Government Shutdown? Not Again!!

Yesterday was for me a fun day.  We had lunch with a couple wherein I have known the husband since I was in high school.  As I sort of contemplated Gene during the lunch where he was sitting next to my husband, it occurred to me that I must be attracted to men who are extremely intelligent, gentle giants.  With that being said, on to my thoughts for this day. 

In thinking about what to write for today of course the situation in Syria came up.  Since I am basically non-violent, but at the same time not aware of all of the issues the President must have to be concerned with, I don’t feel qualified to comment on that.  Just to say I am extremely grateful the decision is not mine. 

The other issue that was of paramount importance this week was civil rights and race.  I remembered once years ago I knew a lady who loved coral colored roses.  They are beautiful, for sure, but that is all she had in her garden.  Now they were beautiful, but also that yard was really boring.  It would have been glorious with even different colored roses, but even more glorious with all sorts of other flowering plants.  It is sort of like the human race.  If we were all light skinned, all over the world, it would be really boring.  (But then who would white people have to look down on?  Joke)  Further, by keeping people of color from contributing their talents to our society, we are short-changing ourselves.  As a nation, and as a people, we lighter-skinned people need to grow up and stop contemplating our own navels.  As the famous Pooh said, “We have seen the enemy, and it is us”, or words to that effect. 

Finally the threat of a government shut-down surfaced in my brain.  All of the government functions that we depend on, but that generally are not forefront in our thinking began to surface.  Imagine wanting to fly away to someplace exotic.  At the airport there would not be TSA people scanning our packed goodies, or reacting to our various replaced joints by then becoming rather personal.  That would be OK for some of us, but there is even something more important about flying that we generally don’t think about.  The federal inspectors who make sure that all of the maintenance regulations on that airplane we are about to get on would not have inspected that airplane.  Could we count on the corporate owners of that airplane to see to it that maintenance was held to a really high level?   

Or what about the federal agencies that oversee our public health?  Would the labs be available to determine whether that person admitted to the hospital had West Nile virus, and thus be able to alert the area wherein the person had been of the presence of the virus?  Lyme disease?  Cholera?  Bubonic plague (endemic in some areas of California)?   

Imagine wanting to take a trip to Yosemite?  Since the Rim Fire is being fought by the US Forest Service, there would not be funding for the USFS.  Would that affect the communities near the fire?  If this winter another massive hurricane made its way onshore either in the Gulf of Mexico or off of the East Shore of the US, would there be any way to fund emergency services to help the survivors?  Or would we have another “heck of a job” moment? 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the federal agency that delivers our weather forecasting.  This service is vital in the mid-west and gulf-states during either tornado or hurricane season, in California during fire season in the fall, in the northern states during the winter.  It is NOAA that sends out tornado alerts, tracks hurricanes, lets firefighters (if CalFire) know, literally, which way the wind blows.   

How about the inspectors who track possible contraband coming into the United States through our ports?  How about the federal agents who track human trafficking across state borders, who track drug imports across our borders, both north and south?   

The list goes on and on.  Any Congressperson or Senator who advocates shutting down the government simply because they have a narrow political agenda of depriving our country of health care reform should be immediately voted out of office.   Any legislation can be improved.  My improvement on the Affordable Health Care Act is simply to take out the age designation in Medicare, and make Medicare available to everyone.  It is a great program that works very well.   

But that is a blog for another day!  Hoping of course that the government has not been shut down in the meantime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ancient Precepts

The Native Americans tell a story about two wolves. 

 

   “A fight is going on inside me,” the Elder said to a child.  “It is a terrible fight between two wolves.  One wolf is evil.  He is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

   The other wolf is good.  He is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

   And then he said to the child.  “The same fight is going on inside of you.”

   The child thought about it for a minute and then asked, “But, Elder, which wolf will win?”

   Then the Elder replied simply, “It depends on which wolf you feed.” 

In the Gospel of Thomas, Verse 7 Jesus said, “Blessed is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human.  Cursed is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion will become human.” 

