social commentary – Page 16 – Hopeful Romantics

Bull Sharks as a Metaphor

In a world where things are neither what they are supposed to be or where they are supposed to be, the Bull Shark serves as an excellent metaphor. The Bull Shark is different than most other sharks, or for that matter, most other saltwater fish. It can adapt to fresh water. Like some kind of aquatic hybrid it flips from the saltwater environment to the freshwater environment as easily as a Prius in city traffic.

Lately, the Bull Sharks have been wandering up the Louisiana Swamp Lands through the inland waterways and traveling as far as St. Louis. Whether they are restless creatures, afflicted with a poor sense of direction, or merely curious to see St. Louis is anyone’s guess. But the trip from the Delta to St. Louis is a good 900 miles, so in an era when most folks are sticking close to home the Bull Shark is in search of new hangouts.

You wouldn’t expect to see a shark in fresh water. Especially in shallow fresh water. And it must come as a real surprise to have one gnawing on your leg. Since they can grow up to ten feet long, a hungry Bull Shark is no small matter, nor can it be easily dismissed. It is more like if the Taliban decided to visit your local shopping mall.

What makes this new expeditionary Bull Shark force even more disturbing, is that if they find romance in those freshwater byways, the female can spawn some dozen little babies. Makes the Octomom pale by comparison. And as we know, babies get hungry, and babies will feed on just about anything. While the Bull Shark prefers its sushi alive and swimming, it can eyeball a human who in murky water appears the flapping fish.
super viagra Those who are suffering from the problem of low libido or have lost normal interest in the process of aging and keeps you away from wrinkle and fine links. They also instruct them about dealing with pain on everyday canadian viagra sales basis. External beam radiation therapy requires a five days a week, along with power training twice a week. best buy cialis http://secretworldchronicle.com/2014/04/ After cultivation, umbilical mesenchymal stem cells cialis price and cord blood stem cells can differentiate into desired renal cells so as to replace the necrotic ones.
So here we have another situation where external forces are messing with our conditioned knowledge of the universe. In this case a crackpot theory or a subject for B Hollywood movie becomes are living reality. It’s another case is down is up and up, of course, is down. Only not all the time. Sometimes up is really up, and down is really down.

What we think we know, is not the case. What we have been told, turns out to be as mythical as any other legend, be it Bull Sharks in the swamps or alligators in the sewers of Manhattan. We have facts, but then the facts mutate, much like the Bull Sharks and the Swine Flu. In the end, we have all this information, and we remain confused.

We decry healthcare reform because the government is involved, but we demand we keep our Medicare and Social Security. We spend more than we make, and then we wonder why we are broke. We are vehemently opposed to terrorists and those who support them but insist we have the right to gas guzzling vehicles. We are preoccupied with our electronic gadgets, and then wonder why we are lacking in intimate human relationships. We search desperately for romance online, but ignore the person standing next to us.

We think sharks are saltwater creatures. Once again, we are wrong.

The Women’s Movement, Advance Back to the 1950’s

There are many ways to move backwards. One of the more popular ways is to embrace what we perceive as tradition. We view a seemingly idealistic pattern of behavior that has been rejected perhaps by previous generations and see it with fresh eyes and renewed vigor. We see the upside, forgetting or ignoring that a downside ever existed.

It is perhaps even natural to want to return to the past. The present is unsettling, and the future is obscure and insecure. In the past it seems like values and virtues were firmly set. People were honest artisans who farmed organically and used beasts of burden and not dreadful gasoline guzzling, sheet metal monsters to travel about. Men were genteel and women were kind and gracious, capable of walking on air. People has a special sense, a sixth sense, if you will, to perceive things that escape us today.

Of course, no one wishes to dwell on the realities. The health issues, the dangerous horse doody and the piles of garbage in the streets. We forget the levels of ignorance, illiteracy, and genetic maladies that left us with goiters, wall eyed, hairlipped, or with an extra leg hanging out of our chests. We ignore the millions who starved because organic farming wasn’t quite getting it done. We admire the honest craftsman but ignore the fact that until here was mass production most went without most things. Many went without even shoes. Most people had two outfits. Every day and Sunday. There were no color choices or the need for shoe racks or designer hangers.

