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Healthcare Is A Human Right
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Category Archives: Current Issues
Ring Dancer
The Cassini Spacecraft is going to dive into the rings of Saturn and send back data before the end of its mission. First dive is today. Go Cassini!
Pick Your Battles
There are several issues that are pressing right now. Important issues that are in the cross hairs of this new administration. Could this be a strategy, attack on several fronts, divide people into different camps? It can be overwhelming. Healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, the Environment, women’s control over their bodies and reproductive health, Education, and Immigration. Did I leave anything out? Preservation of our National Parks, our protected open spaces, is one of my priorities. What’s yours?
Featured image ‘Valley of the gods’ in Bears Ears National Monument via US Bureau of Land Management.
Bears Ears
I recently posted some gorgeous photos of Bears Ears National Monument that I discovered from the US Dept of Land Management. I also wrote I did not think this land was threatened by development, oil drilling, or fracking. I must have been having my intuition alerting me that this land could be threatened because some politicians in Utah want the protections of the National Park removed. I happened to see a video presentation by Patogonia on the PBS website. I am going to share what I am finding out now. Our National Parks and open, natural spaces must be protected. Latest interactive video on Bears Ears.
Compromise
“…Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. You try to find some way to balance or reconcile or compromise those interests, or at least a majority of them. You follow a set of rules, enshrined in a constitution or in custom, to help you reach these compromises in a way everybody considers legitimate.
The downside of politics is that people never really get everything they want. It’s messy, limited and no issue is ever really settled. Politics is a muddled activity in which people have to recognize restraints and settle for less than they want. Disappointment is normal.
But that’s sort of the beauty of politics, too. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way….”
― David Brooks
I hope more of our congressmen and congresswomen would follow this advice about what compromise is. It is not that I don’t think people need to question and push back, or feel passionately about their beliefs, but I am tired of the closed minded regidity of some of them, and the authoritarian leanings I see taking sway lately.
JustJotItJanuary is being guest hosted by Judy E. Martin of Edwina’s Episodes the prompt word today is “compromise” suggested by Ritu at But I Smile Anyway (https://butismileanyway.com/) . David Brooks quotes from Goodreads quotes. Featured image photo of detail from Elihu Vedder’s mural ‘Government’ by Carol Highsmith via wikimedia.
The Beginning of the End
It began when I woke up the morning after the recent presidential election, after watching the election returns late into the night with a sense of shock, disbelief, unreality, and increasing premonitions of impending doom, and said something like this to my husband, “This is when it begins, the end of the world.”
I have gradually calmed down and regained some equilibrium until I read about The Russians hacking into our election and watched the president-elect appoint a man for Secretary of State who was awarded a “Friend of Russia” trophy by Putin.
The saving grace for me has been reading satire and humor about the whole situation. At least we can have a good laugh while we march off to our destruction. So I want to include a few funny posts for your enjoyment, which would probably be anything by Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker Magazine, Dave Barry, and David Horsey.
Kremlin Names Trump Employee of the Month
Putin to Sing at Trump Inauguration
Putin Agrees to Recieve Intelligence Briefings in Trump’s Place
Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2016–What the ?
David Horsey Political Cartoons and Commentary in LA Times
I consider myself a hopeful, optimistic person most times and I feel I must work hard to remain this way for the sake of my kids and new grandson. So I think it will all come out all right in the end.
This post is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosted by Linda G Hill who said, Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “first/last.” Use one or both words, or find words that mean the same. Bonus points if you start your post with “first/beginning/start” etc. and end with “last/end” etc. Enjoy!
Wishing you a Happy New Year! And hoping 2017 will be a better year for us all.
Gifs via Giphy.com and Happy New Year image via Pixabay.com
Sex And Marriage With A Robot
This is disturbing to me because the robots depicted in the short video are very machine like. I could not imagine having one for a mate. How do you feel about this? I just watched an old episode of Star Trek TNG last night, ” The Measure of a Man,” which is about the android, Data, and how we define what is sentience. Data is so “human-like” that it is easy to relate to him as an individual and envisioning friendships and relationships for him. What kind of personalities would these future “robot-mates” have? Would they be so totally compatable with us, be like mirror images, our twins? Would they never chose to disagree about our choice of restaurants, movies, activities….Just kind of wierd.
