Fish for Friday

Edited by Morris Dean

[Anonymous selections from recent correspondence]

End the Bear Hunt - Environmental Action. Maine has some of the best habitat in the country for black bears. But these intelligent, wild creatures are extremely shy and are rarely seen. So rather than respect nature, vicious sport hunters resort to killing bears with dogs, bone-breaking traps, and piles of food to lure them from safety.
    Fortunately, Mainers who love wildlife have put forward a ballot initiative to fight bear hunting. The “Maine’s Bear Hunt Ban” initiative will eliminate the most egregious forms of bear baiting and trapping, paving the way for us to push for an outright ban on bear hunting later.
    Republican Governor Paul LePage opposes the initiative - claiming that cruel forms of bear hunting are good for Maine’s tourism!
    Sign here to support the bears, and ban cruel forms of bear hunting like trapping and baiting. We’ll send your signature directly to news stations in Maine who are covering the issue to show that Mainers and tourists alike support the bears!

For sure Boulder has the fittest women in the country. All you have to do is sit in your front yard at 7 a.m. and watch all the babes jog by.

A basic principle of American democracy is a free press. Net neutrality, open access to the communication / community technology, is fundamental to the historic functioning of the Internet. Creating a privileged class of users will undermine that. Withdraw this proposed rule. "Wheelering and Dealing at the FCC." Excerpt:

What is net neutrality? It’s the fundamental notion that anyone on the Web can reach anyone else, that users can just as easily access a small website launched in a garage as they can access major Internet portals like Google or Yahoo. Net neutrality is the Internet’s protection against discrimination. So why would these giant Internet Service Providers want to eliminate such a good thing? Greed. The largest ISPs make massive profits already. But if they are allowed to create a multitiered Internet, with some content providers paying extra to have their websites or Web applications load faster, then they can squeeze out extra profit. Remember, the users are already paying for Internet access. Now companies like Comcast want to charge people at the other end of the Internet connection, raking in billions of dollars from both the Internet user and the Internet content provider.
    If net neutrality is eliminated, then large, established content providers with ample cash will buy access to a privileged “fast lane” on the Internet. Smaller websites and new applications will not have the same access, and will be stuck in the “slow lane.” The era of lean start-ups driving innovation will come screeching to a halt. Don’t look for any more high-tech companies founded in dorm rooms. Those sites will take longer to load than those offered by the big companies.

Robert Reich nails it again: "Robert Reich: American capitalism is broken." Excerpt:

[The assumption] that our hard-charging capitalism is better than the soft-hearted version found in Canada and Europe...was a questionable assumption to begin with, relying to some extent on our collective amnesia about the first three decades after World War II, when tax rates on top incomes in the U.S. never fell below 70 percent, a larger portion of our economy was invested in education than before or since, over a third of our private-sector workers were unionized, we came up with Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor, and built the biggest infrastructure project in history, known as the interstate highway system.
    But then came America’s big U-turn, when we deregulated, de-unionized, lowered taxes on the top, ended welfare, and stopped investing as much of the economy in education and infrastructure....
    The American economy continues to grow faster than the economies of Canada and Europe. But faster growth hasn’t translated into higher living standards for most Americans.
    Almost all our economic gains have been going to the top – into corporate profits and the stock market (more than a third of whose value is owned by the richest 1 percent). And into executive pay (European CEOs take home far less than their American counterparts).
    America’s rich also pay much lower taxes than do the rich in Canada and Europe.
    But surely Europe can’t go on like this. You hear it all the time: They can no longer afford their welfare state.
    That depends on what’s meant by “welfare state.” If high-quality education is included, we’d do well to emulate them. Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 rank near the bottom among rich countries in literacy and numeracy. That spells trouble for the U.S. economy in the future.
    They’re also doing more workforce training, and doing it better, than we are. The result is more skilled workers.
    Universal health care is another part of their “welfare state” that saves them money because healthier workers are more productive.
    So let’s put ideology aside. The practical choice isn’t between capitalism and “welfare-state socialism.” It’s between a system that’s working for a few at the top, or one that’s working for just about everyone. Which would you prefer?

