REASONS REIGNS

The Susan Komen Foundation, after a third of the Senate signed a petition to reinstate pledge to Planned Parenthood, and people donated about the equivalent in funds to those taken away.  Women of the House and Senate rose to defend health before politics and somewhere people began to finally hear that politicians should stay out of necessary health issues.  Breast cancer and, in fact, all cancer care should not be dictated by any one other than patients and medical people.

The lessons we can learn by this is that we live in a precarious time when the 'bad' guys have sneaked into positions of power and for some reason, the cowards have let their misogynous genes rule them.  There are lots of ways to get back to a workable society that takes care of its people and whose people take care of it.  We are on our way,  The people have finally arisen.  Not all of them are smart enough to handle that uprising maturely or effectively, but enough people are making sense.to begin to make a difference.  Even Mayor Bloomberg made his position clear that the Kamen Foundation had certainly strayed from their original intent.  The controversial withdrawal of funds from Planned Parenthood was matched ($250,000) by the Mayor who says he has always been a contributor to both organizations who do a wonderful service.  Click here to read more.    Read the article to see just how controlling the anti-abortionists can be and how cavalier they are about the medical care of other women, not their own.

HOW EVIL AND SNEAKY TO HURT WOMEN CAN PEOPLE GET?

Rep. Cliff Stearns pulled a cute trick by saying that he wants to look into how Planned Parenthood has spent their funds.  Even though they asked for years of documents, finding nothing, they will not fund.  An ideological, political motive is believed to be behind the move though the Pro-Life people say they have lobbied the Susan Komen Foundation for years to stop funding Planned Parenthood because they do abortions as well (though only 3% of their services and no government funds are used for these)

Shari Roan with the Los Angeles Times was interviewed by Judy Woodruff.  You can listen to an mp3 here.   The zealots who call them selves Pro-Life but are really not that  at all, only anti-abortion since the quality of life of any being other than a tiny bit of protoplasm in fetal life is their real concern.  To achieve it they care nothing about the lives of women who may be snuffed out because of their moves.  How hypocritical is that about being pro-life?

Note:  Due to another Comcast failure to connect, this is almost 10 hours late in appearing.  

LET'S MOVE MORE UP TO THE 1% ONE BITE AT A TIME?

Facebook unveiled plans to go public. I'm sure there are many who will buy stock to see themselves eventually move up to that wonderful 1% of the monied in the US.  Look at how many were made rich with Apple stock and Google among many others.   If you have money, you invest heavily and it is less a gamble if you are wise about doing your homework on trends and history of a company.  The NY Times writes:    "In its filing, Facebook, which has more than 800 million users worldwide, said it was seeking to raise $5 billion, according to a figure used to calculate the registration fee. The company will seek to have the ticker “FB” for its shares, but did not list an exchange."

Poor people can't get up enough money to take this legal , rich man's gamble.  The best they can do is by KENO or other lottery tickets. Relatively speaking, their return is much less likely to be realized, odds being what they are.

Look here for more info from Mashable Media on this IPO.

DEADLY RESULTS FROM PEOPLE'S LACK OF CONSIDERATION OF SUBSEQUENT RESULTS

Lots of people want pets.  Usually they are cats, doge, birds and fish.  Actually, lots of these are unaware of the pets' needs.  Those who live in small places are often apt to have dogs who are huge and need to run with very loud barks.  The worst of them remove the animals voice box rather than finding a suitable home for the dog.  This seems unbelievably cruel to me as I once had neighbors who had done that to their dog who would be chained onto a snow pile not more than fifteen feet from my bed, leaving him to hoarsely honk as he was as far from their house as they could put him.

When people want snakes for pets, the corn snake is a popular one.  It is not poisonous and only threatens the household with salmonella if anyone pets it without washing carefully.  That threat of salmonella from any of the reptiles.  To read more on this, click here. and scroll down to read the abstract.

Just as parents have bought little chicks for their children at Easter, forgetting that they grow up to be roosters or hens and don't live in houses or city apartments, people don't realize that those baby exotic animals grow up to be huge predators.

Burmese Pythons, let out in the Everglades, are now responsible for the low number of mammals found there.  I wonder if the person who let one of them out was prepared to one day read that one swallowed an alligator who may have scratched the wall of his stomach and blew a hole in its side.  The fact that the python's head was missing may account for the alligator biting it off on its way to being swallowed..For the whole story, click here.

DO AMERICANS WHO DISREPECT THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT DESERVE RESPECT FROM THE REST OF US?

