United States Secretary of State HILLARY CLINTON Hopes KIM JONG-UN Charts Different Course For His People

PERHAPS SALAD AND APPETIZERS?  OR HAPPY MEAL.

  But if ever a point of sarcasm couldn’t lessen frustration with World Politics, the calamity of North Korea’s closed-border is painfully it. Even so, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ignored North Korea’s thin-skin advocating transformation while meeting with their rival South Korea in Washington, D. C. Urging North Korea’s new leader to chart a different course than his father, saying First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea Kim Jong-un could steer his nation away from a dark history of starvation and oppression, Reuters reported.

 
  Many U.S. officials and North Korea experts fear the nuclear brinkmanship and repression of his father Kim Jong-il, whose death in December elevated the untested 28 year-old from relative obscurity. But Clinton told reporters, “This young man, should he make a choice that would help bring North Korea into the 21st century, could go down in history as a transformative leader. Or he can continue the model of the past.” And Clinton said regardless of what Kim did, it was her belief that the hermit state would eventually change direction. “Because at some point, people cannot live under such oppressive conditions – starving to death, being put into gulags and having their basic human rights denied.” North Korea denies there are gulags witnesses say is true.

  In a joint statement, the four ministers “urged North Korea to cease its provocative behavior,” but Secretary of State Clinton said young leader Kim Jong-Un still had a chance to change. The United States and South Korea left the door open, saying a “path for North Korea to rejoin the international community remains available” if it refrains from provocation and gives up nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile Boston.com reported U.S. special envoy for North Korean human rights issues, Robert King, talked with participants during the Korea Institute for National Unification’s International Conference on North Korean Human Rights in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 14, 2012 as well. Reminding attendees that through open communication North Korea could change.

  While the problems are probably more closely tied to the ebb and flow of world economics than we’re likely to face for a while longer. Starving North Koreans first became a problem when the Soviet Union fell and like Cuba, the North Koreans no longer received Communist economic and food subsidies and suffered what was called the first North Korean Famine of 1994-98. Economic decline provided the context, but floods and storms provided the catalyst. Cuba has floods and storms but North Korea doesn’t have the bright sunny beaches that draw the world’s real financial attention.

  So what does North Korea’s military elite have to gain from the rest of their country having some moderate comfort? That’s right, show them with Cuban vacations posing as an economic summit. Dressed diplomatically however opposing politicians want, but the story is the same all over the world. Everyone needs a taste. Isn’t it time North Korean children had theirs?

  So if Kim Jong-un has any real power it will be to teach his country the power to say no is no substitute for national equality. And Cuban vacations for everyone should be his real goal after feeding his people dessert.

Photos added Jan. 3, 2013

6/14/2012

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United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Hopes KIM JONG-UN Charts Different Course For His People

6/14/2012 concluded: So if Kim Jong-un has any real power it will be to teach his country the power to say no is no substitute for national equality. And Cuban vacations for everyone should be his real goal after feeding his people dessert.

Aug. 15, 16 & 30 - Sep.6, 2016

Some Coincidence?

  Obviously my 6-14-12 attitude toward Kim Jong-un's assuming power was a euphoric show short of reality. Hence hoping North Korea's dictator was anywhere near capable of taming the conceit and deceit involved in ruling just to rule. While the rest of the world's inflationary conspiracy undermines the working or disabled poor. The world rightfully and righteously demands raises THAT NEVER CATCH INFLATION. But capitalist rule does at least visit the ballpark of socialist results. But, but has authoritarianism ever let people's imaginations reign? A Soviet claim Gorbachev faced. Claims rulers the world over hide from by pronouncements that their elite's different from others. 

  Pursuing individuals' freedoms is a vigilant exercise as America's imperfections attest. 

  Capitalism is socialism, Kim Jong-un. Just as socialism is capitalism when it works and capitalism socialism when either works. You should give it a shot. Socialism is not just another word for state rule as some politically powerful people have misled Americans to accept and gloss over some of the worst acts of bizarre laziness by corporate bureaucracy claiming it's not as inept as government. Building better private schools without taking on all the challenges public schools face. Free economy our a__es. 

