Today, a group of progressive Senate Democrats led by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI, Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution) introduced the Justice Act, to fix the horid Patriot Act, protect your liberty, protect your privacy, and restore Constitutional principles.
A complete copy of their announcement follows. I will keep you posted as developments proceed; you will need to support this legislation with your own Senators and later, Representative.
- Mark Dorlester
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Press Release:
SENATORS INTRODUCE PATRIOT ACT FIXES TO SAFEGUARD AMERICANS’ RIGHTS
JUSTICE Act, Introduced on Constitution Day 2009, Would Fix Long Standing Problems with the PATRIOT Act and Other Surveillance Laws
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jon Tester (D-MT), Tom Udall (D-NM), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Daniel Akaka (D-HI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) have introduced legislation to fix problems with surveillance laws that threaten the rights and liberties of American citizens. The Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect Americans’ constitutional rights, while preserving the powers of our government to fight terrorism.
The JUSTICE Act reforms include more effective checks on government searches of Americans’ personal records, the “sneak and peek” search provision of the PATRIOT Act, “John Doe” roving wiretaps and other overbroad authorities. The bill will also reform the FISA Amendments Act, passed last year, by repealing the retroactive immunity provision, preventing “bulk collection” of the contents of Americans’ international communications, and prohibiting “reverse targeting” of innocent Americans. And the bill enables better oversight of the use of National Security Letters (NSLs) after the Department of Justice Inspector General issued reports detailing the misuse and abuse of the NSLs. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday, September 23rd, on reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.
“Every single member of Congress wants to give our law enforcement and intelligence officials the tools they need to keep Americans safe,” said Feingold. “But with the PATRIOT Act up for reauthorization, we should take this opportunity to fix the flaws in our surveillance laws once and for all. The JUSTICE Act permits the government to conduct necessary surveillance, but within a framework of accountability and oversight. It ensures both that our government has the tools to keep us safe, and that the privacy and civil liberties of innocent Americans will be protected. When he was in the Senate, President Obama was a strong ally on these issues, and I look forward to working with his administration to find common ground on commonsense reforms.”
“The Government must use every legal tool available to protect us from the threat of global terrorism. But when those tools override Americans’ fundamental rights and liberties, we run the very real risk of never getting them back,” Durbin said. “As we move toward reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, we’re proposing commonsense changes to better protect our most basic constitutional rights. Our bill strikes a careful balance between the law enforcement powers needed to combat terrorism and the legal protections required to safeguard American liberties.”
"Like a lot of Montanans, I have serious concerns about the PATRIOT Act and how it was implemented,” Tester said. “What this bill will do is add commonsense so we can fight terrorism without ignoring the Constitution and without invading the privacy and civil rights of law-abiding Americans."
“In recent years, I believe our government has failed to protect the constitutional right to privacy for American citizens,” Tom Udall said. “The JUSTICE Act strikes the right balance between respecting the needs of our law enforcement to pursue suspected terrorists and upholding the rights of law-abiding citizens to live free from unnecessary government intrusion in their lives. I firmly believe we can keep our nation secure without infringing on the inherent rights of the American people. ”
“We must provide law enforcement with the tools they need to protect our country, and do so in a way that also safeguards Americans’ rights. This legislation addresses both of these important objectives by ensuring our security and upholding our cherished constitutional protections,” Bingaman said.
“Every American understands that we have got to do every single thing we can to protect the American people from terrorist attacks. There is no debate about that. Some of us believe, however, that we can be successful in doing that while we uphold the rule of law, while we uphold the Constitution of this country, which has made us the envy of the world,” Sanders said.
Senator Akaka said: “The JUSTICE Act will allow intelligence agents to monitor terrorism suspects while putting checks in place to ensure that law-abiding Americans’ privacy and civil liberties are protected.”
“The JUSTICE Act rights some of the basic wrongs of the PATRIOT Act, which became a poster child for the Bush Administration’s lack of respect for Americans’ privacy rights,” said Wyden. “This bill is designed to keep every law-abiding American free from arbitrary government surveillance. At the same time, it gives law enforcement the agility needed to go after actual terrorists and spies who would do our country harm.”
Fact Sheet JUSTICE Act Of 2009
The Judicious Use of Surveillance Tools In Counterterrorism Efforts (JUSTICE) Act would reform the USA PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendments Act and other surveillance authorities to protect the constitutional rights of Americans while ensuring the government has the powers it needs to fight terrorism and collect intelligence.
Title I – Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans’ Records
Sections 101-106 – National Security Letters
The bill rewrites the National Security Letter (NSL) statutes to ensure the FBI can obtain basic information without a court order, but also adds reasonable safeguards to ensure NSLs are only used to obtain records of people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage, and to provide meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial review of NSLs and associated gag orders.
Section 107 – Section 215 Orders
The bill would reauthorize the use of Section 215 business records orders under FISA, but with additional checks and balances to ensure these orders are only used to obtain records of people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage, and to provide meaningful, constitutionally sound judicial review of Section 215 orders and associated gag orders.
Title II – Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans’ Homes
Section 201 – “Sneak & Peek” Searches
The bill would retain the Patriot Act’s authorization of “sneak and peek” criminal searches but eliminate the overbroad catch-all provision that allows these secret searches in virtually any criminal case. It would shorten the presumptive time limits for notification, and create a statutory exclusionary rule.
Title III – Reasonable Safeguards to Protect the Privacy of Americans’ Communications
Section 301 – FISA Roving Wiretaps
The bill would reauthorize roving FISA wiretaps, but eliminate the possibility of “John Doe” roving wiretaps that identify neither the person nor the phone to be wiretapped. It would require agents to ascertain the presence of the target of a roving wiretap before beginning surveillance.
Section 302 – Pen Registers and Trap and Trace Devices
The bill would retain the Patriot Act’s expansion of the FISA and criminal pen/trap authorities to cover electronic communications, but would allow pen/traps to be used only to obtain information about people who have some connection to terrorism or espionage. It would impose additional procedural safeguards to serve as a check on these authorities.
Section 303 – Telecommunications Immunity
The bill would repeal the retroactive immunity provision in the FISA Amendments Act.
Section 304 – Bulk Collection
The bill retains the new warrantless authorities in the FISA Amendments Act but would prevent the government from using that law to conduct “bulk collection” of the contents of communications, including all communications between the United States and the rest of the world.
Section 305 – Reverse Targeting
The bill would ensure that the overseas warrantless collection authorities of the FISA Amendments Act are not used as a pretext to target Americans in the U.S.
Section 306 – Use of Unlawfully Obtained Information
The bill would limit the government’s use of information about Americans obtained under FISA Amendments Act procedures that the FISA Court later determines to be unlawful, while giving the court flexibility to allow such information to be used in appropriate cases.
Section 307 – Protections for International Communications of Americans
The bill would amend the FISA Amendments Act to create safeguards for communications not related to terrorism that the government knows have one end in the United States.
Section 308 – Computer Trespass
The bill would guard against abuse of a warrantless surveillance authority in the Patriot Act that allows computer owners who are subject to denial of service attacks or other episodes of hacking to give the government permission to monitor trespassers on their systems.
Title IV – Improvements to Further Congressional and Judicial Oversight
Section 401 – FISA Public Reporting
The bill would require limited additional public reporting on the use of FISA.
Section 402 – Use of FISA Evidence
The bill would apply the Classified Information Procedures Act to the use of FISA evidence in criminal cases, and allow the use of protective orders and other security measures in civil cases, to ensure that courts have discretion to allow litigants access to information where appropriate while still protecting sensitive information.
Section 403 – Nationwide Court Orders
The bill would permit a recipient of a nationwide court order to challenge it either in the district where it was issued or in the district where the recipient is located.