There are more and more sentiments such as these in the Hebrew and Christian Old and New Testaments, although none quite as concise as Thomas!  The ancient Sufi’s also had their way of leading to God, now called the Enneagram.  There are 9 negative ways of acting, and 9 corresponding virtues.  The Enneagram cites seven of the Christian “deadly sins” – pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust, but adds two others, deceit and fear.   The nine fruits of the spirit are: love, joy, peace, kindness, forbearance, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 

I assume, but I don’t know, that there are these same precepts in all ancient religions and philosophies. 

These are all really good precepts to live by:  feed the wolf of joy, not the wolf of evil; devour the animal within oneself so that the energy from that animal can be used to do good, and do not allow the animal to take over one’s humanity; study and learn the negative ways of living so one can recognize them, and study and learn the corresponding virtues so that one can live them.  

These precepts have been around for many thousands of years, and although they are usually applied to individuals, the thought occurred to me that they might just as well be applied to ideologies as well, including political ideologies.  One can determine which ideology one wants to be associated with by standing back and evaluating which of the negatives and which of the virtues each emphasizes.   

Is there a current political ideology that promotes fear, hatred, arrogance, lies, superiority, among other negative characteristics?  How about fear and hatred of black and brown people?  Who put the acquisition of even more money (greed) before helping put food on the table of poor people?  Who use the specious argument that to do so makes people dependent on government instead of God.   How about hatred of homosexuals based on religion?  How about adherents of an ideology being so arrogant that they attempt to keep themselves in power by stopping anyone except adherents of their own ideology from voting?  How about an ideology where their mostly male adherents attempt to control women by passing laws that prevent women from making their own decisions regarding their own health care?  What about an ideology that wants to stop protecting air and water in order to make even more profits for corporations?  That denies the truth of climate change because to do so would limit its ability to make even more profits? 

Is there a current ideology that promotes compassion and generosity to the other by helping the other, by all legal means, to obtain enough food so children do not go hungry, who are compassionate to the elderly, who attempt to provide health care for as many as possible, who recognize that other people have the same citizenship rights and do not attempt to disenfranchise them, who believe that the truth should be told rather than the dissemination of lies to obtain power, and/or for greed.  That wants to protect air and water from pollution?  That wants to hear the truth about climate change in order to stop polluting our air with carbon, even if it takes government regulation. 

There will always be thoughtful people in all ideologies that do not fit into any category.  That is a given. 

But when precepts have been around for several thousand years, it usually is not a good idea to pretend they are of no account.  Greed is not good.  Government is not bad.  Regulations of industries for the good of all of the people are not socialism.   

To paraphrase and old aphorism, “It’s not nice to fool time-honored precepts!”  If we do, as a nation we will all end up in a great deal of grief.  We will have fed the wrong wolf.

 

 

 

Paul Krugman On Truthiness?

Today, 8/16/13, in The New York Times, Paul Krugman’s column was titled, “A Moment Of Truthiness.”  The title not only was a tribute to Stephen Colbert for fabricating the word “truthiness” in the first place, but basically Krugman deals with the calamitous fact that an adherence to the truth is no longer a requirement for the radical right.  If it sounds truthful that is enough.  Krugman cites the instance where PolitFact even called one of Eric Cantor’s grossly wrong statements about the federal deficit growing when it is actually declining, a “half-truth”.  The place where we are supposed to go to check political facts is itself inaccurate!! 

It was Josef Goebbels, propagandist par excellence, who stated, and I paraphrase, that one must repeat a lie over and over and soon the people will begin to believe it.  And also, the lie must be kept simple, and I add, said with great authority. 

Thus, we have all of the lies being told about The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.  The IRS will not be deciding what care may be dispensed under this law; there is the outrageous lie being told that if a business is required to provide birth control that is tantamount to violating the business’ religious liberty.  There is nothing said about denying the employee his or her right to birth control according to their religious beliefs. 

