Home of the Brave? Land of the Free?

 

     This blog entry is personal. I have a question. Are you satisfied? I'm not. Listening to the news is painful, depressing, and scary. I understand why so many people have tuned out. It would be easier in the short term to stick our collective heads in the sand and just live everyday as if we're not all riding a run away train, the bridge is out, and the engineer jumped off three miles back. 

     I've been as guilty as anyone, just trying to get by, not taking time to pay attention to the little change here little change there in the society I live in. Here is how I've come to believe that we stand at a crossroads. 

      I was born in the 60s and grew up in the 70s. There was red white and blue everywhere. I was taught in school that I was lucky. I was lucky to have been born in the greatest country on earth. I believed that. We had obstacles to overcome. Acid rain, rivers so polluted that they caught on fire. Any one else remember the commercial with the Indian, (yes we said Indian in the seventies, didn't know better) a tear running down his face. So sad that there was trash everywhere. I thought my handing out pamphlets and picking up trash with other good little tree huggers was helping the planet. 

     Jump ahead to the time I had kids. I remember the day, the moment it hit me like a punch to the gut that decisions made in Washington could hurt the ones I held most dear. April 15, 1986. I was sitting in a laundry with my almost 5 month old son and 8 year old stepson. The TV was on and the regular broadcast was interrupted, Reagan, meaning we, had bombed Libya. The commentator wondered if we were going to all out war and if the draft would be reinstated. I looked at my boys and felt a cold chill. What about their future? Would they have to fight and maybe die someday? 

     

      That really knocked me out of my little bubble where I only paid attention to things that interested me, environmental news mostly. The more I have learned over the years, the more I read about history, not the cliff notes version we learned in school, but real history,  the more I think that maybe we should pay attention to the mistakes that have been made in the past and STOP MAKING THE SAME MISTAKES! 

     Jump to today. Sitting here in front of my computer thinking about my little granddaughter. thinking about my adult children and the world that they are inheriting. How much smaller and more dangerous it seems. I worry daily about another nut job right wing terrorist, not so much for me, but for my granddaughter going to school, for my adult children going to work, for other people I care about who work in schools, or anywhere.  It's a national shame that teachers and school staff have to take classes on how to maybe survive an active shooter. I do worry about foreign terrorist, but to a much lesser degree. That's a subject for another day. I'll say this and leave it alone. We can't give in to fear and hate. Let's not give the terrorist what they want. 

     We can try and get back on track and become a world power to be proud of, to be the country that other countries want to emulate, or we can continue the decent into an oligarchy pretending to be a theocracy, pretending to be a democratic republic. I believe that aside from good people stepping up and standing up to those trying to use fear and hate to distract from all the other problems we face, we need a leader that will go to the front of that runaway train and pull the break before we go off that broken bridge. Then we need to get behind that leader to rebuild all of the bridges, roads, and tracks that we've neglected for too many years. I think that leader is Bernie Sanders. I think that for so many reasons. I will address that in my next blog post. For now be careful but not intimidated, Let's work on making this the home of the brave again, not the land of the scared and the short sighted. Let's work on getting back to the land of the free, not the land of giving up freedom for false security. 

Since I'v Been Away

Friday, November 27, 2015

     Since I've been away. I just realized how long it had been since I had been away. I've been busy doing other things. Stirring the pot on political issues, signing petitions, writing and forwarding letters to various elected officials. Dealing with the health issues that have made me the wheelchair advocate, writing a book that I haven't had the courage to really and truly pursue getting published ( but I will) working on two other books that I love, but wonder if any one is as strange as me and could possibly love my twisted little creations? I don't know. 

