Romney's Success vs. Romney's Greed vs. Romney's Over Ambition

Lawrence  commenting on the above facebook picture, wrote:  Since when is ambition a bad thing? Do you think Obama ran for President because he was not ambitious?

My reply to him was: Oh yes, ambition seems like a good thing to those who believe that success is all about one’s accumulation of THINGS like $$$$. Success to a Thinking person has many aspects, the least of which is amassing material wealth.(which actually falls into a catagory more like GREED.) thinkingblue

CASE IN POINT:

overambitious adj Excessively ambitious; the aims were overambitious, therefore few were achieved…

Excerpt: The Mitt Romney campaign, defending his smirk-a-thon:

Questions & Answers:

Don’t you think it was appropriate for the embassy to condemn the controversial movie in question? Are you standing up for movies like this?
– Governor Romney rejects the reported message of the movie. There is no room for religious hatred or intolerance.

Hmm. "No room for religious hatred or intolerance." Gee, why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah. Because that's what the U.S. Embassy in Egypt said yesterday.

Keeping in mind that the embassy's statement was not about the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi—and that for Romney to characterize it as such is false—note that it says basically the same thing that the Romney campaign is now saying. "Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy," the statement read. "We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others."
So if Mitt Romney "rejects" the movie ... and the U.S. Embassy statement "rejects" the movie ... then what the hell was this whole episode about?
The only answer that I can come up with that makes any sense is that it was about Mitt Romney's unbridled ambition—and his complete lack of judgment. In other words, yes, Mitt Romney is unhinged. And perhaps part of the explanation for that can be found in this fact: Gallup's latest tracking poll has Mitt Romney down by seven full points. MORE HERE: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/12/1130901/-Wait-after-all-that-now-Mitt-Romney-is-condemning-the-movie
~~~

The Difference Between Greed and Success

The general perception in the US, thanks to the media largely, is that success and greed are one and the same. But the difference is huge. Both might result in wealth for those striving for their goals, but the intentions are what make a big difference.

Greedy people look for power and any means to achieve that power is fair game, to them. History is replete with many examples ranging from Hitler to Saddam. Some people would say that Bill Gates is also greedy and indeed he has great power and wealth.

The difference is that Bill Gates obtained his wealth by providing a service or product to people that they voluntarily wanted. Competitors might not agree as to his benevolence and indeed he was a hard charging business man. But he became successful because he offered a product that people wanted.

Greed is defined by Wikopedia as “an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods.” That is interesting but not too helpful in that who is to decide that something is excessive. I would go further and say that a greedy person has the desire to possess wealth or goods and that person is willing to subjugate others to obtain that wealth.

MORE HERE http://www.cavemannews.com/TheDifferenceBetweenGreedSuccess.htm

The Birth Of Intolerance

Wait A Minute, Hold The Phone

Dogs of War, Euthanized

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

The Birth of Intolerance

and the reason why an Anti-Islam filmmaker is in hiding.

First off this horrific and very sad event is one of the reasons why I believe all Fundamentalists are wacky. Someone makes a film debunking Mohammed as a godlike creature and depicts him only as a flesh and blood life form (which he was as well as Jesus et al.) with all the susceptibility that comes with being human and the next thing you know... some mob inculcated to believe what is UNBELIEVABLE, starts to murder anyone resembling the one who dared render a pejorative opinion about their particular Supernatural Being… (The most alarming and chilling aspect about these attacks are: it doesn’t matter if they get the one who, in their eyes, is the guilty perpetrator, they kill anyone who simply resembles the guy…) Silly me, I thought religion and god was about teaching human beings to get along with one another.

From what I’ve experienced since I came out of the atheist closet was that contrasting religions teach the opposite of getting along.  It appears, all religious belief systems, similar or dissimilar, that have been manufactured around the globe, tell their believers that theirs is the only True Belief and all others should be denounced as false.

And so, the birth of intolerance thus began. thinkingblue

Aritcle below:

Anti-Islam filmmaker in hiding after protests

By SHAYA TAYEFE MOHAJER

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An Israeli filmmaker based in California went into hiding after a YouTube trailer of his movie attacking Islam's prophet Muhammad sparked angry assaults by ultra-conservative Muslims on U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three American members of his staff were killed.

Speaking by phone Tuesday from an undisclosed location, writer and director Sam Bacile remained defiant, saying Islam is a cancer and that the 56-year-old intended his film to be a provocative political statement condemning the religion.

Protesters angered over Bacile's film opened fire on and burned down the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. Libyan officials said Wednesday that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed Tuesday night when he and a group of embassy employees went to the consulate to try to evacuate staff as the building came under attack by a mob firing machine guns and rocket propelled grenades.

In Egypt, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and replaced an American flag with an Islamic banner.

"This is a political movie," said Bacile. "The U.S. lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas."

Bacile, a California real estate developer who identifies himself as an Israeli Jew, said he believes the movie will help his native land by exposing Islam's flaws to the world. MORE HERE: http://news.yahoo.com/anti-islam-filmmaker-hiding-protests-042924045.html

PS: I came across this blog which sums it up so eloquently:

Born Wild (The Wild One: Part Four)

One summer’s morning, around the age of 13, I was biking down a leafy tree-lined street in my hometown when I happened upon someone I had not seen in awhile. He was a boy a year younger than me, and he had a reputation for being wild. I suspect his reputation was owed more to his frank honesty, though, than to his actual wildness. In that small town, you tended to collect all sorts of reputation — if you were honest.

