Last week, two encounters with coworkers at the plastics factory that employs me made it personally crystal clear why the worldwide protests against the brutality shown by America's police forces MUST continue.
Last Sunday, Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert issued a 72-hour curfew in light of the Big O being one of the many American cities holding demonstrations not only against police brutality, but also against the militarization of this country's police forces...and against vigilante brutality. In the curfew, people couldn't go out between 8:00 PM and 6:00 AM...unless they had vital jobs. (The company I work at makes, among other things, personal protective equipment...no, not coronavirus masks, but the masks worn by assembly-line employees at dairy factories and by soldiers.)
So...on 6-1-2020, as I got off my second-shift job at 11:00 PM and was heading for my car to drive home, a supervisor from another plant within the same building headed for his own car to go to his own home.
I held the door for him (just trying to be polite, that's all)...and he started talking about the local curfew.
And then he praised this country's chief White House occupant, talking about how "honest" this occupant is...and how this one-time reality-TV show host "says what's on his mind."
Guess what?
Just because the former host of NBC's The Apprentice says what's on his mind doesn't make what's on his mind cool...especially when he declares war on the nation's own citizens by vowing to sic the military on protesters if governors don't do his bidding and "dominate the streets."
That's dictatorial talk...no ifs, no maybes, no buts.
Sorry, folks. The way I see it, we started having a dictator here the afternoon of 1-20-2017.
A couple of nights ago, a fellow second-shift employee of mine at the same plant I work at weighed in on the continuing protests.
She wondered when the demonstrators would get off the streets "so that people can get on with their lives." What's more, she wondered what good the protests are doing.
So I told her.
Not only did I tell this fellow machine operator that the demonstrations have, at long last, gotten the attention of some corporate leaders (one of the leaders took to the electronic billboard at 72nd and Pacific Sts. here in O and loaded a message: "We Need Each Other")...I told her I'm glad the protests continue to take place.
The sign on the east facade of Omaha's Do Space (at 72nd and Dodge Sts., in a building that previously housed a Borders book store) proclaimed: "BLACK LIVES MATTER."
By the way...some of the protests here in Omaha happened at 72nd and Dodge.
Hours before second shift began that day (6-5-2020), NFL commissioner Roger Goodell released a statement admitting that the league was wrong in the way it's been handling player protest ever since San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick went to one knee in 2016.
Eleven days after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis cop named Derek Chauvin (with an assist from four other members of Minneapolis' Supposedly Finest), Goodell finally gave the okay for the NFL's players to speak out and peacefully protest.
What's more, he stated: "We, the National Football League, believe Black lives matter. I personally protest with you and want to be part of the much-needed change in this country."
Goodell also admitted that "Without Black players, there would be no National Football League."
Now, Roger...if you and the league's 32 team owners get rid of that kneeling ban, I'll be glad to get back to spending Sunday afternoons and evenings (and any Monday night or Thursday night I can get off during the season) watching NFL action.
And what about US Sen. Willard Mitt Romney (R-UT), the most recent Republican to lose a presidential election, marching with protesters in the nation's capital?
We'll see what happens in the days/weeks/months/years to come...but Romney's and Goodell's actions are a start. So are those taken by corporate bigwigs everywhere.
So if you're still upset because the protests, as this fellow machine operator of mine put it, prevent people from going "on with their lives," let me tell you something:
Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and too damned many others weren't allowed to get on with their own lives.
Vigilantes took it upon themselves to snuff Martin's and Arbery's lives out.
FOR NOTHING.
And I'd like to ask you something:
Do you REALLY believe in freedom for all to live their lives peacefully...to go about their everyday business just as you do?
Do you REALLY believe people have a right to petition this country's government...especially this current garbage fire of a government, one built on hatred and bigotry?
It's now been 17 days since the 2012 US presidential election took place...and the Republican Party has spent all of this time wondering just what happened (and why it happened).
Party officials (along with their cheerleaders on the nation's AM so-called news and information radio stations) have spent this time not only licking party wounds...but also trying to nail down the reason(s) why Willard M. Romney couldn't put it in his hip pocket despite an early lead on Election Night.
Some in the GOP think the party couldn't end Barack Obama's presidency because Romney didn't choose US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to run alongside the former Massachusetts governor. Others feel the loss was due to the "emasculation" of Romney's campaign.
