Man! Dude! Session #161

M: Dude! The Supreme Court’s legally recognizing same-sex marriages only strengthens the argument for civil rights legislation in the coming months and years.

D: Man! What about the Supreme Court’s rulings against Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Yeah, the justices wanted the lower courts and the United States Congress to reissue stances according to up-to-date data and research, but to place these issues into the hands of essentially those who deferred the issues onto the United States Supreme Court, it seems to me to be a never-ending tennis match!

M: Dude! It’s more like the then-Rehnquist Court and now-Roberts Court are serving one ace after another, without once caring to engage their challengers in a back-and-forth. Justices Breyer and Kennedy offered themselves as the deciding game changers this week, but I still think the court is underhanded.

D: Man! You think the male justices seriously think that they can get away with subversive acts of intellect with poor and working class Americans?

M: Dude! That’s just it! The oppressed that win their arguments for civil rights are the ones to take up the struggle to liberate those who either struggle or, in the cases last week, are taken decades backwards. The LGBT communities within the 13 states that recognize same-sex marriages must now move forward with their fight to spread acceptance throughout the 37 states that do not. And, like the female abolitionists and suffragists, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 will be brought into the public and judicial conscience once again via same sex couple families and their supporters.

D: Man! Talking about Wimbledon-like tennis tournaments, I think the field of Republican deuces like Boehner and Cantor, Blackburn and Ryan, McConnell and Rand, and Bachmann and Gohmert ought to be disadvantaged. But how will Democrats ever be able to empower masses to register for an identification card in order to cast their ballots? No wonder Chris Christie is arrogantly presuming his reelection success in the early voting cycle come this October!

M: Dude! The long arduous battle for civil rights has been handed to LGBT communities across the United States. Having had to live their lives in hiding behind heterosexual facades for the sake of not getting ridiculed or all-out socially ousted, LGBT individuals are tough and formidable forces of positive change and open-mindedness despite the crude stereotypes they are continually being subjected to, like the ones being directed towards Rachel Jeantel, the witness in the Trayvon Martin murder trial.

D: Man! Rachel Jeantel has been stripped of all credibility because of her speech and inability to read cursive English script. I have to confess that I did not have the ability to read cursive until the fourth grade, third grade being the first time I was taught how to write cursive myself.

M: Dude! I could not tell time until the fourth grade! The second hand on all the clocks made me sweat with terror that someone might ask me to read the time! That’s why I always wore a digital watch until the fifth grade.

D: Man! If we were so bumbling in elementary school and so artless in our existences as we are today, you barely making it in construction while I hold on to a job at a hardware store, then what right does anyone in mainstream society have to judge the multilingual Creole-African American Rachel Jeantel?  

M: Dude! Seriously, the defense attorney for Zimmerman rigged the entire trial as insignificant with his tactless opening joke. Reminds me of Peggy Noonan’s argument this morning on George Stephanopoulos that Wendy Davis was promoting “infanticide” by her pro-choice stand supporting partial birth abortions.

D: Man! Peggy Noonan is with The Wall Street Journal. She’s a lost cause, trust me. She is known to savor every word that comes out of her mouth as having the equivalency of pearls. Wait! I misspoke! Noonan prefers to equivocate her words to sapphires because of a September birthday. What a rented mouth!  

M: Dude!  The demographics of the United States are changing and we the people have to think about what is happening to women and minorities in states with Republican legislatures. Texas State Senator Wendy Davis has given US an effective tactic to win back seats in the midterms: The Fort Worth native actually followed excruciatingly detailed procedures in order to filibuster the abortion bill that would have closed down Planned Parenthood Clinics, essentially taking a woman’s right to preventative health care and choice away throughout Texas.

D: Man! What about the quality of life indicators that come into play in the reassessment  of our African American brothers and sisters?

M: Dude! When the United States Supreme Court compromises equal protection, it is messing up the legislative structure upon which societal functionality depends. And African American families are especially vulnerable, with an ancestry that converges upon the Maafa, or “great disaster” that was slavery, which took over 25 million lives.

D: Man! It’s disturbing how the number of African individuals killed in the slave trade altogether is over 25 million lives. Just like the number of Jewish individuals killed in the holocaust is over 6 million! Doesn’t anyone get chills anymore about the disdain with which these perpetrators perpetrated, the actual number of slaves killed amounting to over 100 million and the number of Jews killed amounting to over 12 million?  

M: Dude! Legislative structures were made to suit the status quo and people who fought against such maleficent doctrines were the ones who ushered in the paradigm shifts that have helped soar humanity.

