Demoralized values.

March 22, 2017

By Alison Thoet

In the past month, (click here) there’s been a surge of zoo-related violence and injury in the news. A flamingo was stoned and kicked to death in Prague. A white rhino in a Paris zoo was killed, its horn sawed off. El Salvador’s prized hippopotamus, “Gustavito,” died of wounds after he was violently attacked, and a crocodile at a Tunis zoo died after it was stoned by visitors.

The incidents have again raised questions for animal rights activists and zoos alike about what’s being done to keep zoo animals safe.

“I think it’s a reflection that there are some human beings who still see animals as things,” Brittany Peet, director of captive animal law enforcement for PETA, told the NewsHour. Peet argued these international events, as well as the death of Harambe the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo in May 2016, highlight that “we simply can’t adequately provide for animals in captivity.”...

Mischief? I suppose there are all sorts of bad asses these days.

15 March 2017

A trio of schoolboys (click here) aged between five and eight-years-old reportedly kicked a flamingo to death after pelting it with stones at a zoo in the Czech Republic. 

The youngsters reportedly climbed over the fence of the Jihlava Zoo before launching their attack on the flock of American flamingos. 

“First, they pelted them with stones," zoologist Jan Vašák told the Prague Morning news site, adding that one of them started to kick one of the birds....

Greed and demoralized economies result in education about animals through illustration only.

March 22, 2017
By Katie Mettler
The savage work of poachers (click here) once concentrated in the wild of Africa and Asia moved metropolitan earlier this month when assailants at a wildlife park near Paris fatally shot a captive rhinoceros three times in the head then sawed off the creature’s horn.
The violent attack on Vince, a five-year-old white rhino, was the first known instance of a rhino being killed in a zoo and forced zookeepers around the globe to consider increasing security.
A Czech zoo, Dvur Kralove, took that to the extreme.
It is home to 21 rhinos — Europe’s largest population — and this week began dehorning them all.
“The decision to remove rhino horns was not made easily at all,” zoo director Premysl Rabas said in a statement Tuesday. “However, the risk that the rhinos currently face not only in the wild but even in zoos is too high and the safety of the animals is our first concern.”
“The dehorned rhino is definitely a better option than the dead rhino,” Rabas said....

There are sincere Dylan fans in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

November 4, 2016

By Jerry Walford 

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.

Tulsa will soon be home (click here) to the complete works of the world’s newest Nobel laureate.

Bob Dylan was announced Thursday morning as the recipient of the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature. The Nobel committee said Dylan’s work deserved the prize “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”

The Minnesota native is the first American to earn the Nobel Prize in literature since Toni Morrison in 1993, and many saw the announcement from the Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel Prize as a surprise because musicians haven’t been featured to the same degree as other poets, novelists and writers in the literature category.

One of those who was surprised was Michael Chaiken, curator of the Bob Dylan Archive, which is making its way to Tulsa over the next couple of years.

“I had no idea,” Chaiken said. “Definitely didn’t see it coming. It was a pleasant surprise considering how apocalyptic this election season has been. It was nice to see how beauty and poetry are still important in the world.”

Bob Dylan was awarded the "Metal of Freedom."

The Bob Dylan Archive was acquired by the University of Tulsa and the George Kaiser Family Foundation in March and is coming to Tulsa in pieces to be stored and cataloged for future research of the material, most of which was unknown to many scholars before the March announcement....

He never skimped on lyrics. He composed and sang until the picture was clear.

November 4, 2017
By "World's" Editorial Writers

Bob Dylan was named the 2016 Nobel Prize winner in literature on Thursday. (click here)

It was a surprising, but deserved honor for the 75-year-old Dylan, who the Swedish Academy hailed for creating “new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.”...