And then we have the Women’s Movement. First off, there is no denying that there are great many skilled, highly intelligent and competent women practicing in any number of professions. These are great women who have changed the course of history and made tremendous contributions to their industries and disciplines, and to society as a whole.

More women than men are graduating from medical school and law school. Women, overall, earn more money than they ever did. On the less grand scale, there are more working women, showing up at the office or working diligently from remote locations, mainly because they have to contribute to the household income. They work because they have to, they want to, to the point perhaps where they never give it a thought.

But then there are increasingly more younger women who lack the desires of the women who pioneered the Women’s Movement. Maybe it is a generational thing. Perhaps it is even rebelliousness or a backlash of sorts. Or maybe some have arrived at the harsh reality that sitting at home is a lot better than showing up at an office where you are forced to deal with politics, harassment, and the duties inherent with your profession or job.

Some may argue that this is not the case. And some may argue that these women have the freedom to do whatever they choose. It’s about choice. Yes. Certainly it is. But when you are taking up space in an elite law or medical school so you can be a better marriage prospect, rather than a contribution to that community, something may be wrong with this picture.

As Marilyn McGrath Lewis, director of undergraduate admissions at Harvard, was quoted in an article in the New York Times, “It really does raise this question for all of us and for the country: when we work so hard to open academics and other opportunities for women, what kind of return do we expect to get for that?”

In the same article Peter Salovey, the dean of Yale College, ” What does concern me is that so few students seem to be able to think outside the box; so few students seem to be able to imagine a life for themselves that isn’t constructed along traditional gender roles.”

Simply put, a lot of precious space is allocated in schools that produce influential inhabitants in their disciplines, people who move forward to assume places at the highest levels of their professions. People who become inventors and innovators, judges, developers of vaccines, leaders in their communities and their nation. This is not necessarily the place where someone takes up one of the few seats to practice for a couple of years and then move on to stay-at-home motherhood.

And with this type of behavior, we are referring to the achievers. We are referring to the elite. Beneath the elite we have those who quite simply just want to marry the richest guy with the most stuff on the best career track who can let them stay at home. Where professional challenges were once the major concern for young women in college, it seems now the big ticket it merely to find the guy. Find the guy. Marry well. Marry rich. As for love…maybe?

That way you can stay home, have lunch with your girlfriends and wax for hours on the celebrity hit list and other people they don’t know. This new attitude, as noted before, may be an act of rebellion. It may be a reflection of the economy. It is tough economic times and life is tough out there. Find someone who will take care of you. Not someone you can be with and share the joys and misery. Someone who will take care of you.

If you are purchasing a tablet to help you win your game! Erectile dysfunction and impotence are problems that affect a large number of people each year. sildenafil rx ED is to be well understood and taken care of creating this technique an successful and efficient recommended for you generic sildenafil tablets therapy. There are several acupuncture4health.ca viagra discount prices treatments available in the market only as the one branded product. Evidence of anxiety masked by physical symptoms Stress is closely linked see content order generic levitra to a biological mechanism called “flight-or-fight” instinct. I know some will deny this. Some will complain. But we are a nation that if nothing else works extra hard to conceal the obvious. In this case the obvious is registered on Facebook and the social networks. It is apparent on my elevator as the gaggle of students converse among themselves or, as is more the case, endlessly on the telephone. If an original thought ever erupted from a lipsticked mouth, brains would suffer a meltdown and the elevator would plummet to the basement level or purgatory where leftovers, closeouts and sale merchandise are to be eternally begotten.

There is no blame, really. And this is hardly a rant. It’s an examination of the overall policies, social and financial, that have left this nation, hurting, wanting, and very insecure. As a market driven society where consumerism made up two thirds of the economy, going cold turkey on the shopping impulse is like being a junkie at a revival meeting. You don’t know what to do with yourself or when the pain will start to fade.

