I Knew It Would Get Bad ...

I just didn't know it would get this bad this fast.

CNN: Trump Signs Executive Order to Keep Out 'Radical Islamic Terrorists'
ProPublica: Trump Order Will Block 500,000 Legal US Immigrants From Returning Home
PBS News: Trump Ban Affects All Non-US Citizens, Including Green Card Holders
The New York Times: Trump Bars Citizens and Refugees of 7 Muslim Countries
The Observer: Global Fury as Trump's Ban on Migrants Takes Effect
Aljazeera: World Leaders Condemn Donald Trump's 'Muslim Ban'
Boston Globe: Hundreds Rally in Boston Against Trump's Immigration Policies
The Guardian: US Airports on Frontline as Trump's Travel Ban Causes Chaos and Protests
Fox News: Protests Erupt at Airports Following Trump Travel Ban
New York Post: Massive Protests at Airports Across US After Trump's Immigrant Ban
ABC News:  US Judge Grants Stay on Deportations Under Trump Immigration Order
CNBC: Judge Blocks US from Deporting Visa holders Detained After Trump's Refugee Order
CNBC: ACLU Mounts Legal Challenge to Trump's Refugee Ban

Photo from Women's March in London, Credit: Reuters/Neil Hall

"Love Is All Around"

TV Land paid tribute to Mary Tyler Moore by erecting this bronze statue of her famous hat toss. It has stood in downtown Minneapolis since 2002, and the internet is filled with photos of happy tourists smiling, posing, tossing their own hats alongside. The plaque reads "Who can turn the world on with her smile?"

I grew up watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show and wanted to be Mary all through my childhood ... Maybe I still wanna be Mary. She was geeky-hip. Always did the right thing, was always kind, always careful not to hurt anyone's feelings, always worked hard, never lied, she had trendy clothes, and she was independent and lived in a cozy apartment. She worked an important job, had her own money, her hair always looked nice. She wore make-up, but not too much. She was afraid, yet unafraid. She never made fun of anyone. She was thin and pretty and smart. Loyal and true. She made the whole world seem like a nice place. She was everything I wanted to be. Everything I still want to be.

I loved her theme song, too. Love Is All Around was written by a man named Sonny Curtis -- the same man who wrote I Fought the Law. I read an article where he said it took him only two hours to write Mary's theme song. He said if he had known how famous it would become, it would have taken him longer to write, because he would have been more nervous.

I miss being the little kid who was mesmerized by Mary Tyler Moore and I'm sad she's gone.

I wish her a peaceful eternity. 

Tracy Chapman

I can't seem to get enough of listening to this woman sing. She has joy and serenity on her face. And she seems to be smiling even when she's not. Her energy is simply too beautiful to describe. You have to see for yourself.

Good Riddance to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey

For over 100 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus has been transforming majestic, stunning, elegant creatures into flinching, helpless entities who balance balls on their noses, juggle bowling pins, stand on one foot, and jump through hoops for the sake of entertaining apathetic humans and lining the pockets of circus owners. Beautiful lions and elephants and bears were never meant to be captured and held in cages or be poked with sticks and zapped with stun guns while performing before crowds of noisy, cheering humans. Elephants were never supposed to wear sequined tiaras and tigers were never meant to walk on balance beams.

I say good riddance to the circus and all that it stands for. Unfortunately, all the animals they have held in captivity and bred for their own financial gain cannot be released into the wild, but, instead, will be held in animal conservation areas holding pens created by the circus until they eventually find peace and tranquility in their sad lives by dying in captivity.

There are plenty of options for animal-free circuses, people just have to seek them out. Be more responsible to the world and its creatures. I say don't ever buy a ticket to a circus with animals. (Or a zoo ... fuck zoos, too).

Look at the faces of these animals, then decide if animal entertainment is worthy of condoning.

Sad Elephants. Photot credit Bill Sikes/AP

Sad Tigers. Photo credit chensiyuan/Wikipedia

Sad bear. Photo credit Getty Images/abc news

Carrie Fisher and Mom

Really sad to hear the news of Carrie Fisher and now Debbie Reynolds. Love them both.

Tracy Chapman

Theme song for a better world. 

Why I Defend Cops

When I'm in trouble I call the police and they come and they help me.

And while I'm a defender of victims of police brutality and unwarranted police shootings, I also am a defender of police.