D: Man! If Texas State Senator Wendy Davis’ supporters can stand up for her amidst the war on women being played out in Austin, Texas right now, the upcoming special session beginning Monday, July 1 at 2 p.m., an attempt by Governor Rick Perry to pass the anti-abortion bill, then we’re going to be in for plenty of protests throughout the United States.

M: Dude! Wendy Davis is a diamond that has been gathering momentum with a levelheadedness that cuts through the political riffraff in Texas.

D: Man! She’s got it! She’s superb! Texas is just the starting point of her influence and incredible stamina to wipe out such riffraff like Governor Rick Perry and Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

Supreme Court Male Injustices

(D)ude: Man! Are my eyes crossed?

(M)an: Dude! Are you suffering double vision?

D: Man! No! Should I be necessarily suffering from double vision if my eyes are indeed crossed?

M: Dude! Well, I think that would depend upon the direction your pupils take as a pair. If you are seeing through a vortex of confusion and your headaches from what looks to you like the bridge of your nose and face, you’ve probably got your eyes crossed at one particular focal point in the exact center of your face.

D: Man! I’m not experiencing any vortex of confusion, but I am seeing the exact image of you next to an exact match. What could that mean?

M: Dude! That would probably be an indicator that your pupils are randomly offset with no particular point of interest. Wait a minute- didn’t you just share that you were not suffering from double vision?

D: Man! I’m confused!

M: Dude! Take two ibuprofens.

D: Man! Why?

M: Dude! You’re experiencing and suffering a migraine!

D: Man! Why?

M: Dude! You’ve probably been trying to comprehend how the Supreme Court can be bought a second time. Just look at the way they have basically chosen to weaken and jeopardize the American voter by striking out the federal oversight component in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

D: Man! Why? Chief Justice Roberts believed in disenfranchising the already disenfranchised in the Citizens United ruling that gave corporate thugs like Mitt Romney the right to declare to audiences that corporations were people too.

M: Dude! Chief Justice Roberts wants to pull rabbits out of President Lincoln’s top hat and distribute them to his fellow majority assenters Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy for preparations for the apocalyptic end of Civil Rights that they have set into motion due to out-of-date data that the 1965 Voting Rights Act cites as the basis for its argument. And all five male men also suffer from a god complex that only physicians like the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson can assess and treat with “Papa” John Schnatter’s bigoted “better” pizzas.

D: Man! And what about the Supreme Court’s ruling against tribal sovereignty by sending yet another case, this time concerning the non-Indian couple who raised a 3/256^th Cherokee child named Baby Veronica for the first 27 months of her life before her father came into the picture and challenged the arrangement?

M: Dude! The Supreme Court sided with the non-Indian couple. But, keep in mind, that the Indian Child Welfare Act prevented tribal children from being taken away by predominantly White social services agencies, primarily churches like the Latter-day Saints.

D: Man! Sounds to me like the Supreme Court males really want to clobber every piece of legislation that is going on for forty years on the crux that the data have changed and we aren’t the same United States as 40 years ago. Yet, the United States Congress has yet to sufficiently fund the reservation programs and similar interventions benefitting the desperate and suffering Native American tribes even into the present day!

M: Dude! Gregory Wayne Abbott, the Texas Attorney General, reinstated the Voter ID Law in Texas immediately after the Supreme Court ruling suspended federal approval and restraints to prevent GOP state legislatures from redistricting and issuing hurdles in the way of minorities, especially the African American and Hispanic American communities from being able to cast a ballot.

D: Man! Sounds to me that there’s a methodical cycle of injustices being handed down by the Supreme Court male justices! In fact, if the data is too old for the continued implementation of basic civil rights legislation, than I think it is fair game to dissect the indiscretions of the male justices of the Supreme Court, beginning with the rehashing of Justice Clarence Thomas’s sexual harassment pastimes.

M: Dude! Anita Hill is a heroic woman and I respect her decision to come forward with the issue of sexual harassment in the workforce. But I see what you mean, that Clarence Thomas got such clearance and an eventual confirmation and seat on the Supreme Court, yet he had been a hellishly despicable pervert/supervisor at the Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.    

D: Man! Who is responsible for keeping data up-to-date anyways?

M: Dude! The Supreme Court would like Congress to take such action, but with such inadequate bumpkins like John Boehner and Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell, what can you expect? I overheard that Speaker John Boehner has lost his handle on preschool fundamentals like tying shoestrings and that he’s got a couple of ladies running around him that keep track that Boehner not forget to knot his ties.

D: Man! The Supreme Court Male sure is an incendiary creature deserving his own cage at the National Zoo!

M: Dude! How would the Supreme Court Male be kept engaged at the National Zoo?

