*Here’s the call:
Dispatcher: 911 what is your emergency?
Caller: I think we have a heart attack victim.
Dispatcher: OK please tell me the age and sex of the victim.
Caller: I can’t.
Dispatcher: You can’t tell me the age and sex of the victim?
Caller: About 40 years old, I guess, but I don’t know the sex.
Dispatcher: You don’t know the sex?
Caller: They’re androgynous. Keep Reading
*One Lyman Stone, in The Atlantic of June 24, 2019, blames the Baby Boomers for many of the problems in America, in an article titled “The Boomers Ruined Everything.” According to Stone, the younger Americans (Gen X, Millennials) are having a hard time, economically and otherwise, because of the acts and behavior of the Baby Boomers. The Baby Boomers ruined everything about America? Hardly. Stone’s universal generalization is the first key flaw in his argument. But let’s take a look.
To start off with, Stone begins with this gem: “The average U.S. state constitution is more than 100 years old. We are in the third-longest period without a constitutional amendment in American history: The longest such period ended in the Civil War.” What about our treasured Constitution needs to be changed? He offers no suggestions, so allow me to suggest one. Keep Reading
*During the time that Barack H. Obama was the sitting US President, the Middle East region underwent a fundamental transformation, one in which millions of people were slaughtered in the streets of Arab cities, including many Kurds. Millions more people were running for their lives in all directions and there occurred an epic scale human refuge crises, which slammed smack into Europe. Havoc in many European cities ensued and there continues a great deal of strife in that part of the world today, caused by such massive influx, yellow jackets and all.
The trouble began in the summer of 2009. Iranian citizens rose up in Tehran against the dictatorship of the Mullahs of Iran. The revolution was put down. President Barack Obama said and did exactly nothing. Keep Reading
*The efficiency of government depends on human capital and that means hiring the right people. The federal hiring process is lengthy, and while background checks and steps in the hiring process currently in place seem to be sufficient, bad actors still get through.
Modernizing the hiring process to include more nascent, emerging, credential verification technologies is needed. This is not just to prevent wasted resources spent on hiring the wrong candidates, but can prevent national security threats by instituting modern credential verification processes. Modern technologies can go a long way to protect our country from bad actors, while saving the federal government a lot of money by preventing bad hires.
The Cost of Fraud
In just the recent history, the 2019 college admissions scandal, nicknamed Operation Varsity Blues, rocked the nation when it exposed a criminal conspiracy to influence admissions decisions at several top American universities. It was disclosed on March 12, 2019, by US federal prosecutors. At least 51 people are alleged to have been part of the scandal for paying more than $25 million over several years to bribe college officials, fraudulently inflating entrance exam test scores, athletic abilities and so forth. Keep Reading
*I am Sam Martinez, born a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent in El Paso, Texas. My father and mother were born in New Mexico and California, respectively in the 1920s. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848, moved the U.S. border from as far north as Wyoming and Oregon, as far east as a portion of present-day Kansas, down to the Rio Grande, making tens of thousands of Mexicans into U.S. citizens.
Five generations on my father’s side were born in the New Mexico area once Mexico. My DNA indicates I am 70% of the Iberian Peninsula and Native American. The remaining percentage reflects nomadic survival from Africa, Europe, Polynesia, and Asia. The soup de jour resulted in brown skin I wear proudly.
Keep Reading
*Not so long ago ‘bash’ meant a big party, ‘boss’ meant great and ‘a gas’ was a real fun time! Calling someone a ‘queer’ was tantamount to uttering other hurtful and hurting terms such as ‘homo’ and ‘fag’. At some point in time that probably coincides with folk at Gay Pride rallies declaring, “We’re here and we’re queer”, it magically became OK for gay or straight people to use the word ‘queer’ … kinda stylish.
‘Oriental’, on the other hand, is very much not in vogue. It was taught as both a term of respect and a geographical reference point indicating the easternmost part of Asia, its ancient culture and the people that live there.
‘Oriental’ is much more specific as an identifier than ’Asian’ as it indicates a specific part of Asia and people with recognizable physical traits, such as almond-shaped eyes, and does not include those from Georgia or Kazakhstan who are as Asian as anyone from China but do not ‘look Asian’. Why the term ‘Oriental’ offends is baffling – perhaps we take ourselves a bit too seriously?