As someone who has never been arrested, never been brutalized by police, never been in trouble with the police, and has had police officers in her family (I'm white and female, so that helps keep me out of trouble, too), I defend police because their job is one of the shittiest, most thankless and most dangerous jobs in America. I personally would not want to be the first to respond to an armed robbery or a domestic dispute or be the one to pull over a car full of men who look like they're up to no good ... late at night, in the dark, all by myself. No, I'm not that brave, but I give credit to the officers who are. They have the daunting task of dealing with the criminal element day in and day out to keep people like me safe.

Not everyone should be a cop ... just like not everyone should be a nurse or a florist or a photographer or a chef. There are people in every profession who are shitty at their job and police officers are no different. Some of them are abusers who are too angry to do the job, and some of them are just too afraid and too skittish to be cops. Unfortunately, law enforcement officers who are not good at their jobs have the power to really hurt or kill people through misdeed or misjudgement. That's a problem. Shitty cops also put their fellow officers at risk.

I think it's also important to remember that cops only have a split second to make decisions about who is dangerous and who is not. Who wants to shoot them and who is just reaching for their wallet. They deal with mentally ill people, suicidal people, people waving knives at them, people who want to kill their spouses, and people who are high on drugs. They also deal with bad guys with guns who aren't afraid to use them. There are plenty of cop killers out there and no one knows that better than cops. Police officers don't have the luxury of leisurely contemplating what action needs to be taken. So, sometimes they mess up and shoot someone they shouldn't. And sometimes they mess up and don't shoot someone that they should.

Sometimes cops kill people and sometimes people kill cops.

Hindsight is always clear-sighted.

Deciding right and wrong from after-the-fact videos on YouTube is easier than making decisions in real time.

Everyone needs to chill the fuck out and give cops a break.

According to the National Law Officer's Memorial Fund, gun-related police deaths are on the rise with 2016 already surpassing the number of officers shot to death in 2015.

Last month, four officers were shot in four different cities in a 24 hour period. In July, six Louisiana officers were shot while protesters marched in the street in opposition of police shootings. Six officers were shot in Georgia in the past week, and a Tennessee police officer was shot two days ago.

It's time for people to speak out and defend the good cops who protect us and keep us safe.

Corporate Data Breaches Becoming The Norm

Woke up to another computer hacking/data breaching/customer compromising, this time from Quest Diagnostics which means sensitive, personal, private medical information has been exposed to whoever hacked it, but (as always) the company released a statement that said there is "no indication" that the information has been misused. It just got me wondering what, exactly, that bullshit statement means. It seems corporate data breaches are becoming the norm but miraculously, they keep telling us these breaches are not harming customers at all. I find that unbelievable.

There is a Wikipedia page of data breaches that lists hundreds of companies that have been hacked. This is, of course, only a partial list and only includes companies whose breaches involved 30,000 or more customers records. That narrows the playing field way the fuck down, since smaller breaches in smaller companies occur "continually" according to Wiki.

The companies listed encompass multiple aspects of our lives and include (in no particular order) Home Depot, JP Morgan, Hyatt Hotels, Uber, 21st Century Oncology, Fidelity National, Hannaford Supermarkets, British Airways, Twitter, TD Bank, Walmart, The State of Texas, The Washington Post, Scribd, Sony Pictures, UPS, Domino's Pizza, Ohio State University, Trump Hotel, Monster.com, Adobe, Medicaid, The Veteran's Administration, The National Guard, Verizon, and (my favorite) ... The Internal Revenue Service.

Should we mention the Yahoo data breach that has been going on for two years and effects 1 Billion email users. This is the biggest data breach in history, and Yahoo has kept it under their hats until now ... maybe because they are negotiating a sale price with Verizon and don't want to lower their worth? ... don't know ... just thinkin' out loud here.

Customers are controlled by companies that demand over-the-top amounts of information about us before honoring us with the privilege of doing business with them, yet, they offer no guarantee of being able to secure the personal information they are collecting. Even a job application requests name, date of birth, social security numbers, work histories, past and present pay scales, personal references, places of birth, places of residence ... before we even know if we will be interviewed or what the job even pays. We often don't even know who actually owns the company we are applying to ... yet, they demand that we neatly enter our private stuff into their databases for not-so-safe keeping. Of course, their defense is the old "you don't have to work here if you don't like it", but the majority of us don't own our own businesses and are not independently wealthy, we need to work and all the companies are following suit and demanding the same information of job applicants. (We haven't even touched on employer demands for background checks, credit checks, and drug testing).

Here is a list of statements that companies use to bullshit us after the personal date they demanded from us has been stolen from them:

"...there was no evidence of fraud involving the use of customer information."

"...customer financial information remains secure."

"...no evidence that any person involved was harmed by the breach."

"...no indication that patient or customer information has been misused in any way."

"We have not received any reports of actual misuse of any information."