Title V – Improvements to Further Effective, Focused Investigations
Section 501 – Domestic Terrorism
The Patriot Act’s overbroad definition of domestic terrorism could cover acts of civil disobedience by political organizations. The bill would limit the qualifying offenses for domestic terrorism to those that constitute a federal crime of terrorism.
Section 502 – Material Support
The bill would amend the overly broad criminal definition of material support for terrorism by specifying that a person must know or intend the support provided will be used for terrorist activity.
A health care plan to expand the insurance industry and hurt the sick and the poor. It sure does look like special interests are going to win. I am not sure that it has been everybody sitting at the table transparently. It does not even seem like the American people really had representatives just our corporations. I guess it is a good thing corporations are imortal and really don't need health care.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong/7
It looks like we are going to have a health care bill everyone will hate other than the health insurance industry and pharmacuetical countries.
On this Labor Day morning I sent this feedback through whitehouse.gov:
I campaigned for you, like many others. We elected you and majorities of Democrats bigger than Newt Gingrich ever saw to get the job done: end the war, close gitmo, end warrantless wiretapping, implement universal health care, and the other things you said you would do.I'm sure it's hard once you get there, but gitmo is still open and there's a lot of talk that you're thinking of abandoning the public option on health care. A public option is already a compromise. The real solution, as you yourself once said, is single-payer. Medicare for everyone!You can't please everyone. You really can't please Republicans in Congress, because they're not bargaining in good faith: their only goal is to defeat you by defeating health care and anything else you propose. Trying to do it in a bipartisan way was laudable. It didn't work. You held out your hand and they bit it. Time to get the job done.FDR didn't pass the New Deal by asking Republicans to approve every detail. He accepted opposition and actively campaigned to defeat it and to defeat those Congress members in the next election. His biographer Jean Edward Smith said recently:“This fixation on securing bipartisan support for healthcare reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.”LBJ didn't pass Medicare by giving away the store to the Republicans. He said what he wanted and he twisted arms until he got it. If your Blue Dogs are standing in your way tell them to get in line if they want your support for their next bill or at the next election.You're losing us, your progressive base. We are the great majority of people in this country who want real health care reform, not some compromise with the profit-gouging insurers. Nobody else should have to die so a CEO can get a bonus.It's time to lead, Mr. President. It's time for you and the Democrats in Congress to do the job you said you would do; the job we elected you to do.
BANKRUPTCIES Every year one million Americans claim bankruptcy due to a major medical issue Senator Bernie Sanders, Thom Hartmann Show 8. 2009INSURANCE CAPS Once your cap is used say in a major medicalyou are virtually uninsurable afterwards.Representative Slaughter, Ron ReaganShow 9/1. 2009POST CLAIM UNDERWRITINGYou pay your premiums faithfully but when you have a major medical matter,the company drops you from your policy.Ex insuance broker, Stephanie Miller Show8/17. 2009CLAIM DENIALYou pay your premiums faithfully, something major happens. Your claim was denied. A bonus was paid to the employee for denying your claim. Caller to Stephanie Miller Show8/17. 2009LOSE YOUR JOB LOSE YOUR COVERAGE / PORTABILITYThen, if ill, this becomes a lapse in coverage and a possible pre existing condition.PRE EXISTING CONDITION There are disabled persons and others for whom will never be insurable. How could this happen in America? WORKMANS COMP/ MALPRACTICE CASES could be virtually be eliminated.COST INCREASES TIES UP COMMERCEThe average business can spend as much as 20% of their costs on health insurance making them unable to compete with companies from other countries that do have nationalized coverage. USA 18-22% GDP is health care while otherTHE COST OF NON INSURED The average insured can pay as much as 1000. Per year more to compensate for those who are uninsured and relegated to using the emergency room as a source of primary care for which a tooth abscess can become a 250,000 surgery.
I keep thinking about the movie I saw recently regarding Julia Child. Julia Child was a 'regular' woman. A bit too tall, too broad, too heavy and filled with way too much hilarious intellectual insight. She would never get a television show again, and I don't care how great a cook she was. We are well into the 'pretty woman' culture, which has been served up to us by Hollywood and the mainstream media. We get Kelly Rippa, and her 'right in your face' sexual presentation. She is another human twig, trotted out as an example of what women should be, in order to appear attractive at a distance. That she is unhealthy in her thinness is never even discussed, except in rare tabloids. In other shows, and in movies, we get the same thing. five foot eight women who weigh a hundred pounds or less. They, of course, also serve in very macho roles. They kick butt on all manner of men, in spite of the obvious fact that they would break like twigs if ever faced with a real man in a real physical situation, and I don't care how much study and practice might be honed into the woman using martial arts techniques. the marital arts are subject to physics like everything else.
The internet is not helping either. Internet porn is about forty percent of the traffic out here I have read. The women who are used in the videos and still photos are all the same. They all look like Kelly Rippa in some way or another. How are real women to compete with these sick miniaturized Amazons? How is our species to continue, at least in this culture, if men find regular women unattractive? And how can regular women be treated with respect if they have to stack themselves up against the caricatures presented in all forms of this pervasive media? Hence the latest attacks on women's rights. These attacks are shunted off into the area of reborn Christian revival, but in reality, they are all over the place. Just like many of these protests about health care, which are not protests against health care at all, but attacks against Obama (in particular, about the race of Obama), attacks on Roe v. Wade are attacks against women. They have little to do with the life of the unborn. Any more than the health 'opponents' really care about health care. Look at the makeup of the audiences of those town hall meetings. Almost all the people there are well past the age where they depend upon private medical care at all. They are on medicare. So why are they at the meetings? One might think it is because fears have been built up about the aged losing their benefits because of the coming national plan. But that is not true at all. The old people are not really worried about that. No, they want that black guy out of the White House. And they are supported by armed idiots carrying assault rifles all around them. Why we do not have a national law that reads "no guns are to be carried or possessed by citizens within one mile of the president, unless he is just passing through the neighborhood," I have not a clue.
But back to women. Have you noticed that all the new newscasters coming aboard are lovely young women? Almost one and all. Older men are titillated. And what can anybody really say, without it seeming that the complainer is prejudiced against women having these high paying jobs with such grand visibility (at substantially lower wages than their male co-anchors, I might add)? But the move is more of the same we are having pushed at us. The women are all cut from the same cookie cutter template. Thin. Young. Beautiful. Examples of how all women should be. Without that ever being said.
I want regular women back on television and in the movies. I want people like Julia Child. I want women that I can look up to because they are smart and verbally adroit. I want to observe and think of women with intellect and style. I am sick of Hollywood plastic. Sick of flat foreheads with not a single line. Sick of bust lines that are just idiotic. The creatures of Hollywood are abnormal, unhealthy and do a disservice to all women in this country. And I am sick of them being shoved in front of me at every opportunity to be held up as some sort of goal for all to emulate.
It reminds me of what has happened to us with sports stardom. Bret Favre. Tiger Woods. And all the rest of our professional 'sports' players. They are among the highest paid beings on this planet and what do they do? They move a ball, whatever kind of ball, up and down a measured piece of turf in some controlled way. They have been doing that, and only that, all of their lives, since they were small children. They are nothing else. They are ball controllers and movers. And our culture goes nuts over them. They are our people of courage, our people of worth, integrity and honor. Which they are anything but. But the truth does not matter. There they are, with all that money and power, and the bully pulpit anytime they want to stand up and take hold of it.
