February 15, 2017

Letter I just sent to US Representative Ken Buck

I thought you'd like to see, and I urge you all to write your own representatives about voting the Resolution of Inquiry presently making its way through committee.

Dear Rep. Buck,
I am deeply concerned that we may have elected a madman to serve as our president. His behavior and the behavior of his senior staff since he took office has been far outside the pale of normal. Yes, I can understand differences in politics, in ideology, but this man Trump seems to have little intelligence, poor decision making skills and very few boundaries. Take the recent Mar-a-Lago incident where he had an impromptu foreign policy strategy session in a restaurant in front of people who had no security clearance, and lit his documents with someone's cell phone flashlight. How many of those sensitive documents, we must wonder, were photographed?

In addition, it appears Trump is making money off several of his executive orders, particularly the oil pipeline one in ND. He has tweeted support for his daughter's clothing line - an act bordering on illegal, and his spokesperson Kelly Ann Conway openly marketed his wife's clothing line on national television. How is this even acceptable?

Now, we find that the entire administration, from Trump on down, seems to have been in contact with Russia throughout his campaign. His National Security Advisor was forced to resign due to this illegal contact, and now it appears that both Trump and Pence knew all along. What kind of a circus is this?

Again, Representative Buck, you and I haven't always seen eye to eye on policy, but I respect you and your office. Now I'm asking, no IMPLORING you to do something about this horror. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of NY has introduced a Resolution of Inquiry.

When this Resolution of Inquiry comes up for a House vote in a few days, I formally ask that you, Representative Buck, vote for inquiry. It is clear to me that our president is unfit for office. Let's take care of this now, as the Constitution allows, before this administration lurches into some disaster we cannot so easily clean up.

Sincerely, etc.

February 5, 2017

Letter urging my Senators not to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

I thought I'd share this with you all. It was one of those Daily Kos petitions. Here's what I wrote:

Dear Senators Gardner and Bennet,

I urge both of you, on behalf of the people of Colorado and the Constitution you've both sworn to protect, NOT to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court.

Here's the problem. President Obama, as was his duty under the US Constitution, forwarded a nominee, Merrick Garland, to the Senate for confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, you in the Senate did NOT do your duty under the Constitution and confirm Garland.

This is my problem with Gorsuch. He is not Garland. It was Obama's duty; Obama's turn to nominate and you should have confirmed his choice Merrick Garland.

Do not compound this miserable failure of the US Senate in fulfilling its BASIC JOB by confirming Gorsuch. Bring back Garland and confirm him instead.

Sincerely, and respectfully,


PS. I posted another set of letters to these US Senators on the same topic and as yet neither have answered. I urge all of you to write your US Senators about this. Because, hey, as long is the Supreme Court nominee is NOT Merrick Garland, then s/he should NOT be confirmed.

February 2, 2017

I just sent this letter to one of my Senators, Cory Gardner. I thought I'd share.

Dear Sen. Gardner,

I watched for 8 years as Republicans in the Senate and House steadfastly OPPOSED EVERYTHING Obama said or did. So, here's the deal. I'm among hundreds of thousands pressuring Democrats in the Senate to filibuster ANY Supreme Court nomination Trump EVER puts out. Because our president, Obama, forwarded Merrick Garland to you in the Senate for confirmation, and you did NOTHING. So, you know what - what goes around comes around. Be advised Democrats like me will urge our elected officials to oppose everything Trump comes up with or forwards - fight tooth and nail against everything you try to do. You want gridlock??? Great. You got it. That is if I can have anything to do with it. Yes, we are THAT divided. Trump isn't MY president and in my opinion is NOT a legitimate president. Clinton got 2.7 million more votes than Trump but the electoral college, which was created in the first place to help us avoid electing an unstable and amoral man such as Trump, did not vote as they should have.

Though I know you will disregard my letter because you have plenty of hard right people on the eastern plains so you can feel safe ignoring me, I am asking on my behalf as one of your constituents that you NOT vote to confirm the Trump nominee. Not because he's good or bad, but because you FAILED to uphold your constitutional duty to confirm Obama's pick, so you should not get to put anyone on the bench.

