Saturday, December 17, 2016

FESTIVUS FOR THE REST OF US IN 2016

                         HAPPY FESTIVUS  

      


The Winter Holiday season, in particular Christmas  are portrayed in our society as the happiest time of the year, an opportunity to be joyful and grateful with family, friends and colleagues.

It has always seemed to me that this time of the year highlights the hypocrisy of Society by designating the period for everyone to be joyful, compassionate toward those less fortunate, being friendly, courteous, and doing "all the right" choreographed things in their interactions with others.

Suddenly sick children in hospitals are showered with free gifts by strangers, magical Santa Claus appears to provide needy children with toys, the poor are given free warm clothes, food, and treated as human beings.

What about the rest of the year, when most of these very same people who are still suffering, become invisible, ignored by most others, where does the kindness they received during the Holiday Season go? It simply disappears, these humans no longer are worthy of being recognized.

According to the National Institute of Health Christmas/Holiday Season is the time of year that people experience a high incidence of depression.

Hospitals and police forces report high incidences of suicide and attempted suicide.

Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Social Workers and other mental health professionals report a significant increase in patients complaining about depression.

One North American survey reported that 45% of respondents dreaded the season.

It appears to have more to do with unrealistic expectations and excessive self-reflection for many people.

For some people, they get depressed at this time of the year and even angry because of the extreme commercialization with the focus on gifts and the emphasis on "perfect" social activities.

Others get depressed because it appears to be a trigger to engage in excessive self-reflection and rumination about the inadequacies of life (and creates a "victim" mentality) in comparison with other people who seem to have more and do more.

Still others become anxious because of the pressure (both commercial and self-induced) to spend a lot of money on gifts and incur increasing debt.

Some report that they dread Christmas because of the expectations for social gatherings with family, friends and acquaintances that they'd rather not spend time with.

And finally, many people feel very lonely at Christmas, because they have suffered the loss of loved ones, are distant from family members, or live alone.

To counter all of this, I suggest that we all look back to the truly positive holiday spirit of "Happy Festivus" which is the traditional greeting of Festivus, a holiday featured in "The Strike" episode of The Seinfeld Televison show aired on December 18, 1997.


According to the Seinfeld model, Festivus is celebrated each year on December 23rd. 

However many people celebrate it other times in December, and even at other times throughout the year.

The slogan of Festivus is "A Festivus for the rest of us!"

The usual holiday tradition of a tree is replaced by an unadorned aluminum pole, which is in direct contrast to normal holiday materialism.

Those attending Festivus may also participate in the "Airing of Grievances" which is an opportunity to tell others how they have disappointed you in the past year, followed by a Festivus dinner, and then completed by the "Feats of Strength" where the head of the household must be pinned.

The Festivus celebration includes four main components:

The Festivus PoleThe tradition begins with an aluminum pole, which is used for its "very high strength-to-weight ratio."

During Festivus, the unadorned Festivus Pole is displayed.

The pole was chosen apparently in opposition to the commercialization of highly decorated Christmas trees, because it is "very low-maintenance," and also because the holiday's patron, Frank Costanza, "finds tinsel distracting."

The Airing of Grievances: At the beginning of the Festivus dinner, each participant tells friends and family of all the instances where they disappointed him or her that year.

As quoted from Frank Costanza: "I've got a lot of problems with you people, and now you're going to hear about it!"

Festivus Dinner: A celebratory dinner is shown on the evening of Festivus prior to the Feats of Strength. In the episode the meal appeared to be meat loaf or spaghetti in a red sauce.

The Feats of Strength: After the dinner, the head of the household tests his or her strength against one participant of their choosing.

Festivus is not considered over until the head of the family has been pinned. However, a participant may be allowed to decline to attempt to pin the head of the household only if they have something better to do instead.

Set aside today, or any day this month, including December 23rd and break out the meat loaf, because Festivus is once again upon us! 

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

THEY ARE nAZIS, BIGOTS,RACISTS-THAT"S WHAT THEY ARE CALLED.


                                 

                                        Bodies of Jews Murdered in Holocaust by Nazis 

                                                         NEVER AGAIN!

Those are real human beings in the horrific picture above slaughtered by nazis during the Holocaust.

nazis killed 6 million Jews during the holocaust and an additional 6 million non Jews= 12 million innocent human beings according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Today we have the same newly branded alt-right=nazis in the United States. They are planning to do some similar ethnic cleansing here.

