Apportionment Counts are Coming!

1.

A decent Constitutional Lesson

I have to agree with the author, Ilya Shapiro. This is a correct reading of the commerce clause. The funny thing that strikes me is that it was a GOP push to have this in the damn healthcare bill, and I think they did it just so they could use it as a counterstrike to challenge it altogether. Which means to me Mr. Obama (or his counsel team) are not the clever lawyers as first believed... Yes I want a public option but no, I don't think it should be hinged on forcing people to buy health insurance from private companies. And that's exactly what I think happened here. GOP lobbied to get something bad put in so they could cry and get it thrown out altogether. It only scares me that these selfish bastards one-upped the President.

However, I think a blanket ruling will open up a whole new can of worms about things the government can't make you buy - I think the car insurance analogy mentioned in this article does have a faulty premise if the Supreme Court's eventual ruling is a blanket statement. I am going to look for more examples of what the government (state or federal) forces it's citizens to purchase to be legal. I'm sure there is something out there...

For the moment - CNN commenter on story of bodies found on the beach

Wonder land

ppl freeze to death. Ppl kill each other. Ppl r just cruel, mean n hateful. Most ppl r selfish. Dont put ur self in a situation to be killed. Evil exist in this world. Trust no one n u wont be disappointed!
December 14, 2010 at 3:23 am | Report abuse | Reply

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Havoth

hate to let ya down – but as long as you're here on Earth – and not immortal – you are in a position of dying at some point. Let the cruel nature of it go and enjoy the moment you are having right now – for it's wisdom, its humor, its poignancy or whatever this moment has to offer...Love

Madoff son found dead of apparent suicide

I guess you may have seen that the son of  Bernie Madoff (serving a 150 yr sentence), Mark Madoff killed himself yesterday.  That is sad. The sons pay for the sins of the fathers, don’t they?

 I feel the most for the 2 yr old boy Mark Madoff (named recently in several lawsuits as direct investors try to recoup their losses) left behind. That’s truly a shame. For some reason I can’t help but think Bernie, in prison, will only be able to show his humanity by promptly dying of grief himself  -if only to satisfy some angry people.  The whole thing is a shame.  But the pure viciousness of some readers just take my breath away:

• ·         batman13  -What would have made this a REALLY happy story would have been if when Bernie got the news, he had a heart attack and died. Oh well, I guess you can't have everything.
• ·         bbqbearII  - one can only hope it was a slow painful wretching death.. one he hadn't expected..
• ·         AzWildcat  - Too bad the rest of the Republican Party won't follow his lead

[nonsense, hateful vicious nonsense, Havoth says – even in wishing Repugnicans dead – I don’t like the hard core conservatives who work tirelessly for the rich bastards, bankers, and PACs who have screwed up our country, either, but I don’t wish them dead…I wish the populace was SMARTER in their chosen representatives – Stop voting for the guy you’d like to get drunk with or the Ice Queen you’d like to fuck – vote for someone who can explain shit and do something about it in the People’s favor – Like…uh…say…Bill Clinton!!!!]

However, one of the more positive and just commenters on a CNN article said: “The only mistake Bernie made was to steal from rich people. They [rich people/Republican hard core conservatives and the like] don't like that. ‘You steal from the poor like the rest of us!’ If you can't pay one mortgage you’re a deadbeat, If you can't pay a million mortgages, then your Bear Sterns and we bail you out.”

Now that’s a really sad but true thing to say. A very strange example of how our money system works in this country.

Rally To Restore Sanity and (not) Fear Worked for Me!

I have to say I was pretty excited Saturday watching the telecast on Comedy Central for Jon Stewart's Rally. And I was wowed by the size of the crowd and glad that somewhere Glenn Beck is crying. I thought Kid Rock did so-so and Sheryl Crow - whom I really do like normally - didn't know the song. And that Bruce Springsteen should have been there instead. Or Prince. Or Styx, or anybody but Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow. But the bit with Yusuf and Ozzy - pretty funny. And wowed again by the O Jays. Yes, the Love Train is one we all can ride. PK Winsome's bit was tragically long and unfunny. The Mythbusters made great points.  And Sam Waterston RULED. And Tony Bennett was beautifully in fine form.