D: Man! Give them ties to knot and recorders to record data minute-by-minute. Unless, that is, you want the Supreme Court Male to dismiss everything after forty years of human sacrifice! These male specimens are ruthless and undeserving the attentions of primatologists!

M: Dude! The midterms are here and the unfathomably inept and unfit Republican status quo is infiltrating American democracy by bringing stacks of unread documents to the Capitol steps and honking out a bullish melodramatic tune from the 1980s: I don’t want to work. I want to bang the drum all day!

D: Man! That’s a 1983 song from Todd Rundgren! Thirty years old! Wow! Ten years from now, the Supreme Court Male will be dismissing that tune from public conscience as well!

The American Scholar & Last Scream for Justice

(M)an: Dude! The United States Media is covering the Trayvon Martin murder trial with a brutal bigotry that Mitt Romney’s presidential bid and the 2012 Republican National Convention escalated in attempts to win over the Faux News Channel agglomerate of voters.

(D)ude: Man! I believe the defense attorney and the judge are on the same page. I would have addressed Zimmerman’s lawyer, Don West’s despicable opening as inappropriate and inexcusable if I were Judge Debra Nelson.  

M: Dude! Judge Debra Nelson is not permitting any scientific investigative insights into whose screams were heard in the background moments before armed Zimmerman shot the unarmed 17-year-old African American teenager.

D: Man! Didn’t Mark Twain say something about it not mattering who you were, but what you are?

M: Dude! Yeah! Pudd’nhead Wilson is named such by bystanders when he remarks he would like to kill half a barking dog, those tuning in continuing a discussion of his character and finding David Wilson lacking in rationality after all.

D: Man! There is something to be said about that book, however, about the distinction between what one is and who one is, no? I mean, look at that David Wilson: A lawyer and a fingerprints expert who is looked upon wearily until the end when his expertise proves that the twins in question at trail were switched at birth.

M: Dude! They were switched at birth, both being the sons of a slaveholder who is looked upon as a compassionate, but clearly has impregnated a wife and a slave in all certainty. But in the end he is a slaveholder and sells off his own son by his actual wife across the Mississippi River while his slave’s son is educated at Yale and given the rights and privileges that the slave descendant would not have attained otherwise.  

D: Man! It is a shame that the Supreme Court left open the case regarding affirmative action. I’m afraid to see the lesser courts reassess that particular case regarding the University of Texas. In all honesty, it’s like the Roberts Court decided to place blinders where they would otherwise have had to confront a civil rights issue that is hanging from a rope with these statewide gerrymandered redistricting practices of the GOP.

M: Dude! The finality with which the people in Dawson’s Landing decide to subject the slave descendant retroactively into the system of slavery due to the slave mother’s switching of the two male babies in infancy, therefore the slave descendant having gotten away with the crime of not having served in that dehumanizing institution of slavery as he would have had his mother not switched the two half-brothers.

D: Man! Trayvon Martin was unarmed and Zimmerman was on the phone with a 911 dispatcher and a gun in his hand with which he shot and killed the screaming teenager! Those screams on the tape that Judge Debra Nelson has chosen not to allow in the trial regarding experts investigating and deciding who is screaming that horrific sound of absolute finality and terror and fatality! 

M: Dude! It is an abomination! The American Press’s insistence that the prosecutor’s repeating of George Zimmerman’s exact words on the phone with the 911 dispatcher as being obscene and unrepeatable just tells you how NOT far removed we as a nation are still from the days of Dawson’s Landing and the ways of categorizing and dismissing a human being, in this current court case an unarmed African American teenager.

D: Man! Didn’t George Zimmerman’s defense team have him wear glasses as well as a suit and tie when he was finally arrested and brought before a court approximately 44 days after Trayvon’s death? And isn’t George Zimmerman’s obscenities over the phone indicative of multiple prejudiced perspectives?  

M: Dude! Zimmerman clearly expressed hatred and annoyance towards Trayvon Martin over the phone with the emergency dispatcher. Clearly Zimmerman had resorted to the crudity of generalizing all African American troublemaking teens into one composite “punk” that he identified Trayvon as being, hence even more reason for himself to take matters into his own armed hands against the unarmed teen despite the 911 dispatcher insisting that Zimmerman not pursue Trayvon Martin and wait for authorities to arrive.

