When We Go Wrong

It always seems like it's easier to just keep going, to say to whoever, "I'm too small." "It's too big a problem." "It's not my problem." and "What can you do?"  It always seems like it's easier to shrug the shoulders and say, "It is what it is."

However, the world will only grow crueler, less just, less warm, less beautiful, less like the very good place it's always been intended to be, if we become either permanently enraged, or put on the robes of apathy.   "What can we do?"

It is not a moral act to follow an evil law.  There is no law that requires children to be separated. It's a criminal and immoral response to a problem. 

First, we must name evil as evil.   Taking children from their parents, putting them in cages.  It's simple. It's evil.  I don't care who did it.  I care it's being done at all.  It needs to stop yesterday.  Somewhere, there's a charity or a firm that needs to go and decide to represent however many children are in cages and they need to fight.   We need to fight with them.  We need to sign petitions, call our representatives and tell them to pass bill after bill after bill after bill demanding the reuniting of these families.  We need to call our journalists, on every network, everwhere and have them run story after story after story after story, so we see the faces of these families, so we must stop pretending this story is merely an embarrassment, and recognize it for the cruelty, the absolute wrong that it is.   We need to call the White House and demand that they reverse policy.  The phones should not rest. The emails should not cease.  The coverage should not stop until this policy stops, and every child is reunited. 

This issue should transcend party, it should blanket the nation.  Every mother and father should ache for those mothers and fathers who don't know where their children are.  Every child should weep for the separation deliberately caused by a government unwilling to even admit, it's going on and too cowardly to acknowledge, it must stop. It's beyond wrong.

Most of us grew up knowing the phrase, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" by Edmund Burk.  We know from history, silence because the law allows for something, permits the veneer of law and order to gloss over attrocities on a micro and macro scale; be it slavery, segregation, discrimination, abortion or any other injustice perpetuated with the reassurance, it's the law. 

We go wrong when we forget the purpose of the law.  We go wrong when we allow the law to be a tyrant.  We go wrong when law supercedes mercy, forgiveness, kindness, charity, and freedom.   We go wrong when we allow ourselves to stay comfortable and think, someone else should do something.  We go wrong when we justify not doing something because we don't think it will make a difference.  Every act makes a difference, even if we don't make the news, because every act which is humane, is a rebellion against the tyranny of the wrongness of the world. 

The government is without checks or ballances or a moral compass right now, so it needs people of good will, ordinary, everyday people, to be the moral compass, and to become those who stand against what is being done in our name.   We must learn the first rule of spiritual physics.  We cannot bring about a good by doing evil.  The problem of immigration, and of needing a means of bringing people in, and legally processing them, requires a better response than treating those who come as subhuman.  Anyone who refuses to recognize the evil of taking a toddler from her mother, is wilfully blind. Wifully ignorant.  Wilfully pretending what is cruel, is not cruel.  It is no different than  wilfully ignoring the trains going by, wilfully pretending the child in the womb isn't a child, wilfully declaring someone not to have rights because of whatever one opts to decide is the reason, they shouldn't have human rights.

It's time to fight this constant parade of cruelties with deliberate action, rather than gnashing of teeth.  When the law allows people to be cruel, the laws must be changed.  I don't care if it's been 200 years, or 2000 years.   The length of a law on the books does not prove it's validity or it's merit, only the willingness of people to not get engaged, not be involved.

Here's an article on what's being done: Complaint targets separation of immigrant families at the border.
Here's what we know: CNN article on zero-tolerance involving the separation of mother from her infant.  It's a worthy video to watch.
And the New York Times did a great piece which also includes phone numbers and actions to take: Seizing Children from Parents at the Border is Immoral.  and my online friend, Rebeca Bratten Weiss wrote Legality is not Morality,     
Here's who to call:
Call your representative.
If you need me, I'll be making some phone calls and writing some emails. 

Where Have All the Smart People Gone?

Remember when Hollywood declared if Bush were elected the second time that they would leave the country? Not one of them even filed a change of address.

Now, with a record deficit and no end of spending in sight and congress lining up not to craft thoughtful policy that the American people as a whole can support, but to systemically demonize anyone who still dares to say they are Republican, watch anything other than MSNBC or think anything other than "Obama's the Greatest!" at all times, I have to ask the question.

Where are all the smart people?

We have CNN doing fact checks on SNL but not on itself. We have the speaker of the house saying things like "It's not a tax increase. We're eliminating a tax decrease." and Whoopi saying "It's not rape-rape." Chris Matthews says "I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But we’ll be there to watch." and Keith Olberman trashes people for blood, money and sport on a nightly basis. Meanwhile Gore Vidal fantasizes about murdering the 43rd president while on live television.

