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Moral Awakening

5/29/2016

Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.

A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

...a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past...the dead...over 100,000 Japanese men, women, and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.

...Their souls speak to us. They ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become...

The world that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth...

...In the span of a few years, some 60 million people would die. Men, women, children, no different than us. Shot, beaten, marched, bombed, jailed, starved, gassed to death. There are many sites around the world that chronicle this war, memorials that tell stories of courage and heroism, graves and empty camps that echo of unspeakable depravity.

Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction. How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction...

How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.

Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill.
Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.

Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos...

...perhaps, above all, we must reimagine our connection to one another as members of one human race. For this, too, is what makes our species unique. We’re not bound by genetic code to repeat the mistakes of the past. We can learn. We can choose. We can tell our children a different story, one that describes a common humanity, one that makes war less likely and cruelty less easily accepted.

The irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.

That is why we come to Hiroshima. So that we might think of people we love. The first smile from our children in the morning. The gentle touch from a spouse over the kitchen table. The comforting embrace of a parent. We can think of those things and know that those same precious moments took place here, 71 years ago...

Those who died, they are like us. Ordinary people understand this, I think. They do not want more war. They would rather that the wonders of science be focused on improving life and not eliminating it.

The world was forever changed here, but today the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is.

It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is a future we can choose, a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.
-President Barack Obama, May 27, 2016 at the Hiroshima Memorial, Hiroshima, Japan,

References:
1. "At Hiroshima Memorial, Obama Says Nuclear Arms Require ‘Moral Revolution’", Gardiner Harris, The New York Times, May 27, 2016

2. Text Of President Obama's Speech in Hiroshima, Japan, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/world/asia/text-of-president-obamas-speech-in-hiroshima-japan.html

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Chewbacca Mom Reality

5/26/2016

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      So, The Chewbacca Mom: do you love her, loathe her, or have no idea what the heck I'm talking about?
       If you are among the - some would say fortunate - three or four people who have not yet heard of The Chewbacca Mom, I'll take it upon myself to now divest you of your mayhaps blissful unawareness:
     In brief, The Chewbacca Mom is a jolly young mom of two who went into Kohl's and bought herself a Chewbacca mask (if you don't know who Chewbacca is, go see Star Wars) then came back out to her car where she made a video of herself ceremoniously putting on the mask then breaking into paroxysms of uncontrollable laughter punctuated by declamations of joy and delight. She posted the video on her Facebook page last Thursday and by Monday it had gone viral; received over 133 million views, the most Facebook views ever on a live video; spawned half-a dozen spin-off videos including an awesome Songify musical number; and she was an over-night - or rather, over-weekend - star. The laughing Chewbacca Mom has already appeared on Good Morning America, ET and a few other talk venues. And she and her video have polarized people into two vociferous camps: those who think she's the blessed answer to our nation's general malaise and those in whom she induces the gag reflex.
      But your really have to see the Chewbacca Mom video for yourself, so if you haven't yet, here's the link:

       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X26FuAlnnWY

       And if you've already seen the original, then you really have to see the Songify version:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAFhtY_wHyY

