Welcome Jackson Conrad....grandson

Welcome to the world, Jackson Conrad...my newest grandson. I hope the world will become a better place because of you. I hope we will make it a better place for you to live. Some say we should not bring children into a world so hateful and violent. One where 1 of every 5 or 6 children live in poverty and go to bed hungry. One where war seems perpetual. One where humans fail to honor the glory of nature and instead have brought us to the brink of destruction through pollution and horrible ignorance of the environmental damage we do. It is a dangerous world and one that truly needs change. One that needs true peace and justice for all. One that needs true democracy and true freedom.
So, Jackson, we leave a world for you that needs your help when you're able to help. May you grow up with a moral view of the world. A view that doesn't allow all the negatives to overwhelm you. May you become a person who resists against the tyranny and oppression of the materialistic world of corporate and governmental corruption. May you see others as your brothers and sisters and like another JC find joy in humility and helping others.
I wish I could have helped bring a better world to you, grandson. But, I think the world will be better because you have arrived.

Imagine (Again)

Every so often I feel the need to re-post what I wrote 7 plus years ago...and sadly still relevant.

Imagine (Written August 22 05)

Can you imagine what it would be like to see them come up to your door?
In uniforms and grim looks on their faces, and your child in the war.
Can you imagine how it must feel when they say those five words?
We regret to inform you…do you hear anything but those five words?
Can you imagine telling your husband or wife your child is gone?
Your child whose birth gave your greatest joy is gone.

I’m sitting here in the middle of the night wondering how someone could question a mother or father who lost a child to this war. How could someone in good conscience accuse a mother of politicizing the death of their child? Have we grown so disconnected with our humanity we can’t imagine the day a parent sees the dark colored car drive up to their street, up to their house and uniformed men emerge?
If you’re a parent, maybe you can imagine hearing those five words. It’s your greatest nightmare. You lie awake at night wondering where your child is at tonight.
You hate hearing the phone late at night. You hate seeing strange dark cars in your neighborhood. You can’t stand the newspaper or television news.
Then imagine the five words. Will you hear beyond them? Will you know before they say them?
Then there will be telling the rest of the family. You tell it over and over again…you child is gone. You want to scream out insanely. How can they be gone!!!!!?
Imagine the memories of your child first walking. The first words from their lips. The first worrisome cold. How can they be gone?
Imagine when you watched them swim, or skate or play baseball or football. Imagine playing basketball with them in the driveway in the fall as the leaves turned gold. Imagine the graduation and the joy in their face.
Imagine the day they leave your house to enter boot camp. The next time you see them their hair is short and they seem different and changed.
Imagine the last flight you see them off at the airport. The last phone call from the place of the war. The last letter.
Imagine the day when, with a broken heart and empty soul, you follow the dark hearse with your beloved child inside a casket. Imagine the numb feeling as you get out and see the burial plot where your child will be lowered into the earth. There will be words from the Bible, the Torah or Koran. They don’t bring your child alive.
There will be family all around you but you’ll be as lonely as you’ll ever be. They’ll hand you a triangle in red, white and blue like it will replace your child or there is something there to comfort you.
Imagine the final moments as the casket is lowered into the ground. The thought of your child leaving this earth before you rips at your heart. You hear over and over the words of sympathy and comfort and they are arrows that smash into your spirit in reminder of your child.
Then everybody leaves, you’re alone with only the terrible thoughts of the death of your child. You wonder how it really happened. You wonder if your child suffered. You wonder if they died alone. Death for you would be a welcome thing instead of these thoughts you have.
Imagine after the first month or so, everybody seems to think you’re able to be yourself again. They’ll never understand you’ll never be yourself again; you’ll never be whole again. Your child is gone and each day is a struggle to get up and each day the sorrow begins again.
Imagine returning to work and seeing the looks and the avoidance of some and the overbearing presence of others. They don’t know.
Imagine going to the grocery store and seeing a child with a smile like the smile of your child. You want to scream out your child is gone!! They’ll look the other way to avoid the sadness you hold in your heart.
Imagine the silence between you and other family members. You’re left to think of the moments of each day when your child would get up, go to school, return from school, go to a friends, eat dinner, go to practice, get ready for bed. Each moment so damn precious and you failed to recognize it at the time.
Imagine hearing a song and becoming tearful because it was your child’s favorite. Seeing a book and the memory of discussing the plot and characters with such joy.
That’s all I can do. Imagine it. My mom and dad feared it each day of 1968. They imagined it but they never heard those five words.
I imagined my sons being that dead child as I sat here this late, late night. My heart ached from just the thought of it. I had memories of them swimming and running. I remembered the day of each birth. I remembered reading Mark Twain or Watership Down to them.
All those memories of my children came flooding back to me and I couldn’t really imagine how gut wrenching awful it would be to hear those five fucking words!!!
“We regret to inform you….”

Random Thoughts (from Facebook)

