Oh Say, Can You Hear Me Now?

Tags

corporations, hacking, privacy

Seriously, have I got this right?

First Sony’s emails get hacked and the bodies are strewn across America from sea to shining sea.

Then Sony produces a movie about Kim Jong Un and it  is cancelled because North Korea hacked into their system and threatens to pull out all their fingernails and toenails if they don’t.

I saw the interview with Seth Rogen on the Daily Show, and even I’m scared that they will come after me.

But Sony, what in the hell did you do in a previous life that is bringing down all this upon your corporate shoulders? I know the corporation is suffering, since the SCOTUS has explained to me that corporations are people too and can have religious opinions and political ones, so no doubt they can feel pain and fear as well.

Is this just karma?

Or is that blasphemous itself and really the great white beard in the sky getting back at Sony for some perceived failure to bring good Christian movies to the screen? I mean, I suppose THAT movie, The I N T E R V I E W, (that should confound any hacker), could be considered Christian, but then again, maybe not, since I have not seen it. But I must say that Seth Rogen, (who is an awful interview by the way with a horrid giggle that is super annoying) doesn’t strike me as someone you might see at the local Baptist Church, being Jewish first of all. Maybe it’s his Canadianishness that is the problem, though I don’t recall the Good Lord speaking about Canucks in the New Testament at least, though they maybe those Canaanites with just a spelling error.

By the way, why DO you think that God sports a beard? Did Gillette not get the franchise in heaven?

So anyway, let me just say a word or two about all the hoopla.

First, what possessed Sony to think it was a good idea to make a movie about assassinating a living person? I mean that is really the issue of first import here. I’d be the first to tell you I think His Special Imperialness Kimmy is a screw loose and on the run. Giving that man a nuke is probably not on anybody’s wish list. Still and all, he does qualify genetically speaking as a human being and as such has a right to not expect his very life is made sport of. His life may be supercilious to be sure, but still, it’s the only one he’s got (apparently).

I mean seriously folks, we make sport of crazy people all the time, and we make movies about them, but we call then Prince Crazypants of UZ-beki-beki-Uz-stan. We don’t call-em by name and country. Did Sony fear we couldn’t figure it out?

All would not have happened had they just called him “Jim”.

Beyond that, well, opinions are rampant on both issues. Fear reigns supreme at the present. Sony is “corporately speaking” hiding in the closet, George Clooney is asking why everybody is being such a lady part and having no manly parts? And most normal people go about their business and don’t have much of an opinion, unless it has to do with somehow it being Obama’s fault and therefore a nuke delicately placed up Kimmy’s arse is the ONLY proper response.

Which all begs the second issue, personal chit.

Sony’s other issue deals with hackers who exposed a lot of emails between Sony personnel. They were as you might expect, rather unkind to some people and made jokes at others expense.

What’s new?

I mean that seriously.

We live in a time when the government can hack our phones and listen to our conversations. Corporations regularly have their credit card banks violated. Facebook and my computer monitors everywhere I go, and everyone I talk to, and presents me with “other things I might like”.

While it might be fruitful to make some acts criminal, and a lot more actionable as “violations of privacy”, they cannot be termed unexpected by any sane person any more. They are business as usual.

Whether the government should listen in, it will or somebody else will. And like the rung bell, it cannot be unrung now. The same people who work for the government work for themselves and rogue governments and will do it anyway. If there is a means to profit, people will do it. That has always been the case, and will always be the case.

The fact is, that really smart people choose to do criminal things for either more money, or more thrill. You can’t change that, and so you pretty much gotta live accordingly.

Big brother is watching and so is big sister, and big daddy and mommy.

It’s no use lamenting that fact or pining for the good old days (as we have pointed out, they had plenty enough of their own problems whether you remember or not).  Don’t write down what you don’t want published across public domains. Simple as that. Save your salacious remarks for in-person conversations and check your lunch dates for wires (okay that may be too far).  PS: microphones of any kind are a tell-tale sign that what you say may be heard by OTHERS.

If you are like me, I pretty much don’t care what you know about me, though I would rather you didn’t have my credit card numbers. But I gave up information just a week ago and had to cancel a card and change my passwords, because I acted before thinking it through and was taken in by a website that looked perfectly legit yet on second thought, made no sense. It’s part of life, and with each episode you learn a bit more how to protect yourself.

So, let the media rant and rave about all this business of hacking. Some day, people will find it so normal that we won’t talk of it any more. It will undoubtedly spur new technology to develop “zones” of privacy which will then be the subject of new hacking efforts. And we shall survive it, and on to another level we go.

That’s my take on all this stuff. Sony, I know this will embarrass you, but dude, you were just stupid. Do you feel the pain?

