Time = Patience and Wisdom

One thing that getting older and unemployed brings is patience. If I didn't have sufficient time I would've run on and on and not gotten a jot or a tittle of wisdom. Time also equals wisdom and I have a lot of that.

Time wounds all heels -- or heals all wounds come to that.

Time would also help those heading towards divorce and maybe the litigants will gain wisdom and patience.

Today, I looked through and read some of O Magazine. I have a new view of Oprah again. I liked her when she first emerged on TV because she was an intelligent and heavyset icon. It was the same reason for watching Roseanne; she was fat like me and she was funny. I especially enjoyed the funny and she did not let me down. I watched the show all the years it was on and began watching it when it was rebooted -- until Roseanne was booted off the air when her tweets came back to bite her in the backside. I'm not against being booted, but I do question the rush to get booted off the air, except when the presenter is an abuser and a sexual abuser at that. I do not sanction the whipping and branding part of punishment, but that also may be due to my age and growing patience and wisdom.

Then again, I am studying criminal justice and we're currently going through the part of the first semester of the changing views of justice and how many changes have been initiated. If justice can learn and become more community and people based, then patience will be rewarded in this life and wisdom will follow.

I have doubts about Maxine Waters and her angry outbursts and verbal and physical violence and her advanced age. She has not mellowed with time and she is still after impeaching Trump. He is not the usual politician of presidential timber we expect of our POTUS, but then neither have other presidents been up to the grade according to the people, history, or time. Trump is a loose cannon, but remember he is first and foremost a businessman, a successful businessman of a wealthy family. He is like a used car salesman much like Danny Devito as the father in Matilda. I don't think there is sufficient time for Trump to grow into his role as president and the Democrats will not stand idly by and allow him to grow up and evolve into the president they would prefer, especially those freshmen representatives in the House of Representatives who are well on their way following Bernie Sanders down the socialized Democratic Socialism yellow brick road.

Even Elizabeth Warren seems to have evolved and matured, but I doubt Trump will stop calling her Pocahontas -- or Fauxcahontas. I could be wrong.

I doubt I would be wrong when it comes to Muslims; they have not changed in 1400 years because Muhamed has not allowed his followers to reconsider their position or ask questions when it comes to the Quran or how they must repeat his sutras without change of any kind. Doing so would probably result in death, maybe by having their heads cut off. That's the problem when it comes to people who die and leave instructions not to change what they write, like Muhammed. In Islam, the believer cannot even draw his features, although his image was drawn with a whole lot of latitude -- and error. You cannot question him since he died 1400 years ago. That puts a big crimp in the changes that come with time and wisdom. Too bad his followers keep his words and his beliefs unchanged; it is written and that's how it is.

Oprah has grown wisdom now that she has moved beyond the TV screen and the sponsors' long reach. She may even change her politics. Anything is possible as long as she is alive, breathing, and thinking. I would hope she is one of the democrats that will leave the Democrats'  politics and grow in wisdom and patience.

Her final word on the last page of the magazine showed her evolving view -- from space back to Earth where everything seems smaller and the perspective is evolving. Even Oprah from her lofty position as an icon has and is evolving. I hope her maturity and evolution will continue.

I can and do hope. I still like Oprah, but I have questioned her view of the world around her. When it comes to authors she showcases the male authors and gives short shrift to the women who have also been writers -- really good writers. Women have been and still are stellar class writers. Men have been at the top of the heap so maybe women will find their own level -- at the top -- and the wisdom of maturity will trickle down to rain on them as well. Women are good writers and they all do not end up as romance writers, many of them are good enough to walk with the classics -- be they men like Dickens. Women deserve to be lauded and soon.

Maybe writers like me will end up in the aristocratic class with the centuries of women that have been passed over. Many women have been slighted for millennia and I hope now that women are moving toward equal rights world wide and equal pay and the effect will be a tsunami of change that will sweep over humanity and everyone will get their due even though their due is long overdue.

Men have had it good for too long and it is time for the pendulum to swing back and reward women, too. Time comes to us all.

