Children, Teenagers, Young Adults of America – You’re Doomed…!!

The time is yours now, as much as it is for older adults. We ‘older’ adults had a tough time in the 60s & 70s getting to read books considered sinful, immoral or goes against the sanctity of Christ or any other god out there…

After the book bans and burnings in Nazi occupied Germany – prior to the people of Germany learning that what they did and what they put the Jewish community through – books are there for the people of Germany to read.

After book bans and burnings in America, in the 20s, the 30s, well – you get the drift – MANY of us were able to enjoy and learn from books that opened up WHOLE NEW VISTAS for us. Books that allowed us to explore the physical world and the social world around us – those books were there for us.

Now. Now, we have individuals around the country and those individuals in positions of political power – they want to bring back “Christianity” and more, deeper, “Conservatism” and SHOVE IT DOWN THE THROATS OF FREE-THINKING AMERICANS…!!!  Older adults as well as young adults and let’s not forget the growing children and teenagers who DO want to learn more.

You, you Children, Teenagers and Young Adults of America – you have to do more and take your turn to stop the stifling of free thought; freedom to grow and experiment – YOU are our BEST hope now. YOU have to talk to your parents and your teachers, and CONTINUOUSLY try to convince them to help stop what appears to be a minority of people in America who want to take us back 50 to 100 years in the past. Back when men, mostly men of a certain skin color had the ultimate power to wield over everyone else as if the “other” people were meaningless.

And by “other people”, take a guess here. No, let me just say it. People of color, any color – Black, Yellow, Brown – any of them, any of us were considered SECOND-RATE people. And let’s not forget women. Women in the past (and in some communities across the country to this day) were meant to ALWAYS be, as has been noted for decades, if not centuries – Barefoot and Pregnant and in the Kitchen. Always at home taking care of the “man’s” domicile, his kingdom (said with a little “k” here). Women, at the leisure and pleasure of many men, were meant to be kept in the background, an inferior position – but a step up from people of color.

We. By ‘We’, I include you Children, Teenagers and Young Adults to step up and help stop this insane blood and life-sucking backwards move for society. A growing movement that intends to take everyone back to the time when White Supremacy made all the choices for everyone else: things such as child labor laws being overwritten and returned to the 1700 and 1800s. Don’t take my word for it, take the word of the authors: Erik M. Conway and Naomi Oreskes who wrote the book, “The Big Myth”. They talk about this one area in depth, as well as other areas. Check out the content in the book regarding the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) who could care less about children, as long as they worked for low wages and in dangerous conditions. This is what NAM did in the past.

Today. Today, we have individuals who are actively banning books and even poems such as the one by Amanda Gorman. Amanda Gorman did the poem at Biden’s presidential inauguration – remember her yet? Young and looks to be a wonderful American.  That poem that she recited at the inauguration is now banned from Bob Graham education center in Miami Lakes (Florida) because of a complaint from a SINGLE PARENT where the woman/complainant said she objected to the poem because it was “not educational and have indirectly hate messages”. (Her words, not mine…)

This is what all of us are going through, a minority of individuals and corrupted political individuals as well as political parties across America, in many states – trying to still freedom and growth from you as YOU come into your own time. But, your own time may be stolen and quashed for years and or decades. All because of these narrow-minded thinkers and believers who want a certain colored world, a world of religion again, where everyone should believe in their god.

You have to make your voice heard, somehow. Most of you will never even see this paper, as it is only one of thousands out here in the Internet. Yet, there is always hope, I neglected to mention – I’m optimistic and have always been so. Even after seeing countless incidents and situations of unfairness and illegalities across the decades because not enough of us stood up fast enough.

I still have hope that enough Americans can band together in enough states in America to quench the numerous groups of political parties who are now ACTIVELY banning special elections; creating MORE rules and regulations to ensure their remaining in political power for as long as they can and let’s not forget GERRYMANDERING, which is still going strong…

Children, Teenagers and Young Adults – make your voices heard, somehow. Band together so all of you are able to enjoy the books of your choice and to enjoy the social life YOU would like to enjoy (legal of course…). And to even enjoy the partner of ANY color as some of us have greatly enjoyed being with – no one has to marry another person just because they have the same skin color. Ask the Lovings, Richard and Mildred Loving, they had to go to court to be married, just because they were black and white and living in the south (Virginia). Check out their story, there are books and movies and even podcasts out there that talk about them as a couple, as individuals and as heroes that MANY of us look up to.