 
My wife and I are both RNs caught up in the constant struggle to provide compassionate and appropriate care to the most severe and persistently disturbed people in our community struggling with mental health issues. A struggle made all the worse by big pharma and big insurance.
Americans are constantly rejecting the single payer method of health care used in Europe and Canada. They want to believe the American health care system is the greatest system in the world. They want to believe they have "choices" in their health care. We're either naive or stupid!
Every day we are forced to deal with private companies acting as alleged case managers to control costs of government funded health care such as Medicaid and Medicare. They create formularies for medicines that are often slanted toward certain drug companies. They deny payment for drugs prescribed by the doctors of patients and force the patient to accept drugs that may cause severe side effects leading to muscle contractions, diabetes, excessive cholesterol, higher risk of strokes and heart attacks and assorted other health problems. And the private companies who are in truth, insurance companies, base medical decisions on how much they can save for themselves. How much profit they can make in deciding what care, what drugs patients are allowed.
So it begs the question of how much choice in our medical care do we really have? And why do we allow private insurance companies to run up costs to our care by creating a third party for profit between us and our doctors?
Recently I had labs done. They were routine labs for an old guy like myself. I got the explanation of benefits from the insurance company extolling how much I saved because I had insurance. They showed the total costs of the basic lab tests I had done were over 500 dollars but I didn't pay anything and the lab company was paid less than 1/4 that five hundred dollars based on a "discount" paid to the provider lab company. I also noticed my blood had been sent to the lab company's California lab when I know of at least 10 offices here in Denver owned by the same company. I use the company as a RN to send my clients to for their labs.
I fill out purchase orders for the same labs I had done and the actual costs of the tests are about fifty dollars. But if I had no insurance the costs of those labs would have been that five hundred dollar charge.
Another example is the charge my doctor sent to the insurance company for my physical was absurdly high. The insurance company invoked the "discount" rate for payment to my doctor. He ended up getting paid half the charge his office sent to the insurance company. I ended up paying a 25 dollar co-pay. That discounted payment was the true price the doctor should have received. Without insurance I'd have paid the higher price charged by my doctor if I could have afforded to even gone to him for a preventative care physical.
That's the game. Doctors over-charge so they actually get a fair payment for their services. A psychiatrist charges 280 dollars for a 45 minute session and gets 25 dollars in co-pay and the discounted payment of 125 dollars. Total payment 150 dollars for 45 minutes. Unless the patient is medically indigent (uninsured). Then it would be the full 280 dollars.
If you follow this out, you come to realize the doctors and insurance companies play a game that artificially inflates the cost of medical care for all of us. And I'm not even talking pharmacy costs yet.
So, this is the greatest medical care in the world as opposed to the care in the rest of the developed world? So why do Americans die at younger ages, have the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world? Why do Americans rate the lowest in all aspects of outcomes in their medical care and pay close to 20 times more than these "socialist" nations with single payer health care? Why does 1 out of every 5 or 6 children live in poverty and lack medical benefits? Why do we still have 48 million without benefits? Even after the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is implemented, why will there stil be millions without benefits?
This isn't the greatest medical care in the world. This is the biggest medical scam in the world. Inflicted on, apparently, the most misinformed patients in the world.

　


While we fight the battles caused by polarization, hate, racism, sexism, anti-GLBT rights and rejection of basic human rights (and the list goes on and on), it would behoove us to remember the true war melts down to the issue of economics. The haves and have-nots. The wealth disparity of rich and poor. Elitism as opposed to poverty. When we look at what fuels the polarization, inevitably we'll find the rich are the culprits funding it. The masters of war and those that would be king want us afraid, indentured and dependent. As long as we continue the internecine battles promoted and exploited by the plutocracy we give them the power they constantly seek.

　


So...when the politicians finally come up with their "gun control" laws do we think there will be any legal sanctions about occupations of nations, weapons supply to Zionist apartheid, rocket and gatling gun equipped drones, five hundred pound bombs or cruise missiles? Does the death of a young, unarmed Palestinian crossing the artificial barrier between a ghetto and an alleged "free" land equate with the death of a young child in a white suburban neighborhood? Are the deaths of young men in a gang infested area of South Los Angeles or Chicago's housing projects equal to movie-goers in Aurora?
Does the violence of poverty and injustice have a connection to a culture of violence that allows guns to be so freely available? Does the hypocrisy of politicians bought off by rich lobbyists have any connection to the sustained violence in this nation? Does the trade of more weapons around the world than all other nations combined have a connection to mad-men with automatic weapons and 30 round clips killing children and any other human they can find?
What's worse, a five hundred pound bomb indiscriminately dropped on a neighborhood in Fallujah or the hand gun deaths of kids in an American high school? What's more insane...the military budget consuming 56% of the budget or cuts in mental health care, care for the poor and children or ignoring the issues of returning veterans? Do the choices and priorities of elected politicians have a connection to the violence in this nation?
All the rhetoric and impassioned talk about curbing the gun violence in America is a ruse. The laws and sanctions being suggested are like band aids on an arterial bleed. Unless we make the connections leading to the problem of our cultural violence this nation will continue to bleed out.

　


When I returned from Vietnam I ended up homeless for six months. It meant living on the streets, finding shelter at the library, bus stations and other public places. Cops would wake me up in the bus station. They would do sweeps of the restrooms to make sure the homeless didn't loiter. The shelters were always scarce in those days. And the few shelters here in Denver were dangerous places, places filled with despair . I remember always being tired, always depressed, my feet always hurting, the cold always biting to the bone. I remember being downtown and watching the American landing on the moon. I didn't marvel at the accomplishment. I laughed in scorn that a nation could spend billions on such an endeavor while I roamed my city in the darkness of night along with countless other homeless.
Today, many of my clients are homeless. There are more shelters but there are more homeless. Governments from city to federal try to hide them more than they try to help them. These are the "untouchables" of America. More and more they are families and veterans. More children are becoming homeless. And our response to our homeless Americans is to stigmatize and ignore. We're all guilty of looking away as we pass them on the streets.
If I had one wish about the way we approach the homeless it would be that every elected official spend a week on the streets without resources. That every politician would have a special "moon landing experience" like I had.

　


I'm beginning to think all the "moments of silence" and all the "spontaneous memorials" for victims of our American violence aren't going to have enough hours in the day or flowers and teddy bears to go around. Maybe contemplation and real problem solving would serve us better.