I doubt Einstein will give the Nobel awards committee their prize or their money back. He earned his Nobel prize because his wife did the work and led the way for him. Marie Curie paved the way for her husband and died from radium poisoning, another fatality in the service of men. Science and business are littered with the bodies of enterprising entrepreneurs that were women. It is time to reassess things and realize that women -- like children -- are not going to stand idly by and be seen and not heard. We are here and we are coming into our own -- but not with liars and women like Elizabeth Warren who took advantage of the system to boost their future by lying to get to the top. For that reason, and because she is a Democrat, I do not think she should be president -- if she runs and wins the nomination. She has too much bad history to bury, but then again I may feel different if she has been hiding her light under a steel bushel.

I doubt it.

That is all. Disperse.

Frog or Scorpion?

We should be careful to climb on the back of a scorpion, but we should also be careful of becoming a scorpion or a frog in need of a ride across a river blocking our path. We should not attack needlessly. We should also be far more tolerant when we hear and see something that trips our triggers.

We should also be honest and not end up playing the telephone game where we whisper a simple sentence in our partner's ear while sitting in a circle. What we begin with is seldom what comes out at the end of the game.

We should not gossip and we should not repeat information that seems right but isn't right. That is where the fake news comes in, especially when respected journalists are little more than gossipmongers spreading what they believe is right, but have not checked (researched) to see is right.

Like the story going around that tear gas was fired into a crowd and children were at risk.

That story is not correct. No, we have not endangered children -- or their parents -- for coming illegally into our country. Tear gas was fired. That is correct But tear gas was fired at the chain link fence that separates our land from Mexico's border. It was not fired specifically and directly at illegal immigrants -- or anyone. It was fired at the fence to keep immigrants from climbing the fence and illegally broaching our U.S. border.

Got that? Tear gas was fired at the border so immigrants would not enter illegally -- a deterrent not a direct attack on the immigrants. Parents who have brought their children on this caravan should watch out for their children and not put their children in danger -- which they have failed to do from the beginning.

Yes, their actions are from the political unrest, but mostly their actions are from a desire to better themselves -- we hope. Sadly, when immigrants throw the food and necessities of life onto the ground because they are not being given 'the best' then their desire for a better life becomes less believable -- much like the story of tear gas tossed into crowds. That did NOT happen. That is a lie meant to discredit and stir up animosity at Trump. Bad idea.

Trump is not the brightest and best of presidents because he has far too much ego. But Trump was not elected because he was the most popular and most ethical (just like Obama was supposed to be the most popular and ethical -- and wasn't). Trump is the response to the hope and change that Obama preacified but did not deliver. Campaign rhetoric seldom comes down to what is but what if.

After 8 years of lies and promises, we, the people of the United States, wanted a change -- a far right shift from a definitely far left position. Trump has been asked to run before, but he didn't. The only thing that could have motivated such a drastic shift was the drastic shift that Obama demonstrated. To continue to follow the same disastrous shift that Obama demonstrated, the Democrats will lose again.

Democrats have the right idea -- finally -- of bettering the nation, but as someone who is very adaptable to changes, I don't recommend dramatic change, but the smaller, easier changes that most people can accommodate.

Obama was a liar.

Trump plays fast and loose with the truth. What salesman have you ever encountered who does not play fast and loose with the truth? Car salesmen for instance, especially of the secondhand vehicles. Gilding the lily is the basis for all transactions.

I would prefer Trump not tweet his every thought and I would prefer Obama go back to the hole he crawled out of, but my preferences are not at issue. I would also prefer that Democrats grow up and get real. Bernie Sanders, for all of his 'ideas' about what we can and cannot afford with regard to health care, education, etc. is not at all realistic. He is a dreamer -- a dreamer we cannot afford.

In the end, we are back to the scorpion and the frog. The frog needs to get across the river, but he does not need to get across the river by climbing on the back of the scorpion because he will die when the scorpion strikes. The scorpion is acting according to its nature. So in this scenario -- Trump versus Obama. -- which is the scorpion?

Before you assume I voted Trump, let me stop you. I did not vote for Trump. I thought he was a clown hogging the center ring of a three-ring circus. He has done little to change my opinion of him. The clown is not the scorpion. Obama is the scorpion. He hides his basic nature beneath a charming exterior, but he has not fooled me. He is the scorpion and I prefer to avoid scorpions and not get stung. Trump is more a bee -- annoying and potentially dangerous since I am allergic to bee stings, but not fatal if I keep my Epi-Pen handy.

