19 October 2013 Children underfoot will not be avoided.

Cassi Creek:  Yesterday we traveled to Asheville.  Since our travel took place in the afternoon and evening, we had great views during the early afternoon and magnificent moonlit views on the homeward leg.

          We decided to eat dinner at Tupelo Honey in downtown Asheville.  The food was everything advertised, worthy of returning.  As it was Friday evening, the wait to be seated was quoted as 20-30 minutes but actually timed out somewhat longer at about 45 minutes.  That left us plenty of time to watch people.  The Patton area seems to be a major gathering site for all manner of people from the ultra-straight to the freaks and geeks. 

          There is a drum circle that seemed to grow larger as more participants arrived.  The echo off surrounding buildings was out of phase with the active drumbeats, so the whole thing sounded ragged and fragmented for about the first 45 minutes.  The overall noise level was increased by buses, emergency vehicle sirens, a steady flow of automobile traffic, and the endless muttering undertones of hundreds of cell phone conversant passing by.

          What I found most disconcerting was the assumption by parents that other people are eager to experience their children in those places where children are out of place.  I speak of concerts, lectures, movies, restaurants, and busy sidewalks. 

          We were waiting for our table on the sidewalk outside Tupelo Honey.  So were other parities of various sizes.  There is a bus stop at that location and the sidewalk narrows somewhat.  So a couple with two children in a tandem stroller decided to block traffic into the restaurant, a very narrow door and entryway, by parking their stroller there.    They then released a 2-3 year old and another child still crawling  onto the sidewalk.  The infant was allowed to crawl about and then placed upright and allowed to stagger about the sidewalk full of people.  The older child was given a toy car, which he rolled about on the sidewalk as people tried to avoid the car, and both kids.  The longer the wait, the more annoying the kids became.  At one point, I noticed that the older child was often beneath and beyond my field of peripheral vision.  The 2^nd time the toy car was rolled between my feet; I found it hard to appear tolerant.  Several times this child’s behavior forced people to step off the sidewalk into the street. Meanwhile, the infant stumbled about.  Anyone tripping over it would have sustained at least some superficial injuries and the infant might well have sustained grave injuries.  Unprotected skulls impacting concrete are never a good thing.

          There seems to be a willingness to allow people to bring children to such locations and then turn them loose, as if expecting others to become baby sitters.  While I wouldn’t allow someone’s child to run into traffic, neither would I excuse the child and its parents for being the cause of someone else’s injuries.  Hire a sitter and leave the kid home or stay home yourself.  I’m not willing to put up with your children behaving as if they were at home.  

18 October 2013 Proceed to room X for telemed

Cassi Creek:  I have a telemed conference to attend on 22 Oct.  According to the Richmond VA facility that manages the PADRECC program for the Southeast region, I am to attend this at Mountain Home VAH in Johnson City.  That will be fine if I can find someone who actually knows something about this at Mountain Home.  Three days of calls have resulted in no hard and fast appointment, actually, no appointment at all. 

          It seems that no one knows anything about a Parkinson’s Clinic.  I suspect that I’ll be amplifying this entry Monday.

17 October 2013 Hurricane Cruz

Cassi Creek:  We’ve managed to resolve and temporarily delay another manufactured financial crisis brought about by the Koch brothers’ minions wearing teavangelist disguises.  The current best estimate of cost to the American taxpayers is $124 billion.  While this may be diminutive in terms of the overall cost of running the U.S. government, it is money that would better have been applied elsewhere. 

          Once again, the reactionary right, claiming to be saving the Constitution, has managed to make a shambles of the legislative process as defined by the Constitution.  Their particular blend of pseudo-patriotism, bigotry, anti-intellectualism, and a lack of how a democratic republic is actually supposed to work, has resulted in weakening the U.S. economy.  Further, the resolution that was crafted has only an additional three months grace period before the entire mess will begin again. 

It left me coldly angry yesterday to hear the junior Senator from Texas, Cruz, claim that millions of Americans were suffering because of the onset of the ACA.  No news program that shoved a microphone into his face bothered to challenge his numbers or his claim.  While the ACA rollout is not beginning smoothly, it is in effect and it is providing better access to medical care for many previously uninsured. 

Is the ACA perfect?  Far from it.  Does it favor any industry?  The health insurance industry will be raking in a windfall profit.  We still need a single payer national health insurance. 

We’re required to report self-inflicted injuries to mental health agencies. 

16 October 2013 Please don’t dominate the rap, Jack; if you got nothing new to say

Cassi Creek:  Ahead, incessant obfuscation, ideological blathering, and a deliberate attempt to destroy the American economy.  That attempt is partly due to bigotry and malice on the part of the teavangelists.  The attempt is also due to an utter lack of knowledge about how the national and global economies operate. 

          By tonight, this blunder of morons may well have brought about the next great depression.  I’m willing to have them arrested and transferred to any country that will provide suitable punishment.

          The Congress has only a few hours remaining to resolve this looming disaster.  It is time for the Speaker of the House to remember that he works for all Americans, not just those who fund his re-election.

15 October 2013 Can you use them old U.S. Blues?

“Back to back/chicken shack
Son of a gun/better change your act
We're all confused/what's to lose?
You can call this song/the United States Blues”

“Wave that flag
Wave it wide and high
Summertime
Done come and gone
My oh my”

"U.S. Blues"
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/usblues.html

Cassi Creek: “ American Exceptionalism” keeps surfacing in the political arena.

