What are you most worried about for the future?
Tomorrow is never promised and I can only hope that prepared my son be happy and fulfilled. Once we step through that curtain to whatever lies beyond we can only hope that what we leave behind does more good than harm.
Dwain Northey (Gen X)
We never know how much time we have… nothing is promised so don’t take anything for granted.
I was informed that a cousin who was only in his early 50’s left us last night leaving a wife and a 10 year old son. Even though we weren’t geographically close and I haven’t seen him in person since we were kids I still acknowledge to loss. Above is one of many unique pieces of art and in his memory I am posting it… You will be missed Lee.
Dwain Northey (Gen X)
The 3 branches of our government are meant to be checks and balances against one another so that there is balanced power, and one branch doesn’t supersede. The House, Senate and the Executive have to answer directly to the American Voting populist every 2,4, and 6 years, we are their boss, I know they don’t act like it be we are. Now the Supreme Court… no one elects these individuals, and they have a lifetime appointment… 9 people that don’t answer to anyone but themselves… seem a bit contradictory to our democratic system.
The court’s job is to interpret a 250year old document and determine if a case before them is supported by the document written in 1789 or not. Seems like a crazy notion, right? Let’s see if a document that was written by slave owners, who thought women were property, truly believed that they had manifest destiny over a continent that was inhabited before they arrived is attributable to a much different world than the one they lived in. Yes, it is true that we have amended the document 27 times and the first 10 were before the Constitution could be ratified, so that leaves 17 changes over 233 years… How much has changed over the past 233 years? How much has changed in the past 50 years?
In 1920 the 19th Amendment was passed giving women the right to vote, 104 years ago, yet we still haven’t passed and Equal Rights Amendment… Sadly the only way that the Supreme Court can’t technically change a law is if it has been written into the Constitution as an Amendment. Roe was just a ruling in 1973 based on the 14th Amendment right to privacy, it was challenged multiple times but won out, until recently after a 6/3 loaded court decided that the 1973 ruling wasn’t good enough for women to have sovereignty over their own bodies.
This court has recently decided that gifting elected or appointed officials after a ruling isn’t a bribe, it is a gratuity. Wow that is an amazing twisting of language by a 6/3 conservative court. They have also declared the government experts on pollution and climate science know far less than the corporations that want to continue to extract resources for profit, that Jan 6 rioters can’t be labeled harshly, even those who beat capitol police. They will also be putting forward a ruling if the President has universal immunity… I am sure with this 6/3 count would really want to put forward ruling that Presidents are immune but the caveat is that it only applies to Presidents elected before 2020, and of coarse if Donald were to win in 2024 the court ruling would be amended to only exclude Presidents that weren’t named Trump.
Most of the world now uses the Gregorian calendar, first introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. But credit for the modern calendar should really be given to the Romans. The Gregorian calendar is based on the much earlier Julian calendar (which itself owed a lot to the Egyptian solar calendar), introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 BCE. The calendars share many similarities, though one of the main differences is the treatment of those pesky leap years. The Gregorian calendar handles them more precisely, resulting in a discrepancy between the two calendars that is currently 13 days, and will become 14 days in 2100.
Just six weeks into his presidency, Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan to jumpstart our economy and change the course of the pandemic. The American Rescue Plan funded our national vaccination campaign and helped safely reopen America’s schools.
President Biden worked across the aisle to deliver what decades of presidents promised and failed to do: rebuild our nation’s roads and bridges, upgrade our public transit, clean up pollution, and provide high-speed internet to every American.
President Biden appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court. She is also the first public defender to serve on our nation’s highest court.
The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act is the most significant gun violence prevention legislation in 30 years. It will help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, narrow the “boyfriend loophole,” and expand mental health and safety services in schools.
The CHIPS Act will bring back manufacturing from overseas and create good-paying union jobs here at home. Since President Biden signed it into law, companies have already announced almost $300 billion in new American manufacturing investments.
President Biden signed into law the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxic-exposed veterans in more than 30 years.
President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act to enshrine marriage equality for same-sex and interracial couples into federal law.
President Biden signed landmark legislation to bring down costs for families, lower prescription drug prices, and make historic investments in American clean energy jobs and manufacturing. Every single Republican in Congress voted against it.
President Biden pardoned all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession, removing a burden to employment, housing, and educational opportunities for thousands of Americans
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and strip a constitutional right from the American people, President Biden issued executive orders to preserve access to reproductive care and protect the right to travel across state lines to receive care.
President Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Accords on his first day in office. He is delivering on the most aggressive climate agenda in American history through historic investments in clean energy.
Since the start of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, President Biden has rallied the world to stand with Ukraine, defend democracy, and stand up to autocracy.
President Biden has worked to protect and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Now, millions of Americans are saving $800 per year on their health insurance and 4-in-5 Americans can find coverage for $10 a month or less through the ACA.
President Biden signed a landmark executive order to promote safe and accountable policing, ban chokeholds, restrict no-knock entries by police, create a national police accountability database, and prohibit the transfer of military equipment to local police departments.
President Biden has approved the cancellation of billions in student loan debt for millions of Americans, as well as the largest increase in Pell Grants in over a decade.