So, no, Trump did not order tear gas to be lobbed into the crowd, endangering children. The soldiers lobbed tear gas at the fence which the caravan would have climbed to gain illegal access to our country, forcing us, the United States people, to deal with them. If the immigrants do not wish to illegally enter this country, especially against the law and against the peoples' wishes, they could have stepped back out of harm's way, protected their children, and not have to breathe the tear gas. They should have protected their children and sought to make changes in their home countries and not forced entry here in the United States.

But then the immigrants put their wishes and desires before their children and before anyone who gets in the way. Me, me, me, me, me is all they want. They care about themselves more than anything or anyone. They are already Democrats who talk a good game, but when it comes down to the rub, they are all talk and no sensible action.

In this fable, Obama is the scorpion and Trump is the hapless, albeit politically naive frog. Trump let his ego lead him when Bill Clinton, another scorpion, egged him into the political area, and Hillary, another scorpion -- small but lethal -- and more naive than Trump urged Trump on because she was sure the American people would vote for her and she would handily beat Trump. Hillary is the deadliest scorpion of all, but her ego mitigates her sting.

Frog or scorpion? You choose. I'll adapt as I always have because I was raised by a scorpion with more naievete and ego than Hillary.

That is all. Disperse. 

Soiled Doves

There was a time in the old wild west that Judge Roy Bean was the only law west of the Pecos. Judge Bean was a hard drinking, hard fighting, moral man who surrounded himself with gunfighters and soiled doves (dance hall girls). As the only law west of the Pecos, this violent, imprudent man finally settled down with one of the soiled doves, content to be the law who dispensed his brand of law without restrictions and living by his own code.

He hung rustlers and thieves, assassins, and disturbers of his peace without mercy, but at least by his views a moral man willing and able to clean up the wildest patch of the west. He cleaned up his patch and settled down with a saloon girl, one of the soiled doves, and wrested his dusty corner of the west from the criminals and the dregs of society.

The problem was the soiled doves. Where Sundays were days of leisure, usually after Saturday nights of drinking, fighting, playing cards, and the usual ruckus over who pulled what card from his sleeve, the soiled doves saw their town becoming citified and tame and began to insist on spending Sunday mornings listening to the parson preaching his sermon while they sang in the choir. The old rough and ready frontier town had become safer, filled with the good people of town wearing finer to Sunday service and dealing harshly with newcomers who were less refined Sunday go to meeting trollops. The newly refined ladies didn't see to the morals of newcomers to the saloon and the town who chose the less moral portion of their upstanding population to get rid of.

Judge Roy Bean had less luck with the moral and upstanding female population of town. He recognized his soiled doves, especially his own personal soiled dove, possessed of a prim and proper demeanor that followed with the change in the town's status and high-toned feminine population, as newly whitewashed doves who didn't take to the rough and ready life of a frontier town, especially when the frontier town got a brand new general store, stagecoach stop, and restaurants just like the establishments back East. He realized his happy bachelor days when he was the Only Law West of the Pecos were behind him and he must also change with the times. He had come up in the world, no longer the Law West of the Pecos when he couldn't even handle his own soiled dove who was now the last word West of the Pecos and the arbiter of taste and refinement now that her soiled past was behind her and she wore the finest clothes from back East, a lady who would be welcome in the best and wealthiest homes of the wealthy town matrons.

Judge Roy Bean was tied in eternal wedlock to a dove white as snow that couldn't remember back to the rough and wild old days and wouldn't own up to her past as the Madam of the town's biggest and best brothel. Mention of her past brought out the vapors and fainting as though she had been tarred and feathered with the tar and feathers that bedecked dance hall girls that failed to please the gunslingers, thieves, and highwaymen that once flocked to her saloon upon arriving in town. Heaven forfend anyone who mentioned the past in her hearing or whisper that the silver dagger she still kept in her corset was the sharpest and deadliest blade in the state.

