tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17260250287502416412024-03-08T14:01:59.573-08:00Left-wing TexKen Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-40722415347445175982021-01-11T13:49:00.000-08:002021-01-11T13:49:16.675-08:00Just Part and Parcel of the Glorious Fabric of the Universe<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">(Published in Concho River Review, Volume 34, Number 2, Fall/Winter 2020) <br /></span></span></p><p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">One
mid-September night, down a Galveston beach, a man – what is the
right word, ambled? – yes, this man ambled as if he were absolutely
in no rush at all, as if he had world enough and time. And perhaps he
did.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><a name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465770776273_6099"></a><a name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1465770776273_6100"></a>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">His white suit
stood out in the inky dark. And as he walked, his head firmly
planted downward, he mumbled under his breath, seemingly lost in a
concentration so profound. His hair, long and wavy, bordered on
being out of control. This thin man in a long-out-of-style white suit
with a thin black tie strolled in a sort-of zig-zaggy pattern, until
suddenly he stopped and made an abrupt 90 degree left turn.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
next thing the man knew, the always-warm Gulf water was lapping up to
his thighs. After a shake of his head, he blinked his eyes in an
exaggerated, almost theatrical way, then looked around, as if for the
very first time taking note of his surroundings. Focused now, he took
in the whole 360 degree sweep of the beach, the seawall, the Gulf.
Then, while a lone motorcycle with no governor wound through its
gears racing above him down Seawall Boulevard, the man breathed in
deeply the Gulf's thick salty smell laced with seaweed, spotted a
white lozenge of moon barely seen through wisps of clouds. Then he
suddenly remembered their name and said it aloud, “Cirrus.” </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And
the name of the beach. Stewart Beach, where one balmy night soon
after World War II his mother had won a jitterbug dance contest in
one of those dance clubs all the rage with the younger set back then,
before . . . well, everything. Now the beach was all but deserted, it
being late, a bit past 10. And those dance clubs? All long gone.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Out
in the Gulf, he noticed the lights of a ship, probably an oil tanker
by its outline, waiting its turn to enter the bay to unload its
highly-viscous cargo to some smoke-belching refinery on the ship
channel. Behind the tanker a sideways fist of lightning flashed. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">With
only the dullest thoughts echoing inside his skull, he began to
slowly wade back to the beach, steeling himself for the long, wet
slog back to his motel room. Then out of the corner of his eye, he
caught sight of a handful of the old Indians of Galveston.
Karwankawas – six feet tall – both men and women accompanied by
their coyote-like dogs. One of which now howled at the almost full
moon. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If
the man in the white suit was shocked by the sudden appearance of
long-ago Indians, he didn't show it. He looked at them, curious, to
be sure, but his thin face betrayed no surprise. And as he stood
there, he couldn't help but catch a whiff of the Indians’ smell –
dirt and alligator fat smeared over their bodies to keep the clouds
of mosquitoes that have always haunted this island at bay.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For
their part, the Indians stared back at him with increasing suspicion
Their great muscled bodies seemed ready to let fly a phalanx of
arrows at yet another small man of European descent, the kind of whom
they knew all too well. What else could they think of this thin wisp
of a man, this walking ghost in white suit and thin tie?</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He
continued down the beach, the dry sand making it difficult to walk
with any speed. He then spotted a figure in front of him on a leeward
slope of dune -- the Spanish castaway, <span style="font-weight: normal;">Álvar
Núñez</span> Cabeza de Vaca, himself, thrown up on this isle
wearing nothing, like his Indian wardens. When in Rome . . .</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Karankawas, a
word meaning dog lover in their own language, were dying of a
European sickness that infected the stomach. They could keep nothing
down. One orifice or another was always working overtime until death
like sweet mercy came. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Acting
as a medicine man, de Vaca made the sign of the cross over one
ravaged Karankawa – once well-muscled, now bones as dry and brittle
as the opened oyster shells he rested upon. De Vaca recited a <i>Pater
Noster</i> and for good measure threw in an <i>Ave Maria</i>. Prayed
to God he was not murdered in his sleep, a jagged knife across his
gullet, in this land of perpetual misfortune, this god-awful island,
a true<i> isla de Malhado,</i> the Island’s original Spanish name,
the island of doom. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> By
the moon's light, the thin man could just barely make out how the
Karankawa's elaborate tattoos snaked down their nude bodies. But
there was also a sound he couldn't quite identify, a sound like the
beating of a muffled drum. But when the moonlight hit just right, he
finally made out how the reed piercings on their nipples clanked
against their chests when they moved. Suddenly these Indians stopped,
pointed ahead.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And
there stood an assemblage of white men dressed in shirts and breeches
from another century. Some had tied scarves around their necks and
almost all were full-bearded. Though one was not, only a small
mustache graced his upper lip. There he stood beside a cannon, gold
doubloons spilling out of his pockets like sand in an hourglass,
smirking as he lit the fuse. He was a handsome man with a face equal
parts sensual and rapacious. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jean
Lafitte called his empire <i>Campeche</i> and from his <i>Maison
Rouge</i> lorded it over the island like every two-bit tyrant.
Behind him stood black men chained to one another by leg clamps.
Their bodies, shiny with sweat, flashed a bright shade of red with
every cannon blast. Those chained black men embodied the real reason
the pirate called The Island home. An easy equation really: black
human beings to be sold like bales of cotton equaled ever more money
in his till. Buy low; sell high, a time-honored, if amoral, fixation.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then,
suddenly, there, smiling his big sloppy drunk grin, was old Jim
Bowie, sipping rot-gut, poking his eponymous knife into the starless
night. The thin man wanted to stop, to speak to everyone he'd seen,
but before he could find the right words, if there were any, screams
down the beach interrupted his thoughts. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ahead
of him, about a dozen black men cried out as they picked up the
swollen bodies of the drowned. Around them, clouds of flies swarmed
everywhere, and the smell of black tar slime kicked up from the very
depths of the Gulf permeated the air, the aftermath of the Great 1900
Storm. Next to the wagon, the white overseer took a long swig from a
bottle, his Winchester resting on his hip, always ready. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">“<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Boys,
you can take a break now. Free whisky!” he cried out in a gravelly
voice, trying to sound as companionable as anyone holding people
against their will by force of arms could.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
not one of the black men made a move. Drained of emotion now, their
movements did not deviate. They went about their task as if they'd
mutated from human beings to automatons, lifting and stacking the
water-drenched, always uncooperative dead into a flatbed wagon,
showing no emotion, whatsoever. The thin man noticed one of the newly
stacked, a small girl improbably still clutching her rag doll,
waterlogged and tattered, though it was.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;">“<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Dammit,
boys, can't you hear? I never knew y'all to turn it down before. Free
whisky, boys, free whisky.”</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Shots
echoed between sand dunes.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
thin man raised his head, shouting to the few stars he could see,
“I’m just part and parcel of the glorious fabric of the
universe!” </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As
he got to the seawall stairs, he stooped, then knelt to ring the salt
water from his pants. The night breeze from the Gulf blew right
through him. His teeth chattered. He walked slowly now, very
carefully, one leg at a time, up the stairway to the seawall, his
dress shoes squeaking with each footfall. His right hand gripped the
tottering handrail made from iron pipes. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
once up on the seawall, a young couple suddenly appeared on the
sidewalk. The girl wore a pleated plaid skirt, knit sweater, white
socks, and loafers. The boy, his jet-black pompadour slicked back,
was dressed in roll-up jeans and a plaid shirt. Both ambled, as if
mutually lost in their own thoughts. Then, as if choreographed by a
Hollywood musical of the era, turned toward each other. The girl
looked up at the boy's eyes. Then he looked at her, until some small,
white floating object landed in the girl's hair. The boy smiled and
picked it out of her curls. Immediately the ash crumbled in his
fingers.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then
a yellow pickup truck screeched up, blaring its horn. “Get in, J.
D.! Sarge says we're going now.” The boy turned squeezed the girl's
hand, smiled, then ran, and with all his young athleticism, leapt
into the truck bed from the sidewalk. There his laughing friends
managed to catch him. He turned to look at the girl, gave her a big
grin, a shy wave. As the truck drove away, she waved back.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">His
mom and dad, before they ever got those names, so innocent looking.
April '48 he thought? He'd have to check. The Texas City Disaster, a
ship full of fertilizer blew up, the deadliest industrial accident
ever. Almost 600 killed. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
two people who later would be his mom and dad were in English class
at Galveston's Ball High that morning when explosions twenty miles
away rocked their building. They ended up walking out on the seawall.
His Daddy would talk for years about stacking the burnt bodies. Mom
always said he was never quite the same after that. He realized they
have no idea how, by turns, wonderful and awful their lives will be.</span></span></p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
thin man smiled, his eyes tearing up. Who was he to thank for these –
whatever they were – visions, tiny rips in the space-time
continuum? His plan now was to walk back to his motel. Though, there
was one slight complication. He didn't quite remember where it was
exactly. </span></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">That
might just cause a problem, he admitted to himself. Then shook his
head, but couldn't help but laugh at his chronic absentmindedness.
Eleven now, the only sounds were from a lone motorcycle barreling
down the boulevard, the rustle of palm fronds above his head, the
always steady evening breeze from the Gulf, that always sounded to
him like The Island breathing, and, of course, his wet dress shoes
squeaking with every footfall. </span></span>
</p>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-64861169778378324092019-08-25T08:14:00.000-07:002019-08-25T08:14:00.117-07:00School Daze Angst<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%;">
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I’m
outside my portable classroom with my brand-spanking-new students,
reviewing the material we’ve just gone over. It’s a good lesson,
creative, because it gets the kids up and about, but having to do
with the task at hand. That’s how I roll: reach them, teach them. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
when I ask for a choral response, all I get is “Huhs?” and
“Whats?” and looks stuck somewhere between confused and just
plain “I don’t give a care.” After all these years, I’ve
ended up with a class of freshmen zombies, </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
First Period of the Living Dead</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
raise my voice a few decibels, but I might as well be speaking to the
proverbial wall. Nothing I do works. In fact, I start getting
pushback.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">This
is boring,” declare a few snarky fishes.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
then my “favorite” insult comes from some lump slouching against
his homies: “This is so gay!”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Derisive
laughter rises from the throng. I can feel my blood pressure rising,
sweat pouring from under my arms like a tap’s been opened. I’m
ready to wade into the middle of them and take no prisoners. By
golly, this is the first day. I can't allow this!</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Then,
fortunately, I wake up. Another anxiety dream! I guess it's no
surprise. A former colleague warned me after he retired the same
thing happened to him. After all, for a quarter-century I wore down
carpet or linoleum to threadbare church-mouse thickness, cajoling,
proctoring, mentoring — in other words, teaching — easily a
couple thousand high school students, mostly in majority poor
schools.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, no one's more surprised than I am that I actually made 25
years as a high school teacher. Some are born to teach. I was just
not one of them. I didn’t get into teaching because I'd an
overwhelming desire to be around teenagers. In fact, just the
opposite was true. I figured I could stand the little punks until
something better came along. But the truth is, as the years went on,
I began to feel truly blessed by being around so many fine young men
and women.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I’ll
always remember my first year, 1988, at Stroman High School in
Victoria, Texas, awaiting the usual baptism of fire reserved for new
teachers. But before I could even do that, I had to go through
mind-bogglingly boring in-services the week before school. The labors
of Hercules were a cinch by comparison.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> During
that in-service week, I, a college graduate, had parts of the teacher
handbook read aloud word for word, as if I couldn’t do that myself.