　


You know the gun freaks who think they need to be armed for some stupid ass revolution they think they'll start against some bogus UN government run by Karl Marx will die and there will be no one to pry their guns from their cold, dead fingers. When all their wells are polluted by the chemicals of big oil and gas, when all their forests are dead as a result of opportunistic bugs and diseases, when all their oceans have finally become total sewage and all their air kills humans all their guns won't mean a damn thing. Their guns didn't help them in NOLA during Katrina. Didn't help them when Sandy destroyed so much of NYC and other Eastern seaboard areas. They can't shoot the super storms caused by the melted ice of the Artic and Antartica or the destroyed rain forests of Brazil. It's only a matter of time until their guns will be held in their cold, dead fingers. Most likely won't be anyone to pry their toys from those fingers, though.

　


As the sun sets in the west here in Denver, the GOP whines they didn't get a good deal and might just send us over the fiscal cliff. Question....didn't they accomplish that in 2008 when they crashed the economy? Or was it the two wars they started without raising the taxes needed to pay for them? Not to mention the human costs they managed to inflict. Don't know about the rest of the progressive community but I applaud the GOP for refusing the sell out deal Obama and Biden brokered. It's time to draw the line in the sand and let the GOP show their traitorous colors of elitism. John Huntsman was correct in stating the GOP is devoid of a soul. The actions of the GOP stooges clearly show they have no concern for the middle class or poor in this nation. They are bought and paid for by the likes of the Kochs, Edelstein, big oil, big pharma and the military industrial complex. They fail to realize how much 2000 dollars extra a year will impact the average family. Hell most of them haven't been in grocery store in years except to campaign. They don't worry about healthcare because they have "government" insurance paid for by the tax payers. Don't suppose their hate for big government extends to the freebies of insurance and pension they get from big government.
There really are no word to describe the detestable behaviors of the likes of Cantor, Ryan, Boehner and McConnell. Nor are their words to describe the sell out of Obama and the Democratic leadership.

　


My wife's best friend won't go out with her this week because the election has shown Americans have become "faithless and immoral". WTF??? My wife is the kindest person I know. She believes in Catholicism but isn't a zombie that accepts the dogma without thoughtful consideration. She stayed clear of politics with the friend to maintain the friendship. But because of my willingness to oppose the Church the friend knows we are two of "those people".
The zombie Catholic sect that believes the dogma of the misogynists is willing to elect a man who is a blatant liar, a ruthless job-killer, a war-monger and truly immoral. Why? Because he and his Opus Dei running mate are saying they will oppose all abortion, gay marriage and the right of "moral" employers to refuse insuring women who choose to use "THE PILL".
The local archbishop sent a letter wailing freedom of religion is in jeopardy if certain politicians are elected. And the zombies all fell in line. Apparently including the "friend".
This thinking is why I will not return to the Catholic church. Yeah, I know there are the progressive and liberal groups in the Church but they refuse to directly oppose Papal authority. I tell my patients to leave abusive relationships if the abuse has no chance of stopping. Why think the abuses of the Papal authority will ever stop? Yeah, I am a heretic.
This is the sad fact of political debate in this nation. We can't talk with one another. We propagate hatefulness instead. We see whites at "Ole Miss" riot when the black guy wins. And had he lost would there have been riots from the other side?
Most folks dismissed the poignant thoughts of a man horribly abused by police, Rodney King. When the cops were found not guilty of their crime riots began. Rodney appealed to all of us when he asked "can't we all get along?"

　

Some of the new age folks tell me the end of the Mayan calendar would herald a new age of peace and harmony. I can tell that's coming by watching the parents in Newtown bury their six and seven year old children or hearing about two deaths caused by someone pushing a human off a subway station wait area into the path of the oncoming train. Or the brutal rape of a woman on a bus in India by six men. Brutal enough she died from the horrific physical trauma. Or the continued budget of this nation giving the military more funding than most of the other programs combined. Or the jailing of Bradley Manning for speaking the truth.
Yep, as we approach the new year I can feel a new age coming for sure.

　

If we want to honor the children killed by the insanity of violence, we must connect their deaths to the social conditions fomenting that violence. It isn't just about guns, it's about a culture of violence we've allowed to percolate for decade after decade. It's about failing the oppressed, the addicted, the mentally ill while providing obscene amounts of tax money on militarism and prisons. Year after year mental health budgets are cut while year after year the military budget grows. Year after year prevention programs disappear while more and more prisons are funded.
To those who prefer calling the mentally ill wackos, nuts or loons, I say shut the fuck up until you understand psychosis, mania, major depression, auditory and visual hallucinations, delusions and personality disorders. You have no clue how parents of children struggling with mental health issues have to fight to get treatment. How some professionals tell them to give up parental rights in order for their children to get placed with social services. Or allow them to be imprisoned because jails and prisons provide more care than any other institutional entity in most states.
It's the failure of a culture when time after time children are slaughtered. A government that condones killing children as collateral damage of their wars shouldn't be surprised when there are mass killings at home. A culture that allows childhood to be tainted on a daily basis with images of brutal killings from television to movies to video games shouldn't be surprised children grow up with violent tendencies. Proliferation of weapons intended only to kill other humans can only lead to the horrible fact this nation has more gun deaths than any other nation in the industrialized world. By far.
If we want to honor the children, maybe we should think about changing their role models.....us adults.

　

We want to think we love our children but if we stop and think about it there is an ugly truth about the way children are treated around the world. Child soldiers, child prostitution, child slavery, child abuse are affecting millions of our children. When I worked with adolescents at a mental health facility the stories of abuse were horrific. Beatings and sexual abuse were a given for most of the girls. Beatings and often sexual abuse were givens for most of the boys.
It's always the same when we lose children we don't expect to die or be abused. There's outrage and horror. But then it recedes and we forget. We seldom think about the disenfranchised children enduring the daily horror, though. Who speaks for them?