In case you missed it, please take a moment to read Ayaan Hirsi Ali's recent article on Boko Haram, which was first published in The Wall Street Journal: "Boko Haram and the Kidnapped Schoolgirls: The Nigerian terror group reflects the general Islamist hatred of women's rights. When will the West wake up?" Excerpt:

Organizations like Boko Haram do not arise in isolation. The men who establish Islamist groups, whether in Africa (Nigeria, Somalia, Mali), Southwest Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan), or even Europe (U.K., Spain and the Netherlands), are members of long-established Muslim communities....
    So, imagine an angry young man in any Muslim community anywhere in the world. Imagine him trying to establish an association of men dedicated to the practice of the Sunnah (the tradition of guidance from the Prophet Muhammad ). Much of the young man's preaching will address the place of women. He will recommend that girls and women be kept indoors and covered from head to toe if they are to venture outside. He will also condemn the permissiveness of Western society.
    What kind of response will he meet? In the U.S. and in Europe, some moderate Muslims might quietly draw him to the attention of authorities. Women might voice concerns about the attacks on their freedoms. But in other parts of the world, where law and order are lacking, such young men and their extremist messages thrive...they can blame poverty on official corruption and offer as an antidote the pure principles of the Prophet. And in these countries, women are more vulnerable and their options are fewer....
    It is time for Western liberals to wake up. If they choose to regard Boko Haram as an aberration, they do so at their peril....

"How the Right Wing is Killing Women," by Robert Reich. Excerpt:

According to a report released last week in the widely-respected health research journal, The Lancet, the United States now ranks 60th out of 180 countries on maternal deaths occurring during pregnancy and childbirth.
    To put it bluntly, for every 100,000 births in America last year, 18.5 women died. That’s compared to 8.2 women who died during pregnancy and birth in Canada, 6.1 in Britain, and only 2.4 in Iceland....
    Researchers aren’t sure what’s happening but they’re almost unanimous in pointing to a lack of access to health care, coupled with rising levels of poverty....
    But this tragic trend is also a clear matter of public choice.
    Many of these high-poverty states are among the twenty-one that have so far refused to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and at least 90 percent thereafter....
    Several of these same states have also cut family planning, restricted abortions, and shuttered women’s health clinics.
    Right-wing ideology is trumping the health needs of millions of Americans.

Pam Canby never had any biological children, but she helped raise hundreds like they were her own.
    The longtime Lindsay principal passed away May 12 after a difficult battle with cancer....
    [A colleague] shared a story of how the former Tulare principal motivated adults and children. She said Canby challenged the students to collect 10,000 pennies. If they reached their goal, she agreed to sit on top of the office roof for an entire day. Unfortunately for Canby, the students were successful and Sanchez stated Canby worked from the roof top the entire day to the delight of the students....
    Canby started a program called Road Scholars, where teachers take students to unique learning opportunities outside of their own community. Beginning in 2006, Canby and Warner took about 50 select students from the school and took them all over California to experience new things....Over the course of two summers, students got to do experiments on a tug boat in the San Francisco Bay, pan for gold in James Town and learn, learn about sea life at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and even take-in a Giants game at the ballpark. In many cases, the students had never visited a museum, seen the ocean or even ridden in an elevator....
    “Pam was so connected with nature and made it a personal mission to get kids to experience nature.” [She] was successful in securing three grants through the National Forest Foundation’s More Kids In The Woods program. With the funding, Canby and some of her teachers would take entire grade levels to see places like Buck Rock, Mineral King, and Giant Sequoia National Monument. She would also coordinate leadership training sessions with U.S. Forest Service Rangers for Lincoln and Roosevelt’s Student Councils. Warner said Canby carried that onto campus as well, pushing for a front entrance with lots of trees and recruiting students to plant flower beds throughout the school each spring.
“She believed when children came to school it should be a safe, inviting home away from home,” Warner said. “She always said many students don’t have beauty in their homes but all of them deserve to have beauty in their lives.”

Do you know how many states have never elected a woman to the U.S. Senate?
    I think the answer will shock you, and it is just one of countless reasons why our work at Off the Sidelines continues to be so crucial.
    Click here to take our short quiz – the answers may surprise you!

The movie the Koch brothers couldn't kill. It’s the inside story of the documentary Citizen Koch, which was supposed to air on PBS—before executives yanked the film out of fear of upsetting the billionaire Koch brothers. (By the way: it turned out David Koch had donated $23 million to PBS.)
    As one might expect from a couple of documentary producers who helped Michael Moore make Fahrenheit 9/11, the directors of the Citizen Koch team didn’t take this lying down. The story of how it all happened, and what happened next, is an inspiration in a dark time.