The current argument by the media elites and the White House and Congress is "Yeah but when Republicans ran the show..." Memo: If it was wrong then, it's wrong now too. Obama freezes out Fox News but points out Bush sometimes ignored MSNBC. Saying he did it first does not fly in my house with my children when they start hitting. Congress and the White House and the Press ought to be able to behave in a manner more civilized and mature than grade school students just after school who haven't had snack.

So I have to ask another question. Why are you folks so ticked off?

You guys WON. Your guy WON. Your Party WON. You control the house, the senate and the executive branch and 95% of the media outlets of the United States. (I can say that because the President said Fox isn't a media outlet) and most of the entertainment industry. You guys could write and have written bills that finance the analysis of radioactive rabbit waste and people who disagree can just get together and be annoyed.

Yet even this is considered "suspicious or fishy" behavior. Even just this kind of thinking sets off those in power to no end, declaring those who don't march in line or who "ask questions" are Nazis, fascists, teabaggers, racists, neanderthals, idiots, wingnuts and fanatics that are worse for the country than militant extremists who strap bombs on children with developmental delays to kill our military and anyone else who happens to be standing near by.

We're not going to leave the country or take our toys and go home. This nation has worked for 200+ years prior to this Congress and this President despite periods of great turmoil, economic hardship and seemily intractiable foes, prejudices and public injustices that seemed would never cease. Republicans and conservatives are part of this nation that has done all these great goods not just here but around the world just as surely as Democrats. History did not restart in 2009 with the touch of a button, we are all part of the ongoing story that is America and deserve better than to be accused of every evil under the sun because politically it is expedient to do so.

So we disagree with you. Big deal. We think your guy is making promises he can't and in some cases shouldn't keep and writing checks we can't ever cash. We aren't being treasonous. We disagree. We disagree strongly and we have reasons that have nothing to do with the earth being flat or the existence of dinosaurs or God. I thought smart people who did debate and drama in high school and college and who studied law understood that there were nuanced elements to every argument, validity to multiple points of view or was that mere smoke and mirrors?

To presume that the only ones with intellect or ideas worth considering are those posited by people with Ivy League degrees is the height of hubris. But I must be part of that stupid people that doesn't understand so please explain. You want to get things done I get, but don't you want to get them done well? Your own committees and constituencies are not misinformed, they're more informed than ever and what they've read and what they've learned, they don't like. Shouldn't that matter?

People aren't elected to Congress to rule, they're elected to represent.

By the same token, the President isn't elected to browbeat his political opposition; he's elected to lead and to govern the whole country, to hold the whole American people with greater respect than even they will have for him. A president who wishes to be historic and Presidential must have greater love for the people he represents, than the office he holds, and greater respect for the whole people he governs than the party that helped him win.

It's time for those in power to prove themselves worthy of their titles and their perks and privledges. It's not too late if the people in charge let go of their grudges. We have plenty of politicians and platitudes. What we need at this point, is substance and statesmen.

Not So New News

By now the news is not new. ABC is setting up shop in the White House to produce its daily dose of cheerleading for the sitting President and his party. So the question must be asked, by the networks that have not been chosen. “What exactly does a network have to do to get a primo spot like that around here?” It’s not like CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN weren’t swooning at the commander in chief’s every utterance.

Keith Olberman commiserated with Chris Matthews over sample Prozacs and a few stiff drinks. “I felt the thrill; I would have felt it every night for him.” He sobbed into his double martini. “I still do man…”Keith was sticking to the harder stuff and working on a way to blame Bush or Sarah Palin for the journalistic coup using Twitter. “How can I convey the level of incompetency and my complete loathing in only 140 characters? It’s not enough even for a haiku!”

The Newsweek editor Evan Thomas was spotted wondering the halls of his office building in shock. “I believed. Didn’t I believe enough? D’oh. It was that “sort of” hesitation. I should have just declared him god and been done with it. Doubt. That was my downfall. He found my lack of faith disturbing.”

So ABC’s Charlie Gibson shall deliver the nightly news from the blue room. But let’s call this show what it really is, the ultimate reality television survivor show minus annoying television host, Jeff Probst. Coming soon, “O-44-24” because Jack Bauer isn’t man enough for the job, there’s the President. Seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year, every second of every day, we’ll cover him so you too can appreciate the profound historic nature of his every breath, his every thought, his every pondering moment.

Watch as the President goes to a soccer game. (Gasp!) As he orders burgers. (Sigh). As he puts his feet up on the desk to make phone calls. (This is presidential; this is what it is all about). As he swats a fly with ninja type accuracy and his cat like reflexes! And for sweeps week, Date Night! And a bonus trip abroad to some place where he and his family can kick back and relax, maybe take that shirt off to show how buff he is.