　

I don't want to diminish the deaths of 20 young children and 6 adults to another American madman toting semi-automatic weapons to shoot his prey. I have grandkids close to the age of the children killed. I'd be enraged and bereaved beyond description.
I do have to agree with a young veteran friend who asks the question why these children warrant so much of our attention when there's been so many thousands upon thousands killed by other American armaments. Where was the outcry when our bombs killed entire villages and whole blocks that were inhabited by far more children?
Where was the outcry for the children of Fallujah, a city battered by multiple American assaults of artillery and bombs? Where's the outcry for the children killed all too often in drone attacks by American and Israeli military?
Where's the outcry for the youth sent to the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Oh people will say there's a difference between all those I mention and the children in Newtown, CT. No, there's not. They all have one thing in common. Far too many victims are children and the weapons used are predominately sold by American arms companies.
If it is people who kill people then we need to look at the means by which they are killing them. And, without a doubt, there is a culture of violence that permeates this nation from the time of childhood until we die prematurely or of old age.
The enduring image of my war was the day I walked through a village the day after a napalm bombing. There was a smell of ham from the incinerated pot belly pig but there was also the smell of burned human flesh. As I found out as I got deeper into the village, it was primarily the burned flesh of infants, young children and mothers. How does another human grasp such a scene? How do we reconcile the dead children with our sense of morality?
At least once or twice a year, we find ourselves asking the same questions. Why do we allow the children to be killed without acting to change the culture of violence we've allowed? And that goes without asking why we allow the children of foreign lands to be butchered at the hand of those using "our weapons".
All the cretins and apologists for the NRA will try to justify the continued availability of assault weapons as a right of all Americans under the Second Amendment. They decry any attempt to control deadly weapons used to kill our children. And we refuse to identify them as the terrorist organization they are. They don't give a damn about our rights. They only care about further promoting the violence culture so their masters, the weapons industry, continue to reap huge profits on the backs of those massacred by their implements of death.
If the past is any indication, the deaths of the 20 children and 6 adults on December 14, 12 will only join the massacres at Columbine, Virginia Tech, Aurora's theatres and all the other tragedies caused by a person, usually male, who has some deranged or psychotic impulse to kill and ready access to weapons to carry out that impulse. There will be weeks of reaction but when it comes time for courage and action very few will stand up in the halls of Congress, the White House or state legislatures.
And that makes us a nation willing to sacrifice the potential of young lives simply to maintain the means to carry out the violence so deeply steeped in the American psyche

　

If only Americans felt the same compassion for the innocents killed by automatic weapons, cluster bombs, artillery shells, rocket fire, napalm, white phosphorous, bunker busters, drones and all the other multiple ways that we, the people, have been complicit in using.
If only they understood parents around the world feel the same agony and grief as those who lose children at the hands of killers here in the U.S.. Does it matter if the child is Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist or Sikh? Does it matter what the race of the child is? Does it matter if the child is shot by a cartel in Mexico or by a gang in Chicago?

　

When the history of this time is written it will be the Boehners, McCains, McConnells, Cantors, Grahams and their simple minded weaseling friends who are portrayed as the traitors of the American people. But it will be Obama and his presidency that will be seen as war criminals along the lines of George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger and Ronald Reagan. Yes, Ronnie had wars few Americans knew about. Obama will be seen as the president that imprisoned young soldiers for revealing ugly truths about his military actions and those of his predecesor. He will be the black president that was responsible for stripping away the civil rights of all Americans in the name of national security. While we would like to believe our brave new world of social media revolutionizes our world, the revolution may well be the ability of government to intrude fully into our thoughts and ideals in a way no other government has ever been able to in the past. The priorities of environment and peace and justice have once again taken the back seats of the bus. The Zionists of Israel continue to enslave Palestinians as the American government feeds them the tools to do so. Obama and every other president has failed to acknowledge the correlation between that slavery and the one here in this nation or the gulags and ghettoes the Jewish people escaped. And don't buy the bullshit there's no comparison because there's no gas chambers. Death is simply dealt out in more sophisticated ways with weapons made in the USA. Or by starvation or buldozer. Why do we think ourselves the land of the free or a nation of justice when there is so much to contradict these beliefs?

There's a tendency to think rape is confined to female victims but that's really not the case. Over the last 28 years working in emergency rooms and adolescent units I discovered over half the males I worked with had been sexually assaulted. And many don't report assaults due to the stigma involved just as most women don't report it. Rape is rape regardless of who the victim may be. We really need to understand what causes such rage and hate to inflict such horrible pain and suffering on other humans. The outrage toward the rape and killing of the woman on a bus in India should be world wide. And we must remember her male friend was also a victim.
Please don't misunderstand, I'm well aware of the culture of hate toward women that goes far beyond rape and murder. I just want us to remember not all men are rapists and not all are free of rape.

　

　

Every Action Has a Reaction

Every action has a reaction. Or so they say. For example.....an eighteen year old goes to a war. He's a combat infantryman. He witnesses brutality and death beyond anything he could ever imagine. He takes part because there would be hell to pay if he refused. After a while the brutality becomes common place. The eighteen year old turns nineteen and compartmentalizes his feelings while violating most of his moral beliefs. He believes he's only responsible for having the back of the Marines in his platoon and company. By any means necessary. By the time he goes home he's numb and lacks the empathy he once had before enlisting.

Upon return to stateside Marine life the grunt determines he won't take part in training others to do as he did and he won't play the Marine game anymore. For over a year he fights the Corps. He's sent to brigs and jails and upon return to his unit continues to fight against the Corps. After 13 months in a combat zone he's discovered the war against the Marines is just as tough. They threaten him, jail him and try to bully him. He doesn't care. One time they had him see a mental health professional. He spends 15 minutes with him. They say he's not crazy. They finally discharge him with a less than honorable discharge.