 

 

 

 

The Industry of Controversy

Making broad generalizations about anything is usually dangerous business, and this is no exception. I’ll state my belief and then, well assume I’m probably wrong.

From the perspective of a normal lifespan, it appears to me that political discourse has changed. I seem to recall in my youth, when politics played but a minor interest across my frontal lobes, that the one thing that would kill a politician was to be caught in a real lie.

The lucky journalist who could ferret out the scheming liar was rewarded with a bi-line and the unfortunate recipient of his/her research retired to pick daisies in their garden while shunning the public forevermore.

Today, the lie is revered for its ability to start the firestorm of controversy.

Let me explain with an example my husband once used in a piece he once wrote.

Man takes a loaf of bread for another man. (the fact).

Newspaper 1: Desperately poor man is forced to steal a loaf of bread from wealthy financier in order to feed his family.

Newspaper 2: Lazy local man steals a loaf of bread from beloved philanthropist to feed his dependent family members, none of whom work.

Although I believe that journalism has fallen off a cliff, it probably hasn’t. Emotion has always sold better than simple facts. While the above suggests that “both sides” do it, we know rather definitively that they don’t do it equally. However, THEY BOTH DO IT.

The example the Contrarian uses was from some years ago. It was reported that a polling of British citizens suggested that about 1/3 supported the monarchy, about 1/3 did not, and about 1/3 did not care at all. Depending on what you wished to portray, it was reported by the media as “most people are happy with the monarchy” or “most people are not happy with the monarchy”. The “do not care” is used by either side to push their meme.

It’s not hard these days to find a number of people making the point that things are infinitely worse in our political drama called Washington, because the press has determined that all that interests them is controversy. If you want to get on camera and say that the other side sucks eggs and is the latest great installment of totalitarian governance, well, you will get that microphone. If you wish to fuel the hate, by all means, spout off.

That drives up ratings apparently.

The media does not cause the hate, but they do nothing to stop it. They watch the alley fight with fascination, and encourage it from the sidelines, occasionally dodging the odd piece of mud that flies from the melee.

Somewhere along the line, asking the push back question became  “partisanship”. So anything goes. Any statement is left hanging out there to an increasingly ignorant viewing audience who doesn’t even know that the push back question exists let alone what the answer might be.

This became clear this morning when Mika Brzezinski pointed out about the “Bill Cosby controversy” that the news people seemed apologetic to even ask Cosby the questions. Indeed they are. The icon of comedy is somehow untouchable at “his age” much like the genius of Woody Allen is guard against his possible pedophilia activities.

It works as the politicians intend for one reason. They know to whom they speak. They believe fully in their heart of hearts (no matter how much they flatter  and pander when called upon), that most people are ignorant as dirty water left over from a pig bath. They lie, knowing that the media won’t push back, and the listener has neither the time nor the interest in determining whether they speak a lie or truth. The lie works, and the media is complicit in the drama.

A guy called Gruber said that the ACA passed in part because the American people are stupid and don’t know the first thing about economics or insurance. What Gruber said is hardly news, most any professor across the country would agree, by simply plugging in their field of interest–art history, quantum mechanics, or marine biology. Yet the hue and cry from the Rightie-Tighties was swift and loud. The very folks who depend on stupid were outraged that anyone should say such a vile thing about the American people!

The fact of the matter is that all these people, be they politicians, journalists (I use the term loosely of course), scientists of any flavor, doctors, lawyers,  (insert anyone with a decent college degree and a “professional” job) thinks exactly the same. That is why my friends, that the average working stiff has nothing but contempt deep down in his heart for any of them “ed-u-kay-ed” types, with their snooty knowledge. Gruber said it out loud and for that he can be condemned, especially if you can twist it into some political advantage.

The President contemplates using his executive authority to manage the immigration laws,attempting to fix the worst problems with limited resources. The GOP screams that he is shredding the  constitution. When it is pointed out to some of those who take up the banner that executive orders have been used by presidents since Washington and frankly on issues of even greater important such as desegregating the entire national school system or incarcerating tens of thousands of Japanese citizens, the chatterers proclaim–it’s not the numbers it’s the subject!

But the opening salvos made no mention that executive orders were legal and had been used since the inception of the nation, they simply started screaming about destroying the Constitution. They made it about EO’s themselves. They count on the fact that those who are listening don’t know about EO’s, and will start puppeting the “shredding” remark. And they count on them not listening to other sources that might inform them otherwise. They count on this stupidity. It is their ace in the hole.

We can shut down the government, we can sue the President, we can filibuster each and every thing proposed to lighten the burden on the middle class, we can deny millions health care coverage, all in the name of “stopping this evil man” because we can support our decision by any frightful lie, and know that neither the poor saps we gush at nor the supposedly free press will point out our lies. Nobody is listening, nobody cares.

