Voice of the Crone

Greed

2012-01-27T12:34:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a talk show the other night – Real Time, I believe – when some anemic little shit from the Right informed Bernie Sanders that Social Security must be reformed because he doesn’t want to pay Bernie’s bills. No one bothered to ask him if he knew who had paid his grandfather’s bills – that would be Bernie and me. I don’t expect this trash to understand the nature of a social contract, however, this persistent condemning of people my age and older, retiring and retired, as thieves and leaches deserves a rejoinder. I am more than willing to take the Social Security that I earned in one lump sum. However, I demand interest be paid on that sum for the last 42 years at current credit card rates. I insist upon parity with the most proficient thieves and leaches in this country – the banks. Further, like the aristocrats of thieves and leaches the superrich, I don’t expect to pay taxes ever. I am certain many millions of us would be willing to take this deal causing the current deficit to explode astronomically in less time than it takes to say Ronald Reagan. Then these tight fisted, mean spirited, greedy Neanderthals are invited to shove that deficit and the empty shell of Social Security right up their ass to rest next to the sludge that is their brain.

In Remembrance of Dr. King

2012-01-16T13:02:00.000-08:00

Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of equality, justice, freedom and humanity is systematically being superseded by the Machiavellian principle that the ends justify the means with all the greed, cruelty and tyranny that implies. It seems to me that the upshot of the current drive toward voter suppression, income inequality, union busting, undermining of education and demonizing of the Working Class and the Working Poor is aimed at producing a society not unlike Machiavelli’s. In place of a government duly elected by the people there would be an absolute leader supported by a layer of aristocracy. Below the aristocracy would exist the common people tied to mere survival by the chains of economic deprivation.

This is not Americanism, nor is it democracy. It is in fact the death of Dr. King’s dream. We must teach our fellow countrymen that to spite all the flag waving, Bible thumbing, patriotism pontificating, fear mongering and false bravado, there is a perverse calculus at work here that will not serve them. If we do not then the ethereal grandeur of Dr. King’s dream will be relegated to a page in a dusty history book. That is to say if he is mentioned at all. There is nothing a Machiavellian hates more than a free thinker with a beautiful mind.

Memories of Mozart

2011-12-29T12:29:00.000-08:00

I often think of Mozart. He wrote some of the greatest operas ever heard, even though he was not Puccini. My father said that he was really Italian and writing under a penname – why was never explained. My father also said that one pound of pasta broken in half yields two pounds of pasta – go figure.

One of my favorite operas by Mozart is the “Magic Flute.” He wrote it for the common people. However, tickets to see it performed today would be prohibitively expensive for many of us. Mozart belongs to the rich – like Shakespeare. Never mind the fact that at the time of his death he was a pauper, discarded by his wealthy patrons and left to the not-so-tender mercies of his arch rival, Salieri, who some say killed him. After his death he was tossed into a common grave somewhere in Vienna. Such are the fickle sensibilities of the affluent.

Mozart’s genius was exploited and abused in his time. Today I fear that genius is neglected and even loathed. One wonders how many brilliant and talented people labor their life away for a pay check that barely meets expenses. While they live without the resources to go to school or the time to embrace their destiny. A waste of such a person is a travesty for society.

With the Middle Class shrinking, the income disparity growing and the increasing animosity of the haves toward the have nots, I ask two questions for our modern times. Shall we continue to accept the assignment of value and meaning to our humanity, dignity, passions and gifts based upon criteria that we can’t meet like large stock portfolios and immense aggregate wealth? If not, how will we stop it?

I often think of Mozart these days. Perhaps, I am desperate to keep the memory of genius, of brilliance alive in a world where mediocrity is fast becoming the only thing the common people are allowed.

November

2011-12-27T08:49:00.000-08:00

It will be interesting to see who the Republicans select from their produce section to run against Obama in November. I am certain that no one proffered on the right can beat him. It is one thing to pander to the base in the great city of Ass Wipe somewhere in the Mid-West with talk of overturning child labor laws for poor children or theorizing that some ethnic groups produce criminals with greater regularity than others. However, that crap does not play on the national stage. The moderate Republicans who could have given the president a run for his money have long since been drummed out of the party – myopia thy name is office seeker. With any luck they will drift toward the Democrats. In fact, I have had reason to believe that one did and we elected him in 2008.

A Yule Blessing

2011-12-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

Far above the city in a canyon of stone,
Among Pine, Fur and Spruce I stand alone,
Snow covered peaks soar high above,
Dazzling moonlight covers them with the Goddess’ love.

In a sacred place I clear snow from stone,
Preparing my Yule log to welcome the Crone,
In red and gold, fire radiates the Goddess’ love,
Snapping and dance sending sparks high above.

Starlight in a Pine illuminates a patch white as stone,
I realize suddenly that I am not alone,
As the fire grows brighter I see high above,
A white Owl, courier of wisdom and the Goddess’ love.

Graceful as the Aspen a deer suddenly emerges from stone,
Antlers glittering in the silver moonlight, he stands proud and alone,
Stag of myth and Lord of legend object of the Goddess’ love,
Stepping forward slowly he glances toward the moon above.

Mountain cat drifts forward stealthily casting shadows on stone,
In power and courage she stands majestically silent and alone,
Living with perfect dignity in the mountains high above,
Her beauty and independence symbols of the Goddess’ love.

Sadly I whisper to the noble ones in the canyon of stone,
Dear friends, I have no gifts to offer you I am poor and alone,
The only thing I can share with you is the Goddess’ love,
Like you I have nothing but the Earth below and the Moon above.

A voice unfathomable as eternity ricochets off the canyon of stone,
You are my daughter; you are never poor or alone,
The wild ones came to be with you and share My love,
To join you in ritual and worship under the stars above.

The Goddess commands the stars from the canyon of stone,
Down they fall onto the tree branches in clusters and alone,
It is Yule my children and you shall feast in My love,
You shall find your gifts by the light of the moon above.

. . . from “In Devotion to the Crone,” Graveyard Publishing

Who Are We?

2011-12-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

There are two ways to view the world, with respect or with avarice. The respectful perceive Mother Earth as an indispensible and nurturing source of all life and their fellow creatures as beloved siblings. The avaricious see our sacred planet as merely useful and their fellow humans and all other species as expendable. The latter destructive and nihilistic thesis has become the formula for success in this country. It is the road to the American Dream and the central defining principle of American Exceptionalism. Like a slow growing, flesh eating bacteria this grotesque paradigm, wrapped in patriotism and spouting holy writ, dismantles and dissolves the best and most beautiful expressions of our freedom and national character. All this while the people of the United States are distracted – by design – with two-hundred and sixteen ways to play with a ball, Kim Kardashian’s ridiculous romance, Lindsey Lohan’s police record, Charlie Sheen’s immense capacity to poison himself, the Duchess of Cambridge’s new dress and millions of idiotic, inane and insipid television programs masquerading as art, theater and entertainment. We must wakeup and grow up before our collective suicide is achieved and we no longer remember who we once were.

Words

2011-12-06T10:42:00.000-08:00

There is a distinct difference between the noun and the adjective form of a word in the English language. A noun is a person place or thing. An adjective modifies, describes or clarifies a noun. Take the word Democrat for instance. A Democrat is a person who subscribes to a particular political philosophy. The word Democratic on the other hand is an adjective that ascribes specific properties to a person, place or thing. Thus, we speak of the Democratic Party or the Democratic platform. It is all too common to hear a Cain or a Gingrich refer to the Democrat President or the Democrat Congress. While it has long been the practice in the sewer of American politics to bastardize the language for gain and profit, we have to ask ourselves if we really want some worm who doesn’t know his nouns from his adjectives leading the free world?

Double Speak

2011-11-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

The clamor for ever smaller and smaller government gets louder every day. The hullabaloo over a freer and freer free market, without regulations or constraints, storms across the land with all the subtlety of a tornado on the High Plains. The presumption here is that the money-hungry little shits who caused the meltdown in 2008 – or for that matter in 1929 – aren’t degenerate gambles and moral invalids. The assertion here is that the government of these United States is solely responsible for the nightmare we find ourselves living. Accordingly, if we could only eliminate government we would all be so much happier, the sky so much bluer and the world so much easier to negotiate.

One truly fascinating aspect of all of this is the fact that the same people squealing about shrinking government to the point of impotence are indicting the Occupy Movement for having ties to the anarchist community. It does not seem to resonate with these Neanderthals that a society with a government too small and weak to make and enforce its laws IS an anarchy.

Untying the Knot

2011-11-15T09:44:00.000-08:00

I track Obama’s dismal approval ratings – why I don’t know. Regardless of the poll, Rasmussen, Gallup, MSNBC, etc, it seems to me that they are all contacting the same 1,500 people over and over again. I have been a registered voter in Colorado for forty-plus years. I have never been called by any of them. I don’t know anyone who has been called. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who has been called – ergo, they must have a pasteurized population uncontaminated by facts.

For instance, to spite what the polls and the clowns in the Beltway media suggest, President Obama is not an absolute ruler solely responsible for the failure of our domestic policy and economic substructure. He shares power with two other branches of government – one of which, Congress, sits on Capitol Hill like a necrotic and malignant mushroom almost never to be seen to contribute anything toward the improvement of our lot.

Accordingly, the president purposes and the Congress disposes. In particular, the House of Representatives which holds the purse strings. If the House doesn’t allocate funds to pay for the president’s proposals they don’t reach fruition. If the House won’t pass the legislation that contains the president’s proposals they can’t be funded. Currently, this president is paralyzed by an ideologically perverse, constitutionally corrupt body of “lawmakers” who are intent upon pandering to a shrinking and belligerent minority – not to mention the likes of the stingy Grover Norquist who demands absolute compliance with his tax policy, yet has no legitimate standing in government.

Don’t get me wrong, I have had my problems with Mr. Obama’s policies. I have said before, I will say again that I voted for a Liberal and got a Centrist. It has been my experience that people who spend too much time in the middle of the road get hit by trucks. Still in all, it isn’t the president’s policies or stupefying and terrifyingly inept advisors like the bully Rahm Emanuel or even the creepy Mr. Daily that has done the most damage to the American people’s cause and democracy. It is the Tea Party freshman, the vote whoring ideologues, the old guard pimping the legislative process to Wall Street and the banks. All of whom need to be unseated; be they Right or Left.

We must circulate this information. We must let people know that replacing the president in ’12 is not the answer. Congress needs to be drained like a stinking pipe full of bacteria and stagnant water. Obstructionism has made it impossible for President Obama to lead in any meaningful way. The petulance, political grandstanding, and obfuscation that is a backdrop for the nihilistic political theater aimed at destroying one man, is destroying us all. This is unreasonable, and not to be suffered or pardoned.

Please tell your friends on Facebook, on MySpace, in your blog. We can’t count on the corporate controlled media who, with very few exceptions, have their head so far up their ass they are singing the “Star Spangled Banner” through their navel. People have to understand that it isn’t winning or losing in Washington that destroys a presidency; it is playing the game. The game needs to come to an end.

Long Ago

2011-11-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

I am sixty-two years old. I was part of the counter-culture generation. I was a hippie. People bantering that word about now as if it were a foul insult, never met or don’t remember the hippies.

We lived in converted Victorian houses chopped up into apartments with archways, huge windows full of plants, tapestries on the walls and incense in every corner. We drank herbal tea sweetened with honey, ate brown rice and listened to Bob Dylan. We talked and read politics – not to mention poetry, law and ethics – while the sunlight played over the faded colors on old floral rugs. We marched for peace, social equality and economic justice. We believed in those things; most of us still do. Sex, drugs and Rock N’ Roll notwithstanding, we were deadly serious in our purpose.

Those people who berate Occupy with the word hippie are doing them a great service without knowing it. Those people who insist that Occupy is an unfocused group of rabble-rousers would do well to remember that my generation of rabble-rousers stopped the War in Viet Nam.

Spare Me

2011-11-12T10:58:00.000-08:00

I hear a good deal about the persecution of Christians in this country. Since fundamentalist Christianity is attempting to insinuate itself as a state religion, in as much as men and women who may not follow the Christian doctrine are being expected to live by the tenets of that faith via laws, one has to wonder who is persecuting whom. In state houses all over this country, and in the US Congress one sees an increasing acceptance of religious interference in government. It is not only unconstitutional it is unacceptable. If saying that amounts to persecution, so be it.

Back to the Alleys

2011-11-08T12:24:00.000-08:00

Today, November 8, 2011, Mississippi’s draconian abortion law goes to referendum. If past it will make abortion illegal, many forms of birth control illegal, a woman’s right to save her own life during pregnancy questionable and miscarriage potentially grounds for investigation. Sleazy politicians, using women’s bodies for campaign fodder, are waiting. Bible thumping egotists, wishing to drag women back to the cave by their hair, are waiting. However, there is another group of people waiting. These folks were tossed out of medical or nursing school – if they ever got in – lost their licenses and right to practice. Their equipment is makeshift – up to and including the coat hanger. Their operating theaters are in the back of dirty garages or warehouses and unequipped for emergencies. They work in alleys. They work in the dark. They charge all the market will bear – they are entrepreneurs, after all. Standing and waiting they are like nothing so much as great vultures anticipating death. If I didn’t know better, I would think that they were organized and had a lobby. They wouldn’t be the first monsters to own part or all of our government.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

2011-11-07T11:28:00.000-08:00

I have never been able to fathom the world ending in fire and carnage. Perhaps that is because my Goddess is not in the world or of the world, She is the world. She is every spring leaf on every branch of every tree; every mother robin feeding her young; every snow-dressed mountain stream chasing itself through lacey whitewater; every sunset and sunrise. She is the moon and the oceans; the wind and the Earth itself. She is all seasons, all times and all of us. It is incomprehensible that my Goddess would commit suicide.

That is not to say that I don’t believe worlds end. Eras slip gradually into Jung’s collective unconscious never to be seen in the material world again. In great leaps of consciousness new worlds take their place. The Feudalism, church authority and despotism, religious persecution, Crusades and enforced ignorance of the common people that defined the Middle Ages commenced to wear away in the birth of the Renaissance – one driving force of which was the concept of Humanism.

An intellectual, secular and cultural movement based upon the values, behavior and characteristics believed to be the best part of the nature of human beings, independent of supernatural authority, Humanism was to form the bedrock of nearly two centuries worth of leaping achievements in art, science, politics and philosophy. If genius can be said to be fire, than this period burned with the heat of a thousand volcanoes.

By the time that the Renaissance slipped into Jung’s collective unconscious to be replaced by the Enlightenment, the Italian Masters – Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael to name but a few – had taught the world the beauty of chiaroscuro and form in dimension. The printing press had been invented by Gutenberg. Henry VIII, of lascivious and murderous memory, hard on the heels of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, had kicked the first giant hole in the Papacy’s iron wall of control over monarchs with his Act of Supremacy separating the Church of England from Rome. Galileo, father of modern astronomy, had discovered new worlds among the stars and was condemned by a nervous Catholic Church for his trouble. Dr. William Harvey had described the circulation of the blood. Shakespeare had written his “Hamlet” and Cervantes his “Don Quixote.”

Politically in 1558 a girl came to the throne of England, signaling the beginning of the Golden Age of the Renaissance. A heretical girl, the Pope called her, even as his successors would grudgingly call her the greatest monarch in Christendom. Elizabeth I would teach the world something about religious tolerance. She had both Catholics and Protestants among her subjects. A Protestant Queen, she did not object to the Catholics practicing in her England, saying that she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls. However, any attempt to come after her throne would bring swift and merciless retribution – as the Catholic Queen of Scotland learned. Further, if the fanatics on either side brought Holy War to her people she would destroy them all. Her thinking was that there was one God in England, the method of worship was trivial. Such is the wisdom of a great queen.

It is easy to imagine that a poor, oppressed serf from the Middle Ages dropped into the milieu of the Renaissance would have thought that their world had been destroyed as if by fire. However, the power of the monarchy, of Elizabeth, would have been familiar to them. For all her tolerance, distaste for war, love of peace and refusal to marry because she considered herself married to England and mother to her people, Elizabeth I was an absolute ruler. She had a parliament which she could have disbanded and beheaded at any time. She didn’t. Nonetheless, her word was unquestioned law for the 40 odd years that she reigned.

As the Renaissance in its turn gave birth to the Enlightenment the Catholic Church’s authoritarian power over the crowned heads was withering. Yet, religion still played an inordinate and deleterious role in the affairs of state. The absolutist reign of monarchy in England – then the richest, most powerful nation in the world – would end with James I, Elizabeth’s successor. However, the institution itself would limp along in Europe until the Czars fell in 1917.

The crumbling of the old guard – religious intrusion, absolute power vested in the hands of a very few – was a function, in many ways, of the deepening appreciation and understanding of Humanist ideals. If people were moral, reasonable, cogent and intelligent, independent of any higher power, then why were they not capable of self governance?

By the end of the Enlightenment, Adam Smith had published “The Wealth of Nations.” Voltaire had published “Candide,” and Kant his “Critique of Pure Reason.” Thanks to the printing press anyone with the price of a book, the ability and/or desire to read could open their mind. Mozart had composed Don Giovanni and the Requiem. The first volume of the Encyclopedia had been produced, and the American Revolution had been fought and won.

Politically, Jefferson and his contemporaries had given the world the Declaration of Independency – from England and monarchy. The Constitution, wonder of wonders, had synthesized a way to rid ourselves of meddlesome clergy. Freedom of religion was to prevent religious wars, many of which still raged during the Enlightenment. Separation of church and state was to mean no more sticky fingered clerics torturing nations and draining national treasuries, in the name of God of course. One must imagine that Elizabeth’s courtiers transported to Philadelphia in 1776 would have thought that their world had ended as if by fire.

It seems to me that we have, over the last three decades or so, walked back in time through the Enlightenment and past the Renaissance to a time when science is ignored if not hated; to a time when religion is not a matter of personal solace so much as an instrument of general aggravation, subjugation and torment; to a time when education of the people is regarded as an extravagant luxury, and the working person is valued lower than the work they render.

Corporations are our new found and supreme sovereigns. Their word is unquestioned law and written for them by their serfs and courtiers in our government. The ultra rich, rich and greedy politicos, who have long since forgotten who elected them, are the ruling aristocracy. It is the purpose of the working person to honor and support their divine right to rule. To paraphrase Elizabeth there is only one God in America, money, everything else is trivial. We don’t want to cut windows into people’s souls, we want to strip them bare and hold them for ransom.

I believe that we are racing toward the end of one world and the beginning of another. There are others who must believe it too, for their desperation to stop it grows daily. The people gathered out on the street under the Occupy banners seem to be prophets of that new world. With no violence and no chain of command they embody mission without malice, expression without ego, determination without destruction. They have reached back in time to grab the principles of Humanism by the hair and drag them into the second millennium. Perhaps their cooperation and cohesion is a prognostication of a way of living that takes those ideals to the next step in the evolutionary process.

I hear the criticism that the people of Occupy have no leaders and no clearly defined demands. What they have is a new way of thinking. No hierarchy means no monarchy of any kind. No prescribed agenda means the freedom to think, believe and create. Just as Michelangelo, Galileo, Shakespeare, Kant, Mozart and Jefferson thought, believed and created in their eras. This innovation in thought should not be held against them. We must not allow that. Particularly, considering the mess the old way of thinking has made of the only world we have to stand in.

One Purely Liberal Principle

2011-11-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

The American people are, in many ways, living in a drug induced coma. The drug is consumerism. The dealers in and pushers of the drug are predatory lenders, predatory banks, predatory credit card companies, predators on Wall Street and most despicable of all the predatory colleges and universities that pray on our children. We have been completely commercialized; deeply and digitally desensitized; persistently pimped and spiritually vandalized.

We are so far in debt as a people that we can’t tell our ass from our elbow. It is not because we feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick, or even because we condescendingly and graciously allow retirees to collect the Social Security they own. No, it is because the narcotic poisoning from which we suffer is one of the great driving engines of the unfettered, unrestrained, unregulated Free Market – which is getting freer every day. Laissez-faire Capitalism, in all its glory, elevates the liberty of the Market above the liberty of the individual.

While under the influence of a raging consumerism stupor, acquisition becomes a survival imperative and greed a catalytic mechanism. Thus, the Free Market enjoys its liberty while the individual stumbles blindly into the captivity of addiction.

One purely Liberal principle: our materialism is not going to save us. Only our humanity can save us, and that is not to be found on any market – free or otherwise.

The Nature of Things

2011-11-05T18:00:00.000-07:00

In the plant world, “Them that works, eats.” Their work is done in the light; when their light is obstructed they starve and die. A beautiful garden is predicated on the knowledge that every plant must have an equal opportunity to stand in the light they need. This is a perfect economic system. Somewhere between the shadows of greed-twisted Capitalism and the dark tyranny of power-distorted Socialism, there is a place in the light for each of us to stand and work.

The Boys in the Band and the President

2011-10-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of Mr. Obama’s policies. I voted for a Liberal president and got a Centrist. It’s my belief that people who spend too much time in the middle of the road get hit by trucks. He has been hit by several, some driven by advisors.

Nonetheless, I want to meet the person who can clarify how the head of Godfather’s Pizza is any more qualified to sit in the Oval Office than President Obama. I would like to know how anyone can think that the slippery Mr. Romney, sliding between positions like a whore between parked cars on Saturday night, demonstrates a level of integrity superior to Mr. Obama’s.

I need to understand why 234 gleeful executions and the creation of many hundreds of minimum wage jobs qualifies Governor Perry to be the Chief Executive. I am sure that the Governor and the employers in Texas think, or would like us to think, that they are doing the workers a great favor. However, you don’t raise a family very well on minimum wage. Hell, you don’t take care of yourself very well.

Even though Congressman Paul is the darling of the Libertarian rant, I don’t see how he is a greater champion of freedom than our sitting president. He wants government to die a quick and painless death, yet remain viable enough to invade every uterus, GYN office and OB/GYN surgical suite in America. I find Paul particularly irritating because it sounds to me like what he is saying is simply this, “The full rights and enfranchisements of Libertarianism are the exclusive privileges of men.” Well, good luck with all that dumpy.

The Republican field is like a day in the Denver Zoo, except that the animals there are usually beautiful and almost always endearing. You have to wonder if the Right isn’t suicidal relying as they appear to be on the same old slanders, misrepresentations, obfuscations and distortions. Flying in the face of public opinion on most major issues of the day, they just keep jacking their jaws. Hopefully next year will be the year that they learn the limits of propaganda. After all, when you have nothing to offer but blame the party line gets damned old.

When Ronald Reagan sent his assault on the Middle Class “trickling down,” Mr. Obama was in his twenties. When Clinton shoved NAFTA up the Working Class’ ass, Mr. Obama wasn’t in government. When Wyatt Earp and Darth Vader stormed the White House under the banner of the Neo-Conservatives and other assorted nut jobs, then bent the American people over a table, Senator Obama did not enter office until their second term. He was a Junior Senator, mark me, Junior – that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee. After three years in the White House, obstructionist Congress and Blue Dog, Fun House Democrats notwithstanding, he is being held responsible for every rape ever perpetrated against the American people and all the resulting social diseases.