D: Man! Florida’s 2005 Stand Your Ground gun law needs to be abolished, don’t you think? George Zimmerman clearly took matters into his armed hands against the unarmed and screaming teenager because of that 2005 law’s permitting people fearing for their lives to use deadly force even if avoiding confrontation is possible. And, anyways, how ridiculous is it for George Zimmerman to insist that the screams are his! Zimmerman was holding the firearm that killed the unarmed Trayvon Martin! Zimmerman pursued to killing Trayvon Martin even after the fact that the emergency dispatcher recommended Zimmerman to NOT take action and wait for the authorities!

M: Dude! Don’t our sons and daughters in struggling neighborhoods have any right to move about freely unarmed? I see a lot of trouble arising from this murder trial. There are 30 other states that have adopted the Stand Your Ground Law since 2005.

D: Man! Remember at the campus of Texas Occidental Franchise University when the sororities and fraternities came up with the party idea of dressing up in black face?

M: Dude! It is places like TOFU that Supreme Court Justices like Scalia and Thomas et al need to study by dispatching their clerks and clerics to such campuses to gather qualitative data about the true state of affairs on college campuses in the Southern United States. White people are living in a delusional self-built wonderland in the suburbs and rural townships. People like George Zimmerman cannot even contain their racial disdain and prejudice even for an instant, reacting savagely and brutally to an African American outsider visiting family and friends in their gated communities.

D: Man! That gated community mentality has gripped the Congressional Republicans these days with their insistence to increase border security with extra fencing and patrolling, despite studies indicating that there is absolutely no such need for all that at this time. In fact, the border’s never been more secure in history as it is right now.

M: Dude! Trayvon Martin screamed to death, but the issue of whether or not his scream was even his just shows how pathetically backwards we are to even grant Zimmerman the possibility of owning an African American teenager’s evidential alarm and subsequent fatality!

D: Man! An absolute nightmare for subsequent generations of African Americans to follow! No 

wonder the slave descendant’s mother could only find spiritual refuge in her church in the final chapter of that Mark Twain classic we’ve been discussing! Give it to God? I don’t think so! That’s like dismissing the history of entire people deserving justice, the jumpstart towards a stable and honorable existence!

Man! Dude! Session #158

(D)ude: Man! There’s a lot of talk about Paula Deen and her cultural primitiveness.

(M)an: Dude! She responded in an all-out uncalled-for manner that embodied the sentiments of the Confederate States of America after South Carolina’s issuing an Ordinance of Secession following Lincoln winning his first term. At that time, 15 states held onto slavery and perceived Lincoln as a threat with his talks to abolish that brazen institution.

D: Man! Paula Deen is saucy and her fans are just as caustic with their demands that their bigoted hostess be reinstated! They are unworthy of a presence on Food Network and QVC.

M: Dude! Snowden is a planted Republican in Hong Kong put in place over there by Karl Rove and his billionaire financiers’ CPAC funds.  

D: Man! I knew something was Republican about the guy! The GOP really polished him up and made him look as scholastic as possible for someone who clearly wanted conservative esteem. Have you noticed how Snowden never manages to say sound or coherent statements? As a typical Republican, he is very invested in speaking without expression or substance.

M: Dude! You’re correct. Do you know whether children are being taught the history of slavery in schools? I don’t recall having come across Wilberforce until fairly recently with the film Amazing Grace.

D: Man! Yes, the film is relatively new. And, no, I don’t think the John Browns of the world have been released from the customary boxes in textbooks proclaiming their sainthood and significance. It is sad to think that humanity does not entrust its children with enough knowledge of the truths of such injustices.

M: Dude! The biggest injustice thus far in the postmodern new millennium is the influx of unfit politicians from the Far Right Wing and the neoconservatives having infiltrated our government locally and statewide through cheating tactics like gerrymandering and disenfranchisement schemes like voter identification that suppress the authenticity of a growing and diversifying electorate.

D: Man! What will happen to affirmative action?

M: Dude! The question really ought to be what have the Republican GOP presidents have done since Richard Nixon to ensnare the debate by chipping substantially at JFK’s Executive Order 10925 and LBJ’s Executive Order 11246, two of the most dynamic federal initiatives for “taking affirmative action to ensure” equal opportunity. You know, the construction industry was one of the first places to see these federal programs take effect?

D: Man! Wow! We’re talking about federal contractors being forced to pledge an end to job discrimination right?  

M: Dude! Yeah, and beginning with Richard Nixon and continuing down to Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and both George Bushes, these Republican GOP presidencies have torn up the basic fabric that JFK bravely implemented and LBJ expanded lucidly in their landmark Executive Orders 10925 and 11246. Oh! And, additionally, it was another three-lettered monogrammed US President who actually began the nondiscrimination practices in modern-era government-funded programs: FDR!

D: Man! What did the Republican presidents since Richard Nixon been up to in order to undermine the FDR, JFK, and LBJ’s Executive Orders?