On other issues:
- DON'T allow the EPA to be undermined. Climate change is an existential threat to our species.
- If Trump finances his border wall with a tariff on Mexican goods, the American people will end up paying for it through higher prices charged for those goods; you DO know that, don't you?
- Why is the WH Chief of Staff, Bannon, allowed in high level security meetings, and the people who SHOULD be attending these meetings are partially barred?
- Why won't Trump release his taxes, and why aren't you alarmed about his many conflicts of interest, the nepotism and him allowing Bannon to attend high level security briefings?

I was born here in the USA. I've lived nearly 60 years here, and I am appalled that the people who supposedly represent my interests in DC have allowed this great nation to fall so far, so fast.

Regards,

January 31, 2017

Barbara Hale, the indomitable Della Street, has died at age 94.

Barbara brought a lot of joy into a lot of lives with her talent.

Rest in peace, Barbara Hale.

January 29, 2017

Maybe Trump was right. This image could explain why inauguration attendance was

underreported. It's simple folks, open the link below and look at the image the author has supplied. You will see a closeup that clearly explains all that white!

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/23/1624076/-Maybe-Trump-was-right-This-image-could-explain-why-inauguration-attendance-was-underreported?

January 21, 2017

Night has fallen.

“There's a long road of suffering ahead of you. But don't lose courage. You've already escaped the gravest danger: selection. So now, muster your strength, and don't lose heart. We shall all see the day of liberation. Have faith in life. Above all else, have faith. Drive out despair, and you will keep death away from yourselves. Hell is not for eternity. And now, a prayer - or rather, a piece of advice: let there be comradeship among you. We are all brothers, and we are all suffering the same fate. The same smoke floats over all our heads. Help one another. It is the only way to survive.” - Elie Wiesel, Night

“Like a tornado swirling around you, you are the eye of the storm. A front row seat to the destruction of everything you worked so hard to build. But like all tornadoes, the rain will halt and the winds will calm. The pieces that remain from the cataclysmic destruction of your former self, will soon dissolve and you will find that the only thing that was destroyed was the illusion, the attachment. Allowing for you to rebuild a new, a stronger, a more mature, and spiritually evolved you, that you didn’t even know existed. So have faith, this too shall pass.”
― L.J. Vanier, Ether: Into the Nemesis

January 19, 2017

The DNC Contenders Are Not Interested In Your Populist Moment (Huffpo)

Rank and file voters are angry, but nobody told the candidates. Candidates couldn’t even acknowledge the DNC had botched the 2016 process. When asked whether the DNC “put its thumb on the scale” in favor of Hillary Clinton, no candidate would agree. “That’s a gotcha question,” Idaho Democratic Party Executive Director Sally Boynton Brown said. “I’m not going to answer.” The contentious 2016 primary between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) exposed major fissures in the party. But the candidates studiously avoided emphasizing those divisions. Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, called the idea of the DNC race as a proxy battle between the Sanders and Clinton wings of the party a “false choice.”



The candidates almost universally agreed that lobbyists should be allowed to keep giving money to the DNC. President Barack Obama banned lobbyist contributions to the party in 2008, a ban then-DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz quietly lifted in the 2016 election.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dnc-debate-courage-opposition_us_58803552e4b02c1837e9bf7f

sigh...

January 11, 2017

'Waiting for Trump' a poem by Hilton Obenzinger, Dec. 30, 2016

I sit in one of the greasy truck stops on Interstate 5, near Red Bluff, dizzy and scared.
Decades of hope seem suddenly to turn to bullshit.
Dread and rage swirl around the country, but the lunch counter is quiet with snoozing baseball caps tipping into coffee cups.
Fox is on the TV, yet no one needs to watch the news.
They already know the news.
Something bubbles in the kitchen, like death.
Soon we will have to eat those French fries.

On the frozen plains, in howling snow, Indians come to stop the Black Snake.
They stand to block the way, whether the Iron Horse or the Black Snake, waiting as the new president takes his seat.
We all wait.
Perhaps the ghosts will return and not the cavalry.

Tonight the deeper darkness comes, darker than before.
Spies denounce the spying of other spies.
The Kremlin carries the paralyzing kryptonite, as hulking cyber armies gather in the night.
Menacing men rip scarves from the heads of women.
Kids scrawl ugly slogans on school walls.
Burning crosses dance in the eyes of White Nationalists like the sugarplum fairies of the shopping season.
And we wait.

