DO SOME STILL BELIEVE THE GLOBE IS NOT WARMING?

People may question that the warming on earth is not caused by humans but that it is a natural climactic cycle determined by Nature and other forces, but they cannot deny that there is global warming. My whole long life I've heard that the Northwest Passage has been impassable. Now two German merchant ships are making their way through it from Asia over the Russian coast and on to Europe! For some details, click here. "By avoiding the Suez canal, the trip from Asia to Europe is shortened by almost 5,000km (3,100 miles)."

If you can wade and be patient through the commercial, it is almost like being there. Check out more collapses of icebergs and glaciers on video.

This is not for worry-warts or slippery-slopers. Reading more about global warming is for the interested and curious, not deniers. For those who choose to ignore reality, you can pretend that this video was put together on Hollywood set, if your ignorance takes you tat far, that is. Click here to see how some people are already affected. Some people can not pretend that their lives remain unaffected. Click here.

PROTECT OUR KIDS FROM POSITIVE ROLE MODELS...WHY?

My local grade school writes this on a web page as its mission statement: "Students, parents and staff unite in a diverse community that values and promotes mutual respect, unconditional acceptance, the pursuit of academic excellence, professional motivation, cooperative contribution and life-long learning in a safe and secure environment."

I'm ashamed to say that my local school system refused to allow the President's speech on 9/8/09 to be aired live to the school children, thus violating their own mission statement. They felt the need to make a decision as to appropriateness prior to the children being exposed to our President! What kind of message is that for our democracy and teaching the children to trust respect for the authority of the Office of the President.

As it turned out, President Obama gave a speech which might have been quite appropriate as a college graduation speech toned properly down for younger school age children. It was a stirring speech to let them know how important they are to the future of America and how hard they need to work, starting at these lower grades, to reach what they might desire in life and to contribute to the needs of our society. It raised my respect for the President and lowered my respect for the local school administration that made this arrogant and disrespectful statement.

HOW DOES ONE VALUE A LIFE

Steve Jobs is back at work, testimony to the great distance cancer research has brought us. It certainly argues the statement: "all men are created equal". They are not. Their equality is limited to the fact that all living beings have worth but that worth can be determined only on several scales...worth to whom? worth for what? worth for what they will achieve in life? worth for the legacy to mankind they will leave behind? worth for how their having lived will make the lives of many others happier, more fulfilled, and helped to grow? or worthy because so many people depend on them for their own lives?

Philosophically and ethically, one may argue who has more 'right' to life. It is as useful as arguing how many angels can dance of the head of a pin. People's biases show over sadness of the loss of a child who 'has not had a chance to live to grow up', but one might not see that (as in Africa) they might have suffered unbearably while trying to grow up. One might argue that people who say at the funeral of someone in their 90s, "He/she had a good life." The implication is that longevity makes it okay to die now. It doesn't take into consideration that many people contribute to this world with their healthy minds and vast knowledge and experience no matter how many decades they live.

I've heard the argument that if we allow abortion we will never know if we have 'killed' a Mozart or a Beethoven. Every time there is an ejaculation without sperm contact with an ovum, we might ask the same question. It is ludicrous to argue with that mentality. People should not be in position to make that choice for others. However, shouldn't a person have the right to make that choice for self? Some churches would still have us suffer for the sins of Adam and Eve, etc. though we don't even agree on whether there ever was an Adam or Eve. It is considered to decide to take one's own life no matter what the suffering or prognosis. Why should someone else be given the right to make that choice?

The choice as to who lives or dies is made, often, by Nature, by chance, the law of averages, or by how much a person works to stay healthy and safe. I'm sure that there are many more worthy of life by some people's value system than I, but it pleases me that those people will probably not make that decision for me.

MONEY-DRIVEN MEDICINE

There is a new documentary by Alex Gibney that should enlighten some of us on this issue. It will be lobbied against by high-priced lobbyist, refuted as lies by those with a vested interest, disbelieved by those who should believe, and be a frustration to those who would like to force a failure for President Obama in achieving one of his campaign promises.

Click here for a preview and more on the subject.

Maggie Mahar is a fellow at the Century Foundation and the author of Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (Harper/Collins 2006).

Hopefully we will soon better understand what the proposal is really planning and not have to listen any longer to the slippery-slopers and paranoids. Republicans will continue to debate this as a political debate rather than a policy debate as viewed by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. I think she is right on track here.

