Ever so quietly, the volumes sit in orderly ranks on their shelves, never uttering a word of protest as access to their wisdom, humor, history and hope silently slips away.
All over the country, libraries are closing due to budget constraints. In Boston, on April 9th, they announced 4 branches shutting down (see www.boston.com). In Birmingham, Al., three branches went dark (see www.al.com).
Charlotte, NC, reluctantly closed 12 branches - losing 140 jobs and denying two million annual visitors a chance to reap the knowledge that waits patiently in the rows of now-stilled knowledge.
Indianapolis found the need to close six branches in Marion County, and announced their decision in May (see www.wishtv.com).
In this era when we MUST make "cuts," is this truly the way to go? Could we not forego just one Stealth Bomber, at a cost of $1-billion each (estimated in 1997 - heaven knows what it costs today!)
One billion dollars would likely keep every one of these libraries open. Do we have our priorities straight?
Monday, July 12, 2010
Friday, July 9, 2010
Fox News Goes Green - really!
In the irony of all ironies, here's a little tidbit to make you pull your hair out by the roots while screaming the word "hypocrites": News Corp, the huge entity owned by Rupert Murdoch, which includes Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, NatGeo TV, Dow Jones Newswire, the New York Post, and even the coupon machines that spew out cents-off coupons when you pass the Rice Krispies, has been "going green" since a speech Murdoch made in May, 2007.
Honest - it's Murdoch's stated goal to become carbon neutral, as outlined in the speech during which he said: "Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction."
On Fox News, the commentators call climate change "nuts" and describe Al Gore as "off his lithium," but the Big Boss has decided green is the way to go.
Categories that News Corp is proud of include a "green" season of producing the TV series "24," which claims they saved apprx. 940 metric tons of CO-2.
Read the whole fascinating article at www.motherjones.com
Honest - it's Murdoch's stated goal to become carbon neutral, as outlined in the speech during which he said: "Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction."
On Fox News, the commentators call climate change "nuts" and describe Al Gore as "off his lithium," but the Big Boss has decided green is the way to go.
Categories that News Corp is proud of include a "green" season of producing the TV series "24," which claims they saved apprx. 940 metric tons of CO-2.
Read the whole fascinating article at www.motherjones.com
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Pay 4 Wars with Social Security
Republican Minority Leander John Boehner says we have to cut Social Security ("entitlement") because we need to pay for the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan.
He wants us to work until we're 70 years 0ld - to pay for wars the GOP started - and never funded.
Years ago, Al Gore was laughed out of Washington when he said Social Security should be put in a "lock Box" because he knew politicians were borrowing from the fund we ALL pay into.
I will NOT work until I'm nearly dead to pay for bogus wars! Afghanistan - yes, because that's where Ben Ladin was. Iraq, $2-Trillion worth - NO, No, No.
Young adults should think this through - until Social Security, children were totally responsible for spoon-feeding & diapering their aging parents. Social Security - for which I paid into all my life - allows me SOME dignity - and allows our children the right to pursue their own lives.
John Boehner is so wrong.
The real solution is to raise the "cap" on earnings - people like me pay 100% of our share of Social Security - but people earning more than $120,000 a year only have to pay for the first $120,000 of their income.
Therefore, people earning, let's say, $240,000 a year only pay 50% into Social Security - yet they get to draw their full benefits.
This is not right - yet neither party has had the courage to tackle this unfairness - because, of course, it's the money from the rich who get them re-elected!
Shame, shame, on both political parties!!
He wants us to work until we're 70 years 0ld - to pay for wars the GOP started - and never funded.
Years ago, Al Gore was laughed out of Washington when he said Social Security should be put in a "lock Box" because he knew politicians were borrowing from the fund we ALL pay into.
I will NOT work until I'm nearly dead to pay for bogus wars! Afghanistan - yes, because that's where Ben Ladin was. Iraq, $2-Trillion worth - NO, No, No.
Young adults should think this through - until Social Security, children were totally responsible for spoon-feeding & diapering their aging parents. Social Security - for which I paid into all my life - allows me SOME dignity - and allows our children the right to pursue their own lives.
John Boehner is so wrong.
The real solution is to raise the "cap" on earnings - people like me pay 100% of our share of Social Security - but people earning more than $120,000 a year only have to pay for the first $120,000 of their income.
Therefore, people earning, let's say, $240,000 a year only pay 50% into Social Security - yet they get to draw their full benefits.
This is not right - yet neither party has had the courage to tackle this unfairness - because, of course, it's the money from the rich who get them re-elected!
Shame, shame, on both political parties!!
