I Am a Liberal

This sums up my beliefs.  I am not the original writer of this, although I have altered some words.  Instead of using the reference to “me”, I changed it to “us” or “anyone”, and added the words, “I am a Christian”. It was obvious the original writer wasn’t, but it doesn’t change the belief behind the meaning of these original words.

“I'm a liberal, but that doesn't mean what a lot of people apparently think it does. Let's break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I'm getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: Not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines”:

1. I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. Period.

2. I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. Somehow that's interpreted as "I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all." This is not the case. I'm fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it's impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes "let people die because they can't afford healthcare" a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. And no, I'm not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen.

3. I believe education should be affordable. It doesn't necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I'm mystified as to why it can't work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt.

4. I don't believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don't want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can't afford to go to the doctor. Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this.
5. I don't throw around "I'm willing to pay higher taxes" lightly. If I'm suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it's because I'm fine with paying my share as long as it's actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare.

6. I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their heads above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multi billion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn't have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live.

7. I am a Christian and I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is - and should be - illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize the right to live according to everyone’s beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I'm not "offended by Christianity" -- I'm offended that you're trying to force everyone to live by your religion's rules. 

8. I don't believe LGBT people should have more rights than you.
I believe they should have the *same* rights as you.

9. I don't believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN'T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they're supposed to be abusing, and if they're "stealing" your job it's because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices
(i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc).

10. I don't believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It's not that I want the government's hands in everything -- I just don't trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they're harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation.

11. I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I've spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past.

12. I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many
people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege -- white, straight, male, economic, etc. -- need to start listening, even if you don't like what you're hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that's causing people to be marginalized.

13. I am not interested in coming after your guns, nor is anyone serving in government.
What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new,
common-sense gun regulations.

14. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you're using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person?

15. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people
currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else.

16. I believe that women should NOT be treated as a separate class of human. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work, should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Why on earth shouldn’t they be?

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I'm a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. That doesn't mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don't believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved.

Abortion Rights and Wrongs

This was copied from a discussion I was in on Facebook.  The first part was someone’s discussion they had on the topic of Abortion, then lastly I responded to this posting.

‘Reasonable people can disagree about when a zygote becomes a "human life" - that's a philosophical question. However, regardless of whether or not one believes a fetus is ethically equivalent to an adult, it doesn't obligate a mother to sacrifice her body autonomy for another, innocent or not.

Body autonomy is a critical component of the right to privacy protected by the Constitution, as decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), McFall v. Shimp (1978), and of course Roe v. Wade (1973). Consider a scenario where you are a perfect bone marrow match for a child with severe aplastic anemia; no other person on earth is a close enough match to save the child's life, and the child will certainly die without a bone marrow transplant from you. If you decided that you did not want to donate your marrow to save the child, for whatever reason, the state cannot demand the use of any part of your body for something to which you do not consent. It doesn't matter if the procedure required to complete the donation is trivial, or if the rationale for refusing is flimsy and arbitrary, or if the procedure is the only hope the child has to survive, or if the child is a genius or a saint or anything else - the decision to donate must be voluntary to be constitutional.

This right is even extended to a person's body after they die; if they did not voluntarily commit to donate their organs while alive, their organs cannot be harvested after death, regardless of how useless those organs are to the deceased or many lives they would save. That's the law.

Use of a woman's uterus to save a life is no different from use of her bone marrow to save a life - it must be offered voluntarily. By all means, profess your belief that providing one's uterus to save the child is morally just, and refusing is morally wrong. That is a defensible philosophical position, regardless of who agrees and who disagrees. But legally, it must be the woman's choice to carry out the pregnancy. She may choose to carry the baby to term. She may choose not to. Either decision could be made for all the right reasons, all the wrong reasons, or anything in between. But it must be her choice, and protecting the right of body autonomy means the law is on her side. Supporting that precedent is what being pro-choice means.’

I don't agree with these laws that they are trying to push on us, but I do believe there is a difference with these stated explanation. Aborting is a little different than using a part of you to save a life.

In aborting, which is halting a life, or some would say "killing" a life, you run into other issues. I'm definitely not opposed to abortion at certain terms of pregnancy, and where rape or incest has occurred--- there are ways and procedures to terminating the outcome in these cases without getting involved with calling this the removal/killing of a human being.

I could go on and on, but it seems as those these ridiculous laws that these men want to create is only to harm women. Where the woman is wrongfully blamed and jailed, with more jail time than the man who initiated this "problem"... It really gripes me when they close down/cut funding and march against these clinics that help women through these problems with good health care and preventive medications.

Teaching good parenting for one thing, which is obviously something these men in office no nothing about. They all need to be locked up in a facility for the criminally insane!

It's a serious psychological problem...men dealing with insecurity seems to be the real problem here...taking back that control, this is just their first step.

WE must stop them! None of us should take control over another person’s body, we simply need to love and leave people alone to live the best life they can be.

Hell on Earth

...thinking about the sick humanity that claims to be part of the human race, who were their parents, who taught them?

...Who taught them their ways of stealing from the less fortunate? Who taught them to take and never give back? Where is their God?

...Where is the love in their hearts? Does only greed and evil live within their souls? Where is it that they read they are more worthy than their neighbor?

...Thinking back to the beginning of time, Genesis, and the road that takes its travelers through time, over the precipice and down into hell, Revelations, hell here on earth.

