The Primary Thought of Love
The primary thought of love is others
Not dwelling on self
Seems like the love and care of others
Is the primary thought of love
Like those people known to me who completely turned into Love
The Force of God
Visible in the world
Is there enough Love to overcome the insufficiency of all political systems, they all fail to produce consistent public approval in many crucial areas; our judiciary fails to reduce crime, military operations continue in spite of vast opposition in US polls, because confidence/no confidence votes with power to boot the Executive without a high crime and misdemeanor doesn’t exist in our Legislature. Britain has the system where the top dog can get the bum’s rush at any time. Perhaps our practice of bestowing a flat number of years was aimed at corrupt politization of each transaction of The Office to placate Parliament, and maintain the votes required to continue in office. This practice delayed needed reforms because the executive was never free to act on his own. Our President is given four years to sheepherd the nation. The constant ridicule of President Bush on TV is becoming disturbing to me, and I don’t agree with Bush in his policy or philosophy. But the old family feeling we Americans have for each other can bring a pang of protectiveness to anyone holding that office when the whirlwind of criticism, satire and the crasser insults, some are tasteless. Performers are becoming more bold in their displays of disdain for President Bush. Some Bush-Mockers stay so ‘in-character’ after a performance, one report has a surly fake news reader uncontrollably overcome by the bile of his own hatred of George W. Bush. Wailing and the knashing of teeth is the only logical next step to continue the trend toward the juvenile with ever more fighting words, crude innuendo, and scatological references.
People had begun in ‘03 speaking loudly that the death toll in Iraq was too high.
These deaths get laid at the President’s door, customary in US journalism. This carrying on is all speculation done to the tune Bush does an evil little Hitler dance to when he gets his news. That whole army could be where it is, or be in the woodsides of America training to do what it does now do. You don’t hear a single one of them bitch. At the end of my day I am happy it is not my decision whether shooting continues or stops. I have the idea Bush wants to get enough Iraqi’s on our side that the Army’s job will get easy, like Japan. Where they still play baseball. I also think Bush is an idiot and a war profiteer.
My sudden and mysterious twinge of rue for the mocking he takes came out of nowhere.
I was opposed to the election of President Reagan. His policies pandered to the rich, while the economic safety net was declared un-American.
When a low-income, disabled or jobless individual receives assistance it’s automatically called a hand-out.
Receipt of a check in the mail from stock holdings is a regular entitlement. No one is at his mailbox declaiming his dividend payment is arbitrary and undeserved. If the Stock Market operated like the Social Security Administration and Congress of the United States, Mr. Shareholder might find at any time the rules have changed and all his years of work will undergo a brand new calculation.
The moral relativism of real life demands constant mental weighing of the cost and benefit of each decision.
The President is unwilling to accept his sworn and moral duty to decide when our military operations will end. Unless fighting continues until all the ammunition is used up, there will be an end to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. This end will satisfy no one not already invited to the trough of money made on this misery. The war will end on paper without conversion to anything American.
The administration of President Bush has been a train wreck
Exponential growth in US debt incurred to operate the government in lieu of politically unpopular tax collection is the touchstone of the actual Supply-Side method of government. The “neocon” philosophy is faithful to the gospelling of President Reagan and his devoted followers.
The malleable Congress, always sleeping with one eye open toward reelection and a trusted ear to the ground listening for the next popular outcry from the public in response to outrageous government activity, that occur like clockwork, or more frat-house behavior by some government official serve to further trivialize the political discourse, non-voters tip the balance in many US elections. If one deems exercise of the franchise (the ri9ght to vote) a waste of time because years observing the government has convinced them our republic will continue as long as those enriched by it desire:
The wealthy executive and his many wealthy friends may play a round of golf with a congressman; no bribe is offered nor favor asked. The Congressman is treated with the respect befitting his office, fed, and donations make their way to him in plain white envelopes. All Mr.Wealthy Executive says to the eager congressman about their relationship Exec said as he led Mr. Rep to the front door and helped him into his topcoat.
“The XYZ business has been good to me. We think you’re a straight shooter. All we ask is that you consider the homes and well being of our people before votes that hurt us and make it more difficult to earn close to a decent living. I hope you have a pleasant flight back to Washington.”
( something as meaningless as buying a lottery ticket useless because the financial cost of a Presidential campaign ensures no one from his strata will ever win, I’ve heard useless become an invariablereverted to oftenhas was and decades old refusal to )
The agitators grousing for impeachment of President Bush are counterproductive. The impeachment of a president has yet to occur: taking Nixon’s example of resignation with a losing hand as precedent, it is highly unlikely to ever take place.