      As for me, I'm on team Chewbacca Mom.
      In fact my initial reaction to the video was a wish that I could be like the Chewbacca Mom. That good-natured. That cheerful. That ebullient. That playful. That trusting that it was all right and perfectly acceptable to do something like making a silly video about some silly thing that made me happy. The product of formative experiences that taught that such whimsy actually was all right and acceptable. No fear. "No shame, it's all love," as she says in her video, and subsequently much satisfaction, which is, of course, what we all want, but of which many of us feel that we can't get none.
     But not the Chewbacca Mom.
     I expect this young woman was blessed at conception with some happy gene that rules her outlook on life and that she'll pass on to her children.
     And yet it doesn't appear that her sunny disposition is the product of a life freer from care, discouragement, and unfulfilled longing than the rest of us have.
    In interviews on Good Morning America and ET the overweight, arm-tattooed Mom shares that she wants to start working out but hasn't had much success. That she's tried out twice and been rejected twice from "The Voice". That her 7-year-old daughter came home from school and beamed that because of her mom's new-found media fame she's now really popular among her classmates. Which suggests that she wasn't particularly before. As a mother who's had children in the elementary school in-, out-, and in-between crowds, I can attest that we mothers not only feel our children's peer-group-induced pain, but that a child's social popularity or lack thereof trickles up to the child's parents as well.
     So the Chewbacca Mom obviously faces the same travails as the rest of us, maybe more than some of us. She lives in the same troubled, turbulent world. But she does have an advantage over some of us: She knows how to find her bliss and it's never far off: Her children. Her husband. A funny Chewbacca mask.
     One of the premises of the film on Quantum Physics called "What The #$*! Do We Know?" is that we create our own reality to a degree; that someone with a negative or victimized outlook on life will be the victim of of events that will reinforce that outlook, whereas someone with a bright, positive outlook will enjoy more positive outcomes.
      Chewbacca Mom, take me away.

Reference:
"Chewbacca Mask Mom Candace Payne, Live On GMA" , ohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho7bQfBos6w

http://www.etonline.com/news/189384_exclusive_chewbacca_mom_reveals_she_tried_out_for_the_voice_twice/

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Crazy Rich Asians

5/24/2016

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"Every family is a crazy family."
-Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians

Did you ever read one of those books that's so good, that you just can't put down, that you're zipping through, that when you're halfway through you get a feeling of sadness and loss knowing that this book is going to come to an end, and so you slow start slowing down your reading so that it will last longer?

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan is one of those books.

I happened across the book recently while roving through the stacks at Barnes & Noble, and as the cover looked intriguing I took it from the shelf to browse through a few pages. After laughing my way through the first chapter I smacked the book shut and hurried to the checkout so I could buy it, get it home, and dive into it,

...which I did.

Crazy Rich Asians is a comedy of manners - and errors - about the super-, hyper-, megatomic-rich Chinese families of Singapore, the wealthiest and most prosperous city on the planet. The characters in the story wear top-of-the line designer couture which they buy by the boat-load from Paris, they eat the finest food prepared by their gourmet cooks as well as from the city's legendary food stalls, they go to the best schools, zip around in their private planes from the palaces in which they live to the most beautiful and amazing places in the world. Meanwhile they jockey for status, prestige and good marriages for their children in the gossip-, snobbery-, and money-saturated shark-tank of their high-brow, high-drama society. From the lavish parties to a $40 million dollar wedding, every scene in the book is over-the-top. And hilarious.

The trouble in the too-affluent paradise of the characters in Crazy Rich Asians begins when Nick, a young NYU college professor who is in fact the heir to the fortune of a Singapore family that is "richer than God", decides to bring his Chinese-American girlfriend Rachel home to meet his family. Rachel, a professor of Economics, has no idea that her boyfriend is a billionaire-in-waiting, nor is she prepared for the opulence - and back-stabbery - of the world Nick whisks her into. Rachel arrives in Singapore unaware of the panic that the news of her existence has caused not only within Nick's family, who had plans for him to make a good match from a rich family, but among the other families of the Singaporean Chinese elite who had plans for one of their daughters to land the scion of Asia's plummest dynasty.

Kevin Kwan, himself a child of the richest of the Singapore rich, describes everything in the most minute detail. He has an eye for and and an encyclopedic knowledge of high fashion, jewelry, interior design and architecture, gourmet food, travel destinations, and the lifestyle - and troubles - of the wretchedly, excessively, oppressively wealthy. There's a character in the book, a gossipy but sympathetic and world-wise fashionista named Oliver who sees and knows all in the world of Asian high society. I'm taking a guess that the author might have fashioned this character a little bit after himself.

