Time
A Thought Before Turning In:
This morning we woke up to the fact that the shut-down is still going on. It will end when it is supposed to. A man immolates himself in the near the capital as pictures show joggers frantically trying to put out the flames. The man lighted himself on fire just a few blocks from where federal agents killed Miriam Carey after a car chase from the White House to the Capitol. And Washington Navy Yard, where Aaron Alexis shot and killed 12 people last month, is just over two miles away. Chaos.
Within this chaos, we have a president and minority leader of the House vilifying members of an opposition party (Republicans) by building violent images such as “guns to the head” while referring to them as anarchists, terrorists, jihadists, extremists and insurgents. All the while denying access to elderly veterans wanting to visit the monuments that their valor, large or small helped to create.
We have a health care act that only a minority of the people wanted but still passed by one party. We have exemptions for the friends of the”Ruler” of the country, while others are made to pay. We have members of the Republican Party so afraid that people will hate them, that they are willing to admit they had no convictions to begin with. they just wanted the “big job”. And they don’t understand that hating is one thing but the same people will now loathe them because they will throw in the towel and throw their fellow Republicans under the bus.
History never loved cowards and neither do the people.
As we ponder “outreach” to “minorities”, fight one another and “try to be good”, time marches on. And it is not on our side.
I read the biography of the DeBlasio family, soon to be mayor of New York, unless something changes. You have a far left politician, married to a black woman. The wife is out and honest about it,she is a lesbian/bisexual several years his senior. Pictures showing them shaking their boootay’s in the West Indian Day Parade, celebrating and celebrated with/by members of their party form a stark contrast to the vile excoriation my husband and I (as well as other conservative Blacks) are subjected to by both the some on the right and most on the left.
As we ponder who is next in line and we fool ourselves into believing the hype, the polls, and the glossolalia telling us that we are “winning”, time marches on. The sea of change starkly represented by two races, one in New York and the other in New Jersey should become the sign post up ahead.
Time marches on. The train has left the station and we did not get on board. We must strike a balance, take a stand, practice loyalty, find a unifying set of ideals and stand together or the party will disappear and eventually so will the Republic.
“You are fortunate to have your misfortunes.”
“You are fortunate to have your misfortunes.”
I had a discussion with a co-worker this morning who spoke about his daughter’s friends and how one of them received a BMW 7 series for his 16th birthday. My eldest daughter attended an exclusive private school also, her friends drove Mercedes, Hummers, and BMW’s — all tricked out. Her best friend at the time received a Mercedes 450 SL two seater sports car along with her PERMIT in the 10th grade. I got a lot of blow-back because I told my daughter that I don’t know the Jones family so I have no desire to keep up with them. (smile) I have another story to tell…..about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a young person “not lucky” to have any of these luxury cars but instead is making her own “luck”. And for that, she might be the luckiest of all:
A wise man visited Portland Oregon last month. His name is Justice Clarence Thomas.
“You are fortunate to have your misfortunes.” These were the words that he told to a young woman by the name of Dakota Garza. And no, she is not a Republican, she is a registered Democrat.
Life is never as cut and dry as party lines appear to be, sometimes we forget this fact when the words of violence and vilification tend to be the norm in our political arena. But I digress. They both, Thomas and Garza grew up in hard times. Thomas, who has written about his early life, was abandoned by his father and grew up in a life of poverty in Pin Point Georgia.
Garza’s father died of a drug overdose when she was 2. She and her mother were homeless by the time she was 8. Garza does not have a relationship with her mother.
By her senior year of high school, Garza lived alone in an apartment and worked at Old Navy to support herself. She earned a 3.5 grade point average and could not afford college until she won a $20,000 Horatio Alger Association scholarship and a trip to the organization’s 2011 conference in Washington D.C.
That is where she met her guardian angel in the form of one Clarence Thomas. She invited him to eat at her table, he first declined but changed his mind. She told him about representing herself in court at the age of 16 to emancipate herself from her errant mother – she could not afford a lawyer but knew she had to save herself. She wanted a chance for herself and sometimes we have to let go of toxic relationships in order to move on to better things.
After lunch, Thomas gave Garza his phone number and email address. He told her to contact him if she ever needed anything.
She emailed him after the luncheon, thanking him and writing of her intention to attend the University of Portland. She told him that she wanted to attend Portland because it had the area’s best nursing school. Garza wants to help people and as a result of her tough times growing up, she wanted to make sure that she had a career in which she would have a good chance of steady employment. For those who grow up insecure in their means, security is a must.
Calls were made by Justice Thomas, himself, to make sure that between his association, scholarships and the like, Garza was able to make up whatever shortfall she might have financially. They worked out a deal to cover Garza’s tuition for all four years. Thomas also introduced Garza to a family for whom she nannies to pay for other expenses.
Justice Thomas, a humble man who gained a reputation among legal scholars as perhaps the most conservative justice of the last century: He once wrote that the Constitution gives states a right to establish an official religion, and that teenagers have no right to free speech. He’s compared affirmative action to slavery and segregation, and he is right.