The only thing that matters is blaming somebody other than me. And everybody who doesn’t want to be blamed is surely able to find a suitable scapegoat. And the press? Well, try looking at the FCC and their willingness to allow the consolidation of radio, television and newspapers into fewer and fewer hands, and then you might get a clue why journalism is nothing more than fluff pieces designed to entertain rather than inform. That would be a start.

**title stolen from my husband

 

Turn the Page or Another One Spits Out the Stupid

The Contrarian made a bold statement yesterday.

“I’m done,” he announced.

I nodded without paying much attention. If you ain’t there yet, you will learn as a sane woman that much of what men say is not worth listening to, so all that waiting with baited breath (what the hell does that really mean anyway?) has long passed me by and I automatically search for certain key words to hear before I engage fully in “listening” to my spouse.

“No more news for me. I don’t care. I don’t care what the Republicans do, I don’t care what Congress does or doesn’t do about anything. I’m done with it all. Today was it.”

This brought me to attention, since I just barely, through the usual fog of interfamily discourse, sensed a certain turning point in life issue here.

“What’s up?” I cautiously inquired.

“Fox is in a fit because the president has come out against Christie and Cuomo and their plans to quarantine aid workers returning from Ebola-stricken nations.” (actually he said something like Fox is having a fucking melt down because Obama said they were nuts for locking up people because they MIGHT be sick). Call it poetic license or anything else that suits ya, I’m writin’ it the way I wanna.

I nodded, since I would assume Fox to take no other position. The equation is simple enough. President says X, Fox says, FOR SHAME YOU BASTARD! Nothing new here.

“Ya see,” he says, “if Obama had been the one to quarantine these people, they would be screaming that he is locking up innocent Americans and depriving them of their rights, and FEMA camps, HELLO, just like we been tellin’ ya.”

“Yep, you are probably right,” I mused. That would be true too.

“Well, it’s the last straw, the camel’s back is broken. I’m no masochist. I’m 64 years old. What is this government going to do to me that I can’t live through at this point? Why pollute my mind and peace of mind with such crap? I read WorldNewsDaily every day, and watch the crazies throw poop at each other from inside their cages and call it entertainment. I read Townhall and Daily Caller, and Blaze for the same reason. I’m constantly overwhelmed by how stupid these people are, with few of them even capable of understanding the most basic of arguments on anything. Why they all take oxygen I’m sure, because not a one of them has sufficient brain cells to engage in breathing without help. So I’m done! This is pure torture to the human soul.”

He blinked.

I frowned.

I write about politics and I basically argue that it is a basic requirement of a citizen to be informed and to vote. So I was forced to confront the issue of whether it was really okay to be a low-information citizen or not. Certainly I argue that more knowledge is better, but I can sympathize with the concept that politicians as a rule today are a rather seamy sort of lying blood sucker. That said, can we expect anything better if we don’t participate?

One is faced clearly with a dilemma. On the one hand it is said that Tea Baggers are rather more “informed” than the average person about political issues. But on the other hand, plenty of reputable studies indicate that Fox watchers are by far the most misinformed of citizens. While it may seem that this is contradictory, it truly isn’t.

It’s quite one thing to know that a subject exists in the world, and quite another to know any truth about that subject. Case in point. Fox viewers (aka typical tea imbibers) know that we have no Surgeon General presently occupying the post. In that respect they may be among say only 30 percent of Americans in general. But if you were then to go further and ask, why don’t we have an SG, you would get from the Tea Fool that it is because Obama’s nominee wants to destroy our 2nd Amendment rights, and therefore the GOP has blocked his nomination.

That is patently false. The nominee has evinced an opinion that gun violence is a proper study of health care in America. There are a volume of doctors and other scientists in the field who agree with him. Congress has for several decades explicitly denied the the budgets of the SG or the CDC for that matter as to an studies on the subject. End result, the SG has zero ability to either “take away”  anybody’s 2nd Amendment rights, or even to investigate the issue. Thus it cannot be a REASON to block his appointment.

Thus we can see that in some cases, it would be much better to have no information than purposeful disinformation of which Fox News and it’s ilk are so famous for.

As to the average person, I would suggest, that most are exceedingly low information citizens. While the most prominent “political” party is now “Independent”, that is just a label that means in essence, “I have not thought even enough about any issue to decide on a party.” At least the Green or Socialist, Libertarian, or even Anarchist has done that.

However, it cannot be said from this analysis that people shouldn’t vote unless they can present a modicum of basic knowledge (as some Fox commentators are now arguing). Although their targets are always the poor and brown skinned, there are I suppose some on the left that bemoan from time to time that people who are essentially Tea Party stupid are out there electing their political equivalents to state and federal office. On the whole, the low information voter does reach the right result, even though they may not know why.