Our culture is frozen in time. We have run into a barrier we could never have conceived of. We have run into the monster of creation we invented to entertain us, but which now is slowly and inexorably forcing us to accept mythology over science, lies above truth, and scripted fiction over reality. We are fast becoming a culture of entertainment where the word 'work' is applied to others, located just outside (having come up from Mexico) or much further away (think India and China). And the results of this rapid glacial shift are coming in. This economy is not coming back. Got that? It will only come back when the engine of work, reality and results that built it is restarted, and then run with renewed vigor at high rpm.
http://www.jamesstraussauthor.com
http://www.themastodons.com
http://www.from-the-chateau-dif.blogspot.com
Public option is a must in health care reform! The house bills are closer to what is needed. Coop's unless seeded with billions of dollars and millions of members will not be able to offer plans in a more affordable way than a private insurer.
1. They will not have enough members to negotaite better rates
2. They will not have suffcient capital
So plans would be structured with huge deductables and copays which make people put off preventive care.
I really think it is time for the president to take a leadership role say he will not sign a bill with a strong public option. It will help us in the field to state clearly the benifit of reform. Many lives are at stake 18,000 die because of limited access to health care. We fought war of choice for 3 trillion and 1000's of lives. It is time to fight a real enemy it is in our border our broken health system.
The 3 princples 1 affordablity, 2. choice, 3. cost reduction are fine. I have canvased for with these points are a start but they will not be realized with out the public option. Maybe the wishy washy stance on the bully pultpit is just to get the bill out of the senate. But is does not seem like clever strategy is the answer. Clever strategy is not leadership. With out a clear method of achieving these it weaken both the desire and will to work for this plan.
Our base can turn out with leadership it is forthright and honest and counters mis information. Our president really needs express leadership and let the public now that only viable and simple mechnism is a public option. The american people need and desire leadership and true reform!
Let's keep working. I am glad the my rep. who i visited Rep Ablbio Sires took a leadership stance and wrote a sign the letter to secretary of HHS and let it be know he will stand with the people and support the public option.
As an entrpenuer one knows it is a huge burden if even possilbe to offer health care in the first 2 years. It is a risk start ups and start upemployee's are often put in when creating jobs. A national healthcare option would allow small business to create many more new jobs if there was a public option! Also allow our large corporations to compete.
Prologue
Joshua Boatwright sat patiently, sipping from his small espresso cup, unsure of how he had come to be where he was, tucked into the back corner lobby of the Sheraton hotel in Crystal City. He looked out a floor-to-ceiling window onto a well kept courtyard. No, it was not his place to be there. Analysis was what he did, not personal liaisons. His calling in life was to assemble the smallest shards of data and form sweeping mosaics of truth, in a world filled with lies. Joshua was proud of his nickname, "Tevie," a shortened version of the motto he lived by. "Triple Verfification" was that motto. Three sources to establish the veracity of each shard of data he added to his mosaics, to produce pictures of sanity in an insane world. His team of analysts, located four miles away, at CIA's Langley complex, had not conferred the nickname because of his work, however. Unknown to Joshua, they had given him the name because of their knowledge of his only recreation, which was watching television non-stop when not at the intelligence facility.
Diminutive and fidgeting, he sipped and fretted over the tops of his prescription glasses. They had jet black frames, for affect. He did not need them to read or drive. But they gave him a distinguished look, or so his ex-wife had told him, and they did help when examining the tiniest detail of photo intelligence. The Agency's electronic surveillance, although not legally allowable for personal use, such as tracking one's spouse, had proven ruthlessly effective, just after she'd commented on his spectacles.
A big man entered the lobby near its grand entrance. He wore an expensive blue suit. Its Italian cut did nothing, however, to disguise his morbid obesity. Joshua flicked his eyes towards the man, then grimaced. The man's florid complexion, bulbous nose and polished smile gave his identity away. The Senior Senator from Iowa stopped in the center of the large foyer, to take the place in. No assistants or attendants of any sort accompanied him, which did not surprise Joshua at all. The Senator noticed him sitting alone in the corner. Joshua glanced at him before looking down at a folder he had placed very exactly on his table. Noticing a slight tremor pass through his left wrist, he quickly tucked it down between his thigh and the arm of the chair. Never had he encountered anyone as an Agency representative, and certainly never a sitting senator, much less one who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee.
"There's no shame to having a little bit of fear here," he whispered inaudibly to himself, breathing deeply inward as he heard the powerful senator's approaching footsteps. Joshua squared his shoulders imperceptibly, his back ramrod straight. He had the weight and reputation of the entire Central Intelligence Agency behind him. He would neither genuflect nor grovel before anyone.
"You'd be their man?" the senator inquired very calmly, stopping astride Joshua's chair. Joshua started to rise and raise his right hand. He quickly caught himself, however, putting it down and reseating himself. He was not there, at a clandestine meeting, to be social, or to even appear social.
"Stay seated," the senator said, paternalistically, his voice soft and silky. He lowered himself with visible difficulty into the narrow chair Joshua had purposely placed at right angles to his own before a low coffee table.
"Got something for me?" the senator asked into the silence between them. His tone this time flavored with a likability that the analyst instantly hated.
Before any reply could be made, the senator picked up an unmarked but highly classified file Joshua had placed on the table. Neither man said anything while he read its contents. Joshua noted that the lobby was completely empty, save for two clerks working registration near the entrance. The waiter, who had brought his expresso to him had never returned. Joshua hoped he wouldn't, for fear of having to touch the cup and allow the senator to see him shaking. Minutes passed. A bead of perspiration ran down his hairline behind his right ear. Fortunately, it was the ear opposite the senator's position.
"Says here that you boys are gonna go ahead and help me out," the big man in the blue suit intoned, before plopping the file back on the table.
"The usual Agency drivel," the senator commented, acidly.
"You gonna tell me what the plan is?" he inquired.
Joshua cleared his throat to steady himself, then followed his instructions.
"Your nephew is being justifiably imprisoned by a foreign government. His violations, meriting that imprisonment, are in keeping with what we normally associate with serious criminal behavior in our own country. The Agency does not normally involve itself in such matters, particularly where such deviant and anti-social behavior is involved." Joshua halted, having delivered his own righteous version of the background information he had been given during his briefing. After a few seconds of silence he realized that something was amiss. Without looking over, he felt the heat of tremendous anger flow toward him from the direction of the senator's chair. Instinctively, he dropped his left shoulder a millimeter or two in defense, before he caught himself.
"Just cut to the chase son. Don't make me come after your career." The senator's threat was issued in a low tone, more akin to that of an oversized cat purring than of a human voice. Joshua's throat froze, a tendril of fear coursing through him at the mention of his career. He finally cleared it by swallowing several times.
"We're sending our best man," Joshua gasped. "He's resourceful, violently equipped and experienced. No expense will be spared in this operation. But we're sending him in alone. We can't afford, no matter what measures you may or may not take, to have this operation rise to the level of an international incident. Not now." Joshua averted his gaze from the direction of the man from Capitol Hill as he finished his memorized message. He waited for a response, again trying to fathom why he had been selected for the role he was playing. He was in the dark, but Joshua sensed the reason. It was about the fact that his analysis group had provided the data which sanctioned the mess-of-a-mission the so-called 'best man' had pulled off, against all odds.
He heard the senator arise from his chair. He looked up, but the man was already walking away, his manufactured smile once more plastered to his politician's face. He had made no comment at all, not even in dismissal.
Joshua's shoulders pressed inward, and his head sank to the point that his jaw nearly touched his chest. His trembling fingers grasped the espresso cup handle. He took a shaky sip. He thought of the 'best man' the Agency was dispatching, then smiled weakly for the first time that day. That 'best man' had just come out of West Africa under the bloodiest of circumstances, having improbably accomplished his mission. The skewed manner in which his mission had been conducted would no doubt have the Agency looking like a stone cold, heartless and uncaring beast, and no one in analysis was taking that lightly. His grip steadied as he pondered over what he'd just done. He'd sent a low-life field agent off to save a drug-dealing nephew of a corrupt scumbag senator. This time not the remotest possibility of the mission's success existed.