"...no evidence that users have been exploited malicioulsly."

"... no evidence that stolen information is being used for anything but marketing."

"... can't guarantee that it won't result in fees to customers."


And while I acknowledge that computer hackers are costing these companies lots of money to fix these breaches (issuing new cards to customers, offering free credit reports, changing account numbers, sending out notification letters to customers ... I know all this costs money), I just want companies to acknowledge that they are powerless in securing our personal information; I want them to stop demanding so much of our information; And I want them to stop telling us that we have not been harmed by having our personal information dropped into the hands of criminals.

Brainstorm: Let's Ban Pregnancy!

Ok.

At the risk of sounding like a callous, uncaring asshole, I have a brainstorm about the news reports and fears and CDC warnings about travel bans regarding the Zika virus and pregnant women.

Why don't we just ban all pregnancies until Zika is eradicated?

What's that you say?

You think that's a crazy idea?

You think interfering with reproductive freedoms is a bad idea?

What's that ... you think it would be a human rights violation to interfere with and try to dictate a woman's freedom to control her own body ... her uterus ... her reproductive health ... her sexuality ... her decision to conceive?

Oh, you mean the same way anti-choice legislators who pass anti-choice laws interfere with and violate human rights?

Yea ... I agree. We should all keep our noses out of the reproductive health of others ...

glad we're all finally on the same page.

Happy Rosa Parks Day

Bluegrass Music

Sunday morning Bluegrass goes perfect with coffee. Songs from one of my favorite cds.

Happy, sad, spiritual, hopeful ... all at once ... that's Bluegrass.

Homelessness

I read an interesting article on homelessness from ThinkProgress. It touches on the notion that preventing homelessness from happening before it happens is a real solution to cutting down on homelessness. (Makes perfect sense). And the sentiment that mental illness, drug addiction, alcoholism, and poverty must be remedied before homeless people can be assigned permanent housing is being replaced with the common sense concept that housing has to come first, then the other issues can be dealt with and resolved more effectively. “one thing that everyone who’s homeless needs is a home.”

The whole article is worth a read. It’s packed with good information and is enlightening and hopeful. It also points to some reputable organizations doing a lot of good work for homeless people … places that could use some donations and volunteers to meet their goal of ending homelessness.

Here is an excerpt:

The 1980s “was when contemporary homelessness really began,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. “It’s really critical to remember that we didn’t always have mass homelessness in this country.”

After the widespread homelessness caused by the Great Depression, it became a limited and short-term problem for decades. Homelessness will always exist among people experiencing unexpected poverty, struggling with mental illness or substance abuse, or coping with other unexpected events. But it used to be that getting back on your feet didn’t take months or years. And homelessness used to mostly impact a narrow slice of society: white, urban, older men, many dealing with alcoholism.

“In the 70s, there was an adequate supply of affordable housing, even a surplus,” said Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “If people lost their housing, you could get them back into some place right away.”

In 1970, there was a surplus of 300,000 affordable housing units in the U.S. But then, in the 1980s, affordable housing began to evaporate. The Reagan administration slashed funding. Federal spending on housing assistance fell by 50 percent between 1976 and 2002. At the same time, gentrification sped up, with cities getting rid of cheap housing like single room occupancy units and replacing them with more expensive stock, and units being built were more often for co-ops and condos for ownership instead of rent. Federal incentives to build affordable housing dried up. Add to that the AIDs crisis, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, cutbacks to the social safety net, and the rise in incarceration and subsequent hurdles for reentry, and you have today’s crisis.

By 1985, there were 8.9 million poor renters in need of housing but just 5.6 million units, a 3.2 million shortage. By 2009, there was a 5.5 million shortage. Today, just one in four eligible households gets federal rental assistance while rents keep rising, income stagnates, and a record number of families are paying more than what they can afford.

Other changes since the 1980s have been for the better. When mass homelessness emerged, we weren’t ready for it. “There was a process of learning, because we did a lot of things in the beginning that I think were intuitive, but we’ve learned a lot,” Roman said.

The original focus was on creating a plan to help someone with mental illness or substance abuse before getting her in housing, as well as a reliance on the shelter system, explained Jerry Jones, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “If you go back a few years, it was an emphasis on creating a consensus plan on the local level,” he said. “If you went back 10 or probably 15 years, there was more of an emphasis on transitional housing.”

By now, if there’s one thing that nearly everyone working to end homelessness agrees, it’s that we know how to do it. It’s just a matter of making it reality. The focus is singular, as Rachel Myers, executive director of the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance explains. “People are homeless for different reasons and have different kinds of needs,” she said. “But one thing that everyone who’s homeless needs is a home.”

