October 2, 2023

Open Letter to Cathy McMorris Rogers (R WA)

Want to know a couple of reasons why folks are fed up with Congress, Cathy?
 
GETTY IMAGES
 
 

You proclaim that the border crisis is getting worse. You take No responsibility for proclaiming first that if Dems get back into office, they will "Throw open the borders!" and now constantly claiming that "Biden has opened the border!" and that "Democrats welcome illegals!" Worse than that, I hear your colleagues telling anyone with a microphone stuff like they will be given free education and healthcare. Not only that but I heard one of you claim that they'll get "$2500.00" per month from welfare! 

What the heck Cathy? Do you guys think that there are no televisions anywhere south of our borders? 

Knowing the apparent intelligence of a few of your colleagues, like Gaetz, Boebert or Greene, it's not hard to believe. But surely there are some Republicans in Congress who are clever enough to realize that if you are saying that the US is currently welcoming anyone who can make it here, that desperate people suffering from oppression will believe you! 

 If you truly care about the situation on our border, why will you not vote for any of the bills to try to fix it? Why do you want to reduce funding for more border officers or the courts to handle the process? 

Why are you only now being concerned about the fentanyl problem, when it's been the major issue with drug overdoses for all those years that you and your colleagues were clamping down on hard working healthcare professionals and pharmacies, and telling grandmothers to be sure that their mess were locked away. That was not the problem, Cathy! The problem was and still is fentanyl! 

Not just that, but if you really took the time to look, you'd see that we've got a real problem with the stuff coming in from Canada! Chinese ships unload drugs and precursor chemicals in Canadian ports which are overloaded and uninspected just like our own. They know that thanks to you guys, our focus is on our southern border, making it relatively easy to smuggle across the northern border. 

The Republican solution is nothing more than a cause for amusement among the drug trafficking types. Yeah, I mean the freaking Wall! Talk to any of your border enforcement people, Cathy. They have been trying to get it through your heads that most of the smuggling on our southern border is done by American citizens, who drive their vehicles right through with the rest of the tourists and truckers. Whether they are knowingly carrying drugs or are conned into it isn't relevant. Why are you constantly doing all in your power to stop funding for equipment and personnel to try to detect and stop any of this? 

As if all of that wasn't enough, I keep hearing you and your GOP colleagues moaning that since Biden became President, we've been experiencing "Record numbers" of immigrants and "Thousands of pounds of Fentanyl" being stopped by our border agents! 

THIS IS A GOOD THING! 

It should be telling you that even with the limited resources you and your party are allowing them, they are still able to do their jobs! Let me try to make this clear for you. If Customs & Border Patrol Agents are stopping "Thousands of pounds" of drugs at the border, those drugs are not ending up on our streets! Further, even with your party broadcasting to anyone with the ability to hear that the United States of America is now "Welcoming" everybody who is capable of getting here with free stuff and lots of money, the C.B.P. is still capable of stopping record numbers of them. Think what they could do if your party would stop blocking proposals for fully funding the equipment, personnel and courts that are desperately needed to handle the influx. Which, by the way, is going to get worse as the effects of climate change are being increasingly felt. 

But that is a subject for a separate rant. 

If anyone in your office has bothered to read this, thank you very much, If not, I feel better for getting it off my chest!

Your Constituent, etc

February 24, 2023

"CAT FIVE"


 Five. My sweet fuzzy buddy, Five. Farewell my dear friend!

I already miss your warm fur buzzing against my chest as we snooze together ignoring the television in the background.

We miss your insistent yowls for attention until we rise and pay attention to your needs in the morning And I miss your ferocious and simultaneous growling and purring as we "bug-tussle" while I try to pull on my socks sitting on the edge of the bed. 

 I don't know from where Kathy pulled the term "bug-tussle", but it somehow seemed appropriate, so bug-tussle it has remained.

I do not believe that I have ever experienced a kitty who was capable of expressing the two divergent emotions, purring and growling at the same moment. Friends who have witnessed one of our bug-tussles have expressed concern about the seemingly ferocious scene that they were seeing. Not realizing that none of your pointy bits were involved. There would be no bloodshed on my part, and no aggressiveness or resentment on your part upon the end of the encounter.

