Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The Real Meaning of Memorial Day Should Be the Same as The Real Meaning of Mother's Day


Seeing as Julia Ward Howe and her associates created Mothers Day (though it never took off until business decided to make it a commercial thing, of course) they should be able to say what the real meaning is and it is strongly anti-war.

Though Ms Howe contributed the Battle Hymn of the Republican to the War Between the States (since the South was slowly murdering an entire race of people for the convenience of their wealthy land owners) she turned against war for most causes after seeing the great harm and carnage of what we usually call the "Civil War".

And though her poem uses the archaic language popular in the 19th century, its heart should be one that we can support today.

The Mother's Day Proclamation:

Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
And yes, like all people of the day in which she wrote, Ms Howe felt that we could rely on some higher being to help us, a philosophy that many feel has not panned out.  Still the feeling in her words is valid, much more supportable than the constant call for war from neocons on Twitter and other parts of the Internet.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Republicans Set Up the Veterans Administration to Fail And The News Media is Not Catching Them


Found in a report in the Washington Post from 3/8/13 are two sentences explaining how the Sequester could harm Veteran's ability to get health care in a timely fashion (like before they die) even if the VA itself was supposedly spared the Sequester ax.

This is the kind of reporting that the news media is supposed to be doing and remembering that they've done and our Congress people and the media are supposed to be reading instead of notes from their Koch brother financiers.

Apparently that is not happening in Big News and Congress:
Forty percent of the Defense Department’s medical providers working at military hospitals and clinics are civilians subject to furlough.
“This may mean a decrease in clinic appointment availability or longer wait times to see providers,” Jonathan Woodson, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for health affairs, wrote Tuesday on the department’s military health system blog.
Wait isn't this supposed Obama administration scandal about sick Veterans facing long waits for evaluation and care during which many are dying or getting too sick to save?

So that problem in the indented script above is right there in downtown.

But I bet the news system cannot recall this information in their rush to blame everything on the Obama administration, and the Republicans who have Gerrymandered illegal control in the US House of Representatives have no reason to care to inform Americans of reality.

In addition the Bush administration set us up for two massive wars, creating millions of new veterans, many with PTSD and/or catastrophic physical problems without giving the VA the generous amount of money it would need to take care of the new patients. (I've actually checked the VA saw their funding doubled from 2003 to 2012 last year available.)  Now consider that amounts of catastrophic injuries created by the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the strong blow back from those selfish Iraqis and Afghans that weren't going to just sit there and be dominated by our clearly superior American Christian troops. 


Now Republicans like John McCain are claiming that a privatized system would do a better job.  That is not what happens.  What happens is that privatized systems feel much freer to ignore people's needs and make more money off such a project as long as they are funneling big dollars into the pockets of powerful Republicans.  That is a recipe for disaster for ordinary Americans. to force that onto our veterans would be an immense shame,

Picture at top used via Creative Commons License - Share Alike 2.0 Generic thanks to Flickr user Donkey Hotey who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Shorter URL for this report: http://bit.ly/QOoKKD

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Democrats Leave National Prayer Breakfast as James Dobson Pledges Tax Rebellion Against Obamacare Because of Contraception


What are you looking at?, ask the squirrels.   It's not us going off on a partisan rant at a supposedly bipartisan breakfast.

Janice Hahn left the Breakfast as the unelected Dobson declared a Civil Disobedience against Obamacare because of the dispersal of contraception which hardliners call a form of abortion.
He also called Obama "the abortion president".

According to the Daily Breeze
Specifically, Dobson took the Obama administration to task over the Obamacare mandate that employers, including Dobson's organization, must provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and other contraceptives or face a fine.
During his remarks, Dobson read a letter he sent to his supporters and political leaders stating that the "assault on the sanctity of human life takes me where I cannot go," adding that as a matter of religious conviction and conscience that he would refuse to pay the fine.
Many in the audience gave Dobson a standing ovation.
Another Congressional also walked out.

Click for more from the Daily Breeze on this report.

The Breeze covers much of Hahn's district.

If a group is going to host a bipartisan breakfast, but allow a rant by a extreme idealogue they shouldn't they should be sidelined.  And an anti-women agenda is not a valid position by a national group in a real democracy.