Were it not for these great men of God neither President Obama nor President Raul Castro would have ever met, much less given one another the time of day.
Remember: Prior to this meeting no setting President of the United States of America had ever set foot, officially, on Cuban soil in over 90 years. None.
The Republic of Cuba is, was and always will be, for now, a Communist country. Ruled, militarily and by the police state (gestapo-type tactics). Where if you utter one ill-word towards government there you are summarily; arrested, imprisoned, tortured and, eventually – if government so chooses – put to death.
But hey baseball and God go hand in hand down there! Maybe President Obama and President Castro can have a game of catch afterwards? But I digress. It was the compelling, I believe, of God Himself on the hearts and minds of men like Archbishop Ortega and “Papa Francisco” to say, “Hey! Stop your strident mess, put your shoulders down, bend your stiff-necked will a little bit, come together, speak and listen to each other. Reason together for the betterment of our world and your two countries…It’s been ninety years fellas, don’t you think you’ve been at odd relations in the Family of God long enough?”
NEW YORK, New York – In the first hour of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” today co-host Mika Brzezinski lamented, “[Ben Carson] seems to me to be disconnected from reality” while talking all things Ben Carson and the 2016 Republican primary process.
Dr. Ben Carson (L) and Donald J. Trump (R)…
A primary process that sees both the retired pediatric neurosurgeon and the businessman and media magnate Donald J. Trump on top in all the latest polls, despite the controversies in as many days. Mika lamented, and the cavalcade of midway media mavens and politicos wasted no time in demonstrating WHY they fear Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Watch!
So where, I wonder, can or could we meet in the middle?
I think I have the answer to such a dilemma, and we will call it, “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Main Stream Media: The Do’s & The Don’ts for the 2016 presidential race…”
Hitchhiker’s thumb…
Hitchhiker’s Guide #1: Unless there was an accident resulting in death or dismemberment where an arrest record might be discovered, don’t bring it up because it makes both the reported and the reporter, media and politician alike, look stupid. And leaves the viewer/listener wanton for something that never was.
Hitchhiker’s Guide #2: Unless there’s a positive or negative effect on the Sovereign Republic of the United States of America, don’t bring up politicians peccadilloes. The less said. The better. Because knowing for sure whether Ben Carson had a Lizzie Borden moment with his mother years ago or not won’t put gas in the American people’s tanks, food on the American people’s tables or money in the American people’s pockets.
Hitchhiker’s Guide #4: Not everyone was born a politician, a pollster, a pundit or a talking head. And whether you were or were not or whether the person or persons on whom the topic of discussion is about is or isn’t it doesn’t matter, sooooo don’t bring it up.
Hitchhiker’s Guide #5: Never ever hitch a ride with strangers, and IF someone has…Bring it up! We all remember the rule of thumb taught to us by our parents right? “Stranger danger,” remember?
These are do’s and don’ts that I think will help out both the politicians, the media, and the voter most of all to discern who they want and who they don’t want governing themselves and their families for the next four years.
–Rhett E. Column
#SayWhatNews Approved!
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — I just finished reading an article from MSN News Services, via Reuters and the AP on the so-called Bush-era torture programs/enhanced interrogation techniques during the early days of the War on Terror and I must say I am experiencing and have been experiencing a myriad of emotions, a veritable roller coaster ride of feelings on this pending report for the last two weeks.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out what, respectfully, Mr. Obama & Co. are hiding? Why the need to delay, and deny the American people, their right to know? Additionally why the need to provide cover for the Intelligence Community? Finally why, in this article I read, was a pending report from out of the White House, “accidentally emailed” to an Associated Press reporter?
These are but some of the many questions some of the many points of emotion I have been wrestling with, and again, for the last two weeks.
And so it goes…
I learned something this week and I also want to correct, publicly now, a record of standing I have long-held against a former President of these United States, Dwight Eisenhower. I contended that it was former President Eisenhower who started the C.I.A., it was not. It was in fact Harry Truman who started the C.I.A., BUT and his later years he, like so many of us do, had a change of heart on all things Central Intelligence Agency. Here, is where the change of heart began.
And so it goes…
I said all that to say this. The White House, more importantly this President, Barack H. Obama, II., and the honorable, had better come clean. He has but two whole handfuls of months left in his presidency to serve. He has a real opportunity. A real chance to level the playing field to correct the record as it were for the good of all mankind. To become something far more than what I have titled him under this #blogpost as, an ‘ACCIDENTAL’ Statesman.
President Barack H. Obama, II, 2012 Democratic National Convention…
Because, and I will close with this. Comments such as these from online news articles, though good and very informative, WILL NOT suffice,
“The report does not draw the legal conclusion that the CIA’s actions constituted torture, though it makes clear that in some cases they amounted to torture by a common definition, two people who have read the report said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the still-classified document publicly by name.
The Senate report, the State Department proposes to say, “leaves no doubt that the methods used to extract information from some terrorist suspects caused profound pain, suffering and humiliation. It also leaves no doubt that the harm caused by the use of these techniques outweighed any potential benefit.”
