". . . When President Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the Bahamas testified before Congress to make the case for his nomination, he incorrectly stated that the island nation was part of the U.S. It is an independent country. . . For ambassador to the United Arab Emirates — a job so sensitive in the tense Middle East that every previous president gave it to a career diplomat — Trump picked a wealthy real estate developer with no diplomatic experience. . . The ambassador to Morocco? A well-heeled car dealer. The nominee for Iceland? While well-traveled, he had never been to that Nordic country. For Melania Trump's native country of Slovenia? The founder of an evangelical charity who frequently reposted false far-right social media posts on her Facebook page. . . None have diplomatic experience, but they share one trait: All were big donors to Trump's presidential inaugural committee, which is now under federal investigation. . . "
(from The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds. . . by Michael Lewis)
". . . a big part of a consultant's job was to feign total certainty about uncertain things. . . exhibit confidence when in his view, confidence was a sign of fraudulence. . . pretending to know things rather than actually knowing things. . .
(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-rips-mueller-target-papadopoulos-liar-low-level-volunteer-n815946)
". . . The Fake News is working overtime. As Paul Manaforts lawyer said, there was "no collusion" and events mentioned took place long before he....came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!. . .
The biggest story yesterday, the one that has the Dems in a dither, is Podesta running from his firm. What he know about Crooked Dems is...."
(from http://www.lsuagcenter.com/MCMS/RelatedFiles/%7BA86D8A2D-3D53-4850-862D-CE5AA78A86CC%7D/Medicare-Information.pdf)
". . . Who is eligible for Medicare? A worker who has earned 40 credits provided he/she is paying Medicare tax on those earnings. You earn one credit for every $920 you earn. If you earn $3680 per year you will earn 4 credits. Not to exceed 4 credits per year. What do these credits cover? Medicare Part A, which is hospital insurance. The current (2005) deductible is $912. Pays 100% of covered expenses after the deductible. Cost to have coverage without 40 credits = $375/month (2005 rates)
Who else is eligible for Medicare? The spouse of a worker who has earned their credits, if the following criteria are also met: Spousal Coverage. Must be married – for at least one year – if still married. If Divorced – must have been married at least 10 years. Widow/Widower’s Entitlement.
Worker died with enough credits. Surviving divorced spouse – must have been married at least 10 years. . . Disabled widow/widower. . ."
(http://www.seniorcorps.org/social-security/can-i-collect-social-security-benefits-if-i-never-worked/)
". . . For the majority of senior citizens in the United States, the social security benefits program is a primary source of income which is needed pay for housing, food, medical expenses, and other expenses. While it is widely available, it is largely intended for people who have worked and contributed to the system. However, there are ways that you can obtain social security benefits even if you have never worked. Disability One way that you can collect social security benefits if you have never worked is if you are disabled. The social security benefits program is also available to people who are disabled and unable to work a job that is sufficient enough to provide an adequate stream of income. . ."
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
. . . you think it's relevant to today's campaign, did you know? . . .
(from http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/15-ways-bill-clintons-white-house-failed-america-and-world) Bill Clinton was a:
1. Prison-loving president. In May, on the heels of the unrest in Baltimore sparked by Freddie Gray’s death in police custody, Clinton apologized for locking too many people up. Thanks, Bill.
2.Welfare reform President whose bill has been devastating for millions of American families. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 took a page directly from Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. In an atmosphere steeped in decades of conservative scaremongering around the specter of sexually reckless “welfare queens,” Clinton’s 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it” played directly to white voters' fears of black crime and poverty. Twenty years after scrapping the longstanding Aid to Families with Dependent Children in favor of the right wing’s underfunded and more punitive vision, the number of poor American children has exploded and black welfare recipients are subject to the system’s most stringent rules.
3. Wall Street Deregulator-in-Chief. As president, Clinton outdid the GOP when it came to unleashing Wall Street’s worst instincts, by supporting and signing into law more financial deregulation legislation than any other president, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
4. Gutter of manufacturing via trade agreements. Bill Clinton helped gut America’s manufacturing base by promoting and passing the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, in 1993, when Democrats controlled Congress. That especially resonates today, when another Democratic president, Barack Obama, and Republicans in Congress, are allied against labor unions and liberal Democrats to pass its like-minded descendant, the Trans Pacific Partnership.