I don’t know why any intelligent person wants that filthy Presidential gig – if you don’t think Obama is intelligent you’ve spent too much time on the pipe. We lay-out millions and millions and millions of dollars electing a guy president, only to lay-out millions and millions and millions more trying to drive him out of his bloody mind. I think that we should just announce to the world that Baseball is no longer our National Sport; Ceremonial Human Sacrifice has taken its place. The persistent, mind numbing sacrifice of the extraordinary for the mediocre, the luminous for the lackluster and the profound for the trivial.

Bring It

2011-09-24T08:53:00.000-07:00

“Christie for President,” only the Republican Right could think of such a thing. Gov. Christie’s approval rating has been falling steadily, particularly with women voters who he doesn’t seem to understand have the franchise, since he began to gut education. His disapproval rating is neck and neck with Obama’s. He got a bump from his handling of “Irene.” However, as we learned from Rudy “a subject, a verb and 9/11” Giuliani, that and a dime will get you a cup of coffee. Oh happy days, compared to the sleek, smooth, smart Mr. Obama, Christie will look like just what he is – a thug with all the sophistication and charm of a cop beating up a drunk, as Raymond Chandler once said.

Hello Alice

2011-09-15T10:02:00.000-07:00

I hate politics and most politicians. I follow them out of a sense of self preservation. Yet, I hate them because they ruin people’s lives, twist and distort reality to promote a world view that serves the few over the many.

Millions are out of work in this country through no fault of their own. They are treated like leaches when they need unemployment, while politicians inveigh for deregulation of the institutions where the fault lies – pleading job creation.

Home ownership has gone up in smoke – granted some people took out mortgages they couldn’t afford – that does not take the peddlers and frauds off the hook. Although, we hear very little about them these days.

Republicans, who can’t win a fair fight, go about gerrymandering districts, shutting poor people out of the voting booth, and changing the rules of the Electoral College. That is when they aren’t destroying unions.

Tea Party trolls sit in audiences applauding the death penalty and squealing, "let him die.” Just before they trot off to church and bath themselves in the salvation of a poor working man they would spit on today.

Children are slipping below the poverty line at a dreadful rate. Their health care is dissolving. Their education is evaporating into the old political payback system. Replace public education with a fee-for-service-free-market-fiasco, add a healthy dose of religion, and call it, “school choice.” Good for the kids, hell no. Good for wealthy, contributing special interests, you bet; much like privatizing the military and the prisons.

While all this misery boils up from the American People like poisonous fumes the politicians stand around on the Hill and in the White House pissing on each other’s shoes, or supporting lamp posts on the corners of Pennsylvania Avenue with their partisan slip showing, soliciting any lobbyist that will toss them a dime.

This is the state of American politics. These are our political leaders up to their tits in legalized corruption.

You are on the other side of the looking glass now, Alice. What are you going to do about it? What are any of us going to do about it?

Memories of 9/11

2011-09-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

Brad and I were in Washington D.C. ten years ago on this day. He had a training in Falls Church, and I decided to go sightseeing in the District. I had an appointment to tour the Capitol and was hoping to see Tom DeLay. They hadn’t arrested him yet, and I wanted to thumb my nose at him. Half way down the Mall I heard a sound. It was loud, everywhere and nowhere, an explosion but not an explosion. A minute or so later a guy came out of a building to my left.

“Someone flew a plane into the Pentagon,” he whispered.

“You nuts? The Pentagon is the most secure building in the world. That is like pissing on Zeus’ shoes.” I was a little harsher than I intended.

In exactly the same tone and exactly the same words he repeated, “Someone flew a plane into the Pentagon.” He walked away.

I knew I had better get back to Falls Church – Papa would be worried. I went to several Metro Stations that were closed before I boarded a train that let me off about 10 miles from my destination. Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, as Tennessee Williams said, I got a lift.

My dear husband was standing on the portico in front of our hotel. He was smoking. Brad is cardiac and has no business smoking. In my befuddlement I start toward him to raise hell. As I reached him, he took hold of my hand and said with tears in his eyes, “I thought I had lost you. We heard the Capitol was hit.”

“No,” I said. “Just the Pentagon.”

“Barbara, the Trade Towers are down in New York.”

“What, they just laid down?”

He turned and led me into the bar where a number of people gathered around a big screen T.V. looking at the ash and rubble which had once been one of the jewels in New York’s crown. I ordered a double bourbon - neat. I don’t drink, so I gave it to the guy next to me and told him to drink it for me. He did. He’d had several.

I bought a package of smokes and went outside to sit on a bench near the door. The color of the sky, of the trees and flowers had muted, gone flat and surreal like the world of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone or an Ingmar Bergman film. Now and then, and particularly on this day, those colors return like the lingering heartache for a lost loved one.

Out of the Bowels of History

2011-09-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

It has long been customary in American politics to impersonate not Jefferson, or Lincoln, or Roosevelt, but rather the itinerant peddlers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. These people roamed the country in wagons selling “patented medicines” that were collectively known as Snake Oil. A growing and organizing medical community along with a burgeoning public health system eventually put them out of business, since their concoctions were generally useless and often dangerous.

Their modern day counterparts in the body politic are not so easy to contain since the Snake Oil they are peddling – patriotism, God, guns and gluttony – are not tangible. Wrapped in the red, white and blue, thumping the Bible and screaming about the evil government while sucking off its tit, these swindlers are dismantling or poisoning Democracy in the same way the scammers of the previous two centuries deceived or poisoned an unsuspecting and naïve populace.

By far the most dangerous of these con artists is the politician who ruthlessly flogs religion. As in the case of the old remedies, many alcohol based, the hooks in the religion scam are solace and immortality. People terrified of being alone in the universe, of their extinction after death, of simply living a pointless life without miracles, magic and meaning, stumble up to the wagon of any two-for-a-nickel Elmer Gantry and lay down their money, political allegiance, free will and common sense for an empty bottle labeled hope.

The most insidious, the most pernicious aspect of this idiocy is that in order for the God of the medicine wagon to be real everyone must follow Him or at least the tenets of the religion He represents. Even though faith cannot be regulated or spirituality mandated. Thus, there will be no abortion; no gay marriage; no labor unions since God is a free market aficionado. Climate change is a lie because man is powerless to affect the earth. Evolution is a perjury, and only Creationism can be taught in the schools. God is an American, and we can kill anyone we like. All of this would become the moral imperative of any ship of state unfortunate enough to find a Perry, Bachmann or Palin at the helm through the grace of the God they have promulgated and the infinite dependency of their followers.

Just as the peddlers who made their elixir in the back of a wagon seldom drank it, the God of the extremists is a tool and not an article of faith. I have to believe this, otherwise why would self professed Christians follow an agenda anathema to the teachings of Christ? As did the power lusting popes who used scripture to attempt to control the known world via devout monarchs; so too with the land grabbing abbots and bishops bent upon amassing wealth on the foundation of holy writ. Murderous, crusading kings slaughtering in the cause of the Almighty and at will set the standard for all military madmen. The inquisitors and Witch hunters were simply predatory thieves in the name of God. All of their shadows are falling across the land today, rising out of the darkness of history like a foul stench. To see many modern politicians without their historical antecedents is becoming more and more difficult because as Sherlock Holmes once said, “The parallel is exact.”

Even though religion scamming politicians have always been with us, today their resources are vast and their ability to reach many millions of people devastating. Now more than ever, their masks must be stripped away. They must be put back in their box and relegated to the fringe where they belong. This is the civilian work of people like Reverend Weldon Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance who have grown disgusted with the perversion of the best of their faith to serve the worst of motives.

We will never accomplish the unmasking of these holier-than-thou, right wing apparatchiks with the soft phrases and sweet words of an Obama speech. The maddening insistence by this president that bipartisanship can be achieved with religion pandering fanatics on the right is analogous to Elliot Ness attempting to attain a bipartisan ceasefire with Al Capone on the streets of Chicago. They had nothing on which to base an agreement. Capone’s God was crime; his savoir was money. Yet, this most brutal mobster in the history of American lawlessness took time out from bootlegging, prostitution and staging massacres to feed people during the Depression which is more than I can say for many of our “Godly” leaders in Congress then or now.

If Obama hasn’t the chutzpa to face down these new age scoundrels then he must step aside and allow Biden, Brown, Sanders, Franks or Grayson to help us all do it. This is a matter of National Security, for the cabal on the right, hiding behind the Bible and spewing greed like a faucet churning out filthy water, will surely destroy our way of life.

Good Luck With All That

2011-08-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

This weekend I was reintroduced to the Rahm Emanuel School of Chicago Style Party Politics. That is to say, anyone who doesn’t follow the leader blindly, mouth the party line unthinkingly will be stood up against the proverbial wall and figuratively shot. I don’t know when the Democratic Party lost sight of the sanctity of free speech, particularly political speech, but then they have lost sight of so many things. I don’t know when the Democratic Party forgot that free thinking is a moral imperative in a free society. I don’t know when the party of Franklin, John and my beloved Bobby decided that the best way to win the war is to impersonate the god-damned enemy with all the vitriol, slander and cruelty that implies – questioning the loyalties, commitment and honor of people who disagree as if any s.o.b. had the right. I do know that I am sick of the Democratic Party. They look just like the Republican Party – pandering to special interests and whoring for votes. Along with many other Liberals of my acquaintance I have left the party and changed my affiliation to Independent. There is no place in the party for people like me anymore. Contrary to the blather in the media, all Independents are not centrists. Notwithstanding that same blather about the orgasmic joy of the center, one must ask the question: the center of what? If anyone bothers to read this please don’t write back and ask me if I am supporting Romney. The question is stupid on its face, and I am more than a little tired of the implication that I am a collaborator.

Earth to Working-Class-Republican Voters in Wisconsin. Come in Wisconsin.

2011-08-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

What bloody percentage can Middle Class people see in voting for Republicans? Why would those people consider it in their best interests to return a codependent enabler like Alberta Darling - whose only talent appears to be in knowing what to kiss and when - to the state Senate? Can these workers be delusional enough to think that when Field Marshall Walker finishes with the unions he won't begin to diminish their prospects? It is a true thing that masters seldom invite servants to take a place at the table, no matter how loyal the servant has been.

Delusion is rampant today. Take the media for instance. Every large grin, small brain pundit on cable has been squealing about Labor's great loss last night. Really? Perhaps the idiots didn't pull all the news up on the wire service. The Democrats gained two seats last night after retaining a seat in an earlier recall election and with two elections coming up next week in fairly safe districts.

Labor got two-thirds of what they wanted. In the bargain taking one-third of what the Republicans had and reducing their majority to one vote. It was a great night because meaningful change often comes in increments. The Middle Class struck a blow for fairness last night. There are at least two Republicans in Wisconsin today who wish they had never screwed with us.

Children, Crazies and Cowards

2011-08-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Today while various members of Congress go scurrying about like rabid squirrels trying to whip up votes for the debt ceiling compromise, I am more than a little apprehensive about what these weird brothers and sisters are about to do to this country.

A trillion or more dollars in cuts, with more to come, is not the prescription that economists of any political bent recommend for a struggling economy. In 1937 President Roosevelt was advised to make spending cuts as America recovered from the Great Depression. In mid-1937 the economy declined sharply. During a thirteen month period through much of 1938 the unemployment rate jumped from 14.3% to 19.0%. Today in addition to these penny-pinching cuts, there is no revenue engendering mechanism either in terms of tax reform or job creation to help reduce the deficit – if that is what they are really trying to achieve.

Between the infantile and moronic mantra of the Right, cut spending/no new taxes, and the impotent, faint hearted and posturing leadership of the Left, the majesty of Liberal values is sliding down the toilet. These are values such as: a belief in social and economic justice; a belief in the social safety net; a belief that all people have a right to a living wage, a home, food, health care and education.

I realize that Liberals are out of fashion - so out of fashion in fact that many of us hide behind the alias, Progressive which I don't use myself. Out of fashion or no, we still have a right to our cherished philosophy and a right to expect a president who ran on that philosophy to respect, if not cherish, it as well.
In my estimation, President Obama is not a Liberal, not a Democrat. He is, as Ezra Klein said, a moderate Republican. He has been telling the Left to sit down and shut the fuck up for three years. All the while moving farther and farther Right. As if snuggling up to John Boehner would make the 86 clinically insane tea baggers in the Republican House like him. Call me out of fashion, out of date, out of touch. Call me stupid – nobody has ever dared but hey, give it a shot – the excuses for this president are wearing thin. The idea that anyone who is losing or has lost faith in him is somehow betraying a Liberalism he does not appear to share is worn-out. People keep saying that we will have a Republican president if he doesn’t win. We have a Republican president now. It is just a matter of degree.

Thoughts on the Eve of the Fourth of July

2011-07-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

My grandmother believed as I do that St. Francis of Assisi – featured above – was an incarnation of the Horned God Cernunnos – the Celtic Lord of the Wild Places. The early Christians reviled Him as a symbol of the devil, but to us He is a symbol of fertility and love of the Earth and Her children. Even though Francis took the cowl and walked the path of the monk his love of our planet and all creatures on it expresses a Pagan’s soul.
In my tradition the God is not the equal of the Goddess. He is Her Son and consort, all power comes from Her. The Wiccans believe in the duality of the God and Goddess, and while this belief is both beautiful and profound it has no spiritual timbre for me. The idea that a Wiccan would condemn me or I them for what we believe is unthinkable. Don’t get me wrong there are jackasses in all faiths. However, by in large, it is the Pagan way to understand that the Goddess shows us each a different light, and we must follow that light toward our destiny. It is all we can do – it is all we have a right to do. Thus for us to engage in murder, mayhem or malicious treatment of another whose belief differs from ours is forbidden in the strongest possible way.
Like Frances we try to live with gentleness, love and tolerance toward all. Like Frances we are living in the Dark Ages. Heresy, a real or perceived refusal to accept Christian doctrine, deprived many of my maternal ancestors of their life at the stake during the first Dark Ages. The new heresy of today, a real or perceived refusal to accept a modern day perversion of Christian doctrine and/or to live according to certain restrictive standards, threatens to relegate a large number of people to the status of second class citizen by depriving them of their Civil Rights.
This has nothing to do with Marriage Equality – certainly not abortion since we are content to let children starve in this country – or any of the other sham social issues of the so-called Culture Wars. The real problem here is the frightened, ignorant people who must shove their God down the throats of others because He only appears in crowds. These individuals are incapable of waging a crusade. They are pawns. Like the soldier pawns of the first crusades they are being directed by the rich and the powerful bent upon becoming richer and more powerful. In Frances’ day it was the abbots, the bishops, the popes, the kings and the warlords. Today it is the corporatists, the free market pirates, the corrupt politicans and the malignant capitalists. They are all on the same line, centuries notwithstanding.
I am the last of my bloodline and can trace the Old Faith back in ribbons of glory through the Burning Times, the persecutions and on to be lost in the mists of antiquity. I do not celebrate secular holidays – that is my faith, and my faith is my freedom which has nothing to do with the founding of nations. To all of you who will be celebrating the 4th tomorrow with hot dogs, the smiles of children and fireworks in the cool of the evening I wish you a happy holiday and much happiness on the path before you. There is an Enlightenment up ahead, and this Dark Age will fade into history as its predecessor did long ago.

Give Me a Damn Break

2011-06-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

I don’t vote for Popes. I don’t vote for Saints. I don’t vote for ethereal, mindless demigods with a pronounced inability to mind their own business. I vote for Democrats when they stand four-square on the Democratic platform. That platform used to be firmly grounded in the idea of a social conscience. The God of the Christians said it best, "Whatever you do for the least of them you do for me."

The Republicans and their “Christian Base” long ago gave up the charity, humility and decency that Christ spoke of in favor of the symbolic stoning, judgment passing and ritualized hate that He abhorred. The Democrats on the other hand seemed to have lost their taste for the social and economic justice that He appears, at least to this Pagan, to represent.

They are terrified of the word that used to identify the best of us - Liberal. Even more terrified are they at the possibility of being perceived by the Republicans and their “Christian Base” as doing for the least of us. For the Republicans have hung the word Socialism on the best wisdom of the religion they have usurped, and the Democrats hide from that word like hookers hiding from the Vice Squad on Saturday night.

It takes courage to speak truth to power. It takes dedication to fight money armed only with morality. I no longer believe that the Democrats have either, and I grow tired of spinelessness passing for compromise. I grow tired of moral cowardice passing for righteousness. I grow tired of the double-speak and slide-of-hand that passes for accountability. Mostly, I grow tired of being told that if my Democratic President or my Democratic Party fail to behave like Democrats it is my fault for noticing.

I am sixty-one years old and have followed the Liberal ideal all of my life. I come from good Liberal stock. My father was first generation Italian, working poor. My mother was Irish, working poor. They were union organizers. I am proud to say that I am a child of the ‘60s. I went to college at a time when a premium was placed on the intellectual life and the activist lifestyle. At my age and level of commitment I don’t whine. I shout. Crawl out from under your rock, pull your head out of your ass and act like Democrats – Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson Democrats! If you are Democrats.

A Day in Stupidville

2011-06-10T15:31:00.000-07:00

We no longer have a body politic in this country. We have a bloody circus. There are lions and lion tamers, clowns and hawkers, freaks and trapeze artists flying high above reality with nothing but a thin net of lies below. Dogs dance, horses prance and monkeys chatter throwing peanuts at the crowd. We have become Barnum’s quip – the one that is born every day.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a man – if you can call it a conversation – in which I quickly realized that his idea of common cause, of finding the middle ground was to simply scare hell out of me and then engage in verbal battery. I am old now and after having seen many scary things in my life I don’t scare easily anymore. My vocabulary is six or seven times the size of his so it was difficult for him to land a punch. Finally, in desperation he lobbed the only insult he had left in his arsenal. He informed me that I am a far left Liberal. Well gee sparky, da-ya-think? That is when I realized that I was talking to an imbecile, and that I was an even bigger imbecile for talking to him. But, if we are all imbeciles and can’t talk to one another how do we solve our big, ugly, mutant problems?

Anthony Weiner’s penis is not one of those problems – it is a diversion. Don’t get me wrong his behavior was asinine. When Teddy Kennedy died several people had to pick up his mantel – it was too heavy for any individual. The raging Liberal, Anthony Weiner was one of those people. I did not expect him to drape it over the end of his organ, sending that image slip-sliding down the electron highway to Internet immortality. Still, Anthony Weiner’s penis is not our problem, and we are drowning in diversions.

It has been coming for a very long time in a vague and nebulous way. Yesterday’s trip to Stupidville – a place I know but slenderly as the Bard said – gave it form. I am losing my faith in humanity and in happy endings. I am having trouble believing in the a priory principles of right and wrong, honor and dignity, justice and truth. I don’t know how to be a Liberal without them.

Plain English

2011-05-15T12:26:00.000-07:00

This country suffers from a chronic, degenerative spiritual disease. Like cancer it has a first cause and then a series of symptoms. In particular the symptoms are hate, narcissism, cruelty, bigotry, deceit, fraud, misrepresentation and elitism. The first cause is greed. I believe without exception that every single one of these symptoms is born of a need to exploit and manipulate for gain. How else can you explain people on the right insisting that Christ was a Free Market Profiteer? That he did not believe in helping the poor, the outcasts and the sick.

Cancer is caused by a cellar disruption of one kind or another. Greed is the result of obsession. I once had a man tell me that he had a right to be greedy in America. I answered that he could exercise his right providing he did not trash my life or my planet. He looked at me like I was out of my mind. That’s when I got it – the man was a bloody junkie. The more greed gets, the more it wants. The more it has, the more it needs. Heroin has a similar effect on people. After the first blissful pop the heroin addict is on the same treadmill – the more they get, the more they want. The more they have, the more they need. As Sherlock Holmes said, “The parallel is exact.” There is only one way off the treadmill, save death, you give up the Jones.

Considering the fact that heroin addicts are primarily engaged in killing themselves, but greed addicts are killing the world we might be much better off with heroin users in Congress and heading corporations. It is appalling and despicable that we are in the hands of lawmakers sick with greed and gluttonous corporations that daily devour our economic freedom only to crap out public policy that works for them alone.

I am told that greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Pagans don’t believe much in sin. We believe in stupid, and greed is stupid. I am not talking about wanting to earn a decent living and provide for your children. I am talking about taking one-half out of the middle to earn a gargantuan living while leaving little or nothing for anyone else. Even though greed is supposed to be a sin, in this most Christian of all countries it is venerated, extolled and worshiped as a cardinal virtue. Like a heroin addict who has five-thousand reasons why they can’t get off the needle, the greedy in this country have five-thousand and one reasons why greed is a good thing. It keeps the Free Market running, creates jobs, gives us the edge internationally, provides incentive for entrepreneurs, whitens our teeth and will replace Viagra.

I am a student of the English language. I have studied it all of my life from its grammar to its syntax to its literature to my beloved Shakespeare. I am disgusted and horrified with the fog of flimflam and trickery that passes for civil discourse in our society. English is a powerful and beautiful instrument that can in its plainest and most unadulterated form sweep away cobwebs and build bridges all in the same moment. It is time that we begin to use it the way it was designed to be used – to make clear our world view and our personal reality unambiguous and succinct. What follows is plain English.

Greed is not good. Whether you view it as a sin or just stupid, it is not good. It destroys lives. It hurts people. No matter what some two-for-a-nickel-Elmer Gantry-sleazy-politician or carnivorous corporate executive tells us, it is not a virtue. Greed is killing this Planet and her children. There is such a thing as right and wrong. Profit cannot make wrong right.

In many religious traditions, including mine, Christ is the bringer of compassion not commerce. To an outsider it seems that he is being crucified all over again by people who use the Bible like a bludgeon and his teachings to shackle millions. He has been spun, sold, bought, bartered and bargained. He is big business and good politics. He is a curtain of righteousness for the wicked to hide behind. He is, in point of fact, everything but what he was a good and decent man who healed bodies and souls. I won’t speak to his divinity because I am not a believer. I will say this, it is time for Christians of good faith and conscious to stand up and fight back openly and loudly and stop letting the children of Mammon costumed as holy warriors hijack and maim their religion. Pagans have been doing it for centuries. We’ll be glad to give them some pointers.

This assertion that greed makes holy the acquisition of wealth is putrid. No face of any Deity is seen on U.S. currency, unless you consider the eye of Horus, which the Christians call the eye of Providence. It is the All Seeing Eye. It could be the eye of Jehovah, or Osiris I suppose. Then again it might be the eye of the Security and Exchange Commission, or even Ralph Nader. Whoever is watching they haven’t been watching very well. It is up to us to cure our disease and realize that wealth is not the only indicator of success – it isn’t even the most important. Money is certainly not more valuable than people or than the Earth. It is not more precious than integrity, dignity or veracity. Faith for hire is no faith at all. Anyone who doesn’t understand these principles should check into rehab like any other junkie – and quickly.

Climate Change

2011-05-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

I give you Virginia Foxx, North Carolina, 5th District, I.Q. two points above plant life. This creature vehemently denies the phenomenon of climate change, but then again she hates science like so many members of her cabal. I have come to suspect that their distrust of all things scientific stems from a primordial stupidity. That is to say that they are genetically too thick to understand anything other than their own self-interest.