"The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek", a review

Kim Michele Richardson's novel, "The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek".

April 14th, I picked up my book. April 28th, I put the book down. Usually it doesn’t take me this long to read a book.

It never fails, but when I read Kim’s words, the cadence of a metronome starts to click back and forth in my head. That’s when I start to feel the words, the characters, the beat of these hearts start to connect with mine.  Every good writer has a cadence, but none I feel more than Kim’s.

Chapter 3, I see the old mule Junia plodding along carrying Bookwoman Cussy Mary, stopping in the middle of the stream, she hesitates, listening; I can feel the trepidation of continuing, but when Junia does it's steady and forward. The beat goes on, one step after another...then it’s either a full stop, or a full gallop. Yes, good writing is like music to my ears, and Kim adds just the right amount of beats to her lines.

Stories like these always have me stopping and starting, hesitating to take time out to think; sometimes I’m upset about what’s happening to a character, one like Cussy Mary, the blue skinned bookwoman.  She’s endearing, she’s loved, she’s hated, she’s ridiculed. You name it and Kim will take you there with unbridled emotions. And being an emotional reader, I’m sensitive to the words of every character in this novel.  It levels me to unbelief, even though I know it as truths. How one human being can treat another human being, it doesn’t matter that this novel takes place in the 1930s, it still rings true in this year of 2019.

Years pass, but feelings don’t where prejudices exist.  Hate versus love, love soothes my being, where hate turns my anger over and over within my soul to the point where I have to lay what I'm reading down before I explode.  

Cussy Mary has blue skin, a rare genetic anomaly, and is treated as “colored” where anything other than white isn’t acceptable. She’s nineteen, living with her coal miner father, who also has his day to day trials; health, danger, unions, corporate greed; it feels like there is no relief in this downtrodden life where they find themselves in.  To bring joy of the written word is hard to come by in this story, even with the deliveries of books and letters to patrons along Cussy Mary’s book traveling route; trying to add a bit of love and caring along the way to the people, both adults and children, it’s simply a struggle of one sort or another.

I have to put the book down and rest my eyes and my heart.  This story isn’t just about the book women; it’s not just about the blue color of Cussy’s skin, or another colored skin; it’s not just about the hardships of this Kentucky life, it’s about human rights and the color of human hate that tries to squelch those rights to be able to live and love free, to work free and to marry free. Freedom is at the core of this story.  How each of us finds it is shown to all by Kim Michele Richardson.

The Touch

Thinking about Notre Dame tonight, which is 9 a.m. Paris time, and something I said on
another post had caused something strange to came over me and into my mind about books,
novels I've read and held in my hands to feel the words, and touch and smell the pages,
to touch the characters; and I thought about wood, especially the furniture I used to restore
with my bare hands to feel the grain on my fingertips, the age that lingered between; and the
pews I used to polish in my church, feeling the smoothness and love that possessed them...
and the stained glass I looked up to, to read in that church and many other churches after that.
Yes, they all tell a story. Here is what I’m reminded of about Notre Dame.

I know so many hands touched those walls and surfaces over the many years...an iconic structure.
Amazing how we revere such things. Symbols that show endurance, but like life itself, you never
know when it will end.

I was there to visit Notre Dame, and yes I touched the walls and felt it's beauty and history. I was
once into stained glass windows on churches and studied church architecture, I took pictures of
every church I came in contact with, here in the US and Europe, art history gave me that love
and appreciation, and all of these windows truly tell a story. I'm not sure how much of these
windows on Notre Dame will have survived, lead melts at a very low temperature, let alone the
glass itself. It saddens me immensely to think they will be gone forever.

You can restore wood, stained glass, cement and plaster and paint, but you can’t erase history
it saw and absorbed from the lives that passed its way. Appreciate what you have now is all I
can say. Let it touch you.

"Under These Unbroken Skies" by Shandi Mitchell. Review

                 "Under These Unbroken Skies" 

                       by Shandi Mitchell 

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Never have I held a book in my hands with such sensory vibration! This novel speaks to you; Your eyes are lead from passionate word to passionate word. The storyteller tells us of human life in a day when immigrant families settled on the prairies of Canada. Building their homes through hardships; physically and mentally, forging a place to live, to survive.

This author is like none other I have ever read. Shandi Mitchell will capture your heart and thrust these characters' hearts into yours. You become one with them. You live with them.

It is tragic; It is hate; It is suffering; It is loyalty; It is beauty; It is love, and it is hope. Not one emotion does this author leave you to wonder about. It twists and it turns; It is Under This Unbroken Sky that you will live: Once you pick this book up, do not expect to put it down....until you have turned the last page.....

Trump and Destruction

I almost had guilt feelings about not watching the State of the Union, because it’s what we should do as Americans, but knowing what I know about this current so-called president, it would shake my endurance to the core and probably render me apoplectic.

It's hard for me to be around expelled hot air, even when it comes through a TV screen...the amount of carbon dioxide released into my proximity is toxic waste to any normal human, and to survive I would immediately need my asthma inhaler to survive.

Seriously...it really upsets me to watch him, let alone listen to him...it is pure evil that comes out of his mouth, the untruths are his modisoperendi, and lies can and will destroy a person, slowly, but deliberately, as sure as the sun sets.....and to see his party back these lies, and his followers gravitate to him, is incredibly upsetting...the stupidity and ignorance in this world is astounding. Over time, how much has it, and will it, cost our country?