This is getting too scary

Regarding the NSA subjecting us all to facial recognition files. How is one to live a private life, with dignity and humanity, any more? I've never been diagnosed as paranoid, yet I rely on Woody Allen's well-known riposte: Even paranoids have enemies, I think is how it goes. I'm grateful not to live in the United States, also grateful that New York City, where I always did live, doesn't allow people to carry guns around without a permit. Especially since I'm about to come to New York for a month. But while I'm afraid of all those guns in the U.S., what really scares me is the government. I am grateful to Edward Snowden for revealing all the horrors of the NSA, but I find it very scary, being watched all the time (when I'm there I guess). I'm pretty sure nothing bad will happen to me, I am 79 years old, but the atmosphere is demeaning, the idea of everyone being spied on by our own government. It's not something I ever dreamed would happen in our country, totally gutting the Constitution this way. 1984 seemed so absurd when I read it, way back when, but now it's becoming true before my very eyes.

The REASON we have mass killings?

In case you haven't noticed, America is broken. No, it's not the Congress, the Government, the mental health system, the health system, the education system--it's all of that and more. Somehow, with the help of Fox News and its ilk, the whole country is, well, fucked. Nobody cares about their neighbors, their community, their nation (or at least very few people). I attribute it to money, which is so blatantly displayed by "celebrities," not to mention government functionaries and anybody who has it, that what money can buy becomes all that anyone cares about. If some part of our country worked (like for instance our Congress, those we pay and pay very well to represent us), laws could change some of this. Laws about taxes, say, laws about guns, and laws about health and education. It does appear, from all the polls, that ordinary Americans want a better system; they want single-payer health care, they want better public education, lower college tuition, they want stimulus to the economy so everyone can get a job (and a job that pays enough to live on). But alas, they have no idea of how to get those things, since the concerns of ordinary Americans cut very little ice with the craven officials who run our government, despite elections. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Have we forgotten that old saw? And it's the rich who pay their way into everything and who get their way throughout the country.

HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY Reaffirming Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Vision Julia Ward Howe offered her Mother’s Day Proclamation to the world in 1870. Her dream was the establishment of an international Mothers’ Day Festival dedicated to the cause of nonviolent resolution of conflict and international solidarity among all women. Her pacifist consciousness had been provoked by the bloodshed of the Franco-Prussian War. Her activism was cultivated in the struggles for abolition of slavery and the quest for women’s suffrage. She had the proclamation translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish, working for the establishment of Mother’s Day in concert with women internationally celebrating peace and women’s empowerment. .... Here is the text of her 1870 Mother’s Day Proclamation, so prescient in its understanding, so courageous in its call, so plaintive in its currency nearly a century and a half later. Arise then…women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, For caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.” From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe our dishonor, Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace… Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, But of God - In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality, May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace.

Could someone just tell Cliven Bundy that slavery was not as great as he thinks? I find it infuriating that nobody ever deals with the facts. No, Mr. Bundy, they didn't have their families together. One could be sold off all by him or herself, because they were just simply property. Get it? Human beings but property to be bought and sold. So there was nothing good about it--or as you would say, there wasn't nothing good about it (that seems to be your vernacular). How do you think you'd like that, Cliven? Not so good, huh? Even with "gardens, chickens." This was not a case of getting away for decades without paying proper fees to the effing government whose flag you carry on your effing horse. This was a case of the person being taken away any old time against his or her will, for effing profit. Hello-o

Is Bill Maher also an idiot?

How disappointing. Bill Maher's new rule is all about how we should pit the young against the old, because the old get so much from the government; children almost nothing! Hello. What about the military. I'm quite willing to bet they get a helluva lot more than any age group per se. And I know that congresspersons get a lot more money than I do. Plus, we oldsters supposedly paid in advance for all of this--there was social security insurance and medicare insurance as I recall, taken out of my check when I was working. Oh fuck you Bill Maher. You do not know what you're talking about.

FAMILY VALUES VS. COMMON DECENCY

It's hard for me to understand how the Republican Party can lay claim to high moral ground when they clearly are monsters of sadism--consigning children, old people and the disabled to a category called "takers," for instance. But as to the Democrats, most of them voted to deny billions of dollars worth of food stamps to needy families when they voted for the farm bill. Apparently, no one in office speaks for simple decency any more. Surely somewhere in the Bible, there are words that urge us to take care of those who need our help. Something about Do Unto Others... and certainly even more. Don't these people swear oaths on the Bible? And of course, the Constitution, which is not on the whole a mean-spirited document.

Thought for the Day

Imagine there's no countries, / It isn't hard to do, / Nothing to kill or die for, / No religion too, / Imagine all the people / living life in peace. -John Lennon, musician (1940-1980)