THE MEDIA AND PUNDITS ARE JUST GUESSING MOST OF THE TIME, WITH THE REST OF US...BUT THEY GET PAID FOR IT

As New Year's Day came and went, I did not notice the media focus on predicting the next year as often and thoroughly as in the past.  Nor did I see programs posting the disasters predicted the previous year that didn't happen.  There is no doubt that some people envision process more clearly and, thus, appear to be able to more accurately predict some future events and attitudes.  The reality is, accurate prediction of the future with the best educated guess possible.

As I was going through my computer, cleaning up old correspondence (which I rarely do since, I just keep making more room with bigger drives.  I marvel at people who can throw away their email as soon as they have read it.  I'm sure their closets and kitchen drawers are always neat and clean, as well.  My house is as cluttered as my mind.

But back to my cleaning...On 2/708 I wrote the following note to Senator Clinton, which I had forgotten having written and sent to her campaign headquarters..

"Senator Clinton

You are too qualified to take the Office of President with the mess in which Bush will leave it.  I believe that you are more valuable to our country than to be putting out fires as Obama will be doing.  People will be disappointed that he will not make miracles happen all too soon.  You do not need to be worn down so quickly.  I personally think you would serve this country better on the Supreme Court but you will make your own wise decisions.  I know that you will do well at whatever you do, no matter how disappointed I am that the country did not see fit to nominate you.  Remember, this is the country that made Bush president!"

That was my response to that which was before us all.  She would not have been the reliever, comforter, and inspiration that Obama is.  The title seems not to  be important. She is a wonderful public servant and I hope she will be honored as she deserves.  Those who guessed that she couldn't work with Obama were projecting their own inability to deal with disappointments and petty grievances..   Our citizens have much to learn and won't learn it watching or listening to the media. 

NEWS IN TODAY'S WORLD

Americans continue to die in two wars in the Arab world, one inherited and the other drawn into by American greed.carried out by politicians' lies.  It seems the media chooses to focus on certain stories while ignoring  the spectacular rather than the necessary and interesting.  For years I've observed news people shove a microphone into  the face of a totally devastated mourner, tears streaming down their face, and ask, "Can you tell us what you are feeling now?"

Imagine that we should see as the leading news story on the BBC Americas page,  the funeral of the 9 year old killed in Tucson.  It is sad that it takes the inevitable and predicted deaths of innocents to confront deaf ears of the guilty that the right to free speech requires some use of common sense.  Hate rhetoric, TV, computer games, etc have done little to make a peace-loving new generation.  As in free software, after a trial period you have to buy the software to be able to run the program.  Similarly, in order to be accepted in the 'club', you have to prove yourself through your speeches and words. 

Sarah Palin has proven herself to be beautiful but somewhat brain dead in sensitivity to most of the people in the lower '48'. Ethics and morals are strangers to far too many. She may defend her right to free speech but she is yelling 'fire' in a movie theater.  I do not 'blame' her for the shooting. I have observed Michele Bachmann making no comments in the past few days, Glenn Beck making the kindest speech I have ever heard him make about toning down the hate speech, Palin whose writer didn't look far enough down the list of meanings of 'blood libel' to use a different phrase defended her poor choice.  I've learned that there are people who don't wish you to explain your meaning.  They know the words you used and that is all they wish to know.  The right choice of words distinguishes the great statesmen from the unsuccessful ones.  Sarah Palin failed that round.

Rand Paul on Hannity speaks of 'they' and what 'they ' have to do.  That vague  
they' allows him to continue to talk about the ideal without any real way of knowing what has to be done to get there other than his suggestion of needing new leadership in Washington, obviously forgetting that it what we voted in two years ago to undo what the Bush administration did to our economics.  Rand Paul has zeal but lacks experience to see ahead to political consequences.  I don't mean about his own re-election, I mean the results to our countrymen if his policies are enacted.

