Straight Month?

I saw this clip and it reminded me about this weekend. Here’s the clip:

Have you ever noticed that people are quite happy with what they have right up until they see someone else have something they deem greater than their lot? Give one kid a cookie and they dance, give their sibling a larger cookie and tears run like desperate rivers – and far too many of us seem to hold on to that right through “adulthood”.

I was visiting with my parents this weekend and Dad had to tell me about a great comedian he heard. This great comedian made such a great point: Why is it that Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves, only gets one day of recognition. Worse, he asks, is that he has to share it with George Washington! How unfair, he says. I don’t really see him honoring Lincoln and Washington, but perhaps he does it quietly. But, in keeping with this comedian’s bit, if only they’d sucked off each-other, they would get a full month! Why isn’t that just humorous?

Some days I really don’t know what to think about people. Isn’t it bad enough that people who say they love us vote for those who’d choose to outlaw us, to kill us, to disenfranchise us, to relegate us to obscurity back into the closet? These same people hate, denigrate, despise… and I guess in Rob Schneider’s case, make jokes. He’s funny, don’t you know. I was rolling. Anyway … and those who say they love us vote for them, patronize them, clap for them, and tell their gay son just how that comedian is so very funny and wise.

Thanks Dad. Love you.

I get tired

Hello All;

Scottie asked me a bit ago why I’ve not been posting much. Well, I don’t have a lot of time, and – well, maybe I don’t have a lot of time for some of the crap I find myself having to make time to accomodate.

A ‘for example’ is that I’ve grown weary of having to justify my very existence to people who feel so self-righteous declaring my very life an abomination. That a man and woman would come together in love to bring about a new life is fantastic and magical, but it isn’t the conception of the new life that is amazing to me – it is the true love.

Then I hear people, perhaps those who seek popularity through any means available, say that marriage is only for people who can conceive, and if the individuals are men then they can’t conceive and therefore their love and marriage are invalid. I can only assume that they conflate the ability to make a baby with love, though many rape victims can tell us that isn’t accurate. I would speculate that such people don’t understand love. Perhaps the reason such people can’t understand the difference between an abomination and love is because they go into a room of strangers they call brothers and sisters and fear that who and what they find most attractive and fulfilling will be ridiculed by others.

Perhaps dressed in their “Sunday Best” they focus overmuch on the show they are putting on for each-other. Perhaps they are too fond of the judgement of others and too afraid of the sincerity and honesty of themselves.

Truly, I am finding myself tired of having to demonstrate that life is not so simple as the script they have written only for others to follow.

I am truly tired of having to demonstrate understanding to ignorance, patience to racism, peace to violence and love to spite. I’m tired of having to express myself in private for fear of offending sensibilities that are insensible and hurting the morality of those whose morality is first tested by convenience. I’m tired of fearing the “love” of the “Christ-like”.

Hugs.

Painful Words

I was struck by the backlash to the Texan pediatrician who was ostracized and lost her job because she pointed out that decisions have consequences, and all those who voted for drumpf in Texas are experiencing those painful consequences. Painful words uttered in despair, but damn – that doesn’t make them any less true.

How many times have we heard the line that “now isn’t the time to talk about this”? We’ve seen it with the debate on gun laws, and now we see it on this horrible consequence of firing those who warn us of dangerous weather.

But once again people have died, children have died, destruction and despair are gripping our nation, and the cause of that horror is not open for discussion? It’s being political in a time of national mourning? It’s insensitive? Decisions made in comfort and greed by those untouched by the disaster have exacted the ultimate cost, and they once again seek to control the conversation by denying the ability to explore how it happened!

So, is it safe to talk about these things now? Is it ok to talk about how stripping the social safety nets have consequences? Is it ok to seek to examine what we as a country believe in now, or are we waiting for the next disaster to blow through, the NEXT time parents weep looking for lost and dead children, or will it be one of the times after that? How long must we listen to the powerful deny the impact of greed, arrogance and ignorance.

My sincere sorrow for those who have lost loved.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/greg-abbott-asked-whos-blame-190307692.html

And, to respond to this fool Abbott; Smart teams look to see if the wrong plays were called, or more likely, the wrong people were making the wrong decisions.

hugs.

Some Meme’s

Hello All. Life has been very busy lately, but here are some meme’s that I hope you can enjoy and use.

