Neocon/Isis Both Terrorist

The civilized world is in a battle with terrorism.  There are several terrorist regimes, who cannot gain political footholds in any nation states, so they use fear and terror to try to undermine authority.

Terrorists are a diverse lot, ranging from tribal affiliations gone bad, to religious fanaticism.

After 9/11 Americans of the conservative persuasion, mostly Christian conservatives, decided we were in a Holy War, with Islamic Radicals who were intent on religious warfare.  The fact that most terrorists are secularists have been lost on the GOP.    

The Republican Party, in reaction to being absolutely asleep prior to 9/11, grabbed at this fabriciation, and attacked Afghanistan to destroy terrorist training camps, and Iraq to supposedly rid the area of WMDs.

They never found any WMDs nor any "Yellow Cake Uranium", but they did throw away trillions, and created even more terroists by their arrogant and stupid treatment of Iraqi Sulnnies.  George W. Bush was so ignorant of the middle east that his administration did not know the difference between a Sunni or a Shiite, or Kurd for that matter.  

He blundered into Iraq, destroyed the infrastructure, stupidly tried to privatize the rebuilding effort, put a Shiite in power, put all the Sunnis out of work, and created Issis.  

Meanwhile, the neocons persisted in a demanding yet another military solution to a complex political and historical situation in the middle east.

In short, the foreign policy of the United States is a mess thanks to neocon stupidity.  

Now, as Syria burns with Civil War, GOP "experts" decide to not take refugees and guess what, call for ground troops in Syria; which would be again stupid beyond belief.

Basically the Republican neocons are at it again, calling for widespread war to rid the world of terrorists.  

And of course, in the African black nations, the world's worst state terrorism is totally ignored because there is little oil in that part of Africa; and the faces of the victims are overwhelmingly black not white.  

Oil drives the neocons approach to the Middle East.  Donald Trump, a poltical humorist, even has stated outright that he will "take all the oil" if he is elected.  At least he is honest.  Evil but honest.  

And, fear reigns supreme.  Even though very few United States citizens have been harmed since 9/11, you would think there have been countless slaughters to listen to right wing radio and Fox News.  

Fear, fear, fear is the mantra that is used by right wingers to stir up irrational and wrong headed reactions to terrorist attacks.

This comes from the same crowd who sponsored the disaster in Iraq that is resulted in the rise of the Isis terrorist organization.

So we stumble along, deeply divided, reacting exactly as the terrorists expect, being played like a fiddle by both the terrorists and the neocons who are desperate to regain power, so they can spend more lives endlessly and get back into power.  

It is all about power, for the Isis terrorists and the neocon terrorists...

Terrorism has goals and objectives.  The terrorist has gripes and issues that got them into this revengeful state.   We never bother to investigate the reasons for the terrorism, but are lured into reactions that only feeds their recruits.

The neocons we halfway understand, the Isis no way.  

A Free Press

Two  events recently are of great alarm to those of us who still value freedom in the United States.

One was the behavior of Republicans on the Benghazi Committee in the way they handled Hillary Clinton's "testimony".  In actuality it was a partisan witch hunt; Republicans for eleven hours attacked, maligned and tried every trick they could to rattle the presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate.

Why did they do this?  American politics have  deterioriated into a Gotcha game.  If the opposing party can find a gaffe, just one, it is lifted from the tape, and played over and over during the campaign.   Elections can turn on just one gaffe.  The former  Secretary of State of the United States was fair game for eleven hours of searching for that one gaffe, that one statement from fatigue, that could win the election.

Never mind that all of us, in a pressure situation, can say almost anything.  No, the rules are now inhumanely attack looking for the kill.

And try as they might, the Republicans whiffed.   The only time the Secretary came close was when she laughed when asked if she was alone the night after the attack...the questioner lept to the attack and said, "It is not funny, four Americans died".  Ms. Clinton was certainly not laughing about the deaths but about the ludicrous question and quickly said so.  I will bet this shows up in a campaign ad!  