He and I entwined the handlebars of our bikes — a trick that stabilized the bikes nicely, allowing us to sit them without needing to put our feet down to stay upright. Then we were off telling each other all the news fit to forget. And I have indeed forgotten most of it, but the one thing I still vividly recall came towards the end of our conversation when my friend confided that he’d recently had an experience of indescribable bliss. I had never heard of the word, “bliss”, and had to ask what it was.

As he spoke, his face took on a radiance somewhere between happiness and joy. He told me he didn’t know the right words to describe his experience, but it had to be what adult‘s meant when they talked of being “seized by the Holy Spirit“. Though only twelve, he was completely serious. And he was certain — absolutely certain — he’d discovered life’s greatest and most precious gift.

While I was skeptical of his claims to being seized by the supernatural, I could not ignore his sincerity. Consequently, I hung on every word until the very moment I suddenly recognized he was talking about his having discovered masturbation.

http://cafephilos.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/born-wild-the-wild-one-part-four/

The Birth Of Intolerance

Wait A Minute, Hold The Phone

Dogs of War, Euthanized

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

But You Didn't - A Mother's Poem To Her Military Son Who Was Killed In Afghanistan

It seems we've all but forgotten that the USA is still at war. What is worse, a presidential candidate running in the 2012 election has also forgotten. Romney and the RNC did not mention this war or give homage to the brave soldiers who are dying as I write this. What is wrong with our country, how can we be so callous? When the Bush/Cheney administration so coldly and calculatedly declared war, not on just one front but two, their many followers were all over themselves cheering the troops on, with bumper stickers, flags and blogs that called those of us who hated and were against these wars un-American. But now since the war is not seen as a way to achieve political clout, not a word is mentioned about our young troops who are still in harm’s way. But the families of those still fighting are feeling the pain. They don’t have the luxury of forgetting about the horrors of war. They are living it every day and will continue to live until their lives have ended. It's unfair and pathetic beyond belief. thinkingblue

GOP Labor Day - Take Country Back To Poorhouse Days

Yes Labor was once respected and rewarded with laws in our country but now thanks to the GOP, Republicans, Reaganites and now the Tea Party, those benefits, hard won by the working class, are fading fast. If the GOP keeps on lying and people keep on believing their lies all of these labor advancements will be a thing of the past. Ignorance is not bliss unless you’re a wealthy corporate shareholder who profits from all the Horatio Alger horseshit the Republicans have propelled upon their flock. Most jobs today offer a low hourly wage WITH NO, zero, zip, zilch , nada BENEFITS AT ALL. With no work no pay and no safety net, the Poor/Work Houses will return. thinkingblue

A poorhouse or workhouse was a government-run facility in the past for the support and housing of dependent or needy persons, typically run by a local government entity such as a county or municipality.
The term is commonly applied to such a facility that housed the destitute elderly; institutions of this nature were widespread in the United States prior to the adoption of the Social Security program in the 1930s. Facilities housing indigents who are not elderly are typically referred to as homeless shelters, or simply "shelters," in current usage.
Often the poorhouse was situated on the grounds of a poor farm on which able-bodied residents were required to work; such farms were common in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries; it could even be part of the same economic complex as a prison farm and other penal or charitable public institutions.

PS: Now we know what the Republicans mean when they shout TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK… to the days of the Poor House. Happy Labor Day!

WHAT WERE POORHOUSES?
the Poorhouse Story
(often also called Poor Farms -- and several similar terms --
or referred to with the older term -- Almshouses)

Poorhouses were tax-supported residential institutions to which people were required to go if they could not support themselves. They were started as a method of providing a less expensive (to the taxpayers) alternative to what we would now days call "welfare" - what was called "outdoor relief" in those days. People requested help from the community Overseer of the Poor ( sometimes also called a Poor Master) - an elected town official. If the need was great or likely to be long-term, they were sent to the poorhouse instead of being given relief while they continued to live independently. Sometimes they were sent there even if they had not requested help from the Overseer of the Poor. That was usually done when they were found guilty of begging in public, etc.

[One misconception should be cleared up here; they were not technically "debtors' prisons." Someone could owe a great deal of money, but if they could still provide themselves with the necessities for remaining independent they might avoid the poorhouse.]

BEFORE POORHOUSES
the Poorhouse Story

Prior to the establishment of poorhouses the problem of what to do with paupers in a community was dealt with in one of three ways:

Outdoor Relief provided through an Overseer of the Poor: When people fell upon hard times and members of their family, friends or members of their church congregations could not provide enough assistance to tide them over, they made application to an elected local official called the Overseer of the Poor. Within a budget of tax money, he might provide them with food, fuel, clothing, or even permission to get medical treatment to be paid out of tax funds. http://www.poorhousestory.com/history.htm
~~~
 In England, Wales and Ireland (but not in Scotland) a poorhouse was more commonly known as a workhouse. In early Victorian times (see Poor Law), poverty was seen as a dishonorable state caused by a lack of the moral virtue of industriousness (or industry as it was called). As was depicted by Charles Dickens, a workhouse could resemble a reformatory and house children, either with families or alone, or a penal labor regime to give the poor work at manual labor and subject them to physical punishment. As the 19th century progressed, conditions improved.

