some blockheaded, ‘no-class’, fool thinking he can outrun police radios, so that a violence-desensitized, gore-hungry public can be ‘thrilled’ when this dirt bag causes injury and possible death to some innocent person who just happened to be in the way.
Wow. That sentence is just brimming over with topics to blog about. Thank-you, one and all.
To make things a little simpler, let’s put the blame on ‘human error’. Yeah, that’s it. Hey, NTSB it was a freaking traffic jam in the sky and the humans were not paying attention to what they were doing.
How about all of you news outlets, that own or lease helicopters and are not afraid to waste fuel on this oh so excellent pursuit of ‘news’, put your collective heads together and come up with a plan to have just one helicopter up there feeding the footage, as it happens, to all the stations in your market at the same time? Believe me when I say, nobody cares about ‘exclusivity’ but you.
This way the media gets what it wants and those individuals who have nothing better to do get what they want. Plus we get the added bonus of not senselessly loosing any more lives in the name of ‘bringing the news to you first’.
I am not an insensitive person, I think losing these four individuals in this manner was tragic. They were just doing their jobs. Their families have 'senselessly' suffered a great loss that will never leave them.
I have a problem with the individuals sitting back at the news stations who think this is a credible pursuit of news. The individuals who sent these news crews out to get the footage of this chase. They think they have to show it just because it is happening now. They think they have to show it because someone else is showing it and if they don't show it too then they might 'lose' some viewers to their 'competitors'.
I also have a problem with the police participating in these chases. Most cities these days have helicopters to chase these guys and they can radio to the ground units on where to go after the 'suspect' stops running. Perhaps they can use the news helicopters. Chasing these fools in this manner would at least prevent the police from directly causing an accident.
And of course, the idiot who thinks he can outrun the police. Hey fool, they have radios. There are more of them than you. You cannot get away. If you really want to escape paying for your crime then shoot yourself and save the rest of us the time and expense of having to deal with your worthless ass.
Is this what is passing for ‘hard’ news these days?
Do we really ‘need’ six helicopters filming the same chase?
The NTSB is investigating why two news helicopters crashed into each other in Phoenix AZ and tragically (senselessly) killed four individuals while filming a car chase, of all things. Okay, let’s see if we can help. Six helicopters crowded the sky trying to get ‘exclusive’ film footage of some blockheaded, ‘no-class’, fool thinking he can outrun police radios, so that a violence-desensitized, gore-hungry public can be ‘thrilled’ when this dirt bag causes injury and possible death to some innocent person who just happened to be in the way.
Wow. That sentence is just brimming over with topics to blog about. Thank-you, one and all.
To make things a little simpler, let’s put the blame on ‘human error’. Yeah, that’s it. Hey, NTSB it was a freaking traffic jam in the sky and the humans were not paying attention to what they were doing.
How about all of you news outlets, that own or lease helicopters and are not afraid to waste fuel on this oh so excellent pursuit of ‘news’, put your collective heads together and come up with a plan to have just one helicopter up there feeding the footage, as it happens, to all the stations in your market at the same time? Believe me when I say, nobody cares about ‘exclusivity’ but you.
This way the media gets what it wants and those individuals who have nothing better to do get what they want. Plus we get the added bonus of not senselessly loosing any more lives in the name of ‘bringing the news to you first’.
I am not an insensitive person, I think losing these four individuals in this manner was tragic. They were just doing their jobs. Their families have 'senselessly' suffered a great loss that will never leave them.
I have a problem with the individuals sitting back at the news stations who think this is a credible pursuit of news. The individuals who sent these news crews out to get the footage of this chase. They think they have to show it just because it is happening now. They think they have to show it because someone else is showing it and if they don't show it too then they might 'lose' some viewers to their 'competitors'.
I also have a problem with the police participating in these chases. Most cities these days have helicopters to chase these guys and they can radio to the ground units on where to go after the 'suspect' stops running. Perhaps they can use the news helicopters. Chasing these fools in this manner would at least prevent the police from directly causing an accident.
And of course, the idiot who thinks he can outrun the police. Hey fool, they have radios. There are more of them than you. You cannot get away. If you really want to escape paying for your crime then shoot yourself and save the rest of us the time and expense of having to deal with your worthless ass.
Eaves-dropping and using data mining to spy on U.S. citizems
The U.S. government thinks it is okay to spy on it’s citizens under the guise of ‘national security’. They say they are only looking out for our ‘best interest’. King Bush the lesser thinks it is okay to do this spying without a warrant of any kind. These are facts. He has already authorized this spying through the National Security Agency. He acknowledged this back in 2004.
He won’t admit to ‘data mining’ which means he denies sorting through and picking out ‘relevant’ information from the data collected. Right.
Why would the government collect information through eaves-dropping and not use that information? What they expect us to believe is that they have gone through the expense, financially and time-wise, to collect information from us without our knowledge (and they think this is okay) but they won’t even look at what they have collected because, they say, that would just be wrong.
Does this scenario make sense to anyone? It doesn’t make sense to me.
There is only one reason why data is collected. It is so it can be used.
One side of the argument surrounding this controversy is that they are looking out for us and if you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about. This thinking is what allows the government free-reign to trample all over our civil liberties.
The other side of the argument is that there are unscrupulous individuals that can, and will, use this information for their own gains. No one can deny that the government is loaded with these individuals, especially in the NSA and the CIA. They are spy organizations. This government, especially under George W Bush, cannot be trusted with any data collected about us behind our backs. Only thieves and people with bad intentions sneak around the law to collect information on unwitting citizens.
Trust me, if these people are collecting information on us then they will use it on us.
One of the lies that the U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has been hiding behind concerns this data mining issue. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft did not want to participate in spying on his fellow citizens. Alberto Gonzales has no qualms about it, which is why Bush wants to keep Gonzales in this position. Ashcroft resigned and Bush ‘greased’ the path to get his puppet into place. Before Gonzales became Attorney General, he attempted to get Ashcroft to sign off on the issue (while Ashcroft lay in his hospital bed recovering from gallbladder surgery, real classy move Gonzales) so that he, Gonzales, would not have to have any responsibility for it. Now that Gonzales is being questioned about that meeting he is bastardizing the meaning of ‘surveillance’ (which technically uses eaves-dropping as a tool to ‘collect’ information as opposed to data-mining which technically ‘uses’ information collected) to his benefit. His interpretation of the word, as it relates to the questioning, is about ‘eaves-dropping’ and not ‘data-mining’ so that he feels, in his own mind, that he is answering truthfully when he denies the issue is about, the broader issue, ‘surveillance’.
This is ‘splitting hairs’, and it is exactly what makes lawyers and politicians ‘slimy’. Splitting hairs is what deceitful people do in an attempt to justify their behavior.
Even though eaves-dropping and data-mining are both considered spying, by everyone who knows what spying is, and both fall under the purview of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Gonzales continues to doggedly fulfill his ‘masters’ wishes to collect everything he can about every U.S. citizen. This blind obedience is exactly what Bush wants in an underling. This is why Gonzales is being protected.
Congress knows Gonzales is lying, members of congress like Senator Russ Feingold-WI acknowledges publicly that Gonzales has “lied to Congress and may have committed perjury”. Why does Feingold pussy foot around this? He knows Gonzales has committed perjury since he is lying and that is what perjury is. Why say it as if there is some doubt? “May have committed perjury”? Come on Feingold, now you are splitting hairs. Do something about it.
Representative Christopher Shays-CN says “He doesn’t have much credibility”. Bold words there Representative. Now how about representing us by getting him out of that office instead of just talking about it.
Prominent lawmakers from both parties are calling for Gonzales to resign. How about doing something more than just spouting off words? How about doing something more than just ‘jumping on the bandwagon” and patting yourselves on the back for “joining in”?
Here’s one guy that really makes me shake my head in wonder. Senator Orin Hatch-UT says he has “a lot of respect for the man, he’s willing to hang in there.” This guy is either so totally naïve that he ‘believes ‘ in everybody or he is blatantly sucking up to Bush. It makes me wonder what he has done that he will need King Bush’s good favors?
Four Democratic senators called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether Gonzales committed perjury. Unbelievable! You all know he committed perjury. What is to investigate? Why spend more of our tax dollars to learn something you already know to be true?
Congress thinks the only ‘action’ to take is to ‘form a committee’ while you all slap each other on the backs convincing yourselves that you are doing what you can. Well let me tell you, time is slipping away and nothing is getting done. Why are you guys turning congress into this big ‘social club’ where everyone talks about what needs to be done and then assigns some ‘special investigative commission’ to learn the facts and then do nothing with the findings because no one can agree on what to do with the facts?
This is really getting laughable. You politicians talk, talk, talk and nobody does anything worthwhile.
This is not what our forefathers had in mind when they set up this government. You should all hang your heads in embarrassment.
EDIT-Will Dwinnell left a comment to point out a misconception attributed to me. I want to thank him for taking the time. I had stated earlier that data mining is spying. It is in fact not technically 'spying'. Data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases. Since the federal government built these databases through illegal surveillance, it is, in this case, an extension of the definition of spying.
He won’t admit to ‘data mining’ which means he denies sorting through and picking out ‘relevant’ information from the data collected. Right.
Why would the government collect information through eaves-dropping and not use that information? What they expect us to believe is that they have gone through the expense, financially and time-wise, to collect information from us without our knowledge (and they think this is okay) but they won’t even look at what they have collected because, they say, that would just be wrong.
Does this scenario make sense to anyone? It doesn’t make sense to me.
There is only one reason why data is collected. It is so it can be used.
One side of the argument surrounding this controversy is that they are looking out for us and if you have done nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about. This thinking is what allows the government free-reign to trample all over our civil liberties.
The other side of the argument is that there are unscrupulous individuals that can, and will, use this information for their own gains. No one can deny that the government is loaded with these individuals, especially in the NSA and the CIA. They are spy organizations. This government, especially under George W Bush, cannot be trusted with any data collected about us behind our backs. Only thieves and people with bad intentions sneak around the law to collect information on unwitting citizens.
Trust me, if these people are collecting information on us then they will use it on us.
One of the lies that the U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, has been hiding behind concerns this data mining issue. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft did not want to participate in spying on his fellow citizens. Alberto Gonzales has no qualms about it, which is why Bush wants to keep Gonzales in this position. Ashcroft resigned and Bush ‘greased’ the path to get his puppet into place. Before Gonzales became Attorney General, he attempted to get Ashcroft to sign off on the issue (while Ashcroft lay in his hospital bed recovering from gallbladder surgery, real classy move Gonzales) so that he, Gonzales, would not have to have any responsibility for it. Now that Gonzales is being questioned about that meeting he is bastardizing the meaning of ‘surveillance’ (which technically uses eaves-dropping as a tool to ‘collect’ information as opposed to data-mining which technically ‘uses’ information collected) to his benefit. His interpretation of the word, as it relates to the questioning, is about ‘eaves-dropping’ and not ‘data-mining’ so that he feels, in his own mind, that he is answering truthfully when he denies the issue is about, the broader issue, ‘surveillance’.
This is ‘splitting hairs’, and it is exactly what makes lawyers and politicians ‘slimy’. Splitting hairs is what deceitful people do in an attempt to justify their behavior.
Even though eaves-dropping and data-mining are both considered spying, by everyone who knows what spying is, and both fall under the purview of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Gonzales continues to doggedly fulfill his ‘masters’ wishes to collect everything he can about every U.S. citizen. This blind obedience is exactly what Bush wants in an underling. This is why Gonzales is being protected.
Congress knows Gonzales is lying, members of congress like Senator Russ Feingold-WI acknowledges publicly that Gonzales has “lied to Congress and may have committed perjury”. Why does Feingold pussy foot around this? He knows Gonzales has committed perjury since he is lying and that is what perjury is. Why say it as if there is some doubt? “May have committed perjury”? Come on Feingold, now you are splitting hairs. Do something about it.
Representative Christopher Shays-CN says “He doesn’t have much credibility”. Bold words there Representative. Now how about representing us by getting him out of that office instead of just talking about it.
Prominent lawmakers from both parties are calling for Gonzales to resign. How about doing something more than just spouting off words? How about doing something more than just ‘jumping on the bandwagon” and patting yourselves on the back for “joining in”?
Here’s one guy that really makes me shake my head in wonder. Senator Orin Hatch-UT says he has “a lot of respect for the man, he’s willing to hang in there.” This guy is either so totally naïve that he ‘believes ‘ in everybody or he is blatantly sucking up to Bush. It makes me wonder what he has done that he will need King Bush’s good favors?
Four Democratic senators called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to investigate whether Gonzales committed perjury. Unbelievable! You all know he committed perjury. What is to investigate? Why spend more of our tax dollars to learn something you already know to be true?
Congress thinks the only ‘action’ to take is to ‘form a committee’ while you all slap each other on the backs convincing yourselves that you are doing what you can. Well let me tell you, time is slipping away and nothing is getting done. Why are you guys turning congress into this big ‘social club’ where everyone talks about what needs to be done and then assigns some ‘special investigative commission’ to learn the facts and then do nothing with the findings because no one can agree on what to do with the facts?
This is really getting laughable. You politicians talk, talk, talk and nobody does anything worthwhile.
This is not what our forefathers had in mind when they set up this government. You should all hang your heads in embarrassment.
EDIT-Will Dwinnell left a comment to point out a misconception attributed to me. I want to thank him for taking the time. I had stated earlier that data mining is spying. It is in fact not technically 'spying'. Data mining is the process of finding correlations or patterns among dozens of fields in large relational databases. Since the federal government built these databases through illegal surveillance, it is, in this case, an extension of the definition of spying.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Uniformity needed for sentencing
There has been an unfairness perpetrated in the judicial system for ages. And it involves prosecutions and penalties.
Sentencing discretion has been given to judges in some cases, in others they have no choice. Jury cases can determine whether a person should be charged or not and this is one of the foundations that make this country strong. What really leaves this justice system vulnerable to criticism is that sentences are imposed in a seemingly haphazard way. There actually is no uniform method to determine how much time a person is given for a given crime except how the judge feels that day.
A sentence for murder will be different for similar cases in different courtrooms, whether those courtrooms are in the same courthouse or in different states.
I don’t understand this disparity. It seems to me that there is a lot of room for prejudice. Take the case of kids left in hot cars.
I read this story recently and it just boiled me over, for two reasons.
In Manassas, VA, Kevin Kelly, left his 21-month-old daughter in his van for seven hours. She was found dead by a neighbor.
In Detroit, MI, Tara Maynor, left her two kids in a car for four hours, they were both found dead.
Now let me take a moment to comment on how this particular story was reported. The reporter, Allen G. Breed, Associated Press, wrote the opening paragraph like this: “Kevin Kelly is a law-abiding citizen who, much distracted, left his beloved 21-month-old daughter in a sweltering van for seven hours.”
Mr. Breed reported on Tara Maynor’s situation like this: “Tara Maynor was sentenced to 12½ to 60 years in prison on two counts of second-degree murder after leaving her two children in a car for four hours outside a suburban Detroit beauty parlor while she got a massage and hairdo. She told police she was "too stupid to know they would die."
Does anyone see the bias in these paragraphs? Let me fill you in on another fact that you cannot see without a picture of these two, although you can probably tell already by just how Allen wrote these words. Kevin is white. Tara is black. Now the bias should be very clear.
Think about it, how many times do you see a story about someone who left their child in a van on a hot day described as “law-abiding” and “much-distracted”? It seems to me that Allen has already made up his mind and is certainly trying to convince us that it was a simple “accident” that his “beloved” daughter roasted in that van. He is actually trying to make the reading public feel sorry for him.
As far as Tara’s story, Mr. Breed just coldly reports the facts, as he should in “every case”.
Do you see a difference in reporting styles here? Mr. Breed, reporting such a heinous, unforgiving act has no room for your biases.
I cannot believe this person is allowed to report any human interest story. He should be put out to pasture.
These two cases help to illustrate the disparity in our justice system.
Kevin Kelly was spared a lengthy term in prison.
Why?
It is obvious that these children depended on these parents for their welfare. It is also obvious that these parents failed these children in the worst possible way.
Why did Tara get 12 ½ to 60 years and Kevin did not? Is it because she is black? Is it because he is white? Is it because she is a woman? Is it because he is a man? The acts were exactly the same, the result was exactly the same.
These questions need to be answered.
How can anyone believe there is “fairness” or “justice” in our court system when no one gets treated the same. Equality is one of the cornerstones of our country. How can this situation continue?
And I hasn’t even hit upon the fact that those people who can afford to pay high priced lawyers get more justice than those who have to rely on public defenders.