The loud and seemingly angry encounter would end with cuddles, more purrs, and nose to beard snuggling.

Beard snuggles. I recall that first time we met. Kathy and I were headed into our club on a cold, rainy November afternoon, when Kathy noticed you huddled by the doorway. I picked you up and stuffed your cold, wet, body into my jacket. You were so tiny, Five. It seemed like there was far more wet fur than kitten in my hands. Once we got settled at a table, and you began to dry out, Diane, our friend and server, brought over a container of half & half and a saucer for you. You were so hungry and happily slurped it up in no time at all. Then you climbed up my chest buried your cold little nose in my beard and, purring in contentment, fell sound asleep.

Little heart melter. Even as Kathy and I were talking about taking you to the shelter where Kathy volunteered from time to time, your purrs were buzzing deep into my heart. I only took a very short while before the conversation turned from taking your tiny butt to the pound, to how you would get along with the current queen of the Rancho, our aloof Maine Coon Aesha.

Need not have worried. After a dismissive sniff, Her Maj decided that something so small could be safely ignored.

At the time you agreed to join our little family, I had recently taken over the position of IT Administrator at the car dealer where I worked. Part of the job included bringing order to the servers for the buildings. As a result of which, I found myself buried in a tangled mess of "Category 5" cabling for much of my days. It seemed a no-brainer to name you Cat Five! Which inevitably was shortened to simply, Five.

Oh Five, I look forward to that happy day when I will be allowed to cross over the Rainbow Bridge and we will be able to bug-tussle and snuggle forever.

And I can once again enjoy your contented little furry nose purring in my beard.

Goodbye my friend.

June 6, 2022

The Journey To Here

 

Recently, as I was staring in open-mouthed awe at the latest batch of photos from NASA, I found myself ruminating on the dense star clusters and nebulae and thinking about the vast stretches of time that they represented. The earliest stars were accretions of gas, nearly 100% hydrogen if I understand the process. (No guarantees here) It is only after a sufficient mass is achieved that fusion kicks off in the star's core. It's only then that other elements begin to form. Before then, there were no metals, no rocks, only the simplest of elements. The periodic table was really simple in the opening days of the universe, there was only one, at most possibly three elements; hydrogen, a little helium and maybe a tiny bit of lithium. The rest of the elements were yet to be created by fusion in the hearts of those early suns.

Now consider our Solar System, and whatever other star systems that we've been able to acquire any information about, which began life as accumulations of rock and dust. Which leads us to the conclusion that the earliest stars had to live out their lives, explode as novae, and spew their newly formed elements across the universe before stars like our Sun and its surrounding planets even had the most basic building materials for accretion! We think of or little chunk of the universe as being unimaginably ancient, but there had to be at least a generation of stars, more likely several generations that had to exist and die before our current universe as we know it could even begin!

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I have existed for nearly 71 trips around our star, trying to gain a grasp on the chasms of time that had to pass before our unremarkable little sun got me to this place in time leaves me stunned!

Its times like this that I almost wish that I could convince myself that a deity was possible. It would be so much easier if I could just not think about it and claim that "Goddidit!"

It makes one understand the sheer seductiveness of religion.

June 5, 2022

Constitutional Militia

 Of all the times I have looked over our Constitution, I swear that the following passage just went past my eyeballs without sinking in at all. It seems that I am not alone either because if more than a few of our fellow citizens, especially anyone considering politics had actually read this passage, we might have avoided a few decades of confusion:

“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress” ~ Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 8, Clause 15

I've always been a little confused by the wording of the Second Amendment. In fact, I’ve written about this before. It seems that the writers would have wanted to be a bit clearer about such an important issue. Especially as they were emerging from a colonial legal system wherein weapons and the people who were authorized to carry them had been strictly regulated. It always bothered me that the founders would have been so quick to make firearms available, if not outright encouraged to anyone who wanted them. After careful study of this passage, it now is quite clear: The framers of the Constitution had a very clear idea of exactly what described a Militia! It was never intended to be a bunch of self-appointed weekend warriors. In fact, in colonial times, every able-bodied male was considered to be a member of his local militia.

