Amazon is supposed to be a public use site for purchasing and reviewing products. However, only if you are of a particular political bent. Straight Left. Like a one-way sign.
So, since I don't qualify as a bent left liberal, and since I do have opinions, here is my review of Mrs. Clinton's tome (aka door stop / table support) "What Happened".
Aside from the obvious answer - You Lost - the only thing this particular Whine needs is a lot more cheese. It's like a fortified Port. An overwhelming tsunami of self-pity and blame for everyone but herself.
One thing my parents taught me, a very good lesson that's served me well in my sixty years upon planet Earth is: don't blame others for your own screw-ups.
If you fail, if you screw up, it's on YOU. It's no one else's fault. It's yours, so own it. Then you'll (hopefully) learn from it.
Yet, in all those pages of black overlaid on white, that is what Hillary does not do.
She does not step up, lift her chin in defiant acknowledgement that would result in at least some modicum of respect from others and say, "yes, I messed up. I'm sorry, but I did, and here's what I would do differently."
Oh, no! No, no no no no!!! Instead, she blames EVERYONE, and I do mean EVERYONE, but herself.
She blames me - a white suburban housewife.
She blames my husband.
She blames millions like me, and like my husband.
She blames the press, the churches, the... well, everyone, everything, and anything she can think of. Everything and everyone but herself.
The one person she doesn't blame in this entire thing is herself. Even the Macedonians - and who in modern history (sorry, guys, but you're not exactly frontline news in every day America) even THINKS about Macedonians these days? I don't. Except for the Bible and Biblical reference, I don't think about Macedonians - and yet Hillary blames them for a part of her losing an election. Really?
She doesn't even blink at the idea that maybe her messaging was non-existent. What was her message, anyway? It's less than a year out from the election that she claims should have been hers, and can anyone say what that message was? Come on - I dare you! Tell me what her message was - aside from "It's my turn."
Where was she in all those states that she lost? Wisconsin, Minnesota, Florida and the rest - where was she?
California was a foregone conclusion. She spent weeks in Hollywood, sucking up to the most liberal of liberals, but only because they could give her money. That's the only reason she showed up here.
Hell! California lets illegal immigrants vote through motor-voter registrations, and no doubt they did in droves because they were certain-damned-guaranteed that if Hillary won they'd get amnesty. Take that vote away and Trump would've won the popular vote along with the electoral college.
The painful truth for Hillary is: She is an ugly, small, unimaginative and crass human being married to a serial rapist named Bill.
Her biggest problem, aside from being an ugly human being who blames everyone but herself for her failings, a small human being who blames everyone but herself for everything bad in her life, and her crassness in expecting hard-working people to pay for everything for everyone who doesn't want to lift a finger to contribute are things that normal, hard-working, get up at five to get to work by eight to work until five, decent Americans don't like that.
So, what happened in November? America woke up. America heard a new message. America heard something different, a hope that maybe things didn't have to be as they were. Miracles don't happen every day. Sometimes people intervene - like Hillary being small and ugly and crass and lazy.
As an American. As a voter. As someone who loves the prospect of what this country can be, all I can say is Thank God For That. Thank God for sense and wisdom and exhaustion of the people for same old, same old. Thank God for Donald J. Trump and for his vision for what American can be. I just hope he succeeds.
Best ~
Philippa
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Why I Will NEVER Fly United Airlines
We've all seen the video of Dr. Dao being dragged off the United Airlines flight last week. In its magnificent wisdom, United's policy has been that a passenger sitting in the seat he'd paid for has no rights.
A concussion, broken nose and two missing teeth later, United offers a bonehead "apology" - complementing the manner in which the staff handled the situation.
But this is SOP (standard operating procedure) for United - being bonehead.
Twenty years ago I swore I would never, ever fly United, and after seeing Dr. Dao's ordeal, my resolve is solidified. There are plenty of other options out there. It just takes planning and patience.
As a free citizen, I refuse to be herded like a cow heading for slaughter. I will not pay for the opportunity of being groped or strip searched, treated like a prisoner in a jail or a hunk of meat.
Aside from these things, my refusal to fly United is deeper.
Twenty-four years ago my daughter and I were flying from San Francisco to Seattle. The plane was delayed an hour-and-a-half because of a mechanical problem. Right there, that raised a big red flag, but what was I going to do? I was there with my daughter and our carry-on bags, sitting in the waiting area, ticket paid for. Options? None.
We boarded. Got settled. The plane stank as all planes stink - sweat, dust, under-cleaned toilets - a Greyhound bus for the air.
Take off was fine but, over southern Oregon, there was a loud BOOM and the plane jolted. You don't think that's a bit worrying?