Reince Priebus has just demonstrated how this country has turned to showing little respect for the office of the President and the choice of the majority of Americans in 2008..  That Reince Priebus, on video now, has accused President Obama of being analogous to Capt. Francesco Schettino, the Captain of the Costa Concordia ship, now in jail, who ran his ship aground and ignored those whose lives were subsequently lost.  He compared President Obama within running the ship aground in his Presidency and suggested that he take his policies and get them the Hell out of this country.  For more on this story, click here.  He was criticized both by Michael Steele, past RNC chair and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, DNC chair for making this analogy and being totally disrespectful to the office of the President and grossly inappropriate.

Bob Schieffer interviewed Mr. Priebus on Face the Nation on Sunday.  Priebus gave the Republican part line, "We want to make this president a one-term President.  That's what this is all about."  His claim is that Obama has stopped doing his job and is devoting himself only to campaigning.  I'd like to tell him that he knows nothing about the job of the presidency and that is why is only the chair of a losing political party which should be ashamed of itself.

How I wish we could bring pride, honesty, integrity, loyalty and the love of American democracy back to our people.  It seems too much to hope for until we can get the "Greedy Bastards" out of our midst as Dylan Ratigan.  It is good that we have several more months to try to make the point that Obama needs to be able to continue with the changes he has already put into motion.

20th C MOVIES COMPARED TO HISTORIC ERA MOVIES

My response to movies about ancient times is quite different than movies made during my long lifetime, most of which are now referred to as classics. The classics often tinkle some little bell in my mind which says I never looked as good, wore such great clothes and make-up, or had as much opportunity for everything (especially a social life) as in those movies.

The movies from the forties through the eighties strike a chord too familiar to me,  For some people it is nostalgic.  I'm missing something genetic, I guess. They don't make me nostalgic.  Those about the war make me sad or angry that our country no longer works together or respects the flag and our President.  The romantic ones make me chuckle at .the romantic hero who was by then in his forties or fifties to be seen as a screen idol. ( Warner Brothers made a movie of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in 1940 with Greer Garson (as Elizabeth Bennet who was supposed to be 20)  and Laurence Olivier.who was supposed to be 28)  At the time, Greer Garson was 36 and Olivier was 33.) Granted it ws supposed to have been set in England in the early 1800s but looked like USA in a fantasy of land,time , and costume.  It was as grating to my senses as Lulu, produced on stage in the 80s in Cambridge MA, a play set in Hitler's Berlin with a black woman playing Lulu.  Some things are just too incongruent for me to allow myself to get into the story.

1957, An Affair to Remember, A couple falls in love and agrees to meet in six months at the Empire State Building - which doesn't happen. It featured Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr.  I suppose love knows no age but as handsome as he was, he was 53 by then.  Ms Kerr was 36.  In 1942, Ronald Colman, then aged 51 was still playing handsome lover parts.

I guess I look back at all those movies until recently that gave a view of life as must be the picture in the minds of the current Republican Presidential candidates.  Any similarity to reality is missing from them all.

POLITICAL BRAINWASHING

If people want to believe the worst, they will find a way because there will always be people ready to oblige them.  For example, the nonsense that President Obama has no proper birth certificate to qualify him as a citizen and that he is an avowed Muslim that persists so strongly with so many..  Even someone like Donald Trump has either been brainwashed or is trying to brainwash others with that nonsense.

Conspiracy theorists are masters at this brainwashing.  They sound rational about things they know nothing about and convince people that our government is hiding things from them, lies to them, and has secret intentions not to be shared with the average citizen.  Indeed, not everything the government does (like planning the Seal mission to take out Osama bin Laden) will nor should be made available to the public.  If all the citizens had equal say in how the government is managed, we wouldn't need elections for the Legislative and the Executive Branch.

The Merriam Webster dictionary definition of brainwashing  1: a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas 2: persuasion by propaganda or salesmanship

The first definition is more sinister, but the second fits what I am describing to put it in a category of brainwashing. If you believe conspiracy theories in the face of proof otherwise, you are likely easily brainwashed and campaign aides, con men, and marketers will love you.  Those who are paid enough will say anything to fool the public to their way of thinking.  Think of the 'Swift Boat' campaign ads.  Right now, only rigid Republicans can hear no thought of a real democratic society.  They will continue to project and displace on everyone who doesn't think their way.  All the faults of the Nation fake courtesies.  How pitiful that they are teaching their children to hate as these parents represent divisiveness in our society today.