   In an interview with Vanity Fair Kwan said of the wedding scene in his novel:
      "I’ve seen weddings even more over-the-top than this. So many aspects of and stories in the book I actually had to tone down! The reality is simply unbelievable. They say truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, but there’s such a thing as believability when you’re writing a novel. I did a lot more simplifying and cutting out of the decadence and the excess than I did of adding it on, if you can believe that."
     He then added:
    "Sometimes I had to actually take details out, because my editor was like, No one will believe this. And I would say, But this really happened, and she’d reply, It doesn’t matter. You’re going to lose readers because it’s going to seem so unreal that people would spend this much money, or do something this excessive. So those parts were changed."

     Crazy Rich Asians is good on so many levels. It's funny, yet it's got heart, and at times your own will feel wrenched. And it's fun reading all the delicious details. One comes away wishing to be able to visit Singapore, this version of Singapore, to see the people and their clothes and their manses, to visit their paradise hideaways, to taste the food they eat.
     But alas, (sigh) that sort of thing is not for the likes of you and me, however rich we may be in our own world. The book is occasionally peppered with the characters' down-the-nose comments about the over-all shoddiness and hoi-polloity of America and all people and things American.
     But if we can't actually taste the world of Crazy Rich Asians, we can at least savor it vicariously in Kevin Kwan's book, laughing all the way.

So if you haven't already read it, go read Crazy Rich Asians.
And - oh, happy day - you won't have to feel sad half way though! It turns out that Kevin Kwan has written a sequel

called China Rich Girlfriend.

I'm on my way to Barnes & Nobel!

Reference:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/06/crazy-rich-asians-kevin-kwan-asia-upper-crust

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A Prediction For The Presidency And The Planet

5/21/2016

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     One of my Facebook friends posted the following video the other day:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ppS0UlYY0

It's a video made by a Montana psychic named Danielle Egnew

...who, for this video, took on the persona of a frumpy, funny, midwestern lady schlepping a granny bathrobe, a mug of coffee and a Sarah Palin accent - in fact, she looks and sounds like a Sarah Palin from an alternate universe - complete with Alternate Universe Sarah Palin glasses.

While I recommend watching Ms. Egnew's 9-minute video, for those who don't have time I did type out a partial transcript of her video, minus the "Hey gang's", "Come on guys's", and all the other homey little upper-midwesternisms she inserts into her verbal mix.
And so even though reading the transcript doesn't have the same effect as watching the
video - and all right, some of us out there may need to get past all the references to ethers, dimensions and the Mayan New Year - still Danielle Egnew's words offer an interesting and, I thought, kind of comforting perspective on our upcoming presidential election and a hopeful prediction for the direction of humanity.
Here's the gist of what she says:

