The police just have to be stopped. They seem to kill another Black person every day. I suppose they've always done it and we just haven't known until now. And it seems as if it's the police all over the country--New York City (Staten Island), Missouri, Ohio, Texas--doing it, and they get away with it everywhere. What is this? Changing lanes without the right signal lands a woman in jail for three days and she ends up killing herself (if she did). Come on! This is intolerable. I've changed lanes without signaling hundreds of times plus, look at the video and you see what was happening. Also, I cannot bear hearing people like Dan Lemon (if that's his name) on CNN saying you must obey what cops tell you to do--please do we live in a democracy or not? I don't believe you can't talk back to public servants (which the police are) without being killed. Weren't we all taught, We pay their salaries? I was. This is effing outrageous. Something must be done, and if it requires shutting down the whole system, so be it. Yes, Black Lives Matter. And they better matter to everyone or it's the end of everything the U.S. has ever stood for (well, since the Civil War). The meaning of Democracy--every human being deserves respect, decency,  a vote and someone decent to vote for! Bernie Bernie Bernie! (Does everyone know he endorsed Jesse Jackson in Vermont's presidential primary in the 80s?)

Today's story about ISIS or ISIL or whatever in the Times covers how this organization now provides services in the areas it controls and thus captures the allegiance of residents (because it provides services that pre-exising governments could not seem to manage). So, how about spending the same amount as we waste on the military to provide services people need? Give up destruction and murder and simply help people on the ground with sewage, water supplies, and the like. There's so much we could do, and we could do it without hurting women's rights, unlike ISIS. As it is, we lay waste our powers and theirs, simply destroying and killing, with nothing to show for our billions but devastation.

Doesn't anyone understand that the poor, in order to have bank accounts at all, need to have more money. Banksters--it's the only way. They must have higher incomes!

Just realized "mansplaining" is just a new way of saying, "'Shut up,' he explained." So Ring Lardner was way ahead of the game when he wrote the latter.

The New York Times is a whited sepulcher

Why hasn't the Times printed the cartoons about Mohammed that Charlie Hebdo's staff was killed for? The Guardian managed to do it, yesterday. Apparently the Times can editorialize on the subject and write about it, but is unable to print the cartoons. Who has been cowed into submission here? The Grey Lady, obviously. And an abject sight it is.

So absurd

Spare me, please, the columns about personal experiences of aging that begin, "I've just turned fifty." Turn at least 75, Frank Bruni, before you attempt to qualify to talk about the last part of life. (This refers to his column yesterday in The Times.)

While my son tells me that 85 is what you have to attain before you're "really old," I believe that only accounts for the extraordinary among us. I noticed old age when I reached 75 and obviously some of us, like Frank Bruni, notice it way earlier.

It's not that I can't still get around and enjoy myself, it's more like what John Cleese said on the Jon Stewart show, "I don't care anymore".

Thoughts for a Not-So-Sunshiney Morning

Remember: "Behind the carefully maintained façade of “gridlock,”  the two parties work in lockstep to implement the ruling class’s agenda of war, austerity and the gutting of democratic rights." (The quote is from the World Socialist Web Site.)

So don't worry. It's just business as usual.