TODAY IT SNOWED IN NEW ENGLAND...AND SNOWED...AND SNOWED

Normally, a guest here would receive a warm welcome.  Not  today unless the guest was willing to help shovel snow.  For a few years we have escaped the large amounts of white, fluffy downfall we experienced today of the stuff that looks better on Christmas cards than it does when you have to shovel it against the tide (the tide being the snowplows hired by the city who wait until you have brought the berm they last left down; they gloat as they push more back up to make a new two foot berm for you to have a go at. with your puny shovel)

The snow was wet and heavy. 

BACK TO TRYING A ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL SIMPLISTIC SOLUTION

I've been listening to a lot of discussions in reaction to the Arizona mass shootings in Tucson.  Many offered gun control as a solution.  Actually, some of those made some sense.  Allow people to buy the guns that fit their use.  Hunting guns for hunters, guns for personal security, etc.  However, another offered the suggestion was that we have to get 'rid of hate ', not guns..  This was a profound statement but just doesn't say how to do it, though he offered some of the 'who' should.  He mentioned clergy, teachers, and a few other professions but still no insight into how one can wipe out generations of hate being bred into our citizens and the rhetoric today that feeds it all.while the necessity to eliminate hatred remains, it still doesn't say how one can do it.

Mental health issues were raised.  Again, that is what we see after the fact.  How does one produce a map to prevent before the fact?  How can one force people to take their medication when even the doctors cannot be sure what medication to prescribe for all people in need, when many who need it do not have health insurance to pay for it.

Former President Clinton said to BBC, "No one intends to do anything that encourages this sort of behaviour,. but political rhetoric "falls on the unhinged and the hinged alike".  He called on the US House of Representatives to "lead the way" in toning down the discourse.  Presently, this is like asking the fox to be kind to the hens while he is in the hen house and hungry.

Howard Dean is asking that people (and the NRA)  use common sense regarding firearms.  Are hand grenades or bazookas considered firearms?  Would we encourage people to buy and keep them for their security.  Dean says the gun lobby has won, refusing to allow any sensible gun control.

Palin supporters are angered that she is being held responsible indirectly in the view of many.  They should include the many more who are equally responsible with their hate messages and violent allusions.  The solution to our hate problems is multi-faceted and will not be made simple by using simple solutions.  The last administration and its divisiveness  is still an elephant in the room whether Republicans choose to see it or not.  The hate for Obama and the Republican quest to make him a one-term president to the demise of the American spirit of togetherness must be included in any plan to make positive change.

Living in New England, all my life I have watched those with money, or entering retirement, have flown to the South for warm winters.  When Florida got too hot for some to stay there year-round, people began to move slightly North. 

For the past couple of winters, the middle Atlantic states have fared far worse in the winter than the Boston area.

The last huge snow storm is now historic, 1978.

The picture to the left is of our three cars, that year, with only antennas showing.  The problem with this much snow is it gets too high to be able to throw it to the top of the pile! 

Not a meteorologist, I have only my own impressions to fall back on.  It no longer snows as deeply as it did when I was a child.  We used to be able to build long tunnels in the snow.  That would be difficult to do with and snow storm in the past twenty years.

The weather patterns have changed.  Storms seem to be swinging from Northern middle America and sweeping down to the South and mid-Atlantic.  If by chance it meets a storm there, heading North, it may swing around up with it.  The day after tomorrow we are supposed to get 8 to 14 inches of snow.  That will be the biggest pileup of snow in a very long time.  If it happens, I'll post pictures so all of you warm weather fans can gloat.

HAS ALL THE HATRED AND DEMAND TO TAKE THE GOVERNMENT BACK FINALLY BROKEN THROUGH CIVILITY AND SANITY?