Sudden silence. Everyone looking at everyone else, all thinking "oh SHIT!" or variants thereon. The attendants scurrying around, peering out the windows - not normal.
My four-year-old hasn't a clue, and I'm trying not to make what might be her last minutes on Earth worse than they might be, anyway.
Long story short, we landed safely in Portland. A series of firetrucks lined the runway like a bizarre honor guard, each of them following us to the gate. United's offer for both scaring the crap out of everyone, and inconveniencing us because WE had to scramble through the airport to try to find another flight? A $25 certificate off our next flight.
Yeah, right.
A concussion, broken nose and two missing teeth later, United offers a bonehead "apology" - complementing the manner in which the staff handled the situation.
But this is SOP (standard operating procedure) for United - being bonehead.
Twenty years ago I swore I would never, ever fly United, and after seeing Dr. Dao's ordeal, my resolve is solidified. There are plenty of other options out there. It just takes planning and patience.
As a free citizen, I refuse to be herded like a cow heading for slaughter. I will not pay for the opportunity of being groped or strip searched, treated like a prisoner in a jail or a hunk of meat.
Aside from these things, my refusal to fly United is deeper.
Twenty-four years ago my daughter and I were flying from San Francisco to Seattle. The plane was delayed an hour-and-a-half because of a mechanical problem. Right there, that raised a big red flag, but what was I going to do? I was there with my daughter and our carry-on bags, sitting in the waiting area, ticket paid for. Options? None.
We boarded. Got settled. The plane stank as all planes stink - sweat, dust, under-cleaned toilets - a Greyhound bus for the air.
Take off was fine but, over southern Oregon, there was a loud BOOM and the plane jolted. You don't think that's a bit worrying?
Sudden silence. Everyone looking at everyone else, all thinking "oh SHIT!" or variants thereon. The attendants scurrying around, peering out the windows - not normal.
My four-year-old hasn't a clue, and I'm trying not to make what might be her last minutes on Earth worse than they might be, anyway.
Long story short, we landed safely in Portland. A series of firetrucks lined the runway like a bizarre honor guard, each of them following us to the gate. United's offer for both scaring the crap out of everyone, and inconveniencing us because WE had to scramble through the airport to try to find another flight? A $25 certificate off our next flight.
Yeah, right.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
The Victim (#PizzaGate)
“I hate you!” Fists slammed against the polished steel hard enough to shatter bone but the subject didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Jesus.” Dr. Sara Shelby breathed the name into the dark
room, shocked by the vehemence shown by the pinpoint camera installed in the
cell. “How long has this been going on?”
The body flung itself from one wall to the other and back
again, as if determined to self-destruct.
“Since induction early this morning, brought over from the
ER.” Her assistant was equally rapt, watching the monitor with the date in the
corner. December 26, 2004.
“Any records, local or state?”
“Nope, we’re still double-checking, but no joy yet.”
“What happened?”
“Dunno, but they did a rape kit and it came up positive.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
August, 2008
Outside the familiar window, sunlight fell in a stream past
the trees, lighting the grass so brilliantly that green showed white. Inside,
the clock ticked in the corner, marking time. The subject lay on the tufted
leather lounge in the same position as every other week for the past
three-and-a-half years.
“Where were you?”
“Grandma’s house.” The sodium pentothal made speech slow and
slurred.
“Who else was there?”
A list of names was given and, for the first time, a
hesitation and a frown.
Dr. Shelby sat up. It’s
almost there. She waited, holding her breath for more. But nothing was
said. “Who else?” She prompted.
The dark head jerked in denial. “No one. No one else.”
She paused, considering, and then she took a chance. She had
the record, the list provided by the family. “What about your Uncle Kyle,
wasn’t he there?”
The body on the lounge jerked. The head whipped around, dark
eyes filled with terrible fear and a scream that escaped spittled lips. “No! Not him, not Uncle Kyle! He wasn’t,
he wasn’t. It was me.” The mask kept in place for years slipped away as the
tousled head fell forward with a sob. “It was me.”
February, 2011
The cinderblock cell was painted a chill green, suited to
the place. A polished steel plate for a mirror, stainless basin and commode
were attached to one wall, a formed concrete platform for sleeping protruded
from the other. Nothing fabric, nothing that could be made into a weapon or
noose was allowed. Clothing was not optional, it was forbidden so the cells were
kept at a constant seventy-eight degrees and the concrete benches contained
induction pipes through which warm water was pumped.
The subject lay on their side, not moving, just staring off
into the emptiness of memory. The
doctors had given up watching. There was nothing to see here and other patients
showed more promise. They missed the moment, the change.
