Thanksgiving Message

Hello my friends. 
Here in America it's Thanksgiving. It's a time for families to gather, be grateful for their fortune, however large or small it may be, and feast. We should enjoy our family and celebrate our personal triumphs and tragedies. 

It should also be a time to reflect upon what has happened between today and when people from Europe first set foot upon this great land. If you are of European descent, it's not YOUR fault that our ancestors raped, pillaged, stole and committed genocide against the native population, but it is your responsibility to recognize and be aware of what transpired before we came to be here. In that awareness, perhaps we can recognize the ongoing oppression perpetrated by those who find themselves in positions of authority and rule. We can recognize and speak out against the third world conditions to which many Native American people have been relegated. 

Sometimes, it only takes one person to speak up and voice concern when injustice occurs. A single voice raised with or against another single voice can sometimes make a difference. If we are grateful for what we have, and humbly accept our good fortune, we can also be a voice for reason and justice.

So be happy on this day of thanks and celebrate family, friends and good fortune, but never ever forget the past, for those who do, are doomed to repeat it with all its horrors.


Bedagi (Big Thunder) late 19th century.
Wabanaki Algonquin writer

Give us hearts to understand;
Never to take from creation's beauty more than we give;
never to destroy wantonly for the furtherance of greed;

Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth's beauty;
never to take from her what we cannot use.

Give us hearts to understand
That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion;
that to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty;

That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench;
that as we care for her she will care for us.

We have forgotten who we are.
We have sought only our own security.
We have exploited simply for our own ends.
We have distorted our knowledge.
We have abused our power.

Great Spirit, whose dry lands thirst,
Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.
Great Spirit, whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,
help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.

Great Spirit, whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,
help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.
Great Spirit, whose creatures are being destroyed, help us to find a way to replenish them.

Great Spirit, whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,
help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the wind, whose breath gives life to the world,
hear me; I need your strength and wisdom. May I walk in Beauty.

Anybody but Obama? Is that it?

REPUBLICANS!  PLEASE! Tell me; what's your plan?
I've been hearing all these terrible things about Obama and how he has done such an awful job and how we MUST get him out, but I have not heard a word about what YOUR plan might be.   I've also not heard a single word about what republicans (McCain and Palin) would have done different.  Nothing, nada, crickets and all that.
Is that all you've got is Obama bashing and just a really bad need to get Mr. Obama out of the WHITE House?  What is it about him that makes you guys so angry?  Why do you seem single mind in your efforts to simply get him out with anyone but him?
Very strange and unprecedented in my political experience.

Conspicuously absent

There is quite a spectrum of speakers scheduled for the Democratic National Convention. For me, they will all deliver prepackaged boring speeches that will contain nothing new. IT will be a rehash of the same old political rhetoric that we've heard over and over. Promises that are meant to be broken and a lot of broad statements designed to elicit emotional reactions from anyone listening. I won't be listening just like I wasn't listening when my once past hero Clint Eastwood embarrassed himself before the nation by having a conversation with an empty chair. What a sad way for such a heroic figure to be remembered. Just out of curiosity, I was just looking at the list of speakers at the DNC this week. I was amazed at the variety of speakers from all spectrums of the democratic political arena. All the congressional leaders and many not so highly places members of congress will be speaking. Union presidents, organizations such as Planned Parenthood, governors, former governors, former presidents and former members of presidential administrations. All that got me wondering: where were the former president and members of his administration at the RNC. The only one we saw was Condoleezza Rice. Where was Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, where was Bush the Elder? Hmmm, are the republicans afraid to open themselves up to scrutiny of past deeds? I guess when your past is of certain caliber, you don't want anyone connecting the dots or uncovering the links to the chain. Rest assured, the policies being touted by the right wing extremists of the republican party at the RNC were nothing but repackaged versions of the same old policies they've been peddling for decades now. Giving more tax breaks to the rich and corporations WILL NOT create jobs. In fact, the money the rich and corporations save get put in their pockets or sent over seas with the American jobs. Getting all riled up over abortion is pointless, but every four years for the past three decades the republicans have gotten their troops all riled up about it. Ask yourself: "What has changed in three decades?" The answer: "nothing." Abortion is still as legal as it ever was and will continue to be. Even the right wing supreme court that is currently sitting won't touch the issue. How about those illegal aliens. President Obama has deported more "illegals" than Bush did in eight years. There are currently less people coming across the border illegally than ever in the past couple decades. Are the "illegal aliens" really taking away American jobs? What jobs are they taking away? How many good paying middle class jobs do you think people like Rmoney have taken away with moving corporate assets overseas compared to how many minimum wage or lower jobs get taken by "illegal aliens." See, it's a non-issue, but a big issue for the right wing proles. So back to the original question? Where was George and Dick and Boner? Better yet: Where was their plan? Where was the beef?