Basically, by one’s twenties, one knows what kind of person one is. One is either a citizen of the world and sees us all in this together with the need to work together for the benefit of all, or one sees oneself as part of a tribe, whose only concern is with others of their kind. Most anybody with a few brain cells can tell which party is which based on that simple analysis.

So I have no fear that the Contrarian will falter in his allegiance to the basic principles he has always espoused and vote accordingly. He will continue to read the paper and no doubt will pick up more than enough from me to ensure that he is still wildly above the average when it comes to political knowledge.

And he points to a real issue for me. It is painful to do what I do. My heart is wrenched again and again at what I see as wonton disregard for the rights of others and a very real turning away from helping with basic issues of food, housing, education and health care as basic rights entitled to by all. It hurts deeply to watch the GOP demand that people have a job before they can eat when there are not enough jobs. It is all well and good to create a worldview, and a religious one to back up to that world, as a means to make you feel comfortable with who you really are. It’s quite another to foist that twisted worldview on the rest of us and demand we live by it too.

I am sick to death of so-called religious people (who are not in the least) misusing MY faith as means to justify their own selfish fears about the world and their own inadequacies. If you are unable to handle your homophobic fears that deep down if unleashed you too might harbor a “crush” on someone of the same sex, or once did, hey, deal with it. Don’t re-interpret texts in a sacred book so that you can feel okay in your repulsion at your own “tendencies”.

So I get the desire to dump it all in the nearest trash can and spend the remainder of one’s thinking life pursing things that make one happy and peaceful. I do. And I think that a person has the right to opt for that. And some days I do opt for it.

But politics is as are most things,  a jealous lover. She calls me back. Perhaps one day too, I shall be able to resist her siren calls. But it is not today.

Peace out.

 

Drowning in a Sea of False Equivalency

Tags

comparisons, false equivalancy, GOP, teabaggers

Everywhere we look it seems we see the ugly head of stupid reasoning attaching itself to every issue we face today. Issues are not debated, they are attached. By that I mean velcro strips of “arguments” are thrown at statements that do nothing to actually argue the real point, or offer enlightenment in their own right. They usually obscure, deflect, and defeat real argument.

Case in point is false-equivalency, or as it is known in the GOP dumbed down inopposite: comparing apples to oranges. You see, a perfectly good way to end an argument is to just stroke one’s chin and utter, “ahh, but now you are comparing apples to oranges,” and then sagely walk away, while your befuddled opponent scratches their head and wonders how to respond to that.

For uttering the words, “apples and oranges” is not an argument, but rather a clever device to stop everyone in their tracks while they ponder how what they just said could be of no more worthy comment than to point out that you failed comparison class. But did you?

I know the term false-equivalency is a big mouthful, and something that requires neuronic interplay, so bear with me dear GOP friends. I’m writing this slowly in the hopes that by reading it slowly you just might get a hint of what we are talking about. I’ve been engaged in a couple of conversations recently and all seem to succumb to the “I really don’t have an argument, so hey, I’ll just throw this canard your way, and Good Day!”

Case in point:

The GOP has been Halloween scary when it comes to this Ebola thing. And as the GOP often does, it presumes its sad cadre of listeners/followers can’t remember last Saturday from Mother’s Day, so it says stupid things figuring it can get away with it. While all the GOP was running around in their clown cars lighting everyone’s hair on fire with the “WHO’S IN CHARGE” allegations, they conveniently forgot that they were IN CHARGE of blocking the obvious person to be in charge.

You see, they blocked the nominee for Surgeon General Vivek Murthy a good while back. Dr. Murthy drew this scorn because he had had the temerity to suggest that gun violence in this country was a national health concern. Even though, as SG Dr. Murthy would have zero control over gun laws, the NRA wizzed it’s collective pants and ordered its minions to put a stop to the nomination, which they did.

Now I would be the first to tell you that in all likelihood, the Ebola fright week would have happened in any case, since the GOP is firmly convinced that frightened Americans tend to vote Republican and thus will miss no opportunity to so terrify where possible, but rational people see the GOP walking into their own poop as it were.

Enter the equivalency provocateur, who told me, “aw shucks, you guys wouldn’t approve of Bork. So nominate someone who can get confirmed, and stop whining”.

Essentially, all denied nominees are the same.

This is false equivalency. Nominees have been rejected by  both sides in the past, but ostensibly it is because they are unfit in some manner for the office to which they are intended. Such was not the case in Mr. Murthy’s case–his medical credentials are unassailable. He simply was unacceptable to a small lobbying group. Murthy undoubtedly would make the same argument regarding the need for better safeguards in cars. And it would be as repellant for him to be dismissed from consideration by the auto lobby.