THE DAY BEFORE OBAMA SPEAKS TO SCHOOL CHILDREN

It amuses me that some parents are going to prevent their children from hearing the President's speech. Are these the same people who allow their children to get fat at McDonald's or choose cereal because the TV marketers brain wash them? Are these parents who let their children play their hand held violent games or see movies that teach them hate and warfare? The hypocrisy so many operate under is staggering but their ignorance is far more damaging to themselves and their children. The lessons they should have learned by Jonestown have long been lost. Many are too young to value or read history.

Tom Ritten of the L.A. Times writes: "Those who are whipping up hysteria over the president's address are playing a dangerous game with an unhinged segment of public opinion. While it long ago crossed the borders of reason and civility, the hysteria over healthcare reform is -- at some level -- understandable, because wellness and infirmity are really just stand-ins for those most terrifying of issues, life and death. To see the whole article, click here.

But there is no similar way to rationalize the bizarre controversy now raging over President Obama's plan to deliver a brief televised address on Tuesday to the nation's grammar school children."

The obstructionists have as much right to refuse to hear the President as those of us have to pity their 'slippery-slope' mentality. Some of us are not afraid to hear everyone and make our own minds up about what we can believe. Would that we might have fewer human sheep following the wrong leaders under the name of Christianity. The KKK makes a big issue of their Christianity, yet break the ten commandments just in being, let alone by doing.

Since the troublemakers are a minority, when is the majority going to reclaim sanity for the country again?

LOBBYISTS; MANY TRYING FOR THE BILLY MAYS OF GREED

Craig Holman, the legislative representative for Public Citizen, agrees. "The more the federal government gets involved in the economic sector," he said, "the more businesses will spend on lobbying practices."

Lobbyists are feeling the pinch along with the rest of the country. Not all justice is mete out by the courts. There used to be a slogan about telephone books, "Let your fingers do the walking" but when it comes to most lobbyists it should be: "Let the liars do the talking."

Consumers don't seem to realize that the money paid to lobbyists is not a gift from companies. Not at all, the prices they charge the consumer also does not cut their profit. The consumer pays the costs, judging from the overwhelming fees paid to CEOs and annual reports of profits.

For years, this naive soul thought that non-profit meant just that. I ultimately learned that profit is frequently a major part of non-profits as well, so that salaries can get fattened up, especially those of the CEO. For one example, click here.

None of the TV networks have ever given the ins and outs of lobbying to my knowledge. Do the best lobbyists get rated. Does the top producer win a trip? Does someone get crowned "Lobbyist of the Year"?

WHY THE BELIEF OF STRENGTH IN NUMBERS WORKS

So many of us fear to stand alone, believing our lone voice will be lost in the vast emptiness around us. For that reason, many join movements. Having others saying and believing the same things (regardless of whether a true majority shares them), is confirming. Support groups have sprung up everywhere in our society for that reason. Therapy groups and Alcoholics Anonymous embrace the same philosophy...support and strength in numbers.

Is it any wonder then that we have so many groups coming together with truth and others with insanity ("James Warren "Jim" Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 death of more than 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the deaths of nine other people at a nearby airstrip in Georgetown.")
“I doubt that citizens like yourself could ever, under our democratic system, be provided with the universal degree of certainty, the confidence in their understanding of our problems, and the clear guidance from higher authority that you believe needed,” Eisenhower wrote on Feb. 10, 1959. “Such unity is not only logical but indeed indispensable in a successful military organization, but in a democracy debate is the breath of life.”

Eisenhower also recommended a short book — “The True Believer” by Eric Hoffer, a self-educated itinerant longshoreman who earned the nickname “the stevedore philosopher.” “Faith in a holy cause,” Hoffer wrote, “is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.” Read more on this here.

We have interest groups, family groups, political parties, organizations of all sorts, and the list of collective gatherings is massive, both hurtful and helpful. Oddly, the most hurtful seem to wrap themselves in Christianity. In the past, before the Internet made the world so small and before the news media became a 'sideshow', not a great deal of publicity was given the kookier ones. Some of the more dangerous ones like the Ku Klux Klan appear to be regenerating themselves under new titles and goals. Note that the KKK hides amidst a cloak of Christianity, just as the far right does today! They may shout truth down under different banners, but the messages are as similar as those in the video above.

Is the Unites States birthing new litters of KKK-like hate groips? Will we continue to let the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Beck's and hate-mongering others continue to give them front and center stages? What are we as a country going to do about these attempts to split us all and throw away the societal gains of the last forty or more years? We currently have a President who is half of two races. Let us not forget that! He is neither black nor white. He is mixed racially as our country is mixed with religions and ethnicities. Unless you are a Native American, your genealogy says you descended from people alien to this country,even those off the Mayflower; some groups more recently than others.