M: Dude! It’s a good thing you brought up that last point. FDR’s began with an Executive Order too, Number 8802, in response to an upcoming “March on Washington” being organized by civil rights activist A. Philip Randolph, the leader of the first labor union comprised mainly of African Americans: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

D: Man! So what did Nixon and Ford and Reagan and both George Bushes do?

M: Dude! President Eisenhower enforced the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court and Kennedy continued the utilization of federal troops to do so. But Richard Nixon came in and placed the stipulation that there be some kind of formulaic goals for minorities. However, this emphasis was struck down from LBJ’s Executive Order 11246 by the Reagan Administration, making the goals and timetables encouraged in 11246 to be viewed as what eventually would be uttered and reiterated by Reagan as “reverse discrimination”…    

D: Man! Sounds to me like LBJ’s Executive Order was convoluted by Richard Nixon’s reevaluation and axed afterwards by Reagan’s Administration.  

M: Dude! You’re exactly right! By 1987, the Reagan Administration chopped the otherwise effective goals and timetables out entirely and insisted that recruitment program outcomes were just as effective as keeping records of women and minorities being hired and getting promoted.

D: Man! It must have sounded like Ronald Reagan and his Administration had reached a bipartisan decision since Richard Nixon had also hobbled with formulaic outcome measures, like the goals and timetables that LBJ’s Administration had set into action.

M: Dude! At the point of 1975, the ratios of White and African American students in higher education were almost even. But then, under Reagan, by 1986 the gains in educational parity in higher education dropped.

D: Man! There were high levels of inequities in the housing industry as well. No wonder we’re still having to deal with the discrimination and segregation practices of right now: White flight and the decline of American cities.

M: Dude! President Clinton’s Executive Order No. 12892 did expand upon JFK’s 11063. But with this Republican House of Representatives, will there even be a Farm Bill that does not attack the social safety net necessities like SNAP? We the struggling poor deserve to have a balanced plate, hence diet, and do care about our children receiving sufficient school meals!

D: Man! In fact, the junk foods that the GOP Republicans term as plausible are, in effect, costing generations their dental health and heaven knows what else? Welfare is getting tied to drug testing the weak and vulnerable those relying on government!

M: Dude! The Republican GOP is uncouth!

D: Man! The Republican GOP is intellectually unfit!

Sahir Ludhianvi, p.475 (lamenting Creation), Hindi-Urdu translated by Alverston & Associates

Sahir Ludhianvi, p.475 (lamenting Creation)

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello.

Whenever wished, crushed and bruised her

Whenever wished, drove out and reproved.

Somewhere she is weighed in gold

And somewhere gets sold into bordellos.

Made to dance in the nude for rakish people of state

This is that dishonorable affair that gets divided

Amongst supposedly honorable people!

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello.

For men, all oppression is permitted

But for woman, even crying is censured.

Men have every right to luxury

But for woman, even life is punishment.

For men, there are many beds

But for woman, there is only one pyre.

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello.

The same lips that kissed them in babyhood

Mankind even traded those lips!

The breasts that fed them in babyhood

Mankind even traded those breasts!

The womb that formed them

Mankind even traded that womb!

From which body they sprouted like young shoots

Mankind even disgraced that body!

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello.

All immodesty of the world is nourished

In the lap of poverty!

And the path that comes out of starvation

Ends at the bordello!

When men’s lust oft forms inside a woman’s womb,

She is accursed and it is called sin!

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello.

Woman is the fortune of the universe

Yet still she is so unfortunate!

She gives birth to descendants of prophets

Yet still she remains the Devil’s daughter!

This is that unfortunate mother

Who had to lie on Her son’s bed!

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello.

Customs made by Man are considered

To be true mandates!

Woman’s burning alive on a pyre

Called sacrifice and devotion!

Gave bread in exchange for Her chastity

Even that bread was conferring of beneficence!

Woman gave birth to Mankind

Mankind conferred onto Her the bordello!

Sahir Ludhianvi (1921-1980), translated from the Hindi-Urdu by Alverston & Associates

Page 501 (Sahir) (holding and blessing a newborn)

You were not fashioned a Hindu or a Muslim

You are the descendant of mortal heavyweights

You will mature into a human being!

It is splendid you’ve remained unnamed, nonreligious

Unlike how such discernments have divvied and branched humanity

You cannot be incriminated for possessing such a grasp yet

But you will be recognizant to such persuasions as time advances

You are the descendant of mortal heavyweights

You will mature into a human being!