Sentencing discretion has been given to judges in some cases, in others they have no choice. Jury cases can determine whether a person should be charged or not and this is one of the foundations that make this country strong. What really leaves this justice system vulnerable to criticism is that sentences are imposed in a seemingly haphazard way. There actually is no uniform method to determine how much time a person is given for a given crime except how the judge feels that day.
A sentence for murder will be different for similar cases in different courtrooms, whether those courtrooms are in the same courthouse or in different states.
I don’t understand this disparity. It seems to me that there is a lot of room for prejudice. Take the case of kids left in hot cars.
I read this story recently and it just boiled me over, for two reasons.
In Manassas, VA, Kevin Kelly, left his 21-month-old daughter in his van for seven hours. She was found dead by a neighbor.
In Detroit, MI, Tara Maynor, left her two kids in a car for four hours, they were both found dead.
Now let me take a moment to comment on how this particular story was reported. The reporter, Allen G. Breed, Associated Press, wrote the opening paragraph like this: “Kevin Kelly is a law-abiding citizen who, much distracted, left his beloved 21-month-old daughter in a sweltering van for seven hours.”
Mr. Breed reported on Tara Maynor’s situation like this: “Tara Maynor was sentenced to 12½ to 60 years in prison on two counts of second-degree murder after leaving her two children in a car for four hours outside a suburban Detroit beauty parlor while she got a massage and hairdo. She told police she was "too stupid to know they would die."
Does anyone see the bias in these paragraphs? Let me fill you in on another fact that you cannot see without a picture of these two, although you can probably tell already by just how Allen wrote these words. Kevin is white. Tara is black. Now the bias should be very clear.
Think about it, how many times do you see a story about someone who left their child in a van on a hot day described as “law-abiding” and “much-distracted”? It seems to me that Allen has already made up his mind and is certainly trying to convince us that it was a simple “accident” that his “beloved” daughter roasted in that van. He is actually trying to make the reading public feel sorry for him.
As far as Tara’s story, Mr. Breed just coldly reports the facts, as he should in “every case”.
Do you see a difference in reporting styles here? Mr. Breed, reporting such a heinous, unforgiving act has no room for your biases.
I cannot believe this person is allowed to report any human interest story. He should be put out to pasture.
These two cases help to illustrate the disparity in our justice system.
Kevin Kelly was spared a lengthy term in prison.
Why?
It is obvious that these children depended on these parents for their welfare. It is also obvious that these parents failed these children in the worst possible way.
Why did Tara get 12 ½ to 60 years and Kevin did not? Is it because she is black? Is it because he is white? Is it because she is a woman? Is it because he is a man? The acts were exactly the same, the result was exactly the same.
These questions need to be answered.
How can anyone believe there is “fairness” or “justice” in our court system when no one gets treated the same. Equality is one of the cornerstones of our country. How can this situation continue?
And I hasn’t even hit upon the fact that those people who can afford to pay high priced lawyers get more justice than those who have to rely on public defenders.
Police are supposed to help
In the matter of the samaritan who helped police as an interpreter and then was arrested, I feel compelled to say something.
The story, in case you didn’t hear, is about a woman who, while on her way to her daughters school, was asked by police to interpret for the victim of an automobile accident. The woman agreed to help and the next thing we know she is being handcuffed and taken to a squad car being arrested for, what we later find out is ‘obstructing justice’. You can clearly hear her telling police she needs to pick her daughter up from school. My guess is that she no longer wanted to be at the scene because she had something more important and immediate to take care of which was getting her daughter to safety. The police told her to stay and she objected.
If she no longer wanted to stick around and interpret because she was concerned for her daughter being left alone at school (and we all know the images that little scene presents and what dangers lurk for young girls standing around outside of school by themselves) then she should have been allowed to leave. Did the police assume she was lying to get out of helping them? How absurd would this be after she did help?
The very least the police could have done would be to radio their precinct and have someone call the school to explain the delay and have the child looked after. Another possibility is to send a squad car to the school and pick up the little girl and bring her to her co-operating, helpful mother.
Why did the police choose to arrest this woman instead of helping her in return?
Why did this situation escalate to the point of this samaritan arrest? So, do you think she will be a samaritan in the future after what she went through? Isn’t it great when someone takes the time out of their busy schedule to help? Of course it is. But these cops have now squashed that impulse to help, once again with their authoritative bullying. I know these cops are out there to help, protect and serve but far too many of them go overboard and see threats where there are none.
This police officer, at the very least, did not exercise good judgment in preventing this woman from caring for her child. His actions caused this young girl to be left alone and unprotected. Did he think he was dishing out justice in response to some ‘threat’ from this woman?
Someone commented on this police officers actions by saying that he has a wonderful reputation in the town of Roselle Park NJ, and is respected and always has a smile for everyone. Sounds like the ideal cop that everyone wants on their force. Personally, I don’t believe there is such a cop. It is nothing more than an illusion. The way the news story was presented, albeit several different versions of it, showed no wrong doing on either the part of the police officer or of the ‘interpreter samaritan’, so we are left to fill-in the blanks, once again.
Perhaps this commenter has not seen this ‘friendly, loveable’ officer in a situation involving an Hispanic woman. Yes, I’m hinting there might be some prejudice involved. No one can deny that it doesn’t happen. Even people you think you have known your entire life can take a prejudiced outlook in some given situation.
Perhaps the samaritan reacted negatively, out of fear for her childs safety, when she was told she could not leave the scene until police were through with her services.
These are only but two possibilities and I present them here because they are very real possibilities and the news story left this question open.
You have to admit though that it just does not make sense that a ‘samaritan’ would suddenly be arrested, does it?
Another commenter said this: “Other cops should chastise this guy since they really make cops look like stupid power-mongers! Obviously, this cop doesn't know squat about analyzing a situation. Apparently, he claims he analyzed her. I think it's pretty obvious, on the video, she is worried about picking up her kid @ 1pm! I think people should stop HELPING the police!! PERIOD!”
I think this person has issues with cops in general. The commenter is turning assumptions into facts. Such as, it is not ‘obvious’ that this cop ‘doesn’t know squat about analyzing a situation’. This leap in faith assumes the woman is totally innocent. Since we don’t know what took place between the woman and police, it is an assumption only, not obvious.
It is obvious that she is worried about picking up her kid and I have already said the police should have done something to help her.
As far as advocating that people should stop helping the police, well, I don’t think that would be a good policy at all. You need to do some ‘analyzing’ of your own. Examine each experience with police with an open mind and then if you think the cop is wrong you should do something about it. You should not generalize that all cops are ‘stupid power-mongers’.
The commenter went on to say: “This woman should sue the police for "endangering the welfare of a child" "tort brutality" and "mental anguish". They have no problem putting bogus charges on us. No Jury/Person would decide against her.. and would probably be in 100% favor of her situation.”
Until we know what went on between this woman and police we cannot say if she has grounds to sue the police. It is true, that on the surface, they have done irreparable harm to public relations in not allowing her to go to her child. There are already too many unwarranted lawsuits clogging up the courts and way too many unscrupulous lawyers ready to do so.
I have no doubt that police have made up charges in order to arrest someone. I have no doubt that this has happened. In some cases I agree with the final result but never the means. Some people are just too slimy to get caught or they get slimy lawyers who get them off or they get judges who have stopped caring and allow the wrong people back on the streets. On top of all of this our jails are over-crowded and some of the wrong people get back on the street to prey on us. All of this frustrates cops to no end.
Police are necessary to put ‘bad’ people behind bars not someone who has more interest in protecting her child than she does in interpreting for an accident victim. This police officer should have weighed that fact and allowed this woman to go to her child.
The story, in case you didn’t hear, is about a woman who, while on her way to her daughters school, was asked by police to interpret for the victim of an automobile accident. The woman agreed to help and the next thing we know she is being handcuffed and taken to a squad car being arrested for, what we later find out is ‘obstructing justice’. You can clearly hear her telling police she needs to pick her daughter up from school. My guess is that she no longer wanted to be at the scene because she had something more important and immediate to take care of which was getting her daughter to safety. The police told her to stay and she objected.
If she no longer wanted to stick around and interpret because she was concerned for her daughter being left alone at school (and we all know the images that little scene presents and what dangers lurk for young girls standing around outside of school by themselves) then she should have been allowed to leave. Did the police assume she was lying to get out of helping them? How absurd would this be after she did help?
The very least the police could have done would be to radio their precinct and have someone call the school to explain the delay and have the child looked after. Another possibility is to send a squad car to the school and pick up the little girl and bring her to her co-operating, helpful mother.
Why did the police choose to arrest this woman instead of helping her in return?
Why did this situation escalate to the point of this samaritan arrest? So, do you think she will be a samaritan in the future after what she went through? Isn’t it great when someone takes the time out of their busy schedule to help? Of course it is. But these cops have now squashed that impulse to help, once again with their authoritative bullying. I know these cops are out there to help, protect and serve but far too many of them go overboard and see threats where there are none.
This police officer, at the very least, did not exercise good judgment in preventing this woman from caring for her child. His actions caused this young girl to be left alone and unprotected. Did he think he was dishing out justice in response to some ‘threat’ from this woman?
Someone commented on this police officers actions by saying that he has a wonderful reputation in the town of Roselle Park NJ, and is respected and always has a smile for everyone. Sounds like the ideal cop that everyone wants on their force. Personally, I don’t believe there is such a cop. It is nothing more than an illusion. The way the news story was presented, albeit several different versions of it, showed no wrong doing on either the part of the police officer or of the ‘interpreter samaritan’, so we are left to fill-in the blanks, once again.
Perhaps this commenter has not seen this ‘friendly, loveable’ officer in a situation involving an Hispanic woman. Yes, I’m hinting there might be some prejudice involved. No one can deny that it doesn’t happen. Even people you think you have known your entire life can take a prejudiced outlook in some given situation.
Perhaps the samaritan reacted negatively, out of fear for her childs safety, when she was told she could not leave the scene until police were through with her services.
These are only but two possibilities and I present them here because they are very real possibilities and the news story left this question open.
You have to admit though that it just does not make sense that a ‘samaritan’ would suddenly be arrested, does it?
Another commenter said this: “Other cops should chastise this guy since they really make cops look like stupid power-mongers! Obviously, this cop doesn't know squat about analyzing a situation. Apparently, he claims he analyzed her. I think it's pretty obvious, on the video, she is worried about picking up her kid @ 1pm! I think people should stop HELPING the police!! PERIOD!”
I think this person has issues with cops in general. The commenter is turning assumptions into facts. Such as, it is not ‘obvious’ that this cop ‘doesn’t know squat about analyzing a situation’. This leap in faith assumes the woman is totally innocent. Since we don’t know what took place between the woman and police, it is an assumption only, not obvious.
It is obvious that she is worried about picking up her kid and I have already said the police should have done something to help her.
As far as advocating that people should stop helping the police, well, I don’t think that would be a good policy at all. You need to do some ‘analyzing’ of your own. Examine each experience with police with an open mind and then if you think the cop is wrong you should do something about it. You should not generalize that all cops are ‘stupid power-mongers’.
The commenter went on to say: “This woman should sue the police for "endangering the welfare of a child" "tort brutality" and "mental anguish". They have no problem putting bogus charges on us. No Jury/Person would decide against her.. and would probably be in 100% favor of her situation.”
Until we know what went on between this woman and police we cannot say if she has grounds to sue the police. It is true, that on the surface, they have done irreparable harm to public relations in not allowing her to go to her child. There are already too many unwarranted lawsuits clogging up the courts and way too many unscrupulous lawyers ready to do so.
I have no doubt that police have made up charges in order to arrest someone. I have no doubt that this has happened. In some cases I agree with the final result but never the means. Some people are just too slimy to get caught or they get slimy lawyers who get them off or they get judges who have stopped caring and allow the wrong people back on the streets. On top of all of this our jails are over-crowded and some of the wrong people get back on the street to prey on us. All of this frustrates cops to no end.
Police are necessary to put ‘bad’ people behind bars not someone who has more interest in protecting her child than she does in interpreting for an accident victim. This police officer should have weighed that fact and allowed this woman to go to her child.
News media, get your facts straight the first time
Interpreter arrested after agreeing to help police.
This story is an example of what I see the news media accepting as ‘business as usual’. Let’s analyze this particular story to illustrate my point.
Monica Montoya was on her way to her daughters school and helped police interpret for an accident victim in Roselle Park New Jersey.
Now this is the beginning of the story and this much is true. The news media added two different views on even this simple truth.
One story I heard was that she was driving to her daughters school when she came upon an accident victim who was hit by a van and she stopped to offer assistance. The police arrived and asked her to interpret for the victim, which she agreed to do.
Another version was that she was walking to her daughters school, passing the scene of the accident, when the police stopped her to ask if she would interpret for the victim, which she agreed to do.
The first version, of course, makes her look like a true samaritan. the second version makes her look like she was 'commandeered'. Which version is true? It only happened one way people.
So far neither version mentioned whether the victim was a pedestrian hit by a van or if she was driving and was hit by the van. You might say ‘this detail is unimportant’ and you would be correct but the two different versions already chose to get into ‘some’ detail by saying it was a van, not just an automobile accident. So, the media, in both cases, already opened that door.
Continuing with the story, both versions said the reason for the arrest is that she was uncooperative after both versions reported she was co-operating. I heard her crying, as the officer was taking her to a squad car in handcuffs, that she needs to get her child from school. Since I have already heard two different versions of the story, the only thing I know for certain is that there was an accident of some sort, she was on her way to her daughters school, she helped police, she was arrested. I cannot believe either reporters interpretation. And since the public rarely ever hears a follow-up to a story, unless it is sensational enough, we may never know what really happened at the scene.
The bottom-line here is that the news media, in their zeal to get a story to the public ‘first’ will say whatever they first interpret instead of getting the facts. This is why there are always so many versions of any story. We the public are left to sort through ‘the facts as presented’ to determine the truth. The press is supposed to give us the facts, not their interpretations and then let us figure out what the truth really is.
Who came up with this concept of ‘just throw words out there, we’ll fill in the facts later’? This concept is born out of the news medias need to be ‘the first’ or ‘exclusive’. The public doesn’t care about exclusivity or who gets the story out there first. We care about the truth through the facts not someone’s interpretation of them.
Another thing, while I am on the topic of news media, why do you feel the need to dramatize a story?
As a news consumer, whenever a story is brought to my attention, I I want to know what the real story is. I don’t want to hear one persons interpretation of the story. Why are there so many different versions? Why can’t the media get the story straight the first time?
Being first is not always the best goal when it comes to the news. You need to stop being so competitive and give us the facts the first time. If you don’t know the facts then say so. We will wait.
This story is an example of what I see the news media accepting as ‘business as usual’. Let’s analyze this particular story to illustrate my point.
Monica Montoya was on her way to her daughters school and helped police interpret for an accident victim in Roselle Park New Jersey.
Now this is the beginning of the story and this much is true. The news media added two different views on even this simple truth.
One story I heard was that she was driving to her daughters school when she came upon an accident victim who was hit by a van and she stopped to offer assistance. The police arrived and asked her to interpret for the victim, which she agreed to do.
Another version was that she was walking to her daughters school, passing the scene of the accident, when the police stopped her to ask if she would interpret for the victim, which she agreed to do.
The first version, of course, makes her look like a true samaritan. the second version makes her look like she was 'commandeered'. Which version is true? It only happened one way people.
So far neither version mentioned whether the victim was a pedestrian hit by a van or if she was driving and was hit by the van. You might say ‘this detail is unimportant’ and you would be correct but the two different versions already chose to get into ‘some’ detail by saying it was a van, not just an automobile accident. So, the media, in both cases, already opened that door.
Continuing with the story, both versions said the reason for the arrest is that she was uncooperative after both versions reported she was co-operating. I heard her crying, as the officer was taking her to a squad car in handcuffs, that she needs to get her child from school. Since I have already heard two different versions of the story, the only thing I know for certain is that there was an accident of some sort, she was on her way to her daughters school, she helped police, she was arrested. I cannot believe either reporters interpretation. And since the public rarely ever hears a follow-up to a story, unless it is sensational enough, we may never know what really happened at the scene.
The bottom-line here is that the news media, in their zeal to get a story to the public ‘first’ will say whatever they first interpret instead of getting the facts. This is why there are always so many versions of any story. We the public are left to sort through ‘the facts as presented’ to determine the truth. The press is supposed to give us the facts, not their interpretations and then let us figure out what the truth really is.
Who came up with this concept of ‘just throw words out there, we’ll fill in the facts later’? This concept is born out of the news medias need to be ‘the first’ or ‘exclusive’. The public doesn’t care about exclusivity or who gets the story out there first. We care about the truth through the facts not someone’s interpretation of them.