But it was all a 3 hour warm up for speech by Jon Stewart that achieved its purpose. I could have listened to Jon talk all afternoon. He is just so - so - reasonable. Funny, yes, but more than that, he does speak for more Americans right now. The silent majority isn't really silent you know, they are just being shouted down by the crazies. Thank you, Jon Stewart. Keep up the good work.

P.S.  - I'm going to vote tomorrow. I haven't found that my lefty vote really matters here in Dallas TX. But I occasionally vote for a republican that makes sense. But in the governor's race here - Mr. Perry needs to take a hike. I'm just not sure about that other guy.

Super-Yachts from Stem to Stern Culture: vanityfair.com

Super-Yachts from Stem to Stern Culture: vanityfair.com

Aahhhhh!!! the life....

 Courtesy of Vanity Fair: As of now, Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich’s Eclipse is the biggest yacht in the world, beating the Sheikh of Dubai’s Dubai by at least 18 inches. © Michael Meyer/Action Press/Zuma Press.

success!!!

managed to get these two things hooked up! - so testing testing 123...

Happy Birthday Robert Daniel

Happy Birthday, Robert Daniel, where ever you are...

Bishop Jackson's opinion piece on CNN - a response

OK- here's another one of those things where I read it and then responded. But I wanted to keep it here, so for posterity's sake here it. 

While the bishop supposedly cites some scientific studies to back up his opinion, I think he read them wrong and left a few out. How about the study that says 52% of heterosexual marriages end in divorce. And of the 48% left, another 15% would like to be divorced or are already separated. How about the fact that gay co...uples who raise children by any means, tend to stay married and their children do better in schools? I cannot possibly believe that the nuclear family unit is threatened by anything more than the economy that does not allow at least one parent to be the stay-at-home parent or for them to trade off. The economy has been hugely responsible for the separation of families in the majority of circumstances. And my own personal experience is that maybe a quarter of any one I know is close to their blood relatives. Most consider their friends closer and more reliable than their families. So how about legal recognition of those family units? Whether sex is involved or not, the raising of children to a successful end takes far more than the heterosexual union that produced them. My conclusion would be that any committed partners in raising a family are good, when committed. And how they have sex has little bearing on that fact. And for Diggit's benefit - I'm not gay.
(Diggit posited earlier on the comments that most of the commenters on CNN's site for this article are "gays")

READ this: Freedom isn't free - it just isn't....

READ this: The police won't arrive suddenly - it's already here, so subtly done to ourselves...

Why?

Re: Saiqa Akhter murdering her two children...I can't get my head around this crime. I believe there really are demons among us now walking the earth and making weak human beings do crazy things. I'm starting to believe the TV show Supernatural is a documentary of sorts. (ok -not really but sheesh!)
I cannot imagine what the father is going through. I can only pray for wisdom to understand and to forgive. Here is the full length 911 Call from Monday July 19th.

Hey YOU! - Up there, in the sky if you are, WTF!? This is why it's easier to believe in demons than a benevolent GOD... Where are you?

In Memoriam...To Carmen

Today is the first anniversary of my sister's passing. That feeling has not passed at all for me. But it's easier to bear. Tomorrow will be the first anniversary of the passing of feeling and functionality in my left hand. I cut it accidentally smashing a coffee cup in anger, despair and grief. These two things are linked forever. I feel like it was a larger-than-life conspiracy, the benumbing of Me. One more part went numb, died, became less somehow. Part of it was in my heart. I didn't have much family left. And now it's less. Part of the loss was my own creativity. I was left-handed. I could sew and craft and crochet and deal cards and write to my sister. In some ways, I think-I know- I did not write her often enough. I felt guilty then and even more so now. Her life was hard. My life was hard. She wanted me to tell her how hard my life was cause it would make her feel better about her own. I selfishly refused, because I couldn't stand it that I couldn't really help her at all and comparing our woes only made me feel worse. This same guilt makes it very hard to speak to her grown daughters. But I don't think they miss me really. They always treated me with respect, but not affection, really. My sister was a good person but not a great mother... I was uncomfortable being viewed as a "better" anything than Carmen. My kids aren't perfect and they certainly aren't where I had hoped they would be by now, but they are ok, safe and still speak to me occasionally, mostly with affection and loyalty. And her children were the same, ever loyal. This taught me that it did not matter who was better at maintaining appearances, but that she spent a large part of our time making me feel uncomfortable on a false and undeserved pedestal. I am good person and do not know yet if I was a great mother. I was a good mom, but not always right, which seem to confuse and anger my grown children when I admitted it and let them in on the secret that I was only, alas!, human, after all.

