Blog
What a strange two weeks...
Jun 26, 2015
I've been following and commenting on the news for the past almost forty years and I can not remember any two week period like our country has just experienced. It went from weird to disastrous to contemplative to jump for joy and back to disastrous.
About two weeks ago the President of the Spokane Chapter of the NAACP lost her mind but found another race to identify with. She cashed in her credibility and 15 minutes of fame doing network interviews trying to convince the world of the importance of what race a person identifies with. Nobody has figured out yet why she wanted to do this or why re-identifying yourself with another race was important.....or even why some network news producers granted her as much air time as she received. I seriously doubt we'll ever find out the answers to these questions. I truly believe she's the product of a strange family life.
Speaking a strange family life....in shoots Dylann Storm Roof. I mean who names their child Storm....?....I know it's only his middle name ....but geeze but that doesn't answer the question....why would you give the name Storm to a child...?
I guess it all went downhill from there. It takes a village and we all failed him and we paid for it......some more than others.
On the bright side....our society seemed to finally understand forgiveness by what survivors and relatives of the victims said at Dylann's bond hearing. They told him that they forgive him and ask God for mercy on his soul.....and hate doesn't win.
Now if we as a society can put THAT kind of understanding on the front end of living out lives...we won't have to suffer as much at bond hearings and funerals.
The Charleston massacre led to a public debate about the displaying the flag of treasonous traitors of the United States over southern statehouse and grounds.
-Milt Priggee
Same-Sex Marriage
Jun 26, 2015
WOW----!!...The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5-4 against the 14 states that had banned same-sex marriage. Those bans against same-sex marriage were found to be unconstitutional. This ruling now legalizes gays to get married anywhere in the US of A....and their union will be recognized in every state of the union.
If bigots can't use the power of the state to discriminate against whoever they want...what good is states rights? If the haters of the world can't keep locked up whatever minority they want to stick it to where is the freedom....?
What good is the constitution....if it continually allows people their lives, their liberty and their pursuit of happiness.
-Milt Priggee
Societal Sea Change
Jun 25, 2015
This country changing ....hang on. Same sex marriages, trans-gender actors, Caitlyn Jenner .....and now the old Confederate Battle flag has become toxic.
-Milt Priggee
Media Monday with Lester Holt
Jun 22, 2015
When some people make enough money, they retire from whatever they were doing that generated that money....even if the public still wanted them in their lives. The retired too soon list is includes Oprah, Gary Larson of the Far Side and Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes comic strips just to name a few.
Where as other people who do too little for too much too quickly seem to lose the ability to keep their feet on the ground. They start believing their own press clippings and that their own you know what doesn't stink. They lose the ability to understand the difference between right 'n' wrong. They believe the world revolves around them instead of vice versa. Their morals and values become irrelevant to their own benefit.
In the entertainment world....can you say Charlie Sheen...WINNING...!!
In the journalism world George Stephanopoulos writing 3- $25,000. checks to the Hillary Clinton Foundation and not disclosing it- that created a blatant conflict of interest while covering the foundation.
Now to Brian Williams of NBC, who has been off the air for about the last six months for embellishing stories about him riding in a helicopter that was supposedly taking fire, complete with bullet holes.
Mr. Williams is back on the air....sort of....he'll be working at MSNBC trying to regain the trust of the public and the suits who paid his salary.
People are wondering- why would a guy at the top of his game and that game is telling the truth, why would he embellish stories about himself....? Why would a broadcast journalist who is being paid $10 million dollars a year to read the news, feel he needed to embellish stories about himself.
Ten million dollars a year is ten times more than most people will make in a lifetime and Mr. Williams knows it and more importantly he felt it.....to his core. The NBC suits also know that paying $10 million dollars a year to somebody to read the news is a bit ridiculous and it made themselves question their values.
So- to justify that salary they figured they needed to polish or embellish their professional news reader's resume'. They did this by sending him and a crew to record for further promote Mr. Williams being a journalist out in the field.....combat field. Not too 'combat'...because God forbid our news reader gets hurt. See? Mr. Williams just isn't a news reader, he can go on a field trip and ask interesting questions.....and the proof of it were used on those NBC Evening News with Brian Williams promo pieces.
I believe Mr. Williams is basically a good, honest and yes truthful human being. He just had a salary inflated ego. Even though future paychecks won't be as inflated as they once were...I doubt he'll be worrying where his next buck is gonna come from.