Joshua Boatwright stood up straight, tucked the classified folder under his arm and strode across the lobby. His mind was already lost in formulation of the final mosaic, as it would appear, when the details of an illegal and doomed mission crossed his desk.
We have just had another of those strange flight travel incidents, which nobody seems to be able to explain or resolve in any way. It seems that a Continental plane pulled into Rochester, Minnesota because of bad weather, then sat on the tarmac, about fifty feet from a gate, for twelve hours. Everyone involved has diligently and rationally absolved themselves of fault in this situation. Again. The passengers suffered pretty badly, with just one bathroom. That bathroom was clogged up and inoperable. No food and no drinks were served by the one flight attendant, while all this went on. The Airport says that the terminal was open and available, but the crew of the aircraft would have had to request clearance to dock. The Airline says it knows nothing at all about any of what went on. The crew of the plane says that the terminal was closed and they had no place to dock. That someone's lying here is being totally ignored.
But it is vitally interesting to listen to interviews of the passengers after they were finally deplaned. The succession of lies that they were told by the crew of that plane is unbelievable. It is almost of daytime soap opera caliber stuff. They were told that the terminal was closed. They were told, time after time, that they would be flying out very soon, until they started to be told that a bus was coming to take them back to Minneapolis (60 miles away). Then they were told that the bus had broken down. They were served nothing by the lone flight attendant, but a pack of self-serving lies. There was no bus. There was no flight clearance. The crew never contacted the terminal to ask for docking privileges. There could be only one motivation for all the lying and misrepresentations. Money. Why else would anyone perform like that crew performed?
Flight crews start getting paid as soon as they pull away from the gate. That crew was well into overtime pay while that plane sat there on the tarmac. Not only that, but the crew was using up hours of 'air' time which would give them time off in the weeks ahead, because of the way flight rules are structured within the industry. The passengers were 'gamed' by that crew. The media allows this to continue by not letting the public know about the true motivation behind this kind of miserable flight violation.
And you might think that the passengers kind of deserved what they got because they did not get violent or complain to the point of intolerance? Think again. Post 9/11. Yes, think TSA. Think about the expressions you yourself observe on many of the near-moronic faces of airport security 'officers.' You cannot, as a passenger, encounter flight personnel, or security personnel, with an 'attitude' anymore. You will be charged with a felony, and our ridiculously skewed court system will find you guilty. It happens more than three thousand times a year in this country. The passengers had to do what they did. They had to stay quiet and take the lies. They probably even knew that they were being lied to. And there is the cell phone issue I heard brought up this morning. Once you pull away from the gate you are not allowed to use your cell phone on the aircraft. Only the crew could give you permission to do that, and guess what. Yes, you guessed it. The crew said no cell phones.
The crew will not be fired or punished for their behavior. Anymore than Officer Crowley will be punished for his illegal harassment, humiliation and arrest of Professor Gates. In fact, they will all be rewarded. The flight crew will get the off time and overtime pay, while Crowley will get promoted and have some badly written book published. Some injustices that occur in our culture are actually rewarded. I am not sure why, exactly. Maybe it is just that Jupiter is in transit, or Venus is trining Mars. But, if the airlines do not stop supporting outrageous behavior committed by their flight crews, there will be an occurance of violence at some point. One of these days, or nights, an overheated and fully stuffed aluminum tube is going to explode like a bratwurst left too long on the grill. That coming event is so easily preventable, but, sadly, I don't think anything will be done. Our whole culture is sitting on the dock of the bay, watching .....
They're back. Oh not those two chicks who did whatever the hell they were doing on the border of N. Korea. No, I mean Al Gore and Bill Clinton. Al arranged for the great swooping rescue by the great swooping rescuer (that would be Bill) so both of those two "whatever the hell they are now" guys are talking like crazy inside a private airline hanger to CNN and the world. Al has introduced Bill, telling us all what a heartfelt sacrificing individual the big galoot really is...to go over and save two young American women from the clutches of that horrid simian dictator. Al smiles that wonderfully vapid Gore smile (which certainly had something to do with his having his election as president stolen) and says great things about Bill. He then introduces the man, expecting, without a doubt, that the great rescuer will say great things back. And Bill does not fail in that department. With one minor exception. He says great things alright, but he says them about himself. Clinton, strange faux blue dog democrat that he is, will go down in history as the greatest credit taker of all time. Al Gore, if he could have maintained the "I'm the guy who invented the internet" phrase credibly, would have secured that title. But no. We get Bill instead. His white hair almost iridescent inside the well coifed hangar, his body thin and in good shape. Gore nearby, sweating, with used car salesman hair and the 'I really am losing weight' girth.
It was also stated, prior to the huge plane rolling in, that Bill was on a private mission (totally unsupported by the U.S. government) to save those girls. I don't know why they bother with such giant introductory lies at events like this staged Hollywood production. Look at the plane! Its a 767, flying all over the world. That alone is about a million bucks of expense. Then there is the protecting of the plane because a former president, with Secret Service protection, is aboard it. How about five million or more to make sure Bill gets to and returns from a hostile country like North Korea. Who is paying all that money? We know damn well it is not Bill or the families of those girls. You and I are paying. Once more. The girls have been 'bailed out.' Now they too can write their books. They do need to take a little time to come up with a story though. Wandering about the country side near the N. Korean border isn't really going to fly.
I am very happy to see that the democrats have done a better job of getting the news away from healthcare, however. That last story they stuck in the way worked wonderfully well, but it did carry some ugly baggage. The Gates affair. This one has more positive elan. Young beautiful ladies of asian extraction saved from the world's most notorious pint-sized dictator. What if the girls had been black? You can tell that I write for Hollywood. Black would have been over the top.
Diane Sawyer, playing her well rehearsed role as the idiot-reporting blond, had the best question though. She posed it to the television audience when the plane was very slowly and majestically rolling into the hanger: "Do you think that Bill Clinton had a chance to discuss succession with Kim Jong?" I did get a kick out of that. I can picture the meeting in my mind. The somber Bill (his affected role for the exchange) leaning to the brightly smiling Kim (his affected role for the exchange) and whispering: "...so,when you're dead, soon who's getting the nod?" I liked the mental image of that. Thank you Diane. Kim is a generous man. I know he will leave that rocky mess of a country to his son. Unlike Bill. Bill would just take it with him. And Bill is still talking as I finish writing this. Al Gore is smiling that silly smile and darting his eyes sideways, waiting for Bill to say something great about him. Bill Clinton is talking about Bill Clinton and Al Gore is waiting for somebody to say great things about Al Gore. It is indeed a wonderful life.
“USHUAIA”
El Prat was never really finished properly, following the twenty-fifth Olympiad in ninety-two. Not the last part of the last terminal, anyway, where the tattered and beaten Montenegro Airlines plane had dumped me from the flight in. Barcelona was supposed to be one grand city, but I was not going to see it, and that didn’t bother me in the least. As cold and rotten as the rain had been at Golubovci when I had shambled aboard that morning, Barcelona’s warmer overcast sky, visible just beyond the terminal windows, seemed to offer little better.
All the other passengers had filed dutifully toward baggage claim, somewhere else, probably a long ‘somewhere else’ inside the vast facility. Instead of following along I had taken a nearby seat and fallen into it. I had no baggage. No checked and no carryon. Going home in disgrace did not require luggage or belongings of any sort. Your body was required to make the journey, so you could stand and be told what a sad human being you had turned out to be, and, without it being directly said, how it was not their fault that you were such a miserable representative of species homo sapiens.
But I did have cigarettes. American, no less. The good stuff, not that cheap burning Balkan crap. If I’d had drugs…well hell, I didn’t, so, as with the remainder of my life, it didn’t much matter. The people from the plane were mostly gone. Stragglers here and there, straggling aimlessly, like so many people do at airports around the world. I observed them by habit, as I didn’t care at all about them. No players among them, I knew. Even deep covered operations specialists were not difficult to spot, if you had been in the business, and the field, for awhile. I’d been both.