So I lost my sister and the hand I would have held her close to me with. The hand translates most tactile sensations as pain or nothing. My heart translates the memory of my sister into a selfish barrage of pain alternating with numbness. It has been a year.

My daughter wants commemorate this day somehow. I am at a loss to explain to her, that I am beginning to appreciate the numbness much more than the pain now. But I need to do something for her. How did love and guilt become so closely entwined in us? It must be genetic.
We will have dinner together tonight, Megan and I. Play some cards. Cry a little, probably. Hopefully not argue. I don't want her to feel guilty. I want to help her get some closure. But it's hard for me to open up enough to close anything. I was wallowing in the numb.

Mostly I want to send this message out on the air to my nieces, Lisa Grace and Lauren Elizabeth...I do love you. I do miss your mom, my sister. And I wish you all the best. To my sister, wherever you are, I hope it's peaceful.

MSNBC Panel discusses Wikileaks.org's "Collateral Murder" Video - Part 1

I watched the full video here.
I cannot fathom how 2 journalists with camera bags and the small group of people with them, were identified as threats with "hostile intent". The two people I could see with rifles, had them shouldered and pointing down, not in an overtly threatening-to-shoot position. I never saw a RPG, I believe it was a longish camera lens for 3 reasons: a) though it's a grainy video, the object has light and dark stripes much typical sport or telephoto lenses. b) it's too short to be an RPG tube. And c) If it was an RPG tube, it wasn't loaded and so again, not immediately threatening.

I concur that these may very well be war crimes and the enactors should tried on those grounds.

I also find it quite sad that our troops, such as those doing the shooting that day are temporarily brainwashed into this blase'-yet-gung-ho-kill-em-all-rack-up-a-good-score attitude. I also find it not surprising that as these soldiers come home, there seems to be a trend of large numbers of PTSD diagnoses, suicides, etc. I'm starting to think that a fraction of PTSD, is actually morality setting in, or guilty consciences.

I'm not blaming the troops per say, they are expected to follow orders, etc. But I do believe they are responsible for their own actions and inability to express moral objections over inappropriate actions. Most have been subject to a public school system that supports the pack mentality. which works great for animals. This does not so work so well for humans given to hindsight and reflection. Thus, the high numbers suicides and PTSD claims.

General McChrystal's folly

This is my response to this op-ed piece on CNN by Frances Fragos Townsend on CNN ( whose article begins with an Editors' Note ("Frances Fragos Townsend, a CNN contributor on national security issues, was President George W. Bush's chief anti-terrorism and homeland security adviser. She is a partner in the law firm of Baker Botts LLP, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a consultant for Raytheon, a component manufacturer for drones used by the U.S. military in Afghanistan" - nothing suspicious about HER background,huh?):

It's admirable to watch the general take responsibility for his and his staff's comments. But shouldering responsibility means just that. Like it's admirable to volunteer for the Red Cross, but if ya don't show up, filling out the volunteer sign up sheet doesn't really mean anything. Insubordination is well defined across the branches of service in Article 88 of the UMCJ, and it has definitely been committed here to some degree. Did he think that Rolling Stone was not going to print that? Surely he had enough sense to get the gist of what reporter Mike Hastings was going to write before publishing it? Oh yeah-the General's pitiful PR guy already got fired. blah blah blah...

Ms. Townsend, wrote "...Every day he is surrounded by an enemy plotting to kill Americans in Afghanistan ..." Well, ma'am, I can solve this - **Get out of Afghanistan**. Period. We do not need it, nor do they want our COIN (COunterINsurgency stategy - euphemism for nation-building or American conquest - if you will)!!!
Let them be. They just want us out of their lands.
Ask their permission to hunt for Osama Bin Laden/Taliban/Al-Quaeda if you must, but do we really need 340,000 people to do that? Can't a wiseguy from Jersey get this done? Where is Tony Soprano when you need him? Or maybe a ninja assassin or three?