On one particularly torture-filled day, I was barred from working in
my room because I had to listen to some motivational speaker’s
incredibly lame attempts at humor.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
that’s pretty much what all teachers go through before the start of
school. I’m no prognosticator. I've no idea which of the 20-odd
Democratic candidates will win the nomination. But during these first
weeks of school, I can safely predict that the anxiety level will be
dangerously high for teachers. If you know one, be patient. That
person is passing through a circle in hell. It can all work out and
usually does, even if, at the time, that’s hard to believe.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> That
first year, my last-period class was senior lower-level English.
Think </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Welcome
Back, Kotter</span></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;">’</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">s
sweathogs, and you’d have a pretty good approximation of the bunch
I found waiting for me. Since it was the ’80s, all the girls had
their hair teased and moussed up to what looked like a foot or more.
They all wore black clothes and globbed on dark eyeliner so thickly
they could have auditioned for </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The</span></span></em><span style="font-size: medium;">
</span><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Bride of
Frankenstein</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">.
My rookie knees were shaking. But as has fortunately happened to me
more often than not in my career, I grew to love that class. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Schools
all over this country, brimful with anxious teachers and nervous
students, will begin or already have begun. I had 25 years of those
high-anxiety beginnings. May this year’s crop of teachers have as
much luck and fun as I ended up having.</span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /><br />
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-62745762568717220082019-01-18T08:29:00.000-08:002019-01-18T08:30:14.095-08:00Just Another Pretty Face<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> No
longer content to hide under our beds, Russians are everywhere these
days from fake memes and online trolling to NRA galas, Trump Tower
and, maybe, even the White House. It takes me back to my year in
Moscow, 1988. Gorby and <i>glasnost</i> were in, as was rock, long
hair, and dissent. I felt so at home.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I was
working on my study, which I hoped would be the crowning achievement
of my academic career, “The Moral Advancement of the Soviet People
Because of Their Contacts with Americans.” Although, much to my
surprise, things weren't going so hot. My interviews with Russians
would go well, until they found out I was American. Then they'd try
to interest me in smuggling, you know, the usual – designer jeans,
Playboys, nuclear warheads, toilet paper. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I got
so discouraged I spent most of my time wandering the streets of
Moscow, foraging for edible food. One twilight I ended up at the
University of Moscow, a hotbed of the kind of activism we saw here in
the states during the early eighties. Spying the bulletin board with
its gigantic posters advertising a Milton Friedman Fan Club, a
conference on how to smirk like Donald Trump (hmm, that might explain
some things), and a colloquium on unenlightened self-interest, a
small notice in the corner caught my eye.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It was
an announcement of a meeting about, of all things, Lenin. Now this
was an eye-opener. What would I find at such a conclave – a cabal
of geriatrics planning sedition while comparing gall bladder
surgeries? I grabbed the address and went straight there.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> At the
meeting, I found thirty people crammed into a living room the size of
a walk-in closet, literally sitting on top of one another, eating
cabbage rolls, sampling just picked mushrooms, downing shots of vodka
along with Pepsi chasers, and arguing passionately about all sorts of
intellectual topics. I knew right away I'd come to the right place.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I
overheard a distinguished middle-aged gentleman with a salt and
pepper beard argue, as he pointed at a bottle of Pepsi, that they
“should not drink this sugary example of capitalist thuggery.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “Dmitri,
this is <i>perestroika</i>, drink up!” a woman next to him replied.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “Excuse
me,” I interrupted, “what is the purpose of this meeting?</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “What
you see before you is our national tragedy, men and women who are in
the grips of terrible oppression,” Dmitri answered, then began to
weep openly and without shame.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “<i>Dobryy
vecher</i>,” said the woman, “I'm Anna. I'm sorry. Dmitri is much
too upset to talk. You see, we are a support group for unemployed
Lenin statue makers.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Dmitri
then grabbed my shoulders, sobbing, “All over the world Lenin
statues are being destroyed by peasants who don't understand great
art. It is too much to bear!”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “But
can't you make other statues?” I asked.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “Have
you ever seen Lenin's face,” Anna replied. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> She
picked up a small statue off the coffee table. The room suddenly went
quiet, everyone staring at this simple bronze statuette of Lenin.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “Look
at this face,” she said, then she began to sing (to the tune of
“Baby Face”):</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> There's
not another one to take his place, Lenin's face.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I'm
in socialist heaven when I see his pretty face.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “Look
at these cheekbone,” Dmitri sobbed. “I can't sculpt anyone else!”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “Listen,”
Anna said, “we all had years of training and were given all kinds
of privileges by the state. We enjoyed dachas, vacations on the Black
Sea twice a year, and toilets that actually flushed.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Men and
women began to cry. Some whimpered, “Imagine, a toilet that
actually flushes.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> “But
now,” Anna continued, “we have nothing. Nothing!”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Then
Dmitri screamed, “Life is hell. It is unbearable!”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Anna
slapped him, pulled his face close to hers and gave him a big,
passionate kiss. Then whispered in a sexy Lauren Bacall voice,
“Dmitri, let us dance, until we drop dead.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
meeting quickly broke up, and we had one of those barn-burners for
which Russians are justly famous. What an experience for an American
in Moscow to be hung by his heels out the window in below-zero
weather, while singing such great American favorites as “If I Had a
Hammer” and “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Those
Russians are such cards. I thought they had forgotten me, and to tell
the truth, my feelings (not to mention my frozen extremities) were
just a teensy bit hurt. But when the party finished, they dragged me
back up, and everyone gave each other big hugs and kisses. Then we
did the traditional Russian dance of Danceolovich Polnochke, which
roughly translated means “The Groin-Destroying Dance.”</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> After
several more shots of vodka with Pepsi chasers, we walked out into
the early morning streets of Moscow, promising undying
friendship. It was one of my most memorable experiences in Moscow,
ranking right ahead of finding a clean bathroom in the Moscow subway.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, there were many things I learned during my stay. Not to eat
food without smelling it, not to let fat bearded men who have been
eating cabbage kiss you on the lips, but, most of all, that though in
Dmitri's word's “life is hell” we can make it if only we have
enough vodka and an unlimited credit line from the Russian mafia,
like you-know-who who used to smirk so well. <i>Udachi</i>!</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-90239216031678764642018-12-28T16:37:00.000-08:002018-12-30T13:40:06.006-08:00My Neighbor Jerry<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">[<b>Blogger's note: </b>The piece below originally appeared in the December 26, 2018 issue of <i>The Fort Worth Weekly</i>. Since I was never quite happy with it, I kept reworking it<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">. This is, I hope, a final version.]</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> After
I texted a woman down the street that my next-door neighbor, had
died, she wrote back, “The grumpy guy?” Yes, the grumpy guy. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> My
neighbor Jerry was the quintessential Trump-loving, angry, old,
white, working class male – profanely belligerent, proudly
politically incorrect, and decidedly racist. And without a doubt, he
was the worst neighbor I've ever had. That said, in the past few
years, as his health began to fail, we became friends of sorts.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> About
14 years ago when he first moved in, he came over to introduce
himself. He told me he was moving from Meadowbrook because it was
getting a little too dark over there, “if you know what I mean.”
Then if that wasn't enough, he went on to explain that he wanted to
be a good neighbor, so I needed to tell him if he did anything wrong.
All that left me scratching my head, but, in retrospect, I should've
smelled trouble coming.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> It
didn't take long. After a few months of relative peace, it became
clear that Jerry was a week-end drunk and not a nice one. Because he
was spying on some neighborhood teens who were partaking of drugs, he
asked me to turn my porch light off. I complied, but one time I
forgot and did he tear into me. I explained to him that neighbors
don't talk to each other that way,. His response was to double down,
dropping f-bombs like a rap star. After that I made damn sure to
leave my porch light on.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, it wasn't much later when his demeanor shifted again.
Suddenly, he was all smiles and good cheer. Turned out, Bell
Helicopter had laid him off, so he needed to borrow my computer to
file for unemployment. I was glad to help, but, as my Daddy used to
say, no good deed ever goes unpunished. While hunting and pecking, he
noticed the “No War in Iraq” stickers on my file cabinet. It was
now confirmed. I was one those anti-American subversives Fox News had
warned him about. And from then on, living next door to him became a
living hell.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> One
of his favorite modes of harassment was to wait till almost midnight
then rev up his Dodge Ram truck, his twin glass packs hardly muffling
its 318 cubic inch engine, and make our south bedroom windows vibrate
like his dual chrome tailpipes. I often had to call the police on
him. But one Jim Beam drunk night, he called the police on himself.
I'm serious. Cops came over, asked me, what the hell? “Man, that
dude's just a few fries short of a Happy Meal, ain't he?” shared
one of Fort Worth's finest.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
the years of belligerence and drinking finally took their toll. About
five years ago, Jerry's health began to fail. One day Smoky his
German Shepherd got out. Since Jerry was in no shape to chase it,
another neighbor and I corralled it. After we returned his much
beloved dog, Jerry shook my hand and thanked me enthusiastically.
It'd been years since we'd had a civil conversation.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> At
the time, my late wife thought our <i>rapprochement</i> a God-send. I
wasn't sold it on it myself. But after she died, and Jerry's health
continued to decline, I tried to help him, rationalizing that she'd
have wanted it that way. I did all matter of things I thought I'd
never do. I called ambulances for him. During his frequent
hospitalizations, I mowed his yard and picked up his mail. I even
lifted him off the ground a couple of times. No easy task, since
Jerry was, even in ill-health, a big guy. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Yet
as much as I'd like to wrap this up in a pretty bow and make it a
feel-good story of our politically polarized times, I can't quite do
it. With his health in decline, Jerry surely mellowed, but he was
never an angel. Not many months ago, he bragged how he'd cussed out a
young pharmacy tech because of some perceived misstep, while at the
same ragging on one of drinking buddies for getting his panties all
in a knot over something Jerry'd said. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
I can't stop thinking how during the past few years, he'd call me
“bud” when we talked. I don't know if I really was much of a
friend to him. One thing I do know is Jerry wasn't just the grumpy
old drunk on our street. He was more than the angry white man people
saw from the outside. Like all of us, he had some good in him. I
hope he now gets the peace he never quite got in life.</span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-83196295831881767402018-10-24T13:18:00.001-07:002018-11-10T16:55:05.298-08:00Et Tu, John Miller!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<div style="line-height: 200%;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">You
got to hand it to the Trump Administration, even though they've had
more turnover than your neighborhood Walmart, it's managed to keep a
razor-focus on job number one, screwing over the American people.
While the nation was riveted by the Kavanaugh free-for-all, the
administration proposed weakening mercury regulations (mercury is
especially dangerous to children and fetuses) and effectively
eliminating the EPA office in charge of children's health. (And they
call themselves the pro-life party? Hmmm.) </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> With
all the distractions and uproar, it would have been easy for the
Trump Administration to lose focus, maybe, even cave in to common
sense and decency. So how does the Trump Administration do it?
According to Ihor Binko, former chief lobbyist for The Big Belching
Energy Corporation and now head EPA Administrator for Polluters, a
new office created by the Trump Administration, it's all been one
hard, long climb. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “Washington's
all aghast,” Ihor said, while sitting at a park bench on the
National Mall, munching his favorite hot dog with extra red dye #3.
“Cabinet members and twitter storms come and go. A new scandal pops
up every other day. But in our office, I make sure we keep our eyes
peeled on getting the job done: helping polluters navigate and avoid
the administrative state.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> After
I coughed up a good chunk of my tofu wrap, I asked Mr. Binko, wasn't
it the EPA's purpose to stop polluters? </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> He
chuckled. “Lots of people have that mistaken impression. Go
figure.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> On
deep background, Trump Administration official, John Miller, agreed
to talk to me on the phone, “Ihor, fine man, one of our top people.