It was shown in a start, an intensifying inward stare. The
subject tensed, moved and sat up. A frown appeared on the pallid face. The
first expression the features had worn in years.
“Kyle. It was Kyle who did that.”
Two floors up a technician glanced across the monitors, did
a double-take, shifted their chair and then hit the panic button. Thumbing the
mike, fighting to keep his voice calm, he announced, “Cell twenty-eight,
attendant to cell twenty-eight.”
Three attendants answered the call, clustering in the
hallway outside the heavy steel door and peering through the thick, deeply
scarred plexiglas viewport.
“What the…”
“Open it up!”
October, 2011
Adam, seventeen years old and rail skinny, sat on the
leather chair in the psychiatrist’s office. The bright blue jumpsuit was still
uncomfortable against his skin. After years of being naked, clothing felt
unnatural.
“Are you ready, Adam?” Dr. Shelby tried to hide her
excitement at seeing this moment, a moment she had waited for since Adam had
first arrived.
He looked up, his blue eyes blazing with feeling. “I am.”
She passed the eight-by-ten glossy photograph across. It
left her fingers, accepted by his.
There was a long pause, breathless in its power, and then
the face that had once been so wild and then so blank, crumpled. Tears fell onto the image. The head fell and
fingers tightened with the whisper of despair. “I hate you!”
====
Saturday, January 28, 2017
How To Repeal & Replace Obamacare In 3 Easy Steps
For all you geniuses inside the Beltway, here's how it looks from Real America where we're not drinking Koolaid and trying to breathe in a vacuum:
Stop wringing your hands.
Get off your butts and start working.
Repeal the damned thing and replace it.
It is easier than you're making it look. If you just stop fussing around the outside trying to pick and choose how to approach it, and do what the people who sent you to Washington have said they want to do, you could have this done by July 1st - the start of the next fiscal year. After all, this list comes from me sitting on my butt in my living room for about forty-five minutes, and it makes sense:
1) Set the goals - What Do the American People Want You To Do?
a) Repeal the Obamanation 100%. Rip it out, branch, trunk, root and tendril and send it through the shredder. Leave nothing behind to sprout up somewhere else.
b) Institute protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
c) Make sure that families who choose to can keep their kids on their plans until said kids turn 26.
2) Get started:
a) Again, stop with the hand wringing. We didn't elect you so you can stand in a circle and whine about how hard it is. We voted you into office so you could do this. Now you need to put your faith in us to support you and you need to get the job done. You have about twelve short months to make progress - if we see what you're doing and like it, you've got it made. Keep mucking about and waffling, you'll probably be unemployed come 2018.
b) Get medical professionals and insurance brokers involved - what do they say? What's going to make things better and easier for them to provide the best service and care to the American people?
c) Get rid of the lines, which means amending the Commerce Clause (probably the single hardest thing to do, but you're sharp legal minds - I'm sure you can figure out how to do an end run), so we can buy the insurance we want and need at reasonable cost from whatever state or exchange or whatever we choose to do.
d) Get rid of bureaucratic decision makers who tell us individuals what we have to include in our plans - let us decide what coverage we need. As a sixty-year old woman, I do not need pregnancy coverage or birth control. I do not need pediatric care. I do not need prostate screenings. Make sure that plans offer me a shopping list so that I can pick the coverage that best suits my needs.
e) TORT REFORM!!!! Get rid of the friggin' ambulance chasers who sue over a torn hangnail. If someone suffers a case of medical malpractice, okay - let them sue. People need to make choices for themselves and be responsible for understanding the risks they are taking when they sign up for surgery or medication. It should not be my responsibility to pay for someone else's uninformed decision. And prevent ridiculous awards at settlement time.
Make the settlements reasonable, based on the individual situation. If someone loses wages for 60-years, fine. Take their annual salary (gross), calculate the cost of medical care for the individual based on reasonable life expectancy + 10% and that's the maximum award. Period, end of story.
3) Replacement:
a) Let me pick and choose from any insurer I want from any state in the union. If I can't get an affordable plan here in California, then how about one from Louisiana or Minnesota or Utah?
b) Let me pick and choose from a menu of options. As I said, I don't need pregnancy or pediatric care, so why should a health plan I buy include that?
c) For the people with preexisting conditions, they pay a higher premium than someone who's healthy. Why should people who take care of themselves, who manage their weight, don't smoke or drink, who exercise regularly, get their routine physicals and eat properly pay for the excesses of others? Make people who make unhealthy choices pay for their own damned care.
