Ever think you're just getting crumbs from the table?

If you're a progressive, an environmentalist or an advocate for social justice, are you hungry yet?

I know I am. All I've been getting lately from my leaders, people I elected because I thought we were on the same page, are crumbs.

I'm beginning to think I'm Lazarus, the beggar we learn about in the Bible, who had a hard time getting the bare crumbs from the rich man's table. Of course, Lazarus eventually went to the happy hunting grounds of heavenly feasts. I'm looking for something a little sooner than that, if not for me, then for my children or the homeless, the oppressed, those living amidst drought or suffering from cancer, kidney disease.

These are the people who need reliable health care now, not five years from now and not something piecemeal.

These are the people who live in parts of Africa or on small islands in the Pacific who can't find enough water to feed their animals or plants, or who see their homelands gradually being eaten away by rising oceans.

Meanwhile, we "civilized people" in the Western World or in China or India, we're having a good time playing a game of Chicken. " I won't reduce my greenhouse gases if you don't. I'm not risking more hits on my country's economy. I can't ask my people to cut back on their use of fossil fuels. Everything we do depends on fossil fuels."

It's as thought all of us are walking around in a daze. As long as we of the more affluent countries can wake up tomorrow, use our toaster, microwave, computer and drive to work 30 miles away, and do that five days a week, perhaps writing ads for the media, selling boats or cars, building McMansions or investing in Big Pharma, don't ask us to change our ways.

Most of us refuse to hear or see the canaries in our new coal mines, the folks enumerated above who live on the rapidly dissolving islands, the drying farms, the dying without healthcare.

At this time of year we toss out there a few crumbs to the local poor, the food bank, the sick and imprisoned. We certainly don't want to be considered modern day Scrooges, God forgive! We are generous! Thus we give to our families new electronic equipment that lets us listen to music or communicate with our buddies all day long.

During the Holiday Season, be sure to say Merry Christmas to a few of your Christian friends. Also tell them how proud you are of their elected leaders who have held up health care reform because of their concerns for the unborn while making life for the already born more tenuous.

Come to think of it, if you want to stay on everyone's good side, maybe you hadn't better get into that conversation. No, just discuss the Bowl Season, Tiger Woods or Avatar. You should remain on everyone's good side that way.

Just remember, there are a few of us progressives out there who still worry about the systemic problems within our economic capitalistic system that essentially ignore the potential train wreck that will happen in our children's lives if we don't cut back on our emissions, not 10 percent, not 20 percent, but more than 50 percent real soon. But for now, we're told to settle for the crumbs that have dropped at the Copenhagen Talks, that produced a bigger carbon footprint than if all our negotiators had just stayed home and worked to change things locally.

Our elected leaders have thrown out any hopes of a Single Payer system or even a Public Option with healthcare reform. We are told by both our liberal and not-so-liberal elected leaders to take what we can get, the crumbs. Things can improve in subsequent years. Tell that to a man not able to get care now or next year.

I grew up as a Baby Boomer who thought in the 60's and 70's that we were on our way to real social change. Back then we were also told to just be patient. Settle for the crumbs then, and real improvement would come later.

Just one example of that way of thinking: When the Clean Air Act was passed in the early 70's, our coal-burning power plants were exempt from updating their plants to abide by the regulations of the bill. But when they would update their plants, they would have to modernize their plants to be in compliance with this act. To date, very many of our power plants have refused to modernize because they would have to comply with New Source Review laws of the Clean Air Act of the 1970's.

So I wonder, do we have some good examples of how accepting crumbs in some new initiatives eventually develop into truly socially just and progressive programs. Medicare? Social Security? NAFTA? the Central American Free Trade Agreement, the Maquiadoras? Right to Work Laws?

Should I be happy that at least the crumbs are now dropped from the table by the rich and powerful? Do I fight the millions, billions of poor to get these crumbs?

One thing I wonder though? Will the children of the very same people who are now in denial also have to suffer from their parents' selfishness of today?

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What kind of report card will our Democrats be bringing home this year?

Okay Friends, where's our successful record for 2009?

Many of us voted straight Democratic tickets about 13 months ago, and what has the majority in the House and the Senate, plus a Democratic President gotten us so far? Far too little. My thimble could probably hold all the successes for the common person these Democrats have brought us.

