A special political message.

Excuse the rant, but : 

We've all been nominating this and that for the "Real" national emergency. I'm gonna barge in now and remind everyone what the *Real* For-Reals Actual forget that other stuff for now bolded double-underlined National Emergency is. The one we cannot ignore much longer if we want to have a Democracy any longer. The crisis is much bigger than the doddering old coward and crook occupying the White House without the permission of 2/3 of the country. The Emergency is this : We have allowed ourselves to put our Democracy up for sale to the highest bidder due to the Citizens United decision, and we have sold it out cheap, for a few measly Russian billions paid to a fistful of mendacious, larcenous, rapacious, power hungry damned fools who want to destroy the American Government because they didn't like the outcome of the Civil War. A few stupid, petty men who have neither the heart to help their fellow men nor the soul to hold to the American ideals. A fistful of men too interested in their own petty bullshit political fights to retain any fealty to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. These men (and they are indeed nearly all men, with few women and no persons of color ) want control over all people so that they can deliver the greatest amounts of misery to the poor while shoving money into the pockets of the wealthiest, but even that is of only secondary importance. The greatest emergency by far is the need to take back our FORM of government, wherein money is not speech, wherein secrecy is not permitted, and all must act in the open. No more secret PACs! No More unlimited campaign donations. The purpose of secret money groups is not free speech, but secret bribery. We must demand an immediate move to amend the constitution to ban such uses of money. If not that, then a renewal of McCain-Feingold, constructed so as to withstand supreme court scrutiny. WE HAVE TO GET THE BIG MONEY MEN OUT OF OUR POLITICS ! No one should be able to BUY an election!

Rant Over.

Teal Deer

Teal Deer version : Stop talking about this and that for a moment and realize those are secondary at best. If we allow ourselves to further descend into an Oligarchy none of that stuff will ever get done.

Mr Majority Leader . . .

I rise on this occasion to inquire of the Gentleman from Kentucky, the distinguished Majority Leader Mr McConnell; what level of corrupt or criminal activity does the President of the United States have to achieve in order for the Majority Leader to consider Impeachment ? Exactly what level of high crime or misdemeanor does the President of the United States have to reach before the Majority Leader sees fit to take action ? In the Constitution of the United States, the houses of Congress are charged with overseeing the President's actions and with taking appropriate corrective action when the President should require it. Thus far, the Senate has done exactly nothing to chide, censure or correct the President's behavior, no matter how egregious it may be. Not even one resolution condemning any act by the President has been even considered. Not when he refused to divest himself of business interests that do business with or make a profit from United States Government agencies, staff or facilities. Not when he has clearly shown that he will reward political donors with financial gains in terms of ordering the Tennessee Valley Authority to keep a coal fired power plant open solely so they can buy coal from one of Mr Trump's campaign donors. The Senate has so far refused to even mildly critique the President for social comments that are insulting and denigrating to minorities, such as "There were good people on both sides" of the murderous incident in Charlottesville Virginia. So, Mr Majority Leader, I ask again : What level of perfidy is enough to cause the Senate to take even the most mild of action to correct or punish the President for his egregious behavior ? Does the President of the United States actually have to murder someone in public to trigger the Senate's displeasure ?

Yom HaShoah

The gate said "Arbiet Macht Frei" in an arc over  it. 

     It was a lie. It should have said "Alles Macht Todt." Because the real purpose of the place beyond that gate was not to make people work. It was to make people die. Not in small, accidental numbers. Not in slow starvation (but that was done.) But it was to make people die in vast, industrial scale numbers. Not a hundred or so a day, but thousands. Tens of thousands. Originally located at Dachau, the signs would also come to be known at the Auschwitz complex of camps. The camps were a big fat German lie. The Germans told everyone, including themselves, that the people in the camps were just being held there to work. They were being held there to die. In the end, some six million Jews were consigned to places where they would either be immediately executed or slowly worked to death. Why ? simply because they were Jews. Juden. Untermenschen -- Sub-Human. Yes, that's right. They were considered to be less than human because of their religion and lifestyle. Let that sink in. 
 Roughly 8 decades ago, people were herded into cattle cars at gunpoint -- packed in until there was only standing room. They were then transported to the camps. There, they would be sent in two directions. The minority were sent one way, the majority were sent to their deaths. They were told to strip off all their clothes, put all their personal belongings in a bag, and then step into the "shower room." There was no shower. Pellets of Zyklon B were dumped into the room by men on top of the gas chamber. People  -- ordinary decent people -- were gassed to death in horrific numbers. Then the "Sonderkommando" -- work parties of prisoners -- would drag the bodies out of the gas chambers, load them on carts and then wheel the carts to the crematoria. When the crematoria were overloaded, they would take the bodies and burn them the hard way. Dante never conceived of a hell like this.

