A Rainbow Prayer
The National Day of Prayer was last week. This is a repost.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Good Morning G-d. Please give me the slack I need to make it through this busy life. I have a birthday today, and am getting older. Please give me less pain, both above and below the neck. Thank you for letting me get this far. Thank you for the gift of sobriety, and the memory of inebrience. The gift of moderation would have been appreciated. Help me to overcome body chemistry telling me to be unhappy. If this doesn’t work, help me hide it better.
Please tell the Jesus Worshipers to shut up. They make too much noise. Help me to forgive them. Give Jesus Worshipers a bit more humility. Help Jesus Worshipers to get over their confusion, and quit hating gay people. Let people know that G-d does not write books. Let men know that A REAL MAN KEEPS CONTROL OF HIS TEMPER. Please tell the proud people praying today that it is better to listen than to talk, and that louder does not mean more true.
Please find a happy medium for Atlanta water. Let us have neither drought nor flood. It would help if the developers would move to North Carolina, and the politicians would grow a conscience.
G-d, please try to get along better with Allah. This is important. Maybe if you and her got along better, then all those religious crazies would hate each other less. Help white people and black people get along better. Please be good to the people who have already lived, and are now deceased. Please understand that I am not in a hurry to join them.
Help Mr. Obama with the mess this country is in. Help Israel get along with her neighbors, and live within her borders. Help the world solve the carbon dioxide problem.
Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you for dogs, and dog owners who clean up. Thank you for earth, air, fire, and water. Thank you for the people who enjoy this prayer. Help those who are offended to get over it. Namaste, amen, all my relations, Good Bye.
“Racist” Again
In recent discussions about Donald Sterling’s big mouth, the word “racist” has been universally used. Everybody seems to agree that the comments Mr. Sterling made are “racist.”
It is believed by many that black people cannot be “racist.” The concept is “Black people can’t be racist. Racism is an institution. Although “black people can be prejudiced, we don’t have the power” to enforce the sweeping institutional racism that perpetuates social, economic and political inequality.”
A few years ago, Donald Sterling got in trouble. He was a landlord, and was accused of discriminating against people. This is what “institutional racism” is. This was ignored by the media.
It is worth noting that at the time of the landlord issues, the Los Angeles Clippers were the worst team in the NBA. Mr. Sterling owns the Clippers. Some have speculated that owning this terrible team was his punishment for being a terrible landlord. Currently, the Clippers are a winning team, and Mr. Sterling is the anti-christ. He would turn a profit by selling the team.
So the gf recorded the argument, the old man said some “racist” things, and the national knickers are twisted. Is telling the inamorata not to pose with Magic Johnson perpetuating social, economic and political inequality? Or is it just an old man having a bad hair day?
Maybe the constant use of the label “racist” is what is perpetuating social, economic and political inequality. When you engage in high octane pearl clutching over a famous person saying stupid things, you distract attention from the real problem. What Donald Sterling said, to V. Stiviano, is not going to affect police activity, economic opportunity, or any of the other concerns that people of color have. Maybe it is time to banish the word “racist” from the national vocabulary. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Those were different times.
Atlanta Rising
Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946-1996 is on the shelf at the Chamblee library. This book is a history of Atlanta in the modern era, written by former fishwrapper scribe Frederick Allen. This is a repost.
The story begins in 1948. AR is weighted more to the older part of the story. The main text is 248 pages. On page 124, Ivan Allen has just built a controversial roadblock on Peyton Road, which would be in 1962. The further along in the story, the fewer details are included. The first big story is when Georgia had two governors. This is one of the best descriptions of the two Governors controversy around, and does not mention Ben Fortson’s wheelchair cushion.
The mayor at the start of the story is William B. Hartsfield. “Willie B” was a leader in creating the Atlanta Airport, and in building it into the powerhouse it is today. He was mayor until 1961, when Ivan Allen Jr. moved into the office.
