The Voices of Women – Meaningless? And the Erosion of Democracy…

Apologies to the length of this writing (this is TL;DR for some) but Trump, Kavanaugh, McConnell, Flake, Collins, Hatch, Graham, Manchin and injustice is making life, well, Topsy-turvy to be polite…

Well. It appears that the voices of women mean nothing where it is most important – in sexual assaults (and in every day life to be fair). Even if an event happened 30+ years ago, the voice and statements of a woman are still important.

As of today, Saturday – Oct 6, 2018, America has voted onto the Supreme Court an individual with more divisiveness; with a more controversial background than Clarence Thomas had.

I’m a guy and what women say IS important, always!

That is, until it is proven it is not true. But, where it is ambiguous and no concrete evidence can be found, many of us will side with the woman – not just give lip service and say ‘we believe her’ as certain members of Congress have done (so the congressional members can retain their positions of power in their home state/district). What a woman says can make a difference. In many of the sexual assaults it is primarily a crime not witnessed by others and that is why the victim does not come forth and the guy gets away with it. (Sometimes, sometimes, yes indeed – there are women who also commit sexual assaults, it is just not that many.) And Trump – making an outlandish tweet that young men should be scared is ridiculous. No young men should be assaulting women in the first place (that goes for older men as well).

In America, or rather parts of America – certain Americans have decided that a man with a blemished background and temperament can be put into a position of significant influence and power. Certain Americans have placed an individual with what appears to be a highly tainted past onto the highest court, a court which now will be looked at for every decision it makes for the next 30 years with a jaundiced eye.

All because an individual who was put into the White House due to many electoral college members deciding that this person was the best choice for America in 2016. Trump.

If this Supreme Court vote turned your stomach, you had best “get your butt off the couch and go vote” in the NEXT SEVERAL voting turnouts, for the next couple of decades! The mid-terms, primaries, all of them. This will be the only way to restore some semblance of sanity to America.

Because if you do not, we, America, will be doomed and damned!  Are you one of the people looking to return to the ‘Dark Days’ of yesterday when only the males of one race had the power to lord over everyone else of a different color and all women? Do you really want to return to the days of suppression and repression…?

More and more pieces of democracy (not talking about the democratic party here, just democracy) will be chipped away as they are being done today. More “socialist” programs will be lost for years, if not decades until we can return to the path of growth and equality that we were on until Trump was put into the White House. And what I mean by socialist programs are:

• fire departments (think you don’t need this socialist program when your home catches fire)
• libraries (not everyone has high speed internet or even computers at home)
• police departments (what happens when your local police department is gone and you need law enforcement)
• schools (everyone needs to seriously consider removing Betsy D. from the dept of education…)
• hospitals
• social security (what are you going to do when you are older and have no money to rely on)
• should I go on….?

Socialist programs, today, in 2018, are meant to help everyone, not just the poor and downtrodden – the programs are meant to make the lives of everyone easier,  better and safer.

This is how Hitler grew into power. Think about that – think long and hard – do your ‘own’ thinking. Over several years, Hitler and the people around him whittled away at more and more programs until they gained power – a vise grip on EVERYTHING! (There are some who say this erosion actually started right before Hitler came into the picture – but we all know for fact, Hitler destroyed democracy in Germany.) And what was the result of that, guess! Extermination of massive numbers of the Jewish race, in multiple countries (Poland, Germany, France, Austria and more). The Holocaust was the ultimate disgrace to democracy. Things started out small in Germany and many of the Germanic race were happy and fine that Hitler was looking out for them. Hitler was going to “Make Germany Great Again!” But then when it was too late to do anything, such as removing Hitler, Himmler, Goering and others of the SS and the Nazi party – it was far, far too late.

