Instead of being gushingly trite, and predictably thankful this holiday time, (not because I don't appreciate many things, but as a result my life's learning to date and my current philosophy, I sense no 'being' [other than many humans in my life] to whom I need to offer thanks) I've decided to be a truly modern, state-of-the-art American and instead, ponder some things that I don't, but wish I DID have.
More money, an opportunity to pursue my passion (music) for a living, time (to devote to all previously listed items and to humanitarian causes).
It's really not that long a list. But it's a BIG list.
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AMBIENCE & WINE
(Excerpt from The Israel Lobby,” by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago
and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage_New.aspx?isbn=9780374531508)
". . . John Edwards, the Democratic party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate, told his Israeli listeners that “your future is our future” and said that the bond between the United States and Israel “will never be broken.” Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spoke of being “in a country I love with people I love” and, aware of Israel’s deep concern about a possible nuclear Iran, proclaimed that “it is time for the world to speak three truths: (1) Iran must be stopped; (2) Iran can be stopped; (3) Iran will be stopped!” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) declared that “when it comes to the defense of Israel, we simply cannot compromise,” while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) told the audience that “Israel is facing the greatest danger for [sic] its survival since the 1967 victory.” Shortly thereafter, in early February, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) spoke in New York before the local chapter of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where she said that in this “moment of great difficulty for Israel and great peril for Israel . . . what is vital is that we stand by our friend and our ally and we stand by our own values. Israel is a beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism.” One of her rivals for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), spoke a month later before an AIPAC audience in Chicago. Obama, who has expressed some sympathy for the Palestinians’ plight in the past and made a brief reference to Palestinian “suffering” at a campaign appearance in March 2007, was unequivocal in his praise for Israel and made it manifestly clear that he would do nothing to change the U.S.-Israeli relationship. . . "
(from http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12821-elites-will-make-gazans-of-us-all)
". . . Because it has the power to do so, Israel—as does the United States—flouts international law to keep a subject population in misery. The continued presence of Israeli occupation forces defies nearly a hundred U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for them to withdraw. The Israeli blockade of Gaza, established in June 2007, is a brutal form of collective punishment that violates Article 33 of the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, which set up rules for the "Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War." The blockade has turned Gaza into a sliver of hell, an Israeli-administered ghetto where thousands have died, including the 1,400 civilians killed in the Israeli incursion of 2008. With 95 percent of factories shut down, Palestinian industry has virtually ceased functioning. The remaining 5 percent operate at 25 to 50 percent capacity. Even the fishing industry is moribund. Israel refuses to let fishermen travel more than three miles from the coastline, and within the fishing zone boats frequently come under Israeli fire. The Israeli border patrols have seized 35 percent of the agricultural land in Gaza for a buffer zone. The collapsing infrastructure and Israeli seizure of aquifers mean that in many refugee camps, such as Khan Yunis, there is no running water. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) estimates that 80 percent of all Gazans now rely on food aid. And the claim of Israeli self-defense belies the fact that it is Israel that maintains an illegal occupation and violates international law by carrying out collective punishment of Palestinians. It is Israel that chose to escalate the violence when during an incursion into Gaza earlier this month its forces fatally shot a 13-year-old boy. As the world breaks down, this becomes the new paradigm—modern warlords awash in terrifying technologies and weapons murdering whole peoples. . . "
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(Andy Griffith's "What It Was Was Football" http://www.elyrics.net/read/a/andy-griffith-lyrics/what-it-was-was-football-lyrics.html )
It was back last October, I believe it was.
We was agonna hold a tent service off at this college town.
And we got thar about dinnertime on Saturday.
And uh Different ones of us thought that we ought to get us a mouthful to eat before that we set up the tent.
And so we got offa the truck and followed this little bunch of people
through this small little bitty patch of woods thar,
and we come up on a big sign it says, "Get somethin' t' Eat chyere!"
I went up and got me two hot dogs and a big orange drink,
and before that I could take a-ry mouthful of that food,
this whole raft of people come up around me and got me to where I couldn't eat nothing, up like,
and I dropped my big orange drink. I did.
Well, friends, they commenced to move, and there wasn't so much that I could do but move with them.
Well, we commenced to go through all kinds of doors and gates and I don't know what- all,
and I looked up over one of 'em and it says, "North Gate."
We kept on a-going through thar, and pretty soon we come up on a young boy and he says,
"Ticket, please."
And I says, "Friend, I don't have a ticket;
I don't even know where it is that I'm a-going!" I did.
Well, he says, "Come on out as quick as you can."
And I says, "I'll do 'er; I'll turn right around the first chance I get."
Well, we kept on a-moving through there,
and pretty soon everybody got where it was that they was a-going,
because they parted and I could see pretty good. I could.
And what I seen was this whole raft of people a-sittin' on these two banks
and a-lookin at one another across this pretty little green cow pasture. Well, they was.
And somebody had took and drawed white lines all over it and drove postys in it,
and I don't know what all,
and I looked down there and I seen five or six convicts a running up and down
and a-blowing whistles . They was!
And then I looked down there and I seen these pretty girls a-wearin' these little bitty short dresses
and a-dancing around, and so I sit down and thought I'd see what it was that was a-gonna to happen. I did.
About the time I got set down good I looked down there
and I seen thirty or forty men come runnin' out of one end of a great big outhouse down there. They did!
and everybody where I was a-settin' got up and hollered!