Those methods included slapping, humiliation, exposure to cold, sleep deprivation and the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The White House document is significant because it also reveals some of the State Department’s concerns about how the CIA’s tactics will be portrayed around the world.”
COMMENTS like these, for me at least, add up to duck and cover, run and hide, that age-old game of cat and mouse, that has been played throughout history both time and memorial by our fathers, grandfathers and forebears. The Cold War is over folks!
Yet Barack Obama, it appears wants to do nothing more than allow the Intelligence Community to play with the lives, fortunes and sacred honors of We The American People. It would appear to me, in the very least, that ,his attitude and actions of late, the Constitutional Law Professor has an obligatory disdain for the Rule of Law. It says, by his actions, that the Intelligence Community could give a fat rat’s rectum less about the Rule of Law OR that they only care about the Rule of Law when it is more than conveniently necessary for them to do so.
Such an attitude, such an approach toward governance and toward the everyday people who elected him to high office amounts to what Hollywood calls, “creative license”. And creative license will not cut it Mr. President! Respectfully.
Peace.
–Rhett.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
How can you wrap up D-Day? How can you summarize such an event, such a line of demarcation in the sand of human frailty? Clearly no easy task to be sure but one in which I relish the opportunity to at least try.
When I think of D-Day, World War II, the Holocaust, and ultimately the liberation of Europe and the World I think about my late grandfather, David C. Davidson of Metropolis, IL. U.S.A. by way of Paducah, KY. U.S.A. My grandfather was in Patton’s 8th Army Air Corps. Doing his part as a waste gunner on a B-17 Bomber. Flying missions over North Africa, Sicily, Greece, Italy and France. Eventually he wound up a communications restorations operator and was a part of the European Occupation Forces then ending his effort toward world liberation as part of the European Restoration Forces, more commonly known as the Marshall Plan to Rebuild Europe from the ground up.
Out of all the drafted service my granddad, he would have volunteered no questions asked btw. as would have any other G.I. for that matter, offered he said being a communications restorations operator was the scariest of all. He and the other 29 men he served with in his unit were in constant fear, even after the War in Europe was over BECAUSE the Nazi’s and members of Adolf Hitler’s SS were still at large, many acting as snipers. Many men in my grandfather’s unit died from bullets to the head from entrenched Nazi officers and soldiers as well as SS officers themselves. They were, “crack shots” as my granddad told it. “Killing us left and right before we ever had the slightest chance to help rebuild Germany or even Europe for that matter.”
You see my granddad was a glorified telephone pole setter. His duty, after initial training, was to set and in some cases reset telephone poles, lines, and cables to reestablish landline connections across the then whole of Germany, this was just before Joseph Stalin put up his ‘iron curtain’ across Germany, and he would go with his unit from town to town and village to village setting and resetting telephone poles and making sure that each German household in his assigned area had at least one, “working telephone per household in the whole of Germany (I would add Europe)…” Per The Marshall Plan’s requirement. Between dodging bullets from snipers and the,” occasional German girl’s advances” he was doing his part to rebuild Europe and the World from the horrors of War.
Sadly we lost my grandfather to cancer in June of 2007. My grandfather went through the whole of European Theater War in Patton’s 8th without so much as a scratch. Came home from both the theater of War and Rebuilding. Took a job with then President Harry S. Truman’s Atomic Energy Commission along with two great Uncles, his brothers-in-laws, to build two Atomic Plants. The first in Oak Ridge, TN. The second in Paducah, KY. Where my family is from. He went through that entire building process and start up of the plants and then working at both plants with my Great Uncles hauling uranium in and out of both (made and spent). In the process he got cancer. This is the kicker!
To be sure the Government of the United States of America, both foreign and domestic, compensated our family for the loss along with a letter of apology and admittance of wrong doing from U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican-Kentucky’s office in Washington. Respectfully, no amount of monetary penitence or public gesture of apologetic note from this or any other public official will return my grandfather to us BUT, it most certainly did help. Just like it helped the Peoples of Europe and Germany to have at least one working telephone in their homes and places of business, a job, food, healthcare, education and transportation. These are the things, when applied properly, honorably and rightly per the letter of the law or judicial or military edict that are good about Government. Good government period! Then their is the aged old adage of the government simply getting out of one’s way and letting the helping hand they offered go to work. Government did that then, WHY can’t it do that now?
No amount of word or start will suffice in the wrapping up of D-Day 2014 observances. It just won’t. Instead look at what Europe, especially a free one, has become. Has made of itself. A free people everywhere are living everywhere and anywhere across the wholes of Europe. New and emerging nations and nation states are emerging daily across her breasts. The Iron Curtain is no more. The Cold War is over. People of Europe you are free! And America and her People are the far better for it.
Thank you Papaw, thank you to all the Papaws, Aunts, and Uncles who Liberated Europe and the World! Godspeed and Rest In Peace…
#DDay2014
–Rhett.
(David R. Davidson)
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER, SHARE! PLEASE? THANK YOU. COME AGAIN.
We’re just inviting you to take a timeout into the rhythmic ambiance of our breakfast, brunch and/or coffee selections. We are happy whenever you stop by.
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