  So further criticizing. The facts are power's sufficient of its own self. Responsibility, not a full co-defendent in politically successful grifts. For instance, New Jersey's Governor Christie, (Gateway), once had dinner with Donald Trump after a successful court case relieved the future presidential candidate of a larger financial burden owed New Jersey while still claiming no untoward influence when I recently heard Governor Christie petting his "friendship" with Mr. Trump of "sixteen years." 

  Maybe the whole world's just like Brazil  currently where power's necessary to keep your conspiracies of individuals out of jail, too. Which is in fact not mere conjecture but relative fact all over. Why the American Parties are so eulogized to patronize the public past their human and political frailties. 

  Yep. Too cryptic for American voters and mass opinion to grasp how Americans feelings of patriotism are induced to politically grind the flag in the dirt by honoring national mistakes and condemning, not just "constitutionally protected protest," but basic decency, America. It was close to a century after that d_____ war just to start America's facing racism. Face the present. We'd be further as a culture now if the reasons for protest were completely faced. Indoctrination is a failure to teach your children to learn well. While the best schools in the world have really produced competent teams of individuals dividing the world's spoils. Polishing the networking craft as it exists in legal, as well as corrupt, corruption terms. End the Criminal Enterprise System. 

  So. As a measure of honoring presidential election year equal time. She's not him, but. This is politics. The first President Clinton aided and abetted the ramping up of the Criminal Enterprise System that's been advertised relatively adequately of late as what's part of disheartening America today. Whereby the patriotic act of protest during the National Anthem is depicted as an unpatriotic act. In an America where turning a blind eye produces profit, opened eyes profit too. As in the country's responsibility for China's attitude towards polluting the plant, we'd done most of up to now. If capitalism really required the car Detroit wouldn't have gone broke in the first place. 

  Anyway. Corruption's the rule rather than just symptom. If only Kim Jong-un could be brought to a Texas supermarket to cry as Yeltsin must have. But Kim had seen Switzerland. And current public sacrifices fulfill his elite's self-satisfied needs. If only you, Kim Jong-un, could say to yourself, "I'm the most powerful person in my country and only I can truly free my people and at least give them a real shot at contentment as Gorbachev had." Because life shouldn't just be parades and tyrants supervising nothing. It was Soviet believers in their revolution that faced the communist vision's distortions. Because communism wasn't supposed to have anything to do with being kept slaves. No one should want to shoot anyone. Kim and North Korea, face it. The façade needs put to rest, please Mr. Chairman? 

  What could pierce your leadership's shielding theirselves from social reality? So North Korea shines and rebellion isn't a threat if your bureaucracy really lets North Koreans shine which marching in unison doesn't quite mean. An East German has the power to rule Germany for a while. No reason North Korea has to lose an identity. Nor turn everything over to exploitation as is Cuba's public reasoning for moving awkwardly slow, at least slowing the asphalting of the entire island. 

  You should face things too, Kim. Because you're not looking at yourself in the mirror image your country shows you, apparently shown an entire different show? 

  Feed the people is the No. 1 concern. Though probably the Western Media's fault we haven't heard how well-fed the people've become since a few privileged heads, threatening greater privilege, rolled? 

  Well, nothing's really new about military state enforced nationalism as their citizens' identities. The world's supposedly nicest democracies do similar things. Power is its' own reward, etc. But something has happened, August 18th, that probably, possibly, could be the best news concerning factual change that's happened in too long an ignorant time. Discontinuing national private enterprise prisons. Spurred on by market speculation to fill with the punished portion of the Criminal Enterprise System. That no doubt possibly will be torn to shreds by private entrepreneurs claims responsibility and blame for greedy mistakes is governments' alone. Congress once again for handling business. PRISON. Still. The Criminal Enterprise System's barely touched. Create to punish brutality. Uh huh. 

This Land Is My Land (And Yours Too!)

by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times

Free Enterprise isn't free if a consequence is destroying National Parks.