Justice Thomas, who has been excoriated by misguided and uninformed Blacks and Whites alike as an “Uncle Tom”,(as well as other ugly things) has been the one to reach across the aisle to give a “hand up” rather than and “hand out” to a younger generational soulmate who was “fortunate to have her misfortunes.”
Fly high Dakota Garza.
The Inspector General Lawsuit – Myths and Reality
Has the “Shining City on a Hill” been Fundamentally Changed?
Has the “Shining City on a Hill” been Fundamentally Changed?
President Obama declared defiantly Tuesday that his signature health-care law is “here to stay” and urged Republicans to abandon what he called a right-wing “ideological crusade” to derail it, saying they have the ability to “reopen the government” following a shutdown that took effect at midnight.
I watched with ambivalence the President of the United States “scapegoat” the Republican Party over and over for the past 4 1/2/ years but this was the final movement into stirring “mob hatred”. It was a fearful sight for those who are weak and faint of heart but I truly believe that somehow Right — and I don’t mean an ideology but “Right” in the sense of a “RIGHTEOUS” heart and hand will prevail.
Politics rely upon the spoken word reaching a needful heart or spirit. In turn this needful spirit will be stirred up enough to buy the words of the politician and move them to vote for him/her. In the case of Barack Obama, he appealed to all sides for various reasons. For the Black and Brown people he WAS/IS a symbol of “Hope and Change” For all of the times they felt marginalized, he was vindication, he was a hope for a better day and the change from the old days.
In the prologue to the second of his autobiographies, “The Audacity of Hope,” Barack Obama said: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” He was a blank slate that appealed to the need for “cool”, the need for someone other than the old brown or white haired patrician who never had to worry about money, the was the “guilt eraser” for the liberal white — of either party, he was light-brown enough (a point that was salivated over by Harry Reid) enough to appeal to the Hispanics, he made the ladies swoon with his support for abortion ( remember the statement if his daughters “make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”) , he made Black women worship him for his adoration for his Black wife. He was the Black Romeo of their dreams. And to Black men he was DA Man. Tables were finally turned. This not all he was but just a smidgen or taste of the phenomenon. To many he was/is their God.
Heck, he made Chris Matthews have something going on up his leg.
We watched him read, from his teleprompter, and we thought that by moving his head back and forth he was being sincere. But I maintain this, he never lied about his intent to “fundamentally change” America. America has been “fundamentally changed”. So, what does the word “fundamental” mean? It is a central or primary rule or principle on which something is based.
So, what is our central and primary rule? What forms the core of our beliefs as a nation? Why the Constitution of course. And the fundamental change has been occurring over the past 41/2 years with lightening precision. The First Amendment to the Constitution concerning Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion have been challenged by the Administration. Under the guise of Political Correctness the correct speech is prescribed by one side.
The Second Amendment regarding the right of people of the United States to keep and bear arms is challenged at any turn. Any tragedy is merit enough to call for the surrender of your private gun.
In the fundamental change, the will of the few will prevail by the strategy of divide and conquer. Government bodies such as the Justice Department and the IRS instruct Black Churches how to engage in political activity while maintaining their tax status.
This fundamental change is so strong that we cannot comprehend what our “lying eyes” are telling us. That unemployment is still high and getting higher, that food stamps and dependency are being shoved down our throats……. That we are giving up.
A Health Care Law is passed by the one party dominant in both houses, and called “bipartisan”. Passed onto the general public with misleading numbers and percentages that confound the average, with promises of “helping the middle class” , “helping the poor”, all while exempting friends and enablers and lining the pockets of many. Americans are optimistic people who will eat the poison covered with sugar. I hope the sugar will prevail as the bitterness of broken promises become clear. He is right, it is a done deal, in as much as the health care we might have enjoyed in the past is “done”.
And finally, the mob is instructed to hate. Repeated messages piped in by the President day and night, afternoon and evening regarding how much of a demon the conservatives — in particular the Tea Party is. Isolation and scapegoating, hmmmm Where have we heard of that tactic before……….. Government shutdown that lasts for a short time to stand up for what is right, makes us quake in our boots. A man who stands for 21 hours is criticized by those who fear losing their “seat”.
And he does have help coming from the most unlikely sources….. elderly women such as Maxine Waters screeching that “The tea party can go straight to hell!”. Well I have a better one for her:
Romans 2:6-8
6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done.”[a] 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.
And another elderly lawmaker from Maryland ,salivating while spewing the word “Teabagger” to describe people who simply believe differently than she does. Does she even know what she speaks of?
So, we get back to our President. He who now speaks of the Armed Forces and “My Military” — he assured them that He will make sure that they do not suffer. Oh. Boy. Are we ever going to get back to the country that Nathan Hale so Proudly stated as his last words: “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
Or have we become too “fundamentally changed” to ever be the “the shining city on the hill” ?
