Thursday, July 5, 2012

One perspective . . .

. . . on the meaning of life. . .

(maybe you've heard this one. . . )
On the first day, God created the dog and said, "Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years."

The dog said, "That's a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I'll give you back the other ten?"

And God saw it was good.

On the second day, God created the monkey and said, "Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I'll give you a twenty-year life span."

The monkey said, "Monkey tricks for twenty years? That's a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you back ten like the dog did?"

And God, again saw it was good.

On the third day, God created the cow and said, "You must go into the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer's family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty years."

The cow said, "That's kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty and I'll give back the other forty?"

And God agreed it was good.

On the fourth day, God created humans and said, "Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this, I'll give you twenty years."

But the human said, "Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?"

"Okay," said God, "You asked for it."

So that is why for our first twenty years, we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves. For the next forty years, we slave in the sun to support our family. For the next ten years, we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren. And for the last ten years, we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.




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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

The Bitter End . . .

You never want to have to hear a word
From me again
Never want to have to see my face
At your door
If there's so much as the mention of
My name
You can feel an uncontrollable
Fit of pain

I'm the one
That you said
You would love
Til the bitter end

This must really be
This must really be the end
Nothing could be fitter
This must really be
This must really be the end
Make no mistake it's bitter

You never want us to be seen again
In public places
Can't explain it to another friend
How it goes
You say there's torment that you feel inside
From many things
I can tell you that I still don't know
What that means

Long ago
We were friends
Far removed
From this bitter end

This must really be
This must really be the end
Nothing could be fitter
This must really be
This must really be the end
Make no mistake it's bitter

There's no candy coating
To make it go down easier
Not so simple to digest
No bright colors and no
Exotic flavors sweetening
What you see is what you get

You never want to have to hear a word
From me again
Never want to have to see my face
At your door
If there's so much as the mention of
My name
You can feel an uncontrollable
Fit of pain

With one fell
Swoop you sent
Me direct to the bitter end

This must really be
This must really be the end
Nothing could be fitter
This must really be
This must really be the end
Make no mistake it's bitter


The Bitter End
from CHROMATOSE
©2003 Raymond M. Jozwiak




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Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A view . . .

. . . from the bottom. . . 
The richest 400 Americans own as much as the bottom 150 million put together. And these multimillionaires and billionaires are now actively buying the 2012 election—and with it, American democracy.

750 people at GS Technologies lost their jobs thanks to a bad deal engineered by Bain Capital. 15 million lost jobs after the cumulative deal-making 
of the entire financial sector pushed the whole economy off a cliff. Comparatively, Solyndra was a rounding error.

In 2011, America's top fifty financial CEOs got a 20.4 percent pay hike, even as the wages of most Americans continued to drop.

Welcome to the new Gilded Age, where buoyant rich men with flashy white teeth, raging wealth and a measured disdain for anyone lacking those attributes and challenge their own primary opponent to a $10,000 bet and referring to their wives'' several Cadillacs.

Something much like the robber barons of the Gilded Age complete with political power has now returned with a vengeance.

(based upon the writings of Robert Reich)



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Monday, July 2, 2012

Harsh? . . .

. . . yes.  But I feel better.

 To William Lori (archbishop of the archdiocese of Baltimore),

First, you must understand that there are people who are devout, practicing Catholics and there are people who are NOT.  Accept them all as human beings possessed of the dignity and deserving of every right and privilege that entails. And that means equally and without discrimination.

While you say and think that your right to practice your religion freely is being obstructed, I say that you are deceitful.  In pretending that your hospitals or other healthcare facilities offer 'healthcare' services to everyone without discrimination and then refusing to provide your very own employees (who carry out the tasks that make those services possible) healthcare that any and all 21st century rational people would expect to receive, makes you little more than a hypocrite.

You blatantly claim that your 'dogma' prohibits you from offering birth control or abortion services to your very own staff, yet you will happily accept federal funds and claim that your ineligibility to receive those funds is the government prohibiting your RELIGIOUS FREEDOM???!!!  This stance reveals that you are pre-scientific, tribal and irrational. 

Please wake up, read, think, digest and bring yourself up to date.  The year is 2012, not 1600.




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Sunday, July 1, 2012

July already. . .

. . . but I REFUSE to rush my summer, thank-you-very-much!

Here's what my good friends in Frederick (MD) are up to today.  Now that's the way to spend a hot July afternoon.




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Saturday, June 30, 2012

The only thing. . .

. . . that should be polarized is the electrical plug on your appliances. . .

 Karl Rove, David Koch, Grover Norquist, Mitt Romney,  Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,  Ted Nugent, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Chris Christie,  John Boehner and Rick Santorum please take note.