Maybe being a basically honest person he felt uncomfortable receiving the size of his paycheck for reading the news. SO- instead of giving some of the money back, starting a foundation or just giving it to charity he figured he'd play the 'celebrity' game. Mr. Williams went on talk shows to do what...to talk about himself....reading the news(?). Greater exposure = greater name recognition= a greater paycheck.
Sharing embellishments of near the combat zone rides in a helicopter is a lot more interesting than reading the news from an office building in New York city. Mr. Williams did to the helicopter ride story of his field trip as the NBC suits did to his career.
That's why the NBC suits didn't move on Mr. Williams when it happened.....both benefited by the the big white lies.
-Milt Priggee
Dylann Roof colors
Jun 22, 2015
-Milt Priggee
Crime of Apathy
Jun 19, 2015
Mental illness, hate crime or crime of apathy. By calling, labeling the church shooting in Charleston S.C. a hate crime or a mental illness crime, either way it absolves us, our society of any responsibility. Hence, since we're not responsible we don't have to do anything to correct the conditions that helped create the event in the first place.
This church massacre was a crime of apathy....where the shooter just fell through the cracks or off the grid. That point was illustrated succinctly on last night's network news broadcast about the shooter's background. The report mentioned the shooter.... 'repeated the ninth grade with no indication that he had graduated'. The report didn't say he failed, dropped out or quit.... what the school had was that there was 'no indication that he had graduated'.
Now I generally dislike people saying, wellll back in my day we used to.....whatever...as if everything was so much better back in the day.
Those were different days back then and with our entering the information age, education is a lot more important today. Yet our system for making sure that children's minds are engaged in exercising their brains is totally nonexistent. I mean when was the last time you even heard the title...truant officer...? Our society has lost the ability to see the big picture. To understand how education prepares a young person's mind to protect itself from the undersides of the world. In school a young person is gaining the ability to think, to make decisions to recognize the difference between right and wrong, to help it develop empathy.
Instead our society just doesn't care about the future enough to make sure underage children are attending school 'til graduation. We just let them float out of our care with 'no indication that they graduated'....to face the worst aspects of our world and then expect them to be fine upstanding citizens. We are so clueless about the big picture that when tragedy happens all we can say is that it was pure evil. Pure evil? yeah another nice little label that absolves us of any responsibility.
I'm not saying that a HS diploma is a guarantee against more mass shootings. What I am saying is, if racist hate is taught maybe our society should put forth a better effort at making sure a young brain can protect itself from those teachings.
I believe the state law in South Carolina for compulsory attendance requires children to be in school from the ages of 5 to 17. I believe our shooter just quit going to school before 17 and nobody followed up to find out why. Nobody cared enough...
Now we have 9 plus one reasons why we should've cared a lot more than we did.
-Milt Priggee
Just another mass murder shooting.
Jun 18, 2015
Some people have asked the question ....was the Charleston church massacre shooter mentally ill or a hate criminal....?
Was the shooter mentally ill or did he just hate black people so much that he would sit with them for about an hour during a Bible studies meeting and then start shooting those who had been sitting with there in prayer...? Also, making sure that he left survivors so he could tell them that he hated them so much he had to do it because 'they' were raping our women and taking over our country.
When you make statements like he said and act out as he did....your hate IS the mental illness. They are the same difference.
This country is very racist...and this country is very mentally ill.
Our society is now experiencing it's own cultural climate change....and last night was just another perfect storm of easy accessibility of guns, racist hate and victimization. Since the shooter had just turned 21 you can also say our education system also failed us....in that we didn't educate him onto the correct path to be able to think for himself and to see the world as it actually is.
Instead he got sucked into racist hatred via social media. I won't be surprised in the coming weeks when the authorities release the autopsy of the shooter's confiscated computer. I'm sure we will find he spent time with hate sites in addition to the church's WEB site.....collecting info such as the pastor's name, address of the church, Bible study times, etc, etc.... The shooter wasn't a citizen of Charleston....he lived in Eastover, S.C....almost a 100 miles away from Charleston. He targeted his victims.
Our education system failed him/us by allowing him to drop out of HS....so while other kids are studying reading, writing and arithmatic....he's studying- that he's a victim, his women are being raped and he's losing his country. We allowed him, a young kid to roam around in the internet world of victimized hate without the ability to think and to see the world as it is.
The media and our leaders are going to be asking and pointing fingers at guns, social media hate sites, the rebel flag flying on the state capitol and ...did he do this all by himself....(?) I really don't understand why everybody is looking for an answer, because nobody ever does anything about it. There is no ONE answer....it's all of the above and...