There are the tremendous lies being told about employee pension benefits bankrupting local governments.  What is never mentioned is that not one of the benefits could have been provided had not the governing body of that state, city or county approved of them.  In my own experience, it was the attitude that money would always be available to fund these benefits.  Try as I might, I could not convince some of my confreres that the economy goes up, and the economy goes down.  While it is up, one must be very careful not to commit to more than one could fund when the economy goes down.  Now it is the fault of the public employee unions, the teacher unions, etc.  No…it is the fault of people in office who want to be the big “sugar daddies” (or mommies) who give everyone what they want.  But it sounds truthful to say it is the unions, and so it is repeated over and over with the actual intent of doing away with public employee and teacher unions. 

From the radical religious right we hear a lot about “family values”, but we hear very little about the “You Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Your Neighbor”.   But, as the joke goes, “Everyone knows reality has a liberal bias”, so since reality is liberal, it is OK to say whatever one wants about Democrats or other Progressives.  The only rule is say it multiple times, keep it simple and say it with great authority.

I’ve often wondered if Stephen Colbert knew what truthfulness he told when he fabricated “truthiness”.

 

 

 

 

 

Reince Prieus Said What!

The day before yesterday Reince Priebus announced that the Republican National Committee (RNC) would not allow the Republican Primary debates to be on either NBC or CNN because the entertainment division of NBC was planning on doing a movie of Hillary Clinton’s life, with an actress playing the role of Hillary, and CNN was to do a documentary on Hillary.  Neither of these two enterprises has even been written yet, and already the Republicans are complaining.  Priebus’ reasoning is that he wants to control the debates, and if these two stations air these two programs, he will know that they do not have the best interests of the Republican Party in mind.  On Morning Joe, Priebus actually insulted the objectivity of journalist Mika Brezinski because she is a Democrat, and said he would never have her moderate a debate.

Those two stations do not have the best interests of the Republican Party in mind?  What absolute gall.  Since when does a political party dictate to a member of the Fourth Estate what they can and can’t do?  In my mind this was absolutely outrageous.  We all know that big-moneyed interests put pressure on all of the media all of the time, but at least it is behind closed doors.  But the fact that Priebus seemed to think that the RNC had the right to dictate what NBC and CNN could or could not air was scandalous in the extreme. 

On 1/25/13 I posted “The Divine Right of Republicans”.  Here is an excerpt: 

“But I think the one thing that irritates me the most has been the Republican’s constant ploy to insist that every time President Obama or any other Democrat makes a statement that is contrary to what the Republicans want, the Republicans start whining that the statement is divisive.  Divisive?  Why?  Because it isn’t what the Republicans wanted to hear?  What they want from the President and every other Democrat in office is a strict adherence to the Republican’s talking points.  President Obama’s Inauguration speech was what the people who voted for him by a 5 million vote margin wanted to hear.  It was not divisive from the people’s perspective. The Republicans know that if they can ruin the economy, keep the Democrats out of office by gerrymandering Congressional districts, suppressing the vote, or any of the other shenanigans the Republicans have come up with, then they can rule. 

After all, it is the Divine Right of Republicans to rule.” 

Some of the pundits on MSNBC are also concerned about this announcement from the perspective that if Hillary Clinton does run and wins, the station will be accused of trying to influence the outcome, and if she loses, then they can crow about it.  I understand this concern, but I believe the larger concern is that the RNC actually believed that their threat was OK to issue.  What is it with these people?  

There is a history behind this attitude.  Early on while we were still a colony of England, the Puritans believed that the United States was the New Jerusalem, and that God had led them to establish the true faith on these shores.  Eventually this morphed into the United States being a city on a hill; a beacon of freedom to the whole world; we were an exceptional country because of this.  In the 19^th century Rudyard Kipling coined the phrase, “The white man’s burden”.  The definition of this phrase is: “The alleged duty of the white race to care for subject peoples of other races in its colonial possessions.”  Americans latched onto this phrase as justification for taking away the lands traditionally belonging to Native Americans for the Americans own purposes.   