Could a Holocaust happen in America. Sure why not?

They are nazis,Bigots,Racists-That's what they are called.

Now the media calls them the alt-right -a sugar coated word that legitimizes them. 

If you see it the media use the words alt-right call them, email them, write to them, Tell them this must stop!.

The media must refer to them as Nazis before their phony name becomes reinforced in the minds of the public.


One of the reasons they’ve achieved such widespread recognition is the “catchiness” of their name. If you can evoke the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis and sound kind of edgy, it seems you can make it in a digital age where one’s values and basic human decency can be tossed out the window with a whim and an Avatar.

Think Progress is done with coddling these slimy creeps with cute nicknames.  One of their more visible spokesmen these days is Richard Spencer who just held a gala conference in Washington D.C. to celebrate Trump’s victory.  
Instead of high-fives, people gave each other Sieg Heils and Nazi salutes. Yes,that happened this weekend. He’s head of a White Supremacist organization called the National Policy Institute, whose murky goals amount to complete separation of the races.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, Spencer keynoted an NPI conference in Washington, D.C. Over the course of his speech, he approvingly quoted Nazi propaganda, said that the United States is meant to be a “white country,” and suggested that many political commentators are “soulless golem” controlled by Jewish media interests.
That, in a nutshell, is the face of the so-called alt-right. As Spencer himself has said, the core of alt-right ideology is the preservation of “white identity.”
As the ThinkProgress Editors note, there’s nothing distinguishing these people from the cowardly jackasses in the white hoods who burned crosses in helpless people’s yards and ran around in groups at night terrorizing people because of their skin color. 
This new group of haters just aspires to do it with the assistance of the Internet. Where they can’t physically harass someone they’ll threaten them on line. And why not? It’s cleaner, most of them don’t ever show their face, and it’s a source of constant reinforcement.  Much better than holding furtive meetings in the cold, dark woods.
[Y]ou might wonder what, if anything, distinguishes the alt-right from more hidebound racist movements such as the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. The answer is very little, except for a bit of savvy branding and a fondness for ironic Twitter memes. Spencer and his ilk are essentially standard-issue white supremacists who discovered a clever way to make themselves appear more innocuous — even a little hip.
So as the Editors point out, Trump’s de facto Chief of Staff, Steve Bannon, can brag about providing a platform for the alt-right with nine tenths of Americans not realizing he’s talking about the KKK and the NeoNazi’s. Alt-Right, huh, what? Like Alt-Rock? It’s sanitized and user-friendly. The cable networks love it—they can have special guest spokesmen from the alt-right come on their shows without ever once acknowledging the uncomfortable fact that they’re enabling White supremacists. It’s all in the name of news, after all, isn’t it?
With that in mind, ThinkProgress will no longer treat “alt-right” as an accurate descriptor of either a movement or its members. We will only use the name when quoting others. When appending our own description to men like Spencer and groups like NPI, we will use terms we consider more accurate, such as “white nationalist” or “white supremacist.”
One would hope that the rest of the media follows their lead, but the rest of the media are often slow to move. 

So if you’re tired of giving people the benefit of the doubt after this election these are certainly the type of rotten people who don’t deserve any benefit and certainly aren’t worthy of any doubt. 

We’re not going to get much satisfaction during the next four years but the least we can do is stop allowing these assholes to play their little games.
The point here is not to call people names, but simply to describe them as they are. We won’t do racists’ public relations work for them. Nor should other news outlets.
We have a responsibility to use morally precise language when referring to this group (which in this case, is “neo-Nazis”), to contextualize their influence (little, but more than it should be), and to unequivocally call them out. 
“Alt-right” needs to go into the trash bin of history. 
Which is exactly where these hatemongers belong.

                









Wednesday, November 16, 2016

WHEN THEY CAME FOR ME



During these difficult times in America what have we learned from history?

The answer is NOTHING.

For me I have learned much  & will defend it forever:

                                                   NEVER AGAIN!



Picture (with Poem) of a Small Boy Captured
During the April-May 1943 Warsaw Revolt




.
 My God, How Could You Have Failed So Miserably? 



