War is Peace?

Is War Peace? Freedom Slavery? Ignorance Strength? As suggested by the leaders of Oceania in George Orwell’s novel, 1984? Well, Here in 2015, the United States, the country with the largest military budget in the history of the world, more than the next 10 militaristic country’s military budgets put together…has finally done it!

Currently we are fighting in Iraq, along side the Iranians, in an effort to defeat the terrorist forces of ISIS. And we are fighting in Yemen, alongside the Saudi Arabians, in an effort to defeat the terrorist forces of the Houthi rebels, who are allied with Iran!

Whose side are we on anyway? …Answer: Yes!

We are now fighting with our enemies against our enemies and they are both us, or at least one is us, or some combination of us and them. It’s quite confusing, but suffice it to say that we are fighting over there so we don’t have to fight here… which is kinda the same thing as saying…well, you know…don’t ya think?

And meanwhile here at home we are fighting over whether we should be increasing the military budget while cutting homes for the homeless, food for the hungry, and healthcare for the unhealthy…which is kinda the same thing as saying…

N’est-ce pas?…or as we like to say here in the USA… Freedom Fries!

Born in the USA?

Ted Cruz is the first Republican to announce his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2016 election. Did you know that Mr. Cruz was born in Canada and that his father is Cuban? So how come he is eligible to run for the presidency of the U.S. let alone serve as a Senator in the U.S. Senate?

Well, according to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) provided the U.S. citizen parent was physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child’s birth. Mr. Cruz was born in 1970 and for births between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, the child’s parent must have lived in the U.S. for a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen, in order to transmit U.S. citizenship.

So Mr. Cruz is a United States citizen because his mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. So that made him a U.S. citizen at birth, and therefore eligible to be president.

So what was all the fuss about President Obama!? President Obama was born in Hawaii. And for those who might be geographically challenged, that’s actually in the United States. And the president’s mother was born in Wichita, Kansas, which is also in the United States where she lived for the first 25 years of her life. So, even if President Obama had not been born in the U.S. it would never have made any difference anyway because his mother was a U.S. citizen and so the president’s citizenship, just like Mr. Cruz’s, was never, ever in doubt and never, ever should have been, birth certificate or not!

So why didn’t anyone in the Republican party, especially those 47 Senators who decided to take Iran to school on the constitution, or any of the Tea Partiers or any of the reporters on Fox News, or anyone in the American media for that matter, point that out to everyone in the country and put all of this racist hate mongering immediately to rest?!… can someone riddle me that?

And in addition, Mr. Cruz has also announced that his first order of business, should he be elected president, will be to dismantle the entirety of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare” as the Republicans are so happy to call it…but, since his wife is taking a leave of absence from her job to help him campaign for the presidency, the Cruz family will be without healthcare so…wait for it…Mr. Cruz is going to sign his family up for…the Affordable Care Act!

When asked why he wouldn’t just purchase healthcare for his family on his own and avoid The “Obamacare” exchanges in protest of the healthcare law that he so thoroughly loathes his answer was…(you can’t make this stuff up)…”It’s too expensive that way and using the ACA exchanges is much more affordable for my family”. !!!!!!

So here we go ladies and gentlemen. Start your engines…the only way you’ll ever know if these candidates are lying to you will be if they move their lips. Maybe someone in the media will raise their hand and call them out on it, but the chances of that happening are probably slim and none. It’s going to be a long election cycle but I guess, as we U.S. citizen’s like to say, “one hell of a show!”

Word!

Well it’s getting to be that time again… so…

Can anybody please tell me why God doesn’t speak to anyone anymore with any more instructions as to what we should do as a people here on Earth? No one has written anything authored by God in over a thousand years… except perhaps for Joseph Smith who was visited by Moroni, an angel who helped him discover the invisible plates of New York State? So why won’t God communicate with us now that we can all hear and record his voice and words so as not to mistake his message?

All of our scripture consists of what someone said they heard from God when no one else was around, and most everyone else was illiterate. Then it was written down over centuries by others who said they remembered or heard what was told to them, and then we know that it was further edited and reworded and altered over hundreds of years more before printing, and thus some tangible and corroborative proof of its existence as a text, was even invented.

After that labyrinthine process, how can anyone call whatever book they believe in, the indisputable “word” or “words” of God, a supposedly infallible and supreme being of intelligence and love? The entire process sounds no more intelligent then what must now go on in the editorial rooms of Fox News…

What kind of way is that for a supreme being to show off his intelligence, infallibility and supremeness?

To have faith is one thing…but to have faith in a supreme being who had no more sense or regard for his audience than say, a Rupert Murdoch does now, isn’t very inspiring of either faith or god. Is it?

God could have delivered an actual book couldn’t he? And updated with another revised edition each year or so like even the phone company or Sears does, could he not? And doing so before books were even invented would have been really awe and faith inspiring… don’t you think?