If they can't afford free-market healthcare, make the individual states set up high risk pools, like those for uninsurable drivers who can't get car insurance from most auto insurance providers. They pay a higher premium but get the coverage they need.
d) If families choose to keep their kids on their plans, fine - make them pay for it on their own. Once the kids get insurance of their own, through an employer or on their own hook, mom and dad's premiums go down - but make them pay for it themselves.
e) Make it possible for me to negotiate my own healthcare costs with my providers or medical group if I choose to, and then my insurer comes into the picture. Why should an insurance company get to pick and choose what doctor or group of doctors I can see? If I want to see Dr. X who participates in Plan 1 because s/he's someone I like and trust, but also want to see Dr. Y who doesn't participate in that Plan but does participate in Plan 2 because they're a specialist in the field for which I need treatment, why should I pay extra?
See? If you just stop dithering and get to work, you can get this done and all Americans will thank you. This took me all of about thirty minutes to write up. I'm sure that you guys, with your brain trust and consultants and PR people can do something just as sweeping.
Did I hit all the points? No. Obviously not. But if you wipe the slate clean, 100% clean and wash it with acid so that even God can't find it, you can start new and fresh and it'll be a lot easier in the long run.
Now do what we sent you there to do - get to work and get it done. The clock is ticking.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Stop wringing your hands.
Get off your butts and start working.
Repeal the damned thing and replace it.
It is easier than you're making it look. If you just stop fussing around the outside trying to pick and choose how to approach it, and do what the people who sent you to Washington have said they want to do, you could have this done by July 1st - the start of the next fiscal year. After all, this list comes from me sitting on my butt in my living room for about forty-five minutes, and it makes sense:
1) Set the goals - What Do the American People Want You To Do?
a) Repeal the Obamanation 100%. Rip it out, branch, trunk, root and tendril and send it through the shredder. Leave nothing behind to sprout up somewhere else.
b) Institute protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
c) Make sure that families who choose to can keep their kids on their plans until said kids turn 26.
2) Get started:
a) Again, stop with the hand wringing. We didn't elect you so you can stand in a circle and whine about how hard it is. We voted you into office so you could do this. Now you need to put your faith in us to support you and you need to get the job done. You have about twelve short months to make progress - if we see what you're doing and like it, you've got it made. Keep mucking about and waffling, you'll probably be unemployed come 2018.
b) Get medical professionals and insurance brokers involved - what do they say? What's going to make things better and easier for them to provide the best service and care to the American people?
c) Get rid of the lines, which means amending the Commerce Clause (probably the single hardest thing to do, but you're sharp legal minds - I'm sure you can figure out how to do an end run), so we can buy the insurance we want and need at reasonable cost from whatever state or exchange or whatever we choose to do.
d) Get rid of bureaucratic decision makers who tell us individuals what we have to include in our plans - let us decide what coverage we need. As a sixty-year old woman, I do not need pregnancy coverage or birth control. I do not need pediatric care. I do not need prostate screenings. Make sure that plans offer me a shopping list so that I can pick the coverage that best suits my needs.
e) TORT REFORM!!!! Get rid of the friggin' ambulance chasers who sue over a torn hangnail. If someone suffers a case of medical malpractice, okay - let them sue. People need to make choices for themselves and be responsible for understanding the risks they are taking when they sign up for surgery or medication. It should not be my responsibility to pay for someone else's uninformed decision. And prevent ridiculous awards at settlement time.
Make the settlements reasonable, based on the individual situation. If someone loses wages for 60-years, fine. Take their annual salary (gross), calculate the cost of medical care for the individual based on reasonable life expectancy + 10% and that's the maximum award. Period, end of story.
3) Replacement:
a) Let me pick and choose from any insurer I want from any state in the union. If I can't get an affordable plan here in California, then how about one from Louisiana or Minnesota or Utah?
b) Let me pick and choose from a menu of options. As I said, I don't need pregnancy or pediatric care, so why should a health plan I buy include that?
c) For the people with preexisting conditions, they pay a higher premium than someone who's healthy. Why should people who take care of themselves, who manage their weight, don't smoke or drink, who exercise regularly, get their routine physicals and eat properly pay for the excesses of others? Make people who make unhealthy choices pay for their own damned care.
If they can't afford free-market healthcare, make the individual states set up high risk pools, like those for uninsurable drivers who can't get car insurance from most auto insurance providers. They pay a higher premium but get the coverage they need.
d) If families choose to keep their kids on their plans, fine - make them pay for it on their own. Once the kids get insurance of their own, through an employer or on their own hook, mom and dad's premiums go down - but make them pay for it themselves.
e) Make it possible for me to negotiate my own healthcare costs with my providers or medical group if I choose to, and then my insurer comes into the picture. Why should an insurance company get to pick and choose what doctor or group of doctors I can see? If I want to see Dr. X who participates in Plan 1 because s/he's someone I like and trust, but also want to see Dr. Y who doesn't participate in that Plan but does participate in Plan 2 because they're a specialist in the field for which I need treatment, why should I pay extra?