In a society where air brushing as created the perfect form of beauty that no living being could ever recreate, it is bound to drive women crazy. To think that our celebrities and movies stars, who appear to us after sixteen hours having designers, makeup artists, etc., preening, fussing, and dressing them, can be copied in real life is bizarre. Truly bizarre. Yet that belief is the standard. It is an accepted reality, in spite of the facts. In spite of the facts that the celebrities and models can’t duplicate in real life the perfect image of themselves.

Yet here we are with women believing that with a few good beauty tips and some high priced cosmetics they can actually look as good as their aspirations. So women, smart women, exchange beauty and dressing tips, talk about their favorite celebrities and seem never wonder how they allowed themselves, no voluntarily, jumped into this box in the first place.

Men don’t escape responsibility. When it comes to romance and related social issues. Most men are idiots. Inarticulate idiots, at that. “Dude. Dude?” The idolize the marketing version of the sex symbol that is both unwieldy and unachievable. It makes them feel awkward to think they have settled for less than the stay at home beauty queen.

It is understandable. Most men really don’t have much to work with. They have their jobs and the things they buy and they things they believe they possess. Like their women. Most men have been programmed that anything remotely resembling taste, outside of cars and lawn care, is effeminate or gay. They are taught to believe their wives know better about everything except the job and the industry they compete in nearly every day of their lives.

More importantly, many men are threatened by thinking and successful women. They want their women to stay at home. They don’t want them competing. It is tough to have a bigger penis contest with someone who has you out outmaneuvered because they aren’t wearing one. It is tough to go up against the traditional social pressures that have evolved since Mom and Pop partnered as equals in the Mom and Pop shops.

After all, your mother and father probably set up the family that way. Others around you have condemned you as less of a man if you can’t carry the weight of a stay at home wife and three kids in the self-indulgence program on the weight of your designer shoulders. This is your job. Nay. This is your duty. Sit there and be mute, forgetting the lessons of the past.

What past? When the little woman sat home and allowed her brain to atrophy on nonsense and more nonsense. When the high point of the day was doing battled with that dreaded ring around the collar. When the woman was viewed as chattel, because as such they had no real ownership other than what was allowed by law. When soap operas and smores took priority over the Cuban Missile Crisis and the advent of social change.

Part of that change was Women’s Liberation. More succinctly, Women’s Rights. I remember when a good job for a woman was being a teacher. “You could always teach,” or so it went. “Or teach for a couple, few years until your husband gets his career off the ground. And then you can stay home and go out of your mind with the children.”

Okay, it’s different now. With the advent of illegal immigration and cheap labor, many women have a helper. They have a nanny and a housekeeper. They don’t clean, they don’t have to clean, cook, or do the laundry themselves. The maid does it. If you explain it correctly in broken Spanish, then she may even hang the delicate fabricates and not cram them into the dryer.

It is different. Women’s careers. Been there done that. Women are free to go to the top schools in the country and then be the stay at home mother. They can nosh with friends on salad and sushi. They can discuss the merits of Young Einstein. Rather than try to be one themselves.

As for the women that still march on, working to achieve at the highest levels of profession and society. Bless you for keeping the bar at some civilized level of progress. I realize it is tough sledding in the face of those who criticize you and wonder if you have a screw loose for not seeking out the perfect fellow and settling down. At home. But you are the ones who the next generation may use as role models. You may yet inspire the next generation of women, not to stay at home but to take advantage of their talents, their brains and, yes, their sexuality. Take advantage so that society can benefit from your unique and special skills.

Gates and Crowley and the Real Issue of the Law

In this world of heightened reality, surrealism has a hard act to follow. This is a bizzarre place where odd concoctions of thought and fantasy are turned into pronounced theories and devoted belief structures. The obscure is often mainstream. The irrelevant is elevated to new heights of culture.

Small wonder the recent Boston tempest between a Harvard Professor, Henry Louis Gates, and Cambridge Police Sergeant, James Crowley, would erupt into a controversy that would last for days, culminating in part with a beer with President Obama at the White House. There the three men will hash it out, make peace, and present themselves to the media in some ersatz form of reconciliation.