9/11, back home and so many years back, had changed everything, I thought, as I began looking around for a place to smoke even the smallest part of a cigarette. Airports were hermetically sealed environments following 9/11, where smoking had gone the way of the pay phone, and the coin-metered parking out front. I watched a beautiful, but stressed out, woman head toward the opening to the washroom. Barcelona, not home, so it was one of those single unisex things I didn’t care for. Although the woman was dragging a seven or eight year old girl along with her, I mostly noticed her. Tall, elegant, and wearing a beautiful knee length black dress. I noted that she walked powerfully, moved strongly but gave the appearance of somehow being wounded at the same time. I was a predator, and she had the look of prey. I smiled, turning away. Fortunately, for both of us, I was neither a predator of women nor children. Unless it was required of the mission. And there would be no more missions.
I had a decision to make. The greatest decision of my life. The decision about my life. And I needed a cigarette to help me along. I looked back toward where the woman and her child had disappeared into the unisex bathroom opening. Just beyond that opening was a large metal door with yellow writing angled across it. Spanish was not one of my languages, not the writing of it anyway, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the message was a ‘keep out’ message. I could not see any lock on the door’s surface.
Looking around carefully first I arose from the chair and headed for the door. I took out my pack of Marlboros, to use as a cover in case I was encountered. Even so, just trying to use a door marked not to be opened might be a huge violation, not explainable by a person simply wanting to have a smoke.
“Screw it, like it makes any difference at all,” I said to myself in disgust, pushing down on the European-style door lever. I pulled. No alarm. I opened it all the way, stepped into another world, and looked around in surprise. I gently closed the door behind me, leaning down to make sure that there was no hidden device or lock along the height and depth of its edge. I took out a Marlboro and lit it. I leaned against the hard concrete wall opposite the door. I suddenly realized what I was in. I was in a long walled off corridor open to the sky. At one time the corridor must have led somewhere, but the vagaries of construction , and probably security, had caused both ends to be walled off. I looked up at the gray sky. The walls had to be over thirty feet high.
I heard the sound of deep sobbing. I walked a short distance down the long enclosed length of the concrete box. The sound was coming from a vent just above my head, as I stopped. I blew out a great puff of smoke and watched it swirl right into the vent. A child coughed lightly from inside the vent. The vent led into the bathroom I concluded. The woman was sobbing, with her child nearby.
“What are we doing, Mom?” I heard the child say. I listened intently. After a moment of more quiet sobbing, there was silence. Then the woman spoke in a whisper loud enough for me to hear.
“Get on your knees. We’re going to pray to God. We‘ve been deserted hereand have no money. If the authorities take us in it won’t be long before they have us back in that horrid country with those horrid people.”
The accent was American I concluded. The world was a hard place. I imagined one of the countries the woman must be talking about. Saudi, Iran, Jordon. Cultures that were implacable, with respect to their women and children. Rendition had been invented by them, and the Israelis, not by Americans. To be on the run from one of those countries was to be in terrible jeopardy. I drew in more smoke, then watched it snake back into the vent. I heard no more coughing. Instead I heard praying.
“Please Lord,” the woman intoned, followed by the little voice of her child, repeating the same words. “We are in deep trouble. Please send someone to help us. Anyone. We can’t make it on our own.” I heard all the words twice, but it was the little girl’s that went in toward what was left of my soul. Then I shook my head, threw the cigarette down and ground it out with my foot. It was a cold cruel world.It took its toll on all of us and I had my own problems. I tip-toe'd to the door, opened it noiselessly, then slipped back into the real world again. I moved away quickly, until I was well down the terminal corridor.
It seemed like a half-mile walk to the main building where the counters were located. I had an electronic connecting ticket to Washington but I had already made my decision about that. I wasn’t going back there, so I needed a ticket. I picked the United line, as it was fairly short and my original connect had been on it. Maybe they had a flight to South America that did not connect in the United States.
I felt someone behind me, but then, I was in line at an airline counter. Instinctively, I glanced back anyway. I almost groaned aloud. It was the elegant broken-down woman and her child. I quickly turned my head, but not quickly enough. The little girl spoke up at me.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” I grimaced down at her, in question.
“Huh?” I said, intelligently.
“You smell like him," she went on. I stared, having nothing to say to such a comment.
I looked at the woman, but her attention was on everything else around. Her eyes darted all over the place, like those of a cornered animal. The girl kept staring at me, waiting for something.
“I smell?” I finally asked, against my better judgment. She nodded, knowingly.
“My Mom and I prayed for help. I smelled you when we prayed. You’re him, the one God sent.” I stared, my expression one of total disbelief. The girl had coughed at the smoke from my cigarette while in that bathroom I realized, then picked up the same aroma from my clothes. My mind raced. A lot of people smoked, especially in Europe. The girl could not possibly know that the smoke was from me personally. I started to comment, then stopped, looking into the steady deep pools of her eyes. She knew. I knew that she knew. She knew that I knew that she knew. No words needed to be said.
“Por favor?” a woman’s impatient voice said, from the side. I jerked toward the sound. I was next. The counter clerk was motioning toward me. I looked up at her, then back at the child, who smiled, her knowledge and confidence in my role total and complete.
“Jesus Christ!” I whispered bitterly, taking my wallet from my pocket, and then approaching the counter. I took out my personal Visa, the only credit care I owned myself. The Agency cards were not going to work to get me anywhere, I knew, not anymore. My last ten thousand dollars was invested in the Visa card. Or at least my only ten thousand, and it was all credit. I shrugged. What did it matter?
“Here,” I said, shoving the card across the counter, “fly these two people anywhere they want to go.” I pulled back. The woman moved to the counter.
“What?” she asked. “What’s going on? What are you doing?” The woman looked from the clerk to me, than back again. The clerk shrugged like I had, but with more meaning.
“Here, you need tickets out of here. Use my card. Take care of your child.” I said the words in embarrassment, as the woman stood staring at me in silence. I watched conflicting expression flow across her face like the surface of a river’s white water rapids.
“We needed help Mom, and God sent him,” the small girl said, in her penetrating little voice. She pointed up at my chest. I could tell that the woman did not know what to do.
“Take the tickets. Get the hell out of here,” I said sharply. The woman’s face broke, then she caught herself, thankfully stifling a sob. I stepped away, to give her room. The little girl stepped with me.
“Where are you going?” she asked me, conversationally, as if what was happening was just a normal part of her everyday life. I sighed.
“Ushuaia,” I said, thinking that that would stop her, but it didn’t.
“Ushuaia?” she intoned, getting the pronunciation all-wrong. I didn’t correct her, preferring to wait until she and her Mom were out of my life.
“Why are you going there?” the girl went on, as I wondered that she had not even asked where Ushuaia was. I answered as if she had asked.
“Its in South America, down near the tip, in a place called Terra del Fuego. There’s a bar down there I’m going to drink at. I’m done. I’m all done. “ I finished saying the last words with my eyes closed, imagining the total relief I would find down, in that weird wind-swept place, as there was just no point in living on anymore. The bar in Ushuaia was as good a place to end it all as anywhere.
“Can I draw you?” The little girl brought me back with her odd question.
“Huh?” I said, returning to my earlier intellectual response. I noted that the girl had produced a small notepad and pencil from somewhere.
“I don’t care what you do,” I answered, truthfully. I moved to the side to wait. Until I had to sign something. I did not have to wait long. The clerk gestured, the woman stood aside, and I signed the credit card slip, then some other papers. I accepted my card back, but did not put it away.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” the woman began, as I tried to shake my head and stop her. “No, without you I don’t think we would have made it," she went on, "you saved our lives and I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I don’t need any thanks, just get your child back home, or wherever you’re going.”