It is unlikely anyone can portray precisely how singular an individual our Presidents are. The trust of the country is his to protect four years at a time. We do not change Executives like European Parliamentarians. This President will have the job until January 20, 2009. There are ways to improve the lot of troopers in Iraq. The bitterness of White House coverage, and the ever increasing scorn he receives from a wide section of media is unprecedented in my memory. While some people had nothing but loathing for Richard Nixon, he was not accused of being stupid. President Bush has arrayed against him the snobbery of “all those who were right about the war.” Claiming he is stupid is a 5th grader’s tactics. Talking heads could improve the dialog spending more time educating the public on what is taking place in our names in South Asia. Congressional speeches warning President Bush the money to prosecute the war may soon be withheld from him to force an end to the war was pure theatre.This was Little Rascals all the way…each declaimation a preface to outraged playacting. Nobody around Washington took it seriously. It is Constitutionally forbidden for a US Senator or Representative to approach a President to discuss matters relating to military operations, or bargain with a President. The idea any Congressional Democrat is so ignorant of the US Constitution or the way government operates or how money is actually disbursed down to the actual transfer of funds from the Treasury to Defense, the actual legal transaction. Any doubt about whether a single Democratic lawmaker did seriously believe any parliamentary rule empowered Congress to alter the amount or withhold funds to any segment of Department of Defense or the larger government with a budget in place carrying the force of law. The so-called “Constitutional Showdown,” President vs. Congress, to determine if Congress possesses the authority to demand a President make any change in foreign policy or ongoing military combat operations or supply lines supporting forces and enforce its will in a timely manner like a Court of Law can either rest assured or face the fact such action is beyond the scope of Congress..
The Corporate US Media; always the Equivalent Of any Government Controlled Media in both Authority and Purse, is devoted to the portrayal of violence as freedom of speech-to sell commercials. Anything to draw a crowd the law will allow is WHAT IS ON TV. It is FORBIDDEN to show a mother breastfeeding on Network TV, but all manner of mayhem, especially violence with THE GUN proves to be the “formula” for hit after hit after hit.
One does not cotton censorship. It is the ownership and control of the airwaves which require adjustment. Few Americans are aware of their 100% percent funding of the cable TV infrastructure, the way subcontract contracts were written when cable was strung on the Bell poles many unknowing and elderly taxpayers were underwriters of Cable TV who died before watching a minute of it. through both taxes and utility bills and NASA subsidized satellite launches the public has supported the TV business to the point we need to band together and deny them a single copper.
The middlemen between Producers of programming Content and subscriber are hogs.
US media is an oligarch, like tobacco.
The folding up of our economy like a road map because mergers are virtually unrestricted is represented by the numbers of channels a single corporation may operate on cable and satellite TV. NBC Universal Inc.controls USA, History Channel, A&E, Biography Channel, Sci-Fi, Bravo, Sleuth, Chiller, Telemundo, MSNBC, CNBC, Shop NBC all owned by the same Shareholders and Board of Directors who dictate the dissemination of information and provide entertainment based exclusively on the ability to draw draw a crowd for any spectacle allowed on the air. Commercial time is the business they’re in.
Is that in the public’s interest?
Is that the only alternative?
People yet to be shot with the evil tumbling deer rifle bullet the AK-47 and M-16 delivers still have a choice.
The trade deficit monster exists from the top down. WalMart peddles merchandise from Communist China, and consumers cannot be expected to alter the price or availibility of the vast array of products imported from China. The anti-protectionist gospel of supply-siders and neocons has far more acceptance amongst premium movie-star media than the public that doesn’t vote, they used tariff a thousand years ago.
Lacking confidence in Congress to obey the will of the public many have just tuned-out.
Opposing incumbents already in the money camp is a fool’s game. The same capital the political process is beholden to cannot be expected to promote the changes required to rein in business practices hurting average Americans while Wall Street views it all in a microscope it neither bought or has a mind to protect. As long as High School Americans wanting a job not McDonald’s is all that’s standing up for this country, we ought to be allowed to have some goddamn fun now and then. For the poor bastard who just wanted the “College Benefits” It’s not that simple.
George Will and the courts are in agreement that money connects to freedom of speech. This will guarantee the dominance of the two parties. Limiting the expense of elections to an equal sum for every political party would transform political discourse. Ideas should trump image, but that is not reality; as long as the US has the Federal Reserve in its form as a quasi-central bank, owned by a rather small unpublicized number of shareholders, expect the protectors of their interests to receive abundant donations.