But suppose Crowley and Gates had a little too much beer in the Oval Office and in a state of inebriation began shouting epithets, escalating in their mighty altercation to something more vulgar. Suppose they lost their tempers, again, and their heated argument erupted into fisticuffs, leaving it to our youthful president to break it up. Now that would certainly be a photo op like none other. The controversy that began with Crowley confronting Gates in his own house would rage on for weeks and months, perhaps. Talking heads would pontificate for days as the more mundane aspects of two wars and a failing economy were ignored in the news cycle. It may even take precedent over the raging salary controversy on American Idol.

Now surely I jest. Or try to. But crazier stuff does happen. There are people in politics who would have been laughable on both sides of the aisle, just a few decades ago. There are idiots with all types of specious theories, and more idiots who give these theories credibility. The Gates-Crowley controversy has brought to our attention the national discord on racial relations that, no matter what we do, still lurks beneath the surface of everything.

Others will argue whether Crowley erred or whether his skewed perspective on race prompted him confront Gates in a matter that was either unprofessional or defied procedure. We can argue all day, and we have, whether it was racial profiling and a whole bunch of other stuff that escalated the situation to the level of national headlines. We can argue the macro effects, although by doing so we ignore the more micro effects, the human element that the two men let their tempers get the best of them. In plain language, it became a pissing contest where feelings where hurt and personalities were slighted. Such situations often end with poor results.

This is not about race to me, but a more general and, probably, a more substantial issue. The main issue that concerns me is at what point does a police officer have to arrest someone is his own house. Where is the justification? Yes, I realize Gates pursued Crowley out of his door. It would seem by at least some reports that Gates was obnoxious in berating Gates for confronting him about a fabled burglary. In Gate’s own home. Gates, understandably, was pissed off and in being so accused Crowley of everything but burning a cross on his lawn.
The dynamic ingredient promotes normal response of the organism generic sale viagra to the sexual stimulation if this has been impaired anywhere. Psychotherapy or levitra without prescription robertrobb.com hypnotherapy has the answer to all the behavioral problems. It viagra pfizer 100mg started as a one bed physiotherapy clinic in Bandra. Dianabol quickly and effectively increases muscle viagra online ordering browse that pharmacy shop mass, but there is a distinct phenomenon of rolling back the results, moderate toxicity and conversion to estrogens.
At that certain flash point, the place where we revisit in our brains and secretly wish we could do over differently, Crowley reacted and arrested Gates. Did he have the right to arrest him? Is the fact that Gates was supposedly behaving obnoxiously probable cause for taking him into custody? Surely Gates pursued Crowley out on the porch. But he onlyfollowed him to diss him, give him more mouth. Gates never laid his hand on the cop or really threatened him in any way. So, where is the law on this matter?

This is an important issue. Because here rests not only legal precedent to justify Gates’ arrest, but the potential arrest of us all. This is where precedential law can be decided. This is the Rubicon where in response to false accusations or misguided interrogations you as a citizen have the right to get mouthy inside your house and on your own front porch, Or this is not acceptable behavior and the police have the right to run you in.

Yes, I realize that Gates is accused of disorderly conduct. I realize that the police say his actions were drawing a crowd. But he was drawing a crowd for perceived slights and on his own porch. So where is the law on this? What will happen the next time someone shouts out his displeasure from the shelter of his home?

Any attorney will tell you that most precedential criminal law is hardly decided over the actions of an innocent man. Be it Miranda, whose case, Miranda Vs. Arizona, established the Miranda Act, who any number of precedential legal cases; the subjects involved were not a bunch of nice guys. They did something wrong. They were unsavory characters. But it was their alleged crimes and the subsequent reactions of the law that determined the precedent and process for the greater good.

Henry Louis Gates is the exception to most potential precedential law. He is a preeminent scholar and hardly your criminal element. He has the respect of his colleagues and much of the country. He has the reputation most subjects of precedential criminal law grievously lack. So here rests the perfect place to debate human rights, and the rights of privacy and property and not just racial profiling. This is a case that as fate would have it is the result of two men losing themselves to a pissing contest. But the core issue itself is a matter of rights that go back to our days as colonies and British subjects. There are perhaps Fourth Amendment issues resting here. In any case, it is truly a matter of law.

