Now the smoke has cleared........

.....we can see the trees that compose the forest. They come in huge variety. Some hug the ground stealing the sun from seedlings which are challenged to grow tall
and develop a canopy to get their share. That canopy provides habitat for beautiful
birds whose color and songs bring us joy. The ground huggers provide habitat for
numerous creatures which clean the forest floor and in turn are food for felines, predatory birds, snakes and small mammals.
This symbiotic arrangement enables the animal kingdom to be free of constant conflict. There is no species with a goal to acquire power over others or get control
of all the assets.
In every human society the government of whatever form, whether democratic republic,
or oligarchy , the drive by the rulers are to accumulate power and control of resources for the benefit of some particular class or group, usually called "party".
The greatest good for the greatest number makes a good slogan to divert voters but
it doesn't influence policy.
Perhaps we should follow that old adage "leave it to the birds!"

State of the Person

To mimic the federal government it might be useful for each of us to analyse and
sum up our own state of affairs after passage of another year.
We all long for the past days when we could each be masters of our own fates. We
could work where, and at what we pleased. We were free souls in control of our
family destinies. The overall economy was capable of supplying jobs to a growing population and America was the economic colossus and model of free enterprise.
But the rest of the world took advantage of the continuing technological revolution
by educating its children for the new global economy, in the process attracting
American capital and manufacturing operations. With the disappearance of our
industrial base the plenitude of jobs was replaced by chronic unemployment.
There are among us people who are entrepreneurs and self employed. Their job
security lies in special skills and talents for which demand will always exceed supply. This group represented the elite of the middle class, now a remnant of
what was the main support of our consumption based economy.
To bring back the past by recalling our industrial base or limiting wages, benefits
and labor laws to the standards in the low labor cost venues is no option. We must
strike out into another direction--joining the new world of green life style. In
that new world, our productive workforce and technological brains inventory
can make us a world leader once more. Subservience to the special interests that
have locked our policies into the past, must end. We are blessed with a large territory on which sunlight falls, huge borders on seas whose tides can generate energy, with broad expanses of prairie for wind generators, and enormous arable
land surface to grow bio-fuels. Why don't we exploit these wondrous gifts from
nature to improve our economy, while benefitting the entire human population?

The State of the Union

The address has come and gone, and I have been reviewing it to judge if it changed any minds. The event is always big and historic for its substance and
symbolism. I scanned the audience carefully to see how many I recognized, and if there were any big, historic persons. All I saw were mediocrities, most clad in
the armor of their biases.

The speech was reasoned, intelligent, conciliatory to the Republicans. It certainly was inspiring, especially to America's youth... It didn't change any minds. The bias
armored idealogs didn't open their minds and let the sun shine in. We can expect
two years of trench warfare in Congress. The know-nothings are in the saddle
and they are determined to continue impoverishing the middle class to wipe out big government programs and deficits. How else justify retaining costly tax cuts that benefit mainly the wealthiest 2% of our populace while slashing the basic support for the unemployed or barely subsisting?
The Right is clamoring for deficit reduction. We need that vitally. To get an amount
that is meaningful will demand of us austerity for all, plus increased revenue
from those who can. Bombast and phony measures won't cut it in the real world.

Update

The project to develop a new course of instruction on the adjustment to an aging
population has not died aborning. Unfortunately my precarious state of health has
made it impossible to proceed at this moment. I had prepared a preliminary plan of
attack to get it going. If any of my gracious volunteers has time to take it on, I
will help as much as my limited capacity permits.
The head knows what to do, the heart knows it is worth doing, but the body says sorry
buddy, I can't carry you there. As I wrote, there is a season for everything and
everyone. I am in the Winter of mine.

For everything, and everyone there is a season.

And as we are all actors on the stage of life, the more skilled know when their role has been played out and it is time to leave the stage. Good ole Joe Lieberman
has seen the other players lurking in the wings, has heard the fading applause and
has finally decided his role has nothing left to add to the drama in Washington. He
will not run for reelection. As this thunderbolt echoed through the halls of Washington it appeared that the establishment would somehow survive. Have we seen
the last of Joe? Not likely if there is still room on a Federal payroll somewhere,
or a spot for a lobbyist with his connections.
One measure of a pol's success is the number of years he was able to hang on to his
office. I would suggest that a more suitable measure would be the meaningful content of those years. What did he contribute to the general welfare of the citizenry? In what measure are we a better nation, a society with greater comity,
because of his service? There are few men of greatness in congress. Who is there to set a worthwhile goal for newcomers? A political hack cannot inspire stars to rise.

It seems we have fallen into a malaise of low expectations for candidates and are
willing to settle for corrupt mediocrities. Thats what we are getting.

