I thought this was a good bit to accompany the Mike Luckovich political cartoon in my previous post....what do you think?
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2018
Sunday, January 29, 2017
The Human Race
Every day I am upset, angry, frustrated, you name it, with our new president. I am not only all of those things and more with him, but also with the folks who blindly excuse all of his behavior.
I was watching a segment on NBC Nightly News late last week with Gabe Gutierrez interviewing some Trump supporters and asking them what they thought towards the end of his first week in office. The subject came up of the impending Muslim ban, and the response of one woman in particular really made me want to scream. She was talking with an accent that was definitely not native to any region of the U.S., and she was saying that she supported the ban. She went on to state that she didn't want people coming to America and bringing their different cultures. I about fell of my chair!
I am so sick of the people who either directly came from other countries, or whose ancestors came from other countries saying that we should be banning anyone! Just because you or your grandparents got to America before now doesn't mean that you have more 'right' to be here. The only group of people that even remotely have the right to complain about 'foreigners' are Native Americans. I'm wondering if that woman eats tacos, egg rolls, or pizza, because honey, those didn't originate in 'Merica.
What's happening right now goes against everything this country stands for and has been since it was founded. One week in office and look at the damage he has done.
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Women's March Bellingham
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| Women's March Bellingham |
Yesterday for the first time in my entire life, I attended a march. When I first heard about the Women's March I knew I should go, but I didn't know exactly why. But the more I thought about it, and read about the gal in Hawaii who got the ball rolling on her Facebook page, I knew that I had to go because there is strength in numbers; in this case that ended up having more than one meaning for me.
Strength in numbers not only to send a message to the new president, but also the whole country, and really the whole world. The message that he doesn't speak for millions of Americans when he spews his hateful, sexist, and racist rhetoric. That he doesn't speak for us when he denies climate change, and mankind's role in it. He doesn't speak for us when he wants to ban Muslims and Mexican's.
We had to send the message that he does not represent what the majority of Americans think. He doesn't have our best interests at heart when he wants to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act. And he is an affront to all women the way he makes it quite clear that a woman's only value as a person is her physical beauty. He is the embodiment of the attitude that a woman is only here for man's pleasure, and that man has the ultimate control of her body.
The other way that I didn't anticipate that strength in numbers was important, is that my being part of that crowd, let me know that I am not alone in this fight. And that's what it's going to have to be. We are going to have to fight him every inch of the way from making our lives worse, not better. Yesterday was a call to action, and at one point I let out what amounted to a war cry.
I was so encouraged by seeing just as many men as women at the march. Entire families, and generations. Experiencing the energy of that crowd, and knowing I am not alone in my disappointment that such a horrible human being actually got elected to president, was just what I needed. Knowing that I am not alone in this is going to help me face the next four years. And it's obvious already that they are going to be tough ones. So unless that idiot starts World War III, then hopefully we will still be around in another four years to keep progressing as a nation, rather than going in reverse.
Sunday, November 13, 2016
#He's Not My President
Mike Luckovich - November 4, 2016
Needless to say anyone that knows me, knows that I did not vote for the #orangepresident - and I am now feeling alienated from those that did, because I am left with no other conclusion than that they have just as much hate in their hearts as he does.
I had originally meant to write a post before the election, not that I thought I would change anyone's mind. Writing it now is because I am part of the over half of the country that voted for Hillary Clinton because she was the best candidate for the job. I didn't cry on election night, but I did have to turn off the TV because I could see she was losing, and it was a gut punch and surreal.
There was a very good opinion piece on The Detroit Free Press today from Brian Dickerson that hit on several things that I have felt this past week. One is that I feel like I'm going to be in mourning for the next four years. The second was that I could not understand how the same people that voted for Trump would not want him at their dinner table. But that was my problem, I kept trying to use logic through this whole election, and unfortunately his supporters weren't, and still aren't.