   "... I don't normally weigh in on politics, because politics are merely an exterior representation of what we have going on in all kinds of other aspects of consciousness.
      We're all so afraid that Donald Trump is going to become president. Or we're all so afraid that Hillary Clinton is going to become president.
       ... This isn't about who's president. This is about how we handle a changing consciousness, and how we choose to handle fears that are coming up in the United States.
        ...Guys, Donald Trump does not become president. It does not matter how much money he spends, it does not matter how many tweets he has. It's simply not in the cards, it is not in the ethers, not in any dimension, way, shape or form.
           Do you know why? Because Mr. Trump. love him or hate him, is playing a super important roll right now, and that is, representing a consciousness that is on its way out. The dying, angry, ego-driven patriarch who puts down women and hates minorities and acts like it's 1942.
     ....As of Dec. 21 2012, the Mayan New Year, we entered into a feminine time frame. The entire earth had been under a 100,00-year masculine time frame. And we needed to be because that was about conquest and taking over things and starting the planet up and filling the planet up with humans. We'll we've been there, done that, we're kind of crowded and we kind of need to take care of what we have.
So as of Dec. 21, 2012 we have entered into a 100,00 year feminine time frame.
     Now, gentlemen, this doesn't make you a patsy or a girly-boy. What it means is that we all have feminine and masculine within us.   What it means is that now that we've conquered the planet, built the planet, took over the planet, it is time to nurture that which we have brought forward with the feminine energies within all of us.
     ...Right now Donald Trump is representing a consciousness that really is is dying out. It is not sustainable: Hating other people, building walls, getting rid of people we disagree with. Banging the chest? Not gonna work out. It is what it is. It's not even specific to Donald Trump; it's that the energies of this time frame don't support that candidate.
    Now moving on: We've got Hillary Clinton. I know tons of you are gagging on your tongue at even speaking the name Hillary Clinton. But can we get past the garbage and the hype and the personas of people to look at the energies? Look at Hillary. She's kind of a masculine female. However, she is bridging the masculine time frame into the feminine. It doesn't even matter what her policies are going to be, what she's all about. What does matter is that she is ushering in the feminine. And if she were too girly-girly about it she wouldn't be the right fit either.
     This is about the players who are representing a consciousness tide in the globe.
     Then let's look at our wonderful Bernie. Everybody loves Bernie. What's not to love? He represents the people. He represents boots on the ground.
     Bernie is here to start an ascension in consciousness that if trapped in the flippin' White House is gonna have its wings clipped right off and gonna go nowhere really, really fast. He's doing more where he is now for the consciousness of the whole than he'd do being stuck in that stupid thankless job where you can't get a damn thing done anyway because you're working against a bunch of lobbyists and Congress people.
      So if we take a look at the cast of characters simply from the perspective of consciousness and shifting energies, this all makes complete and total sense to somebody like her who reads energy signatures for a living.
     So how we do this: how about we come out of the fear, about come out of the personal judgement of who we like and who we don't, because by doing that we're kind of buying into a 20th Century manipulation of our perceptions by the media.
     ....Everybody has their role. Everybody is playing a vital part right now.
     And here's where you can play yours: No matter who you choose to vote for in this 2016 election, get out and vote. Please don't go home and take your toys and cry because your candidate didn't make it, whether it's Trump, Bernie, or Hillary. Get out there and represent your consciousness. In doing so we actually get the opportunity to take the consciousness back.
     And you wanna know what's gonna change America? We are. You, and me, and Joe Blow, and Jane Doe, sittin' there on Saturdays with our coffee in our crazy bathrobes.
     Because we're gonna start caring. We're gonna stop marginalizing people and creating them into caricatures that we can hang our hatred and our fears on. We're gonna come out of fear and stop hating everybody that's not like us. And instead of blaming the President and the Congress and Big Business and this guy and that guy for everything we're unhappy about in our lives we're gonna take some personal responsibility.
    We're gonna have community gardens. We're gonna get together and care about our neighbor. Because we realized that having some savior at the top to save us hasn't worked at all, has it?
     So please, as you're going into your week, abandon this fear, abandon this hatred, abandon this hopelessness that nobody can save us.
      Well, for God's sakes, let my inner Montanan talk to you for five seconds before we're done here. Pick yourself up by your boot straps! Quit being so scared! Nobody's running your life but you.
If we don't bring courage forward, and we don't bring change, and we don't stop this in-fighting, it doesn't matter who's at the top.
     Let's quit blaming the President, let's quit blaming everybody, and start here (points to heart) with getting a control on our fear. You are Okay. We are Okay. Love everybody. Do your best to love your family and friends. Put beautiful messages out on Facebook. And please stop falling into this stupidity or hating all the candidates. I mean, you can if you want to, but it's not really 1860. If you really need the lesson of that consciousness you go for it.
     For the rest of us, let's just have a cup of coffee together. Remember, whether you're gay, straight, transgender, green, yellow, conservative, liberal, Republican, Democrat, none of the above, Atheist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Don't-Even-Care...you're human.   You are fueled by light. ... We may disagree, but it doesn't matter. I'll still have a c cup of coffee with ya.
..... Please abandon fear. It's not helping anybody. And it is poisoning our ethers and causing other things to happen. Like extreme violence towards women, weird weather changes outside of our climate crisis, hysteria...God, you guys...Stick to love. It's what we're about.
     And you, go find somebody to have coffee with. Take a load off. Relax a little. And realize it's not ending. Not unless you choose it."