GOP Labor Day-Take Country Back To Poor House Days

What is wrong with this Romney Photo Op?

Mitt Romney's Ad Infinitum Right-wing Buffoonery

The Voter ID Law 2012 or Jim Crow Rides Again

Paul Ryan's Violence.

Tell Us Paul Ryan,
How did the war on poverty become the war on the poor?

Well, the suspense has ended and we all know who Mitt Romney’s pick for VP is. Lo and Behold… It’s Paul Ryan, who would have guessed? Now the stage is set, these two draconian ideologues haven’t a clue as to what it’s like to be born into poverty (or for that matter, windup in poverty due to unforeseen circumstances). They speculate, theorize and guesstimate what it’s like and come to a conclusion… They’re poor because they are lazy, or foolish, or they rather take hand-outs, than work. This plays well to their low information base but how can they truly believe the crap they spew? IMAO, I believe they half believe it because they’ve never experienced being poor in any shape or form. Their motto is… HEY LOOK AT ME, I’M ON TOP AND I DID IT ALL BY MYSELF. TOO BAD FOR YOU, IF ONLY YOU WERE LIKE ME AND NOT LAZY YOU WOULD BE ON TOP TOO!

OK, maybe that’s a bit farfetched but if they know better, even if it's only a half-assed "guesstimation" their base does not. On Facebook, I see this a lot… Soon as a Liberal image is posted the comments always circle around the worn-out THEY’RE POOR BECAUSE THEY’RE LAZY. THE POOR RATHER RELY ON HAND-OUTS THAN WORK.

These opinionated right-wing cruel comments are tragic, from a societal view, the bashing of poor and working poor people for society's ills is so cowardly and is downright bullying. I am so sick of hearing their nasty rhetoric of how "certain people" want to depend on hand-outs. Why don't they do a little research before they spew forth their hatred of people who find themselves in situations not of their choosing? Oh, I know that’s too difficult it’s better to offer up rationalizations that point judgmental fingers that in turn triggers derogatory name calling of people who do not fit their right-wing idea of “respectable, pulling up bootstraps, Americans”. One of Ghandi's memorable quotes sums it all up perfectly: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Well anyway, maybe the right-wing hate to research the truth but I don't… Here is a bit of fact checking on POVERTY and Paul Ryan's heavy-handed budget plan: thinkingblue

EXCERPT: Hurricane Katrina rolled over the Gulf Coast and unearthed an unpleasant truth about the state of poverty in this country: concentrated poverty still exists. Isolated deep in inner-city neighborhoods were hundreds of thousands of poor households that lacked the means to evacuate or weather the storm. But even without hurricanes, the problems associated with concentrated poverty affect more than 3.5 million poor people – 8 million total, if you include the non-poor – who live in such neighborhoods.

