A quotation by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Probably the most appropriate comment describing the return of the precursor of the Great Depression to our present times:
“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace – business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
SOUND FAMILIAR?
LABOR DAY
Good grief, Charlie Brown. Is it just my old pappy’s imagination, or are years really getting shorter?
Here we are at “Labor Day” again, and the jobs situation in our good old U.S.of A. is still deteriorating at a rapid pace. Granted that the statistics show decent job creation recently, but most of these jobs are in low-paying retail, or if they are better paid, they very likely will be in the modern, soul crushing, “efficiency”-mad, big multi-national corporate sector.
Now then, amazingly, we have the Yahoo from Wisconsin campaigning for the highest elected office in our land with his dubious claim to fame – Union Busting!
For a little tutorial on the history of “Labor Day” please refer to my Blog #26 (posted, naturally, last Labor Day). Again this year we’ll be celebrating the all but forgotten memory of the original holiday by shopping our fool heads off, buying up all those cheap products made in foreign lands by poor souls who would probably face execution if they were even to mention unionization. Oh, thank goodness, those jihadists haven’t gotten to our beloved malls yet!
Politics, of course, is just one of the self-inflicted wounds currently affecting life in our good old U.S.of A, and pap and I will be speaking about all of them over the next few weeks, beginning with some comments below regarding a few of the controversial SCOTUS decisions from this past summer.
70 YEARS AFTER WWII
BTW, did you know that we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on September 2nd? In my Blog #27 – Racism and other idiotic ideas, we spoke of our real “exceptionalism” in winning the war, as well as rebuilding the lands of our allies AND enemies afterward. Returning, our soldiers were able to take advantage of the “GI Bill” which ushered in an unparalleled period of prosperity. Unfortunately, that prosperity didn’t extend so much to the black members of our population, which we discussed in Blog #27, and which hasn’t been rectified to this day.
Oh, goodness, I wish my dear old pappy were tech savvy enough to get my information to a wider audience! Our dear country can return to it’s post-war greatness, even getting around to including all our citizens equally, but only if people are able to stop and think for themselves.
SOME GOOD NEWS:
A couple of our GI’s, together with another passenger, stopped and subdued a potential mass- murderer on a French train headed for Paris. They were all awarded France’s highest decoration, the Legion d’honneur.
An article in the National Review opined that such moments of courage send our enemies a message: “Americans still know how to fight,” completely ignoring the fact that only a tiny percentage of us Amuricans actually participate in our “volunteer” military. Some people just don’t “get it.”
FALLING UNDER UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:
Thankfully, we haven’t heard much of that “warrior” word since dear old George went back to his ranch in the great State of Texas (oh, that State surely is “blessed”). Talk about your “presidential legacies” – yikes, that dude really left one – a nearly perfect disaster in the Middle East! Now, all of Europe is deluged with poor migrants fleeing the resulting chaos. Of course, we here in the good old U.S.of A. can observe these horrors and hypocritically say, “they should do something about helping those poor people.”
All this turmoil begun under the caption, “making the world safe for democracy,” incidentally while his party of Republicrats is working to diminish that wonderful ideal by restricting the vote here at home. BTW, the good old Demoblicans have practiced a bit of that “gerrymandering” stuff themselves, though possibly not quite as successfully as their adversaries. Kinda reminds ya of situations in Central and South America after (and, unfortunately, still during) our dubious “war” on drugs.
SCOTUS – JUNE 26, 2015
Holy lizards, Batman, darned if those old folk at the Supreme Court didn’t hand poor old POTUS a trifecta!
One, they upheld the subsidies for the Affordable Care Act for states that use the Federal Exchanges instead of setting up their own exchange. That’s the law that the good old Republicrats derogatorily dubbed “Obamacare,” and have spent the last five years trying to repeal, running up the federal deficit to beat the devil while doing so.
Two, they effective struck down the “Three Strikes, and You’re Out” law, which is an amazingly good thing. This law has been used to incarcerate millions of mostly young black persons for extraordinarily long periods, sometimes for minor offenses. It has fostered a whole industry of private prisons, which is certainly not the kind of business this country needs, and it is certainly not the proper means for removing people from the terrible living conditions in our big cities.
Third, they effectively made Gay “Marriage” legal in the entire U.S.of A, which, of course, is basically a good thing. This ruling, however, is extremely controversial. This, at least old pappy and I believe, is one of those instances where a bit of understanding, good will, and compromise probably could have avoided most of the horrible consequences of having to force social change on our population. The Gay community really wanted to have the same legal rights as other persons committed to living together as a family have, such as tax benefits and health care decision abilities. These statutory rights could have been obtained by calling the arrangement for Gay persons “Civil Unions,” which is actually what is bestowed by the state, anyway. Various Religions perform Marriages in one form or another, but cannot bestow the civil rights that the states license. So, with forethought and consideration for others, the word, “Marriage” could have been reserved for the Religions while still accomplishing the equality of treatment goal. Unfortunately, this case illustrates one of the “troubles” of our present society – no one wants to even try to see the other person’s point of view. We can do away with discrimination, and live together a little more happily if we can just think instead of emoting.
Now, we have an instance where because of his religious beliefs, a baker feels he can’t bake wedding cakes for a gay couple, so the couple sues the baker, possibly causing him to lose his business. Is this dude the only baker in town? Then, there is dear little Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, who, because of her religious beliefs feels she can’t issue the “marriage” licenses which are part of her job. In fact, she isn’t really supposed to issue “marriage” licenses since the churches long ago coined the term, “marriage,” and our dear old U.S.of A. Constitution requires a separation of Church and State. So, poor Kim, along with her Kentucky law-makers, are laboring under a misunderstanding, and the dear lady is now sitting in the hoosegow, oblivious to the fact that her job is not to issue religious licenses, but civil ones.
One of the left wing-nuts, yes, they are the mirror image of the right wing-nuts, even called Mrs. Davis’s situation a “stunt.” Further, the “all-inclusive “Occupy Demoblicans” have even distributed a nasty video about her. All this animosity over the use of one silly little WORD!
All this stuff sure ain’t Christian love, nor is it Atheist human understanding; it is just plain stupidity. Does this horrid lack of compassion, on both sides, make any sense?
Old pap and I really wonder sometimes,
Your favorite, I hope, hound doggie, Buster.
Maybe we need to lighten up a tad?
A Post Script: Oddly enough, another of the quaint little idiosyncrasies of the Homo Sapiens species is their almost universal belief in their personal indestructibility, despite all evidence to the contrary. As you may know, old pappy and I have been hunkered down out here in the Idyhoe desert for going on three years now, and currently there are wild fires (fars in Baltimorese) raging all along the west coast. While we don’t think we are in imminent danger, there is an awful lot of second-hand smoke here in the Treasure Valley. Hearing one of the local weather forecasters mentioning the red air quality alert and warning persons with respiratory ailments, et cetera, et cetera, and ELDERLY PERSONS to stay indoors, poor old pap, brutally confronted with his own inevitable mortality, declared not to anyone in particular, “Good Grief, they’re talking about me!”
Buster's Two Cents 