Let's hope we all choose wisely.

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Anusha's Bridal Shower, 5/14/2016

5/18/2016

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...Continued from yesterday:

Anusha, here with her mom Jaya.

Anusha is from India.
As bridal showers are not among the wedding customs in India, Anusha's shower would be not only the first one she'd ever attended, but the first as well for her mother,

...for her sister Alekhya, sitting on the far right end, and for several of her friends.

     This being the case, I wanted to make the menu extra-special, something different and out of the ordinary.
     "Nah, just make what you always make," insisted my nephew Randy, Anusha's intended. "You know, stromboli, green beans almondine, those little cupcakes - Anusha's never had your party food, I want her to taste it."
    So the standard operating party food it was to be; however as a number of the guests were either vegetarian or did not eat beef, I left out the beef and leaned towards vegetarian.

   Anusha's Shower Menu (See yesterday' post for pictures):
   Ham and cheese stromboli
   Vegetable and cheese stromboli
   Pork roast in wine sauce
   Mashed potatoes (to put the pork wine sauce over)
   Oven-fried chicken off the bone
   Hot rolls
   Pasta in tomatoes, garlic, green onions and olive oil
   Stuffed mushrooms
   Vegetarian crispy egg rolls
   Green beans almondine
   Spinach sauteed with mushrooms, garlic and olive oil (The spinach was ultimately kind of a disaster. Though it was lovely and tasty when I took it off the stove, the spinach continued cooking from the heat of the chafing dish and after a while was over-cooked, wilted, and no longer appetizing except to hard-core spinachophiles).
    Guacamole dip with chips
    Veggies and dip, brought by Randy's Aunt Susie
    Chips and pretzels
    Cherry almond streusel pie
    Cream-filled, vanilla-iced chocolate mini-cupcakes
    Vanilla mini-cupcakes topped with pink rosettes
    Hershey's kiss peanut butter cookies
    Blueberry bars (These were a new recipe that I'd never tried before but were the hit of the desserts)
     Chocolate- and white chocolate-dipped strawberries
     Chocolate dipped pretzels
     Assorted Dove chocolates
     Soft drinks, lemonade, coffee, tea, and water

Eating was the first order of the event, and we ate,

...in the living room,

...in the kitchen,

...and in the family room

After lunch came the shower games, organized by Mary Jane,

...and enjoyed by all.

Next Anusha opened her gifts,

.... then we played one more game,

...amidst much laughter.

Then Jaya brought out some samples of saris for us to try on, as some of us want to wear Indian dress to the wedding.
Randy's sister Audrey modeled as Jaya showed us how to fold, pin, and wear the sari.

Then Jaya showed us some beautiful samples of jackets that go under the sari.

...that we could try on for size.

Audrey, looking like Princess Jasmine from Aladdin.

Then the ladies began bidding their farewells with best wishes to Anusha,

...everyone leaving with party favors, a take-out plate of food or dessert if they wished, and a balloon.

Then the party was over and it was time to clean up the dishes,

,...and the left-overs,

...and bask in post-party relaxation,

...and the happy memory of a beautiful day.

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It Takes A Village - And Lots Of Lists - To Do A Wedding Shower

5/17/2016

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Last Saturday I co-hosted with the mother of the groom the bridal shower of Anusha, fiancee of my nephew Randy.

Randy and Anusha.

Mary Jane, Randy's mom, with Anusha, her mom Jaya, and the youngest shower guest.

Me, with my pre-shower lists.
It's a known fact that I can't make it through the day without a list. Planning a party takes at least half-a dozen,

...progressively revised over time up to the day of the event,

...complete with a schematic,

...which I use to set up the serving table the night before.

People are always asking me how I do it. Anyway, that's how I do it. With lists. Lots of lists.
And, even more important when it comes to big-food bashes, lots of help.