I don’t pretend to clearly understand aberrations like Virginia Foxx or how she got into office. What I do understand is air, wind, sun, soil and water. I am a master gardener. It is May, but the air is not May air - cool and sweet. It is Rocky Mountain cold like the end of November. The sun is weak, barely able to compete with the intermittent heavy clouds. A furious wind gusts from cold to frigid. I stood in my tulip bed this afternoon and watched ice crystals scatter across the ground. Ice crystals - not the soft, wet snow of May. I am Witch. The practice of the Craft of the Wise goes back in my maternal line farther than anyone can remember. I know the Earth. She is a friend of mine. I know the air, the sun and the water as well as I know the touch of my husband’s hand. Something is wrong, very wrong. So, who the hell do we see about that, Virginia?

I Dissent

2011-05-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

During the Bush Administration, just following 9/11 and beyond, it was proffered and understood by the Republicans that anyone who questioned the president was engaged in treason. Anyone who doubted the wisdom of one of his policies was aiding and abetting the terrorists. The Left gave them hell for this nonsense – as well we should. It seems now, however, that some Lefties are engaged in pretty much the same thing. This is extremely disturbing to me.

I have found while writing online that anyone who questions Mr. Obama runs the risk of being accused of serving the Rightwing agenda at best and/or racism in the worst case scenario. When a Liberal questions the policy of keeping Gitmo open they are whining. When a skunk like Rahm Emanuel tells the Liberal base to sit down and shut up, or go “F” themselves, and the President does and says nothing, anyone who notices is somehow disloyal.

My loyalty is to Liberalism. I grew up in the world of Kennedy. My parents were working people and union organizers. We didn’t have much, but we had our principles and our principles were Liberal. I have taken my faith in the Liberal cause to the streets, to jail, to the courts and once or twice to the Emergency Room. I have paid my dues. I will not be expected to forfeit the doctrine I have held and cherished all of my life for any politician. I wouldn’t have done it for Bobby Kennedy who I worshipped. When President Obama supports Liberal policies, I support President Obama. When he does not, I study, read and think. Then I speak out. That is my right. I have found that people who do the most squealing about their free political speech are only too happy to object to mine. That appears to be a bipartisan trait.

The idea that disagreement with the policies of President Obama constitutes latent conservative leanings, childish temper or hatred for the color of the man's skin is on its face dim-witted. It is an insult to both the accuser and the accused. Do I respect Mr. Obama? Yes, I do. Am I proud of him and his election? Yes, I am. Do I think that he deserves better treatment and protection? I do. Do I or will I blindly agree with everything he says and does? I most definitely, emphatically, indubitably do and will not. I reserve the privilege to exercise the sacred Right to Dissent.

How the Randites Run

2011-04-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

Paul Ryan is a Randite. Alan Greenspan was a Randite. Many members of the rightwing Conservative and Tea Party Caucus are Randites. That is to say that they subscribe to the ideas of an American novelist, Ayn Rand. Her philosophy known as Objectivism is based largely on selfishness, greed, egotism and an unwillingness to see all human beings as equal and worthy.

I was required to read Rand in college. In the manner of all fine educators, a very liberal Jesuit priest who detested her ideas insisted that her literary style was worthy of study. The book he assigned was the “Fountainhead” about an architect who blows up a housing development for the poor because it hasn’t been built to his aesthetic specifications.

Some years later I read Rand’s opus, “Atlas Shrugged.” I had to disagree with Father. Her style was stilted, her use of the conventions of writing juvenile. Now, I am a Shakespearian and my standards are high, but still in all it seemed to me that she used the English language as nothing more than a battering ram to force her philosophy into print. As a statement of that philosophy let me quote John Galt, her hero in “Atlas Shrugged.”

“In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains.”

My sister tells me that she believes that John Galt is a metaphor for all people trying to “shrug” off an oppressive system. I disagree. I think he is a metaphor for how to establish one. He speaks of the top of the pyramid which he must know cannot exist without a base. Rand had to understand that an elitist class is meaningless without a lower class. When she speaks of “the man at the bottom” contributing nothing she is saying in essence that the work of the ordinary man or woman has no value.

In large part Ayn Rand’s disciples are running the House of Representatives. The spawn of this malignant, twisted, cruel, sadistic harpy are crafting budgets, setting social policy and dismantling institutions such as education and Medicare. Not a single man or women now serving as Rand’s surrogate could have won their election if they have laid out her Objectivism in their party’s platform, and they know it.

One other thing, Ayn Rand detested religion. She considered blind faith in anything that could not be proven to be detrimental to life because it contradicts reason. This is how some so-called Christians can justify stealing from the poor. They are not Christians, and when they bow their head in prayer or wax righteous about abortion, gay marriage, or school prayer they expect to get something out of it other than salvation.

The People's Budget

2011-04-14T09:16:00.000-07:00

This is a very important link. I love this guy. This is the most intelligent thing that I have heard since this whole budget sham heated up. Please call your congressman or woman and endorse this. Call the Republicans in your area too, they can't read so don't bother to write.

http://grijalva.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=13&parentid=5§iontree=5%2C13&itemid=908

So Long

2011-03-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

Elizabeth Taylor died today. Many women of my generation considered her to be the most beautiful woman who ever lived. With her violet eyes, double thick lashes, jet black hair, perfect skin and at one time perfect figure, she held the Twentieth Century mesmerized as she lived a creative life of independence, passion and joy on her own terms. Taylor wasn’t like her colleagues – Monroe, Mansfield, Dee – she was not a celluloid reflection trying to live in the real world. She was a whole person and a damn serious actress with three academy award nominations and two academy awards, not to mention the BAFTA and the Golden Globe to prove it.

This morning I was watching some puppy on MSNBC attempting to report the news and talking about Taylor. He did not mention her humanitarian work, academy and other awards, or her great movies like "Butterfield 8" and "Cleopatra," but by the Goddess he was quick to mention her prescription drug and alcohol abuse which took place years and years ago.

We are people who love to watch our fellow humans twist on the noose of humiliation. We are sadistic and petty little voyeurs with a taste for the salacious. It seems to make us feel better to know that someone else is miserable and in peril. The media and our political culture feed this for monetary gain and political advantage. They don’t much give a damn what they say about anybody. What isn’t covered by Freedom of the Press is covered by Freedom of Speech and the beat goes on. So, praise God and pass the Inquirer, Taylor is dead and that ought to give some of us fresh meat for many a day.

The Bad Old Days

2011-03-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

John Boehner is a pig. Eric Cantor is a pig. In fact all of the Republican House members are pigs. They go oinking through the Halls of Congress trying to turn back the clock on Women’s Rights. However, the real criminals are the women who enable them – like Michele Bachman and Virginia Foxx. These two eunuchs are content to consign American women to the 1950’s. They must not think that this will ever affect them, their daughters or granddaughters. They must not realize that if it were 1950 neither of them would be in office. Clearly, they don’t understand that they are not just threatening the rights of women, they are threatening their dignity.

Those of us who remember the 50’s look back on a time when women were little more than chattel. They were owned body and soul by the significant men in their families; their work undervalued, their appearance overvalued, their opinions dismissed, their economic security doled out to them in nickels and dimes, their obedience compelled. In other words, they were children. This regression on the part of our rightwing lawmakers isn’t just about the availability of safe abortions or equal pay for equal work. It is about returning to a toxic and pervasive social paradigm that rendered half the human race powerless and subservient.

Whenever I think of the 1950’s I think of the actress Sandra Dee. She was the preferred feminine image of the day – a soft, fluffy kitten with a lovely face and body and a sweet willingness to please. Indeed, she was a perpetual child, just what the era demanded, and on some level expected to remain sixteen for the rest of her life. When she married, had a child of her own and was deemed more or less past her prime as an actress it must have been horrific for her. You see the kitten never became a cat with proper claws. Dee began to drink, and her drinking ruined her marriage. After her husband left, her drinking escalated. When he died in the early seventies she sunk into chronic alcoholism. I have to wonder if in her isolation and drunkenness she ever came to realize the madness of a world that demanded women view themselves exclusively through the eyes of other people.

The tragedy of Sandra Dee is not unique. It is in part the product of stereotyping, marginalizing, forcing people to draw their self-image from someone else’s consciousness. This can only be done to people who don’t enjoy parity in a society. The Suffragettes gave us the vote. The Feminists gave us access to our souls and the right to define our future on our own terms. Sandra Dee didn’t have these things – most women didn’t in the 50’s.

The feminist reality and the rights of women were hard won by those of us who fought the war. I am old now and battle scared. Like a lot of people who have many fewer years to live then they have lived I see with precision the tapestry of existence. If one thread is cut in the weave all the others are weakened accordingly. If the rights of Labor are compromised in Wisconsin, then Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, the Rights of Gay and Lesbian People grow systemically fragile in turn. I doubt that the myopic pigs, criminals and their assorted appendages around the country have a clue nor give a damn what they are doing when they disturb the delicate fabric of Freedom that so many men and women have stitch together. Just as Bachmann and Foxx haven’t a clue nor give a damn when they aid their male colleagues in forcing women back to a time of physical, intellectual and spiritual oppression.

Elected officials of either party who are afflicted with this level of stupidity or apathy aren’t fit to govern. Not only are they unworthy of representing a free people in a free state, but they are to our very democracy as AIDS is to the human lymphatic system.

The rose featured above is “Rainbows End.” She is a miniature landscape rose that glows golden in the sunlight. I put it here in honor of Sandra Dee and all the women whose chains prevented them from following their rainbow to its end.

The Whoring of America

2011-03-09T13:24:00.000-08:00

Henry James wrote: “We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task …” James was speaking of art, but he could have been speaking of anything today. We are all living in the New Dark Ages, doing what we can, giving what we have, our passion is the truth and finding it is our task. By the Goddess it is not easy. Between the media gone round the bend on trivia - Sheen, Lohan, blah, blah, blah - and a political establishment with a greater than ever vested interest in keeping the American People in the dark, it seems that the Dark Ages have come back around to collect us with all the trappings of greed, tyranny, scapegoating, religious zealotry and repression aimed at a Working Class some of whom are only too willing to accept it.

Now contrary to the opinion of some of my former nursing students, I was not present for the first Dark Ages. So I have no personal knowledge of the political or economic climate. However, I have a pretty good idea of what is going on today. Our political institutions have become conclaves of whores. I am not talking about prostitutes; they work for a living – no matter how shabby or pathetic that living might be. Our politicians on the other hand peddle their influence, power, principles and integrity so they won’t have to work at all and can serve for life. Unfortunately this is a bipartisan occupation and is prevalent in all the halls of power across the country. Accordingly our body politic is always open for business. They sell women’s rights, civil rights, worker’s rights, children’s rights. They sell God. That’s a big one; unless it is the God of the Muslims then they sell hate, bigotry, cruelty and a free flowing fear and stupidity. It is past time that we began to call these people what they are. They are not leaders, public servants, elected representatives, men and women of the people, they are WHORES.

Of course all of this is largely facilitated by our nearly brain dead media that itself is open for business 24/7 and when not selling nonsense, tomfoolery, and celebrity flimflam is out-and-out lying. Take for instance this morning. I was listening to MSNBC (although I am beginning to wonder why anymore) and a man who calls himselve a White House correspondent, told a young anchor man that there had not been a revolution in this country since the Republicans took the House. Giving the man the benefit of the doubt perhaps he can’t spell Wisconsin or has never seen a map of the United States. Then again it could be that he has spent so much time in the Beltway that his cerebral cortex has shrunk. In any case, I looked everywhere for this man – Twitter, MSNBC, Google, Yahoo. I wanted to enlighten him; I couldn’t find him. Maybe there is a reason he hides.

A Glimpse into the Shadows

2011-03-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

When did our public servants, our elected officials, become our superiors? When did our legislators, supposedly accountable to the electorate, become ruling nobility with the same contempt for the working men and women who put them in office as Louie XVI’s court had for the French peasantry of his day? This isn’t just about the moral invalids in the Republican held U.S. House, but about governors and state and municipal leaders. It is the modus operandi of the New Right to denigrate and demonize the American people - particularly the Working Middle Class and their children, the Poor and their children, the Elderly, the Disabled, the Unemployed, Wounded Veterans and Women of almost every class. We are slobs, parasites and destroyers of the American Dream. What they can’t or won’t do for themselves they fear-trip their troglodytes into doing for them – example, the Tea Party mess during the health care debate. They project a belief that as members of a newly minted aristocracy they will never have to face us at the ballot box again.

There can be no question that a perverse calculus is at work - a Machiavellian and highly organized movement designed and driven by a first-rate mind. I believe there is a single intelligence orchestrating all of this because of the precision and seamlessness of the process we are seeing. I believe it is a man’s intellect owing to the demonstrated fact that from John Boehner to the most obscure Republican city council person in the smallest city in America these people, male and female, suffer from advanced misogyny and profound penis envy.

It is not the brainpower of that bloated buffoon in New Jersey or the Dog Faced Boy in Wisconsin. It isn’t the mental apparatus of the Koch brothers at play – they are bankers, appendages like the Tea Party Movement which couldn’t organize a trip to the toilet without their money. It is inconceivable that this acuity and mental power could belong to one of the aphid-like sub-literates who infest the legislative process across this land with an overwhelming need to see women die at the hands of butcher abortionists while they nonchalantly promote gun violence through countless sins of legislative omission. All of this is diversion, akin to several shows going on simultaneously under one of P.T. Barnum’s Big Tops. The ringmaster, the man who would be king draws back and lurks in the darkness like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. He may be hidden away on Wall Street or in some great corporation. Perhaps he is buried deep in the Republican Party Machine. Of one thing I am certain – we have never seen him.

Call me paranoid or just plain crazy, but this is the only explanation that I can find for how every political rummy, dimwit, nimrod, dull knife and numb nuts in the Republican Party got into office and is pursuing a flawless agenda that none of them are smart enough to conceive, direct or pursue on their own. This is the only explanation I can find for why these same politicians spit in the face of their voters at every possible opportunity showing no respect for our franchise or power. Do they anticipate a time when we will have neither, or do they just think, à la Bush, that this is the best path to reelection because reminiscent of physically abused children we will come to protect our abusers out of terror?

In the works of Shakespeare three of his darkest plays involve agents plotting behind the scenes. The three Witch in Macbeth, Iago in Othello and of course the ghost in Hamlet. Nefarious or not their machinations enable total destruction. The moral of these brooding tales is wake the hell up. Had Macbeth heeded the warnings of the three Witches, had Othello paid more attention to Iago’s behavior, had Hamlet made a damn decision of his own one way or the other, these anecdotes would have ended very differently.

The American people must wake up. The warnings are all around us. The behavior of our so-called leaders is increasingly deviant, arrogantly corrupt and growing more threatening every day. The American people need to make a decision about what is important to them – the future of our government and country or J Lo’s underwear, the Super Bowl and our innumerable toys? The question becomes while we are watching the celebrity de jour biodegrade what pseudo patriot, false prophet or budding dictator dismantles our liberties behind our back?

What the Bloody Hell is Going on in This Country

2011-02-17T14:08:00.000-08:00

The toads in Washington talk about entitlement reform as if it will solve our fiscal problems. It will not, not even close. Thugs like Walker in Wisconsin or Christie in New Jersey insist that crippling the public employees’ unions will solve their state budget shortfalls. It will not, not even close. Years and years of government mismanagement, corruption and stupidity in addition to years and years of criminal behavior, malfeasance and unprecedented greed on Wall Street has brought this country to its knees. After this orgy of amoral behavior the Middle Class, one of the only groups that didn’t benefit from it, is being punished and expected to pick up the tab.

CNN has not covered the workers struggle in Wisconsin at all, that I can tell. MSNBC has ignored the protests except for Maddow and Schultz who have covered them fairly extensively. I must admit that the mealy-mouthed-sorta-kinda-wanta-be journalist Chris Jansening gave the demonstrators a nod this morning saying that about one thousand people were on the street. There are thousands on the streets in Wisconsin. Fox is insisting that the demonstrators have been infiltrated by Muslim radicals - by the Goddess I wish someone would write them some new material.

Every time a member of the Tea Party breaks wind four thousand, six hundred and twenty cameras are on him. To paraphrase the Bard, the media hangs about Michele Bachmann and Sara Palin like a new married wife about her husband’s neck hardly to be shaken off. Yet, when working people take to the streets for their benefits and the long settled right to collectively bargain the whole press establishment, like the three monkeys, is deaf, dumb and blind. What is the overall message here?

Chris Christie is a political anomaly. Red faced and bloated, he has the same crude manner as a surly detective in a 50's movie. I suspect he is a coward and would crumble if anyone growled back at him. This jerk told some Tea Party organization that he wanted to reduce the size of government to the point where he could go upstairs in the governor’s mansion, put his feet on the desk and have a beer. His approval rating is 51%. What in the hell is going on in this country?

According to MSNBC Obama has selected a bipartisan group of law makers to consider entitlement reform. Of course their pensions will never be at stake. I didn't work 48 years in this country so that a covey of self promoting politicians could break the contract I came in under; or take any part of what I earned in the name of reform; or force my 30 year-old nephew into the toilet of Wall Street. I didn't vote for Obama so that I could watch him hand my interests over to the anti-humanist Republican greed machine.

No one will give us a straight answer as to what entitlement reform means. Paul Ryan and Jeff Sessions get angry when someone tries to pin them down. They want a blank check. Ryan wants a better haircut more. They don't see the need to reform the tax code and stop giving the rich and corporations billions. No, take it away from the elderly, the Working Middle Class and Working Poor. People are accepting this excrement. What the bloody hell is going on in this country?

The worst thing of all is what these right wing pustules are trying to do to education. Consider this: the same people who are trying to deny women the right to choose are cutting education funding. What do we take away from that? The fetus, abandoned by the righteous in the birth canal, is brought into the world so the child can be educated on the cheap and the adult can work for minimum wage. God's law my ass - a larger, ignorant serving class is more like it.

The Quest

2011-01-28T12:42:00.001-08:00

Chris Carter the creator of The X-files is a modern day Shakespeare – poet and prophet. I first watched his program many years after it had gone into syndication. I was up late one night, as I often am, and I turned on the TV, as I usually do. This lunatic was chasing a human size fluke worm through the sewers of Boston or someplace. Following him was a stunning redhead, brilliant and clearly his keeper. I finished that episode and watched the next two. I was instantly addicted.

I don’t like Science Fiction. I am a realist in my own work and have very little use for fantasy. It took me a while to figure out why I was so enamored of The X-Files. One morning around 3 am, in the middle of my fifth episode, I got it. The X-Files isn’t Science Fiction at all; it is a contemporary morality play with many layers of meaning similar to Hamlet. The aliens, alien abductions, super solders, black helicopters and government conspiracies are metaphors fused together in a mythology to form a field of ideas for Carter’s Knight Errant, Fox Mulder, to pursue a quest for the Holy Grail – in this case the Truth.

Carter consistently reminds us that “The Truth is Out There.” While Mulder speaks of it as if it is more than human, less than divine, a living, breathing entity waiting and sure to return. In his estimation Truth has been relegated to the darkness by a pack of bold liars operating in unison.

Like all great writers Carter routinely engages in prophecy. It is the mark of his kind of genius to be able to stare at the past and see through it to the future. He certainly glimpsed ours. Today we are inundated with liars and they truly have no trepidation about the truth. They seem to believe that if they deceive, dissembled and distort well and long enough the Truth will never be seen again.

It is the Grail Quest of every reasonable, caring and thoughtful person on the Left, in the Middle, and on the Right – if there are any still in attendance – to call, invite, pray for, go out and seek the Truth. The liars would have us believe that they can better protect our future and the future of our children. They cannot. The prevaricators would have us trust them to protect this Planet. We must not. Their sword is greed, their standard hate, their avatar apathy to anything other than their own self interest. They breed corruption and decay. They care more for the smallest bill in their wallet then they care for all of humanity.

Only the Rich Need Apply

2011-01-27T13:03:00.000-08:00

I have just called my Senator Bennett, my Congressman Polis, and the White House. I have insisted upon the following:

1) Social Security is a return on an investment, it is not a hand out. Please treat it accordingly. The rich have no monopoly on investments.

2) Many of the people in the House and Senate have large even vast personal fortunes. Let us dismantle their retirement. They won't need it. In fact many of them shouldn't even be collecting a salary.

Perhaps others would like to call as well.

The Problem with Lies is the Truth Wants to be Told

2011-01-26T09:36:00.001-08:00

Read the corrections to the Gospel According to Bachmann, then ask yourself how in the hell does someone like this get elected dog catcher much less Congresswoman?

http://politicalcorrection.org/factcheck/201101250021

The Senselessness of It All

2011-01-14T15:14:00.000-08:00

I was a young woman when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I wasn’t yet old enough to vote - you had to be twenty-one back then. I was volunteering in Denver in one of his campaign offices with three other women that night when we got the news on the radio that he had been shot in the head like his brother the President of the United States, John Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, shot in the face two months earlier. Goddess, it was a season of death, and we all tried to wrap our minds around another atrocity – a third great man felled by some monster with a gun where his humanity should be. Sobbing and chocking on our tears we started moving campaign literature from one table to another aimlessly. One of the women sunk to her knees, and another woman and I got her up and into a chair. It seemed like a long time, but it couldn’t have been, before my over protective Italian father, Goddess bless him, called and said, "You are coming home now. Tell the ladies that you are locking up, and I am taking them home too." No one argued with my dad, and home we went.

It was June and there was no one in the streets of Denver. No kids were playing, no young guys were showing off their hot rods, no Italian ladies were sitting on their porch gossiping. A vibrant ethic neighborhood had simply ceased to exist as time stopped and the Earth halted in its orbit. Bobby died the next morning, and time came back with the spinning of the Planet from night into day. We had lost something in the emptiness of no time and nonexistence. Something we never got back.

Political assassinations in this country are always carried out with guns from the attempted assassination of Roosevelt that resulted in the death of the Mayor of Chicago to Bobby Kennedy bleeding out on the floor of a kitchen in a Los Angeles hotel and many more. The butchery of massacres is consistently committed in this country with guns from Columbine to Tucson and so many more. When are we going to get it – some people can’t have guns. Some guns are only killing machines and shouldn’t be in the hands of anyone except people trained to kill for military reasons. Maybe some guns shouldn’t be in anyone’s hands. When are we going to decide that the NRA has absolutely no right dictating social policy around guns either to our Congress or to us? When are we going to start insisting loud and long that our politicians stop behaving as if they worked for Heidi Fleiss and stand up for the people who elected them? When are we going to realize that life is first among our freedoms – after all if we are dead what good are the others? Consider the NRA’s reaction to the monstrous events in Arizona. They instructed us to focus on praying for the victims and not to distract ourselves with anything else. Works for them. They are like a person watching another cut their wrists, and rather than taking the straight razor they hand out Band-Aids.

Welcome to Your Gestalt

2011-01-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

The word Gestalt is German in origin. It refers to a concept of wholeness. The wholeness of a life or the wholeness of a family. In examining the wholeness of our society including its discourse and extremes one has to take into consideration the fact that as the monstrous events in Tucson are part of the Gestalt, so is the shooter and so is the culture of well sanctioned gun violence exhibited by people like Sarah Palin. Just because Loughner did not rage into the Safeway parking lot with a Sarah Palin tee-shirt on it doesn’t follow that he wasn’t directly or indirectly influenced by the far Right’s extremists and incendiary rhetoric - some level of cross contamination is obvious.