With refinement came morals higher than the mangy cats tussling over the drunks they rolled in the
streets, passed out cold from too many drugged drinks, to pay for their drinks and dances. Passing out was no excuse for not paying the bill. There were two laws West of the Pecos, and Judge Roy Bean was kinder law. Judge Roy Bean would only hang you by the neck until you were dead. His wife, Madam Moustache, would empty your pockets and slit your gizzard when you failed to pay. Then Judge Roy Bean would arrest you for vagrancy when she'd emptied your pockets. The hangover in the morning was less painful than the fleecing and jail was quiet -- at least until you were sentenced to hang and then that short drop would put a kink in your gullet that lasted until the undertaker filled it with dirt after you were buried.

That's the thing about the wild west, it was wild until you made that short drop.

Today, in modern times, we don't have the Wild West and all the soiled doves are in church come Sunday morning where they warble their hearts out for God and where the memories begin when civilization arrives in Judge Roy Bean's town. Instead we have Democrats whose memories are even shorter than those of Judge Bean's soiled doves and just as full of righteous indignation if anyone has the gall to remember the wild west when they were the rowdiest and wildest dancehall girls West of the Pecos showing their garters and their frilly bottoms on stage at Madame Moustache's Brothel and Saloon.

The thing about whitewash is that with a good hand and a thick enough paint even Tom Sawyer can cover the worst of the dirt so that soiled doves can hide the past and refashion the edifice into a Sunday meeting house fit to entertain the best of the best from back East with nothing soiled showing even on the worst gullywasher day of the week, especially Sunday.

Of course, the Democrats have a lot worse to whitewash than rolling drunks and knocking out
unsuspecting cowhands and gunslingers. Their soiled past history settles into the ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, and eating two helpings of the shit pie the maid shat out that morning. Whitewash is good for everything, especially covering up all that soiled, shitty past. Give that whitewash and refinement  a little time and it will gleam like a ghost town in the noon day Texas sun.

That is all. Disperse. 

One Voice

I don't usually write about politics here, or anywhere, although I have at times become so angry with what is going on that I let myself go and put it out there . . . in writing. That's what writers do -- write.

As I watch the Democrats and Republicans scrapping over the country's votes and Obama gearing up for yet another campaign, as if he ever got off the campaign trail since he started umpteen years ago, I am appalled by what I see and what the elected representatives of the people call working in our best interests, that is the interests of the common man, the people who elected him, and those who did not but must look to him or her as their voice. The only voices those politicians hear are their own and those of the people who lobby for their attention with money, favors, and power. It's called bribes or baksheesh anywhere else in the world.

Had these politicians been paying attention the people would not be rising now, first with the Tea Party movement, which was co-opted by the Republicans and twisted to their own ends, and now with Occupy Wall Street, and the politicians are getting nervous, as well they should. It is just such anger and resentment coupled with the need to know what is being done about fixing this broken ship of state that led to the creation of the United States of America and the colonists' break from England. I'm sure King George was just as appalled by what he considered disrespectful behavior no in accordance with the terms of agreement between colonist and king. The colonists should have been thankful to be British citizens and to provide the mother country with goods and money that it needed to continue looking after them -- and they were definitely not thankful. Why should they be when they were asked to carry a burden of taxes for people who didn't work the land or undergo the privations and conditions of this new world, or allow them representation in Parliament?

To some modern day scholars, it was the rich that flung the fortunes of all at the King of England and his Redcoats just so they could pay fewer taxes, and yet it was the common man killed in the streets of Boston during the massacre and the average colonist who bravely withstood the Redcoats until this country was free of foreign rule.

Once again, we have the rich on the spit for our problems and the rich are the wo/men elected to do our bidding, to be the voice of the common man, but the common man doesn't have the sense to know how to wheel and deal in the halls of power, intrigue, and bartering for favors that passes for legislation. They no longer have any connection to the majority of Americans who are marching, assembling, and angry about what is being done to them and to their country. How could they when they no longer live and work among us, intent only on the acquisition of power and wealth?

America's government is not a democracy but a republic, which is defined as:

a (1) : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government

b (1) : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law (2) : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government.

When asked what kind of government the first constitutional convention Ben Franklin said, "A republic, if you can keep it."