I faced some vicious personal attacks in 2012, and it was just horrible. Now, many of my friends in Congress are facing the same line of attacks – all funded by powerful mega-donors and dark money groups.
    Ever since the Supreme Court’s decisions in Citizens United and now McCutcheon, negative attack ads backed by unnamed sources have become all too common in our elections. Americans for Prosperity, the main political arm of right-wing billionaires, just announced they will spend a record-breaking $125 million this year. That’s more than the DCCC, the NRCC, the DSCC or the NRSC spent in 2012!
    We have to put a stop to this – right now! Will you join me in standing against secret money in politics?
    Help me stand up to the Kochs and their corporate bullies. Add your name to tell Congress to take a stand against secret money in elections now!
    An election should be about who best represents the needs of the people – not who can shout the loudest and throw out the most negative insults.
    Conservative Super PACs like Americans for Prosperity have already spent $35 million on ads to defeat Democrats this November, and it’s only going to get worse as the election gets closer. They think they can buy control of the Senate and elect an army of yes men who are loyal to them – instead of real Americans like you and me.

Many of you have long wanted to tape my mouth shut. Here I am at Moral Monday. Background: "‘Moral Monday’ protesters return to Raleigh quietly, but outspoken." Excerpt:

Days after the Legislative Services Commission changed the rules for North Carolina’s Legislative Building, demonstrators who sang, chanted and protested loudly last year changed their tactics, too.
    Protesters were still outspoken outside about the effects of policies and laws adopted last year, when Republicans wielded power from both legislative chambers and the governor’s office.
    But inside the building where those laws were made, protesters marched two by two in an eerie silence through the facility and out the back door toward Halifax Mall....
    The Rev. William Barber, the North Carolina chapter president of the NAACP and architect of the movement supporters call “Moral Monday” that is spreading across the South, pulled the gray masking tape off his lips outside the building and spoke to those following him.

From a personal and business point of view, I say, you ain't never been screwed till you've been screwed by a "Christian." I've had it happen to me both ways. I do my best to be non-judgmental but it can get hard. Thankfully, though, these days, with more maturity and I'd like to think wisdom, I keep my thoughts to myself. You don't learn things using your mouth anyway. I use that line with my granddaughters a lot. Not sure they've quite grasped it yet.

I didn't know that Pagans were as crazy as all the others: "Despite prejudice, Pagans practice the ancient rituals." Excerpt:

Most Pagans present here are professionals. By day, they’re businesspeople, accountants, teachers, even doctors... Several nights a year, they meet to observe important dates on the Pagan calendar, such as the seasonal equinoxes.
    “We observe the rites of our ancient elders, or our ancestors. Most of us in this coven come from ancient Celtic roots,” explains High Priestess Shinny Pearson, her long, golden blonde hair streaming down her dark brown satin cloak. A silver five-pointed star hangs around her neck....
    Greg says Pagans venerate the natural world.
    “We show this by honoring the old Gods of earth, from various ancient civilizations, such as the Greeks. One of our Gods is Herne. He is the stag, the God with antlers. He is the lord of the greenwood,” he explains.
    “Then we have Demeter, another Greek goddess. She looks after the land; she gives us the crops, so we have food. Women who cannot fall pregnant very often give offerings and pray to Demeter and beg her to make them as fertile as she is.”....
    After the meditation, the warden, a young man in a black, hooded cloak, beats a drum to consecrate the Pagan’s sacred circle, to drive away all evil, says Ms. Pearson.

Art for art's sake: "Street Artists Just Pulled Off The Largest Advertising Takeover In World History."

Highly creative people tend to view all of life as an opportunity for self-expression.
    Nietzsche believed that one's life and the world should be viewed as a work of art. Creative types may be more likely to see the world this way, and to constantly seek opportunities for self-expression in everyday life.
    "Creative expression is self-expression," says Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at New York University who has spent years researching creativity. "Creativity is nothing more than an individual expression of your needs, desires, and uniqueness."

Limerick of the Week:

Siegfried has a nickname, I call him Sieggy-Guy.
Sieggy likes to be near Mom or me – he's shy;
    he loves to nuzzle,
    we love his muzzle!
Sieggy's a close companion, a sweetie-pie.

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Copyright © 2014 by Morris Dean

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