Shame . . .

https://blog.oup.com/2018/07/varieties-shame-philosophy/

(from https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/devin-nunes-impeachment-defense-trump-possible-ukraine-collusion-redefines-partisan-ncna1090261)

". . . As Trump’s loyal attack ferret on the House Intelligence Committee, (Rep. Devin) Nunes has continually pushed the same debunked conspiracy theories about Ukraine, the Democratic National Committee and Crowdstrike . . .  in all of its bizarre contempt for facts, its willingness to ignore and defame witnesses and its zeal to defend the president at all costs — including actively colluding with efforts to dig up dirt on his political opponents. . . we now learn that Nunes may also have travelled to Europe to meet with a former (and highly corrupt) Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss the effort to vilify former Vice President Joe Biden. (Speaking with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, Nunes dodged questions about the report.). . . Nunes’ behavior has become so openly outlandish its drawing fire from former colleagues. . . former Republican congressman and current (long-shot) presidential candidate Joe Walsh tweeted: “One takeaway for what it’s worth: @DevinNunes is a stupid, partisan hack.”. . . Old-fashioned hackery generally consisted of loyalty and a willingness to take one for the party, because hacks were concerned with self-preservation. But the thing about this form of hackery is that there were limits — a point beyond which even the most devoted hack would not go. (See: Watergate.). . . In a world where politicians still retained the capacity for shame, Nunes might have been chagrined by Fiona Hill’s rebuke. It was as close as we have come to the moment when Army counsel Joseph Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no shame?”. . . But shame requires a shared moral universe, and Nunes did not blush. . ."

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A Necessary Shame . . .

. . . that someone had to actually say (or write) that. . .



(from https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-column-0909-20190910-xmmpucausrehhc3vfaoasjko7i-story.html?fbclid=IwAR1OdeIqoLmut4X6ZNjQ8iShiJNPVxkzStwXZd3TjWQus5oiPpdySd6S4BQ)
[The weather] ". . . is what it is, not what the president says it is. . . "


. . . not to mention that the president forced NOAA to falsely defend his gaffe (again,  dictatorship tendencies) . . .

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Bitchin' . . .

. . . vocabulary skills . . .

(from http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/donald-trump-u-s-will-confront-north-korea-over-very-n779986)
". . .  “confront very strongly” . . . “very, very bad behavior”. . . “I have some pretty severe things that we’re thinking about,” . . . “I think we’ll just take a look at what happens over the coming weeks and months. It’s a shame that they’re behaving this way,” . . . “Something will have to be done.”. . . “I don’t draw red lines,” . . ."

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A Crying . . .

. . . shame . . .



(https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/get-me-roger-stone-donald-trump-netflix/526296/)
". . . The (Roger) Stone mystique is carefully curated. Stone recalls early on how, at a mock election at his elementary school, he took a liking to John F. Kennedy because he had “better hair” than Nixon, and he persuaded his classmates to vote for JFK by assuring them Nixon planned to introduce school on Saturdays. “For the first time ever, I understood the value of misinformation,” Stone says, with a glint in his eye. That the story is too good to be true only further emphasizes his point. . .

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Superstition . . .

(from http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/mencken.htm— H L Mencken, “Aftermath” [coverage of the Scopes Trial] The Baltimore Evening Sun, September 14, 1925)
". . . The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame. . .True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can’t disarm their enemy. . ."

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Available . . .

Everything really is negotiable
Though your initial look may betray
So big and frightening they may appear
Your dedication and intellect take the day

There's one thing you have to remember
You mean so much to me
That's one certainty
When concerns become burdens
Please know I'm the one you need to see
I will always be available
No matter how far life removes you from me

There's no necessity for extreme bravery
All your good qualities I admire
There's no embarrassment and there's no shame
If you accept someone's helping hand when you're tired

There's one thing you have to remember
You mean so much to me
That's one certainty
When concerns become burdens
Please know I'm the one you need to see
I will always be available
No matter how far life removes you from me

Any other time
Any other place
Nothing between us will be any different
You don't have to hide
Feelings deep inside
I'm here to help you so please let me try

You may not understand
You may not care
I know you'll realize what's to bear
I always felt that my responsibility
Is to make sure you find happiness everywhere

There's one thing you have to remember
You mean so much to me
That's one certainty
When concerns become burdens
Please know I'm the one you need to see
I will always be available

No matter how far life removes you from me


Available
©2009 Raymond M. Jozwiak 






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Odd. . .

 

Isn’t it odd that our Supreme Court is finding it difficult to say that gay people should be accorded every benefit of marriage while they had no difficulty at all saying that corporations are people?  Maybe it’s time to clean the judicial house.  (Guess that really can't be done, can it?  What a shame.)

 

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Available. . .

Everything really is negotiable
Though your initial look may betray
So big and frightening they may appear
Your dedication and intellect make the deal

There's one thing you have to remember
You mean so much to me
That's one certainty
When concerns become burdens
Please know I'm the one you need to see
I will always be
Available
No matter how far life removes you from me

There's no necessity for extreme bravery
All your good qualities I admire
There's no embarrassment and there's no shame
If you accept someone's helping hand every now and then

There's one thing you have to remember
You mean so much to me
That's one certainty
When concerns become burdens
Please know I'm the one you need to see
I will always be
Available
No matter how far life removes you from me

Any other time
Any other place
Nothing between us
Will be any different
You don't need to hide
Feelings deep inside
I'm here to help you
So please let me try

You may not understand you may not care
I know you realize what's to bear
I always felt that my responsibility
Is to make sure you find happiness and we grow

There's one thing you have to remember
You mean so much to me
That's one certainty
When concerns become burdens
Please know I'm the one you need to see
I will always be
Available
No matter how far life removes you from me

Available
©2009 Raymond M. Jozwiak



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Outspokenly denounce. . .

