Let Us Not Fear to Negotiate

The Iran Anti Proliferation Agreement is a good thing and should be approved.  Predictably Republicans have rallied against it, remember the Senate Republicans actually sending a petition to Iran?  

This was one of the most blatant disloyal acts I can ever remember from the United States Senate.

This all reminds me of 1919 when the U.S. Senate, looking to the 1920 Presidential election, turned down the treaty President Wilson brought back from Versailles.

History has not been kind to Henry Cabot Lodge and other Senate Republicans, who killed America's participation in the League of Nations.

This led to Italy's rape of Ethiopia, the march to World War II, and directly aided the rise to power of fascism throughout the world.  

The United States was the only world power after WWI who had the strength to provide some kind of world order.  Instead of seizing this, as Wilson urged, we shrunk back into isolationism.  Japan, Germany and Italy saw their opportunity.  Without the United States in the League of Nations it was emasculated and ineffective.  FIFTY FIVE MILLION PEOPLE DIED because of this stupidity on the part of the Republican Party.

And, they won the Presidency for three terms, culminating in the disaster of Hoover and you know the rest.

We are looking at the same thing now.  Republicans are driven by politics, and a Israeli leader who is a hawk on everything, to opposed virtually anything the outgoing Democratic President proposes.  There is jockeying for position from over a dozen "viable" candidates, ALL who oppose the Iran Deal.

Fact:  The major world powers were at the table and participated in the negotiations from the outset.

Fact:  The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the settlement.

Fact:  The opposition has NO alternative to offer save attacking Iran.

Fact:  Iran, whether we like it or not, is an essential player in the politics of the Middle East.  They can either help or hinder virtually any efforts we make fighting terrorism in the area.   To isolate them further is stupid plain and simple.  

Fact:  History is not kind to the Republican Party and American Firsters (yes some Democrats participated in that stupidity).  They helped cause WWII!

Show some sense, read the agreement and support the President!  "Let us not negotiate in fear nor fear to negotiate", was the phrase President Kennedy used when he negotiated the end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Can you imagine if the Republicans would have blocked him?  We all would be dead!

Two babies running free in the heat

Yesterday I spent from 1:30 to 8:00 in the heat of the day.  I marshal a golf course in Redding.  The high was 112.  It hit that figure (or higher) at about 4:00 pm.  

We had about 10 people who teed off at 1:30; no kidding.  Some were tourists who had planned their round as part of their vacation, one was a fellow marshall, four were guys drinking beer who decided to do this on a dare.

We get that on hot days, people who risk their lives on a dare.

One of them, a young man of about 15, got heat exhaustion.  My training as a coach came into play, I demanded he drink lots of water (we have ice and water on our carts) and made an ice pack from a golf towel to put on the back of his neck.  Later, he was feeling better after not able to play several holes when I last saw them.  

At first his father thought it was funny, as his son got incoherent, he didn't think it was funny anymore.

Meanwhile, I saw animals in distress everywhere.  Squirrels out of the trees, lying flat in the grass, trying to cool off.  I saw deer in the middle of the day, at the stream  that runs pathetically through the course (it has mostly dried up).  The geese and ducks were out of the water, clustered under trees for shade...It was too hot in the water!

I saw a dog running loose.  I think it was crazed with thirst.  I tried to catch it, but couldn't.

I saw a falcon, on a green of all places, standing in the shade.  This was with golfers hitting balls at the green.  I drove up on it, and scared it away for its safety.  

No birds were flying, it was too hot.  

It was strangely silent everywhere except for the droaning of air conditioners in the houses, sucking the air in and expelling the hot, making the heat worse. 

And then there were the two little ones.

At about five, when the heat was the worse, my wife called me on her cell phone.  We live on the golf course, and she had been driving back from town, and saw two "babies" cross the street headed away from the creek.  She did not see  their mother.

I happened upon a beautiful doe a few minutes before, about a half mile from where my wife saw the two babies.  She told me they were very small, tiny almost, way too young to be separated from their mother.

The doe I saw was lying down next to the creek, probably suffering heat exhaustion.  The water in the creeks is rancid.

I quickly figured out I was witnessing a tragedy.  In 112 heat I sped off in my golf cart, looking for the fawns.  

The golfers has long since given up and quit, the heat drove them off.   They retreated to their cars turned on their car air conditioners and left.

The deer were not so fortunate.  I am afraid that the doe and her fawns were separated by too large a distance.   They were not weaned, they probably died in an hour or so, alone, without their mother.  I really tried to find them, not sure what I would do, but at least give them a chance.  

I failed. We all failed.

A predator didn't get them.  The predators do not move in heat like this, they stay in the shade and don't move.  The predator becomes the heat.  

The predator is the climate.  The predator is the Great Reckoning.  

WILD ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE AIR CONDITIONING.  

Air conditioning lulls us all into a false sense of security because we hide in it when it gets hot.  We shut up the house, burn more energy from a coal fired plant and watch T.V.  

Global warming cannot affect us directly anyway, when we hide in our houses.  Right?

Not so for those two little ones.  

Two more little victims of our utter and complete stupidity, of our lack of any common sense.  The victims of climate change are the weak, the young....

Two more victims of man made climate change on a hot summer afternoon in Redding California.  Two more reasons why the vultures are constantly circling over our land.  

And who will cry for them?