Autumn in the High Country

Autumn chases Dawn into the light every morning now.  The breeze picks up her feet and dances windy as the Sun sets, splashing September’s gold, crimson and indigo spray from the pool of the Western sky.  The Mighty Rockies breathe the scent of pine and early changing Aspen down over the Prairie.  I imagine I smell the crisp clean chill that is the prelude to Winter drifting from the great red-stone canyon that lines the beautiful Boulder Creek running wild with the blood of the Goddess.  How insignificant we are in the face of such grandeur.  Our schemes and plots are trivial when set beside the glory of the smallest flower.  Daily my home reminds me that we are as the least speck of dust in the eye of the Great Mother who created my Colorado, and if there is a place more beautiful I have never seen it on this side of dreaming or the other.

The Potentate of Puffery

This morning I tuned into Joe Scarborough’s program as I was waiting for it to get light enough outside to commence feeding my rose for the last time this season.  The usual suspects were clustered around the table, pretending to be relevant and wanting desperately to be part of the news rather than just comment.  Scarborough was cutting them off right and left as usual, seeming to insist that his opinions are actually facts. 

I am sure most people remember Scarborough’s tenure as the Congressman from Florida’s 1^st Congressional District from 1994 to 2001.  As near as I could tell he did little save thump the Bible, serve the “right” people, defend fetuses, question the need to feed poor children, and follow the silhouette of Clinton’s penis through a $42,000,000 panty raid.  Yes, Clinton and his intern offended and obsessed the mighty white and righteous, family values Scarborough until his own assistant turned up dead in his Florida office on a summer day in 2001.  The death was ruled accidental – head trauma sustained during a fall.  She was said to have been alone and fainted.  He resigned the same year, and was so affected by the tragedy that he and Don Imus joked about it on air in 2003.  Well, so much for interns and assistants alive or dead.

The incident is never spoken of; certainly not on sorta-kinda-left-leaning MSNBC where at least one Liberal voice has been silenced, that of Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos, for daring to flout the taboo.   Indeed, the network has ensconced Morning Joe like a bloated potentate on a downy throne of hubris where he pontificates Monday thru Friday.  Today was no different as he held court surround by his head nodding, always agreeing supplicants.  He led a chorus of critics opining against Obama’s foreign policy, his domestic policy, the color of his tie, the sound of his voice, the cut of his jib and on and on.  Look, I am no cheerleader for the president, many of his policies make my skin crawl; but goddamn it nobody is wrong all of the time. 

I have ask before and I will ask again, can the disinclination of our friends and allies to support us in Iraq against these maniacs driving people onto a mountain top to starve not be in some small way related to the fact that President Obama may have been reduced in the eyes of the world to a paralyzed and near impotent figurehead by a feckless, corporate shilling, yellow journalism loving media and a power hungry, resentful and in many cases well past its sell by date Rightwing Congress?  Can we be so stupid as to not connect the nearly continual and malignant verbal emesis, slander and personality assignation of the Scarboroughs, McCains, Grahams, Palins, Bachmans, McConnells, Boehners, Limbaughs and so many more to the reticence of our friends and the emboldened applause of our enemies?

Has he made mistakes?  Oh yes many, and some in my mind profoundly damaging.  However, I will say that the first president I remember was Dwight David Eisenhower.  I come from a solid, hardcore Liberal, Working Class background.  My parents were both FDR Democrats and union organizers.  I was a Fabian Socialist in my youth.  I am a committed Democratic Socialist today.  Because I have always worked for a living and aligned myself with the Working Class, I have devoutly believed that I couldn't be a Republican because I carried a lunchbox and certainly couldn't afford to be ignorant.  Accordingly, I have studied the body politic closely for nearly half a century and state without equivocation that I have never seen one man blamed for so much by so many with so little evidence.  I have never seen one person asked to unilaterally shoulder the psychic Shadow of a nation or the responsibility for the broken faith, fraud and malfeasance of generations of overpaid, over empowered, parasitic political hacks. 

No one person is responsible for the deepening mess this country faces every day.  No one person is responsible for the bloodbaths, the famines, the terror, the disease and the sorrow of this world.  It is time to start holding everyone accountable for their part.  It isn't good enough to just say Obama did it anymore.

Know Your Limits Politicians

I am a bit disturbed about politicians who presume to practice medicine. Not long ago the five Ambulance Chasers for Jesus on the Supreme Court took it upon themselves to redefine conception, implantation, contraception and abortion. Now, we have members of the political class bantering about whether or not to fast track drugs for the treatment of Ebola.