(from http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-11-21/news/30424409_1_david-frum-republican-party-tax-cuts)
" . . . Republican commentator David Frum, who recently mortified many members of his party by suggesting that Paul Krugman might be right about the US economy, is back with a long essay in New York magazine.

This time, Frum expresses dismay about how the Republican party has lost touch with reality.

In the space of only a decade, Frum observes, the GOP has gone from being a party dominated by reasonable right-of-center pragmatists to being hijacked by right-wing extremists.

A lifelong Republican, Frum sums up his views this way:

I’ve been a Republican all my adult life. I have worked on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at Forbes magazine, at the Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes, as a speechwriter in the George W. Bush administration. I believe in free markets, low taxes, reasonable regulation, and limited government. I voted for John ­McCain in 2008, and I have strongly criticized the major policy decisions of the Obama administration.

And then he looks at the views one has to have to be a loyal member of today's Republican party, and he's appalled by what he sees:

America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.

Specifically:
It was not so long ago that Texas governor Bush denounced attempts to cut the earned-income tax credit as “balancing the budget on the backs of the poor.” By 2011, Republican commentators were noisily complaining that the poorer half of society are “lucky duckies” because the EITC offsets their federal tax obligations—or because the recession had left them with such meager incomes that they had no tax to pay in the first place.

In 2000, candidate Bush routinely invoked “churches, synagogues, and mosques.” By 2010, prominent Republicans were denouncing the construction of a mosque in lower Manhattan as an outrageous insult.

In 2003, President Bush and a Republican majority in Congress enacted a new ­prescription-drug program in Medicare. By 2011, all but four Republicans in the House and five in the Senate were voting to withdraw the Medicare guarantee from everybody under age 55.

Today, the Fed’s pushing down interest rates in hopes of igniting economic growth is close to treason, according to Governor Rick Perry, coyly seconded by TheWall Street Journal. In 2000, the same policy qualified Alan Greenspan as the “greatest central banker in the history of the world,” according to Perry’s mentor, Senator Phil Gramm.

Today, health reform that combines regulation of private insurance, individual mandates, and subsidies for those who need them is considered unconstitutional and an open invitation to “death panels.” A dozen years ago, a very similar reform was the Senate Republican alternative to Hillarycare.

Today, stimulative fiscal policy that includes tax cuts for almost every American is “socialism.” In 2001, stimulative fiscal policy that included tax cuts for rather fewer Americans was an economic­-recovery program.

Frum's observations are far from radical. A couple of weeks ago, we noted that the Great Hero of the Republican party, Ronald Reagan, would not likely be able to get elected today, because of, among other things, his willingness to raise taxes when he needed to.

Frum attributes the GOP's drift to the extremes to the influence of talk radio and FOX News, ethnic competition, and the pain of economic stagnation. He observes that, once he raised his views on FOX News, he was immediately banned as a commentator.

The America championed by the current Republican party would be a brutal country with even more extreme wealth inequality and poverty and an even more powerful and richer ruling class. And, unfortunately, the extreme views of today's party will alienate many of the more moderate Republican ideas --or, worse, cause them to have to get extreme or risk getting excommunicated.

One hopes that, by bravely speaking out on these issues, David Frum will galvanize what might be called the Great Silent Majority of Republicans to take back their party. Because the sooner America returns to having two reasonable alternatives, the better. . . "




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Friday, June 29, 2012

Speaking. . .

. . .  Wednesday in Virginia, (Mitt) Romney said that "if the court upholds it, if they say look it passes the Constitution, it still is bad policy and that'll mean if I'm elected we are going to repeal it and replace it."



“LOOK IT PASSES THE CONSTITUTION”?????  (Is that the best you've got MITT???!!!)

(from factcheck.org)
With the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act on June 28, voters are guaranteed to continue hearing the same old false claims about the law from politicians. And President Barack Obama and presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney wasted little time in taking to the airwaves to rehash plenty we’ve fact-checked before. Obama even threw in a few new claims.

    Obama reiterated his “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” refrain, despite the fact that at least a few million workers won’t keep their employer-sponsored plans, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

    The president also exaggerated the benefits of the law, such as the number of young adults who were able to join their parents’ plans, thanks to the law, and the number of individuals who will receive rebates issued by insurance companies that didn’t spend enough premium dollars on health care.

    Romney repeated a number of distortions, saying that the law would “cut Medicare” by $500 billion and that it “adds trillions to our deficits.” That’s a reduction in the future growth of Medicare spending over 10 years. And CBO says the law would reduce the deficit.

    Romney said the law is a “job-killer.” But CBO says the law would have a “small” impact on jobs, mainly affecting the amount of labor workers choose to supply. Those getting subsidies, for instance, might work less hours since they’re paying less for health care.

    Romney claimed the law “puts the federal government between you and your doctor.” The law would set minimum benefits packages, but medical services will not be government-run, nor does the law allow for rationing of care.




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