Twitter, why do you let Laura Ingraham bully me?

Laura Ingraham is a bully, and Twitter indulges her in bullying others, and I'm not the only one.

It's merely annoying how Ingraham speaks ill of others while playing the victim, but she crosses the line when her unjustifiable complaints result in a Twitter suspension for me; two now, in fact.  I don't know who I'm more angry at, that skinny, humorless bitch or Twitter.

Twitter, why would you cater to a hatemonger and a liar?

"@IngrahamAngle  You must be very cross and disappointed that #AnnCoulter and Limbaugh are getting credit for all the hate and for guiding Trump around by his nose when it's really you who does that.  People must confuse you two miserable, skinny, blond broads all the time."

No threats, no incitement to violence, just an unflattering characterization of a hateful, odious woman, and a reasonable reaction to the poison and lies she spreads daily.

Apparently she IS quite cross and she's lashing out at me, but Twitter should have a policy that's fair, not one that Ingraham can use as a weapon for people she doesn't like.  There is nothing in this tweet that warrants a second 7-day suspension based on HER complaints, and Twitter should not be used by a bully to harass and deny me. 

You want to see a really bully in action?  Check the link below.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/3/29/1752993/-Cyber-Bullying-is-a-bit-new-But-Lauren-Ingraham-was-a-real-bully-long-before-the-internet

Why vote

I’m trying real hard not to hate republicans in Congress, but I’m angered and saddened by the lengths they go to to NOT do their jobs, and, worse, to hinder those who are working for fairness and justice, to improve the lives of all people, and protect this planet.  They are willing to waste our money in their zeal to destroy and discredit those they perceive as their "enemies.”  That they see progressives as enemies instead of, simply, folks with whom they disagree is unfortunate.  In their cynical effort to destroy and discredit Democrats, especially the black one, they’re sacrificing us all and are confident that they can if only they smile enough and pretend to be selectively outraged.  They know too many of us are preoccupied, and cynical about government, which they count on.  It won't work on me.  I may be discouraged and angry, but I will not disengage.

It's particularly galling that the latest chair of the newest and ninth congressional committee to investigate !Benghazi! complains about government, and he’s a member of the House of Representatives.

Americans are victims of the right-wing's cruelty and lies and the machinations of their religious fundamentalist allies.   Their governors refused to accept federal funds for healthcare for millions of their uninsured citizens.  They’re not interested in jobs programs.  They don’t care to extend unemployment, but will vote themselves a raise.  They cut school lunch funding.  They're waging a war on women.  They’re making it harder to vote.  They announce plans to gut regulations.  And the list goes on and on and on. 

Not only is it dereliction of their sworn duty to act in this manner, but these bastards are not going to find a more decent president who has tried harder to work with them.  He ain’t perfect, but I think history will regard him very favorably.  But like all bullies, they mistake cooperation and real governance for weakness and see it as an opening to destroy, regardless of the fact that they are destroying us individually and destroying the nation we used to be.  If you’re an American and doing well financially, you still have to breathe the air and drink the water, and perhaps you want to sell a product to the public or raise your children here.  A nation in poverty -- financially or spiritually -- is a weak nation, and everyone who remains here will suffer.  As in the Gilded Age not so long ago, eventually the music will stop.   

Their number one job, as conservatives see it, is to get reelected, and we should ask ourselves to what end, for what purpose?  We’ve seen what they do with power.  How many times must we learn that lesson?  Dems and progressives had better wake up and realize that we'd better start fighting back.  If you don't prefer to fight, you don't have to.  You can merely vote, and help others to do likewise. If our current state of affairs isn't enough to convince you to vote, recognize who is working so hard to keep you from voting and ask yourself why.  If that still isn't enough to convince you to vote, remember that Medgar Evers, Dr. King, Andrew Goodman, and so many others, known and unnamed, rightly assumed that they may die ensuring and protecting our right to vote, all of us, but that right was important enough for them to make that sacrifice.  In doing our part as citizens, we honor them.

Mara Liasson is a hack

If a radio or TV talking head chooses to be a pundit or commentator who carries water for the GOP, fine; live with yourself.  Not to overstate it, but it becomes a danger to our democracy when it’s couched in such reasonable sounding terms, and on NPR, that people trust her, because what they will come away with is wrong information and, worse, a dampened enthusiasm about Democratic politics.   If you’re a progressive and you listen to Mara Liasson routinely, you will be discouraged -- routinely; also, misled, but slyly.  And some Democrats who listen to her tripe will stay home and Republicans get what they want.  She helps in that effort.

