Retribution?

Webster's defines retribution as recompense, reward, or the dispensing or receiving of reward or punishment, esp. in the hereafter. The Compact Oxford Dictionary says it is punishment inflicted in the spirit of moral outrage or personal vengeance.

I'm all for retribution for the dictator wannabes in the Bush administration who thought it was their God given right to take the United States down the road of torturing people. Now I am not naive enough to think it has never happened before. There will always be sadists in our midst who will do this kind of thing. However, to make it "legal", to make it "policy", to make it "common" for America is beyond all comprehension of a sane and moral society.

My little quibble here is the use of the term retribution. While the definitions are appropriate, the word has taken on connotations for vengeance, sometimes at the price of reason. Why not say justice? When a person is charged with assault or theft or even murder, we call it justice to hold the perpetrators accountable for their actions. Why is it not justice in this case. These people broke not only U.S. law, but international law. They broke agreements made between many countries decades ago. Why is it not justice to hold them accountable?

Prosecuting Torture, or Not

The President announced today that he has no interest in prosecuting the people who tortured on behalf of this country, or words to that effect. I can't go back and get the exact quote. I am too horrified that President Obama can consider this line of action, or inaction.

We have the smoking gun. We have the memos. We have statements from members of the Bush administration going up to the highest levels that brag about the torture. We have the notes! For God's sake, six times a day for a month? Two times a day for a month? In even the most basic of criminal code, if you hit someone once it is called assault. Just once, that's all it takes.

What the hell does it take? Even if the men that actually perpetrated these horrors don't get investigated and brought up on charges, the men that allowed it, ordered it must be held accountable. What kind of warped, sadistic men would do these things in the name of this country, would consider it okay? Allowing them to get away with it would tell future administrations that torture is a naughty no-no, but we shouldn't do it again!

God help us if we don't.

Everyone's Suddenly Decided to Go Green

Almost every day now, one news cast or another is running a "green" story. Species are dying out, forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, fish populations are crashing, the glaciers and polar ice caps are melting faster than we thought just last year, are just a few of the now timely topics.

We still have naysayers twisting bits and pieces of legitimate studies and reports to suit their needs, often to the point of outright lying. I'd like to know what purpose is served by that kind of thinking, but really don't want to go into it now.

My current question is about the sudden interest in being green. I want to know where the hell these reporters, anchors, commentators, editorialists, show runners and powers that be were when all of this could have made a difference? I hope that somewhere, sometime, they wake up in the middle of the night and know, with soul chilling certainty, that their inaction and disinterest has contributed to the dying planet they are leaving the children of this world, including their own.

Teabagging, Tempests and Taxes

Well, the teabaggers were out in varying sizes (or lack thereof) of force today, protesting everything from taxes to the president. I wonder just how many of them understand the conotations of being a "teabagger". As some of my friends woud say, *snerk*. They can't claim to have used th term first, but they will certainly be remembered for using it at all!

(Oh, go Google it! There are some rather graphic vids that leave no room for confusion.)

I wonder, though, why they are screaming about the taxes part. For a very large chunk of the American taxpaying public, Federal taxes went down on April 1. Were all those ordinary looking people I saw in the news reports not amongst my income group of under $75k per year? Are they pissed because they are just over that mark and aren't getting the reduction? Maybe that's it.

I also wonder where they were when the previous administration was running up the deficit, pouring money down the drain, often to good old boy buddies and their corporations. No-bid contracts from a president who believed that taking care of those BFFs with deep taxpayer pockets was the right thing to do must have made them think it was Christmas every day.

Where were the teabaggers then?

I could go on about the boatload of lies used to get this country into a war that wasn't necessary, taking our eyes off the real ball just next door. Now, how many years, how many hundreds of billions of dollars, how many lives of American service men and women have been wasted?

Where have the teabaggers been?

I could also talk about the off shore tax shelters used by big corporations in order to avoid paying hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes in the U.S. I could talk about the criminal lack of keeping the American infrastructure in good working order. (Yes, roads, bridges, schools, power generation.) There are so many things and so little time.

Hellooooo, teabaggers? Any of you there?

Now, the teabaggers are swallowing the hook, line and sinker dangled by Fox Noise, corporate lobbiests, and headline seeking talk show hosts in their "grassroots" campaign. I wonder if these people realize that they are the ones on the ground and the organizers are teabagging them?

Probably not.