Marty's Blog Golden Globe awards

Tis the season for self congratulations in the movie business, and the multitude of
designer fashion shows to promote the various merchants of illusion that ordinary
housewives are just $5000 away from stardom.
In keeping with the season Marty's Blog has assembled its own list of awards:

1. Outstanding comedy spoof of the year: The house of Representatives vote to
repeal the Affordable Care Act. As an act of sheer spite to deprive Obama of a
legislative achievement, and despite the obvious benefits to the economy, the public,
and the budget process, the Republicans can't resist sticking their thumb in the
President's eye.

2. War movie of the year: Iraq Journal. The world has seen the Hundred Years War, the Thirty Years War, the two-part WWI-WWII serial covering 30 years. And now the Iraq War coming up to a decade. The staying power of War as a theme for entertainment is astonishing.

3. The mystifying, magical performance of Speaker Boehner pandering the illusion that cutting taxes will eliminate budget deficits as long as we decimate the
safety net that allows some in the middle class to survive. And the bloated defense budget for fighting WW2 must not be touched.

The list of buffoonery in Congress is too long to relate here. Enough to say that
we have the most inept Representatives that corrupt money can buy and that is
how corporate America prefers it.

All gall is in Florida

From my Latin Primer in high school the first sentence we learned was "omnia
Gallia in tres partes divisa est"--all Gaul (France) is divided in three parts. The
latest action in the Florida legislature makes a wondrous play on words. The amount of sheer, senseless gall, and the bizarre timing of the event defies belief.
An act has been introduced permitting the open carry by anyone of firearms, everywhere
but inside schoolrooms.
I defy anyone to produce valid statistics, not anecdotes, showing that the incidence of crime has been reduced in any state allowing open carry. There is no such evidence.
There will be however a marked increase in gun violence because too many people are
not capable of anger management. When two armed individuals face off in some real or
imagined offense the temptation will be to draw and fire first. Second place means little when you are dead. I can visualize on I95 a daily event---someone inadvertently cuts in front of another driver in another lane. It has happened that
the driver so cut off shoots the other in anger and frustration. A life lost, families devastated for an insignificant incident. Now when everyone is armed
perhaps we will get a shoot out between both drivers, each fearful the other will get off the first shot. Whoop-dee-do, what entertainment for the by-standers! This is
what the NRA and their intimidated legislators envisage as a blessing for Florida.

There is a valid aphorism that repeating the same action and expecting a different result is a sign of insanity. Has the U. S. society actually become safer and less
afflicted with crime as more states allow everyone to openly carry guns? Where are the facts indicating that? No Florida, don't surrender one of our few signs of a civilized society. Say NO to open carry, and no to guns for all.

Fascinating dialogue

The Tuscon massacre has invigorated the tweeter world argument on guns pro and con.
I never acquired the skill to tweet. Perhaps it is because I still revere the
English language as an exalted means of communicating ideas and emotions and not
as a medium for practicing the cryptographers art. If the creator, or evolution had meant for us to talk with our thumbs I am certain that by now they would contain lips
and teeth, to say nothing about tongue and voice box. And above all A CONNECTION TO A BRAIN.

In an effort to find out what the tweeter world feels about the de facto unregulated world of gun use and ownership I have taken to reading a variety of blogs, columns, and conversations among tweeters, second amendment zealots, the Brady Bunch control
advocates and a garden variety of blood-and guts hunters. What strikes me most forcefully in the material I have seen is the lack of logical reasoning on the part of the gun loving fanatics. Their rhetoric is about fear. Someone is out to subvert
my nation, and their first step will be to take my guns away from me---over my
dead body, or theirs! "The government is no longer willing or able to protect my
liberty and property," so I must be prepared to change it, by bullets if necessary.
And one more tactic is to demean and abuse those who think otherwise--calling them
vile names, and ordering them back to someplace from which they never came.

If there is no longer any room for reason, that way lies chaos!

The Tuscon Massacre

As usual in these horrific public executions the media, and opportunists in the
political universe are quick to claim the killers were motivated by hateful and
violent speech and propaganda levelled against the victims by political opponents, right wing zealots, tea party types and similar. Thus moved to exact revenge, or prevent all sorts of plots to subvert our government,
liberties and culture, the killers deliver divine punishment on the evil doers. No doubt there is enough hate speech and
violent rhetoric to stimulate the eagerly awaiting, gun clutching, self anointed
avengers among us, as happens in attacks on abortion providers. But not all such massacres are so motivated.
Yes, ours is a horribly violence infiltrated culture. Even our national sports such
as pro football are violent on a grand scale, produced with all the showmanship
of major Hollywood musical extravaganzas. Hockey games are only exciting if some player has his skull fractured in a personal confrontation with an opponent. Try to
find a movie representing real, normal, adjusted people. Instead we have a world of Super heroes and super monsters wreaking unimaginable horror and destruction, or pathological killers dismembering their victims on screen.