Patriotism is much more than sycophantic.
Speaking of not admiring the benefits of a Police State.

Where Morality's A Bubble of Conceit Should Stop

Fast Eddie

  I rode next to Eddie down Lexington Avenue at Steve (who'd even asked why I never called him Steve the Greek) Athineos' Memorial Ride. Eddie said he'd taken a picture of me, years ago, riding up the Williamsburg Bridge as if in a golden glow of light. May yours shine forever Eddie. We truly wish you were here.

Legal System Physicians Heal Thyselves?

  The chasm between truth and public presentation makes the light of day as blurry as the self-deception behind why sheltered truth happens. Every day, life is as a court of law where any point conceded dooms the rest of the case. Admit nothing. That wins. But I turn away, which is how I wish we all treated this dilemma. All of usrefusing to be involved rationalizing every form of criminal behavior anymore.

  The New York Times investigated, under the title, In Police-Stop Data, Pockets Where Force Is Used More Often, written by RAY RIVERA, the fact, we all know, that police have to protect themselves to protect us. Spawning some of the reasons for Mr. Rivera’s report, contributed to by Daniel Krieger, Randy Leonard, Sarah Maslin Nir, Nate Schweber and Tom Torok.

  The writer begins by describing the worst case scenario where two Bronx precincts have higher rates of violence during police stops than other New York City precincts. The West Bronx’s crowded neighborhoods come alive at night with residents, young and old, clustered around door stoops and teenagers filling playground basketball courts, with police officers from the nearby 44th and 46th Precincts patrolling and, from time to time, stopping and frisking young, mostly black and Latino, men. And when stopped for interrogation, statistics show, physical force is used far more often than anywhere else in the city.

  So – The New York City Police Department has been under increased scrutiny over the racial disparities and sheer volume of street stops under their “stop, question and frisk” crime-fighting technique policy that allows officers to stop people they reasonably believe are committing or about to commit a crime. Last year, the police stopped a record 680,000 people as more than 80 percent were black or Latino. A federal judge this summer approved a class-action lawsuit accusing the department of using race as a basis for the stops.

  Couldn’t be as a police state would, intend to put the fear of crossing them in the minds of their subjects?

But The Times being The Times stops short at an accusation of that magnitude. However continuing, The Times prints, but, often overlooked,(though the article’s intent is continuing scrutiny), is how frequently police officers use some level of physical force in these encounters. People who have been stopped say if they show the slightest bit of, even verbal, resistance they can be slammed against walls, forced to the ground and, on rarer occasions (thank goodness for that at least), officers’ guns pointed at their heads.

  According to an analysis by The New York Times, the police used some level of physical force in more than one in five stops across the city last year. The West Bronx’s rate was more than double that. Yet the high level of force seldom translated into arrests, raising questions among black and Latino leaders about whether officers were using enough discretion before making the stops in the first place, much less before resorting to force.

  The four precincts with the highest use of force all include or have included what the police call “impact zones,” violent pockets routinely flooded with officers, often in their first assignment out of the academy, in an effort to suppress crime. That combination of inexperienced officers and worst neighborhoods may be one reason force is so high, residents said. Adding the encounters, while apparently not leading to a higher number of physical injuries, do create lasting feelings of resentment and a distrust of officers. Us vs. them we deny but all live with and through, perhaps needlessly according to the laws that are supposed to rule This Great Land Of Ours.

  Felipe Carrion, 42, who runs a 44th Precinct barbershop on the Grand Concourse, said, “I feel sometimes a lot of the rookies that come out don’t have the proper training, and it’s actually a fear factor on their part. They’re actually afraid of getting hurt themselves.”

  Ever watch COPS, the television event? Controlling the subject is rule number 1. Period. Gotta subdue and nip improper attitudes in the bud before they’re out of hand. Hello! Everyone.

