The Rudy

03/25/2019

Trey Gowdy investigated Hillary Clinton and Benghazi for over two years (26 months) and came up
with nothing. Now Robert Mueller has investigated Donald Trump for collusion with Russia for 22 months and come up with nothing proving collusion. I'd like to see both sides stop trying to "lock up" their opposition and find some things they can agree on and start getting some work done.

01/19/2019

BUILD THE "WALL" Reopen the Government.
How about this for a compromise? Build a section of "wall" but have it also double as a new Border Patrol headquarters and reception center, dormitory, courtroom and administrative offices for asylum seekers and immigrants. It can be a long, narrow, three story building located along the must popular illegal border crossing area so it looks and functions as a wall. This reception center would be coupled with surveillance cameras, increased border patrol and other border security measures. Above the main entrance to this modern day Ellis Island would be the words, "Welcome to the United States of America, Donald Trump, President; Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives".

01/18/2019

How about this for a compromise- build a section of "wall" but have it also double as a reception center, dormitory, courtroom and administrative offices for asylum seekers? It can be a long, narrow building located along the must popular illegal border crossing area. Above the eentrance it should say, "WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Donald J. Trump, President -- Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House". We could build one of these reception centers every hundred miles or so along the border and connect them with a light rail transport train so wherever an immigrant reaches the border, they can hop on the train and be taken to a reception center. The reception centers would be legal ports of entry. All along the railroad, there would be security cameras and guard shacks. There would also be employment recruitment/ placement offices in the reception centers where employers would come to hire immigrants who would be given work visas. The employers would have to vouch for the whereabouts of the new employees and would take taxes out of their pay. Mexico would help pay for this new system of border security because it would also double as an illegal drug interdiction program and would benefit Mexican citizens who were coming to the U.S. to work temporarily.

12/12/2018

I've always thought it was interesting that Billy Graham and other old school evangelicals were against the Catholic church's teaching on abortion back in the 1960s essentially meaning they were pro-choice before they were anti-abortion. This article chronicles the shift in thinking. The article doesn't really emphasize the point, but I attribute to earlier position to the anti-Catholic stance of what we called WASPs back then. Remember how controversial the idea of a Catholic president was when JFK was running?

In 1979, McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal. Sometime after that, it was decided that the Bible teaches that human life begins at conception. Ask any American evangelical, today, what the Bible says about abortion and they will insist that this is what it says. (Many don't actually believe this, b...

11/20/2018

God gets blamed for a lot of bad stuff that happens and people ask "How could God let that happen?" Or they say, "I don't believe in God because if He existed, He wouldn't let all this bad stuff happen." I just don't think God has anything to do with bad stuff happening. Natural disasters happen because of things like weather and shifts in the earth's crust. People get sick because of viruses and infections and cancer cells growing rampantly. Mass shootings happen because crazy people get a gun and go shoot a bunch of people. God isn't some guy sitting on a throne micromanaging the universe and causing all this stuff to happen just to make you miserable or causing good stuff to happen just to make you happy. I don't think God is a guy at all. I think God is love. God is always there. In the background. In the foreground. Just keeps flowing through everything and always there to tap into whenever you need it. Pretty simple, but it works for me.

10/20/2018

No room at the inn for "hardened criminals" headed here from Honduras.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – An Indianapolis church is sending a message about the nation’s current immigration crisis. Christ Church Cathedral put up the display at their lawn on Monument Circle overnight. It shows statues of Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a cage. “On our lawn tonight we placed The Holy F...

10/14/2018

10/08/2018

Don't be fooled folks, the United States Supreme Court is now a completely politicized branch of government and it's controlled by Republicans who can be expected to march in lock-step with the radical right-wing agenda of the party of Trump. People are looking at the relative young age of the Republican members of the Court and saying the Court will be conservative for a generation. Not necessarily so! Surprisingly, the number of Supreme Court Justices is not set by the constitution. The Judiciary Act of 1869 (now codified as 28 U.S.C. §1) fixes the number of Supreme Court justices at 9. That means that it will not take a constitutional amendment to change the number of members of the Supreme Court. FDR famously proposed raising the number to 15 which would have enabled him to "pack the court" with Justices sympathetic to this political agenda.FDR's plan could have been accomplished by a simple act of Congress. However, even members of his own party in Congress balked at the idea. Democrats are despondent today because Mitch McConnell denied a hearing to President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland and ultraconservatives Neil Gorsuch (51 years old) and Brett Kavanaugh (53 years old) have been elevated to the Court. Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 86 years old. Odds are, she will be the next Justice to retire which could shift the balance of power even further to the right if Trump gets a chance to nominate her replacement. But don't despair. We don't have to endure a generation of regressive rulings from a 5-4 or even 6-3 ultra right-wing Supreme Court. We don't have to just sit back and wait for these radical conservative members of the Court to retire or die. Democrats need to rally their voters and take back the Senate in the 2018 mid-terms next month. That will enable Democrats to use the Merrick Garland precedent set by Mitch McConnell to block any future Trump nominees. Then we need elect a democratic president in 2020. At that point, assuming there is a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, it will be a simple matter to pack the Court by amending 28 U.S.C. §1 to raise the number of members of the Supreme Court to 15 and pack the Court with liberal Democrats who can promptly reverse any decisions handed down by the Supreme Court in the next 2 years. The 2018 mid-term election is the most important in history.

09/03/2018

The rich are working this Labor Day fine tuning the line they give us.

08/19/2018

I've seen the 2015 Kennedy Center performance of "(You make me feel like) A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin dedicated to the song's composer, Carol Klein. It is truly inspirational. I love Carole King's unbridled enthusiastic reaction. She looks like a little kid who just came downstairs on Christmas morning to find a 5 foot teddy bear under the tree. I just want to point out that, to me, the impact of the song is as much a result of the lyrics which were written by Carole King's husband, Gerry Goffin and inspired by the suggestion of Aretha's record producer, Jerry Wexler who asked King and Goffin write a song called Natural Woman specifically for Aretha Franklin. It bothers me a tad when people keep saying it's Carole King's song. It's actually the result of the collaborative effort of all four of them. You could even throw in Muddy Waters, John Lee Ho**er and other African American blues artists who sang about the quintessential 'natural man' which led Wexler to come up with the idea of Aretha as the 'natural woman' as the inspiration and subject of the song. I have add that I'm getting most of this info from Wikipedia. For all I know Goffin might have no more input into the song than John Lennon did with "Yesterday". Maybe he got credit for the lyrics because that was the deal he had with Carole King.

07/12/2018

"Ripple" montage. Poetry by Robert Hunter.

07/11/2018

https://youtu.be/_FnKruz-zUY

Lyrics

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men
There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone
Ripple in still water
When there is no pebble tossed
Nor wind to blow
You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone
If you should stand then who's to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home

"Ripple" montage. Words by Robert Hunter, Music by Jerry Garcia. Performed by The Rudy