AR has many moments of unintentional irony. When you read a book 18 years after it was written, and fifty years after the events in the book, you see things that could not have been imagined before. In 1960, many of the political-business elite thought it was time for Mr. Hartsfield to retire. Among his shortcomings was an indifference to sports. Mr. Hartsfield thought that a new stadium would be too great a drain on the city’s taxpayers. Fifty four years, and three stadiums, later, the power elite is going to build another stadium. Atlanta Stadium cost eighteen million dollars. The Blank bowl will cost over a billion. (In the past year, a plan to move the Braves to Smyrna was announced.)
One of the big stories here is civil rights. Atlanta came out of that struggle looking pretty good. It was a combination of image conscious businessmen, enlightened black leadership, and a huge helping of dumb luck. In 1961, the city was under federal pressure to integrate the schools. The state was firm in opposition, and the city wasn’t crazy about the idea anyway. Then, another federal court ordered the integration of the University of Georgia. Since the people would not stand for messing with their beloved University, the state laws forbidding integration were quietly repealed. The city schools were integrated with a minimum of fuss. (The book tells this story much better than a slack blogger.)
The controversy about the 1956 model state flag was going full steam when AR was written. The book has some legislative records, which for some reason never made it into the fishwrapper. There is no clear cut answer as to why the legislature changed the state flag. It was mentioned that at the national political conventions, you could not have a written sign, but you could wave a state flag. This controversy provided a diversion from gold dome crookedness, and hopefully has been laid to rest.
A man named Lester Maddox sold fried chicken, and ran for public office. AR describes Lester as looking a bit like an angry chicken. Through a series of constitutional convulsions, Lester was elected Governor in 1966. The state survived his tenure. In the seventies, when Jimmy Carter was running for President, Lester said a lot of rude things about Jimmy, helping the smiling peanut farmer get elected. In another turn of fate, Lester Maddox died June 25, 2003. This was two days after the eternal departure of Maynard Jackson, the first black Mayor of Atlanta.
The book ends with the 1996 Olympics looming over the city. Billy Payne led a smart campaign to secure the games for Atlanta. One of his moves was to keep Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner out of the action. After the 1980 boycott, and the Goodwill Games, neither person was popular with the I.O.C. The book was published before 1996. The Olympics were a blast.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Medical Waste
There is a story going around, Aborted babies are being incinerated to provide electricity in the United States. Supposedly, medical waste is produced in British Columbia, shipped into Oregon, and used for fuel to generate electricity.
“‘Medical waste,’ in this brave new world of ours, includes amputated limbs, cancerous tissue, and the bodies of murdered children. I don’t have any long tirade for you. I just need you to understand what’s happening here in your one nation under God. We are incinerating slaughtered babies so that we can charge our iPhones and power our televisions.”
The local BS detector runs on batteries, Ding, ding, ding. To start, this product was shipped across an international border. Does US customs allow medical waste to come in?
The picture, on top of the blog post, shows a red plastic bag labelled biohazard. If you look in the dumpster behind the hospital, you will see a lot of plastic bags. When you burn plastic, toxic fumes are released into the atmosphere. If you are using recycled matter as fuel, it cannot be contained in plastic. Is there someone at the power plant that unties the bags, and dumps the fuel into the fire?
Power plants use a large volume of fuel. Making electricity requires a lot of heat, to boil the water, to push the turbines. The medical waste from the participating hospitals in British Columbia probably would not generate a whole lot of power. Since this matter is wet, it probably does not burn well.
You shouldn’t believe everything you hear. Of course, when you are a religious enthusiast, you enjoy believing things that others find preposterous. When you denounce abortion, no rhetoric is too extreme. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Jury Duty
April 15 is the day income tax returns are due. Many self anointed conservatives make noise on this day. 364 days a year they loudly celebrate American exceptionalism. When it is time to pay for it… One popular blogger had a story along those lines today. The chamblee54 comment: In paragraph one you say “full paragraphs necessitate the formation of full thoughts, which only come to those who write because they actually have something to say.” Paragraph five was “Fine. Maybe not.”