In fact, as regards the Consumer Protection Agency, the GOP was actually clear: Richard Cordray had been denied the job for years by recalcitrant Republicans, not because he was not qualified, but because they hated the agency and were trying to make it powerless, by keeping it headless. They fully admitted that Cordray’s credentials were impeccable.

Claiming that “both sides do it” is not an answer, its avoidance of the real issues of why one party has decided that not governing is the new way to govern as the minority. Instead of working with the majority and trying to tone down legislation that has majority support, they aim at obstructing all legislation and such has been their stated decision since a week or so after Obama entered the White House in 2009.

Case in Point:

Among the other asinine arguments about how we aren’t doing enough about Ebola, is the usage of it, as a means to whine about the border security issue again.

We can talk all day about border security, how more people have been deported under Obama than Bush, how more agents have been deployed under Obama than Bush, how more fences have been constructed under Obama than Bush and on and on, but of course, that doesn’t fit the meme the GOP wishes to pursue, so instead we talk about how terrorists who are carrying Ebola will be crossing our borders willy-nilly and infecting everyone before they die.

When we again remind them, then why aren’t we talking about the Northern border too then, we get the “that’s comparing apples and oranges”.

When asked to explain that, they figuratively, smile slyly and walk away.

Because of course it is not comparing apples and oranges. The Northern border is more than twice as long as the Southern, and as best I can learn is “secure” to about 1%, I’d hazard a guess that is mostly at the Great Lakes, which presents a sort of barrier itself and the St. Laurence, and at points of entry such as Sarnia, Windsor, Buffalo, and Niagara. Other than that, its wide open and as everyone knows, a few thousand of our citizens entered Canada to avoid Vietnam a few years back if you recall.

Who’s kidding who?

If you were a terrorist, might you consider it in fact easier to enter through the north than the south?

If you buy any of that nonsense in the first place that is.

Case in Point:

Some one posts about Cheney and Haliburton being responsible for the existence of ISIS in the first place.

Now that’s probably a stretch. I suspect that they have a part to play in the rise of ISIS to be sure, pushing a needless war that allowed war profiteering companies like Haliburton to make billions at the expense of over a 100,000 Iraqi lives to say nothing of our own losses. That is something we could discuss.

But the response we get is not a defense of Cheney and company, but rather, a “let sleeping dogs lie” kind of theory because “history can’t be changed”.

No indeed history cannot be changed, but that is hardly an argument. It’s not even rational good sense on it’s own merits. To know and learn from history gives us the hope at least that we don’t make the same mistakes. So said George Santayana however inelegantly he might have worded it. And as others point out, we are constantly learning it better;  we seldom write one definitive history of anything, but continue to gather information and reflect on the subject from myriads of angles.

But it does offer to shut down the conversation does it not?

And that’s all that the GOP seems good at.

At all costs, we must avoid what we don’t want to confront. I think you get that when you sign the card, “I register as a Republican,” along with your requisite button and US flag pin.

These are false equivalencies, or simply avoidance period. Don’t be confused. It’s the first line, and usually the only line of defense you will get. We don’t argue with the uber right to convince them, for that is usually not possible, we seek to inform the fringe who are listening in and actually want to learn.

Continue to be clear with your facts, scrupulous in your research, and quick to admit any mistake. You can count on the fact they won’t do any of these things, and a fair listener/reader will end trusting your version. The point is after all, truth.

Another Angle

Tags

EBOLA, Media, unions

I think it’s the Boomers fault.

If like me, you grew up under the specter of the ATOM BOMB and “duck and cover” exercises in school, you can see that we are at fault.

Since us Boomers all feel that we grew up pretty much okay, except for the one quarter of us who are certifiably insane right wing ranters who think denial of the obvious will some how insulate them from extinction at the hands of an angry god, we figure that we best instill a large chunk of panic in the national diet so that upcoming generations will grow strong like us.

This explains, I think, why media grand viziers seem determined to make each and every “event” one in which we should all be checkin’ our survival rations and “bug out” plans.

It should be, therefore, clear why  ALL the media is in a panic about EBOLA. The fear of God requires it ya see, for only after learning to hold one’s bladder and sphincter in the face of impending death can we come out the other side as well-rounded happy and content people that most of us Boomers actually are.

Of course on the far-far-right in a galaxy too stupid to find it’s way in orbit, the media has all sorts of unusual if not predictable explanations. WorldnetDaily which is peopled by a class of subhumans intractable in their level of stupid, it’s all a deliberate plot by the dark guy Barack Hussain to rid the planet (Amerika that is) of white people. Secretly of course all black people have been issued hazmat suits. (The fist bump signals, “I got mine, you got yours?)