To say the least, I'm very disappointed. Where did things go wrong?

For one thing, I think our elected friends under-estimated the entrenched power still meandering around the U.S. Capitol and White House. Instead many important people appointed by our President have, like Rick Warren at the Inauguration, been major disappointments. Witness Robert Gates being left on to fill the important head of the Defense Department.

And, unlike the Democrats when they were the minority, the defeated Republicans refused to roll over and play dead. To tell you the truth, they did anything but! The election of Democrats invigorated their hate and their united resolve to discredit the new administration and its fellow Democrats on the Hill.

The Republicans, along with Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Bill O'Reilly, have sung their song in perfect harmony. They can lie and most Americans believe them. They can organize Tea Baggers and put a big dent in healthcare reform efforts. They know their enemy's weak points and they do a darn good job on accentuating them from Day One.

My suggestion after almost one year in office to the President and his Democratic friends: Get serious like FDR did nearly 70 years ago. He and his friends cannot forget that people who wanted real change elected Obama and fellow Democrats to get his program through the House and Senate. We even have a handful of Independents who side with us on most issues. (Witness Bernie Sanders. Too bad we've lost Joe Lieberman, but he seems to symbolize the rotten luck Democrats are having in a term that should have been golden.)

Remember we won some tight races. We went to the gates raring to set the captives free, to bring health care to all, toe feed the hungry and to ensure a clean environment for our children.

So on a scale of one to ten, after one year, where are we now towards reaching that goal? I have often written grant proposals. The corporate mentality that has inflicted the non-profit world taught us that we had to set goals and objectives that were time-phased, measurable and quantifible.

If I had a funder who had given me a $5,000 grant (as opposed to we Americans giving our representatives command over billions of dollars), I would be expected about now to hand in a concise report on how far I had come in achieving my goals after this year.

I think if I were the American government about now, I would have a hard time reporting back to my constituents about how far their confidence in me had propelled me well along on my road to completing my task(s).

About now I would be getting some nasty notes from my funder, asking me where was my report, how had I helped my constituency? Was my money being spent as I was told it would be spent?

Be it Christmas, New Year's Eve, time for the State of the Union Address or whatever, if all I had to report back was that, hey, I increased the number of our combatants in Afghanistan in 2009, I think I would also be looking for a job on the other side.

Are you ready to hold your elected Democrat accountable? If you're a Republican, on the other hand, you certainly got your money's worth!

But darn! We were supposed to be the winners, not you guys! Can't you lighten up a little and let us win one for the Democrats?

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How much has Afghanistan cost your town already?

I was extremely saddened to hear that our country will commit some 30,000-plus of our most able and gifted men and women to fight an everlasting war in Afghanistan.

But some people can only understand the cost in monetary terms. Let's look at Asheville's cost, according to statistics compiled by the National Priorities Project (nationalpriorities.org).

Since 2001, when the USA first started fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, taxpayers in Asheville have paid approximately $44.2 million (an average of $5.5 million per year). This doesn't count funds spent in Iraq or other defense purposes, by the way.

This much money spent in Asheville could have paid for:

• health care for 9,461 persons for an entire year;
• renewable energy for 35,046 homes for a year;
• 1,131 public safety officers for a year;
• 828 music and arts teachers for a year;
• scholarships for 8,777 university students for a year;
• Pell Grants worth $5,350 each for 8,257 students for a year;
• 418 affordable housing units could have been built;
• healthcare for 21,068 children for a year;
• Head Start places for 5,995 children for a year;
• 916 more elementary school teachers for a year;
• 676 port container inspectors for a year.

So even if you think that you take no position on our continuous war in Afghanistan, but you do care about education, health care, the environment, high taxation, national debt, the arts, jobs, law and order or simply common sense, you need to also take a position against the proposed surge of troops in Afghanistan.

If the dollars mean nothing to you, count the countless loss of lives among loved ones here and in Afghanistan because of the USA's stubborn persistence in a country that has destroyed empires for at least half a millennium.

Is there another way to protect our country? Or are we simply helping create new and more angry terrorists willing to give their lives to get even with us someday?

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Was Saturday Night Live's skit on Tiger Woods funny?