As of the year 2000, about one-tenth of the nation’s poor lived in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 40 percent and higher. Among poor minorities, the share was an even greater 15 percent, including 19 percent of poor African Americans. The problems that arise from concentrated poverty are not just limited to those that occur after natural disasters. A number of economic and social ills prevail, including the ABSENCE of quality education and work opportunities, which can lead to high rates of unemployment, crime and school dropouts. From a housing perspective, high poverty areas are more likely to have deteriorating and/or abandoned properties, which discourage investment in the area. This leads to a downward spiral for the neighborhood, from which it is costly and difficult to recover. Thus, it is not just the poor who live in concentrated poverty that suffer, but all households in these neighborhoods.

Residents of high poverty areas often earn incomes so low that they cannot afford even the rents and housing costs on the dilapidated units in their neighborhoods. In 2000, almost a third of households in these areas still paid at least half their income for housing, in spite of living in some of the worst housing conditions.

While still high for residents, these rents are often not enough for many landlords to cover the maintenance and operating costs on their properties. A number of property owners in these neighborhoods neglect their buildings, leaving them to deteriorate to near-uninhabitable conditions. Spread over an entire neighborhood, such abandonment of property can destabilize an area, by discouraging other owners and would-be investors from spending money to improve and bring services to the area.

----

PS: If you care to read more truth about poverty click here or forever go on bashing those who may need help and hope one day it won't be your right-wing self or one of your loved ones.

http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/147/concentratedpoverty.html

Idea for image came from

Weingart Center | Homeless nonprofit charity

www.weingart.org/

A little Paul Ryan 101

Budget hawk: A closer look at the Ryan plan

EXCERPT: A $5.3 trillion cut from essential social programs that effect everyone from the working poor to senior citizens. While at the same time, Ryan’s plan gives a total of $4.3 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthy 1% in America. In other words, if you’re not as fortunate as Paul Ryan and his fat-cat handlers, then you are royally screwed.

And what is Paul Ryan’s defense for such drastic cuts to the poor while giving additional handouts to the rich? He wants to help the poor by stomping on them…

“If we have a debt crisis, then the people who get hurt the first and the worst are the poor and the elderly.”

That’s all you need to know to understand how and why Ryan came up with his budget plan. But here are the specifics.

After recalling his family’s immigration from Ireland generations ago, and his belief in the virtue of people who “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” Ryan warned that a generous safety net “lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.”

HOW VERY KIND OF MR. RYAN: To protect poor Americans from being demeaned, Ryan is cutting their anti-poverty programs and using the proceeds to give the wealthiest Americans a six-figure tax cut.

The Ryan budget plan is full of holes and missing key explanations for his wacky math. In one instance, Ryan proposes putting financial aid for college on “a sustainable funding path” instead of admitting that he completely slashes most financial aid for higher education. His plan states giving average workers “the tools to thrive in the 21st century” instead of saying that he’s cutting most job-training programs.

Other highlights of Ryan’s budget plan:

Cut 25% from transportation and infrastructure spending (including cuts to Air Traffic Control
Cut 13% on spending for Veterans
Cut 6% on spending for “general science, space, and basic technology”
Cut 33% on spending for “education, training, employment, and social services”
Cut 14.6% on spending for protecting the environment (including cuts to weather forcasting related to emergency warnings and hurricane response)
Cuts to EPA and Food Safety

It’s estimated that Ryan’s plan would grow the national debt by $4 trillion over his 10-year plan. That’s because he’s going to give additional tax cuts to the wealthy, lower the already basement level corporate tax rate, and allow all those corporations and wealthy individuals to bring their money home from offshore and foreign accounts without having to pay taxes.

MORE HERE: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/closer-look-ryan-budget-170813588.html

Why Is There Poverty?

Following the course of major social problems such as poverty, drug abuse, violence, and oppression, it often seems that nothing works. Government programs come and go as political parties swing us back and forth between stock answers whose only effect seems to be who gets elected. If anything, the problems get worse, and people feel increasingly helpless and frustrated or, if the problems don’t affect them personally, often feel nothing much at all.
As a society, then, we are stuck, and we’ve been stuck for a long time. One reason we’re stuck is that the problems are huge and complex. But on a deeper level, we tend to think about them in ways that keep us from getting at their complexity in the first place. It is a basic tenet of sociological practice that to solve a social problem we have to begin by seeing it as social. Without this, we look in the wrong place for explanations and in the wrong direction for visions of change.
Consider, for example, poverty, which is arguably the most far-reaching, long-standing cause of chronic suffering there is. The magnitude of poverty is especially ironic in a country like the United States whose enormous wealth dwarfs that of entire continents. More than one out of every six people in the United States lives in poverty or near-poverty. For children, the rate is even higher. Even in the middle class there is a great deal of anxiety about the possibility of falling into poverty or something close to it – through divorce, for example, or simply being laid off as companies try to improve their competitive advantage, profit margins, and stock prices by transferring jobs overseas.
How can there be so much misery and insecurity in the midst of such abundance? If we look at the question sociologically, one of the first things we see is that poverty doesn’t exist all by itself. It is simply one end of an overall distribution of income and wealth in society as a whole. As such, poverty is both a structural aspect of the system and an ongoing consequence of how the system is organized and the paths of least resistance that shape how people participate in it.
The system we have for producing and distributing wealth is capitalist. It is organized in ways that allow a small elite to control most of the capital – factories, machinery, tools – used to produce wealth. This encourages the accumulation of wealth and income by the elite and regularly makes heroes of those who are most successful at it – such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates. It also leaves a relatively small portion of the total of income and wealth to be divided among the rest of the population. With a majority of the people competing over what’s left to them by the elite, it’s inevitable that a substantial number of people are going to wind up on the short end and living in poverty or with the fear of it much of the time. It’s like the game of musical chairs: Since the game is set up with fewer chairs than there are people, someone has to wind up without a place to sit when the music stops.
In part, then, poverty exists because the economic system is organized in ways that encourage the accumulation of wealth at one end and creates conditions of scarcity that make poverty inevitable at the other. But the capitalist system generates poverty in other ways as well. In the drive for profit, for example, capitalism places a high value on competition and efficiency. This motivates companies and their managers to control costs by keeping wages as low as possible and replacing people with machines or replacing full-time workers with part-time workers. It makes it a rational choice to move jobs to regions or countries where labor is cheaper and workers are less likely to complain about poor working conditions, or where laws protecting the natural environment from industrial pollution or workers from injuries on the job are weak or unenforced. Capitalism also encourages owners to shut down factories and invest money elsewhere in enterprises that offer a higher rate of return. MORE HERE: http://www.agjohnson.us/essays/poverty/

An Abominable Mitt Romney, Mother of all lies, Lie!

