Martin Luther King was one man who sought to do more than speak out against hatred and bigotry. He wanted laws changed so that it would be possible for his people to become equals in the eyes of the law. For the decades in which he lived, before his life was cut short in a tragic assassination, that was quite the accomplishment, to become instrumental in changing terrible wrongs in this society and seeking to make this country for all people a far better place to live. I’d see no better reason to honor this man with a holiday.

Since the time of Dr. King’s death, there have been many attempts to undo his great achievements. Laws meant to give minorities a leg up in jobs and education become called discriminatory. To bring about an end of overt hatred becomes counter- or reverse-racism. “White people” become “victims” who more often than not had it so much better than their minority brethren. They become “victims” of minority collectivist rights. — Shall we put it bluntly that in the decades since the death of Dr. King that this is the language and general behavior of bullies? And maybe they should have their words come back to haunt them, whether in print, file footage, or cyberspace. Not honor a man who in his short life advanced this society to a far more of a Christian place than it had been previously? Says a lot about the man’s detractors, doesn’t it?

The wind is up rather seriously and drifting the inch or two of snow now on the ground at the close of this day of memory for a life and time and all that might have been had Dr. King lived. I am listening to Yanni here at my mobile home and posting my latest. Because of the weather, I will have to take it easy coming back to my late mother’s house. And because I have more moving to do, take it easy coming here with yet another major haul of personal possessions on the morrow. There is one nice thing about it, the snow held off until all the truly heavy lifting had been accomplished. Think about it, in two months putative spring will arrive.

But, I guess she forgot a few things on the way to passing judgment on the opposition party. Precisely, it was the GOP at their ant-regulatory worst that made possible the predatory lending practices that Senator Durbin among others wished to now curb. Starting with, bankruptcy reform.

Once that consumer regulatory law was passed, banks such as Capital One felt free to engage in highly questionable tactics, look for reasons to run up the bill on credit card debt and refuse to correct this disputed debt situation. The latest from this bank with whom I no longer do business and owe nothing to “Case #100011785197383″ claims that $3,366.41 (where the line of credit was originally established at 2,000 and they neglected to credit a payment made to this account some years earlier) is an “accurate” payment due. This disputed situation happened well before Senator Durbin and his party assumed majority control. And immediately after the bankruptcy reform bill was passed into law.

You see, the Republican party doesn’t like the idea of “job creators” (megabuck business interests) having to be held accountable when it comes to their employees and customers—it destroys jobs—so they claim. Well now, didn’t these same unaccountable business interests succeed in destroying jobs just because they went a long ways toward destroying a consumer base? I’d thing so. So, if Senator Durbin can be called “guilty” of anything, it is trying to protect the very people who are partners in “free enterprise” and over all job creation: the consumers themselves. In any question of the free market, there can not and should not be an us versus them. We all lose if that is the case.

So shame on Ms. Johnson for failing to understand the basics of capitalism.

Employment starts going up, jobless claims start going down, and the shriek from Mr. Pelley (eyes rolling here) that it isn’t good enough! Even further, his CBS reporting crew is expected to go out and ask the GOP candidates how they would create jobs. The real irony in such a question? Is that the supposedly anti-big government party has no problem declaring that government will be there to support business interests. Just as the other half of this irony is: that business interests want government to be there for them! Just as publicly factual, that the people are being informed that the politicians they voted for (GOP by 2010)aren’t actually being represented by their own representatives and senators. As for the GOP presidential wannabes? Government is there to support the special interests, who may or may not put people back to work.

And then there is the news media whine about “part time work” where people aren’t able to find “full time employment.” As though that were a bad thing. Even if it is “part time work,” that is still employment and people are earning some kind of paycheck. The paycheck they earn, not only pays some bills but also adds to the consumption base in this nation. By adding to the consumption base, it is also possible to create new jobs. The news media engages in a truly negative view rather than recognizing that we truly are in a period of recovery, even if not a complete one. Given the percentage of the homeless unemployed who litter the landscape. Even part time work is better than full unemployment. And it gives people who have such work reason to have hope. But the news media wants to stir up a high degree of dissatisfaction over people who at least have some form of employment—in an election year!

Then again, I don’t know who suffers a higher degree of short term memory loss: the GOP who quickly forget that their pro-business policies during the Bush II years caused an economic train wreck or the news media themselves. I haven’t forgotten. That is why President Obama continues to have this conservative Republican’s support. As it is, I am sure that the lap dog news media would rather have childish GOP presidential candidates stepping into the White House doors. Rather than keeping President Obama in office any longer than he needs to be. Sorry Mr. Pelley, but you are cheerleading a bunch of losers.