The woman nodded. I knew she was aware of my discomfort. She took her papers, turned, then turned back and kissed me on the cheek. She smiled for the first time, as I shrank back in surprise, bringing my hand to my cheek. The woman grabbed the little girl by one hand and made to depart. The girl pulled back.
“Wait,” she yelled, then held up the other hand to me.
I took the piece of paper she pushed at me, then watched as both she and her Mom half-walked and half-ran out into the main terminal area. I watched until they were gone.
“Por favor?” the United clerk said, once again.
“Connect me all the way through to Ushuaia, Argentina,” I said, pushing the Visa back across the counter. The woman went to work. I waited for almost ten minutes. All at once she looked up.
“The card’s no good. You don’t have enough money for that trip.”
I stared.
“What?’ was all I could say for a moment. “But I had ten thousand of credit on that card,” I said, in a shaky voice.
“Oh,” the woman said. “Now I understand. That woman and her child used up nine thousand dollars of your credit.” I stared, my eyes going round.
“Where the hell did she buy tickets to, Timbuktu?” I could not believe what I was hearing.
“Washington D.C.” the woman said, flatly.
“D.C.” I almost yelled. “It doesn’t cost that kind of money to fly from Barcelona to D.C.!” I waited for a reply, fuming.
“It does in first class. You said fly them anywhere. They were going to D.C. At the last minute and with a full plane, first class is all that was available. Do you want to fly somewhere else?” I shook my head, still in total shock. I took out my electronically issued boarding pass the Agency had assigned me. I handed it across the counter.
“Are they on that same flight?” I asked, knowing the answer. The woman checked her computer. She nodded, as I knew she would.
“Please tell me that they don’t have seats next to mine,” I murmured, all the strength of my voice gone.
“Oh no,” the woman replied, brightly. They’re in first class. You’re back in economy.” I just looked at her, slowly taking my boarding pass back. “You better hurry, you’re flight leaves in twenty minutes,” she finished.
I nodded again, saying nothing. I stepped away, hearing “por favor” behind me.
I walked numbly toward the center of the terminal. I stopped under the flight display to find my gate. I remembered the piece of paper in my hand. I unfolded it. It was a wonderful little pencil piece of some expressed talent. It was a drawing of a smiling man bending over to talk to or accept something from a female child. Under the drawing were written the words “Not Done.”
I could not help smiling to myself. I didn’t believe in God. If I did believe in God I wouldn’t have liked Him. But I walked toward the United gate smiling, with a strange new purpose in my step. I talked to Him, whom I did not believe in, while I walked. Indeed, it appeared I was not done.
copyright 2009
Proverbs
Warning Against Enticement 1-8 Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching.1-9 They will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.1-10 My son, if sinners entice you, do not give in to them.1-11 If they say, "Come along with us; let's lie in wait for someone's blood, let's waylay some harmless soul;1-12 let's swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit;1-13 we will get all sorts of valuable things and fill our houses with plunder;1-14 throw in your lot with us, and we will share a common purse"--1-15 my son, do not go along with them, do not set foot on their paths;1-16 for their feet rush into sin, they are swift to shed blood.1-17 How useless to spread a net in full view of all the birds!1-18 These men lie in wait for their own blood; they waylay only themselves!1-19 Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the lives of those who get it.
Warning Against Rejecting Wisdom1-20 Wisdom calls aloud in the street,she raises her voice in the public squares;1-21 at the head of the noisy streets she cries out,in the gateways of the vity she makes her speech;1-22 How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools tate knowledge?1-23 If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you.1-24 But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand,1-25 Since you ignored all my advoice and would not accept my rebuke,1-26 I in turn will laugh at your disater; I will mock when calamity overtakes you--1-27 When calamity overtakes you like a storm,when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind,when distress and trouble overwhelm you.1-28"Then they will call to me but I will not answer;they will look for me but will not find me.1-29 Since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord,1-30 Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, 1-31 they will eat the fruit of their ways.and be filled with the fruit of their schemes.1-32 For the waywardness of the simple will kill them.and the complacency of fools will destroy them;1-33 but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.
God had already shown wisdom to people with a special way, and wisdom had already awared some people to call aloud in the street with wisdom together. Even people were not willing to believe that Wisdom was calling aloud, but they could see that there were some people had been awaring by wisdom and calling aloud in the street.Mind control abuse and torture are (1-11) "wait for someone's blood",and "waylay some harmless soul"; (1-12) "swallow them alive, like the grave, and whole, like those who go down to the pit". God condemned such terrible mind control abuse and torture. People should not ignore victims calls and reject to help victims who were calling the same with Wisdom to "stop terrible mind control abuse and torture" Mind control abuse and torture is the most sinful thing in the world. God also condemned those who supported such crinimals and who ignored all complaints of victims. These criminals were very waywardness and complacency. People in the world, please be awared of such terrible crime. don't ignore. (1-32) For the waywardness of the simple will kill them. and the complacency of fools will destroy them;
I read the Sunday New York Times today. I was sorry to see that Maureen Dowd, brilliant as she can be, wrote near unprintable drivel. That didn't bother me. Most of the columnist's spend so much time doing everything else but writing that I expect to see their 'staff work' much of the time. What bothered me was the article in the middle of the front page, just under the photo from Afghanistan, which poignantly illustrated it. We just had our worst month over there, with a ton of kids having lost it all in our names. The article was well written. It was all about the problems that the 'living' returning veterans have in coming home. How difficult, or near impossible, that return can be, depending upon the horror of what the particular veteran whet through to get home. There was no fakery in any of that. PTSD is a killer, and when it is not killing directly, it is a destroyer of marriages, family relationships, friendships, sleep and all appetites. It causes drug addiction and acoholism. The worst part is that it is damned difficult to diagnose, very hard to treat, and embarrassing difficult for a combat 'hardened' veteran to admit. No fakery.
But read on in the same issue. Half way through the first section is a long article about this 'problem' that we have with people making up war stories, the places they did or did not serve, decorations or even units served with. We have a federal law that now attacks anyone who is caught even lying verbally about those things, or, and this is a grand bit of fakery, of not being able to prove what he or she said is true! Yes, said! Like in the first amendment freedom of speech 'said.' Wild times. That this article would be in the same section with the PTSD article from the front page is deeply droll. Gallows kind of humor. You see, most civilians do not make up any of that veteran junk! They usually don't even know enough to make credible stuff up. No, the preponderance of fibbers are veterans themselves, embellishing stories and maybe just demonstrating mental damage. Many many of them are veterans returning with PTSD, just like the kids pictured in that photo on page one! Do you know that there are even volunteer groups of other veterans who pursue these fibbers to catch them, label them on the internet and then turn them over to the feds for prosecution? The law is called the 'Stolen Valor' law, and it is one of the most deceptively damaging laws against veterans ever passed in this country.
Let's take a group of these woeful, and deeply hurt, returning veterans, and lets hold them to a standard which no civilian (except a complete idiot civilian, probably on drugs or alcohol) would be held. Where does stuff like this come from? Has the lead content in our water supply increased substantially? Or let's take a geriatric veteran who has PTSD stuff come out late in his life, and gets it all wrong. Are our Congressmen and Congresswomen completely out to lunch? And the veterans who go along and investigate, mostly their fellow veterans, who are these people? I was a Marine Officer in Vietnam, shot three times and brought home on a gurney, barely alive. I won't even tell anyone, ever, what decorations I received. "Let's have that fact-checked," somebody might say. Then I can allow beads of sweat to form as the report comes in. Is the report missing something I said I had? Did I give the proper unit and place? Yes, I know all that stuff by heart and I've got the medals in my closet. But, you know what, I don't want to go through the 'vetting' process. You know, in many ways, it is better for me to say that I did not serve at all. This 'Stolen Valor' law is all about that. I am not ashamed of my service on your behalf. I am just ashamed to admit it to you, or around you. PTSD has caused me to be 'hyper-vigilant,' and I am. I am hyper-vigilant of you. You can, and may, hurt me.