PG spent this April 15 with another tacky, but necessary, civic obligation: jury duty. During the educational video, SCOTUS parasite Samuel Alito said, in effect, that if you were on trial you would want someone, like yourself, on the jury. PG has a functioning BS detector. The average lawyer would not want PG in the same zip code as the jury room, if his client were on trial.
The day started at 5am. PG made breakfast, took the week’s trash to the street, and published a blog post about drones. This is the sort of expensive, big government activity that the conservatives don’t seem to mind. Drones kill children, and right to lifers say nothing.
The plan was to take marta to Dickhater. PG gets tired of driving all the time. When the time came to go to the station, PG slipped off the driveway, and tore up a slice of earth. He stopped to cover the skid mark with mulch. He got to the marta station in time to see the train leaving for downtown. The plan then became a drive to Dickhater. The parking deck was reached at 7:53am. The summons said to arrive at 8:15 am. Spell check suggestion for Dickhater: eradicate.
The entertainment did not begin until 8:37 am. PG probably could have caught the next train. There was little to do except watch the video, read a book, and wait. At 9:20 am, the MC asked a list of people if they had Safeway insurance. At 9:25 am, they were led to the courtroom, and the rest of the jurors were given a break until 10 am. At 10:21 am, the rest of the jury room was sent home.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a wonderful facility, offering downloads of thousands of public domain photographs. The LOC is a function of big government, and is supported with tax revenues. It’s annual budget would pay for a three drone strikes. The last statement was a made up statistic, and should not be used in any serious discussion. This collection of working women was taken in Philadelphia, PA. The photographer was Jack Delano, and the time was June 1943.
Drones
A giant art installation in Pakistan got some attention. An international committee displayed a large picture of a child, in an area that receives many drone strikes. The idea is to make drone controllers more aware of the human life on the ground.
A few days later, a commentary appeared, This Giant Art Piece in Pakistan Won’t Be Making Drone Pilots Feel Empathy. The author said the *target audience* of the piece was the empathetic public, not the drone controllers. There is a link to an article, where the psychological impact of drone warfare, on the controllers, is discussed. People in Yemen have a different perspective.
The drone war has been going on for some time now. It began under George W. Bush, and was intensified under Barack H. Obama. The “right to life” moving lips have been strangely silent. There are indications that fewer children are being killed now than before. Since the drone war is conducted by the secrecy oriented C.I.A., there is little way to *confirm or deny* these reports. Nor is it possible to determine the financial cost of this program. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Institutional Racism
It is blackberry winter in Brookhaven. PG is editing pictures from The Library of Congress, some of which will illustrate this post. While fussing over group portraits from a Navy vessel, PG is listening to The Glenn Show. Today’s episode features the host, Glenn Loury, and frequent guest John McWhorter. Both men are professors at Ivy League institutions. They are also African Americans. Their conversations are usually entertaining, and provide fodder for slack blogger content.
The first part of the chat involves politicians who say, in effect, “my opponent is not black enough.” An incident involving Barack Obama was discussed. In some of his early elections, the opponent charged that BHO was too closely connected to the big money elite.
Duh. You don’t get elected to public office without having wealthy friends. They want a return on their investment. This has been a problem for the *naive* people who thought they were voting for hope and change. BHO did not raise a billion dollars without making shady promises.
Most politicians face the “authentic enough” issue. When running in the party primary, they try to appear blacker than Spike Lee, or more conservative than Herbert Hoover. When the general election arrives, the need to reach less radical voters arises. Many politicians see the need to back away from what they were saying a few weeks earlier. Saints do not win elections.
After a while, Doctors Loury and McWhorter moved onto the issue of gentrification. Dr. McWhorter wrote a Time magazine piece, “Spike Lee’s Racism Isn’t Cute: ‘M—–f—– Hipster’ Is the New ‘Honkey” Regarding this article, there is a lovely quote from Dr. McWhorter. The quote says to always remember that racism is institutional.