Another thing, while I am on the topic of news media, why do you feel the need to dramatize a story?
As a news consumer, whenever a story is brought to my attention, I I want to know what the real story is. I don’t want to hear one persons interpretation of the story. Why are there so many different versions? Why can’t the media get the story straight the first time?
Being first is not always the best goal when it comes to the news. You need to stop being so competitive and give us the facts the first time. If you don’t know the facts then say so. We will wait.
The ‘guest’ that over-stayed his welcome
Iraqi’s have, on several occasions, hinted to the American Military that they should go home. The Iraqis are learning that you cannot be subtle with the U.S. military. They only understand direct confrontation.
The U.S., of course, is convinced they are ‘helping’ the Iraqi people. Hell, the U.S. says we are going to help you if it kills both of us.
Earlier this month Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the U.S. they can leave any time. Hey George, that was Maliki’s ‘polite’, ‘diplomatic’ way of telling you to go away. But obviously you need to be hit with a stick in order to get your attention. Do you understand the concept of ‘single-minded obsession’?
Now tempers are flying between the U.S. and the Iraqi’s. Once this happens relations will never be the same. Words are said, deep-seated resentments are finally brought out into the open and egos are bruised. This last point may seem trite but I can assure you that when egos get bruised people do some very stupid things.
Everyone else is looking at this latest set of events from the sidelines and can see that the U.S. is no longer welcome in Iraq, that the U.S. is the offending bully.
General Petraeus won’t even acknowledge the problem is as bad as the Iraqi administration is saying it is. It isn’t as though Petraeus is in the next room and cannot hear what is being said, no, he is sitting at the table with the Iraqi’s and they are telling him to go home. Why is he being blind to what the Iraqis are saying? Let me spell it out again, THE IRAQI’S DON’T WANT US THERE!
General Petraeus’ latest ‘solution’ to try to ‘win’ this ‘un-winnable’ situation is arm the Sunni’s. Oh my God!! This is a terrible move. As a military commander this move is at best stupid. As a human being this move is criminal.
Al-Maliki once, in discussion with President Bush, even threatened to counter this move by arming Shiite militias. See what Petraeus’ reckless ‘solution’ is doing. He is only escalating the situation. George, even you can see that this man is off his nut.
The U.S. egocentric response is that this clash is more of a clash of policy than of personalities. Wake up! It is a clash of policy. The U.S military has a policy of ‘winning at all costs’ and they are going to arm private citizens and further exacerbate the problem to attempt it. The Iraqi policy is to run their country the way they want.
The U.S. wants to keep al-Maliki as a puppet at the head of the table and does not want to let go of the strings. Al-Maliki sees right through this. Al-Maliki fought against Saddam Hussein’s method of governing before the U.S. ever entered into the picture. To the point that al-Maliki was banished into exile. He has deep-rooted resentment towards the way Saddam led the Iraqi people. One of those problems was that Saddam armed his Ba’ath Party against all others in Iraq. Now Petraeus wants to do the same thing using the Sunni’s. Saddam used repression to crush rebellions he deemed threatening to the stability of Iraq, Petraeus wants to do the same thing by arming Sunni’s. No wonder al-Maliki wants the U.S. to go home.
We have lost far too many of our brothers in this illegal (yes, I said illegal, George Bush used lies to get us involved in this mess), unnecessary and un-winnable war. Let’s put an end to it and come home. If, as Bush so self-servingly says, we will only have to fight terrorism on our shores then so be it. We already are anyway. I don’t think it will get any worse than it currently is just because we will not be caught in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. We are not peace-keeping in Iraq. Those religious groups, Sunni’s and Shiite’s, will continue to hate and distrust each other long after we are gone. Why should we continue to sacrifice our men and women for something we cannot change? Come on George, tell me why?
The U.S., of course, is convinced they are ‘helping’ the Iraqi people. Hell, the U.S. says we are going to help you if it kills both of us.
Earlier this month Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told the U.S. they can leave any time. Hey George, that was Maliki’s ‘polite’, ‘diplomatic’ way of telling you to go away. But obviously you need to be hit with a stick in order to get your attention. Do you understand the concept of ‘single-minded obsession’?
Now tempers are flying between the U.S. and the Iraqi’s. Once this happens relations will never be the same. Words are said, deep-seated resentments are finally brought out into the open and egos are bruised. This last point may seem trite but I can assure you that when egos get bruised people do some very stupid things.
Everyone else is looking at this latest set of events from the sidelines and can see that the U.S. is no longer welcome in Iraq, that the U.S. is the offending bully.
General Petraeus won’t even acknowledge the problem is as bad as the Iraqi administration is saying it is. It isn’t as though Petraeus is in the next room and cannot hear what is being said, no, he is sitting at the table with the Iraqi’s and they are telling him to go home. Why is he being blind to what the Iraqis are saying? Let me spell it out again, THE IRAQI’S DON’T WANT US THERE!
General Petraeus’ latest ‘solution’ to try to ‘win’ this ‘un-winnable’ situation is arm the Sunni’s. Oh my God!! This is a terrible move. As a military commander this move is at best stupid. As a human being this move is criminal.
Al-Maliki once, in discussion with President Bush, even threatened to counter this move by arming Shiite militias. See what Petraeus’ reckless ‘solution’ is doing. He is only escalating the situation. George, even you can see that this man is off his nut.
The U.S. egocentric response is that this clash is more of a clash of policy than of personalities. Wake up! It is a clash of policy. The U.S military has a policy of ‘winning at all costs’ and they are going to arm private citizens and further exacerbate the problem to attempt it. The Iraqi policy is to run their country the way they want.
The U.S. wants to keep al-Maliki as a puppet at the head of the table and does not want to let go of the strings. Al-Maliki sees right through this. Al-Maliki fought against Saddam Hussein’s method of governing before the U.S. ever entered into the picture. To the point that al-Maliki was banished into exile. He has deep-rooted resentment towards the way Saddam led the Iraqi people. One of those problems was that Saddam armed his Ba’ath Party against all others in Iraq. Now Petraeus wants to do the same thing using the Sunni’s. Saddam used repression to crush rebellions he deemed threatening to the stability of Iraq, Petraeus wants to do the same thing by arming Sunni’s. No wonder al-Maliki wants the U.S. to go home.
We have lost far too many of our brothers in this illegal (yes, I said illegal, George Bush used lies to get us involved in this mess), unnecessary and un-winnable war. Let’s put an end to it and come home. If, as Bush so self-servingly says, we will only have to fight terrorism on our shores then so be it. We already are anyway. I don’t think it will get any worse than it currently is just because we will not be caught in the middle of an Iraqi civil war. We are not peace-keeping in Iraq. Those religious groups, Sunni’s and Shiite’s, will continue to hate and distrust each other long after we are gone. Why should we continue to sacrifice our men and women for something we cannot change? Come on George, tell me why?
Friday, July 27, 2007
Play the game
In the continuing saga of the Senate Judiciary Committee attempting to get at the truth in the firings of nine U.S. prosecutors, the whole situation became a circus, as predicted. The U.S. Attorneys office, under an incompetent leader, knows it can ‘get away with’ firing these attorneys because the White House will ‘protect’ that incompetent leader to the end.
All of the witnesses and knowledgeable participants know they will not have to answer any questions put forth by the investigators, again because the White House will protect them.
Senator Patrick Leahy makes threats of a subpoena against members of the White House, the White House laughs at him, while another member, Senator Arlen Specter, of the same committee tells the intended recipients that the subpoena will not be enforced because he thinks the committee won’t learn anything from them. This all makes the Judiciary committee look pretty impotent. It makes Leahy look like a blustery old fool.
The White House appears to be guilty of complicity by not allowing the knowledgeable participants to tell what they know. The common thought is that if you are innocent then why not testify. If you are guilty or have something to hide then do whatever you can to divert attention onto something or someone else. It is basic human nature and is based in survival. This is what the White House is doing. They are stalling long enough in the hope that when the truth finally does see the light of day the relevance of the situation will have lost all importance. Stalling, diversion and passing the buck are very commonly used tools in politics. You don’t get to the ‘top of the heap’ without using them successfully.
Leahy has been pursuing the truth behind the firings of the nine attorneys because these nine individuals were wrongfully fired. Anyone who is wrongfully treated is seen as a victim and being victimized by your superior doesn’t sit well with the American people. I believe that Senator Leahy is righteously pursuing this matter and on the surface it appears that he is zealously ‘doing his job’. Very commendable. But, he is, after all, a politician. Perhaps he is using his position to further his own personal agenda. Only history will tell.
The bottom line is that these nine lawyers were hired to prosecute guilty parties no matter where those guilty parties were found. Some of those guilty parties turned out to be high-ranking republicans. In the current political environment you are not supposed to accuse republicans of wrong-doing. Apparently, no one warned them of this restriction and they were blind-sided by short-sighted, self-serving politicians in an effort to protect their own. Perhaps these politicians either ‘called-in’ a debt or ‘indebted’ someone else to themselves for future consideration. In the end, no consideration was given to the general public whose trust was violated by those individuals that these prosecutors were investigating.
These nine prosecutors, who by a simple twist of fate became under the control of an inexperienced, under-qualified individual who is backed by an unscrupulous group of men in the White House, were fired because they made no distinction as to politics. I applaud them for taking their jobs to heart. They are idealists who believed that their actions make a difference. Unfortunately, this political machine doesn’t take idealism into account anymore. Nor does it take morals to be of any consequence. I fear the real tragedy is that this experience could harden these prosecutors against ‘doing what is right’ in the future. They could come out of this convinced they have to do more to ‘clean-up’ American politics or they could become calloused and possibly even become one of the politicians that learn how to take advantage of the political game for their own personal gain.
This is usually how self-serving politicians are created. When they first start out in politics they believe they will make a difference, then something happens. Something that makes them realize that the machine is just too big and too powerful. Their idealism suffers and as a result we the people suffer and they climb up the ladder faster and some of them make headlines for being accused of some scandal. But they won’t have to worry about being damaged by those headlines because they will learn how to cover their tracks and protect themselves from future ‘over-zealous’, idealistic prosecutors.
The biggest problem in prosecuting these ‘wayward’ politicians is that the ‘order of law’ demands ‘hard, irrefutable evidence’ in order to prosecute. These ‘guilty’ people know they can weasel out from under the scrutiny of investigators because they have left no ‘hard, irrefutable evidence’ that can be brought into a court of law. These guys know how to get away with doing what they want. And it is a major bonus to have the White House ‘protect its own’ no matter how bad things get.
The bottom line is that there is no ‘justice’ in the justice department. There is no ‘justice’ in Washington D.C. there is no ‘justice’ in the legal system. The tactics being played out here between the guilty and those that strive to bring their guilt to light are being played by lawyers in every court room in this nation. And as a result, lies are being swept under the table, crimes are over looked, guilty individuals ‘walk’ without punishment because they all play the game.
If morals had any influence on all of these involved individuals then lies would not be swept under the table, crimes would not be over looked, and guilty individuals would not ‘walk’ without punishment.
The public knows that Alberto Gonzales does have knowledge that these individuals were fired for political reasons. The public knows that Karl Rove and Scott Jennings, deputy director of political affairs at the White House, had prior knowledge of this fact. The public knows that the circus in Washington D.C. that passes for justice cannot be ‘cleaned up’ because the public knows that morals cannot be found in American politics.
All of the witnesses and knowledgeable participants know they will not have to answer any questions put forth by the investigators, again because the White House will protect them.
Senator Patrick Leahy makes threats of a subpoena against members of the White House, the White House laughs at him, while another member, Senator Arlen Specter, of the same committee tells the intended recipients that the subpoena will not be enforced because he thinks the committee won’t learn anything from them. This all makes the Judiciary committee look pretty impotent. It makes Leahy look like a blustery old fool.
The White House appears to be guilty of complicity by not allowing the knowledgeable participants to tell what they know. The common thought is that if you are innocent then why not testify. If you are guilty or have something to hide then do whatever you can to divert attention onto something or someone else. It is basic human nature and is based in survival. This is what the White House is doing. They are stalling long enough in the hope that when the truth finally does see the light of day the relevance of the situation will have lost all importance. Stalling, diversion and passing the buck are very commonly used tools in politics. You don’t get to the ‘top of the heap’ without using them successfully.
Leahy has been pursuing the truth behind the firings of the nine attorneys because these nine individuals were wrongfully fired. Anyone who is wrongfully treated is seen as a victim and being victimized by your superior doesn’t sit well with the American people. I believe that Senator Leahy is righteously pursuing this matter and on the surface it appears that he is zealously ‘doing his job’. Very commendable. But, he is, after all, a politician. Perhaps he is using his position to further his own personal agenda. Only history will tell.
The bottom line is that these nine lawyers were hired to prosecute guilty parties no matter where those guilty parties were found. Some of those guilty parties turned out to be high-ranking republicans. In the current political environment you are not supposed to accuse republicans of wrong-doing. Apparently, no one warned them of this restriction and they were blind-sided by short-sighted, self-serving politicians in an effort to protect their own. Perhaps these politicians either ‘called-in’ a debt or ‘indebted’ someone else to themselves for future consideration. In the end, no consideration was given to the general public whose trust was violated by those individuals that these prosecutors were investigating.
These nine prosecutors, who by a simple twist of fate became under the control of an inexperienced, under-qualified individual who is backed by an unscrupulous group of men in the White House, were fired because they made no distinction as to politics. I applaud them for taking their jobs to heart. They are idealists who believed that their actions make a difference. Unfortunately, this political machine doesn’t take idealism into account anymore. Nor does it take morals to be of any consequence. I fear the real tragedy is that this experience could harden these prosecutors against ‘doing what is right’ in the future. They could come out of this convinced they have to do more to ‘clean-up’ American politics or they could become calloused and possibly even become one of the politicians that learn how to take advantage of the political game for their own personal gain.
This is usually how self-serving politicians are created. When they first start out in politics they believe they will make a difference, then something happens. Something that makes them realize that the machine is just too big and too powerful. Their idealism suffers and as a result we the people suffer and they climb up the ladder faster and some of them make headlines for being accused of some scandal. But they won’t have to worry about being damaged by those headlines because they will learn how to cover their tracks and protect themselves from future ‘over-zealous’, idealistic prosecutors.
The biggest problem in prosecuting these ‘wayward’ politicians is that the ‘order of law’ demands ‘hard, irrefutable evidence’ in order to prosecute. These ‘guilty’ people know they can weasel out from under the scrutiny of investigators because they have left no ‘hard, irrefutable evidence’ that can be brought into a court of law. These guys know how to get away with doing what they want. And it is a major bonus to have the White House ‘protect its own’ no matter how bad things get.
The bottom line is that there is no ‘justice’ in the justice department. There is no ‘justice’ in Washington D.C. there is no ‘justice’ in the legal system. The tactics being played out here between the guilty and those that strive to bring their guilt to light are being played by lawyers in every court room in this nation. And as a result, lies are being swept under the table, crimes are over looked, guilty individuals ‘walk’ without punishment because they all play the game.
If morals had any influence on all of these involved individuals then lies would not be swept under the table, crimes would not be over looked, and guilty individuals would not ‘walk’ without punishment.
The public knows that Alberto Gonzales does have knowledge that these individuals were fired for political reasons. The public knows that Karl Rove and Scott Jennings, deputy director of political affairs at the White House, had prior knowledge of this fact. The public knows that the circus in Washington D.C. that passes for justice cannot be ‘cleaned up’ because the public knows that morals cannot be found in American politics.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Supreme Court as a tool of the President
Is school integration ending? Is the U.S. Supreme Court against integration in our public schools? Their latest ruling shows that they are.
A school district in Kentucky, along with all others throughout the nation, has been told that the school district’s racially diverse programs have to end.
In June of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racially diverse programs that were started voluntarily in Louisville and Seattle, using race as a factor to determine public school placements. The court's decision has left schools across the country scrambling to find a way to protect diversity in their classrooms.
More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decision, known as Brown v. Board of Education, declared that separate schools are inherently unequal and therefore must become racially diverse. Thus began a painful and sometimes violent process for school districts to become compliant with that ruling.
I believe this process helped unify our nation and bring us more in line with the notion of ‘America, Land of the Free’. I believe this decision helped make our country stronger.
50 years of busing students out of their school districts to other schools based on race has resulted in more racially diverse schools. We needed it. Without the Supreme Court decision to force integration it would not have happened.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has made a decision that will undo everything we have struggled to achieve and will set race relations back 50 years.
School districts have now been told, by this conservative U.S. Supreme Court, that race cannot be a factor in promoting desegregation. Schools have been trying to comply with that 50 year old decision based on race and now the court has said that basis is wrong. What does this government want?
