The memory chain is interesting. I’d bet for scientists and doctors who work with our brains that it is overwhelmingly interesting.
This morning I was buttering a piece of toast and instantaneously I thought of Uncle Charlie. He is long, long gone, and sometime if you want to talk about tough lives, not the tough lives of the privileged protestors today, we can talk about him.
Buttering bread and Uncle Charlie, he was known for putting the butter on extremely thick, what was known in those days (because they didn’t know anything in those days like they know today) as heart-attack thick. Best buttered bread you could get, that was Uncle Charlie.
He was married to Aunt Hannah. She is long, long gone. Aunt Hannah: housedress, white bobby sox, house slippers similar to what I’m wearing now, open-toe, flat heel, just that one strap across the bottom of the toes.
Aunt Hannah was in love with the Brooklyn Dodgers. She lived across the street from where they played, knew all the players, went to the games, all the games.
Spring started yesterday; today is the first full day of Spring. Up here in the northeast we don’t really know if we’re done with the snow or not, but looks like it – maybe. My wife and daughter are upstairs sleeping. I made breakfast for them, they ate, they went upstairs separately and when I looked in on them they were peacefully asleep.
I feel somewhat content. I don’t generally feel this way. More often I feel pressured and stressed, worried (GAD) and harried.
But not at this moment. Thank God for that. I feel very grateful these days, filled with gratitude. We’ve survived Covid and are vaccinated. My daughter is in school, has been in school since July 2020 half-time and since December 2020 full-time. In many ways her Covid journey is the paradigm for how we should have been handling it altogether. Maybe we would have been handling it better all along and would be handling it better now if the Democrats hadn’t used it as the key political weapon in their seize-power-control-America-forever arsenal.
But that is what it is and it’s for another time.
I’m posting this little piece first, before I post some new things. I work in the mental health field and while the Democrats piss away 2 trillion dollars for bull shit that’s not necessary and which has proven over the last 55 years not to in any way accomplish that which they say they want to accomplish, that very small percentage of kiddos and adults with serious mental health issues suffers inordinately more and worse than anyone else except the elderly they let die (maybe purposefully).
Yes! Those with serious mental health issues and disabilities are a small percentage of our population. As such and by the nature of their ailments, they are underfunded, mostly under-represented politically and most incapable of advocating for themselves.
Over this Covid time the mental health services system has become saturated and it is very hard to find services. My workload volume has increased 140%.
So I have no apologies for not posting for a few weeks. I have no apologies for me at all. I’ve been busy.
Regarding apologies, those who would tell us to feel bad about ourselves for who and what we are based upon our skin color and political beliefs should be apologizing to us by simply passing strict term limits for themselves. Their attempting to teach such ridiculousness to our little children in public schools is beyond despicable and disgusting. It is obscene.
What they are doing and what their lapdog press is promoting is the real insurrection in America.
And so it goes.
Memory chain: I remember my father being a POW in Nazi Germany for three and a half years. Hitler killed almost 10 million people. Moving toward that totalitarianism is the real insurrection in America.
By Peter Weiss
When was the last time any of our lawmakers could not fill up their tank with gas because they needed the money for food?
When was the last time any of our lawmakers had to lower the temperature in their home/apartment by five degrees (and therefore be cold) to save on energy so they could afford to buy necessities for their family?
When was the last time increased energy prices meant a lawmaker’s/Congressman’s family could not afford a much needed new washing machine?
When was the last time any of our esteemed millionaire lawmakers got fired from a lucrative job and was told to go get a job in a field in which the jobs were not there yet, weren’t going to be there, or were only there in China?
When was the last time we heard about Kerry’s wife, you know the Heinz heiress who is worth about a billion dollars?
When do you think Kerry, so quick to put people out of work, worried about money, about his financial future, about whether or not he had a job? When do you think he last thought that maybe he should cut his energy footprint instead of claiming special privilege?
When was the last time we got the truth from Pavda USA, the mainstream media Democrat lapdogs?
And when was the last time we got the truth from the American Politburo, those multi-millionaire oligarchs who claim to be everyday people like you and me? Or from their multi-billionaire oligarchs, most of them media owners, who own them, run them and run the mainstream media that licks their feet?
Monday Morning Rant: just some when questions.