Really! Believe me!”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “But
you don't think weakening mercury rules and eliminating the office
for children sends a bad message?”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “No,
that's fake news! And what's your name again? Wheatcroft-Pardue, what
is that, a hyphenated name? Sad. Little Kenny, we all know who wears
the pants in your family. You sound like a loser to me, an enemy of
the people. I got a good friend in Montana who can body slam you.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “Excuse
me.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “Listen,
I'm close to the President. Very, very close, if you know what I
mean. You play ball, maybe, I can get you an ambassadorship. Bound to
be some shithole country without one now.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “I'm
not interested in an ambassadorship. I just want to know how the
party that claims to be pro-life can back policies that are obviously
hazardous to young children?”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> “Pro-life
is better. It helped me – uh, the President, in his great, amazing
victory. That night was so, so amazing. Nobody thought we could do
it. But, interestingly, I was pro-abortion in my younger days. Lot of
guys went to Vietnam, but my Vietnam was 5<sup>th</sup> Avenue. After
all that sex with 10's, (I only do it with 10's, I'm not a loser,
like you) no STD's. Nothing, and me, without a condom. Always. Now
people say I have small hands. I can tell you I never heard any
complaints in bed before. Believe me.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> So
there you have it, despite having a “spokesman“ who way
over-shares, you truly have to hand it to the Trump Administration.
It has done exactly as promised. Help rich polluters ruin the
environment and our children's lives, too. The real question now is,
what are we going to do about it?</span></span></div>
</div>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-77089543842626715012018-04-05T14:16:00.000-07:002018-04-12T09:41:13.109-07:00Trump to Refugees: Drop Dead!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Over my
two decades as a high school ESL teacher, my refugee students were my
heroes. They'd left their countries in the midst of conflicts and
came here to learn a new language and culture, while at the same time
navigating the minefields of adolescence. Many were victims of our
country's foreign policy. In the nineties, that included my students
from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Vietnam. By the time I retired in
2013, Palestine and Iraq were added to that list.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> I'll
never forget one Salvadoran student, I had in the early 90's. This
young man was quite the charmer, always sporting a big grin, yet it's
clear to me now that part of this was show in order to hide what we
would call today PTSD. Once, he confessed to me that at night when he
heard police helicopters hover over his neighborhood, he always dove
under his bed and shook like a leaf because that sound of chopper
blades reminded him of <i>los escuadrones de la muerte</i> he and his
family had fled in El Salvador. Death squads our country backed with
weapons, money, and training.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In the
20-teens, my Iraqi students recounted to me tales of growing up in a
war zone. Immediately after we stupidly invaded their country, they
were forced to stay inside their homes because our troops, expecting
throngs “with sweets and flowers,” couldn't secure Baghdad. So
for months these children at very important ages for their
development couldn't go to school. And, of course, when they were
finally able to go out, they would often come upon the brutal
aftermath of firefights, IEDs, and suicide bombings, not something
we'd want any child to experience. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Today
with the Syrian Civil War dragging into its seventh year, and an
unstable Middle East, which we are partially responsible for, the
world has more refugees than at any time since World War II. In 2016
the UN Refugee Agency estimated that there were 22.5 million refugees
in the world. So, in the Age of Trump, what has been our response to
this crisis? In one word, obscene.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
Trump Administration had promised to take in 45,000 refugees during
fiscal 2018, a paltry number considering our population of over 325
million, being the largest economy in the world, and, as compared to
2016, when we accepted nearly 85,000 refugees. Even so, at the
halfway mark, we've only admitted a little more than 10,000. So in
this very important respect, the Trump Administration has gone all in
for globalization – or, as Pope Francis called it “the
globalization of indifference” to refugees. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Look
no further than recent news for proof of the world's
hard-heartedness. Netanyahu just changed his mind about resettling
African migrants. Anti-immigrant parties are ascendant in many Poland, Hungary, and now, Italy, while Trump demagogues about “caravans” of
“illegals." </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Yet
the fact is most refugees are not in Western countries, but in
Lebanon, Uganda, Kenya, and Jordan, countries much smaller
geographically and economically than we are, so much less able to
handle influxes of refugees. If these relatively poorer countries can
step up, why can't we? </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> We
have a moral responsibility to do more, as we have in the past, yet
today even mainstream Republicans seemingly equate refugees, who have
already gone through a rigorous vetting process, with terrorists.
That's not just a lie. It's the big lie on steroids. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">But,
worst of all, it's self-defeating. Under Trump, the world's opinion
of the U.S. has plummeted. A Gallup survey earlier this year
documented an almost 20-point drop in global confidence in American
leadership. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But if
we accept more refugees, we might be able to change the world's
opinion. Our intransigence is especially galling to me because, from
my experience, we are good at assimilating refugee students. After
the shortest time imaginable, my students, no matter where they came
from, would be acting like typical American teenagers. Typical
American teens who later would be a credit to their adopted country.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;">_______________________________________________________________________</span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Correction: </b>An earlier version of this piece stated that the U.N. Refugee Agency had estimated there to be 65.6 million refugees. That is in error. The U.N. Refugee Agency estimated that there were 65.6 million "forcibly displaced people worldwide." There are an estimated 22.5 million refugees. That error is now corrected. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-77491038845765631852018-03-01T15:16:00.000-08:002018-03-01T15:16:38.442-08:00Believe it or Not, Trump is Not Our Main Problem<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Donald
J. Trump, America's fevered dream, a lonely grifter who expertly used
fear of the other to ascend to our nation's highest office . . . He
strode fully-formed, from New York tabloids and reality TV, with the
huckster's gift of gab and the uncanny ability to hone in on other's
weaknesses. But from that fateful day he rode down on his golden
escalator in Trump Tower, he's been our slow-motion national train
wreck from which we cannot for even a day avert our eyes. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Just
try, for I have, and every time I do, I still can't quite ignore him.
Just think of all the myriad of ways, he has sullied his office –
the constant lying, the shameful bullying of others, his blatant
disrespect of our courts and media, his cartoonish threats in the
U.N. to destroy another sovereign nation, and, most shameful of all,
the defending of Nazis and white supremacists. Interestingly, what
would have dominated the news for any other President, the paying off
of a porno star, doesn't even make the cut. Chew on that awhile.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> By the
dizzying number of unforced errors, Trump has proven his worst
detractors correct. He is spectacularly unsuited to be President. So
it is with some sadness I have to admit that Trump is not our main
problem – even though saying that I know I might well lose my
glow-in-the-dark Trump Hater decoder ring that George Soros uses to
communicate with we minions of the Deep State.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A
number of factors made Trump's election possible a strong right-wing
news media impervious to facts and the manipulation of voters through
largely unregulated social media sites, to cite only a few. But
whenever I hear the usual political blah-blah-blah about Trump
speaking for the forgotten man, Democrats being condescending toward
the working class, or Hillary Clinton being such a flawed candidate,
I can't shake the notion that something very important is being
ignored.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Namely,
that Hillary Clinton, for all her many weaknesses, real and imagined,
managed to win by nearly 3 million votes. So the proximate cause of
Trump being in the White House is not Russian bots, the mendacious
Fox News, or, even, the unpropitious James Comey, but because of the
out-dated, convoluted way we pick our Presidents. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It is
richly ironic that the Electoral College, which was supposed to be
our bulwark against populist demagogues, made it possible for the
most demagogic President ever to win. In Federalist No. 68, Hamilton
contends that the Electors would be “most likely to have the
information and discernment” to choose wisely so as to avoid
selecting someone “not . . . endowed with the requisite
qualifications.” To belabor the obvious, in December 2016 when the
Electors met last that didn't happen. Instead, they voted for the
obviously unqualified Donald J. Trump. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> So far
this century, we've had two candidates who lost the popular vote and
won the Electoral College, Trump and George W. Bush. And, if you're
of my political persuasion, that's more than enough to convince you
the Electoral College needs to go. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But if
you still need more reasons, here goes. Part of the Electoral
College's original purpose was to keep southern states relevant
despite their built-in disadvantage of a disproportionate number of
3/5's of human beings (slaves, in other words) in their populations. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> So it
helped slave states, and now it benefits lightly populated, largely
rural states that are predominately white. Think, Wyoming. So as the
nation becomes ever more diverse and urban, we will continue to elect
Presidents by a method that strengthens the vote of the minority at
the expense of the majority. This is not one person/one vote. It's
not majority rule. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> If
your city privileged a mostly white conservative neighborhood by
giving their votes more weight, regardless of our political
persuasion, we'd all be outraged, but that is exactly what happens
with the Electoral College. Wyomingites have 3.6 times the voting
power of Californians. The Electoral College is a radically
undemocratic anachronism that virtually guarantees we'll have more
Presidents who represent the minority of voters, not the majority. It
needs to be abolished. Period. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> That
can either be done by a constitutional amendment or by the National
Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), which is an agreement among
states that the popular vote winner will be elected President. Over
the years, upwards of 700 amendments have been introduced in Congress
to reform or abolish the Electoral College. It's time we finally got
the job done.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In
2012, Enrique Peña Nieto won by two-and-a-half million votes to
become President of Mexico. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron won by 10
million votes in France. In neither country, in fact, in no other
country does the second-place vote-getter win. Our presidential
elections should be no different. Just as Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School in Parkland, Florida should be the last school to face a
mass shooting, Donald J. Trump should be the last second-place
voter-getter to become President.</span></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-49617849028974782712017-09-11T13:48:00.000-07:002017-09-17T13:04:21.503-07:00A Houston Park, a Naked Angel, and Pure Evil: My Southern Heritage<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
admit it. I love grits with lots of butter, hot cornbread, and fried
anything. At 60, I still say “yes, sir, no sir, yes, ma'am, and
no, ma'am,” the way it was drilled into me as a boy. And, no matter
which side of the Mason-Dixon I land, I use the plural of you every
chance I get. In fact, I'm such a son of the south that my great
grandfather, a Tennessee farmer, was named after not only one
Confederate “hero” but two, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Yes,
I love my southern heritage, a phrase that's only besmirched, when
you package it as an excuse to keep symbols of white supremacy, which
in 2017 we should be long past defending. Our southern heritage, you
see, is not only all that bad stuff. It's our food, our friendliness,
our beautiful accents. But, most of all, it's our culture. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Imagine
American music without the three Southern cities of Memphis, New
Orleans, and Nashville. It can't be done. American music does not
exist without the south. And our culture doesn't stop there. Southern
writers, like Robert Penn Warren, Flannery O'Connor, and William
Faulkner taught me the pure joy of words and gave me, a teenage
misfit in suburban Houston, a way to make sense of the craziness that
has always been the south. To me, this is my southern heritage. But,
obviously, others see things differently.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> When
I was a teenager, after a morning doctor's appointment in downtown
Houston where my dad worked, I was allowed to play glorious hooky the
rest of the day. That afternoon I wandered through underground
Houston, long hallways under streets that connected downtown
buildings back in the seventies, and, for all I know, still. Later, I
found myself in the old downtown library, a multi-story red-brick
affair, now long torn down. But I didn't stop there. I wandered all
the way to Sam Houston Park, a little west of City Hall. If you've
ever driven on 45 through downtown Houston you've seen it, an oasis
of green with old buildings, and yes, a statue.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Picture
me there, a 70's high school punk happily AWOL from the internecine
conflicts of high school, sunning himself on a bench, just enjoying
a little teenage R&R. After breathing in all that youthful
freedom, I noticed an especially ugly statue looming behind me. It
was a male angel with wings and a sword and not much else on.