Do we have George W. Bush to thank for this? He appointed the two most recent, most conservative justices he could find to serve on this Court. Both of those justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, played major roles in undermining the tenets of Brown v. Board of Education.
This turn of events is in itself an education for students. What they take away from this is that no decision of our highest court in the land is final. No final decision remains, as it is not written in stone. We can no longer believe in what the courts tells us, because another court will strike the decision down.
This is why the once noble practice of law has become so overrun with unscrupulous lawyers. Because they can manipulate the justice system to get the decision they want based on the fact that our court system is not unified and that no court decision is final. We live in a world of wishy-washy ‘decision makers’ that change their minds based on which way the political wind is blowing. If there had been different justices on the court 50 years ago there is a strong possibility that integration never would have happened.
We, the people of the United States, need to have a firm foundation to define us, to unify us. The U.S. Constitution is that foundation. But, the U.S. Supreme Court, through the appointments of the President, keeps changing that foundation. The U.S. Constitution says that were are created equal and as such should all be treated as equals. Before Brown v. Board of Education, and other court decisions, the U.S. government was not treating all of us equally because of the way the school system was set up and because racial discrimination had become so institutionalized. The government was forced to correct these injustices by forcing integration and now the U.S. Supreme Court tell us that they were wrong to do it in this manner.
When a decision as strong and righteous as Brown v. Board of Education has been made and it has been proven to be as successful as it has it then becomes too important to be over turned by a future court just because the current president loads the court with people of his choice.
A school district in Kentucky, along with all others throughout the nation, has been told that the school district’s racially diverse programs have to end.
In June of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racially diverse programs that were started voluntarily in Louisville and Seattle, using race as a factor to determine public school placements. The court's decision has left schools across the country scrambling to find a way to protect diversity in their classrooms.
More than 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decision, known as Brown v. Board of Education, declared that separate schools are inherently unequal and therefore must become racially diverse. Thus began a painful and sometimes violent process for school districts to become compliant with that ruling.
I believe this process helped unify our nation and bring us more in line with the notion of ‘America, Land of the Free’. I believe this decision helped make our country stronger.
50 years of busing students out of their school districts to other schools based on race has resulted in more racially diverse schools. We needed it. Without the Supreme Court decision to force integration it would not have happened.
Now, the U.S. Supreme Court has made a decision that will undo everything we have struggled to achieve and will set race relations back 50 years.
School districts have now been told, by this conservative U.S. Supreme Court, that race cannot be a factor in promoting desegregation. Schools have been trying to comply with that 50 year old decision based on race and now the court has said that basis is wrong. What does this government want?
Do we have George W. Bush to thank for this? He appointed the two most recent, most conservative justices he could find to serve on this Court. Both of those justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, played major roles in undermining the tenets of Brown v. Board of Education.
This turn of events is in itself an education for students. What they take away from this is that no decision of our highest court in the land is final. No final decision remains, as it is not written in stone. We can no longer believe in what the courts tells us, because another court will strike the decision down.
This is why the once noble practice of law has become so overrun with unscrupulous lawyers. Because they can manipulate the justice system to get the decision they want based on the fact that our court system is not unified and that no court decision is final. We live in a world of wishy-washy ‘decision makers’ that change their minds based on which way the political wind is blowing. If there had been different justices on the court 50 years ago there is a strong possibility that integration never would have happened.
We, the people of the United States, need to have a firm foundation to define us, to unify us. The U.S. Constitution is that foundation. But, the U.S. Supreme Court, through the appointments of the President, keeps changing that foundation. The U.S. Constitution says that were are created equal and as such should all be treated as equals. Before Brown v. Board of Education, and other court decisions, the U.S. government was not treating all of us equally because of the way the school system was set up and because racial discrimination had become so institutionalized. The government was forced to correct these injustices by forcing integration and now the U.S. Supreme Court tell us that they were wrong to do it in this manner.
When a decision as strong and righteous as Brown v. Board of Education has been made and it has been proven to be as successful as it has it then becomes too important to be over turned by a future court just because the current president loads the court with people of his choice.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
To “Fix the problem”: quit
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims he will ‘fix the problems’. The ‘problems’ he refers to involve using politics as a basis for hiring and firing prosecutors in his office.
He claims he is opposed to politics in decision-making in his office. Yet it is commonly understood that this is exactly the basis for his firing of eight U.S. attorneys. When he faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, in April of this year, to answer these charges his favorite answer to almost every question was “I cannot recall”. This in itself is a very poor response for someone in such a position as his. And to hide behind this transparent stalling technique shows him to be as guilty as anyone sitting in any witness box of every courtroom in this nation.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, sent Gonzales a list of 12 questions that he promises to ask Gonzales today. Senator Leahy, D-Vermont, decided to present these questions to Gonzales before hand so that Gonzales will have time to prepare his answers instead of hiding behind his supposed faulty memory.
It will be interesting to see what ‘facts’ he will hide behind to try to get the heat off of him.
Alberto Gonzales is not qualified for his position. He does not have enough experience to be in this position. No one can convince me that politics did not get him this position. No one can convince me that politics did not play a part in the firing of those eight prosecutors.
Politics is the only game this person knows, he is not fooling anyone.
The only way Alberto Gonzales can ‘fix the problems’ is to step down.
The U.S. Attorneys Office commands better respect and prestige than this man can provide.
He claims he is opposed to politics in decision-making in his office. Yet it is commonly understood that this is exactly the basis for his firing of eight U.S. attorneys. When he faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, in April of this year, to answer these charges his favorite answer to almost every question was “I cannot recall”. This in itself is a very poor response for someone in such a position as his. And to hide behind this transparent stalling technique shows him to be as guilty as anyone sitting in any witness box of every courtroom in this nation.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, sent Gonzales a list of 12 questions that he promises to ask Gonzales today. Senator Leahy, D-Vermont, decided to present these questions to Gonzales before hand so that Gonzales will have time to prepare his answers instead of hiding behind his supposed faulty memory.
It will be interesting to see what ‘facts’ he will hide behind to try to get the heat off of him.
Alberto Gonzales is not qualified for his position. He does not have enough experience to be in this position. No one can convince me that politics did not get him this position. No one can convince me that politics did not play a part in the firing of those eight prosecutors.
Politics is the only game this person knows, he is not fooling anyone.
The only way Alberto Gonzales can ‘fix the problems’ is to step down.
The U.S. Attorneys Office commands better respect and prestige than this man can provide.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Who protects them from the protectors?
It seems that immorality is a world wide issue. Even the ‘peacekeepers’ are not exempt from this unsavory human trait.
The United Nations peacekeeping force has been identified by, the very people they are supposed to protect from predators, as being the predators.
A story out of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in Africa, tells of women, who were asked by the U.N. to identify anyone who has sexually exploited them, pointing fingers at the U.N. peacekeeping force. The women said that a group of these men, stationed in their country to support a peace process that was revived in March by an agreement between President Laurent Gbagdo and the rebel leader Guillaume Soro, took advantage of the situation and has had sex with minors.
This is indeed very disturbing. The United Nations is a very noble organization with highly regarded and respectable reasons to be called into a part of the world where human rights violations are taking place. The actions of these ‘men’ serves only to denigrate these women to a subservient class. I am pretty certain that this goes completely against what the U.N. stands for.
I am appalled. It is bad enough to have sex with these women under the cloak of ‘protection’ but to have sex with minors is morally repugnant. To come into a village, disguised as peacekeepers to protect these people from harm and then to do that very same harm is unimaginable. How can these ‘men’ hold their heads up. Have they no shame?
I will never understand how a man can think it is okay to take advantage of a woman, and especially a child, in this situation. Granted there are some cases where the woman may have initiated the sex. It is possible. But these ‘men’, performing the respectable role as protectors of human rights, have disgraced that honor for their own personal gain.
Do these men think they ‘deserve’ to engage in this ‘pleasure of the flesh’ because they are seen as ‘heroes’ who saved these women from their enemies? Perhaps they think that this is their ‘reward’?
No man has the right to call himself a man if he has sex with a minor. These ‘dogs’ need to be castrated.
The United Nations peacekeeping force has been identified by, the very people they are supposed to protect from predators, as being the predators.
A story out of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire in Africa, tells of women, who were asked by the U.N. to identify anyone who has sexually exploited them, pointing fingers at the U.N. peacekeeping force. The women said that a group of these men, stationed in their country to support a peace process that was revived in March by an agreement between President Laurent Gbagdo and the rebel leader Guillaume Soro, took advantage of the situation and has had sex with minors.
This is indeed very disturbing. The United Nations is a very noble organization with highly regarded and respectable reasons to be called into a part of the world where human rights violations are taking place. The actions of these ‘men’ serves only to denigrate these women to a subservient class. I am pretty certain that this goes completely against what the U.N. stands for.
I am appalled. It is bad enough to have sex with these women under the cloak of ‘protection’ but to have sex with minors is morally repugnant. To come into a village, disguised as peacekeepers to protect these people from harm and then to do that very same harm is unimaginable. How can these ‘men’ hold their heads up. Have they no shame?
I will never understand how a man can think it is okay to take advantage of a woman, and especially a child, in this situation. Granted there are some cases where the woman may have initiated the sex. It is possible. But these ‘men’, performing the respectable role as protectors of human rights, have disgraced that honor for their own personal gain.
Do these men think they ‘deserve’ to engage in this ‘pleasure of the flesh’ because they are seen as ‘heroes’ who saved these women from their enemies? Perhaps they think that this is their ‘reward’?
No man has the right to call himself a man if he has sex with a minor. These ‘dogs’ need to be castrated.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Robbing the poor to pay the rich
Yet another tale of a politician in the position to misuse taxpayers dollars, and guess what? He gets away with it again.
This time Representative (what a misnomer) Jerry R. Lewis is ‘appropriating’ $500,000 in taxpayer money to ‘beautify’ a park in an area that already has much more money than a vast majority of small towns across this nation.
Why does he think that money is better spent on a park in a ritzy neighborhood than say in a working class neighborhood where people are struggling to make ends meet while trying to keep their kids off drugs and trying to keep their kids in school so they can make something of themselves? You don’t have to look very far to learn the answer to this question. He owns a house just three blocks away from this ‘privileged’ park. Of course, he says that has nothing to do with why he would rather spend the money there than to help the poor taxpayer who provided the money.
How about allocating that money for larger police forces to patrol our nations highways to cut down on traffic lawbreakers and maybe save some lives?
How about allocating that money to research for cancer and other healthcare issues again to help save lives?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers to educate families on how to raise children so we can produce better well-adjusted adults?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers through the education system to pay for better teachers so we can increase our collective intelligence in this country?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers to help reduce the cost of health insurance?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers to help hard-working single parents pay for daycare?
How about not legally stealing that money for your personal use. Lets face ‘Representative’ Lewis, you are going to benefit from this expenditure and you know it.
In this age of ‘pet projects’ and ‘me first’ he is just doing what it seems every congressman is doing, simply grabbing a piece of that huge golden egg called taxpayer money. He is simply playing the game as it is played in Washington. He is engaged in a race to grab as much as he can, just as everyone else is.
I personally think that if there is enough money to fund wasteful projects such as this then maybe we are paying too much in taxes.
I also believe that since it is common practice to seek out money for pet projects then maybe we should replace the people who are 'grabbing' this money for themselves.
This time Representative (what a misnomer) Jerry R. Lewis is ‘appropriating’ $500,000 in taxpayer money to ‘beautify’ a park in an area that already has much more money than a vast majority of small towns across this nation.
Why does he think that money is better spent on a park in a ritzy neighborhood than say in a working class neighborhood where people are struggling to make ends meet while trying to keep their kids off drugs and trying to keep their kids in school so they can make something of themselves? You don’t have to look very far to learn the answer to this question. He owns a house just three blocks away from this ‘privileged’ park. Of course, he says that has nothing to do with why he would rather spend the money there than to help the poor taxpayer who provided the money.
How about allocating that money for larger police forces to patrol our nations highways to cut down on traffic lawbreakers and maybe save some lives?
How about allocating that money to research for cancer and other healthcare issues again to help save lives?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers to educate families on how to raise children so we can produce better well-adjusted adults?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers through the education system to pay for better teachers so we can increase our collective intelligence in this country?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers to help reduce the cost of health insurance?
How about allocating that money back to the taxpayers to help hard-working single parents pay for daycare?
How about not legally stealing that money for your personal use. Lets face ‘Representative’ Lewis, you are going to benefit from this expenditure and you know it.
In this age of ‘pet projects’ and ‘me first’ he is just doing what it seems every congressman is doing, simply grabbing a piece of that huge golden egg called taxpayer money. He is simply playing the game as it is played in Washington. He is engaged in a race to grab as much as he can, just as everyone else is.
I personally think that if there is enough money to fund wasteful projects such as this then maybe we are paying too much in taxes.
I also believe that since it is common practice to seek out money for pet projects then maybe we should replace the people who are 'grabbing' this money for themselves.
Politics and prostitution
The 'D.C. Madam's' phone records are being researched to find out who in our nation’s capital has been ‘using’ her ‘escort service’. This research of phone records is a waste of time and nothing more than ‘busy work’ for those doing the research.
Nothing will ever come of any of this. This behavior is so ingrained in our society that it is accepted even as we act outraged.
Deborah Jean Palfrey is the California woman known as the ‘D.C. Madam’. She is just the latest ‘D.C. Madam’. She is facing federal charges of running an illegal prostitution ring in the Washington D.C. area.
She contends it was an escort agency in the most literal sense (Oh, Please!!), and that any eroticism between her escorts and their customers was strictly "fantasy," not hands-on. Yada, Yada, Yada.
So let’s just play this ‘”fantasy” card a little further. She, as a ‘business’ owner, who had to have known that illegal activity was taking place, did nothing to stem this behavior. This in itself holds her accountable.
It is common knowledge among the adult population of the entire world that “escort service” is a euphemism for prostitution. And everybody knows why a man ‘hires’ a female ‘escort’.
An escort is defined as a person who accompanies another person to a location or (usually formal) event such as a ball, cotillion or wedding to provide protection, support, or company.
These “escorts” certainly did not provide protection. Support and company? Were these customers so ‘lonely’ from being so far away from their wives that they ‘needed’ support and company? Give me a break.
Throughout history there have been men from all walks of life, on the legal side and the illegal side, who have participated in this behavior. There have been countless millions of dollars made in this activity that we have deemed illegal. There have been countless ruined lives that have resulted from this activity and we view as immoral. And yet it continues.
Why the big ‘to do’ about this? This is nothing more than exercise for the media to shine a spotlight on the smut, the scandal and the distrust that comes along with being a politician.
Why do you people act like you care that this happened? Nobody does anything about it. Yet, it does affect everyone.
Senator David Vitter, R-Louisiana, is one of the latest men to be connected to this latest “escort service” scandal. He is a married man. He has a family.
This activity is abhorrent and morally wrong on so many levels. Why did he feel he ‘needed’ the service of a female escort? Was it an ego thing? Did he feel the need to present this image in Washington that he is a ‘power player’ and as such he needs to show everyone there that he can shun his married life and show he is a ’man of the world’ who can have any woman he wants? Was it just to ‘fit in’?
In the strictest sense of the word the woman he hired was not to be involved in sex with him. Loose morals is what allowed the situation to ‘devolve’ into something slutty. By his own admission he "sinned". And he did this at least five times! Did he “sin” by hiring the escort? No, that came from being weak and foolish. Did he “sin” by carrying things outside the definition of an escort? Yes. Did he “sin” because he cheated on his wife? Yes.
He made is wife look foolish. He presented himself to his constituents in Louisiana as a man of low ‘moral character’. I am certain that if those voters had known he did not take his marriage vows seriously, he would not have been voted into office. This is a man who clearly cannot control his urges. He does not take oaths as serious. He placed himself above both legal law and moral law and he will bend these laws to his advantage. Is this the image of what politicians have become? In America, Yes.
Some people will say that it was a weak human trait that allowed him do this and he should be forgiven and allowed to go on without punishment, since he apologized. I say that line of thinking is exactly why this behavior continues.
Humans have every opportunity to show themselves to be above this moral low-ground and are very capable of doing so. He alone made the wrong choice and should not be forgiven for it.
He is in a political position to make law as well as uphold the law and he has now proven to us that he cannot be trusted. He should not be forgiven.
He has proven that he does not respect his wife. Does he respect his voters?
He has proven that he does not hold his marriage vows as sacred and that his marriage is secondary to his personal desires. He should not be forgiven.
Every person should hold themselves to high moral standards. I’m not talking about preaching on every street corner to all the sinners to repent. I’m talking about within each of us we need to gain some respect and dignity.