Today in order to extricate herself from public scrutiny Palin chose to invoke a horror that can be traced back to antiquity, Greco-Egyptian times specifically. Blood libeling is a false accusation leveled against religious minorities, usually Jews, asserting that children are murdered in order to use their blood in Jewish rituals. This accusation is insane, born of ignorance, born of stupidity it is not mitigating. Once again Sarah Palin is engaged in using blind, over the top and brutal accusations to accuse people she has no right to accuse. Thus allowing her to continue her program of malice and fear mongering toward anyone who dares question or oppose her. In my opinion this is why it is reasonable to assume that the negative and vicious influence this woman asserts on the whole of this society might be a contributing factor in Loughner’s deadly rampage.

Palin is the essence of our Gestalt right now, the mistress of our nightmare. It is time for public opinion to silence her.

A Message of Peace

2011-01-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the monstrous events in Arizona Dr. Deepak Chopra has just been on Dylan Ratigan's program. He asks that each of us get on our social network(s) and leave a message of peace. There is a meadow in my heart where the hills roll away in greens, terra cottas and majestic blues. Wildflowers and roses cluster near a tiny tinkling stream. Sun moves in reds and golds toward her rest. Moon rises in silver splendor. In this meadow where the scent of rose flows like honey I sit with the Goddess and listen to the sweet song of the Fairy children on the side of the hills. This is peace to me and I wish each of my friends a place in this meadow. I wish the haters, the violent and the sick a chance to glimpse this meadow.
Goddess bless you all.

Power of the Witch

2011-01-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

The first Dark of the Moon is upon us. The Great Crone walks among us. As the old expression says, Goddess is alive, magic is afoot. This is the time for dark magic - what the uninitiated call black magic. There is really only one magic, the lightness or darkness rests with the intent of the practitioner. The uninformed call dark magic evil. Many Pagans understand the definition of evil to be live spelled backward. Make no mistake that is exactly what we are going to be doing in this country - living backward. We will move back into a time when a president was hunted unto impeachment, for nothing more than having a blow job, by at least one man who was keeping his own mistress. We will move back toward the world of our founding fathers when women couldn’t vote and black men and women were slaves - this we will do without the perspicacity to understand what we are doing. We will move back into a time of penny pinching with a plastic Jesus in our window, a well thumbed and little understood bible in our hand we will attempt to destroy all social safety nets and relegate our old and poor to a death in filth and squalor. Some will raise their tea cups to the good old days and consider themselves lucky to be an American. It is time for Witches to raise their wands and invoke the Dark Goddess in protest. I grow tired of empty conversations, of an electorate that feeds upon itself like a snake upon its tail. I grow tired of the definitions and conventions of a culture that has no use for people like me and of a media that sucks the life blood from this country in order to keep its rating up. Let us raise our wands to invoke our Dark Lady to stand like a menacing shadow between these vile politicians and their purpose. Let us work together, plan rituals together and join our hearts and minds.

Frauds, Fops and Four Letter Words

2010-12-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entitlement is defined as: the state or condition of being entitled: Right. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/entitlement)

Entitlement is not a four letter word, except in the gaping maws of slick and oily politicians who have managed to slither into national office on a wave of carefully cultivated selfishness and fear in an ignorant electorate. For instance, take my Social Security which I will start collecting at the end of the year. Am I entitled to it, you’re damned right, for the same reason I am entitled to live in my house; enjoy the beauty of the roses I have nourished for two decades; or benefit from the comfort of a great marriage that my husband and I have built over a good part our lives.

I have worked for 47 years and paid into the Social Security Fund. FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) was taken out of my check every week without so much as a howdy do, kiss my ass, have an apple. I didn’t trash the fund, that would be the power drunk idiots in Congress, and I see no reason why the short fall should be my problem. Every American who has ever paid one dime into the fund has the same right to get it back as I do. Social Security is not a handout; it is a return on an investment. Accordingly, when any citizen who has paid taxes has need of a social program they are utilizing a return on their investment. When a poor person takes foods stamps into a grocery store they are making use of a return on our investment. I have always understood, without qualification, that some part of my tax dollars go to help the needy. If the bloody frauds in Washington have changed the rules then by my reckoning they still owe me 47 years of dividends to the poor starting in November. Our government is perfectly capable of understanding the concept of investments and returns when it comes to every bloated showboat on Wall Street, felonies and compound felonies notwithstanding. Why don’t they get it when it comes to working people?

We must reframe, as the Jungians would say, the debate on social programs. Entitlements aren’t charity. We aren’t parasites sucking on the government tit. That would also be Congress. Those who expect returns on their investments are within their rights, particularly when those returns are underwritten by years of work and a hope for a better future. In whatever way, large or small, that we can begin to insist that the word entitlement be returned to its true definition – a definition that works for the people rather than robbing them – we must try. It is and always has been ineffective to ask the leaders we respect and admire to do for us what we won’t do for ourselves. It is and always has been dangerous to allow leaders who do not deserve respect and are beneath contempt to set the criteria for what must be done.

Language is to meaning as watercolor is to canvas, a fragile often vague image of reality. In a watercolor landscape if the blush of a rose is too close to the sky without proper perspective or definition there is no rose and there is no sky. When the proper perspective and definition of language is used to distort reality then meaning becomes a shill for petty politicians and their lobbyist thugs to rip off the American people at knife point using the Constitution as the weapon.

My Very Best

2010-12-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

“For the good of all, according to the free will of all,” my grandmother and her many sisters in the Craft taught me. To honor the free will and free mind of another person is to honor the highest good of all people. Pagans carry their freedom like a sacred fire. We follow only our path, the God and/or Goddess of our heart – never gurus or mindless mobs. Our fire burns in our soul, keeping us warm in a cold and angry world. We have all moved through a particularly cold and angry time. Soon, with a darkening of the Moon, we will step into the midnight of the year. The earth sleeps. The bright promise of spring awaits its time in the Goddess’ womb. Now we honor the dark and look forward to the light.

The rose featured here is John F. Kennedy. It sits in my sacred circle surrounded by red roses. Some say that a bouquet of eleven red and one white rose means goodbye. So goodbye to the old year, and in the spirit of our beloved 35th President we look forward to Camelot.

Murder, Myth and Money

2010-12-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

I have always been fascinated by the case of Jack the Ripper. After seeing all the movies (including the silents) and reading everything I can get my hands on the desperate search for information has never abated. Certainly I am not alone in this obsession. From the FBI and some of the finest working detectives in the world to crime fiction and mystery writers like America’s very excellent Patricia Cornwell people have presented themselves at Scotland Yard’s museum to evaluate the evidence and render an informed opinion about the identity of the Ripper. All of this notwithstanding, the mythology of Jack the Ripper as a smoke screen for a series of politically motivates murders refuses to die.

The legend holds that a Royal impregnated a prostitute. Afterward he went through some type of marriage with her while five of her friends, Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, witnessed. These five women were the Ripper's victims. The woman who married the Royal died in an asylum, and the child disappeared.

According to the allegory the Ripper was actually one of Queen Victoria’s court physicians acting on behalf of members of the government who were part of a secret society. The motive for the murders was to keep the five women silent.

I believe that this hasn’t been about Jack the Ripper for decades. This is a morality play, a cautionary tale for all those who would suffer an upper class or aristocracy without boundaries and above the law. At the time the Ripper was killing much of London’s East End was slum. Whitechapel was one of the worst. Disease, overcrowding, poverty, starvation, unemployment and crime shaped the environment were the five tragic women lived and died. Sometime after the Ripper vanished from the scene the monarchy and the City of London began to clean up the slums. However, by that time the image of a black-caped aristocrat riding in a Hansom cab, sporting a long blade and stalking prostitutes was already deeply ingrained.

The poor people of Whitechapel and everywhere passed the story from generation to generation until it had the full force of a folk myth. We are on the verge of moving back to a time when we have two classes – the very rich and the very poor. Let the Myth of Jack the Ripper be a lesson – if it is a myth.

Darkness

2010-12-11T09:29:00.000-08:00

Winter Solstice is upon us. Little by little the light will linger longer. In good time those of us who truly understand the earth will feel the Quickening as the Goddess’ little roots, tiny seeds and perennials begin to stir. Presently they will immerge, growing steadily to dance on our heart strings and delight our eyes. I grow weary from missing my gardens - the world today seems dark and forbidding as if our Lady had turned Her back and left us to the mess we have made.

I grow tired of smug men dressed in plausible deniability uttering cotton candy words that hide the germs of a bitter betrayal. I grow sick of watching the well fed and the well housed hand the assets of this country over to those who have too much while turning their backs on those who have nothing. My heart is full of sorrow because I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel – I don’t see light anywhere.

Like most of you who will read this I am a Pagan and well schooled in the concept of Karma. The Wiccans identify it with the Rule of Three. Whatever you do in the world comes back to you three times. I hope I live to see the Solstice when the hand of the Goddess waves over this country three times, sweeping away the advantages of the arrogant and cruel who put money ahead of humanity. Then there will be light again, like the brilliant winter sun’s eternal ballet across the pristine snow covering the high Rocky Mountains. This I ask of the Goddess in Her sacred season of Yule.

Heartache

2010-12-04T13:54:00.000-08:00

I went traveling about in my world today. Two Salvation Army Stores around my area are closing. Apparently, the landlords have increased the rent to the point where it is unaffordable. These property-owners gave no warning, but just waited until the little stores’ leases were up. Salvation Army community projects, food banks and drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs will suffer accordingly. In the Dollar Store I met a man who said he was a fork-lift driver. I don’t know what that is, but I suspect that it is a fairly high paying job for a skilled laborer. He has been out of work for two years. I met him in front of the coloring book display where he stood selecting a dollar book for his little daughter’s birthday. I see this where ever I go as the Middle Class crumbles and the ever growing poor slip deeper and deeper into despair. Will the American people have to see starving children begging in the streets before their anesthetized social conscience comes up from under layers of deceit, duplicity and delusion?

Seven Will Get You Twelve

2010-11-16T12:45:00.000-08:00

Some in this country believe that our leaders lead. They do not. Some in this country would have us believe that our elected representatives represent. They do not. Our government and political system are much more akin to a high stakes game of chance then to any management or service organization. In this context it is clear that big money and special interest groups are the bank, and the American people are the chips, the thoroughbreds on the track, or the dice tossed in an alley. Our politicians function like chronic, degenerate gamblers forever hedging their bets. Thus, a prolife platform is supported by the pharmaceutical companies that make birth control preparations and the surgical supplies companies that create the tools to perform abortions. Accordingly, an anti-immigration candidate is funded by business people who count on the labor of undocumented workers, used shamefully and forced to toil for next to nothing. Gay bashing right wingers will take money from the Log Cabin Republicans if they can get it. While Conservadems intent upon undermining a woman’s right to a safe clinical abortion will accept campaign donations from prochoice feminist groups stupid enough to contribute.

None of this is about the American People. To paraphrase the words of an old Bob Dylan song, when will we ever learn? We are like children fed donuts by diseased parents who spend money for good food on the games. But, we are not children. We don’t have to accept sugar in place of nutrition – lies and propaganda in place of a functioning government. We don’t have to accept parents who sink deeper and deeper into addiction. The next time someone promises change we need to demand the kind of change we want. The word change is not a magical mantra. It isn’t magic that we need. It is common sense. We can start by demanding real, meaningful and enforceable campaign finance reform. Let’s get the big money out of politics so the little guy has a chance to have an ethical government. Let’s demand that our leaders stop their compulsive gambling and earn their keep.

Because money buys power at the heart of this stupidity is greed. Some people think that greed is a disease, like gambling. I think that greed is a character flaw parallel to deceit, arrogance, bigotry, hatred, manipulation and egotism. This Blog was inspired by Kitty Hunt’s work on Blogger at Kittisplace. Her most recent Blog is about spending Veteran’s Day, called Armistice Day then, with her father. Kitty’s dad seems to me to have been a man of great character and decency, the kind of character and decency that got this country through WWII. The Blog that follows is about the internment of the Japanese people during that same war. This is truly a black spot on our national soul, driven by the character flaw of bigotry. While reading these Blogs I started thinking about what I remember of the American character years ago. It was different. I recall a character with flaws. Today we suffer flaws with no character.

We must change this if we want to survive as a society. We must reclaim our soul that has been covered in lies, twisted to serve arrogance, battered with bigotry, harassed with hatred, nearly murdered by manipulation, and eaten alive by egotism. We must reclaim our character by demanding an end to the partisan propaganda, the viciousness, the cruelty, and the ugly slander hidden under the First Amendment. We aren’t starving children dying for the sins of our parents. We are We the People.

An Old Play on a New Stage

2010-11-08T11:03:00.000-08:00

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. . . Oscar Wilde

If the great Irish playwright was living today, I believe that he would not be speaking of men and women who really love their country; men and women who understand that what is right for the human community that is their nation will be right for them. I trust that he would be pointing out the cruel absurdity of yapping dogs turning up at Presidential venues with guns. I believe that he would be indicating the idiocy of Neanderthals waving the Gadsden War Flag in front of the White House, implying that we are at war with our president as we were once at war with England and George III. He would know this for what it is - racism. I have faith that he would be directing our attention to the monstrous malice of vote whoring politicians waving that same flag from a balcony of the U.S. Capitol. He would be commenting on the sociopathic self promotion of people like Palin, waving the Constitution and stirring up her following with nothing more than vitriol and bitter resentment. Oscar Wilde spoke the truth. It was his job. It is the job of all serious writers.

I am a lifelong conspiracy theorist, and like Chris Carter’s Fox Mulder, I believe the truth is out there, and that it wants to be heard. I am not a glass-half-full woman. Some have called me a professional pessimist – true enough. Expect the worst. Why be disappointed? Still, in these days when Wilde’s vicious patriot has taken control with more money, more noise, more rage, I have a great sense of optimism. I hear the truth fluttering at the window.

Soon the subpoenas will fly, the government will be shut down, and the Tea Party mongrels will begin to draw blood from the ankles of their Senior Senators and Congress People. Presently the structure will begin to shutter like a skyscraper built on an unstable foundation. Hate is weak and cowardly, as love is strong and courageous. It will crumble without doubt because its bricks and mortar are of an inferior material - greed. I refer you to 2008 to see how suddenly that rotten substance deteriorates once it starts. This lousy economy will jump start it.

Call me naïve – it has been done before. Call me crazy – it has been done before. Call me stupid – that has never been done before, but hey, be the first. Nonetheless, I intuit and believe that we are in the final stages of labor. It will be hard and painful, but we shall give birth to a better reality.

The Lost Vote

2010-10-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

My father’s family came to this country in 1911 from Southern Italy. By the early 1920’s my grandfather, by all accounts a gentle man who wielded an iron sledgehammer of control over the lives of his wife and children, insisted that everyone be naturalized. He also insisted that voting was not an option for the male members of the family. Women were not allowed to vote, except for my Irish mother who did pretty much what she pleased. On the night before every election the men gathered for food and fighting, wine and fighting, sweets and fighting - sometimes fist fighting. Although, I could never figure out what the hell they were fighting about, they were all Democrats. Nonetheless, they were at it until time to go vote and sometimes report to the emergency room in that order.

When Grandpa died and my papa inherited the iron sledgehammer, Grandma came to live with us. Since my father was even more fanatical about voting then my grandfather he demanded that my grandmother vote. I remember the day he told her. The look in her eyes was abject terror. This was a peasant, born into a peasant’s world. She told my father that she was afraid the police would come and take her if she didn’t vote the right way. The old man in his infinite wisdom assigned me to help her because she didn’t read English and because my mother, the granddaughter of a Suffragette, was highly suspect of family sedition – being a Republican.

For several elections, local, state and off year, we struggled to gather information, think about it, make a choice and go vote. I went with her into the voting booth because everyone knew she could not negotiate the language. She would often say to me, "What do you think little rabbit?"

"What can I think Granny?" I replied. "I am nine."

Finally there came an election that she got very excited about. We gathered all the information we could from newspapers, television and the radio. She wore a campaign button everywhere she went. I bought her a poster for her bedroom door with my allowance. She told people she met on the street that she was going to vote for the “little Irish boy who wants to be President.”

Four days before Halloween 1960, some 50 years ago on this day, my grandmother suffered a massive stroke and died. She never got to cast her vote. I would have loved to cast it for her, but that wasn’t possible. I am sure there are cynics out there who would say that the election was rigged in Chicago by Daily, or that he didn’t need her vote anyway. I think he would have been happy to have it.

I loved and respected my grandmother. She was a courageous woman, genetically predisposed to optimism and hope. She was born and raised in an Italian vineyard. She worked there much of her life, giving birth to two of her sons on the ground next to the vines. She came to this country with her husband and gave birth to eight more children, burying four of them along the way. She left her quasi
feudal world and traveled several centuries into the middle part of the 20th all in one lifetime. Yes, I think Kennedy would have been happy to have her vote.

Even though her love was unconditional, I don’t know if she would respect the woman I have become. Our sense of duty, family, honor and loyalty are light years apart. She would be terrified of my religion as she was terrified of my mother’s mother who taught me. Still, I believe that wherever she is she understands that every vote I cast is cast in part to make up for her lost vote and all the lost votes of the generations of women who were kept from voting. The Franchise is not a right; it is a legacy, a light in the darkness, a path out of oppression. My grandmother was a peasant who learned to be a free woman. Why in hell would anyone want to stop voting and go backward?

Eighteen Days Out

2010-10-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Grateful Dead called its compilation album, "What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been." They could just as easily have applied that title to the election season of 2010. Long, oh yeah. It started roughly twenty-two minutes after the inauguration of President Obama by the media’s lights, and for the right very soon thereafter as the Republicans began to publicly grind out a chorus of mantras and allegation aimed at his political demise.

Strange? Believe me, this has been one of the strangest off year elections in my memory. Take for instance, the Tea Parties that seem to metastases faster than glandular tumors from state to state. They have no platform other than rage against a disenfranchisement that has not occurred. They see Communist-Socialist-Muslim-Nazis under the bumper of every car, and hate President Obama because he is a Kenyan-Muslim-Socialist-maybe Communist-Nazi. Their philosophy, if that is what you want to call it, is like something out of Serling’s Twilight Zone.

Through their psychosis they have the Republican Party on the ropes and the media in their pocket. I keep thinking of Salvador Dali’s painting, “The Persistence of Memory.” In his vision a clock is draped over a branch, another is wearing a suit and a third is sliding like molasses off a raised platform. Clocks are appropriate - how much longer will we have to deal with the false legitimacy of this distorted mental picture?

Indeed how much longer will we have to live out our political dreams in the theater of the absurd? Consider last night’s debate between Sharon Angle (Tea Party darling) and Harry Reid in Nevada. Ms. Angle’s stupidity is surpassed only by her arrogance, yet she is spoken of as a serious candidate for the Senate. Her entire performance last night seemed to revolve around insulting Reid, squealing about the need for an unrestrained Free Market and remaking Social Security in that Market’s image.

Reid for his part stammered and stuttered and demurred like a frightened debutant at her first dance. When Angle snarled at him to, "man up," he could have told her to, "grow up, consigning Social Security to the Free Market and Wall Street is tantamount to financial homicide." Did he? No, he did not. He just kept attempting to elucidate his achievements with ever diminishing effectiveness.

Throughout this election season of darkness and decay lies have bloomed in the halls of power and the hearts of the American people like wild flowers in a field. Obamacare - socialized medicine, death panels, increased taxes, stimulus isn’t working, Sharia Law is taking the place of the Constitution in this country, and our president is a secret Muslim, ad nauseum. In my estimation some of this stuff is laughable, and some is treasonable. Some of it is obviously nuts and some deeply offensive.

Take the fact that within the last day or so the Empress of Deceit, the Queen of Fraud, and the Demigod of Destruction, Sarah Palin, has taken a statement of Michelle Obama’s out of context and used it to imply that the First Lady has never met a member of the Armed Forces nor does she care about them. One of Mrs. Obama’s signature causes is helping the families of service men and women. She has taken more care and done more good for these families then most of us know. I would like to know what Palin has done for them recently other than using them as political fodder.

No matter how outlandish, idiotic, foolish, destructive or Nixonian, the media clings to these lies, these distortions of Palin and her ilk like drunks clinging to a wall because they can’t stand up straight. The media’s powerful voices hardly bother to correct the falsehoods, and this is yet another thing that has made it all so bizarre, so weird, so surreal over this unending election season.

C.S. Lewis said, "Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn." We Liberals have had a brutal political experience. There have been times when it seemed that even the Democrats had no use for us. Still we and we alone carry FDR, JFK and RFK’s banner. That is a heady responsibility and we can’t allow their standard to drop into the mud for buffoons with tea bags on their head to tread upon. We may need another party, a Liberal Party, but not now.

I have learned that many of our leaders are weak, and we must be strong for them. I have learned that our opponents gain strength daily from their deceit, their cruelty and their innate racism aided and abetted by the media. Eighteen days out from the November election and I am sure of one thing, the bitter lesson of the past two brutal years is simply this – if we don’t stand up now and turn out we are doomed to government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich run by Tea Party influenced or intimidated fanatics who consider love a failing and hate a virtue. Please vote!

Goodbye for Now

2010-10-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Soon the sweet scent of the rose will be just a memory drifting out on the West Wind. Pine and wood smoke will replace her gentle elegance as snow covers the grass and the skies turn gray. A true gardener laments the coming of Autumn - the first song of Winter - just a little. The fading of the last mum is like the loss of a rare and beautiful love. Even though the flowers will return in streams of color and joy from spring to summer they are deeply missed at the evening of the year, through its midnight and into the dawn of the next.

When I was a child my father, the finest gardener I have ever known, told me that Heaven's seasons are the opposite of ours. When the pale gown of Winter covers the Earth the souls of all the flowers bloom above to delight the saints. My father and I did not share a faith, but we shared an understanding of the inestimable spiritual significance of the flower.

What is Really Going On - A Rant

2010-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

What is the hope behind Citizens United and all the subsequent money poured into political campaigns? Is it that the vote of the American people is for sale? We know that our elected representatives have been walking upon and down K Street in their Joan Crawford hurt-me-pumps singing “Hey Sailor” for years. We know what they are, but is it possible that the Republican Front Man, John Roberts, and his masters on the Hill think that we are the same? Are we? If we aren’t does it matter how much money is pumped into cable advertizing, internet soliciting or the ever gaping holes in the faces of the legions of pundits? If we aren’t for sale then money is just green paper, like a vampire it has to be invited in to hurt you.

Perhaps, it isn’t money at all. Perhaps, a myth or an outright lie is being perpetrated here. Since there is no real-time benefit for the voter from large amounts of money flowing into the political arena, can we believe that a man or woman will vote against a quality education for their children simply because an expensive ad campaign instructs them to do so? Is a slick commercial enough to induce a working person to vote for someone who opposes the minimum wage? In other words, have we got any reason to believe that people vote on the basis of the money given to others rather than their own self interests?