We have met the enemy and he is us.
-Milt Priggee
Trump the Chump
Jun 17, 2015
Donald Trump has now thrown his hair into the ring to become President....or another way to say it is, Money talks and BS walks..... or runs to an increasingly right leaning base.
Why does the Donald think he can be president or even make a viable run for the presidency.....? He's an egomaniac, a narcissist on steroids who has mixed up being a king with presidential leadership.The steroids are our campaign-finance system that says money is speech. Somehow he got the idea that a royal decree is presidential leadership.
He's never held elective office, never politically compromised on anything and the word 'diplomacy' does not exist in the Donald's dictionary.
He's the democrats' secret weapon, a suicide bomber intent on taking the republican party down with him. Trump is the spokesperson, lobbyist for the Birther Tea Party. He's so far out there ...he makes Mitt Romney look like Mother Teresa. He's a carnival barker, saying any outrageous (and I do mean ANY) thing to get people into his tent.
It may sound like I'm complaining but I'm really not because as Trump said, " I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created." Which is true because he's going to be keeping a lot of comedy writers employed at least until he drops out of his expensive charade. Next time somebody asks me where I get my ideas from...all I have to say now is ...Trump.
I've heard of burning your bridge before or behind you...but with Trump he's really enjoying his own personal gold-plated flamethrower. Unfortunately, he's on the middle of the bridge with all the other republican presidential campaigners ...and that's why Hillary will be the next one in the White House.
-Milt Priggee
White is the new black
Jun 16, 2015
I must admit, I've been following the Rachel Twilight Zone Dolezal fiasco a bit more intently that other Washington State issues or news events. Mainly because I lived in Spokane from 1987 to 2000...(which has moved me to now draw my 4th cartoon on the topic.) I quickly learned that Spokane was not the end of the world but you could see it from there. Spokane's a quirky little city in eastern Washington State about 30 minutes west of north Idaho. The capital of the Inland Empire is another column, so let's get back to Rachel.
Like I said, I've been following this issue...watching the news, interviews, speaking to reporters and reading as much as I can. I'm somewhat surprised at how much of the essence of the issue has just not made it to the other reporting outlets and interviewers. The bottom line point that started this whole story was the number of racial harassment complaints that the Coeur d'Alene Police Department dropped as soon as Rachel moved to Spokane. And yep you guessed it...as soon as Rachel arrived in Spokane race harassment complaints increased there. And yes the main 'victim' doing all this filing of complaints was Rachel.
As Jeff Selle the Coeur d'Alene Press reporter who broke the story started collecting information he realized this was a story. This raised red flags because Rachel was moving up into leadership positions
I'll cut to the chase because this is starting to get really ugly. Ugly because the only questions that haven't been asked deal with Rachel's family. Family issues such as raising children and cross race adoption may have something to do with this mess.
-Milt Priggee
Do you have to be black, to be black....?
Jun 15, 2015
SO- the President of the Spokane Chapter of the NAACP doesn't know if she's African-American, black or white.... Obviously she's not playing with a full-deck....and has decided to step down from her leadership position. She'll now spend the rest of her professional life trying to regain her credibility and public trust.
This story will be floating in the public's news stream until either she apologizes or at least explains why she decided to fight for justice and civil rights by lying about her background. It won't be easy for her to do because she's been playing the victim for most of her life. She's been using her victimization to manipulate her way through life.
I'm assuming you've already read or heard that she most likely planted her hangmen nooses and along with claiming she received racist harassment hate mail. She's the ultimate victim....and it doesn't matter what race she is identifying with at the time when she claims she has been injured.
Rachael identifies so strongly and completely with the African-American race that she sued her Alma mater, Howard University. Howard is a historically black institution and she sued because she felt discriminated against because she was white.
Yes- a judge threw the lawsuit out of court ......and the Spokane police dropped their investigation of the racist hate mail......and Eastern WA Univ. where she was a part-time professor has dropped her bio from their WEB site .......and Rachael's dropped her integrity....all over the sidewalk.
Probably the weirdest thing about this strange minstrel show....has been some media pundits actually trying to explain and defend Rachael's identifying herself as a black person. They do this in part by saying that you can be a white person and still be a leader of civil rights....even to the point of listing of previous other white people who have fought for civil rights.
SO- I'll try to bring the essence of the issue back, by saying, yes, you can be white and fight for civil justice....but it's just a little more difficult to do it in blackface.
-Milt Priggee