A politician is in a position where all eyes are on him/her. Not just American eyes, but eyes of the world as well. This type of behavior casts serious doubts about trust and the ability to do what is right for the people of this country beyond personal gain. This issue is that big.
Once again the U.S. looks like it cannot be trusted because we cannot trust our own.
Why is this behavior continued to be accepted? Why don’t we take a hard stand and replace these low-characters with someone who can be trusted? Is this activity illegal or not? Is it immoral or not?
We talk a good game of morals and we ‘act’ like we are outraged when someone is caught but then everyone shrugs their shoulders and say “Ah, It was a moment of weakness.”
Will Congress do anything to punish him? No. Maybe a token slap on the wrist but this man of low character, of low virtue will say he is sorry and we will all know it is bullshit. He may even carry it further and lie by saying he will not do it again. But we already know he is not a moral man so how can he be expected to keep his promise to his constituents, his wife and his family? This person does not deserve to be a Senator. But there are many in Congress who do not deserve to be there. It is a very long list.
If this behavior is so acceptable now and we are not truly outraged, then why bother with all of the media attention? Why bother with a trial against this madam?
Nothing will ever come of any of this. This behavior is so ingrained in our society that it is accepted even as we act outraged.
Deborah Jean Palfrey is the California woman known as the ‘D.C. Madam’. She is just the latest ‘D.C. Madam’. She is facing federal charges of running an illegal prostitution ring in the Washington D.C. area.
She contends it was an escort agency in the most literal sense (Oh, Please!!), and that any eroticism between her escorts and their customers was strictly "fantasy," not hands-on. Yada, Yada, Yada.
So let’s just play this ‘”fantasy” card a little further. She, as a ‘business’ owner, who had to have known that illegal activity was taking place, did nothing to stem this behavior. This in itself holds her accountable.
It is common knowledge among the adult population of the entire world that “escort service” is a euphemism for prostitution. And everybody knows why a man ‘hires’ a female ‘escort’.
An escort is defined as a person who accompanies another person to a location or (usually formal) event such as a ball, cotillion or wedding to provide protection, support, or company.
These “escorts” certainly did not provide protection. Support and company? Were these customers so ‘lonely’ from being so far away from their wives that they ‘needed’ support and company? Give me a break.
Throughout history there have been men from all walks of life, on the legal side and the illegal side, who have participated in this behavior. There have been countless millions of dollars made in this activity that we have deemed illegal. There have been countless ruined lives that have resulted from this activity and we view as immoral. And yet it continues.
Why the big ‘to do’ about this? This is nothing more than exercise for the media to shine a spotlight on the smut, the scandal and the distrust that comes along with being a politician.
Why do you people act like you care that this happened? Nobody does anything about it. Yet, it does affect everyone.
Senator David Vitter, R-Louisiana, is one of the latest men to be connected to this latest “escort service” scandal. He is a married man. He has a family.
This activity is abhorrent and morally wrong on so many levels. Why did he feel he ‘needed’ the service of a female escort? Was it an ego thing? Did he feel the need to present this image in Washington that he is a ‘power player’ and as such he needs to show everyone there that he can shun his married life and show he is a ’man of the world’ who can have any woman he wants? Was it just to ‘fit in’?
In the strictest sense of the word the woman he hired was not to be involved in sex with him. Loose morals is what allowed the situation to ‘devolve’ into something slutty. By his own admission he "sinned". And he did this at least five times! Did he “sin” by hiring the escort? No, that came from being weak and foolish. Did he “sin” by carrying things outside the definition of an escort? Yes. Did he “sin” because he cheated on his wife? Yes.
He made is wife look foolish. He presented himself to his constituents in Louisiana as a man of low ‘moral character’. I am certain that if those voters had known he did not take his marriage vows seriously, he would not have been voted into office. This is a man who clearly cannot control his urges. He does not take oaths as serious. He placed himself above both legal law and moral law and he will bend these laws to his advantage. Is this the image of what politicians have become? In America, Yes.
Some people will say that it was a weak human trait that allowed him do this and he should be forgiven and allowed to go on without punishment, since he apologized. I say that line of thinking is exactly why this behavior continues.
Humans have every opportunity to show themselves to be above this moral low-ground and are very capable of doing so. He alone made the wrong choice and should not be forgiven for it.
He is in a political position to make law as well as uphold the law and he has now proven to us that he cannot be trusted. He should not be forgiven.
He has proven that he does not respect his wife. Does he respect his voters?
He has proven that he does not hold his marriage vows as sacred and that his marriage is secondary to his personal desires. He should not be forgiven.
Every person should hold themselves to high moral standards. I’m not talking about preaching on every street corner to all the sinners to repent. I’m talking about within each of us we need to gain some respect and dignity.
A politician is in a position where all eyes are on him/her. Not just American eyes, but eyes of the world as well. This type of behavior casts serious doubts about trust and the ability to do what is right for the people of this country beyond personal gain. This issue is that big.
Once again the U.S. looks like it cannot be trusted because we cannot trust our own.
Why is this behavior continued to be accepted? Why don’t we take a hard stand and replace these low-characters with someone who can be trusted? Is this activity illegal or not? Is it immoral or not?
We talk a good game of morals and we ‘act’ like we are outraged when someone is caught but then everyone shrugs their shoulders and say “Ah, It was a moment of weakness.”
Will Congress do anything to punish him? No. Maybe a token slap on the wrist but this man of low character, of low virtue will say he is sorry and we will all know it is bullshit. He may even carry it further and lie by saying he will not do it again. But we already know he is not a moral man so how can he be expected to keep his promise to his constituents, his wife and his family? This person does not deserve to be a Senator. But there are many in Congress who do not deserve to be there. It is a very long list.
If this behavior is so acceptable now and we are not truly outraged, then why bother with all of the media attention? Why bother with a trial against this madam?
Friday, July 20, 2007
Medical vs Moral issues
My Mom turned 80 today.
She is ‘existing’ in a home for elderly patients.
Her quality of life sucks.
She is getting good care at the facility. As far we know, anyway. It is scary to have her there under someone else’s care. You read horror stories of elder abuse and we on the ‘outside’ know nothing is happening until it’s is too late. I have not seen any signs, but what do I look for?
Her current living situation is not due to a ‘lack of caring’ on the part of any of her family members either, she has done this to herself.
She survived lung cancer and a brain tumor. We have stood beside her through all of this, as in all things. She survived this horrible indignity only to become so depressed that she does not want to live any longer. She refuses to eat, she refuses to accept phone calls from those of us who live far away. She refuses to talk to those of us who visit her daily. Every once in awhile she will say something that indicates she is living in the past. Most often she knows where she is. Sometimes she says hurtful things directed at one of us. This is very uncharacteristic of her and we try not to take it personally.
This situation is extremely difficult for us to understand. She has always been an independent woman, strong willed and very loving. She has shut down from all outside contact.
Doctors cannot tell us definitively why this has happened, they can only guess. She is comfortable where she is, or so she says. She is financially comfortable so she can pay her own way.
I look at her and want so much to have her back. I also want her to not feel any more pain.
Does she have the right to decide that she no longer wants to live in this world? I believe she does have that right. Do we have the right to grant her that wish? It is repugnant to think that one of us should make the final decision to carry out her wish.
I have known her my entire life and I know she does not make irrational decisions. She thinks things through and although she cannot always block out emotions she tries do what is best overall. She has always put her children first and I know right now she thinks she is a burden to us and therefore she does not want to continue life in this condition. Knowing her like I do is why I can say that I am convinced that dying is want she wants to do.
Do we have the right to allow her to die? Doctors, of course, take a pledge to do whatever they can to save lives but when does the patients rights override that pledge?
This is a thorny legal issue. It is a thorny moral issue. I have always been at odds over legal versus moral law.
My issue at this point has to do with a conflict of interest. Knowing she does not have a good quality life and is only waiting, indeed wishing, to die versus the medical establishment profiting on having her live.
We want to bring her home. She refuses to leave. Do we force her? I cannot entertain the idea of ‘kidnapping’ my mother and forcing her to live where she does not want to. She is a prisoner in her own body, I do not want to make her my prisoner. Has she worked her entire life collecting benefits towards supporting herself in her retirement years only to have all of it go to the medical establishment? This scenario is just plain wrong. It is wrong that they are benefiting from her condition and we all hopelessly stand on the sidelines and can do nothing.
There is no easy answer to this, the greatest, and most painful moral dilemma this family has ever had to face. Of course we try to keep her as comfortable as possible. This usually means drugs. This means giving up independence. She has now become dependent on a pill to keep her numb. The medical establishment charges exorbitant rates for everything they control and administer. How long is this going to continue? For my mother, no one knows. For the medical establishment, forever.
There is only unsolvable issues while the medical establishment continues to profit.
She is ‘existing’ in a home for elderly patients.
Her quality of life sucks.
She is getting good care at the facility. As far we know, anyway. It is scary to have her there under someone else’s care. You read horror stories of elder abuse and we on the ‘outside’ know nothing is happening until it’s is too late. I have not seen any signs, but what do I look for?
Her current living situation is not due to a ‘lack of caring’ on the part of any of her family members either, she has done this to herself.
She survived lung cancer and a brain tumor. We have stood beside her through all of this, as in all things. She survived this horrible indignity only to become so depressed that she does not want to live any longer. She refuses to eat, she refuses to accept phone calls from those of us who live far away. She refuses to talk to those of us who visit her daily. Every once in awhile she will say something that indicates she is living in the past. Most often she knows where she is. Sometimes she says hurtful things directed at one of us. This is very uncharacteristic of her and we try not to take it personally.
This situation is extremely difficult for us to understand. She has always been an independent woman, strong willed and very loving. She has shut down from all outside contact.
Doctors cannot tell us definitively why this has happened, they can only guess. She is comfortable where she is, or so she says. She is financially comfortable so she can pay her own way.
I look at her and want so much to have her back. I also want her to not feel any more pain.
Does she have the right to decide that she no longer wants to live in this world? I believe she does have that right. Do we have the right to grant her that wish? It is repugnant to think that one of us should make the final decision to carry out her wish.
I have known her my entire life and I know she does not make irrational decisions. She thinks things through and although she cannot always block out emotions she tries do what is best overall. She has always put her children first and I know right now she thinks she is a burden to us and therefore she does not want to continue life in this condition. Knowing her like I do is why I can say that I am convinced that dying is want she wants to do.
Do we have the right to allow her to die? Doctors, of course, take a pledge to do whatever they can to save lives but when does the patients rights override that pledge?
This is a thorny legal issue. It is a thorny moral issue. I have always been at odds over legal versus moral law.
My issue at this point has to do with a conflict of interest. Knowing she does not have a good quality life and is only waiting, indeed wishing, to die versus the medical establishment profiting on having her live.
We want to bring her home. She refuses to leave. Do we force her? I cannot entertain the idea of ‘kidnapping’ my mother and forcing her to live where she does not want to. She is a prisoner in her own body, I do not want to make her my prisoner. Has she worked her entire life collecting benefits towards supporting herself in her retirement years only to have all of it go to the medical establishment? This scenario is just plain wrong. It is wrong that they are benefiting from her condition and we all hopelessly stand on the sidelines and can do nothing.
There is no easy answer to this, the greatest, and most painful moral dilemma this family has ever had to face. Of course we try to keep her as comfortable as possible. This usually means drugs. This means giving up independence. She has now become dependent on a pill to keep her numb. The medical establishment charges exorbitant rates for everything they control and administer. How long is this going to continue? For my mother, no one knows. For the medical establishment, forever.
There is only unsolvable issues while the medical establishment continues to profit.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Religion as a selling point?
Recently, some businesses have been printing biblical scriptures on their product packaging. In-n-Out Burger, Chick-fil-A and the Forever 21 clothing chain are doing this. My first thought was ‘good for them’.
I am not a zealot for or against religion. In fact, I believe a little religion can help this country regain its moral bearings. God knows we need all the help we can get. I also believe a company has the right to print what they want on their packaging, as long as it is not hate-mongering or slanderous. If someone has a problem with it then let their sales numbers speak for themselves, for or against.
Starbucks prints quotes from artists, writers, scientists and other noteworthy people on a variety of subjects, including religion. Atheists were upset when they saw that the Rev. Rick Warren ("The Purpose-Driven Life") is quoted, and Christians did not like gay writer Armistead Maupin's comment that "life is too damn short" to spend in the closet.
So outraged is one organization by the anti-evolution messages that it dispatched its members to protest the practice via e-mail and phone calls. "I mean, my God," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "It's rather unforgivable. They're going to give their customers heartburn."
Gaylor also came up with this gem: "What are they going to do next, run quotes challenging the theory of gravity, then run a separate one by Galileo saying, 'Oh, no, it's true'? No wonder this country is going downhill scientifically." This is just stupid! Woman, if you are going to say anything please be intelligent!
Suck it up, people. Freedom of speech goes both ways. The objectors have a right to speak against the company and the company has the right to print what they want.
I am sick and tired of a very small minority trying to restrict what other people do by passing their own narrow-minded viewpoint off onto the majority. These are legal businesses engaged in legal commerce, you do not have the right to tell them what they can and cannot print on their packaging. Again, if you don’t like it, don’t shop there!
The problem I can see with this, besides it bringing out all the ‘nut jobs’ who think they have to protest against this way of doing business, is if the workers begin to engage the customers for or against the messages. When I walk into a business I am there for the product, not a sermon. Just sell your product and let the chips fall where they may. Of course, if the company wants to have open discussion with the customers they can, but I think it will hurt their sales.
I am not a zealot for or against religion. In fact, I believe a little religion can help this country regain its moral bearings. God knows we need all the help we can get. I also believe a company has the right to print what they want on their packaging, as long as it is not hate-mongering or slanderous. If someone has a problem with it then let their sales numbers speak for themselves, for or against.
Starbucks prints quotes from artists, writers, scientists and other noteworthy people on a variety of subjects, including religion. Atheists were upset when they saw that the Rev. Rick Warren ("The Purpose-Driven Life") is quoted, and Christians did not like gay writer Armistead Maupin's comment that "life is too damn short" to spend in the closet.
So outraged is one organization by the anti-evolution messages that it dispatched its members to protest the practice via e-mail and phone calls. "I mean, my God," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. "It's rather unforgivable. They're going to give their customers heartburn."
Gaylor also came up with this gem: "What are they going to do next, run quotes challenging the theory of gravity, then run a separate one by Galileo saying, 'Oh, no, it's true'? No wonder this country is going downhill scientifically." This is just stupid! Woman, if you are going to say anything please be intelligent!
Suck it up, people. Freedom of speech goes both ways. The objectors have a right to speak against the company and the company has the right to print what they want.
I am sick and tired of a very small minority trying to restrict what other people do by passing their own narrow-minded viewpoint off onto the majority. These are legal businesses engaged in legal commerce, you do not have the right to tell them what they can and cannot print on their packaging. Again, if you don’t like it, don’t shop there!
The problem I can see with this, besides it bringing out all the ‘nut jobs’ who think they have to protest against this way of doing business, is if the workers begin to engage the customers for or against the messages. When I walk into a business I am there for the product, not a sermon. Just sell your product and let the chips fall where they may. Of course, if the company wants to have open discussion with the customers they can, but I think it will hurt their sales.
Children have no guidelines on what they can become as adults.
When I was a child I was too busy doing childhood things to worry about my future. That job belonged to my parents. They were busily wrapped up in the task of providing for themselves and their offspring. This in itself is a noble undertaking for any parent. It is just that they should have done a little more in preparing me for what life could offer. I understand that they probably wasn’t given many choices and it is true that the number of choices back then were limited.
When it came time to answer that question from my high school guidance councilor that everybody eventually faces, “What do you want to be when you graduate?”, I was stumped. I was totally unprepared for it. I wasn’t terrified until later after realizing that I had indeed come to that crossroad in everyone’s life when I realized that my future was coming at me ready or not.
Looking back on the way my life has turned out I can see that I have been fairly fortunate that I am not more poor than I am. I am not financially wealthy, but I am not as financially comfortable as I would like to be either.
I can’t help thinking that I was not given the proper guidance by that high school ‘guidance councilor’. As an adult I now realize how difficult it must have been for him to sit across his desk from a high school student whose face was as blank as an unused chalk board. When he asked me that question, the only thing I can remember thinking was that I had no idea what I wanted to be.
Of course, he was trying to determine what classes I should take in order to prepare me for my eventual life after high school. Since I had no idea what to tell him he loaded me up with all the academic level classes so that I could be ‘generally’ prepared for making a decision later.
When I walked away I felt that I had secured a course that would help me through life (of course I didn’t really phrase it that way, I was just glad I was no longer in his office and that I could get back to class and get through the day).