From Palin's maps with gun sites marking the targets, (see Maddow blog here) To the vitriol of Limbaugh, Beck, Bachmann and others, it seems no wonder that another misfit tries to solve his perceived problems.  Just as anti-abortionists take no responsibility for the death, by shooting outside a church, one has to wonder just how long Americans are willing to put up with the violent rhetoric we to which we have been subjected and which has been escalating since the majority of Americans voted Obama  to the Presidency.  There is no secrecy in our society as to the degree of hatred Republicans have felt, stirred to expression by some media,  for Obama to have been elected President two hears ago.

YouTube gives some lovely examples as to how easy it is to misinterpret the meanings behind statements of determination as, for example, in the second verse of the Star Spangled Banner.  Most of ujs have never heard it and I don't suppose it will pass Supreme Court Challenge as to whether it is 'politically correct' any longer.  Click here to hear it sung. The group hearing it does not seem to understand that it is the elected government which decided whether we are to fight our enemies...not individual or self-appointed posses.

Read Glenn Beck's call to violence just last October, click here.  Quoted from the article is:  Beck portrays Obama, Democrats as vampires, suggests "driv[ing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers." On his March 30, 2009, Fox News show, Beck aired a graphic portraying Obama and Democrats as vampires and said: "The government is full of vampires, and they are trying to suck the lifeblood out of the economy." Beck then suggested "driveing] a stake through the heart of the bloodsuckers." Beck returned to that imagery on his January 19 radio show, warning listeners that progressives are "vampires" who now have a "taste of blood" and are "gonna start getting more and more violent."

With so many of the things politicians and talk shows say, some would like to pretend the past is a blank slate.  Despite the speeches of Palin, Bachmann, Beck, and so many others finding their way to YouTube for all to see and hear,  we have an article blaming the Left for the violence!  Click here to be impressed with the degree of rewritten history and denial in this blog by Erica.  Haven't the bullies learned by now that guns and violence are not the way to make our country better?.

IF THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, THEN WHAT?

A 'Shepherd' is, I believe, 'Sheep Herder'.  If the Lord is my shepherd, that makes me one of the many sheep, or more accurately put as  female, a 'ewe'.  (note that ewe is spelled with an e- a double v-e).  If we are to believe the Bible, Eve must have been a 'black-sheep' since she didn't follow directions.  Some sheep follow directions through 'faith' and some make their faith through logic and experience... following no shepherd.  Though I am not from Missouri, I certainly am among the 'so, show me' people.  I have never found it possible to believe anything on faith alone, or because my religious mother tells me that something is holy because a priest said words over it.

In the last twenty or thirty years of my life I have talked to many people, like myself, who have learned that most religions require their congregants to be like sheep...'follow me and don't ask questions'.  The reason I rarely feel as though I belong within many groups is that others feel alien around me.  For centuries, people have been ostracized by the masses for being different.  Often it was scientific men, but the witch hunts proved it was women as well that were punished for non-conformance.  I believe I have been spared from being banished, most of the time, because I clearly have no capacity for casting the 'evil eye', .I try to live by the golden rule, am basically ethical and moral (though those requirements differ greatly as in the eyes of the beholder who also rule which laws get made).  In fact I live pretty much within the ten commandments, at least those relevant to this century.

It occurs to me that the world would be a better place if there were no religions.  It would certainly allow people to believe whatever they wish, privately.    Now religious institutions occupy tax-free lands...giving back nothing to the community at large.  Why should this be?  If there were no religions, perhaps laws would have more meaning.  As it is now, the phrase 'In God We Trust' is rather meaningless to the world full of various 'Gods' no longer fabled on Mount Olympus.  Without organized 'religions' fewer wars would be fought for the power of that particular religion.  We would be rid of one set of bullies as history has well recorded.  Another set of bullies, now voted into the House Representatives should also go, for the same reason.  Some are there to make Christianity the opiate of no-choice for the American people.

It is small wonder, then, that the number of Atheists on all continents is rising..  Too many people are under the delusion that they talk to God, or 'he' talks to them.  They are running churches, mosques, temples or whatever and seem to be adding their numbers to our government.  Within mental hospitals one finds them concentrated in even greater numbers!