The above article credited to Bryce Covert, Economic Policy Editor at ThinkProgress. Here’s her email: bcovert@thinkprogress.org

Green Day-Last Of The American Girls(Live at Jimmy Fallon)

President Trump

This is some serious shit now. Trump won the 2016 Presidential election.

Unbelievable. Everyone I've spoken to seems to be in shock. No one seems able to believe it.

I blame Hillary. If she hadn't fucked Bernie out of winning the nomination (which I believe she did), Bernie would have beat Trump and it would have been President Sanders.

Well, we have to just put on our seat belts and ride out the storm. I'm hoping he surprises us and actually does some good. Time will tell. We're powerless to do much about it anyway.

We're a Plutocracy Democratic Republic (maybe) full of voiceless, powerless people.

Pretty fucked up.

Go Vote Today (for Stein)

Just go vote for the person you think will make you happy or healthy or wealthy or less marginalized.

I was a Bernie supporter. I was positive he would have changed things for the better. He was the only scandal-free candidate and it seemed like the bigger his crowds got and the more state primaries he won, the more electoral votes Hillary got. WTF? It seems the system really is rigged (Jesus Christ, is Trump right?)

I’m not voting for Hillary because she thinks $15 bucks an hour is too high of a minimum wage for working class stiffs of America, but thinks its normal for her to earn around $1000 dollars a minute talking to wealthy corporate thieves. (Yes … that says per minute, motherfucker)

I’m not voting for Trump because he’s too rich to really give a fuck about poor people or homeless people or working people or struggling people. He sends jobs overseas because that’s what wealthy companies do – that’s how they make money. And Mike Pence spends every waking minute trying to control women’s reproduction as if that’s the only issue in America. Any man who devotes that much time to worrying about uterine activity has perv stamped all over him.

  

I’m not voting for Gary Johnson because the “Take Care of Yourself” mentality of the Libertarian party doesn’t sit well with my “Let’s Help Other Humans” mentality. Interestingly, Johnson wants less government interference in the lives of citizens, but is okay with big brother interfering and controlling women’s reproductive freedoms.

BTW, Gary, here’s a picture of Aleppo for you you fucking idiot : 

 

New York Times photo

 

I'm voting for Jill Stein. She’s the only one that holds my values, is concerned about people other than herself, and has faith in humans to strive and flourish if given a fair chance in life. I trust her, I like her, and I’m voting for her. For all the Hillary people saying, “A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump”, I say, “Go fuck yourselves. A vote for Jill is actually a vote for Jill.”

See you at the polls. Go vote - for whoever you think will help you.

Happy Halloween

I have to work a night shift tonight which means I won’t be awake to have fun answering the door and passing out candy to all the little costumed beggars.

Halloween restores my faith in humanity every year, because back around 1995 I took my son trick or treating and, instead of just leaving the house dark with no one home, I decided to put all the candy I bought in a big bowl and leave it on the front porch with a sign that read:

TRICK OR TREAT!!!!!

PLEASE TAKE A CANDY

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

My son and I agreed as we headed out of the yard that the first person to arrive would empty the bowl and steal all the candy. Oh, well…

When we got home hours later -- exhausted, cold, and lugging a bucket of amazing trick or treat candy --  we found our candy bowl 1/3 full. 

Faith in the integrity of humans: RESTORED

All Done With The Walking Dead

I’m officially quitting the Walking Dead. Since watching the Season 7 premiere, it seems obvious that the writers don’t know where to go, so they’re taking us on a bullshit journey of gruesome that I am simply not interested in traveling. The writers have fucked up and, being the unforgiving asshole that I am, I’m leaving.

Rick having his face plastered with blood has evolved into the new norm, but the bashing of skulls – especially of characters that seem to have the most humanistic personas – is a bit too much. The line has been crossed. 

And where the hell are all the women and children? Why are there all men in Neegan’s camp and is this a setup for a bordello of Neegan-owned women that he confiscated like inanimate objects from the men he coerced and tortured into submission? The guise will, of course, be that the women went to him voluntarily to save their husbands from having their skulls bashed by Neegan. Fuck that.

The writing is on the wall for a whole bunch of torture, gore, and perversion in the coming episodes so I’m bowing out now. 

Sorry Daryl. I’m gonna miss you. 

Eeeny Meeny Miney Moe

 Nothing Better Happen to Daryl Tonight ... 

Can't Forget Bernie

Courtesy of CNN posted on YouTube

Lost Generation (Palindrome)

Courtesy of Jon Reed created for AARP