WillyT
WillyT's JournalI Can !!! - 'Deadly: Cars vs. Guns...'
Next time someone tells you about the deadliness of cars, compared to guns...
Remind them...
That cars are regulated up the wahzoo, because cars CAN be deadly.
You have to be tested, licensed, registered, and insured.
We now have seat-belt, air-bags, and numerous other safetey features... ALL required BY LAW>
We have entire governmental departments assigned to the monitoring of cars... The DMV, the police, sheriffs, state police, Dept. of Transportation, etc...
We should do the same for guns.
I'll Say It Again... If I Were King (LOL !!!) I'd Tie The Top Marginal Tax Rate To The Unemployment
Rate, AND... The Poverty Rate.Hike it back up to 60 or 70 percent, and then tell... "THE JOB CREATORS"...
For every point of unemployment reduction, you, as a class, get 5 points off your tax rate.
I'd have experts figure out how to come up with some similar formula for the poverty rate so they have to start paying everybody a Living Wage.
C'mon "JOB CREATORS"... put you monies where your mouths are.
I Guess I Missed The DU Rapist Genesis... But...
My sister, one of three, was kicked out of her boyfriend's Corvette because she was trying to break her relationship off.
He circled her twice saying, "I love you, baby."
And then ran his Corvette into the stadium wall at Sac City College... killing himself, right in front of her.
Two years later... same sister... was asked by a guy if she wanted to dance...
She politely said no, and thanked the guy.
30 minutes later... as she was walking to her VW, thinking her friends were right behind her...
This same guy tells her to open the car door and get in there with him.
She refuses (going against the advice of law enforcement) and he slices her arm with a swith-blade to show how serious he is. When he does that, she screams bloody murder. And then he stabs her three time in the back... puncturing her lung.
She survives still... and is one AWESOME and forgiving person.
The reason I tell these rather personal tales...
Is twofold.
1) Try to distinguish between the various forms of rape... in order to keep RAPE un-muddled as a crime.
And...
2) Remember... (not letting anybody off the hook here) but... many of us here at DU actually lived through the sexual revolution. And many did it with differing consequences.
But, as I remember, the challenge was, once you turned 18, you own your own body, and your own decisions.
I never took advantage of a sleeping woman because my philosophy is...
"I don't want to attend a party I ain't invited to."
And twice in my young sexual revolutionary life... I was in mid... well ... you know...
and as soon as I knew the rules had changed, I backed away,and put it all away, and hugged them, and exited as friends.
The Sexual Revolution WAS a lot about stuff like that. It was about learning new realities and social mores.
Don't know if this makes any sense, but... my 2 cents.
Excuse Me... But In Many Ways... This ENTIRE SITE Was Founded Over A STOLEN ELECTION
Now 2012 was not stolen, in part because thousands of people voted early, by mail, and those that did not, refused to budge from the lines they were in.
To me... the ONLY elections that can be stolen, are ones that are razor thin. But... because of increased awareness, because of 2000, 2004, and the obvious attempt to disenfranchise DEMOCRATS in several states this time around... people got pissed, came out in droves, and stood their ground.
AND... made it unstealable.
I really have no idea what the reality of the Rove/Anonymous story is. But I am enjoying the fallout never the less.
But for some posters who've just arrived, and are hectoring the rest of us...
We who survived Bev Harris, and Black Box Voting, and loved Andy Stephenson, and on, and on, and on...
It is more than a tad insulting to be told to shut up.
We discuss things on this here discussion board... and I for one do not normally care if my petty-coat is showing.
I have this nasty habit... I tend to think for myself.
And I leave symbols... to the symbol minded. (Thank you George Carlin!)
WWII Vets: Creating A Better Society... My Old Man...
My old man was a journalist before WWII broke out...
He signed up and learned to fly with the Navy (using a stearman)...
Was assigned to the Marines as the Captain of a B-25...
Yet he never talked about it...
And it was only a couple of years ago... decades after his death...
That my mom, in her 80's, told the following story...
As Clint Eastwood's first movie about the Flag at Iwo Jima was about to be released, and there were commercials promoting the film... my mom off-handedly says half indignantly/half prideful...
"Joe Rosenthal... let me tell you something. Your father and Joe had had a few drinks in San Francisco, and decided it would be a good idea to drive to Sacramento and see the State Fair. They drove into a bridge abutment, and I had to go down and bail their asses out!"