5. Non-LGBT equality president: Defense of Marriage Act. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was one of conservatives' biggest victories in the 1990s. Passed by Congress and signed into law by Clinton in 1996, the bill defined spouse as "heterosexual" and deprived legally wed same-sex couples of many significant benefits, from Social Security benefits to hospital visitation rights. It allowed states to refuse legal recognition of couples married in other states.
6. War on drugs president. Although Clinton called for treatment instead of prison for drug offenders during his 1992 campaign, once in office he reverted to the same drug war strategies of his Republican predecessors. He rejected the U.S. Sentencing Commission's recommendation to eliminate the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences. He rejected lifting the federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs. He placed a permanent eligibility ban on food stamps for anyone convicted of a felony drug offense, even marijuana possession. And he prohibited felons from living in public housing.
7. Death penalty expander. When running for president in 1992, then-Arkansas Gov. Clinton allowed his state to execute Ricky Ray Rector, a convicted murderer with severe mental impairments. Despite much criticism, Clinton's decision not to commute the sentence not only established his tough-on-crime credentials as a national candidate, it also became a precedent to the expansion of the federal death penalty under his White House.
8. Proponent of Cold War priorities. As the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush forged ahead with the same imperialist stance toward Europe. As Bush's successor, Clinton had an historic opportunity to attempt a cooperative, non-aggressive international model based on international law. While his administration frequently gave lip service to these ideals, a far-reaching economic and political agenda to bring Eastern Europe into the NATO-E.U.-U.S. orbit was in the works. As Clinton's former national security advisor Anthony Lake summarized, "Throughout the cold war, we contained a global threat to market democracies: now we should seek to enlarge their reach." And enlarge they did.
9. Wimp with regard to Joycelyn Elders and the culture war. At a 1994 U.N. Conference on AIDS, the U.S. Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, was asked if “a more explicit discussion and promotion of masturbation” could help limit the spread of the virus. Elders said she was “a very strong advocate” of teaching sex education in schools “at a very early age.” She added, “As per your specific question in regard to masturbation, I think that it is something that is a part of human sexuality and it’s a part of something that perhaps should be taught. But we’ve not even taught our children the very basics.”
10. Condo operator Turning Lincoln Bedroom into fundraising condo. The Lincoln Bedroom is an historic bedroom on the second floor of the White House that was at one time Abraham Lincoln's personal office. Under Clinton, it served another purpose: an overnight apartment for top political donors. Between 1995 and 1996, donors who gave a total of $5.4 million to the Democratic National Committee—including businessman William Rollnick, who gave $235,000 to the DNC, and investor Dirk Ziff, who gave $411,000—stayed overnight as White House guests.
11. Bomber of Sudanese pharmaceutical plant. On Aug. 20, 1998 the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum North, Sudan was annihilated by a cruise missile strike launched by the Clinton administration. President Clinton claimed the plant was making a deadly nerve agent and maintained connections to Osama bin Laden, who was unknown to most Americans at the time. Sudan claimed it was a factory producing medicines that saved thousands.
12. Hardliner on Iraq sanctions. Due to President George W. Bush’s disastrous war of choice in Iraq, people forget Bill Clinton’s Iraq humanitarian disaster: U.S. sanctions that decimated the Iraqi economy, crippled the civilian infrastructure, and according to a 1999 UNICEF survey, ultimately led to the deaths of more than 500,000 children. Though the sanctions began under President George H.W. Bush in 1990, Clinton expanded them, insisting a week before he took office in 1993, “There is no difference between my policy and the policy of the [Bush] administration” and squashing any subsequent effort to rein them in.
13. Master of Political smears: Sistah Souljah. Clinton was highly regarded by African Americans during the 1992 election cycle for his ability to articulate how racism impacted their communities. However, when it mattered most, he dropped the ball on race when it was completely unnecessary. It started when he blasted hop-hop artist Sistah Souljah over her comments in a Washington Post article about the Los Angeles riots, which were sparked by the acquittal of several Los Angeles policemen who beat truck driver Rodney King. “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?” she said.
14. Knowledgable party regarding the coming Rwandan genocide. This might be Clinton’s worst foreign policy failure. Intelligence analysts knew in advance about the plans for the Hutu-led genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda, yet the White House did nothing to try to stop it. In 2013, Clinton told MSNBS that he could have sent some 10,000 U.S. troops to the Central African nation to support a U.N. peacekeeping force and perhaps saved 300,000 lives—about a third of those who perished.