I ask these questions only because I am sick of the world according to media false prophets, as corporate driven as any Wall Street banker. It is my belief that the anti-intelligence, xenophobic movement is far worse than the money – it is the root cause of voter nullification. Deep, critical thinking, higher education, and a fluent use of the English language are discouraged by many on the right. No reading Shakespeare – he was British. No reading Voltaire – he was French. The unwashed and malleable masses of the GOP are too extraordinary to ever bother with or learn from civilizations hundreds of years older than their own.

Every election season it starts, the new dummying down of the electorate. Don’t think, don’t question, don’t not do what you have always done. Your betters will tell you what to feel, what to expect, what you need, when you can organize. They will proclaim their love of your Jesus while worshiping their Mammon and calling it all Free-Market Capitalism.

I think of all of this as deliberate, slovenly ignorance. My dear friend Kitty feels that it is a lack of education. I defer to her on this, as I defer to her on many things. Still there are times when I hear some over paid twit disregard the adjective case and refer to the Democratic Party as the Democrat Party that I would like to bitch-slap them back to the prom.

Thank you for listening.

From the Otherside of the Looking Glass

2010-09-29T14:47:00.000-07:00

My father’s favorite song was the old Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea." He was particularly fond of Sinatra’s version. I never could stand Sinatra. He always reminded me of a penis rolling down the street on a wave of testosterone without a body. Still in all, the lyric to the first stanza pretty much sums up how I feel about the Democrats these days:

I don't want you
But I hate to lose you
You've got me in between
The devil and the deep blue sea.

The lyrics to the chorus of one of Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty’s songs are perhaps more timely and succinct:

Clowns to left of me, jokers to the right
Here am I stuck in the middle with you.

Over the last twenty odd months this country has slipped behind the looking glass. Right wing extremists have become respectable and capable of taking over the Republican Party. Liberals have become objects of ridicule, disdain and condemnation by the Democratic Party. The intensity of confusion within the Party leadership is superseded only by the befuddled notion that the Liberal Left can be brow beaten into compliance the way the far Right has brow beaten the Republican Party.

The leadership’s bewilderment stems from the idea that the Left is angry at and withholding its support for 2010 because of what President Obama didn’t do. I believe that the Left is angry about HOW he didn’t do it.

He courted bipartisanship for months with people who had stated their determination to see him fail, indeed who stirred up every vile element in this society against him, at the expense of his legislative agenda. He kicked the Public Option to the curb because a handful of so-called Democratic Senators in districts with a total population smaller than Brooklyn, New York, insisted upon it - even though 61% of the American people supported it. The myopic media won’t tell us this but that is a goodly number of the people who don’t support the Health Care Bill now. He let the Republicans carry the message from the summer of 2009 until recently, while he and his underlings mouthed platitudes like, "Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good." Goddess, if I ever hear that again I will kick the TV screen in. The Democratic agenda regarding Gitmo and the war in Afghanistan have simply slipped into the fierce whirlwind that has become our body politic.

This whole muddle reminds me once again of my father. He had the most astounding ideas which he insisted upon – "hot water freezes faster than cold." "Take one pound of pasta, break it in half and you have two pounds of pasta." "Power makes people hurt themselves." One out of three ain’t bad.

Michael Moore interviews Tony Benn

2010-09-26T09:36:00.000-07:00

This is stunning. Please pass it around.

Missive from a World Gone Mad

2010-09-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

“The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.” . . . William Shakespeare

Once upon a time under an azure sky a majestic land mass spread itself between two mighty oceans. Dressed in granite peaks, silver streams and flora of every kind and dimension this hunk of terra firma came to support a magnificent nation dedicated to freedom for all – excuse me, almost all. Through the two plus centuries of growth from infant to adolescent to young adult this storied civilization evolved with all the graciousness of a prolonged bout of ulcerative colitis. The pernicious sources of chronic discomfort – greed, avarice, hypocrisy, bigotry, cruelty and generational stupidity – grew exponentially. Fed to the point of stupor with the idea of Exceptionalism the beautiful, clumsy giant went slamming through her own domestic affairs and often the affairs of others like an eighteen wheeler though a schoolyard. Afterward, turning to view the carnage she blamed everyone around her. Other nations came to distrust if not hate her. By the second decade of the second millennium she was shattered financially, morally and spiritually. Desperately the great nation quivered with rage and hate, looking for scapegoats – black presidents, non Christians, same sex partners, anyone would do. Finally bringing full circle the process began long before when it was first understood that espousing a value is more important than owning it, religious conviction became a whore servicing the fear and prejudice of a few, the Constitution became a validation of bigotry and patriotism became the justification for destroying anything and everyone who disagreed with her.

I am not a patriot in the traditional sense, but I love this country. I have no trouble looking at and speaking of her faults, blemishes and warts. I can live with those. What I can’t tolerate is the present day hate, the viciousness, the slander, the greed masquerading as the common good, the self serving, oily politicians who place re-election ahead of governing, the persistent pandering by the Beltway and media ideologues to every extremist turd that floats to the top of the bowl, the unabashed liars-cheats-thieves-frauds-pornographers running for major public offices and finally the desiccation for political gain of the several cardinal and transcendent principles on which America was founded.

I keep asking myself when the profane became policy. How can a so-called Christian rationalize prohibiting abortion on any grounds then wink at health insurance companies denying coverage to children because they can’t discriminate against the sickest? How the hell is it reasonable to raise the roof over extending unemployment benefits to people losing their homes while holding up middle class tax cuts until the rich receive their “entitlement?” The same rich who made out like bandits during the Bush years and definitely are not hurting now. How can anyone who lived through the Wall Street melt down in 2008 advocate privatization of Social Security? How is it that the people who caused the melt down aren’t in prison, instead they took millions out of the mess they made and went on their way? How is it that one of the smartest men to ever occupy the Oval Office is routinely called out for being too smart and/or too professorial after eight years of being stuck with what Zelda Fitzgerald called, “a beautiful idiot?” How is it that a professional muckraker can write a book about Obama’s handling of the war in Afghanistan that is touted by the media in such a way as to undermine our president’s authority as Commander in Chief?

I don’t know what is to be done about what seems to me to be a vile collusion of empty vessels, monsters and fools except for those who pray, to pray. Those who write must write. Those who agitate and engage in activism must follow their credo. Those who walk in the sterling moonlight of the Great Goddess’ favor must raise power to flood the earth with the winds of Her Spirit. To become discouraged, check out, sign off, or most importantly refuse to vote is to give aid and comfort to the enemy.

It isn’t easy to keep the faith mind you. Some days I wake up and wonder where I am. This isn’t America, not the America I love. Maybe there never was an America and I was only hallucinating, or perhaps like Atlantis that majestic land mass and its magnificent nation sunk to the bottom of the mighty oceans leaving only a dream-like memory behind.

The Morass of Our Modern Times

2010-09-06T14:52:00.000-07:00

I have been politically active all of my adult life. From Viet Nam to Afghanistan I have opposed war. From Shulamith Firestone and Betty Friedan to Hillary Clinton I have been a feminist. For over four decades I have passionately supported Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Union Rights, the Right of the Planet and Her Creatures to live in peace and dignity. I am absolutely committed to the precepts of social and economic justice. Further, I refuse to believe that unfettered and unregulated Free Market Capitalism is anything other than a slaughter house for the Working Class and the poor.

It would seem that some people have confused the President of the United States with individuals like me. They call him a radical – he isn’t. I am a radical. He is accused frequently of being a Socialist – he isn’t. I cut my activist’s teeth on Socialism and still stand very close to that line. I have yet to see President Obama in the vicinity and resent the hell out of the misinterpretation of my philosophy. After all, I have walked picket lines in the blazing heat, stood in the cold to demonstrate, raised hell were hell need to be raised and more than once been carted off to jail for my politics. In view of all of this I demand and have earned the right to define my political doctrines and will not cede the privilege to some corporate funded, sub literate, shady apparatchik of the social emesis known as the Tea Party.

The real problem for President Obama isn’t any resemblance to old lefties like me. His issue is that he is a black man in the Oval Office and presiding over a nation with a fair number of resentful, intellectually necrotic white people who are furious after suddenly realizing that they are no longer in the majority. This crowd firmly believes that they have a divine right to rule this country. Their God of rage and wrath, misogyny and murder told them so.

Simply stated Obama’s difficulty with the right is an acute, old fashioned racism and nothing more. Anyone who isn’t clear on that needs to pull their head out of their ass. The media’s so-called experts facilitate the hallucination of a nonracial political world by prophesying the President’s defeat purely at the hands of a people angry over a failing economy. They have been talking about his losing the House and Senate this November since twenty minutes after his inauguration. Their thesis is always based upon the premise of a deep moral and ideological divide between Obama and the Republican right. Horse crap! In my estimation the disingenuous blubbering of the media is to be taken with a grain of salt since they live only to serve their corporate masters and long ago forgot the public interest.

In addition to the racism, President Obama has the added burden of being an enigma. He has allowed his supporters, particularly those of us on the hard left, to know him, “but slenderly,” as Shakespeare said of Lear. That has left the foul mouthed Rahm Emanuel and the rather pathetically snide Robert Gibbs to fill in the blanks – usually by insulting us. This and the watering down of liberal legislation, the loss of the Public Option, the refusal to prosecute Bush and his henchmen for war crimes, the failure to close Gitmo, the seemingly open ended war in Afghanistan, a country that no one has influenced since Genghis Khan, are all so very puzzling.

I have liberal cronies who call me at least once a week and scream, “Who is this guy? What did he do with Obama?” They are bewildered, stunned and befuddled. Could it be that all the angry, disaffected liberals the media is constantly bleating about are just really, really confused?

A friend of mine, Max, called the other morning and asked without a greeting,“What in the hell has happened? We elected a liberal Democrat. We got a moderate Republican. All the other Republicans hate his guts. Change died in the filibuster. What happened to us?”

I don’t know what happened. I don’t know anybody who knows. There isn’t anywhere to find out. Yellow journalism is the law of the land. Our politicians behave like vote whores (although most whores work for a living) pandering to anyone or any group that will help them get elected, peddling their influence to the highest bidder and lying about it. Lies are produced in mass quantities and never challenged, distributed in bulk in the blink of an eye, shot over the internet on streaming electrons, repeated over and over again until they become gospel.

Our world is enveloped in an oppressive stain of deceit and malevolence. In all the years that I have studied politics I can’t remember a political environment so toxic as to render truth meaningless. Some days it feels as if we are burying the truth so deep that we will never find it again.

Shakespeare said,“Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning .” Experience has taught me that like one of Carl Jung’s Archetypes, it is pure in essence and can’t be destroyed. No matter how long it is shut out of the world and forced into a corner of the abyss it will return. Perhaps when it does we will look back at the first two years of the Obama administration in honest mortification and shame, realizing that gang rape and slander were the rule of the day, and damn few people who could did anything about it. We may even appreciate with integrity and candor that a decent and honorable man who just wanted to help people was stonewalled and crippled by a bunch of opportunistic, grandstanding bottom feeders who had no interest in serving anyone but themselves. It is my hope that we may further realize with sincerity and meticulousness that those Americans who now bear him the greatest malice will suffer the most by what he wasn’t allowed to do.

Bedlam

2010-08-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

Mark Twain said that a patriot is, “the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.” Anyone who is paying a modicum of attention to the world around them today will understand this statement clearly. We have patriots by the bushel, the barrel and the gross spread across this land like maggots on a corpse. They thump the Bible, wave the flag and wipe their backsides with the Constitution all in the name of America – their America, God’s America, American Exceptionalism and America the Beautiful.

It is all so hideously insane, so brutally hypocritical. I refer now to the geniuses who want to dismantle the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution after spending months insisting that as purists and patriots they needed to defend the Constitution from health care reform. Apparently enfranchising sick children who heretofore have been denied insurance coverage under the pre-existing condition rule would undermine the Republic to such an extent that Jefferson, Washington and Franklin would rise from their graves and make haste to the Nation’s Capitol with muskets blazing. However, the dismantling of the Fourteenth Amendment to invalidate the idea that children born in this country are citizens is the patriotic duty of every Constitutional purist. After all people come to this country and have children just to exploit and annoy us. What arrogance – what stupidity.

The most obscene thing that I have witnessed in recent years (believe me that is saying something) is the dance macabre in New York over the Muslim community center. My fellow citizens are jumping up and down like spoiled, dim-witted children in a candy shop because, of course, Glen Beck and Sarah Palin told them that all Muslims are responsible for 9/11. Perhaps I have missed something here, but even though all of the men who flew the planes into the Trade Towers and the Pentagon were Muslim they were also Saudi Arabian. Seems to me that the right was conspicuously quiet when Bush went walking through the Saudi streets hand in hand with the King sometime after that miserable day in September.

It boils down to this, we seem to need someone to hate in this country. My father was an Italian. When he was a boy it was him – the dirty Diego, the thieving Wop anarchist. The mob mentality, the rage and hatred grew to such an outrageous state that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had no trouble rigging a trial and executing two Italian men, Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, for a crime they didn’t commit. Papa said that it was almost like their blood was the only thing that could quench the thirst of hatred. He also believed that men like Al Capone grew out of that hate. No one ever called Al a Wop and lived to tell about it.

Hatred is in my estimation a degenerative and progressive disease of the mind. While the hater is despicable and disgusting the real monster is the hate monger who stirs it up and feeds off of it for political or financial gain. The fat white men with messianic complexes, the aging beauty queens who couldn’t make it as governor, the Washington hack who will say anything to get reelected are the real threats to the Constitution, the Republic and the America my father wanted so much to believe in.

True patriots stand against the hate making it unfashionable and unprofitable. Eventually they strip the parasites that live on it of their authority and power. Once this is done their slavish followers slink back into the abyss - they always have.

The Devil is in the Pantry

2010-08-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

Some days ago my husband directed me to an article, “Federal workers earning double their private counterparts,”in USA Today’s online publication. The first link below will take you to the article. The assertion in USA Today’s piece is based upon information gleaned from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, a part of the US Department of Commerce. By way of rebuttal Colleen Kelley, National President of the NTEU (National Treasury Employees Union) who is mentioned in the article, stated in a message to her membership that according to “the Bureau of Labor Statistics federal employees are paid an average of 22% less than their private sector counterparts.” The Bureau of Labor Statistics is part of the Department of Labor.

The first question that occurred to me about the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ findings was had they taken into consideration bonuses and stock options in the private sector – if not why not? The author of the article, Dennis Cauchon, seems oblivious to the fact that private sector salaries and other forms of compensation are the exclusive domain of private sector employers. Since greed became the family value of choice in this country those employers have made it a practice to work hard and pay cheap. I can’t see how this is the government’s issue. On a personal note I have been married for twenty years to a government employee. He is an old hippie who, in the manner of old hippies, has spent most of his career handing out food stamps. My husband is not over paid nor are any of his colleagues.

I can’t help but wonder if this assault on government employees with uncertain data isn’t a backdoor attack on the Federal Government itself by the usual government hating wingnuts on the right. They have always been with us, but the modern day hater is disproportionately inspired by the poster child for the bewildered, Ronald Reagan. His famous assertion that government is the problem and not the solution for society’s ills has provided cover for countless megalomaniacs eyeing the institutions of government the way Carrion birds eye a corpse. Reagan never did explain why he spent millions of dollars rising to the top of the government he hated so much. Just as his disciples can’t explain why they resist term limits to suck on the government’s tit year after year hoping to die in office. Odd behavior indeed for people who dislike government on principle.

Regardless of its purpose Cauchon’s article has certainly been well received by the right. It is championed by the Cato Institute and Representative Eric Cantor, Republican from Virginia. The Cato Institute is a Libertarian, often Conservative, think tank. Eric Cantor is a an appendage of the Conservative Right who hates President Obama almost as much as he fears the American people ever taking hold of their power.

Cantor’s yearly salary is $174,000 according to Legistorm (second link below) not including his excellent health care and lavish retirement benefits. This chump is a member of a Congress that as of this writing has a 19% approval rating per Gallup. Exactly who is overpaid?

The dirty little secret here is that this doesn’t have a damn thing to do with salaries. Government haters notwithstanding, this is about dividing and conquering the nearly shattered Middle Class. The public sector is set against the private. The private sector is set against the public, and everybody is beating up on the cops and the firefighters. This is a sadistic circle jerk, a foul experiment in human degradation stemming from a ferocious infection preying upon our social order and body politic. Said another way, many of the people in Congress who swear they love and are sworn to serve the American people do neither.

This Congress and others before it have sold our government to corporations in exchange for campaign contributions. They embezzled our social security and are now trying to take what little is left away from us. They have prostituted, propagandized, politicized, and polluted every sacred thing in this country, up to and including the Constitution. They play fast and loose with the truth then deny responsibility. All of this is the product of a systemic corruption enabled by a corporation controlled and gullible media working methodically to further encumber the prosperity, hopes and dreams of the Middle Class. We are being made expendable in the interests of profit, power and politics.

It is high time to put a stop to all this crap. The Middle Class must organize. We must take a page out of the labor movement’s book, stand together and raise holy hell. Scare the devil out of the pantry, as my wise Celtic grandmother used to say.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afedpay10_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip
http://www.legistorm.com/member_of_congress_salaries.html

There is Nothing New Under the Sun

2010-08-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I watched the McCarthy hearings with my parents on our old black and white TV. Almost no one had color in those days. During the course of the hearings my father told me that if his father had known such crap would go on in the U.S. he would never have left Italy.

Joseph McCarthy was a Republican ideology, elected to the Senate by the people of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. In my estimation he was a liar, a fraud, a narcissist, and a grandstanding political opportunist. In league with malignant power brokers like J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn, McCarthy used the formidable authority of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and Congressional subpoena power to ruin countless lives and careers with the stain of Communism.

Out of the work of this malevolent trinity evolved the infamous Hollywood Blacklist. The link at the end of this piece takes you to an article about the Blacklist followed by the names of those who made the list from 1947 to 1950. It is stunning. These men and women were actors, writers, producers, directors, and they were punished for refusing to name their friends as communists, refusing to confess to being part of a conspiracy that didn’t exist and/or refusing to admit to being members of the Communist Party. It is not an accident that people like McCarthy, political thugs and tyrants, burn books and go after the creative soul of a people. A society that can’t dream loses the ability to see the future and is trapped in the past.

McCarthy couldn’t prove a damn thing and never demonstrated the existence of a Communist cell or a plot. He never proved that anyone was a Communist. Still in all, the accusation was enough - as it seems to be today - and a goodly number of these people never worked again. No one would hire them in this country. Certainly not that bunch of sniveling limp dicks in Hollywood.

Proof notwithstanding some of the blacklisted artists eventually went to jail for Contempt of Congress, as if that Congress was not beneath contempt. One of these was my favorite writer - Samuel Dashiell Hammett. The nearly Shakespearean irony of this is that Hammett created a purely American detective genera that owed nothing to the British or the European. He was the father of the Hardboiled Detective and had one of those American voices that won the world over with its outspoken clarity and truth. There isn’t a fictional detective of stage, screen or television that doesn’t owe something to Hammett’s Sam Spade and the Continental Op. Nonetheless, the sub-literate Senator from Wisconsin tossed him in jail because he refused to name his colleagues in the Civil Rights Congress as Communists. He was released prematurely after the subcutaneous emphysema he contracted in the trenches of WWI flared sending him home near death.

When McCarthy decided that he had put enough hurt on Hollywood he turned his attention to the Department of the Army. That was a mistake. First, because it brought Eisenhower off the golf course and out of coma. Secondly, because it put him into direct conflict with a little man who had a cherub’s face and a will of iron. His name was Joseph N. Welch, the attorney for the Department of the Army who on June 9, 1954 ripped McCarthy’s legs out from under him with two questions: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Welch then refused to speak further to McCarthy or to call anymore witnesses. The gallery erupted in applause. My father tapped me on the shoulder and said, “He’s done.”

He was done, and HUAC began a slow and painful decline into oblivion. In 1969 its name was changed to “House Committee on Internal Security.” In 1975 the Committee was abolished, all functions handed over to Judiciary.

Since the McCarthy impersonators are legion today we must ask ourselves, in a country that is forever ranting about Liberty, Freedom, and the Rights of the Individual how does a McCarthy - or a Glen Beck or Andrew Breitbart for that matter -crawl up out of the primordial slime of depravity and become so empowered as to damage or destroy everything he sees? We need only look around us for the answer. To begin with we have a profound cowardice in our Federal Government from the Capitol to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave as they did at the height of McCarthy’s red baiting. Just as then no one is willing to stand up and fight back against the Palins, Bachmanns, Hannitys, and all the other modern day McCarthys who level unfounded accusations of racism, communism, socialism and anything else they can wrap their small minds around. Like their predecessor they don’t need proof or even facts. They just need a microphone. That is where the corporate media comes in - following them around like hungry dogs, tail between their legs yapping for the first bite of the next morsel. Finally there are all the people in this country who, as Chris Carter had a character in the "X-Files" say, have an almost insatiable appetite for bogus revelation. It would seem that if they are told something salacious enough and told over and over again they believe it.

The liars and frauds copying McCarthy’s crimes revere him. Perhaps it is because he showed them an easy path to power. Clearly they share his disrespect, distrust, and loathing for the American people. Like McCarthy they pander to bigotry and greed. They use fear and cruelty to redefine realty in their own image. They seem to consider free thinking and anyone who talks back un-American. Maybe that is why when they insist that their antigovernment, antihuman, anti-compassion Christian movement is organic no one counters, “So is bullshit.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

Listen to the Earth, Mr. President

2010-07-27T11:52:00.000-07:00

Most of you know that I am a master gardener. What you may not know is that in my world gardening isn’t just a skill or even a hobby. It is a spiritual path. Every flower, seed, tree, herb and shrub is my companion along that path. When my grandmother initiated me into the Celtic Witchcraft some 40 years ago she asked me a single question, "What will be your work – will you be a healer or a teacher or a defender of the faith." I answered, "I will tend the earth and in doing so will be all of these."

I have gained a great deal of wisdom on my path. The Earth teaches much that can be applied to our daily lives,indeed it is all part of the same thing or as the Pagans say, "As above, so below." Perhaps the most important lesson the Earth has taught me about gardening and living is to plant things where they grow. I can’t tell you how many idiots plant roses in the shade or impatiens in the blazing hot, high summer sun.

This single lesson has been of inestimable value in helping me to understand any one of a number of conundrums that have troubled me deeply. For instance, the lethargy of the Obama Presidency and his dithering White House. From dumping the public option to watering down the financial reform bill to kicking comprehensive immigration and energy reform under the bus, not to mention Afghanistan and that insipid foolishness of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” I find myself vacillating from disappointment to disgust to despondency. I doubt that I am the only Liberal in this country who feels that way.

Looking through the eyes of a gardener I have come to the conclusion that Barack Obama has planted his administration in the wrong soil. He planted it in the soil of bipartisanship and magnanimousness which is okay as far as it goes. However, today that soil has been sterilized even poisoned by the rancor of the opposing party. Men like Emanuel keep telling him to amend soil. Gardeners cannot amend sterile or poisoned soil. We can only wait until the Earth heals Herself. Obama hasn’t that kind of time.

