at my open screen door, in search of mama.. i come into the living room (from the kitchen), we exchange glances for a moment, and he beats a hasty retreat.
i am not mama.
.. meantime, finches gather 'round the four birdbaths in my garden and splash about and share the latest birdland gossip.. .
My experiences with wildlife lately..................lessee.....last month we were playing golf in Mexico and there was a big ol' black and white snake on my tee box....Mr Bee shooed it off......somehow it wasn't a really scary episode because it was all open area............
Last week there were a couple of coyotes on our regular golf course......felt a little cautious..........but had a golf club in my hand............
OMG! I just got it......."no ryans"...........
personally i believe we are.. your thoughts?.
how will it turn out?.
what can/should we do?.
I worry abou the way of life my grandchildren will encounter.
so in the 5-4 decision today, the courts said an employer could not be forced to cover things mandated by the aca (specifically birth control was the point of contention), if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.. nuts.
just nuts.. here is what ruth ginsberg wrote in her dissent.
its 35 pages, but this stood out to me for obvious reasons.. "would the exemption...extend to employers with religiously grounded objections to blood transfusions (jehovah's witnesses); antidepressants (scientologists); medications derived from pigs, including anesthesia, intravenous fluids, and pills coated with gelatin (certain muslims, jews, and hindus); and vaccinations[?
A shameful, disastrous ruling. We clearly have an activist SCOTUS - a tragedy for our democacy.
july 28, 2012is algebra necessary?by andrew hacker .
a typical american school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra.
in both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail.
the old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
JT, Yes! Corporate personhood is the bigger issue at stake here. Citizens United opened that door and now a corporation's so-called "religious beliefs" have trumped the rights of actual individuals.
This SCOTUS is out of control.
By Chris Tomlinson on July 3, 2014
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This op-ed column was originally published in the Houston Chronicle. Follow the author on Twitter.
I may have made a horrible mistake in becoming the Houston Chronicle's business columnist.
The Chronicle is owned by Hearst Corp., a privately held company based in New York, and I didn't first vet the owners' religious beliefs before I accepted the position.
Stupid me, I didn't realize that a for-profit corporation could impose its religious values by deciding which federally-required benefits I receive. Until now it never occurred to me to worry about my employer's religious views. Now we all have to.
Much of the outrage over the Hobby Lobby decision has rightfully focused on women's rights, and the idea that a corporation's religious freedom trumps a woman's right to fair and equal treatment under the law is astonishing, but there are other insidious aspects to this case that we need to worry about. Here's what Shannon Minte, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights said:
"The majority's holding that closely held corporations can claim religious liberty protections designed for individuals and can rely on those protections to avoid complying with generally applicable laws is a dangerous and radical departure from existing law that creates far more questions than it answers."
Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court decision today in the Hobby Lobby case, Justice Samuel Alito has cracked open the door for Hearst - or any private company - to decide it's religious beliefs prevent it from supplying any form of health insurance or retirement plan. Or maybe, the company will conclude the 40-hour work week is immoral because it promotes sloth, the third cardinal sin.
Of course, those are extreme cases and Hearst won't do any of those things. But those are the kinds of extreme cases that Supreme Court decisions are supposed to allow for. Alito tried to write the decision as narrowly as possible, but so did Justice Anthony Kennedy when he threw out the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Kennedy's "narrow" decision opened the door to dozens of gay marriage lawsuits. Alito's decision may be a narrow decision, but it won't necessarily stay that way.
Brace yourself for some cost-cutting, suddenly religious CEO to use today's decision to justify all kinds of exploitative practices. Or now that a corporation can be religious, something Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and I thought was limited to people, will we have boards of directors meetings where they vote on the company's official religion? This decision opens the door to hundreds of new legal questions that activists will scurry to test with new lawsuits.
Perhaps what worries me most is the growing division in American society between the religious and the non-religious. We are literally moving away from one another, living in different states, cities and neighborhoods. We elected politicians who think their job is to annihilate the opposition rather than reach compromise. Now we may end up dividing up along employer lines.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/horrible-mistake-hobby
the old guys sided with hobby lobby today in denying birth control coverage to its female employees based on the owners religious views.
intact- is viagra for the guys.
funny how the far right evangelical owners of hobby lobby didn't want to touch that one.... read judge ginburg's scathing counter argument and opinion.. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/13-354_olp1.pdf.
Even worse is the fact that we have an activist SCOTUS that continues to flesh out corporate personhood. Corporations now can "speak" through their money and hold religious beliefs that they can impose on their employees.
What next?
his talk was about reaching out for the real life.. he is in his mid seventies, then begins to rant on about staying loyal to the organization because many of us have lost loved ones in death and if we want to see them again we must remain in the organization.
he says he wants to see his father again, then the tears begin to flow right there on the stage.... then an elderly sister during the watchtower study admits to regetting leaving her daughter behind to seek a better life in the u.s, and she is crying.... these 2 meetings was just plain weird..
sir82 and wingcommander, et.al.
I will just say that the longer you live, the more inevitable and natural and death seems.
There is no shortcut - you can't reach that acceptance and peace earlier - it has to unfold in the fullness of time.
Cruelly, the WTS has delayed that natural (merciful) process so that we have to come to terms with our mortality in later years and thus closer to the final act. For some, it will be brutally abrupt.
I realized it in my 20's, but many reach their 60's and 70's before the light dawns and thus are denied the gradual progression of awareness that makes this journey bearable.
i found this link really interesting: inequality.is and associated with the excellent robert reich documentary: inequality for all.. .
Income inequality is bad for humans, bad for democracy and historically leads to societal collapse.
It is a naive notion that "income equality" is the opposite and preferred state of affairs. One must understand the difference between relative and absolute.
she fell again and had to have surgery on her other hip.
this is the fourth trip to the er since last fall.
needless to say, i'm not having a good week.
Jeff,
So sorry to hear this. Did your mother actually break both her hips?
This happened to my mom about 8 - 10 weeks ago and it has been rough in more ways than just the hip surgery and recovery alone.
Even with this reminder to be very careful, I fell recently (in condo in Mexico, husband took a shower, didn't use a bath mat, water on tiles that were like glass, I came along and whoooooop!) fortunately didn't break anything, just bruised up.
obama speaks at us war cemetery on d-day landings anniversary.
"united states of america is and will remain the greatest force for freedom the world has ever known.".
on may 28, obama delivered a commencement address to the us armys newest officers at west point, where he argued america would remain an empire forever.. .
Other than the Revelation bits, I agree with all posters' comments.
As my pa used to say, "Might makes right."