I believe it is possible to drastically reduce crime in American cities with the Public Works projects pioneered by President Franklin Roosevelt. Economic alienation from the community is instrumental in developing the personality willing or daring enough to commit property crimes in addition to legitimate jobs.
This alienation is everywhere to be seen.
In 1951, 51% of US wage earners were represented by a Union demanding the benefit of collective bargaining. Collective bargaining is the only leverage Americans can use with an employer. His work is not a real asset under law. English Common Law states: “Labor is not property.” The US “labor movement" depends on current legislation. Protection of Union is not in our Constitution.
By the end of the Reagan years union representation of US wage earners was 11%. Reagan didn’t do it by himself.
Ronald Reagan was the photogenic TV politician the heavyweights needed. As a single-minded advocate for tax relief the American public took him at his word like a fevered patient takes an aspirin. The obscure economic theory that was his hallmark was an afterthought to those marked up by our loss in VietNam. About every action he took, the ones transmitted to me; were disagreed with.
When he fired the union represented airline air-traffic controllers for striking for a raise and started using military personnel as emergency flight controllers the end of labor progress in America was in sight.
Unless one has a professional degree, work must arise from the market for goods and services. The organic economic forces existing in all human community.
A Supreme Court that Nixon built upheld the firings to be lawful. The union movement never received a more crippling blow in the courts before or since.
Once the courts approved a practice of mass firings to resolve a strike for benefits; the right to strike was suddenly in flux legally, losing stature to bring a dollar bill from the pocket of an owner to a laborer’s jeans. The so-called global economy has been with us as long as there were ships at sea. The bastardizers of English communication would have the average GED moron believe something new is afoot. Trade existed in caveman times. The first guy to sell out his buddies was probably a caveman too.
If one derives benefit from slavery-like Chinese labor one is hand in glove with among the worst of all the God-denying governments ever on earth. Communist gospel states no one will believe in God in the envisioned result of human historical forces.
When collective bargaining is denied any group; we toy with jeopardy for any segment of the workforce who is dependant on agreed wages. Some loonies up north think schoolteachers should go to jail when they strike, because the letter of the law prohibits them to strike too, it is easy to dismiss the actions of others as too daring when we hear they fail. Reagan bet the courts would uphold his action and he bet right. This decision hurt the Union Movement irreparably; and without corrective legislation to address the issues the Court depended on to reach its holding it is case law. The legitimacy of the Union Movement is diminished, if mass firings can be used to enforce a letter of the law enforcement of laws forbidding strikes written during WWII when workers were frozen to their jobs and were de jure militarized; labor has become a housecat. Labor contracts are “for the already hired.” Ownership is still the worshipful apex of the social order.
So: as I observe a tribal gospel arise that “Reagan won the cold war” I direct the reader to PBS.com to find the Frontline episode documenting how heightened the threat of nuclear war was in those Reagan years. I view the Reagan devotees as believers in that phrase “All’s well that ends well.” Those who believe the world is safer because of the collapse of Gorbachev because of Russian treason are whistling Dixie. Oh we laughed and laughed, we won! We won! But what is our New World freer of the fear of nuclear confrontation than ever before in H-Bomb history?
It isn’t yet clear to me what system Russia practices. It looks like the mafia took over from the commies.
After the fall of the USSR military pensioners soon began receiving irregular payment then none at all. I never understood how US-USSR relations became so hostile immediately after victory. ESPECIALLY NOW THAT COMMUNIST CHINA PRODUCES EVERYTHING IN THE DEPARTMENT STORE!
The US warred against Germany and Japan TO END THE AGE OF EXPANDING BORDERS BY FORCE. WE DON’T WANT ANY MORE STATES. THE FORMATION OF THE U.N. RESTS ON THIS PRINCIPLE.
Bush’s failure to ease the persecution of drug abusers can hardly be seen as Christian; We don’t know what George may be snorting now. But his testimony that he bacame transformed from a rich kid testing nose candy whenever he craved to a tee-totaling, observant Methodist: that should mean something to prisoners, especially anyone taken into custody unarmed.