So, sitting in my new home, blogging and paying attention to the news. Gabrielle Giffords and the anniversary date of her becoming a victim of a mass shooter. “Cops” that features a couple engaging in lewd conduct on a stranger’s lawn in Spokane, Washington. A light dusting of snow in the forecast. Temps going up and down in the projected computer model… But mostly dry and sunny which will continue to help me with my moving to my new home. And a soon to be former neighbor whom I wonder—LOL!—is too anxious to see me out of the neighborhood. Am I paranoid? Probably. But then again, call me only civil with the woman, not cordial. She only caused a lot of grief that I shall never forgive or forget. Moving is still going to take awhile. After all, I am only trying to move a house into a mobile home not even half its size.

The silly season of the GOP has arrived in all of their eye-rolling numerous debates, silly attacks on the president, a total lack of understanding of “Christian” values, sillier attacks on themselves. And the biggest hilarity to date? So great is their hatred of Obama in particular and the Democrats in general that they were prepared to paint themselves into a corner over possible tax hikes on the not so well off. How better to describe hypocrisy “r” us.

At least there are no deer in a mobile home park and I can work at my leisure to put together raised beds and everything else that won’t fit in a raised bed can then go into containers. I already told the park managers about that and the dwarf orchard in containers. Yes, I am literally moving my business to a new home and not just myself.

They say that this is the year of the end times for the world as we know it. That it may well be. Given the hyper-partisan attitudes of the two political parties and the childish attacks on the president by talking heads such as George Will (Obama is “a willow” for wanting to move beyond fossil fuels.), it says a lot more about those talking heads than it ever will about the person they attack. After all, George Will is contracted to serve and be an apologist to people who have no loyalty to anything or anyone beyond their bottom line. So, who cares what he thinks anyway? One of the dreaded “four horsemen” was after all a capitalist. And considering the misery that was caused from a definition of “capitalist” that completely disassociated itself from supply and demand is still being felt today even as the American economy slowly recovers. So yeah, who cares what Will thinks?

For the first time in my life I become an ersatz home owner. That makes me at least close to being middle class. So, reading what Froma Harrop had to say about the “middle class” and how they aspired to do too much without having the means to pay for it would have been a partial truth for a troubling age. After all, people do choose to mortgage against a home equity in a time of rising home values hoping to cash in on a bubble, that like all other bubbles, is going to burst. The rest of the story? Is that the people who enticed this sort of behavior, not just the middle class, happen to suffer from memory loss about other economic craze melt downs. Such as the dot com bubble burst before Clinton’s presidency had ended. People who see “the craze” as something to cash in on and get rich quick don’t think in terms of long range planning and whether this is something that has future staying power. Only people who make it a practice of studying history would have warned against this kind of behavior. It wasn’t just the middle class that suffered a tremendous jolt, so did the business interests that thought they could cash in on a “sure thing.” How long before being sadder but wiser ends with the latest economic craze? Something that the Republicans should consider.

actually, to be very fair about it, I had enough war stories in my life that developing a disorder would not be impossible. But it took being a veteran and finally being checked out for this and various other problems that I could finally begin to take the first steps to addressing what I do know to be emotionally wrong with me. That being said, I recall the recent Froma Harrop column in which “how dare the government pull the plug on drug companies raking in billions of dollars on questionable drugs that may do more harm than good.” According to the GOP. And according to the same GOP, people like me shouldn’t get taxpaid for help for the various problems that we have developed in our lifetimes. Even though the veterans had surely earned such assistance through their service to this country. Yeah, that’s right, gvt should act on the behalf of corporations who’s only allegiance is to their bottom lines, but veterans should get tossed under the bus.

When does being a collector turn you into a hoarder? I’ve seen the extremes of hoarding, people who can’t seem to throw anything out. Well, I might spend years collecting things, I guess you could call it a comfort zone to have things around me, but I also will throw anything that is broken, or should I eventually leave my late mother’s home, have no problem reducing considerably the things that I have. I collect, yes, but hoarder, I don’t know about that. All of the above because I paid a visit to the VA Hospital in Spokane, Washington today. —5 December 2011.

