How do we even begin? Join the Bern!

(D)ude: Man! The Ronald Reagan and Herbert Walker Bush and George Walker Bush and William Jefferson Clinton presidencies laid out the foundation for free market economics that led to the financial crises we have been enduring since trickle down became an anthem in the 1980s. According to the Nobel laureate economist Joseph E. Stiglitz,

“Inequality weakens aggregate demand and the economy. America’s growing inequality was moving money from the bottom of the pyramid to the top, and since those at the top spent less of their money than those at the bottom, this weakened overall demand. During the 90s we masked the deficiency by creating the tech bubble—a boom in investment. But with the breaking of the tech bubble, the economy fell into recession. Bush [#43] responded with a tax cut aimed at the rich. With consumers worried about their future, the hoped-for stimulus to the economy from Bush’s tax cuts was weak. Piling on a further capital-gains tax cut—on top of one that had been given a few years before by President Clinton—only encouraged more speculation. Since its benefits went overwhelmingly to the very top, this tax cut was particularly ineffective and also strongly increased inequality.”   

(M)an: Dude! That passage is from an introductory chapter out of  Stiglitz’s 2015 book entitled The Great Divide: Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them?

D: Man! Yes! I'm reading from page 4! It is a colloquial masterpiece, don’t you think? I mean, it’s groundbreaking scholarship for sure, but very simple to understand. I feel compelled to vote in the upcoming presidential primaries for Bernie Sanders because of the striking similarity in

messaging he shares with Stiglitz—that, since Reagan, the top tenth of the 1% manufacture policies and politics that favor the financial sector over societal fairness. As Stiglitz continues writing on page 5,

“Inadequate fiscal policies put undue burden on monetary policies, which are the responsibility of the Federal Reserve. The Fed can (sometimes) stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates and making regulations more lax. But these monetary policies are dangerous. Their prescriptions should come with a big label:  Use only with caution, and under close supervision of adults who understand the full risks. Unfortunately, those in charge of monetary policy had not read any such label; and they were naïve market fundamentalists—believing that markets are always efficient and stable. While they underestimated the risks that their policies posed to the economy—and even to the government’s budget—they didn’t seem to care about the inequality that was growing day by day.The result is now well known:they unleashed a bubble,and their policies led to an unprecedented growth in inequality.

The Fed kept the economy churning with a policy of low interest rates and lax regulations. But it worked only by creating a housing bubble. It should have been apparent to all that the housing bubble and the consumption boom to which it led could only be a temporary palliative. Bubbles always break. Our consumption binge meant that the bottom 80 percent of Americans were on average spending 110 percent of their income. By 2005 as a country we were borrowing more than $2 billion a day from abroad. It was not sustainable.”        

M: Dude! The Humans of New York guy, Brandon Stanton, was a Power Player of the Week on  Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday show last year, August 30, 2015, and did not share the latest news about his philanthropic undertaking alongside Syeda Ghulam Fatima, the Lahore-based female human rights activist fighting on behalf of bonded laborers in Pakistan. The resulting fundraiser that generated $2 million dollars in donations for Fatima’s organization, The Bonded Labour Liberation Front’s relief efforts, was never followed up on by the United States Press Corps. There is no accountability in charity work is there? What became of the approximate two hundred million rupees raised for Fatima’s cause?      

D: Man! We already lack campaign finance reform in the United States and now you want charities held accountable for the promises that they make on behalf of the people they represent? How do we even begin?    

M: Dude! Vote for Bernie Sanders!

Something like that. Yeah?

(M)an: Dude! The stampede that claimed the lives of over one thousand pilgrims at Hajj this past September, was the result of the lack of gender segregation within the crowds that collided and crushed together.

(D)ude: Man! Gender segregation is not being implemented during Hajj? Why?

M: Dude! Family members are allowed to complete the pilgrimage together, hence, there is a long-standing tradition of having all the females precede the males in family units.  

D: Man! The women in a family are allotted the front of the line, while the men provide a shield from behind?

M: Dude! Yes! And therein lie troubles and tragedies. The family unit cannot guarantee complete protection for female members from being physically harassed by perpetrators in such masses, which leads to utter chaos and the inevitable collapsing of the crowd onto itself.   

D: Man! The solution is obvious, to implement a separation of the genders during Hajj. And I’m speaking of what they’ve done in Austin, Texas malls. Remember the bathrooms in that outdoor shopping complex, the ones labeled male, female, and family?

M: Dude! Yes! That was an intelligent way of handling the transgender rights debate that sprang up in Houston, Texas and onto the ballot there this past spring. What was it? Neoconservatives arguing the specifics of gender reassignment versus identity at the time of birth, and the use of public facilities, specifically bathrooms?      

D: Man! Something like that. Yeah?

M: Dude! Why then cannot girls and women be divided from the boys and men during Hajj and Umrah?

D: Man! Why not? And what’s Umrah?