Every horrible thing that came out of his mouth couldn't sway his fans, while it disgusted the rest of us. Trump is mocking the 'elite' press, but I understand why they predicted that his campaign would fail the same way I did - it was because of how repulsive he is as a person. We all assumed at some point all of his crap would catch up to him and it never did.
One of the saddest things I read yesterday was the percentage of people that disliked him and still voted for him anyway. I have a message for everyone that voted for him, voted for a third party candidate, or didn't vote at all - I hope you can live with your conscience with what is to come.
Tonight I was further disgusted by his campaign manager expecting Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton to make more of an effort to unite America. Are you kidding me!?! Honey, you backed the wrong horse. The one person who should be making the effort to heal the wound in America is the same person that ripped us apart in the first place, and obviously he is not capable of either seeing this, or doing anything about it because he is not a leader. How ironic that she was calling on two people that actually are to do the job.
There's so much more that I was originally going to say, but I don't have it in me right now. I just hope that there is still an America left in 4 years for us to get a real president and get back on track.
I had originally meant to write a post before the election, not that I thought I would change anyone's mind. Writing it now is because I am part of the over half of the country that voted for Hillary Clinton because she was the best candidate for the job. I didn't cry on election night, but I did have to turn off the TV because I could see she was losing, and it was a gut punch and surreal.
There was a very good opinion piece on The Detroit Free Press today from Brian Dickerson that hit on several things that I have felt this past week. One is that I feel like I'm going to be in mourning for the next four years. The second was that I could not understand how the same people that voted for Trump would not want him at their dinner table. But that was my problem, I kept trying to use logic through this whole election, and unfortunately his supporters weren't, and still aren't.
Every horrible thing that came out of his mouth couldn't sway his fans, while it disgusted the rest of us. Trump is mocking the 'elite' press, but I understand why they predicted that his campaign would fail the same way I did - it was because of how repulsive he is as a person. We all assumed at some point all of his crap would catch up to him and it never did.
One of the saddest things I read yesterday was the percentage of people that disliked him and still voted for him anyway. I have a message for everyone that voted for him, voted for a third party candidate, or didn't vote at all - I hope you can live with your conscience with what is to come.
Tonight I was further disgusted by his campaign manager expecting Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton to make more of an effort to unite America. Are you kidding me!?! Honey, you backed the wrong horse. The one person who should be making the effort to heal the wound in America is the same person that ripped us apart in the first place, and obviously he is not capable of either seeing this, or doing anything about it because he is not a leader. How ironic that she was calling on two people that actually are to do the job.
There's so much more that I was originally going to say, but I don't have it in me right now. I just hope that there is still an America left in 4 years for us to get a real president and get back on track.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Leonard Pitts Jr. - March 14,2015
I read this on my way into work earlier this week in The Detroit Free Press.
I like Leonard Pitts, and I could totally understand the distinction he is making here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is for Gigi,who can’t figure out why I don’t like Bill Maher.
Gigi, a reader in West Palm Beach, wrote me last week noting that I agree with the star of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on most political issues. Yet I have, on previous occasions in this space, expressed distaste for him. “I just don’t understand,” wrote Gigi, “why you profess to dislike someone who is so like minded. It baffles me.”
Me, I don’t see the contradiction. To whatever admittedly imperfect degree you can judge character from a television performance, I find Maher smarmy, self-satisfied, condescending and just plain nasty. Besides which, his use of coarse, sexist vulgarisms to describe Sarah Palin and of an offensive term to describe her special-needs child a few years ago strike me as far beyond the pale, whether as comedy or as political analysis.
That said, Gigi’s letter intrigues me less for its unspoken assumption that we should flock toward people with whom we agree than for the obvious, albeit equally unspoken, corollary: We should avoid those with whom we disagree.
Her bafflement tracks with the findings of a 2014 Pew Research Center study. It found that partisan animosity has increased significantly in the past 20 years, the right moving further right, the left, further left, with the result that people now largely prefer to make their lives in echo chambers where their beliefs reverberate without challenge. Half of all “consistently conservative” respondents told Pew it’s important for them to live in a place where most people think like them. Forty-nine percent of their liberal counterparts said most of their friends share their views.