It was certainly never imagined that a “well regulated” militia would be convened with the express purpose of defending the people from tyrannical overreach by the United States’ government. Especially as there are other parts of the Constitution that were expressly written for the purpose of defending against such an event. There are Amendments to deal with the legal removal of any office holder, including the President, for reasons ranging from abuse of power to incompetence. The fact that the system seems to be broken has little to do with any of that. Our problem is that we have allowed our legislators to be bought and paid for by the plutocracy, but that’s a topic for another time.

The reason that militias were thought to be necessary was that in those times, it was thought that the country had little need for a standing army to defend the country from foreign invasion! It was thought that if need arose, Congress could simply call up the various militias. Looking back at our history, this seems to have been the standard up until the First World War. If we look back at various conflicts, especially the Civil War, the initial call-up of troops were from the local militias. This turned out to be a fiasco leading to the formation of an actual Army.

I’ve discussed in the past that the founders could not have guessed the development of modern weapons. In the late 18th century, a high-tech weapon was a musket that had a rifled barrel! It simply beggars belief that even such forward thinkers as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson thought that they were drafting a document that would allow un-“infringed” keeping and bearing of something like an AR-15. If anything, it seems to this grantedly biased observer, that they would have perhaps envisioned something like modern-day Switzerland. The Swiss are required to attend regular training and exercises, and must keep and be practiced with a government issued weapon so as to be ready to be called up if needed for the defense of their country.

Bottom line? If you really feel the need to play with assault rifles or crash around the landscape in camos and body armor, join the fucking military! If you and your buddies are practicing for an armed rebellion, there’s a word for that, too and it isn’t Militia. The word you are looking for is TREASON!

October 19, 2021

Well Played Republicans!

 For the last two years, Republicans have been bloviating at anyone with a microphone that if Joe Biden was elected President, he would immediately open the borders to immigrants. Of course right-wing broadcasters had been gleefully repeating these lies as if they were gospel.

Did they think that desperate people huddling in countries south of the United States had no access to radio or television? Maybe they were unaware that there were refugees who could understand the English language.

No, the Republican leadership was perfectly aware of what they were doing. Their plan worked out very well too! No sooner was President Biden sworn in were the borders overwhelmed with refugees who had been impatiently waiting in Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras and other countries. Some had been waiting for years in places as far away as Brazil and Chile. They had listened. They were absolutely positive that they would be welcomed into the USA by the new Democratic government of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. After all, they had been assured that they would not only be welcomed, but be assured that they will be given money, health care, and schooling for their kids! The Republicans had been broadcasting exactly that for years.

Why on earth would they think that the Republican politicians would have lied to them?

While I am a firm believer in the First Amendment, there needs to be consequences for any so-called "news" outlet for knowingly repeating what are obvious and easily debunked falsehoods. We cannot be misled about the contents of a can of beans, or the horsepower of a new car, why can Fox News make claims about the intentions of a political party that are totally divorced from reality? As an aside, here's a small article from 2019 listing some of the blatant lies from that time.

For that matter, why are politicians allowed to blatantly lie with complete impunity? I realize that lying seems to be a time-honored and expected province of political types, but why is it allowed to continue? We eventually passed laws that put the sellers of snake oil remedies out of business, why can we not do likewise with those who would put our very country at risk by distancing themselves from the truth? 

May 13, 2020

More questions than answers?

Anarchy? Libertarianism? Are they the same? Or two sides of the same coin.

I've been bothered by both philosophies for a very long time. Both seem to operate on the assumption that people could live and be happier in a society where there is nobody that can tell them what they can and cannot do.

Recently, I asked a friend (Hi friend of BunnyCat) for help in trying to understand how people could be so committed to either set of ideas. Granted, they can make for a stimulating conversation, and can certainly be interesting to think about, but I have a real problem with anyone who seriously believes this type of philosophy could truly be the basis for a functioning society. She was kind enough to point me at a couple of YouTube videos of Noam Chomsky expounding on what he believed Anarchy was about. Unfortunately, I seem to be stuck right off the bat after seeing Brother Chomsky’s “clarification” of what it means to be an Anarchist. I can’t seem to be able to get past the part where he states that in a truly Anarchist society, anyone who assumes a leadership role must be able to prove that they have the authority to do so. He cites the example of stopping his granddaughter from running into the street, and said that he would obviously have the authority in this situation as he was the grandfather of the young child. 