You may not believe this but it’s just a matter of time that some of our children, or grandchildren, will take a robot as a life partner. In fact, at the recent Love and Sex with Robots conference in London, industry experts predicted that human-robot marriages will become commonplace by 2050.
You can read all about it here.The New York Post just did a story about this. While many of us consider The New York Post to be a rag, they do have unique and bizarre stories that eventually come true.
Make sure you watch the video too.
Moot
I don’t give a hoot about “moot.” That is our word prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week. And as you can see I am posting on Sunday because I did not get inspired so much by moot yesterday. Moot indicates something has occurred and it is probably not worth it to debate the whys and wherefores. It is not worth it to go look back over the situation and argue about why it happened. It is done. Kind of like the recent presidential election in the US. We can go over and over it, trying to determine the cause(s) for the outcome. But maybe it is not productive to do that and no one will ever be able to prove, without a doubt, all the factors involved in the final result. We just need to focus on where do we go from here, (Even if it’s The Russians).
I love owls. The owl on the right is saying, ” I know it’s The Russians!” This post is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosted by Linda G Hill.
Column: Places like Ghost Ship, site of the deadly disaster in Oakland, have kept us alive
There are no words to convey the heartbreak felt by those closest to the Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse fire.
Source: Column: Places like Ghost Ship, site of the deadly disaster in Oakland, have kept us alive
“They don’t understand why we don’t just live in a $3,000/mo. apartment where everything is safe and sterile and clean; why we live in a warehouse, or a garage, or an attic or shed or laundry room; why there is a mattress on the floor with a space heater where there normally would be a Queen size bed with a duvet and a nightstand and central heating.”
Interesting post on the Ghost Ship, young people, and not fitting into a box.
Let Us Not Be Afraid Of Bullies
This week I am posting a lot about the recent election and my reaction to what has happened. I decided to check out Huffington Post Women because I suspected the women who post there would be talking about this. That is where I saw the reference to Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letters. She posted a quote from Sojourner Truth, and if you don’t know who Sojourner Truth is look it up.
“I am not going to die, I’m going home like a shooting star.” —Sojourner Truth
Here is an excerpt of her letter to Hillary Clinton:
A lot of people have been talking about how we need to try to understand how this happened and what’s going on in the minds of the people who voted for Donald Trump. Maybe. Maybe. But maybe let’s leave that to the strategists, to the men in offices who need to run the numbers. It should not be the job of women, of people of color, of queer and trans Americans, to understand who does not consider them human and why, just as it’s not the job of the abused to understand their abuser. It’s quite enough work to know about and bear the hatred of so many. It’s quite enough work to go on living…..
Thank you, Hillary, for bravely taking every shot and standing tall, for weathering assaults from every direction, for telling us that no, this wasn’t politics as we know it, and no, you were not going to let a chronic interrupter with a limited vocabulary of catchphrases stop you from speaking coherently about your dreams for this country. Thank you for 30 years of public service. Thank you for showing our daughters something beautiful to aspire to. Thank you for reminding us what we are capable of when we are focused and ferocious. Thank you for 30 years of that. Thank you for not abandoning us now.
So no, the work isn’t done. It is only beginning. We will stun ourselves with what we are capable of. We will laugh with surprise like kids who finally threw a punch back at the schoolyard bully. We will watch our friends in awe as they step forward and demand more, as they recognize and wield their politicized identities. We will not be governed by fear. We will show our children a different way. We will go home like shooting stars.
I’m proud of you,
Lena
I remember when I was a little girl there was a bully on our street and he took pleasure in terrorizing the little kids. One day he and his buddies had surrounded my best girlfriend’s little sister and they were taunting her. She called out to me to help her. I was very scared too but I am proud to say that the little girl who was me went into that circle of bullies and put my arms around my friend’s sister and escorted her out. The bully became very upset that I did that. He hit me as I walked past him. His mother later explained to a group of us that he had problems and asked for our understanding.
It is important to stand up to bullies. I am afraid now too, kind of like when I was little, and hope that I will again have the courage to walk into that circle with the bully and stand up for the things I believe in. To put my arms around his victims and walk them to safety.
This post is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday hosted by Linda G Hill. The prompt for today is “mem.” Featured image of Hillary Clinton speaking at Brown University by Gage Skidmore on Wikipedia.
Notes Tied On The Sagebrush 