And about that time thirty or forty come runnin' out of the other end of that outhouse, and the other bankful, they got up and hollered.
And I asked this fella that was a besittin' beside of me,
"Friend, what is it that they're a-hollerin' for?
Well, he whopped me on the back and he says,
"Buddy, have a drink!" Well, I says,
"Well, I believe I will have another big orange.
And I got it and set back down.
And When I got down there again I seen that the men had got in two little bitty bunches down there
real close together, and they voted. They did. They voted.
They elected one man apiece,
and them two men come out in the middle of that cow pasture
and shook hands like they hadn't seen one another in a long time.
And Then a convict come over to where they was a-standin',
and he took out a quarter and they commenced to odd-man right there! They did!
Well, After a while I seen what it was they was odd-manning for.
It was that both bunchesfull of them wanted this funny lookin little pumpkin to play with. they did
And I know, friends, that they couldn't eat it because they kicked it the whole evenin'
and it never busted.
But, uh, anyhow what I was a-tellin' was that
Both bunchesful wanted that thing.
One bunch got it and it made the other bunch just as mad as they could be!
And Friends, I seen that evenin' the awfulest fight that I ever have seen in all my life !!
They would run at one -another and kick one- another
and throw one another down and stomp on one another
and grind their feet in one another
and I don't know what-
all and just as fast as one of 'em would get hurt,
they'd tote him off and run another one on !!
Well, they done that as long as I sat there, but pretty soon this boy that had said
"Ticket, please." He come up to me and says,
"Friend, you're gonna have to leave because it is that you don't have a ticket."
And I says, "Well, all right." And I got up and left.
And I don't know friends, to this day, what it was that they was a doin' down there,
but I have studied about it.
I think it was that it's some kindly of a contest where they see which bunchful of them men can take that pumpkin and run from one end of that cow pasture to the other without either gettin' knocked down or steppin' in somethin'.
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(from http://truth-out.org/news/item/12782-un-holds-urgent-security-council-meeting-us-stands-with-israel) comments of VIJAY PRASHAD, PROF. INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, TRINITY COLLEGE
". . . the UN has been consistently trying to raise questions about Israeli action in the occupied territories and Gaza.
You know, these areas are under Israeli occupation. There is no sovereign nation of Palestine. There is no sovereign Gaza. So when the attack took place on Gaza, the attack did not take place of one country fighting another; it was an occupying power using disproportionate force against a place which it has held under occupation since 1967.
In that context, the Egyptians, Moroccans, and others called for an emergency session. At the emergency session, the various countries, the 15 members of the council at this time, all said that something must be done. The president of the council at this point is the UN permanent representative from India, Hardeep Singh Puri, and after the meeting, he said there was unanimity in the council, that something had to be done, that the situation was atrocious.
The problem was that there was no, as it were, agreement on what should go forward, and therefore the council was paralyzed. In other words, most of the 15 members of the council at this time said that Israel should be condemned for the use of disproportionate force, not only, you know, the extrajudicial assassination of Hamas members and suchlike, but also the bombing of, say, water towers. You know, what does a water tower outside Khan Yunis have to do with the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel? Why was a water tower targeted? So these were the kind of questions they raise.
But the United States blocked any attempt at crafting a resolution. And Ambassador Susan Rice made it very clear that the real culprit here was not the Israeli government, but Hamas. And this was a curious thing, because she spoke of the conflict as if it was a conflict between two governments, two sovereign governments, and therefore the United Nations has to come in and condemn both governments. You know, she wanted a kind of proportionality in condemnation, even though the war is a fundamentally disproportionate war. . . "
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(from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-14/fracking-hazards-obscured-in-failure-to-disclose-wells.html)
". . . Homeowners in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming have complained that their well water was contaminated with chemicals or methane gas from nearby frack jobs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last year linked the method to contaminated drinking water in Pavillion, Wyoming; the agency is now retesting some of those findings. The EPA has little authority to regulate fracking; Congress in 2005 stripped it of most such power.
States have responded in various ways. Pennsylvania officials require that companies disclose chemicals within 60 days after fracking. New York has a moratorium on the practice until its environmental impact can be determined. Vermont has banned it outright. Texas began mandating disclosure of fracking chemicals this year, after officials determined that operators were voluntarily reporting about half their fracked wells to FracFocus, according to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas wells.
Oil and gas executives say the FracFocus website helps eliminate the need for any new federal oversight that might unify the regulatory approach. . . "
Might UNIFY the regulatory approach???!!!!!!!
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AMBIENCE & WINE
So congressional Republicans claim they will never allow taxes to increase for wealthy Americans. They claim that they will eliminate loopholes and leave tax cuts in place which will provide the additional revenue the country requires.
Conversely, President Barack Obama says that the amount of revenue that elimination of tax loopholes would generate, (while leaving tax cuts for the wealthy in place) is not nearly close to the amount of revenue required to tackle the budget deficit.
It seems to me that the 'leave-cuts-eliminate-loophole' strategy either WILL or WILL NOT generate the amount of revenue required. There is no OPINION involved. This is an empirical issue and can be proved or disproved.
Either Congressional Republicans or the Administration should take it upon themselves to prove or disprove (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) the effectiveness of the strategy. Or even better, if you can imagine, the news media could take it upon themselves to prove or disprove it (OBJECTIVELY & AUTHORITATIVELY) and actually provide a service to the general public for a change.
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