Yes, I'm back, now THINK!

I'm Baaaaack. We'll see how long it lasts. I've been highly focused the past year or so on pursuits of a non political nature. Accomplished a lot academically and now maybe I'm ready to spend the next couple months pointing out why the republican agenda for America is bad for the working class and good for the elite of this country. How obvious does it have to be? The republicans are running a candidate who was responsible for much of the devastation that has hit the middle class over the past few decades. Out sourcing of jobs is what it's all about. The destruction of the manufacturing base in America is what has killed the middle and working class and it all happened because cheap labor is what the elite class is all about. They don't give a rat's ass about how they get it, they just want to minimize costs for their production of goods. They don't even care that their market base in America is shrinking, they'll take their product elsewhere. Then, in some cockeyed scheme, they finagle huge tax breaks under the guise of creating jobs. Add to all that the hundreds of billions that the military is pumping into the pockets of the Halliburtons and General Dynamics and it's easy to see what's happening in America. . . UNLESS, you're listening to the extremist right wing conservatives who are twisting the public discourse into having you believe that your freedom is at risk every day, your security is threatened around every corner and the only way to reproduce the jobs that have been lost is to take more money out of your pockets and put it into the pockets of the uber rich. Then you need to believe that it's not these uber rich corporate royalists who are causing our problems, it's actually . . . get ready for this. . . those hard working brown people from Mexico who are taking away your jobs. Really? All those landscaping, dry walling and pool cleaning jobs being taken away from Americans is the problem? How fucking stupid do you had to be to believe that?! Oh, and all those illegals are collecting welfare, social security and free healthcare. BULLSHIT! Do you dumb fuck proles really believe that just anyone can walk into a welfare office or a social security office and sign up for a check? The whole premise is ridiculous, but stupid people believe stupid things. Geez, I could have signed up for unemployment after I received my severance package when I retired, but the process was so damn long and drawn out and I had to produce so much documentation that it wasn't worth the bother. What the fuck is the matter with you people for believing things without even thinking about it for a minute? Free healthcare? Ok, anyone can walk into most hospital EDs and be stabilized. "Stabilized." That's it. No long term care. No advanced treatments. They put a bandage on it and send you back out the door. Think about it. No, really, THINK! There is a big difference between stabilization and advanced care. Millions of people lack access to advanced care in this country. . . that means no endocrinologist if you have diabetes, no orthopedic surgery if you break a bone. . . symptoms of disease are treated rather than advanced therapy and care. Come on, THINK! I don't care how bad a job President Obama has done (and I don't believe he has done a bad job, but that's for another post), the republican formula has been applied for the past 30+ years and it has gotten us where we are today. Our standard of living has eroded to the point where we are now no longer the country with the highest standard of living and in fact, lag behind numerous nations. We have a percentage of poor that is second to none among developed nations. Now the republican agenda is to further cut social programs. Remember when they talked about maintaining a "safety net?" Well fuck that, it's been blown to shreds already. So keep listening to the fear mongering and the falsehoods saturating the public discourse then imagine what it will be like 30 yrs from now if we continue to see the erosion of the middle class and the poor and desperate increase in our country. . . yea, I know, more tax cuts for the rich will fix all that. Wake up you ignorant proles! THINK! REALLY THINK!