Does anyone think that there wouldn’t be a mass media revolt if Fox News had set up shop inside the Bush Oval Office? Does anyone not think they would have declared it a puppet media mouthpiece of the President? Does anyone not think that every left wing/liberal would be excoriating the blogosphere and airways about the inherent unsavory relationship between the press and the people in power if this had taken place? They would have been right to do so, but they are not squawking now because the parrots of ABC shall repeat what they believe and what the Administration wants us to hear, all in the name of access and transparency.

But it’s not too late. The other networks could come up with something even better. There must be a way to prove themselves greater toadies than the American Broadcasting Company.

So here’s my proposal. Don’t even say any news. Don’t air any programs. Just line up the stars to offer their lauds to our current president every hour, all day and all night long, until everyone, men, women and children, dogs and cats, birds and worms, all manner of bacterial life start to chant over and over again, “Obama Rocks.”

During the commercials for movies no one watches and cars no one buys, have a rolling screed along the bottom, “Obama is good. Obama is Great. We Love Him. We Love Him More than ABC. We Love Him more than our spouses, our offspring and our dogs.”

Then, we can call Jeff Probst to conduct the ultimate survivor series over the course of a single year. “Which Media Outlet Loves Him Most.” Losers get voted out into the island of Bermuda where they can suffer being marooned on a tropical island that most people pay good money to go visit.

Earth Day

Okay, I listen to Laura Ingram --gave her up for Lent but it's Easter now...and heard about this guy who runs the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement --not that they're advocating dying now...just dying out...because the Earth would be so very happy if we all just followed the path of the dinosaurs. I thought this was a brilliant mock until I recognized, it was real.

I was beginning to wonder if satire in this day and age is possible, then I decided one could write about a husband and wife that loved each other and raised children to be loving responsible citizens and consider it satire because of one wink at the beginning of the novel, the words (This is ironic) as a footnote to the first word.

People would line up to buy the book so they could look smart while plowing through a story about lives as one would hope it could be, without all the mess and nastiness that the news presents us with on a daily basis. The novel would involve people who struggled and suffered occasionally, and made mistakes and asked forgiveness and sometimes spent too much or ate too much or blew things off but mostly tried and tried hard to live lives of quality and grace. They would even pray.

Buyers of the book could say they read it because of the delicious irony even as part of their souls craved that it be authentic. The adults in the book would find their identity and true callings within the constraints of a real and traditional relationship, rather than acquiring it via a sexual revolution or awakening with another man, woman, alien, sperm whale...but that would be okay because it would be safe to think so. After all, it was ironic.

The author would be on Oprah and CNN, she would be hailed for her sagacity and tight prose. It would be required reading as part of 21st Century literature. Kids in college would wear black and sip coffee that was straight because it was now chic to do so, and cheaper, much more honest, and tap their heavily thumbed and highlighted copy. The cover would be black and the title would be, The Real Life.

Eventually, the writer would become an acclaimed professor, sought after for convocations and speeches at political rallies. She would be wealthy but that would be okay because it was the result of enlightening others.

Then one day, the author would ask people, "What was ironic about that piece?" and no two people would answer the same thing....ah, the true irony of it all...excuse me, I have to get writing.

Obama and Hillary's Secret Meeting

I imagine it went something like the Grand Slam Finals of Poker.

Diane Fienstein acted as color commentator on the two finalists, in this H20 Smackdown for the final round.

Diane: Here’s the Flop…and Hillary has Pennsylvania, New York, and a possible flush with Michigan and Florida. She’ll have to wait for the River to see if she can pick that up. Obama’s hand includes Iowa, Illinois, California and those wild card Superdelegates. Both will sit on their hands for the next few cards.
And the DNC rules committee makes it’s move, and it’s Obama’s, now comes the serious bargaining, the bidding for the final card down.

Opening bids are usually nicer than subsequent attempts to control the pot. Let’s watch.”

Obama: I’ve got the superdelegates.

Hillary: I’ve got the popular vote.

Obama: I’ve got the press.

Hillary: I’ve got the experience.

Diane: “Round One, Obama. Now they up the ante.”

Hillary: I have a video tape of a speech by Michelle. It’s a Youtube Viral for sure.

Obama: I have footage of Bill with Hollywood star, Gina Gearson. Do you want to gamble whether or not Bill is up to his old tricks?

Hillary: …. …. ….You have friends like Wright, Pfleger, Ayers and Rezko. Maybe there are more?

Obama: You’ve loaned your campaign 11 million dollars….where’d it come from?