Now, this is not saying Trump is a Nazi but – he is providing a helping hand in the destruction of the American way of life and all of its democracies. Trump has enabled the worse of the worst to come forth (recall the nighttime ‘Tiki Torch’ parade). Trump has unleashed the hounds of hell, to put it mildly, to come out of the wood-works and raise pure hell. Look at:

• early February 2017 where the House and Senate voted to repeal the so-called “stream protection rule”- Coal companies now have a freer hand in dumping mining pollutants into streams
• the white nationalist rally incident in Charlottesville, VA where Heather Heyer was killed
• Chris Collins and his insider trading on the lawn of the White House – how brazen was that?
• Many of the cabinet members Trump installed and the self-aggrandizement these individuals did while in power – sound-proof phone booth in his office (guess who that was);
• Expensive furniture, what was it, ~$31,000 for his office – you know who this was, the man qualified to run HUD because he grew up in the projects (I grew up in the projects too)…
• Zinke of the Interior Department and his sell off of federal lands
• The black protestor who was sucker-punched by a white man in the stands at a Trump rally in Fayetteville (and trump said he would pay the legal fees for the puncher)
• we could go on and on with this list…

The point is, if Americans do not come to their senses and stop this extreme political partisanship, we will continue going down the rabbit hole of more:

• hate crimes – racially & religiously motivated
• individuals like Michael Gerard Grimm, former congressman & former FBI, who threatened to throw a reporter off the balcony – a reporter who was doing his job (after his prison term for that, Grimm had the audacity to try running again for public office)
• corruption – how can people follow the law when the law makers and peace keepers are the ones causing this corruption and excess to continue – so they can feel powerful and make money in many cases for doing so
• erosion of public lands for corporate revenue – oil exploitation, so that oil companies can continue to make large pools of revenue before the clean energy wave really kicks in and fossil fuel use will be a money pit
• inequalities – women and racial – women and those of different skin colors doing the same job as men of a certain color “SHOULD BE PAID EQUALLY” for doing the same job
• anti-discrimination against new immigrants to America – and we all know this is how America started
• to name a few….

What do we need to do people? You all have to use your head and think!!!!

You have to perform research and think and talk about your actions before you do them! You cannot just listen to unqualified individuals who spout hate and conspiracy theories. You must do your own thinking, it is what makes you “you”!

So, what are you thinking? Are you thinking things in the political environment are going in the right direction?

Are you thinking Trump is making America great – when he raises tariffs, the ultimate cost is on you, the American citizen because you will be the one paying more for the products with the tariffs. 

Do you think the tax cut he instituted was wonderful? Well – continue thinking about that when your local services (any or all of them) are cut or eliminated due to your city budget does not have enough revenue – ‘because of that tax cut’.

What about clean air and clean water? Think your kids are going to be able to run around as you did years ago but now the air and water are more polluted (remember, the coal mine dumping above and the Trump administrations’ attempt to relax car emissions letting car makers off the hook…)

Use your brains. Think about the future. You cannot just think about yourself because you do not like gays or dark skinned people. You cannot say “hey, my religion is the foremost important thing in the world” when other people believe in a different religion. Do not make a mistake, as an American and a global citizen – I. DO. NOT. WANT Sharia Law anywhere near America.

Ultimately, what is being stated here is that Americans need to be better.

• Give women their voices – it is hard enough to come forward publicly as it is
• Think about unity, amongst all Americans (i.e. why do we still have Sundown towns in parts of America? Why do we still have so many skinhead/white nationalist/white supremacist groups around the country?)
  

Because America has to come together again and be a “United States” and grow stronger and be better as a country for itself. As well as in the face of rising problems with:

• Russia’s Putin doing the meddling he is doing globally and
• China doing what they are doing – attempting to force people / countries to kowtow to them; giving China hemispheric power to do what they wish, such as build man-made islands in the South China Seas and claim more of the region as belonging to them (we could discuss the Uighurs and the police state they are living under as well as the great firewall of China as well as internet and public censorship so the Chinese citizens have no voice and are unable to vote politicians out of power – these are big stories on their own…)

We are losing the luster of being a world leader because we do not have any serious diplomatic power. Who do we have that is a shining star in the world of diplomacy? Our ‘leader’ in the White House is not one who has great powers of diplomacy. He is continually causing America to devolve into a laughing stock of the world every time he utters a sentence or disseminates a tweet.