  Two months ago, Mr. Carrion said, he was standing outside his shop when two officers confronted him. “They asked me what I was doing in front of the shop and I said I was the owner,” and, “They said, ‘No, you’re not. You’re not the owner. Let’s see some ID.’” But as Mr. Carrion reached for his identification, the officers shoved him against the wall. “I was like, ‘You’re using police brutality. You’re not supposed to be doing that. Let me show you ID.’” Then the officers calmed down after seeing identification, but not before shoving him against the wall again and searching him. Both officers, he said, “looked like they were right out of the academy.” Or ready to go back?

  Police officials defend the stops as an effective crime deterrent. According to The Times, They downplayed The Times’s findings about use of force, saying the only reason the four precincts had such high levels was officers checked a box marked “hands on suspect” more often on the form they are required to fill when conducting stops. Other boxes include “suspect on wall” and “suspect on ground.” Paul J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said “hands on suspect” was a subjective category that “may be reported anytime the officer’s hand comes into physical contact with the subject. This could occur during a frisk or to guide a suspect to the sidewalk,” he wrote in an e-mail.

  But The Times found, John A. Eterno, a former New York Police captain, who used to train officers on the stop-and-frisk tactic, who disputed that explanation, saying officers are trained to only check the box “whenever some sort of force is used to control the situation, or to make sure that either the officer’s safety or somebody else’s safety is maintained.” Dr. Eterno, who retired in 2003 and is now a criminologist at Molloy College on Long Island, added, “You could frisk a person without any use of force at all.” While all policemen ever had to do is ask me.

  It was in the 46th Precinct that Christopher Graham said he was stopped by two officers last winter as he and a friend were leaving his friend’s apartment building. The officers guided them to the wall of the building and began frisking them, Mr. Graham, 19, said. When the officer got to his groin area, Mr. Graham flinched, he said. “I said, ‘Whoa, what are you doing?’” Mr. Graham recalled. “The cop put his hand on the back of my cap and, boom, smashed my head into the wall of the apartment, for no reason.”

  The reason is power and also the reason not to.

  The resulting gash sent blood gushing down Mr. Graham’s cheek that took six stitches to close. Mr. Graham, who was neither arrested nor issued a summons in the stop, still bears a scar next to his left eye.

  You see that’s all that’s between us and state sponsored anarchy. A system of checks and balances, otherwise possibly millions could be lost and the keys to their cells thrown away. Thank God the police have to answer to lawyers, otherwise, poof, police state. But no one in, or running for, public office would admit that. Fuzz-y is as fuzzy self-righteously does, huh?

  City Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who represents the West Bronx, called the numbers “alarming. If indeed they were resisting arrest, or if there were any other kinds of crimes being committed that would call for that kind of aggressiveness, you would expect to see a correlation in arrests,” he said. “Instead, we see the total opposite.”

  That’s right, if only all the riff-raff could be legitimately arrested and gotten out-of-the-way?

Police officials also noted complaints, filed last year with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent panel that investigates complaints of excessive force, were at the lowest level since 2003, and only a tiny fraction of those were substantiated. But many citizens interviewed by The Times said they had either never heard of the board, or did not believe complaining would do any good. Those interviewed said the use of force seldom led to physical injuries. No, The Times would never accuse the police of violence with the intent to not leave marks. No, not in this country. Ha! ?

  The Times interviewed dozens of people in the 32nd, 44th, 46th and 113th Precincts who told stories of physical encounters with the police. Many said they were stopped multiple times without any force. But if they displayed any resistance, even verbally, like asking why they were stopped, the police sometimes got rough. Corroborating their stories is difficult because police data does not name those stopped or the officers making the stops. When most-likely computerized visual documentation of every action an officer is involved in is possible. What, something profiteers can wait to get their hands around when there are so many other ways to lucratively squeeze the public? So why wouldn’t the officer on the street want in on the action? Humans aren’t that complex. Most of what anyone does is for kicks no matter how our actions are rationalized otherwise.

  The presence of impact squads in high-crime areas is not enough to explain why force is used so often in some precincts. The 73rd Precinct in Brownsville, Brooklyn, has the city’s highest violent crime rate, and the police stop residents at nearly three times the rate as in the 44th and 46th Precincts. Yet the police used force in only 14 percent of stops in Brownsville last year, well below the city average.

