Revenge

Revenge

"If you will allow Poirot to offer you a piece of wise advice: the pursuit of revenge is rarely a good idea".

- Agatha Christie

Such Tiny Hands

Such Tiny Hands

"People with a grudge against the world are always dangerous. They seem to think life owes them something... It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy."

- Agatha Christie

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The Kind Of Thing That Happens

The Kind Of Thing That Happens

“It is the kind of thing that happens to you when you are stupid... Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them.”

- Agatha Christie

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Terribly Revealing

Terribly Revealing

"Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind and your soul is revealed by your actions."

- Agatha Christie

Old Sins

Old Sins

“Old sins have long shadows,” quoted Poirot. “As we advance through life, we learn the truth of that saying.”

- Agatha Christie

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The Compounding Interest of Lies

The Compounding Interest of Lies

"On the whole, you know, people tell you the truth. Because it is easier! Because it is less strain on the inventive faculties! You can tell one lie - or two lies - or three lies or even four lies - but you cannot lie all the time. And so - the truth becomes plain"

- Agatha Christie

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Authoritarian Bluster Cluster F*ck

 
Authoritarian Bluster Cluster F*ck

"If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority—and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves".

 

-Agatha Christie

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The Essence of Successful Deception

 

The Essence of Successful Deception

"To know when to use the truth was the essence of successful deception."

- Agatha Christie

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The Deception Exemption

The Deception Exemption

"I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself"

- Agatha Christie

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Dangerous Conversations

Dangerous Conversations

"Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide."

- Agatha Christie

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Stupidity

Stupidity

"Stupidity - it is the sin that is never forgiven and always punished."

- Agatha Christie

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Nothing But A Loin Cloth

Nothing But A Loin Cloth

“To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his action as a sane man - given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical.”

- Agatha Christie

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What Is Madness?

What Is Madness?

"What is madness? I can assure you that the more we study the subject, the more difficult we find it to pronounce. We all practice a certain amount of self-deception, and when we carry it so far as to believe we are the Czar of Russia, we are shut up or restrained. But there is a long road before we reach that point."

- Agatha Christie

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It Walks The Earth!

It Walks The Earth!

"Nowadays, no one believes in evil. It is considered, at most, a mere negation of good. Evil, people say, is done by those who know no better - who are undeveloped - who are to be pitied rather than blamed. But... evil is real! It is a fact! I believe in evil as I believe in good. It exists! It is powerful! It walks the earth!"

- Agatha Christie

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Evil Will Come...

Evil Will Come...

"Do not open your heart to evil… Because - if you do- evil will come... Yes, very surely evil will come... It will enter in and make its home within you, and after a little while it will no longer be possible to drive it out."

- Agatha Christie

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The Old Savagery

The Old Savagery

"We see it all around us today - in political creeds, in the conduct of nations. A reaction from humanitarianism - from pity - from brotherly good-will. The creeds sound well sometimes - a wise regime - a beneficent government - but imposed by force, resting on a basis of cruelty and fear. Opening  the door, these apostles of violence are letting out the old savagery, the old delight in cruelty for its own sake! Man is an animal very delicately balanced. He has one prime necessity - to survive. To advance too quickly is as fatal as to lag behind. He must survive! He must, perhaps, retain some of the old savagery, but he must not - no, definitely he must not - deify it!"

- Agatha Christie

Less Than Human...

"Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human. Your criminal is someone who wants to be important, but who never will be important, because he'll always be less than a man."

- Agatha Christie

Weekend Onesie: Just Another Brick...

Weekend Onesie: Just Another Brick...

File this under: whatever happened to...?

Remember 'the wall?' No, not Pink Floyd's masterpiece... the one the orange ogre promised everyone he would build. 

He had four years to get 'er done. And... what became of that? 

Well, you don't have to search very hard on Google to find all the answers. In particular, there are articles by John B. Washington of The Atlantic, and CNN's Ed Lavandera, Ashley Killough and Catherine E. Shoichet, which shed more than a little light on the whole debacle. 

Here are some 'fun' facts:

HISTORY

In the 1990's, the federal government built the first segments of the border wall along major cities in the U.S. Southwest: El Paso, TX, Nogales, AZ , and San Diego, CA. It utilized recycled steel from helicopter landing mats left over from the Vietnam War and materials from former Japanese internment camps. 

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THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

One of the tenants of President Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign was that he would make a clean break from the policies of the Trump administration. 

On his first day in office, President Biden declared, "It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall."

Halting a project of this size remains a political and logistical quagmire.