Illegal gun-toting should and could be seperated from sale and possesion of drugs. Having a gun or not should be like night and day in announcing drug sales and possession sentences. The least this might do is provide some incentive not to go into drugs “Big Time” meaning those heavily invested in a supply of illegal drugs become a target for thieves and robbers and require the same protection police officers demand. Many in the food chain of Dope receive currency indirectly enough to be protected from any criminal association. Yet they are the momentum of the dope problem now. They are never caught and never will be, because they’re doing nothing wrong. They are responding to ecomonic stimuli just like supply and demand requires. US Troops are presently engaged in combat operations to forcibly bestow upon the residents of ancient Babylon the ways and transactions of Jeffersonian Democracy.
Coca and Poppy cultivation could be attacked with about zero loss of life.
Beneficiaries of widespread drug abuse and promoting the status quo of draconian penalties that include Life Without Parole are numerous, the pharmaceutical Corporations, backdoor South American and Latin American Political players and their US contacts, the massive paramilitary Police and Corrections Workforce, Members of the Bar, TV Writers…
It is rarely conveyed to the public what a premium a prison cell is to the common good.
Current penal codes defeat the aim of corrections-keeping dangerous people under observation. With so much time being handed out for non-violent property crime it becomes impossible to keep all the right people behind bars. At any given time the demands of the mathematics of space guarantee the parole of an approximate number, a quota. I observed how this worked when I was in Jackson Prison for a per se drunk driving, meaning the car was parked and I wasn’t in it when the cops arrived . But I watched as the tatooed and ponytailed Joey S., who was in prison for shooting and killing a man after illegally entering his own home with a pistol was sent home like a graduate; while I, a drunk, was kept another year. Maybe a lucky drunk, I never seriously hurt anyone else or myself. That should mean something in court more than it does.
I remember my Parole Officer, a 5’4” dark haired college woman, really ambitious in her job and following “Zero Tolerance” gospel. She was shouting at me about “What might have happened”, and listing examples she’d pull out of her ass, making up alternate endings for real events, and she sent me back to prison for exactly that, what she said “might have happened.” That’s scary shit. The average person doesn’t realize how easy it is to wind up in prison.
One inmate I knew from Auto Mechanics class was in prison for fighting with people who refused to leave his house, he got Felonious Assault because he picked up a hachet in the back yard after the fight spilled outside, he didn’t use it, he didn’t hack anyone up, he just picked it up, he was bleeding from the head where three people struck and injured him. It was his house. His name was on the landlord’s paperwork. The Hazel Park cops treated ownership even like that’s unimportant.
Prison must be permanent .
Except for paying guards, Michigan Prisons were self sufficient 30 years ago. Now MDOC is a bonanza for commercial suppliers. MDOC is a money drain exceeding school funding for the first time in history.
Only the legislature can remedy laws written to mollify the public by long indeterminate sentences. I rode from Oakland County to the prison with Mike McKenney; his sentence was 4 years to life for punching someone in the mouth.
That’s fucking crazy.
Dangerous Offenders receive inadequate programs and are set free unchanged except for age; molesters of children, because the budget required to maintain maximum prisoner population requires restrictions in rehabilitation opportunities. College in US State prisons was completely eliminated by President Clinton signing the 1994 Crime Bill completely cutting off federal funding for Pell Grant assisted College in prison. This is the “Crime Bill” that also limits an individual’s right to file federal habeas corpus to one single petition no matter how long they are locked up. Really obscene shit. Of those in state prison released by petitioning for Federal habeas corpus, few were released on the first filing, some were not read without the persistence of the petitioner.
There is an evil algebra that’s mandatory required to manage a corrections environment.
Figuring ratios about space or the cost of housing those who should never get out while simutaneously processing those the court sends you. With so many long indeterminate sentences being handed out for such a wide variety of offenses, especially unarmed offenses. Courts are handing the real job of Judge to the less educated people employed in Corrections Departments. The buck stops nowhere in human sight. The actual sentence of most criminals run to a length no one knows who is uninvolved in the actual incident because bureaucrats must do the work that is politically dicey and perform for an audience of one, the poor bastard who wants out.
After one goes to the the penetenciary, the facts of a criminal’s crime get chewed up. The parole process is a corrupt personality contest.
After the minimum of any sentence for any crime the prisoner is legally eligible for parole. In all likelihood some really dangerous convicts will always regularly hit the street. The need for weeding out the dangerous from the merely greedy or thieving is where the rubber hits the road. It is violent crime that destroys families and ruins human minds.
The need to protect property would be secondary to any normal family member encountering an invader of his household.
The law as written doesn’t exactly see it that way sometimes.
Prison sentences should befit #1. Physical Injury to Victim, #2. prison space.