The man the son of a former Michigan governor did select as a running mate, US Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), racked it up to "urban" voters...while WMR himself, in that now-infamous (or famous, depending on your point of view) conference call to his campaign team, chalked the 2012 results to Obama supposedly giving "gifts" to Hispanic Americans, African Americans, young voters of all ethnicities, and women of all ethnic backgrounds.
Regardless of your socioeconomic background, what would YOU do if someone offered you an actual, honest-to-goodness freebie?
Next door in Iowa, you've got Matt Schultz, its secretary of state, who's trying to get its lawmakers to join all those other states in getting voter suppression (oops...I mean voter ID) laws put into place. ("You know...if All Those Other People hadn't turned out for this year's election...")
Only a few brave Republicans have had the guts to blame the party's overall message for why we'll have to wait until 1-20-2017 for the country's 45th commander in chief to give the inaugural address.
Yes...I could really dig all of this GOP self-evaluation and all this soul searching among the current trustees of the party of Abraham Lincoln and of Teddy Roosevelt and of Dwight Eisenhower if it were heartfelt and not mere lip service.
I keep turning on my TV set and finding US Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) trying to prevent UN Ambassador Susan Rice from accepting the State Department's top gig because they don't like how Rice has handled the Benghazi affair of 9-11-2012.
McCain thinks Rice isn't qualified to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton at State. (And that's hilarious of McCain...especially when you consider his 2008 decision to have Sarah Palin run alongside him in the former Navy pilot's effort to prevent the creation of an Obama administration to begin with!)
It all smacks of Business As Usual as far as I'm concerned. You see, if McCain and Graham can get Obama to change his mind and ask US Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to take over from Rodham Clinton on 1-21-2013...well, Scott Brown can keep his own seat in the US Senate (this time as Kerry's replacement).
So much for the Republicans' loudly-proclaimed slogan of 2008: "Country First."
Democrats, independents, and other non-Republicans have shown themselves more likely to put America first.
With Republicans, it's- with very few exceptions- party first. (One of those exceptions has been New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's work alongside BHO in the Garden State's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.)
Another major component of the GOP message, besides "Party First," is: "It's every man for himself. It's every woman for herself. I've got mine. You go get yours.
"In fact...I want yours, and I'm going to keep you from getting yours!"
To top it all off, Republican lawmakers and aides go to great lengths to make anybody who isn't a Caucasian-American man feel unwelcome. (Todd Akin's and Richard Mourdock's sexist remarks come to mind...as do racist jibes from Newton Gingrich, John Sununu, Donald Trump, Ryan, Romney, Brown, Palin, etc., etc., etc.)
And these same Republicans have the audacity- the unmitigated nerve- to wonder why they can't get votes from people who aren't Caucasian-American men!
I remember when the Democrats ended up having to retool their party after Richard Nixon crushed George McGovern to keep the job he'd always wanted. That year, 1972, the Donkeys held a telethon.
And on that telecast, one of the speakers (I think it was Phil Donahue) said that, instead of the Democrats holding this telethon to pump money into the party, "John Wayne ought to have a telethon for war!"
It took a lot of years...but the Democratic Party remade itself into a party that not only cares about civil rights, but also cares more about America's middle-and-low-income citizens than the Republicans do.
Let's face it: The Elephants MUST retool if they're going to remain a viable major US political party (let alone win presidential elections again).
The Republicans can crow all they want to about having won seven of the last twelve US presidential elections.
Fact remains that this party has now LOST four of the last six US presidential elections.
If the Romneys and Ryans and Boehners and McConnells ever learn that, as Mom used to say, "You draw more flies with honey than vinegar," their party will have a chance to get back to winning the most talked-about political job there is.
But only as long as the Republicans REALLY mean what they say and say what they mean.
When I got home from work late last night, I turned on MSNBC.
And I found out, from watching The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, that Taggart Romney- the new de facto campaign manager for his dad, the ex-governor of Massachusetts- appeared as a guest on The Bill LaHaye Show, heard on a North Carolina talk-radio station. (The appearance took place shortly after this year's second presidential debate, held this past Tuesday in Hempstead, NY.)
Bill asked for Taggart's reaction to "the President of the United States calling your dad a liar."