The Creator anointed all of humanity as human beings

Nevertheless, we fashioned Him a Hindu or a Muslim

Omnipotence entrusted us with just this earth

But we still chose to create India somewhere, Iran elsewhere!

You are the universal deluge who will break down embankments:

The religion that teaches hatred

The foot that tramples human beings

You do not belong inside these places of worship

Where only a specific scriptural decree is rendered acceptable

Yours will be the solicitude of peace

You are the descendant of mortal heavyweights

You shall be a soulful human being!

Man! Dude! Session #157

(M)an: Dude! Syria is in all-out civil war and Senator John McCain is really out of line and out of touch, whereas he has the gumption to express cold indifference towards mothers of victims of gun violence like Caren Teves of Phoenix, Arizona.

(D)ude: Man! I remember John McCain’s apathetic response! Quote unquote, I can tell you right now you need some straight talk. The assaults weapons ban will not pass the Congress of the United States. Did you know that John McCain’s office only offered a form letter to Teves after her son died in the Aurora, Colorado massacre?

M: Dude! The Republican Party operates exclusively on form letters! And President Clinton is such a backwoodsman that he has shown another edge towards President Obama’s Administration by expressing the same interests in intervening in Syria as John McCain.  

D: Man! What about Hank Crumpton’s pleas for authorization to kill bin Laden that went unanswered under the Clinton Administration’s watch in 1999?

M: Dude! What about Paul Kagame’s Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front, or RPF, that was cofounded by Kagame in opposition to the Hutu incumbent government in 1986 when under President Reagan’s watch, Kagame was trained in combat from U.S. Special Forces in Kansas?    

D: Man! The Tutsi and the Hutu suffered as a result of that U.S. intervention in Rwandan politics, into 1990 and 1994, under Presidents George H.W. and Clinton. I wonder what could have happened if Ronald Reagan’s Administration has not prematurely taken sides with the Tutsis, leaving the Hutu and the Tutsis to reconcile without that combat training that Kagame received in the mid-eighties.

M: Dude! Philip Gourevitch’s 1998 classic, We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families must be rereleased with an index inside as well as an update. In the book, Gourevitch brings out an interesting and decisive clue to the underlying mechanisms that created such mass destruction and mass graves: Tutsis were known as cockroaches in Rwanda and not provided the same infrastructural advancements in their small part of the countryside known as Kibuye, despite the country being attributed as having the best roads in central Africa.  

D: Man! Kibuye was not granted the same quality of roads as the other nine of Rwanda’s ten capital cities? What country was involved in the remaking of these roads into modernity?

M: Dude! China in the 1980s provide the road builders, but out of the ten provincial capitals, Kibuye was placed last on the to-do list and right before its turn, the millions of dollars set aside for it’s make-over disappeared, according to Gourevitch.

D: Man! What about those Tutsis who sought shelter in the churches and hospitals?

M: Dude! The clergy and the doctors turned against their Tutsi flocks, the genocidaires really leaving no room for distinction between Hutu and Tutsi communities eventually. Even Kagame’s ascension to the Rwandan presidency is marred with accounts that Kagame also turned sinister upon the vulnerable and the disenfranchised populations of Rwandese, with France perhaps even having had a hand in 

fueling the genocide when they offered assistance through the United Nations.

D: Man! When colonialists get a handle on nations through the process of colonization, like the German and the Belgian in Rwanda, crude discriminatory identification practices are put into place that mark brothers and sisters against brothers and sisters.

M: Dude! That’s so true! Then what should we do about Syria?

D: Man! Do not go with the flow the Republican Party is preemptively trying to enforce upon the Obama Administration! Did you hear how McCain went before the floor of the Senate to tell about President Obama’s coming onto the airways with information concerning Syria shortly thereafter?

M: Dude! I think we need to invest in our own infrastructure and lead by example, not as trumpeters like McCain and the U.S. GOP.

D: Man! The GOP is always creating havoc abroad. Just look how Republican Senator Rand Paul is always meddling with Turkey, and McCain is always intercepting into affairs of Putin and Russia. What’s up with these preemptive braggarts?

M: Dude! President Putin is probably just as tired of the Republican Party as US! It’s a wonderful coincidence that the G8 Summit is just around the corner, giving the evenhanded and humble but strict President Obama an opportunity to speak face-to-face with President Putin alongside Canadian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, British, and European Union representatives.

D: Man! There ought to be a standardized testing schedule for the House Republicans during the G8 Summit. I seriously think that American children ought to be trained towards mastering the basics outlined on the SATs, not some statewide test creator’s agenda. Isn’t that what private school does anyways?