Curious, I got up and spotted its name: the Spirit of the
Confederacy. I then read its dedication: “to all the heroes of the
south who fought for the principles of states rights.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Gob-smacked,
I reread the inscription again and again. Here we were in the
seventies, and there was an actual statue honoring those who'd taken
up arms against our nation, who, in other words, were traitors. And,
even though, I was white and privileged, I remember being bowled over
that in downtown Houston, where many African-Americans lived and
worked, there'd be a statue to people who thought enslaving other
human beings was not just par for the course, but worth fighting an
especially brutal war over. How the hell must that make them feel?</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> One
argument I've seen on Facebook is that this struggle over statues is
overblown. It's just not important. One meme blared as Harvey was
pummeling my hometown with trillions of gallons of water that nobody
in Houston now cared about Confederate statues. A statement, I
suspect, even then was false. This urge in 2017, some commentators
believe, to get rid of these statues is just so much misplaced
angst. Why now? they opine. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
this specious argument can be turned around. If the existence of
these statues is as unimportant as some conservatives claim, then one
could plausibly argue, why not take them down if some members of the
community are offended by them. Yet the truth is these statues, like
most symbols – our flag, for instance – are important. Yes, the
removal of these offensive monuments will not magically heal the very
deep and real wounds caused by America's original sin of slavery. But
it is still very much a fight worth having and having now. </span></span>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-27690229515995734532017-05-30T10:31:00.001-07:002017-06-10T15:26:23.123-07:00Dating in Your Sixties or Beware of Crazy Greek Psychotherapists!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Remember
how awful junior high was? Well, dating in your sixties is worse.
Women complain of hoped-for princes turning out to be frogs,
mansplainers, or pervs, but, let me tell you, it's not so easy for
men either. After my wife of 30 years died almost 2 years ago, I
thought having a long successful marriage, plus still having my hair
and being in relatively good shape, would bode well for me in the
dating world. After all, I'm a nice guy, hard-wired for a long-term
relationship. Surely, some woman would see that, and the rest would
be history.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Boy,
was I ever wrong! Think something on the scale of Columbus believing
that bumping into a few islands in the Caribbean meant he was on his
way to China and mega-riches or working-class voters buying any of
Trump's flim-flam, faux-populist rhetoric. World-class wrong!</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> For
example, none of the dozen or so women I've dated have been my ideal
exactly, but I've always tried to see the good in each one. Some had
nice smiles, while others were good conversationalists. But women,
I've found, are not quite so broad-minded. They're like shoppers who
know exactly what they want, and it hasn't been me. I don't seem to
display quite the self-confidence of the narcissistic sociopaths they
divorced and are used to. For example, I've been dumped for rather
exacting reasons: not being able to salsa dance, not traveling to
the “right” places, and, my personal favorite so far, being too
intelligent.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1496163408892_7545"></a>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A while back, I exchanged emails with an attractive
woman from Match.com. I learned she was Greek and a psychotherapist.
Of course, I didn't know then that she was crazy. But when we talked
on the phone, I ought to have figured it out. Enough red flags were
raised that for a moment there I felt like I was in the middle of a
Mao-era Chinese ballet. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> After
she wondered how she would know me when we met, I told her I could
wear my baseball cap. “That's a deal breaker!” she exclaimed.
Taken aback, I explained I'd only wear it till she saw me, then
discreetly put it away. That seemed to calm her, for a while. Then
when she found out where I live, in a working-class, urban
neighborhood, you would've thought <i>mi barrio</i> was a slum known
for druggies and drive-byes, instead of great taco trucks and pho. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Despite
all the red flags, we met for lunch, and it went pretty well.
Afterwards, we exchanged hugs and agreed to a second date. Or so I
thought. But that night I got the “adios” email from her, which
happens. I've rejected women and been rejected, but you try to do it
nicely, not like a certain crazy, Greek psychotherapist.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> She
wrote: I want to “enjoy the rest of my life with a romantic partner
who wants and is ready to focus on his last love. You are not him.
<span style="font-weight: normal;">BTW, You are not the only one who
watches 'Friends' and borrowing their 'sometime' line. Not very
unique for a writer. LOL . . . I feel great to have said the Truth.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> I
had to ask my daughter about that “Friends” line. Who knew that
show had a copyright</span> <span style="font-weight: normal;">on the
phrase, “Let's go out sometime?” I sure didn't. But in the end,
the crazy, Greek psychotherapist, who seems like she might need a
little work upstairs herself, did me a big favor. Honestly, would I
have really wanted to go on a second date with that nut job, even if
she was quite attractive?</span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Undeterred I've gone on to date two other women. A
Brazilian who sent me tons of cute texts, until she broke our third
date. And I haven't heard back from her since. Then I had 2 dates
with a gorgeous 54-year old with a personal trainer, until she
regained her sense of sight.</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Sure, I think about giving up sometimes, but then I
realize all of it – the crazy Greek psychotherapist, the Brazilian
addicted to cutsie texts, and <i>la belle dame sans merci </i>– are
just fodder for my memoir, tentatively entitled, <i>Worse than Junior
High: the Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue Story</i>.</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-53086002286998687462016-12-14T17:18:00.001-08:002016-12-16T14:34:26.133-08:00The G(OP)rinch that Stole Democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> This
morning, in front of my foggy bathroom mirror, I try once again to
enunciate the phrase I've had trouble saying without a shudder now
for more than a month, “President-elect T-tr-tr-um . . .” </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Don't
worry. I'll get it right some day. But, I still wonder, why did<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> </span>just
enough Americans in the right states pick a former-reality TV star
with no experience in government to be the 45<sup>th</sup> President
of the United States? </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Is
it FBI Director Comey's fault? Or, perhaps, the blame lies with
Russian hackers? Or fake news? Or uneducated whites? Or, maybe, it's
the fault of our anachronistic and undemocratic Electoral College?</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Take
your pick. They've all been written about extensively, but one reason
hasn't received nearly enough attention. That the winning party, the
Republicans, has been involved in a long-term, well-funded project,
not to steal Christmas like the Grinch – that would be small
potatoes – but American democracy, itself. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481734653283_2959"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481734653283_2958"></a>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> This project can be
traced back to corporate lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice
Lewis Powell's infamous 1971 memo, a reveille, not for radicals, but
for big business to organize against – well, us, the people. Powell
laid it all out, calling for<span style="color: #333333;"> “careful
long-range planning and implementation,” backed by a “scale of
financing available only through joint effort.” </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="productTitle"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="title"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> As
chronicled in Jane Mayer's essential </span></span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Dark
Money</i></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>:
The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical
Right</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">,
a</span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
handful of right-wing billionaires, the Kochs, the Scaifes, the
Olins, the DeVoses, and a few others took up Lewis Powell's clarion
call and have worked tirelessly over many years to turn our country
rightward. To install a government to do their biding, to allow their
companies the liberty to rook the suckers with impunity and pollute
our air and water without the interference of pointy-headed
bureaucrats. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> They
have poured billions of dollars into a dizzying array of think tanks,
foundations, and action committees. They've bought off media and
universities. In fact, they've even founded their own media, with
their own set of “facts.” </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Meanwhile,
with gobs of ready cash, the right-wing funded the Federalist Society
and bought their way into America's law schools to turn the courts
and the country rightward. And their hard work has paid off
handsomely. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In
2010, the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling made our politicians
even more reliant on the top 1%, whose interests are diametrically
opposed to most Americans. <span style="background: transparent;">But
not stopping there, i</span>n 2013, Republican-appointed judges on
the Supreme Court defanged the Voting Rights Act. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Since
then, Republican state legislatures have passed voter ID laws and
purged voter rolls in order to deny their fellow citizens, mostly
Democrats, their precious right to vote. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> As
Mehdi Hasan explained in<i>The Washington Post</i>,<span style="background: transparent;">
in North Carolina, “[on] the eve of the election, a federal judge
said she was 'horrified' by the 'insane' process by which people were
'being purged' from the voter rolls. In July, a three-judge panel
ruled that the state’s 2013 voting law could only be explained by
'discriminatory intent'” because it was obviously aimed at keeping
African Americans from voting.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: transparent;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"> This
“systematic disenfranchisement,” according to political reporters
Alice Ollstein and Kira Lerner</span><b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">,
“</span></b><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;">was
intentional and politically motivated. In the years leading up to
2016, Republican governors and state legislatures implemented new
laws restricting when, where, and how people could vote — laws
that disproportionately harmed students, the poor, and people of
color. In several instances, lawmakers pushing such policies said
explicitly that their goal was suppression of voters who favor the
Democratic Party.”</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: transparent;"> As
Zachary Roth succinctly put it in<i>The Great Suppression: Voting
Rights, Corporate Cash, and the Conservative Assault on Democracy</i>,
“At its core, this bold campaign has amounted to nothing less than
an effort to undermine democracy.”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481734653283_2999"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1481734653283_2998"></a>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: transparent;"> </span>It's
worth noting that Republicans originally got into the driver's seat
in battleground states because in 2010 they used every trick in the
book and then some to win majorities in order to gerrymander their
way to more and more power during the decennial redistricting,
regardless of their minority status. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In
2010, they blanketed districts with libelous mailers, shamelessly
sliming their Democratic opponents. Then having won, they redrew
districts with laser-like precision by using a computer program
called Maptitude. In Ohio, Republicans were able to win 75% of U.S.
House seats with just 51% of the vote. In Pennsylvania, according to
Dave Daley's accurately-named <i>Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the
Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy</i>, Pennsylvania
Republicans won 72% of the House seats with only 49% of the vote.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> So
by hijacking the courts; using computer programs to ruthlessly
redistrict and thus, to effectively disenfranchise so many voters;
and by then passing voter ID laws while purging voter rolls, all to
keep Democratic constituencies from exercising their right to vote,
the Republicans have blatantly stolen American democracy in order to
seize power. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Republicans
now control both the executive and legislative branches of the
federal government. And very soon, after a new right-wing justice is
appointed, they will control all 3 branches of the federal
government.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> This
naked thievery of our democracy has been in reality a slow-motion
coup that has led directly to the election of a rich vulgarian unfit
by both temperament and experience to be the 45<sup>th</sup>
President of the United States and, also, to me, still sadly standing
in front of my foggy bathroom mirror, trying not to choke on my own
words.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-65023312250345317732016-09-16T08:47:00.000-07:002016-09-16T08:59:24.460-07:002020: Welcome to Dystopian America: Like Us, But Only Worse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1473801240602_5355"></a>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It's 2020, and even the most jejune commentators are
bored to death of the constant belaboring of the utter irony of 20/20
vision in the American dystopia of 2020. The very idea that anybody
in the government, </span><span style="font-size: medium;">ensnared</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">as
it is in a gridlock so crippling that it can best be described as
more akin to <i>rigor mortis</i>, has vision is ludicrous on the face of it.