Am I reading this correctly? OPPOSE OBAMA'S LAWSUIT AGAINST MILITARY VOTING RIGHTS! This has got to be one of the most abominable lies to EVER come from the right-wing HATEFULS! (I've refrained from calling them people because they are not people any longer, they have disqualified themselves from the human race) This is so ignorantly mendacious even for despicable Teapublicans. Here's the truth but of course many followers of the Teapublican Bigots don't want to hear the truth they prefer to be in the dark, and wallow in HATE, DECEIT, SCORN and VENOM. But for anyone with some common-sense left (you know that word or words that mean – SOUND PRACTICAL JUDGMENT!) who may question whether or not the Teapublicans tell the truth, HERE IS A BIT OF REALITY TO CHEW ON! thinkingblue

~~~

The fact and fiction behind the Obama campaign’s Ohio voting Lawsuit

The most recent controversy between the Obama and Romney campaigns concerns the key swing state of Ohio. The Obama campaign filed a lawsuit that seeks to force the state to open up their early voting period to all Ohioans, while the Romney campaign claims that the Obama team is trying to deprive military service members of their early voting rights. Below are the facts and fiction behind the story.

What is early voting?

Early voting is a process adopted by many states that allows voters to cast their ballots in the days or weeks before Election Day. The process is designed to make it easier to vote, since many people work shifts that prevent them from voting on a Tuesday. Some states have very open early voting procedures that allow any voter to vote early for any reason. Other states have adopted more restrictive procedures that only allow certain people to vote early for certain reasons (i.e. being out of the country on Election Day). Democrats generally favor early voting since a larger turnout benefits their candidates. In Florida, for example, Democrats have opposed Gov. Rick Scott’s (R-FL) attempt to not allow early voting on Sunday. Democrats argue that many African-Americans, who tend to vote for their candidates, go to the polls after church on Sunday.

What did Ohio do?

In the past, Ohio set a policy that allowed voters to cast their ballot three days before the election. In 2008, 93,000 Ohioans took advantage of these rules. Republicans, who control the Ohio state legislature, passed a law that restricted early voting rights to only those in the military.

What did the Obama campaign do?

The Obama campaign subsequently filed a lawsuit, a copy of which can be read here, that seeks to reinstate the three-day early voting period for all Ohioans. The lawsuit argues that the new law adopted by the legislature will cause voters to “suffer direct and irreparable injury” by depriving many of them of the opportunity to vote. The lawsuit also claims that the distinction between other Ohio voters and military service members is “arbitrary.”

What did the Romney campaign do?

The Romney campaign argued that the Obama campaign was trying to deprive military service members of their voting rights through the lawsuit, issuing the following statement,

“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage.”

Even some conservative publications like Hot Air have cast doubt on the Romney campaign's claim.

How did the Obama campaign respond?

The Obama campaign called the Romney campaign’s argument a lie. The Obama campaign points out that the lawsuit does not seek to deprive anyone of any voting rights, but instead seeks to reinstate the early voting rights for all Ohioans.

Why it matters

Ohio is a key swing state with 18 electoral votes in the upcoming election. Early voting tends to benefit Democrats. As was proven in Florida in 2000, a few thousand votes in one state can effectively decide which party occupies the White House over the next four years.

Chick-Fil-Hate Day

Chick-Fil-Hate Day

Where Chicken Little Is Served Up With a Side Order Of Hate

A restaurant serving up hate and marginalizing a whole group of people; Actually, encouraging their patrons to feel hatred and claiming that bigotry is GODLY. It's not only priceless, it’s mind boggling. thinkingblue

Chick-fil-A day: Don’t boycott. Infiltrate.   

EXCERPT: Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and former Republican presidential candidate had declared Wednesday, Aug. 1, as “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” in support of the company “whose executives are willing to take a stand for Godly values.” He wants people to celebrate those values “by simply showing up and eating” at the fast food restaurant.

(TAKE A STAND FOR GODLY VALUES!!! SAY WHAT? If there was a supernatural MAN IN THE SKY do you honestly believe he would approve of HATE and BIGOTRY towards HIS prized creation, MAN? I doubt it! thinkingblue)

Exactly what are those values, which have not only been espoused by Huckabee, but Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty (maybe not such a smart move as he’s being vetted for veep by Mitt Romney)?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/post/chick-fil-a-day-dont-boycott-infiltrate/2012/08/01/gJQArrGOPX_blog.html

EXCERPT: Bishop Gene Robinson, the first gay Bishop in the Episcopal Church, has a new book,”God Believes in Love: Straight Talk About Gay Marriage.”

“What would Jesus think about two men and two women getting married?” he asks in his book. “According to the accounts of the life of Jesus as recorded by the Gospels, Jesus never said anything about sexually intimate relationship between people of the same gender. Nor did he comment on sexual behavior between people of the same gender. Period.”

According to the president of the company, Dan Cathy, “We don’t claim to be a Christian business. But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles.

{{{{{ The question is, what are biblical principles? }}}}

Bishop Robinson points out that Jesus was “consistently on the side of those who were outcast by society and bore the unfair burden of disdain, discrimination, and prejudice.”

HIP HIP HURRAY FOR JESUS! thinkingblue

I can't believe it... lines and lines of people supporting bigotry and hate. They all ought to be ashamed. thinkingblue
Chick-Fil-A Has 'Record-Setting Day' While Embroiled In Anti-Gay Controversy

EXCERPT: Equality Matters published a report on Chick-fil-A's charitable work that found that the chain donated nearly $2 million to anti-gay groups in 2010. Among those to reportedly receive donations include the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian organization that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/
chick-fil-a-has-record-setting-day-anti-gay_n_1733697.html

A Safe Haven For Intolerance from thinkingblue on Vimeo.

2 New Videos

Voice of reason Rachel Maddow and Bob Herbert sit down and talk about the GOP fringe and Intolerance.

A Safe Haven For Intolerance from thinkingblue on Vimeo.

Voice of reason Rachael Maddow and Bob Herbert sit down and talk about the GOP fringe and Intolerance.

Rachel Maddow espouses the many benefits from the Affordable Healthcare Act

Thank All That Is Good America Is Not A Christian Nation

(Picture From This Site: http://www.facebook.com/obetiku )

Religion could never have such a stranglehold on people's minds if we didn’t fear death as much as we do. Just vision it, if death was just a part of life like eating, sleeping, growing and learning, the so called CHURCH could not control minds and would go OUT OF BUSINESS. It's a pity that we teach children from day one to fear dying, telling their innocent minds to believe that they will be judged upon the arrival of this day called death, and will either be ‘SENT’ (by some non-existent Supernatural Being) to a PIE IN THE SKY, HEAVEN (if they are ‘GOOD’ which is a word that can be subjectively interpreted) or sent to the dungeons (if they are ‘BAD’ another subjective word) where they will burn and be tortured forever and a day. I wish we could all learn to just live in reality (it’s not near as scary as the place that religion tells us to live in) and not in the nonsensical world that Religion creates for us, using fear. thinkingblue

OH, ‘WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD THIS WOULD BE’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5taPhvqbXE

Teapublicans Out In Force Doing What They Do Best: LIE!

Now, we who THINK, have to go around spreading the Truth to counteract their lies. I wish the good people of America would not be so easily fooled into becoming Teapublican stooges and vote against their own best interests. Please watch Al Sharpton on Political Nation to get the facts. I wish it was that easy, but I know they have been lulled into a trance to believe whatever comes from the lips of a lying Teapublican as the HOLY TRUTH. thinkingblue

PS: It really should be against the law to be so ignorantly uninformed, as to believe the misleading, unfactual lies that the dastardly spread around without conscience; these low information voters should be fined (TAXED) for believing such unabashed and blatantly false Teapublican mendacity.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

1. By 2022, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the Affordable Care Act will have extended coverage to 33 MILLION AMERICANS who would otherwise be uninsured.
—