But we have faith that he decided to avoid mass communication with all of the sophisticated civilizations throughout time and rather enjoyed whispering his words of instruction and obedience to the outlying, marginal and unlettered people of the world so as to watch the spread of his message slowly throughout the convoluted march of time, altercation and war until…when?…Hell freezes over?

Common God! At the risk of blaspheming, If you’re out there, I have faith that you can do better. We need some new words please. Ones that none of us can miss, mistake or misinterpret. And we need them now… Word!

Go West Young Man…and Bring Water!

California has one year of water left in its reservoirs!

NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002 and groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century. And even though Nevada, Oklahoma and Texas also have patches of “exceptional” drought, along with areas of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Georgia experiencing abnormal drought, California has been the hardest hit.

But this once again is just science so we Americans are forced to take it all in with a grain of salt, even though salt may be the only export to come out of California in the future rather than the 99 percent of artichokes and walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis and plums, 95 percent of celery and garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots that California sends to the rest of us in the lower 48.

But as this map above shows there are still a lot of fresh watery places left on Earth. It’s just that most aren’t anywhere near the dry places so perhaps we humans might think about getting busy building a few more water pipelines around the world so we could at least get some water from where a lot of it is, to the places where it mostly isn’t…but wouldn’t you know what we fight about most is where we’re going to build all of our new oil pipelines. Oh well, you know what they say, “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink…so give me cheap gas for my car and I can drive to the store and get some.”

When you think about all of the energy that we use to get water into bottles that are made of plastic, which is created from oil, which we then discard into our oceans and landfills, where they will exist as monuments of pollution for eternity…well, it kind of boggles the mind doesn’t it?

Anyway, California and other places where severe drought has persisted, have no real contingency plans for how to replace water during extended droughts like the one California is experiencing now, and especially not for a dreaded mega-drought that might last years longer, but hopefully won’t… So what to do?

In the past, droughts have always ended when the rain finally returns…And that, spiritually and scientifically speaking, is apparently still our best and only plan.

Cracker box Palace

Our government no longer works. In fact, by its own admission it won’t work. It more resembles a kindergarten class run amok then it does an august governing body of adults. Rather than taking traditional aye or nay votes on questions of the day Congress’ typical response to law and matters of governance nowadays is Nya, Nya, Nya, Nya, Nya!

Case in point: Loretta Lynch is the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general. Even the Republicans in Congress acknowledge that she’s been a great prosecutor who has prosecuted terrorists and gone after organized crime and public corruption. Her integrity is unimpeachable and by all accounts, she’s a great manager, and even Rudolph Guliani, the avowed Obama-hater, thinks she’s a perfect choice who needs to be approved immediately. Plus, the Republicans in Congress hate the man who is the current Attorney General and want him replaced.

Yet, they have been refusing to take a vote on her nomination for the past 130 days because president Obama nominated her and they don’t like President Obama so, Nya, Nya, Nya, Nya, Nya to him! And unless they get what they want, which is an anti-abortion bill, passed…then nobody gets nothin’ so there!

And this, believe it or not, is how “the most wonderful government ever invented in the history of the world” functions…or rather, dysfunctions. Even your little children at home understand that this behavior is childish and needs adult intervention and supervision. Go ahead and ask them. I’m sure they will agree…and they’re just little kids…not elected adult representatives of a sovereign nation!

And yet there is nothing “We the People” can do about it. And no way for us to reprimand, replace or receive a refund from these juvenile delinquent legislators who refuse to do their work. Some government, huh? If this were an excerpt from a history book you were reading, you’d swear I was writing about 17th century France or some foppish, poofy European kingdom where they all wore monocles and sashes and carried long polished swords with scabbards.

But no, this modern day government is all ours. And I’m ashamed to say, as nutty as a fruitcake. So they say Nero fiddled while Rome burned? Well alas, here we still are, wallflowers… at the dance.

Living in a Material World

Every now and then when I go on long highway drives I have a revelation. I’m Not sure if they are in any way prescient or prophetic…hopefully not, but here is my revelatory story from today’s sojourn across the state of New Jersey.

As I was driving down the highway at 75 MPH I noticed, while glancing into my rear-view mirror, an angry old man flashing his lights and gesturing for me to get out of the way. I was already traveling at 10 miles per hour more than the legal speed limit but I also noticed that as far as the rest of the traffic was concerned, I was a slacker! So I pulled out of his way only to find myself in front of a young woman talking on her cell phone who was rapidly gaining on me and looked as though she was prepared to go right through me if she had to.