M: Dude! I think the state standardized testing schedule only applies to public schools. And I think you’re correct about private schools. Does House Speaker John Boehner even know the subtleties in world geography these days?

D: Man! I don’t think Wisconsinite Representative Paul Ryan can talk about world affairs, even with the opportunity to utilize his smart phone, et cetera, et cetera, he would be lost in serious artificial contemplation and abject consternation towards his examiners.

M: Dude! Americans deserve an educated class of representatives, and senators too, that have not just bought themselves redrawn and drawn once more seats in Congress.

D: Man! People seriously think that having a silver spoon to pick your nostrils with is guarantee of anything intellectually as well, had better look no further than dried mucus Mitt Romney!

M: Dude! Did you just choke on that asparagus? 

Republican Fiction Writers in US Congress (1944-2013): The GOP Legacy

FDR’s Fala [campaign] speech delivered on 9/23/1944 in Washington, DC:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

Well, I think we all recognize the old technique. The people of this country know the past too well to be deceived into forgetting. Too much is at stake to forget. There are tasks ahead of us which we must now complete with the same will and the same skill and intelligence and devotion that have already led us so far along the road to victory.

There is the task of finishing victoriously this most terrible of all wars as speedily as possible and with the least cost in lives.

There is the task of setting up international machinery to assure that the peace, once established, will not again be broken.

And there is the task that we face here at home - the task of reconverting our economy from the purposes of war to the purposes of peace.

These peace-building tasks were faced once before, nearly a generation ago. They were botched by a Republican administration. That must not happen this time. We will not let it happen this time.

Fortunately, we do not begin from scratch. Much has been done. Much more is under way. The fruits of victory this time will not be apples sold on street corners.

Many months ago, this Administration set up the necessary machinery for an orderly peacetime demobilization. The Congress has passed much more legislation continuing the agencies needed for demobilization - with additional powers to carry out their functions.

I know that the American people - business and labor and agriculture - have the same will to do for peace what they have done for war. And I know that they can sustain a national income that will assure full production and full employment under our democratic system of private enterprise, with Government encouragement and aid whenever and wherever that is necessary.

The keynote of all that we propose to do in reconversion can be found in the one word jobs. We shall lease or dispose of our Government-owned plants and facilities and our surplus war property and land, on the basis of how they can best be operated by private enterprise to give jobs to the greatest number.

We shall follow a wage policy that will sustain the purchasing power of labor - for that means more production and more jobs.

You and I know that the present policies on wages and prices were conceived to serve the needs of the great masses of the people. They stopped inflation. They kept prices on a relatively stable level. Through the demobilization period, policies will be carried out with the same objective in mind -to serve the needs of the great masses of the people.

This is not the time in which men can be forgotten as they were in the Republican catastrophe that we inherited. The returning soldiers, the workers by their machines, the farmers in the field, the miners, the men and women in offices and shops, do not intend to be forgotten.

No, they know that they are not surplus. Because they know that they are America. We must set targets and objectives for the future which will seem impossible - like the airplanes - to those who live in and are weighted down by the dead past.

We are even now organizing the logistics of the peace, just as Marshall and King and Arnold, MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Nimitz are organizing the logistics of this war.

I think that the victory of the American people and their allies in this war will be far more than a victory against Fascism and reaction and the dead hand of despotism of the past. The victory of the American people and their allies in this war will be a victory for democracy. It will constitute such an affirmation of the strength and power and vitality of government by the people as history has never before witnessed.

And so, my friends, we have had affirmation of the vitality of democratic government behind us, that demonstration of its resilience and its capacity for decision and for action - we have that knowledge of our own strength and power - we move forward with God's help to the greatest epoch of free achievement by free men that the world has ever known.

Man! Dude! Session #156

(D)ude: Man! Katherine Jackson should block Paris Jackson and her two brothers from having to testify in the untimely death of their father Michael Jackson. And now there’s even a curious “I am here for you” audio recording by Conrad Murray to Paris Jackson being leaked to the press.

(M)an: Dude! I am reminded of anti-predator adaptation and Diana Ross and Denise Richards. I am reminded of the way parents provide so much protection against human predators to their children. Ross and Richards are two women who have proven to be stellar mothers and fathers.

D: Man! I am beginning to understand why Michael Jackson slated Diana Ross as the next best guardian for his three children, after Katherine Jackson. Diana Ross is strong and outspoken and strict but genuinely committed to her children and grandkids.

M: Dude! Katherine Jackson ought to hand over the care and nurturance of her son Michael’s three children to Diana Ross. I wholeheartedly agree with you. Plus, it is traumatic for teenagers sheltered from the public eye to have to fight off the camouflage of a normal school day and a loving network of cousins and a doting grandmother to descend into celebrity status while being pressured from their aunts and uncles and that same doting grandmother to relive the horror of finding their father unresponsive and passed away in his bedroom.

