And another thing..you know, what is up with Dick Cheney and Karl Rove? They are like a never ending duet featuring the michelin man and the pillsbury dough-boy. Every time I see one of them I think of the line from Macbeth "the lady doth protest too much." If they were really sleeping the sleep of the just, they would have nothing to fear and they wouldn't always be coming out and trying to spin the story. I am reminded of criminals who can't resist coming back to the scene of the crime. I heard it reported that the vice president was running an assassination squad from his office. I could never imagine believing that Al Gore ran a hit squad, or Gerald Ford, or Bush 41, but sadly Mr. Cheney wouldn't seem so implausable, mainly due to his apparent doctrine of "Any Flimsy Pretext ".

I am against the death penalty. I am against torture in any form for any reason. So it follows that I am against tazing. No one should have to be afraid of the police, for then, it is not long before we are living in a police state. And like it or not, I believe that many of our African-American citizens live every day of their lives in a police state, right here in America.
Cast your minds back to Eleanor Bumpers. She was a mentally ill black woman in NYC, shot dead by six policemen because she was wielding a knife. Ooohhh..a knife you say, but...she was grossly overweight and old and hardly light on her feet and skilled at knife-throwing. Any number of strategies would have worked to defuse the situation, but they were not utilized.
Then you may recollect Abner Louima, brutalized in a brooklyn police station without pity and for no reason, and even so-called good guys in the department did nothing, until they were forced to.
Next comes Amadou Diallo, murdered in a hail of bullets for having the nerve to reach for his wallet, and oops, don't forget that the "authorities" then tossed his apartment, looking for some evidence to exonerate their actions! Even freakier is when you realize that the officers involved received a change of venue for their trial, went up to Albany and were found "not guilty" within a week! That had to be one of the shortest murder trials in recent history. We must ask "why".
Right now in our newspapers we read about the trial in Westchester where a black police officer was shot dead by officers from another department! while he was doing his job! because he didn't follow their directions.
We can not go back and raise someone from the dead, but we can soul-search and humbly realize that our attitudes must change most of all. Every one is of equal value. Every one is guaranteed equal rights. Why are our African-american citizens so often deprived of their rights, even in a time when we have seemed to come so far.
If it is not fair for everyone, then it is not fair for any one. No one could ever argue that African americans have not borne the brunt of police brutality. There are a lot of good and even great cops out there, and they more than anyone else, have to engage in self-examination and educate their collegues accordingly.

christian right wing
you better come to your senses
better start mending fences
or sooo long.
when the world moves on you've gotta change
or just become a fossil
and keep in mind your attitudes
weren't held by christ's apostles!



A work in progress...words in my head when I woke up..sung to the tune of "desperado" More to follow.

When is someone going to let dick cheney and karl rove know that they are surplus to requirements? Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't recall people from the Clinton camp and the Gore camp weighing in constantly on the Bush presidency. When are these people all going to cease and desist, so we can all get down to business?
The tea parties of the previous week were just nonsense. Then, this week, the gutter press went on and on and on about a handshake! I looked up the word "churlish" yesterday. It means boorish or ill-bred, and that's the kind of person you would have to be to turn your back on someone's proferred offer of peace and friendship. And you know, hello, Mr Chavez has a right to his opinions whether we agree with them or not, unless we're turning into nazis. And this is the point where I think we really all have to stop and take stock. Historically, movements such as fascism and nazism have sprung from the conservative and reactionary factions of political parties, never the liberal or progressive factions. You can almost boil it down to "live and let live" or, "live the way I live or else!" Awful things have been done in our name, and the previous administration must be held accountable. These tempestuous little non-issues are simply a smoke screen to attempt to deflect us from the real truths we are seeking to uncover.
Isn't it ludicrous to call republicans "the right"? The right what? The right stuff? Hhmmp. and then we come to the "christian right". Who would Jesus torture? Who's hand would Jesus refuse to shake? And how come it is they who seem the most morally bankrupt to me?

911 Calls

Last night when I first heard about that girl calling 911 I had a tendency to giggle a little,but you know, when I thought about it.....what recourse does any one really have? If she had jumped the counter to grab her three bucks out of the till, they would have called 911 for sure, and they would have made sure she was in way worse trouble. She paid for something that she didn't get. And how do we know that she didn't have her weary mother waiting out in the car with a two -year -old ready to have the mother of all tantrums if they didn't get their mcnuggets? or any of a thousand other scenarios. Maybe, to her, it really was an emergency. The fair thing to do would be for Mcdonald's to pay her fine and undertake to educate people about the uses and misuses of 911 and educate themselves on how to treat customers. It's possible that at that moment in her life, 3 bucks was a lot to her, because everything else for that day had already been spent.
There has been some research published lately about the experience of unfairness and how it can undermine our immune and cardiovascular systems . I am expecting McDonalds to make this right for her, otherwise, that's just another product I won't buy.

I have been reliably informed that the purpose of satire is always to illuminate, not perpetuate.
Satire is the political cartoon's reason for being. Can anyone out there actually claim that the Post's ignoble excuse of a cartoon met that definition? It did convince me of one irrefutable fact; there is a whale of a lot of work left to be done.
Freedom entails responsibility; responsibility to monitor your own behavior so that it does not infringe upon any one else's rights to liberty or opportunity. John Stuart Mills is credited with the saying "Your liberty ends where my nose begins".
In every way possible, the Post and their cartoon let us down.
Did you know that John Wilkes Boothe was a white supremacist; that it is actually that kind of mindless scum that ended the life of a brilliantly kind man? Lincoln was assassinated on april 15, 1865, and in that particular year, the 15th was Good Friday, the same day Jesus was nailed to the cross.
The Christian Right is certainly becoming an oxymoron for me .
I have really grown to love the transparency of the hospital setting. It doesn't take long to separate the wheat from the chaff as regards the people you are working with . The work is very intimate, so people who are predjudiced leave because they consider themselves too good for that kind of work. That is good for us because there is so much more oxygen to breathe!

During the Bush years, I constantly felt as though we were all stuck in some scene from "Animal Farm" or "1984", and now forever in my mind I will think of them as the Orwellian years. You think in your mind about what those books were like and the way we were constantly bombarded with facts which turned out to be lies, dire warnings of danger were we not to climb on that bus of insanity, and a simply astounding breach in the armour of our constitution.
I feel as though we have been delivered. We have been transported back to the land of rationality and it is safe for our minds to come out of hiding.
I think part of Mr. Obama's great charm is that he reminds us of Jimmy Stewart. He is tall, stalwart, staunch, determined, committed to his own values and confident yet humble; he is the ultimate "good guy". And I am very grateful to be finally getting a good night's sleep again.