SLClarke
SLClarke's JournalVenezuela's bullion
Here's another reason to go after Venezuela - according to an article in today's Guardian, there's $1.9 billion in gold bars being held in London at the Bank of England.
I've been banned
Could anyone help me with this? Back when the Hamas / Palestinian and Israel war started, that very day I wrote an article and posted it on Daily Kos. It was an angry article of about 500 words where I talked, very briefly, maybe one sentence, about "toxic religion". I went back about 1/2 hour later to edit it, to soften my language somewhat, but couldn't as their program said I wasn't authorized to use the program.
Since then I've not been able to post another article. I've sent them multiple emails asking for reinstatement but have gotten no response.
On September 3, 2025, I sent them an actual letter, via snail mail, but again, so far, no response.
I do have two articles that were published earlier, without difficulty.
Does anyone out there have some idea of how to solve this?
Susan.
THE LETTER SENT
Dear Sen Klobuchar
There was an article on Salon last week by Griffin Eckstein, about how you called for compromise with our new administration. Eckstein’s headline was “... there is no common ground with fascists” (1), commenting on an interview in the New York Times where you said “… Americans want us to work together when we can and find common ground”.
I agree with Eckstein. There is no common ground with fascists. Their set of values are not yours, nor mine. For them working together means they get what they want and, if they want what you want, you get what you want; such a young conversation, one from around 3-4 years of age, where the child says, in effect, what is mine is mine, and what is yours, is mine.
Children and many of this administration live that way. They live in a world where they get to say how it’s done; they get to make the laws even if they damage themselves; they live in a world of shame and blame; a world of short-term gains; a zero-sum world. This is the world of distributive negotiation (2), where you, me, my family, my community, my country are the losers.
You, I know, want to live in a place where people collaborate for the greater good. You want to build goodwill and trust; want everyone to get something of what they want or need; You want people to be listened too and heard. That is integrative negotiation.
Think of it like King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table (3), a 12th century tale about a king and his cohorts discussing policy sitting at a round table; round so no one person has ascendancy over another. According to the stories the group included not only King Arthur and his best friends, but many of his enemies and some minor nobles, all having equal say.
However, the head of this current administration and his un-elected financiers, and many of his supporters believe in distributive negotiation, a competition where the emphasis is on limits, on scarcity. This administration goes even further. They want loyalty and will punish those who they perceive are not. They say we should be loyal to the person heading our government, rather like bowing down before a king, a King John who, because of his treatment of his subjects had to sign the Magna Carta, a king who lost land on the other side of the channel for the same reason (4).
As an immigrant, coming from England, and now an American citizen, the idea of bowing down before this human being called a king is something I thought I’d left behind.
You cannot find common ground with kings. You cannot find common ground with those who worship him. You cannot gainsay the divine right of kings. You cannot say the emperor has no clothes (5). when they insist he’s covered in robes of glory.
Please don’t try.
1 https://www.salon.com/2025/02/01/there-is-no-common-ground-with-fascists-progressives-rip-klobuchars-call-for-bipartisanship
2 https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/negotiation-skills-daily/negotiation-skills-expanding-the-pie-integrative-bargaining-versus-distributive-bargaining
3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_the_Round_Table
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%2C_King_of_England
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor's_New_Clothes
The Letter Not Sent
THE LETTER NOT SENT 2025/01/13
Dear Senator Klobuchar
I was at a meeting sometime in 2006 with Mike Hatch. I think it was at the Ole Mexico restaurant on Lexington and Dale. He came to talk, as Attorney General, and as he often did, to a group of chiropractors, about 20 of us, about what was coming up in the Minnesota legislature. He was asked what kind of support would need to get re-elected in the upcoming election.
He said he wasn’t going to run again. Why? Because the new people elected to office were not interested in getting a bill through, a bill that would help Minnesotans, they were more interested in counting coup, in getting their way. He said he could not trust them to keep their word, that he would negotiate with them, come to an agreement about how a bill would be passed, and then, when on the floor, they would turn around and vote against it.
This is what I see you having to deal with; the opposition breaks promises; they ask for the absurd; they make weird, inaccurate and inflammatory statements; they dismiss your concerns; they deflect and re-define as did Brett Kavanaugh 2 when you asked him questions.
I remember when he was up for confirmation and you, referencing your father’s struggles with alcoholism, asked Kavanaugh about his drinking issues. His response was to argue with you, to attack you. And because of the rules, which you adhered to, your time ran out. But, and this is a big but, no-one else took up the issues. No-one else supported you. Your question disappeared, was put out of sight, under the table, as were any questions about his sexual proclivities.
Isn’t that what we do as women? We make it okay for people to belittle us. And I see you doing that a lot, making nice as a way to navigate a difficult work environment. I do vote for you, but really wish I could vote for someone else, for instance an AOC, a Crockett, a Porter, a someone who doesn’t prevaricate, doesn’t harp on being non-partisan, on being able to cross the aisle, a someone who doesn’t think it a triumph to get the bald eagle listed as the designated bird of the United States, who doesn’t boast about that on her website.