2. Families making less than 133 percent of the poverty line — that’s about $29,000 for a family of FOUR (4)— will be covered through Medicaid. Between 133 percent and 400 percent of the poverty line — $88,000 for a family of four – families will get tax credits on a sliding scale to help pay for private insurance.
3. For families making less than 400 percent of the poverty line, premiums are capped. So, between 150% and 200% of the poverty line, for instance, families won’t have to pay more than 6.3 percent of their income in premiums. Between 300 percent and 400 percent, they won’t have to pay more than 9.5 percent. This calculator from the Kaiser Family Foundation will let you see the subsidies and the caps for different families at different income levels.
4. When the individual mandate is fully phased-in, those who can afford coverage — which is defined as insurance costing less than 8 percent of their annual income — but choose to forgo it will have to pay either $695 or 2.5 percent of the annual income, whichever is greater.
5. Small businesses that have fewer than 10 employees, average wages beneath $25,000, and that provide insurance for their workers will get a 50 percent tax credit on their contribution. The tax credit reaches up to small businesses with up to 50 employees and average wages of $50,000, though it gets smaller as the business get bigger and richer. The credit lasts for two years, though many think Congress will be pressured to extend it, which would raise the long-term cost of the legislation.
6. Insurance companies are not allowed to discriminated based on preexisting conditions. They are allowed to discriminate based “on age (limited to 3 to 1 ratio), premium rating area, family composition, and tobacco use (limited to 1.5. to 1 ratio).”
7. Starting in 2018, the law imposes a 35 percent tax on employer-provided health plans that exceed $10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for family coverage. The idea is a kind of roundabout second-best to capping the tax code’s (currently unlimited) deduction for employer-provided heath insurance. The policy idea is to give employers that much more reason to avoid expensive insurance policies and thus give insurers that much more reason to hold costs down.
8. The law requires insurers to spend between 80 and 85 percent of every premium dollar on medical care (as opposed to administration, advertising, etc). If insurers exceed this threshold, they have to rebate the excess to their customers. This policy is already in effect, and insurers are expected to rebate $1.1 billion this year.
9. The law is expected to spend a bit over $1 trillion in the next 10 years. The law’s spending cuts — many of which fall on Medicare — and tax increases are expected to either save or raise a bit more than that, which is why the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will slightly reduce the deficit. (There’s been some confusion on this point lately, but no, the CBO has not changed its mind about this.) As time goes on, the savings are projected to grow more quickly than the spending, and CBO expects that the law will cut the deficit by around a trillion dollars in its second decade. Here’s its graph, which covers the period between 2012 and 2021:
The ACA’s taxes and spending cuts make it a slight deficit reduce in its first decade. (CBO)
10. In recent years, health-care costs have slowed dramatically. Much of this is likely due to the recession. Some of it may just be chance. But there’s also evidence that the law has accelerated changes in the way the medical system delivers care, as providers prepare for the law’s efforts to move from fee-for-service to quality-based payments.
11. The law’s long-term success at controlling costs will likely hinge on its efforts to change the way health care is delivered, most of which have gotten very little attention. They include everything from encouraging Accountable Care Organizations to spreading medical homes to penalizing hospitals with high rates of preventable infections to creating an independent board able to quickly implement new reforms through the Medicare system. A partial list of these efforts can be found here.

Jonathan Krohn Not Your Average Everyday Indoctrinated Child

This child is a breath of fresh air in these times of right-wing CRAZY. He, at the early age of 17 has gone through an epiphany of an entire lifetime (--78.2 years in the USA-- that is if one, is capable of thinking). Starting out at the age of 13 as a conservative pundit (His political philosophy, he now believes came from the right-wing hate radio that he listened to everyday in his home of Georgia.) spouting all the right words that the right-wing radio talk hosts repetitively (ad nauseam) jam down the throats of their obedient, low information listeners. He has a brilliant mind and can memorize volumes of information all at once; so in essence the garbage went in from the right-wing hate radio and he pumped it out from his innocent frontal lobes. Now that he is older, he is pondering upon those automated unenlightened thoughts that he believed were correct and finds out that so many of his beliefs were not only wrong but did not coordinate with his perception of life. HAT'S OFF TO JONATHAN KROHN! thinkingblue

Philosophy for Children
First published Thu May 2, 2002; substantive revision Mon Jun 8, 2009

In the United States, philosophy typically makes its formal entry into the curriculum at the college level. A growing number of high schools offer some introduction to philosophy, often in special literature courses for college bound students. In Europe and many other countries, it is much more common to find philosophy in the high school curriculum. However, philosophy prior to high school seems relatively uncommon around the world. This may suggest that serious philosophical thinking is not for pre-adolescents. Two reasons might be offered for accepting this view. First, philosophical thinking requires a level of cognitive development that, one may believe, is beyond the reach of pre-adolescents. Second, the school curriculum is already crowded; and introducing a subject like philosophy will not only distract students from what they need to learn, it may encourage them to become skeptics rather than learners. However, both of these reasons can be challenged. They will be addressed in turn.

-------------
1. Are Children Capable of Philosophical Thinking?
Jean Piaget's (1933 ) well-known theory of cognitive development suggests that prior to age 11 or 12, most children are not capable of philosophical thinking. This is because, prior to this time, children are not capable of “thinking about thinking,” the sort of meta-level thinking that characterizes philosophical thinking. This “formal operational” level of cognitive development includes analogical reasoning about relationships, such as: “Bicycle is to handlebars as ship is to rudder, with ”steering mechanism“ being the similar relationship” (Goswami, p. xxi). However, there is a growing body of psychological research suggesting that Piaget's account seriously underestimates children's cognitive abilities (Astington, 1993; Gopnik, et al.).

Philosopher Gareth Matthews goes further and argues at length that Piaget failed to see the philosophical thinking manifest in the very children he studied. Matthews (1980) provides a number of delightful examples of very young children's philosophical puzzlement. For example:

•TIM (about six years), while busily engaged in licking a pot, asked, “Papa, how can we be sure that everything is not a dream?” (p. 1)
•JORDAN (five years), going to bed at eight one evening, asked, “If I go to bed at eight and get up at seven in the morning, how do I really know that the little hand of the clock has gone around only once? Do I have to stay up all night to watch it? If I look away even for a short time, maybe the small hand will go around twice.” (p. 3)
•One day JOHN EDGAR (four years), who had seen airplanes take off, rise, and gradually disappear into the distance, took his first plane ride. When the plane stopped ascending and the seat-belt sign went out, John Edgar turned to his father and said in a rather relieved, but still puzzled, tone of voice, “Things don't really get smaller up here.” (p. 4)
Matthews acquired many of his anecdotes from friends who knew of his interest in the philosophical thinking of children. It is not uncommon for attentive adults to encounter such examples.

However, it might be objected that more than such anecdotes are needed to show that children are capable of serious philosophical thinking. What is needed is evidence that children are capable of sustained philosophical discussion. Matthews (1984) provides illustrations of this, too. Meeting with a group of 8–11 year olds, he used the following example to develop a story for discussion:

Ian (six year old) found to his chagrin that the three children of his parents' friends monopolized the television; they kept him from watching his favorite program. “Mother,” he asked in frustration, “why is it better for three children to be selfish than one?” (Matthews 1984, 92–3)
This generated a lively discussion in which children commented on the inconsiderateness of the three visiting children, the desirability of working out a solution that would satisfy all four children, the importance of respecting people's rights, and how one might feel if he or she were in Ian's place. Matthews then posed a possible utilitarian approach: “What about this argument, that if we let the three visitors have their way, three people will be made happy instead of just one?” One reply was that it would not be fair for three people to get what they want at the expense of a fourth. This triggered a discussion of fairness that addressed more specific concerns about the relative ages of the children, whether they are friends, siblings, or strangers—and what types of television programs are involved.

