Screaming Me-mes! Free Speech or Loud Bully?

I have been to and seen many town hall meetings and as much as I appreciate political concern, I have no patience for ignorance, heated passion or anything that cannot be logically applied to an issue, and backed up with relevant facts. It embarrasses me that our media play unedited, live town halls which demonstrate our worst instead of our best intellectual thought.

I don't care what someone's position is; it never holds value to repeat something or to say it more loudly; and doesn't not change its truth. Loud idiots should never have an advantage over thoughtful, intelligent people.

When others across the globe see rednecks talking about "death panels", and for that matter, when one of those rednecks was a VP candidate, it makes America look like a nation of Jerry Springer University graduates.

I respect my conservative and liberal friends alike, as long as they don't confuse emotionality and quickened anger for "Americanism".

Personally, if I were a congressman and I held a town hall, I would lay down the law that there is as much a right to hear as a right to speak. When one speaks in a disrespectful way, just as in my classroom, I would immediately dismiss them.

These politicians, who fail to manage a respectful, intelligent discourse, should not have town halls, plain and simple.

If people scream, chant or disrupt in any way someone else's right to civil communication, and they refuse to leave, tazer them and drag them out. They may protest as loudly as they like outside the meeting as long as they don't disturb communication among those who came to advance real political thought.

American media who play unedited, live reports, are irresponsible and the people who see live reporting know they can misbehave and get on the air. Both are wrong, but ultimately, it is the media's responsibility to avoid being an unfiltered megaphone for idiots.

The Nerve of the Rich!

The rich overpaid themselves for the entirety of history, stealing from the poor, and now they say there isn't any money because of the poor.

The rich raped me then complained that I am no longer a virgin.

The rich decided life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness didn't include the necessary ingredients for such; i.e. food, education, health.

The rich man who is not dying, is complaining that those dying are too expensive and it's their own damned fault

The rich determine their own compensation having no correlation to hard work or ideas, but only to the power of their check-writing pens.

The rich deprive me of an education then put me in prison for the result of my ignorance, taking no blame and bearing no responsibility.

The rich and its sworn agents decide what I am worth, rather than the majority deciding what they and their ideas are worth; we are extorted.

The Nerve! I think I now understand the French...

Breaking the Propaganda Code With a Moral Code

Today's politics is full of good metaphors (if "metaphor" becomes a metaphor for "BS"), but I find myself needing to address this with stark reality in order to make sense of it. As a college teacher of Logic and Critical Thinking with most of my education in Literature and Comp, I am adept at dealing with analogies, but the propaganda has become so overwhelming that I find myself wanting to simply scream, "The Emperor has no clothes."

Even on US news we hear such ridiculous terminology that ignores and veils the goal of objectivity. Those charged with a stated goal of love and compassion lead the assault on those weaker than they. So called "Christian" right-wingers would rather you sit in prison after you commit crimes of survival, than to prepare you for the world with adequate education, then they call you "criminal" for the rest of your life. Proof is certain of the failure of religion to protect the moral code; instead they prefer the propaganda code.

When young men from Islamic nations oppose the establishment, they call them "radicalized youth". If the US kills women and children; we are soldiers/brave young men and THEY are collateral damage. When France did it to their Nazi occupiers, they called them the "French Underground." It almost sounds sexy. If their soldiers do it, we call them "terrorists", despite the clear fact they would prefer to do what they do with B-1 Bombers than with Toyota Tercels. When we do something to intimidate the enemy, we call it a "show of force", though our goal is the same, to provide terror, yet we have the nerve to name it "Shock and Awe".

When the colonists opposed the British, and dumped tea, it was called a "party". Sounds like fun. They, who combine to fight back, we call the "axis of evil". But when we are lucky enough to pull together 3 or 4 countries that still agree with us, we call them "an alliance of the willing."

If Al Quaeda soldiers do it, we call them "extremist" or "brainwashed" unless they are doing it to Russia in Afghanistan under CIA support; then they are "committed and disciplined freedom fighters".

The biggest problem is, that news just reports using the same terminology as if it were rational, when clearly these terms have been market tested and are designed by the greatest, most skillfull and technically trained Psy-Ops officers in the world.

I don't know how much longer I am willing to just nod my head. I am close to screaming when my mind is assaulted by all this purely emotional language intended to brainwash rather than to communicate truth. The list is replete with examples of double standards of terminology.

It is war. People are killed in order to allow one group of rich men to prevail over another less rich group. We don't fight for honor, though the men who fight have the best intentions because they don't know any better. They follow the bouncing ball and sing the song, ooh rah, and people die while my finances, peace of mind and safety quickly fade.

If we haven't been too drugged by the dumbing down within our education system, or by the mass therapy and anti-depressant wave, I think it's a time for the lions that sleep at the heart of America to wake. These are the lions that saw through the repressive regime that taxed without representation and the lions rebelled against the tamers!

Truth, Justice and The American Way.

It's time for the Truth, and it's time for some Justice. As for the "American Way", we must decide a way that is defined by truth and justice or the way we are going is simply a path paved with lies.

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You can lead a horse’s ass to Washington, but the truth?

Senator Patrick Leahy has decided he is going to subpoena Karl Rove to testify under oath. Well, it’s about time. But according to Whitehouse Spokesperson Tony Snow, he has already offered himself up in such a way that “he would tell the truth” only under the condition that he not be sworn, documented and that he be free to hide one of his hands behind his back at all times with his fingers crossed.