Polls show that amazingly Congress is even more unpopular than ever,
scoring far below tech help, used car and insurance salesmen, and
even below vegans.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> A
small but dedicated cadre of the most-conservative of Republican
House members, who because of gerrymandering have safe districts as
long as they act like bombthrowers instead of reasonable legislators,
have managed to stall almost every bill since January of 2019, even
shutting down the federal government multiple times, using the always
reliable debt ceiling as a cudgel. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Adding
to the general chaos has been Democratic representatives staging
sit-ins whenever there is a mass shooting, which has averaged about
once a month of late. And, if that's not enough, Black Lives Matter
demonstrators have staged raucous protests and shut down major
thoroughfares in Washington, D.C. out of frustration with the
continuing inaction of the federal government. Throw the Democratic
governors of California, New York, and a handful of other states
threatening to declare their entire states Sanctuary States unless
comprehensive immigration reform is immediately implemented into the
mix, and you get the general idea that the Obama-era dysfunction is
now on steroids.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1473801240602_5366"></a>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> And all because of a computer program called </span><span style="font-size: medium;">Maptitude</span><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">.
</span></span><span style="font-size: medium;">After the 2010 elections, Republican
operatives were able to use it to draw districts that resembled
Rorschach blots that with computerized precision were able to combine
different African-American communities for a Democratic district, and
then with the African-Americans safely ensconced in one
Democratic-safe district draw several districts that would be
Republicans-insured districts for years to come, regardless of the
outcome of presidential elections.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Before
the midterms, Democrats were able to work with a handful of
Republicans in order to pass a modest raise in the federal minimum
wage, a substantial but inadequate infrastructure bill, and some
tinkering at the edges of what was once called Obamacare. In 2018,
almost all those Republicans who committed the deadly sin of
cooperating with Democrats were soundly defeated by opponents so
conservative they'd make Ronald Reagan look like the head of
Politburo.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> In
2020, President Hillary Clinton has her hands full. Like her husband,
she has been impeached by the House, and now, faces trial in the
Senate. After her electoral college landslide victory in 2016,
Republicans knew not to despair. They bided their time, until the
midterm elections, when the electorate favors them by being whiter
and older than the general population. And it paid off because of
America's unique mid-term elections when a small percentage of voters
can essentially overturn what the larger, more representative
electorate in a presidential election year voted for.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> So the
umpteenth rumor of the death of the Republican Party proved to be
wrong yet again. In 2018, the House increased its Republican
majority, while the Senate reverted back to Republican control.
Facing a do-nothing Congress in the midst of out-right revolt,
President Clinton decided to do the only thing she could – issue
executive orders on a variety of issues, including immigration and
the environment. Taking none of that lying down, Republicans played
their trump card, so to speak, and got a special prosecutor with an
open-ended mandate. After months of testimony, Republican researchers
announced they found the smoking gun, what they believed to be
perjured testimony given by the President, ironically not on Benghazi or emails, but on some inconsequential documents that one of the many congressional committees investigating her had subpoenaed. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1473801240602_5374"></a>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Besides impeachment, the Republican-led House hasn't
done much, except busy itself with largely symbolic votes to overturn
completely or </span><span style="font-size: medium;">partially</span> <span style="font-size: medium;">what
was once called Obamacare, but is now derisively labeled Hillarycare.
The running tally now is 75 votes against and counting.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, 2020 is also an election year, and what a race it's been.
Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, former TV-star Scott Baio, and Willie
Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame lead another “yuge” pack of
Republican presidential (and Fox News) hopefuls. </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Amazingly
after their last electoral drubbing, the Republican field has even
outdone the Trump of 2016 in their xenophobic, anti-immigrant rants.
They promise not only to build a wall but to send troops to the
border to stop disease-infested, gang-banging, criminal Mexican and
Central American immigrants or, depending on the day or audience, to
stop ISIS-inspired terrorists who are, they claim, sneaking in the US
by the truckload.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> And
yet, multiple polls have shown that the American electorate has moved
even further to the left, fewer and fewer identifying as conservative
or Republican. Hefty majorities now favor a single-payer system of
national health insurance and giving the undocumented a path to
citizenship. And, it's widely agreed that President Clinton, if she
survives her impeachment trial, will be reelected easily.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1473801240602_5382"></a>
<span style="font-size: medium;"> If she does, the Republican drought in winning the
popular vote for the presidency will then stretch to twice in 32
years, a truly horrendous record, almost </span><span style="font-size: medium;">unparalleled</span>
<span style="font-size: medium;">in American history. But with the inspired scheming of
the Republicans, each Democratic victory has proven diaphanous,
almost-Pyrrhic-like. They can win the presidency, but can't do
anything once they're elected.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> The
net effect is that we have a center-right government of a center-left
country with your average citizen left with no way to effectively
change government policies – all because of a well-financed and
well-organized political minority interested more in fundraising and
doing the bidding of the billionaire class than in governance. In
2020, I promise you, you won't need 20/20 vision to see the system is
utterly broken.</span></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-65902376292907846952016-09-09T08:45:00.000-07:002016-09-09T08:45:19.511-07:00True Confessions: My Boring, Boring, Boring Life Exposed!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> <b>You
know your life might be getting just a little too boring when . . .</b></span></div>
<ul>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You
look forward to the automated calls from your library telling you
that the item you ordered has just come in, and you even engage in
conversation with the computer-generated voice. What's really weird
is when it turns out to be one of best conversations you've had
lately.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">One
day you suddenly realize you haven't spoken face-to-face with a real
human being, except for your daughter and sales clerks, for weeks.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The
highlight of your social life is going to the downtown library every
other week, especially if you get the good circulation clerk, not
the frowny, unfriendly one. </span>
</div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You
actually look forward with eager anticipation walking around
downtown, while alternatively dodging and getting tangled up with
the annoyingly clueless throng of Pokemon Go! players.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You
know the schedule of your local NPR affiliate so well that you can
tell what time of day it is by what's playing on your radio, and
sometimes you even know what day of the week it is by what program
is on.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You
are so bored you waste hours engaging in what passes for political
“debate” these days with a couple of knuckle-dragging,
Trump-loving, crude-to-the-max, name-calling conservatives on an
on-line comment section, even though you know from the beginning
that it will change nobody's mind.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You
get excited making the grocery list for your weekly trip to Target,
a store you've been to literally hundreds of times before. And for
added excitement you decide to go in the morning rather than making
your usual afternoon trip. Then for a really wild time, you throw
caution to the wind and go an alternative route. Life in the fast
lane, watch out!</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Even
though you're not normally that great at crossword puzzles, you
become obsessed one Sunday with the New York Times Sunday crossword
and finish it completely. And you still have time to clean the house
and make your usual Sunday phone calls to your siblings and dad.</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">You
realize with utter mortification that you could describe in explicit
detail, leaving out nothing, all the dates you've been on since you
became a widower in front of your daughter, any child of any age,
mixed company, even the Pope, without censoring anything. And if
that's not depressing enough . . .</span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">It
then dawns on you with deep and utter embarrassment that your social
life isn't rated triple-X, a single-X, R, not even PG-13, but G for
general audiences, or, more appropriately, E for Extremely Boring. </span>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-75062970998169559022016-07-22T16:30:00.000-07:002016-07-22T16:30:16.744-07:00Beware the Coming Zombie Republican Apocalypse!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Here's
a sentence I never figured on writing: I agree with George W. Bush.
He may well be, as he fears, the last Republican President. After a
primary season historical in its tumult, easily the most chaotic
convention since 1968, and a smarmy conman, light on specifics and
posing as a strong man who can single-handily solve all our problems,
as its standard bearer, a real danger exists now that the Republican
Party will become a zombie party, the party of the living dead –
too weak to win the presidency but strong enough at the state level
and in the House to prevent Democrats from doing anything significant
for at least the next four years and perhaps longer.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Out
of the past 7 presidential elections, the Republican Party has only
won the popular vote twice, in 1988 and 2004. For Donald J. Trump to
win in 2016 so many things have to break right for him I'm doubtful
he can pull it off. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Today,
Nate Silver's 538 blog gives Trump a 39.7% chance of winning.
However, we're only a terrorist attack, a mass shooting, another
police assassination, and/or another Clinton scandal away from a
change in that trajectory. And how likely are one or more of the
above to happen? The way this year has gone, I'd say, pretty likely.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1469223123854_3331"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1469223123854_3332"></a>
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> So
Trump certainly could win. </span></span><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">No
reason exists for Democrats to be complacent.</span></span> <span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">Hillary
Clinton's present standing in the polls is roughly the same as John
Kerry's in 2004, and we all remember President Kerry's moving
inaugural speech after he took the oath of office on January 20,
2005, don't we? </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But
even if Clinton wins, the dysfunctional Republican Party, the party
of the living dead that cannot win a presidential contest, will still
have more than enough power to prevent a President Clinton or any
Democrat in almost every state from doing any of the people's
business till at least 2020 and perhaps beyond. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> How
did we get into such a fine mess? After the shellacking Republicans
took in 2008, when Democrats picked up 21 seats in the House and 8 in
the Senate, the Republicans didn't give up. They got even. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> As
recounted in Salon editor David Daley's </span></span><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Ratf**ked:
The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy</i></span></span><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">,
soon after its 2008 defeat Republican strategist Chris Jankowski had
an epiphany when he noticed a simple fact. The next election in 2010
ended in a zero. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In
other words, 2010 would not be just any election. If Republicans won
at the state level, they would be in charge of redistricting. As
Karl Rove said, “He who controls </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">redistricting</span></span></span></em><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">can
control Congress.”</span></span> <span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
the Republicans could pull it off, they'd be the masters of their own
fate.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Republicans
could gerrymander U.S. House congressional districts and state
congressional districts to favor their party. Financed by dark money
by far right-wing billionaires wanting lower taxes and no regulations
and using a fraction of the money it costs to run a national
campaign, Jankowski and his allies were able to make amazing gains in
the midterm elections in 2010. It was a tsunami, “the biggest
midterm swing since 1938.” Republicans gained 63 seats in the U.S.
House, and, more importantly, won an astounding 680 new seats in
state legislatures across the country.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> With
those victories and the help of a little computer program called
Maptitude, Republicans were able to redraw districts in such a way as
to give themselves overwhelming majorities even in blue states where
they lost the popular vote, like Pennsylvania and Ohio. In fact, the
congressional districts were drawn in such a way as to potentially
protect Republican incumbents, even in the case of a Democratic
landslide in a presidential election. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> So
even if Clinton wins and, perhaps, wins big, the House will still,
more than likely, remain in Republican control. And not just
Republican control, control by Republicans whose main reelection
worries will be solely from their right-wing flank. All because of
redistricting, they will have no reason to compromise and every
reason not to. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
Republican Party post-Trump could well be a party in chaos, nostalgic
for an imagined past, veering between white populist nationalism and
big business libertarianism – yet still powerful enough and with
plenty of what ex-Senator Phil Gramm called “the most reliable
friend you can have in American politics . . . </span></span><em><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: normal;">ready
money</span></span></span></em><em><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">”</span></span></em><span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;">
to block anything Democrats want to get done.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Then,
of course, next will come the midterms of 2018, when a
proportionately older and whiter electorate – who will have been
steeping in anti-Hillary messages – will show up at the polls angry
and voting Republican. It's not difficult to see that Republican
gains in 2018 could be substantial.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> As
Americans we face any number of incredible challenges that need to be
addressed – a decaying infrastructure, among the worst inequality
of any Western democracy, the shrinking of the middle class, the
hollowing out of our industrial base, a political system too
controlled by wealthy and secretive special interests – to name
only a few. Chances are that none of these problems, as great and as
important as they are, will be solved, even if Hillary wins big. So
beware, Beware the Coming Republican Zombie Apocalypse! </span></span>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-25576685858939711312016-06-29T15:01:00.000-07:002016-06-29T15:05:59.251-07:00An Open-Letter to Speaker Ryan: The People's House, Really?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2928"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2927"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2926"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Dear Speaker Ryan:</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2931"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2930"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2929"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I was just
gobsmacked when I heard you use the phrase “The People's House”
in your scolding of the Democrats after their gun control sit-in.