(note: Extermination camps killed more than Jews, but the Jews were the only ones targeted for death because of their religion. )
So I'm going to say it again, for all those who can't.

Never Again. Never forget what happened. Never allow it to happen again.
Don't let any modern-day Nazi, whether they call themselves "Nationalists" or "White Nationalists" or "White Separatists" fool you. Don't let them deny what happened.

Some Thoughts about MLK Day.

I was six years old when Dr. Martin Luther King was killed on April 4 1968. 

I don't really remember his speeches from the days he gave them, but I viewed and listened to them again in Jr High School, and again in High School, and again in College. It's important that we keep repeating his words -- that we keep his message going. But try not to paraphrase. Try to use the original words.
So I include here a transcript of one of Dr. King's most popular speeches.
It's called the "I Have A Dream" speech.
Go ahead, read it. The speech espouses ideas I consider vital to American Society.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr: "I have A Dream"

Go ahead. Read it. Copy the link and share it with your friends.
Dr. King's dream is still alive.

Nixon, Trump and Weasels

I was reaching the end of my boyhood when the whole Nixon thing brewed up.

      I remember well sitting in the kitchen with Mom and eating my breakfast while she got our lunches ready and made sure we had our homework, while half watching the morning news. The War, Watergate, NASA and The cold war were the big topics. But soon it would all be eclipsed by Nixon and Watergate. Erlichman, Dean, Cox, Haldeman and others. Soon, we were even talking about it in class. The effects were pervasive, and divisive. "never trust anyone over 30", "remember may 4" and other slogans were popular. The pressure to get rid of Nixon was intense, and eventually even the Republicans realized Nixon had to go. With the Impeachment hearings moving through Congress, a delegation of GOP Senators went up to the White House. One witness later described Nixon as a "Cornered Weasel." Nowadays, we have Donald Trump, who wants so badly to be seen as a Tough Guy, but who even a casual observer would see is not a Tough Guy, but a Weasel.
Where is the modern day version of the three who took that walk up to the White House to beard Nixon in his den ? We need a modern day version of Scott, Goldwater and Rhodes. Unfortunately, it looks today as if McConnell , Cornyn and McCarthy simply haven't got the belly for it. Although I tend to doubt that The Weasel in Chief would resign if they bid him to. He would simply continue on, hacking holes in the bottom of the Ship of State.

Bill Maher is wrong again.

Bill Maher is wrong again.

The other day on his show, Bill Maher asked that people stop talking about politics. He made the unfounded claim that nobody ever changes their minds and therefore it's useless. I hate to disagree with a man who has his own TV show, but I'm going to. Bill, you're wrong. People do in fact change their minds. When I first voted, I voted as a Reagan Democrat. By the time I moved to Arizona, I was a conservative Republican. (yup... crazy, ain't it.) By the time "W" was elected (or stole the election in 2000) I refused to vote for him. The Party had moved away from me, or perhaps I had moved away from the party, or perhaps some of both. By now, 18 years later, I've shifted toward being a progressive or liberal Democrat. You might even call me a Democratic Socialist. (I wouldn't but that's another story.) People do change, Bill. and Political discussions are a part of that. Not the canned talking points, trolling, and carefully studied insults that we have today, but actual discussion, where the facts themselves are not in question, but the interpretation of those facts is the matter of discussion. Bill, we don't need to stop talking politics, we need to stop having arguments about what the fundamental facts are. Even as early as the mid-90s, people on the internet were trying to bring their own facts. That's what we need to stop doing -- stop using our own facts. Stop bringing "Alternative facts" to the discussion. That done, we can move on to discuss the actual issues at hand. It's not going to be easy. People have to mutually agree to trust sources of facts, and that's going to be difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. It will likely take as long to move back to that that than it took to get to where we are, and to stop shouting slogans at each other.

Another poem for the day.

Whenever veteran's day (Remembrance day elsewhere) comes around, I cannot help but think of this poem. I'm just going to leave it here for you. 

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

By A. E. Housman

These, in the days when heaven was falling,

The hour when earth's foundations fled,

Followed their mercenary calling

And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;

They stood, and the earth's foundations stay;

What God abandoned, these defended,

And saved the sum of things for pay.

Wikipedia entry for AE Housman

As sung by Gillian McPherson (for the film The Dogs of War)

(contrary to the use in the movie, Housman was using "Mercenaries" ironically, describing the professional soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force in WW1)