My first criticism of that would be it’s not going to be "obvious" to any stranger observing the act. Plus the act itself might possibly be subject to misinterpretation. 

Be that as it may, Chomsky goes on to posit several more examples wherein any authority figure or person assuming some manner of authority must be able to demonstrate his right and/or ability to do so. How is this in any substantial way different from the current systems of population and market controls around the world? Chomsky does lean rather hard on women for examples of people who should be more questioning of masculine assumptions of authority. This is certainly true in some cases, but what of the rest of society? Let’s not forget that there are examples of matriarchal societies and countries with females in positions of leadership all over the world. 

In the USA, we make a great show of the supposed democratic elections of our leaders. By definition, those representatives are given their authority by the supposed majority of the voters. The fact that some of us disagree with the results of any election in no way invalidates the authority given to the winner.

Even in a totalitarian state like China, the leadership is granted authority to lead by the acquiescence of the majority of the people. As that same country has proven over the millennia, when the leader loses the “Mandate of Heaven” he is quickly removed from power, either by popular uprising or by invasion of a stronger ruler. Even truer today as we see Xi Jinping seize power from his predecessor Hu Jintao in an onging coup, all the while knowing that he's a Cultural Revolution away from ending up in front of a firing squad as many of his compatriots have done.

I guess the bottom line for me anyway, is that these kind of political exercises are intriguing to ponder, and likely could be workable in a small population of like-minded people, but quickly fall apart as soon as one person, or a group of people who don’t want to play by the rules enters the equation. 

Like Libertarianism, Anarchy requires everyone in the group to agree on its basic premises, whatever they might be. In a large group, even a moderate-sized village, let alone a large modern city, the whole concept would seem to fall apart relatively fast. The whole idea of businesses “Self-regulating” because they would be forced to be so by their customers has been proven over and over to be wishful thinking. Businesses have shown repeatedly that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing. When they are poorly regulated, they pollute the environment, produce shabby and unsafe products, lie to their customers and shareholders, and more. For every ten businesses that are sincerely trying their best to be good citizens, it seems we will discover at least one who is acting the part of a weasel in the henhouse, using other’s responsibility as cover for their misdeeds. Plus in today’s corporate accounting, it is a matter of faith that in order to maximize profits, they will actively seek ways to at least take advantage of tax loopholes if not deliberately misrepresent their profits and expenditures to illegally avoid paying their fair share. Not even talking about tax dodges like the Bahamas and lots of others that will allow foreign actors to hide their money from the IRS.

And yet for all this, we hear politicians and others bloviating about the “Invisible Hand of the Market” and the need to remove those “Job-Killing Regulations” that are holding back the economy.
But as usual, I seem to have digressed.

When I see the self-proclaimed “Anarchists” dressed in black and rioting on the streets of Seattle, what should I be reading into their protests?

Dictionary.com describes Anarchist as:
1] A person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.
2] A person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.
3] A person who promotes disorder or excites revolt against any established rule, law, or custom.
Also, I found a piece by a Paul McLaughlin titled “Anarchism and Authority” which I confess that I did not read, only skimmed, but I was able to summarize in part that it depends on the belief that human nature allows humans to exist in or progress toward such a non-coercive society. (Pp 25-26) 

It looks as if Anarchism goes quite a way further than Chomsky’s rather unsatisfying examples. He seems to be of the opinion that authority is okay, as long as it’s “legitimate” somehow. But the definitions of classical anarchy seem to put forward as a basic principle that all authority is illegitimate, therefore anything purporting to exercise control over a population is forbidden!

Libertarians are just as confusing. It began as a far-left Socialist organization, and truly they have more in common with them. Libertarians are opposed to war, they believe in universal healthcare & education, but have aligned themselves more with far-right groups in recent decades. Isn't that odd? But they do still adhere to the belief that peple and businesses can be trusted to behave and be responsible citizens.