Indeed, to a great degree, political identity now serves the same function in the public mind as racial identity — namely, as a fundamental and immutable marker of character and worth. To put that another way: Would you want your daughter to marry one? Twenty-three percent of consistent liberals say no, they would not want to see an immediate family member marry a Republican. Thirty percent of consistent conservatives feel the same about the idea of a Democrat in the family.
Look, I get it: we argue — and we have to, and we should — over momentous things. This is not a call to paper over critical political differences with false harmonies of Kumbaya. For the record, I doubt I could share a bus shelter in the rain with such conservative icons as Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz or Ben Carson. Drenching would be much preferable to five minutes with any one of them. But, as with Maher, that represents a judgment less of politics than of perceived character.
In this era, unfortunately, that’s a distinction without a difference. My problem is that I came of age in another era, that I remember the likes of Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, men with whom I could — and did — have sharp political disagreements without feeling obliged to personally dislike them or to disparage their patriotism or decency.
Having been shaped by that era, I persist in believing party does not equal character, nor ideology, identity. I feel no imperative to like you because I agree with you. Or to dislike you because I don’t.
Granted, that is an outdated and minority view, but I hold to it, largely because I can’t see how the alternative solves anything except the need to argue. If a political opponent is defined as unalterably misanthropic and irredeemably evil, then all politics is doomed to fail. Politics, after all, is the art of compromise. You don’t compromise with monsters.
No, you compromise with people like yourself, who have wants, needs and fears like yourself, though they see the world through a different lens. That’s a truth lost to this loud and polarized time. As is this:
Disagreement is not a reason to stop talking. Truth to tell, it’s a reason to start.
From the Miami Herald
I like Leonard Pitts, and I could totally understand the distinction he is making here.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is for Gigi,who can’t figure out why I don’t like Bill Maher.
Gigi, a reader in West Palm Beach, wrote me last week noting that I agree with the star of HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher on most political issues. Yet I have, on previous occasions in this space, expressed distaste for him. “I just don’t understand,” wrote Gigi, “why you profess to dislike someone who is so like minded. It baffles me.”
Me, I don’t see the contradiction. To whatever admittedly imperfect degree you can judge character from a television performance, I find Maher smarmy, self-satisfied, condescending and just plain nasty. Besides which, his use of coarse, sexist vulgarisms to describe Sarah Palin and of an offensive term to describe her special-needs child a few years ago strike me as far beyond the pale, whether as comedy or as political analysis.
That said, Gigi’s letter intrigues me less for its unspoken assumption that we should flock toward people with whom we agree than for the obvious, albeit equally unspoken, corollary: We should avoid those with whom we disagree.
Her bafflement tracks with the findings of a 2014 Pew Research Center study. It found that partisan animosity has increased significantly in the past 20 years, the right moving further right, the left, further left, with the result that people now largely prefer to make their lives in echo chambers where their beliefs reverberate without challenge. Half of all “consistently conservative” respondents told Pew it’s important for them to live in a place where most people think like them. Forty-nine percent of their liberal counterparts said most of their friends share their views.
Indeed, to a great degree, political identity now serves the same function in the public mind as racial identity — namely, as a fundamental and immutable marker of character and worth. To put that another way: Would you want your daughter to marry one? Twenty-three percent of consistent liberals say no, they would not want to see an immediate family member marry a Republican. Thirty percent of consistent conservatives feel the same about the idea of a Democrat in the family.
Look, I get it: we argue — and we have to, and we should — over momentous things. This is not a call to paper over critical political differences with false harmonies of Kumbaya. For the record, I doubt I could share a bus shelter in the rain with such conservative icons as Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz or Ben Carson. Drenching would be much preferable to five minutes with any one of them. But, as with Maher, that represents a judgment less of politics than of perceived character.
In this era, unfortunately, that’s a distinction without a difference. My problem is that I came of age in another era, that I remember the likes of Bob Dole, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, men with whom I could — and did — have sharp political disagreements without feeling obliged to personally dislike them or to disparage their patriotism or decency.
