miracles

Miracles

Ever wonder why miracles are needed in the first place? How come the events of our lives sometimes desire that extra big bonus of hope, help and happiness? Yet when something unexpected comes around and changes the course of our lives we celebrate, wiping off the sweat of a furrowed brow, release the pain which held tightly to our temples, breathe a deep desired breath and shout loudly what a miracle!

Tis the season we are told of Miracles. We hang our lights on the tree, or gather eight of them on the menorah. We recount the birth of a man with the promise for all humankind or remember when humankind was adrift in slavery and how that sadness changed for the better. Then some of us recall this time of year when humankind can watch the days fade into night earlier and how the night can cradle us with a glow of a fire, the warmth of a blanket, the love of family and friends.

Miracles

They never happen on schedule and actually like to surprise you, eliciting  a laughter so deep in the belly that when released it seems miraculous enough.They never are posted on your calendar, or to do list, instead find their way to the front of the line in a most miraculous manner. They are many times imagined, but when they appear they are deliciously hard to imagine.

We wish you a reason for a miracle or two this season. We want you to find your own surprises,  promises or passion for a celebration of miracles. Let them be as loud as you desire or as calm and quiet as you need. Let them be bold, brash and brilliant or so subtle that it takes keen eyesight and sharp listening to see and hear them. We wish you the kind of miracle you want!

Happy Holidays/Season’s Greetings,

Black or right

Life in America has become all about we vs. they and has fallen far from the facts replaced by finding and forming divide within the community we live. Madmen kill innocents with guns but we never discuss the murders but instead take sides on something as absurd as the 2nd Amendment. Cops kill black men and boys and instead of questioning why we move to one side or the other never debating the death of so many but who is right in doing the killing and who deserved to be killed. Compromise we are told is a weakness, (ask any T-Publican in Congress and the Christian right wing people who elected them), to find common ground suddenly is so un American and of course something Jesus the first president of the US would have never wanted. Events happen and we refuse to look closely as to the sad rational behind them instead we insist someone was right and someone was wrong and if you don’t agree with me you must be one of them! It is either black of right!

Trayvon Martin is gunned down, Michael Brown is shot in cold blood, Eric Garner is choked to death and somehow each black man deserved to die because it was the black man against the police. And as is the case in this very volatile and divisive nation you either take the side of the police or you must be a Commie loving/African American on the dole/anti-law and order traitor. There is no conversation about why so many black men are killed but instead a diatribe as to why you like the police or you don’t. No longer are we pressing for truth, but would rather take shelter in our own biases fearful that anything else might expose our own personal experiences lack of insight and of course our own hate. You are either black or right!

When did discussion of fear, bigotry, and stupid stop being permitted to take precedent? When did the Constitution become highjacked by pistol packing Patriots who long for the days of the Confederacy, Jim Crow and of course old time region where Jesus was a white straight man and frowned upon anyone not? When did the strides of integration get sidetracked, or were they just a facade to begin with. When did policing stop serving and protecting all of the people but instead became a fraternity for some of the people? When did it become all or nothing as in your are black or you are right?

Imagine this?

Rick Santorum: “Separation Of Church And State A Communist Idea, Not An American One” -. Imagine if a liberal/progressive/democrat inferred that the founding fathers of this nation like Adams, Franklin, Jefferson were commies; Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly would demand they burned at the stake. In the world of men like Santorum history is only useful when it is twisted to suit the twisted bigotry of a very small minded and hateful brain. For many T-Republicans the Constitution is always an immovable object until it needs to be moved more to the right enabling false prophecies to be propagated by false prophets!

Ben Carson: “Young African American men like Michael Brown are getting killed by the police because they “never really learn how to relate to authority in the proper way.” “Certainly in a lot of our inner cities, in particular the black inner cities, where 73 percent of the young people are born out of wedlock, the majority of them have no father figure in their life. - Imagine how much more pleasant and safer this world would be if Ozzie and Harriet were everyone’s parents, if June and Ward Cleaver took the time to raise all of our families, if Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar would take the time and not only parent their brood of 19 kids but the entire black community? Violence in the world of the T-Republicans is never the fault of the propagator but usually of the victim.

Mike Huckabee: blamed the legalization of abortion and same-sex marriage on the failure of pastors to become active in politics. Huckabee said Americans have “blood on our hands” for failing to criminalize abortion and contended that reproductive freedom is much worse than the Nazi Holocaust. He added that the country will also “pay the consequences” for trying to “tinker” with marriage and “having upended the very foundation which is the essence of how a civilization survives.” Imagine an Amerika which limits certain freedoms and choices based on the bias and bogus of self proclaimed Crusaders for Christ. Imagine just how much more pure this nation would become when purity tests for morals and values based on nothing but a human interpretation of the Bible become the standard. The laws of the land in the mind of T-Publicans are for a few and even fewer get to pick and choose who lives free and who receives equality.

