A real TRAITOR!!!! Let's DO something about it!!!!!

Yesterday I received two more forwarded emails from my Republican friend: one a joke about Obama and the other about Benghazi. From the wording, both had been circulating for years. This morning I responded to them in what I thought was a very factual, non-partisan, even friendly manner, but then caught myself telling him that, to me, continuing to bring up Obama and Hillary was a waste of perfectly good anger and indignation.

Then I said to myself, gee, if it's okay to continue to bring up old "bad people," why not bring up Benedict Arnold? The guy was a general in Washington's army, then betrayed them, went over to the British side, fought against the Americans, and eventually moved to England, then Canada, and finally back to London. So he was not only a traitor, but he got away with it. So let's get the press involved, get a congressional investigation going, convict him, and arrange to have his body extradited so we can hang him.

How's that sound?

Edward R. Murrow on Sen. Joseph McCarthy

Just ran across this quote from Murrow's TV series See It Now, on March 9, 1954. The issue then was Communism, but otherwise it all rings so true even today.

And please read it all the way through before you flame me or hit the "broke a rule" button.

No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one, and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between the internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

Finding and deporting illegal space aliens?

Is there any truth to the rumor that ICE and the NSA have set up a top-secret program to identify and arrest space aliens?

Well, let's see if CNN has any guts

I hope I'm jumping the gun here -- really hope I'm jumping the gun -- but I'm really interested to see what CNN's response to DJT refusing to take a question from one of its reporters will be. Will they have the GUTS to follow up on this?

For a guy who's been credited with over... what's the latest count. thousands? of lies to call a seasoned professional reporter a liar on international television goes beyond belief. If I were the head of CNN News (or NBC) I'd be all over this like blowflies on a corpse. I'd get my legal staff to dig up anything even remotely related to the First Amendment, put one hell of a response together, and publicly submit it to Congress, demanding a reprimand or a censure or whatever the appropriate term is.

And if I were Jim Acosta, I'd start writing. And I hope he already has.

Okay, a serious question re: people insulting admin staffers

I don't want to derail the other threads on this topic, so here's a serious question for those of you who have followed politics or the news for a number of years.

Are there any documented cases of previous presidents resorting to the same type and volume of verbal or written attacks or insults on people they didn't agree with, as with the current president? We know LBJ, Nixon, and others occasionally blasted someone, but it was mostly in WH meetings or private settings. They all probably did that. But I'm asking specifically about things they said or wrote in public, to a similar degree.

No opinions here, please. There are lots of other threads for that. As Sgt. Friday used to say, "Just the facts, ma'am."

Finally out of AT&T (I thought)

We switched our cell phones out of AT&T on June 24. The next day I checked on their web site to make sure it was closed. Yesterday I received a bill covering the period June 24 thru July 23. I called them. Turns out there's a clause in the agreement that requires a 30-day notice for closing out an account, even after the initial 2-year, or whatever it was, period is over. Without that 30-day notice, they can charge you for the month you never used.

I'm going to cool down for a couple of days before I decide what to do, but, in the meantime, just wanted to alert you folks that AT&T has that little clause, buried in the fine print, that basically allows them to RIP YOU OFF.

Good riddance, AT&T.

Why are we burying history?

About a year ago I discovered Atlas Obscura, a web site that features articles, written by users, about interesting places around the world. Sometimes, after plowing through several news sites, I find it to be a breath of fresh air. This morning they had a piece (which they moved out of the front page) about the Little Prairie books and how inaccurate the food descriptions were.

It also pointed out that the author's name had been removed from the American Library Association's awards list because some people considered the books racist.

So here we go.

First, the article was informative about the food the pioneers ate. No arguments there. But I have to wonder why some people feel it's a public service to point out that children's storybooks (over 150 years old in this case) are often not historically accurate. What's next, bash the cartoons? "The old Roadrunner cartoons weren't accurate. No way Wiley could have ordered stuff in the middle of the desert because cell phones and drones hadn't been invented yet."

But what really got to me was the bit about the awards. It brought back stories about books being removed from shelves because some people feel they're "insensitive" or something similar. Burying literature and history does not make it go away. And heaven forbid someone should get the quaint old-fashioned arrogantly naive (and probably divisive) idea that we can learn something from it.

Makes me wonder if the real reason some people want books removed from shelves is because they have no clue how to talk to their kids about them.