Having been shaped by that era, I persist in believing party does not equal character, nor ideology, identity. I feel no imperative to like you because I agree with you. Or to dislike you because I don’t.
Granted, that is an outdated and minority view, but I hold to it, largely because I can’t see how the alternative solves anything except the need to argue. If a political opponent is defined as unalterably misanthropic and irredeemably evil, then all politics is doomed to fail. Politics, after all, is the art of compromise. You don’t compromise with monsters.
No, you compromise with people like yourself, who have wants, needs and fears like yourself, though they see the world through a different lens. That’s a truth lost to this loud and polarized time. As is this:
Disagreement is not a reason to stop talking. Truth to tell, it’s a reason to start.
From the Miami Herald
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
David Horsey of the LA Times - Tom Cotton & The Iran Letter
I read this today on my way into work, and thought he really hit the nail on the head with what is so problematic about the actions of senator Tom Cotton and the letter to Iran. This whole situation is just so mind blowing in it's stupidity.
Sen. Tom Cotton prefers military action to diplomacy with Iran
David Horsey / Los Angeles Times
Monday in Lausanne, Switzerland, Iranian negotiators demanded that their American counterparts explain to them the meaning of the open letter sent to Iranian leaders by 47 Republican U.S. senators. In the letter, the senators declared that any agreement with the current resident of the White House could be modified or nullified by a future president or by Congress. Apparently, their goal was to scuttle the Obama administration's effort to reach a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and the other U.S. officials in Switzerland who are trying to make that deal declined to characterize their response to the Iranians, but one might assume it was something like, “Hey, you’ve got your hardliners back home and we’ve got ours.”
The Republicans’ letter may not scare Iran’s rulers away from an agreement, but it contained a passage that ought to send a chill up American spines. Pointing out that a president is limited to two four-year terms, the letter noted that senators can keep adding six-year terms for as long as they keep getting reelected.
“As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades,” the letter said.
Now that is a genuinely frightening thought. Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, David Vitter, Joni Ernst, Jim Inhofe, Mike Crapo, Ted Cruz and the rest of the saber-rattling, climate change-denying, corporation-adoring, immigrant-fearing cranks might still be in the Senate for years and years to come. God save America.
The one who could be around the longest is the freshman senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. At 37, he is the Senate’s youngest member; he's the precocious darling of the conservative establishment who came up with the idea for the letter to Iran. Cotton claims his mail to the ayatollahs was a necessary assertion of the Senate's constitutional role in reviewing and approving treaties, but by intruding on the negotiations he flouted another constitutional mandate -- the one that makes it the president’s job to forge international agreements on behalf of the nation.
Republicans justify their unyielding belligerence by forever implying that only they speak for the people of the United States. However, while Cotton and his colleagues have won elections in most of the old Confederacy and several sparsely-populated states in the West and Midwest, the president and vice president are the only two governmental leaders elected by the entire country. Republicans have been in denial about it for six years, yet the fact remains that Barack Obama has twice been chosen by a solid majority of American voters to represent them in the world.
It is dangerous for any bunch of senators to insert themselves so directly into delicate diplomacy involving six other countries about an issue as serious as nuclear weapons, but Cotton is happy to court danger since his favored alternative to diplomacy is military action against Iran. One would think that the Senate’s elders might have stepped in to caution the brash upstart from Arkansas. Rather than doing doing that, though, old guys like Mitch McConnell and John McCain added their signatures to Cotton’s letter.
McCain claimed he really didn’t read what he was signing. The Arizonan was in a hurry to get out of Washington before a snowstorm hit. Besides, he said, he gets lots of letters placed on his desk that colleagues want him to sign. Apparently for McCain it was not notable that this particular letter was postmarked for Tehran.
