Hard to live without our furry friends. Its been over 20 years since Pucky and Roscoe , left, with beautiful portrait by their late mother a d my sister, Joan , taken here i’nthe large bathroom of my Laf home where we had four great years together I’ll never forget. Numerous cats since then since i don’t have a good yard for dogs. New additions Oreo, 1, and best buddy Archie, 13, now enjoy where Zack and Orange julius and Zippy lived and loved in the past 2 years. Plus 16 year ild Pinky curreently enjoys her quiet life watching the birds in the back bedroom cat TV with me . A good , happy, fortunate life it is. Hope same for you out there whomight be reading this.
got my first furry friend, Juicy, a cat I found I bsckroads, obviously left by his people along with mattress , etc. He was a great orange cat but a handful at times with a wild atrwk from having. Ee left out in the wilds see pic below with other past family
Maybe a A little extreme but let this be a wake up call to live each day to the fullest while we have our health.. Talk show host Mike Gallagher’s burtday is also April 7, on which he reads an email from a listener -be patient until halfway thru this 5 minute monologue- who insists getting older is a terrible experience. Maybe a bit extreme or maybe I’m just lucky for now. In another 5 years I might not be, so I’m going out to LIVE TODAY and TOMORROW and the NEXT DAY. In the meantime I will do my best to take care of myself, Eat well, etc. but enjoy while doing so. You? So, Don’t call me today as I’ll be out living my burtday to the fullest. Thanks for all the kind burtday wishes and I hope u do same on your burtday and everyday> https://youtu.be/deThpSusjyk
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“America will never be destroyed from the outside,” said Abraham Lincoln. “If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said the same thing in 1961. “We do not have to destroy America with missiles,” he said. “America will destroy itself from within.” Were they correct?
Waving Goodbye to the America We All Knew and Loved By Ed Brodow
Latest example:
Alfredo Ortiz: MLB Pulling ASG from Georgia Will ‘Cost Upwards of $100 Million of Economic Damages’ > https://t.me/Breitbart/106011 Every freedom-loving person should boycott sponsors supporting MLB move , ie Coca cola , Delta airlines, etc…. Gone: American Icons Baseball, Coke …Next it will be Apple pie
Waving Goodbye to the America We All Knew and Loved
My generation believed in the United States. We believed in its respect for the individual, in its Constitution, in its status as the only benign superpower in history. In other words, we believed in American exceptionalism. “Traditional American values are worthy of a passionate defense,” said author and TV commentator Monica Crowley. Referring to these values as “the American project,” Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart, defined it as the continuing effort “to demonstrate that human beings can be left free as individuals and families to live their lives as they see fit, coming together voluntarily to solve their joint problems.” If you boil it down, what makes our society unique in world history is the respect accorded the rights of the individual citizen. The Constitution was written as a restraint on the power of the government to interfere in our lives.
All that seems to be changing. As we move into 2021, to borrow from Shakespeare, something is rotten. It is difficult to pinpoint the origin or the exact nature of America’s disintegration. It developed a head of steam when a man who hates this country, Barack Obama, was elected president. For eight years, we watched his concentrated assault on our values. Obama and his fellow Democrats have introduced some new concepts into our vernacular: democratic socialism, identity politics, social justice, diversity, inclusion, political correctness, Critical Race Theory, cancel culture. They were intended for the express purpose of destroying everything that is laudable about America.
If you wanted to destroy the USA, how would you do it? “America will never be destroyed from the outside,” said Abraham Lincoln. “If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev said the same thing in 1961. “We do not have to destroy America with missiles,” he said. “America will destroy itself from within.” Were they correct?
In February 2019, astute Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson made this observation: “[t]he political debate between the right and the left seems to be moving forward in a manner that indicates the fundamental robustness of the institutions of democracy in the U.S.” Peterson’s observation is no longer accurate — our democratic institutions are anything but robust. The political debate is flirting with civil war as progressives in Congress and on social media gang up to censor conservative viewpoints. Citizens have no confidence in their elected representatives, the legal system, the media, or each other. Public officials encourage disrespect for the laws they are sworn to defend. Our cities are being torn apart with rioting, looting, and arson as mayors and governors encourage the breakdown of civil order.
