Boy, I have a mess to say right now....

Where to start, where to start.

I haven't neglected keeping up with news, either there nor here. But I don't see the sense in going from one hyperventilating cause of outrage to another without pause, or without having an antidote, other than to get involved in things directly through petitions, and giving your pennies to whomever you think can dig 'Murka out of the hole it dug for itself, and messed up half the world in the process.

But the THING IS... what happens there doesn't STAY there, and I sure as hell wish it would.

So let's see, on the repub side, you have a disney animatronics figure with faulty wiring and a weak battery that makes him stammer all over the place and look embarassed. And a wannabe disgusting guy who is out only for financial gain, and a real, dyed in the wool, bible-thumping, ASSinine religious zealot who would like to take the clown car in full throttle forward toward a cliff, and the gear shift is broken, and there's no reverse on the damned thing. They sure have them some 'swell' choices.

Things have come up in this cycle that I thought were dead and solved a half century ago. But hey, Sanatorium coming up and saying he wanted to puke over JFK's presser about separation of church and state? I REMEBERED that speech as if it were yesterday. I was 11 years old, but my family was catholic, and that was a very big deal and concern, the wasps thinking 'da pope' would control him somehow. I remembered that speech when they began playing excerpts in light of what mr. 'Sanatorium' was saying. And then they reported that the JFK speech was 51 years ago, and I said to myself, 'Oh, Ren... you've gotten oooooollllllld.

Then going after women, because that is what bullies and guys who are sexually frustrated and have no---NO--clue as to what women are like DO and they go after them because they think they are an easy target. And these ASSHOLES get onto contraception issues, out of the blue, hey... Except we thought THAT was settled 51 years ago. Leaving aside that some men still consider women as possessions or chattel, and the word trophy wife is so telling, don'tcha think?... leaving that aside, that wasn't even the real purpose of all the uproar. They hate health care and are using it as a wedge issue so that insurance companies can continue to screw the public, see the so-called Blunt ammendment. If I as an employer am not a believer in medicine, cancer treatments won't be part of the insurance package I offer. That's what they really want.

Just when you think progress of some sort was made. And attacking a college student, boy, ya gotta hand 'the Rush' a trophy. Here's a guy who was married four times, sired no children...(that anyone KNOWS of)... and he goes on thinking that women have to take a birth control pill every time they have sex, so the student is a ´rapacious slut? He HAS to know better, and it was vicious, and so typical of bully behaviour, and in the end, laughable... except a lot of people aren't very well edumacated in 'Murka these days. And the woman's testimony wasn't ABOUT that. It was about the fact that women take the pill for other reasons, like preventing ovarian cysts. But hey it's an agenda, so drag an innocent woman through the mud, why not, she's 'only' a woman, after all and that is how that bastard thinks. And the real rethugs kiss his ass and perform unmentionable lower intestinal acrobatics on him to make him feel reaaaalllll good.

And hokay, how does this look here? We got us an AUSTERITY package, how loverly. And the focus on pensioners and federal employees, not good, but it could have been worse. Except now, of a sudden, well, another major bank needs a bail-out and guess who's on the paying end? Uh-huh. It's a daily case of dejà vu.

What concerns me far more is what is coming out of the mouthpieces of the parties here about a rise in drop outs in the schools, and 'playing lots of hooky'. Alarums went off in what is left of my mind. Because, you see, the conservative party thinks it would be a useful thing to fine parents of children who play hooky.

Reallah... really? IF we are gonna haveta go there... I seem to remember a time when things in 'Murka weren't so good for kids in poor neighborhoods, and I went to a grade school in the poorest part of the city. You got caught playing hooky? You got sent to a juvenile detention center, and boy howdy, those institutions created a whole generation of petty criminals. The only way to keep peace in that grade school was for the principal to beat up the sixteen year old seventh grade students once a week in front of his office winder during recess, to intimidate the rest of the students. And there were knives, and one teacher got thrown down a flight of stairs and broke her leg, it was terrific, and didn't learn much of anything there other than to survive from one day to another, but thank whomever I read non-stop. Every single one of us were expected to fail. Every one of us. Let's face it, it's real class warfare... keeping the plebes in their place, and it was anything but pleasant. Now it seems subtle.. seems.

So that was also fifty years ago, so what? Except I saw an interview with a mother on one of the msnbc shows last week that I would have killed to keep for this, and can't find it. There's this school called noble school in one of the poorest parts of chicago. And it's the only hope for those kids. But they fine parents when the kids break the rules, and whoa, they are successful. They are so successful, they collected nearly half a million dollars in fines in a two year period. From the parents in the poorest part of the city. And they coughed it up, because if they didn't... there was no other school for their kids to go to. Simple as that.

Transgressions leading to fines? Untied shoelaces. A button not buttoned on a shirt. Not sitting up straight and tracking the teacher continuously, falling asleep in detention.

WHAT the hell has any of that have to do with education? And Rahm Emanuel thinks it's a great program? What was he looking at?` The fine intake?

It's keep em down, keep em in their place. So let's take a closer look at here. The socialists think it's a bad idea to fine the parents of kids who play hooky, the freepers are for it, of course, greens against, and the unmentionables... don't count... so far.

And I was on-line, and asked about it in my guild. We are only about seven people aged late thiry to my age. So sorta adult. And I wanted to know if they had those fines in germany, and they do. One said it was just another scheme to get money from people who are already so strapped by their austerity program. And I asked who gets the brunt of the fines? Not hard to guess, preciousses... the poor and the newly emigrated families. Just keep em in their place, hey. It was an interesting discussion.

If the children of immigrants aren't doing well, it's because their system is failing, as it is failing here. Ours fails them, they are trying to find a solution. And the Germans? Turn a blind eye, seemingly, but I might be wrong. I haven't looked into their 'troubles' so much, so that is only a supposition.
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But if you take that to the extreme, you get what you recently had in chicago... I think it was... where a mother gets jail time for drugs... not the serious kind... and a sixteen THOUSAND dollar fine, BECAUSE... she enrolled her son in a school in a better district so he would have a better chance, and that was 'stealing' from the taxpayers.... a public school, hey, who did she steal from, huh?

This bothers me in the extreme... our schools are very good. When they graduate from 'high school' it is the equivalent of two years of college over there. And this shit shouldn't be happening, but leave it to the catholic conservatives... they are really a pain in the ass and mules with blinkers on.

This all seems somewhat surreal to me... as in getting the feeling, 'I've been here before, why am I back in this nightmare?'

I'm not so happy with the other side there either on some issues, but goodness... as Mittens would say... at least they act like they are adults.

One last thing... if anyone tells you that they are for 'enhanced interrogation' I saw a documentary on tee-vee the other night about Hitler taking over Austria. And you know what? That is when the SS decided to use, 'strengthened' vulgo 'enhanced' interrogation, right here. and that was their euphemism for it, and people died horribly. So I think I would ask such promoters of that why they would ever want to associate themselves with people so heinous, because that is what they do when they say they are for it.