Every Republican running for office is pondering whether we should close the beaches or just nuke the hell out of the continent of Africa and make the world safe for white people. The media, meanwhile is busy asking questions like, ” are we prepared, should people fly, should they poop, and WHO THE HELL IS IN CHARGE?” Which is all quite funny since the Surgeon General would be the obvious person to be in charge but we don’t have one, because the NRA doesn’t like the choice, and the CDC functions with a slashed budget, again because the NRA is afraid that somebody might suggest that gun deaths are a national epidemic and where the hell are guns sales going then?

There is a story, but of course, not one that anybody bothers with, because gosh and darn it, one might have to think a bit, and actually go out in the FIELD and ask questions rather than simple vomit (yikes, where’s the HAZMAT suit?) out trite talking points?

A few days ago, just after the nurse was confirmed as a patient, a bunch of nurses representing some nurses association started talking. And at first it seemed weird and rather silly. Ya see, at first the only question was “how could this nurse contract EBOLA? After all, we had been assured that all them medical folks knew the “protocols” and so it must be this damn African thing was a lot more dangerous than we had been led to believe (enter cries of “it’s Obama’s fault”).

My first reaction was that this was just a bunch of nurses arguing that they were not to blame (the CDC insisting that for a caregiver to come down with the virus meant that there had been a break in established protocols). I kind of laughed it off.

But it was more than that. It turns out the National Nurses Union was giving the country information that was not forthcoming from the people in charge. Certainly nobody at Texas Health Presbyterian was making these admissions. The information the NNU was providing came directly (so they claim) from nursing personnel at THP, information that they were afraid to share openly out of fear.

Why you ask?

Because like most of the South, and increasingly almost everywhere, Texas is a right-to-work state, and the massive THP is not unionized. Nurses there had a story and they were afraid for their jobs to relate it. The NNU received their reports and relayed the information anonymously to protect them from retaliation from the corporate heads.

The reality is that the first patient with Ebola was left in a common area (with other patients and medical personnel) for “hours” after being brought in by ambulance before he was transferred to secure isolation. Senior nursing supervisors complained of this to no avail apparently. Further, nurses were not given proper hazmat suits but used fairly flimsy “contagious disease” coverings that left parts of their bodies exposed. Protocals were “not in place” and the required equipment was not there. Higher ups in the administration of the hospital apparently would not ask for help.

What does this all mean?

It’s hard to say, but surely it should be looked at. The fact is that it is hard to believe that in a unionized business, workers would be afraid to speak out against dangerous conditions. Unions are there for that reason, to protect them against being fired. Further, unions themselves put their foot down and insist on corrections or threaten a strike. It is entirely possible that the the secondary infections could have been avoided.  Of course it may not have been either, and we make no blanket assertion because it is an unknowable.

However, we do know that unions are in place for just these sorts of things–to give workers the ability and protection needed to speak out about issues that often they know much better than suits far removed from the scene do.

It continues to be appalling that our apparently poorly educated folks never learned how much their good life today was due to the unions that are quickly becoming a quaint history notation. Many of these people grew up in union homes and should know this without more. Yet, they have so readily been misdirected to blaming unions for their present financial woes whatever they might be. Surely unions are not perfect, but without them, the worker is left to the devices we see in play at DHP–proper actions being taken too late to be effective.

Just something to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Shaming of the GOP

Tags

Bergdahl, GOP, hypocrisy, tea party

I mean ya gotta hand it to the GOP and their corp of clowns. I swear the term chutzpah must have been invented just for them.

Given all the back-walking going on within the GOP ranks on this issue of Sgt. Bergdahl, it still remains stunning the degree to which folks like Fox Noise continue to look down their noses at the drooling sycophants that pass as the usual Fox viewer.

Case in point, is one Ollie North, criminal/traitor extraordinaire who was recently on Newsmax to give us the benefit of his wisdom on the negotiated release of Sgt. Bergdahl from the hands of the Taliban.

You remember Ollie. He participated along with candidate Ronald Reagan, in a secret deal with Iran (terrorists) to sell them missiles and then turn that money over to the Contras in Nicaragua (more terrorists). In return Iran was supposed to turn over  hostages, but not until the election was over, so Carter couldn’t get the benefit of it. This was not only negotiating with terrorists, it was downright treason.

Yet, Fox figured Ollie was a good choice to weigh in on the matter of the Bergdahl release. I mean seriously!

From there we move to Johnny McCain who just cannot to this day live with the fact that he is not the President.

Back in February of this year, Johnny suggested that he could probably get behind a trade of Taliban Gitmo detainees in exchange for Sgt. Bergdahl, though he would “have to see the details”. This seems in line with the information that this negotiation has been in the works since 2011, and that the appropriate members of Congress were informed of both the negotiations, AND the subjects of any exchange.