Taxpayer money buying Taliban guns aimed at our kids
House of Reps hearing the other day revealed that there are 190,000 U.S. contractors between Iraq and Afghanistan.
Outfits like the infamous Blackwater get millions to perform, for example, security services. They keep their $20-million and hire local Afghanistanis, for maybe
$1-million, to escort convoys of goods coming from our bases in Pakistan to bases scattered around Afghanistan.
Those local "security forces" in turn pay off the Taliban to not shoot at our soldiers as they drive through the mountain passes, bringing food, water, bedding, boots, etc. to the troops.
It's OK, though, for them to shoot at our brave men and women in different spots at different times.
The taliban turns around and buys more weapons with the money channeled from you and I, as taxes, into payment for Blackwater, into local "sub-contractors," into the hands of our enemies.
This is so sick.
Outfits like the infamous Blackwater get millions to perform, for example, security services. They keep their $20-million and hire local Afghanistanis, for maybe
$1-million, to escort convoys of goods coming from our bases in Pakistan to bases scattered around Afghanistan.
Those local "security forces" in turn pay off the Taliban to not shoot at our soldiers as they drive through the mountain passes, bringing food, water, bedding, boots, etc. to the troops.
It's OK, though, for them to shoot at our brave men and women in different spots at different times.
The taliban turns around and buys more weapons with the money channeled from you and I, as taxes, into payment for Blackwater, into local "sub-contractors," into the hands of our enemies.
This is so sick.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
The Fool(s) on the Hill
The Fool on the Hill was a Beatles tune, recorded in 1967.
Today, some 43 years later, we need to pluralize that old Fool to include the absurd Fools in the Senate who are conducting the "confirmation" hearings of Elena Kagan for Supreme Court Justice.
Each political party has taken its own idealogical stance, and no one is budging. Each Senator gets to drone on for at least five minutes, with a prepared speech that often has no relevance to the issue at hand. Then they get another 10 or 15 minutes to question her.
All Senators are perfectly free to ask the EXACT same question as was asked by the last Senator - over and over and over. The woman in question has to smile politely, and answer again - in often the same words as she did 10 minutes prior.
Here's the bottom line on Elena Kagan. Yes - she has no courtroom experience - nor did 38 of our prior 111 Supreme Court Justices. Yes - she is a liberal.
As Lindsay Graham (a Republican) said at the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts (a Republican), during the Bush administration, "elections have consequences - presidents get to pick their Supreme Court Judges - period."
Today, some 43 years later, we need to pluralize that old Fool to include the absurd Fools in the Senate who are conducting the "confirmation" hearings of Elena Kagan for Supreme Court Justice.
Each political party has taken its own idealogical stance, and no one is budging. Each Senator gets to drone on for at least five minutes, with a prepared speech that often has no relevance to the issue at hand. Then they get another 10 or 15 minutes to question her.
All Senators are perfectly free to ask the EXACT same question as was asked by the last Senator - over and over and over. The woman in question has to smile politely, and answer again - in often the same words as she did 10 minutes prior.
Here's the bottom line on Elena Kagan. Yes - she has no courtroom experience - nor did 38 of our prior 111 Supreme Court Justices. Yes - she is a liberal.
As Lindsay Graham (a Republican) said at the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts (a Republican), during the Bush administration, "elections have consequences - presidents get to pick their Supreme Court Judges - period."
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Reading the "McChrystals"
So, the former "Dark Ops" General resigned today - I'm thinking it wouldn't take a tea-reader to have figured this one out long in advance.
Prior to heading the operation in Afghanistan, his modus operandi was working "in the dark" - doing dark things, under the radar, threading the needle between legal and what was considered "necessary." His bravado team relished in flaunting the rules and distaining accepted behaviour.
These cats were cool, brave, and outrageous in their design of how to find, interrogate, and kill our oppositiion. That was their mission - and our tacit approval (often framed by feigned ignorance of what they were up to) led them forward, onto greater and greater exploits.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on point of view, once these rebels were required to become legitimate, brought out into the sunlight of the battlefield and put in positions of leadership, their "dark ops" bloodlines could not be contained.
It was a lockerroom mentality of testesterone gone wild - and believe me, I don't condone the ghastly things they did to keep us "safe."
But it is time, if we are the nation of values that we purport to be, that this
dark-side gang be retired.
For a complete picture of what "dark ops" is all about, Read Jane Mayer's true book "The Dark Side," - if you dare - it will change you.
Prior to heading the operation in Afghanistan, his modus operandi was working "in the dark" - doing dark things, under the radar, threading the needle between legal and what was considered "necessary." His bravado team relished in flaunting the rules and distaining accepted behaviour.