  State Senator José R. Peralta, a Democrat of Queens whose district includes the 115th, said he was already concerned by the high number of stops taking place in the area. But he said he was surprised to learn, from a Times reporter, how many of those encounters involved physical force.

“Those are very troubling statistics,” he said. “The community has some pockets of high crime,” he added, but the overall amount does not correspond “to the extent of the force being used.”

  So, we need to protect the police to protect us and, if nothing is done about adversarial justice, nothing will be done as has happened for centuries now under our lazy haphazard system of self-righteous ignorance of what crime should actually be defined as by the state. Amen.

8/15/2012

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Legal Physicians Heal Thyselves?

8/15/2012 concluded: So, we need to protect the police to protect us and, if nothing is done about adversarial justice, nothing will be done as has happened for centuries now under our lazy haphazard system of self-righteous ignorance of what crime should actually be defined as by the state. Amen.

January 31 - February 20, 2019

The Modern Day Maginot Line

  Fairly accustomed to alternative slant, but bent over in agony spewing the results of narrowed public opinion? However much elucidation reveals about the artless allusions to historical embellishment glossing over current replications of indifferent swagger. Why bother facing, in the broad public forum, (media empires, word-of-mouth etc.), how much this proposed Great Wall Between Mexico and the United States is haunted by the symbolism of the Maginot Line. Symbolic for its being constructed for peace of mind security against a possible reoccurrence of World War I. Forget that that line just reinforced aggressive tensions, while the current modern day americanism line isn't intended to deter an actual invading military force. Because beyond the argumentative minutiae, once again military might may well be the great end all. Except culture's the over-riding force and the idea of this new border wall is a direct shrugging of responsibility for nightmarish occurrences of capitalist and socialist corruption. Getting over is the easy part of salesmanship. While the Criminal Enterprise System that's been reaped requires solution. Not another shaky symbol that nothing's our fault.  

_________________________________________________________

Well, It's Always Something

  Reading well written journalism with artful arcs of weighed perceptions, the experience itself has a standout dynamic. Specifically, accurately using pseudo-patriotic frenzy to describe a fault line at which societies are portrayable without backdrop with simplistic props. 

  Whereas, could the country see, as written, an elucidating tale while tied to scapegoatist iconography? Right. Politics aren't reducible to an impossible Shangri La the social fabric's nowhere near, anyway. Where the realistic thing's been not to face how the Criminal Enterprise System's challenged integrity runs amok. Ethics For Everybody 

  So what's to be done's undone by political jargon that closes off avenues of perception when every street has to possibly be taken. 

_________________________________________________________  

"Past Is Prologue"

  That there are even individuals to point to as culprits, on either side, is somewhat remarkable. Not that that's not always the case, having somewhere specific to load all the blame. But that cartoonish status can be painted across any piece of imagery such that real life events become caricaturized right before, and in, the public's eyes. Relegating the most extreme examples of chicanery to modest outrage at best. Ah, the land of international entertainment complexes and the apparatuses of corruption we're too slow and late tearing down. Rebuilding a legal society is not quite as thrilling as chasing the desperate criminality raised by the Criminal Enterprise System's apparatus.

  Right. Roger Stone's so brilliant as to have created himself out of whole cloth when the cynical self-servingness he'd evolved from has plagued humanity throughout time. One could imagine, if so inclined and not beholden to an ideal that the separate white race is a treasure in and of itself. That what's probably true is wealth's as much a result of creativity as ruthlessness infects its' roots. Tell us Roger Stone? How satisfying power is for power's sake? 

Steven Colbert 

History Doesn't Judge When EVERY Regret's Undermined. PERIOD.