By Peter Weiss
Why would a new and incoming administration cause people to lose jobs?
Why would it drive up the price of energy and home heating oil and support immigration/border policies that are not only inhumane but drive wages in its own country down?
Why would this administration take its country from energy surplus and independence to being once again dependent upon its enemies for needed energy?
Why would this administration support, defend and uplift its country’s enemies and belittle and diminish its allies?
Just some questions for us all who are still wondering why the media and the network news don’t report such things.
Dishonest and biased media that practice censorship and suppression are the purveyors of totalitarianism,
By Peter Weiss
Seven minutes each all last month, that’s what ABC, CBS and NBC spent on covering the story, whatever that story is, with Andrew Cuomo in New York.
Have you heard yet about Hunter Biden, the computer, the investigation, the story that The New York Post broke about a month before the election? The story which was suppressed by the mainstream media and banned from being reproduced on social media?
Do you know what’s happening at the border?
The bad news is that there is no news.
Not having news, having biased news, having news that is in the tank for the leaders: that’s the stuff of totalitarianism, the stuff where suppression and injustice flourish.
America is being run by corporate and political oligarchs and the mainstream media is their lapdog, Pravda USA.
The bad news is that there is no news.
By Peter Weiss
The first and major purpose of a government is to protect its citizens and to protect the rights of its citizens. This is stated in various ways and goes back to the Ancient Greeks who said that the purpose of government was to improve the lives of its citizens. Note the operative word: citizens. One more time, since that word is very clear: to protect the rights of its citizens. The operative word is citizens.
No. The United States is not a world government. No. The citizens of the United States are not world citizens. No the citizens of the United States do not have citizens’ rights in any other country unless they hold citizenship there too. Similarly, and consequently, citizens of other countries do not have citizens’ rights in the United States. They are not world citizens unless other countries want to accept that fact, and honestly there aren’t any yet.
So, how stupid is America?
The first sure sign of America’s stupidity is the game its citizens allow the government to play with its language and its confuscating of the definition of citizen.
No. Illegal aliens are not undocumented citizens. No. Although the government under the past and now this president would have you think so, it is not wrong to call illegal aliens illegals. It is also not wrong to call them aliens. They are not immigrants if by immigrant one means a person who comes to establish permanent residence. Permanent residence implies legal status though not necessarily citizenship. So if an illegal alien in his or her heart wants to stay here permanently, the best he or she can become is a long-term undetected illegal alien. He or she would not be a citizen, can never become a citizen without moving through the proper channels to do so, and is only here by the fact that he or she remains undetected.
Illegal aliens are not entitled to the benefits of citizenship and should not be. They should not be allowed to vote. They should not get public housing, welfare, social security or food stamps. They should not be entitled to any form of public assistance.
So how stupid is America?
America affords all of the above to its illegal aliens. The shameless leaders, from the Congress down to local state and city governments, offer us all kinds of silly arguments to protect their ability to keep the flow of illegals coming into the United States. It is in their best interests, but it is not in our best interests. Most of our leaders these days are millionaires and being leaders they do not spend much of their own money. They and their children and families, for the most part, live in the gated cities, protected by bodyguards and private security, and sometimes by the Secret Service. Their world is not our world.
How stupid is America?
State and city governments won’t even turn over public voting records to the Justice Department. They are required to do so upon written notice but fail to comply. Why? What are they afraid of? Why, in America, the land of the free where anyone can walk into a DMV and get an official ID, is an ID not required to vote?
There are only several reasons for the stupidity of the American Citizens allowing their governments, local, state and Federal, to perpetrate this ridiculousness. One is indifference. A second is not wanting to rock the freebie boat. A third is ignorance. Our public education, by the way, is a reason unto its own for why we are so stupid.
America the stupid. Only in America can an illegal alien get a legal aid lawyer and sue the government for not protecting his/her rights. Only in America are American citizens and taxpayers forced to support those who have broken our law, do not legally belong here and are very often treated better than the hardworking citizens supporting them.
So, how stupid are we?
By Peter Weiss
So which shoes do you wear? Are you one of those people who see things on social media and don’t bother to check them out? Do you then take them and repost them on your social media outlets? Are you one of those people who actually believe any of the ridiculous things that come from either the left or the right?