Little Polish Boy
I.
I would like to be an artist
So I could make a Painting of you
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat on your head
The Star of David on your coat
Standing in the ghetto with your arms up as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

I would make a monument of you and the world who said nothing
I would like to be a composer so I could write a concerto of you
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat on your head
The Star of David on your coat Standing in the ghetto with your arms up as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

I would write a concerto of you and the world who said nothing
.

II.
I am not an artist
But my mind had painted
a painting of you

Ten Million Miles High is the Painting
so the whole universe can see you Now
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat
on your head
The Star of David
on your coat
Standing in the ghetto with your arms up as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

And the World who said nothing
I'll make this painting so bright
that it will blind the eyes
of the world who saw nothing

Ten billion miles high will be the monument
so the whole universe can remember of you
Little Polish Boy

Standing with your Little hat
on your head
The Star of David
on your coat

.
III.
Standing in the ghetto
with your arms up
as many Nazi machine guns pointing at you

And the monument will tremble so the blind world
Now will know

What fear is in the darkness
The world
Who said nothing

I am not a composer
but I will write a composition
for five trillion trumpets
so it will blast the ear drums
of this world

The world's
Who heard nothing

I
am
Sorry
that
It was you
and
Not me

.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

OVER 90 MILLION VOTERS DIDN'T VOTE IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

     






Voting is a fundamental right of adult U.S. citizens; it's protected by the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th constitutional amendments. 

It seems unfair that some State laws make it more difficult for certain Americans to exercise such an important democratic right.


Some people were barred from voting by law, and others were effectively blocked by the obstacles put up by new restrictions or by the memories of bad experiences the last time around


For others, child-care and work demands proved too difficult to juggle with going to a polling place. 


Some decided not to cast a ballot on principle


Others were simply too lazy and /or apathetic to vote.

Over 231 million Americans are eligible to vote, but, based on early results from the 2016 Presidential election, just over 130 million of them voted for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump
In some of the key battleground states that decided the election, less than a few thousand votes decided the result, proving how important every vote counts.

Over 100,000 people in Michigan voted in every race on their ballot except the Presidential race. They apparently could not summon the courage to vote for either presidential Candidate.

It is in the shame of those who didn't vote in this crucial election that disgusts me the most. In particular among people who have the most to lose in their lives by either candidates political platform.

To not have voted means that America gets what it deserves.

To not have voted means that accountability for what happens in the future is caused by the huge amount of people who did not vote.

To not have voted means you are full of shit to complain later about what happens or doesn't happen to our Nation.

To not have voted means don't blame the results on other people or other "things". 

To not have voted means YOU are to blame if the result was not what you wanted.
As of Thursday afternoon November 10, 2016, projections from the United States Elections Project 
show that there were 231,556,622 Americans eligible 
to vote, but 131,741,000 voted. That means that 43.2 percent didn’t vote, while 56.8 percent did. 
Here's the still being tabulated National popular vote 
count, from the AP as of 10:30 PM, Nov.10, 2016:


CandidateVote TotalPercentage
Hillary Clinton60,438,90347.7
Donald Trump60,049,44047.4


The number of eligible voters who turned out in 2016 was a slight increase in eligible voter turnout from 2012.

 FEC data from that election shows that 54.87 percent of the voting age population cast a vote for president, or 129,085,410 of the 235,248,000 eligible voters cast a vote. 

However, 2016 was still far from the high reached in 2008, when 58.23 percent of the voting-age population participated. In 2008, 131,313,820 total votes were cast.


In Minnesota, enough people cast ballots to put the state at the top of the pile, said Steve Simon, Minnesota's top election official.


With its higher-than-average education and incomes, Minnesota has traditionally led the country in voter turnout, although it did slip to sixth place nationally in the 2014 midterm election.


Below is a list of the highest to lowest State voter 
turnouts of eligible voters in the 2016 Presidential election.

Note: All turnout data is preliminary and may not reflect provisional ballots, absentee voters or final vote counts.
Trump was able to pull off the most stunning upset in American political history thanks to the states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, but it also helped that Hillary Clinton lost millions of votes that Obama won in 2008 and 2012.
The result in Pennsylvania was particularly surprising, and Trump won about 80,000 more votes there than Barack Obama did in 2012. Trump also took the state of Wisconsin, even though nobody thought of it as being a potential swing state even a week ago. The Republican candidate won the state with 47.9 percent of the vote, though this falls short of Obama’s decisive victory in the state in 2012, when he earned 52.8 percent of the vote.
The number of voters might have been up nationally, but if everyone registered to vote really did cast a vote, the results might have been different. 