Yikes! I was now pushing 80 MPH and still cars were passing me and weaving in and out of the traffic created by other motorists who thought that traveling in the 70’s was pretty damn fast…

And speaking of the 70’s I remember living and driving in the 1970s when the speed limit of the land was 55 MPH and set there as a way to save gas and oil and curb our need of foreign oil. And we were also concerned about pollution back then and the ecology and the ecosystems of our planet, or at least we said we were. We seemed to be trying. And we had hostages in Iran, and OPEC was ruling the day and we needed to change our dependence on oil and fossil fuels…

And now here we are in 2015, just having finished 2 long and grueling wars in the Middle East and threatening to start another! We are still held hostage by the fear of terrorist groups cutting off our oil supplies. And we bust open every inch of the earth on our own homeland in an endless search for more fossil fuels for us to waste on our highways, in our wars and with our modern devices of leisure and convenience…while the vast majority of us no longer even believe that any of this is doing any great harm to our world. And even if some of us do, it does not seem to affect our participation in the madness of it all. 7 billion humans strong, living and breathing and polluting each and every day, with still many, many more polluters to come.

Traveling at 80 MPH, it would only take us about 3 hours to reach the end of Earth’s atmosphere…all around our planet… about the distance from North Jersey to Washington D.C…that’s it. 3 hours of air and then you would be driving off into space and hoping that your car’s air conditioning would save you while you try to turn around. Of course it wouldn’t because the guy behind you would be flashing his lights and honking his horn while yelling at you to get out of the damn way…plus the air conditioning thing wouldn’t work…but you knew that, right?

But I digress, because I believe my true revelation was that we all live in a material world and have no intention to go quietly into that good night. Unless some scientists come up with a way to save the planet from ourselves and then get the dumb asses in Congress to believe them, rather than take Big Corporate’s money and continue to commit global suicide, I fear none of the rest of us will care nor take the time to pay any attention to what’s going on around us to see our own end approaching.

Sooner or later this planet is going to shake us all off like a bad cold…or not. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…that is if any of us plan on paying attention at the time…

Deja Vu All Over Again, Again?

Well it’s Spring!…again…almost… and here on the east coast Spring has apparently been lionized for the entire month of March, so baseball season won’t begin until April this year… But no matter what the weatherman says baseball and opening day shall always spring eternal… although this year the season might not end until Thanksgiving!

Anyway, speaking of America’s favorite pastime, I have been a New York Yankee fan long enough to remember their 1965 collapse into mediocrity after a 1964 season that saw them finish one game away from the World Championship…for in 1965 as the great Yogi Berra might have phrased it, “The Yankees suddenly got old, early out there.”

And now 50 years later the Yankees stand on the precipice of continuing that trend again…but with a continued twist.

With their aging heroes continuing to age and with the return of our favorite exiled anti-hero, AKA Alex Rodriguez, the NY Yankees still owe their players over 200 million dollars in annual salary…and all for a team that hasn’t made the playoffs in the last 2 years. That’s a lot of money spent for mediocrity but nothing says America quite like spending a lot of money for nothing…and then passing the buck onto the American taxpayer. For the Aging New York Yankees play in the house that “tax exempt financing” built.

Yankee Stadium is the most expensive baseball stadium ever constructed and although the Yankees paid for it (sort of)…They get to use their taxes to pay off their debt…which would be like you getting to use your property taxes to pay off your mortgage… (sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?)…but it is.

So, will joy return to Mudville this year? Along with Alex Rodriguez? All I can say is “Stay tuned!” Because when they fell from grace back in 1965 the Yankees had to wait 10 years until free agency was invented before they could put themselves back together again. But as a Yankee fan rooting for a team that still has access to free agency and with seemingly unlimited resources, in a city that can’t seem to wait to continue picking up the tab, I can only hope that it’s finally time for the next “new” thing…

A-Rod the Cyborg! After all, he’s not some cheap 6 million dollar man…he’s our 20 million dollar man!

Hopefully he used last year’s suspension from baseball for his steroid use, to have himself not only detoxed… but rebuilt! With the finest metal alloys and computer programming that the Yankees and NY taxpayers could buy. So let’s play ball and pray for sunshine…warm weather…and no rain…and definitely no lightning!

And no crazy new rules outlawing cyborgs! …Well, I can dream can’t I?

Any Given Sunday?

Here’s a sobering fact for the NRA and gun advocates everywhere.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health and the most recent government data available, 19% of all U.S. adults have suffered from a mental illness in the past year. In fact, Research on mental health and disease patterns shows that mental disorders are common throughout the United States, affecting tens of millions of people each year, and that, overall, only about half of those affected receive treatment.

So with some 300 million guns of various kind and caliber, distributed throughout the populace of a country with tens of millions of adults suffering from various kinds of mental illnesses…is this not a certain recipe for disaster? And is it any wonder why so many horrible tragedies involving guns, occur each and every year within our country’s borders?