Going forward the grunt becomes an activist with other veterans. He meets his wife. He has two sons. His second son cries a lot during the night. It wakes the grunt from his nightmare. He runs into the room to quiet the son. He's flashing back to a baby killed in a bunker that had cried right before a frag was thrown into the confined area. He holds his hand over the baby son to quiet him.

The grunt continues to stay with his family. He's often times a gentle and loving husband and father. It's the times of rage that makes his family afraid of him. His two sons never know which father will show up. The father that reads to them or the father that pins them up against the wall with hand around their throats and screaming. His rage is terrifying.

Twelve years after the grunt leaves combat he discovers there's a new diagnosis for grunts like him. PTSD. He's amazed how many grunts have similar stories. How many become enraged without apparent reason. How many have nightmares. It's good there's treatment for the grunts. It's too bad there isn't treatment for the families they terrorized. The families become the hidden casualties.

The grunt's sons begin using pot when they're twelve. By twenty they're trying cocaine, LSD, meth and ecstasy. By thirty the second son is addicted to crack. Two days ago he told his parents he felt suicidal. He's said it before. It's usually after a binge on crack and the following depression. For years the grunt and his wife have tried to get him to go to groups. He doesn't like groups. They make him want to use. But he continues to use without groups.

Every action has a reaction. Sometimes it takes years of repetitive actions for the full reaction to occur. Sometimes the actions result in tragic reactions.

If you're a grunt and think you're in it by yourself, think again. Look around to see how many people surround you with care and loving. Don't wait until your kid's reaction becomes crack or booze or meth. Or suicide. Act with love. The same love you had for your shooting buds in the bush or sandbox.

There's A Storm A'Coming

The first Earth Day took place in the 1970s. The issues then are pretty much the same today. Only we've allowed the potential of environmental disaster to become the reality. There's no prevention of what's to come. Not anymore. When Hurricane Katrina hit the shores of the Gulf we watched the citizens of New Orleans struggle to survive and waited to respond. Even though it was an American city, it was a mostly "black" city.
It seemed New Orleans was more like a Haiti or Bangladesh than part of the US. Cops and the military were more apt to kill perceived looters than help hungry, thirsty humans. Once help arrived the horrors of the Super Dome had already been allowed. Seven years later the city is still waiting for true relief. A large portion of the homes owned by the poor and middle class have been condemned and scraped off so gentrifiers and rich developers could make one of the largest land grabs since the Europeans arrived in North America to steal the lands of the indigenous people.
This past week the bill came due for the neglect of our ecosystems. Our failure to acknowledge the harm done by greenhouse gases, polluted water, pesticides, plastics and other environmental wounds to the planet has resulted in the melting of ice caps and rising oceans. Which has led to bigger, more deadly weather occurrences.
Tornadoes have become more frequent and larger in size and areas of deadly destruction. Droughts and wildfires have become commonplace. Infestations of insects and destructive weeds have changed the landscape of our mountain forests. Fracking and other industrial polluters have put major potable water supply in jeopardy for generations to come. Hurricanes have increased in number, size and locations they strike.
New Orleans has been a frequent target of hurricanes. So, the neglect toward the city seemed palatable to some. Some even said New Orleans should be allowed to die because of the frequency of hurricane destruction. But this past week Americans woke up to the new reality of environmental payback. The Big Apple, Hoboken, Coney Island and all the iconic areas of the greatest megalopolis of the US were inundated by a "perfect storm" called Sandy. A huge tropical hurricane joined with a "Nor'easter" and a western storm front to strike at the heart of America like no terrorist had ever done.
The NYC subway was flooded. Staten Island was cut off for days with streets flooded and homes ripped apart by water and wind. Relief was slow to come as crews raced to restore power in Manhattan and the center of American commerce. Ordinary people would have to wait for their communities to be taken care of. Even with dramatic response by FEMA and the Red Cross, the damage was so great there was no possible way to alleviate the suffering of all the survivors.
What's unfolded in the days after the "super storm" has been an apocalyptic scene of things to come. New Yorkers were observed going through garbage for food, gas lines for cars were many miles long, drinking water was scarce and electricity was missing.
Some communities joined together to help one another but others seemed helpless to do much except complain about their plight. Images of beach homes worth millions became a common sight on the evening news. The once well off middle class neighborhoods were destroyed and the survivors became angry because their needs weren't instantaneously met by the government many wanted to do away with. The demand for instant gratification by this nation's people has been epitomized by men and women making unreasonable complaints following the greatest storm in the history of the nation.
The scenes of demanding Americans shows an ugly side of this nation many in the world have come to expect. Entitlement and American exceptionalism have become the norm.
When natural disasters occur in other parts of the world Americans often come to the aid with money and boots on the ground. We often make huge promises of aid only to renege when it becomes time to pay up. The political climate has created polarization so great we can't come together for other humans.
But when the disasters occur in American cities and towns, with the exception of New Orleans, the syndrome of the great American victim comes onto the scene. Like our losses in wars we create, our losses of life and property in natural disasters are much more egregious and significant than all the other nations that have suffered every bit as much. At least in our own minds. We don't remember the earthquake in Haiti that still awaits the aid we promised. New Orleans is no longer a city of black residents. And the black neighborhoods have been ignored for years.
The most important issue about the "perfect storm" hasn't been discussed by most people waiting in line to get gas for their internal combustion engine driven cars. The survivors who bemoan the total destruction of homes built too close to shore lines or in flood plains, don't accept their wasteful habits helped contribute to their plight. For two plus centuries the American people have believed they could rape the land of this nation and nations around the world without having to pay a price. They refuse to acknowledge the warnings of environmentalists about the continued use of fossil fuels creating global warming that would cause super storms. They refuse to acknowledge there is drought so wide-spread the food supply is in jeopardy. They refuse to admit allowing greedy corporate entities a free pass to pollute in every imaginable way has led to an environmental crisis of epic proportions. A crisis that may well lead to the eradication of human life on the planet.
The American people want to believe they are a nation of people with ideas and ideals. They believe they can do anything but haven't done anything to change since the end of World War II. The great myth we have created an "information age" transforming the world has played out to be an age of misinformation and polarity.
Change for this nation is a foolish notion reflected by the actions of the American government gridlocked in perpetual war and failure to maintain and rebuild the nation. Change is impossible when our Supreme Court gives corporations person hood and the ability to literally buy elections, judgeships and local rule. Change is impossible as long as corporate interests are allowed to dictate science for their own profits instead of the good of humans living on the planet, Earth. It's impossible if we continue to deny the obvious exemplified by Hurricane/Super Storm Sandy.
Environmental armageddon is quickly approaching and we won't connect the climate changes with the destruction of Katrina or Sandy. The irony of the relief efforts going on today is the bottled water being handed out by the Red Cross and other relief workers. The environmental damage caused in the name of relief only ensures there are much darker clouds waiting out in the oceans headed our way.