And all I'm thinking is... "Dad knew Joe Rosenthal ???"
Point being...
Most of them did not talk much about it when they came home.
And...
The writers/journalists tended to hang out together.
My old man knew Rosenthal, Pierre Salinger (JFK's Press Secretary), The guy that wrote 'In Harms Way' (which is my favorite WWII movie, directed by Otto Preminger, and starring EVERYBODY), and many others including those serving IN THEATER from Hollywood.
And for all the crap and horror they must have witnessed...
they tended not to talk (or brag) about any of it.
And when they got back home, being lucky enough to have survived it in one piece...
They set about creating a better society.
Damn... A Good Friend Of My Mom's Has Passed... Here's To A Life VERY WELL LIVED... Peace Joe...
Born March 19, 1923, in Patterson, LA, Joe spent his earliest years in Havana, Cuba. His family eventually returned to the U.S. and settled in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. 'Joe' soon became Servando's anglicized name and 'Yuss' his Yiddish one, the first of many monikers he was given and loved. 'Coach,' was another favorite.
Joe was strongly influenced by the practice of 'tikkun olam,' the Jewish term for 'repairing the world,' and throughout his life he was a champion of social justice, human rights and civil liberties. He loved the printed word and his interests were limitless. Confined to bed as a young boy with rheumatic fever, reading became his lifesaver; writing soon became its companion. Over the course of his life, he wrote everything from academic manuals to public policy treatises, essays, short stories, poetry, and beautiful love letters. He had more than 100 letters-to-the-editor published by The Sacramento Bee.
Joe was a gifted speaker with a phenomenal memory, a wonderful sense of humor, and a depth of knowledge about an extensive list of subjects. He left an indelible and positive imprint on most people-even those who knew him only briefly. Students and peers from the distant past would be ecstatic when they 'found' him; many of them said he 'changed their life.'
His own life was changed when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He left Brooklyn College as an 18 year-old to enlist in World War II and served 4 years and flew 60 combat missions in the European Theater as a top turret gunner in a B-25. In 1952, while completing work on his doctoral degree, the U.S. Air Force recalled him to active duty. He served for the next 20 years as an intelligence and special operations officer with tours of duty that included Germany, Lebanon, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (or, as Joe called it, the 'jungles of DC') and the Air Force Academy. For his distinguished service, he was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit, a Special Freedom Foundation Award, and more than 20 other commendations from the Army, Air Force and other countries.
He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1971 and returned to academia as the Dean of Students at Eisenhower College in New York. In 1974, he and Carol married and in 1975, they moved their blended family to CA. Joe spent the next 25 years as an advocate for migrant farm workers, immigrants and other disenfranchised poor, bringing their deplorable living and working conditions to the attention of state legislators and government officials. During this period, he served as Deputy Director of La Cooperativa de Campesina. He was also the Project Director and Editor of 'The Education of Adult Migrant Farmworkers,' a 2-volume publication commissioned by the US Dept of Education that provided resources for use by teachers & administrators throughout the nation; and he proposed and lobbied for a 'National Immigrants Day' to honor those who add to the richness and diversity of our country.
No picture of Joe would be complete without mention of his love affair with fencing. He began fencing at the age of 13 and co-captained his Brooklyn College team before the war and his NYU team after it, winning the Eastern and National Collegiate Three-Weapon Team Championships. From 1949-1952, he coached the U.S. Military Academy and Columbia Univ. fencing teams and individuals to national championships. In 2002, Columbia honored him as the 'Progenitor of the Golden Age of Columbia Fencing,' and in 2009 he was inducted into the U.S. Fencing Hall of Fame.
Very significantly, Joe is credited with ending racial discrimination in fencing as the result of withdrawing his Columbia team from a 1949 competition that barred his black fencer from participating. He was told he was ahead of his time and pushing too hard too fast; his response was that he fought the Nazis to defend our Constitutional principle of equal opportunity and it was others who were behind the times and moving too slow.
Joe lived a good life. He knew what he felt, said what he meant and did what he said. He was a man of integrity, taste and judgment. He shared his knowledge, humor, philosophy and affection with his family and friends until his last day on September 26, 2012. He enriched the lives of those who let him. He loved without condition and was so greatly loved by so many. He was 89 but he was never old. He was a gift.