Taking the high road, as Michelle Obama once said, might feel good, righteous, but if you listen to that 18th century Scottish song, The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond, you would be reminded that taking the high road when others are taking the low road, means you will never meet.
For instance, you like to follow the rules, decent rules, rules designed to make life easier, rules designed to keep people safe, fed, housed, taught, loved, honored. Your opposition has a different agenda; they are playing a different game, on a different court.
Please, out-maneuver them; out-strategise them; out-think them; use their rules to get what you, I, millions of other Minnesotans and Americans, really want. Please!
1 https://swansonhatch.com/mike_hatch
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brett_Kavanaugh
3 https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/01/politics/amy-klobuchar-brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court/index.html
4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
5 https://time.com/5459984/michelle-obama-go-high
6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bonnie_Banks_o%27_Loch_Lomond
Now What Will People Say
Yesterday, Wednesday December 18, 2024, the US House of Representatives voted to shut down the government this Friday. Why? Because an un-elected member of our government, a man who will not be able to get full security clearance because of his drug habits, a man who, apparently only sleeps a couple of hours a night, who is, maybe the richest person in the world, this man tweeted to the Republicans who were going to vote for the bill, that he would fund primary's against them if they did. They complied, so currently, today, this Thursday, there is no bill being passed that will keep the US government open past Friday December 20, 2024. Oh my.
I reckon, now the Repubs and Dems will be working furiously to see what can be cobbled together in the next 36 hours. The Republicans have done this before, but this time, instead of it being a blackmail ploy by the House itself, often posturing to keep their more conservative voters appeased, this time it is driven by the owner of a car company who uses a social media app to threaten others. And he also uses his social media app to send out not only distortions of the truth, but often complete fabrications, which his 207 million subscribers believe and further disseminate.
I have just re-read Sheri Tepper’s Gibbons’s Decline and Fall 1, a novel set in the US where a group of women meet in college and stay friends throughout their lives. The hero is a being who lives on this earth, but her species evolved differently from humans. They still live here amongst us, unseen, protecting themselves from the encroachment of humans (who have a history of killing those who look different from them). The hero helps her friends defeat the monstrous entity that threatens everyone.
So I am reading this and seeing so many parallels between what Tepper was writing about and what we are seeing now in the US. We have a group of very rich people, mostly men, who are intent on getting more, and more, and more, and have no intention of knowing the damage they are inflicting on all of us, inflicting on the population that actually allows those people to be as rich as they are.
In the Book of Revelation, John of Patmos wrote about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 2, Pestilence, War, Death, and Famine. In our time, with the appointment of someone suspicious of medicine as the head of the Department of Health; the appointment of someone who has never commanded an army to the post of Secretary of Defense; the appointment of a person supportive of Putin to be head of national intelligence; and the appointment of an immigration hard-liner as Homeland Security secretary, the four horses are galloping towards us at full speed.
When I was growing up, living in the convent, Sister Joseph, when I was misbehaving, would say to me, what she said was a Chinese curse, May You Live In Interesting Times 3. Turns out, it isn’t Chinese but was said by someone who, in the early 20th century, was a British diplomat in China. But whatever the provenance, these times are way too interesting.
1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/168540.Gibbon_s_Decline_and_Fall
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse
3 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/12/18/live
The first time
I have never started a discussion before , but have commented now and again.
I emigrated to the States July 1972, lived in LA for 5 years and then moved to Minnesota.
Even now I do not regret coming here, but jeez loueeze, it sure is looking like hard times ahead.
I am concerned about my grandchildren and their health - of the five, two are trans, and one is seriously thinking of getting pregnant. Oh dear!!!!!!
The American Supreme Court
Here, in America, for short, it is called SCOTUS – Supreme Court of the United States. This week, Monday, in June 2024, it did something that, for 800 years, has been unquestioned. SCOTUS granted immunity from prosecution for certain acts taken on as President of the United States. Not since the signing of the Magna Carta by King John in 1215, in the meadows of Runnymede, have we had a leader who was given permission to be above the law. King John, at the time, had been insisting that what he wanted to do was part of the privilege of King. The barons wanted “protection of church rights, protection for people from illegal imprisonment, and access to swift and impartial justice”. (Wikipedia).
And later, King Charles 1 was beheaded for the same reason. He too was taking on privileges, insisting on immunity for his actions, and the people, eventually, stopped him.
And now, at the end of June 2024, six people, one woman, white, one man, black, and four other white men voted to re-install their chosen one as king. Really, as king. They tossed aside 800 years of precedence, 800 years of agreement that no person is above the law, no person in the English speaking world can dodge consequences for their actions, whatever their position; 800 years of English common law, upon which a lot of American law is based, in repudiation of such 800 years, SCOTUS granted immunity to a ordinary man for some acts undertaken whilst President.