Or are you one of those people who checks out everything? Are you one of those people who understands that facts are facts and facts are incontrovertible? There may be different facts formulated by different outlets, so when that’s the case are you one of those people who checks out all the sets of facts and attempts at least to determine which ones are real and which ones are fabricated?
Are you one of those people who believe in suppression? Or are you one of those people who believe in free expression and the exercise of free rights? Are you one of those people who sees beyond the hypocrisy of both the left and the right? Or are you one of those people who subscribe to one side’s hypocrisy?
Well, some of these are pretty hard questions. They’re pretty hard because we all wear different shoes. They’re hard because we all feel different ways about ourselves and each of us have different reasoning capacities and different senses of self-gratification.
Do you really think that putting President Trump’s Supreme Court pick onto the court will really kill millions of women? Do you really believe that the second he’s put on the Supreme Court Roe v Wade will be immediately overturned? Or are you capable of seeing that these are hyperbole and not even responsible hyperbole? In one fell swoop the lefties have gone from pushing grandma over the cliff in a wheelchair, what they’ve accused the Republicans of in the past, to having their Supreme Court nominee kill millions of women. No matter which shoes you wear, it just doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, it’s irresponsible to advance such divisive rhetoric.
It goes on and on and it gets worse and worse. No matter who is put on the Supreme Court, it won’t be the end of the world, as the lefties have already said. Not only will it not be the end of the world, but it won’t be the end of the Constitution or the Republic or the democracy. Those who insist that it will be any of this and do it with a straight face have really jumped off the deep end along with a whole host of the lefties.
That’s not to say that the righties are always right or right about everything or right even most of the time. But they’re not always wrong about everything or maybe even most things. The righties simply wear a different pair of shoes and have their own personal interests.
So the real issue is always what we really want for our country. Do we want a country that suppresses people’s rights in the name of advancing people’s rights? Do we want a country that does not ascribe to its own laws? Do we want a country whose government spends most of its time arguing back and forth on political terms rather than looking for the realities of what’s going on in this country and then looking for solutions to the problems at hand?
These are really hard questions too. They’re hardest because we all wear different shoes. However, no matter which shoes you do wear, we ought to be critical of and ashamed of the Congress we’ve elected. And we ought to check out our minds about how we elect our officials. And we surely ought to be asking ourselves if this is the best we can do.
By Peter Weiss
America is more divided than ever before. We hear this statement made over and over. Actually we hear a lot of things nowadays, especially with 24/7 cable news channels which not only say a lot of things, but say them over and over and over. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it isn’t. Regardless, it is a fact of our life.
I wonder: are we more divided than we were during the Civil War times? Than during the Viet Nam War times? What do they mean by divided? Do they, whoever they are, mean divided politically? Racially? By religion? Culture? By economics?
Which station(s) do you watch? Which newspapers do you read? Do you get your news from social media? Do you pay any attention to the news at all? I mean, one of my friends recently said that now that marijuana was legal in his state he was just gonna chill out for the rest of his life and not pay any attention to this ridiculous stuff.
Your answers to the questions above tend to define which shoes you wear, especially if you subscribe exclusively to one grouping of any of them. Our shoes are determined, very often, by where we’re born, to whom we’re born, our parents’ experiences and beliefs and their socio-economic status.
No matter which shoes you wear, however, on some level what’s going on in this country is ridiculous, even in the realm of the absurd. Actually it’s in the realm of the theater of the absurd. But on another level it is very real, especially if the effects of what’s going on impact your income, benefits, taxes, services or education.
Once again, as said before, this is tough stuff. Remember, about fifty per cent of the American population doesn’t pay taxes and many of these people get money back from the government. They wear one set of shoes. Those who pay taxes wear a different set of shoes. Those people who have children benefit from free public education. Those with no children who pay taxes pay for the public education of people with children. These groups wear different sets of shoes. In America, such groupings are numerous and varied. Some people in America aren’t here legally and still get money and benefits from the government, this despite what the government would have you believe. These people wear a different set of shoes. If you’ve been waiting to immigrate here legally and have tried to do it the right way, you wear one pair of shoes. If you’re the illegal collecting benefits, you wear a different set.