     I do know that strange things are afoot in the land. We have people running for president who have no clue as to how the government works, and people screaming their names, proving that they all skipped civics 101 in junior high. 
     Mr. Donald Trump, erstwhile business man and reality TV star, one of the founding fathers of the birther movement, and all around swell but creepy guy, is running for the office of president. 
     I admit that my first reaction was an eye roll and a "well this should be fun." Then as the nasty verbal vomit kept pouring from his mouth and his poll numbers rose, and all the others began to try and out Trump Trump, I began to get a sense of the surreal. 
     Dr. Ben Carson, famed neurosurgean and supposed intelligent individual. He may have been an awesome surgeon, I have no reason to think otherwise, but as a candidate for office, he is a disaster. I'm pretty sure that the great pyramids weren't grain silos, but hey, who am I? I do have a world map on my wall that is strikingly different from the one on his resent ad. Watching the man talk makes me actually yell at the TV. he seems heavily medicated and delutional. If the meds are for the delusional condition, they aren't working. 
      Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX). Now there is an enigma. He has a bad case of the LOOK AT ME's. With his reading of Green Eggs and Ham on the senate floor, too late to delay a vote that had already happened. I watched him preen for the cameras and got a sense that this was a sick personality that I should keep an eye on. It's the feeling you get when you meet your friends new guy and you have an instant distrust of him and he just makes your skin crawl. I have a deep instinctual distrust of this man. He's too greasy, too arrogant, and too hateful. While I'm on the subject of Cruz, Texas, I am so sorry. I know that you are getting a ration of crap for him and I'm sorry. I know that there are plenty of smart and rational people in Texas. Now please fight harder so that this man doesn't speak for you. 
      So that's my amateur and strictly personal thoughts on these three. I've got oh so much more to say. Don't I always? I'll be working on getting more up soon. 

SCOTUS

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

     Yesterday SCOTUS made a decision that set what I believe to be a very dangerous president. The fact that a company was deemed to be able to have religious beliefs is frightening and outrageous, but to then determine that those religious beliefs can be imposed on their employees is beyond understanding. 

     I have heard the argument on social media that it doesn't really matter because employees can still get  16 out of 20 kinds of contraception. It does matter. It matters for the employees whose healthcare needs are best served by using one of the banned forms of birth control. It matters because it is a blatant assertion by the court that corporations are people and women are somehow less. 

     Healthcare should be between a woman and her doctor. When employees or anyone else can dictate your personal choices, there is a problem, a big one. There are several more court cases coming up that also seek to to restrict or altogether ban covering birth control. 

      I don' understand the celebration of this decision by some, specifically by women. The only thing that occurs to me is that these women buy into the patriarchal religious teaching common with some sects of Christianity. It's a downward spiral of taking away rights that were so hard won. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was quoted as saying "The court has ventured into a minefield." I agree with her.

     What's more the information that the court was presented to make the decision was flawed. The Plan B, ella and other emergency contraceptives prevent conception from occurring. I have heard many supporters of the decision claiming that emergency contraception pills are the same as abortion pills. That's not the truth and they knew it when they said it. the abortion pill, UR-486,mifeprex (mifepristone) is in no way the same thing. It is almost understandable that uninformed people blindly following their pastor, conservative republican, or opinionated friends might buy into believing what they are hearing over science. 

     The Justices were presented claims that these forms of contraception were virtually abortions. This is not forgivable. They did not do their due diligence in finding out the facts before the ruling. Or maybe they did and don't care. The decision was made by the male members of the SCOTUS while the women members opposed the ruling. 

     One last question that I have is could Justice Scalia have really been able to make a fair and impartial decision when his wife is a pro-life advocate and a crises pregnancy counselor for the anti-abortion group Nurturing Network. 

My Views On Fracking (What the Frack!)