Taggart told the listeners that he wanted to jump out of his chair at the debate site and...punch out one Barack Hussein Obama.
And he would've done it if it hadn't been for all those Secret Service agents.
Well, Taggart Romney would have to punch out a whole lot of people...starting with Lawrence O'Donnell himself. (And Lawrence said so toward the end of his own show last night...and even invited Tagg to take a swing or two or three!)
Tagg, you might as well catch a plane to come here to Omaha to punch me out, too.
After all, the last time I put up a post, I mentioned that your father (whose own dad- your paternal grandfather- used to be Michigan's governor, and had that job from 1963 to 1969) struck me and millions of Americans as an out-and-out liar.
George Romney had more class in his right pinkie than Willard M. Romney has in his entire body.
When Romney the Elder ran for this country's presidency in 1968, he proved he could afford to run for what was then Lyndon Johnson's job by releasing a tax return of his from each of the previous dozen years.
Willard Romney doesn't have the guts to turn in more than a pair of his own income tax returns.
(I STILL believe he's got something to hide!)
How about WMR's taking credit for the recovery of America's auto industry- the very industry that helped George and Lenore put food on the table for little Mitt and themselves, let alone made the family wealthy?
Yep, we're talking about the same Mitt who grew up to, a year after his stint (2003-07) as the governor in the Bay State ended, put an editorial in The New York Times to call for that very same industry to go bankrupt!
Getting Taggart's father to commit to one stand or another on abortion is harder than nailing Jell-O to a brick wall. Same for getting him to take a stand on the Lilly Ledbetter Law...the first thing BHO signed into law.
But what really took the cake this past Tuesday night was- besides his constant bullying at the debate- his lack of command of the facts on the Benghazi uprising.
Taggart's father/political client got away with pushing PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer around during the first 2012 debate (at Magness Hall in Denver, CO)...but couldn't get the same results with the next debate moderator, Candy Crowley (who hosts CNN's State of the Union program).
All Crowley wanted was the truth about how the White House handled the killing of four Americans, including the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stephens.
After all, if you're going to cast a ballot during an election, don't you want to know the truth about the people vying for the offices that are up for grabs?
The truth is: Willard M. Romney says and does anything to win an election. He enjoys saying different things to different groups of people on the campaign trail.
And that means he said something completely different in Denver on 10-3-2012 (with 68 million viewers watching on TV) than he did in Boca Raton, FL about five months earlier (in a closed-door speech meant for 25 of his fellow bluebloods...a speech that, as things turned out, got televised around the world, for crying out loud!).
I don't like being bullied, coerced, or forced into anything...and I've got the feeling that US Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his new puppet (that's right- Willard M.) will do lots of bullying, coercing, and forcing to America's rank-and-file citizens should this year's Republican ticket take the Big Prize.
According to a composite of the various opinion polls out there, that very thing could darned well happen. (They've got WMR leading BHO, 47.7% to 46.7%...even if the composite doesn't take this week's debate into consideration.)
And if that result holds true on 11-6-2012, I feel it's going to be the beginning of the end for America as an independent country, let alone the world's most influential, most powerful, and most talked-about nation.
The stakes are too darned high.
I can't help but ask: "Do you REALLY want a bully in there at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?"
I'm glad you're in there.
I'm so glad you came along when you did.
You've done a lot of great things for the United States, starting with that loan to General Motors and Chrysler. (Sorry, Republicans; it wasn't a bailout. It was a loan...and while GM's still paying off its debt, Chrysler already has paid its loan back.)
America's had 31 straight months of job growth, and now, according to information I got from reading www.factcheck.org, the nation's had a net of 325,000 gigs since you took the oath of office on 1-20-2009.
Helping out this country's auto industry WAS a bold, bold move...as was pushing for the Affordable Care Act of 2010. (I'd been saying all along: "With America's knowhow, why should this country be the only major nation still without a universal or equivalent type of health-care insurance plan for all its citizens?")
ACA really does save lives.
Then you've got DADT, the Dream Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Act, and...Osama bin Laden and Muammar al-Qaddafi aren't here anymore and can't check out what happens in next month's US presidential election.
To top it all off, the stock market has skyrocketed on your watch (something the Republicans absolutely refuse to admit)...and, contrary to what the so-called GOP teaches, you've shown that you're NOT going to take people's guns away.