15. Drug war proponent - In Clinton's second term, he initiated Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar effort to reduce that country's coca and cocaine production and end a decades-long war between Bogota and leftist FARC rebels. While Colombian President Andres Pastrana Arango originally envisioned the initiative as an economic development, roughly 80% of U.S. aid under Plan Colombia was military assistance, making Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid after Israel and Egypt.
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
What do I know about happiness
Do I possess some kind of key
To things that no one else can see
Just as far back as my memory goes
Sometimes it seemed I was alone
Only my point of view and me
As I reflect
Some disconnect
Could be afflicting me
Am I just one
Under the sun
Or am I quite unique
Others speak out very easily
No fear about who may get hurt
By words so hastily dispensed
For some reason I step back away
I hesitate to be so bold as to
Presume some insight gained
As I reflect
Some disconnect
Could be afflicting me
Am I just one
Under the sun
Or am I quite unique
Unique
(final mix for forthcoming tentatively titled 'Male Pattern Radness') by OHO, Jay Graboski, David Reeve and Ray Jozwiak, Bill Pratt at the controls
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky
“I am tired of people saying that poor character is the only reason people do wrong things. Actually, circumstances cause people to act a certain way. It's from those circumstances that a person's attitude is affected followed by weakening of character. Not the reverse. If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others and judging their lives as either black or white, good or bad. We all live our lives in shades of gray.”
― Shannon L. Alder
“When you don't know where to start,
just go to a place you miss so much.”
― Toba Beta
“I just want to be someone, to mean something to anyone…”
― Charlotte Eriksson
“After a long silence, Dodge cleared his throat. "I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'Huh?hat”
― Frank Beddor
“sometime hate is just confused love!”
― Omar Tyree
“I freely admit I'm confused. I'm a confused and troubled individual but at the same time...Its Free! ”
― Craig Ferguson
“I do not understand this analogy," Mencheres muttered.”
― Jeaniene Frost
“I've never been lost, but I was mighty turned around for three days once.”
― Daniel Boone
“It’s really very difficult to understand a woman – actually it’s not she but he who is confused”
― Amit Abraham
She/He
Recorded live at the compound by OHO November 2015(Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak)
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
. . . conceived as a prayer, but remove 'God' and the wisdom remains. . .
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_Prayer)
". . . Though clearly circulating in oral form earlier, the earliest established date for a written form of the prayer is various versions printed in newspaper articles in the early 1930s by or reporting on talks given by Winnifred Crane Wygal, a pupil and collaborator of Niebuhr's. Wygal included the following version of the prayer in her 1940 book, We Plan Our Own Worship Services, attributing it to Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971):
O God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed,
The courage to change what can be changed,
and the wisdom to know the one from the other
Various other authors cited Niebuhr as the source of the prayer from 1937 on. Niebuhr included the prayer in a sermon at least as early as 1943, followed closely by its inclusion in a Federal Council of Churches (FCC) book for army chaplains and servicemen in 1944. Niebuhr himself did not publish the Serenity Prayer until 1951, in one of his magazine columns, although it had previously appeared under his name. The prayer is cited both by Niebuhr[4] and by Niebuhr's daughter, Elisabeth Sifton. Sifton thought that he had first written it in 1943, although Niebuhr's wife wrote in an unpublished memorandum that it had been written in 1941 or '42, adding that it may have been used in prayers as early as 1934. Niebuhr himself was quoted in the January 1950 Grapevine as saying the prayer "may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself." In his book Niebuhr recalls that his prayer was circulated by the FCC and later by the United States armed forces. Niebuhr's versions of the prayer were always printed as a single prose sentence; printings that set out the prayer as three lines of verse modify the author's original version. . .'
OHO's "Ocean City Ditty," the CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak. Please Visit http://www.ohomusic.com
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music will be released April 7, 2014 Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
(To Access all Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano music you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RayJozwiak)
OHO's
"Ocean City Ditty," the
CD single is now available at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/oho4
(and, if
you're in town, at Trax On Wax on Frederick Rd. in Catonsville, MD) OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak
My latest solo release, '2014' of original, instrumental piano music, can be downloaded digitally at:
(or you can copy-and-paste this URL directly to
your browser: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/rayjozwiak4)
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