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Living History

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Henry Ettinger was a “Monuments Men” who helped rescue stolen art work by the Nazis and spoke of his experience recently.

The article mentions that Hitler was into natural art and resented the turn towards impressionism and interpretative art, and instead of accepting that, he decided to destroy the art.  But that sentence doesn’t make sense, because they put the art into the mines to preserve them and protect them from bombs instead of outright destroying them.   Yeah, I know that some could be sold on the black market to raise money for the war….but they also had an “exhibition” of the artworks, which also makes no sense–why put them on display at all if they were disgusting to Hitler?  Why go to all of the trouble to transport them through a tour in Germany and Austria?

In addition to the Monuments Men, Ettinger’s family history is also very intriguing.  As the story goes, his family lived in Germany before being forced out by the Nazis in 1938.  The part that leaps out at me was  this simple passage:

“My family dated back 600 years in Germany,” Ettlinger said. “My father had an elegant women’s fashion store, with 40 employees. But when the Nazis came to power in 1933, it was immediately boycotted.”

The Nazis, said Ettlinger, didn’t immediately start killing the Jews. Instead they made it impossible for them to make a living.

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Am I entirely too cynical or conspiracy theorist to look at how our jobs have been shipped overseas and the ones left are poverty-level wages, making it impossible to put any money away for savings/retirement/vacations/emergencies….and that the union jobs are being replaced with low wage workers…?  Yeah, I suppose it is too conspiracy theorist…but the effect is still the same–making it impossible to earn a living…

 

 

 

Tossed aside

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The suicide rate has skyrocketed for one particular age group:  the over 50 crowd….the Boomers…

Susie Madrak has a post up on it here.

From the comments, which are really sobering:

dogjudge • 3 hours ago 

September, 2011. I get a phone call from friends of my (then) 83 year old aunt. She had just been saved by two friends. Both are nurses. She had sliced both arms about 35 times. When the dust settled, we found out that she had gotten over 10 grand in debt. Why? She and her husband had lost all of their money paying for hospital bills for his heart condition. He died about 10 years prior. Her only income was Social Security. Couldn’t afford to live on that. Long story short, she now lives with my wife and I.

And we get the Republicans wanting to make that situation worse for millions and a President who thinks that cutting Social Security is fine so that the wealthy in this country still don’t have to pay their fair share.

Isn’t this a great country, or what?

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The comments are heartbreaking.  And very telling.  There’s a lot of pain out there….and not a lot of hope that things will get better.

Are you listening, members of Congress? President Obama?

….probably can’t hear over the loud voices of lobbyists and campaign donors….

Obama and Education

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Diane Ravitch has a link up to the discussion on the Washington Post.  You can’t let President Obama off the hook, as is discussed–he picked Arne Duncan and actually praised No Child Left a Mind while slobbering over Bush at the dedication to the *cough* library.

No one who cares about public education and children can endorse No Child Left a Mind.  Only someone with a narrow view and narrow mind can believe it is a success.  Those with $$ in their eyes, that is….

I just want to cry

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…at what they have done to our schools….

Little ones who are now exposed to the constant fear of some bad person coming into their school and killing them or their teacher…

Schools being locked down every day instead of just when there is a possible suspect in the area…

…and No Child left a Mind continuing to be regarded as some sort of successful program, when all arrows point in the opposite direction…

…and the ones that care, the teachers and principals who give a rat’s behind about the children and not just earning a paycheck, well…they’re the ones that are leaving the profession.

I just want to cry.

Fort Wayne is on Fire

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Another police shooting—the fourth in four months–of a Fort Wayne citizen:        indianasnewscenter.com/news/local/Mayor-Henry-on-205796441.html

This isn’t even counting the ones shooting each other.  You know it’s bad when California sits up and takes notice….as they did with the third shooting just a few days ago…

The news reported that the latest shooter “should not have had access to a gun with his prior history…”  It left out the details about why this person should not have had a gun….but since he claimed to be Jesus and just randomly started shooting people (rather than a specific target), I would guess mental issues.  And yes, I would wonder about the chem trails and the toxic environment of FW–they had terrible air quality last year on many, many days.  And this shows air quality is once again questionable.  All I can say is that I notice a change in people’s behavior when there has been heavy chem trail spraying and when the air quality is already bad.  I know that when I tried jogging in the A.M. on bad air quality days, I started wheezing afterwards.  Not good.

Here’s another map showing particulate matter as being moderately high.  This is not good, either, as particulate is known to be the cause for health conditions–scientists just don’t know how it affects health, only that it does affect heart, lungs, and brain health.

FDA drops the ball…so what else is new?

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(As I first started reading this, I thought of a pun with the title:  “Something’s fishy”  but PR Watch beat me to it in their write up. Heh.)

(So…I’ll have to settle for the boring title of FDA drops the ball…so what else is new?)

Note in the comments section the paid flack who attacks the article not based on facts, but wild accusations….um-hmmm…

There are a million souls who do not want frankenfish.  (and probably millions more would be protesting if they only knew what was going on) .

What does it take for American citizens to be heard?  And why is this garbage science of Genetically Modified organisms released without a) thorough testing by independent research labs with no financial/political gain;  b) without follow-up by independent research to investigate the damage that they have caused; and c) why isn’t the entire ecological system considered when making these decisions…?

 

 

 

Ending Too Big To Fails…?

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Center for Media and Democracy has this up at PR Watch.org.

From the site:

These banks enjoy an implicit government guarantee that has been quantified by economists as a hidden taxpayer subsidy that disadvantages smaller banks. Bloomberg recently pegged this subsidy at some $84 billion,

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The Brown-Vitter bill wants the banks to be ready to give themselves a bailout when there is another shock to the financial system. The bill significantly raises the amount of high-quality (equity) capital that the big banks must hold – foreign banks operating in the United States included. Community banks would stay under the current rules, mid-sized and regional banks would be required to hold eight percent in capital to cover their assets, and megabanks – institutions with more than $500 billion in assets – would be required to meet a new 15 percent capital requirement, virtually double their current requirements.

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Ab-so-freaking-lutely.

If you click on the Bloomberg link, the question of the year:  Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion Per Year?

From Bloomberg:

The top five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – – account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits (see tables for data on individual banks)

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Now, these banks wouldn’t be getting these NICE dividends because of campaign donations and lobbying, now would they…?  Nah, we *know* they are too honest, too upstanding, too ethical to do that…right…?  Pfft.

When I clicked on the massive bailouts to foreign banks, as well link, the site wasn’t that informative, and that is something I would reeeeallly like to know…how much are we paying out for other countries’ banks??

The bill is supposed to force the banks’ hand:  they either come up with the capital to cover their assets or they start divesting their mega corporations into smaller banks, which is what they should have done immediately after the crash in ’08.