You really DO care about the country's low-income and middle-income households...and you really DO want all of us (including America's 300,000 wealthiest citizens) to pay our fair share to help keep these 50 states on the map.
Mr. Obama, I voted for you on 11-4-2008...and I'm going to do this again on 11-6-2012.
I know you and the other Democrats (as well as independents and other non-Republicans) have a whole lot of things you'd like to do to help get America back on its feet.
And I support what you're doing. Big time.
Now if you can really take it to Willard M. Romney next time you and he debate (and expose him for the out-and-out liar he strikes me and millions of other Americans as)...
GO GET 'EM!!
Sincerely, Jim Boston
Allow me to introduce myself.
You see, four months ago, when you spoke at a fundraiser in Boca Raton, FL, you referred to a certain group of people who want the US government to feed them, house them, provide them with health care, etc., etc., etc.
You labeled them as Americans who don't pay their taxes.
You said that these people make up 47% of this country's population.
And you stated that they're going to vote to keep Barack Obama in the White House.
What's more, Mr. Romney, you made it clear that you're giving up on trying to reach them (in spite of your recent claim in Miami, FL, that you were going to be the President of 100% of the nation's population).
Yes, I'm one of the country's low-income wage earners; and yes, I voted for Obama in 2008...one of 69.5 million to do that on 11-4-2008 (out of 131.3 million who voted that day...when the United States had 225.5 million eligible to cast ballots).
That's actually less than 31% of this land's eligible electors four years back...not 47%.
And as a matter of fact, I actually DO pay my taxes.
Okay, Mr. Romney, I've received money back from the State of Nebraska every year since I moved back here in 1997 from my birth state of Iowa...but it's been years since I got a refund from the Internal Revenue Service. (Okay, all right...for tax year 2011, I received a tax refund check of $109 from our state's Department of Revenue...while paying the United States Treasury $62.)
And I didn't go for the one-time US senator from Illinois because I wanted to be a freeloader.
I filled in the oval next to Obama's and Joe Biden's names because I thought the 2008 Democratic ticket could help more Americans than that year's Republican ticket...you know, John McCain and Sarah Palin.
By the way, when you gave that speech to 25 of your fellow bluebloods down in Boca Raton this past spring, you said you couldn't convince the so-called forty-seven-percenters to take responsibility for their lives.
Well, guess what?
I most certainly DO take responsibility for myself AND for my own life.
I know you're some kind of busy right now, but if you get a chance to read this blog (or its predecessor on http://www.freeblogit.com), you'll find that I've been at the same place of work (a factory) since 1-26-2004, and that I'm also an independent performer (old-time piano- check out http://r2rfestival.webs.com).
Last time I checked, that DIDN'T sound like someone not taking self-responsibility.
I remember when you made a campaign appearance late last year (at the height of the Occupy movement); a man attending the rally identified you as one of America's 300,000 wealthiest people. (Okay...he called you a one-percenter.)
I remember you calling him a divider.
As far as I'm concerned, the remarks you made this past May in that fast-growing Sunshine State city (86,445 lived there in 2009, up from a 2000 total of 74,764) are totally divisive.
If telling folks that Hispanic people giving their 2012 votes to the one-time Illinois state senator would ruin this nation isn't divisive, then...you were never governor of Massachusetts!
One more thing...I feel that this presidential election cycle, the way the Republicans have been running it, is the culmination of 48 years of- let's not kid ourselves- your party courting and attracting proven racists and sexists (in response to Lyndon Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act into law in 1964).
By the way...every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows (or is about to learn) that America's government works best when all three branches- executive, legislative, and judicial- actually participate in decisions. And that goes for BOTH major political parties!
Your GOP buddies in the US House and the US Senate made it clear, right from the start of the current administration, that they were going to block every piece of legislation that BHO proposed...even if previous Republican lawmakers (or the current ones themselves) championed that legislation before.
The Republicans took back control of this country's House loudly proclaiming that jobs would be what they'd be working on.
It hasn't happened.
IN FACT, THIS STRATEGY HAS HELD THIS COUNTRY'S RANK-AND-FILE CITIZENS HOSTAGE!!
You knew darn good and well that if you refused to work to bring America's economy back up to snuff, you'd get enough sympathy from citizens at large to get The Prize back.