Ronald Reagan expanded on this theme by calling the United States a “shining city on a hill”, and by stating that the United States must be prepared to fight the brown hoards threatening to bring the evils of Communism from Central, particularly El Salvador and Guatemala, and South America over the border from Mexico.  After President Obama was elected we kept hearing from the Tea Partiers, etc., that we needed to take our country back.  My question then, as now, is, take it back from whom?  Obviously from people of color, whether they are American citizens or not.  And if someone of color is elected President, then obviously he must have been born someplace else, and thus is not qualified to be President, according to the Constitution. 

There is nothing we can do about American history to change it.  It is our history, like it or not.  But it behooves ever thinking American to really study not just the events of our history, but the thinking and motives behind them, because if we allow a group of people who think it is their God-given destiny to rule, we, as a nation are in deep….yogurt.

 

 

 

 

Mis-used Words, And A New One

There was a lengthy discussion last night on “All In” with Chris Hayes regarding former Education Commissioner for Florida, Tony Bennett.  It seems that Bennett had changed the grade for a charter school while he was still in Indiana from a C to an A.  It turns out that the owner of the school was a Republican who had donated extensively to Republican candidates, and to Bennett.  His mantra had been, and still is, that he believes in accountability.  That is fine when the word is a noun, but when it becomes a verb it is transitive.  That is, there must be something at the other end of the word.  He believes in accountability, but for whom or for what?  In this case, it seems he believed he was accountable, not to the children or even the entire school, but to the wealthy owner of the school.  But what he apparently has never been asked is to define what he means by “accountability”.

Which brings me to what drives me crazy about these new so-called Republicans.  I used to be one in the good old days of believing in fiscal responsibility in order to have the necessary funding for social and/or environmental programs.  I call them “so-called” because they have abandoned the traditional rationale of the Republican Party and embraced what even some of their own members call crazy.  It drives me crazy when I hear or read about one of them changing the meaning of words to suit their own purpose.  As with Bennett, he touts his love of accountability, but to whom or for what is he accountable?

John Boehner is the master of this misuse of words.  He constantly says the Democrats need to “get serious” in Congress so that the Republicans can get work done.  That sounds good, but what does “getting serious” mean? It used to refer to the Senate and the House passing individual bills, then sending the bills to reconciliation, then going back to each for passage.  Now, with this new philosophy,   it simply means that the Democrats need to abandon their own opinions and expertise and do whatever the Republicans want them to do, or else.  I have never heard anyone ask Boehner what he means by “getting serious”.  That would be a really interesting answer, if, in fact, he actually answered it using traditional words.

Another word that the neo-cons misuse is the word “patriot”.  When I was young  patriots were people  who loved their country and worked to make it the best it could be.  Now, to be a patriot one must be a Tea Party Republican who adheres strictly to their party line, even though it changes from person to person.  Now since I do not adhere to their party line, I particularly resent the misuse of this word.

“Conservative” used to mean, and I quote from my old Webster’s, “Disposed to maintaining existing institutions; opposed to change”.  Considering that this bunch of wackadoodles want to entirely dismantle our government institutions such as Social Security, the IRS, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, etc., they hardly fit the traditional definition of “conservative”. 

Another term that is distressing is “fiscal responsibility”.  This used to mean that one used one’s income very carefully so there would be enough for things that really matter like education for children, taking care of the elderly who couldn’t work anymore, paying a fair share of taxes, donating to churches or other charitable organizations to help those less fortunate than oneself.  Now being “fiscally responsible” is to cut all social and/or environmental programs in order to give tax breaks to the already wealthy or corporations to help them stash their profits overseas to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. 

The list of misused words is endless.  What we need to do at every possible opportunity is to demand definitions of words so that we are all talking about the same things.  And then, because I’m from California and we had Arnold Schwarzenegger as our “Governator”, I have decided to call these obstructionists in Congress the “Destructionators”, because that’s what they are.