Please. Band together to help stop this nonsense of forced Christianity and conservatism…

The Taliban, errr – sorry, ‘American Right’ Are Coming for YOU… (part 1 of 2)

Is That What’s Really Happening….

Note, I wrote this in a rush to get it somewhat off my brain to get back to some other tasks I need to do, so please bear with me for this article, I may come back to polish it up more but you will get the gist of it here… That is, if I can put with WordPress’ pathetic mode of editing…

To be clear, this does not extend to all Republicans, or folks on the Right – there are some that are very decent and very democratically oriented. This is primarily aimed at the, ummm – more outer edge and QAnon type ‘Right’.

But. We do have quite a significant number of Conservative Republicans – men (mostly men), women, white (mostly white), black (interestingly), yellow, brown, red, straight (mostly) and a few gay (again, interestingly) – that are quite puritanical and religiously oriented about how ALL Americans should behave and act.

Because of the “Draft” Overturn of Roe v Wade from the Supreme Court, the country has gone into banana mode, led by McConnell and some of his buddies and their red state legislators. I am not even including Trump in this, he is just too far off the rails to be considered sane.

This has finally led me to believing that America is being led astray by a LOUD minority of folks in this country. Here, let’s compare a few things and you make up your own mind – AFTER you do your own research AND your own thinking OUTSIDE of all conspiracy circles and Facebook siloes.
YOU need to do the deep soul searching and information content on your own and by yourself first before coming back to debate/discuss it with others.

(Apologies on the table formatting, it did not come across as in the original paper)

Taliban Edicts

Republicans’ Wet Dreams

Women cannot drive long distances without a guardian (this means a male, of any age), since the Taliban believes women need to be overseen at all times and have no say in anything. And if there is no guardian and the woman does so, the guardian (man or boy) will be paid a visit by the Taliban.       Women will not be educated beyond grade school (upper education schools are being shut down or already shut down – May 2022) Women will cover their faces at all times in public and on TV         Women are not equal to men and never will be         Religion shall be all about Allah – no other religion will be practiced or allowed                   Adultery – beaten via the Sharia mechanism or even stoned to death     Taliban want supreme control over everything

* Women will be banned from any abortion, regardless of rape or incest * Women will be banned from leaving the state for abortions * Women will be banned from receiving abortion medication * Women will be forced to endure the unwanted, repugnant pregnancy, whether they like it or not – even if they were raped by their FATHER or UNCLE or a LUNATIC criminal * Women will have no right regarding pregnancy, except to deliver the baby Education will be led by the conservative republicans, there will be: * no gay subject matter for grade school; * no anti-racist material in schools; * no critical race theory will be taught in grade school, high school or college * meaning – republicans really do not want future generations to learn about racist attitudes of the past (and today) nor any horrific activities that their ancestors undertook (lynchings and raids and firebombing towns and outright murder – even tar and feather) to quelch ANY kind of equality and continue to suppress anyone of color and gender * Conservative republicans want to continue to whitewash history, especially in Texas; * removing any kind of racist horrors and history from ALL text books in grade / high school – leaving only some kind of puffery (and a very short blurb at that) regarding that time in history. * Then when these school kids become adults and move to another state – the adult who grew up in a state whitewashing history becomes horrified (the smart liberal ones at any rate) to learn that they were taught partial history (or none) which was covered up rather than the full and complete atrocities that were done * The Japanese tried this years ago regarding the murder, raping, looting, and burning in the Chinese city of Nanjing (then known as Nanking) in 1937    Next will be what kind of clothing women and young people are allowed to wear in American schools – there have already been multiple cases of what kind of hair styles boys and girls in school are allowed to have – which all ended up backfiring     And yes, women of America, many men still want to suppress you to this day – primarily white men * There are still TOO MANY men who do not want to see women earning as much as or more than they earn and many of the men do NOT want you in positions of power * This is where I fail in my comprehension – with the suppression of female equality, ESPECIALLY amongst white women – there are STILL so many white women who will gloss over this and continue to be suppressed and not want equality as other women do   Religion – the vast majority of republican conservatives want there to be god everywhere and in everything we do. Even though science continues to disprove nearly everything brought up. For the first 20 years of my life, all religious talk was about how the world was only 6,000 years old. You do not hear that any more… People can believe whatever they wish to believe but they CANNOT CONTINUE TO FORCE RELIGION on those who do not believe… Nor force any non-religious individuals to heel to ANY religious ways of life…       Women get the short end of the stick in America because they cannot just go enjoy sex the way many corrupt, philandering men do…   Mostly white men want to regale supremely over all non-white men in America: * the militias want their weapons to fend off future attacks by uprising blacks and browns and China (which is simply all crazy) * SUNDOWN Towns want to continue to exist by ‘persuading’ non-whites to not stay in their towns overnight * the KKK still wants to come back to power and then there are * the neo-Nazis who also want to be the power brokers of America to save the pureness of the white lineage (hint – bad news for ya folks, many of you have mixed blood in your ‘pure lineage’)