For twenty plus years I have listened to Liasson’s reports, and I have never, not even once, not even a little bit, believed she was fair or honest in reporting of a progressive representative.  Not surprisingly, she didn’t find much fault with George Bush or Mitt Romney, if you'll notice, which makes sense.  But she’s a special, troubling kind of disingenuous because she does appear and sound reasonable and objective, in a stylish, professional manner while actually being far from it, with no agenda beyond presenting the GOP in the most flattering light possible -- which has become a more difficult job in the last six years.  She sounds reasonable to some listeners.  Voter turnout is already low, so her influence becomes that much more significant for progressives.

Because NPR is so widely popular and respected, Liasson could, by herself, dampen enthusiasm and tamp down the vote for progressive candidates and do it in a way that people won’t notice.  They’ll just be like:  Ah, it probably doesn't matter anyway.  Voting doesn't help; they're all sons of bitches.

I have been fed up with her sly insults and slanted coverage for many years, but Sunday’s broadcast -- about nothing terribly important: the correspondents' dinner and Benghazi! hearings -- while not any worse than any other, was the last straw for me.   She cannot give Obama credit for anything -- not for healthcare, not for jobs, not for foreign policy, not for nothing.  So I will vow to turn her off from now on because there is no point in wasting my time listening to her.  I have learned time and time again, and finally now accept, that I will not get what I need from her, which is insightful, objective information, even after all these years of waiting.  LOL  And since she'll never say anything fair or positive about a progressive representative, she can piss right off and take NPR with her.  The fact that she is NPR’s “THE national political reporter” is disappointing to me.   I have come to expect more.

I mean, Mara, opinion is fine; just don’t pretend you’re fair and balanced when you’re just an attractive shill for the GOP.  

This letter is a long time coming. 

PS:  I love, adore, and appreciate Garrison Keillor and many others on NPR, locally and nationally, so I'll be listening, but not to her.

May 5, 2014

You know you're a narcissist if....

You know you're a narcissist if...

Most everything you see is a reflection of yourself

Most everything you say is related to yourself

Most everything you read comes back around to yourself

Most everything you write contains more “I”s than “we”s or any other pronoun

Everything in the universe is organized around you with constant reminders of that

Everything you express is infused with entitlement, however unrecognized

Your needs come first and foremost.

There are countless narcissists in this world, and the only surprise lies not in their banality but when something is not about them.

I had a frightening but revealing dream recently which the video below relates to.  It's synchronicity that I found it soon after my dream.

I've had only a few scary dreams in my life, but this dream had me quite scared and desperate to get away.  I dreamt that I suddenly realized that my former sweetheart, whom I was visiting, was a vampire, and I learned I was the only one who didn't know it.  In the dream I had the sense that he was the kind of person to suck the life out of anyone who cared for him.  A couple of years ago I realized he is a narcissist.  One evening, early in our affair, he had a lack of self-awareness -- or a slip of the tongue -- and freely shared with me that his ex-wife, who had studied psychology, diagnosed him as a narcissist, and he chuckled when he told me.  I, naturally, thought she didn't understand him, but turns out she was correct.  According to Dr. Orloff in the video below, narcissists lack an emotional chip.  My guy often professed to being confused about figuring out how to satisfy another person's (or mine, as the case may be) emotional needs, and that led to much anguish for me.  I remember telling him more than once, "If you don't know what to do, what to say, or how to act, just do what you think a normal person would do."  That didn't really help.

Two years later, sending him out of my life was both the most emotionally painful experience I had ever endured and was the most healthy step I could take.  At the time I believed that pride was behind my decision to break up, but I now believe it was more than that.  I was honoring my own truth.  It was my self-survival and self-caring that I was honoring.  I learned that I can indeed trust myself, and that I deserve true love, not a confusing, unsatisfying narcissistic type of "love."  I'm not that desperate.

Anyway, the video below contains some keen and very interesting and accurate insights into the narcissist (aka an emotional vampire).  According to Dr. Orloff, narcissists lack an emotional chip.  .

I answered yes to four of the questions she read.  Life is full of lessons.  I'm happy to still be living and learning them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxTddQM-d08&feature=share&list=PL841ACBAB19254949    

The Authorized Use of Military Force and giving up power

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/05/29/187059276/why-obama-wants-to-change-the-key-law-in-the-terrorism-fight

“Almost all of the federal government’s actions against terrorism – from drone strikes to the prison at Guantanamo Bay – are authorized by a single law: the Authorization for Use of Military Force.  Congress passed it just after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.  Now, President Obama says he wants to revise the law, and ultimately repeal it.”

