This website combines some of my personal musings and observations on events past and present. (see biography)
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By Rolland Smith, on January 27th, 2012
Here it is Friday again and already I am throwing my hands up in the air over some of the news headlines.
Governor Romney citing the fact that his Father was born in Mexico, but left there at the age of five. His parents were missionaries. The current Romney does not speak Spanish, but would love to parlay the distant connection to the Latino voters in Florida as votes.
A government report shows that federal workers owe 3.4 BILLION in back taxes. You must be kidding! We pay them with our tax dollars and they don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
The Associated Press reports in the Washington Post Newspaper:
“The data showed that 467 employees of the House of Representatives, or about 4.2 percent of the workforce, owed more than $8.5 million. In the Senate, 217 employees, or about 3 percent of the workforce, owed $2.13 million.
Obama’s staff was not immune, either, with 36 people in Obama’s executive office of nearly 1,800 workers — about 2 percent — owing the government $833,970 in back taxes.”
The IRS found that more than 279 thousand federal employees and retirees own 3.4 billion in back income taxes as of September 30, 2010.
Come on…..Congress you want something to do this year as you bicker and bilk. Do something about this.
I have to believe that this kind of thing has been going on for decades and continues to follow the old admonition, “do as I say, not as I do.”
When are we as participating and controlling citizens of this Republic going to stand up for what is right, what is fair, and what is necessary in order for our democracy to return to compromise, courtesy and common sense?
When?
By Rolland Smith, on January 26th, 2012
It seems to me that politics no longer makes strange bedfellows, although it might in the caves of controversy within the Washington environment.
It now makes confrontation appropriate whenever you get the chance.
Take for example the meeting on the Phoenix Airport tarmac when Arizona governor Jan Brewer greeted, or better yet, confronted President Obama with a letter and a lecture.
It may have turned into a testy greeting, there is no way to know except by reading the body language.
I don’t think this picture is a finger point that says, “Gee, you are doing a great job.”
Supposedly it’s an intense gesture that says have you read my book, “Scorpions for Breakfast.” In it, she criticizes Obama for opposing her law on immigration.
Here is what Christi Parson of the Los Angeles Times says in her report on the encounter.
“A White House official offered this take on the encounter: “The governor handed the president a letter and said she was inviting him to meet with her. The president said he’d be glad to meet with her again, but did note that after their last meeting, a cordial discussion in the Oval Office, the governor inaccurately described the meeting in her book.”
Thick skin is in now, more than ever before, required in the Washington arena of hopeful ideas. In Roman times they just threw the inimical to the lions. Today the political fangs drip with uncompromising memberships in both parties.
What it also points up to me is that the United States of America may be an amalgum of cultures under the aegis of a collective one, but it is also a partisan dichotomy of political beliefs that can only be resolved with courtesy, discussion, compromise and the political dominator of seeking only what is the greater good for America.
We see it! Why can’t the guys and gals we choose to represent us?
By Rolland Smith, on January 25th, 2012
As I write this post I’m listening to President Obama’s State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.
I listened to a number of good ideas from the President that any American would and should embrace with compromise, yet I see little or no reaction from the republicans in applause or facial acknowledgements.
It is another reason why I am angry and frustrated with contentious members of congress who care only for their party to win the next presidential election rather than solving our serious problems and building a new America.
I also acknowledge that Democrats in their myopic view of sustaining power also share responsiblity for the current situation we are in. What does that tell us?
We need to work together, not for the benefit of individual party platforms, but for the greater good of America.
I have listened to state of the union addresses from Presidents since JFK. Some of the issues have stayed the same. Jobs, housing, the economy, taxes, health care, and social security. I don’t know if any of those issues will ever be resolved, I hope so, but congress needs to try; partisan passions, if they continue, will stop any compromise and that needs to STOP.
Having ranted and raved, my friends, I still personally choose to move from within my spirit and know that all is as it should be and we, collectively, create our world as it is and we are responsibility for its condition.
By Rolland Smith, on January 23rd, 2012
Yesterday morning the temperature was six degrees. Later I had a fire going and felt safe after a cold winter’s night.
The warmth of a long ago sun spreadsinto my room as a log fire dissolves its way to ash giving back the heat and light of many seasons’ growth. Fluid flames dance in a flickering grace of form and orange light. Heat is the result. Light a soft byproduct.
A few feet away was the cold. It is a stinging cold with only a window glass to hold it back. It’s double glass, a bulwark of silica that another temperature and time turned into a transparent glazing of clarity and protection.
I grew up in old houses with single panes of flawed glass. Frost would decorate the panes into a translucent crystal of art, but not now. Modern houses are too tight for nature’s cryogenic beauty to seep in and paint the panes with a cameo of cold. Too bad! How many kids today will miss the vision of feathered frost on the inside of a windowpane where they can scratch their own design into the thin sheet of ice crystals.
Just beyond my outer pane is an astringent cold that if you stepped outside without protection it would burn with negative degrees, blister the skin, force he eyes to tears and tighten the inner nose when breath is necessary. It’s an arctic tight. Not a tight of clothes and layers, but a tightness of breath. It’s like an invisible contorting serpent; a tightening Arctic snake that constricts with every breath. Its tightness smothers and suffocates in a vapor of ever constricting cold.
But I’m inside and warm and I feel safe. Proximity to potential danger seems to do that. Other dangers will evoke a similar feeling. High winds, flooding, blizzards, and even summer heat can harm, but if we feel safe, protected while near the danger, then the rest of the feeling and fear basks in the comfort of illusion for safety is only as good as the protection that holds back the danger.