We are a country where it is now up to the states to institute clean air and clean water and equality for all. That is, those states with a forward looking mindset for the next 10 – 30 years…

 

 

Rouhani of Iran – America does not have Nazi Dispositions!

Be very careful Rouhani, Iran’s President – be very careful of what you say.

America, for the vast majority of its citizens, does not have a Nazi disposition.

Yes, we do have an idiotically sad and malcontent bunch of individuals in America who for whatever reasons, believe in a Nazi future and want to make America pure white (Crazy, yes, I know. Especially when not all of the skin head and militia members are pure white themselves… get them to take a DNA test to prove it [heck, I might even pay for some of those myself to prove their ‘purity’]).

What we have in America is a puerile president who believes he is all powerful and can say and do what he desires – to whomever he wishes. And no, the American PEOPLE did not vote him into office, a large number of electorate college members for whatever reasons of their own, elected our current president into office. It was not the people – many of whom now regret what they voted for…

And yes, you are unknowingly (or knowingly) correct that this current president IS of German ancestry – do not cast aspersions on all of America on what this incompetent and ill-suited president spews from his, errrr, oratorical mouth-piece.

And yes, this includes many of the unqualified individuals he surrounded himself with.

 

Most of America has true democratically open values but cannot bring them to the forefront for the world to see when we have as our ‘leader’, an individual who consistently AND constantly makes America look like the laughing stock of the world.

Yes, we are embarrassed and highly angry that we have to spend so much time and money for what this individual does, Every. Single. Day!  (I for one hope that some group does a cost analysis study to show how much money has been wasted overall due to who was put into the white house.) In the meantime, we, as a country and as part of the global society, are not moving forward in economic, social, educational, environmental, health and democratic (united) fronts but instead are going backwards at a remarkably fast rate.

America will be back, once the entire current administration is out of office. And it will take a little longer than many of us would prefer because too many of this president’s base, for whatever ill-considered reasoning they have of their own, want to keep this person in office while he snookers them in the meantime…

America does not have to be ‘great again’, America is already great. We just have a president who has put a layer of mold and mildew on top of America that we have skim and clean off and then disinfect to start shining again. Sad but it is the state we are in… This American president has humiliated Americans so badly. Imagine, wait, no – it actually happened – an American president being ridiculed at the U.N….

Freedom…. or Death…..

Originally posted Aug 30, 2013 at & moved from: http://patrick642.wordpress.com/
Change. Improve. Innovate. Be better.
~ Pressing issues, from cyber security, to strategy, to innovation, to improvements (self, others, organizations)

 

WMD Well, it looks as if more people of the world would rather watch the innocent Syrians continue to be massacred by Al-Assad…. The evidence continues to be clear that there are chemical weapons being used. And I am willing to bet that it is not Syrian rebels using those kinds of chemicals on other Syrians… Two years and 100,000 people killed – and counting…

Yes, America did the wrong thing in hindsight years ago when Iraq used chemical weapons and we did nothing to stop that. But that was then and today, I don’t believe any American in their right mind would condone another country using chemical weapons on their own people.

Hopefully the U.N. inspectors, even after a lengthy and diluting time period, have found some kind of chemical evidence to prove to the U.N. itself and other countries of the world that ‘yes,’ there were chemical weapons used.

Syria’s Friends Syria is a country that has had a dictatorial government, errr sorry, dictatorial leaders for decades. The people of Syria have been dead set on resolving that matter and wanting to elect, democratically, new leadership for the people (if they can avoid the religious divisions that is hurting Egypt’s elections). The Syrian people no longer want to have someone born into power to run the country and the people. And we have Al-Assad, who does not want to give up that absolute power.