Santorum, Carson, Huckabee are all potent predators at the ready to run for the office of President from the T-Publican party. Imagine if any one of these men are elected to the highest office of the land and then wonder depending on your religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and level of income upon which rung you will become stranded or upon which gallows you will be hung? 

ain't nothin' like hate

There ain’t nothin’ like hate until it is presented in a hostile,phony blanket of religion. Nothin’ says hate with more profound idiotic gyrations, then basing that particular hate on a self serving rhetoric pretending that it isn’t your word but your lips moving to the voice of God who of course has chosen only you. Nothin’ says hate better then holding a Bible in your hand, bowing your head and spewing any kind of conceivable bull shit presuming that it must be true because of course God told you so. Ain’t nothin’ like hate the way Mike Huckabee presents it pontificating as if his standards are nothin’ short of the Lord Almighty himself. Visiting Concentration Camps in Europe, with a bunch of Evangelical Baptist brothers good ole’ Mike (maybe I should be president of this Christian nation) Huckabee, has been reciting a fable about the end of civilization based first on females wanting reproductive rights and now of course due to same-sex marriage. It seems people with vagina’s, and men who love men/women who love women are powerful enough as to bring the death to civilization as Mr Huckabee imagines or knows it. 

Ain’t nothin’ like hate when it reeks of hypocrisy. It is a nauseating sweet smell that sickens your stomach, the kind of hate with pretense precluding no fact but lots of foible. Ain’t nothin' like creating two sets of standards based on nothin’ but your own homophobia and misconceived understanding of religion and God. In Mike Huckabee's hypocritical world, opposite sex marriages can be full of deceit, adultery, cheating, abuse but civilization will surely survive. But when those men seek men and ladies shack up with other ladies marriage is on its deathbed and certainly the last throws of civilization as we know it will crumble. Ain’t nothin’ like hate filled with hypocrisy to have the insecure swoon with fear, and the foolish to linger in the stupid!

Ain’t nothin’ like hate until it has whet the appetite of those who need an enemy in life to feel whole. Divide and conquer, separate and exclude words of wisdom by people whose only hope is by saying others are not worthy will shoo away the insecurity and enforce the false belief of superiority. Ain’t nothin’ like a snake oil salesmen to bottle up prejudice, animosity and malice stand on a soap box covered with gilded Bibles and abridged quotes from a select passage or chapter to rile up the attitudes of men and women who desperately don’t want to be on the bottom rung of life. Ain’t nothin’ like false idols in the vein of Mike Huckabee to use hate to discredit others while thriving on hate to credit his own insecurities, biases and bigotries. 

best, worst of times

We celebrated, congratulated ourselves when we elected to the office of president a man of color, a black man. America, many of us said had transcended our bias, our bigotry America looked beyond the color of skin and was able to find the color of intelligence, fairness, quality and smart. How proud we were! But almost as fast as our pride shone in the sun, a dark demonizing, dreadful persona appeared and suddenly for every step forward taken were driven back tenfold. 

Since the election of President Barack Obama we have witnessed a rival of Jim Crow laws, voting rights infringement, ignorance on immigration, disrespect for the office of president, a nostalgia for the Confederacy and an increase of intimidating, harassing and shooting people while living their life black. Open season on black people has been called and the call has grown louder with the successful democratic election of President Obama for his second term.

Guns, abridging the Bible, activist justices, a news station prone to insist that fear holds all the facts, conservative pundits and entertainment personalities all prone to incite riot before reason have led a cunning and calculated way forward to divide and deny to promote bigotry. Voices like Ingraham, Huckabee, Hannity, Limbaugh, Cruz, Palin have become the mainstay of decimating information, with all of them singling out anyone who is not deemed American enough, Christian enough, not worthy enough. And all of these self described Patriots have permitted the continual acceptance that white is right and black is bad.And from this we get another black youth shot and killed.