Baby boomers growing up in the 50s and 60s were often taught that blacks were to be called ‘Negros’ in polite company, or (often in the south) ‘Colored’. At some point in time that probably coincides with folk at Black Pride rallies declaring “Black Power”, ‘Negro’ gave way to ‘black’ as the new polite term, and things were simple. Then came the ‘politically correct’ and factually inaccurate do-goodnics who saddled us with the ridiculous ‘African American’, making race about a continent – like ‘Asian’ – and avoiding the issue completely.
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*Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is offering a lot of people hope. Hope for a new beginning, hope for a new life, hope for peace and prosperity. The U.S. government is supposed to wave its magic wand and grant all of those things to people from other nations who are innocent and only want the aforementioned. The pursuit of these goals is being vociferously advocated by citizens calling themselves “global citizens” a group of Americans who do not understand citizenship.
Did I mention that they themselves are hoping for a great deal number of people who will vote for them?
*Reading the article titled, “A Message to Mayor Pete from a Latina Mama: “Don’t Force Your Sexual Ideology on Me and My Children,” by Ana Samuel created this response.
I was a bigot against LGBTQ persons to the point of being critical, being disgusted, and being angered. My being came from family, friends, religion, and readings. Now, I am embarrassed at myself for not following the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent God of love. Believing LGBTQ is a choice, proves wrong scientifically or from the power, thought, and presence of God.
Why limit oneself to believe LGBTQ is a choice and not a choice of children born healthy, lacking body activity, having health conditions, developed mental issues, or missing body parts or functions? How was it my choice to be born with cells of what is considered normal or the choice of hermaphrodites to be born as they are? At conception, neither I nor anyone else had the opportunity to choose mental or physical capacity.
Not surprisingly the politicians on the panel belittled that idea as quickly and harshly as possible, not wanting to acknowledge that it could be necessary to call upon a non-politician to do a politician’s job; protective of their jobs and situation in the uneasy manner contractors display when homeowners suggest doing their own repairs instead of calling upon the contractor’s expertise. Of course Mr. Maher could not have been more correct or insightful.
Much of Trump’s initial support was a result of him being a TV personality. Had it not been for his established fame not only would he not have been elected president … he would never even have been invited to the debates or received the nomination. He certainly wasn’t a credible politician – or even a credible human being.
*The crime rate in the U.S. has been going down since 1993. There are several explanations for the decline in crime, some of my favorites being that cell phones and the internet have lowered the crime rate. The folks that suggest that crime is going down have their favorite theories, and tend to insist that crime has gone down because of whatever cause for which they are currently stumping. I would like to consider a few reasons other than cell phones and the internet.
In a more expansive viewpoint, I would suggest that there are several factors that have caused the crime rate of the U.S. to decline. Of course, Chicago and several other cities have yet to witness any decline in crime, so obviously the decline has not touched those places; nonetheless, crime in the U.S. has declined since 1994. Every announcement of the continuing crime wave sweeping over Chicago is met with deep disdain and helplessness, as the futile efforts of the authorities seem unable to lessen the out-of-control violent crime, even for a county with some very strict firearm regulations. Keep Reading
It isn’t about how many weeks or how many centimeters or how many heartbeats because you can’t have a person without that zygote and so you can’t say the zygote is not alive, or a being. Cells that are reproducing and growing as rapidly as the zygotes are, more than qualify anything – plant or animal – to be ‘alive’.
No, it is about 1) who gets to murder legally and 2) who gets to decide who gets to murder legally. The answer to both – generally speaking, in dangerous generalizations – is old white guys. Politicians, influential businessmen, henchmen and cronies that think in grandiose terms, where lost lives are anticipated, computed and accepted as part of the game; the price of doing business.
Who doesn’t get to murder legally is everyone else, and the guys running the show will do anything to keep it that way, lashing out at the very idea of what and who they fear most: empowered women. Keep Reading
*The media of today (2019) are so incredibly inaccurate and uneducated that it is difficult to understand how they were hired as reporters or commentators. Zack Ford, on the website Thinkprogress thinks he can correct the president on the use of a political term that he doesn’t think is appropriately used. Mr. Ford, and many of his co-conspirators in the media, think that Mr. Trump is incorrect when he uses the term “coup d’etat” for the Mueller investigation. As one member of the media stated on one of the Sunday discussions, they insisted that President Trump was in error because “coup d’etat” means military overthrow of the government. Keep Reading
*Given the clamoring among political insiders about aspects of the Mueller Report that they see as problematic for President Trump, and the effects that can have on the American voting public, it would behoove us all to get straight to the bottom of what this probe’s findings really mean to our nation. It’s not so terribly hard to do. A quintessential example of how wrong any calls for impeachment, or further investigation of our 45th US President, are, is a Washington Post oped piece written by a top presidential aid’s spouse.