  Some day? Some day passed many times over when the angels of conscience are torn asunder by the beliefs of the receptively coerced self-righteous. For instance an NFL quarterback called the greatest of all time, who benefited from the NFL's FINALLY protecting quarterbacks from out-right injurious assaultive practices. That perhaps has a correlation to the currently in vogue practice of belittling congestion pricing without the slightest allusion to the fact the automobile's been subsidized for over a century. Undermining an actual thoroughly thought out transportation system. History already reads this way. But who gives a hoot over regretting that previous generations self-absolved themselves of responsibility, too? History as enemy continues to be crafted through generations of passing along problems because purchased adherence is one way of the world. Johnny Unitas' career was on the NFL's conscience way, way, too long. Or that too is just another example of swept under the rug as this year's Super Bowl imagery attests. And Fox News trumpets. Anyone lately, or ever, during appearances, hear Broadway Joe asked, "How're the knees?"

  I've always been against taxing our way to any solution. Especially since the roots of all problems are cultural. Even collecting tax. But that doesn't mean congestion pricing is wrong to the extent that New York City's radio talkers, between songs, flippantly regard the unfairnesses. But if people were, and are, more responsible last resorts wouldn't be necessary. That there's no plan whatsoever to transition the world's already operating petroleum vehicles to environmentally cleaner fuel is proof the transportation industry's heart really isn't in everyone's interest. Although the president seems terribly satisfied with our getting away with this self-absolution too. Maybe some histories won't read this way for centuries. Or ever. Because there's just too much dough riding on separate truths? No face. For shame. For shame. 

Jailed Former Billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky Sentence Review By Russian Supreme Court

  RT reports that in response to appeals filed by ex-Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his former business partner Platon Lebedev, the Russian Supreme Court has officially confirmed review proceedings will begin. On Tuesday court spokesman Pavel Odintsov told reporters, “Supreme Court Chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev, having looked into supervisory appeals filed by the defendants (Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev), overturned another Supreme Court judge’s ruling that rejected these appeals and ordered the start of review proceedings.”

  Quoting statements from Khodorkovsky’s defense lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant to Interfax on Tuesday, RT believes he hopes the Supreme Court chairman’s decision to begin an oversight inquiry into their clients’ complaints marks some headway in the case. “I have just learned that the Supreme Court chairman has made the decision to start an oversight inquiry into our complaints. I can only say one thing, this is either yet another special operation with the use of the court or the first step towards justice. I hope for the latter.” Khodorkovsky’s defense team remains cautiously optimistic as to what this latest event means for their client. The defense lawyer Klyuvgant also said, “We will see how the situation develops, and what the follow-up events and outcome will be. The decision alone does not tell us anything.” So if that sounds overly cautious when hearing positive statements from any Russian official then this could quite possibly be the first time you’ve ever read anything about a Russian government institution.

  Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 49, was arrested on October 25, 2003, and eventually sentenced to nine years in prison for tax fraud. Later, together with his business partner Platon Lebedev, they were found guilty on separate counts of embezzlement and money laundering. But as Raymond Chandler once insinuated in the pages of The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe detective novel, when extremely large sums are accumulated it’s hard to guess how much could come by completely honest means. However President Putin has found fit to not justify his own wealth before the legal system or Russian people, so what’s the real deal, Vladimir?

  Khodorkovsky was once ranked 16th on the Forbes list of billionaires and is scheduled to be released from prison in 2017 after a nine-year sentence. Having been arrested and jailed in 2003, one can wonder if the Russian legal system ever heard of, or pondered, the concept of time served? Vladimir?

7/25/2012

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Jailed Former Billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky Sentence Review By 
Russian Supreme Court

7/25/2012 concluded: Khodorkovsky was once ranked 16th on the Forbes list of billionaires and is scheduled to be released from prison in 2017 after a nine-year sentence. Having been arrested and jailed in 2003, one can wonder if the Russian legal system ever heard of, or pondered, the concept of time served? Vladimir?

May 8 - May 28, 2018

May 5, 2018

Dear Mr. President,

  Could we sit, at least briefly, as I've noticed your doing, publicly, whenever explaining how your time's spent, with someone your image's being profiled beside? People can be too intrusive, no? But without those excuses, heads of state can't competently bury their heads otherwise? 