Although, I took it as a minor miracle you didn't immediately choke
on your words or that lightning didn't strike any where near you.
Granted, I didn't check the D.C weather reports for that day, so it's
possible the latter happened.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2934"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2933"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2932"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> How, I wondered,
were you able to utter the phrase, “The People's House,”
especially after criticizing Democrats for doing a sit-in because
they wanted to debate what were, after all, fairly mild gun safety
regulations with which the majority of Americans agree.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2937"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2936"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2935"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> According to a CBS
News poll taken after Orlando, 57% of Americans now support a ban on
assault weapons, a much more substantive proposal than anything the
House Democrats were putting forth. One bill the Democrats wanted to
debate was universal background checks, which a super majority of 89%
of Americans support, including substantial majorities of Democrats
and Republicans. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2940"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2939"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2938"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2941"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2943"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2942"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2946"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2945"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2944"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> How can you call it
“The People's House” when no debate is allowed over what the vast
majority of the people want? To call the present Republican House “The
People's House” makes a mockery of the term. As Sean Illing pointed
out in Salon in 2015, “<span style="color: #333333;">the GOP’s control of
Congress is . . . a scandal.” Obama beat Republican candidates
twice “with more than 50 percent of the popular vote.” Also,
“Democratic congressional candidates received 1.4 million more
votes than their Republican opponents in 2012. And yet Republicans
lost only eight seats that year. In a remotely representative system,
such results would not be possible.”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2950"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2949"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2948"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2947"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> So
what has happened in the world's last best hope? Your party, fueled
by dark money, was extraordinarily successful at rigging the system
in its favor by gerrymandering at the state level. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2959"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2958"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2957"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2956"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2955"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2954"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2953"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2952"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2951"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2962"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2961"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2960"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> As
Illing explained, “S</span></span><span style="color: #333333;">omething
like 55 percent of America’s congressional districts have been
redrawn to favor the GOP, while a paltry 10 percent have been redrawn
to favor Democrats. It’s difficult to overstate how anti-Democratic
that is. Republicans have essentially short-circuited the Democratic
process.”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2966"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2965"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2964"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2963"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
how did your party do that? “They’ve used advanced technology and
algorithms based on the most recent census data to redraw borders and
create the safest districts possible.” So because of your party's
rigging of the system, its influence in Congress is much greater than
its support among the actual people of America.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2970"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2969"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2968"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2967"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2971"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2972"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Another
more interesting way to say it is that all of us have collectively
been ratf**ked as Salon editor-in-chief David Daley puts it in his
provocatively titled new book, <i>RatF**ked: The True Story Behind
The Secret Plan To Steal America's Democracy. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Daley
points out that because of your party's successful effort to subvert
our democracy, blue states like Ohio and Pennsylvania that voted for
Obama end up sending super majorities of Republicans to Congress, all
because of gerrymandering. In Ohio's case, Republicans have a 12-4
advantage and Pennsylvania's delegation is 13-5 Republican.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2977"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2976"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2975"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2974"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2973"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, your party was only able to pull off this little coup because
of dark money. In fact, if it weren't for a handful of right-wing
billionaires, the Kochs, the Scaifes, the DeVoses, and a few others,
your party's hard right turn over the past few years would never have
been possible. They bought off media and universities. They
established think tanks and a 24-7 365-days-a-year campaign mode that
has transformed our nation for the worse.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2981"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2980"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2979"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2978"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2985"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2984"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2983"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2982"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2988"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2987"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2986"></a>
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333;"> As
described by Jane Mayer in her well-researched </span><span style="color: #333333;"><i>Dark
Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the
Radical Right</i></span><span style="color: #333333;">, the present-Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell once explained to a college class that there
are only three ingredients to building a political party: money,
money, and money. So according to your counterpart in the Senate,
such quaint notions as the people's will or the common good are not
ingredients in building a political party. Good to know.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2992"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2991"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2990"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2989"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> After
years and years of your party filling its coffers with dark money,
while doing nothing, being the Party of No, you have the gall to
lecture those who want to do the people's business. And to add insult
to injury, you call your bought-and-paid-for House, “The People's
House.” </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2996"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2995"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2994"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2993"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1467236194212_2997"></a>
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Given
all the above, I don't know whether to call your utterance of the
phrase “The People's House” chutzpah, delusional thinking, the
meaningless mouthing of political platitudes, or just politics as
usual as practiced in the second decade of the 21st century? Yet no
matter what I call it, the people, whose well-being should be the
primary objective of “The People's House,” will continue to be
the losers. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-29315989542728837542016-06-04T09:01:00.000-07:002016-06-04T09:06:44.384-07:00What I Did Not Tell You<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;">1</span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> At
the yellow house on our street –</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> the
one where the son once sold crack</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> out
of his converted garage window,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> his
driveway like a drivethru,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> a
couple weeks into your hospital stay,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> his
sister wandered off from bathing her 10-month old. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Maybe
to text someone, </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> or
probably to bitch about how absolutely bored </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> to
tears she was, or maybe just to stream </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> a
movie, <i>quien sabe? </i><span style="font-style: normal;"> To cut to
the quick,</span></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> the
10-month old drowned</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> in
just a tiny bit of soapy water.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
paramedics tried, but no.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> All
the family stood in their front yard </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> of
hard dirt and high weeds –</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and
wailed and wailed.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;">2</span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> It
sucks to get old.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Our
family doctor, around my age,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> was
going through something.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Dyed
the gray out of his hair,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> shaved
his mustache, </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> pumped
iron in earnest.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Even
I noticed. Surreptitiously,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
checked his wedding band.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Still
on, but just barely.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> You
see, he texted our 28-year old daughter,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> nothing
gross, no pics of his package,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> just
an “innocent” invite to coffee.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> While
you were splayed out </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> on
yet another hospital bed,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
phoned him from your bathroom.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> When
I told him he lost us as patients,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> he
started crying, honest-to-God tears,</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> telling
me how sorry he was </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> doing
this when he knew </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> how
afraid I was for you. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I will never
forgive him those tears.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "comic sans ms" , cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;">(Blogger's note: This poem was originally published in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review last month.) </span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-39791448480367343402015-11-09T07:49:00.000-08:002015-11-09T07:49:03.524-08:00A Husband's Case for Physician-assisted Suicide<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> One
March night I'll never forget, my wife grasped my hand, and looking
up from her hospital bed, her eyes locked on mine, she begged me to
sneak her pain meds from home. Tired of living with bone-numbing
pain, she wanted to overdose on pain medication, so she could finally
die in peace. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yiv4071648269yui_3_16_0_1_1439768838650_431411"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="yiv4071648269yui_3_16_0_1_1439768838650_431211"></a>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> It was heart
wrenching, her sad eyes looking up at me, pleading. But I told her
no. Then explained, as calmly as I could, that it wouldn't be good
for our daughter to have one parent dead and the other in prison. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">
Before she died this past July, my wife and I were blessed to live
for 30 years our own goofy, old-movies, cheap-date life. She was one
of the sweetest, most loving and giving people I've ever known. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> She
certainly didn't deserve to suffer as she did her last six months –
to endure eight ER visits, to be passed around like a hot potato by
three different hospitals, two skilled nursing facilities, two
long-term acute care hospitals, one rehab hospital – then to
finally, end up in hospice. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Take
it from me, there's nothing at all edifying about suffering and
certainly nothing edifying about watching the person you love most in
the world suffer day in and day out for months on end. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
refuse to put a cherry on top of it. My wife's last six months were a
living hell. She bore the full brunt of a confluence of medical
issues – chronic pain, a neurological disorder, an auto-immune
disease, and inflammatory arthritis. In April her pain specialist
straight-up admitted the strong narcotics he'd prescribed hadn't even
come close to controlling her pain. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
truth is, if my wife had had access to physician-assisted suicide,
she'd have used it without hesitation. As early as February, she told
me that she believed that death was now a better option than the
agony she lived with every day. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> My
wife was clearly at peace with ending her life, but in our home state
of Texas, physician-assisted suicide was never an option. Partly, I
blame the religious right's perverse and unscriptural indifference to
the suffering of others, but I also blame the tyranny of the
able-bodied, living forever in denial about death. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> When
most people imagine death at all, they envision it will occur some
time in the far, far future when they'll be surrounded, like some
Norman Rockwell painting, by all their loved ones at home. But the
truth is none of us knows when we will die or under what
circumstances. Many, if not most of us, will die in some kind of
hospital setting with tubes and electrodes stuck all over us.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Yet
I want someone to explain to me how is it right that if we have a pet
that was as racked by pain as my wife was for months on end, I'd be
considered cruel if I didn't bring it to the vet to be put down, but
humans, no? They must suffer and suffer like my wife, who writhed in
gut-wrenching pain nearly every one of her last 175 days. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Belgium
and Holland have physician-assisted suicide, as does Oregon, Montana,
Vermont, Washington, and now, California. In fact, across the
country, public opinion is swinging in the direction of
physician-assisted suicide. According to Gallup, almost 70% of
Americans now support it. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
sadly, it is too late for my wife. I can never change the horror,
the almost-constant terror of her last six months; though, believe
me, every day I wish I could. But just maybe if more states opt for
physician-assisted suicide some body else's loved one won't have to
suffer in the future, as my wife did. </span></span>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-76424063805885398142015-10-07T09:54:00.000-07:002015-10-07T14:01:57.712-07:00System Failure<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I'm
not clairvoyant, but I can safely predict that the NRA, that national
organization devoted to the coddling of mass shooters, will continue
to fan the irrational (not to mention, totally delusional) fear of a
government confiscation of guns and, even more importantly, continue
with their unending and ever profitable quest to line the pockets of
gun manufacturers unabated by either common-sense or decency. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
most importantly, the NRA will continue to push the total fiction --
what former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger called
very rightly “one of the greatest pieces of fraud . . . on the
American public by special interest groups” -- that the Second
Amendment gives Americans some kind of absolute right to own a
firearm. Despite the Heller and McDonald rulings, you can never
delete the actual text of the Second Amendment and that bothersome
phrase -- “well-regulated militia,” which
was, of course, the whole point to having a right to bear
arms.<br /> After each mass shooting – after Newtown, after
Charleston, and after Roseburg – President
Obama spoke eloquently that we must come to grips with the epidemic
of mass shootings in our country. And undoubtedly after the next and
the next and the next mass shooting at a mall, college, school, movie
theater, or church, there will be even more poignant speeches,
sermons, op-eds on the necessity to do something to stop this
continuing blight on our country that leaves other countries
wondering "what-the-hell?" </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
I can very safely predict that nothing much will change in America as
far as gun control goes. <br /> In Australia gun control measures were
passed after a mass shooting in 1996 that killed 35. Those measures
led to a 59 percent decrease in homicides between 1995 and 2006. But
laws like those have almost zero chance of being passed in the Home
of the Brave where so far in 2015 we have already experienced 297
mass shootings according to shootingtracker.com.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> If
the killing of 20 elementary-aged children in Newtown, Connecticut in
2012 didn't move Congress to act, do you really think the Roseburg
Massacre of 9 adult innocents will make one whit of difference? </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> How
do I know that future mass shootings, which we all know will
inevitably happen, will have no effect on the body politic? Because I
know the dirty little secret of US politics: our government doesn't
work.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> How
do I know? The federal minimum wage in 2015 is $7.25 an hour. It
hasn't budged for 6 years. If the minimum wage had kept up with
inflation since 1968, it would be above $10 an hour. Raising the
minimum wage up to $10.10 an hour would lift 50 million Americans out
of poverty, according to a study by the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst. <br /> Look at the depleted highway fund. Toll
roads, which I and most Americans hate, proliferate because the gas
tax used to pay for highway construction hasn't been raised since
1993. The American Society of Civil Engineers graded our
infrastructure as a D+ in 2013. Since we now have low interest rates,
this would be the perfect time to borrow money to build
infrastructure. It would create jobs now and kickstart our lagging
economy. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Infrastructure
improvement is actually something government has traditionally done
well. In 1956 the Congress passed the National Interstate and
Defense Highways Act, which led to our interstate highway system that
helped to grow our nation's economy. Even so, I can safely predict
that any action by the present Congress to improve our infrastructure
will be minimal at best.<br /> Keeping guns from nut cases, helping
low-wage workers, keeping our highways repaired, and our
infrastructure modern -- in a functioning democracy none of these should really be political
issues. <br /> But because our government can't do any of the above,
it's a sure sign something is terribly wrong.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> If
bills like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that will end up benefiting
mostly the wealthy, can be passed, despite strong opposition, but
bills to help average Americans never see the light of day, my
question is this: are we really anymore the government of the people,
for the people, and by the people?</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
really sad thing is – all of us already know the answer to that
question.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-64463017925052190932015-09-18T12:59:00.000-07:002016-02-23T08:49:15.992-08:00Farewell, Donald, We Hardly Knew Ye!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">(Blogger's Note: This is the unedited version of my letter to <i>The Fort Worth Star-Telegram</i>, a once fairly decent, local newspaper.) (Another Blogger's Note: I had thoughts of deleting this post or, at least, changing the title, but now that it's late February of 2016 and the Donald is still the front runner. <i>Mea culpa</i>, I think it's a good reminder that we can all be wrong. Just a week or so ago, I watched some of the Republican debate before the South Carolina vote. Twenty minutes was my max. I will never understand how Trump supporters can listen to his incessant whining and bullying. My thought was that he'd finally jumped the shark, but, no, he won South Carolina. Incredible year. What we are watching is a monster created by years of ideologically-biased news coverage. His supporters, the great mis-informed mass, who facts cannot reach. It's a scary time. Who knows how it will turn out?)</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> After
reading the <i>Star-Telegram</i>'s coverage of the Donald in Dallas, I admit
to now being just in awe at Mr. Trump's oratorical skills. Forget
that first Republican President's Gettysburg Address. Too old school.