If George T Conway III thinks he can get away with such a lambasting of this president, on this issue, seen in the second highest circulated US newspaper, without it being properly dissected, he’s got another thing coming. Keep Reading
*China is an interesting state, and becoming a bigger player on the world stage as time passes. Having lost wars to major powers in the more recent century, China is deliberately moving on the world stage and is determined to exercise its power in the twenty-first century. In terms of assets, China is creating man-made islands in the South China Sea, in order to enlarge its global footprint, claiming manmade islands as part of their sovereign nation and attempting to curtail traffic in the open seas. Keep Reading
*In early summer of 2010, coming off a DC Metro line at the US Capitol stop, I found myself walking among a dozen or so people, all of us on our way toward a Tea Party Event being held on the Capitol Lawn. There was a palpable feel to our walk and talk, very nice, and within minutes we rounded a corner to the sight of tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of American citizens peaceably assembling to address their grievances, like, say, out of control spending and runaway debt. You know, “generational theft”, and all.
A few of the guys yelled, loud, “YEAH!”, and couldn’t help but start running a little. There were beaming smiles all around as we headed on down to join the massive gathering. We looked forward, of course, to all the speeches, to the camaraderie, and to taking on a president who’d actually started his political career in the home of a terrorist who bombed US targets, including that Capitol Dome on our right. “How on earth could any politician working in that building be perfectly okay with a president who was so friendly with a man who once bombed it?”, asked one of the men among us.
We slowly shook our heads.
There is simply no sane answer to that question. Keep Reading
*President Donald Trump, to many people, is one of the worst presidents in history. I see no point in attempting to change anyone’s mind about this, nor do I have any desire to persuade anyone to look at the president differently. What I want to do is to explain why he was voted into office.
Economic Determinism
One of my favorite questions to ask any economics professor, and I have asked many of my economics professors, is this question: Does economic determine politics, or does politics determine economics? Most of the professors will hedge their answer, saying that the answer is a little bit of both. Keep Reading
*Governor Rod Blagojevich’s prison sentence is the most ridiculous example of hypocrisy in the history of justice and political corruption in the state of Illinois.
Setting aside the question of whether one views the former-Governor’s fundraising activities as crimes, and whether he received fair trials, are less important than examining the real corruption the media doesn’t report.
I take issue with the charges and the conduct of the Blagojevich prosecutors, but that is not the key point; the key point is what is playing out in Illinois politics today and how outrageous it is that the real corrupt Democrats have no accountability. Add the fact that killing someone goes less punished in Illinois than alleged fundraising activism.
I support President Trump pardoning Blagojevich’s prison sentence as not only a tool to amend the excessive prison sentence, but to push back on hyper aggressive federal prosecutions, and to allow Illinois citizens to consider the bigger picture.
Four of the last seven Illinois Governors have been convicted of various crimes and sentenced to prison. Various other elected officials have faced criminal charges, and while that is not uncommon in other states, Illinois has had it bad.
*.. and upon entering, the children sprout wings and begin to fly, frolicking and playing together without regard or concern for race or gender; eating nutritious candy and carb-free ice cream; while discussing philosophy, playing music and jointly painting an endless mural of peace and love.
Sounds a lot like the last bit of the Green New Deal:
“.. shall provide all people of the United States with high-quality health care; affordable, safe, and adequate housing; economic security; and access to clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and nature.”
We MUST participate in saving this planet!
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is certainly on the right track and trying to steer us in the right direction. (Do you hear a ‘but’ coming?) Keep Reading
*We can all agree that House Speaker Pelosi and President Trump have important jobs and face a variety of pressures. Politics, legislative agendas, and federal agency oversight, are all subjects of intense disagreement during this new era of divided government. In spite of these, both the speaker and the president, have a duty to the American people.
Veterans can and should be a focal point of inspiration, which allow for an easing of tensions in these spaces. These are the men and women who have served our country should be a lasting example of why domestic political gridlock should not stall or delay entrepreneurial pursuits, which serve to better our veterans’ quality of life.
**The following is political satire*
Today the Congress of the United States of America officially passed into law the Twenty-eighth or ‘Hero’ Amendment:
The forty-fifth President is hereby designated the true American Hero and true Father of our Country. No law shall restrict his actions, deeds or service. All textbooks shall be updated to reflect his stature. In order to learn, emulate and preserve the Hero’s beliefs, manners and mannerisms, all children aged 4 to 19 shall be required to be an active member in in the Trump Youth, henceforth overseen by the Department of ReEducation.