Cops who are honest worry what they may be called to do.
And those who are not touch their holsters, assured that they may impose order and nature’s law at will, and they wait to pursue someone’s happiness because they fear for their lives.
Farm workers, hunching over the entire Sacramento Valley, tear plants up by the roots, and fear for their lives.
Violence has found its season.

Tired truckers stretch out in the rear of their cabs, about a dozen rigs lined up in the dark along the shoulder of the freeway, and they get some shuteye.
I rearrange the eggs and bacon on my plate and wonder what those men think.
Perhaps they believe that everything will be great again when they open their eyes and find themselves back on the road.
They were given a promise.
Perhaps they will really pay off all their credit cards because they work hard and they’re white.

We wait for robot drivers to fly up and down the Central Valley, picking up apricots and dropping off tractor parts, with no need to shit at the truck stops, no need to sip the chicken noodle soup.
And the day the robots begin to drive, the dreaming truckers will sleep in the back seat of their old Chevrolets, their steering wheels taken from their hands, waiting for the promise.

We wait for everything and for nothing.
There is no singularity, no instant wide horizons, no ironic lights, but a grim stupor, as the tycoon casts a long shadow from his golden tower, lumbers to the White House to take possession of one more property, while delirious settlers really do slouch towards Bethlehem.

The Great Man holds court.
His loyal children seek his hand, the great and the rich, the powerful and the ridiculous float up the elevator shaft to meet the wizard king. Generals, CEOS, moral monsters, angry souls, fools of exceptional quality, celebrities, they all rise up to the tower, taken to the penthouse to bend before the greater fool.

We wait.
There is a pervasive sense of dread before the beast takes the oath, before the Republic becomes a wholly owned subsidiary.
Ordinary life goes on, and we wonder.

We must love one another and die.
Our danger is great, and we must love one another or die.
Is it love and die?
Or is it love or die?
Do we have a choice?

What’s on TV?

******

You can find this, as well as many thoughtful articles on current events at: http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/ which is Rabbi Michael Lerner's website.

January 10, 2017

Unions Facing the Trump Era by Jonathan Rosenblum January 3, 2017

Beginning in 1979 in Seattle, WA, Jim Levitt expertly fabricated custom aircraft parts and tools, helping make the Boeing Company one of the most successful businesses in the world. But in 2013, corporate executives issued a threat: They demanded that Levitt and his fellow machinists surrender their pensions, and that Washington State political leaders hand over a record $8.7 billion in tax benefits. In exchange the company promised to keep production jobs in-state. The Democratic governor of Washington, along with virtually the entire political establishment, caved in to the blackmail. So did Levitt’s international union leadership – they had bargained the deal secretly with the company. The capitulation cost 32,000 Boeing workers their pensions.

“We’ve lost collective bargaining, for all intents and purposes,” Levitt observed in the wake of the corporate blackmail. In recent weeks we’ve seen no shortage of reasons – and excuses – for why Hillary Clinton blew the election and Donald Trump will be our next president: the Russians, an unfair Electoral College system, FBI Director James Comey, xenophobia/racism/sexism, a weak Democratic candidate, Wikileaks, and faked news. Some Clinton backers even blame the “tough” primary run that Bernie Sanders gave their candidate. What’s barely given any attention in the mainstream media is the role that decades of destruction of union power played in the 2016 election debacle. But it’s no mystery to Levitt, his fellow Boeing workers, and millions of other workers from all walks of life who’ve justifiably grown cynical about a political establishment that repeatedly has failed them over the years.

This, my friends, is the difference between third way and New Deal socialist Democrats. A lot of people are cynical, and we blame them for that, particularly if they voted Trump or worse, did not vote at all. But Levitt and his fellow union machinists were betrayed, simple as that. They have every right to be cynical; they had a reasonable expectation that our party to help them when Boeing made the attempt to steal their pensions, but our party did not.

Decades of Democratic leaders caving in to corporate crimes has so eroded our party's base that it has made the entire American public a bit cynical. It is sometimes difficult to understand what our party actually stands for, particularly when we can observe that much of our leadership has the same corporate donor base as the other party.

We have to learn, people, to better articulate our positions (and please don't say we did a good job of that, because we did NOT). We must also learn to stand up against the immorality and odiousness of corporate greed like the Washington Dems DID NOT. We need to call things like what Boeing did what they are - horrible moral wrongs foisted off on innocent people so corporate coffers can become even more swollen with profits.