It is my considered opinion after 35 years working in the medical world and 65 years on this planet that such decisions belong in the hands of the CDC, the World Health Organization, the highly ethical and selfless doctors who serve in the field where these diseases present themselves, and above all in the hands of the patients who are facing death without said drugs.

Politicians need to stick to doing what they do best - peddling influence.

Myths and Morons

I think the Ebola virus is being used to divert attention from Palestine and our humanitarian crisis at the border?  Let’s be clear.  Ebola isn't something you want to take out for a spin, but in this country we practice Universal Precautions which are defined as: an approach to infection control [that] treats all human blood and certain human body fluids as if they were known to be infectious … , (Bloodborne Pathogens Standard 29 CFR 1910.1030(b) definitions).  

In addition, we practice aseptic technique which among other things means gloving, gowning, establishing sterile fields and in this case maintaining strict isolation.  Further, this virus isn't airborne which means you can’t catch it from the guy sitting next to in the bar, and it doesn't have a silent incubation period.  You have to be sick to pass it on.  All of this means that it is highly, highly I say, unlikely that Ebola will take up residence in this country the way it has in Africa where Universal Precautions and Aseptic Technique aren't routinely observed.

So, the next time some media hump starts going on and on about the potential spread of the virus by the people coming home for treatment, or a Bachmann starts running off at the mouth about the kids at the boarder possibly bringing it in, understand that you are being diverted, man; you are being played.  

If you want to get upset about something consider the fact that people speak with alarming acceptance and implied approval about the Free Market Capitalist predators in the Pharmaceutical Industry who have never developed nor are they likely to start developing a vaccine for Ebola.  The reason, no incentive; what is the only incentive for these people – money.  Now I realize that I am an old battle scared Socialist who tends not to view the obsessive acquisition of money in a favorable light, but really?  

Trash Talk

I am not an Obama apologist.  I carry water for no politician.  Indeed with damn few exceptions I can scarcely stand the sight of the lying humps.  From the early days of Mr. Obama’s administration I began questioning his policies.  Starting with the healthcare debate, running through Chained CPI, the drone strikes, TPP, the Keystone XL Pipeline, offshore drilling and our unrelenting and mule-headed position that no matter what Israel does or how she does it she is only defending herself in the most righteous of causes. 

I have lost friends, then and since, because I refused to cease and desist in my dissent with regard to many of his policies – to keep my mouth shut and follow where led.  I submit that dissent is as necessary for the health of this Republic and its people as clean air.  Further that it is the oldest and noblest of our patriotic traditions.  I reserve the right to dissent loudly and often whenever and wherever I see fit – the cops in Chicago in '68 didn’t shut me up and peer pressure from the Left won’t either.  I am an old woman who speaks her mind, and when old women speak their mind the tribe does well to listen.

I don’t stand alone, but with many who oppose much of this president’s agenda.  We are Liberals – not Progressives, Moderates, Centrist, Clintonites, Hillary’s Women, or Obama’s army – but Liberals.  We hold to a strict code of social and economic justice.  We do not practice war, and certainly not wars of convenience.  We shutter at unbridled Capitalism, the excesses of the Free Market and corporatism.  We honor people over profit, the planet over greed; and we do not define freedom and liberty in terms of religious opportunism.  That is to say that Christians, Jews, Pagans, Muslims, Buddhists, Atheists, none of the above and people who just don’t think about it own equally this nations promise of freedom and have every right to express their liberty in the interests of their own happiness.  No platform, party or person is more deserving of our loyalty than the cause.  We are the Liberals, but not the enemy.

That distinction belongs to the far Right side of the political spectrum, their parasites, sycophants and pretenders to the throne.  When John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, John Boehner and others start trash talking over the airways about President Obama’s policies they are not proffering disagreement, opposition, or even dissent.  They are in the process of destroying a man they hate.  They have materially weakened the fabric of this nation, eroded the structure of this Republic and compromised our standing in the world with their unending and obscene display of hubris and contempt for the President of the United States.  This is not politics or the spectacle of government.  No, this is the deliberate, systematic, orchestrated and premeditated annihilation of the man’s presidency, his character and his legacy.  Since we the people elected this man twice by clear majority their hatred, hubris and contempt cannot help but rebound on us. 

I believe that we have been made to appear weak in the eyes of our enemies not because Obama is weak – he isn’t weak.  I don’t like a lot of what he does, but he isn't weak.  Our perceived weakness rests in the fact that our enemies know that these resentful old men and the women who follow them about regurgitating their venom would side with the enemies of this nation before they would be seen to support President Barack Obama.  If that doesn't frighten you in the world we live in then you must have nerves of steel, a large liquor supply or be incredibly uninformed.