Remove the Enablers

Hi everyone. I found this to be a hopeful sign. We need to excise, like an infection, the poison that has taken over our country’s leadership and too many of our citizens. And, in keeping with that, since they are a bunch of juvenile delinquents, perhaps the best person for the job is a pediatrician?

Some Memes.

The Moving Goal Posts

Hello all in Playtimeville! Yesterday I came by this meme and I was a bit shocked.

So I went to look it up. Googling the issue, I found that the bottom 90% of earners had an average wage of $36,571, and the federal poverty line for a household of 4 is $32,150.

Now, my father worked a good factory job, and I now supervise a fabrication plant. I don’t make, inflation calculated, what he made in 1990 – roughly when he retired. None of my people do. Interestingly, the job he had and a great many of the jobs like the one he had are gone now, moved off quite literally to India, China, Mexico and such. Those jobs are gone. Gone. Like the Bruce Springsteen song, they ain’t coming back.

When you look at the debt situation, it is bleak as hell. But, when did those debts really start accumulating? Right after Ronald Reagan’s Trickle Down Economics – when three major events coincided: the idea that the wealthy know how to invest money better than the poor, and will therefore be the better custodians of that money, trickling it down to the labor classes; the globalization of industrial labor when companies could move their jobs off-shore for a fraction of the hourly wages; and the reduction in taxes that the top incomes would contribute on their astronomical earnings while increasing the taxes that the lesser incomes would pay.

When it gets to the end, there are a great many factors influencing the lives of the common American. I believe welfare and immigration are problems. I believe also that writing laws that you won’t pay for is also a problem!! Congress, regardless of party, has put the tab on the credit card for over 40 years and worsened the position for those who are not in the top 10% at every opportunity. Like every other business and family in the country, I believe the government must live within their means by forcing a law that the budget must balance. It is only then that we can solve some of the other problems facing our country – or more so, become unflinchingly aware of who the real problems are.

Continuing Education

Hello All; I thought that since the drumpf and the republicans want to defund public education and national educational standards, we could use this time to learn some new words. Please feel free to add these to your vocabulary as I believe these will be especially useful for describing current politics.

For my day of advancing calendars…

My Week

Hello all. I don’t really have anything to share this week earth-shaking, but I thought I’d tell you about my week and a couple of my coworkers. I think we get so caught up in the waking nightmare that we see on the news each day that we forget to look at the life that just keeps on going on.

First, we have young Anthony. Anthony (Never “Tony”!) came to us recently out of prison. He had nothing but a string of disappointments and a fervent hope to somehow restart his life. He was so proud of each of his accomplishments that I was grinning like his daddy all proud for him! Of course, the first thing he got himself was a baby.

I shook my head wondering how he could manage to dig his hole deeper, but he loves that baby so much. In time, he bought a car that wasn’t worth the cost of the license plate, but he was walking with a pushed out chest – until it quite literally fell apart on him. But he bought a truck, and he looked upon life like a mountain climber, grinning at each up-hill stride – until his grandfather died this week and this grown man-child cried in my arms.

Then we have Zack. Zack had gotten himself mixed in with someone I’d wished he hadn’t. Despite being a young 18-year old, I couldn’t tell him what to do. He’d need to learn these lessons like we all do, one heart-ache at a time, and that has come true for him.

He finally realized that particular someone that he put so much faith in and followed around like a puppy was not the person he made people believe him to be: he wasn’t particularly cool, wasn’t hip, wasn’t wise, – just mostly a middle-aged negative minded overgrown juvenile delinquent – and Zack finally saw who was behind the image. Now he eats his lunch alone and works his machine with his head down. I can see he’s lonely, so I check in on him a couple times a day, sad that he’s feeling that pain but proud that he’s realized the truth.

Too many times I’ve focused on those things that went wrong, losing myself in criticism and frustration. I’d miss these little moments in some misguided hope that I could bring perfection to the shift, to the business, and somehow it would all be right in the end.

But life is messy and so much of that mess is my own. People fail, frustratingly so, but they also succeed. I wish I was wise enough to focus solely on those good moments and walk through the dark valleys with that sunshine in my eyes. Those two young men had their own share of mistakes this week, one of them quite costly, but I had an opportunity today to see a peek behind the curtains and the life not always for public consumption and it reminded me that there is a whole lot to life.