Different points of view, depending upon which shoes you wear is a characteristic trademark of America. It is one of our greatest strengths. It can also be one of our greatest weaknesses, especially when we let the priorities our country was founded upon deteriorate into ridiculousness. For example, in certain states one can be fined, even put in jail for using the wrong pronoun. Imagine that! For another example, during the Obama administration if one’s findings on climate change contradicted theirs, one could be prosecuted. Imagine that! When our rights are suppressed because of the shoes we wear, our country’s values have been diminished and we as a free country are in peril.
Which shoes do you wear? Maybe you wear many different shoes. Maybe not. Whichever shoes you wear though, you should be free to wear them without fear of being suppressed for wearing them.
By Peter Weiss
Toward the end of the Trump administration, the wife one of my cousins de-friended me on facebook because she did not agree with my political positions.
That’s well and good, really. That’s America, the ability to disagree.
Wasn’t good enough to de-friend me. She had make a big pronouncement of it, a public spectacle of it, if you will.
Her choice. Still America.
Bottom line of what she did, and maybe she doesn’t care, is that I probably won’t ever speak to my cousin again. He’s old, I’m getting old. We probably will have no more actual interplay on this earth.
I’m saddened. What I feel is a deep sadness.
I’m a writer. I write fiction and non-fiction. You can like or not like my fiction. You can agree with or disagree with my opinion pieces. As you wish. That’s America.
I’m also a researcher. Researchers learn to only cite peer-reviewed and accepted sources, those that are based upon scholarly study. They also learn to check out all sources to examine their veracity. They are taught that when one study is paid for by an entity who then determines it’s veracity — well then something smells funny.
You know like all the environmental studies our government relies upon, that our government has paid for and continues to pay for and whose funding depends upon results that support our government’s position. Stinks a little bit.
Researches also learn that when censorship comes into play, which is why 90% of the American people don’t believe the mainstream media anymore and less than 20% approve of our Senators and Congressmen — well then something smells funny and something is fishy.
As a free and curious person, that which they don’t want me to know is precisely what I want to know.
I don’t sit at an electronic device and press “like” then indiscriminately re-post other people’s opinions. I certainly don’t re-post without checking the veracity of what’s being said.
Of course I feel that my personal opinion is right. It’s my opinion. But I don’t criticize, threaten, hate or call names at people who don’t agree with me.
Such vitriol is well…deeply saddening.
Yesterday I happened to see a remark on facebook by a different cousin, same family. It was so filled with venom that I wondered how such ugliness came to be. My uncle, the father of this cousin, was the sweetest man in the whole world. My mother and he deeply loved each other as siblings. Of all the siblings, he was the most sensitively emotional and wonderfully sweet and caring.
I’m shocked that such a public display could come from a child of his. I’m further shocked that some of the “family” could simply like and/or approve of such a public display.
Where and when did we come to believe that such a tantrum could and should be publicly displayed?
It’s this publicly expressed and then the herd-like approval of such ugliness that makes me feel deeply sad.
All together, I fear we’ve lost what matters most within ourselves.
By Peter Weiss
How stupid are we?
Talking about America, there seems to be no limit to the depth of our stupidity, the depth of the pit of stupidity we have fallen into. It’s rather amazing actually. Think about it. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin wall came down, the United States was the only world power. In the thirty years since then we have allowed Russia to regain its world-power status and we have allowed China to become a world power. China’s economy has overtaken ours and just recently, for the first time ever, the dollar is no longer the world currency.
So how stupid are we? Well, how stupid can you be?
The war on poverty has been going on for fifty-two years, since 1965. We’ve poured twenty-three billion dollars into it. That’s 23,000,000,000. For that money there has been no real noticeable change in the poverty rate and no real change in the demographics of the people in poverty. Yet we continue down the same road. Stupid?
As regards education, we spend more per capita than any other country and yet we rank a whopping twenty-seventh in the world in education. Now that’s a big bang for the buck. Furthermore, segregation was outlawed in 1954 and yet our schools are becoming more and more segregated. The rate at which segregation is occurring continues to increase.
Stupid?