The Nature of Life

Sometimes I hear and see things I don’t want to hear and see.  That’s the nature of working in the field of psychiatry. The other day I sat down with someone who said little but I could see the terrible pain and tortured thinking on the face of the individual. They had lived in oppressive conditions for a number of years. They’d witnessed horrible deeds done by other humans. They’d heard terrible stories of atrocities. They struggled to tell about these things but I didn’t need to hear. I could see the stories in their face. In their eyes. In the way their body slumped. The way their hands moved.

Sometimes atrocity and horror can’t be explained or described. I’m well aware of that. I have my own demons from jungles and paddies of Vietnam. They haunt me almost daily but I’ve never been able to fully describe or explain what I witnessed. What I smelled. What I touched. Even watching old film footage fails to capture that atmosphere of terror and evil.

This is the nature of life in our world today. Evil persists. Sometimes it triumphs. We can lose ourselves in the darkness of it. We can turn to evil as our own way of living. We can allow it to crush us.

There is another part of life, however. Only days before I met with the individual so much in pain we reunited with my wife’s niece, Richele, and her husband, Dan.

When we were young we saw Richele once a year in Erie, Pa. during our annual trip with the kids to visit their grandparents. After she and Dan married, it became the periodic funerals of my wife’s family members.

We met at funerals and always told one another we needed to quit meeting like this. But we’d leave shortly after the funerals and wouldn’t meet again until the next funeral. The last meeting was at the funeral of Richele’s father. My wife’s brother.

I think we might have thought we'd seen each other the last time. Even with some talk about them coming to Denver in the fall. Those are things we'd always say at funerals.

 Sometimes life brings us surprises that are positive and very welcome. Sometimes life brings us unexpected times of genuine love. Richele and Dan came to Denver for business conferences. They wanted to meet for an afternoon they had free.

For one glorious autumn day we shared a ride into our beloved mountains with them. The sky was the pristine blue of a Colorado day. The sun was warm and bright. And the company was fun and comforting. We walked the tundra with mountain winds chilling our faces. We peed behind bushes. Drank lattes and coffee in Frisco. Beer in Breckinridge. Walked the streets of the mountain town. Ate dinner near the 16^th Street Mall in Denver. We talked about our lives and politics. And kids. We enjoyed one day of life together.

For one special day, life wasn’t about the rigors of work or doing household chores. Or pursuing our interests in making things better. It was just life. And family. We toasted one another. Hugged each other and parted ways in downtown Denver. And told one another we loved each other. That we should meet again before ten years passed.

It’s the nature of life. And sometimes life is good.

The Lies of the Empire

The truth about Mitt Romney and taxes is his alleged charitable contributions are given in stocks to Romney owned charities which allow the stocks to be free of taxes. And the money given to charity not claimed on the tax return was not an act of largesse on his part. No, it was a cynical act to ensure his tax paid exceeded the 13% he earlier claimed he had paid. So his tax paid was 14%, still much less a percentage paid by most average American workers. And once the election is over the Romneys can file an amended claim and recoup every cent of the money not previously claimed and more.

What Mitt Romney is really good at doing is cheating. He’s a consummate liar. He willingly lies to further himself and the agenda of his puppet-masters, multinational corporations. Romney is the epitome of the corporate world. They cry about prohibitive tax rates in the U.S. making it impossible to create new jobs and harming small businesses. That 35% tax rate is a myth. The largest corporations not only don’t pay taxes, they get tax rebates once they use all the available tax loopholes provided for them by the corrupt Congress.

These are antisocial personalities that have no problem pushing for profitable wars killing millions, including American sons and daughters from the middle class and the poor. They have no problem polluting the planet for profit. They will deny the effects of their pollution even as millions die and suffer from the filthy air and water. Even as lead pits kill children in Peru. Even as oil spills pollute the oceans and kill the creatures of the sea.

These are people who will kill their own grandchildren in their rush to greed. They don’t care about the future they will leave the younger generations. They only care about profit now. They manipulate and game the system at every turn to gain power and wealth. Power translates into more wealth for them. That is the significance of the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. It allows wealth to buy government and the power which will lead to ever more wealth.

The hate and wedge issues proliferate the media because the corporate masters intend it. They know creation of divisiveness will keep the middle class and poor at each other’s throats while the rich will continue to accumulate more wealth, more power. Even a black President doing the bidding of the rich is made out to be a Marxist liberal. His color and race are included in the dialogue of hate promoted by the masters of the corporate world. His term as President was allowed to scapegoat him for the depression created by the neo-cons and right wingers.