The glass in the window keeps me feeling safe and sustains my sense of comfort. The cold on the other side sets a tension for possible attack, but cannot penetrate the timid barrier of wood and glass. It is the knowing fierceness of potential danger that keeps me in the fort of comfort.
By Rolland Smith, on January 22nd, 2012
Winter Falls
©2009 Rolland G. Smith
It looks like nature’s raven hair.
Illusion from a flowing falls
Creates a snowy cameo
Long ‘fore a warming spring enthralls.
A moment frozen – wintertime -
And held within a fleeting thought.
When framed by icy clifts and woods
The soul of winter’s stream is caught.
By Rolland Smith, on January 20th, 2012
Some things don’t make any sense to me.
Why can Congress vote billions of dollars to go to war where they know our young citizens die, but will only agrees to half the money to repair the Washington Monument where our young citizens are inspired?
Why is it that news organizations will interview the ex-wives or wife of a presidential hopeful whose initial separation was probably acrimonious. What did they expect an endorsement? Why has she been silent for so long?
Why do all candidates distort the facts to fit their positions? Whatever happened to truth?
If you feel like it add some other whys in the comment section of this blog.
Have a nice weekend everyone.
By Rolland Smith, on January 19th, 2012
http://akiomatsumura.com/2012/01/a-response-from-former-cbs-anchor-rolland-smith.html
By Rolland Smith, on January 18th, 2012
It’s January and it’s cold where I live. It should be cold, it’s January, but we have had some warmish days since winter began and I am thankful for it.
I wonder what that means, if anything. I don’t think the planet climatology is changing beyond a normal cycle, but then again I’ve watched the weather statistics for a number of years and it does seem things are different. I do acknowledge that we as a polluting species need to curb our trash.
Could it be global warming? A cyclical pattern we amateurs don’t understand? An aboration in climate? It doesn’t matter, the cold is part and parcel of the season no matter what its cause and if we don’t like it, we can move.
That said, life goes on and on and on. A very simplistic observation, but one that embraces the truth of living and a truth we oft forget because we are a controlling species and life is not something we can even remotely control. We can only control how we think or feel about the episodes of life, but true control is left to the spiritual and physical consequence of our actions.
Life goes on in the minutia of things. It is the way it should be.
People say things, we react. We say things, people react. Unfortunately when we react either as a person, a people, a community or a country our reaction engenders the other’s reaction and conflicts and cultural separations often result that are adversarial in nature.
There is only one way out of this dilemma. Gandhi said it decades ago. A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
We need to change our minds to change our lives.
By Rolland Smith, on January 17th, 2012
We need to do two things between now and next November. We need to find new candidates for the jobs of those in Congress that we are going to vote out of office. And we need to vote out of office any incumbant who is currently in Congress because individually and collectively they have failed to do their job.
Here’s a new poll from the Washington Post Newspaper and ABC News. It’s not much different from the poll last fall.
To wit:
“A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that a record 84 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing, with almost two-thirds saying they “disapprove strongly.” Just 13 percent of Americans approve of how things are going after the 112th Congress’s first year of action, solidifying an unprecedented level of public disgust that has both sides worried about their positions less than 10 months before voters decide their fates.”
I can help all Congressman and women who are up for relection to decide their November fates.
LOOK FOR WORK!
By Rolland Smith, on January 16th, 2012
I’ve posted this poem before and I will again on the occasion of celebrating MLK’s birthday.
Martin Luther King
© 1995 Rolland G. Smith
I had a dream the other night
and Martin Luther King was there.
He spoke in tones befit the wise
and asked me if I’d share,
the news of how his dream came out,
since he had been away.
I told him times had changed somewhat,
but the dream was still a dream
and somewhere in these many years
was progress, or so it seemed.
Tell me, he said, what has happened,
since he had been away.
We’ve legislated out the hate,
I said, but laws can’t touch the mind,
if bias reeks within the heart
there cannot be a human – kind.
It’s still not true, he said,
for he had been away.
And then he said, where he is now,
there is no ONE color bright,
not black or white, yellow or brown.
There is only a loving light.
It’s the truth I lived, and live,
he said, as he went away.
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Headlines and More
Here it is Friday again and already I am throwing my hands up in the air over some of the news headlines.
Governor Romney citing the fact that his Father was born in Mexico, but left there at the age of five. His parents were missionaries. The current Romney does not speak Spanish, but would love to parlay the distant connection to the Latino voters in Florida as votes.
A government report shows that federal workers owe 3.4 BILLION in back taxes. You must be kidding! We pay them with our tax dollars and they don’t pay their fair share of taxes.
The Associated Press reports in the Washington Post Newspaper:
“The data showed that 467 employees of the House of Representatives, or about 4.2 percent of the workforce, owed more than $8.5 million. In the Senate, 217 employees, or about 3 percent of the workforce, owed $2.13 million.
Obama’s staff was not immune, either, with 36 people in Obama’s executive office of nearly 1,800 workers — about 2 percent — owing the government $833,970 in back taxes.”
The IRS found that more than 279 thousand federal employees and retirees own 3.4 billion in back income taxes as of September 30, 2010.
Come on…..Congress you want something to do this year as you bicker and bilk. Do something about this.
I have to believe that this kind of thing has been going on for decades and continues to follow the old admonition, “do as I say, not as I do.”
When are we as participating and controlling citizens of this Republic going to stand up for what is right, what is fair, and what is necessary in order for our democracy to return to compromise, courtesy and common sense?
When?