And because American Red states want to dictate what should be primary and final determinations for pregnancy and abortions.  The problem here is, the final decision regarding a pregnancy abortion is ultimately up to the woman – she is the SOLE arbiter of what should happen. It is HER decision to live with for the rest of her life – no one, not religious or atheist, not conservative or liberal should tell any woman what she should do. In the end, it is up to her, not the woman’s parents; not the husband or boyfriend – but the pregnant woman.

So, it will be pretty simple for women who are doomed in their home red state and cannot afford to do anything.

1. Miscarriage – easiest answer and I really hate to say it but this may be the woman’s only option – but remember, too many precious women may die and have died over the decades because of getting rid of an unwanted fetus (a non-breathing, non-thinking, non-conscious entity)
2. Have the baby, put it in a box and leave the box on the doorstep (not at any church or fire station) of your favorite Associate Judge of our “Supreme Court” – Judge Amy (not the t.v. star), Judge Kavanaugh, Judge Gorsuch or everyone’s beloved (not) Alito and not to forget Judge clarence. But, you need to take precautions (which I would do if I were a woman and had to be forced through this nightmare):
   • Use a box with no markings to indicate you
   • Wear surgical gloves when handling the box and the baby – leave no DNA and to hide your skin color
   • Put the baby in the box wrapped up in a blanket with a note for Auntie Amy, I mean Judge Amy
   • Wear two sets of clothing – one for bagginess to cover the set underneath and you must wear a Burka, damn, sorry – a hoody and keep it down
   • Have a spare pair of shoes to switch to after you drop off the box with the baby
   • Avoid as many cameras as possible
   • After doing the drop, find a safe, dark/deserted spot blocks away – outside of camera view – switch clothing and shoes and put them in a trash can, keep the gloves on and later dispose of them somewhere else
3. These are things are what I would do, not saying you should do them – besides, doing the drop on these associate judges door steps should be a dear thing of god that these justices would want, right, leaving the babies with someone who would love them – it should be as legal as dropping the baby box at a fire station or church – correct….???

But this is what we face, red states – that want to dictate and force people to do things the person does not want to do. Yes, the pandemic forced people to get vaccinated because that affects EVERYONE around them, not just the person refusing to get the shot. I wish we had some kind of mechanism to track how many people died because the “hands off my body anti-vaxxer” refused to get vaccinated…?

1. hundreds
2. thousands
3. 10’s of thousands…?

Because of refusing to get the vaccine, many anti-vaxxers / hands-off my body individuals caused others to get sick and die. Or they caused people who needed to be hospitalized for other issues – heart attack, liver transplant, cancer surgery – to not undergo surgery in a timely manner and then died.

The pandemic was a different animal – that affected everyone – forcing a woman to retain and undergo a pregnancy is an individual issue. A woman who is pregnant and wants an abortion does not cause anyone who is a living, breathing, thinking and conscious entity any kind of physical pain. It ‘might’ cause emotional distress but that is the price the religious pay for following a god.