These are people who will get the citizens of this nation to wave patriotic flags of nationalism and demand war against nations for absurd and morally corrupt reasons. They will support the troops right up until they return home from their wars for the last time. Then they will turn their backs on the wounded and emotionally scarred young they got to do their bidding. Their flunkies in Congress will refuse to vote for legislation to assist the troops. They will allow them to struggle in the desperation of unemployment, homelessness and substandard treatment. They don’t care about the daily suicide rates of troops.

These are people who have clearly shown they will bully and bankrupt small business if they get in the way of multinational corporations. Wal-Mart and others have no problem destroying local business to provide greater profits for themselves. These are people who cry crocodile tears for small business while constantly conspiring to steal their ideas and creative innovations. They will crush small business or small farmers like annoying insects to gain profit for themselves.

These are people who have mastered the art of striking fear in the hearts of the elderly about the benefits due them. They’ll make the elderly feel the benefits are entitlements when in fact they’re benefits paid for by taxes deducted from the paychecks of every working person. These are people who would gladly pull the plug on granny if she no longer represents a profit for the rich. They don’t blink in taking food from the mouths of children supported by food stamps.  They claim to be people of good faith. They cynically use faith to cover up their greed. They want others to believe faith will be rewarded in wealth. The poor and struggling must surely lack in their faith.

In the next two months the attack ads will increase and foolish people will buy in to the insanity. Either deluded or hateful people will buy into the toxic Kool aid of the rich. Others will hopelessly give up and do nothing. Not enough will reject the circumstances and rebel.

The myth of a Mayan apocalypse is supposed to occur in 2012. In terms of American history the myth may well come to be true depending on the November election. If not in 2012, the apocalypse for humans will not be far away if the sleeping, stultified and narcotized continue to ignore the warning signals of corruption and environmental disaster that are centered in the American Empire.

A Failure of Greatness

I wonder how the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan feel with the focus off their daily grind and daily threat they face. You'd think from the media reports wars were no longer paid for in billions of dollars and the blood of our young. You'd think drones and bombs weren't killing innocents in both nations and places we aren't even aware attacks take place.
"Joystick patriots" send killer drones out to spy and kill every day and then go home to beers, families and television. And maybe video games to sharpen those skills they have to have to remotely kill. It must be a real rush to finally get to "light up" some damn "terrorist".
Every day, on average, one vet kills themselves. And when I tell people this they don't want to believe it. When I tell them vets are killing wives and kids they refuse to believe. They don't want to believe they are going to prison at high rates. Homeless more than the average population.
We never hear about the families in Basra or Fallujah still grieving their dead family members. Enduring the crippling wounds inflicted by American weapons. Developing strange illnesses resembling radiation poisoning.
We seldom hear about the rapes of young female troops by the other troops in their unit. Seldom hear about the rapes of young Iraqi or Afghan women by angry and arrogant occupiers. These war crimes seldom result in trials or convictions.
Americans don't want to believe we're still at war for all the wrong reasons. They are led to believe the troops are protecting this nation when and if the wars are even mentioned. They fail to understand we are the largest terrorist entity in the world. How else can you describe bombs, drones, rockets, white phosphorous, depleted uranium and toxic weaponry used against other humans? And we're always looking for better ways to kill.
I still try to wrap my head around the outcry by citizens whenever someone goes berserk and kills groups of people without reason. Where would they ever get such thoughts in America? Rampant gun supplies, constant wars, constant violence exposure through media, hate-mongering by racist radio hosts, hate by religious leaders....the moral breakdown of humanity. We say we're a Christian nation but Christ would be appalled at what is done in his name. Any concept of a loving god is belied by the reality of the hate and violence so prevalent in this nation.
The political drama and facade going on has taken center stage with all the lies and hateful rhetoric. Damn the troops. Damn the poor and hungry. Damn the frail. All we hear is the lies and attacks of shallow men and women who don't give a damn about this nation or the plight of the common person.
The wealthy bastards of Wall St., Goldman-Sachs, BOA, CITI, Chase and the DC beltway live in a bubble of insane greed that sucks the humanity from the marrow of their bones. Their God is Mammon, the god of the greedy. They are the money-changers Christ is said to have chased from the temple.
We should not be fooled into believing these crippled humans care about those dying in wars. Their sick minds are oblivious to the weak and needy. The failure of their souls doesn't allow them to care about the husbands and wives struggling to feed their kids and pay their rent or mortgage. Their hatefulness only allows them to use the issues of women's rights, gay rights and the return of Jim Crow as ways to divide those who struggle to make living wages. They vilify teachers and union members fearing they might educate and organize.
We should not be fooled into believing we are free and have rights as described by the Constitution. The individual has given way to the personhood of the corporation courtesy of the Supreme Court's total lack of integrity. Gridlocked Congresses and cowardly Presidents and legislators are tools of the military industrial complex and all the other special interests. The only special interest not being considered are the people of "we the people" so eloquently mentioned in the Preamble of the Constitution.
My mind wonders what the mothers and fathers of the troops must feel each day and night their sons and daughters are in the "kill zone" of our insane wars. What must the children and spouses feel with the empty place at the dinner table? How many struggle to sleep worrying about a phone call in the middle of the night.
I wonder how a mother and father must feel after a drone kills their child. How must the Iraqi family feel following the death of a mother at the hands of foreign troops? How does a new mother cope with a child born with horrible birth defects in the Fallujah region of Iraq?
I wonder about these things and why they fail to be mentioned in our daily conversations. It's clearly apparent we choose to forget and would rather go about considering this a great nation. I think of the words of a President who said a nation is only as great as the lives of the weakest citizens. Today, a nation is only as great as the way it treats all the citizens of the world. In that we have failed the test of greatness.