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 THE POLITICAL FALLOUT

In October, 2021 both Texas and Missouri sued the Biden administration for halting border-wall construction and not using the funds specifically appropriated by Congress for that purpose. This was is an effort to force the administration to resume building the wall.

Despite the lawsuit, large-scale wall-raising isn’t likely to happen. Trump infamously had to bypass Congress and stretch the definition of a national emergency in order to secure funding.

Myles Traphagen, who monitors the effects of border enforcement on the environment for the Wildlands Network has  said, the wall represents the "erosion of the democratic process, compromising the integrity of environmental laws, and a fake emergency."

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COST AND WASTE

According to the Congressional Research Service, the Trump administration directed $16.4 billion in funding to his pet project. Most of those funds, about $10 billion, came from the Department of Defense. An April, the DOD estimated that an addition $1.4 billion in suspension and termination costs may be incurred. 

"We know how much an F-35 fighter costs and how much components cost for the latest Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, but everything regarding the borderlands wall is severely obscured from public review and scrutiny." - Myles Traphagen, Wildlands Network 

Tens of thousands of heavy steel slats are slowly rusting in the open air throughout the southwestern borderlands.

These slats, called 'bollards,' are 18 or 33 feet long and filled with concrete and rebar, making recycling them incredibly difficult. To reuse the metal, someone would have to cut out the concrete, then cut up the steel, before turning it into scrap metal - a process which significantly diminishes resale value.

One site in New Mexico has about 31,000 bollards. Another 20,000 are spread across four sites in Arizona; a few thousand more sit in the chaparral hills outside San Diego. They are/were worth at least a quarter of a billion dollars.

One steel manufacturer which supplied material for the border wall estimated that each bollard costs about $9,000, not including modifications (welding, steel panels, rebar and concrete) or installation costs. That means about half a billion dollars’ worth of steel is sitting in the sun in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

"The government will seek to transfer usable material to other federal agencies before considering material for donation or sale. We have no plans for separating the concrete from the excess bollards for disposition."  - Jay Field, a public-affairs officer at the Army Corps of Engineers

Along with the steel, contractors have left light poles, electrical supplies, crushed aggregate, processed riprap rock, sand, culvert materials, and piping - worth about $350 million - sitting unused in the desert. Itemize costs of materials are unavailable, and anti-wall watchdogs put that cost significantly higher.

The border wall now runs much of the length of Arizona, which is where most of the construction took place over the past four years. Given the difficult terrain in Guadalupe Canyon, the wall erected there cost about $41 million a mile to build.

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THE ENVIRONMENTAL FALLOUT

"It's kind of a bizarre scene because we've got this huge amount of devastation, this massive swath of land that's been blasted open, and nobody knows what's gonna happen next." 

- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist

Within sight of Guadalupe Canyon, in the southeastern corner of Arizona, land made up of rounded buttes and steep canyons - critical habitat for jaguars and other endangered cross-border species - crews were dynamite-blasting into mountain sides in order to build the wall.

"It is enraging. We have watched thousands of pounds of dynamite be detonated in wilderness areas, in corridors for endangered species, in places where there is not frequent migration from people or smugglers. They have cut through an entire mountain range to build a small section of wall that to someone in DC was just another mile on the tally." 

- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist

Entire ecosystems are imperiled by the wall. 

"At least 93 endangered and threatened species - think jaguars, ocelots, Mexican gray wolves - are pushed nearer to extinction by border walls, Walls in the wild destroy habitat, alter waterflows, and disrupt wildlife migrations." 

- Russ McSpadden, of the Center for Biological Diversity

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MAINTANENCE COSTS

The existing wall is easily sawed through. It has holes and gaps, and needs near-constant repairs and monitoring.

 
Some contractors are still being paid to maintain already built segments of wall, or guard leftover material. 

In the Tucson, a private company, Southwest Valley Constructors, was awarded a $524 million contract "for design build of the Tucson sector barrier wall replacement project." The completion date for that section, still unfinished, was September 7, 2021. Southwest Valley Constructors received three other federal contracts for border-wall construction, with its multiple contracts adding up to more than three-quarters of a billion dollars.

"We want to see these contracts canceled, and we want to see the remaining billions of dollars left in those contracts used to restore and revegetate this beautiful landscape." 

- Laiken Jordahl, environmental activist

A report from GOP staff on the Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, written by aides to pro-border-wall Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, claims that the Biden administration is spending as much as $3 million a day paying subcontractors to guard border-wall materials and keep work sites safe. (That number has not been verified by an outside source.)