Come home Troops and defend the US! This nation-building COIN crud is an expensive and foolish measure altogether.
-havoth (disgusted at how this took our eye off the Gulf Disaster)

NO Ethnic Studies?...Thoughts On the Anti Mexican Movement in AZ

Havoth's Thoughts on the Anti-Mexican Movement that seems to have overtaken Arizona: My message to those of Mexican descent or immigration: Leave Arizona. Let them mow their own lawns, take care of their own children, teach their own children, police their own crap. Remember the movie "A Day Without a Mexican"??? Leave, for a week or two or even three! They'll be changing their minds so quick it'll make your head spin! If you are Mexican and crossing the border illegally, cross somewhere else. I'd prefer you cross legally, but if you're coming over, don't come to Arizona and work in the kitchens, or anywhere else. The anti-brown policies in this country has got to stop, but then again Mexico needs to be a better country so it's best and brightest quit slipping over here. Stay in Mexico if that's your country and make it better. But if you are coming here legally, don't stop in AZ. Move on and let them deal with their own problems til they beg you to come back. I know the history...but this is now and that was then. Shame on Arizona and it's governor.

And Ofelia, wherever you are in Nogales, AZ, I know you are Mexican born here, but I remember when your prejudice of Obama because he's half black, made me uncomfortable with your racist remarks and apparent self-loathing for your own ethnicity. This is what that kind of racism gets you...only now-Dios mio! - you are the target, you and your children, who can't change what they look like to get a fair shake.

My thoughts on the Times Square Bomber

We'll see how off I am eventually...But I wrote this on CNN in response to the coverage of this story there and partly in response to some of the commenters calling for the death penalty for his crimes...I think there is an almost mysterious lack of mention about his wife and kids. I think they went to Pakistan in July 09 and were threatened and/or kidnapped until he agreed to do this thing. I think that's he messed up the bomb and it didn't go off. I think it's why he "planned" a "bomb" that wouldn't do much damage if it did go off. I think his wife and childrens' lives are now forfeit or worse and that's why he confessed so quickly and waived rights to an attorney etc. And I think the rednecks and xenophobes of the world need to wake up.

Health Care as explained by my hero

Let me get this straight......we're trying to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a president that also hasn't read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke.

What the hell could possibly go wrong????

Just to let ya know...

I'm doing ok in my work... all that angst in December has paid off. Work isn't always steady but bills are being paid by the swet of my brow. Thanks to all those who support me in spirit...

I'm doing much better personally too. With Spring comes new ideas and new energy to see them through!

love ya

When Death Overcomes Politeness

Force Marie Jacmel from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

I personally wish I could be there to help. I remember a recent email exchange with a friend about the plight of Detroit, MI and it's unclaimed dead, sitting in a freezer at the morgue, waiting for the 2010 budget year to start so they could bury or cremate the unclaimed remains of the poor or homeless. They had around 70 bodies at the time of the article, and I thought gee- how terrible...This massive disaster certainly brings a whole new perspective on the matter of unclaimed dead...but I really wish they would/could do what Sri Lanka and China did, take a photo of those they are burying so that someone may be able to find out if their friends and relatives are really gone instead of burying them in mass graves without even counting the bodies. Even spray paint or mark the area with a number of bodies or the names of who buried them.

Perhaps mass deaths in a warm climate on this scale just suppresses a normal "let's-give-them-closure" response. I do not know. But the Cine' Institute of film students in Haiti, have done a great job so far of trying to record this as it happens in their country.

My prayers go out to the Haitian people who marched and sang on the streets immediately following the disaster - Que Belle Spirit!!

Hate will be the destruction of us all

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/01/14/haitian-catastrophe-for-racists-a-good-laugh/

 

This is so sad, but expected…Why do people hate so much? The interview with Pat Robertson saying the Haitians made a pact with the Devil and are now reaping their just rewards…well, that’s why so many good people refuse to call themselves Christians, so they’re not associated with people like Pat Robertson. For shame…

 

Heavenly Father – if you are listening…blow the wind of understanding into their hearts…and if that doesn’t work, well then you have the final say…

I pray for the Haitians who didn’t have much to begin with and have lost even that.

 

Kari Bunch

 “Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; & suddenly you are doing the impossible.” St. Francis of Assisi