     Fracking does indeed cause environmental damage. Local water tables are contaminated. Up to 600 chemicals are used in fracking fluid, including known carcinogens and toxins. The chemicals in the water forced into the earth are dangerous to human and animal health. Why else would NC go so far as to forbid the public from knowing what is in the fracking water they are using?
     Hydraulic fracturing is the process of drilling and injecting fluid, containing water, chemicals, and sand, into the ground at a high pressure in order to fracture shale rocks to release natural gas inside to get to a larger area and get more natural gas the wells are often drilled horizontal. Each fracking site requires around four hundred tanker trucks of water to be shipped to the drilling site. Around 1 to 8 million gallons of water are used for each well.
      50% or less of the fracking fluid is recovered and is left in open pits to evaporate, this puts volatile organic compounds into the air creating contaminated air, acid rain, and ground level ozone.
    Here are a few facts that are usually undisputed on both sides. The level of methane in water wells near fracking sires are 17% higher than average water wells. contaminated water doesn't always get into the drinking water. This depends on several factors; the depth of the water well, the geographical features of the rock beds between the fracking site and the area surrounding the sites, and the adherence to proper procedures by the industry doing the fracking.
     Exposure to these chemicals does cause serious health problems. There have been many cases of the water table in a specific areas being permanently contaminated so that the property owners can’t continue to live on the property and can’t sell the property, though not as many as have been claimed in some documentaries. The fact that it does happen needs to be addressed by the industry and as much as possible made right with the people effected.
     Fracking as well as drilling for oil is not the best long term solution for energy needs. Obtaining fossil fuels is damaging to the environment. There will have to be a shift into renewable energy, though I do understand that it can’t happen overnight, It will happen.
     In the meantime a few things need to happen. The Frack Act, (fracturing responsibility and awareness of chemicals act), which would require industry to disclose all chemicals used in fracking. This should not be a problem if, as the industry claims, it is not harmful. 
    The second is to repeal the exemption from the safe drinking water act. This should have never have been allowed in the first place and has bred the mistrust of the industry.
     Neither side is telling the whole truth. An informed opinion can only be reached with research and facts from sources that have nothing to gain from either side.

On Dick Cheney (May 22, 2014)

           The former Vise President doesn't seem to remember from one moment to another what he has said. Back in  the early 2000s he was greatly responsible for lying to the american public and pushing the United States into war with Iraq. 
     *There were FBI reports dating back to before September 11, 2001 that stated that a group of men were training to fly planes, but not how to land them. Another report  stated there were targets in New York and Washington and indicated that hijacked planes might be used as weapons. there were warnings from the CIA European Chief  Tyler Drumheller that Curveball couldn't be trusted which were ignored.* ( http://m.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/18/1300205/-Dick-Cheney-wants-Hillary-Clinton-held-accountable-for-Benghazi)
       After having information stove piped to his office and circumventing the normal flow of information, Cheney got up in front of the public and lied.  From What I remember it was a serious play on the fear and anger that encompassed the country after the 9/11 attacks. The people needed a name to attach their anger and indignation to and the Bush administration used that to their full advantage to get us into an illegal war. 
     this week Cheney has been quoted as saying that Hillary Clinton bears responsibility for what happened in Benghazi. She was secretary of state at the time it happened and was one of the first people in Washington to learn  about the attack. 
    Let's be real. It's a horrible thing when people die in such a horrible way, or at all. People died doing their jobs for their country. In other words for us. an investigation was in order after it happened to least to see if there is a way to better protect our people in foreign lands. That was done. 
    What is happening now is a witch hunt and a way to drum up money for the republican party. There was no such outrage when other the 13 embassy attacks that occurred the bush administration when Richard Cheney was the  Vice President.  
    Who is really at fault for there not being adequate security at the embassy? I would say that the  House Republicans that voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut 1.2 billion from state operations that would include cutting funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions.  Look the numbers up yourselves and see who was really responsible for the supposed lack of security in Benghazi. 
    I think the government in general and the republicans  specifically need to stop raising money on the backs of dead Americans. The politicization of the deaths for the purpose of raising money and deflecting attention from other issues is disrespectful to the men who died and a continuing and needless torture for the families these men left behind.

    Why are we still talking about, and listening to this war criminal? The lights are on, dimly lit, but it's obvious that nobody's home. Stop asking him to speak. He's not going to be held responsible for an unjust war based on lies or the profits he made on the backs of dead soldiers and civilians. Let him fade into demented irrelevancy