See? If you just stop dithering and get to work, you can get this done and all Americans will thank you. This took me all of about thirty minutes to write up. I'm sure that you guys, with your brain trust and consultants and PR people can do something just as sweeping.
Did I hit all the points? No. Obviously not. But if you wipe the slate clean, 100% clean and wash it with acid so that even God can't find it, you can start new and fresh and it'll be a lot easier in the long run.
Now do what we sent you there to do - get to work and get it done. The clock is ticking.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Sunday, November 13, 2016
My View of #MAGA
We have a great country. That was proved on November 8 when millions of us - more than twelve million - went to the polls and, by a goodly majority of electoral votes, we effected a bloodless revolution. Now we have to deal with the future.
What can we do to truly Make America Great Again for all of us? From where I sit, there are a few things that would go a long way to not only making America stronger than it was, but keep it stronger for our future generations.
One YUGE thing popped into my awareness yesterday - our Constitution. It's been assaulted, again, by our own government, by someone who took an oath of office that declares, in part: "to uphold and defend the Constitution".
Secretary Kerry and President Obama signed a treaty with the United Nations that could, realistically, undermine our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. This treaty is intended to prevent the trade of arms "across state lines". The UN, at least publicly, says those lines belong to nation states. However, it is not at all difficult to extrapolate that "state line" component into individual American state lines.
This angers me. It angers me a lot because I happen to understand the brilliance of our Constitution.
It's a guideline, not a rule book, and it can be - if decided upon by the majority of American citizens and American states - be modified. However, and it's a big HOWEVER, it is not supposed to be something that can be undermined or weakened by a simple swipe of the pen by one person or a small group. Changes to the Constitution, such as gutting the Second Amendment, require ratification by thirty-eight of our fifty states.
Therefore, from where I sit, one challenge is how to guarantee that our Constitution and our sovereignty are protected from any such treaty in future? Simple, but not so easy:
Amendment Thirty-Four: No Administration, Department or Agency shall enter into any treaty that weakens or directly affects, negates or offsets any of the Amendments to this Constitution without achieving a two-thirds majority vote of the legal American electorate.
That wording is not as elegant as the preceding thirty-three amendments, but it covers the bases. It makes it harder for any Secretary of State or President, to sign away our sovereign rights to another entity - like the UN.
We've already had our First Amendment threatened. Earlier this year, the US gave up its control of the internet DNS - Domain Naming System - to the UN via the ICANN treaty. We haven't seen the change, yet. However, if the UN decides that internet "things" are getting out of control, what prevents them from shutting it down, or modifying the DNS access we currently enjoy to something unusable?
As it is now, if you type in a domain name, the DNS recognizes the link between the name and the IP address and directs you there, without you having to remember the TCP/IP string of ###.##.##.## which is convenient. However, let's say the UN's group that oversees the internet decides it doesn't like me and others like me who say what we think. Not all members of the UN like free speech. If they're in power, or heading up the internet group, what's to prevent them from meddling? This is something that should not have been turned over to another entity.
Going farther, because of the changes in society over the past two-hundred fifty years, we need to think hard about our approach to things. We need to look back and take measure of the best parts of the character and ethics of the men who wrote this document. We need to weigh their morals and values against ours (which, in my view are weak, at best). When it was written, they approached governance of America from the standpoints of:
The greater good - what is good for ALL of the citizens, not just for them and their cronies? There weren't lobbyists and the buying of access and power then as there is now.
Justice for all had meaning. It meant that the laws that affected the people would apply equally to them. There would be no different strokes for different folks as there is now - think of Hillary Clinton and her cabal. Do you really believe that if any one of us did one-one-millionth of what they've done we would get a pass? Hell no! We'd be tried and convicted in half-a-heartbeat and the key would be thrown away for good.
The Founders asked themselves under what guidelines and laws will ALL of us live? They expected to live by the same rules and regulations imposed on everyone else. They never envisioned a state of affairs with one set of rules for We the People and an entirely different set for the rich, the powerful and the politically connected. Congress, for instance, doesn't fall under the sway of Obamacare. Some unions and states were given a pass on it - they didn't have to buy into the exchanges and weren't subjected to the rules.
Service to America - not dictatorship. When the Constitution was written, the people who would serve in Washington expected, and were expected, to serve for short periods. They would be elected, go to Washington, do the work, get the job done, and go home again. They never expected to be career politicians as we have now. These career politicians are the people (vermin) who have done so much damage to our country. Donald Trump's term limits proposal is exactly what's needed.