Hillary: You need me and my 17,493,836 voters. Only 41,622 votes separate us in reality, less than one of those towns in Pennsylvania you dissed in San Francisco.

Obama: Two words will make most of those Democrats vote for me anyway. “President McCain.” Anyway, I got there first, you need me more than I need you.

Hillary: The Superdelegates haven’t voted yet.

Obama: The media has, and you still have Bill.

Diane: “Round two…this time is a bit trickier. Obama may have won the hand but Hillary still has cards to play, or she may be bluffing. The next round concerns who shall be Veep and I’m joined here by former Clinton staffer George Stephanopolous for a bit of a discussion about Hillary as Veep. Is she 2008’s Perot? Dan Quayle? Or does she give Cheney type gravitas to Obama’s soaring rhetoric?”

George: Well before we get to that question, there’s breaking news…Edwards has said he would say “No” to being Obama’s veep. Edwards has also said “No” to being the lead singer in Metallica and hosting next year’s Oscars. I should mention in the interest of full disclosure, Edwards’ cell, home and office phone have no indications of any calls in the past three weeks from the Academy, the Heavy Metal Band or an upper level management surrogate of the DNC or Obama’s campaign. His inbox in his email, text messages, blackberry and personal PC are also devoid of such offerings. They’re still checking the fax machine and mail box though, just in case.

Diane: Well, who else can we rule out as a matter of course for potential Veep? Any inside information as a former insider with the Clintons?

George: Well, there’s a Definite No list, that includes people like Carter, Dukakis, Kerry, Rush Limbaugh and Lieberman. There’s a probably not list; Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis have all been notified by their respective agents to go ahead and look for other work.

Diane: Harrison Ford?
George: Depends on the Crystal Skull Gross take.

Diane: And the probables?
George: Hillary is like the New York Yankees to the Red Sox before 2004. She has to be a factor. I mean, she’s gone from being a strong candidate with strong negatives to someone people have grown used to seeing on television, used to seeing speak on a daily basis. That’s a plus that’s hard to pass up. And then there’s the angry women factor which Obama would be wise to quell before it gets a chance to get to full steam.

Diane: What about tapping the governor of Virginia, or Ohio to get those traditionally red but shifting blue states to go Democrat?

George: It’s going to be tough. We’ve had staffers at CNN playing the board game “Mr. President” from circa 1974 non-stop for the past 24 hours and the break is really dependent upon everything. We’ve run models which include massive sweeps both ways, which break just short and break just over.

Diane: Speaking of over, the poker game is about to resume…

Hillary: We’ve decided something important.
Obama: Together.

Hillary: We’re going to keep going on…
Obama: having secret meetings.

Hillary: It keeps everyone from considering actual ideas or policies.
Obama: Or McCain.

Hillary: There will be another press conference tonight.
Obama: Thank you folks for coming!

Obama Sneezes as the World Watches

In a recent stump speech in Texas, Obama paused to blow his nose and people applauded.

When asked about her nasal passages, Hillary sniffed, "Sure I could use a hanky in public, but being more experienced at these things, I consider a nostril full of substance to be more compelling."

The crowds that amass at Obama's every stop in his campaign for the Democratic Nominee have reported finding long lost kittens, an absence of rheumatism, and spouts of spontaneous literacy in foreign tongues.

"It's incredible." said one gasping fan as she slurped down a Boston crème. "He's like the chosen one. The one we've been waiting for. His midi-chlorian count must be off the charts." She added in a low eager hopeful whisper, "I bet he even has the lightning shaped scar somewhere."

More seasoned veterans of the political junket remarked on how the ground seemed to be erupting with wild flowers wherever the charismatic candidate walked.

CNN reported that the used hanky had been posted on EBay and was currently holding at a bid of $24,000.00, with all of the proceeds going to charity. The anonymous bidder did leave a note indicating that if he was so fortunate as to win the auction, the DNA residue would be given over to science in the hopes of cloning a future Obama for posterity.

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign must answer questions about campaign discrepancies in financing that include $1,300.oo for Dunkin Donuts alone. Rumors that Obama zealots raided the Clinton campaign for breakfast supplies to feed the 5000 that showed up for his speech in Houston, have so far been unconfirmed.

"At least my vampiric minions aren't pure zombies." the once and future Presidential Candidate, queen of the Night snapped.

Obama walked into the crowded room to chants and swoons and screams of pure joy. The phenomena of his presence caused one MSNBC correspondent to acknowledge, "Rome could burn and people would come to hear him fiddle."

Play on Obama, play on.

For more insights on who to vote for, this is probably not the place, but given the state of things, it might be more amusing, try www.humor-blogs.com!