Dwain Northey (Gen X)
Tonight is the first of 2 scheduled debates in this Presidential race and the world is already making bets on the outcome. Will Joe Biden stutter or misspeak ? Will Donald Trump interrupt and lie? I can almost guarantee that Donald will be a disruptive petulant toddler that he always is but unfortunately the press and his loyal sycophants won’t acknowledge the obvious failing.I honestly hope Joe is the man he has been at the State of the Union addresses and completely ignores the orange blowhard that will be on the left side of the stage.
Fox and right wing media will only focus on any missteps that Joe Biden makes, and they will project all the problems that their candidate has brought to the stage onto their opponent. I don’t believe that this debate will make anybody change their minds if they are in the pocket of, the Republican GOP because they’ve made up their mind. there will be no substantive policy discussions because Donald Trump doesn’t know anything about policy. He only has grievance.
The projection will be evident tomorrow in the right wing media of how well they think their candidate did against Joe Biden, even if their candidate fell on his face.
Palm trees are not native to Los Angeles.
There are an estimated 75,000 palm trees in Los Angeles, all of which have one thing in common: They aren’t native there. Despite being an L.A. icon on par with the Hollywood sign and Dodger Stadium, the tropical tree is no more a native Angeleno than, well, the Dodgers. Not unlike the Hollywood sign, palms were originally a marketing technique for developers hoping to attract newcomers to the area in the late 19th century. They got the idea from the French Riviera — another area palms aren’t actually native to — where like-minded developers had successfully used them just a few decades before to cultivate an image of glitz and glamour. In addition to being beautiful, palms are surprisingly easy to uproot and transport from their native tropical and subtropical environments in the Middle East, Mexico, and elsewhere, so tens of thousands of them were planted all across the California city that had once been desert scrubland.
It seems fitting that one of Los Angeles’ most enduring symbols was essentially a branding strategy chosen for its aesthetic appeal, doubly so because palm trees’ association with the city was (and is) further cemented by their ubiquity in the many films shot there. After all, most of the directors, actors, and studio executives who made Hollywood what it is today weren’t originally from the City of Angels either.
Lyle Northey (Silent/Boomer)
Since the 1980’s the middle class in America has declined in size because of the special privilege given to the rich to make them richer. This is all based on the “trickle down” theory which we know does not work. Now that we have reached the 2020’s we are being informed of another issue to reduce the middle class even more.
That issue is AI. All of these various industries want to implement AI so that they can cut back on human employment. This means less of a payroll bill, much smaller contributions to health insurance and social security. Maybe it might be possible to get rid of those items all together and we can put more money in our pockets.
Great theory but the question that comes to mind is if no one is working and all this stuff is being produced by robots that do not require breaks or meals or insurance or retirement benefits, who is going to buy the stuff you are producing? When all is automated then the factory will do the work and humans will have little or nothing to do with it and no income either.
Unemployment is very low at present, but should change when AI hits with the impact that is predicted. There are dangerous jobs that make robotic workers very attractive but that technology can not replace everything. The hopes that reductions in human staff may be running around in the brains of some is just not entirely possible. Even AI will require human interface as no man made system is perfect, at least not yet.
We were supposed to be flying to work by the 1960, that did not happen. This technology is like all the rest, it will have problems and that is going to require thinking beings to repair it. The hope of the very rich to get richer will have to depend on the usual lying, cheating, and manipulating that continues to happen in the political and financial arenas by our not so honest political and banking executives.
It is in our people’s best interest to be well informed and very concerned about who gets elected and stays in office. Term limits need to be standard on all aspects so that we do not have the same people making decisions for 30 or 40 years as they age and get cynical or go crazy.
The politics of today will no doubt play the introduction of AI as a plot by a certain group of people. This will bring the directed anger at the given group rather than the greedy business men behind the implementation. Just another way to use hate to mask the pursuit of wealth as the fault of someone with a difference from mainstream society.
Hate crimes have been on the rise since 2015. The campaign for the Presidency became the venue for hate to be spewed like never before. The winning of the election put the fountain of hate clearly in the center of the picture and he gave all the people with problems the green light to exercise their hate. Even though he lost the next election he has still been stirring the pot and the news media and the court system continue to allow it to happen. It is time to muzzle the dog and reestablish civility and the rule of law in this country.
Dwain Northey (Gen X)
I wanted to compare Donny Dumb Ass’s behavior to a toddler but that would be insulting to the intellectual and emotional development of a toddler. I really can’t think of a psychosocial developmental stage that adequately describes the walking waste of skin that feels he deserves to occupy the White House again after his abysmal performance last time.
Let’s go over the score card:
Ok this is just crap he did while in the White House and immediately after and still people what him in the seat of power again.
His latest Fight Club, Hunger Games flight of fancy is Immigrant/Undocumented Fights, I presume on pay per view. So, we really have entered the fall of Rome times (Give the masses bread and circus,) that’s so that the power base can rob the treasury and go unnoticed.
There is a debate on Thursday and choice story will be policy and compliance or buffoonery and grievance. Yes, the clown show, and that outrage are more entertaining but at some point, we can’t all stand back and just watch the train wreck. Trump and his moronic minions effectively lit the house in fire while he was in charge, Biden has done his absolute best, with lost of obstruction, to put the flames out and rebuild the house, if we let Donald and his ilk in control again the Chicago fire of 1871 will look like a one year olds birthday cake by comparison.
Esoteric Meandering Shouting Into the Void 
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