What a pregnant woman decides in the end, that is her business and does not affect how anyone else’s life, that is – anyone breathing, thinking and conscious continues.

And remember, this “abortion ban” – this is only the prelude to more attempted restrictions or bans. Such as banning mixed race marriage, where others like my wife and I would “not” be able to get married in the future. The Loving’s work to get legally married would have become a terrible wasted effort…

A huge hurdle and effort, wasted – gone, because too many Americans chose not to stand up to Trumpist’s, Trumpism and narrow-minded bigots and white supremacy wannabes…

Part 2 – Donald Trump: Taking America Backwards & Laughing Stock…. Very Sad

Continued from Part 1 @ https://patrick642nu.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/part-1-donald-trump-taking-america-backwards-laughing-stock-very-sad/

 

Medical Care – Universal Health Care[1]

For decades, there have been individuals who wanted to put something like Universal Health Care (UHC) into play, people such as; Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt (1901-1909), FDR (1935 & 1939), Harry S. Truman in 1949 as part of the Fair Deal to our last president (Obama). You can also check Wikipedia[2] if you wish but do your own reading and thoughtful introspection.

So, what’s the big deal about UHC, our future – that is what is at stake? At stake is a future of healthier individuals, across the country. It is a future where costs will actually be lower because early care will preclude major medical disasters later and there will be no monstrous medical bills to be picked up by the families involved and tax payers due to an escalation of emergency room visits…

My thoughts on what these past presidents and current UHC (or Affordable Care) leaders thinking is that we need to cover everyone to bring down emergency room visits; to bring down the costs of catastrophic medical situations so that down the road, we Americans, will not have such significant numbers of people across the country without coverage. We would have in the future, a greatly reduced number of Americans without serious medical problems because the medical problems would have been caught very early in life and prevented. And the problems would have been prevented at a significantly fraction of the cost, instead of letting it go festering on for decades, with each year seeing more of that families (and tax payers – think emergency rooms) money going down the drain when it could have been prevented due to long-term thinkers who have been trying to get UHC instilled into the American psyche.

Just imagine more people:

• With healthy looking teeth so they can go and gain better jobs instead of being automatically assigned as a person of low income and low intellect and passed over for someone else who simply looks better
• Walking around on healthy legs or prostheses instead of a stump and a crutch(es) or obsolete decrepit wheel chair
• With the ability to see rather than being blinded due to malnutrition or bad school lunch plans and more

Do you not believe UHC would better everyone? Okay, think about an event occurring where you lose your high paying job and you were the primary bread winner with a great insurance plan. Well, your plan is gone and you suddenly find yourself in a medical catastrophic situation and it is going to be hugely expensive. What are you going to do? Bemoan the fact that you have UHC at that point.

Grow up people, stop thinking about yourselves because you have a better life – think about others out there who are not as fortunate as you.

Wouldn’t you want to see:

• Every American in this country reaping the benefits of great health care 10 years from now? {That 10 year number is only an educated guess as to we could start seeing better health care efficacy…}
• A dramatic reduction of emergency room visits 10 years from now, while at the same time – a significant reduction of tax payers paying for so many unnecessary ER visits?
• No more prohibitively expensive and labor sapping hospital visits 10 years from now because preventive UHC took care of problems before they exploded into the problems they are today?

We can do that!!!! But we have to agree to do this now, as a country. We cannot just provide UHC for the elite and better paid Americans and continue arguing and kicking this can down the road, EVERY SINGLE BLOODY YEAR as we are doing now!!!! We can change that paradigm!

 

Laughing Stock?

Back to the U.S. becoming the laughing stock country. Is that true, what do you think? Remember, do your own research and analysis; do not rely solely on news folks (TV or radio), or talk shows, or conspiracy theorists and only your inner circle – expand your horizons.

Why can’t the U.S. spend more money, evenly, on all levels of education to ratchet up the education and knowledge of American students? Why can’t the U.S. be like Canada, Great Britain and Germany[3]? Education goes a long way in making for a better citizenry… And we, the U.S., we need to do better if we want to be ‘the’ world leader – we need better education to get there. Check out a Pew article[4] for some info on where we stand.