C'mon! Domestic violence in the Tiger Woods-Elin Nordegren spat?

Well, I guess you could technically call it domestic violence. And I do admire Tiger for not physically fighting back. Instead he took the flight approach to the fight or flight dilemma.

I just had never considered this as a prime example of what many of us see as domestic abuse. Of course, we have been cultured to believe that usually it's the woman who is the target in domestic abuse crimes.

That was until I saw a recent headline that the December 5th Saturday Night Live skit about Tiger and his beautiful Swedish bride was in bad taste, considering the fact that the musical guest Rhianna was herself a victim of domestic abuse.

OK, if you want to get technical about it, I guess scratching up your two-timing "squeaky clean" hubby is domestic violence, and chasing him with a golf club could have done him great harm. Nevertheless, I want to whisper a small "Way to go, girl," when I read the story of the Tiger Woods poly-gram and his "woman scorned" wife.

I immediately thought of Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards "standing by their men," along with Jenny Sandford and other politicians' wives who continued to be the demure little women after their husbands carried on with "the other women."

None of them really seemed that mad! Were they really human? Had they no pride?

Now I see a sweet little woman not from these here parts stand up to her man and let him know that she wasn't going to be cheated on here in the U.S. or anywhere else for that matter. She lost her temper. She scratched his face (Hey, women's fingernails have always been our most potent weapon!), and then chased him with his expensive golf club, running him out of the house at 2:25 AM and darn right embarrassing the poor guy. In my politically incorrect opinion, more power to you, Elin!

For far too long we wives have looked the other way when husbands cheated. We have forgiven, forgiven and forgiven, and then looked inward to see what we could have done to cause him to stray. Did we ask him to get up with a crying child once too often, or to mow the yard once a month, or did we nag him too much?

Now we see a strong woman who stands her ground. This sexy blonde Nordic Woman of the Bear Clan knows where her claims are, is willing to mess up a good night's sleep, damage a pretty good Cadillac and cause a ruckus in her refined neighborhood because her man cheated on her and has, it seems, continued to do so with a number of women a good number of times.

Maybe she is a reborn Virginia Wolfe, I don't know.

I just apologize to all people, men and women, who have been on the receiving side of domestic violence. As adults we should never hit, scratch, cut or maim any person, especially when we have young children in the home. This was not acceptable for an adult to react in such a manner, even if she is a "scorned wife" of Tiger Woods.

Nevertheless, I laughed when I watched the skit on SNL last night. It didn't even register with me while I watched it that I was laughing at domestic violence. Shame on me!

but also shame on Tiger!

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President Obama's biggest mistake so far -- Afghanistan

This day will go down as the day President Barack Obama made one of the worst mistakes of his life.

Our hero is no longer my hero. I have hoped he would show a backbone amidst his right wing critics, the war mongers, the Wall Street Mafia. But in my eyes he has failed in all three areas.

I know there are many out there that will say that putting more troops into Afghanistan is something he must do to protect this country from future terrorist attacks. Or they may say that we is just cleaning up the mess that Bush left there. Or they may even say that if he didn't do this he would be labeled as a weakling. And who wants to have that label?

Did Gandhi or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have this label? And even if they would have been labeled as such, would that have stopped them from doing the peaceful nonviolent thing?

Before I get labeled myself as a racist for not now supporting the man I voted for, let me tell you that I have done my very best to give this man the benefit of my doubt. He is a very smart, educated and well-reared man who seems to have had a socially responsible mother. He showed promise as a community organizer some 20 years ago. He got off on the right track.

But somewhere along the line he learned that he had charisma, much like John Kennedy had. His ambitions grew. He discovered that he had a way of giving a speech that could mesmerize his audience. He wanted to be loved by all, to not offend those who opposed him any more than he had to. You see he wanted to bring all of us under one roof.

He had the left by his side. He didn't fit our model of what a dynamic leader should be, but he certainly showed that he had the grit to win. So we were in his pocket.

Soon he pulled in the middle of the road moderates. They decided that they could stomach this guy, as could the independents. Soon he was on his way to forming a majority with passionate volunteers willing to die for him in the process.