My daughter Claire, in from Chicago for the shower, helping dip strawberries the night before.

As always, the morning of the shower it was boots on the ground and hit the ground running to get the food ready for the 1 pm arrival of the guests.

One of my awesome Posse members came over to help, here decorating cupcakes with Claire.

Anusha and Jaya setting out the strawberries,

...among other things,

...including a work-of-art vegetable try brought by Randy's Aunt Susie,

...here holding once again our very popular littlest lady while Mary Jane slices the stromboli.

Me stirring one of many pots,

...not to mention Tom in the background doing whatever needed to be done, including perpetually washing dishes, pots and pans.

And when the work was done,

...the house, decorated as a balloon forest, ready for the guests,

...the beautiful party favors set out, chocolate-dipped Oreos made by Mary Jane and bottles of lavender sugar scrub hand-made by

Rachel, Randy's brother's fiancee,

... the food ready,

...and the guests arriving,

....the moment was finally at hand to stop working,

...and start eating!

To be continued...

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Don't Buy Calvin Klein!

5/16/2016

2 Comments

Have you seen the new Calvin Klein underwear ad? Believe me, if you have you know it.
I have, and now I can't decide who's the worst: the members of the Calvin Klein marketing team who developed and distributed the revolting ad, the individual from whose nasty mind the idea first slithered,

...or Calvin Klein himself, who presumably gave the image in the ad the green light, or in any case is responsible for the sort of over-sexualized - in this case, hyper-sexualized - advertisements that have become over the years the low-slung hallmark of his brand.

       The ad, which was released last week, is an up-the-skirt shot of a spread-legged middle-school girl (or a model who appears to be a middle school girl) in a slip. But what makes it even more twisted is the caption superimposed over the image of the girl that reads: I ___flash___ in #my calvins. The message being, I suppose, that it's okay because the girl was asking for it.
       The sty of high-paid amorals who produced this pedophile's dream should be ashamed of themselves.
       But of course, they're not, and Calvin Klein is refusing to pull the ad in spite of the storm of outraged excoriation the ad has brought down on the company, including this statement released by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation:
    Once again, Calvin Klein has used a depiction of sexual harassment or assault in its advertisements.
     The American fashion house has continued to stand by its most recent ad campaign, not-so-subtly entitled Erotica, despite the backlash over its glamorized depiction of an "up-skirting" victim. Up-skirting is a growing trend of sexual harassment where pictures are taken up a woman's skirt without her knowledge, or without her consent. Not only is this activity a crime in many states like New York, Washington, Florida, and more, but it is also a disturbing breach of privacy and public trust. By normalizing and glamorizing this sexual harassment, Calvin Klein is sending a message that the experiences of real-life victims don't matter, and that it is okay for men to treat the woman standing next to them on the metro as available pornography whenever they so choose.
     We are calling on Calvin Klein to not only remove this offensive ad, but also to suspend its Erotica advertisement campaign, and to issue an apology to victims of sexual harassment or assault everywhere.
      They say that sex sells, which was what this ad is really about - not sex, but selling. However one truly wonders how girls and women - who are the target audience for the underwear that Calvin Klein is trying to sell - could possibly be reeled in by an image, not of a woman looking as sexy or attractive as they themselves would like to look, but of a 12-year-old girl as the sexual prey of a sick creep with a smart phone?
    Calvin Klein has crossed the line between the stuff of women's dreams to the stuff of our nightmares.
    And yet Calvin Klein and his minions believe that this sort of ad will sell merchandise. Perhaps they even believe that preteen girls will be brainwashed into thinking that buying then flashing their Calvin Klein underwear is a cool thing to do.
     Girls and women of the world, let's prove Calvin Klein wrong. Let's force him to drop that horribly offensive ad with the most effective weapon we have - our pocket books.   Maybe if Calvin Klein's profits fall as low as his company's morals, he'll get that he has nowhere to go but up.