So, is asking for a little more control, regulation and oversight over weapons that are designed to either kill humans, along with other weapons that are mostly only used in the killing of humans, really all that difficult to understand and grasp…especially when our laws all but guarantee the potential for tens of millions of deadly weapons to be in the hands of tens of millions of mentally ill adults on any given day?!

And how can it not be indicative of an illness, mental… to think otherwise?

Speak No Evil…Hear No Evil

Here’s some discouraging news…according to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, employees of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection claim they  were ordered to refrain from using the terms “climate change”, “global warming” or “sustainability” in official communications. Apparently the unwritten policy went into effect shortly after Gov. Rick Scott, a global warming skeptic, took office. The new Florida policy is similar to a 2012 law passed by lawmakers in North Carolina that prohibits the state from basing coastal policies on scientific predictions regarding sea level rise.

Scientists have warned that, like much of Florida’s coastline, North Carolina’s outer banks are at particular risk from climate change. But what do environmental scientists know? All they have is science and study and facts on their side while their political opponents have silence, sarcasm and like climate change denier Senator Inhofe, snowballs!

Unfortunately scientists aren’t in charge of our environment and Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection, while they are in charge of planning for how to try and combat what could be catastrophic sea level rise…just can’t talk about it, make reference to it or shhhhhhh…say its name.

But don’t despair! All we have to do is cut our worldwide carbon emissions by 85% so as to begin the process of reversing that unmentionable climate thing. However, since we appear do be doing exactly the opposite in our never ending frenzy to grow, grow, grow our fossil fuel production and use, better just not to buy any beach property. And tell your grandchildren to move inland or to higher ground because by the end of this century…or sooner… 80 out of 100 coastal cities in the world will be under water…

But that’s just scientists talking and they haven’t had much luck in convincing many of our political leaders that this is a serious global problem for humanity, the planet and…did I mention humanity? Probably because half of our political leaders are happy to approach the problem by covering their ears and pulling the blankets a little tighter around their ignorant and empty heads.

Home On the Range

Have you heard of Free Range parenting? And I’m talking about human parents, not chicken parents. Apparently everything old is new again because as I read this story I couldn’t help but thinking that this was a story about parenting in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s…you know, before the whirlybirds landed and took our old parents away and replaced them with the newer helicopter variety.

Anyway, In Maryland a couple who allowed their children to walk around their neighborhood unsupervised are now facing a child neglect ruling in their home county. Following a two-month investigation, Montgomery County Child Protective services found Danielle and Alexander Meitiv responsible for “unsubstantiated” child neglect… which means that their case will remain on file with the state for the next five years.

Authorities launched the investigation, after two police officers spotted the Meitiv children, a 10-year-old boy and his and 6-year-old sister, walking home from a park about a mile from where they live. The officers brought the children back to their house, where they confronted their father who was shocked to see his children being escorted home by 3 police officers…but he shouldn’t have been because this was his children’s second offense! A few months before, someone had phoned in an anonymous tip to Child Protective Services when they had observed the two youngsters playing alone at a different park a few blocks from their home.

This is why the Meitivs are known as “free range” parents (couldn’t we think of another name…please?) because they allow their children to “run off and play” as opposed to the so-called “helicopter parents,” who are known for hovering over every aspect of their child’s life (including play) in an effort to keep them safe.

Now in case you are wondering, an unsubstantiated neglect ruling typically comes when Child Protective Services gathers some evidence that suggests child neglect, but not enough information to support a more concrete conclusion. The Meitivs said they wouldn’t let their children walk around the neighborhood if they didn’t feel the children were capable of handling the responsibility. And they let their children regularly walk home from their bus stop, to the library, and to nearby parks, all of which are less than a mile from their home.

But in all fairness, they’re only the children’s parents…and do we really trust any parents these days…or any adults for that matter? Just a few months ago a 12 year old child was walking around a park in Cleveland, Ohio, pretending to shoot people with a toy gun. Remember that? And when the police found him they didn’t round him up and bring him back to his parents. They shot him! When I was a kid my friends and I would run around our neighborhood with toy guns all of the time, pretending we were our dads during WWII shooting Nazis… And no one went looking for us unless it was night time and we hadn’t returned to base all day. Boy, I guess were we lucky that nobody shot back at us with real guns or captured us and took us back to their leader.

So perhaps, as many of today’s parents might suggest, the Meitivs should consider themselves lucky that their children were returned to them safe and sound… but now what are “free range” parents to do?… on a range that is no longer as free as it once was, back in a day when the deer and the antelope played along with everyone else…and discouraging words or neighbors were seldom heard?

If they don’t comply and keep their children supervised at all times, the Meitiv’s worry that should their children roam free again…and be turned in again… they’ll all, parents and children, be in bigger trouble. Because now, not only is it unsafe for children to go out into the world unsupervised but also for the parents as well! Which I guess, sadly begs the even more important question:

What’s on TV?

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