It gets better. There are those who fought against segregation who now insist they have a right to their own spaces, or they insist that whites not be allowed into certain spaces. Well then…
Stupid? You bet
Just as stupid and actually most dangerous to our society is the disregard shown for logic and facts. Replacing logic and facts are feelings and subjectivity. The gender identity laws exemplify this. But that raises a controversial issue and God forbid that should happen. So let’s put it this way. Mr. X doesn’t have any cash and can’t buy that five-dollar super mochaccino he wants because he left his wallet in his Porsche. He feels poor. He identifies with poor people at that moment. In accordance with the gender identity rules, he is poor. He identifies himself as poor, ergo, by the new rules, he is poor. If that happened on April 15th, Mr. X should be eligible for not paying taxes and even getting an earned income credit.
Stupid? Beyond stupid. How stupid can we be?
Let’s see. Remember “you have to sign it to see what’s in it?” Stupid? Well, what’s even more stupid is that she’s still in office and the head of her party. She’s not stupid. She didn’t have to read it because she doesn’t have to deal with it. She and her cronies voted themselves an exception so they could stay on the government congressional plan. That’s the Cadillac of Cadillacs plan.
Stupid? Not them! Us. More than half of them are millionaires And they way their positions work, they don’t really have to pay for anything. Our tax dollars pay for everything. Or, they’re having a great, self-enriching time on our dime. So how stupid can we be?
Russia. Russia’s goal is to create chaos here in America. Well, look at what our media has been pushing for the last four years and more. Look at what the party of opposition, now leadership and in control, has done. How stupid are we as a people and as a nation? Haven’t we played right into Putin’s hands? China’s hands? Stupid.
Well, aren’t we stupid for allowing all this to go on? Aren’t we more stupid for continuing to fund it?
Finally, as the liberals push left toward the welfare state and socialism, history tells us that capitalism and the free market pay for the bulk of all charity work done throughout the world. It also tells us that no socialist government thus far has ever managed to succeed. Why would we push toward that which we know will fail?
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Really, how stupid are we? Pretty damn stupid.
By Peter Weiss
WYSIWYG came about in regard to computers, referring to the notion that what was displayed on the computer screen was exactly what would be printed out. What you see is what you get. Computers programs did not always produce this, so around 1982, when they began to, it was a pretty cool thing.
Overall, it’s nice to know that when you are looking at something it is what it’s supposed to be. Similarly, when you’re looking at someone, it’s nice to know he or she is what they appear to be. WYSIWYG.
Most often, however, this is not the case. Most often language is coded, ideas are couched in innuendo or inference, and people are not what they appear to be. It’s sad, but it’s true.
So let’s start with the media. News reporters are supposed to be unbiased. That was why the press was protected in the Constitution. When the media are puppets for governments, we in America look at them with scorn and derision. Remember the 1950s and 1960s, particularly regarding the Soviet Union, when we viewed their propaganda-spewing press as despicable agents for the government hiding the truth from the Soviet people? When a coup occurs, the first thing a new power does is knock out the broadcast media. It is only restored when controlled by the new government.
We were supposed to be free of that propaganda stuff here in America. We were supposed to be free of a biased press. That’s why the press was protected from the get-go, in the First Amendment to the Constitution. But the media is no longer WYSIWYG. Most of the media is in the tank for Democrats and these days they make no bones about it. Two newspapers come to mind, The Washington Post and the New York Times, both of which lean really far left. It’s okay to lean one way or the other, but the particular bent is supposed to be expressed editorially, not through the news itself. The news is supposed to be sacrosanct. But it’s not. The first, by the way, is owned by the owner of Amazon. His personal holding company bought it in 2013. Carlos Slim, one of the world’s richest men and Mexico’s major cell phone controller, is the major stock holder in the other. Since he’s a shady character, it’s alleged he became top owner in the Times to prevent negative press about himself.
WYSIWYG NOT.
It gets better. We knew where the real media bias was pretty early on in the Obama presidency. GE owned NBC when Obama invited GE’s CEO into the White House and made him a major player in Obama’s green energy transformation of America. GE got sweet light bulb deals and a lot more, especially some major contracts in China. NBC, a major media player, was fully in bed with the POTUS.
WYSIWYG NOT. But at least Obama was transparent in his corruption.
We now have what we were never supposed to have, the APN, the American Propaganda News. It purports to be unbiased but we know it isn’t. It pretends to be fair, but study after study shows it leans heavily left, and this year in particular it isn’t even trying to hide it much. A lot of it is owned by big moguls whose private interests control much of what it does.
Unbiased, First Amendment protected, free press? WYSIWYG NOT.