 

What about international diplomacy? You too must think this is a laughing stock situation, right? Look at the current secretary of state, Tillerson – a person who does not grant interviews and press conferences. He wants to do mostly behind the scene affairs. Do you believe that is an open and transparent way to handle diplomacy, not sharing information with the country he represents?

Oh wait-a-minute that does not really matter. Our president and OMB person (Mick Mulvaney) want to cut the budget for State Department and USAID because we do not require or need this kind of effort around the world. Surely you believe this is laughable too… Right?

 

What about cleaner air, well, no? Apparently we not require or need this either. Our latest president and EPA head seem to believe their own knowledge on climate change and disregard what scientists who have been studying this for years. We should let companies dump waste in rivers and pollute the air, sure why not…? That is quite laughable, the president and EPA head that is, oh and include Bannon in that lot.

 

What about all the extraordinarily significant amount of time the U.S. is spending on the current president, his family, inner circle of administration officials and business cronies staying at Mar-a-Lago and at Trump Tower? Do you not believe this is laughable enough? Why yes, it is. The U.S. is spending far too much time on illicit activities, ummm – excuse me, alleged illicit activities. And we are spending far too much money on all of this as a result.

And the end result is that, most of the other hard stuff is not getting accomplished. Here are some of the things not getting done like; infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, levees, power grid, water, etc.) across the country, all of which need attention. Then there is the tax reform; there is equality in the work place which needs more attention.

Take a look at the rampant, vitriolic, unvarnished display of outright racism being displayed across this once great nation. This is worse than when the last president was in office. And remember, that last president did not spew nonsense and idiotic content such as “knock ‘em out,” or “grab ‘em by the p_ _ _ y” or even using 7^th grade language for that matter – sometimes, just sometimes, using ‘plain spoken language’ can mean talking down to someone and insult that person’s intelligence….

What is going on? What is happening to this once great country? Why are so many people willing to condone this current president? Why condone someone who continues to willingly lie to the country, to the world – on multiple topics? And many people were (and are still) willing to continue listening to and believe in this individual even though what this current president promised will never happen again (think coal and massive manual manufacturing)…

More people in this country need to start thinking of each other, no matter their race, religion, age, gender, sexual preferences or what part of the country they live in. We are all here together, right now.  Look at each other, deeply look at each other and consider the travels and hardship they may have endured to get to where they are now (of course I’m talking about honest, hard work and legal efforts). And remember that no matter whom you see in front of you, or whether they live 2,500 miles away, that other person may be smarter than you and have better cognitive skills than you. These are people who are walking around right now – with or without:

• a college degree (that other person who ‘looks’ unintelligent may hold several degrees including a doctorate for all that you are aware)
• a family trust fund
• the best looks
• the best smile or
• the best speech abilities / speaking mannerisms.

So take note, that other person just may be a better person than you – rich or poor though they may be…

 

[1] “A Brief History: Universal Health Care Efforts in the US,” 1999, www.pnhp.org/facts/a-brief-history-universal-health-care-efforts-in-the-us

[2] “History of health care reform in the U.S.,” retrieved June 3, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States

[3] “Best Countries for Education,” March 7, 2017, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/best-education

[4] “U.S. students’ academic achievement still lags that of their peers in many other countries,” February 15, 2017, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/

Part 1 – Donald Trump: Taking America Backwards & Laughing Stock…. Very Sad

Part 2 continues @ https://patrick642nu.wordpress.com/2017/06/12/part-2-donald-trump-taking-america-backwards-laughing-stock-very-sad/

 

To Be An American

Let’s be clear up front here. If you wish to live in America and/or become an American, you have to follow the laws, rules and regulations in place to ensure we are all adhering to a basic foundation of governance. (Meaning = you’re not doing anything illegal or trying to take advantage of the system.)

It does not matter if you are a green card immigrant living in New Jersey or Dearborn, MI. It does not matter if you are a Militia member in Montana or Utah. It does not matter if you are a Sovereign Citizen. Nor does it matter if you are a citizen in Houston.