Ballots are still being counted, though, so it’s highly possible Clinton’s margin over Trump will wind up being even higher than that.

Of course Trump won the deciding Electoral College count 290 to 232 for Clinton.


Here are the number of popular votes cast in each state, via data from The New York Times.
STATEDonald TrumpHillary ClintonLead
Alabama1,303,576 (62.9%)717,138 (34.6%)586,438
Alaska129,786 (53.0%)92,013 (37.6%)37,773
Arizona947,175 (49.7%)864,053 (45.3%)83,122
Arkansas677,904 (60.4%)378,729 (33.8%)299,175
California2,965,704 (33.2%)5,481,885 (61.5%)2,516,181
Colorado1,075,770 (44.8%)1,126,384 (46.9%)50,614
Connecticut637,919 (41.7%)823,360 (53.9%)185,441
Delaware185,103 (41.9%)235,581 (53.4%)50,478
Florida4,605,515 (49.1%)4,485,745 (47.8%)119,770
Georgia2,068,623 (51.3%)1,837,300 (45.8%)231,323
Hawaii128,815 (30.0%)266,827 (62.2%)138,012
Idaho407,199 (59.2%)189,677 (27.6)217,522
Illinois2,117,479 (39.4%)2,976,534 (55.4%)859,055
Indiana1,554,959 (57.2%)1,029,127 (37.9%)525,832
Iowa798,923 (51.8%)650,790 (42.2%)148,133
Kansas655,035 (57.2%)413,482 (36.2%)241,553
Kentucky1,202,942 (62.5%)628,834 (32.7%)574,108
Louisiana1,178,004 (58.1%)779,535 (38.4%)398,469
Maine328,546 (45.1%)349,922 (47.9%)21,376
Maryland873,646 (35.3%)1,497,951 (60.5%)624,305
Massachusetts1,082,521 (33.5%)1,964,433 (60.8%)881,912
Michigan2,278,630 (47.6%)2,265,938 (47.3%)12,692
Minnesota1,321,003 (45.4%)1,363,742 (46.8%)42,739
Mississippi675,842 (58.3%)461,105 (39.8%)214,737
Missouri1,585,753 (57.1%)1,054,889 (38.0%)530,864
Montana260,767 (56.9%)161,341 (35.7%)99,426
Nebraska485,819 (60.3%)273,858 (34.0%)211,961
Nevada511,319 (45.3%)537,753 (47.9%)26,434
New Hampshire345,379 (47.3%)346,816 (47.5%)1,437
New Jersey1,502,524 (42.0%)1,964,586 (54.8%)462,062
New Mexico315,875 (40.0%)380,724 (48.3%)64,849
New York2,635,300 (37.5%)4,142,719 (58.8%)1,507,419
North Carolina2,162,074 (50.5%)2,339,603 (46.7%)177,529
North Dakota216,133 (64.1%)93,526 (27.8%)122,607
Ohio2,771,984 (52.1%)2,317,001 (43.5%)454,983
Oklahoma947,934 (65.3%)419,788 (28.9%)528,146
Oregon725,090 (40.9%)919,591 (51.9%)194,501
Pennsylvania2,912,941 (48.8%)2,844,705 (47.6%)68,236
Rhode Island165,810 (40.3%)225,445 (54.9%)59,635
South Carolina1,143,611 (54.9%)849,469 (40.8%)294,142
South Dakota227,701 (61.5%)117,442 (31.7%)110,259
Tennessee1,515,242 (61.1%)865,693 (34.9%)649,549
Texas4,677,115 (52.7%)3,852,923 (43.4%)824,192
Utah360,634 (46.8%)217,820 (27.8%)142,814
Vermont95,025 (32.6%)178,072 (61.1%)83,047
Virginia1,731,155 (45.0%)1,916,845 (49.9%)185,690
Washington750,719 (37.8%)1,118,772 (56.3%)368,053
West Virginia486,198 (26.5%)187,457 (68.7%)298,741
Wisconsin1,409,467 (47.9%)1,382,210 (46.9%)27,257
Wyoming174,248 (70.1%)55,949 (22.5%)118,299