Speaking of economy...if the trickle-down economic philosophy Republicans have espoused since 1980 is so darn great...why hasn't the money trickled all the way down to us rank-and-file Americans?
After all, CEO pay here in America has skyrocketed since 1981 (and the pay for middle-income and low-income Americans has flatlined or, at times, even gone down).
That's not jive. That's research from Mother Jones.
To wrap it up, I'm going to vote the exact same way I did on 11-4-2008. (The Democrats- and independents- not only, as a whole, are talking the talk when it comes to putting America back on its feet. They're walking the walk.)
Barack Obama knows what and who he is.
Now, if you can just puh-leez figure out who you are...
Thank you for this opportunity to address you.
Sincerely, Jim Boston
I wouldn't buy a new item from any of them, either.
They've had twenty debates thus far; I watch some of the discussion shows on TV...and listening to the four remaining Republican presidential hopefuls for 2012 makes me sometimes want to...sometimes want to vomit.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Willard Romney (I'm sorry; I refuse to use his nickname!) has been on both sides of far too many issues, be they REAL issues or the wedge issues Republicans have been dining on for decades. His father (that's right, George Romney, the one-time Michigan governor who ran for the presidency in 1968...only to become Richard Nixon's first HUD secretary) has got to be turning over in his grave over his son's desire to see the very industry that kept food on the Romney family's table go straight down. (Remember when Romney pere ran the old American Motors Corporation?)
Yes, I know, I know...Pennsylvania's old junior US senator, Rick Santorum, is being praised for his honesty and for the courage of his convictions.
Here's the thing about it, though: Santorum's convictions include having only the well-to-do (the GOP's main bankrollers) be able to see to it that their sons (and, just maybe, daughters) can get access to a real education. After all, he doesn't want state or federal government involved in schools.
And that leaves city governments and county governments. As strapped as they are today, how's it all going to look having them and only them bankroll public schools?
Oh, by the way, Mr. Santorum...not every parent in America today is equipped to homeschool his or her children. (Got that?)
I listen to one-time House Speaker Newton Gingrich and current US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and conclude that they're still in the race to massage their egos.
And all the ugly, racist things Paul and Gingrich (as well as far too many other Republicans, especially these last three years) have said- be they in newsletters or speeches- make me feel that, like Santorum and Romney, they're not fit to give the next (or any future) inaugural speech.
That's what the Republican Party amounts to today...and has ever since the mid 1960s.
WHY?
Back then, the people in charge of the party courted the Southern Democrats who turned their backs on the Donkeys after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. (Strom Thurmond was one of those who switched to the Elephants at that time.)
The next time a presidential election came along, once Nixon got the 1968 GOP nomination, his campaign staff cooked up a "Southern strategy" to reel in all those Caucasian men angered over LBJ's decision to help make America live up to its proud promises.
One of Thurmond's trainees was Lee Atwater...the same Lee Atwater who helped Ronald Reagan get the greatest role of his career, then went on to enable Reagan's old veep, George Herbert Walker Bush, to become the first standing vice president since Martin Van Buren (in 1836) to win a presidential election.
It wasn't until Atwater was on his death bed that he decided, all at once, to 'fess up and admit that his racist views played a huge role in making that former CIA director into America's 41st chief executive.
Atwater's proteges are at work right now, 21 years after the former Republican National Committee chief died of a brain tumor. (And that includes ALL of the people who've taken out papers to get the opportunity to make Barack Obama the latest former president.)
Still wondering why Gingrich, Paul, Romney, and Santorum sound the way they do?
And then you've got these people's desire to tell women what to do with their bodies!
These four all are in favor of the amendment US Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) wants to push where any, any, ANY employer can opt out of providing access to contraceptives for religious and moral reasons. (This bill, if it becomes law, would allow CEOs to use any excuse they can think of.)
It's going to be a disaster for women here in the United States.
I don't know about these current Republicans. I feel nauseated over their desire to push this country all the way back to 1912...if they can't shift it all the way back to 1612.
Think about this.
If you're a middle-income person or a low-income person and you're thinking about giving any of these four men your vote on 11-6-2012, ask yourself if there's anything in it for you if you turn to the very people whose policies and attitudes helped pave the way for the Great Recession.
If they care so much about you and me, why are they so much more interested in telling women what they can do with their own bodies than in repairing America's economy?