No doubt, part of the explanation of the children's ability and willingness to carry on an extended discussion of Ian's circumstance is that they have faced similar challenges. Still, the children exhibited a rather sophisticated conceptual grasp of the issues at hand, which is what one might expect from children once they are invited to reflect on their own experiences. MORE HERE: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/

A Romney Win Will Be An OH NO For SCOTUS

If Obama manages to lose to Romney, a blatant unabashed liar and a flagrant SCREWBALL, the Supreme Court will become a dictatorship and not an impartial, objective observer who can make decisions according to the constitution and what is good for this nation and its people; A tyranny court of far right-wing, goofy and dangerous decisions.

When this court, in 2000, picked our next president against the will of the people, my one thought was, OH NO MORE RIGHT-WING JUSTICES WILL BE APPOINTED. Of course this SCOTUS decision to appoint Bush, also wrecked havoc on our country and society which left us quite bruised and damaged, still the USA, with time, was permitted to heal somewhat, with the election of an intelligent brain. Yet Dubya’s conservative picks for the court has continued to EASE ON DOWN THE ROAD and vote along an ideological line, so that, in a sense means that old George W Bush is still sort of, YIKES, at the helm. More conservative appointees (from Romney) will clinch the deal and we won’t need those 9 justices anymore, just sign on the dotted line and enact laws that will favor the rich and make the poor even poorer until they won’t be called poor any longer but slaves. So be it. thinkingblue

Court's Recent Rulings Shake Up Partisan Narrative

June 29, 2012

It's a bit less likely now than a week ago that you'll hear people accuse the Supreme Court of being politicized.

That's because this week, the court ended its session with two controversial decisions — neither one of which was decided on the usual and predictable split between the five justices appointed by Republican presidents and the four appointed by Democrats.

But that doesn't make the court any less of a political animal.

Complaints about "activist courts" are common — and that phrase is easy to define, says Jeffrey Segal, a Stony Brook University professor. "Activism is a decision that people don't like."

A partisan court is a little different.

"Political polarization means that, by and large, the center is disappearing," Segal says.

There was a time when justices appointed by Democrats and Republicans intermingled in their judicial decisions. Ideological lines were murkier, and it was harder to predict who would fall where in a split decision. The last two justices who retired, David Souter and John Paul Stevens, were both Republican appointees who usually voted with the court's liberals.

Since they left, the court has settled into a partisan pattern of 5 to 4. MORE HERE http://www.npr.org/2012/06/29/155985744/courts-recent-rulings-shake-up-partisan-narrative

Suffer The Children Of Social Inequality

Police Rescue Malnourished Girl From Closet in Kansas City

This story is a tragedy that defies explanation. The mother is most assuredly mentally ill and the abused little girl will suffer mental scars for the rest of her life. The other 2 children involved will probably be placed in the foster care system which is a spin of the ole wheel of fortune, as to whether they will wind up in a safe and loving environment or suffer more abuse from within this, yet another, broken system involving children of the poor. It's a very sad tale that should not be swept under the carpet. We live in a time of social inequality where the top 1 percent of Americans now own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. How much does the bottom 80 percent own? Only 7 percent, (Read more here: HOW UNEQUAL ARE WE http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/334156/top-five-wealthiest-one-percent/ ) these statistics are appalling and result in the mass suffering of our little children. If I were part of the 1 percent living in this New Gilded Age, I don't think I could ever show my face in public let alone run for President of the USA. ( “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” --Mitt Romney--) thinkingblue

PS: Some sad statistics about Foster Care: According to national statistics, 40 to 50 percent of those children will never complete high school. Sixty-six percent of them will be homeless, go to jail or die within one year of leaving the foster care system at 18.

80 percent of the prison population once was in foster care, and that girls in foster care are 600 percent more likely than the general population to become pregnant before the age of 21. More Here: Statistics suggest bleak futures for children who grow up in foster care
http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2012-06-24/what-comes-next

Police Rescue Malnourished Girl From Closet in Kansas City

A Kansas City, Mo., mother is behind bars, accused of keeping her 10-year-old daughter locked in a closet, not letting her come out to eat, sleep or even go to the bathroom.

The girl weighed just 32 pounds, and hospital records indicated that she has only gained 6 pounds since she was 4 or 5 years old, according to a police probable cause statement. The girl also suffers from "multiple healing skin injuries and failure to thrive," the statement said.

"She weighed a little over a third of what a 10-year-old should weigh," Kansas City Police Capt. Steve Young said. "We don't know how long or how frequently she's been in there [the closet], but it's clear she'd spent a significant amount of time in there."

Kansas City police met Missouri Children's Division workers outside the apartment building Friday morning after the division received a hotline call about a girl who was locked up and unable to eat or use the restroom.

When a division worker told two women outside the apartment that three children lived in the apartment, the neighbors said they had never seen the third child even though they'd lived there for "several years."

"We never knew of her the whole three years we've been down here," Kimberly Kelley, another neighbor, told ABC's affiliate in Kansas City, KMBC-TV. "She told us she only had two kids." MORE HERE: http://news.yahoo.com/police-rescue-malnourished-girl-closet-kansas-city-161117342--abc-news-topstories.html

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An unequal society
By Robert B. Reich

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar? http://room4truth.com/2011/09/04/an-unequal-society/
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Life as a Foster Child

A throw away kid...
This is my story as a foster child. I hope it helps someone understand us, especially the foster parent. I hope it makes the case workers really listen to us. I hope it changes the system, but I'm afraid it won't.

Don't let me mislead you, I am not a child now, but I remember everything. I remember thoughts and feelings, I remember the looks and attitudes of those around me. I was a watcher, a silent, withdrawn watcher. In a way, I still am.

I was taken from a stay in the hospital to the social worker's office. There I met my younger siblings, ( I was the oldest). I didn't know what was happening, but I don't think I cared at the time. I was already broken at this point. I had already shut down emotionally, a child in a box, detatched, going through the motions. I was 7 years old, and very small for my age.

I had no memory of the particular incident that put me in the hospital. It had just happened, and my mind protected me from the memory, it still does to this day.

Yes, we should have been taken.
Don't get me wrong, child services were right in getting us out of that home. It was horrible there. After my mother divorced my dad she married a psycho. No, really, he was clinically psycho. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and even his parents warned my mother to stay away from him. She didn't listen. She moved in with her very young 5 children. I remember so many horrible moments with that monster. So when I finally ended up in the hospital, it was good that we were immediately taken out of the home, but then came foster care.

How can you expect us to be grateful?
This is to all of the foster parents, we don't like you. You have to earn that right. You have to earn our trust, what little we have left, and it won't be easy. Oh, and something else. Don't expect us to be grateful for what you are doing for us. What do we have to be grateful for, anyway? We were ripped from everything and everyone we know. We were thrown to you, and you want us to be grateful? We didn't choose you, and we know you will probably never love us. You are strangers, you are dangerous, you are another set of adults we have to listen to, another set of adults who can hurt us. You have power over us, and we are helpless. Our life lays in pieces around us. We are shattered, damaged, broken. How can you expect us to be grateful? MORE HERE: http://www.squidoo.com/lifeasafosterchild