M: Dude! Hajj is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca made by Muslims at least once in their lives if they can afford to make the journey without putting financial strain upon themselves, which falls on the last month of the lunar Islamic Calendar, specifically the eighth to the twelfth/sometimes thirteen of Dhu al-Hijjah, or “the Month of the Pilgrimage”…The Gregorian Calendar that we’re accustomed to is not lunar, therefore there is a difference of eleven days between the Islamic and Gregorian calendars.      

D: Man! Lunar and non-lunar? Islamic and Gregorian?

M: Dude! The Gregorian Calendar is eleven days longer than the Islamic Calendar. And going back to what Umrah is, it is literally the “lesser pilgrimage” to Mecca and can be made at other times of the year, whereas the Hajj is time sensitive. Speaking of time sensitivity, Saudi Arabia clerics need to reevaluate the timing of Hajj in 2016.

D: Man! How come?

M: Dude! Hajj in 2016 will fall on September the eleventh, exactly fifteen years after the horrific 9/11/01 attacks in New York City. Again, Muslim clerics need to be vigilant of all havoc-generating activities and actors during Hajj 2016.   

D: Man! You want to know my take on the Tel Aviv, Israel attack and why the United States Congress is creating havoc with allegations about President Obama’s administration spying on Netanyahu? That’s because the only real threat facing Netanyahu and the world right now are the neoconservative Republicans and Teabag Democrats like Howard Dean and Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The neoconservatives in the United States Congress as led by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are elevating toxicity across the country by remaining unresponsive to long-term climate disaster relief while municipal neocon politicians pocket funds originally allocated for infrastructure and welfare.

M: Dude! Did you see the port-a-potty fallen on its side on Westridge Avenue, near the Ridglea Country Club? Fort Worth, Texas is in shambles. George Prescott Bush prides in telling people he’s a resident of Fort Worth, and he is the Texas Land Commissioner, but where does he live? The roads and bridges available to those of us who do not have the finances to utilize the toll roads, are torn up. The Chisholm Trail toll road, however, is decorated with these huge Vince Lombardi Trophy-like sculptures and grass that is maintained, while all the other roads—leading the rest of us to destinations in twice or thrice the time—are rigged with potholes and dangerously uneven tread and allergy-laden spruces coming out of the overgrown greens.    

D: Man! Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy is being utilized by the Republican Party for 2016 and Debbie Wasserman Schultz is underhandedly giving away confidential campaign strategies to the Republican Party through carefully timed breaches. And, get this, the campaign strategies being disclosed were carefully designed and implemented by the grassroots-led Organizing for America, the true Democratic revolutionaries, not the members of the Democratic National Committee! Howard Dean confessed—to the Morning Joe panel on MSNBC on Tuesday, December 28, 2015—to being the mastermind behind the 6-debate schedule for the Democratic presidential contenders.  

M: Dude! It’s much worse! Jeb Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton are making Donald J. Trump a recruitment tool for terrorist organizations themselves. Jeb Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton have a lot to gain fiscally in a Bush 45 presidency, both being in the top 2% of the population that will see even more tax breaks and relief under another pseudo-presidential puppet controlled by Dick Cheney et al.

D: Man! America needs Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley to speak up and against such savageries of the top two-percent. And Hillary Rodham Clinton’s breaking point politically begins where she doesn’t agree with having all young adults qualify for tuition-free education at state colleges and universities. Rodham Clinton presumes that all young adults from the top two percent of households in the United States have access to their guardians’ checkbooks, a presumption that could not be farther from the truth. Not all children of the top two percent are as nestled as Chelsea Clinton. Some are outright manipulated and harangued by their parents and/or guardians.

M: Dude! Did you hear that Marshall Bruce Mathers’—or better known as the rapper Eminem— daughter got a full scholarship to Michigan State University?

D: Man! Eminem’s daughter carried out a deliberate rebellion. It’s time for American voters to make the deliberate decision to elect their officials, not fall prey to the far-right coming into power as a direct consequence of their disillusionment and disengagement. 

Dreams Restricting Flight?!?!?

(D)ude: Man! Thank goodness for the FAA! The Federal Aviation Administration made the registration of drones mandatory beginning December 21, 2015.

(M)an: Dude! Drones that are used for business purposes have already started registering with the FAA. On the other hand, drones that are termed “hobbyist”—or utilized for, I guess you could call it play or recreational purposes—are now mandated to register with the FAA?   

D: Man! Yes! According to cnet dot com [cnet.com], there were 238 cases of drone abuse in the United States last year. Shockingly, that number has climbed substantially since then, with 1,113 cases of misuse having been reported already in 2015! It’s the holiday season and I’m concerned for pilots and their passengers. Folks are buying their children such devices, which I consider irresponsible parenting. Drones are not suitable for people under the age of, at least, twenty-one. And the repercussions for disrupting pilots’ visions as they’re flying should involve assault charges and incarceration as punishment for the operators of such devices.      

M: Dude! I totally agree! In fact, I was impressed with the recent Beethoven Google doodle that succeeded in familiarizing my nieces and nephews with reading musical compositions. It was a tough, intellectual exercise but entirely entertaining nevertheless for me as well. It got me thinking about Google glasses, specifically why hasn't Google availed the opportunity to make its glasses accessible to solving problems like obstructionist radar beams disrupting the vision of aircraft operators?