References
1. http://www.esquire.com/style/news/a44834/calvin-klein-klara-kristin-controversy/

2. http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/calvin-klein-fire-controversial-upskirt-underwear-ad-article-1.2634590

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Say, Hillary, Bernie, And Donald, In Case You're Interested:

5/12/2016

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Things about the candidates I honestly don't care about:
1. Hillary Clinton's emails.
2. Bernie Sanders' tax returns.
3. Donald Trump's tax returns.
4. Hillary's Goldman-Sachs speaking fees.
5. Bernie's Atheism.
6. Donald's multiple wives.
7. Hillary's speaker's cough.
8. Bernie's rumpled suits
9. Donald's orange make-up.
10. Hillary and Benghazi.
11. Bernie and the Vermont NRA.
12. Donald and his billions.
13. Whether they were born rich or
poor. Whether they're rich or poor now.
14. Who they're married to.
15. Their occasional accidental slips of the tongue.
16. Who their friends are.
17. Who they love and why.
18. Their religion or lack thereof.

Things about the candidates that are important to me:
1. Their resume and relevant experience
2. Their plan for future health care reform.
3. What they intend to do about our crumbling infrastructure.
4. Their grip on global issues and foreign policy.
5.   Their ability to forge working relationships with our foreign allies and adversaries.
6. Their grasp of diplomacy.
7. Their plan to handle ISIS and Syria.
8. Their economic doctrine.
9.   How they stand on immigration issues
10.   What they intend to do about our national opioid epidemic
11. What they intend do about crippling college debt.
12. How they stand on the minimum wage and a living wage for workers.
13. Their solution for the growing economic inequality in our country.
14.   Their plan for establishing safe water supplies in cities.
15. Where they stand on race relations.
16. Where they stand issues affecting children and families.
17. Where they stand on climate change and the environment.
18. Their willingness to always compromise and get along with their colleagues across the aisle.
19. And most important: How much they care from their heart about our country and we the people who will have elected them Steward-In-Chief-of our nation's well-being.

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Note To Donald Trump: Loose Lips Sink Ships

5/10/2016

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   So, just in case you're not jittery enough over ISIS, Kim Jong Un, Boko Haram, Vladimir Putin, Zika, Ebola, our crumbling infrastructure, crazies running around with assault weapons, climate change, the San Andreas Fault, and just about everything you read in the news every day, now hear this:
      After the National Conventions are over and the presidential and vice-presidential nominees are named, each of these four people will be given a confidential briefing by top U.S. intelligence officials who will share with them a portion our nation's important classified, confidential and secret information. According to a quote in the New York Times by former deputy CIA director Michael J. Morell, the briefing is given so that the nominees might "'understand that they have now stepped into a bigger world' in which foreign allies, adversaries, and neutral parties are paying close attention to whatever they say, and that their words may have broad consequences".
      This briefing of the nominees has been standard protocol for well over half a century . But this time around the intelligence community is scared to death.

Of this.

Specifically, this.

