WHO CARES WHO DOES THE KILLING? IT'S ALL MURDER
And now one reads about the totally bonkers Mr. Dear (ayiyi!) who killed people at a Planned Parenthood clinic the other day. We certainly do not need Islamic terrorists to terrorize. Our own white christian fuck-ups can kill innocent human beings without any problems. How dare Trump talk about  banning Muslims when he and his Repugs have been egging these people on for years. "Body parts... babies..." that's what Dear talks about. Is that any less crazy than the people who cut heads off. I hope the Repugs are happy with the audience they've created. No help for the mentally ill, and no decent education for anyone. Their followers and their boisterous cheers are clearly traitors themselves, and that's what they've been groomed for by the Repugs.

MASS SHOOTING IN SAN BERNADINO
I hope these congresspeople are satisfied. Fourteen dead (probably all Democrats) at a mass shooting inspired, apparently, by ISIS. And yet, no one seems quite to understand that, although it was not done under an express order from the Caliphate, ISIS did tell people to just do it--rain death and destruction in the US, while guns were still available without background checks, on-line and at gun shows. "What are you waiting for," apparently they said. What total idiocy, and beyond idiocy into treason, it seems to me, for the Congress to do NOTHING in the face of such messages, let alone the many many unbearably many mass shootings that occur in the US. So shall we say the NRA is personally responsible for all these deaths. I think we say the entire US Congress also bears responsibility, big-time.

DO THEY KNOW HILLARY ENDED "WELFARE AS WE KNOW IT"? (OR AT LEAST SUPPORTED HER HUSBAND'S ENDING IT)

Do they know that no one can be on welfare any more than five years total now--whether they or their children are sick, disabled or anything else? Do they realize there are no jobs for a lot of people? That is just since Bill Clinton was president, and Hillary was his first lady.

Is it so important that the Jewish people survive? Even at the expense of the Palestinian people? I don't think so. (David Gregory being interviewed by the Atlantic; he I guess does think so.)

AIPAC Defeated!
Finally, some senators remembered they were Americans first; then Jews. The Iran Deal, supported by nearly all Democratic senators, survived. Take that, Chuck Schumer! I think the only way HE can redeem himself, morally and politically, is to vote in favor of Palestinians whenever the subject of occupation or of Gaza comes up. He could lead the fight to diminish our aid to Israel, for example. Now that would be very fine.

"NOW Calls for Overhaul of Criminal Justice System in Light of Police Brutality Crisis," is the head of a press release I received by email today.
At last, NOW is doing something that I consider radical today and not some leftover from yesterday. With the police totally out of control all across the country, citizens must speak out against them.  And it's a help to have NOW, which up to now (no pun intended) has been the whitest, middle-classest organization of our time, urging change in this epidemic of police killings.
NOW also said,
 "What can be said about the state of our criminal justice system when, in the past two weeks alone, five women of color have been found dead inside correctional facilities?

Raynetta Turner, 43 years old. Arrested in Mt. Vernon, NY for shoplifting. Found dead in her cell within 48 hours after being arrested.

Kindra Chapman, 18 years old. Arrested in Homewood, AL for stealing a cell phone. Committed suicide within 24-48 hours after being locked up.

Joyce Curnell, 50 years old. Arrested in North Charleston, SC on a bench warrant for shoplifting. Found dead in her cell within 24-48 hours of being locked up.

Ralkina Jones, 44 years old. Arrested in Cleveland, OH for assaulting her ex-husband and his car with a tire iron. Found dead in her cell 2 days after her arrest.

Sandra Bland, 28 years old. Pulled over in Waller County, TX for making a lane change without signaling. Found dead in her cell 3 days later."

I don't think we even knew about most of these other women. I'd like to know why the man who stopped Sandra Bland is not in jail, though. But the worst of it is that even when these people are charged with murder, as they must be, they are never convicted. That has to change. There must be a nationwide re-education (what am I smoking?) about how the police are our servants; we pay their salaries; they follow our laws and they don't fucking step out of line.