There is no form of government or power that cannot be twisted and turned into something other than what it was designed for. There have been benevolent and thoughtful rulers among the despots and good presidents who have had what is best for the whole country at heart. By and large the rulers, and a president does rule in a sense, as one friend puts it, as the face of the franchise, have been drunk on power and their own importance and the common man suffers. The excrement always rolls down hill due to gravity and its own weight and now the excrement has hit the oscillating blades and the power brokers are shaking in their shoes.

It is about time, too.

Okay, so why should anyone pay any attention to me -- or to anyone with an opinion (and there are a lot of people with a lot of opinions out here)? To get a different perspective, to hear and pay attention to the growing roar of the angry and disenfranchised Americans who have been cheated, lied to, and treated like dirt. (I think there's a song in there somewhere.)

I am the canary in the coal mine telling you the air could be dangerous. You should worry when I no longer sing because then you're dead and it's too late to get out, to clear the air, to breathe.

The Democrats are determined to put the world right by any means necessary and save us from ourselves, rescue our world and the people in it from extinction -- or worse. They are the ones who slowly made cigarette smoking nearly a crime and want us all to drive hybrid or electric cars or gas up at the alternative fuel station and to pay for the privilege on both ends.

The Republicans meanwhile are busily engaged in the usual sleight-of-hand while they substitute politics for sticking their noses into everyone else's private business and bedrooms and calling it Right.

Both parties are out of step and out of line. They are supposed to be the voice of the people not to dictate morality and who can or cannot marry, serve in the military, or dine out in public while they hide their barely post pubescent mistresses, receipts for prostitutes and toy boys, and various schemes for keeping power and money in their hands while wrecking the world around them. They are the Neros who continue to fiddle while Rome burns and looking for someone to take the blame while they're still sending out troops to set the fires.

America no longer produces much of anything except contempt and a growing unemployed mass of people who can no longer keep up with the Joneses -- or the Muhammads and Krishnamurtys -- any more. It isn't just the rich getting richer, but a small fraction of rich who got their wealth by taking it from the very people necessary to create the wealth they covet and beg, borrow, and steal to maintain. Who actually needs or can spend in ten lifetimes $200 billion dollars, or even $50 million dollars? Okay, anyone who wants a gold toilet seat encrusted with precious gems and wired for WiFi and iPhones, but there aren't that many people out there who ever feel comfortable sitting on a toilet seat that would feed, clothe, and house a family of five for ten years. Those that do are called masochists -- and looters with very poor taste.

The bottom line is that America is slowly slipping into a top-heavy pyramid of excess that is poised on its head and ready to crash and destroy everything around it. There's a reason the pyramids were built with their broad bases resting solidly on the ground and not on their pointed tops. It's time to clean house and get rid of every Democrat and Republican and president and politician who is out for themselves and replace them with Daniel Boones and Rosie the Riveters who know what the people and this country need.

I've said it before and I will say it again and again. It's time to throw the looters out and get back to what America did better than any other country -- produce. It's time to stop worrying about whether or not same sex couples want to marry and have children and whether or not gays want to serve in the armed forces. Anyone in this country willing to wear the uniform and do the job should be able to do so -- and the pay should be commensurate with the risk and the danger. If someone wants to make serving the people a career, let him work for the fire department, police and sheriff's departments, and in other service jobs, but not in the legislature.

It's time to focus on fixing this broken republic and put it back on course. The current slate of candidates will not do the job, as we have amply seen in the past three years under the leadership of Obama and his ilk, who have subverted the Constitution and the will of the people under the guise of hope and change. Well, we hoped Obama would change the policies, and he did, but only to make further inroads into the destruction of this country and for personal gain. He has no clear objective, other than destruction, and no clear policies. It's time for a real change and so far I'm not liking what's out there.

It's time to take back our country and put it on a paying -- not borrowing -- basis. People will make their own choices and that is as it should be. It isn't the rich we have to fear, but the greedy. If we want change, it has to come from the people and from the wo/men with vision willing and able to produce a product or service that will bring change, not from legislation and back door deals.

It's time for the sheep to become proactive and extend the reach and power of movements like Occupy Wall Street. The time for asking questions is over. It's time to roll up our sleeves and clean house.