Too many massacres are initiated by demented people with no understanding of the
consequence of their acts, and often no memory of having committed them. Here, dear Brutus, the fault is with ourselves that we make it possible for them to posses
weapons of extreme lethality. Thus the insane have taken over the asylum and the sane must cower in fear that their paths may cross. If you can call murder an act
of sanity, some murder in anger, or for material gain, and may be aware of their
actions and risks. To the insane, there is no moral dimension to the event.
The NRA says an armed society is a safer society. How would this "shoot out at the OK Corral" policy help the six already dead?

Guns, Gore and the NRA

Yesterday the nation was treated to an educational message exposing the minds
of many NRA members, whose lives are dominated by the philosophy of "my way or the
grave way". In Arizona a mentally deranged man used an expanded clip 9mm hand gun
to kill six prominent citizens including a federal judge and wounded 13, some of whom are not likely to survive.
In another venue gunmen killed two and wounded one. In the process many families
were devastated. How a deranged man acquired such a powerful weapon is not difficult to
guess. Caving to NRA pressure so many states allow unlimited rights to acquire and carry guns that they can be purchased everywhere. It appears the only restriction would be if the purchaser was wearing a straight-jacket when entering the gun shop.

Once having the weapon he may openly carry it in saloons, theatres, markets, churches, and even high risk sites for interpersonal conflict. With the gun he can
fulfill his dream of being more powerful than the high and mighty around him. He is
now ready to put to use certain cardinal behaviors typical of NRA zealots:
1. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, as long as it agrees with mine.
2. Disagreement on policy should be discussed in reasonable and rational fashion, and compromise, as long as the compromises are not required of me.
3. If someone gets into a confrontation with me, cool heads should prevail, or I will
blow him away.
4. With a gun I am GOD. I hold the power of life or death over anyone.

I recognize that by publishing these remarks I will ruffle a few feathers and one
of those zealots, in devotion to sacred NRA principles will find a few minutes to "blow me away!"

Let the INEPTNESS begin!

In the first day of their control of the House the Republicans demonstrated clearly,
and to the embarrassment of their leaders, what are their priorities. Two GOP
Congressmen conducted a fund raiser and forgot to attend the formal swearing-in
ceremony which is required by the Constitution before any legislative business can be done. The omission made all actions of the house invalid, including the selection
as Speaker of Mr. Boehner. The frantic efforts to remedy the situation by in effect back-dating all actions and declaring the missing Congressmen "sworn in" by TV
because they appeared on camera from their fund raiser was more ridiculous than any
farce on The Early Show. The fund raiser was conducted using government property,
which is a crime. If this continues we are in for some ludicrous actions in the grubbing for money and protecting the monied. And guess at whose expense.
They are following this up with the attempt to repeal "Obamacare", an act which will
live in infamy, unmatched for political stupidity, and the damage it will inflict
on generations of the vanishing middle class. If they succeed they will have pulled off the biggest "snow job" in history!
We have met the enemy and HE IS US!

Back with my treasured friends

I am thrilled to be back communicating with my colleagues and fellow correspondents
after surviving a near terminal emergency illness resulting from a reaction to
a prescribed medication. Nine days in the Boca Raton Hospital plus further days of
convalescence have given me plenty of time to observe Obamacare in action and decide what about it I like or dislike.
My illness had a critical immediacy which made every decision about it a matter of TRIAGE (choices). An incorrect choice could have had fatal consequences. Because I had adequate health insurance the choices were all made objectively and I was made to survive!
I am now considering what the treatment and outcome would have been if I was uninsured with the same illness and there was no Obamacare.
Lets go through the triage in that situation:
1.The patient shows up at the E.R.--no insurance. The E.R. discovers he is critically ill and will require lengthy hospitalization, blood transfusions, expensive medications. Triage decision????
2. The patient requires immediate consult with a Cardiololgist, Renal specialist,
Gastroenterologist.They are called in, but ask if there is insurance. Told no,
they will "get around to it" when they "finish with their patients". When????
3. The hospital, under financial pressure begins to look for a place to dump the
patient!
4. The blood bank suddenly runs out of the blood type.
5. Do I need to go on?
By making health insurance mandatory none of that would happen, and the insured
population would not pay for the non-insured through higher insurance premiums.

More essays on the subject will be coming.