Froma Harrop spoke of Avastin that the FDA formal studies on the drug ended their prior approval of it because of the prospects of its being dangerous to cancer patients health. Of course this is of interest to me, my late mother died of the lung cancer that metatastized into the bone. This is what Avastin was supposed to combat. But because mom wasn’t diagnosed until her condition was terminal, for my mom at least, the issue would have been moot. But leave it to the GOP who don’t want people who can afford insurance to be forced to buy it, but on the other hand, they should have available to them what amounts to a political death panel decision engineered by the GOP. Insurance policies that presumably cover something that could easily end your life. More than a little ironic.

This is what I understand, I do have my problems, and I also know that I have my problems, I am also I hope honest about the fact that they exist. I don’t avoid the reality of the fact that they exist. On the other hand, just how reality based are the partisan politics currently percolating in Washington, D.C.? Reality Avoidence Disorder, I’ll agree to that.

Quite frankly, I doubt that Charles Darwin would be very pleased with this latest misuse of his biological theories. Unlike adaptive mutations, the marketplace is a social construct like all others. And it is effected for the good or the ill like all other social constructs by the choices we make. The economic melt down of 2008 that ushered in a new Democratic administration, the lingering recession that followed, that made possible a GOP resurgence by 2010; had nothing to do with what this professor tried to claim was Darwinian in concept. Only a few people could have afforded to build bigger and more palatial mansions. Only a few people could have afforded yachts of a size to rival ocean liners. Everyone else would have been considered lucky to have a home to call their own and income sufficient to pay for the mortgage, etc.

I didn’t catch this professor’s name and quite frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised that he has his critics. But any such criticisms as they may espouse would have just as badly missed the point as this professor’s thesis had. The “Occupy Wall Street” movement isn’t screaming for mansions when they complain about greed, corruption in government, corporations aren’t “people,” etc.; they are complaining about the politics that continues to drive this nation toward the cliff. For what faults they may have as well as the fringe elements they have attracted, they do express legitimate concerns for the future of this country and the next generation to follow.

But, on the other hand, maybe the GOP contenders for the U.S. Presidency, as well as the GOP members of Congress bought into this professor’s “economic argument.” From small businesses to major corporations (they can’t be very competitive if) 1. Taxes are too high, 2. Unions are involved, 3. Regulations are to onerous. So, in the process of “avoiding all of that,” major corporations in particular hand all possible marketplace advantage to “cheap labor” countries such as China. The “I just want the money” point of view out of all of the above isn’t Darwinian in nature. That’s just greed. So, out of all this, I’d just have to say, professor, don’t waste your breath trying to make excuses for the choice of people to do wrong things. They really don’t need any more justification for why they insist on screwing around with their fellow human beings. And certainly (taxes, unions, regulations—the elimination thereof) won’t guarantee survival on the economic level any way. Not when we are looking at a chronic tendency to self-destruct in the human psyche as it is.

That is why Darwin doesn’t work when it comes to trying to explain away or even justify why people do what they do. Unlike animals who’s very survival comes from mutant traits that make it more likely to escape their predators, humans operate on a moral or not so moral premise. Unlike animals, we determine our survival by what we do, and we determine our actions by our decisions. So yes, this professor can add me to his list of critics. Perhaps evolution made a “smart man” (homo sapiens) out of an ape-like ancestor, but in today’s society, we literally deplore being “smart” about anything. That’s inclusive of the marketplace (the driving force of the American economic picture) and politics. So, since Darwin can’t be held to account for homo stupidus, then I guess we need to blame ourselves for the decision we made to take our “evolutionary development” south. And aceept the responsibilty for the consequences to follow.

A few points can be made here about what the news media revealed about where the American workforce is concerned. Apparently, “we” aren’t cut out for hard demanding work any longer; or, we are generations divorced from the very concept of the family farm where hard demanding work was a requirement. Or there could be other reasons, does bus service run in the direction of these more rural mega-farms? Is it possible that people desperate for any kind of work can’t make it to these sites of agri-business? Or how about this? After many years of agri-business preferentially hiring cheap labor that came from south of the border, now the decisions made years earlier about whom they preferred in a workforce has now come back to haunt them. It sets on its head, in any case, the arguments of the GOP, the “TEA Party,” and the Occupy Wall Street types across this nation. The jobs are there folks, learn what hard work is. Because there is nothing demeaning about picking lettuce, harvesting apples, etc.; as long as it puts food on the table and keeps a roof over one’s head. If I were even 20 years younger, I’d travel into Washington state myself and help the guy with his apple crop. It would be for me a decent job that paid fairly well. And no, I don’t mind hard work. On the other hand, there is nothing more demeaning that sitting around whining that the job you are trained for isn’t there any more. So, get off your butt and look at the kind of work that is in fact available and start building up a useful work history.