What matters to all of us is – we all must follow the rules. No one can live in this country and dictate their own set of rules such as:

• “Well, we have been letting our cattle graze public lands without paying access fees, why should we start or continue to do so, it is public land.” Or,
• “We are not going to pay taxes to the government – we have our own currency and we have our own laws.” Or,
• “We have a right to bear arms, as they did in the early days of this country when there was no adequate military or police force to protect us.” Or,
• “We come to America to live, to live in a country of freedom and democracy but oh, by the way, we are going to continue following our own religious laws (i.e. ‘Sharia’ and ‘Honor Killings’) and we will not work too hard on assimilating into the American culture. By the way, we want you to respect our religious tenets and cultural laws.” Or,
• “Our town, yes, we are a Sundown town and we only want our kind, our race here, so, if you’re not our race and here after dark, you might want to think twice about staying the night.”

This cannot be the way of America. WE have to become the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and in doing so, we must come together. We are supposed to be a progressive country, not devolving into olden days, days of cowboys and Indians when people of any color as well as women were treated as second class citizens. Think about Native Americans, Chinese who were forced into doing manual labor on the railroads and elsewhere and yes, even malicious treatment of Jews and Poles and other immigrants who came to America.

Think about the course of history surrounding women denied equality (and we are still not there yet on this point).

When anyone moves to America to become a citizen and pledges allegiance to America, you are bound to accept and follow the American way of life and its culture. This is not to supplant the culture, customs and traditions you bring with you but in addition. One cannot move to a new country and impose your homeland’s laws, views and aspects onto those citizens of your newly adopted country. If one does not wish to accept the new country’s laws, views, culture, traditions and all the rest, well, maybe you should return to your own country.

 

Reverse mode – U.S.A.?

What is going on? Are we, the American people, really going to permit this evolution of “going backwards” to continue to pick up steam?

First, remember, this current U.S. administration was not elected by the American people.  The Electoral College, via whatever machination they employed, selected this current president, even though the overall number of votes was not for him.

Second, this paper is not aimed at any party in particular. It does not matter if you are liberal, conservative, independent, green party or libertarian, we are all in the same boat, floundering because of who was put in the White House.

Thirdly, this president has made the claim that he does not want foreign leaders and countries laughing at the U.S. Well, it is a tad late for that. We have become, well, on the straight and narrow in becoming the laughing stock of the world. Our fortunes are falling, from world leader to falling in line with Syria and Nicaragua (climate change).

 

What are you Watching & Listening to…?

Another significant thing to keep in mind, something I always ensure that everyone understands;

• “No, you do not have to believe me.”

The reason I say that particular phrase is because I want you, and everyone else, to do some of your own research. Reach out to different news outlets – “do not stay in your own comfort zone, listening to the same individuals or groups of individuals.” This is because it is a dooming cycle to remain in; you only hear the same content from the same people and you start becoming brain washed by listening to the same regurgitated content from the same types of sources. Do not take the following in a spate of anger but it is like being raised from birth in the church (any religion, pick one – from Catholicism to Wahhabism). All you hear is religion until you start acquiring more areas of knowledge and start doing your own concentrated thinking and determine your own line of reasoning as to what is what – B.C./A.D. or B.C.E/C.E.  

Watch and listen to other men and women on different news channels, network and cable; listen to different radio stations on FM, AM and satellite; watch or listen to news in local, national and foreign (to see how the American news comes across) news outlets; read different newspaper sources. The point is, listen to and watch different sources, do not get trapped in listening to only the folks around you or only your favorite news person – you simply must, absolutely must expand your horizon.

Then, do your own reasoning and thinking to make your own conclusions. You cannot just listen to someone, no matter how rich or famous (or how loud) they are, the onus is on you to make your own generalizations. You have to look down the road into the future to see what the possible consequences of your present decisions will engender. This is where the scenarios of; “if I make this choice, then this will happen” come into play. For non-computer folks, this is a primary programming aspect, the “if – then” statement.