Too boring.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Here's
the Trumpman giving a summary of his platform: “We are going to
have so many victories . . . and they are going to be great victories
and we are going to have them all the time.” </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> What
do you think? His word choice just might make it to the third-grade
level, of course, with absolutely no depth and no details. It's as if
he designed his discourse especially for Fox News viewers.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> But,
let me make this clear, I'm not against Donald Trump. As a liberal
Democrat, I'm hoping, I'm praying he will be the Republican party
nominee in 2016. Please, my Republican brethran, vote Trump. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> You
will wake the sleeping giant of the Latino vote, and my side will win
big. It'll be a great victory for a better, more inclusive America,
and, to top it off, it'll make all the Trumpsters' heads spin.
Literally.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> (As a bonus, here's, my response to an annoying, name-calling troll on the S-T website.)</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Let's see if I can break this down for you, buddy, and
maybe do it without name-calling, which you might want to try doing
because you only do name-calling when you don't have much of an
argument.<br /> In 2004, 43 won because he won 44 percent of the Latino
vote. Since then Republicans have not won such a high percentage of
the Latino vote. That is an important reason the GOP did not win in
2008 and 2012. A CNN poll found that 82 percent of Hispanics view
Trump unfavorably. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> You may "think" that those who are truly
informed (those extremely misinformed Fox "News" viewers,
like yourself) back Trump, but that is wishful thinking. You cite no
facts because you have none. Let me make this clear to you. Any of
the Democratic candidates would beat Trump. The electoral college
vote would be a landslide because the high number of Latinos in our
most populated states. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> It's not going to happen of course. Trump is
already becoming yesterday's news. But hope springs eternal. Take
care, and try using facts next time, buddy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
(And more . . .)<br />
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> To point out the obvious, again, you don't cite one single
fact. Your method of argumentation is bullying, name-calling, and an
inability to write anything coherent on the subject at hand. (A clue:
the subject at hand is not Hillary, Benghazi, or CNN. It's whether
Trump could garner enough of the Latino vote to win a national
election.) </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Obviously, he could not because of his high negatives.
Trump's extreme xenophobia might excite the Republican base, but it
makes him unelectable in a national election. The leaders of the Republican party already know this, so there is no way he will win
the nomination. </span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"> Even though I wish he
would win because, as I've already explained, Democrats would win
such a big victory it would make Trump's supporters' heads spin.
Quite literally, I hope. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: medium;"> </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<span data-offset-key="68s9p-0-0" data-reactid=".0.0.2.0:$976989892360828_978424788884005.0.$right.0.0.0.0.0.0.$editor0.0.0.$68s9p.0:$68s9p-0-0"><span data-reactid=".0.0.2.0:$976989892360828_978424788884005.0.$right.0.0.0.0.0.0.$editor0.0.0.$68s9p.0:$68s9p-0-0.0"></span></span>
</div>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-82464433597964710972015-05-06T12:27:00.000-07:002015-05-21T08:34:09.536-07:00No Joke: The 84th Texas Legislature<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div align="CENTER" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Any
op-ed about the 84<sup>th</sup> Texas Legislature should just really
write itself – the setup, the joke, the punchline. It's <span style="font-style: normal;">a
formula the late-great Molly Ivins mined for decades. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span>A
corrupt Texas pol proposes a bill for reasons so venal only a moron
could possibly buy into it. The reader, now in the know, slaps his
forehead, muttering, “Those idiot Texas legislators.” Then tilts
his head back for a good, long chuckle. But in the end, who is this
joke really on? You, me, us. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
this legislative session, with its compendium of bad bills that sound
like a horror movie film festival: “Open Carry,” “Open Carry
Goes to College,” “The Vouchers That Ate Public Ed,” is just
choke-full of punchlines. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Take
perhaps the worst bill of a very bad lot, Representative Phil King's
HB40. This bill is explicitly designed to take power away from the
people, so that energy companies have the inalienable right to frack
where and how they want. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Poor,
poor Big Energy. Doesn't your heart just bleed? Those mean ol' Denton
voters banned fracking, but Big Energy saw right away that kind of
grassroots democracy had to be stopped and now. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> What
if other cities and towns got in their heads that they had the right
to ban fracking? Anyway, what's more important – the will of the
people or Big Energy? In today's Grand Old Party, the answer is
clear. Screw. the. people.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
not only are our legislators making Texas safe for disposal wells and
the earthquakes that will surely follow, but, dripping with the milk
of human kindness, seek to protect that most endangered of all
species, the plastic bag with – I love this – “The Shopping Bag
Freedom Act.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Such
blue cities as Austin, Dallas, and Laredo had the temerity to
restrict the use of plastic bags. These restrictions, Republicans
claim with a straight face, would lead to the Californication of the
great state of Texas. Such a non-reason is beneath contempt, to be
believed only by those poor wretched souls forever trapped in the
right-wing echo chamber on the Planet Crazy. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> The
upshot is, towns and cities, the governments closest to the people,
must not be allowed to pass bills in their citizens' self-interest
when the energy sector is even slightly inconvenienced because in
Texas Big Energy trumps all.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> My
own senator, Konni Burton has taken this a step further. She now
covers her ears, saying, “Lalalalala,” whenever a lobbyist from a
city is within earshot. But what makes Senator Burton even more
extra-special is that, bless her heart, she is the walking, talking
embodiment of the deep doo-doo we're now in. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> As
I watched her “debate” Libby Willis back before the November
elections, I couldn't help but wonder what exactly was the Republican
vetting process for their candidates. During the debates, Burton came
across as, to put it charitably, an intellectual lightweight and a
political dilettante. In fact, I defy any one, regardless of
political affiliation, to watch those debates and think the best
person won the election. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
what her ultimate triumph at the polls showed was that now Republican
voters will vote for anybody with an R by their name, even an obvious
incompetent like Burton. In what is pretty much a one-party state
now, that's frightening as hell, and probably explains better than
anything else why there are so many bad bills this session.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> To
console ourselves, we might be tempted to snicker at the over-sized
clown car that is the 2015 version of the Texas Lege, but the truth
is, bad government isn't funny. It's deadly. Just ask those people in
West. Taking money away from public schools, and giving Big Energy a
blank check will make us all poorer and less healthy. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
while historically Texas government has been conservative, this new
breed of science-denying, evidence-ignoring, Koch-brothers-backed
coterie is so, so much worse. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> One
political savvy friend wryly observed that because so few Texans
bothered to vote we now have the government we deserve. But the truth
is -- nobody deserves this. In fact, I believe all of us have an
inalienable right to good government, one that works for the average
person and the common good. But how we get there is up to us.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> What
we shouldn't do is give up hope. Yes, Big Money, gerrymandering, a
God-awful voter ID law, and apathy are going to be very hard to work
against. But with jokers like Konni Burton and Jonathan Stickland
gumming up the works, a revival of progressive populism cannot be
far off.</span></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-18274282744465989582014-12-13T13:45:00.000-08:002014-12-15T14:19:45.063-08:00Being Raked over Coals<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It might seem strange to enjoy being raked over the coals for my political writings, but I always count it an honor of sorts. Here's a link to a libertarian-leaning lawyer's blog post that zeroed in on my most recent piece in The FW Weekly. <a href="http://right-winggenius.blogspot.com/2014/12/contrarian-view-low-voter-turnout-isnt.html">http://right-winggenius.blogspot.com/2014/12/contrarian-view-low-voter-turnout-isnt.html</a><br />
Interesting stuff. Of course, nothing will ever compare (knock on wood) with the shellacking I got on the Free Republic site after my piece in the FW Star-Telegram about how undemocratic our Constitution is. <a href="http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/921320/posts?page=55">http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/921320/posts?page=55</a> Good times!<br />
<br />
Below is my reply to Adam Arrington:<br />
<br />
<div class="yiv6919912200" dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1416875354994_3698">
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_9795">
Mr. Arrington,</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_11110">
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_11108">
Thank
you for reading my piece in the FW Weekly. I appreciate any and all
feedback. And I suppose it's sort of an honor to be raked over the
coals, whether those coals are red-hot or day-old cold. We obviously
disagree, but I commend you, for the most part, for your tone, which is
less personal invective than substantive disagreements. So let's get to
that . . .</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_10277">
</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_10279">
I'm always more than a little
surprised how any one who looks at the facts objectively can defend
voter suppression, regardless of their political persuasion. The voter
ID laws that have proliferated across the country in the past few years
originally came from ALEC, a right-wing group. The bills ostensibly
address an issue -- in-person voter impersonation -- that is extremely
rare. The true purpose is obvious: to suppress voters who would vote for
Democrats, and it's worked remarkably well.</div>
</div>
<div class="yiv6919912200" dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1416875354994_4345">
<br class="yiv6919912200" clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_12016">
The
GAO released a report in September of this year that the voter ID laws
in Kansas and Tennessee suppressed the vote by about 2%, correlating
pretty closely to earlier estimates from statistician Nate Silver. I
think conservative Judge Richard A. Posner has put it best: "There is <b class="yiv6919912200" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1416875354994_5569">only one motivation</b> for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,<b class="yiv6919912200" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1416875354994_5567">and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.</b>" <b class="yiv6919912200" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1416875354994_5568">As he points out, the laws are "highly correlated with a
state's having a Republican governor and Republican control of the
legislature and appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities,
particularly blacks</b>." And your link about the noncitizens
voting is unconvincing, as well. To say that something is possible, a
high percentage of noncitizens voting, is not to prove anything, really.
