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Showing posts from October 25, 2020

FIRST DO NO HARM

After Trump accuses doctors of profiteering, medical professionals push back. I, like most of us, especially older people have had a lot of experience with Doctors in the last few years. Not that this experience was welcome, illness never is, but when you know that your Doctors are dedicated to your health and speedy recovery from whatever ails you at least you have the comfort of knowing that they have your best interest at heart not to mention their years of education and their Hippocratic Oath: "First Do No Harm". The very idea of blaming our first responders, our essential medical workers our lifesavers the ones at the top of the medical food chain, the Physicians, for conspiring against us and compromising our health for financial gain is repulsive to our intelligence. This reasoning is Trump's MO, how he rationalizes everything, "first, what's in it for me ?". At this point in the countdown to the election, Trump has panicked and is striking out at eve

COVID COVID COVID

Did Joe Biden win this race or was he an innocent bystander recruited to fill the leadership void created by a President who was self-destructing over a virus called COVID-19? Before the election, he told a rally audience of maskless, distanceless supporters that his problem with the press was that all they could talk about is "COVID, COVID, COVID." as if he was a more important story than a pandemic that has taken over 238,000 American lives and infected 10 million of her citizens. Your health is everything, without it, nothing else matters. Think about that, how can you support your family, your friends, your employer, and your country while lying in a hospital bed under a ventilator.  We must defeat COVID first if we have any chance of rebuilding our financial infrastructure. This is not chicken or egg, this is life or death. COVID has been Trump's nemesis, it's no wonder; it stalks his campaign, his WH staff, his Vice President's staff, and millions of America

A BRAVE NEW WORLD

  Less than a week before E-Day and the inmates are escaping from the asylum. Both campaigns are running scared, the managers are spinning the polls, the volunteers are starting to believe the "fake" news, and the candidates are digging foxholes to avoid incoming flak from the media.  The campaigns are in the red zone, the toughest few days in a long struggle. The polls are pulling even, the opposition research is fiction, the foreign influence is peaking and the legal teams are being assembled to mount a challenge to the supreme court for voter fraud, This is not politics as usual folks, this is a cage match in a pre dystopian world with the players ready to emerge on cue This is Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" replete with handmaidens, authoritarian leaders, constant surveillance, environmental destruction, and societal compliance. "So, you want to create a world  where the ruling elite manipulate the masses and create a glistening veneer that hides and

TO BE OR NOT TO BE~AMY'S CONUNDRUM

We now have a 48-year-old lifetime member of the US Supreme Court, one of the nine most important individuals in the country. The Court's slip to the right has become an avalanche, with three new members having been nominated by Donald Trump after contentious hearing processes.    Does this mean that all decisions supported by the Democrats will be overturned, not necessarily? Of late Justice Gorsuch and Roberts have voted with the liberals and, it seems to me, have demonstrated independence, they were not in lock-step with the President, much to his disgust. Amy Barrett's educational, professional and personal bona fides are rock solid and she performed well during the nomination hearings. There were complaints that she dodged specifics but in all fairness, the Ginsburg Rule, "No Hints, No Forecasts, no Previews", has been followed by previous nominees, conservative and liberal alike. It can be argued that Ginsburg had been more forthcoming with her answers than Barr

STICKS & STONES

SOUNDCLOUD AUDIO EDITION If ever there was a time to consider the power of words it has to be during a presidential election. How many times a day lately do we hear someone, usually a candidate or a candidate's hand-picked spokesperson say: "my comment was taken out of context" or "I was taken out of context". Context: to repeat part of what someone has said or written without describing the situation in which it was said so that it means something quite different. The notion of context may be the best excuse for criticizing ever conceived. we say something hurtful or blatantly untrue and then, when we get called out on it, we simply say. "you've taken my comment out of context". Excuse my English, but with these politicians, that's pure Bullshit! They're professionals, they say what they mean and mean what they say. I miss Kellyanne Conway, she was the master of linguistic manipulation, when she was blowing the dog-whistle for the Presiden

THE FINAL CURTAIN

.                                Nick With Gabi Bernstein   F or months I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a blog, a brief summation of my feelings, thoughts, opinions, and ideas about the creative process, world events, and our State Of The Union! As many of my FB family and friends know I’ve traveled the developing world for the past 25 years learning, experiencing, and discovering that we in America are not the only ones occupying this fragile place called Planet Earth and that we have so much to learn from our neighbors, politically, culturally and religiously. Will my writings be unbiased, of course not, they will reflect 80 years of living, failing, succeeding, and finding my way in a world beset with contradiction, disappointment, and danger? At my age, I should be sitting back and basking in the reflection of my family and a peripatetic life that had given me more than I can give back. And yet I find myself musing on what could have been If I had the courage and discipline to