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THE HUMAN FALLOUT

The border wall’s opponents claim that the wall itself, not migration, is the crisis. Even half-built, the existing parts of the wall force migrants into ever more remote, ever more perilous crossing zones. Some of these zones are seeing record numbers of migrant deaths. 

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Only in America...

The Immigrant - Neil Sedaka

The Truth About Fake News

The Truth About Fake News

Whenever the orange ogre screams ‘Fake News’, I used to freak out a bit.

What did he mean?

When you or I hear that term, ‘Fake News’, what jumps to mind? I immediately question the integrity of the reporter. The facts? Are the facts wrong? Is that what the gaseous-ass is complaining about?

No.

I finally figured it out.

It's another dog whistle.

When his followers hear him spew, ‘Fake News’, what he’s saying isn’t that the story’s narrative is false, the facts, wrong. No. What he is telling them is… never mind. Nothing to see here. Go about your business. We have this handled. Don’t worry about this. Now, go back to your lives. You have more important things to concern yourselves with.

And his followers, because not only do they not like to think for themselves, they just plain don’t like to think at all, are only too happy to comply. Yay. Something else they don’t have to concern themselves with. They can go back to watching NASCAR and playing Grand Theft Auto, or shop at Wal-Mart to add to their hoard, or get themselves more deep-fried Ick-Fil-A sandwiches. With fries. And a 72 oz. Diet Coke.

See? They were right to trust this man. To vote for this man. Remember that other man? So much to worry about. To think about. Remember? He kept telling us to think about this, think about that? He kept telling us we had to do things. But this man? He has everything under control. He tells us who is good (we are!) and who is bad (everybody else). He is the most best-est ever.

He’s a friggin’ genius!

Jan. 2017 - Apr. 2020

I don’t know why it took me so long to decipher this. I think it was the alarm that kept going off in my own head regarding journalistic integrity that kept me good and distracted. I kept thinking it was a message meant for me. So, I struggled to make sense of it, from my perspective.

But that’s the wrong perspective…

I remember exactly where I was sitting when I came to this realization - on my Mom’s couch. We were having coffee and watching the news. A story came on - I think it was something about Covid-19 and testing, and my Mom told me that her friend, Toni, told her that what that reporter was saying was fake news, so she didn’t have to pay attention to it anymore. It didn’t concern her.

And I was flabbergasted. Sputtering. And then it dawned on me - ‘Fake News’ was like being handed a get-out-of-jail-free card. A we-aren’t-responsible-for-our-actions card. And that? That explains a lot of what we are seeing in these no-longer United States.

Those people who refuse to wear a mask when shopping at the supermarket? Those people who demand that restaurants reopen so they don’t have to cook for themselves anymore and go to the beach in droves or attend a political rally? Or demand that school’s reopen so they don’t have to take care of the kids they chose to bring into this world?

That person who hung a noose in Bubba Wallace’s garage? That white woman who called 911 because a Black man was walking in the park? Those two wannabe bounty hunters who hunted down Ahmaud Arbery?

That cop who killed George Floyd?

They have all been given permission to be their most awful selves. 

And so they are doing exactly that. Well, the orange one said it was okay. Immigration! Our precious borders. People who are different! We have the right to stand up for what we believe in! You know, like Black people were better off as slaves. And the South never lost that damn war. And Columbus discovered America… well, there was no one here.

He’s given them permission to ignore facts. To ignore history.

They’ve also been given permission to dismiss science.

You see, some people view science the way I view religion. I see Jesus as propaganda. A means of control. They view science the same way.

It’s cultural. It’s why southern states want God in the classroom. So they can downplay the science stuff. Due to their need to over-simplify their lives (because they are lazy - aren’t we all?), they pit the two against each other. For them, it’s a death match and only one can come out alive. And because Jesus promises, well, all sorts of things - salvation, eternal life, forgiveness (you know, for doing things like calling 911 because a Black man is walking in a park or kneeling on someone’s neck) and the possibility of mind-boggling wealth - based on the percentage of your monthly SSI payment you are willing to tithe so your Pastor/Reverend/Financial Guru can afford those Armani suits, lake homes, lavish trips and fancy automobiles. Because Jesus wouldn’t want him walking around in G.D. rags. Oh, yeah… and so you can get into heaven, or whatever. 

Religiosity - 2016

Because people are lazy. Why earn your way into heaven by doing good works and doing the right thing when you can just buy your way in? And - it feels good to be righteous. To win.

And science? Science is hard. I mean, it is practically math! You have to read. Religion is easier. You go to church and get spoon-fed stories. Stories! A lot more interesting than a bunch of numbers and dissecting things...

Besides... What does science have to offer? Nothing.