There is no doubt that our government does not run the way it was intended. Congress seems incapable of doing the country’s business. What has it accomplished in the last four years aside from the ridiculous impeachment of the president and sending our tax money to countries that call us names? Using the coronavirus as an excuse, government is trying to insinuate itself into every facet of our lives. As we allow the government to tell us when we can leave our homes, when we can go to work, and under what circumstances we can run our businesses, we relinquish more and more of our independence.
The worst shortcoming of our government is its failure to maintain election integrity. According to the US News & World Report, U.S. elections from July 2012 through December 2018 rated “lower than any other long-established democracies and affluent societies.” The source is a 2019 report published by the Electoral Integrity Project, an independent project based out of Harvard University. This revelation should make all Americans clamor for improvement.
The 2020 presidential election has brought us even lower on the ladder. We have more than a thousand sworn affidavits attesting to massive voter fraud: suspension of signature verification, violation of state election rules, non-verification of mail-in ballots, backdating of ballots, double-voting, dead people voting, hiding ballots under the table, refusal to allow poll-watching, and vote-switching by machine systems. “People are going on the record under oath and risking being canceled, doxed, and even accosted, to tell what they have seen about this election process,” said Rep. Michael Cloud. “The apparent lack of action from the Justice Department regarding a number of anomalies, statistical improbabilities, and sworn accusations of fraud is troubling.” It may be troubling, but it is consistent with partisan activities of the DOJ, the FBI, and the IRS. FBI Director James Comey’s refusal to indict Hillary Clinton, Obama’s weaponization of the IRS against conservative groups, and inaction from the Durham investigation have destroyed the public’s confidence in our justice system.
In spite of the media’s efforts to hide the truth, the public knows what is going on. Actor James Woods tweeted, “70,000,000 Americans are outraged about this befouled election.” “We don’t accept this fraudulent result.” Whenever the president tries to expose the fraud, the media poison the airwaves with the same mendacious phrase: “Trump’s baseless allegations.” It makes my skin crawl every time I see this lie repeated by CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. The media are no longer free to express conservative viewpoints and have abdicated their role as the republic’s watchdog.
What kind of nation are we bequeathing to our children? Unless we wake up soon, it won’t be pretty. Perhaps Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, was correct when he predicted “a dictatorship without tears … a kind of painless concentration camp so that people will have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing.
2008 photo of Obama with Muslim leader Farakan, not released until after Obama left office
‘America in a Necessary Era of Decline’ – Barack Obama
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Sudden Reality Setting In – That I Don’t Belong There. I was given tickets to the Oakland Speakers series to see author Michael Lewis of Money Ball and The Big Short fame. I always wondered about Lewis, not being a big fan of Money Ball and always wondered how that got made into a movie along with The Big Short, another movie I felt was over-rated. So, what the heck- it might be interesting to hear this hometown (Berkeley via New Orleans) author expound on the current state of baseball, the economy and who knows what. The lecture was April 4, 2017 at the beautiful, restored Paramount Theater in Oakland. I made sure to get there early as tickets state that your seat will be given away to a person who couldn’t afford to pay regular price if you’re not in your seat by 8 pm. Sure enough the empty seat next to me was filled by a young, impressionable-appearing student. But even before sitting down I was struck by the parking fee of $20 for the hour lecture. I’d never paid more than $10 for various Param,ount events, including some very recent ones. I did notice, the people coming in to the lecture appeared to be older, well-healed white folks.
White Liberal Speakers In A Black City
I also noticed that all the featured lecturers in the lecture series brochure were extreme liberals such as Madeline Albright, Paul Begala, Ayaan Hiri Ali, Alan Alda, Michael Beschlos. I wasn’t too sure about Michael Lewis’ bent – or if he had one – but I thought it odd to have all liberal speakers rather than a mix of politics and maybe people with no political leaning.
