Michael1942's Blog

The recent filibuster by Rand Paul is clear evidence that our Congress is obsessed with getting elected and a possible future  upwardly mobile role in politics. The current seat fillers (Scamocrats and Dupublicans) are of one mind and that is not doing the work they were elected to do. The single purpose is to stay in office long enough to get a good pension, win friends and influence for their” post  Congressional” life. The Congress will never create a term limit situation because they can get by with little or nor effort beyond following party lines and occasionally making a ripple. The only term limits that apply are those applied in the voting booth by the voters. This last failed filibuster had nothing to do with the issue but just another way to get his name in the press. This is the way Congress works, yell about any and everything then do nothing. Our economy is in tatters but  we are still fighting the same fight over and over again. If an opportunity to go to war comes along the Congress will be all over that before the ink is dry but when it comes to doing the right thing for the American people without a war that is quite different. The Congress appears to be making war on the American People. Do we all need to arm ourselves against the Legislature?

We  are all detectives in some form. While we exalt in the TV detectives of all sorts, we each discover things in our way. The real detection occurs each time we read more than one source for information, listen to several news or pseudo news outlets. The one defect in this discovery is our own personal biases. Our learned and acquired biases form a basis for many of our actions and beliefs. With this basis we often accept as fact the skewed information issued by our Congress. The Congress has been in free fall for many years and we have not fully realized it. With this idea in play we vote and keep the failures in office to continue the almost evolutionary progress in government downward spiral. The clues are:  the economic crisis AKA “fiscal cliff”, pursuit of Susan Rice on misinformation she was given and the pursuit of the Presidency by any means possible. Of the 500 plus members many are millionaires or nearly, so the raising of tax rates would affect them. Keep in mind that this tax does not raise the rates on investments by much, it has more impact on the earned income. One line that is quoted regularly is the effect on small businesses. Most small businesses will not be affected yet the notion that it will is out there and living large while the real information lies undetected.

There is an elitist group of men and women who believe the sport of boxing, weight lifting and other so called male sports should remain all male. As a species humans are the only ones that apparently do not recognize the strength and ability of the females of the species.This viewpoint is as ludicrous as the more popular racial stereotypes. In contrast while being the so called weaker sex, there are animals whose entire society is matriarchal with adult males being allowed in when mating is required.  Of course there are activities that are more masculine but there are activities that are unisexual and defy any specific gender identity. Human beings have the advantage of superior intellect but fall short in the area of  broad thinking on gender roles. We tend to fall short in judgment of other people, religions, ethnicities and skin tone.. This is apparent in marriages, dating behavior,  friendships and in families.  Think about the women in the so called “mens sports”, they have to prove themselves as able to perform  as women  instead of being seen as just athletes who are and could be the best in their sport. Do we allow this thinking to deprive us of some our best and brightest while  losing their skills and ability?

As I was looking at a movie on the Telly, I heard people use the phrase S.O.B. several times.  I thought about this and concluded that phrase  is more often used as an insult or expletive. Looking at the possible origins of the word B***h.    bitchn. A female canine animal, especially a dog. Offensive . A woman considered to be spiteful or overbearing or The word “bitch“, literally meaning a female dog, is a common slang term in the English language, especially used as a denigrating term applied to a person. So in anthropological terms or cold scientific ones a woman can be a bitch with no other connotation than being a female and sometimes a female parent. Using these terms and explanations we all could be S.O.Bs or D.O.Bs, though usually S.O.B. is used as male and female insults. There are several other modern day definitions that need no  coverage here  but do exist in several dictionaries. When the phrase wells up in you or in conversation it would be wise to reconsider your usage as you could be insulting someones parent.

Democracy has come to Head Start! The employees of the Head Start program have issued a resounding yes to having union representation. The Springfield Urban League (grant administrator) “terminated” 200 plus employees in June in order to save the money that would have been paid towards the COBRA of normally “laid off” workers. The US Health care bill mandated that employers who lay workers off will have pay a portion of their COBRA, the Urban league skirted that issue by terminating the employees then saying that this was normal practice. The normal practice has always been been a “layoff” of 9 month employees. The League then began a campaign of ridding themselves of vocal employees and dissidents. Once management was notified that the employees had petitioned to have union representation, the war began. They (management) not so systematically eliminated as many job titles as possible to dilute the voting pool. The next step was the campaign of words, which for the most part were untrue and threatening. This barrage of words and actions served to consolidate the workers into a solid block for unionization. This past week the election results showed that democracy lives in Springfield, at least at Head Start.