But that is America's gotch politics.   In the first hours long Benghazi Committee appearance of Mrs. Clinton, she in frustration said something to the effect, all of these questions don't matter, lives were lost and we need to find out why.  Conservatives ran ads claiming she really said the lives did not matter.  

Her comment was lifted out of context, placed among a damning narrative, and ran as a hit ad all over the country.  I had conservative friends actually chant this to me....It doesn't matter to Hillary that people were killed!   Dirty politics at its worst has become the new normal in Washington.  And, the right wing is practicing it at full bore.

Now the ultimate in hypocrisy.  It seems that in the last Presidental "debate" run by CNBC, with one questioner a Latino, the candidates complained about the content of the questions.  Incredibly, the head of the GOP has suspended NBC from carrying a future debate!

Interesting, Republicans get to pick and choose their questions to answer, the Democratic front runner for President is subjected to eleven hours of witchhunt with no chance to screen the questions?  

The real threat is to the First Amendment.  A free and unfettered press is essential to the existence of a democracy.  The press, and this includes Fox News, is necessary to hold politicians accountable.  Watergate comes to mind.  So does the Vietnam War and yes, the Iraq War.  During the Civil War, when the nation's very existence was in question, the free press attacked President Lincoln at every turn.  

The Press, even the opposition press, must be able to ask probing and yes even stupid questions.  This is necessary and proper to our freedom!

If a politician does not want to answer the question then he/she has the option of saying so.  There may or may not be fallout.  At a recent debate that happend to Mrs. Clinton.  She was asked about her emails and she simply chose not to answer.  That was it, no answer.  

The Benghazi Committee is not the free press, but Mrs. Clinton still showed up and endured eleven HOURS of grilling so brutal that even Republicans were shocked.  It is a direct threat to our basic political freedoms for the National GOP leadership to boycott CNBC.  

What is next, allowing political parties to shut down news companies they don't like?  That my friends is totalitarianism.  

Why Can't We Fix Things Without Government?

I just posted yet again, another picture of a gentleman helping others in spite of his age.  I have posted several examples of "paying it forward" of individual philontrophic efforts that help scores of people.

And my conservative friends always bring up the fact that Redding, a poor area, has one of the largest personal giving percentages in the state.

That's right, in spite of grinding poverty, the haves up here are overall  very  generous in their giving.

So why not just let it be like it used to be?    Before the Great Deprression personal donations and church benevolence was what took care of the less fortunate.  Why can't we just do that?

Then mean old Mr. Roosevelt came along, and socialism in Russia, making government a wet nurse.

Why then can't we just put it back, like Conservatives want to do.

Its a matter of scale and population.  

Our church had a series of meetings on what to do with the poor and homeless in Redding.  We strategized for weeks trying to maximize resources to make a difference.

With over 3000 homeless the task is daunting to say the least. 

And everytime, I mean everytime, we ultimately turn to government to do something.

Ok, this is why conservative philosophy regarding social welfare will always fail:  numbers.

That's right numbers.  There are over 300 million Americans now.    They mostly live in huge metro areas that depend on large scale infrastructures for everything.  They can't grow their own food.  They can't provide their own roads.  They can't be "rugged individualists".

Inland the smaller population numbers live more individualistic lives, but still are hugely dependent on each other for support.  In short, we ALL need each other, working together, to maintain our  wasteful and climate endangering lifestyles.

Years ago the United States made a serious mistake.  We allowed Big Oil to run our politics.  We are so enamored with automobiles that we tore down our passenger rail infrastructure; we did away with trollies, we even reduced Greyhound Bus Lines to a shadow of itself.  

We now drive everywhere, we depend on the personal automobile for our economic existence.

And that individual freedom has fooled us into believing that we are somehow separate, aloof from the rest of us.  