This was really my first ‘confrontation’ with real life. This was a very important moment in my life and I was not prepared. Did someone fail me for not preparing me for this moment? Was I supposed to have been shown what my options were by my parents? Was the councilor himself supposed to give me a long list of possible career choices? Was there some test available to identify my ‘aptitude’ that would at least point me in the right direction of a career choice?
I did not have any of these things given to me.
When I graduated, never making a real decision on what I wanted to become, I went to work doing anything I could to earn money.
I had always been willing to work. My first income was mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, doing odd jobs for neighbors willing to pay me. My first ‘structured’ job, complete with time clock and a paycheck, was as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. A job I thoroughly hated. Then I worked in a paint store as a salesman. Another job I thoroughly hated. I was quick to decide that dealing with the general public was not something I wanted to look forward to each day.
I got a job in a warehouse and felt a little better about life in general. Most of my time away from my job was spent with my girlfriend. And I never really ever put much thought into my future. Things were going well enough so why bother.
Then Uncle Sam reached out to me with draft papers in hand. I politely refused to go into his army and be shipped to Vietnam, where I am sure my future would have taken a decidedly darker turn. I did what every other red-blooded American male did at the time who did not want to run off to Canada and who did not want to kill anyone, I joined the Air Force. They gave me a test that defined my ‘aptitude’ for electronics. I was placed in tech school to become a computer operator. This was okay for the next eight years, but I was beginning to want more. I used the GI Bill to go to college to become a computer programmer. After all, everybody said that computers are the ‘big coming wave of the future’ and ‘Get on the train now for a brighter future’. After four years of college and a degree in hand I went to seek my fortune. Many jobs I found turned out to be ‘sweat shop’ operations. Nothing at all like the picture that had been firmly planted in my brain.
After spending years writing programming code I eventually burned out. It became boring. Luckily I was able to save money though the companies payroll stock sharing programs available to me and was able to retire before age 65. Not too bad for someone who had no clue about what life could offer.
Looking back on all of this with the advantage of actual experience, the picture I am presented with is a very common one. Most kids don’t know what they want to do with their future so they just go with the flow taking whatever comes along and hope they can make enough money to retire on after it is all over.
This course of action, or inaction, is really very mundane and scary as hell. If I had gotten real guidance, if I had been shown what my real options were then I am quite sure things would have turned out differently. Every child should have this type of guidance while they are young so they can be shown what they need to do to prepare themselves for the business of surviving this life in this capitalist society.
Recently, I answered my front doorbell on two separate occasions to be greeted by a neighborhood child wanting to earn some money.
On one occasion it was two young girls who had made bead bracelets and were asking two dollars each to earn some ‘extra’ money. My first thought was that it was refreshing to see youth taking the initiative to begin to earn their own way. This means a lot to me. My next thought was that they had priced their wares too low. Sure, it was only string and beads, but they had put their time into making and designing them and created very nice looking bracelets. I told them they should be asking for three or four dollars and that I would give them three dollars each for three of them. I have three granddaughters and I can’t by just for the youngest one.
On another occasion, two young boys came to the door offering to mow my lawn for five dollars. I refused their very generous offer by telling them that I mow it myself. Then I thought to tell them that they should ask for more than five dollars. I explained to them that the price of gas alone was enough reason to ask for more. Then I told them it would take about an hour to mow my lawn and they should ask for at least twenty dollars if they did a good enough job. I am sure there are some neighbors who would like to take advantage of these boys inexperience, and that would be wrong, so I hoped that by telling them this they would place a higher value on their time.
The point to these two stories is that someone (parents) should have told these kids that their time is worthwhile and they should set a higher price for it. Now I think it is great that these four individuals took it upon themselves to earn some money, but really, where is the guidance they clearly did not get?
Every loving, caring parent wants their children to become something more than they became. We can do this by trying to find out what the kid is interested in and has an aptitude for and then nurturing that interest toward a career possibility. Kids don’t see the future. We need to see it for them. Maybe by the time they are sitting across the desk from their guidance councilor they will be able to answer with more than a blank stare.
When it came time to answer that question from my high school guidance councilor that everybody eventually faces, “What do you want to be when you graduate?”, I was stumped. I was totally unprepared for it. I wasn’t terrified until later after realizing that I had indeed come to that crossroad in everyone’s life when I realized that my future was coming at me ready or not.
Looking back on the way my life has turned out I can see that I have been fairly fortunate that I am not more poor than I am. I am not financially wealthy, but I am not as financially comfortable as I would like to be either.
I can’t help thinking that I was not given the proper guidance by that high school ‘guidance councilor’. As an adult I now realize how difficult it must have been for him to sit across his desk from a high school student whose face was as blank as an unused chalk board. When he asked me that question, the only thing I can remember thinking was that I had no idea what I wanted to be.
Of course, he was trying to determine what classes I should take in order to prepare me for my eventual life after high school. Since I had no idea what to tell him he loaded me up with all the academic level classes so that I could be ‘generally’ prepared for making a decision later.
When I walked away I felt that I had secured a course that would help me through life (of course I didn’t really phrase it that way, I was just glad I was no longer in his office and that I could get back to class and get through the day).
This was really my first ‘confrontation’ with real life. This was a very important moment in my life and I was not prepared. Did someone fail me for not preparing me for this moment? Was I supposed to have been shown what my options were by my parents? Was the councilor himself supposed to give me a long list of possible career choices? Was there some test available to identify my ‘aptitude’ that would at least point me in the right direction of a career choice?
I did not have any of these things given to me.
When I graduated, never making a real decision on what I wanted to become, I went to work doing anything I could to earn money.
I had always been willing to work. My first income was mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, doing odd jobs for neighbors willing to pay me. My first ‘structured’ job, complete with time clock and a paycheck, was as a dishwasher at a local restaurant. A job I thoroughly hated. Then I worked in a paint store as a salesman. Another job I thoroughly hated. I was quick to decide that dealing with the general public was not something I wanted to look forward to each day.
I got a job in a warehouse and felt a little better about life in general. Most of my time away from my job was spent with my girlfriend. And I never really ever put much thought into my future. Things were going well enough so why bother.
Then Uncle Sam reached out to me with draft papers in hand. I politely refused to go into his army and be shipped to Vietnam, where I am sure my future would have taken a decidedly darker turn. I did what every other red-blooded American male did at the time who did not want to run off to Canada and who did not want to kill anyone, I joined the Air Force. They gave me a test that defined my ‘aptitude’ for electronics. I was placed in tech school to become a computer operator. This was okay for the next eight years, but I was beginning to want more. I used the GI Bill to go to college to become a computer programmer. After all, everybody said that computers are the ‘big coming wave of the future’ and ‘Get on the train now for a brighter future’. After four years of college and a degree in hand I went to seek my fortune. Many jobs I found turned out to be ‘sweat shop’ operations. Nothing at all like the picture that had been firmly planted in my brain.
After spending years writing programming code I eventually burned out. It became boring. Luckily I was able to save money though the companies payroll stock sharing programs available to me and was able to retire before age 65. Not too bad for someone who had no clue about what life could offer.
Looking back on all of this with the advantage of actual experience, the picture I am presented with is a very common one. Most kids don’t know what they want to do with their future so they just go with the flow taking whatever comes along and hope they can make enough money to retire on after it is all over.
This course of action, or inaction, is really very mundane and scary as hell. If I had gotten real guidance, if I had been shown what my real options were then I am quite sure things would have turned out differently. Every child should have this type of guidance while they are young so they can be shown what they need to do to prepare themselves for the business of surviving this life in this capitalist society.
Recently, I answered my front doorbell on two separate occasions to be greeted by a neighborhood child wanting to earn some money.
On one occasion it was two young girls who had made bead bracelets and were asking two dollars each to earn some ‘extra’ money. My first thought was that it was refreshing to see youth taking the initiative to begin to earn their own way. This means a lot to me. My next thought was that they had priced their wares too low. Sure, it was only string and beads, but they had put their time into making and designing them and created very nice looking bracelets. I told them they should be asking for three or four dollars and that I would give them three dollars each for three of them. I have three granddaughters and I can’t by just for the youngest one.
On another occasion, two young boys came to the door offering to mow my lawn for five dollars. I refused their very generous offer by telling them that I mow it myself. Then I thought to tell them that they should ask for more than five dollars. I explained to them that the price of gas alone was enough reason to ask for more. Then I told them it would take about an hour to mow my lawn and they should ask for at least twenty dollars if they did a good enough job. I am sure there are some neighbors who would like to take advantage of these boys inexperience, and that would be wrong, so I hoped that by telling them this they would place a higher value on their time.
The point to these two stories is that someone (parents) should have told these kids that their time is worthwhile and they should set a higher price for it. Now I think it is great that these four individuals took it upon themselves to earn some money, but really, where is the guidance they clearly did not get?
Every loving, caring parent wants their children to become something more than they became. We can do this by trying to find out what the kid is interested in and has an aptitude for and then nurturing that interest toward a career possibility. Kids don’t see the future. We need to see it for them. Maybe by the time they are sitting across the desk from their guidance councilor they will be able to answer with more than a blank stare.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
False front, true prejudice
Normally, I wouldn’t even address this issue but this guy got me to thinking about the false front that so many people put forth in their daily dealings with the public.
The chairman of the Roger Williams University board, in Providence Rhode Island, admitted to using the N-word during a board meeting, saying it "kind of slipped out."
I know there was a ‘ceremony’ to bury this hate filled word, but the word itself is not the problem. The true problem is the meaning behind the word. The images that are presented from the use of this word cannot be forgotten without the passage of time. The use of the word flags the underlying prejudice that allows everyone to see that the user of the word is a prejudiced person.
Ralph Papitto, 80, who stepped down earlier this month after nearly 40 years on the board, had been, during a faculty meeting in May of this year, discussing the difficulty of finding blacks and other minorities to serve on the 16-member board, which at the time included 14 white men and two women. (Is ‘he’ finding difficulty because he thinks blacks are inferior and therefore cannot possibly ‘attain the same stature’ as he? I don’t know the real reason why the board is not already diverse).
Another board member said Papitto became irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, (he does like being ‘forced’ to diversify the board) at one point using the slur to refer to black candidates to the board. This other board member then said he then told the board he knew he couldn't say that because of Don Imus, the radio host who was fired after referring to Rutgers University women's basketball team members as "nappy-headed hos." (Here I have another objection. Why can’t the media replace this objectionable term with a phrase such as ‘racial slur’ instead of repeating what the public found so objectionable in the first place? Isn’t the media perpetuating the hurt that goes with this phrase? Yes, they are!)
I have another take on this, Mr. Papitto. You said you should not have used the N-word by referring to the aftermath of the Don Imus slur as the reason. I submit that you should not have said it because of all the negative historical connotations that are attached to this word. Connotations that I am certain you are aware of, and have been aware of your entire life. The fact that this word just "kind of slipped out” indicates that you are no stranger to this word. In fact, it shows that you are deeply embedded in a belief system that you, being white, are better than all non-whites.
You, sir, are an example of what goes on in the world everyday. People put up this front of respect for others when deep inside the prejudice remains. This activity is not exclusive to whites only. Sadly, it is also practiced by blacks. I have known blacks who have these same prejudices against whites.
We all talk a good game of wanting equality for everyone. A lot of us really do want equality for everyone. Some people actually do what they can to make it happen, and to them I applaud your efforts. But, it will never fully happen.
People like Mr. Papitto will always be in positions where they can do something about it but won’t. People like Mr. Papitto will always talk like they want to do something, but won’t.
Mr. Papitto claims to have never used that word before. This is of course an out right lie. It was bad enough to try to make us believe that the word just “kind of slipped out” it is quite another to make us believe that he is so free of prejudice that he has never used that word.
Several board members called for his resignation after the incident and I suppose he should be punished for it in some way, if it truly offended someone’s sensibilities. But the small group of people who attended the meeting who were ‘so indignant’ at the use of this word during their closed meeting are just calling for his resignation for political reasons. Their skins are not so thin that they were offended by the word. Perhaps they each want his chair at the head of the table. I am certain each of them have used this word before. Maybe not in public, but the thoughts are there just the same. The deep seated prejudice is there. They just don’t want to be honest with the public because they too would be ostracized for saying it. They want him out just as a ‘show of unity’ to the political environment that we find ourselves in today.
Writing laws that says you cannot discriminate based on ‘anything’ only pushes the real prejudice deeper inside. I applaud the passing of these laws, they were passed for the right reasons, it is just that they don’t really get rid of the prejudice. They serve only to make the offense punishable in some way. We Americans, indeed all humans, have these prejudices and trying to eradicate them will only meet with failure. So we all hide behind our public face and get through whatever business is at hand.
The chairman of the Roger Williams University board, in Providence Rhode Island, admitted to using the N-word during a board meeting, saying it "kind of slipped out."
I know there was a ‘ceremony’ to bury this hate filled word, but the word itself is not the problem. The true problem is the meaning behind the word. The images that are presented from the use of this word cannot be forgotten without the passage of time. The use of the word flags the underlying prejudice that allows everyone to see that the user of the word is a prejudiced person.
Ralph Papitto, 80, who stepped down earlier this month after nearly 40 years on the board, had been, during a faculty meeting in May of this year, discussing the difficulty of finding blacks and other minorities to serve on the 16-member board, which at the time included 14 white men and two women. (Is ‘he’ finding difficulty because he thinks blacks are inferior and therefore cannot possibly ‘attain the same stature’ as he? I don’t know the real reason why the board is not already diverse).
Another board member said Papitto became irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, (he does like being ‘forced’ to diversify the board) at one point using the slur to refer to black candidates to the board. This other board member then said he then told the board he knew he couldn't say that because of Don Imus, the radio host who was fired after referring to Rutgers University women's basketball team members as "nappy-headed hos." (Here I have another objection. Why can’t the media replace this objectionable term with a phrase such as ‘racial slur’ instead of repeating what the public found so objectionable in the first place? Isn’t the media perpetuating the hurt that goes with this phrase? Yes, they are!)
I have another take on this, Mr. Papitto. You said you should not have used the N-word by referring to the aftermath of the Don Imus slur as the reason. I submit that you should not have said it because of all the negative historical connotations that are attached to this word. Connotations that I am certain you are aware of, and have been aware of your entire life. The fact that this word just "kind of slipped out” indicates that you are no stranger to this word. In fact, it shows that you are deeply embedded in a belief system that you, being white, are better than all non-whites.
You, sir, are an example of what goes on in the world everyday. People put up this front of respect for others when deep inside the prejudice remains. This activity is not exclusive to whites only. Sadly, it is also practiced by blacks. I have known blacks who have these same prejudices against whites.
We all talk a good game of wanting equality for everyone. A lot of us really do want equality for everyone. Some people actually do what they can to make it happen, and to them I applaud your efforts. But, it will never fully happen.
People like Mr. Papitto will always be in positions where they can do something about it but won’t. People like Mr. Papitto will always talk like they want to do something, but won’t.
Mr. Papitto claims to have never used that word before. This is of course an out right lie. It was bad enough to try to make us believe that the word just “kind of slipped out” it is quite another to make us believe that he is so free of prejudice that he has never used that word.
Several board members called for his resignation after the incident and I suppose he should be punished for it in some way, if it truly offended someone’s sensibilities. But the small group of people who attended the meeting who were ‘so indignant’ at the use of this word during their closed meeting are just calling for his resignation for political reasons. Their skins are not so thin that they were offended by the word. Perhaps they each want his chair at the head of the table. I am certain each of them have used this word before. Maybe not in public, but the thoughts are there just the same. The deep seated prejudice is there. They just don’t want to be honest with the public because they too would be ostracized for saying it. They want him out just as a ‘show of unity’ to the political environment that we find ourselves in today.
Writing laws that says you cannot discriminate based on ‘anything’ only pushes the real prejudice deeper inside. I applaud the passing of these laws, they were passed for the right reasons, it is just that they don’t really get rid of the prejudice. They serve only to make the offense punishable in some way. We Americans, indeed all humans, have these prejudices and trying to eradicate them will only meet with failure. So we all hide behind our public face and get through whatever business is at hand.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Catholic church pays off its sins
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached a settlement agreement Saturday with more than 500 people who allege they were sexually abused by clergy, the main plaintiff's attorney told The Associated Press.
I hate it when these people use the word ‘allege’. As if this is designed to lessen the sin that these people perpetrated. There is no ‘allege’ about it, these crimes against people actually took place. These crimes committed by a person of trust against children actually took place.
Just look at these figures:
$100 million was paid out in 2004 by the Diocese of Orange, California, to settle 90 claims.
$84 million was paid out in 2003 by the Diocese of Boston to settle 552 cases.