As NOW says, "Our criminal justice system is in crisis. Police officers are seemingly trained as if they are a military occupying force and believe that Black and brown people are all presumptively dangerous insurgents. They are also, seemingly, trained to believe that their personal safety is threatened whenever a Black or brown person fails to be utterly compliant and utterly submissive to an officer’s every command, however whimsical (like instructing Sandra Bland to put out her cigarette on pain of being tasered)." 

I would add that they now seem quite emboldened with white people too, from what I've heard, although I don't live in that country anymore. THIS MUST CHANGE. 

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.

McDonald's Denmark spokesperson: “We don’t want there to be a big difference between the richest and poorest, because poor people would just get really poor,” Mr. Drescher added. “We don’t want people living on the streets. If that happens, we consider that we as a society have failed.”

In Denmark, McDonald's employees earn $20 an hour; their cost of living is higher, but not by THAT much.

Somehow it has just come to my attention that Michael Brown was killed for WALKING DOWN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET (not on the sidewalk). Is that possible? Jesus.

LETTER TO THE TIMES:
Your pages are full of Ebola coverage, but to my mind, you're not covering the real question: given our much-vaunted healthcare system, how is it possible that this hospital in Dallas sent the Ebola patient home, even after he told them he'd just come from West Africa? It boggles the mind, and also recalls Rick Perry's lapse in the presidential debates, except the hospital only had to remember ONE thing: West Africa is where there's an Ebola epidemic. Oh maybe a second thing, too: Ebola is a grave, contagious illness that can kill people, innocent people. Is this an example of how our splendid health system works?


Maybe, just maybe we need to stop spending money on war and spend it on education and other human services. If ANYONE in that hospital knew the prospective patient had just come from West Africa and didn't know that he should stay in the hospital, under quarantine, there's something very very wrong with that hospital, our system, the entire country.

Here's an extremely important comment on a touching story in the Times today about a woman trying to save her dying father (it's from MGdoc of Oklahoma City):


There's an extremely strong cognitive disconnect running through this story that the writer, Mr Andrey's daughter and most of the comments fail to realize. Mr. Andrey was ALWAYS dying. 90 year old Alzheimers patients falling from weakness and unable to care for themselves are terminally ill. No amount of physical therapy, rehab, nursing home care etc could change that. For this sort of patient, nursing homes are just warehouses holding them until they complete the dying process. While the bedsores, malnutrition etc alleged in the article are horrifying, repeatedly taking a terminally ill patient to the hospital, repeatedly treating sepsis, having emergency surgery for somebody who is about to die despite surgery is a CHOICE. Both the patient and his daughter wanted him to keep on living, but weren't willing to accept the consequences of that decision. Mr. Andrey could have gone home, and stayed home, and died at home. Instead, he kept going back to the hospital, over and over. THAT's the real tragedy here; that he was dying and a slow agonizing death was chosen instead of realizing that death was inevitable and that death at home, without medical intervention was an acceptable alternative.

My response to a friend who sent me a blog that featured a letter by a learned Middle East scholar who seems to like Israel, or at least writes a screed (it seems to me based on nothing but pilpul) in its favor (and against using the words apartheid or nazi in speaking about the country of Israel):

I'm afraid I can't quite read all of this letter, viewing it, as I do, as Israeli propaganda. I too deplore the loose use of the term Nazi, but one cannot blame the world for seeing certain parallels in feeling tone, if not in detail. I am pretty much convinced at this point, that Jews should NOT have a country, and why wouldn't I be, since I've been brought up to believe in the SEPARATION of church and state, as we all have. In fact, I guess you could say that all this is just one more last lingering horrible effect of the Holocaust--making the Jews fulfill the worst thoughts of the ant-Semites.

The Times has one of those seemingly benign editorials about not giving the death penalty to "the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks." A commenter referred to this man as a "mass murderer." I commented:
"But is he a mass murderer? As far as I can tell, this man has not been convicted of anything. And isn't a guilty verdict the only way we'll ever know, according to our system? It seems to me that even if our torturers were prosecuted (an essential move if we are ever to regain our self-respect), this man's trial is hopelessly compromised if he was treated in the cruel, heartless way you describe."

Got 24 recommendations!!

This:
http://peoplesworld.org/dead-child-walking-a-cry-from-the-heart/

says it better than I could. They never mention that it's our children we're sending to these absurd wars.