People are isolated in our cars, until someone swerves into our lane or heavan forbit, we have an accident.  Then wham, the government is right their in the personage of the Highway Patrol, Judges, Lawyers; etc.  In a heartbeat we realize we really were not alone in our cars.

And everytime gas prices spike we flinch; because the vast majority of us now live paycheck to paycheck.  The vast majority of us drive over 30 miles one way to work in citiies where only the rich can afford to live close to work.

Meanwhile the gap between the rich and the poor grows.  The homeless grows and we begin hearing from the demogogues who tell us all we have to do is "Make American Great Again" and we "Can Fix This".

And everyone of them on the right are USING us against ourselves.  They cater to  our panic when we slow down and realize we are trapped.  We are trapped in our myths in our yearning to be free of one another when it is just impossible to be free from one another.  

It always has been. The rugged invidualist is a myth.  In the "Wild West" the only thing that kept settlers safe was the United States Army.  That is what "won the west" by a system of brutal genocide toward Native Americans and out and out land theft.  That's right, your great grandparents stole the land, they DID NOT earn it.  The military protected them.  That's right, government won the west!

Today it will be over 100 degrees in Redding, California in the middle of September.  In the next week we will see temperatures that will set, once again, records for heat along with a drought that is endless.

Our California Dream is quickly becoming a nightmare of heat, crime, homelessnes and a sense that we can't do anything about it ourselves.

It's the "ourselves" part we HAVE to address.  WE ARE NOT IN THIS ALONE!  We have to fix it or it will fix us:  we are talking species survival here.

Rugged invidualism is a myth; never have been, never will be.  We have to realize that teamwork and working with not against government is the ONLY way we can get out of this one way trip to hell.

That's right a one way trip to hell.  Global warming is on us, poverty is on us, and yes an unfair distribution of wealth is on us.  It will destroy democracy, encourage fascism (the Republican Party has become a fascist poltical party by any political science measurement) and paralyzes effective refroms to solve problems. 

There is a reason why the Congress can't solve or do anything.  It is by design, it protects the gas, coal and oil industries who have decided to ruin the planet to protect their profits.  And they use our love of the automobile against us.

They are sly, they are very well funded, and they will never quit.  They have pledged to win this no matter what the costs.  Just like Germany in the 30s, coroporate power has thrown its power to the right wing, gambling that "at the end we can control them".  

That was crazy then, it is crazy now.  Fascism ultimately leads to conflict and leads to warfare.  And that warfare ultimately leads to ruin.  

And that is a reckoning that none of us can afford.  We can turn this around, but it will take those of us who are mesmorized by the right to blink, shake their heads and see.  It is the only way we can stop this madness.  

I pray every day that this will happen.  

The Lying Oil and Gas Companies

The truth just tell the truth.  

 

Let's talk a bit more about the gas and oil industry.  I, like all Americans, love my cars. I love the freedom of going where I want when I want.  I don't like the traffic jams and I particularly don't like having to pay more and more for gas.  I don't like the potholes in the roads and the congestion.

 

Lately I really don't like the ridiculous heat that beats down on us; nor do I like the endless California drought.  I don't like the news stories warning that either global climate change is a liberal plot and not true, or that global climate change is real and is ruining the earth.

 

I don't like President Obama warning us all the time.

 

I smell a rat and its the oil and gas companies.

 

Why are we fracking so much?  No really, why so much?  Why are we drilling for oil in the Arctic?  

 

Why don't gas and oil companies tell us what their estimates are of oil reserves for the rest of the century.

 

Why don't we start building up our transportation system to allow trains and buses?  Why don't we have a choice like we USED to.

 

Right now, to get to San Francisco from Redding you only have two viable choices; by auto or by plane (and that is expensive).  Trains come in the middle of the night and it takes a day to get to San Francisco.

 

I am old enough to remember getting to San Francisco by train in six hours!

 

 

I suggest we all demand from the gas and oil industry a straight answer to the basic question:  How much is left?  How many years of full consumption do we have?