I also think that it's crucial that we re-institute American History courses in our schools. Not just one year, or two, but year after year. Teaching needs to go back into the decades that preceded our withdrawal from British rule, without revision or parsing. It must be true to what happened.
What made us want to leave? How did the Constitution and Bill of Rights come into being? (It wasn't just a bunch of guys sitting around the dinner table one night.) What were the effects of those documents on the men who formulated and signed them? How high a price did they pay for demanding to be free? How did the Revolutionary War start, and how was it fought?
None of our kids - none of the #Snowflakes running around, screaming their heads off - know these things. They do not know the brilliance and the beauty of our Constitutional form of government. THAT, among all the rest of it, is the biggest crime of all.
So, those are a few of my visions of what will Make America Great Again. There's a lot more, but if these things get started, I'd sleep better at night.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
What can we do to truly Make America Great Again for all of us? From where I sit, there are a few things that would go a long way to not only making America stronger than it was, but keep it stronger for our future generations.
One YUGE thing popped into my awareness yesterday - our Constitution. It's been assaulted, again, by our own government, by someone who took an oath of office that declares, in part: "to uphold and defend the Constitution".
Secretary Kerry and President Obama signed a treaty with the United Nations that could, realistically, undermine our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. This treaty is intended to prevent the trade of arms "across state lines". The UN, at least publicly, says those lines belong to nation states. However, it is not at all difficult to extrapolate that "state line" component into individual American state lines.
This angers me. It angers me a lot because I happen to understand the brilliance of our Constitution.
It's a guideline, not a rule book, and it can be - if decided upon by the majority of American citizens and American states - be modified. However, and it's a big HOWEVER, it is not supposed to be something that can be undermined or weakened by a simple swipe of the pen by one person or a small group. Changes to the Constitution, such as gutting the Second Amendment, require ratification by thirty-eight of our fifty states.
Therefore, from where I sit, one challenge is how to guarantee that our Constitution and our sovereignty are protected from any such treaty in future? Simple, but not so easy:
Amendment Thirty-Four: No Administration, Department or Agency shall enter into any treaty that weakens or directly affects, negates or offsets any of the Amendments to this Constitution without achieving a two-thirds majority vote of the legal American electorate.
That wording is not as elegant as the preceding thirty-three amendments, but it covers the bases. It makes it harder for any Secretary of State or President, to sign away our sovereign rights to another entity - like the UN.
We've already had our First Amendment threatened. Earlier this year, the US gave up its control of the internet DNS - Domain Naming System - to the UN via the ICANN treaty. We haven't seen the change, yet. However, if the UN decides that internet "things" are getting out of control, what prevents them from shutting it down, or modifying the DNS access we currently enjoy to something unusable?
As it is now, if you type in a domain name, the DNS recognizes the link between the name and the IP address and directs you there, without you having to remember the TCP/IP string of ###.##.##.## which is convenient. However, let's say the UN's group that oversees the internet decides it doesn't like me and others like me who say what we think. Not all members of the UN like free speech. If they're in power, or heading up the internet group, what's to prevent them from meddling? This is something that should not have been turned over to another entity.
Going farther, because of the changes in society over the past two-hundred fifty years, we need to think hard about our approach to things. We need to look back and take measure of the best parts of the character and ethics of the men who wrote this document. We need to weigh their morals and values against ours (which, in my view are weak, at best). When it was written, they approached governance of America from the standpoints of:
The greater good - what is good for ALL of the citizens, not just for them and their cronies? There weren't lobbyists and the buying of access and power then as there is now.
Justice for all had meaning. It meant that the laws that affected the people would apply equally to them. There would be no different strokes for different folks as there is now - think of Hillary Clinton and her cabal. Do you really believe that if any one of us did one-one-millionth of what they've done we would get a pass? Hell no! We'd be tried and convicted in half-a-heartbeat and the key would be thrown away for good.
The Founders asked themselves under what guidelines and laws will ALL of us live? They expected to live by the same rules and regulations imposed on everyone else. They never envisioned a state of affairs with one set of rules for We the People and an entirely different set for the rich, the powerful and the politically connected. Congress, for instance, doesn't fall under the sway of Obamacare. Some unions and states were given a pass on it - they didn't have to buy into the exchanges and weren't subjected to the rules.
Service to America - not dictatorship. When the Constitution was written, the people who would serve in Washington expected, and were expected, to serve for short periods. They would be elected, go to Washington, do the work, get the job done, and go home again. They never expected to be career politicians as we have now. These career politicians are the people (vermin) who have done so much damage to our country. Donald Trump's term limits proposal is exactly what's needed.