Critics of the Republican senators’ missive have branded it everything from a breach in protocol to treason. Whatever one wants to call it, the letter surely is one more glaring example of what poisonous partisan politics has done to undermine the image and authority of the United States in the eyes of the world. When U.S. senators cannot resist acting like impulsive children spoiling for a fight, we should not be surprised if people in other countries begin to wonder if Americans still have the requisite maturity to be global leaders.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
Sen. Tom Cotton prefers military action to diplomacy with Iran
David Horsey / Los Angeles Times
Monday in Lausanne, Switzerland, Iranian negotiators demanded that their American counterparts explain to them the meaning of the open letter sent to Iranian leaders by 47 Republican U.S. senators. In the letter, the senators declared that any agreement with the current resident of the White House could be modified or nullified by a future president or by Congress. Apparently, their goal was to scuttle the Obama administration's effort to reach a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry and the other U.S. officials in Switzerland who are trying to make that deal declined to characterize their response to the Iranians, but one might assume it was something like, “Hey, you’ve got your hardliners back home and we’ve got ours.”
The Republicans’ letter may not scare Iran’s rulers away from an agreement, but it contained a passage that ought to send a chill up American spines. Pointing out that a president is limited to two four-year terms, the letter noted that senators can keep adding six-year terms for as long as they keep getting reelected.
“As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then — perhaps decades,” the letter said.
Now that is a genuinely frightening thought. Jeff Sessions, Richard Shelby, David Vitter, Joni Ernst, Jim Inhofe, Mike Crapo, Ted Cruz and the rest of the saber-rattling, climate change-denying, corporation-adoring, immigrant-fearing cranks might still be in the Senate for years and years to come. God save America.
The one who could be around the longest is the freshman senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. At 37, he is the Senate’s youngest member; he's the precocious darling of the conservative establishment who came up with the idea for the letter to Iran. Cotton claims his mail to the ayatollahs was a necessary assertion of the Senate's constitutional role in reviewing and approving treaties, but by intruding on the negotiations he flouted another constitutional mandate -- the one that makes it the president’s job to forge international agreements on behalf of the nation.
Republicans justify their unyielding belligerence by forever implying that only they speak for the people of the United States. However, while Cotton and his colleagues have won elections in most of the old Confederacy and several sparsely-populated states in the West and Midwest, the president and vice president are the only two governmental leaders elected by the entire country. Republicans have been in denial about it for six years, yet the fact remains that Barack Obama has twice been chosen by a solid majority of American voters to represent them in the world.
It is dangerous for any bunch of senators to insert themselves so directly into delicate diplomacy involving six other countries about an issue as serious as nuclear weapons, but Cotton is happy to court danger since his favored alternative to diplomacy is military action against Iran. One would think that the Senate’s elders might have stepped in to caution the brash upstart from Arkansas. Rather than doing doing that, though, old guys like Mitch McConnell and John McCain added their signatures to Cotton’s letter.
McCain claimed he really didn’t read what he was signing. The Arizonan was in a hurry to get out of Washington before a snowstorm hit. Besides, he said, he gets lots of letters placed on his desk that colleagues want him to sign. Apparently for McCain it was not notable that this particular letter was postmarked for Tehran.
Critics of the Republican senators’ missive have branded it everything from a breach in protocol to treason. Whatever one wants to call it, the letter surely is one more glaring example of what poisonous partisan politics has done to undermine the image and authority of the United States in the eyes of the world. When U.S. senators cannot resist acting like impulsive children spoiling for a fight, we should not be surprised if people in other countries begin to wonder if Americans still have the requisite maturity to be global leaders.
Copyright © 2015, Los Angeles Times
Saturday, July 19, 2014
The Daily Show - July 15 2014
The opening segment of Tuesday's The Daily Show was absolutely priceless-
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Government - Why Does It Have to Be More Hate Than Love?
So this was on Fail Blog yesterday, I suppose this would be funny if Stephen Colbert was saying it with a straight face. Not so much with this guy. Who in the world elects idiots like this to an energy committee?
And the shutdown continues.......