It was never meant to be this way. From the writings of the various founders, the intention of how America politics would work was that the legislative branch was paramount, and the executive branch and the judicial branch would provide the necessary checks and balances. Our founders were clear, in their white privileged, slave-owning and land owning world, they did not see and did not want anyone, ever, being above the law. John Adams, in 1774 wrote that here, in America, “we are a government of laws, not of men”. He wrote about the inequity of inherited leadership. He wrote that a republic, as he saw America at that time, that a republic, where “the people have a voice in making” is in contrast to having an empire, because an empire is ruled by “a despot, bound by no law or limitation but his own will.”
My patients, pretty much all of them, even the Republican ones, came in upset by this immunity decision. There are a few patients that I regularly talk politics with, but this week, most of them initiated the conversation. Upset, worried.
One showed me a clip from 1933 Germany when Hitler was appointed Chancellor. He was offered the position but refused until the government gave him the right to rule by presidential decree, in other words, he would be above the law with regard to his acts. And out of that came Kristallnach and the Holocaust.
Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, Roberts and the infamous Thomas all voted to give our past president immunity. They are all lawyers. They call themselves “originalists”, “constitutional scholars”, or at least some of them do. They must have read Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, way deeper than I ever could. They obviously are not thinking clearly, being, as it seems, beholden to a man, an ordinary man, a very ordinary man. For him, they are willing to challenge and overturn 800 years of legal thinking. And we, now, get to pick up the pieces.
Note: a piece I wrote today.
American Politics 2023
AMERICAN POLITICS 2023 2023/10/26
Yesterday, the House of Representatives elected a Speaker, a member with no chair experience, a someone who, as one Representative said, that most did not know, or even know the name of, a someone who is anti-abortion, anti-LBGTQ, anti-immigration, an election denier, someone, who in the eight years he has been a Representative, has never had a bill passed and, according to the reports, is not a great fund-raiser, and, a someone who is dedicated to cutting Medicaid and Medicare, a someone who labels Social Security an “entitlement” program.
I could go on with his list of awfuls, but what is truly more disturbing is, that in order to be elected Speaker, you have to have the blessing of our past president, a man who’s set a record with 91 indictments, with the possibility of being tried for treason because he shared state secrets with other countries; is the arbiter of a party where his followers ignore his bankruptcies (four), his frequent marriages and the affairs that came before that, ignore the astounding disrespect of his first wife, burying her at his golf course and, ignore the fact he doesn’t pay his bills.
We, as a country, need two functioning parties. America was set up that way. We are not a parliamentary system, however, at this moment, watching the shenanigans in the House, maybe we should be. At least then, ignoramuses would not be elected to higher office. I can’t stand people who are willfully stupid, and Johnson, in his speech about basing his life on, what he calls, Christian principles, is just that, stupid, ignorant, mean, spiteful, vengeful, and blind, blind, blind.
My very Republican patient was incensed when she heard the news (just before coming in for treatment yesterday). This women, politically active, wants someone who will support her party in the coming election, and was verbally articulate about the failings of Mike Johnson of Alabama. Even she did not know his name, and, she would expect too, because, like everyone else she is on the watch for someone to rise up and take the GOP back to power. This man won’t.
And I am back too, we need a functioning opposition party, and the current members of the Republican Party occupying the House in DC are not that.
Regardless of whether or not you liked Pelosi, with her thin margin of Democratic Representatives, she managed to get hundreds of bills through the house. This time, with the Republicans in power, they have passed twelve. And now, in October, having finally elected a Speaker, they have until the end of November to pass bills to keep the government open.
It remains to be seen what Johnson can manage. Can he manage the Freedom Caucus?
Personally, I am resigned about the mess they are making. It’s like bad theater, however, unlike theater, we are sitting in the seats and cannot move, cannot leave the bad performance and the bad actors to their fate, which, in a just world, would be rapidly coming for them.
Taxes and Health Care
For those of you who pay a monthly "fee" for your health care, consider looking at that payment as a "tax". For indeed, it is a tax. It just isn't named at as one. If you want health care in this country and are under 65, paying this monthly fee is mandatory. A deduction of $250.00 per month from a paycheck (for instance), is, in reality, a "tax". That is $3,000 a year being paid for access to the clinics and doctors covered by the plan. Oh yes, this plus the co-pays on top of that (which makes the yearly "tax" outlay even bigger).
For those who think that Medicare For All would create more taxes, need to know they already pay even more "taxes" than they realize. As Shakespeare wrote "... a rose by any other name would smell as sweet ...", the health care "deduction" could (should?) be redefined to reflect reality.
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Member since: Thu Apr 25, 2019, 05:29 PMNumber of posts: 71