Again, I’m struck by the supposition that humans are basically all good and will not need any sort of coercion to do what is right.

Am I missing something?


March 26, 2020

Perfect Storm Part 2

First off: No, I have no answers to propose for this crisis. Anyone who is claiming to know how to fix the situation we are in is either crazy or lying. Maybe 20 or 30 years ago..? But now?

I do know that Trump's presidency has vastly exacerbated the problems. We need to acknowledge though that Trump is merely a symptom of a much, much larger sickness in our country. The systematic reversal from a Representative Democracy which had worked reasonably well to an overt Oligarchy and what has been pretty accurately described as "End-Stage Capitalism". The largest corporations have unimaginable power and are mostly out of control. When a company's only concern is profit for their shareholders, anything goes.

Boeing's latest problems are directly traceable to an overworked and underfunded FAA who had largely turned over its responsibilities to the company. Trusting that Boeing had enough of a concern for the safety of their customers to "self-inspect" their products. The underfunded Customs and Border Protection service actually inspects less than 2% of cargo coming into the country. But our biggest concern is preventing smuggling is building some ridiculous wall on the Southern border. So we see an incredible epidemic of opioids like Fentanyl from China and Heroin from Afghanistan and other places flooding our Emergency Rooms with overdoses. Which our government and it's enablers in the media dutifully proclaim is the fault of unscrupulous physicians and families with unsecured medicine cabinets at home.

And if Drug Lords in Mexico wish to pump their own varieties of drugs across the border, they are simply running it up the coast aboard submarines or in those same containers which only get checked less than 2% of the time. The business is profitable enough that several tunnels have been found running up to over a hundred feet underground, and any wall, complete with tracks, ventilation and electric lighting. If and when any boat, tunnel or shipping container gets detected, it's a barely noticeable cost of doing business.

In 2016, I predicted that if Hillary won the country would continue its slow but quickening slide into the abyss. Slow poison. But if Trump won, it would be a relatively quick hand grenade into the heart of our government. Our nation was a big, strong and resilient beast however, and would take a long time to kill. Even with pyrotechnics. A Bernie Sanders might make the fall a little less violent. Perhaps even managing to slow our descent by a little. But nature always tends toward balance. When a population of rabbits gets too large, foxes, raptors and disease will prosper until balance is restored. Even disease can only spread to the point where it no longer has healthy hosts, or the hosts develop a resistance. In the world today, Homo "Sapiens" is the disease. We had already entered the perfect storm.

Economies have been thrown radically out of balance. All over the world, but mostly in the U.S. the nation's wealth has shifted to the top percentages of the population. In the U.S. there are three individuals who own more than half the wealth while one in five are destitute. This is not sustainable!

Here at home we, or at least most of us, know how difficult it is to get by on current salaries and job availability. For most, there's no safety net. No means of getting by if there's no money for food or housing. Even if one is lucky enough to have good insurance, bankruptcy is moments away if we, or our children experience a devastating medical issue. Whether it is from disease or accidental injury, co-pays and spending limits cause enormous debt to be accumulated quickly and without warning.

Traditional markers of economic well-being are no longer reliable. The stock markets which seemed to have been at all time highs have been so artificially inflated and tinkered with as to be complete fictions. Unemployment numbers are completely unreliable. I've seen reports that the true figures would be more like double the reported figure   or U-3 if the governments own U-6 is to be trusted or even as high as 23% if we include people who have given up on looking for a job for over a year. The U-6 only counts discouraged for the "Short Term" for some reason, and does not count at all people who are forced to work part-time, low-paying jobs because nothing else is available.

We have shifted the world's very climate. That means that regions which in the past were prime agricultural areas are becoming too hot, too dry, or too wet for crops historically grown there. This means people are leaving farms for cities. Cities are being overwhelmed. Depending on the local governments, these migrants are likely to be treated very poorly as long-term residents feel threatened. People from war-torn and climate-ravaged areas are seeking refuge and survival in areas seen to be less devastated. We know how well those people are welcomed in the U.S.A. The same thing is happening all around the world.

Now enters COVID-19. Old Ma Nature will restore balance. And there's nowhere for us to escape.