You must remember, even if you believe you are the center of the universe, you have to consider what your decisions mean for jeopardizing the future of others. You must instill a better substitute to staring at your belly button; it is solely your fault in focusing in only on one source of news, such as Tweets that come out at 4am.

 

Leadership – Knowledge or Ulterior Motives…?

Here, let’s take a look at some of the individuals the current U.S. president wanted in office. Individuals that supposedly want to help the current president ‘make america great again.’

Scott Pruitt, here is a man that sued, or at least attempted to, the EPA multiple times as a businessman. Since taking over as the EPA Administrator, he has had the EPA web site scrubbed of all real scientific evidence relating to climate change or global warming. Does that sound like something a reasonably sound person of any decent level of intellect would do?

Betsy DeVos, a woman who wishes to bring charter schools to all states. This is a woman who made the unintelligent statement on HBCUs[1]. “DeVos said HBCUs “are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality”. “HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” the statement said.”

HBCUs were somewhat the only choices Blacks had to go to…

DeVos wants to help break down the national common core. This is a point that many people continue to contest, they believe it is too difficult and unachievable and that each state should have their own standard of education. Here is the problem. If the states maintained their own standards, we are going to go in reverse, again. Some states will have better standards of education while others will have very poor standards. Humor me, just imagine, if you are a parent and you were relocating for better opportunities – would you:

1. Go to a state that has poor standards and are near the bottom of the nation – i.e. these could be states in the mid-west and south or
2. States like California or New York with better standards where your children will have a much more guaranteed chance for success

Mull that over and see if you still want a willy-nilly set of mish-mash standards across the country,  or a common, tougher, standard…. If you move from a state with poor standards to a state with excellent standards, your children will suffer the educational cost of catching up, meaning they may be placed in remedial classes… Education is not necessarily meant to be easy, such as all 2nd graders getting a trophy for 1st place.

Tom Price, here is another person with less than excellent standards. He wants to be a key player in getting rid of Planned Parenthood, an entity that is instrumental in many families around the country, an entity that is not solely aimed at abortions. Do we want our country to return to unplanned pregnancies and back alley abortions of the 70s?  This is a person who made dubious gains in money in the stock market from insider trading, sorry, making money on various investments due to congressional bills he sponsored and voted on.

Mick Mulvaney, I do not know what to say here. Is this a real person and is he really qualified to head up the OMB? Look at what he is proposing in making budget cuts for the Affordable Care Act, he wants to cut out big chunks and state that it really will not affect those who are covered.

Ben Carson, – okay, this is a real winner. He himself said that he was qualified to head up HUD because he lived in the projects at one time. Hmmm, not sure how to take that statement? Good? Bad? What?

Steve Bannon, do we want Bannon to stay in the administration now that nearly everyone in the country knows what Breitbart is about and Bannon’s mindset while he was running the company (and likely still running that “news” outlet)? This is a mindset that is not fit for the majority of Americans.

I could go on with many, many more of trumps’ selections he put in place for our administration but I just do not have the time or patience right now…

 

Divisive Country, Yes! United, No!

We started seeing an uptick in negative relationships across the board when our last president (good old Barack) was elected. This was most likely because he is not white, which was/is a huge problem for many people across the 50 states (and we may have this issue when {not if} a women is elected). I did not include ‘united’ because we are not a truly united states.

Evil content, divisive content started pouring out. Militias grew in numbers, even the KKK {a.k.a. 88} started growing again and who truly wants to deal with something like the KKK in this point in our history. Now, look at all the evil hearted content that used to be dying down (or so we thought) and/or covert. The current president seemed to have opened the flood gates for racial hatred, ignorance and flat out bigotry to flow. We have much more public evilness on display in all areas of our lives now. People (white) walking up to parked cars, if the driver appears to be Muslim, and creating a scene full of diatribes. People (white) in grocery stores telling (or yelling and cursing) Muslim appearing people to get out of the U.S. and go home because there is no Muslim in the White House anymore… Recall the recent bus scene where two men were stabbed to death and another wounded because they were trying to step in and stop a guy who was clearly (allegedly) out of his mind in verbally accosting two Muslim young women.