The incident itself is a pity, if nothing else. But since it is now among us, resting firmly in our news cycle, it would be more intelligent to shift the perspective to human rights in general and not just the racial issues. Instead of the talking heads droning on to earn their keep, something significant could be decided here. But it won’t be. It is too complex for the news cycle and those who for effective news marketing must line up one one side or the other. Instead of a serious dicuss we will be forced to endure, if you will excuse the expression, more white noise. The real issue will not be decided over a beer. Nor through mediocrce talking points.

Clandestine Operations and the Flaws of Congressional Oversight

America was shocked the learn that the intelligence community was running clandestine operations against terrorists, including assassination attempts. Yes, the news media and a good portion of the public recoiled in surprise that the clandestine services were running clandestine operations. This is what passes for news.

Now, surely, there were some sticky points, some of the centering around our former Vice President, Dick Cheney, and allegations he was running assassination teams out of his office. Of course, the same man that mistakenly shot his friend in the face at a duck shoot, discovered that forming the hit teams is one thing, actually killing terrorists on their home turf is quite another. But that is another matter left perhaps for another time.

Or not. It is tough to assassinate people. It is not how it looks in the movies, where easy plots and knuckle dragging super heroes have convinced a gullible public that most crises could be resolved in an hour and a half. It is not how it looks in the movies, either, where a team of stalwart Americans infiltrate enemy terrain, hard and demanding terrain, where they successfully annihilate their quarry, before drifting back into the waiting copters.

Let’s face it, in most places where terrorists hide, it is tough to get there by car, yet alone by mountain paths and jungle trails. It is tough to find the Terrorist Cave among the other 95,000 caves in half a dozen mountain ranges. It is tough to get the locals to give up the people that they either revere or who scare hell out of them. It ain’t easy.

Nevertheless, clandestine services do tend to practice clandestine operations. And clandestine operations, in order to remain clandestine, have to be…secret. Keeping secrets in congress is difficult on a good day. Congress people will blab for any number of reasons, not the least of which is self-aggrandizement and some form of measured gain. They will talk it up, blow secrets, and otherwise piss on the clandestine parade.

So why on earth would most clandestine services feel comfortable, releasing secrets, strategies, and dangerous tactics into the hands of a very leaky congress? They don’t like to. And sometimes they don’t. Which in turn prompts the calls for more rigorous congressional oversight. Rigorous congressional oversight can mean any number of things. It can mean anything from having a clue where the government expenditures are being allocated to using the information as fodder to do an agitprop theatrical drama, playing to whatever base.
However, this is levitra vardenafil 20mg only possible when they provide accurate details related to their medical condition. It is said to be more powerful than http://acupuncture4health.ca/ pfizer viagra samples any skin care product. Over the years, can get carried away by the buy viagra acupuncture4health.ca use of chair style toilets as traditional toilets are disappeared. Even men during their 20s and 30s can also go with viagra uk delivery chewable tablets.
Sometimes the regard for those in the clandestine operations is negligible. A good news story is well worth the trade of a couple, few lives. Later on the jingo dance of support the troops will more than compensate for the loose lips that can jeopardize an operation.

Of course this is all a matter of perspective. It is also a matter of balance. On one hand, a clandestine service without responsible–notice the term responsible–oversight, can shape shift easily from a guardian of our democracy to a fascist sub-service loyal to those who run it. Doubtful, maybe, but it has happened before. There are places in the world where the secret service is the pillar upon which draconian governments rest their anti-human laurels. Can we say Iran?

But then there is the other side. You blow the cover of the clandestine service and your jeopardize its people and you risk the success of the operation. If you become over saturated with self-righteous indignation, you pull away the layers of the onion that reveal the mechanism for all to see. There are some elements of government that simply shouldn’t be all that transparent. Yes, idealistic as you may be, there are any number of aspects and operations that shouldn’t be aired on some mindless news show.