$84 million was paid out in 2006 by the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky to settle 360 claims.
$48 million was paid out in 2006 by the Diocese of Spokane, Washington to settle 150 claims.
$52 million was paid out in 2006 by the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon to settle 175 claims, while setting aside another $20 million for anyone who comes forward in the future. These guys are ‘planning’ for future abuse claims, how’s that for preparing for a bright rosy future.
Other Catholic groups facing abuse claims are in Tucson, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Davenport, Iowa, and San Diego, California. These guys played a different card to get out of jail, they filed for bankruptcy.
There are millions of dollars in settlements being paid out to families of victims by pedophiles. These pedophiles are not serving time in prison. Why? What society is telling pedophiles is to become catholic priests and you can commit your sick and predacious acts against children while ‘the faithful’ send their children into your arms and beds and will pay your way out of prison.
Why are there so many people still willing to trust their children to these pedophiles? Wearing a mask of religion does not make them trustworthy. In fact they are all the more dangerous.
It is not sick enough that children have to suffer at the hands and filthy minds of these vermin, now they have to have the knowledge that these perverted individuals are still allowed to do it again without punishment. What message are we sending our children?
This is one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed against a child and we allow it to go unpunished just because the predator is a priest! Amazing! Even more amazing is that we continue to send our children to them!
How can these people who wear religious robes and take religious vows actually believe in God when they commit such sinful crimes against that which God has made?
I just do not understand what we as a society allow to live amongst us.
I hate it when these people use the word ‘allege’. As if this is designed to lessen the sin that these people perpetrated. There is no ‘allege’ about it, these crimes against people actually took place. These crimes committed by a person of trust against children actually took place.
Just look at these figures:
$100 million was paid out in 2004 by the Diocese of Orange, California, to settle 90 claims.
$84 million was paid out in 2003 by the Diocese of Boston to settle 552 cases.
$84 million was paid out in 2006 by the Diocese of Covington, Kentucky to settle 360 claims.
$48 million was paid out in 2006 by the Diocese of Spokane, Washington to settle 150 claims.
$52 million was paid out in 2006 by the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon to settle 175 claims, while setting aside another $20 million for anyone who comes forward in the future. These guys are ‘planning’ for future abuse claims, how’s that for preparing for a bright rosy future.
Other Catholic groups facing abuse claims are in Tucson, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Davenport, Iowa, and San Diego, California. These guys played a different card to get out of jail, they filed for bankruptcy.
There are millions of dollars in settlements being paid out to families of victims by pedophiles. These pedophiles are not serving time in prison. Why? What society is telling pedophiles is to become catholic priests and you can commit your sick and predacious acts against children while ‘the faithful’ send their children into your arms and beds and will pay your way out of prison.
Why are there so many people still willing to trust their children to these pedophiles? Wearing a mask of religion does not make them trustworthy. In fact they are all the more dangerous.
It is not sick enough that children have to suffer at the hands and filthy minds of these vermin, now they have to have the knowledge that these perverted individuals are still allowed to do it again without punishment. What message are we sending our children?
This is one of the most heinous crimes that can be committed against a child and we allow it to go unpunished just because the predator is a priest! Amazing! Even more amazing is that we continue to send our children to them!
How can these people who wear religious robes and take religious vows actually believe in God when they commit such sinful crimes against that which God has made?
I just do not understand what we as a society allow to live amongst us.
Iraqi Prime Minister says U.S. troops can leave anytime
Okay, George, your move.
This is a golden opportunity to get out of Iraq.
Are you going to continue to hang on to Iraq as if it was your personal trophy? Are you going to hang on the ‘spoils of war’, the income producing opportunities that are making your ‘good ole buddies’ richer while American soldiers die?
Are you going to listen to reason and the demands of both the U.S. citizens and the Iraqi government and get out?
In Al-Maliki’s news conference, he referred to the political reforms that need to be made in Iraq as the reforms that ‘Washington wants’. Notice he did not refer to them as what Iraq wants.
They don’t want us there, George, get a clue. You cannot force them to want us there.
One of al-Maliki’s advisors, Shiite lawmaker Hassan al-Suneid, sharply criticized the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations and embarrassing the Iraqi government through such tactics as building a wall around Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah and launching repeated raids on suspected Shiite militiamen in the capital's slum of Sadr City.
He also criticized U.S. overtures to Sunni groups in Anbar and Diyala provinces, encouraging former insurgents to join the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq. "These are gangs of killers," he said.
This view from a top advisor illustrates a major problem that will never be overcome. They hate each other. How can you possibly expect any success at attaining a ‘democracy’ among Iraqi citizens when they hate each other? These deep divisions within the Iraqi party are along religious lines, Shiite, Sunni, and Turkish Kurds and they do not want to get along. Religion is so deeply embedded in a persons character that it cannot be ‘overcome’ even with the force and will of an American military. You are trying to change centuries of hate and distrust. You are not going to win this, George.
You cannot turn Iraq into a mini America. Give up your quest to turn Iraq into a profit center for America, give up your quest to “Americanize’ Iraq, get out now.
This is a golden opportunity to get out of Iraq.
Are you going to continue to hang on to Iraq as if it was your personal trophy? Are you going to hang on the ‘spoils of war’, the income producing opportunities that are making your ‘good ole buddies’ richer while American soldiers die?
Are you going to listen to reason and the demands of both the U.S. citizens and the Iraqi government and get out?
In Al-Maliki’s news conference, he referred to the political reforms that need to be made in Iraq as the reforms that ‘Washington wants’. Notice he did not refer to them as what Iraq wants.
They don’t want us there, George, get a clue. You cannot force them to want us there.
One of al-Maliki’s advisors, Shiite lawmaker Hassan al-Suneid, sharply criticized the U.S. military, saying it was committing human rights violations and embarrassing the Iraqi government through such tactics as building a wall around Baghdad's Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah and launching repeated raids on suspected Shiite militiamen in the capital's slum of Sadr City.
He also criticized U.S. overtures to Sunni groups in Anbar and Diyala provinces, encouraging former insurgents to join the fight against al Qaeda in Iraq. "These are gangs of killers," he said.
This view from a top advisor illustrates a major problem that will never be overcome. They hate each other. How can you possibly expect any success at attaining a ‘democracy’ among Iraqi citizens when they hate each other? These deep divisions within the Iraqi party are along religious lines, Shiite, Sunni, and Turkish Kurds and they do not want to get along. Religion is so deeply embedded in a persons character that it cannot be ‘overcome’ even with the force and will of an American military. You are trying to change centuries of hate and distrust. You are not going to win this, George.
You cannot turn Iraq into a mini America. Give up your quest to turn Iraq into a profit center for America, give up your quest to “Americanize’ Iraq, get out now.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Bush is fooling only himself
A headline says that Bush argues Iraq report does not signal war is lost.
Of course he will say this. If he admits the report is accurate then he would have to admit to failure. If he admits failure then he will have failed his daddy’s honor. And let’s face it, this is the true reason George the Second so callously took this nation to war. His own misguided ‘sense of honor’ to right the wrong in what his daddy should have done during his little war. Clearly, George the First should have taken out Saddam Hussein when he had the chance. But honor would not allow him to. George the Second is not ‘hindered‘ with honor. This is why he was chosen by the political powers to ‘right this wrong’. He used American soldiers to ‘assassinate’ a foreign head of state. Something this country has sworn never to do. Sure, no one walked up to Saddam and placed a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. He used the anger of the Iraqi people under the promise of a democratic government to do it.
George the Second has sent many American soldiers to their deaths to carry out his goals and he continues to cost even more American lives because he refuses to quit.
George the Second is not man enough to stand on his own and admit he made a mistake in going after Saddam. That would require that he admit to lying to the American people when he ‘interpreted’ another report to meet his agenda. That report, which came from our very own CIA, told him there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He chose to believe otherwise. Now, instead of admitting he was wrong and stopping this senseless taking of Americans lives and of Iraqi lives and of destroying a once beautiful nation and culture, he stubbornly sides with military advisors who will never admit defeat and who clearly have their own agenda (which is to go down in the history books as the greatest warriors ever. This is what all military leaders aspire to. Hell, it’s the only thing they can aspire to.)
He thought he could pull a ‘John Wayne’ and save his daddy’s honor and the honor of the American people. He is too blind to see that he has done nothing more than to eroded even further the perception of what America truly stands for. Since you Bushites have ‘forgotten’ what America stands for, let me tell you.
We stand for freedom. In fighting to maintain our freedom, we have earned honor. Sadly, we are not honoring ourselves by fighting in Iraq. We are not honoring ourselves by fighting in Afghanistan.
I love America. I salute and praise our brave American soldiers. They do only what they are told to do and go where they are told to go. I write these essays in an attempt to find the right words to express how we are failing the memory of all of those who have fought wearing the American military uniform during times when our freedom was in jeopardy. Our freedom is not in jeopardy in Iraq. Our freedom is not in jeopardy in Afghanistan. If we ‘lose’ the fight in these countries we do not ‘lose’ any freedom.
Our honor is what is at stake in these countries, but only because George the Second keeps us in these places. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and the rest of the world know the reason we are fighting in these countries. They know that honor has nothing to do with it. We are still in Iraq because a handful of American financial interests are still making lots of money. We are still fighting in Afghanistan because we are trying to get revenge against Osama bin Laden. We are ‘winning’ shamelessly in Iraq and failing miserably in Afghanistan. Neither of these deployments bring honor to the American people.
We don’t need the military to restore honor to the U.S. The military is but one part of the overall makeup of a true America, not the only one, George. We broke away from a nation that was ruled by tyrants, such as yourself, intent on spreading their form of government throughout the world. We broke away because we were tired of suffering at the hands of a ruling class elite that refused to represent what ‘we the people’ wanted.
The people who formed America over 200 years ago wanted nothing of spreading their form of rule to the rest of the world. They wanted nothing more than to live their lives in peace without being taxed to death and without having to live under the watchful eye of a government who is supposed to protect us. Are our taxes too high? For what we get in return for those taxes, the answer is a resounding yes! Do we live under the watchful eye of the government? When we have to worry about what we say to one another for fear of being hauled into jail and interrogated under the auspice of some ‘terrorism law’ that this president wants to enforce, the answer is another resounding yes! Is this government protecting us? When it has become unsafe for Americans to travel anywhere in the world because of our governments policies, then the answer is a resounding no!
This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the America I wish to live in.
When this president, any president, can override judicial decisions, interpret reports differently from what experts say in order to meet his own agenda, circumvent laws by ‘presidential decree’, or decide that ‘we the people’ don’t really know what is best for us then we need to remove that president lest we fall into the feudal system days of pre-America, land of the free.
Of course he will say this. If he admits the report is accurate then he would have to admit to failure. If he admits failure then he will have failed his daddy’s honor. And let’s face it, this is the true reason George the Second so callously took this nation to war. His own misguided ‘sense of honor’ to right the wrong in what his daddy should have done during his little war. Clearly, George the First should have taken out Saddam Hussein when he had the chance. But honor would not allow him to. George the Second is not ‘hindered‘ with honor. This is why he was chosen by the political powers to ‘right this wrong’. He used American soldiers to ‘assassinate’ a foreign head of state. Something this country has sworn never to do. Sure, no one walked up to Saddam and placed a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. He used the anger of the Iraqi people under the promise of a democratic government to do it.
George the Second has sent many American soldiers to their deaths to carry out his goals and he continues to cost even more American lives because he refuses to quit.
George the Second is not man enough to stand on his own and admit he made a mistake in going after Saddam. That would require that he admit to lying to the American people when he ‘interpreted’ another report to meet his agenda. That report, which came from our very own CIA, told him there was no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He chose to believe otherwise. Now, instead of admitting he was wrong and stopping this senseless taking of Americans lives and of Iraqi lives and of destroying a once beautiful nation and culture, he stubbornly sides with military advisors who will never admit defeat and who clearly have their own agenda (which is to go down in the history books as the greatest warriors ever. This is what all military leaders aspire to. Hell, it’s the only thing they can aspire to.)
He thought he could pull a ‘John Wayne’ and save his daddy’s honor and the honor of the American people. He is too blind to see that he has done nothing more than to eroded even further the perception of what America truly stands for. Since you Bushites have ‘forgotten’ what America stands for, let me tell you.
We stand for freedom. In fighting to maintain our freedom, we have earned honor. Sadly, we are not honoring ourselves by fighting in Iraq. We are not honoring ourselves by fighting in Afghanistan.
I love America. I salute and praise our brave American soldiers. They do only what they are told to do and go where they are told to go. I write these essays in an attempt to find the right words to express how we are failing the memory of all of those who have fought wearing the American military uniform during times when our freedom was in jeopardy. Our freedom is not in jeopardy in Iraq. Our freedom is not in jeopardy in Afghanistan. If we ‘lose’ the fight in these countries we do not ‘lose’ any freedom.
Our honor is what is at stake in these countries, but only because George the Second keeps us in these places. The people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and the rest of the world know the reason we are fighting in these countries. They know that honor has nothing to do with it. We are still in Iraq because a handful of American financial interests are still making lots of money. We are still fighting in Afghanistan because we are trying to get revenge against Osama bin Laden. We are ‘winning’ shamelessly in Iraq and failing miserably in Afghanistan. Neither of these deployments bring honor to the American people.
We don’t need the military to restore honor to the U.S. The military is but one part of the overall makeup of a true America, not the only one, George. We broke away from a nation that was ruled by tyrants, such as yourself, intent on spreading their form of government throughout the world. We broke away because we were tired of suffering at the hands of a ruling class elite that refused to represent what ‘we the people’ wanted.
The people who formed America over 200 years ago wanted nothing of spreading their form of rule to the rest of the world. They wanted nothing more than to live their lives in peace without being taxed to death and without having to live under the watchful eye of a government who is supposed to protect us. Are our taxes too high? For what we get in return for those taxes, the answer is a resounding yes! Do we live under the watchful eye of the government? When we have to worry about what we say to one another for fear of being hauled into jail and interrogated under the auspice of some ‘terrorism law’ that this president wants to enforce, the answer is another resounding yes! Is this government protecting us? When it has become unsafe for Americans to travel anywhere in the world because of our governments policies, then the answer is a resounding no!
This, ladies and gentlemen, is not the America I wish to live in.
When this president, any president, can override judicial decisions, interpret reports differently from what experts say in order to meet his own agenda, circumvent laws by ‘presidential decree’, or decide that ‘we the people’ don’t really know what is best for us then we need to remove that president lest we fall into the feudal system days of pre-America, land of the free.
Bush is destroying ties with allies
Great. Now King George has pissed off Russia.
How many more nations are going to turn their backs on us before we get rid of this buffoon? This war-mongering fool! Is there no end to how far this puppet of the military industrial complex will push us down this road to ruin?
Every time Bush speaks he tells us not to worry, that things are great. How long are we going to accept his lies?
He needs to be impeached now and every single one of his inept, under-qualified cronies needs to be replaced as well.
President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, on Saturday signed a decree suspending Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty due to "extraordinary circumstances ... which affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate measures," the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin has accused the United States and its NATO partners of undermining regional stability with U.S. plans for a missile defense system in former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe.
This move on Russia’s part is directly due to our weak diplomatic stance against Iran’s recent refusal to back down from the threats they have received from the West for not halting their nuclear program. The U.S. thinks, wrongly, that simply flexing its military muscle, nation's will cower in servitude. And now since our over-burdened military is deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan it is even more laughable that the U.S. will continue to use this tired tactic.
Why can’t the world leaders see that when you don’t follow-up on a threat you lose all credibility. The answer is not to simply follow through with your threats, it is to not make threats in the first place. Stop using the military might as a tool of diplomacy. The U.S. needs to start showing respect and stop stomping on everyone who does something that we don’t like. We have become schoolyard bullies and we deserve to have our collective, arrogant butts kicked and humility needs to be forced down our throats.
Now Russia won’t even allow inspections and verifications of its military sites by NATO countries, and they will no longer limit the number of its conventional weapons. Everyone knows NATO is just a puppet of U.S. policy.
Withdrawal from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty would allow Moscow to build up forces near its borders. And since they feel a threat they have a right to do so. If the U.S. was in Russia’s position, don’t think for a moment that the U.S. would not do exactly the same thing and expect the offending nation or nations to back down.
Of course Russian military analysts have said the possibility of suspending participation in the treaty was a symbolic rising of ante in the missile shield showdown more than a sign of impending military escalation.
I don’t believe that Russia has any intentions of attacking any of its neighbors. But how can they sit back and allow an aggressive world power to build missile sites within range of its territories without raising objections to it?