We are back to blatant racism and it is no longer covert, it much more overt. The expansion of public racism, we can safely presume, right, sprang from the election campaign of Donald Trump. Take that infamous rally where Trump stated, “knock him out” where a person (a white guy) sucker punched a black guy in the stands – and Trump stated later for all to hear that he would cover any legal charges (yeah, right).

Trump’s outrageous manner of speech, his “plain spoken” talk and ill-mannered  behavior (remember grabbing women by their ‘p _ _ _ _ _ s’ – never, NEVER forget that one) allowed many other ill-mannered, poorly behaved, ignorant individuals around the country to come forth to talk and act as if that style of behavior was acceptable. It is not! Racism continues to roar its ugly head as it ratchets up in the public, overt hemisphere around the country. This is partly to blame on the current president in the white house and a sizeable number of individuals surrounding him.

 

State of Affairs…?

Well, our government wants to relax fuel and emission standards for auto manufacturers instead of being stricter in what vehicles pump into the air (I used to run in L.A. and got sicker and sicker every winter due to smog – I bought a Nordic Track runner instead of running outside and within a year I was healthy again). And gaining better mileage is what everyone who drives a car or truck wants but no, our government believes this is too arduous of a manufacturing goal and hurts profits. Let me help you digest that a bit – profits over health, think about it.

Allowing the dumping of waste into rivers – in what universe is this okay? Who desires possibly toxic waste to seep into ground water tables and spread laterally? Do you want some factories waste content in your water system – remember, when storms cause waste water facilities to overflow, that contaminated water is likely going to end up in a neighborhood near you – if not directly in yours…

Relaxation of emission standards for factories, this is the direction our government to help businesses in also. Let them pump out less clean waste into the atmosphere. Is this lunacy to anyone besides me?

Climate change, possible move to more coal usage and pollution – recall that there is no clean coal solution yet. And no, you cannot continue to blame countries like China. China is shutting down coal plants and stopping production of more coal plants (China is in its 3^rd year in a row of reduced coal consumption). Between 2015 when China was still going full bore on coal, the rise of pollution throughout the country has given the country pause to move away from coal to cleaner energy alternatives. Remember, do some research on your own.

 

We, America, by this point in time in history should have stamped out a massive chunk (yes, good word to use here) of racism and excised it from our ‘progressive’ path forward. But, we did not. Many people still believe that only one color matters and anyone else of a different tint or hue does not belong in America. Too bad these individuals have not gone out and had a DNA test done to see what their racial/genetic makeup is composed of. Take a look at a white cop[2] in Hastings, MI who did so and discovered he has Black blood in his genetic makeup (yes, he started being on the racist end of multiple comments and situations). Ancestry.com said he was 18% black. Hastings is 97 percent white… So, take a wild guess at how many KKK or Militia members have a genetic makeup much less than that Hitlerish (88) goal of being 100% pure, of any race. And you might be right… Unfortunately, it will be a long time before we discover that kind of info. But, we are too far on the path of evolution for that many people to be 100% pure blood.

Coming together ‘only’ for holidays like Memorial Day, the 4^th of July or in times of disaster should be shameful for everyone. The time to come together is all year long, every single day. We should have everyone’s back and to be there for them when a hurricane comes their way; or when a plumbing flood snafu occurs at home; or when a neighbors’ kid is bullied because that bullied kid is gay or autistic – these everyday events are when everyone must come together, not just on some event like Rolling Thunder crossing over Memorial Bridge.

Does the above not cause a glimmer or spark of outage in your brain cells in realizing (for those of you out there who are truly thinking this through) that we are becoming a laughing stock in the world? It is not due to the American citizenry, or rather, not the majority of Americans, but to the current leadership in place…

 

Enough for now, I will add more to this fall from grace saga where America is becoming a laughing stock due to our current president…

 

 

[1] Historically Black Colleges And Universities

[2] “White Michigan Cop Files Racism Lawsuit After Ancestry.Com Revealed He’s Part Black,” May 10, 2017, http://www.newsweek.com/white-cop-sues-michigan-city-racism-after-ancestrycom-revealed-hes-part-black-607004