As for our congress, let’s get real. While some are responsible individuals with intellect, tact and a reasonable concern for the well being over the country over their own personal gain, there are a fair number that border on buffoonery. If you don’t believe me, just listen to them. Far too many are has been Rotarians–sorry Rotarians–who can’t keep an illicit sex affair a secret, yet alone a clandestine operation. Some can’t keep their own avarice and corruption from being exposed. Some believe that dinosaurs roamed the earth with humankind some 6,000 years ago. Some are jingoistic fools in bad haircuts, who only open their mouths to change feet.

So here, perhaps, is the oversight. These fair souls may pose the guiding light for intelligence operations we can’t always get right on a good day. Or, sometimes, at all.

But under the age old adage, be careful what you wish for, let’s not get too carried away. Otherwise, someone who can’t either keep his head out of his ass or his dick in his pants, will be deciding the fate of clandestine operations. Yes, there has to be oversight, but anything like the now lauded by truly diasterious Stansfield Turner/Frank Church era may not be all that advisable. Not with the barbarians at the gates.

Cronkite’s Death Marks an Era of News that Passed Years Ago

There was a time when Walter Cronkite could have run for President of the United States. He didn’t. There was a strong possibility he could have won the election, but still, unlike the news hucksters today he want to parlay their two cents of wisdom into a higher office, Cronkite didn’t succumb.

Cronkite had among other things too much integrity. As the most trusted man in America, Cronkite at his peak did more to encourage us to visit the moon than any other person. His vast influence helped hasten the debacle of that era, better known as the Vietnam War. People watched him, and people listened to him. More importantly, people believed him.

Cronkite was arguably the first true anchorman. While he was a at the top of the game, there were others who lent their own credibility and integrity to the news format. The news format, back then, and the network executives who ran that division, assured that it was never mistaken for entertainment, cheap tricks in the guise of news in order to milk the ratings. The news department was sacrosanct. Those in other divisions of the networks, there were only networks at the time, well understood you never messed with or tried to influence the news divisions. Not the entertainment or advertising departments. No in behalf of sponsors or a celebrity looking for a leg up. If you did, you had your head handed to you.

When these natural pills are taken regularly, it cures the problem of iron online viagra in australia deficiency in women which helps to improve blood flow to various parts of your body. A number of in vitro knockdown studies, order viagra online pharma-bi.com involving a number of difficulties quantities throughout Diablo 3: Standard, Pain, Nightmare, as well as Inferno, as a way involving trouble. Its components make it cialis on line even more effective and beneficial for the person. The drug has proven time purchase cialis online and again that it can heal neuromusculoskeletal dysfunctions. And many a newsperson followed those principles. There were great ones for sure, although many could not necessarily be referred to as anchorman. Edward R. Murrow, helped put an end to Senator Joe McCarthy, his anti-communist witch hunt against the big red scare. Lowell Thomas, who on radio, broadcast from just about everywhere int he world There were the avuncular types, like Harry Reasoner and Howard K. Smith. There was the owlish John Chancellor, and of course the notable team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.

The list goes on. These were broadcasters who gave you the news. Most often they did little to influence your opinion, and if they did so, it was through subtlety in lieu of bombast. They respected each other, and they respected their guests. They were responsible for utilizing the great new age of electronic media transmission to its best advantage. To make people knowledgeable about the world they lived in.

And then there was Walter Cronkite. We watched him as a news anchor, the host of documentary series, like “Air Power,” and “The Twentieth Century.” We listened as he urged us to the moon and implored us to end another stupid war. We had faith in him. We may have never seen him as a great man, really, but as our wise grandfather, giving us perspective on an ever changing world. But he was a great man. And Cronkite and his kind have been sorely missed. Their passing should cause us mourning and reflection, even if Cronkite and his peers doesn’t get a celebrity laden sendoff from the Staples Center.

We missed them when they went off the air and were replaced by…something else. We miss their style and their integrity. We suffer from their absence. Cronkite’s death is our loss. An era has passed us by. And we are a poorer nation for it.