As to friends of the Syrian leadership – is it any surprise they are other countries where the people are controlled, and I will say absolutely controlled, by their country’s leadership. a – China A country with no true religious freedom, no democratic freedom (despite what the leaders say because the leadership is still communistic) and no Internet freedoms because the Chinese ‘Net is monitored and censored to only allow what the Chinese government will allow and shut down when that leadership decides to… b – Iran A country where the former leader, Ahmadinejad, stated there are no gays in Iran, no religious freedom, no “true” democratically elected leadership (clerics still run the country) and no Internet freedom because the Iranian ‘Net is monitored and heavily censored AND can be shut down when their government decides to… c – Russia Another country where to be gay is to be illegal…. But where there actually is freedom on the ‘Net – even if that ‘Net is HEAVILY monitored by state/federal police for ANY kind of dissident or deviants… These are the Syrian leaders’ friends – other countries with severe and heavy handed control of the people. Oh, and countries that want to continue selling weapons to enforce controlling their people…

Uniting So then. I am not sure what is going to transpire next, Syrians continue to die while the rest of the world stands by because many of the people of the various countries do not want their government to get them involved. Instead, people of the world are hoping that: 1 – Conversations will solve the problem (two years and counting), 2 – Sanctions will solve the problem (two years and counting), 3 – Diplomacy will solve the problem (two years and 100,000 people killed and counting)…

And if we, the U.S. and other allies (if they do join us) do get involved with U.N. approval for precision (as best possible) strikes, what will be the aftermath? What will Russia and Iran do to help their ‘Friend’ Syria, a country that purchases munitions from them? Will Russia and Iran condone losing their business buddy – even if Al-Assad is killing innocents wantonly? Or are these two countries using nothing but bravado and bluster to say, “Hey, I’m important, you have to listen to me?” Or will one or both of them take some kind of retaliatory action against the U.S. and allies – kinetically (missiles, bombs), via cyberspace (some kind of debilitating virus / worm) or maybe even some kind of chemical weapon against the U.S.

Conclusion What do we do, continue to talk – or worse, let our do nothing congress engage in rabbithole approach to some kind of answer. And yes, congress is supposed to be giving approval for any kind of strike. Maybe our do nothing congress will surprise us…. While I am not a Hawk, I don’t want to turn ‘any’ cheek while people are getting massacred.

Society: Bigotry, Gender discrimination & Stupidity

Originally posted Aug 15, 2013 at & moved from: http://patrick642.wordpress.com/
Change. Improve. Innovate. Be better.
~ Pressing issues, from cyber security, to strategy, to innovation, to improvements (self, others, organizations)

Society What is happening to us? Are we losing our minds around the world or what? And no, this will not be a diatribe; it is a soliloquy of frustration at what is happening in the world. This was somewhat long but it is a big deal to me, all of the following.

We have so many people who only want things their way and no one else’s. We cannot do that, not anywhere in the world. The world’s population is growing and it ‘ain’t’ gonna stop, not in our lifetimes and as such, we cannot afford to say, okay, this part of the world, we’re only going to have Sharia law where women are 2nd class (or less) and girls cannot go to school. Here, in this part of the world, it is only for the white race and no gays. Are you serious? ARE YOU BONKERS!!!! We have men and women; we have blacks, whites, Chinese, Arabs, Latinos; we have atheists and Christians and Muslims; we have gays and lesbians and heterosexuals; we have older and younger; and on and on and on. We have got to stop treating people like they are not welcome in any part of the world. But in order to do so, we have to get more people to realize that their way is not the only way – and I mean this for those religious groups who have one way of life or for those who believe that their race (skin color) is the superior race…

America What is happening to us? We, here in America, are supposed to be the leaders of the free world and we STILL have all these racial, religious, class issues here in this country. We cannot lead the world if we cannot first learn to live and work together!!! Yes, conservatives have their say, just as liberals and other parties have their say or thought process. But whatever happened to helping each other? We need to help each other up even if it means getting our own soft hands a bit dirty to ensure everyone is being pulled up. However, when you become polarized and antagonistic towards other different groups JUST because they are different – then you slow down or even halt progress. Just because you, hypothetical you in this case, grew up in a nice neighborhood and your family had a decent income to live off of, it does not mean that others who did not have that same luxury are beneath you. They, these lower class individuals whom you look down on (if you even notice them), just never had the same opportunities as you did. And on top of that, if you continue to suppress them, errr, deny them opportunities to grow – they will remain in that economic miasma. What are you afraid of, the other person’s skin color? Religion or lack of? Gender? Sexual preference? Dearth of education? Why?