D: Man! And the unpredictable weather conditions that endanger our precious emergency medical professionals when they are taking patients to and fro facilities via helicoptered care flights! Why can’t Google glasses protect against the natural elements that make visibility an added issue of grave concern for our care flight teams? Surgeons from South America to South Asia are utilizing Google glasses to enhance their practice and instructional methodologies. Nepal is already a front runner in the pursuit to change the way medical expertise is rendered through the utilization of Google glasses beginning in medical school.

M: Dude! Silicon Valley needs to take action regarding the international threats facing the world in this volatile millennium. Hillary Rodham Clinton made reference to the Manhattan Project and how she would coalesce the great minds of today in a similar fashion to the issues of cyberspace security and decrypting encryption. However, I am greatly concerned for the United States of America under a Clinton 45 (Hillary) or Bush 45 (Jeb) presidency. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush are detrimental to our democracy, as are the Republican National Committee Tea Partiers and the Democratic National Committee Teabags. Reince Priebus and Debbie Wasserman Schultz are interchangeable at this stage of the 2016 presidential election cycle. Reince Priebus and the Republican Party have falsely promised Debbie Wasserman Schultz that they will never challenge her seat in the United States Congress, if she complies by stifling the debate scheduling so that Hillary Rodham Clinton goes uncontested in the Democratic Primaries. Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley are far more courageous and authentic than the artificial Hillary Rodham Clinton, a covert Republican operative just like her husband.

D: Man! What do we do? Where do we go?

M: Dude! There has to be a revolutionary movement in the United States of America where people realize their power to vote not as a privilege, but a lifeline for the desperate and disenfranchised that is essentially dying as we speak as a result of the terrible voter turnout in 2010 and 2014. But, of course, this involves registering to vote way ahead of the Presidential Election in the United States, which will be held Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Charlotte Gordon’s dual biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Godwin Shelley touches on the issue of sovereignty and nation building in Europe and North America in the late 1700s and the early 1800s, the basic argument and concern of the Europeans being that American Democracy could only survive if generations of its’ citizenry remained conscious of their responsibility to be informed participants in that grand experiment, which was the United States.

D: Man! Didn’t the French Revolution leave France incapacitated like Germany was left incapacitated after both World Wars I and II?

M: Dude! Mary Godwin Shelley’s husband takes her, and her stepsister Jane, on a romp through France and Switzerland at the start of their matrimonial woes. Celebratory at the start, convinced that they are the disciples of the late Mary Wollstonecraft, the trio anticipate a post-revolutionary France awaiting them with open doors and a livelihood for Percy Shelley, but only find desolation and poverty at every doorstep.       

D: Man! Percy Shelley couldn’t find a publisher in London?

M: Dude! He was a wild and controversial soul in England, having left his first wife, expecting their second child, for Mary Godwin Shelley, and leaving Mary Shelley momentarily during her pregnancies as well. Their descendants made sure all journal entries betraying Percy Shelley’s and Mary Godwin Shelley’s fidelity and celebrated love story, were torn out and disposed of for eternity. And his significant literary works came after he had wed Mary Godwin. She was always a trusted intellectual colleague, Percy Shelley proclaiming her “originality” as the driving force behind their relationship.    

D: Man! Have you read Gloria Steinem’s latest memoir, My Life on the Road?

M: Dude! Yeah? Didn’t you think it was choppy compared to her previous books?

D: Man! Gloria Steinem spent 18 years constructing her latest tour de force, but it is choppy. You know, I found out the reason why it is lacking watching Steinem’s interview on PBS with Charlie Rose. According to Steinem herself, her editors at Random House took a proverbial machete and tore her latest masterpiece into incomplete shreds that left me wanting, and I bet I’m not alone in this assessment. Steinem must re-release this memoir with another publishing house and include those missing parts she had to depart with at Random House.

M: Dude! Random House? Everybody knows Simon and Schuster as being crusty conservative and the publisher of the Clintons’ memoirs, but Random House as well?  

D: Man! Of course! Jon Ellis Meacham is Random House’s exec editor and executive Vice President! Come on! Have you forgotten already? The guy wrote the latest entreaty biography of the Bushes titled Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush!  

M: Dude! Walter Isaacson, like Jon Ellis Meacham, seems enchanted by Jeb Bush, as does Joe Scarborough. Scarborough protects Jeb like a mother kangaroo keeps her joeys in her pouch. The American Press Corps and the Clintons and Bushes are conspiring against Russia right now in the same way they conspired against Iraq, wanting the major Western fossil fuel corporations to take over the oil infrastructure of the Russians as they did the Iraqis. Hillary Rodham Clinton is just as lethal to the health of the world economy as Jeb Bush. American voters need to make certain that they do not elect one more Clinton nor Bush.

D: Man! Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley are the antidote to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s artificiality and Jeb’s jabber.

M: Dude! Saddam and Iraq then, Putin and Russia now?

D: Man! That is, if you vote for either Clinton and Bush! But, fortunately, there are Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley!