Dishing out spicy liberal social commentary and critical thinking news analysis on America, world politics, the news, fun political humor, cartoons - and a little poetry by Independent journalist blogger Denny Lyon.
Poems From A Spiritual Heart: Legacy of Love: From Denny: ... Mentoring others is important no matter what stage you are living in your life. You can be young or old. You can teach the young, those older, those your same age. Teach what you know and share your life experiences. You never know who you will inspire. And, as you teach, you learn from them too. Never feel what you know is not important enough to share. Never be too proud to receive knowledge from others eager to share what they have just learned or figured out. For today's shared knowledge just might answer tomorrow's problems - for them and for you. Mentoring: it's a fair exchange, don't you think? :)
*** Speaker Pelosi relentlessly drives hard to pass two important bills: keep teachers in the classrooms and hire the unemployed out of work for two years.
Nancy "Give 'Em Hell" Pelosi takes no prisoners in Congress
From Denny: Go get 'em, Nancy! Now THIS is government at work! "I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers' jobs and help seniors & children," Pelosi said via Twitter this afternoon. From CBS: "The measure extends programs enacted in the stimulus package, with $16 billion for state health care programs and $10 billion to help school boards avoid teacher layoffs."
Two bills: Medicaid, avoid teacher layoffs and funding for longest unemployed
What's going on? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered House members back to work to pass important pending bills, like first to pass a funding package for Medicaid and teachers. There's another bill in the Senate she is also motivating Senators to pass, most notably for the folks known as The 99ers, people who have been out of work for the past two years and no longer receive any unemployment benefits.
Congress was scheduled for an entire month on holiday during August while other Americans face horrific financial and employment struggles. Well, The 99ers got smart and finally organized as a political group. They have threatened to take their case to the polls in November. Now we're talking about getting the attention of lawmakers.
Unemployed for as long as two years: The 99ers
As you read this post, every day there are an additional 50,000 people who fall off the unemployment benefits roll because they no longer qualify after receiving benefits for the duration of 99 weeks. Unemployment is unprecedented in America since 70 years ago during The Great Depression. Big Business continues to insult the American worker, sending their jobs overseas.
Big Business continues to screw over The Middle Class worker
Big Business also imports foreign workers through unchecked visa programs like Microsoft set up with President Bush - and the practice continues today as Prez Obama has not stemmed the tide. That's where all the high tech jobs went: Americans got kicked to the side while foreign workers, willing to work for lower wages and no real benefits, filled the jobs in America. Gee, if billionaire Bill Gates of Microsoft wants to give away half his fortune like he claims, why doesn't he do something about the very mess he created where he displaced thousands of American workers every year for a decade?
Russia paid a visit to Silicon Valley to recruit back their tech people from America
You only had to watch the news a few weeks ago as the Russian President came to America to visit, you guessed it, Russian high tech workers in Silicon Valley. Clearly, Putin is trying to sweet talk the Russians home so they can reverse engineer our American technology for free. The Russian workers were suspicious and fearful of their President trying to woo them back home. Yeah, I would not want to go back to that after living in America either. The problem is that we have plenty of Americans who qualify for those high tech jobs and yet they are denied those same jobs because foreign workers on visa programs are filling them.
New unemployment Senate bill
Introduced by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat, Michigan, and co-sponsored by Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat, New York, is a new bill to finally come to the rescue and help The 99ers. This bill extends unemployment benefits for an additional 20 weeks. They did not leave it at that as they have added incentives to the employers to get motivated to hire those who have been out of work the longest. As it stands, Big Business has ordered employment agencies to reject for consideration interviews anyone who is out of work. In order to get hired a prospective employee must already have a job.
Incentives for employers to hire The 99ers
The Hire Act will be extending tax cuts as well as increase tax cuts for an additional year to those businesses that hire these four to five million people currently out of work for two years. Now THIS is a great idea for jobs creation. Tax incentives + tax breaks = jobs creation. This bill is now called the Americans Want to Work Act.
*** Update 5 Aug 2010:Senate Passes Bill to Save Teacher, Police Jobs - The House Reconvenes Next Week to Take Up $26 Billion Measure, which Won't Increase Budget Deficit. This just passed the Senate, preserving about 300,000 jobs across America by extending programs in last year's stimulus plan. It passed by the vote of 61 - 39. That was after months of stalling tactics by the heartless Republicans. The House votes on it next week for a final vote to send this bill to the President.
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*** Never feel what you know is not important enough to share: mentor!
From Denny: This week a famous American teacher passed out of this life and into a new adventure. His name was Jaime Escalante and it was his life story told in the movie "Stand and Deliver." He was well educated and worked at NASA. Yet when he read of the failing schools in Los Angeles he quit his high-paying job and went to teach advanced math at one of those failing schools, Garfield High School. He fought the public school system's failing mindset cemented into the old ways of doing things, believing low income kids were not smart enough or motivated enough to learn advanced math. Escalante proved them all wrong: the educators who ran the schools, the parents and the students.
Escalante brought faith in his students and passion to the job of more than teaching: He was a mentor of gigantic proportions. Today, many of his students are successes, working at NASA or teaching the same calculus to their students that he taught them. Most of all he taught a group of people to believe in themselves. He taught the educators to never give up their faith and reach higher so their students can succeed in life.
Cosmic consciousness by h.koppdelaney @ flickr
Mentoring others is important no matter what stage you are living in your life. You can be young or old. You can teach the young, those older, those your same age. Teach what you know and share your life experiences. You never know who you will inspire. And, as you teach, you learn from them too. Never feel what you know is not important enough to share. Never be too proud to receive knowledge from others eager to share what they have just learned or figured out. For today's shared knowledge just might answer tomorrow's problems - for them and for you. Mentoring: it's a fair exchange, don't you think? :)
Legacy of Love
Have you ever thought about… All the knowledge in the Universe? Have you ever thought about… Your place in millions of information bits? Have you ever thought about… Why your experiences were important?
Did you know that on the other end of that information Lived someone waiting for you to tell them about it? Did you know that in the world every day there is A person sharing what they know with someone else Who yearned for the solutions to their problems but Did not know where to find that knowledge – until you?
The old speak of their long lives while the young listen. The young shout their enthusiasm while the old smile. When tough times strike we all stretch out helping hands. When Life is sweet we lift up our hearts in shared Joy. Kindness and sharing creates more kindness and sharing, Giving comfort and ease to many hearts, lightening the load.
When at first we meet as strangers we become friends. Sharing our experiences we relax into deep friendships. Family we become when we give Love and receive Love. Have you ever seen all the thoughts floating in the Universe Wondering of their origins and how long they were seeking? Sharing what you know is your legacy of Love.
Denny Lyon Copyright 4 April 2010 All Rights Reserved
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*** The real reason Americans are so intensely angry at President Obama and Congress is because for the entire first year of this "change" presidency they gave away power to those famous for abusing power: the Republican Party and Big Business.
From Denny: For anyone who was naive enough to think the Republicans would let go of power willingly - and choose to cooperate for the good of the country - or that this new President would be able to solve any of the massive problems in one year, well, they were unrealistic. It took more than eight years of Bush and 25 years of a Republican dominated Congress to get America into this rabbit hole and it's going to take more than a couple of good years to pull us out.
At the rate the Republicans are throwing the taxpayers all off the cliff the Democrats had better buckle down and start working fast and furious. Enough of the niceness thinking Republicans will cooperate if you talk sweet to them. Get real. A junkyard dog is a junkyard dog even when you dress him up in a suit.
Get tough and get real. The Republicans don't respect nice. All they respect is tough and hard-nosed strictness like Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. They hate her which means they fear her. Obama could take a lesson from her. Either that or the country needs to hire a dominatrix to discipline the Republican Party. Oh, wait a minute, Louisiana Senator David Vitter probably already has one on retainer. Maybe he will loan her out on a pro-bono basis. Prez Obama and his team have walked on egg shells long enough while real people are losing their jobs, their homes and their savings to Big Business who are taking unfair advantage.
That anemic credit card legislation Congress passed a year ago just motivated the banking industry to jack up everyone's interest rates on a whim, changing all the rules of the original contracts with their customers. And all the banks had to do was send the customer a fine print notification they changed the rules? And you wonder why the news keeps reporting there is a public revolt against paying mortgages and credit cards now? If changing the rules of the contracts is good enough for the banks, then it must be good enough for the customers too.
Who gave Obama this really bad advice about bailing out Wall Street in the first place? Who advised Obama to go moderate on Big Business? Hmmm... "do ya think?" it could be those same advisers are planning to return to Wall Street and want to cultivate some goodwill for their wealthy return? Come on; Big Business is a behemoth that steam rolls over everyone it can. Why has Obama not stopped all those Big Business job visas, replacing American workers when our economy is so fragile?
Yes, jobs loss, jobs creation and the economy is what is utmost in the upper mind of Americans. People are frustrated at where they are in life as they watch the economy slide down for them but huge bonuses for Wall Street with taxpayer monies. One note though: just how many of those same very frustrated people goose-step marched along with the Bush-Cheney duo when things were going well and voted them into that disastrous second term? Those voters should not be taking their anger out on Obama but rather need to kick themselves around the block a few times in the driving rain.
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From Denny: A few years before the disaster struck in Haiti, American Brad Johnson decided to move there and help the people in his parents' ongoing Christian mission to Haiti. He was in a unique position to help after the earthquake as he already had an established school, an orphanage and a medical clinic operating, along with plenty of supplies. His mission is just outside of Port-au-Prince. He is busy distributing supplies to survivors and has been within hours of when the disaster hit.
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