 (from IT'S EVEN WORSE THAN IT LOOKS by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Copyright ©2012 by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein)
 ". . . The country needs the remaining (if dwindling) opinion leaders from institutions like the military, churches, universities, foundations, business, the media, and public life to outspokenly denounce those who profit from bombast and lies and to denounce equally the television and radio networks and the print outlets that gave them airtime and web and print space, with the legitimacy that flows from them.  There's no better place to start than with the outrageous rhetoric of Stephen Schwarzman, billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, who responded to a proposal from the Obama administration to treat  the "carried interest" of private equity managers as ordinary income, taxable at a rate of 35 percent, instead of the same as capital gains and dividends, at 15 percent.  Schwarzman characterized the proposal as being "like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939."  Scores of such examples litter the landscape.  In another particularly egregious example, the Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, Republican Mike O'Neal, referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as "Mrs. YoMama" and called her the Grinch, and then forwarded widely an e-mail that asked for Psalm 109 to be applied to the president-- a verse which says "Let his days be few in number" and "May his children be orphaned and his wife a widow."  Then there was Republican Representative Allen West of Florida who told President Obama to "get the hell out of the United States of America" in a January 2012 speech captured on videotape.  People like Colin Powell, Robert Gates, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Tom Brokaw, George Shultz, and Oprah WInfrey, ideally through some collective effort, should have the goal of recreating in society some sense of shame for distortions, lies, and other efforts to coarsen the culture and discourse.  That means calling out miscreants like Schwarzmand, O'Neal and West. . . "

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Shame. . .

. . . our representatives appear to have failed us. Journalist from both sides of the camp weighed in. . .

Huffington Post. . .
One of the most-respected and economically intelligent publications in the world, The Economist, has turned against the Republican party for its disgraceful behavior with respect to the US debt-ceiling negotiations. The Republicans, the Economist points out, would rather disrupt the US economy and put the country into default than compromise on a long-term deficit and debt reduction plan. This behavior is an abdication of the Republicans' responsibilities as elected officials. It puts the Republicans' self-interest ahead of the country's. The Republicans' stance on the debt-ceiling has now gone so far, in fact, that the Republicans appear to be trying to disrupt the economy in order to improve their chances in the next elections, rather than address an economic crisis that threatens to affect millions of Americans. This is not practical or responsible. It's also not patriotic. It's traitorous.

Business Insider. . .
Finally, someone in Washington DC is taking a sensible approach to the US's massive debt and deficit crisis: President Obama. The Republicans continue to stick to their ludicrous plan to fix our problems by slashing spending immediately and raising no additional revenue. Over the long haul, spending does need to be cut, but slashing it suddenly will deliver a hammer blow to an already frail economy. The country will plunge back into recession, unemployment will soar, and--importantly from a budget perspective--government revenues will drop. The latter outcome, which we're seeing in Greece, the UK, and other countries that have tried "austerity" as a solution, will defeat the whole purpose of trying to balance the budget by cutting spending.

The National Review. . .
"Reagan may have resisted calls for tax increases, but he ultimately supported them. In 1982 alone, he signed into law not one but two major tax increases. The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) raised taxes by $37.5 billion per year and the Highway Revenue Act raised the gasoline tax by another $3.3 billion. According to a recent Treasury Department study, TEFRA alone raised taxes by almost 1 percent of the gross domestic product, making it the largest peacetime tax increase in American history. An increase of similar magnitude today would raise more than $100 billion per year. In 1983, Reagan signed legislation raising the Social Security tax rate. This is a tax increase that lives with us still, since it initiated automatic increases in the taxable wage base. As a consequence, those with moderately high earnings see their payroll taxes rise every single year.
In 1984, Reagan signed another big tax increase in the Deficit Reduction Act. This raised taxes by $18 billion per year or 0.4 percent of GDP. A similar-sized tax increase today would be about $44 billion. The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 raised taxes yet again. Even the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was designed to be revenue-neutral, contained a net tax increase in its first 2 years.

MediaMatters for America, County Fair. . .
From Will Bunch, author of, “Tear Down This Myth:
The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy,” 2009
What the American people have been news-fed instead has been an ideology loosely based on Reagan, called Reaganism – a notion that has led to the Tea Party’s hatred of anything involving government and the bogus ideas that taxes can only be cut or that diplomacy with America’s rivals is for wimps. With each passing election, more and more of the electorate is too young to have remembered or experienced the real Ronald Reagan, yet are searching for an idealized president based on these right-wing perpetrated fallacies. Many of the worst aspects of the George W. Bush presidency – more tax cuts for the rich, soaring deficits, and “axis of evil” bluster – were rooted in this legend of a man who wasn’t there.




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Fred and Ginger

They dance together
Just watch their feet in flight
They're Fred and Ginger
But only when the music's right

The wedding was a big event
The champagne flowed
and so many dollars were spent
The social season now complete
He picked her up and
Swept her right off of her feet
They looked so sweet

Dance just dance the night away
Tomorrow brings a new day
Tomorrow brings a new day
That's their only chance to play
Tomorrow brings a new day
Tomorrow brings a new day

Everything was going right
The truth won't see the daylight
The truth won't see the daylight
Now they can't avoid the fights
The truth won't see the daylight
The truth won't see the daylight

Something's gone awry
They dance together
Never look into each other's eyes
The feeling isn't quite the same
But was it ever
Which of the two is to blame
It's such a shame
Such a shame

They dance together
Just watch their feet in flight
They're Fred and Ginger
But only when the music's right

(from ANOTHER SHOT
Copyright 2010 Raymond M. Jozwiak)

(Hear my music at http://www.rayjozwiak.com)