These cats were cool, brave, and outrageous in their design of how to find, interrogate, and kill our oppositiion. That was their mission - and our tacit approval (often framed by feigned ignorance of what they were up to) led them forward, onto greater and greater exploits.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on point of view, once these rebels were required to become legitimate, brought out into the sunlight of the battlefield and put in positions of leadership, their "dark ops" bloodlines could not be contained.
It was a lockerroom mentality of testesterone gone wild - and believe me, I don't condone the ghastly things they did to keep us "safe."
But it is time, if we are the nation of values that we purport to be, that this
dark-side gang be retired.
For a complete picture of what "dark ops" is all about, Read Jane Mayer's true book "The Dark Side," - if you dare - it will change you.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
I was horrified to read today that a Republican Senator wants to require drug testing of all people receiving unemployment benefits. Having worked every year of my life since age 16 (when I couldn't WAIT to work), it dawned on me that not even a 46 year track record of believing in self-sustaining work could be challenged.
I mean, hey - maybe suddenly, after 46 years, I woke up on a Tuesday morning and felt - WTH (what the heck) - lazy. Maybe, suddenly, I found crack cocaine in my grocery bag, actually knew what it was, and snorted until my eyes popped. Having discovered Nirvana at this advanced age, of course I would never want to work again. If I could get Government benefits, to keep me in a poverty lifestyle to which I'd never before become accustomed, I mean, that's about as
way-cool as my life could turn out!
A conversation with a co-worker, two generations younger than me, opened my eyes to the new "guilty until proven innocent" reality of life here in the U.S.A.
This young woman, a favorite of mine, has grown up in the drug-testing era. A professional athlete by trade, she has had to be drug tested for all the important jobs in her life.
She sees nothing wrong with this, and feels that if a person is receiving public benefits, like unemployment insurance - for which she feels she is paying - then any and every one should accept a drug test without a problem.
My problem is that I, also, have been paying for unemployment insurance - for a far longer time, and have therefore made a substantially greater contribution, than has she.
Yet, I'm not equivocating about the 21-year-old laid-off from Staples, who worked for six months after college, and now needs help because this economy stinks. I'm not upset about the 32-year-olds, who've paid into the system for maybe 17 years, who lost their jobs as teachers and now need help.
I'm figuring we're all in this boat together. And I don't like the idea of living in a country where we're all suspected of being guilty, unless we're willing to, as she says, "pee in a cup" and prove otherwise.
Our nation suceeds because we are (or used to be) a system of laws based on the premise that we citizens are INNOCENT until proven guilty.
If we manage to flip-flop that equation, if the government can always assume that we are guilty unless we can prove otherwise, then we have entered an era of tyranny in which, yes indeedy, I'll need a lot of crack cocaine to survive.
Just somebody, show me what it looks like.
I mean, hey - maybe suddenly, after 46 years, I woke up on a Tuesday morning and felt - WTH (what the heck) - lazy. Maybe, suddenly, I found crack cocaine in my grocery bag, actually knew what it was, and snorted until my eyes popped. Having discovered Nirvana at this advanced age, of course I would never want to work again. If I could get Government benefits, to keep me in a poverty lifestyle to which I'd never before become accustomed, I mean, that's about as
way-cool as my life could turn out!
A conversation with a co-worker, two generations younger than me, opened my eyes to the new "guilty until proven innocent" reality of life here in the U.S.A.
This young woman, a favorite of mine, has grown up in the drug-testing era. A professional athlete by trade, she has had to be drug tested for all the important jobs in her life.
She sees nothing wrong with this, and feels that if a person is receiving public benefits, like unemployment insurance - for which she feels she is paying - then any and every one should accept a drug test without a problem.
My problem is that I, also, have been paying for unemployment insurance - for a far longer time, and have therefore made a substantially greater contribution, than has she.
Yet, I'm not equivocating about the 21-year-old laid-off from Staples, who worked for six months after college, and now needs help because this economy stinks. I'm not upset about the 32-year-olds, who've paid into the system for maybe 17 years, who lost their jobs as teachers and now need help.
I'm figuring we're all in this boat together. And I don't like the idea of living in a country where we're all suspected of being guilty, unless we're willing to, as she says, "pee in a cup" and prove otherwise.
Our nation suceeds because we are (or used to be) a system of laws based on the premise that we citizens are INNOCENT until proven guilty.
If we manage to flip-flop that equation, if the government can always assume that we are guilty unless we can prove otherwise, then we have entered an era of tyranny in which, yes indeedy, I'll need a lot of crack cocaine to survive.
Just somebody, show me what it looks like.
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