John was enraged when this was pointed out to him. He sputtered, accused journalists of “lying” and then abruptly changed his tune, and suggested that it was a done deal, and we should move on. Then the next day, he was back on the bandwagon, screaming for “his head”.

Joined at the hip, Kelly Ayotte just on Memorial Day was calling on citizens to “remember Sgt. Bergdahl in their thoughts and prayers” and declaring that she was pushing the military to do everything possible to return him to his family. Of course now she’s singing a different tune.

Ayotte, is of course, no different from Lindsey Butchmeup Graham, who get their marching orders from Johnny, came to lately McCain, and both can be forgiven their turnabouts, since it’s all just too confusing to them in the first place. Lindsey of course is facing a primary next week, and so he’s desperately trying to remind everyone in his state that he has a mighty big job in just zipping up his trousers over that massive load of junk he’s carrying.

Their story is not singular as it were. A host of those who were congratulating America on having brought back a prisoner, quickly scrubbed their congratulations from their Twitter feeds when advised that the GOP was tacking once again. At least six Republicans have done so, advised by party leaders apparently that things “had changed”.

This all falls into place when one realizes that the rabble of the Tea People are making their anger heard throughout the faux news blogs that cater to the trailer brigade. Facebook pages, and the usual stories rebound around the likes of WorldNetDaily, Breitbart and Fox Noise, all attesting to the fact that Bergdahl was “probably a traitor”, “probably a deserter”, whose father “looks like a Muslim” and on and on. Impeachment echoes through the halls of crazy land.

None of this has anything to do with the decision of course, but in the usual fear of upsetting the grossly ignorant, GOP politicians run scared. The mill around the Capital, asking each other what to do, after all, elections are at stake, and NOTHING is as important.

The degree to which the GOP jumps when the fringe furrows it’s collective Neanderthal brow, is stunning. Just last week, the NRA after having declared that the crazies in Texas wandering around cheap food establishments with assault-type rifles and camouflage, should just go home, was met with an uproar from these thugs, and beat a hasty retreat, claiming “we made a terrible mistake”.

Such is the state of the GOP that they are drug around by the nose by a band of motley ill-educated morons who have basements full of canned goods, and lockers full of assault weapons, all ready for the coming revolution. However shaming this is to them personally doesn’t excuse the selling out of their soul in exchange for a greasy fingered vote.

The bottom line is quite simple. There are few facts that are known, other than the following.

1. Prisoner exchanges have always been part of a President’s duties, going back to George Washington.
2. Prisoner exchanges are done by most countries, including Israel with Palestine. In fact one of their more famous exchanges involved 1 Israel for over a THOUSAND Palestinians. Both sides call the other side terrorists.
3. This negotiation has been going on since 2011. There seems to be evidence that some Congressional leaders of the appropriate committees were aware of the negotiations, and the general parameters of those discussions.
4. Sgt. Bergdahl has been charged with no crime. And even if he were, that is no reason whatsoever by any military standard not to secure his release.
5. The exchanged Gitmo detainees were Taliban, not Al Qaeda. There is a serious difference.

This smacks, as so much of GOP opposition usually ends up being, as nothing more than, whatever the Black guy does, we hate it. Note that as usual, the GOP prior to this event, demanded the release of Sgt. Bergdahl, but as usual offered NO concrete terms of how that should be done. (See Syria, and the Ukraine for similar demands without specifics). So they demand action, refuse to specify what that action should be, and then when ANY action is taken, it’s the wrong action, and still there is no statement of what right action would look like.

This is a pattern of opposition. This is not governance, it is pure mean-spirited obstinate opposition. It is in truth a pandering to the fringe crazies which now seem to run the GOP. These people are satisfied with nothing other than venomous denial to everything this President presents. Of course they have no alternatives. Do you expect to get alternatives from seven-year olds?

Perhaps someday, normal men and women will pick themselves up from the mud, wash themselves off, and decide to reclaim the GOP as a party worthy of listening to. Not today however, not today.

 

Do You Ever Imagine What It Would Be Like?

Tags

life in the foothills, tea party, the human condition, the media game

This isn’t about sadness or depression or anything like that.

It’s about imagining how others live.

Have you ever sped down a highway in the evening, just past sundown? Noticed the shapes of houses sitting on hills and along dusty roads off in the distance?

Or have you driven through an unfamiliar small town passing house after house, each some replica of the next, although each distinct enough with its own pattern of fence, porch, color, tree ornamentation makes it semi-unique?

The lights are on in this houses.

It’s near dinner time.