What fakery is up next? The new G.I. Bill! The one that gives vastly huge benefits to the guys and gals who served following 9/11? But not the veterans before? Yeah, that sure seems fair! Thanks again. And how about preferential treatment at V.A. medical facilities for returning Iraqi and Afghani veterans? A bit more thanks is due there, from those of us who bled our asses off in prior wars (and I was at Yokosuka Naval Hospital in Japan first, then Oaknoll over in Oakland, CA, and then the Naval Hospital at Camp Pendleton, CA....go 'fact-check" it!)
But this new fakery is not just directed towards veterans. It is all around us. It is in the press portrayal of that black professor named Gates, and that police officer named Crowley. The media, with the governments support, changed the whole thing all around, into complete fakery. The black guy lipped off and the cop broke the law, numerous times. That the black guy gets to lip off to the police in his own home (except about any decorations or units he might have or served with!), nobody is much arguing about his right to do that. But nobody is talking about the simple fact that our police, across this entire land, and definitely including Officer Crowley, may not arrest people for that. Fakery. Crowley got to stand up to the President of the United States and thumb his beer foamed nose. I do so hope that Obama has a long long memory.
And the H.R. 3200 fakery. I wouldn't want to pass on that. We started out with everyone talking about health care for all Americans at affordable cost. The insurance companies, and the medical providers (yes, that is the hospital in your neighborhood, and your doctors and dentists in town) do not want this. And they have a ton of influence on those Congress people I was writing about earlier. So much so that the watered-down version of this bill we are hearing about now has just about one thing left, as a solid feature of it. 47 million uninsured Americans will be paying premiums to these rotten insurance companies, except those companies will have Federal Punishment built into the collection system. And the insurance companies will still decide on who gets real coverage, what coverage and when. This is the fakery that is descending upon us in health care. If you think those Federal Punishments for not paying your new medical premium are in any way humorous, then think again. How about no air travel if you are not up to date? How about no driver's license renewal? How about garnishment? Through fakery, lies and just pure bullshit we are being led along like the bovine, press-driven, creatures we are all beginning to resemble, physically and mentally!
A lot of the things I have discussed here are not going away. The bills have been passed. The procedures are in place. Even H.R. 3200 is just about a done (and rotten) deal, thanks to the Blue Dog Democrats and the usual assortment of Southern Fried Republicans, and the big health money people. But can we recognize what we have done? And what we are doing? Can we sit and think about the reality of these things, without just being sold on all of it by that melodious voice coming from the television? If we do not pay attention to the past we are not doomed to repeat it. We are doomed to having everything become a whole lot worse! Over the course of the last ten years have things really been getting any better, anywhere? Think about it.
MUST WATCH:
Here's Howard Dean explaining why Co-Ops (baby Public Options per state) instead of a true, strong Public Option Plan are just another con tactic of the insurance/drug companies and well-bribed politicians. WATCH THEN SHARE EVERYWHERE:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2Sjxj7XosAIt is of vital importance that EVERYONE learns the truth about this 'Co-Op thing'
p.s. President Obama yelled out 'I Want Public Option' during today's N. Carolina health care town hall. It is up to We The People to SPEAK OUT in unison ! Contact The Blue Dog Dems...Shout "WE MUST HAVE PUBLIC OPTION" !!!
We Didn’t Just Fail To Support President Obama And Professor Gates; We Failed To Support The Common Sense Values We All Share As Americans.
The president of the United States made a straight forward common sense comment about the Gates’ arrest at a national press conference. I’m sure he assumed that there would be universal common sense understanding throughout the media and our society about the injustice of arresting a middle-aged man within his own home for being rude to a police officer. Sadly the media, law enforcement, political institutions and race baiting public in this society allowed this common sense evaluation to spiral out of control. The minority population in this country has always and will always need a coalition of proactive citizens with a similar sense of values in this society so injustices can be expressed without chaos, political unrest or violence. That has been the basis of every minority civil rights movement of our country. The president acknowledged an obvious injustice at a national press conference and expected common sense police officers, nurses , doctors , teachers, the media, politicians and everyday citizens to understand and support his outrage at the injustice and humiliation Professor Gates endured in his own home. Common sense values dictate that no one would want their dad or grandfather to be arrested in their own home for being rude to the police. But instead, this society debated and continues to debate whether Professor Gates should have been humiliated in such a manner by a professional police officer. President Obama is president of the United States, but he is also a member of a minority group of citizens in this country, and he has to navigate in ways someone who is not a member of a minority will never have to. As a member of a minority group, just as in the civil rights movement, President Obama's voice on injustice in this country, is and will only be as strong and as loud as the courage, strength and volume of the coalition of common folks who elected this president to office. Without common sense folks repeatedly speaking out loudly and confronting an obvious injustice, the president’s voice will be drowned out by the race baiting fringe groups, media and other institutions that know his voice is only as strong as yours. The radical fringe wants everything about President Obama, from birth certificates to pre-school, from friends to religious associations, marriage, political appointments and opinions to revolve around race, so that the voices of common sense folks with common sense values and issues can be drowned out by fake controversies, chaos and political unrest. If we empower the president's voice on common sense issues within this country, we will mute the divide and conquer tactics of these racists fringe elements in our society that surely benefit from political unrest and racial strife in the United States. The president spoke out about an obvious injustice to one of the most respected scholars in the country. It is our responsibility as citizens to back the common sense approach and determination that the president came to, repeatedly and loudly. In this democracy our president is a reflection of who we are and what we represent as a society. If we fail to speak up and support this president’s common sense approach on issues of injustice and policy in this country, the president we elected will have no voice, and neither will we.
H. Smith
When I toured Europe, some years back, I was kind of surprised by the size of the old churches, relative to the size of everything of age which surrounded them. I went inside many. Huge resounding open areas are common to all of them. And every one of them has, as an integrated part of its construct, a great high and elaborate podium. I realized something. For a long time there was only the spoken word for the passing of information. There was writing, but Guttenberg took some time to really get print off the ground. And people had to learn to read. So, where did people go to get the news of the day? Or of the week? To the church, where they sat or stood down below an 'announcer,' or News Anchor...although he was officially titled a minister or a priest. No wonder the power of religion is so strong, even extending to and through this very time. The 'anchor' of those times could reach hundreds of people, potentially thousands, at one setting. Nobody else could come close to that.
Here we are today. We have the same problems with reaching the people, although everything has dramatically changed in scale. Who has that podium, microphone, or television transmitter controls what is transmitted as the news. And messages beyond the news? Those are delivered in papers, books, the television and the internet, although they cross all over one another in content and kind of delivery.
So how do you get a message out to 'the people' if you do not already have possession of one of those 'podiums?' You beg. You cajole. You appeal. You attempt to cast yourself as an interesting enough voice to be of value to whoever and whatever it is that controls ascension to the podium. And it is unbelievably hard to do any of that. The myth is that only the best work gets to the top. The truth is that only those who have some sort of access, or can angle some sort of access, get their message heard at all. In fact, it is so very very hard that only a very tiny percentage of people ever get 'read' at all. To be 'read' is to be considered for publication or airing, not to be given the podium.