Before I go any further I will say that I was impressed with the message from Lewis’ most recent blockbuster, The Big Short, which talks about the corruption on Wall Street and how the banks made out big selling sub-prime mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them – and that Lewis’ book and subsequent movie did result in changes in the banking system.
Michael Lewis Darling of the Left, Obama
That said, Lewis’ first answer to the first question from moderator Joan Ryan ended up castigating our current President. The question dealt with former President Obama and how Lewis had somehow garnered a private audience with the President, not for one moment but for weeks, off and on. Lewis, who appears quite aggressive in his fast-talking, animated style spoke about emailing Obama’s secretary one night after several glasses of wine . Lewis got an answer back that he could phone the President, which he did, but that Obama didn’t seem very interested in having an author come in to see what it was like to be President. After several more calls to the President, Lewis was given an audience with Obama which Lewis calls a high point of his career. Then, in jest, he went out of his way to knock current President Trump, saying that he would probably have no interest in visiting him, that the only thing they would have in common is golf and tweeting, after which the audience went hysterical. Lewis would also admit that it wasn’t all roses during his time with Obama when he had a ‘dust up’ because Obama didn’t necessarily agree with all the Wall Street/Banking corruption Lewis wrote about.
Lewis Spent More Time Bashing Trump Than Reflecting About His Books
During the program, Lewis was sure to drop Trumps name several more times, and never in a positive way. At one point he said about Trump , ‘ I would like to bring him down.’ After that strong statement , the moderator n ow very hyped with the rest of the crowd after that statement , asked Lewis how we would try to bring Trump down. Lewis said, ‘ I can’t tell you now but I’m working on it,’ which garnered another big roar from the crowd.
It wasn’t just Trump bashing but Lewis appeared to be against anything Republican. He told a story about how his daughters had trouble dealing with the parents in more conservative towns like Rohnert Park when they played softball against them. Lewis said he was spending 30 hours a week coaching his daughters’ teams and would travel and see what he considered hostility from the other parents. (As an aside, one wonders how Lewis finds time to write when he spends 30 hours a week coaching.
‘Narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets’
By now, I am wondering what I am doing at this place with rabid fans of Lewis, who has but two or three big books and obviously hates the president only 60 days into his term. Probably always hated him and always will. I was really surprised to hear all his Trump bashing as his books, for which I came to hear Lewis speak, were purportedly about baseball and the economy. As a registered Democrat myself, I grew up believing the company line that Democrats were open-minded and Republicans the closed-minded. Though, in reality, I have come to the honest reality, later in life, that it’s just the opposite – that republicans are the nicer, fairer ones as we are learning in corrected histories that show how democrats were actually the ones more instrumental in the slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that Lincoln broke down the doors of slavery, etc.
The lecture atmosphere at the Paramount felt like that of a club or fraternity to which I didn’t belong. Why was Lewis so popular anyway. He sounds like any number of aggressive activists from Berkeley. Lewis may be as good or better a marketer than a writer – and having his liberal pedigrfee certainly helped him get in the Hollywood film door, ala Michael Moore and others.
Quite frankly, even if I agreed with Lewis’ ‘hate speech’ it wasn’t worth the $50 price tag (not to mention the parking, which, apparently well healed Oaklanders and Berkeleyites will pay) to hear a few of his personal stories and limited info about the books he wrote for which I believe most people came to hear – with the possible exception his ‘political groupies’ there more to vent and be seen. But, apparently, it’s part of ‘the plan’ for all those Oakland and Berkeley hill people. Perhaps it’s the Democrat version of a Trump rally, where people can vent not at the lecturer (unless it’s Trump) but WITH the lecturer.
No longer the Same Oakland I Grew Up In
I grew up in Oakland not a political animal. But, I don’t think politics ever played as much a part of urban life, at least in Oakland, as it does today. It’s sad to see how people have become so hateful.