 

I think I know the answer; about fifty on a good day.

 

So, we are looking at the ravages of rising oceans and high temperatures along with running out of gas all at once.

 

And who is leading us that way?  Who resists every climate initiative?  Who lies to us all the time.

 

The gas, coal and oil industry.  

 

Why do they do that?  Why do they lie.  One answer; short sighted profit.

 

These guys are so evil they don't care.  That's right they don't care.  The corporate culture is so bereft of morality, profit rules EVERYTHING, that they constantly lie to the public about everything.  You can count on them to resist every government regulation; as they ruin the Arctic Ocean after they wrecked the Gulf of Mexico.  Have we forgotten that so soon?  They are banking on that.  They are evil!

 

I have an idea.  As we run out of gas, go to Shell Headquarters, take the bastards out of their office and HANG THEM!   I don't advocate that, but it WILL happen if people ever wake up to the way we are being used and lied to.

 

Why do they lie?  

Why Care?

I think I need to clarify something for my friends out there.  Why the Facebook photo...why do I dwell on my 1/16th Cherokee and not the 15/16 Western European?  

Fact is I know and embrace the 15/16 Western European.  That is mostly my mother's side, God Bless her soul, a person of dignity and love for all.  

I remember when we invited one of my 1st grade classmates, a little African American girl, to my birthday party, and some of my friend's parents kept their children home.  My mother called each one of them later and read them off for being the bigots they were. 

I found out years later of course, but that is what she did.  She married my Dad, a 1/8 Cherokee knowing full well his racial history.  She did so against the wishes of some in her large family (many supported her though).  

How does 1/16th influence me so?  It forces me to remember!

I tell you the truth it was hard.  At Stanford there was a fellow teammate who was African American and kept beating me out for first string.  It was hard.  He was better.  We competed as equals.  I resented it.  But never because he was black.  I had to live with it.  I had to live with the fact that he was a team mate.  He is gone now, an early heart attack took him.  I often wish I  could speak with him one more time.  

My mother has taught me better.  My father did too.  

Yesterday I visited him in the Dementia Assisted Facility.  He rambled on about how we were born poor and made due somehow.  In spite of the agony of Alzheimers he still, once in a while, makes me proud!

That is why I keep coming back again and again to this.  That is why I keep harping on white supremacy.  

I hate it!  I love my Mom and Dad.

There are many things that conflict in a man's life.  There is much to love about our country.  There is much to hate.

The one thing that keeps coming back, that lives each day in the hearts of us all, is White Supremacy.  

Fox News claims it is gone while all of us know it is not.  The United States has done some great things.  We stopped fascism and ended the most brutal war in human history.  It nicked us, because we had to be brutal too to end it; witness the atomic cloud.  

As we opened the death camps and saw the ultimate of man's brutality the world caught its breath, then went back to doing the same brutal things it always had done.  

And white supremacy forced us to wait until the late forties before we could allow inter-racial marriage or allow an African American to play major league baseball; wait another almost twenty years before segregation ended and Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts were passed.  

Why so long.  Why must I remember and just not know?  Why do we all ignore the evil that is right next door?  

Because white supremacy conditions our every waking moment.  It is engrained in our culture to its very core.

The more I study history the more I am appalled.  Millions of Native Americans were exterminated, millions of wildlife killed, to steal land and create the "American Dream"..We ruined our environment so we could play a new video game, take a needless ride to the store, get more and more until we are so fat we waddle to the T.V. remote.  

Why must the American Dream be at the expense of someone else, always?  Why must there be "winners and losers" in our consciousness?  Why do we continue to pollute, to watch the doe die in the gutter after getting hit by the truck?

Trump speaks of that a lot.  And many of my fellow American listen.  Trump embodies the American nightmare.  

Hate sells in white supremacy.  Love does not.

But, again at the end of the long day, the reckoning is coming.  God is not sitting idly by during all of this.  The Great Mystery need not act,  It needs to just wait.

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?