They're selling postcards of the hanging, they're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors, the circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless, they need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight, from Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy, "It takes one to know one, " she smiles

And puts her hands in her back pockets Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning. "You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says, "You're in the wrong place, my friend, you'd better leave"
And the only sound that's left after the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up on Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden, the stars are beginning to hide
The fortune telling lady has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel and the hunchback of Notre Dame

Everybody is making love or else expecting rain

And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing, he's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row

Ophelia, she's 'neath the window for her I feel so afraid

On her twenty-second birthday she already is an old maid
To her, death is quite romantic she wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion, her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood with his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago with his friend, a jealous monk
Now he looked so immaculately frightful as he bummed a cigarette
And he when off sniffing drainpipes and reciting the alphabet
You would not think to look at him, but he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin on Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read, "Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on the penny whistles, you can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough from Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains, they're getting ready for the feast

The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest
They are spoon feeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words
And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls, "Get outta here if you don't know"
Casanova is just being punished for going to Desolation Row"

At midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping to Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn
Everybody's shouting, "Which side are you on?!"
And Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday, about the time the doorknob broke

When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke
All these people that you mention, yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name
Right now, I can't read too good, don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them from Desolation Row

Songwriter Bob Dylan

Why did the Tea Party stop the Republican so called "Fix" to the ACA?

That is the real question. Why? The Tea Party (Freedom Caucus) is the extremist of the extremists, so why make the Republican measure fail? 

March 25, 2017
By Priyanka Dayal McCluskey and Felice J. Freyer

The failure of House Republicans (click here) to approve new health care legislation Friday was met with relief in Massachusetts, which stood to lose billions of dollars in critical federal funding under the bill. But that doesn’t mean the state is worry-free when it comes to paying for medical care that is considered both high quality and high cost.

Most pressing, the state faces significant financial challenges with its Medicaid program, called MassHealth, which covers low-income residents. Enrollment has swelled as the program is used to provide coverage to more than just the state’s poorest denizens. It now includes more than 1 in 4 residents, or 1.9 million people. That’s up from 1.1 million people a decade ago....

Why? You have to understand how they are to understand they intend to destroy the country until the federal government and the states are bare knuckled police, fire and military. They see no other value for government.

WHO ARE THEY?

They are the Kochs, the Waltons, the Trumps and every other FAMILY CORPORATION in the country that has no IPO/stock offering.

Their so called fortunes were made by generations past and should have ended when the founders died. That didn't happen. The businesses have lived on as 'a gift' from dear ole' Mom and Dad.

The businesses are outdated and part of the problem in today's economy that has to bend to keep up with the demands of a growing population in the world and Earth's physics. These family businesses have no vested interest in the idea society has to change as time passes. The economy of the past is not capable of supporting generations to come.

The Old Oil Barons are probably the best example. They bought Dick Cheney and he pledged to be the biggest bad ass alive. That was the only way he could harness power from a basically civilized USA. Being a bad ass is a male identity (God help you, Hillary Clinton. The USA is NOT going there.) that serves itself well with declarations of war by the last Superpower on Earth. 

Wouldn't you think that when the USA declared itself the last Superpower on Earth peace would be a prime directive? But, what do we have today? We have another male bad ass that is cutting regulations to the bone because he thinks it's cool. He is the Supreme Bad Ass. His friends, like the Amway Queen, want to make pyramid schemes the only way to make a living in the USA. The Tea Party/Freedom Caucus are backed by useless businesses that should have died decades ago.

Basically, the billionaires of today should be working folks because no different than a growing population on Earth, a family grows in size when parents have 5, 6 or seven children or more. So, when the children of the original founders inherited their fortunes they saw their own large family and no way to slide them into a millionaire or billionaire slot without future exploitation of natural resources or harnessing the subsistence lifestyle of supply side economics or wanting to be a millionaire with pyramid schemes. These are all old paradigms that did not die.

The reason the Freedom Caucus stood in the breach with the Republican health care bill could be for hero worship. They can appear to be real bad asses or they can appear to be a shadow warrior for the Democrats. Either way they win the next election if their propaganda appeals to all.

So, perhaps the Freedom Caucus seems interesting to those in Massachusetts, but, BEWARE Gentle Ben. The life you save may be your own, because, they are taking aim at Massachusetts and the result will not be like a Governor of conscience even though he is a Republican.