Looking back to when Obama was first elected, though I didn’t vote for him, I was impressed to give the first black President a chance to lead – at least 100 days worth of chances, which few if any Democrats seem to be giving Trump. I’ve never enjoyed going to concerts where musicians use their name and place to harangue a political cause. This night author Lewis was doing just that. Had the night been billed as ‘Michael Lewis Hate Speech’ I wouldn’t have come out.
It was also interesting to note that there wasn’t a black person in the crowd of several thousand liberal whites in Oakland, a town who’s population is nearly half black. It was a crowd of baby boomers, perhaps still living the late 60s and at least giving the impression that they really cared about the poor even if they were living now, mostly in bedroom communities such as Montclair, Kensington, Orinda through Walnut Creek. It’s interesting that perhaps the majority of the crowd lived OUTSIDE of Oakland.
Never before in my 60-plus years living in the area did the political divide hit me so hard. I have my own theories for the widest divide in memory, which I won’t go into right now. But now, suddenly, I understand while I stopped feeling welcome in Oakland, including my own church of many years. I’ve even felt the disparity more than ever , of late, among my own friends and relatives.
I once was a big supporter of Oakland and remember our family staying there while many of our friends opted for ‘white flight’ to the suburbs during the 1960s. (My family did eventually move to Montclair, still within the Oakland line, in 1968 , so my brother could go to a ‘better school’ than the one in the flatlands where I went. Eventually, something told me to move out of Oakland and now I’m glad I did. I see Oakland and similar urban areas as less friendly to all groups than they were in the 1960s growing up. True equality doesn’t really exist among all peoples (including segments of the white population and religions). The divide is now among all lines, religion, race and economics as the middle class disappears and America comes closer to being a socialist country, what with people like Bernie Sanders, who nearly won the presidency.
Sadly, I will not be attending any more of the Oakland Lecture Series at the Paramount until they offer an ‘equal opportunity’ for speakers of all political bents and races (only one black speaker in the series and zero Republicans.
For me, Passover / Easter this year is a time for reflection, to emerge from the ‘chains of bondage’ much like our ancestors did 5000-plus years ago. Time to move outside the box and DO and ACCOMPLISH as we SAVOR and ENJOY each valued day we have left on earth (they do become fewer and fewer and we never know when ).
It’s so easy to race through life but this year ,especially , and after a recent,difficult loss , I am thinking about those who have been an important part of my life and my family’s life. That would be a good number of people but at the top of the list are Uncle H Aunt R as well as R , L , A and T and their families – though I haven’t seen T D for some time.
T and D might be interested, especially,to know that tonight reaching beyond normal comfort zone to attend a chabad seder in town with people never met. It should be a good experience and the kind of thing I need to do more.I’m thinking today of the many , many generous, helpful phone calls I /we received from Uncle H Aunt R during difficult family , times as well as the many wonderful visits with H R and OTHER members of family.It was usually the Divines coming West to visit us… a wonderful Trader Vics dinner getting to visit Laurie and meet her fascinating husband, catching up with Amy for a meaningful reunion at Dads apartment. I know these visits were especially therapeutic for Dad when there wasn’t much going on in Dads life. Ill never forget how Rick was the only doctor from among seven opinions I sought who was able to correctly diagnose and correct my serious red eye problem when he was here at Stanford.But, most of all, I am grateful for the many caring and helpful phone calls from Uncle H and A R during the multitude of family issues.Your ‘long distance ,’ common sense guidance was more helpful than what local help we might have received. My last vacation,with Dad , to visit H and R in W was one I’ll never forget. I’ve only begun taking short trips again , recently, so that was a big deal and another ‘outside the comfort zone’ experience I’m glad I made and while Dad could still travel.In short , uncle H Aunt R , you helped make our later years some of the best,despite all the health issue’s in our family. The visits or just knowing you were never more than a friendly phone call away made all our lives better- and that goes for not only dad but mom, joan, Don and myself. NOBODY did more for us and for that I am eternally grateful as I know Dad and the rest of the Kaufman family were while they were here.I’m glad you’re with family on this day so you ,too , can savor special times as I did with Dad and the rest of my family.So, I’m thinking of you extra on this day, and look forward to being in touch with you all again soon.