Sacrifice Many people have to go through sacrifice to get to where they are today. It may mean breaking a glass ceiling for women. It might mean someone of a different skin color going through agonizing periods of time to attain a spot in society that means middle class or better. It might mean someone hiding their homosexuality in work environments that are strictly homophobic – for years! All of these people have to suffer through the same bloody things. To become equals in society, they have to endure emotional humiliation and even physical pain every day. They have to endure stupidity from those around them and these individuals spewing stupidity may not be the best and the brightest our society has to offer – even though, sometimes it is our best and brightest (who years later may say that they do not recall ever doing horrible things to others). For many of us, sacrificing multiple things in our lives for a period of time to reach a milestone is a fulfilling thing. However, many people should ‘not’ have to suffer needlessly and foolishly to achieve any goal – but really, NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO SUFFER needlessly and foolishly to grow in their lives. We all will need to sacrifice something in order for the world to grow as one.

Commonsense Just because you believe in one thing and only act in one manner, you are not on this planet alone. You are amongst hundreds of millions of people who want a better way of life. Or who just want to live a peaceful life, one where you can walk the streets without people locking their car doors as you approach. It might be a world where you can be a woman without every single guy in the world hitting on you just because you smiled back out of niceness. Some want a world where they do not care if you practice a different religion from them but that you allow them to practice their religion in peace without being castigated for it. Each and every single one of us has to look out for the others, especially the weaker. We have to protect those who have a difficult time protecting themselves or cannot. We have to get past the notion that skin color means something. It does not really and I mean that respectfully. It only means your ancestors were born in a different part of the world at a very, very different and difficult time. And I’m not talking about the religious 6,000 years ago when the world was created. I am talking about the scientifically recognized time of millions of years ago as humans evolved and developed (if you disagree, I am sorry and that is your right). Many people today who believe they are of a pure race would be shocked to discover (if they underwent a DNA genetics test) that they are not as pure as they believed. When are we, as a collective race of people, going to start recognizing as a whole that we should not be letting skin color separate us, marking us as totally different? Or in the case of some misguided groups, that skin color or religion marks you a lower class individual (Hitler and the Jews, KKK and blacks, etc.) When are ‘more’ of us going to start recognizing that mixed race marriages or relationships are going to continue to grow and there is nothing wrong with that? Is it wrong in your eyes?

Today! Personally, I’ve been waiting for decades for the world, but America specifically, to grow and appreciate the possibilities of synergy of mixed races and to get past stupid and meaningless racism. I continue to believe that we are getting better but watching the news seeing some individual in Norway (2011) blow up a building and shoot up an island summer camp because of racism – it makes me saddened. Then you read about some nut jobs who want to join some group but need to track and target gays or blacks and kill them, just because they are different and as part of the groups’ initiation process. I cry when I see these kinds of stories in 2013, I cry because I still have that little bit of optimism in me that says we will get better, we will be better. What is happening to us, are we devolving to lesser peoples, only concerned with little old me?

Harvey Fierstein was on “All in with Chris Hayes” (Wed., Aug 14, 2013) in regards to Russia and that country’s anti-gay laws. Harvey was fired up about this and equated it to Hitler and how the people of the time, over time, let the little things continue to go by until they became big things, and well, you know how that ended. Jews were massacred. Well, it is the same with gays this time, the Winter Olympics at Sochi 2014. How can an entire country, or most of the population still have such a difficult time moving forward into the future, here in 2013? How can so many people be so conservative that they allow gays to be beaten in the streets and arrested? How can this be? Iran is the same, recall Ahmadinejad stating that there are no gays in Iran. Something has to be done, around the world as a hold in getting countries to change their regressive ways of thinking and beliefs. And it means that the people of the world have to unite.

I recall, during the week of Martin L. King Jr.’s death, my being asked to give his “I have a dream” speech to the student body. I have held the same thoughts ever since, about his dream, but adding the inclusiveness of gays and people of all religions, or no religion. I still harbor these desires…

Lastly, it does not matter to me what your skin color is, how old/young you are, what your gender is, what religion you are nor your sexual preference. What matters to me is your character – your integrity and ethics, these are what matter to me. Can you reciprocate?