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Thursday, October 3, 2013
Government Shutdown
My favorite memes so far this week poking fun at the federal government shutdown. The whole thing is so ridiculous.
The most ridiculous moment of the week for me, was when the Congressman from somewhere back east was caught on film chastising a park ranger at one of the monuments in Washington D.C. and telling her she should be ashamed of herself for not allowing the public in. I could not flipping believe it. As if she had anything at all to do with the park being closed, and here she was being ridiculed by someone who directly had something to do with it.
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Shame On Congress!
"Shame on you!" is right. As if it wasn't already obvious enough to anybody paying attention, Congress doesn't give a rats ass about the people that elected them. They won't bite the hand that feeds them, and that's the NRA and every other highly funded lobbyist group in town. Why do we even bother to hold elections? The vote today in Washington makes it crystal clear that our elected officials are completely out of touch with the average American. I am so absolutely disgusted.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
I'm On My Soapbox Again
Yes, I am on my soapbox again, because once again I read something I find sickening. First there was an article about a Republican New Mexico State Representative that wants to make it a crime for a woman to abort if she ends up pregnant as the result of rape. Another article a few days later reiterates that, and then goes on to detail states where the rapist can claim custodial parental rights to have access to the child born of his rape.
It really makes me wonder if all Republican lawmakers hate their mothers. Otherwise I sure don't understand what is at the heart of all the decisions they want to force on all women concerning their bodies.
It really makes me wonder if all Republican lawmakers hate their mothers. Otherwise I sure don't understand what is at the heart of all the decisions they want to force on all women concerning their bodies.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation
Abraham
Lincolns' 1856 visit a sign of Michigan's abolitionist current
By Louise Knott Ahern, Lansing State Journal
In a small park in Kalamazoo, hundreds of Michiganders gathered
to hear a future president speak under a waning August sun.
He warned of the dangers of a divided nation and the scourge of
partisan politics, but he also extolled the promise of American freedoms.
"We are a great empire," he told the onlookers.
"We stand at once the wonder and admiration of the whole world."
But there was one great stain on the nation, he warned. A stain
called slavery.
It was 1856, and the man was Abraham Lincoln.
It would be the one and only time Lincoln would step foot on
Michigan soil. He came to Kalamazoo as a member of Congress to campaign for
John Fremont, the presidential nominee of the new Republican party born in
nearby Jackson.
Lincoln told the Kalamazoo crowd, "This is the question:
Shall the government of the United States prohibit slavery in the United
States?"
The nation's attention is focused once again on the 16th
president with the recent release of "Lincoln," a much-anticipated
movie by Steven Spielberg, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, that explores the
controversial signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, a precursor to the
eradication of slavery. The proclamation, freeing all slaves in the Confederate
states, was issued by Lincoln 150 years ago on Jan. 1, 1863.
Being the birthplace of the party he embraced was likely one
reason Lincoln made his way to Michigan. The state also had begun to embrace an
abolitionist agenda by then and was a crucial stop for escaped slaves on the
Underground Railroad.
Several sites in Michigan have been confirmed as places where
escaped slaves hid on their paths to freedom.
Though it would be a mistake to call Michigan an early leader in
the abolitionist movement, said Carol Mull, an historian and author of
"The Underground Railroad in Michigan," pockets of strong
anti-slavery activism kept the movement alive.
"Most people prior to 1850 were rather passive on the issue
in the state of Michigan," Mull said. "Most people just hoped it
would go away on its own and didn't take an active role. The people who did
faced censure from their neighbors and their communities for what was
essentially breaking the law at that time -- helping people escape from
slavery. But that said, there were still many people who did help."
By the time Lincoln came to Kalamazoo, more Michiganders were
embracing the anti-slavery movement, many of them angry over the 1854
Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and gave
voters in those new regions the ability to vote on whether to allow slavery
within their borders.
Lincoln urged Michigan voters to support Fremont and to take a
stand against the policies of expansion.
"Have we no interest in the free territories of the United
States -- that they should be kept open for the homes of free white
people?" he asked the crowd in Kalamazoo.