If you consider the president a war criminal, I challenge you to listen to this NPR story above.  The vote in 2001 on the AUMF law was nearly unanimous and that president used it for all it was worth.  You can ignore that this president is working to roll it back and ultimately repeal it despite pressure not to, or that he’s cutting back on drone strikes and devising an official policy, and you can pretend that presidents routinely voluntarily give up power and authority, or you can give Obama some credit.  He tried to close Guantanamo early on and will try again.  People like Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald and other know-it-alls, who have built careers around criticizing Obama, will probably never admit it, but the speech last week and the policies he’s proposed and is committed to are a big deal and positive steps, and the repeal of this law is almost unprecedented. 

I’ve listened to Scahill’s Town Hall lecture three times now, including tonight, and I grow more and more impatient with the selective way he views politics and national security and the excuses he makes for poor, put-upon Anwar al-Awlaki and the sympathetic way he portrays him while ignoring what his mission was, but when you have a book, a movie, or a column dependent on that characterization, you’re not likely to call it into question or admit that perhaps you didn’t have it right after all. 

If you prefer to see the president as a war criminal, that’s your choice.  If you can hear the president say, "We can't keep doing what we're doing because that's not who we are" and not appreciate what that represents, perhaps your inability open your mind means you have a personal agenda that you can't or won't see past.  For some people it's monetary in basis.  Whatever is behind it, you're not alone, but I'm happy not to be included in that crowd.  I wasn't included in the love fest in 2008 and I won't be included in the whine fest this year.

You could give Obama some credit for the patient way he listened to and respected self-aggrandizing Medea Benjamin (who also has a new book out).  Contrary to the view of some, I don’t believe the president is entitled to respect just because s/he holds the office -- we learned this with Bush -- but s/he does deserve it when the president's policies are mostly right and above-board.   And when is the last time YOU heard about somebody in power voluntarily giving some up?
  

SPD answers to the DOJ & the federal court now lol

http://www.uscourts.gov/Multimedia/Cameras/WesternDistrictofWashington.aspx

USA v. City of Seattle, Case No. C12-1282JLR, Status Conference, 3/12/2013, Seattle Courthouse, Seattle, WA, Judge James L. Robart presiding.

Judge Robart is overseeing the Dept of Justice reform of the SPD, and there was a hearing today after weeks of “distractions,” he called them, public fighting between the mayor and city attorney -- deliciously, in the press.  The mayor seems to think he doesn’t have to listen to anybody because he’s a lawyer and he knows best and his lawyer is telling him he doesn’t have to listen to the city attorney.  The city attorney disagrees, naturally, and believes that IT is the precise agency to ensure that the city (police, mayor, et al) are following the law.  Mostly, the distractions are Mayor McGinn and Chief Diaz dragging their feet, kicking and whining instead of signing on to the agreement, as if they can wish it away, as if they aren’t part of the problem in the first place and why a consent decree is now needed. 

That settlement agreement is an agreement to submit to reform or have to give up control of your police department entirely to the federal court, which has been done in several other cities, presumably for the improvement of their police force.  Not so sure about LA…

I love legal stuff, so this is probably more interesting to me than to most, but this video is a rare glimpse into the workings of a federal court right here in Seattle, which, happily, has some proceedings televised. 

The proceedings in this video speak for themselves, but to save time:  There was a presentation by the police monitor, and then advisors to the process (not sure of their roles), a junior DOJ attorney, and the assistant city attorney, and then the judge spoke.  It was the judge’s comments that are, of course, the most interesting, since they control and since he’s a wry wit, but more than that, he seems like a good guy and will oversee the serious reform of the SPD for the first time in its history.  Reform means the police are going to have to fucking change the way they do things and it had better start pretty soon.

It was -- DELIGHTFULLY -- mentioned today that the LAPD found success in its reform around the same time that their police chief was replaced.  I was sitting behind Chief Diaz when I heard that and stole a peek at him as he sat impassively. 

I also found it interesting that City Attorney Pete Holmes did not address the court, leaving that to the assistant city attorney, and so did not grab the spotlight in a setting when it would have been really easy to do so, and that says something about him, what, I’ll leave to you to decide.