I also think that it's crucial that we re-institute American History courses in our schools. Not just one year, or two, but year after year. Teaching needs to go back into the decades that preceded our withdrawal from British rule, without revision or parsing. It must be true to what happened.
What made us want to leave? How did the Constitution and Bill of Rights come into being? (It wasn't just a bunch of guys sitting around the dinner table one night.) What were the effects of those documents on the men who formulated and signed them? How high a price did they pay for demanding to be free? How did the Revolutionary War start, and how was it fought?
None of our kids - none of the #Snowflakes running around, screaming their heads off - know these things. They do not know the brilliance and the beauty of our Constitutional form of government. THAT, among all the rest of it, is the biggest crime of all.
So, those are a few of my visions of what will Make America Great Again. There's a lot more, but if these things get started, I'd sleep better at night.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Friday, November 11, 2016
Mirror, Mirror
In the past months, the drumbeat of hatred has ramped up. Words are being thrown around with abandon, and the vast majority of the pejorative nouns coming from the Left side of the political spectrum are being grossly misapplied. Most often by those who consider themselves to be "tolerant."
Yesterday, GrubHub's CEO issued a broadcast email to all of his employees:
Based on what's here, if you happen to think Donald Trump might be a good president, you're supposed to tender your resignation - there is no room for you at GrubHub. He explicitly states: "We do not tolerate hateful attitudes on our team." But isn't the jist of his message hateful toward those who happen to have a view that's different than his?
There are hundreds of examples of this kind of bigotry and intolerance throughout the media, across the internet and through anecdotal reporting of individual victims.
People are being threatened or beaten until they're bloody because they don't agree with those who support Hillary Clinton.
Yesterday, in Woodside, California, a high school student was viciously beaten and ended up in the local hospital emergency room because, as shown in the video below, she tried to explain why she supports Trump to another student. The other student wouldn't listen or just walk away. Instead, she tore into this young girl who just happened to have a different point of view.
On the radio this morning, I heard a caller from Williams, California tell about his experience with the "loving" "tolerant" Left.
He picked his step-daughter up from school the other day. He noted that she was upset but, when he asked what the problem was, she wouldn't tell him. Half-an-hour after getting home, the man's wife, who's Hispanic, took him aside and told him that because he's white, their daughter is being bullied by her classmates.
There are thousands of other, similar stories. They're popping up in our news feeds time after time after time.
Given the hatred streaming from the Left - the shrieking intolerance, bigotry, fascism and, at times, blatant racism - I think these "inclusive" "loving" and "tolerant" people would do well to stop for five minutes. They should be encouraged to find a mirror, to look deep into the glass and think: Just who is it who best fits all of the pejorative terms being thrown around?
And, for clarity, here are those definitions I promised:
Hater - a person who greatly dislikes a specified person or thing.
Bigot - a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.
Fascist (fascism) - an advocate or follower of fascism (facism - an authoritarian and nationalistic system of government and social organization. [In general use - extreme authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.])
Based on what's unfolding across America these days, the protests, riots, destruction of private property and the rest of it, I can tell you who are none of these things: Donald Trump and his supporters.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
"White Guilt" - What Is That?
On Tuesday, Americans went to the polls. We cast our votes. One side won, the other didn't. Now there are protests. People waving signs a nine-year old might write, screaming unimaginative slurs and swearing because the vocabulary just isn't big enough to encompass emotion.
Virtually all of it is organized and promoted by Moveon or other Soros fronts. This is a job for most of these people. They get word there's something on. They get dressed. They go out and make a bunch of noise and create problems for law enforcement and fellow citizens. At the end of it, they get a check. It's not a true movement. It's pretend.
That's the overarching theme. Underlying that, mixed in with the overt "we hate the guy who got elected" childishness, are "Black Lives Matter" and other outright racist signs.
Oops. I'm not supposed to say that. I'm white, and a woman, and over a certain age (39) so I can't call anyone "racist" - even if it fits.
On the other side, they can say I'm racist, a bigot, and all the rest, even though they don't know me. They don't know what I think, what I believe or what's in my heart. Just because I don't hold exactly the same view about things they do, I'm a... something.
What these people don't realize is: This country, because of generations of discriminatory laws, attitudes and behaviors, has deep wounds. The problem with deep wounds is that if you dig at a them, pick at the edges and rip at the scab, the wound can't heal. And that's what these people are doing.
By putting black lives above other lives, saying they're more important than brown lives or red lives or white lives, they're diminishing - discriminating against - those other lives.
By demanding that I, and other Caucasian people feel guilty because of a chance of birth, is plain stupid. I didn't choose to be white. It just happened.
