Author: Paul

{I strongly suggest that you publish the entire script, not a transcript, of the president’s eulogy for pastor Pinckney}
One need not become a “godder” or be “born again” to get religion, so to speak. You only need to accept that there is something unseen, unheard, but felt, that exerts a positive influence on the way people think and act. Even a confirmed atheist can sense it. No definition is needed, no ritual, no identifiable verbiage. It is just a feeling of connectedness with the rest of mankind. And seeing how the people of that Charleston church have reacted to an unspeakably horrible event inspires me to think a kind of “religion” will find its way into the hearts of many wouldn’t be caught dead in a regular church.

As a veteran myself (World War II), I find it very difficult to accept the heading or the premise for Kay Hartley’s letter of May 24, 2015. Thinking people have long ago acknowledged that the Iraq invasion was a colossal mistake, but let’s blame Obama anyway. Did Obama disband the Iraq Army, leaving unguarded munitions dumps all over the country, and thousands of unemployed Sunnis and Shiites who hate each other (and hate Americans even more for destroying their country)? Was that Obama’s doing? Only diehard Cheney-ites wanted to keep an occupying force in Iraq with our soldiers being picked off, one by one, while we hoped the Sunnis and Shiites would suddenly begin to love each other, form a government together, and keep the oil flowing. They wouldn’t do what we wanted, so, let’s blame Obama. Two things are certain in the Muslim world: 1) Sunnis and Shiites will always hate each other, and 2) no foreign military can change that. But even so, we are supposed to blame Obama for all the current troubles in the Middle East. Despite the warmongers, who wanted to keep our soldiers in the Muslim crosshairs, Obama did what we asked him to do: He brought our troops home from Iraq, but let’s blame him for doing so before our “mission” was accomplished. Never mind that there was no legitimate mission in the first place, no reason for “shock and awe” with its massive destruction of a sovereign country and endless thousands of civilian deaths. But let us blame Obama anyway. Actually, if we do not rein in the war mongers among us, then maybe Iraq will have been “for nothing” after all.

Both Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have declared as follows: “the world is safer because of the Iraq war!” Okay. Can either of you gentlemen name a part of the world today, where any person, village, province, city, state, or country, for that matter, is safer than before the war? Can you name just one?

Things will get better, and soon. How do we know? The old saying is that thing must get worse before they can get better. As far as America is concerned, it is hard to imagine how things could get any worse than they already are. Could Republicans have screwed things up beyond what they promised to do when Obama got elected, and have so capably accomplished ever since?

Chutzpa, from the Yiddish meaning “brazen nerve”. It’s the perfect word for Howard Myers’ and Rush Limbaugh’s criticism of the Obamas for not using the bully pulpit to improve race relations in America. To put that statement in perspective, consider the past seven years during which occurred what can only be described as the most intense, well organized, and financed campaign of character assassination ever directed at any individual or couple in the history of our country. Now, these same people who have been conducting the “hate Obama” campaign want to blame him, our first black president, for not eliminating the racism that has plagued the US since it’s founding.This is the very racism that spawned the unfounded and counterproductive hate for Obama in the first place. If there were any chance that electing an African-American to our highest office would change the attitudes of people like Limbaugh and Myers, we would be well advised to keep electing blacks until we could see that change begin to happen.

I want to contribute, but at the end of the month there just isn’t anything left. Also, I do not think it is good for the country to select a presidential candidate based purely on her gender and length of service. We do not know Hillary Clinton well enough yet to hand her the nomination. Her specific experience in some cases has been less than exemplary, and her connections to the finance industry are worrisome.

Why, all of a sudden, does it appear so many people of means (you know, the rich guys) have become involved in “education reform”? Could it be that there is big money to be made there? Think of the huge publishing contracts for standardized testing materials, standardized national curricula, teacher retraining courses, charter schools, you name it. Where there is big money involved, such as America’s education budget, you will naturally find the big money people.We should ask: how much thought has been given to the research, the unbiased research, indicating that none of this “education reform” has produced any better results than our own public school system?

A couple of unidentified Iowa voters made a pertinent comment relating to Hillary Clinton’s apparent lock on the Democratic nomination for president. They are worried that “a perfunctory nominating contest might not stir enough enthusiasm … to power a victory for the eventual nominee in 2016.” In other words, a ho hum primary is not likely to bring out more than the most loyal base. The Iowans might be right. Clinton’s dominant starting position, plus her less than energizing “here I am” announcement, portends another 2010- and 2014-type election where progressive voters, both Democratic and Independent simply stay home.

Is it any wonder big money tech moguls like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, and Eric Schmidt all want to import more H1B workers? Imported workers can be paid less, they demand less from their employer, and are tethered to the firm that recruits them, thus safe from being lured away by competitors. The problem, and this is one the folks at the top could care less about, is that every job taken by an H1B worker is a job not available to an unemployed American. H1B is a great program for India and some American multinationals, not so much for unemployed American engineers.

Like so many others, Graham Stokes (April 15, 2015) bemoans the attention paid to endangered species of fish in the current drought crisis. Of course, people and the food they eat for survival are more important than any smelt, salmon, steelhead, or sturgeon. Certainly! But are they? Are people really more important than the animals of the earth? Consider what happens when we have destroyed all the natural habitat for wildlife and they become extinct. Will the human animal be next?