</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_13595">
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_12495">
Politics
ain't beanbag, and Republicans play for keeps. I, for one, admire them
for that.That said, I don't think voting should be a partisan issue.</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_13029">
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_14744">
I
also can not abide your idea, as attractive as I'm sure it is to you,
that Republicans are smarter, more attractive, and have straighter teeth
than the dim-witted Democrats. I don't think either party can honestly
claim a monopoly or near-monopoly on misinformed voters. Most people are
busy with their lives, which, for most people, includes kids, work,
long commutes, money-problems of one sort or another, and hanging on to
what sanity they were born with. In as depoliticized a society as ours
it's little wonder that most people don't follow what passes for
political discourse in this country. One side thinking the other side
are idiots is normal, I suppose, but both sides have their share of
ill-informed voters pulling the lever for them.</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_22127">
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_22128">
In
2016, I think it somewhat likely that the country will elect a
Republican President. If history is our guide, then Republicans will
lose in the midterms of 2018. I predict that you will not think those
voters are<i> la creme de la creme</i>, as you purport to believe now.</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_31498">
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_31499">
Mr.
Arrington, I count it an honor that you took the time to attack my
work. I always tell everyone that the writing I've done for the Weekly
has kept me out of the bars -- well, at least for the most part. Here's
hoping it did the same for you. And I'm glad it provided you some raw
material to stake out and defend your own political positions.</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1418506439798_6033">
<br clear="none" /></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_40646">
Take care.</div>
<div dir="ltr" id="yiv6919912200yui_3_16_0_1_1417707716322_40643">
<br clear="none" /></div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-59003348147921710002014-11-21T16:17:00.000-08:002014-11-22T14:55:38.530-08:00Who Knew Meema Was a Hottie and Such an Exhibitionist, Too?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;">An Apology to Generations Yet Unborn:</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Let
me say for my entire generation that I'm really, really, really so
very, very, very sorry for all those millions of selfies we took. I
know, we could have spent our time so much more wisely. </span></span>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> In
all the time we wasted doing selfies at every new restaurant we went
to and with every new friend we met -- not to mention, documenting every somewhat-significant moment of our lives, like breakfast, lunch, and dinner for decades on end -- we could have been learning
Sanskrit, Mandarin, how to fix our dysfunctional government, and
still had time to watch dozens of cute cat videos. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> And
ohmyGod, how stupid did we look? Am I right? Yes, yes, I know our
hairstyles were weird, and our clothes were way weirder. And yes, we
showed a lot more skin than we should've. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Way
too much information, I know, tell me about it. Who knew meema was
such a hottie and such an exhibitionist, too?</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> You
see, selfies just sort of got out of hand with your grandmothers,
grandfathers, great uncles, great aunts, cousins twice removed, and,
with even, Presidents and megastars getting in on it. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> I
don't know what it was exactly. Maybe it was the combination of a
cellphone <u>and</u> a camera. You see, we had never seen that
before. As you probably already guessed, our lives were really very
boring, and we were, to be honest, kinda stupid. And I admit, we
sorta overdid it. But I hope you can see your way to forgive us.</span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Of
course, maybe you shouldn't be too hard on us. Selfies were just
something we all did in the second decade of the twentieth-first
century, like earlier generations' fads – swallowing goldfish,
packing into phone booths, tripping out on acid for a couple of
decades. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Remember,
you are fortunate enough to live in the future where you have 20-20
hindsight. I do hope you can forgive us what must seem to you as our
abysmal ignorance and mind-boggling stupidity. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But,
remember, the truth is that all of us, including you, future people,
are prisoners of our own stupid eras and their fashions that
inevitably look so unfashionable only a few short years later. </span></span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Sorry
for that, too. And, by the way, I'm sorry for all the weird, quickly
becoming wrinkly body art on your grandparents, unless you like that
sort of thing and then you should thank us. Really. </span></span>
</div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-32657761160888195642014-11-12T13:19:00.000-08:002014-11-14T13:01:27.007-08:00Using the Dead<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> In
his Sunday op-ed <a href="https://www.blogger.com/(http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/11/08/6271087/the-republic-is-safe-for-a-while.html)">(http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/11/08/6271087/the-republic-is-safe-for-a-while.html)</a>, Richard Greene, taking a victory lap for the GOP,
conjured up the long-dead. The slightly-fevered ex-mayor of Arlington
imagined Benjamin Franklin, the libertine Deist who had multiple
mistresses, smiling beneficently from on high or (one can only
guess) somewhere warmer on 21<sup>st</sup> century Republicans,
fueled by dark money from the energy and financial services sectors,
giving the Democrats a well-deserved ass-kicking. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And
while I wouldn't normally want to rain on the Grand Old Party's end
zone celebration, I have to say that Greene making Ben Franklin of
all people to be his Disneyfied version of our framers is as
despicable and ultimately disrespectful as phony George Washingtons
in white wigs and tricorne hats in commercials peddling more
stuff-we-don't-need for annual President's Day sales. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Who
knows if Benjamin Franklin, a thorough-going 18<sup>th</sup> century
man of Reason, would be for either the 2014-version of the Democrats
or the Republicans? Since he was a man of science, one could presume
that he would look more than askance at Republican's denial of
science on a range of issues from climate change to evolution to
Ebola. But since he is obviously no longer alive there is no real way
to know, is there? So both parties should avoid the temptation to put
words in the mouths of the dead, especially those dead we rightfully
honor as framers of our Constitution.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> But
what lies behind Greene's fantasy is the Republican's spurious notion
that theirs is the party of the Constitution. Nonsense. For example,
most Republicans, as do overwhelmingly most Americans, believe in a
standing army. And the vast majority of Republicans have supported
every undeclared war since World War II. However, our framers
emphatically did not believe in a standing army; thus, the 2nd
amendment. And they strongly believed that only Congress had the
power to declare war. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Or
take the 2<sup>nd</sup> amendment. Pleease, I say in my Henny
Youngman voice. Republicans, by and large, now view the 2nd amendment
as giving a private citizen the almost unlimited right to possess a
firearm, but a simple reading of the actual text and 200 years of
jurisprudence prove that's not what the framers believed. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
2nd Amendment clearly has to do with "a well regulated Militia,"
not individual ownership of guns. It's there in black and white on the page, and neither the Federalist Society nor the NRA will ever be able to change that always-salient fact. </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> As former Chief Justice Warren
Burger said in 1991, the 2<sup>nd</sup> amendment “has been the
subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word
'fraud,' on the American public by special interests groups that I
have ever seen in my lifetime.”</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I
could go on and on, but the truth is both parties, with a nudge and a
wink, decide to ignore certain parts of the Constitution at different
times, especially war-making powers.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> While
I won't pretend to conjure up the long-dead, I doubt anyone, the
framers of the Constitution or actual living Americans, should be
ecstatic that in this past election millions of dollars from
corporations were spent on by-and-large negative ads that so poisoned
the airwaves it might not be a bad idea if all of us hired an
exorcist or two to cleanse our televisions. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> If
you follow the campaign money, the ultimate product of this
conservative takeover that Greene imagines the framers would smile on
is more likely to be less environmental regulation which will only
leave us with dirtier air and water and a return to a more unbridled
financial services sector, which could ultimately lead to the same
kind of financial sector collapse we saw in 2008. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> No,
constitutional government did not win in this past election. Pretty
much all of us, in our new Gilded Age, have come up losers.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-37162796572642798802014-10-26T16:54:00.000-07:002014-10-26T16:54:19.021-07:00Voting: What is it Good For?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> Yesterday
when I was block-walking for the Democrats in north Fort Worth, I
came to a house that exemplifies one of the central problems we now
face. An elderly woman stood at the door, scratching the open sores
on her arm. This poor woman told me in a most agitated and even
heart-rending way that she didn't want to vote at all. That now she
was so mad at the government and all the things it was doing or
perhaps, not doing. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> She
didn't go into details, but I imagine the cornucopia of
pseudo-hysterical news coverage we've faced these past months had
something to do with her decision. No doubt Ebola, IS, and
god-only-knows-what-else were dancing in her head.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> As
I was taught to be around the sometimes-agitated elderly, I was
respectful and told her I understood completely (in retrospect, maybe
a little too completely). Then I let her alone, but now, the next
day, I wish I had had the courage to tell her that her attitude is
exactly what the Republicans want. They want her and people of modest
means like her to be so disgusted with government that they end up
not even voting. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
if anything is central to keeping the U.S. from its continuing slide
toward plutocracy, voting is. My own belief is we should do what the
Australians do. If you don't vote, you get a ticket. Voting is as
much a civic duty as serving on a jury or paying our taxes. Since we
already pay a fine if we shirk jury duty or dodge paying taxes, why
shouldn't we pay a penalty for not voting?</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> We
can also make it much easier for everyone to vote. Other countries
automatically register voters and declare election day a national
holiday. We can do the same. Other reforms that encourage more voter
participation like instant run-off and proportional representation
are well worth considering.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> But
we must do something. The U.S.'s low ranking in voter participation,
120<sup>th</sup>, is inexcusable. It is a national outrage. There can
be no true consent of the governed if so very few bother to vote.
And, of course, by increasing the pool of voters, the rich will not
so effectively be able to manipulate elections, as they are certainly
and successfully doing now.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-86097634159445662582014-10-18T14:33:00.000-07:002014-10-20T09:06:14.409-07:00Stop the Pseudo-hysterics! Now!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> What
has happened to us? Our forebears faced down real problems like the
Great Depression and the rise of Fascism with more aplomb and true
grit than we are now able to muster with hyperventilating cable news
and the Internet besieging us with one pseudo-hysteria after another.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Ebola?
The annual flu season will kill many more of us than Ebola will. IS
operatives sneaking across the Rio Grande endangering our very way of
life? Your time would be much better spent worrying about real
dangers to our way of life embodied in various privatization schemes
and lack of public investment in infrastructure and education. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Wake
up, America, we're being played! The constant harping about Ebola in
a country of almost 320 million when we have had a handful of cases – what is
up with that? </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And, let me say this, I hope there is a special place
in hell reserved for people who play on others' fears. Many
Republicans and most of Fox News, with the notable exception of
Shep Smith, are guilty as charged. You want to be against everything
Obama and the Democrats do? Fair enough. But this has to do with
public health, and the constant politicizing and over-hyping do not
help.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The
truth is we're living in an incredible time: the deficit is down,
unemployment is dropping, and given the non-issue that gay marriage
has become, we are more accepting and open-minded than people a
generation ago would've dreamed possible. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS, cursive;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My
advice: take an extended holiday from cable news bloviators and
doomsayers. Maybe, the truly daring will even get out and have an
actual, not digital, conversation with a fellow human being. One can
only hope.</span></span></div>
</div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1726025028750241641.post-70480459782837656032014-09-27T10:10:00.001-07:002014-09-27T10:10:31.207-07:00The Unbearable Lightness of Being White<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
True story from my college daze:<br />
<a href="http://www.fwweekly.com/2014/09/03/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-white/">http://www.fwweekly.com/2014/09/03/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-white/</a></div>
Ken Wheatcroft-Parduehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02819522767398698044noreply@blogger.com0