The quote “It was the best of times it was the worst of times”, by Charles Dickens, in ‘Tale of Two Cities’ has taken on horrific meaning for this nation. America has become a nation suddenly not seeking the middle but feigning fortune in holding onto two extremes. Our divide grows deeper and our need for enemies stronger.  One more death of a black man and instead of figuring out why, we would rather take sides, blame, corrupt, and single out villains. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”, but for America in 2014 time seems our time is running out.

that war on christmas

The day after Halloween was the first real IT IS CHRISTMAS commercial I had to endure while watching television. Prior to that I was entertained with Mariah Carey singing a disco version of some Christmas song while looking for men’s under ware at my local Target store, but due to a very disgruntled customer angry about some lay-a-way procedure did not get to fully enjoy this Christmas carol. (As loud as Mariah was singing about gifts and love this customer was angry that the sales associate knew nothing about lay-a-way). Some homes in my neighborhood already have the lights a blazing and at least three houses have the tree in the window decorated and looming large. I know it is the Christmas season but somehow until Bill O’Reilly, or Glenn Beck try and sell their newest book about the War on Christmas, or the very white Stepford Wives of FOX propaganda demand that this IS a Christian nation and we all should be shouting NOEL from our synagogues and mosques, the true spirit of capitalism, hate, bogus and buy, buy, buy just will not set in.

But then my worry that the Grinch had not arrived to confuse us all about what the origins of Christmas were all about I read two speeches from self proclaimed save the family/for the children/Jesus wrote the Constitution along with the leadership of Moses politicians; both T-Publican Governors of course. It seems good ole’ Koch Brothers puppet Scott Walker of Wisconsin believes that preventing Americans from obtaining life-saving insurance will help them live the American dream, much better. It seems just in time for Christmas , Governor Walker has decided that if you cannot earn the right to buy overpriced health insurance you do not deserve to either stay healthy and you do not deserve to call your self a real American. Pay for health care or die, you lazy Communist low life. Joining Gov. Walker in the battle to out scrooge his constituents to death, Gov. Mike Pence, I am a a good Christian soldier and Koch brothers marionette stated that he “wants to enoble Indiana state residents by cutting off food stamps. For Mike Pence, you either starve or find the money from some high paying job to really justify food on your table. You want to eat, then find the dough to do it. Nothing says enoble of Americana or Christmas season like skipping a few meals and being hungry all day long.

I know it might be a bit early for the soldiers en mass to proclaim the war on Christmas.  However,the self serving, selfish so called Christian crusaders will find a very high horse or an extra tall soap box with the New Testament Bible in hand carrying some invented amendment to the Constitution insisting that we say Merry Christmas, and permit Christian expressions of this holiday season to be established on Government property. These folk will lament the fact that since the Muslim became president,since the atheist Progressives have poisoned the minds of the intelligent, since disregard for Christian law in favor of Sharia law became the law that a war on Christmas by the non Christians must be fought and won. But since hypocrites are usually the last to notice their own folly and failures, this group of Christian Jihadists will never realize just how much of a war they have already declared on what I suppose is the true meaning of the Christmas season; fighting against faith, hope, charity and good will to all. 

this Amerika

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn (R) warns there could be not only a political firestorm but acts of civil disobedience and even violence in reaction to President Obama's executive order on immigration Thursday.  President Obama’s looming executive action on immigration reform represents a Fort Sumter-type moment, according to conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly. where the opening shots of the Civil War were fired, representing the beginning of a ruinous conflict. T-Publicans always at the ready to invite fear and loathing, never too concerned in the facts but always hitting the nerves of the townsfolk looking to lynch the black man.

Imagine if a Democrat or Progressive spokesperson or elected politician mentioned civil war or civil disobedience toward a T-Republican president. Immediately the T-Publican conspiracy theorists would be waving the flag, carrying the Bible above their heads and digging up the grave of George Washington invoking some bizarre and brainless quote from Ronald Reagan ready to deport those damn bastards. Remember when the Dixie Chicks sang a song to George Bush Jr. telling them they have had and are not going to take it anymore and how FOX News, Limbaugh Express, and the right wing propagandists demanded that these women almost be tried for tyranny. Remember just how many presidential privileges Reagan and Bush implemented toward immigration and just how red, white and blue those were because after all Bush and Reagan exemplified true Amerika! Take the black man in office who is after all THE president currently and suddenly we have a monarchy, tyrant, a dictator because his name is barack Obama.

President Obama says words like immigration reform, Gay marriage, women’s’ reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work, fair hourly wages and immediately he is called a communist, and anti-Christ, a socialist, not the kind of guy who should be running a country that used to be based on fair and equal and freedom for all. For those Americans who still believe in rights, equality, the Constitution, not the one supposedly penned by Jesus Christ, we had better take heed. There are jihadists amongst us with names like Coburn, Schlafly, Cruz, Palin, Limbaugh, who want to terrorize this nation, who want to find the fearful and scare the living daylights out of them. We have T-Publicans and their minions of scared folk who believe immigration never happened in this nation before. We saw in the mid terms what fear can do, now we must stop it in its tracks before it becomes like Zombie Apocalypse in this Amerika.