Start doing that and backing it up with deeds, legislation, and votes, and we will begin winning elections. Most Americans HATE living and functioning in this dog-eat-dog 'real world.' They yearn for something else, leaders who at least try to mitigate the worst of the corporate greed, employee, consumer and environmental abuse, and who address the yearning we all have within our hearts for a kinder, gentler world where we can at least sometimes believe justice will prevail.

I don't, in short, want to be told that my way isn't even feasible because that's not how the world works. blah blah blah.

Because to that I say, "WHY????"

When our party leaders hear messages like this, and act on them, then we will begin winning elections and we together will create a better world.

November 25, 2016

A rant from a loyal Democrat.

When I think of my own purchasing power and how it has dramatically declined since the 1990s, it makes me sick. I blame the 'free trade' policies which were never about moving goods and services over international boundaries - we could already do that just fine. Nope. These 'free trade' agreements are about moving capital over international boundaries. The idea that a factory can move its jobs from Flint, MI to someplace like Indonesia, get tax breaks and even be able to 'offshore' the profits so they DON'T EVEN PAY US INCOME TAX is wrong. But hey, look at GE and numerous others who have said 'goodbye' to paying US income tax.

Basically, the working class has gotten fucked since 1948 when Taft-Hartley passed and it was no longer legal for unions to strike in sympathy with one another. Because, I'll tell you, this 'primacy of shareholder' theory where the CEO of a publicly held company is ONLY expected to increase value for shareholders (at the expense of the workers, the consumers, the community and the world environment, including the climate) is FUCKED. Without workers there can be NO profit, so if we all put our hands in our pockets for a few weeks and resisted the massive pressures put on us individually and as a group by corporate enforcers, we'd get some action. But, gosh, that's now illegal...

So now, I get to go to the store and pay and pay and pay. More and more and more. For less and less and less. I've got shitty, rationed healthcare with financially crippling copays. I have no real economic security because my employer can fuck with me at will - gee, I live in a 'Right to Work' state! Talk about an anti-worker concept.

And the people in my state just overturned an amendment that would keep our private prisons from profiting from the slave labor of prisoners.

The ice caps are melting at a truly scary rate and in ten years this world may not be recognizable, but we STILL pander to shitheads who think the world is 6000 years old and climate change doesn't exist.

So...I think you get it...I'M FUCKING MAD.

The neoliberal economic philosophy of 'privatize, deregulate and gut New Deal programs' purposely rapes our treasury and prevents OUR tax dollars that WE pay into OUR government that is supposedly OF, BY and FOR us, the people from being used for anything that actually makes our lives better. Instead we fund war, 'defense,' massive domestic spying and other useless shit that we don't need.

And, instead of getting rid of the Federal Reserve Act of 1912 and coining our own money like it says in Article II of our Constitution, we foolishly pay back money we should 'owe' ourselves to bankers with interest.

So, because of this SHIT we live in a world of artificially created scarcity, with the mistaken idea drummed into us for years and years that we have to be rugged individuals and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and helping others has become a radical political position...gasp...socialism!

Yeah, I'm plenty mad. But I'm educated. I have a graduate degree. I keep abreast of issues. I watch our corporate owned media and the right-wing corporate propaganda noise machine keeping our people ignorant.

And I want to PUKE.

I voted for Clinton, but it should be REAL EASY for any Democrat in any kind of responsible party position to see how someone as angry as I am could see Clinton as the quintessential establishment candidate and instead vote for Trump, because hey, the establishment has been fucking me since 1980 unrelentingly and now I can vote in an OUTSIDER who will make change.

See?

This is the DANGER of grossly misreading the mood of the people. I'm sorry to offend some of you but we ran a weak establishment candidate in an election where the working class is in near revolt against the very establishment she represented. How can we be surprised we LOST?

Oh, and we've REALLY LOST. Under a Trump administration, we're fucked. So now...I'm MAD at the Democratic party, too. And I have this friendly advice for any powerful Dem apparatchiks reading this rant - GET THE HEAD OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OUT OF ITS PROVERBIAL RECTUM AND START LISTENING. I can well remember how patronizing the Democratic establishment was as it crushed Bernie, who maybe could have won. "Oh, well, none of these things are practical..."

But, LISTEN UP. I don't want practical...I want CHANGE.

LISTEN.