I believe he must dig up his administration, clean off and trim the roots (he could start by washing Emanuel out of the White House)then replant it in a large pot filled with good Progressive soil. The Progressive media and blogosphere - which Obama seems inclined to ignore a good deal of the time - would be slow acting chelates to release nutrients into the soil as their levels begin to fall. This is what a good gardener would do to save a beautiful plant from bad soil.

Finally, if he doesn’t want to limp out of Washington in '12 dragging an anemic and mutilated legacy behind him, he needs to aggressively apply the insecticide and fungicide of sunlight and truth. The insects at Fox News and the systemic fungal infection that is the right wing media and blogosphere have dealt blow after blow to the immunity of his administration. Gardeners must be forceful in dealing with pests or infections and so must he.

A Very Strange Irony

2010-07-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Submitted for your consideration: Al Capone was a brutal man, a stone killer, racketeer, pimp and bootlegger. However, in Chicago at the beginning of the Depression hungry people could get something to eat in one of his soup kitchens. They could find a bed in one of his shelters. My dad told me that if you could sneak into a Cubs' game and get up into the stands behind Al's box you could pick up a little milk money when his Lieutenants tossed bag after bag of coins up into the crowd. Men like Frank Nitti, called the Enforcer, known to be a psychopath, spent half the game throwing money to the hungry and the displaced. Now if men like this, violent, unstable, criminal men like Capone and Nitti had the compassion and the kindness to help their fellow humans suffering in the Depression, what in the hell is wrong with that tribe of “Christians” in the Senate?

Capone, Al "Scarface" - The Free Information Society

A Grand Dame

2010-07-20T15:40:00.000-07:00

The Greatest Generation as Tom Brokaw called it produced some very remarkable women. They were born to the seclusion of home and family. However, during World War II they were pushed into the factories, foundries, railroads and orchards to do the jobs the G.I.’s left behind. When the war was over and the men came home there was an expectation that their cultural icon Rosie the Riveter would be retired, and they would be banished to their kitchen leaving the work-a-day world to the men once again.

I knew a woman who said, "Bite me!" or the equivalent of the day. She stayed out in the world and became a newspaper woman, a real estate woman, a political activist and a delegate to the 1960 Democratic Convention that nominated John F. Kennedy.

I used to enjoy talking politics with her - her stunning red hair flashing in the light, green gold eyes focused on a point somewhere over my right shoulder. Suddenly she would shout, "Good! We have it now, let’s go write to that idiot in the White House." Off we would go to write to the idiot in the White House, whatever idiot that might be.

She wrote thousands of letters, hundreds of editorials always speaking truth to power - local, national or international. She once wrote to Tony Blair telling him if he didn’t want to go the way of Colin Powell with his reputation in tatters he had better keep clear of George W. Bush and the turds in his administration. She got a charming letter back thanking her for her concern. She was right about that association you know. She was always right.

Her name was Fern Beryl Cook, and she died on July 14, 2010. There was no funeral or service. Fern hated empty rituals almost as much as she hated religion, particularly organized religion. She believed in the Almighty whom she perceived through her own eyes with her own special vision. No damned cheerleader reading from an old morality play was going to tell her differently. That’s a quote.

Fern was my aunt. I didn’t know her as well as I would have liked, but I am proud of her, proud that she was my aunt, proud of what she taught me and proud of what she and women like her did in this world.

I don’t know how many Grand Dames like my Aunt Fern are left, certainly none of my acquaintance. I suspect most of them have slipped into the heaven of their understanding past a society they neither recognized nor respected. The world is not liable to see their like again and is not a better place for it.

A New Justice, Maybe

2010-07-20T15:10:00.000-07:00

The Rose above is Betty Boop. She is a shrub rose of the hybrid floribunda (many blooms on one stem) type. Very hardy and a prolific bloomer in most climates, heat notwithstanding, Betty is an ideal rose for a first time rose gardener. She does not require a great deal of pruning or shaping. Her color is white-gold tinged with red, and her parentage is Playboy x Picasso. Hybridizer by Carruth in 1999, Betty Boop is a tribute to the great cartoon siren of the 1930’s and 40’s. I placed the rose here not so much as an information tool for the rose gardeners who follow my Blog but as an acknowledgment of cartoons everywhere, including that brainless burlesque in Washington D.C.

Elena Kagan past out of the Senate Judiciary today and is headed for a vote of the full Senate. John Kyl, The Comedian from Arizona, in baggy pants and floppy shoes cracked foxy for the audience by stating that Ms. Kagan had been unwilling to be clear with him about her Liberal leanings. As if Liberal was a disease a kin to alcoholism, and leaning Liberal was a character flaw. It never occurred to him that she had told him all there was to tell. It takes a lot of nerve for this pond scum who has spent most of his career sucking hind tit in corporate America to question anyone else’s character.

Jeff Sessions (R - Alabama) apparently didn’t have anything to say. Of course he seldom has anything to say even when his lips are moving. They weren’t today.

The Republican from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham coiled in a corner with both eyelids open shocked the room by voting for Kagan. After the vote he hissed, and I am paraphrasing, that the Senate needed to take the partisanship out of the judiciary appointment process (da ya think, Senator?). He also said that he would not have chosen Kagan. However, the person who selected her, President Obama, chose well. If anybody knows what the hell that means I would love to learn.

The Hell You Say

2010-07-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

I have studied politics most of my life. The first campaign I worked on was Robert Kennedy's. It broke my heart. I thought I had seen and heard it all until I read yesterday that Sarah Palin has compared herself to Shakespeare. Shakespeare sometimes wrote of fools, and Goddess knows that Mrs. Palin certainly is a fool, but is that a valid comparison? Particularly since Shakespeare’s fools were often wise men charged with being the only subject of the king who could tell him the truth, indeed must tell him the truth. Events have proven that Mrs. Palin wouldn't know the truth if it roared up her ass on a Harley. We seem to be inundated in this country with tiny, infant souls squalling to wear the mantel of glittering, transcendent souls. I have studied Shakespeare almost as long as I have studied politics, and this I know. He was either the first incarnation of Carl Jung or the greatest natural psychologist in the history of the human race. I have no doubt that Mrs. Palin has been reincarnated many times – no one could get that stupid in a single life. Still in all, her only greatness is an immense capacity for duplicity and self service.

The False Prophets of the New Millennium

2010-07-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

On this past Fourth of July I found myself thinking about the false prophets of freedom; the Glen Becks, Sarah Palins, Dick Armeys, John Boehners, Mitch McConnells, ad nauseum. These are the Bible waving, Constitution quoting - although not necessarily understanding - peddlers of a cheap salvation and an even cheaper liberty.

Like all false prophets before them these staggering idiot promise an easy way to live without the necessity of thought, taxes, or education. Subjugate your women, chain up your children, exploit the minority peoples and murder the gays. In other words, close the front door and back to the 1950’s.

Most of you who follow this Blog know that I am a proud and outspoken Pagan. As such I am unimpressed with the word evil and its common uses. Evil, like activist judge, currently means, "I don’t like you," or "You don’t agree with me." Therefore, the concept that evil is simply the word live spelled backward makes much more sense today. The backward thinking ideas of people like Beck, Palin, Armey, Boehner and McConnell work only to their elitist good and are completely destructive to the men and women of the working middle class who they are attempting to seduce to their cause and encourage to live in reverse. I am sure that they are fully aware of what they are doing. If that isn’t "evil" I don’t know what the hell is.

I have also come to believe that our persistent need to be told Fairytales is not just foolishness but another form of evil. It draws us back into a way of thinking that we have long outgrown. For instance, we can do away with public education so we don’t have to pay taxes and insist upon promoting "American Exceptionalism." We can live in the greatest nation in the world tax free and be safe in our person and property because our military and police will work for nothing. We can keep all of our toys - all of our money - and continue to enjoy the vast human resources of this country. That is to say enjoy, technology, medicine, clean streets, wholesome food, great universities, fire departments, first responders and it goes on and on. There are days when I want to stand on top of my house and scream, "Pull your head out of your ass and grow up!!!!"

False prophets serve no God and no country. They serve only themselves. The people drawn into their cause and sphere of influence are burned up like fuel and forgotten. To the extent that the media promotes, highlights or features a Beck, a Palin or any of the others the media lights the fire.

I have said and I believe that Democrats use money to take care of people. Republicans use people to take care of money. It follows then that the Glen Becks, Sarah Palins, Dick Armeys, John Boehners, and Mitch McConnells use both – with no distinction in value – to arrogantly and parasitically promote and take care of themselves. As the Bible of the Judeo-Christian tradition warns, "Beware of false prophets."

Dark of the Moon Incense

2010-06-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Dark of the Moon Incense

2 teaspoons Foxglove flowers crushed
2 teaspoons Monk’s Hood flowers crushed
6 drops of Rosemary oil

To be burned in the North Quadrant during the invocation of the Great Crone. This is a time for working dark magic, and banishing rituals. Many of us who follow the Great Crone and Queen of the Witches have no fear of the dark and therefore consider black magic like white magic to simply be a tool. In point of fact, magic is magic. The light or dark of it has to do with the intent of the practitioner.

Goat for Azazel

2010-06-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Recently I have heard some Christians attributing the corruption, greed, and deceit within their own ranks to Pagans - specifically Witches. This is BS in the first degree. Whether we follow the Rede or not we have absolutely no interest in distorting Christian values. It seems to me that many Christians are hell bend on doing it themselves.

This particular bit of scapegoating appears to hinge upon our practice of magick and its alleged infiltration into the Christian world. Let me be very clear, Pagans and Witches do not share their knowledge of magick or anything else for that matter with outsiders in an arbitrary and capricious way. There are some damn good reasons for this - the majority of them have to do with fire. Without our knowledge most people wouldn’t know magick if it flew up their butt on a Kaiser roll with mustard, ketchup, salt and pepper.

Christians have no monopoly on ethics or honor. Witches do not seduce or influence people against their will. We do not turn men and women into the Anti-Christ. We also don’t fly over houses on brooms grabbing Volkswagens and small children.

Those who subscribe to this asinine position might do the world a favor and take some responsibility for your own problems. That is the first thing a good therapist would tell them to do. They should find one.

Just Joey

2010-06-11T12:31:00.001-07:00

Of all the roses I own this is my favorite. She is apricot and gold. A giant fancy bloom on a hybrid tea. She was hybridized in England in 1972. Parentage: Fragrant Cloud x Dr. A.J. Verhage. She has won the following awards: Royal National Rose Society James Mason Gold Medal 1986, Royal Horticultural Society Award Of Garden Merit 1993, Worlds Favorite Rose 1994. Awards won in England are far more prestigious than awards won in the United States. The British have been growing roses longer and better than anyone in the world. Enjoy.

Thank You Mr. President

2010-06-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

The problem with Blanche Lincoln winning in Arkansas is that even though the people of her state are getting what they deserve, owing to the arcane rules of the Senate the rest of us are stuck with her too. Thus the next time she decides to take a leak on something the people want - like the Public Option - we all need a shower. Thank you Mr. President & Mr. President for putting politics ahead of the good of the working people.

A Kind Of Prayer

2010-06-04T10:58:00.001-07:00

I haven't had much time to be on line recently. The beginning of gardening season means mulching, pruning and manicuring gardens. As some of you know I have many gardens and over 30 roses. Considering the monstrous thing, the horrible affront to the Goddess and the Earth that is occurring in the Gulf I am working very hard to honor Her in my gardens.

The featured flower, purple and white, is the viola. She comes in many forms. If you plant her in pots one year you will find her volunteers scattered throughout your garden the next. Viola is winter hardy, and heat resistant to a point. If you plant her in direct sunlight she will stop blooming when it gets hot. She will be back when it cools down. Viola is sacred to the Goddess Hecate.

The Media - a Source of Madness

2010-06-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

I have often wondered at the insanity of spending millions upon millions of dollars, not to mention millions of man hours, electing a president just so we can spend the next four to eight years driving the poor fool crazy. If he is kind and compassionate then he is weak and too emotional to be effective. If he is brilliant and coolly cerebral then he doesn’t care about people and the great issues of his day.

The other morning I heard Joe Scarborough - not one of my favorite people - expounding upon the fact that Obama isn’t good at symbolism. I had no idea that we needed an Ingmar Bergman in the White House. Also that morning I heard Anne Kornblum of the Times who seemed to imply that since the oil spill in the Gulf could not be stopped by Obama’s rhetoric this proved the limits of Obama’s talent. She must be delusional. No president has ever had the kind of power and control needed to stop an oil plume from pumping out of a badly maintained pipe deep in the ocean with or without rhetoric. If they had Congress would soon take it away from them in its infinite need to urinate on the Executive Branch’s parade.

Nonsense like this proves to me that one of the most corrosive elements in our body politic is the mainstream media. They promote the torture of presidents with cruelty, depravity, stupidity and speculation leading to guilt by association - all of which validates in the electorate a profound confusion, a dance of lunacy, a paranoid schizophrenic’s wet dream.

The 24/7 news cycle produces legions of news performers and precious little else. Their performance de jour often bleeds over into the print media. Thus, people like Kornblum engage in the theatrics and optics necessary to float with the other crap in the toilet. In my opinion these commentators and talking heads aren’t reporters or journalists. They are pseudo intellectuals impersonating experts in order to grind a political axe. Believe them, follow them too closely at your own risk.

Presidents like other societal victims often own a part of their victimization. Obama for instance is brilliant without question, beautifully eloquent and cares deeply for someone - although, I am not always sure who. Nonetheless, he persists with the tenaciousness of an angry teenager in impersonating Gandhi when he ought to try on a little Lucky Luciano.

. . . and Freedom for All

2010-05-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

From December 9, 1946 to August 20,1947, in the American sector of Germany at a place called Nuremberg, a legal proceeding known to history as the Doctor’s Trial convened. United States of America v. Karl Brandt, et al, as it was officially captioned was a war crimes trial during which many Nazi doctors and SS officers were accused of conducting or facilitating some of the most egregious and horrifying medical experimentation in history.

At the end of the presentation of evidence and during sentencing the American Judges Beals, Sebring, Crawford and Swearingen laid out their opinions in such a cogent and compassionate way as to create a foundation for modern medical bioethics. At the core of their judgment, as it does at the heart of modern medical practice, sits the tenet of informed patient consent. A patient must be told what is wrong, what can be done, who will do it and what if any good they can expect to experience. They also have the right to refuse any treatment or testing. This is not negotiable. It hasn’t been for a very long time.

Let it be known that the State of Oklahoma has decided to set aside all of this when it comes to women and their pregnancies. In HB2656 the State House of Representatives decreed that it is perfectly acceptable for a physician to lie to a patient carrying a child suffering from birth defects so that she can’t make the choice to terminate. They also overrode a veto by their Governor, Brad Henry, of another grotesque law HB2780 insisting that a woman view an ultrasound of her fetus prior to having an abortion. The Senate concurred.

I haven’t the words to express my anger right now. Suffice it to say that most of us who have spent years honoring the craft of medicine are not likely to take ethical instruction from sleazy politician, two-for-a-penny John the Baptists drumming up votes. Yet, some practitioners will certainly take the law as license to shove their religion down their patient’s throat; Goddess help our sisters in Oklahoma.

To force a woman to look at a child she is terminating is almost as scandalous as some of the evidence in the Doctor’s Trail. Anyone who thinks that women have abortions without thinking or feeling or grieving is too bloody stupid to live. I had an abortion thirty years ago. I had no choice. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think, feel or grieve for that child. That is my burden to bear, and I will be damned if some governmental appendage will define or deny it now based upon a religion I don’t follow. In point of fact, they may not follow it either when it comes time to aid in the care of a child born with a serious birth defect to an unknowing mother.

There is a great authority in the Bible for misogyny and cruelty to women. There is also a great tendency in these God fearing, freedom loving, Constitution worshiping states like Oklahoma to conveniently forget that the right to a safe legal abortion is as much the law of the land as the right to bear arms. When you put religious authority together with selective application of the law you end up with a bunch of hooligans, bullies, who would never consider treating men the way they treat women and might not treat their women the way they treat strangers.

My Irish grandmother, who trained me in the Celtic Witchcraft, used to say, "If men had to have babies abortion would have been a foregone conclusion in the time of Christ. If men had to have every other child in a family there would only be one." Woman gave birth to the race of men. Our bodies belong to us. Our sons need to step aside.

Welcome to the Melting Pot

2010-04-29T15:03:00.000-07:00

My father’s parents came to this country from Italy in 1911. When they stepped off the boat at Ellis Island some illustrious jackass with the Department of Immigration stamped W.O.P on the back of their hands. Strictly speaking they were illegals, "without papers." If they were in Arizona today they would go to jail and be deported I suppose.

Our immigration policy (old and new) is the craziest mess in the history of societal screw ups, based upon the assumption that immigrants are a threat to America's way of life. It seems to me that the Mexican immigrants are basically after what generations of immigrants have been after before them. My dad used to say that it all boiled down to food and a way to earn it.

Nevertheless, on one side of the modern immigrant is a group of murderous career criminals whose existence in Mexico has become endemic largely because their products - drugs and smuggled human beings - have become endemic in the United States. On the other side of the immigrant population U.S. citizens are feeling frightened and under siege by the breaching of a porous border. Some are bigots. Some are being manipulated by politicians who have used immigration for decades to instill resentment and terror in their constituents. In my grandfather’s day all Italians were greasy criminals and anarchists. I have to believe that there are also some decent people in Arizona who living in the hardest times they have ever known are simply worried that what little they have will be taken from them, including the ability to work and even their lives.

The federal government surrounds this damn muddle like a filthy swamp. Scores of our leaders stand with a microphone in their face posturing, pontificating and promising blindly. The only thing that concerns most of Congress is getting reelected indefinitely so that they might die in office or perhaps be buried under their desks like sacred relics. Thus, it is impossible for many of them to behave with any kind of courage - to recognize the right thing much less do the right thing.

Suckling at the under belly of the immigration issue are legions of employers who support the flow of illegal laborers that they can work to death and pay next to nothing. I don’t hear a lot about these vultures even though they are the catalysts of what I shudder to think is an impending explosion.

There is no question that the law passed in Arizona is a tragedy waiting to happened. I guess a tragedy is what it will take to get the attention of our recalcitrant, insensitive, even negligent lawmakers. I am always hearing Obama and the lawyers in Congress chant that this is a nation of laws, not people - a concept that I find fairly toxic on its face. Having said that, if the lawmakers are not making laws because they are paralyzed with partisanship or terrified of being jettisoned from office do we still have a nation?

The current White House is adamant that they will not get into immigration this year. Let’s not have another health care, Mr. President. This issue is important if not politically correct. Over the last year and some months I have felt the wind of calamity blowing across my heart. I hope that Arizona’s law will not provide the backdrop for that calamity to play out simply because Obama and other politicians are watching their butts when they ought to be watching the racists and the border.

Somewhere in the Darkness

2010-04-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Some in the mainstream media seem to be discovering that they have given the tea partiers more coverage then they deserve. Well hell, ain’t it amazing. There are more people on Downtown Denver's streets at lunchtime then have shown up at some tea party rallies, and the media thinks they may have credited them with too much influence - wow, brilliant.

Never have so few been served by so many to damage so much. I continue to hear leaders of the tea party and leaders of the Republican Party mouth falsehoods one after another into any microphone that is available. While media types sit frozen, wide-eyed like dear in headlights, seemingly unable to argue with or even question what is being said. Further, our journalistic community appears not to realize that every lie serves to eat away at this President’s perceived veracity not to mention the integrity of his legislation the way infection eats away at the integrity of tissue. In the final analysis the question becomes what lasting effect will this campaign of deceit have on the institution of the presidency and the legislative process.

It goes without saying that the current breed of politician tends to be myopic with a near sociopathic obliviousness to anything other than self promotion. Still in all there needs to be a limit to the fabricating, mudslinging, slander spreading emesis that passes for political discourse. Goddess knows that our cowardly media is incapable of setting those limits. Many members of the public lemming-like, believing whatever they are told, get in line and follow any voice of doom through the looking glass and against their own interests. Thus, a health care bill that will cover 30 million of them is still unpopular on the grounds that it is Socialism.

It seems to me that politicians, the media and the public all have a large piece of responsibility for the nightmare we are living now. Nonetheless, be it sickness, cowardice or foolishness there is a special place in hell for people like Frank Luntz, Republican spin mister, personality assassin and apparatchik, who counts on the full trinity when sculpting a propaganda campaign designed to destroy his political opponents with lies rather than help his fellow Americans know the truth.

In as much as this man has written many of the talking points that were used to discredit health care reform and now financial reform it is interesting that so few people know of him. I think it behooves people to find out about him. Men like Luntz do their best work in the dark - shine a light.

Cynicism and Self Promotion

2010-04-16T09:42:00.000-07:00

One of the finest things to come out of the 90’s was a television series entitled "The X-Files." Its creator Chris Carter is a genius and a master storyteller. Like most brilliant writers he writes on many levels simultaneously and appears at times to be engaged in prophecy. In the final episode of the series when his hero, Fox Mulder, is on trial for his life and is given an opportunity to speak to his accusers Mulder basically asserts that a large group of liars working in concert has no reason to fear the truth. Further, that true evil is a product of that same kind of alliance rather than the deviousness of a single malevolent entity. One can almost imagine that Carter was looking into a crystal ball at the world of social unrest and politics in the Age of Obama.

I believe that lies are like airborne bacteria passing from person to person. In the presence of fear or exaggerated self interest they attach to the cells of the psych rupturing and deforming the perception until fact cannot be divided from fallacy. We saw this with the health care bill as a preponderance of lies were slathered over reality until distortion became truth. The same is happening with the financial reform bill. A couple of days ago Mitch McConnell, the Republican Minority Leader, stood in the well of the Senate and insisted that Obama is giving the American people a bill that will force them to endlessly bail banks out of their self induced implosions. This is a damn lie, and he knows it is a lie. Smiling and winking at Main Street, pretending to be a defender and friend of the people, this hyena is working hard to protect Wall Street. The bankers and other greed merchants do not like the democratic reform bill because it will reign in some of their more predatory practices and force them to create a fund to cover the cost of their failure. It is not perfect but it is better than the deregulate and hope for the best strategy the Republicans favor.

In this milieu of lies upon lies upon lies the image of America’s first African American President has been thoroughly tarnished and trampled. Obama has been made to appear as a dangerous interloper, even an alien, to such an extent that a fair number of Republicans believe that he is the Anti-Christ.

I wish someone would explain this conundrum to me. In the self proclaimed best of all Christian countries a comparatively large number of "good" Christians believe every bit of stupidity spoon fed to them by an army of self promoting, cynical gasbags. Thus disempowered, they courageously stand together in packs shouting at the hungry, the homeless, the sick and the dying, "I’ve got mine. Screw you." Where does the Anti-Christ fit in? It seems to me the patina of lies, the liars working in concert and the alliance of hoodwinked, crap-fed sheep have rendered him superfluous - unemployed like everybody else.