Survived by his wife, Carol Greenwood Velarde of Elk Grove and their children, Geraldine Collins, Servando J. Velarde III (Luminita), Gayle Palumbo (Maurice), Maria Duke (Pascal), and Leonard Velarde (Stacy); sister, Maria Paul, 14 grandchildren, 5 great-grandchildren, and an extended family of in-laws, cousins, nephews and nieces. Joe's dear daughter, Dana Rortvedt, predeceased him.
Link: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sacbee/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=160694353#fbLoggedOut
Peace Joe...
Question: How Much Has Modern Presidential Campaigning Become Like Dating ???
Especially when it comes to undecideds/uncommitteds...
Are we now wooing the electorate ???
There used to be a word for those uncommitted/undecided people we attempted to seduce...
And I wonder if seduction is the current way one wins the Presidency these days.
If true... it's the fault of the MSM.
It's ALL marketing.
May I Humbly Bring Up A Proposal To The Group ???
I almost did not post the post below because of the title, I Kinda Liked Mitt, Until I Lost My Job
DU Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021545316
And the reason why... is because my initial snark reflex went off and I thought something along the lines of, "Well read a newspaper once in awhile, or, So only when your job is lost to you start looking for help", and a thousand other nano-second knee-jerk reactions.
Operative word there is Jerk.
It took me a couple of minutes... and actually WATCHING the video... and I thought to myself...
Hey asshole... this woman just learned/found out in a few months, what many of us have known for decades! And ... this woman might have just decided to vote Democrat and/or BECOME a Democrat for the first time in her life.
What I'm suggesting is that she got a real life crash course in the political reality of our times. She did not necessarily have the opportunity to study for the test.
So...
Remember... that all newbies are not trolls...
And... whether newbie or not... people who are frightened about the possibility that Romney and the Moneyed Interests might be able to pull this thing out... are not necessarily Concern Trolls...
Hell... I'm worried, but I just keep plowing... FORWARD!
Finally... many new people, people that are young, people that have been hurt, abused, neglected, or any manner of reaseons... INCLUDING leaving the band of Looney-Toones that is now the current GOP... may just be looking for some REAL information.
And finally finally... remember that this place was founded for a whole lot of wounded Democrats and fellow travelers after the SCOTUS gave the Presidency to GWBush.
It should be a safe place for us, and those that want to join us.
And P.S.... WE NEED EVERY ONE OF THEM!
I'm Am So Weary Of The LCD Voter...
Remember math ???
The lowest common denominator ???
I do not think I am better than these people... I think that people that think that they are better than other people, are automatically disqualified for the very fact that they think that way. You may be better AT SOME THING than another, but you are NOT holistically a better human being.
And I would fight with all my might (unlike the GOP) to make sure that ALL people who have the basic qualifications to vote (a breathing citizen at the age of 18 years old) TO VOTE!
Hell... I'd change the rules, if I could, and make election day a four day weekend ending on Tuesday.
But...
I am bone-tired, and red-eyed weary, of having to argue and outvote some of the least curious and most uninformed people that are some of my fellow citizens.
I could show you a hundred videos and a thousand quotes to underline what I'm talking about... Just watch an episode of Jay Leno's 'Jay-Walking' and you'll see what I mean.
And the frustration bubbles up because THEY HAVE NOT A CLUE...
And further frustrating... is wondering what can be done.
And I really do not know...
AND... they are being lied to and misled.
But for those of us...
Who tried to get something out of school...
Who actually read and maybe even write on a regular basis...
Who might have ACTUALLY had to try and raise a family... make a budget... care for the kids mental and physical health...
For those of us who've worked hard at our jobs... and those of us that took the risk of putting their money into starting their own businesses...
For those that have had medical issues... physical OR mental..
For those that have lost a child, a parent, a friend or a colleague...
For those who are being bullied, oppressed or marginalized...
For those who are being ignored, threatened, or abused...
And for a thousand other reasons that we could come up with here...
We rely on the GOVERNMENT because WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT !!!
IOW - We REALLY DO rely on one another.
So PLEASE... Please... Vote that way.
When I Think Of Trayvon Martin's Last Moments... I Can't Help But Think Of This By Norman Rockwell
Southern Justice (Murder in Mississippi) by Norman Rockwell
More on Race by Rockwell...
Peace...
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