And your mind begins to imagine what life is like inside that house. Who lives there? What do they do for a living? Are their children or grandparents? Are they troubled with finances or health issues? What must their life be like?

You’re not from there. You’re going from somewhere to somewhere else.

And sometimes, it looks depressing to be there. Sometimes it seems like the most gawd-awful life that must be lived there.

And you can’t imagine standing it.

And suddenly you breath deeply and you realize how darn lucky you are to “not be them”. Even though you know nothing about “them”. You just assume that their lives must be sad and awful because you find the surroundings not conducive to whatever you think of as a “good” life.

It’s too out-in-the-middle of nowhere. It’s too run down. It’s too cold, or not green enough, or to loud, or too quiet. It’s too something for YOU.

And you shudder at their mean little lives.

Except, as I say again, you don’t know.

It’s perhaps one of the saddest things I think about, when I think about humans.

I recently heard, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson suggest that what made us special in all of evolution is that we compare stuff. That ability to “judge” or compare led us to  strive for improvements I guess. While the dinosaurs nestled into their perfect environment, grabbing each genetic mutation that made their “fit” more comfortable, we seem to be the ones who simply altered the environment to suit ourselves.

That makes us more adaptable no doubt. The dinosaurs were powerless to respond to the comet that hit their world and changed their environment drastically. The mammals, especially the burrowing sorts fared better.

But in our comparing nature, it seems that we like to compare ourselves to each other. And that may not be such a good thing.

Let’s face it, much of politics is driven by our comparisons, real or imagined. And plenty of highly priced magicians of public opinion are engaged in efforts to manipulate that comparison.

It seems that the average person can relax and feel satisfied as long as she can point to some “others” as far worse off. And of course the far worse off is arrived at by lack of whatever YOU have that makes you the relative success.

How else do we explain the relative popularity of shows like “Moonshiners”, “Swamp Hunters”, “Ax Men” with their whole slew of vaguely educated, rough men and women who live on the fringes and manage to “make do”. We love us some Honey Boo Boo, and her family of misbegots. We relish our pageant babies and their silly and sick mothers, (at least I’m a better mother than her!) We eat up this garbage because they make us feel like decent successful people by comparison.

The rich tell us that we are the salt of the earth, while they lie to us with half-truths and pieces of fact, trusting that we are so ill-informed and so incurious to tell the difference, that fact and fiction wrapped in self-satisfying ribbons of “it’s not your fault, but THEIRS” that you life feels so stinkin’ worthless. If you watch you kids not doing any better than you did, then it’s not your fault, it’s  THEIR fault. “Their’ is merely adapted to whatever group is currently available to be blamed.

A Latino man shoots some people at Ford Hood before killing himself, and I will assure that that from it the NRA will tell us we need more guns and the Tea People will inform us that our border security is to blame. Of course all that is untrue, but the quivering masses of “my life sucks” will eat it up and blame THEM.

We will feel better, because we have chosen to believe that others have it worse. Indeed others do have it worse. But it’s only by mere luck that we aren’t in their shoes and they in ours. We are not so much smarter or industrious as they. In fact they may well trump us on both those issues. We were lucky or not in having parents who could afford to support our four + glorious years in higher education finding our niche from which we could, as our personality led us, drive ourselves to financial nirvana, or be fairly lazy and still manage to make a decent living.

We got lucky in who we married perhaps, which led to unexpected riches (the family farm is worth a whole lot of dough on the market as prime farm land), or not. The family hardware store might turn out to be nothing in the face of the new Wal-Mart down the street. It’s pretty much a crap shoot ya see.

We did or did not have a kid with disabilities. We did or did not get sick; or maimed or not in theaters of war. The company upon which everybody’s job depended, did or did not belly up, or move to cheaper labor pastures.

Yet we still find it useful to compare our lives to others of which we know nothing.

It’s just easier.

It’s easier than digging through the pile of manure in our head and seeing if there is anything there worth keeping as human.

It’s easier when the bills need to be paid, and that second job may be lost, and the kid needs braces.

And the people who trade on stirring the pot of hate are happy that we are so distracted with trying to exist, that we will account ourselves good citizens if we listen vaguely for thirty-minutes every day while stirring the spaghetti, and pick up the phrases designed to resonate and be easy to remember.

BORDER SECURITY!

SHARIA LAW!

BENGHAZI!

OBAMA CARE!

2ND AMENDMENT RIGHTS!

OUR FREEDOMS!

FREE MARKETS!

TAKERS!

PLAYING THE RACE CARD!

SOCIALIST!

DICTATOR!

AMNESTY!

And I watch Nebraska, and I watched Medora, and I find myself thinking, “God how depressing to live THERE.” And I am doing the evolutionary thing I guess. But I am so wrong to do so. We are so wrong to do so.