Lies of Traitors

There is a myth in America that the economy depends on the stock market and the big banks like Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, Goldman-Sachs and on and on.

The truth is Americans and all the rest of the world are getting robbed by them.  They caused the economic crash with their twisted methods of banking and brokering. They deliberately went about selling fraudulent stocks and derivatives to individuals, pension funds, stable companies, municipalities and other nations outside the borders of NYC and the USA.

The liars of both political parties want us to believe austerity is necessary because of the working class. Unions, teachers, police, firemen, nurses and grave-diggers are all the cause of our economic problems. They used too much credit eagerly offered by the banks. They over- spent on homes and high end cars despite constant offers to finance by the banks. They demanded too much in wages even though their yearly wages lost ground compared to the 300% improvement of wealth by the richest 1% of the world.

And when the crash came it was the working class losing jobs, watching pensions lose most of their value, watching gas prices escalate beyond all expectations and in turn seeing all necessary goods like food become so expensive some had to skip meals.

Don’t think for one minute the bankers, brokerage firms or fat cat politicians are suffering or ever have during these bleak times. They’re living high on the hog from the wealth stolen from the workers. They raided pensions, destroyed unions and blamed public employees for their disasters. They watch as children starve and homelessness increases dramatically with people never experiencing homelessness.  Their responses have been to outlaw the homeless by keeping them from using public lands to camp in, sleep in or sit in after hours.

Don’t think for one minute the politicians spending billions on attack ads via super-PACs have the workers or poor in mind when they get elected. No, they are concerned with pandering to the ultra-rich with tax cuts, special police protection, assistance moving good jobs out of the country and making sure the oligarchy is so powerful the workers can never overcome the oppression.

Don’t think for one minute the war machines, the prison industry, the drug war or all the other over-funded government programs will go away or be reduced. The needs of real humans take a back seat to the needs of the wealthy.  Never mind old people suffer, children die, education becomes only for the rich.  In the misery of lost jobs, lost homes and hunger the will to fight back diminishes.  The effects of the thieves calling themselves job producers and the back bone of the economy saps the energy of even the strongest who object.

Don’t think for one minute the Ryan Plan or any other austerity program will get America back on track. What the politicians and Wall Streeters plan to do is totally devastate and derail the American worker. They are shooting for a working class similar to the worker in China, Bangladesh or Vietnam. They want the destruction of a middle class that might oversee their traitorous crimes. Yes, these people are sociopaths who have no country or allegiance. Their loyalty lies only in the stolen wealth they have.  They also managed to steal the Bill of Rights and the government of “we the people” in the process. They control the Congress, the Executive branch and the Supreme Court.  The blustering fools in thousand dollar suits are merely tools of the sociopaths or insiders in the anti-social network that quite some time ago executed a coup d’état without the American people even recognizing it.

Good people will resist but at risk of pepper spray and imprisonment. Good people will attempt to exercise their rights but at risk of thugs in blue riot gear beating them down. People will look at Egypt and deplore the military dictatorship beating and threatening those who resist them.  But will Americans deplore the same thing happening in their own nation under the guise of “law and order” and keeping the peace?

.

Running Out of Canaries

Another canary in the dark hole of democracy died yesterday in the state of Wisconsin. How many more will have to die before Americans wake up to the deadly scent of the poisonous billionaires who have bought the government of “we the people”?

Too many Americans have failed in being responsible citizens of a nation once thought to be a beacon of hope and freedom. Too many citizens have allowed the propaganda machines of both the left and right to make decisions for them. Too many are too lazy, too apathetic or too discouraged to make informed decisions based on their own study of issues. Studies that go beyond the 30 second to minute sound bites of the ads paid for by shadow groups unwilling to even identify themselves.

Why should we accept the information of groups unwilling to reveal who they are and who their members are? Is this the government a free people should accept? A government bought by shadowy individuals and groups with the desire to control all segments of government for their own greedy needs?

Too many Americans are willing to let others decide their fate and the fate of their children. They’re unwilling to be responsible enough to be informed, to seek the real truth and to stand up to the bastards attempting to shackle them in debt and oppressive laws meant to protect only the rich.

Too many are willing to bitch about conditions that adversely affect them but won’t do something other than cast a ballot for politicians already sold out to the millionaires and billionaires. Too many buy into the idea they can become a millionaire or billionaire if only the government is dismantled and everything turned over to the private sector. This is called an oligarchy or fascist state in other parts of the globe.

Too many Americans cower in fear that an outside enemy will take away their freedom and fail to see it is the government of the rich they should fear most. Too many worry about the phony threat of gay marriages. Too many allow religious hysterics and fanatics to control their lives and fail to actually study and understand the ideology of Christ, Allah and others they claim to believe in.

Too many Americans have abdicated citizenship to liars and traitors only interested it gutting this nation’s resources, enslaving its workforce and moving on to the next conquest. They figure once the American people are under control, the rest of the world will soon follow. Americans like to believe they are the greatest nation on Earth but they gave up that recognition by constantly using wars and coercion to get their way.

Too many Americans blame the fall and decline of this nation on other people or institutions. We all need to look in the mirror and ask ourselves how much we’ve done to ensure our children and grandchildren remain free people.  We need to ask if we challenged those who attempt to steal their freedom or if we sat on our asses watching Dancing With The Stars or some other inane and mind numbing television program.

We have to ask ourselves how many more warnings will there be?  How many canaries in the toxic remains of democracy will die in order to warn us of the impending poison created by billionaires who could care less about “we the people” or freedom?