Saintperle

5/30/12

Golly Gee -- the Polish government is upset that our president referred to 'Polish Death Camps' when honoring a Polish patriot-hero who opposed them?


Golly gee.

And also -- Golly gee -- to think if it hadn't been for the Nazi's, the Poles would still be up there ranked pretty high -- all by themselves -- on the number of Jews they murdered in the 19th and 20th century (or didn't my grandmother still have nightmares about the Cossacks killing raping and murdering in the 1950's?)

Of course they don't like people mentioning it -- who would? 

And I know, the president must be very diplomatic and would that he'd known how sensitive the Poles are, but the problem is that Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Betzec,Chetmno, Poznan,Gross-Rosen, KZ Lublin, and others WERE all there, in Poland, where the Nazi's built them -- some not so nice as Auschwitz, a labor-till-you're-dead camp, but straight out extermination -- Death Camps like Treblinka and Sobibor and KZ Lublin -- end of the line, everyone out of the train. 

And the Warsaw Ghetto wasn't built by the German invaders. 

So --oooo, sorry to hurt your delicate feelings about your own history, Poland, but get over it. 
It happened. 
It's history. 
Own up to it. 

Probably not many -- if any -- Poles still alive who participated in the crimes (although I know and know-of several people who -- as boys -- grew up in Poland -- hunted, haunted, and surviving Auschwitz - Birkenau -- and THEY have mostly gotten over it.) 

Alternatively, you can always go hang out with the Turks who still refuse to admit their own history of mass murder/genocide of the Armenians.
You can sip coffee together and complain how unfair the world is to be so tactless as to remind you of all those bodies -- even inadvertently.

By the way, most of the people I know either from Poland or of Polish descent, know the history and deal with it. 

It's just politicians -- same in every country -- looking for something to get pissed off about. 

I recall the wisdom of my friend, the late Arlen Riley Wilson, whose observation on politicians was succinct and accurate for most of them:

The scum rises to the top.

Really miss you Arlen, you and Bob both.


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5/15/12

Ah, yes, Romney repeats the mantra over and over: "I'm a busnessman, I'm a businessman."


Well, let's see -- a pretty great businessman -- Joseph P. Kennedy -- who incidentally also raised some sons, all of whom, unlike Willard the Wonderful, were pretty much committed to the welfare of those less fortunate -- Joe Kennedy put it this way, a lesson he taught to his sons, and one that they remembered:

"All businessmen are sonsofbitches."

And Joe the bootlegger and Hitler admirer, knew whereof he spoke, having been one of the biggest goldplated sonsofbitches ever to walk the walk.

So maybe the Kennedy boys were focused on doing for those less fortunate because they rejected everything their father was. Possible.

And if so, maybe Mitt has done the same thing, rejected everything his father was -- a decent, socially concerned, open, honest person.

You think? 

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5/12/12

Oh, just in case you want to know the opinion of some people who actually KNOW SOMETHING about marriage traditions...



Arlington, Virginia; The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, the world's largest organization of anthropologists, the people who study culture, releases the following statement in response to President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a threat to civilization.

"The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples."

(This statement was released during the Bush Administration -- not like it's too new to know.)



The link to the American Anthropological Association statement was in an excellent article in the Alaska Dispatch May 10, 2012 by Scott Woodham on Bristol Palin's typically dim-witted blog in which she makes a semi-coherent denunciation of President Obama's statement that he favors marriage being a right for LGBT.

Alaska Dispatch* is a wonderful daily paper, and I recommend joining for a free online subscription -- always something fascinating with a point of view and candor not often seen in other newspapers.

Mr. Woodham also provides a link to a PBS story on "the marriage practices of the Mosuo, a contemporary group a matriarchal ethnic group in China in which biological fathers don't rear children and reproduction is unrelated to the institution of marriage..."
In other words, as Mr. Woodham points out, a cultural group with marriage traditions more appropriately relevant to those of the Palin family.

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 *My long-time thanks to Steve Heimel of Alaska Public for pointing me to many fine things over the years, including Alaska Dispatch.
  

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5/11/12

Mitt Romney -- does he really think we're all stupid enough to believe him?


First of all, you look at that prep school photo of him and you know Dick Wolfe would cast him immediately as the Prep School Sadist in a Law & Order bullying/hazing death episode.

He says "We didn't know anything about gay or homosexual back then."

Really? The 60's? Tell me another.
-- OK -- I will bet $10,000 that Mitt snarled "You little faggot" at his victim as he showed him who was boss -- with all his buddies helping. And you know he did.

I think there's a reason -- even before this -- why former schoolmates and working mates have not lined up to endorse him.*

He's worked hard to improve, even perfect, his "actual human being" mask but it never fully covered up the vicious sonofabitch you can see just behind that phony smile.

Of course, TV journalists have to pretend to believe him -- if they just outright called him a lying sack of shit, they'd get congrats and points for honesty, but lose the big bucks.

A hero of mine -- the incredibly vile John Wilmot, 2d Earl of Rochester (1647 - 1680) -- privileged to have a friendship with King Charles II, who found him amusing, and always relented, restoring him to court after times he was so egregious he had to put out to pasture. Wilmot observed the way things are:

"Any man who calls things by their rightful name will surely be hanged."

Or, with anchorpeople, calling things by their rightful name will lose those 6 and 7 figure salaries they get for being able to tolerate fools and vicious assholes with a straight face -- both the network execs and the monsters they have to interview.

He's a monster.
Amazing to realize that in matters of corruption and dishonesty, there's someone who -- along with his sleazy crew of lie-concocters -- makes Richard Nixon and his band of felonious reprobates look, in retrospect, like Mr. Rogers and the neighborhood.

In comparison, he makes W look like a serious, thoughtful, populist, an earnest intelligent studious fellow. 

It's no coincidence that people in place to know say that many in the LDS Establishment are unhappily concerned by the possibility that people will assume all Mormons are as sleazy and nasty as Mitt Romney.

Actually, I'm remembering the way that LDS Establishment invaded California, terrified that people who didn't believe the same mean-spirited crap they did might be allowed to live their own lives and love and marry. They came, pouring over the border squealing and biting like a swarm of rabid squirrels, bringing the heartless psychotic Proposition 8, millions in money and thousands of mindless volunteers. We know they are no better than Little Mitt.  Sanctimonious vermin.. 
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*Addendum -- regarding the apparent reluctance of Romney's former cohorts to endorse him, a Managing Director at Bain Capital --Jonathan Lavine, who has been there since before Romney severed active ties  -- has raised between $100K and $200k in contributions for President Obama's re-election campaign. (We can only speculate on what stories he might be able to tell. Scarey. Kind of like being on trial and finding out the prosecution has called your ex-wife as a witness.)
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