This is another instance in which the GOP and minions grab symbols that were once universally “American” in perception, and then distort their use so that they become recognized as right wing, pseudo-patriotism. 

          American Exceptionalism as a doctrine dates back as far as 1831.  The concept of America as somehow unique was adopted and nurtured by politicians seeking votes from immigrants who viewed the New World as a political and social haven.  The doctrine fit nicely with the concept of manifest destiny.  As Americans swept westward, they took these concepts with them. 

          The political and social changes which occurred in the years between Teddy Roosevelt and the LBJ administration found the U.S. meeting the need for a progressive government, weathering the Great Depression, taking its place as a world power with a modern navy, and displaying its ability to fight a war taking place in two theaters because of assembly line manufacturing capabilities and vast resources to feed and fuel those factories. 

          As the Cold War became the dominant military driving force, the doctrine became less attractive to the political left but more so to the political right.  The Reagan era and the Bush II era found neo-cons appropriating doctrines and symbols to garner votes from people who no longer cared about the social foundations that made liberty and equality planks in the platform of Exceptionalism. 

          Now, the theft of symbols has degraded the concept to the level of drunken sports fans, ready to engage in a brawl at the slightest provocation but not knowing why the brawl began or how to end it. 

          This is not the country I grew up in.  This is not the country that welcomed immigrants, not the nation that went to the moon, and not the nation that once was truly exceptional.  Where that nation has gone and whether it will ever exist again, I cannot say.

14 October 2013 Columbus drops by for a brief visit

Cassi Creek:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/14/1247084/-NJ-Sen-Sarah-Palin-Uses-Hand-For-Notes-During-Rally-For-Steve-Lonegan-R?detail=facebook

          “ Palin called the government shutdown an act of disrespect against military families whose paychecks and death benefits were delayed. U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, whose death in June prompted this election, "was the last World War II veteran to serve in Congress. His memory is dishonored, along with all of our military veterans."

          "Bottom line, guys: The politicians are using the military as pawns," she added.”

When push comes to shove, I’d rather not become a participant in the teavangelist oil wars.  Palin, Cruz, and company complain about troops being used as pawns while encouraging vets to voluntarily become cannon fodder for the far right.

          Today, we celebrate the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the “New World.”  His voyages and those of the other great explorers brought about the invasion of the Americas by countless missionaries to subjugate the native population in a manner far more devastating than the damage done by the Conquistadors. 

          Diseases brought to the new world, such as measles wiped out whole tribal groups of people who had no innate immunity to European illnesses.

          There is, of course, the New World’s revenge, Syphilis, remains active worldwide today.  Well done, Christopher!

13 October 2013 Teavangelists and flat earthers sailing over the edge

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/13/rand-paul-obama-is-trying-to-scare-people-on-debt-ceiling/?hpt=hp_c2

Cassi Creek:

           Rand Paul, teavangelist senator from Kentucky, claims that President Obama is using the debt ceiling to scare Americans.  While I’m certain that there is an element of fear for the future included in Obama’s desire to have the debt ceiling crisis resolved before we default on our obligations; any rational person I’ve ever encountered realizes we have just cause to be not just “scared” but “scared shitless.”

            “Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said Saturday the consequences of a failure to raise the debt limit would be dire for economies around the world. She spoke to CNN's Richard Quest at an Institute of International Finance conference in Washington.

"You know, I've just spent the last two days with representatives of about 188 countries around the world. I wouldn't say they are confident. I would say they are concerned, and they are very anxious to see this crisis resolved, because they know it's going to impact on their economy," Lagarde said.”

          Despite the imminent default, the Senate will not meet until later today and the House is in recess until tomorrow evening because tomorrow is a federal holiday. 

          The house, the initial origin of this financial nightmare, does not deserve a holiday.  Millions of Americans are unable to celebrate that holiday or to look forward to the winter holidays because the teavangelists in both houses of Congress are masquerading as intelligent human beings while steering the nation ever closer to the edge of world economic collapse. 

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/12/veterans-groups-to-push-to-end-government-shutdown/?hpt=hp_t2

16 hours ago

Veterans groups to push to end government shutdown

Posted by

CNN's Kevin Bohn

Washington (CNN) – A military coalition including 33 of the nation’s leading veterans and uniformed services organizations on Tuesday will stage a major event in Washington to push for an end to the government shutdown.

Activists for veterans and the nation’s service members have warned the shutdown – especially as it approaches the end of its second week – has had a devastating impact on them and their families, and now they are stepping up their campaign to put political pressure to re-open the government.


The event will be held Tuesday morning at the National World War II Memorial, several sources familiar with it confirmed to CNN. Some of the major groups that will be represented include: The American Legion, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Air Force Sergeants Association, National Military Family Association and Jewish War Veterans.

Officials from these groups say there is a lot of frustration and uncertainty as the shutdown continues, such as among veterans who receive disability and GI Bill benefits and survivors who rely on survivor benefits. The Department of Veterans Affairs has said it would not be able to pay benefits if the government stayed closed through the end of month.

One of the approximately 3 million wounded veterans who are facing dire circumstances is Ryan Lamke. He told CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr he had this message for the politicians about what he and his fellow veterans will face if their checks don’t arrive.

If I could afford the trip, I’d be there.