The internet is marginally changing things. You can get read by writing blogs. You can Twitter. You can comment on Facebook. You can get viewed by making a video for Youtube. Those things are advances which are new and most unusual. But those advances do not get you in front of 'the people.' You might get twenty or thirty 'hits' a day on your blog if you develop a following. You might get a few hundred views of your Youtube video. To really reach any of the public at all, you have to be 'touched by God.' I once talked to Jacqueline Mitchard, just after she had written Deep End of the Ocean. I told her that I believed that her book would become a bestseller. She responded with something completely prophetic: "...from your mouth to God's ears..." God touched her through Oprah. Oprah picked her novel to be her first book club selection. And that was it. Mitchard is the top speaker at the Hawaii conference I will be speaking at in September (I am a lowly entity compared to her, although I really like her so I don't mind). Somehow, I do not think Jackie is going to recognize or remember that guy who stopped to comment so long ago at Barnes and Noble in Madison. Fame is not especially complimentary to long term memory.
You can have a voice out here, true, but it is more like being a town crier on a soap box, compared to having the podium. People stop briefly, look at you funny, and then pass on by. Your only message, probably, is that you are a weird person standing atop a box as people pass you by. You have a message, and it might be the single most important message anyone could have, but it matters not at all if nobody hears or sees it.
Competition is extremely stiff. Everyone is shouting into that darkness. And you will note that the greatest stuff is not like the cream rising to the top. Note that every word that Sarah Palin says is duly reported, over and over again. It does not matter what she says. The same is true for Joe the Plumber. No matter how stupid, vapid or idiotic their strung together words are, they have the podium. How do you persevere through all this? How do you get a shot at the podium? I am not sure. I am still down here with you, the few, thinking about it and wondering myself. I reach many more than most who try, but my numbers are really small too. The message on House is influenced by a large writing staff and a bevy of producers, not to mention the director. It is not really mine, even if some people think it is. And I am constantly asking myself another valid question: "why is that I think my message is important enough to be considered by 'the people' anyway?" That is, indeed, a good and valid question of merit. I ponder that, day after day. I believe I do have a message. A message of compassion, concern, intellect, tribalism, work, thought, relationship, love, honor, integrity, and losing causes. I have traveled far. God did touch me with His finger when it came to that. But is it enough to get atop that podium and tell it all to you? As i said, I sit here, with my coffee and my laptop, and I ponder.
This week's news story of note, aside from whacked out coverage of the medical expenses issues set before the Congress, is all about a black Harvard professor who was accosted inside his home by a white police officer. Barack Obama has chimed in with some comments of his own (to the effect of labeling the police officer 'stupid' for taking on a citizen inside his own home), and the press has decided that this event, and all the stuff that surrounds it, is the story that should occupy our culture for two weeks, or so. It is what television is doing to us these days. They decide, and you sit here, with me, and get only what they vomit out over that screen. We get almost nothing international. We get no real substance on anything nationally, and the medical costs issue is a typical example of that. Has anybody really talked about what doctors, dentists, and hospitals are really making in actual take-home cash? Is anybody talking about why it is perfectly legal for medicine to use extortion (you pay or you die) to collect money, and make profits from such behavior? Is anybody talking about why these drug companies can charge whatever they want for any drug, even to the point of copyrighting our very genes as their own property, and selling them back to us in a tube? Nope. Nothing. Nada.
We get all this crap about a truly stupid-acting police officer (whatever his merit as a human being and intelligent person may be) who encounters a black professor in the professor's home, does not like the professor's attitude, so illegally and unethically violates him. This story should occupy small news slots locally, not occupy all of us, nationally. The police officer should be promptly indicted, arrested, and then relieved of his badge and gun after being released on bond. He, most probably, broke at least three laws. He entered a private home without the owner's permission (that is criminal trespass, even for a cop). The police officer placed the professor in handcuffs, against the professor's will. That is assault (yes, even for a police officer, as cops must act within the law at all times). The police officer removed the hand-cuffed professor from his home, forced him into a police car, then transported and held the man in a cell at the police station. That is called kidnapping. Yes, the big felony. Police officers are specifically denied the right to do just what this cop did, every step of the way. He should be charged and then prosecuted for his crimes. The onus of the legal system (called our system of justice) should fall with a terribly weight upon this man's shoulders, and life.
What will really happen? Nothing. Most probably, the professor will be awarded some sum of money for the embarrassment he went through. The only saving grace of the entire affair is that the professor is black and the police officer is white. Only race can keep this affair in the spotlight, not that that spotlight should be national. The spotlight is needed to illustrate that policemen, especially post 911, cannot be allowed to brutalize citizens. Ever. And this kind of behavior is going on all across the nation. Our citizenry is afraid of the police. How has this come to be? It has come to be because of a surrender of public trust. Our police have come to resemble skin-headed thugs, dressed up like Star Wars soldiers of the Imperium, and acting like out of control school yard bullies. Thank God nobody got shot at the professor's home. These school yard bullies have guns!
When a police officer deals with a citizen of this country, any citizen, he or she should do it with respect and full consideration. If that police officer wants to enter private property, then he or she should ask permission, and, if denied, consider getting a warrant if the situation merits it. The other officers who showed up, at the site of the Harvard professor's arrest and kidnapping, should also be taken in. They permitted a felony to be committed in their presence. They, the police standing around outside of the home, should have sprung into action to stop the illegal series of events from going any further. They did nothing. They acted just as actively stupid as the arresting officer. Now, the Chief of Police (behind this errant acting police office) is standing behind the man and stating that he was acting within the scope of his authority. The Chief of Police reduces himself to just another stupid acting cop.
It is regretful that our President has chosen to withdraw most of what he said about this series of illegal and unethical behaviors. I expect more of him. He now throws the professor into the same puddle as the dumb cop, by saying that both men 'over-reacted.' Bah! Humbug! The professor can say anything he wants to the cops...within the privacy of his own home. That is speech protected by our Constitution. You can call a cop a pig and not get arrested! I was a cop. I was actually trained to accept talk, directed my way, of this kind. But no cop can break into a residence, enter it against the will of the owner, cuff the man, drag him from his home in front of the entire neighborhood (and most of his fellow-idiot-acting police officers) and incarcerate him in a prison cell far from home. Those things are not 'over-reactions.' Those things are crimes. We are a nation of laws. If our enforcement officers do not act to support that then we do not have a nation (not as we know it) anymore. We have a police state.
Meanwhile, the health issue resolution (or, so it is hoped) languishes on the sidelines, almost ignored by the media. Will we ever be graced with a regular newscast that seriously takes apart our legislation and makes its provisions apparent and understandable to us? Before and after the voting? A long time ago, when a man I now despise (Rush Limbaugh), took a piece of legislation apart (it was called NAFTA) on the radio I was so very impressed. I had never had anyone go through a bill, page by page, and make me aware of what was in it...both good and bad. I did not even mind the man's obviously skewed opinion. I just enjoyed getting in on the front end of a coming vital piece of legislation. I have never had that experience again. Neither on television, nor on the radio, does anyone do this. Instead we get idiotic sound bites which usually have nothing at all to do with the bill's potential effect. The Medical mess is all about over-charging. It is not about uninsured Americans. It is about such things as the 'rent' for a surgery theater being fifty thousand dollars an hour. The surgeons, other doctors, tools, x-rays, chemicals, medications, and all other things are add on charges. An X-ray is five hundred dollars. The surgeon gets three thousand for ten minutes work. And so it goes, on and on. But nobody is talking about any of that. And all of that is outrageous.
I was a police officer myself, as I stated. I do not lack respect for the profession or for the problems endemic to doing that job. I understand it. I admire many of the people who wear the uniform. But, and especially since I am a former cop, I am very demanding of the requirements which must lay at the foundation of performing police services. We need the police to be friends of our citizenry, acting in partnership with the societal public. They cannot be the 'parents' or the 'guardians' of our cultural values. We, as citizens, must never surrender our position as purveyors of those values. We must create the rules by which we live. We must insist, from our servants (in this case, the police), on the manner of how those rules are enforced. The police do not get to decide. They get to follow up on the decisions we make