D: Man! How many more nine figures does Katherine Jackson want to attain? I don’t get it! This is not the first suicide attempt by Paris either. She has endured the pain before and, well, I don’t see why Katherine Jackson persists on pursuing additional monetary gains at the expense of Michael Jackson’s children’s mental health and stability.

M: Dude! It is frustrating to know that even a billion dollar estate cannot satiate the Jackson clan enough to not put Michael Jackson’s children up to testify. I believe this is a very apparent case of re-victimization of the victims. For the past four years, Katherine Jackson has made Paris and her siblings appear in court. Children these days are just too sharp to not pick up societal and personal cues from their surroundings.

D: Man! I don’t know if Debbie Rowe is a reliable source of comfort and solace for Paris Jackson either. Rowe may be the biological mother of Paris, but I still believe Diana Ross can settle the trauma that Michael Jackson’s children have gone through: Latoya Jackson, Janet Jackson, and Conrad Murray.

M: Dude! I cannot forget how Janet Jackson adjusted the microphone so that Paris Jackson’s declaration of love for her father Michael Jackson would not be minced at the public funeral at the 

Staples Center in LA.

D: Man! And remember how Janet Jackson then proceeded to superficially embrace Paris with her gloved hands? What a fake flake Janet Jackson was then and even now, I heard that Janet envies Paris and still wants custody of her for her own selfish indulgences. I would not trust Janet Jackson with Paris, lest Paris become an esthetician and/or massotherapeute!

M: Dude! A massage therapist and/or an esthetician for Janet Jackson would be punishing for anyone, but especially for someone as cherished and beloved as Michael Jackson’s daughter and sons!

D: Man! Diana Ross and Katherine Jackson must work out an arrangement where Paris Jackson can stay with Ross during this critical time in her adolescence. I don’t think parental restrictions as carried out by Katherine Jackson are enough for a developing teenager. Paris wanted to go to a heavy metal alternative rock band concert but was not permitted. Instead she had a scheduled appearance on a German TV show, which she slotted to her older brother.

M: Dude! Do you remember how I dyed my hair multiple colors throughout high school? I used to be obsessed about the eighties heavy metal alternative rock bands like Scorpions and Def Leppard and Motley Crue and Alice Cooper.

D: Man! Alice Cooper’s considered an entire band, huh? But, yeah, I remember the colorful dyes and the pierced earrings. You looked just like a cross between Kip Winger and George Michael.

M: Dude! Huh? Thanks? But, yeah, I recall a lot of our classmates who did not compromise their eardrums in the end after all that MTV headbanger afterhours.

D: Man! I think all that listening to those rock metal ballads made my ears sensitive to water. I think around the time of the MTV headbanger afterhours, I began suffering swimmer’s ears.

M: Dude! That reminds me of Denise Richards’ colorful history of boyfriends that included Bon Jovi’s Richie Sambora. She’s now taken custody of her daughters’ half-brothers from Charlie Sheen’s relationship with Brooke Mueller, which is impressive considering that Richards was already balancing three daughters alone with the help of her widowed father.

D: Man! Did you see how toddlers today choose electronic devices like iPads over their mothers and more traditional toys?

M: Dude! We underestimate the brilliance of babies and toddlers and kids! Of course, the child will know that an iPad is no substitute for a parent! But, like adults who procrastinate or lull over our phone apps and surfing the Internet, babies are aware of the enduring affection and love of their guardians.

D: Man! ABC News is very Republican! They think, like the GOP, that children are innocent and vulnerable to an exhaustively simple degree. One of the stories that I’ll never forget is that of a family who opted to trade in their Amazon Gift Cards and Barnes and Noble Gift Cards for cash, only to spend it on a parent’s night out!

M: Dude! That is sacrilegious!

D: Man! It is! They traded in hundreds of dollars worth of possible personal libraries for  immediate guttural gratification via parent’s night out! Talk about waste! Yeah, tomorrow they will be judging Marilyn Manson, but I know Marilyn Manson would indulge his children with books instead of trading in the opportunity for some night on the town! Oh! Marilyn Manson has invited Paris to join him unconditionally VIP to all his shows for as long as he’s in the business of showmanship.

M: Dude! That is incredibly generous of him! I know too that Marilyn Manson would indulge his children with books instead of instant guttural gratification. But Paris Jackson had better be chaperoned by her older brother when attending these concerts. Prince Michael is an old soul!

D: Man! Indeed!