Beyond today’s hearing, I got there early and sat in on a public but somewhat personal parole violation hearing of a 54 year old man, on probation or parole (I don’t know which is which) for some kind of bank fraud, cashing checks not his, setting up fraudulent bank accounts to do so, which was all adjudicated, and he’s back in court because he failed to keep up with restitution payments.  He’s doing all the other right things, getting a degree, counseling on his own, is employed supervising others, joining a church community, has a girlfriend, lives near his kids and grandkids – all the right things and more for a black man with a felony.

I sat there listening as unobtrusively as possible, troubled that this man is in trouble for bank fraud when the real criminals in banking who committed unfathomable fraudulent acts on millions of us ruining millions of lives who haven’t set one foot inside a courtroom, and that is the grossest injustice of all.  I thought please don’t let this judge be harsh with this man.…  Please.  I also knew that it would be a case like this where it would be really difficult for me not to show emotion if I were reporting the testimony.  It was difficult just sitting there.

For the government’s side, the probation office lady in the beginning was kind to the defendant, remarking how laudably he’s been living his life.  Later in the hearing, when asked his opinion, the 35 year old male probation officer shared his view, that in spite of all that, we must set an example and there must be consequences for being deceptive, that punishment is needed.

I wish I had recorded this part.  The judge didn’t take too long to tell the defendant that he didn’t see much good in sending him back to jail (his words), so he is going to go easy on him this time, but if he comes back to court, it will go a year back in the detention center, and he wished the defendant a good day.  Very very very happy to hear that and to be reminded that some of our judges believe in redemption and compassion.  Then I had to rush out to the parking meter certain I had a ticket and I didn’t.

This is the same judge who later reminded the Seattle Police Department and everyone that HE alone is in charge of this process and HE is in charge until he says he’s not, so (me paraphrasing) the Seattle Police Union Guild can file all the lawsuits it wants in state court, as it did just yesterday, and that he “awaits with interest” what that court decides to do with it  HA HA  Their timing in filing the lawsuit yesterday, just in time for the judge’s comments today, is HILARIOUS.

The bald-headed guy on the left is Barry and he’s the court reporter and super nice.

That memo on the use of drones

Coming into clearer focus for me is a nagging sense that it’s a bit arrogant to give special protection to an American person, who’s an avowed combatant devoted to harming US citizens, just because he’s American, while we feel freer from a moral standpoint to kill a non-American who threatens us.  What makes an American human being more special than a human being from someplace else?  And further, what makes an American?  In my opinion, someone who’s born in New Mexico and joins al Qaeda and vows to destroy the US and carries out plans to that end is an American in name only.  They have for all intents and purposes renounced his/her citizenship.  A person has a human right to declare their loyalties however they want, which should be respected, and conversely, shouldn’t their vow to renounce their loyalty be taken just as seriously?  Another side of the same coin.

I’m more hawkish than most and don’t wring my hands too much about having to thwart threats with lethal force.  Until war is no more I expect lethal force will be necessary unless we’re willing to capitulate, concede, and surrender.  It’s obvious that combat has changed with technology.  The countries and regions where terrorist plots are hatched, funded, and carried out are very dangerous places, both to civilians (especially women) and soldiers.  So assuming we are combating credible, verifiable threats against the US and our interests, is it reasonable or moral to put our soldiers at risk when we have the technology not to have to do so?  The world has changed, let’s not pretend it hasn’t.

I’m not one to trust my government and never have been, but I’m enjoying this rare moment in history when I do trust this administration, far more than I would another (depending on who it is), so the trouble to me lies in what the next president does with this power.  The courts repeatedly have said it’s up to congress to address this complex situation, and as long as we keep electing Tea Party wing nuts and bigots and obstructionists, and as long as our politicians are beholden money and special interests in order to campaign seriously, nothing will get resolved, not even this most troublesome and pressing issue of the morality or usefulness of drones. 

We need to do more than complain about what we don’t like.  We need to work to get money out of politics and overturn Citizens United.  We need to communicate with and pressure our representatives, and we need to elect pols who will do what they’re hired to do rather than just enriching themselves and feathering their own nests for the future.

I appreciate the administration not lying about or trying to hide the drone program.  With national security, I hope it’s obvious to everyone how important secrecy is and that we shouldn’t expect the whole program to be made public.  However, there could be a oversight panel consisting of administration officials, select members of congress, and federal judges that oversees the program.  But again, if congress can’t be trusted to do their jobs, where does that leave us? 

I hope the upcoming discussions will include in an honest way what we should and will do about threats, before and after they occur.  I’ll be watching the Brennan hearings.