In my religion we believe that the Goddess gives each of us the gifts we request when we are born. Those who can heal, heal. Those who can feed, feed. Those who can tend the Goddess’ most vulnerable and precious creatures, the nonhumans, tend. Those like me who can serve the Earth, serve. We are charged with offering our gifts humbly, lovingly, joyfully, freely and to the extent that we are able, impeccably. There is no Anti-Goddess. If we take a leak on our ancient and sacred faith it is down to us - our responsibility.

Truth and Twain

2010-04-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

The Constitution is the new Christ - gun, bludgeon and knife. A tool with which to indoctrinate and intimidate the uninformed. A counterfeit ethical standard by which to judge the morality of one’s enemies. I have heard the right, the tea people, talking about the Constitution and am put in mind of Mark Twain’s statement about truth. "Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it."
- From Twain’s Notebook, 1898

This clearly applies to the fringe of the right. These shouting, screaming, stuttering intellectual ragamuffins are as committed to their version of the Constitution as they are ignorant of its true meaning. If I am not mistaken, that was Twain’s definition of a Blatherskite - the abusive morons of his day.

I am not a great fan of Obama anymore. I am a left leaning Liberal, and he is a Moderate. I have no idea what in the hell the word Progressive means so I don’t use it. Nonetheless, President Obama is the most maligned, ridiculed, tortured and tormented man I have ever seen reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Why? He is not radical - I am radical, so I know. He is not a socialist, a communist, or a Nazi. He has done none of the things he has been accused of like plotting a government takeover of health care or turning his back on Israel. So what is the impetus for all the hate and cruelty? In my Constitutionally protected opinion the answer is obvious - it is his black face. The man is black. Bush was an idiot, and Nixon was a scoundrel but the tint of Obama’s epidermis has sent this country into a tail spin of unprecedented force.

What amazes me is the umbrage that bigots take at being labeled racists. They will snivel for days about being victimized by the race card, no matter how vicious and bloody their deeds. The same is true of people who perpetrate class warfare. Don Blankenship of Massey Energy, the company CEO who killed 25 miners in West Virginia is engaged in class warfare every time he sends a man down into a mine he knows isn’t safe. Yet, the words "class warfare" are somehow more profane then Massey’s behavior. Even liberal talkers apologize for sounding like they are talking about class warfare.

I want to get familiar with the truth. I don’t think this country can heal from the carnage done over the last 14 months until we all get familiar with the truth. In my estimation Palin and Bachmann and most of the right are garden variety racists engaged in bigotry dressed up as politics and policy. They remind me of the Klu Klux Klan hiding behind their hoods and robes. The racist vehemence swells as one moves toward the fringe of their party.

The unfettered free market is the first weapon in the arsenal of someone perpetrating class warfare. Whenever money is more important than men and women the Working Class is under siege. I believe that the left uses money to take care of people. The right uses people to take care of money. The struggle is elemental. But then as I said, I am a radical.

Voice of the Crone

2010-03-17T13:20:00.001-07:00

See the website mentioned.

more about "Rep. Alan Grayson's Petition @ wewant...", posted with vodpod

Common Sense Wisdom from the Journal of a Master Gardener

2010-03-15T09:56:00.000-07:00

The middle of April is the best time to prune and first-fertilize roses in my experience. All dead leaves should be removed from the canes and base of the rose. These leaves often carry diseases that have over-wintered from the previous season. A diagonal cut should be made into each living cane, taking no more than a third of the cane. Dead canes should be removed entirely. A very sharp pair of pruning clippers is critical to this procedure. Because one of the most destructive insects to prey on the rose in many areas is the carpenter or burrowing insect, the end of the pruned cane should be immediately sealed with a rose or glue stick.

Other destructive fungal diseases and insects are powdery mildew and thrips. I have tried various three-in-one feeds with fungicide and insecticide added. I am unimpressed with the results. I know that organic gardening is something of a religion these days, however it has been my experience of some 40 years that a stubborn insistence upon organic gardening in the face of a blight-like infestation can cost you a vegetable, rose and/or perennial season.

Two years ago I lost a number of blooms on a magnificent rose to thrips (Neptune featured above). Cutting back the tender buds and blooms where the thrips feed on an infected rose is part of the recommended treatment. Only a rose lover can understand how heartbreaking it is to have to prematurely cut back the young buds on a lovely rose in the hope of stemming the spread of these nasty little attackers. Had I worked strictly organically - which might well have allowed the thrip to run its course - I could have been forced to remove several groups of buds and might not have seen another prolific bloom period that season.

Colorado high summer brings temperatures in the high 90’s to low triple digits. No doubt to protect her fragile, satiny petals the rose prefers to bloom in early to mid summer’s cooler temperatures on the Plains. My decision to prune back the larger buds in addition to administering a single bi-weekly dose of Rose Pride killed the thrips and quickly. A hardy rose like Neptune will continue to push growth and buds as long as the temperature stays mild to spite the over pruning.

Deciding which chemicals to use including fertilize, if you are going to use chemicals, requires thought and research. Out here on the High Plains roses are susceptible to virulent insects like the aphid and the spider mite, as well as the burrowing insect and the thrip. They are also highly susceptible to the destructive fungi red spot and black spot in addition to powdery mildew. If your roses are also inclined toward vulnerability I would suggest that you consider the short term use of insect, disease, and plant specific preparations for the treatment of roses and other plants in your garden.

I am not trying to make an either/or argument here. Organic gardening is wonderfully effective until it isn’t.

My Ducats, My Daughter

2010-03-02T15:26:00.000-08:00

The "gentleman" from Kentucky, Republican Senator Jim Bunning is currently holding up a bill that would extend the unemployment benefits of thousands of people. The excuse he gives for this despicable behavior is that he believes the government should be able to pay for this extension of benefits before it is approved. Of course, he had no such scruples about George Bush’s two unpaid wars and tax cuts for the rich. Indeed, he voted against Obama’s special commission to solve the nation's budget problems. It seems to me that this level of foolishness transcends hypocrisy to border on insanity. On the other hand, Mr. Bunning has been asked by his party not to run for re-election so perhaps this is hubris. The working class has always been an easy target for men like Bunning. We haven’t the money to be respected beyond the lip service our elected officials pay to us and the world in which we live.

I keep hearing from various people in the media that Bunning is a baseball Hall of Famer as if it should mean something. Well, I don't give a damn if he is a star AARP Chippendale dancer, he is a bloody skin flint. Like so many on the right if he had his way we would all be standing in breadlines.

My parents talked often about the breadlines of the Great Depression. In Chicago where they lived during the 30’s most of the breadlines and soup kitchens were built not by the government or the Salvation Army, but by a man named Al Capone. With his submachine gun and pinstriped suit Capone - mobster, killer and gangland overlord - was strictly small potatoes compared to the thugs in the Senate today. It takes industrial size balls to praise Jesus out of one side of your mouth and put money above people out of the other.

Mr. Bunning isn’t the only one who considers helping the middle class a financial inconvenience after funding wars and cutting taxes for the rich. Yesterday on the floor of the Senate Jon Kyl of Arizona, also a Republican, made the following assessment. If you extend unemployment benefits people won’t bother to look for work because they will be making money without working. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, tried to tell Kyl that there are no jobs. The Senator from Arizona was unimpressed and ignored the argument. The same is true of Cobra in Kyl’s estimation. Nothing makes people more eager to find work then a need for health care.

I do not understand why working people vote for sadists like Kyl and Bunning - or Bush come to that. It looks to me like the voters who elected these men are now dealing with the universal principle of Karma, and Karma is a bitch.

A Pagan’s View of Health Care Reform and the Party of God

2010-02-28T14:59:00.000-08:00

Shortly after President Obama's health care summit I began to see ads from an organization called "Patients United Now." Essentially these ads were spewing the standard Republican talking points, including the need to scrap the current legislation and start over. Predictably the ads were utilizing an attractive shill to distort the medical outcomes of other countries and implying the usual nonsense about the President being a malignant socialist who wants to take over health care and kill us all.

If this stuff weren't so pervasive in the body politic today it would be hysterically funny - in much the same way that Buster Keaton's falling over furniture was funny. After listening to six hours of back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans at the summit, of this I am sure: the strategy of walking away from the House and Senate reform bills advocated by the right is very simply a way to stop reform in its entirety, and there is nothing funny about that bit of foolishness. I find it difficult to believe that the Republicans have any intension of doing anything other than stall and delay until they can gain control of the Congress once again in which case they will basically ignore the issue as they always have. A good indication of this is the fact that these people see no reason to stop the deplorable practice of denying coverage on the bases of pre-existing conditions.

"Patients United Now" is on the internet, although I was unable to link to their website. I wrote and told them what I think of them. I am telling everyone I know and suggesting that they tell everyone they know to watch out for this bunch.

Millions of people are uninsured in this country. Hundreds of people die every day - thousands every year from lack of health care. This is a moral issue not a business issue. I would think that a Christian nation would understand the difference and be willing to put caring for its sick and dying in a humane and decent way ahead of supporting - in the name of the bloody free market - a well healed special interest group that sucks up more and more of the American dollar every year.

I hear many of our "leaders" asking for forgiveness when they get caught doing something they shouldn’t, but who will ask for forgiveness for ignoring the people who are dying today and every day. It is the will of the God of the Christians that we love and care for one another above all thing, or so I am told. I hear a great deal from some politicians about the immorality of abortion, gay marriage and the like. I never hear any of them repeating Christ's admonition to, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God's."

The rose above is the Peace Rose. Her legend is timely. On the night before Hitler invaded Paris a French diplomat brought her seedling to the US in his pouch. Roosevelt called her the Peace Rose in the hope of peace to come. I never expect to see peace in my life again. I have no doubt that people who would deny their countrymen the right to be treated decently when sick and dying would be indifferent to the sickness of war and the dying of soldiers and civilians. Still, I plant a Peace Rose somewhere every season and will as long as I can lift a shovel. Like Roosevelt, I hope for peace.

The Road to Perdition

2010-02-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

Every now and then a malignant ideologue rears their ugly head in the body politic. Some are charming, some charismatic, and some just intimidating and ugly. They all have three things in common. First, they are generally liars, usually fanatics and always name callers. Without exception they seize upon a term with which to define others as social pariahs and use it freely. Secondly, they are not interested in the common good. For all their mouthing off about freedom, patriotism, Christianity and the wonder of democracy they are without exception self promoting power junkies. Finally, they all come to an ignominious end generally at the hands of the institutions that supported them.

In the 1930’s - during the Great Depression - a priest known as Father Charles Coughlin took the job. He was a rabid anti-Semite and supporter of many of Hitler and Mussolini’s policies. He hated Communism. After initially supporting Roosevelt Coughlin turned on him and the New Deal. He spewed his detestable venom over the public airways via a series of radio broadcasts. In 1942 the Bishop of Detroit, Edward Mooney, ordered Coughlin to clam up and go back to his parish duties. He did until he retired in 1966. However, this particular ideological nut case introduced the world of demagoguery to the media. Therefore, he is the grandfather of the Rush Limbaughs and the Glenn Becks of today.

Some twenty years later along came Joseph McCarthy, Republican Senator from Wisconsin. This guy was a paranoid tyrant who saw little red communists under every car and dining room table. Using the bludgeon of the Senate’s subpoena power he brought countless innocent people before that august body to be intimidated, slandered, filleted and ruined. They were all communists to him, and all communists looked alike. He served from 1947 until his death in 1957. It is worth noting that McCarthy was never able to prove any of his charges of Communism, and that in 1954 the Senate voted to censure him by 67 to 22. This effectively put him back in his box for the duration of his tenure.

The brilliant journalist Edward R. Murrow once said of McCarthy, "His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. . . We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law." (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

If you substitute the word terrorism for the word communism you will have exactly what is going on today. The right’s lies, the blatant hypocrisy, the false accusations and the distortions are all designed to confuse, muddle and mislead the electorate. This has nothing to do with serving the public good. It is about power and political gain pure and simple.

There are so many demagogues slithering through the political scene today that one is hard pressed to identify a single primary perpetrator. Like Coughlin and McCarthy they are for the most part on the far right tending toward the lunatic fringe. Unable to articulate any kind of coherent public policy argument, lacking any pretense of a serious commitment to the electorate, willing to say anything to get their face in front of a camera, profoundly judgmental, prone to name calling and hypocrisy - at times cruel - they are the most destructive personalities on the public stage. Most of them have a large following as did Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy. All of them are extremely adept at inspiring fear, hatred, and anger. As were Coughlin and McCarthy.

How far they will rise in the political world isn’t so much up to them or the Republican power brokers as it is up to us. We are a people who love to follow a Pied Piper with a mouth full of ear candy until it becomes obvious that we are being taken for a ride. By then we have generally paid dearly for the privilege. I give you George W. Bush, the run up to Iraq and the subsequent fear mongering of the next several years.

McCarthy was worse than Coughlin, because he was more powerful then Coughlin. The new breed of ideologues have a definite potential to be worse than McCarthy because they have access to greater wealth and a slavish media. With only a few exceptions there are no more Edward R. Murrows.

When someone inspires fear in me I don’t automatically think of following them. Fear mongers are fear mongering for a reason, and it is never a noble or honorable reason no matter how well it is wrapped in Christianity, integrity or patriotism.

If we believe that it is possible ". . . to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. . ." then we had better stop following every snake oil salesman with a false face and a fall guy down the road to perdition.

Imbolg

2010-02-01T11:43:00.000-08:00

The second of February is one of the Greater Sabbats for Celtic Pagans. It is known as Imbolg or more commonly by its Christianized name - Candlemas. This feast of fire and light is presided over by the Great Triple Goddess of the Celts, Brigit our Lady of Inspiration.

As the first fragile light of spring penetrates the departing darkness of winter, deep within the belly of our Mother Earth the first fetal stirring of life begins in the seeds, bulbs and roots that will yield the beautiful plants of summer. This is the Quickening, the second spoke in the Wheel of the Year.

Before the next Great Shabbat of Beltane, Brigit, the bringer of fertility, will gently shepherd the delicate shoots up through the soil. She will spread the leafy transformation of barren branches into lavish canopies seemingly in the blink of an eye. Under the silver glow of the Moon the symbol of Her three aspects - Maiden, Mother and Crone - She will nurture Her young attended by the little Fae until such time as I can help with the birthing and caretaking. Joyfully, I will spend the season with Her and the little ones through sweet golden mornings, long sultry afternoons and the deep silence of the hallowed nights.

As I walk through my gardens now I can feel the gentle rhythm of the life force in the Goddess’ womb. I can sense where a bulb has died, where a root has grown weak and will need extra feeding. Once in while I pause feeling the loss of a beauty that has been taken by the Great Crone through the Veil to bloom forever. Carried in my genetic makeup is this intuition of a master gardener, a Witch and worshipper of the Earth. I can trace my line back through time into the mists of old Scotland. I am honored to wear the mantel, proud of my faith and of my heritage.

The tulip above is called Golden Dawn. It was planted in dedication to Brigit and represents the radiance and renewed life of the Quickening and the Maiden Aspect of our Lady of Inspiration.

Fools and Frauds

2010-01-21T14:06:00.000-08:00

Is there fundamentally a difference between the mainstream media (left or right), the paparazzi and the scandal sheets with headlines such as "Woman gives birth to 20 pound alien gorilla,"? Maybe, but I don’t think so. For instance, look at the last several weeks before The Earthquake in Haiti. What has been one of the major stories obsessing our so-called free and unfettered press - why Tiger Woods and his penis, of course. We have followed, identified and cataloged his various mistresses, acquaintances and one night stands. We have speculated endlessly about the effect of his catastrophic infidelity on his extraordinarily important career in medicine? no - law? oh no - education? hell no - in golf. To say that we are a nation gone gaga over the trivial and prone to elevate mediocrity to the level of the legendary is to grossly underestimate our group psychosis. However, the Tiger Woods business during a fight for health care reform, an attempt to clean up Wall Street and to curb double digit unemployment, not to mention the need for some hard hitting commentary on the Democrat’s determination to toss Ted Kennedy’s seat to Republicans, is insipid and embarrassing.
The same geniuses that orchestrated the Tiger Wood’s fetish are now, in the wake of the Massachusetts’ defeat, determined to convince the American people that the Democrats are no longer in power in the Senate. This is ludicrous, lurid crap. The Democrats have 59 Senators and the Republicans 41. It is not higher math to figure out who has the majority.
Now, the only thing that has been harped on more than Tiger Woods’ penis is the Senatorial lunacy known as the Super Majority of 60 Votes. Each has been over exposed - no pun intended. The Democrats don’t need 60 votes to pass a bill. They need 60 votes to prevent a filibuster. The filibuster is basically a gimmick to wear out the other party. That is to say, the Republicans can stand up for five or six or eight days and read the phone book or The Complete Edgar Allen Poe or The Life and Times of Glenn Beck, if there is such a publication, anything to delay a vote. In the last year Mitch McConnell and his tribe of conservatives have used the filibuster like a pair of well worn running shoes to halt the Obama agenda. The filibuster was never designed to be used this way, and it needs to be terminated as a legislative option. It is a damn waste of time, and one of the reasons why nothing is ever done.
Extortionists like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson used the threat of voting with the Republicans to filibuster in order to get what they wanted out of the White House during the Senate health care negotiations. With God in their mouth and blackmail on their minds Lieberman cost the American people the Medicare Expansion that would have covered millions of people 55 and over, while Nelson held A Woman’s Right to Choose for ransom until he was given a great deal of money for his state. Sickening! I don’t understand why Obama didn’t trot over to the Secretary of State’s Office, borrow Hillary Clinton’s balls, come back to the Senate and say the following: "You want to have a filibuster. Come on down. You can filibuster in one room, and I will explain the health care bill in the other. We will all be on CNN." Not even the Republicans can run off at the mouth forever. Sooner or later they need to shut up. Put them on T.V. wasting the taxpayers time and money and my guess will be sooner.
Why would members of the Senate go out of their way to destroy with a filibuster something such as health care reform that we need so badly? Because they are being paid to protect someone else’s interests.
I have said before that the media does the American people no good by ignoring the influence pedaling on Capitol Hill. Just today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that a hundred years worth of laws and restrictions on corporate political contributions are to be set aside. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority - Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito - held basically that money is a form of free speech. In a country where money talks and everything else walks, that’s a good one, Mr. Justice. It is interesting to note that Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican Minority Leader, filed the opening law suit in the process that ended with today’s decision. If you have any doubt that your government is for sale, now more than ever, think again. If you think this serves you well, remember you don’t have enough money to matter.
I believe it is time for a third political party. I believe that it is time to tell the McConnells and the Obamas that most politicians of both parties are alike in our estimation. Their first priority is to promote themselves. Their second is to rub the tit that yields the money. They wouldn’t know the truth if it ran over them with a truck, and they are not to be trusted with the welfare of the Republic.
I believe it is time to boycott the arrogant, salacious, condescending mainstream media. There is plenty of good reading and watching online whether you are a liberal or a conservative, a Democrat or a Republican.
Above all, I believe that we can send a message to the nine wise men and women of the U.S. Supreme Court who serve for life and apparently have no interest in or fiduciary responsibility to the American people. We must show them that we will not allow money to run our government, because we won’t allow money to control our minds. Whenever there is a great deal of corporate cash on the table for a candidate or a cause, the game is rigged - this is a given. Until the elitists on the Supreme Court decide that only corporations can vote, we have the ultimate currency in the franchise. We sell it at our own risk.

The Big Lie

2010-01-08T13:23:00.000-08:00

We have always had abortion on demand in this country. We do it in hospitals now instead of garages. De-legalize it or restrict access to it and we go back to the garage. That is the real choice in prochoice.

When I entered the hospital setting back in the late 60’s/early 70’s - long before many of the women who now take their reproductive rights for granted were fully formed ova - I had the appalling misfortune of watching a 13 year-old girl die from what a back alley abortionist had done to her immature womb. Her death was long and hard and cruel. Her parents kept asking, "Why didn’t she tell us?" "Why?" Perhaps it was the twin, cardinal virtues of the "good girl" back in the day, fear and shame. Perhaps it was a mistaken confidence that anyone who called themselves a doctor wouldn’t hurt you. Whatever it was it cost her life.

Today, decades after Roe v. Wade became established law, a handful of Conservative Democrats in the House and Senate along with their enablers in the leadership, Obama included, have decided to send women back to the alleys to exercise their reproductive options. The pathetic and sniveling excuses for health care reform legislation dribbling out of both chambers of Congress are fully informed with the idea of making a Woman’s Right to Choose irrelevant by drying up access to safe, therapeutic abortion. This tactic of supposedly enfranchising one group of people by disenfranchising another is called leverage in politics. It is called extortion in the real world. These narcissistic, self serving, seedy politicians - yes I include Obama - are engaged in misogyny of the most evil kind. Once again women are reminded that our minds and bodies are of secondary importance in the urine laced sandbox that is the affairs of men. We will follow the tenets of a bloody faith we may not accept and have children we can’t care for because the power grabbing of our politicians, including so-called feminists, Goddess help us all, is more important than the life and safety of generations of women.

Lest you take all the bible thumping and pre-born loving too seriously in a country that has been content to accept one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and the denial of prenatal care to women having their second child on the grounds that pregnancy is a preexisting condition, all of this in the name of profit, let me tell you a little more about the bad old days before abortion was legal. If you think that the Obamas or Stupaks or Nelsons or Pelosis or Boxers or Reids, etc., are going to abide by the lousy laws they shove down the public’s throat - think again. We used to see the wealthy, the powerful, the well connected and the holier than thou slink into the hospital years ago. Their surgical procedure was listed as a D&C. The procedure done was a D&C with suction. Their diagnosis was recorded as abnormal uterine bleeding. The diagnosis in reality was a therapeutic abortion. The tissue removed was documented as uterine tissue. In reality the tissues evacuated were the productions of conception. We came to suspect that many of these people lied for a living and compulsively. They lied to constituents, themselves and probably to their god. One thing we knew for sure, they didn’t end up in alleys. This was elitism and class warfare of the most gruesome kind.

There is no doubt that there are many decent people who are prolife. Certainly, there are many committed prolife women. To them I respectfully say, abortions is an individual woman’s question. Her decision to terminate a pregnancy is between her, her Deity, her partner, and her doctor. This is not a societal concern. It is not a government issue, and above all it is not the province of any organized religion. A Pagan woman is not bound by the teachings of the Catholic Church. She has as much right to the protection of the Constitution and secular law as any other woman. Roe v Wade is the law of the land. Insisting that women be denied equal protection under the law because some religious coup d'état enjoys the ear of our legislators is obscene. The very idea of laws dictated by religious groups would have seemed insane to Thomas Jefferson, but then he didn’t lean on the Catholic Bishops to make laws in his time as Ben Nelson did during the debate over health care reform.

Obama promised us change. I had no idea that he intended to change the early 21st Century for the mid 20th Century with regard to women’s rights. Back then women routinely died because they couldn’t obtain a clinically safe abortion. I am afraid they will start dying again, and when they do the blood will be on Obama’s hands. After all he keeps telling us that the buck stops with him.

Health Care Reform the Great Hoax

2009-12-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

If you have been following the Health Care Reform Debate recently you have witnessed one of the greatest sell-outs in the history of politics. Many people will tell you that politics is a dirty game. I think that it is a toilet inside of a cesspool surrounded by a nightmare. No one inside of the system escapes being soiled and no one outside escapes having their interests trashed.