People twitter hissy fits about racism like to have it both ways. They will tell you that racism is *really* about institutional systems that oppress POC. Ok, fine. Exactly what does a tweet, quoting a joke taken out of context, have to do with institutional systems of oppression?
Shut Up Franklin Graham Part Two
William Franklin Graham III is the namesake son of William Franklin (Billy) Graham Jr. This accident of birth is the only reason anyone listens to the idiot. There was a reminder tweet this morning. @JoeMyGod Franklin Graham Endorses Putin: “”America’s response to Putin’s law was sadly predictable. President Obama int…
On February 28, 2014, Mr. Graham published a thinkpiece, Putin’s Olympic Controversy. This was when Russia was invading Ukraine. The article was posted on the web page of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1 Billy Graham Parkway, Charlotte, NC 28201.
BGEA has a story now, Exclusive: Interview With Acting President of Ukraine. “In the midst of ongoing turmoil that has enormous global significance, God is mightily at work in Ukraine, the nation’s acting president said Wednesday.” PG does not know what is going on in Ukraine, and suspects that BGEA does not either.
“I see God’s hand in every little detail that took place as unarmed people went out to defend their freedom and the independence of their country against a fully armed professional army, many times bigger in size,” Turchynov said. “Their faith was victorious. God granted them victory.”
Getting back to the rantings of Mr. Graham, the chatter about the Olympic controversy could have been predicted. What is surprising is the comments about Syria.
“I have never heard Putin quote the Bible, but during his 2012 election campaign, he met with church leaders in Moscow and vowed to protect persecuted Christians around the world. That is one justification for his support of the Assad regime in Syria.
Syria, for all its problems, at least has a constitution that guarantees equal protection of citizens. Around the world, we have seen that this is essential where Christians are a minority and are not protected. The radicals in Syria want an Islamic constitution based on sharia law.
Christians have lived in Syria since the time of Christ. The Apostle Paul was on the road to Damascus when he met Christ. Christians in Syria know that if the radicals overthrow Assad, there will be widespread persecution and wholesale slaughter of Christians.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Privilege Preservation Act
There is a piece of work in the Arizona legislature now, Senate Bill 1062. The proposed law would ” legally protect businesses that deny services to customers for religious reasons.” Some say it would be modern day Jim Crow, while others say that it would not be too bad.
Lawyers see the proposed law as a source of revenue. It would be tested in the marketplace, and challenged in the courts. The billable hours would accumulate. Attorneys created the marriage profit center, both traditional and same sex.
Jesus worship is the most popular religion in America. The believers enjoy a remarkable degree of privilege. Like many owners of privilege, they do not even know that it exists.
Many, if not most, POC are Jesus woshipers. On the one hand, POC have shouting rights as an oppressed population. On the other hand, many POC enjoy the benefits of christian privilege.
Privilege is a buzzword in some circles these days. When owners of privilege see this unearned advantage slips away, the privileged population gets testy. The proposed Arizona law would reconfirm the privileged status of Jesus worshipers.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Give Up The Funk
PG was stumbling through another morning in the real world. Keep moving, get breakfast, survive i285, and maybe by Sunday you will get out of this funk. Those of you with any sense will skip this text, and look at the pictures. They are from The Library of Congress.
A twitterlady caught his eye. @Flyswatter “Feminists calling each other out for various offenses. At any rate, it’s an interesting and thoughtful article.”
Upon arrival, the page visitor is greeted by a fundraising as for “EMILY’s List.” This is an effort to raise money for select moving lips. EMILY is an acronym. Early Money Is Like Yeast.
Once upon a time, some feminists had a conference, #femfuture. They started to snipe at each other. A hashtag was hatched, #solidarityisforwhitewomen.
Before long, one cornerstone of correctness had an article, 5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism. The article had a header ad from an auto insurance agency. Your suggested next post was I Threw Away My Scale and I’ve Never Felt Better About My Body.
The article about #femfuture is long, and might cause brain damage. The authors are not talking to cismale crackers like PG. Today is going to require a few brain cells to negotiate, and reading these posts might wipe them out.
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