Futher, on this matter of jobs, was something of a round table discussion about putting America back to work. One of the more hilarious comments concerned the lack of customers for specific business interests. Uh, you have to put a paycheck in people’s hands before they become someone else’s customer. On the other hand, business interests who complain about the “lack of skills” in filling available positions… The best response? Was where this woman professor (?) expressed that major corporations should simply hire and train the people for the skills they needed the most. After all, I was a dishwasher before I entered retail. The national chain store where I work now did not have a problem training me for the skills they needed to do the job. The American work force isn’t by any means the only people who can be accused of laziness and lacking initiative.

Mona Charen did a lot of ranting and raving about how the ancient Aztec civilization and all the horrors of barbarism that were heaped on their victims in ritual sacrifice that has been treated with kid gloves in modern scholastic settings. The Aztec civilization is long dead. So? But I noticed a whole lot of hypocrisy behind Ms. Charen’s views of how we really can and should judge the short comings of long dead peoples. In actual fact, the Aztecs were no more horrible or barbaric than their European conquerors. Certainly no more horrible or barbaric than what can be found in the Old Testament that was used to justify a lot of horrible and barbaric behavior in Christian Europe vis a vis the witch craze, hatred of the Jews, Crusades against Muslims, etc. All of mankind has a history of violence. And all of man has at some point utilized religion and God(s) to justify some truly horrible things. Targeting the long dead Aztecs in order to really engage in a long winded complaint about “liberal multi-culteralism,” well; that’s pretty sad. It also says a great deal about the author as well.

Speaking of addictive substances, Washington state is again in a cultural war zone over who has a right to sell hard liquor. Should it only be state-controlled liquor stores? Or can national “big box” stores like Costco sell it too? Uh, speaking of restaurants who are “forced” to buy their hard liquor from “state-controlled” liquor stores, far as I know, restaurants get all their supplies from distributors, that includes whatever spirits (beer, wine, etc.) that they are allowed by law to stock. Whereas, it is the ordinary customer who buys hard liquor from state-controlled stores. If I 1183 were to pass this time, it just means that hard liquor distributors would simply have more outlets for selling their product, but it also means, that the “privatization,” of hard liquor won’t make it any cheaper or “more competitive” with state-run stores. You would have to have spent some time in the restaurant business as well as retail to know that simply isn’t true. The rest, is for the voters of Washington state to sort out.

The next scary thought would be: what if you were Sean Hannity, out for a stroll, and some cop throws you up against a van in order to frisk you on the suspicion of carrying a weapon without a license or carrying illegal drugs. Knowing that to not be the case, you’d be screaming bloody murder at your constitutional rights being violated. The cop runs you in on a “resisting arrest” charge, then gloats about it to a friend afterwards. So, excuse me if Leonard Pitts, jr. has every right to feel outraged over how a fellow African-American received that sort of treatment. But fortunately, this cop was over heard by some federal agents who promptly arrested him for violating his victim’s civil rights. So, as Mr. Pitts states in his column, republished in the Spokesman-Review on this 31^st of October 2011, why should it matter if you are a minority; you still have the same constitutional rights. And maybe it defines what continues to be bigotry in this culture today.

It is going to be the first Hallowe’en without my mother here to enjoy some of this holiday with me. She died two weeks shy of when my dad died, of smoking related heart problems and undoubtedly emphysema as well. Almost eleven years later. So, if I proved to be quite slow in putting out some decorations, well, there were good reasons. I’m at work tonight, with a costume for handing candy to the kids at the mall. But, it will never be the same again. So, the house will be dark until I get home, and then I will enjoy my own Hallowe’en treats by myself. Light up what display I have and put it away come tomorrow. In many ways, mom’s death does prove quite a blow. But unlike dad, we had a few good moments between us, until the end.