Since he was elected, even from the day of his Inaugural Address, he has tried to pull into his camp his enemies. They remain stubborn. Yet he gives and he gives to them. He sacrifices ideals that we who were in his pocket from the beginning hold dear. We grimace as one after the other is compromised, such as sending more than 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan to fight people who we call insurgents, but whose countrymen call patriots.

I am now out of his pocket, as are most of my friends. We have one more time become disillusioned by a politician who is simply not the great statesman we had hoped to see. We wanted another leader like Franklin D. Roosevelt who took on the powers of the elite and worked for the oppressed. We wanted a leader like Dwight D. Eisenhower, who understood the power of the military-industrial complex, and he wasn't afraid to confront them. Even President Harry Truman stood up to his General MacArthur, firing him for insubordination when MacArthur thought we should go in and nuke our enemies during the Cold War.

I was warned by some wary Democrats back during the 2008 Primary season that Mr. Obama was a do-nothing man. With his deep desire for consensus he often ends up getting nothing accomplished because he has no real Ideals, no real Standards or Ethics.

So in a few minutes I will hear him tell the soldiers at West Point that they will be heading to Afghanistan back and forth for at least the next three years, and many of them returning in body bags. If I were one of them, I would risk a dishonorable discharge by standing up and shouting, "Hell no, I won't go!" Maybe one by one, each young man and woman would join the first, and soon shout out in unison, "None of us will go!"

Are we left-leaning, pro-peace non-violent people to one more time stand by while our new president fiddles with a country known throughout history for eating up empires and spitting them out?

But then, maybe that is what this empire needs....to be chewed up and split up into hundreds of little pieces. Maybe such an action would humble us and we could start again.

May our Creator forgive us and our president for leading us down this road to violence and ruination of the good name we had hoped to secure with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, just one year ago.

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Some things not to be thankful for this Thanksgiving

As Thanksgiving 2009 approaches, I find myself thankful for the usual stuff: family, friends, food, health, shelter, love and all those other fuzzy things.

What I think is more interesting though are the things I'm not thankful for. So I ask the following questions:

* Why do we remain in Afghanistan and why are we having to risk our children's lives in order to commit some 30,000 more troops into that country?

* Has President Obama not studied our involvement in Vietnam, how we thought we had to do the same some 40 years ago when we feared the Communists instead of today's terrorists?

* Why can't the Senate get their act together and approve health reform for citizens that would give us some of the benefits they now themselves have?

* Why are one in seven in this country hungry while a few of those other seven live in extreme wealth letting their money support them rather than their labor?

* Why are one in four homeowners behind in their mortgage payments while those who approved many of those mortgages continue to get bonuses?

* Why does the Catholic Church welcome disgruntled married Episcopal MALE priests into its fold while telling their own priests that they will never be able to marry?

* Why do our automobile manufacturers continue to make vehicles we don't really want rather than cars that are reasonably priced that offer us outstanding fuel efficiency and a good cup holder?

* Why are our schools becoming more and more dangerous even though more and more dollars are poured into them each year?

* Why do otherwise intelligent men and women continue to deny that global warming is really happening as they drive their Hummer a couple blocks to get a cup of coffee?

* Why is it that when you are young you are underqualified and when you're old you're overqualified. And when you are "best qualified" you don't happen to be looking for a job?

* Why does it seem that when your kids are young it seems that they'll never grow up, but when they are grown up and gone, their childhoods seem like they didn't last any time at all?

* Why does Bill Moyer have to leave PBS when he's the best news commentator out there?

* Why do people insist on shopping at 4 am on the day after Thanksgiving when they could be sleeping in and enjoying one more day off?

* Why can't the Israelis and Palestinians get along and let their children grow up in peace?

* Why do we insist on putting bandaids on injustices rather than working for justice?

* Why can't a person make enough money to live above the poverty level when they work full time?

* Why can't edible food be eaten by someone who is hungry instead of it being thrown into a locked dumpster or trash compactor?

* Why do some industrial farmers have to plow under perfectly good food rather than give it to hungry people or at least selling it at a cheaper rate?

*Why are our farmers subsidized to raise food that is not good for us or our livestock?

If anyone can answer these questions for me, I'll be more thankful this Thanksgiving. I get tired of just loving warm fuzzy feelings and things.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to you!

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