Political parties and our future

Originally posted Aug 1, 2013 at & moved from: http://patrick642.wordpress.com/
Change. Improve. Innovate. Be better.
~ Pressing issues, from cyber security, to strategy, to innovation, to improvements (self, others, organizations)

Politics. At some point in the future, with the way things are nose diving in politics, we may wind up with a one party system for the country (maybe even one for N. American as a continent – but that is way off in the future).

So many politicians are in office nowadays primarily looking out for themselves rather than their constituents and the country. What happened along the way to get to this point where these selfish individuals want to line their pockets while in office or once they get out of office? What happened to those folks who went to Washington to do selfless work for the people of the country rather than completely toeing the party line, even if it makes no sense to them? Yet they kowtow to their party leaders, sometimes with no self-recrimination. What happened to those bold individuals who would stick up for things that were just and right, even if it did mean they were only a one term politician? But what they stick up for just may end up paving the way for new progress and improvements for those who follow them. What they do ‘might’ break the logjam that continues to hold us back from actually being the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.

Is it that the allure of being in the spotlight brings out the worse candidates to public office? Or rather, maybe I should say that it brings out the worse of that candidate/political member… Or is it the allure of making buckets of money while they are in office and then after they leave office? We know that a lot of individuals go in to office with a modest bank balance but at some point along the way they seem to have millions of dollars in the bank and in investments. Is greed the factor that draws so many individuals to the highest public office now. Many individuals who should be running simply cannot afford to so, what with the steep, STEEP cost of running for office and/or remaining in office. We should not need to have candidates for president raise and spend $1,000,000,000 (billion). Neither should we be seeing candidates for mayors, governors, congress or senate now be required to raise millions of dollars for their war chest to run and compete against other candidates who might be rich or well funded. We need to somehow rejigger the methodology of how we get good and decent candidates to run for office, without all this massive amount of spending…

I favor no one party blindly but I will say that I am an independent who leans heavily to the democratic party. But, I don’t follow that party blindly just because they are democrats. So if you are of a different party that is your right, just don’t hate me or respond negatively just because of the party difference. We are supposed to be one country, one where we should be able to speak our minds – but not rabidly without commonsense and common courtesy. Be passionate but not bullheaded, stick in the mud or ostrich in the sand passionate.

We have to hear what all parties say and do “our own homework/research” to get more ground truth and complete facts. Not just one side of the story. This is what is killing us, so many people listen to just one side on a daily basis and they end up with this vicious bubble filter (actually, read Eli Pariser’s book on “The Filter Bubble ” and gain some insight from that). Then these folks stay in that filter bubble and close their minds to new, fresh, different ideas – all because they may be too unsettling for them to come across something different, even if what they come across may be more true. I would say, “to each their own” but this is too important for so many people in this country to get in and stay in those filter bubbles. It is flat out dangerous.

We have too many in the different political parties that already make it more expensive and dangerous to be involved. We have states and cities around the country that are sneaking in bills that are harmful to the people of the state. Rather than debating the topic at hand, these bill sponsors rename the bill with something esoteric and stash it in another bill and then sneak the bill in at the deadline…

Maybe we do need one party in this country, one that is for the people that treats all Americans with dignity and respect. Whether they are women, people of different races, have lower educational backgrounds – the point is, we are supposed to be helping each other, not making the “have not’s” suffer as they are. All Americans should be getting a fair shot, not because they belong to just one party (‘ours’ – not ‘theirs), because for sure if you suppress someone, you are not being fair.

Do we need to change the political party system? Because to me, this bicameral one is having far too many expensive and ineffectual issues. We have to stop all these stalemates and get things moving. We all know. sorry – I mean ‘many of us’ know that the longer we delay projects, they become more expensive. And we have to start thinking of the future, strategically and put things in place now (even if they are expensive) so we can reap the benefits and rewards down the road.

Okay, enough on this for now – I just get riled up hearing all these political fights that make no sense. Conservative or Progressive – we need to be fair and help everyone up.