~~~

Also Read: Are Foster Children Overmedicated? Government Seeks Improved Guidelines - http://www.opednews.com/articles/Are-Foster-Children-Overme-by-Martha-Rosenberg-120623-261.html

~~~

Foster Care News

Statistics suggest bleak futures for children who grow up in foster care

Statistics show the future bodes poorly for many of the children in the foster care ... Arrow, an international child-placement agency, claims the statistics describe a national foster care crisis. ...

 

Thank You Alan Turing For Making Today's Post Possible

The Strange Life and Death of Dr Turing

Click Here To See The Full Part One Video On Youtube

Alan Turing: Inquest's suicide verdict 'not supportable'
By Roland Pease BBC Radio Science Unit

Alan Turing, the British mathematical genius and codebreaker born 100 years ago on 23 June, may not have committed suicide, as is widely believed.

At a conference in Oxford on Saturday, Turing expert Prof Jack Copeland will question the evidence that was presented at the 1954 inquest.

He believes the evidence would not today be accepted as sufficient to establish a suicide verdict.

Indeed, he argues, Turing's death may equally probably have been an accident.

What is well known and accepted is that Alan Turing died of cyanide poisoning.

His housekeeper famously found the 41-year-old mathematician dead in his bed, with a half-eaten apple on his bedside table.

It is widely said that Turing had been haunted by the story of the poisoned apple in the fairy tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and had resorted to the same desperate measure to end the persecution he was suffering as a result of his homosexuality.

But according to Prof Copeland, it was Turing's habit to take an apple at bedtime, and that it was quite usual for him not to finish it; the half-eaten remains found near his body cannot be seen as an indication of a deliberate act.

Indeed, the police never tested the apple for the presence of cyanide.

Moreover, Prof Copeland emphasises, a coroner these days would demand evidence of pre-meditation before announcing a verdict of suicide, yet nothing in the accounts of Turing's last days suggest he was in anything but a cheerful mood.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

We have... been recreating the narrative of Turing's life, and we have recreated him as an unhappy young man who committed suicide. But the evidence is not there”

Prof Jack Copeland University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Alan Turing's genius

He had left a note on his office desk, as was his practice, the previous Friday to remind himself of the tasks to be done on his return after the Bank Holiday weekend.

Nevertheless, at the inquest, the coroner, Mr JAK Ferns declared: "In a man of his type, one never knows what his mental processes are going to do next." What he meant by "of this type" is unclear.

The motive for suicide is easy to imagine. In 1952, after he had reported a petty burglary, Turing found himself being investigated for "acts of gross indecency" after he revealed he had had a male lover in his house.

Faced with the prospect of imprisonment, and perhaps with it the loss of the mathematics post he held at Manchester University, which gave him access to one of the world's only computers, Turing accepted the alternative of "chemical castration" - hormone treatment that was supposed to suppress his sexual urges. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18561092

Conviction for indecency

In January 1952, Turing met a man called Arnold Murray outside a cinema in Manchester. After a lunch date, Turing invited Murray to spend the weekend with him at his house, an invitation which Murray accepted although he did not show up. The pair met again in Manchester the following Monday, when Murray agreed to accompany Turing to the latter's house. A few weeks later Murray visited Turing's house again, and apparently spent the night there.

After Murray helped an accomplice to break into his house, Turing reported the crime to the police. During the investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray. Homosexual acts were illegal in the United Kingdom at that time, and so both were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885.

Turing was given a choice between imprisonment or probation conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted chemical castration via injections of stilboestrol, a synthetic oestrogen hormone.

Turing's conviction led to the removal of his security clearance, and barred him from continuing with his cryptographic consultancy for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British signals intelligence agency that had evolved from GCCS in 1946. At the time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual entrapment by Soviet agents, because of the recent exposure of the first two members of the Cambridge Five, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, as KGB double agents. Turing was never accused of espionage but, as with all who had worked at Bletchley Park, was prevented from discussing his war work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

IMAO: The sad circumstances inflicted upon the genius of Alan Turing (because of sexual orientation discrimination) during the 1950's, is NO DOUBT, one of those times in our human history that the Republicans would like to take us back to...

thinkingblue

Happy One Hundredth Birthday To Alan Turing

Cultural Insanity - Jailed For Peeing

I don't know about you but the older I get the more I am having problems with Cultural Insanity. We as a people do need laws in order to live together with a smidgeon amount of courtesy and respect for one another. BUT, Holy Riddled With Holes, Batman, there is a gray area to every law and rule ever devised by mankind! At least there should be, but not in this Little Rural Southern Town. An article printed in the local newspaper, about a man arrested for urinating in public is beyond all that is REASONABLE. I know this guy did a NO NO for sure, but give me a break, Arrested, Booked, Running a SS # and EBT card (food stamp) check on him and then making sure the local paper got a hold of this super notorious story so they could print-up a comprehensive headline article complete with MUGSHOT for "PUBLIC URINATION" is BATSHIT CRAZY!

Excerpt: The "culprit" was ordered by FHP to STOP but was evasive and uncooperative! (HE WAS PEEING FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!)

If the guy had been an undocumented immigrant, he would be fast tracked to another country (costing big bucks to taxpayers) for doing such an UNTHINKABLE BODILY FUNCTION!  I can’t help but ask… Why didn’t the Police Person have a little empathy and just give the guy a warning? Oh no, that would make sense and in this Culture of Insanity that the GOP/TP has catapulted us all in, making sense would be an even BIGGER thou-shalt-not, than peeing on a public sidewalk. Pathetic and Distressing to say the least! (redacted newspaper clipping included) thinkingblue
 PS: I, once again, can't help but wonder why, the Florida Authorities didn’t give this much attention to George Zimmermann for killing an unarmed teenager; but, there I go again with my damnable common sense.

The Best Authority On Batshit Crazy: George Carlin

Please Tell The GOP, No Man Is An Island.

AP IMPACT: Suicides are surging among US troops

By ROBERT BURNS | Associated Press 

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-suicides-surging-among-us-troops-204148055.html

EXCERPT: Kim Ruocco, widow of Marine Maj. John Ruocco, a helicopter pilot who hanged himself in 2005 between Iraq deployments, said he was unable to bring himself to go for help.

"He was so afraid of how people would view him once he went for help," she said in an interview at her home in suburban Boston. "He thought that people would think he was weak, that people would think he was just trying to get out of redeploying or trying to get out of service, or that he just couldn't hack it - when, in reality, he was sick. He had suffered injury in combat and he had also suffered from depression and let it go untreated for years. And because of that, he's dead today."

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Suicides are surging among America's troops, averaging nearly one a day this year — the fastest pace in the nation's decade of war.

The 154 suicides for active-duty troops in the first 155 days of the year far outdistance the U.S. forces killed in action in Afghanistan — about 50 percent more — according to Pentagon statistics obtained by The Associated Press.

The numbers reflect a military burdened with wartime demands from Iraq and Afghanistan that have taken a greater toll than foreseen a decade ago. The military also is struggling with increased sexual assaults, alcohol abuse, domestic violence and other misbehavior.

Because suicides had leveled off in 2010 and 2011, this year's upswing has caught some officials by surprise.

The reasons for the increase are not fully understood. Among explanations, studies have pointed to combat exposure, post-traumatic stress, misuse of prescription medications and personal financial problems. Army data suggest soldiers with multiple combat tours are at greater risk of committing suicide, although a substantial proportion of Army suicides are committed by soldiers who never deployed. MORE HERE http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-suicides-surging-among-us-troops-204148055.html

~~~

Media should be talking about this overwhelming cataclysm but they are not. It seems it is one of those quandaries that those in power positions would rather sweep under the carpet. I blame many of our societal ills on the GOP conservative frame of mind and again I place responsibility for these military suicides smack dab on the GOP ideology of… women are weak, gays are an abomination, government is not and should not be responsible for its citizenry, human beings ARE ISLANDS, therefore each individual has no one to blame but themselves for humankind breakdowns; And the GOP attitude on mental illness, especially within the military is, ITS ALWAYS FEIGNED AND ALWAYS A COVER FOR COWARDLINESS. They disperse this indifferent, calloused and unrealistic credo, as if it were something to be proud of. It’s a false pride because all of us together are only as strong as our weakest link. John Donne, wrote a poignant poem many years ago that 'rings' true today.

 No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee. John Donne( born between 24 January and 19 June 1572 – died 31 March 1631)

~~~

The best explained critique for this passionate poem came from this site: http://isu.indstate.edu/ilnprof/ENG451/ISLAND

John Donne

Meditation XVII: No man is an island...

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

This famous meditation of Donne's puts forth two essential ideas which are representative of the Renaissance era in which it was written:    No man is an island, entire of itself...The idea that people are not isolated from one another, but that mankind is interconnected; and…   Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee The vivid awareness of mortality that seems a natural outgrowth of a time when death was the constant companion of life.

Donne brings these two themes together to affirm that any one man's death diminishes all of mankind, since all mankind is connected; yet that death itself is not so much to be feared as it at first seems. Join us in exploring these two main themes, which we have associated with the two controlling images of the meditation...the island and the bell.

~~~

If I had only a smidgeon of universal power, I would put forth a proclamation that these words of wisdom shall become required reading and study for all who believe we are NOT, every last one of us, in the SAME boat; And Common Sense would tell you quite blatantly… it’s not UNSINKABLE. thinkingblue

PS: Now as a Case in Point of the GOP's absurd creed: GOP To Women: Equal Pay, No Way!

Many more examples of GOP callousness at thinkingblue.blogspot.com