In the place where I grew up, I'll admit it wasn't diverse, but is that my fault? Should I feel guilt because my parents bought their house in a town that was predominately white?
As it happened, my family wasn't much different than the families of my peers - except for the family of my Chinese friend who lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods in town, and Wilt Chamberlain who lived in a house that looked down on the small, three bedroom, one bathroom house my family lived in. We were middle class / borderline poor - one car, lots of casseroles and cheap meat, tent camping trips were the vacation of our dreams and, among that, I was raised to believe that I have to make and take opportunities that present themselves.
When I was fifteen, I tried to talk to my dad about planning for college. He looked me in the eye and said, "We can't afford it. If you want to go to college, you have to work through it." The door was closed because I was fifteen. I wasn't driven, so I looked for other options. I took typing classes. Then I went to junior college and took bookkeeping classes. I didn't get a leg up or special treatment. I wasn't admitted to the typing class because I was white. In fact, two of my classmates were black. I certainly didn't look around and pin the blame on someone else, not even of a different race. It was my situation, my problem, and it was up to me to figure it out, so I did. Should I feel guilty for that?
This is what I don't understand. Why are these people out there, marching, blocking traffic and sidewalks, interrupting the lives of other people just trying to go about their own business?
Why do they demand that I and other people who don't happen to be black, feel guilty for a chance of genetics?
If these people really want equality, as they say they do, why do they keep picking at the wound of differences? Why don't they stop pointing out that not everyone is the same? At the end of the day, what difference does it make? Who cares what color skin someone happens to have?
Martin Luther King said it best:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character"
Why can't these people strive for that ideal and just go home?
Can someone enlighten me, please?
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
Virtually all of it is organized and promoted by Moveon or other Soros fronts. This is a job for most of these people. They get word there's something on. They get dressed. They go out and make a bunch of noise and create problems for law enforcement and fellow citizens. At the end of it, they get a check. It's not a true movement. It's pretend.
That's the overarching theme. Underlying that, mixed in with the overt "we hate the guy who got elected" childishness, are "Black Lives Matter" and other outright racist signs.
Oops. I'm not supposed to say that. I'm white, and a woman, and over a certain age (39) so I can't call anyone "racist" - even if it fits.
On the other side, they can say I'm racist, a bigot, and all the rest, even though they don't know me. They don't know what I think, what I believe or what's in my heart. Just because I don't hold exactly the same view about things they do, I'm a... something.
What these people don't realize is: This country, because of generations of discriminatory laws, attitudes and behaviors, has deep wounds. The problem with deep wounds is that if you dig at a them, pick at the edges and rip at the scab, the wound can't heal. And that's what these people are doing.
By putting black lives above other lives, saying they're more important than brown lives or red lives or white lives, they're diminishing - discriminating against - those other lives.
By demanding that I, and other Caucasian people feel guilty because of a chance of birth, is plain stupid. I didn't choose to be white. It just happened.
In the place where I grew up, I'll admit it wasn't diverse, but is that my fault? Should I feel guilt because my parents bought their house in a town that was predominately white?
As it happened, my family wasn't much different than the families of my peers - except for the family of my Chinese friend who lived in one of the nicer neighborhoods in town, and Wilt Chamberlain who lived in a house that looked down on the small, three bedroom, one bathroom house my family lived in. We were middle class / borderline poor - one car, lots of casseroles and cheap meat, tent camping trips were the vacation of our dreams and, among that, I was raised to believe that I have to make and take opportunities that present themselves.
When I was fifteen, I tried to talk to my dad about planning for college. He looked me in the eye and said, "We can't afford it. If you want to go to college, you have to work through it." The door was closed because I was fifteen. I wasn't driven, so I looked for other options. I took typing classes. Then I went to junior college and took bookkeeping classes. I didn't get a leg up or special treatment. I wasn't admitted to the typing class because I was white. In fact, two of my classmates were black. I certainly didn't look around and pin the blame on someone else, not even of a different race. It was my situation, my problem, and it was up to me to figure it out, so I did. Should I feel guilty for that?
This is what I don't understand. Why are these people out there, marching, blocking traffic and sidewalks, interrupting the lives of other people just trying to go about their own business?
Why do they demand that I and other people who don't happen to be black, feel guilty for a chance of genetics?
If these people really want equality, as they say they do, why do they keep picking at the wound of differences? Why don't they stop pointing out that not everyone is the same? At the end of the day, what difference does it make? Who cares what color skin someone happens to have?
Martin Luther King said it best:
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character"
Why can't these people strive for that ideal and just go home?
Can someone enlighten me, please?
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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