"As our northern states are growing more and more in wealth
and population, we are continually in want of an outlet, through which it may
pass out to enrich our country. In this we have an interest -- a deep and
abiding interest. There is another thing, and that is the mature knowledge we
have -- the greatest interest of all. It is the doctrine, that the people are
to be driven from the maxims of our free government, that despises the spirit
which for 80 years has celebrated the anniversary of our national
independence."
I read this article in the Detroit Free Press from December 30, 2012. It caught my eye of course due to the mention of my hometown of Kalamazoo.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Cory Booker - Mayor of Newark, New Jersey
I want to follow up to last week's post, but first, I wanted to post the link to an interview on The Daily Show with Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey from December 12th. It's the third part of a three part interview.
What he's talking about is not completely unknown, but needs to be better known. I've personally felt that government in partnership with business and schools could be leading our society, and in turn improving our economy. And it's not about hand-outs. What he is talking about is how we are not educating our young people to move into the 21st century job market. There are jobs that exist right now that are going unfilled, because of a lack of people with the training and skills to fill them. I've seen a few things on the news in relation to this as far back as two years ago, and it's still a problem today.
This interview reminds me of the interview that I posted about earlier this fall with Bill Clinton on The Daily Show. It's not just a cliche, we really do need to think outside the box and have a revolution of thought if we are going to fulfill our potential as a society and as human beings.
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| Cory Booker |
This interview reminds me of the interview that I posted about earlier this fall with Bill Clinton on The Daily Show. It's not just a cliche, we really do need to think outside the box and have a revolution of thought if we are going to fulfill our potential as a society and as human beings.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Benghazi and Susan Rice
It's always fun to see people's words come back to bite them in the behind....here's another pointed commentary from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Post Election
I wanted to post this the day after the election, but it has been a hectic week for me.
I was on pins and needles election night, and almost thought Romney was going to win, and I had to turn off the television for a while. When I turned it back on an hour later, I was rather amazed at how quickly things turned around, and how, to my understanding Obama did even better than the first time in terms of the popular vote and the electoral college.
In regards to other election results, I personally was not happy that marijuana was legalized here in Washington. Time will tell of course, but I don't really see anything positive coming from it.
And what should have surprised me, but didn't, is how quickly Republican candidates were pointing the finger everywhere but at themselves for losing. A perfect example is this article I read in today's Seattle Times about a call that Mitt Romney made to donor's of his campaign.
To hear the beliefs these guys were expressing in this day and age makes me wonder if they all are misogynistic neanderthals under the surface. I honestly am not holding my breath that they are going to look inside themselves and change and grow.
With the Republican Party, pretty much all I've been hearing the last week is about how they feel like they lost the election due to "changing demographics", and that they need to run a better election next time. You can wrap crap in a new package, with a pretty bow, but it's still crap. And when they were claiming the day after the election that the Democrats were supressing the vote I about went through the roof!! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. They REALLY need to hold a mirror up to themselves, OMG!
But enough about politics....
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| Tom Cat and his injured leg |
Two weeks ago Thursday, I had let Tommy out during the day while I was at work, and when I came home, he came in limping. I couldn't see any outward signs of an injury, so was in a wait-and-see mode before contacting the vet.
It didn't get any better over the weekend so I made an appointment to bring him in last Saturday. On Friday, the cause of the limp revealed itself; he had an infection that finally popped the surface. Obviously he got into it with another cat and was bitten.
We had to take the bus to the vet, and he actually did really well. I was worried that he was going to be yowling the whole time, but he didn't make a sound. They shaved his leg, cleaned the wound and gave him an antibiotic shot, and sent me home with medication to clean his leg twice a day.
I had to take off work this afternoon to take him back for a check-up to make sure that it was healing properly. He got a thumbs-up from the vet that he it is okay. He will be taking antibiotics for 3 more days. I'm relieved he did not have to have stitches, he's happy because he finally got to go out after being stuck inside for 5 days.....
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