Frankly, it will be nice to get Rove’s lies on official record, but if anyone thinks this is going to result in the unearthing of truth from his thin little lips, they have no idea who they are dealing with. Karl Rove is and has been the biggest “spinmeister” to have ever entered the District of Columbia; and that’s a high honor.

It has been the food from which he thrives. Lie ‘til you die, and even then have a lie placed on the tombstone and hire Tony Snow and Scooter Libby to write the obituary. He has been lying so long he has no idea what the truth is.

As he has been leading Bush’s political career since his days in Texas, it is his modus operandi. It has become his mantra that if you tell a lie often enough, people will eventually believe it. And when lies aren’t enough, break the law and tell secrets that end careers and put lives in danger, while endangering the well built apparatus by which the US had previously tracked nuclear proliferation to the Middle East. Who cares? It’s just another spy, just another country with nukes. Who cares if it is a felony punishable by death? And according to him, it’s not a secret if you are the second or third person to have told it. According to him, everybody already knew it, right?

In his days in Texas, he not only was a master of lies, but he completely automated the rumor mill. He perfected the art. Basically, it was his favorite way to win. Just think of the very thing that would make an opponent unpopular, and whisper it to everyone you know. It didn’t matter that Ann Richards wasn’t a lesbian. She rode a motorcycle. She had to be, according to Rove and his team. And Texans love homosexuals, right?

If anyone thinks Rove is worried about being forced to testify, they are clearly deluded. He couldn’t care less. If you think Gonzales said, “I don’t know”, “I can’t recall, or “I wasn’t in the loop,” were enough to make you roll our eyes, just wait. Rove will have your eyes sticking that way. You will become so familiar with eye-rolling that you will likely give yourself a frontal lobotomy from the friction.

Meanwhile, Bush, Cheney and Snow will simply complain that there has become a proliferation of politics where there once was none.

What's wrong with "Nappy" hair?

I love "nappy" hair. It's soft, free and it stands and delivers.

As for "Ho's", what is a ho? A woman who enjoys sex with multiple partners? Hmm, if it were a guy wouldn't we call him a stud?

As for the intentions of Imus, clearly racist and ignorant but so are all the rap songs I hear that denigrate women and their own race.

Isn't it time we remove the double standard. If a white man says it, its bad? But if a self-hating black says it, is it okay? If a black politician calls white members of the Mondale Presidential staff, the "Smart Ass White Boys" (Andrew Young), or a Presidential candidate calls New York "Hymy Town", is it okay (Jackson)? When on many occasions black politicians blindly refer to "white people" saying or doing one thing or another, is it okay? As if all white people do or say the same things.

Frankly, I am tired of the double standards. Will it ever be the right time for us to start all over and walk hand in hand like children with others of different color, creating the rainbow society Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned, or has it become an intractable and an all too profitable industry to point fingers, even when four of them are pointing back at you?

Shame on Imus for thinking he was ever funny. Shame on Sharpton for ever thinking he was without sin and for parading his own daughter before Imus in his stone-throwing exhibition. Shame on Jackson for his focus on one fool while ignoring himself and many others. Aren't their better racists to point at; like Bush and the other white men who send black men disproportionately to their deaths and injuries in war and prison?

Is anyone other than me tired of hearing that it is terrible for whites to express their racism while pretending there is no such thing as black racism? As I have said to the many black men for whom I have worked, "you have the power, not I." Can we just finally start treating each other by the "content of our character rather than the color of our skin."

Maybe I'm just being naive and idealistic to suggest that the time to do the right thing, once we recognize it is right, is now!

Double Standards, Confusion: What Subjects are "OK"? Homosexuality? NOT!

It is confusing enough to be either a student or teacher in todays politically charged environment, but one would think that it would be okay to maturely discuss tolerance toward gays and lesbians in high school. If you are from some communities in America, you would would be mistaken as freedom of the press apparently does not extend to some subjects that offend the religious sensibilities of a public high school.

That's right. In Woodburn, IN a teacher was suspended for failure to ask for specific approval of a student column promoting such tolerance.

It was the usual practice Woodlan Junior-Senior High School to submit "anything controversial" for prior censorship to the principal. School newspaper teacher Amy Sorrell figured the articles on teen pregnancy, teen motherhood and sexually transmitted diseases would be controversial, so she submitted them to her principal before publishing. No problem there. But she didn't submit an article she considered less controversial promoting tolerance of homosexuals.

It never occurred to her that attention from state and national news would cause her principal to suspend her.

"If we can talk about herpes and gonorrhea on one page, we should be able to talk about tolerance on the next page," says Sorrell, who doesn't believe she did anything wrong.

Commentary: If teachers and students are put in a position of prior restraint in the first place, it should be a hint that their independent decisions are subject to arbitrary moralization. In this society where children can watch hundreds of people being killed in a graphic fashion in a horror movie or one that glorifies war, but can't be trusted to process 1 second images of Janet Jackson's nipple, I guess it should be no surprise that tolerance of homosexuals would be preposterous.

What is a teacher to do? The safest answer, nothing and that's how we got where we are. Teachers are under such scrutiny that they either choose not to enter the profession or if they do, they choose to water down the curriculum so much that it has no parallel to the larger society for which they pretend to prepare students.

It is no wonder the teachers who get the best report cards are those who make things unchallenging, uncontroversial, and often uninformed.

More details in the Indy Star

4.5 Billion Years - The Many, The Proud, The US Depleted Uranium Bombs We Have Used!

Think about this whether you like it or not. The US has used tons of depleted uranium weapons in three wars running including Iraq. And they say, "What problems can there be with 4.5 Billion years of damage to the people of these regions and our own soldiers?

2mins of disturbing truth!
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