Science says all those deep-fried sandwiches you buy at Ick-A-Fil are bad for you. They make you fat. That 72 ounce soda you get at the Pic N Save? Bad for you. Gives you the sugar beeties. Science tells you to wear that mask. To social distance. To wash your hands. To watch your diet. To take your insulin. Blah, blah, blah...

Bah. Science.

Science is a bully and just gets in the way of all your fun.

Besides, everybody knows the reason you are 100 lbs. overweight is glandular. It’s all glandular.

Obesity - 2018

Because if it wasn’t, and science was right… you could do something about it. Like muscle up some self control. But, naw. Science is junk… unlike those delicious waxy Little Debbie snack cakes you eat a box of every day. Hey, they’s only $1.09 for a whole box!

Yeah, science is all Fake News.

Now, I hate to use terms like ‘they’ and ‘them’. I know that those terms are divisive. Just as divisive as terms like ‘Fake News’ and ‘Big Hoax’.

And I know that words feed behavior. And it seems to me that both are at the crux of what’s wrong in this country right now.

And I know it’s not just the south. They’re merely an easy target because they’ve made themselves one.

What’s it going to take to fix it? What always takes:

Personal responsibility, hard work, a willingness to listen.

Empathy, understanding.

Owning our shit.

And we, in this country? We have a lot to own.

The other day, I had to explain to my mother why reparations still need to be made for what was done to the Black community. She sputtered, “But it’s been so long.” Yes. And we still haven’t taken care of that.

I told her, one idea to make things right? Just as we handed the casinos over to the Native Americans, we should legalize marijuana and hand that industry over to the Black community. “But why?” she asked.

Because we kidnapped people, tore them from their native land, tore them from their families and everything they knew, brought them to this country to build this country, to build an economy, and then treated them horribly - worse than horrible - what was done was inhumane. 

It still is...

Africans Kidnapped for Slave Trade: 1501-1875

Just imagine what a magnificent continent Africa would be, had we not robbed them of a future?

And the same is true of Native Americans. Imagine what an interesting and marvelous nation they would have developed?

But my mother still struggles to understand. I get it. It has taken me a lifetime to get to where I am.

Words matter. She was brainwashed. Just as I was. To believe in a false history, a false narrative. A history that painted white people as saviors… that takes a long time to work through.

But it is time. To do that.

Time to do the hard work.

And that?

That’s not 'Fake News'.

People Get Ready - Curtis Mayfield

Think! - Aretha Franklin

Times Like These...

I, of course, missed out on the whole #BlackoutTuesday thing. Always a step behind. But, I have shared plenty of thoughts on here about our current unrest and the need for change.
 
Yes, Black Lives Matter. And I would like to believe that this time... a change is going to come. 
 
The State of Minnesota has announced a sweeping human rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department. Which is a start. But it's not enough. For it's not just Minneapolis. Racism, homophobia and misogynistic attitudes permeate law enforcement throughout Minnesota... throughout this country.  
 
And how do we fix that? How do you teach empathy? How do we show people that to understand the plight of another demonstrates strength, not weakness?
 
Is there a textbook? A method? An instructional film? Something that reaches into the hearts and minds and brings about an evolution of spirit which generates compassion?
 
If there is, I haven’t heard of it. I haven't seen it.
 
So we investigate, identify and cast out hatred, but to what end?
 
To root out hatred is not enough. Because that hatred will simply find a new place to hide. Hatred flourishes in the shadows, on the fringes of society, where it waits for circumstances to exploit and gain advantage. We've witnessed this type of opportunistic fascism over and over again. Incendiary groups disrupting a movement towards change, kidnapping its message and momentum to spread their own misinformation and poisonous doctrine.
 
So, to merely drive it out of one place means allowing it to flourish in another.
 
And that is the nature of being caught in a cycle, a loop of behavior you can't escape. 

To be stuck in the middle of something you can't get out of. 
 
What is the key that unlocks the heart and mind and releases an individual from such a prison? 
 
We must approach with love, kindness and compassion. And we will be branded weak and insignificant in a world that values noise and flash and violence. Our methods will be determined ineffective and soft because the crunch of the jackboot will do all that it can to drown us out. But we must persevere. Like the tiny seed that spits the rock, our numbers must grow and join forces. For there is strength in numbers, and those who believe in the power of love far outnumber those who choose to live in darkness. So…
 
Bring the light.
 
Be the light.

Found this at http://www.seducedbythenew.com/

A super site, sharing all sorts of wonderful things. But this image... I thought it perfect for these times.

Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out  - U2

Times Like These - Foo Fighters