If Russia did the same thing in Mexico or Canada and used the excuse that the missiles would only be deployed against some third nation, the U.S. would raise hell against Russia. So, why the double standard? Please don’t tell me that it is because it is traditional that the U.S. adopt ‘double-standard’ policies. I already know they do. It must stop in order for there to be true peaceful co-existence.
This represents yet another unfriendly move on America’s part and will serve only to spoil relations with Russia.
Somebody needs to stop this maniac George Walker Bush. When are you people in government (our representative, indeed) going to do something?
How many more nations are going to turn their backs on us before we get rid of this buffoon? This war-mongering fool! Is there no end to how far this puppet of the military industrial complex will push us down this road to ruin?
Every time Bush speaks he tells us not to worry, that things are great. How long are we going to accept his lies?
He needs to be impeached now and every single one of his inept, under-qualified cronies needs to be replaced as well.
President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, on Saturday signed a decree suspending Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty due to "extraordinary circumstances ... which affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate measures," the Kremlin said in a statement.
Putin has accused the United States and its NATO partners of undermining regional stability with U.S. plans for a missile defense system in former Soviet bloc countries in Eastern Europe.
This move on Russia’s part is directly due to our weak diplomatic stance against Iran’s recent refusal to back down from the threats they have received from the West for not halting their nuclear program. The U.S. thinks, wrongly, that simply flexing its military muscle, nation's will cower in servitude. And now since our over-burdened military is deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan it is even more laughable that the U.S. will continue to use this tired tactic.
Why can’t the world leaders see that when you don’t follow-up on a threat you lose all credibility. The answer is not to simply follow through with your threats, it is to not make threats in the first place. Stop using the military might as a tool of diplomacy. The U.S. needs to start showing respect and stop stomping on everyone who does something that we don’t like. We have become schoolyard bullies and we deserve to have our collective, arrogant butts kicked and humility needs to be forced down our throats.
Now Russia won’t even allow inspections and verifications of its military sites by NATO countries, and they will no longer limit the number of its conventional weapons. Everyone knows NATO is just a puppet of U.S. policy.
Withdrawal from the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty would allow Moscow to build up forces near its borders. And since they feel a threat they have a right to do so. If the U.S. was in Russia’s position, don’t think for a moment that the U.S. would not do exactly the same thing and expect the offending nation or nations to back down.
Of course Russian military analysts have said the possibility of suspending participation in the treaty was a symbolic rising of ante in the missile shield showdown more than a sign of impending military escalation.
I don’t believe that Russia has any intentions of attacking any of its neighbors. But how can they sit back and allow an aggressive world power to build missile sites within range of its territories without raising objections to it?
If Russia did the same thing in Mexico or Canada and used the excuse that the missiles would only be deployed against some third nation, the U.S. would raise hell against Russia. So, why the double standard? Please don’t tell me that it is because it is traditional that the U.S. adopt ‘double-standard’ policies. I already know they do. It must stop in order for there to be true peaceful co-existence.
This represents yet another unfriendly move on America’s part and will serve only to spoil relations with Russia.
Somebody needs to stop this maniac George Walker Bush. When are you people in government (our representative, indeed) going to do something?
Monday, July 9, 2007
Budget problems and energy conservation
The state of Pennsylvania partially shutdown Monday morning because they could not work out a solution to the budget. This prompted about 24,000 state workers to be put on furlough, without pay, and shutdown museums, parks, drivers license testing. But the governor saw fit to keep the casinos and state liquor stores open.
They have been ‘working’ at this budget for nine days and the result is that the state lost the authority to spend money on nonessential services and employees. But gambling and liquor sales, which are obviously considered essential to the state of Pennsylvania, are allowed to continue.
This brings up a point about the lottery. Gambling in this manner is such as sure bet for the state that they cannot possibly stop it. Read this to say that those who gamble on the lottery win very little and the state always wins a lot. Get a clue people.
And if they took away liquor sales there would be such a riot among the alcoholics that there would be fighting in the streets. You really don’t want to piss off alcoholics, there are a lot of them.
By the way, the reason these state employees are getting an unexpected unpaid vacation is because the governor wants a surcharge placed on residential electricity use to fund alternative energy programs and electricity conservation and the senate won’t allow it. This state has a $650 million surplus! And now the surplus will grow from money saved by not paying these 24,000 state employees.
Haven’t we been hearing for years that we need to come up with alternative energy sources? And isn’t electricity conservation a good thing? Why can’t they use some of that surplus to fund the governors project? A project which, on the surface, sounds right, but he is a politician so you can’t take anything from him on surface value. Why take money away from state employees?
Notice I haven’t identified the political parties of either side? That is because it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that the governor is holding state employees hostage to get what he wants and the senate refuses to give in. This is pure politics and it stinks. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.
The governor is simply throwing a tantrum. And both sides are being stubborn at taxpaying citizens expense, as usual.
They have been ‘working’ at this budget for nine days and the result is that the state lost the authority to spend money on nonessential services and employees. But gambling and liquor sales, which are obviously considered essential to the state of Pennsylvania, are allowed to continue.
This brings up a point about the lottery. Gambling in this manner is such as sure bet for the state that they cannot possibly stop it. Read this to say that those who gamble on the lottery win very little and the state always wins a lot. Get a clue people.
And if they took away liquor sales there would be such a riot among the alcoholics that there would be fighting in the streets. You really don’t want to piss off alcoholics, there are a lot of them.
By the way, the reason these state employees are getting an unexpected unpaid vacation is because the governor wants a surcharge placed on residential electricity use to fund alternative energy programs and electricity conservation and the senate won’t allow it. This state has a $650 million surplus! And now the surplus will grow from money saved by not paying these 24,000 state employees.
Haven’t we been hearing for years that we need to come up with alternative energy sources? And isn’t electricity conservation a good thing? Why can’t they use some of that surplus to fund the governors project? A project which, on the surface, sounds right, but he is a politician so you can’t take anything from him on surface value. Why take money away from state employees?
Notice I haven’t identified the political parties of either side? That is because it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that the governor is holding state employees hostage to get what he wants and the senate refuses to give in. This is pure politics and it stinks. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.
The governor is simply throwing a tantrum. And both sides are being stubborn at taxpaying citizens expense, as usual.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Consumers lose to big business again
So, here is yet another way in which the U.S. government bows to economic pressure over the consumer well-being and pushes the consumer further down the list of who they are protecting. This time the USDA takes a crack it, again.
I learned from a fellow gardening blogger that the USDA changed the standards by which they label a “food” as organic.
The USDA has authorized 38 “other” substances to be added to the list of what can be called organic. Most items are food colorings, but the big beer brewers and the pork industry are the big winners here. They lobbied hard (call that legalized bribery and coercion) and won the right to add ‘other’ items that no one in their right mind would ever consider to be organic.
Here's an example: mega beer brewer Anheuser-Bush (they have lots of money to get what they want, thanks to all of you alcoholics and drunks out there) will be allowed to sell what it calls ‘Organic Wild Hops Beer’ without using any organic hops at all! Take a moment and think about this. Anheuser-Bush just bought the rights to use the word ‘organic’ so they can jump on the ‘organic’ bandwagon without having to actually go organic. The USDA sold the right to them! I am outraged! How much is the USDA getting for this sell-out?
Here's another example: USDA ‘Organic-certified’ sausages, brats, and breakfast links will be allowed to contain intestines from factory-farmed animals raised on chemically grown feed, synthetic hormones, slaughterhouse waste, and antibiotics! This is because the cost to actually go organic is too prohibitive. Additionally, pork raised without growth hormones and chemically grown feed would revert to the smaller sizes that used to be the norm for pork before all of this scientific intervention. That would be like taking a step backwards. Heaven forbid we would ever have to forego science in order to eat healthy.
There was a time when we all ate healthier than we do today. That time was before science got involved to help industry produce larger and more, more, more! They did not get involved to 'help' the consumer, they did it first of all because they could and secondly because when industry saw they could they shelled out money for science to continue doing it.
The truth is people don’t really want to pay the higher prices to eat healthier. Oh, they say they do, when they are around other people so they can ‘show’ everyone how they are part of the modern trend to go ‘natural’. It always comes down to money. Let’s not forget this is the good ole United States of Capitalism after all. The USDA did not forget.
If you are outraged enough, and if you believe your voice will actually be heard, much less considered in this matter then go to this link and make yourself feel better.
I learned from a fellow gardening blogger that the USDA changed the standards by which they label a “food” as organic.
The USDA has authorized 38 “other” substances to be added to the list of what can be called organic. Most items are food colorings, but the big beer brewers and the pork industry are the big winners here. They lobbied hard (call that legalized bribery and coercion) and won the right to add ‘other’ items that no one in their right mind would ever consider to be organic.
Here's an example: mega beer brewer Anheuser-Bush (they have lots of money to get what they want, thanks to all of you alcoholics and drunks out there) will be allowed to sell what it calls ‘Organic Wild Hops Beer’ without using any organic hops at all! Take a moment and think about this. Anheuser-Bush just bought the rights to use the word ‘organic’ so they can jump on the ‘organic’ bandwagon without having to actually go organic. The USDA sold the right to them! I am outraged! How much is the USDA getting for this sell-out?
Here's another example: USDA ‘Organic-certified’ sausages, brats, and breakfast links will be allowed to contain intestines from factory-farmed animals raised on chemically grown feed, synthetic hormones, slaughterhouse waste, and antibiotics! This is because the cost to actually go organic is too prohibitive. Additionally, pork raised without growth hormones and chemically grown feed would revert to the smaller sizes that used to be the norm for pork before all of this scientific intervention. That would be like taking a step backwards. Heaven forbid we would ever have to forego science in order to eat healthy.
There was a time when we all ate healthier than we do today. That time was before science got involved to help industry produce larger and more, more, more! They did not get involved to 'help' the consumer, they did it first of all because they could and secondly because when industry saw they could they shelled out money for science to continue doing it.
The truth is people don’t really want to pay the higher prices to eat healthier. Oh, they say they do, when they are around other people so they can ‘show’ everyone how they are part of the modern trend to go ‘natural’. It always comes down to money. Let’s not forget this is the good ole United States of Capitalism after all. The USDA did not forget.
If you are outraged enough, and if you believe your voice will actually be heard, much less considered in this matter then go to this link and make yourself feel better.
Friday, July 6, 2007
Katrina fraud swamps system
What the hell is wrong with these people?!
The U.S. comes to their aid and they turn around and screw over their government! It is people like this that embarrass me to call myself an American! These people should be embarrassed too if they had any shred of decency.
It wasn’t bad enough that nature took away everything most of these victims had, now other Americans have taken their best shot too. Why do we have to prey on one another? Don’t you people realize that you are stealing from yourselves when you do this? It’s your tax dollars too! Where is your self-respect, your pride?!?!
People who cheat aid programs and charities are the lowest of all human beings. Swindling people through contracts in their hour of need is just plain rotten and despicable treatment of your fellow Americans.
So far 700 people have been charged with crimes, and the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force has referred 11,000 more potential fraud cases to Homeland Security and a handful of other law enforcement agencies for investigation. The Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, identified another 1,700 open criminal cases.
Many of these cases include allegations of fake Social Security numbers or addresses. But authorities also have sought charges in more complex schemes.
In one case, prosecutors charged that two roommates in Houston sent FEMA 39 claims for assistance for the two storms and lied about living in places hit by the hurricanes. These lies were an attempt to receive $2,000 checks that FEMA sent to victims to help victims get back on their feet after the disaster. I want to know who these two lying bastards are and I want them to be branded so that everyone who ever meets them knows what filthy, thieving, low-lifes they are.
And can you believe this scum-bag, A police chief (of all people) in Independence, La., pleaded guilty to over-billing the government for overtime. Why does cheating, lying, and theft reach such heights? Can anyone answer this question? Have we no shame at all? This individuals name should be prominently published and sent to every police force in this nation and he should never work as a policeman again or in any position where he has access to other peoples money. He is a disgrace to policemen and law-abiding Americans.
And then there are those people who legitimately received their checks and did not spend it on rebuilding their homes but instead spent it on jewelry or vacations. Does it sound like these individuals were suffering? Did they really need to take our tax dollars to ease their plight?
The U.S. comes to their aid and they turn around and screw over their government! It is people like this that embarrass me to call myself an American! These people should be embarrassed too if they had any shred of decency.
It wasn’t bad enough that nature took away everything most of these victims had, now other Americans have taken their best shot too. Why do we have to prey on one another? Don’t you people realize that you are stealing from yourselves when you do this? It’s your tax dollars too! Where is your self-respect, your pride?!?!
People who cheat aid programs and charities are the lowest of all human beings. Swindling people through contracts in their hour of need is just plain rotten and despicable treatment of your fellow Americans.
So far 700 people have been charged with crimes, and the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force has referred 11,000 more potential fraud cases to Homeland Security and a handful of other law enforcement agencies for investigation. The Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, identified another 1,700 open criminal cases.
Many of these cases include allegations of fake Social Security numbers or addresses. But authorities also have sought charges in more complex schemes.
In one case, prosecutors charged that two roommates in Houston sent FEMA 39 claims for assistance for the two storms and lied about living in places hit by the hurricanes. These lies were an attempt to receive $2,000 checks that FEMA sent to victims to help victims get back on their feet after the disaster. I want to know who these two lying bastards are and I want them to be branded so that everyone who ever meets them knows what filthy, thieving, low-lifes they are.
And can you believe this scum-bag, A police chief (of all people) in Independence, La., pleaded guilty to over-billing the government for overtime. Why does cheating, lying, and theft reach such heights? Can anyone answer this question? Have we no shame at all? This individuals name should be prominently published and sent to every police force in this nation and he should never work as a policeman again or in any position where he has access to other peoples money. He is a disgrace to policemen and law-abiding Americans.
And then there are those people who legitimately received their checks and did not spend it on rebuilding their homes but instead spent it on jewelry or vacations. Does it sound like these individuals were suffering? Did they really need to take our tax dollars to ease their plight?
Thursday, July 5, 2007
It’s About Time! Shoot to kill a right
Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed legislation which says people can use deadly force once an intruder illegally enters their home, vehicle or other dwelling, including a tent. The Bill provides an absolute defense against being charged or sued by eliminating the requirement for people to try and run first if they're attacked. The issue is drawing quick reaction. "It ensures law-abiding Missourians will not be punished when they use force to defend themselves and their family from attacks in their own home or vehicle," Governor Blunt said in a written statement.
States are finally giving our citizens the right to protect their property. This right has been suppressed for far too long. We are tired of being afraid to shoot at an intruder for fear of prosecution. The intruder does not have this same restriction put on him, he will shoot if he is threatened, without reservation. The home owner, on the other hand, has to think twice because he can be sued for wrongful death and\or manslaughter (this is because of unscrupulous lawyers). Now, without this fear, homeowners have a new power to protect their property and others the way they should have been able to all along. The power has shifted from the scum-bag felon to the homeowner where it has always belonged. I’ll bet you that home break-ins will finally decrease in number.
I hate like hell to give any politician hero status, but Missouri Governor Matt Blunt has just become a hero to a lot of people.
This bill is long overdue and I urge every state to follow his lead immediately.
I am not an NRA member, and I am not a gun fanatic. I just believe in the very basic right that everyone should be able to protect themselves and their property from anyone. We have always had this right but low-life, money-grabbing lawyers will sue anyone if the price is right and have turned the tables on law-abiding citizens for far too long. I just pray those same ‘gun for hire’ bastards don’t screw this up for us too.
The next law that needs to be passed is one that will give battered women the right to kill their bastard, coward husbands who have a history of beating them.
States are finally giving our citizens the right to protect their property. This right has been suppressed for far too long. We are tired of being afraid to shoot at an intruder for fear of prosecution. The intruder does not have this same restriction put on him, he will shoot if he is threatened, without reservation. The home owner, on the other hand, has to think twice because he can be sued for wrongful death and\or manslaughter (this is because of unscrupulous lawyers). Now, without this fear, homeowners have a new power to protect their property and others the way they should have been able to all along. The power has shifted from the scum-bag felon to the homeowner where it has always belonged. I’ll bet you that home break-ins will finally decrease in number.
I hate like hell to give any politician hero status, but Missouri Governor Matt Blunt has just become a hero to a lot of people.
This bill is long overdue and I urge every state to follow his lead immediately.
I am not an NRA member, and I am not a gun fanatic. I just believe in the very basic right that everyone should be able to protect themselves and their property from anyone. We have always had this right but low-life, money-grabbing lawyers will sue anyone if the price is right and have turned the tables on law-abiding citizens for far too long. I just pray those same ‘gun for hire’ bastards don’t screw this up for us too.
The next law that needs to be passed is one that will give battered women the right to kill their bastard, coward husbands who have a history of beating them.
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