I have followed presidential politics from Eisenhower to Obama, and I am absolutely astounded at the fact that the successor of FDR, JFK and LBJ lacks the balls to stand up to his own caucus. When faced with a bullying, strutting, self serving egotist such as Joe Lieberman the 44th President caves in like a tower made of wet tissue paper. Oh he is beautiful and smooth and smart; however, I am beginning to believe that all of the intestinal fortitude in the Progressive Democratic Party Leadership is sitting in the Secretary of State’s Office.

Following his magnificent collapse Obama seems to have sent his minions in the Senate out to the cameras to instruct the American people not to be greedy, take what we can get and that nothing has really been lost. Perhaps this is the most appalling thing of all - to bargain away any chance we had of real health care reform then to stand and tell us that we don’t see what we see, hear what we hear and know what we know. My mother used to say of people who engaged in this behavior, "The empty wagon rattles the loudest." Empty they are - of decency, compassion, honor and often brain power. They still have their even emptier slogans though. "Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good," code for the needs of the American People aren’t really the issue.

We began this Health Care nightmare with the idea of a single payer system. We are the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that doesn’t cover all of its citizens. Many of the countries that have the single payer model are not using a socialist foundation. It might behoove some of the empty wagons rattling in this country to acquaint themselves with the difference. Thanks to Senator Olympia Snowe - whom I don’t remember seeing on the presidential ticket despite Obama's need to placate her at every opportunity - and some other so called bi-partisan Republicans single payer was pushed into the cesspool as the public option emerged.

The public option was predicted to be a government run plan that the uninsured and others could buy into. It was to be not-for-profit and therefore cheaper to run. This would have offered competition to the private health care insurance providers and encouraged the lowering of costs. Once again for the benefit of the empty wagons rattling about government take over and socialized medicine, this is neither. The public option, as the word option implies, was a choice.

Down the toilet with single payer and with the help of Senator Max Baucus’ Finance Committee, into the cesspool with the public option as the Medicare buy in materialized. The buy in would allow people 55 and older to buy into Medicare. This is a group of people who are very difficult to insure. Onto the scene comes Joe Lieberman, the Senator from Aetna, to flush single payer down the toilet and push the Medicare buy in into the cesspool.

What is left? A windfall/bailout for the insurance companies shored up by individual mandates to carry insurance. Penalties to be exacted by the IRS. What becomes of the employer mandate? Will employers drop their employees from coverage secure in the knowledge that the individual must provide their own insurance?

Supposedly there are some consumer protections. However, the health care insurance industry has been dancing around consumer protection for years. Particularly, when they have, as they do now, someone to carry their water in the White House. This is a bit like forcing tax-payers to do business with organized crime.

The real sadness of this is that the President and the Democratic Senate had a chance to do something monumental and historic for the American People. Instead, like very brilliant surgeons with the opportunity to remove a heretofore inoperable tumor they decided that rather than using the best equipment, the finest medications and the most excellent technique they would bleed the patient because the man who owns the leech pool contributes to their campaign. Herein lies the rub, as the Bard said. We have the finest government money can buy. Most of our so called leaders of both parties and all descriptions spend a good deal of their time sporting Joan-Crawford-Hurt-Me-Pumps, strolling up and down K Street singing "Love/Influence for Sale" to passing lobbyists. There is a name for people who behave this way, and it isn’t Mr. President or Senator.

Finally, a word to the Tea Baggers and the Freedom Loving Patriots who have fought health care reform at the behest of corporate sponsors these many months. Aetna is tossing several hundred thousand people off their rolls soon to protect their profit base. Odds are that some of you will be in their number. Perhaps your corporate friends like Dick Armory will help cover any and all of your medical expenses in the weeks and months to come. Of course, we know that you won’t want to accept government subsides. Good luck with all of that.

Obama, Health Care and Other Political Scapegoats

2009-11-17T12:12:00.000-08:00

I remember very clearly when George W. Bush was elected - or should I say appointed by Scalia - in 2000. The media, many liberals included, placed their soft little cheeks up against Bush’s rosy red bum and chattered about wanting to have a beer with him. They happily lowered the bar and watched their new leader stumble through the White House and the English language for about a year and a half. By then it was clear to even the dullest, working reporter that Bush was not only a fool, but a dangerous fool under the control of one of the most malignant ideologues in the history of American politics - Dick Cheney. Suffice it to say that the media was roundly ridiculed by the American people and even some within its own ranks for their starry eyed refusal to investigate thoroughly and report objectively on the Bush Administration’s embarrassing war in Iraq, blundering in Afghanistan, attempted extermination of the Middle Class, and incompetent management of the economy.

I have followed politics in this country for the better part of half a century, and these things I know:
The media seems never to admit its mistakes unless it stands to be sued, with the exception of a few truly remarkable journalists like Ms.Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.

The media never forgives or forgets. The media will get even, if not with the object of their vengeance then with a reasonable facsimile. Therefore, since they have absolutely no power to hold Bush accountable anymore they are hot after his successor - President Obama. Our 44th President has been over scrutinized, over criticized and over speculated about. Now at nine months in office he is expected to have fixed the economy, solved health care, solved the global warming problem, sent unemployment back into the low single digits, not to mention cleaning up Wall Street, Iraq and Afghanistan. Sometimes I wonder if some of the heads squawking at me from behind my TV screen are insane. Let’s face it, even George W. Bush, a virtuoso among the inept, couldn’t screw all these things up in only nine months.

There are a number of excuses for this behavior, but only one honest name for it - scapegoating. That is to say blaming one person for the failings, shortcomings or mess made by another. It isn’t just the media. Oh hell no, the Republicans have been doing it with increasing vehemence since Obama was elected. Those on the right are the people who followed and supported Bush, allowing him to spend the Conservative movement into near collapse. These are the people who didn’t argued with him or take issue with his policies until very late in his administration. They are dreadfully unhappy with the result of Bush’s years in the White House and would rather call Obama a Socialist then look at their own culpability.

In social psychology scapegoating is a hostile hallmark of dysfunctional group behavior. In politics it is business as usual. Still in all, the scapegoating isn’t the worst manifestation of disease-like behavior in our government. With the passage of the House’s Health Care Bill, H.R. 3962, we saw the trading of a few Democratic votes - many of which did not materialize - for the right to undermine a woman’s lawful exercise of her reproductive freedom. This was an act of extortion that suggested the psychopathology of sever narcissism.

It seems to me that there are with a few exceptions three kinds of people currently serving in government and using these and other pathological tactics to support their personal agendas. First, the whores peddling their influence up and down K Street. These are the people who routinely sell their constituents out for campaign contributions. Second, the religious zealots, career misogynists and parasitic capitalists who pick and choose the principles of the Bible, the Constitution, and the Free Market that support their bigotry, cruelty and greed. I am thinking specifically of the Democrats who promised to vote for H.R. 3962 if the Stupak antiabortion amendment was passed. After passage of the amendment many of them voted with the Republicans against reform. They are liars, and their voters should consider removing them from office on the grounds of trustworthiness, authenticity and commitment. Finally, there are the want-to-be lifers. Men and women who expect to be buried from the House or Senate and will do nothing that might interfere with that. They vacillate, procrastinate, and sit on their hands until the vote is safe. They are the most treacherous of all because they are fundamentally and deliberately inert.

Such mental and moral midgets are always casting about for scapegoats to shield them from the ramifications of their own narcissistic and duplicitous actions or inactions. Barak Obama is their goat of choice currently. However, ideas can also be used as scapegoats to cover up the real motives behind political action. For instance, this ridiculous Stupak amendment, steeped in Christianity, is being used to deny one group of people health care unless another is disenfranchised. Religion has always been used as a tool to exercise illegitimate control over the feminine mind and body. Women are entitled by law to abortion services and other forms of reproductive medicine.

Make no mistake about the fact that the purpose of Stupak is to stop health care reform not abortion. As the Democratic and Republican Right well know, the Hyde amendment passed on September 30, 1976, already prohibits the use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services. Cynically realizing that Pro-Choice will not be denied the legal options guaranteed under Roe v. Wade, the amendment’s proponents hope to force the left to vote down its own health care bill if Stupak is part of that bill. In other words, Stupak and his tribe are unwilling to say that they wish to deny the American people a sensible health care reform bill - for whatever reason - so they are making a scapegoat of a Woman’s Right to Choose and pounding the Bible to do it.

What a show some of our lawmakers put on, strutting about, talking out of both sides of their mouths, wrapped in the flag and proudly displaying many of the personality traits of a successful serial killer, to wit: over 18,000 people die every year without health care coverage in America; our infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world - yes, a very successful serial killer indeed .

Samhain - Rededication

2009-10-22T13:39:00.000-07:00

I am hereditary, born and bred to the Craft of the Wise. My grandmother and teacher had no interest in the Wicca and no use for the Creed or Rede as it is sometimes called. I was raised to work solitary - with a precise moral compass, fearing neither the light nor the dark. Now that I am Crone I am charged as my grandmother was with sharing my wisdom.

Some say that Wicca is the religion and Witchcraft only a skill. For those of us who follow the Goddess and offer our "skill" up as Her liturgy this is not acceptable. The Craft represents the antecedent creed, the ancestral path of magic. Witchcraft outside of the Wicca is much less codified and ritualized. Many of us have a nearly anaphylactic reaction to hierarchy and authority. The concepts of high priest and high priestess aren’t particularly meaningful. The idea of a god as a coequal in divinity is also lacking in spiritual valence. Still, the Wicca offers much beauty and not a little enlightenment.

I was dedicated to and taught to follow the Goddess Brigit. Although, my grandmother dearly loved Cernunnos as a companion of the Goddess, and I came to love Him too. At the time of my Croning I was called by Hecate the Queen of the Witches, Goddess of the Dark Side of the Moon and Solitary Keeper of the Crossroads. The Wiccan concept of duality is fascinating, however, I have and do follow the Goddess, not Her consort.

As in all religions these precepts are the tenets of faith. We can prove nothing. We can only follow our heart. I think that it is perhaps in ritual that we come to see our spiritual reality best. I have only ever seen the Lady.

Contradictions

2009-09-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

There are days when my mind reels with the contradictions around me. I want to scream that it can’t all be true at once. For instance, the following arguments cannot be supported side by side without admitting to the most grotesquely immoral of stipulations:

One cannot espouse a pro-life position, defending the rights of the unborn, while simultaneously supporting politicians and state governments that allow health care insurance companies to deny prenatal coverage to many women on the grounds that pregnancy is a preexisting condition.

Stipulation: Some unborn babies have no rights in the service of profit.

One cannot be identified as a freedom loving American demanding liberty while simultaneously denying fellow citizens the freedom of action and choice to protect their life.

Stipulation: My liberty is more important than your life - even if I don’t know what the hell I am talking about and believe that all kinds of things are in the Constitution that are not.

One is not a patriot who disrespects and threatens the Commander and Chief of the United States of America.

Stipulation: African Americans cannot be Commander and Chief of the United States of America.

Walking a righteous path requires more than mouthing political talking points and serially vomiting selective and/or misquoted passages from the Bible. Using the head for something other than a showcase for a vicious and destructive mouth is a place to start. Without very much effort a little thought might indicate that two diametrically opposed principles cannot cohabitate in the same truth. One must be a lie.

I have seen a lot of things in my sixty years. I saw a president cut down in the streets of Dallas. I saw a man walk on the moon. I saw human organs transplanted and the fall of Communism. I have seen the Internet, email and Twitter. I have also seen the truth twisted into lies and fall to ashes in the mouth of a self-serving and opportunistic political ideologue. I left the wilderness of youth behind me long ago, and am entering old age and the wisdom of the Goddess. With all I’ve seen and all I’ve learned, this I know. There is no power in the world, human or other, that can work the liar's alchemy backward.

There Are More Things In Heaven and Earth . . .

2009-08-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

Liberal. 1. Having, expressing or following political views or policies that favor civil liberties, democratic reforms, and the use of government power to promote social progress. 2. Having, expressing or following views or policies that favor the freedom of the individual to act or express themselves in a manner of their own choosing. The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

Edward M. Kennedy was a Liberal. He was not a Fascist or a Nazi. Those two philosophies are at the opposite end of the political continuum, to the right in point of fact. He was not a Marxist, a Socialist or a Communist. He was not a moderate or a conservative – he didn’t advocate the value of money or rigid social structures over people. Teddy was a humanist, an altruistic advocate of social justice. He loved this country because he realized that his and all liberal visions of social justice can best be realized here.

Over a period of nearly 50 years he promoted, penned and passed some of the most important human rights legislation in the history of our government or any other. From Civil Rights to Voting Rights, from Equal Pay for Equal Work to increasing the minimum wage and much more – Teddy was there. The man never worked a day in his life, outside of government, and yet he was the best friend the working man or woman ever knew. Certainly better than all the “real Americans” who would flush the unions down the drain without a second thought and consider a living wage a burden on business.

Senator Kennedy believed that everyone should have decent housing, food to eat, an education and health care. It is in keeping with the dark irony of his tragic family that he should die before seeing the work of his life completed. I am afraid that his vision of health care for everyone has followed him into the grave at Arlington. It will take ten Democrats to carry his mantel, and we don’t live in a world that cares about social justice anymore.

The elderly stand up in town hall meetings and screech about socialized medicine while collecting Medicare. Seems to me that they don’t give a damn whether or not their children or grandchildren have health care. Idiots wear guns to Presidential venues. What are we suppose to make out of that in a country that has assassinated four presidents, with thirteen near misses and a couple of questionable? Here’s what I make of it. Me-me-me-me-me is the Gregorian Chant of the infant soul. I hear it everywhere making it even more poignant that Teddy’s great voice is silent.

For people who don’t believe in reincarnation take a look around. There are people showing their ass daily, mostly on T.V., who could not possibly have gotten so stupid in one lifetime. I do believe in reincarnation. I hope Teddy comes back, although I can’t imagine why he would want to.

The rose above is a pristine white hybrid tea. Like all white roses this one suffers in the heat of summer. It burns and fades early. Yesterday morning as Senator Kennedy’s funeral began the rose opened and defied the blazing sun. Within several hours the rose unfolded in a cacophony of shades of pale and sweet rose scent. The name of the rose is John F. Kennedy.

Flower Comments

What in the Hell are They Fighting For?

2009-08-13T14:41:00.000-07:00

I have been watching these town hall meetings closely. Between the bouts of nausea and anxiety I keep asking myself, "What in hell are these people fighting for?" Could it be the broken health care delivery system on the verge of implosion? Could it be the multimillion dollar profits of multimillion dollar corporations? Is the working class just a collection of stooges following the ultra rich blindly against their own interests in the name of the Constitution? Could it ultimately be that these angry, shouting mobs of ageing adolescents are stupid enough to believe in intellectual excrement like death panels and government spies in the exam room, and if so are they moronic enough to believe that I or any other medical professional would stand still for such things? What arrogance. What condescending presumption. What a total lack of respect for their fellow human beings. Is this the heart of Christian-Middle America - selfishly defining the world and their fellow citizens exclusively in terms of their vested interests, fears, neurosis and insecurities?

This is all so pathetic. I keep seeing people standing up and tearfully shouting out that they want their country back. Where exactly do they think it has gone? Could this be code for, "I want a white face like mine back in the Oval Office?" Is it possible that we are going to deprive millions of our supposedly beloved countrymen of health care because we haven’t come to grips with our bloody bigotry? There is a sorrow here deeper than any sorrow I ever observed in the psych ward; deeper than any sorrow I ever felt for an alcoholic who killed his family because he was too drunk to know what he was doing; deeper than the sorrow I felt in the OR watching a surgeon repair the tortured veins of an HIV positive, teenage addict. It is deeper because everyone knows that booze and junk lead to addiction. However, we treat hate - the greatest of all mind altering substance - as if it had no deleterious properties, no long term effects.

I see hate, and little else, in these town hall meetings full of rage and belligerence. Hate is addictive, and we are addicted. We hate our government, until a hurricane comes. Our politicians hate the government, but don’t mind sucking off the government tit for thirty or forty years. We hate our president. He is turning the economy around and has cut our taxes, but we hate him still. His face is black. He has a funny name, and certain fools say he was born in Kenya. I remember when certain jug-heads in the House attempted to change the law so Schwarzenegger could run for president. Of course, he is pasty white. We hate other countries. We have savaged Britain and Canada for the last six months because of a health care system they like and we know, "but slenderly," as Shakespeare said. We hate one another. The Sarah Palins, Glen Becks, Rush Limbachs and other unmedicated wack jobs keep this going with the right people and the wrong people; the good people and the evil people; the real Americans and the interlopers; God’s people and the devil’s. They have built a narrow world boarded by anger, hate and resentment with few options. Their followers living within those boarders even hate themselves it seems to me.

President Obama is the president of open boarders and expanded options and possibilities. He forgives his enemies and turns the other cheek. These are Christian virtues, I am told. I wouldn’t know. I am a Pagan and I leave forgiveness to the Goddess. She controls the laws of karma, and deeds return in increments of three. Turning the other cheek makes no sense to me. Never turning my back on the enemy does. I admire Obama, and I am terrified that while attempting to help this country he will be hurt. I am pretty certain that we aren’t worth it.

Blue Dog Democrates

2009-07-21T08:31:00.000-07:00

The Blue Dogs are a group of conservative democrats. They have tended to resemble Republicans within the last several months, particularly with regard to Obama's health care plans. My fear is that they will undermine him to such an extent that his health care plan will go the way of Clinton's in the early 90's. Since he has staked so much of his presidency on the promise of affordable health care for every American, I am concerned for his chance of reelection in 2012 if health care goes down. Most people say that the Dogs will stop short of this, but who can tell. It all depends upon how red their state is and how much money they take from the health care lobby.

I am determined if the public option goes down to the interests of the insurance companies - to advocate for the proposition that the people in Congress lose all health care benefits. There is no reason why the American people should subsidize their public servants in what they are denied. I can't imagine that it would be very difficult to stir up against the Dogs and others the same selfish interests within the general public that are now worried about what covering the uninsured will cost them. It is time that Congress lived in the world it creates.

If the Dogs want to be Republicans they should cross the isle. I have written to the leader of the Blue Dogs telling her so. I tried to write to the coalition, but their email is no longer working - imagine that if you can. I am providing some urls for anyone who would like to write. Let’s be clear here, these people live in our Capitol and feed at our government's troughs. Therefore, anyone can write to them who wishes too, regardless of who put them office.

http://www.house.gov/melancon/BlueDogs/Member%20Page.html coalition

http://hersethsandlin.house.gov/contact2.htm leader of the Blue Dogs

Now, if you have reached the end of this blog and are thoroughly pissed off, that would be your problem. You are in the wrong place. I am a Liberal, an unashamed, unabashed Liberal. I believe that people are more important than money. Don't waste my time forcing me to read an angry comment - go find someone with whom you have something in common.

Disgusted

2009-07-18T14:48:00.000-07:00

This morning I caught an ad on CNN. A woman claimed to be a Canadian who needed brain surgery at one point and was told that she would have to wait some ridiculous period of time. I say ridiculous because some of the claims about the British and Canadian systems boarder on malpractice. At any rate, she indicated that she had to come to the US for surgery. It begs the question, what in hell did she use to pay for her care? I know neurosurgeons. I worked with many when I was in institution health care. THEY DO NOT WORK PRO BONO.

There is something really strange about all the crap being spread with regard to health care in other countries. There aren't too many people walking around who could afford to pay out of pocket for resection of a brain tumor. It seems to me that either she is lying or there is something she isn't telling us.

Sorrow

2009-07-18T14:28:00.000-07:00

I have stopped watching the news or reading it on line. I refuse to go into the Internet News Chat Rooms that are like nothing so much as toilets. I realize that I am frightened and irritable. I have taken counsel with my good friend Kitty, other wise women and my Goddess. This is what I know.

In the late 60’s I joined the Fabian Socialist. I remained a card carrying Socialist for nearly eight years. Barak Obama has no more resemblance to a Socialist than I do to an NBA star. Most of the political opportunists throwing this term at him like spitballs wouldn’t know a Socialist if they ran over them with a tank.

I left the Socialist Movement when I understood that the logical outcome of the old adage, "What goes around, comes around," and the Pagan Rule of Three is that most people have exactly what they deserve. Still in all, I remained committed to social justice, civil rights and women’s rights. I joined the Democratic Party. Please note the "ic" on the end of the word Democratic. In this phrase Party is the central noun. It is modified by the adjective form of the noun Democrat. Here ends the lesson except to say that politicians who are so self absorbed or lack the perspicacity to speak their native language properly should stay away from the microphones or learn to Sign.

These many years since have demonstrated to me that Democrats use money to take care of people, while the Republicans seem to use people to take care of money. I hear this persistent and ubiquitous rant about the Unbridled, Unrestrained Free Market as if it existed on some soaring, rarefied plain miles above the human condition. It is a tabernacle to wealth and greed of which most people will never own any significant portion, but will exist only to serve. The working class is enslaved by the concept, mouthing the rhetoric of their economic betters like hypnotized children hoping for a sweet. It is group think, group speak, no free thinkers allowed, and they call Obama a Socialist.

The worst of it is the hate speech, the demonizing and the veiled, or not so veiled threats. I sometimes think that we are a nation of one-note-canaries. We are so shrill and so unyielding that we can’t hear the many other notes that would ease our soul and make a beautiful symphony. I feel as if the world has grown dark and bloody as Macbeth’s Scotland. Juxtapose this to the bright promise of President Obama’s election and the darkness fills with a palpable sorrow.

I will enter my sixth decade in November. I have seen a great deal. I know where rage and hate lead, and it is nowhere that any sane person should want to go. I know truly that greed is a deadly sin and not, as some in this country would have us believe, a cardinal virtue. Mostly, I know that true freedom lives in the heart with love and empathy.

Calling Social Security an Entitlement is a Damn Good Way to Get Away with Theft

2009-07-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

Here is my problem with so-called-entitlements. I have had Social Security removed from my pay for nearly 50 years. There was no "check if you wish to contribute" box on my tax forms. I wasn’t given a choice. The money taken out of my check was food off my children’s table. Where the hell did it go? Who raided my retirement fund? I am an Italian American, when my ethnic brothers, the mobsters of the 1940s and 1950s, raided the Teamsters retirement fund they were charged with racketeering and sent to prison. Now the modern day racketeers are telling me that I am a drain on society and it isn’t their fault, it is mine. I need to retire later, take less and they have no accountability. I suppose the good news is that we never adopted the Bush plan and put Social Security into the stock market.

Well I have an idea how we can save some money in this country. Cut the salaries of all those serving in the Congress in half. Cut their retirement benefits in half. Most of them may not have Social Security. Their government funded retirement is far better and has never been in question. Anyone now receiving a salary who is no longer serving in government and not of retirement age needs to go get a job, and their funds need to come back into the country’s coffers. Perhaps it is time that we demand that our legislators receive compensation and benefits consistent with the average public servant rather than being spoiled and pampered like an elite ruling class. Above all we need to remember what Mark Twain said, "There is no distinctly criminal class excluding the United States Congress."

Just an opinion.