  Besides all the power, and everything, your lifestyle's imaginably confining. Attention monotonous. Maybe you're immune, of course. Everyone's not as lucky as you. Everyone? Few are as lucky as you. While you're aware of what that means? Luck's made. Lottery's chance. But otherwise, luck's made. Strategies executed too.

  Ruthlessness is underestimated in the public forum. Abstractly resigned to the attribute, alarm to the consequences is diluted. Continued apace, momentum's accrued, making impossible the possibility that the networks of machinations and massive machinery could be curbed. Your position is power's iron-hand, regardless of flaws. Without responsibility for the immense collateral damage, beneath the office of a presidency. The separation of state protocol from reality. Because that general smirk, of yours, Mr. President, reflects an amusement with the general ethical compromises of rule, that, however much are your call, is not history's award passed verbatim. 

  Yes meanderingly broad's imprecise. But this conversation's purpose isn't for complaining about specifics, you ritualistic self-idolizing class adherent you. The regal façade's behind this one-sided exchange, and why we're kinda stuck in the middle with you and your, clamoring for blind obedience, fellow elitists, sir.  

  Though ruthlessness does rule every context, there should be a social obligation to have a court system that's not just, arbitrarily, commercially driven? What do I mean? What's avoided being seen? Because that's the huger canyon to span than understanding me. 

  I'd guess neither of us were invited to the Markles' wedding last weekend. Life in the publicity glare. You probably don't empathize. All the stature, good connections. Secured military career. Smiling and kissing babies and all the commendable things. You're probably jealous. Though you, like most others, have your Pilate's hands washed often, you're probably jealous of so much privilege without personally dirtying the hands. I hear the young man's probably planted food in Africa. What did you tell someone to do? 

  I'll give a gift too. For Prince and Princess Markle, Pages 287-288. Not a conventional wedding present. But we weren't invited, were we Mr. President? 

  Leverage-wise, your boxscore's strong with observers. Can't fix what's always been broken. Buncha finger pointers, right? What matters is on the ground facts. Control and controlled. Ethical behavior be damned? 

  Even you know there's a bridge over the exploitive madness. The question is why we're not past the nonsense of being sold that's the path we're on? 

THEY KNEELED

     Among the world's evils are self-righteous nationalism. Getting to the crux, let's question whether I'm loyal enough to my flag and country. Fiddlesticks. This is a soapbox, not pedestal. 

     Right. The National Football League owners own their game. Rah rah. I suppose, the thing to do, to appeal to that so treasured, medium of agreement, public approval, would be to explain how the NFL's locker room decision is at least close to a rational outcome resulting from the voices of the people. Some of whom only a short-time before were dancing on their privilege to extol the honorable confederate flag till this issue arose of football players symbolically renouncing the violence that had not only gone on long enough, BUT WAY TOO FAR. 

  Notice the politically social path's been just one piqued resentment following the next? But this locker room talk's had legs through these angry expressions of Americanism. When the kneeling protest was never about undermining what America will mean, but turning back the tide of nonsense. It's literally nonsense that the best defended group in America has to resort to offensive tactics to protect themselves. Man overboard? Everyone's overboard. The crap should end and why the problem facing that? The protest honored the flag, you bastards. Look what your defending honor facade made me say. They knelt before the flag. Stop using the flag to conceal denial.

     But by all means we should all stand behind a rickety president, (I'm offended to be confronted with saying that), who exalts sycophantic obedience as virtuous. And beyond that, coaxing a portion of the public through a vast denial of actual history. The shame. The shame. 

     But by all means, to tell the truth, or virtually any cliched expression could be inserted here. Such as in all honesty discuss the flag. Kneeling was respectful. Using the flag to cover America's inertia of not fully facing history, in its' totality, marks this time, really, as The Era of the Scapegoat. Some seriously ridiculous things happened in the past. But in what's become of the trend owned public consciousness, in this truly privileged elitist time, takes the cake. Marie Antionette's been reborn. I'm not proud. I'm ashamed of it all. 

The Soapbox View pursues the Twin Legacies

 Andy Rooney and I.F. Stone