    And well they might be. Well we all might be.
    For out of the above mouth has come admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to Putin's flattery of Donald Trump; a financial plan for our nation that would involve borrowing gargantuan sums of money from foreign creditors then basically declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying them back; not to mention a wish that that the mouth's owner could date his own daughter.   These among other things that would have been better left unspoken.
     In a Washington Post article former counter-terrorism analyst Aki Perez says of Trump,"This is a person who doesn't seem to have much of a filter."
    Is that putting it mildly?
    Perez goes on to say, "The scary part is that nobody knows who he really is. Is he this blowhard demagogue we see on TV or is he really a sophisticated consumer of information that will keep this information close to his chest?" In an article in The Guardian Perez asks the rhetorical but scary question: "Are confidential briefings for Donald Trump a disaster? What will he reveal? "
     Which begs the question, what should he be told?
     "It beggars the imagination," said former CIA director Michael V. Hayden, who was among those who briefed President Obama after the 2008 election. "Given that [Trump's] public persona seems to reflect a lack of understanding or care about global issues, how do you arrange these presentations?"
       And worse, even if Donald Trump doesn't win the presidency he'll walk away with the national secrets he'll have learned from his security briefing. Perez imagines Trump on the campaign trail spilling classified information to his cheering crowds, saying, “Here’s something the government doesn’t want you to know, but I’ll tell you” and being praised for it by his fans for "telling it like it is".
      Could Trump be prosecuted for revealing classified information to the public?
      Perez says maybe not. "There’s no precedent for prosecuting a presidential nominee. And since the president is the primary individual with the power to classify information – or declassify it – Trump could, theoretically, pardon himself for any legal action taken if he actually wins".
       The obvious answer would be not to share any secrets with The Donald. But, alas, according to a May 5 Washington Post article entitled , "Trump will soon be getting briefings from U.S. spy agencies. It might not go well", it's required that all the candidates receive the same information. But which information will be shared is definitely being tailored around which information the intelligence team feels comfortable putting in the safekeeping of Donald Trump.
President Obama, if he wished, could call off he intelligence briefing altogether, as whether or not the briefing takes place has always been at the discretion of the president. But since the briefing has been standard operating procedure for well over half a century, President Obama has stated that it will take place in this election cycle, too, and the President is leaving it up to the intelligence community to decide which need-to-know information will be shared with the nominees.
     Let us pray to God not a whole lot. Not this time.

References
1. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/28/donald-trump-classified-intelligence-briefing-presidential-nominee

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/05/donald-trump-will-soon-be-getting-briefings-from-u-s-spy-agencies-it-might-not-go-well/

3. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/opinion/the-making-of-an-ignoramus.html?src=mv&_r=0

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/06/us/politics/-donald-trump-classified-intelligence-briefing.html?rref=collection%2Fnewseventcollection%2FPresidential%20Election%202016

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Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls, Governor McCrory

5/9/2016

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Governor Pat McCrory of North Carolina must either not have taken physics in high school,

...or if he did he must not have paid attention in class. In any case he seems to have missed learning somewhere along the way one of the basic laws of physics: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
      This is too bad for Pat McCrory and his state, because the outraged reaction to his ill-conceived law forbidding transgenders to use the public restrooms of their gender identification has been coming home to roost for weeks now, with businesses and corporate investors pulling out and entertainers and conventions cancelling their North Carolina venues.
       But today is the true day of reckoning for McCrory, when this misdeed of his recent past must be either atoned for or commensurately punished. Last week The United States Justice Department informed the Governor that his anti-transgender bathroom law, known as HB2, violates the Civil Rights Act and gave him until 5 pm today to revoke enforcement of this law and another law forbidding North Carolina cities to forbid (double negatives are never up to any good) LGBTQA* discrimination. If he does not meet this deadline with the appropriate response then over a billion federal dollars in education funding will be cut off from the state, including funding of North Carolina's public universities and federally-backed loans to students attending those universities.
       But while the minutes tick away to financial disaster for North Carolina, McCrory balks and gripes, his image of big-talking machismo more important to him than than the welfare the people who elected him as their state's steward.
      "It's the federal government being a bully," he whined to Fox News yesterday.
      What it actually is is the bully whining that he's being bullied.
      Whine, gripe, file lawsuits, balk away the minutes and the hours until then, but today at 5 pm the bell will toll for you, Governor Pat McCrory.

And henceforth you will be political toast.

*Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Asexual {or Ally of the LGBTQA's, which is me. And, hopefully, you, too 8) }.

References:
1. http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/09/politics/north-carolina-hb2-justice-department-deadline/

2. https://www.yahoo.com/news/north-carolina-gov-faces-feds-monday-deadline-lgbt-070443699.html

3. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/north-carolina-gov-pat-mccrory-faces-monday-deadline-lgbt-law-n570396

4. http://abc11.com/politics/north-carolina-gov-pat-mccrory-files-lawsuit-against-department-of-justice-over-hb2/1329947/

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