However, there are many kinds of failures. Mom is dead now, from stage four lung cancer. She physically died late Thursday night last week. However, before her death “my family” comprising my two brothers and sister seemed to have a serious problem. Of the need to ridicule, show contempt for, despise and attack myself whom they had otherwise ignored for years. And to begin squabbling with me over her assets including the house in her name, the house where I have put my home based business. Yes, before she dies. Mom was never wealthy. She had some investments. Her greatest investment was only the house she bought after selling the old place. And given the current market, it would not be as much now as she paid for it. Yet, my “family” still wants to fight over “the spoils” as it were by how they behave toward myself. Shall we put it bluntly, that some failures are never learned from if those who commit them intend to go on repeating them.

Because I am quite poor this is not something I can personally fight, but the nice thing about my particular business, is that it is ultimately portable. But regrettably after more than seven years of establishing my business here, “my family” who have their own homes, their own lives, want a piece of something they never actually contributed to but think they are “entitled” to it anyway. Myself? A section 8 housing voucher sounds like a good idea. As long as I can put my business back together, have my feline company with me, and continue to have something to look forward to well into retirement. What I call my own little success story after a long hard life of seeing constant failure. But, the company of “my family” well, that leaves a lot to be desired. After the last few weeks of turmoil, especially from “my family;” I could use some real alone time: to sort things out and to ultimately make my plans for the future without mom.

Mom could have gotten an apartment. Establishing a business part agricultural would have been rather interesting in an apartment. But what would have been truly hilarious is for “the family” to have to try vying for a rented apartment and having to settle for a piece of mom’s financial assets, what ever was left of it. But the real reason for the bitch fit over the house which mom bought and at the time fully intended to leave to me? Well, try the neighbors. To go in and be an executor of an estate that includes my Farmers’ Market based business and decide that it can simply be placed on the open market (good luck that it can be sold right away) is because a bitch for a neighbor decided that she didn’t like the fact I have feline company and what they did to the wall paper (very old) and the carpet (real cheap). Nice justification for wanting to dump it on the market and leaving me without a home. Use the neighbors. So, how to put it bluntly, not only can’t my family wait for mom to die, but they are also going to engage in a slug fest with me over whether I can continue to live here even before mom dies. Including attacking my character. But then, what can I say? We grew up in a very abusive environment, it was ultimately something that got taught to my brothers and sister. But whether they were prepared to pass that on to their own families, I hope not. But they were prepared to make sure I got the brunt of it in the weeks prior to mom’s death, and on the day of her death. In which case, a section 8 housing voucher becomes even more appealing. I won’t have to deal with over-grown two year olds. I get something I like, I won’t be leaving a forwarding address. Seriously.

But while I apply for this and other available assistance, it will take time for the dust to settle. I have no problem moving on. But it will take time before I know what I have to move forward to. There is still work, I got in some extra hours last night. I have a customer for some knitted goods that I am going to make for her. So there is a guarantee that I can extend my business beyond the market itself. I have something to work for, something to look forward to, that is my story of success. I can only wonder what my “family” will have to look forward to when they are only able to hand the house keys to? And then can only go “home” from here. I think, that it will have proven their failure. I have my own home ultimately, work toward having a life for myself; like Steve Jobs, no setback will stop me.

“60 Minutes” of CBS ran a recent expose on General Electric’s CEO. Immault?—I think. Not certain of the spelling. In any case, President Obama made this GOP CEO the new jobs czar. Whether that should be regarded as a major political mistake or simply laugh out loud hilarious, only time will tell. However, there were certain things that he said that caused some eye-rolling. Like the developing market in Brazil, for example. Yeah, he created a market for his products, including putting in a factory for it in Brazil. After he hired a few thousand people there, voila! and he had a developing market. If there was anything that he could represent, that is exactly what other now global enterprises also did, decided to create their markets somewhere else, hired people in foreign countries, invested in new factories, etc.; and had their market ready to go.

Now cut to the various GOP presidential wannabes who waste a lot of breath promising the moon to the American voter. Oh, if we cut corporate taxes to zero… Or Herman Cain declaring, let’s adopt the 999 plan… They would do better to listen to the guy who heads General Electric, cutting the corporate tax rate to zero isn’t going to make General Electric abandon its investment in Brazil, China, or anywhere else that G.E. wants to go to remain global. Nor is the 999 plan going to remind global enterprises of any sort that the market they abandon here in the U.S. is still one they could develop if they choose. Only, that would put people back to work, wouldn’t it? So, as far as I am concerned, the GOP are collectively talking through their hats or living on Fantasy Island.

As far as cutting corporate tax rates to zero means, these corporations actually don’t really pay taxes. So, why bother? Senator Rick Santorum on the “Early Show” can do far better than that, like tell the truth.