Here are America's finest. Bigots. "Why don't you get a job?"

Where is Steve Bannon? He should be holding the largest candle. Oh, forgot, they aren't candles so it isn't exactly a candle vigil now is it?

Poor Robert E. Lee is being permanently put to rest and he can't even get a candle vigil. Torches. That is what the KKK is most fond of.

This is not what Lincoln died for!

You lost the war you frigging nut cases!

May 14, 2017
By Jonah Engel Bromwich

Carrying torches and chanting angrily, (click here) demonstrators marched Saturday in a Virginia city against a vote to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, leading the city’s mayor to compare the rally to a gathering of the Ku Klux Klan.

The gathering of several dozen protesters in Charlottesville, Va., was led by Richard B. Spencer, a prominent white supremacist, who posted pictures and video from the gathering to social media that showed a phalanx of demonstrators holding Confederate battle flags and a banner proclaiming, “We will not be replaced.” Their chants, some of which were captured on video, included “Russia is our friend” and the Nazi-era slogan “blood and soil.”...

Nurse gets a fright when a drone causes over $1000 worth of damage to his car, embedding its camera in his radiator.

This is not just Australia or New South Wales; it happens in the USA, too.

May 16, 2017
By Andrew Taylor

Every child (click here) in NSW has a legal right to access and participate in education, regardless of disability or special needs.

But Carly Landa said there were "definitely negative consequences" to sending her son to school.

Louie, now 11, went to school for three years before his parents decided to home-school him.

"For Louie, it just didn't work," she said of her son, who is on the autism spectrum. "The ideal is every student's needs are met and that every student is supported as a learner.

"But the reality just doesn't actually translate. The numbers in the classroom, the lack of support."...

Parents of disabled students in many places, not just New South Wales, have an additional burden, they must home school their children FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY.

It is an unspoken truth that effects the child and the parents and their potential to acquire income that leads to poor choices for the families future. When a parent sees a child, a disabled child, suffer day after day from bullying there is no choice left, but, to homeschool. The school systems fail these children and families are left with poor choices.

One parent has to decide or perhaps is the only one qualified to homeschool a child or children. That means their ability to work outside the home is diminished and quite possibly a loss of income is felt all to profoundly by the couple.

Teachers' assistants assigned to classrooms can also be a help on the playground, buses and walks to school. They can be the eyes and ears to bring vigilance to worried parents and scared children. It is not that costly to employ more people to be those important intermediaries to protect the emotional health of children as they learn lessons important to their future rather than harsh lessons about life.

Unless the culture of a society provides the basis for bullying, as is the case in the USA, there should be no mistake; the bullies should be homeschooled and not the children deserving of a good education facing a challenging future. What is learned by children when their parents decide their sacrifice is important to protect their child? I am afraid of the actual lessons learned when retreat by a disabled child is the only solution.

Where are unions when you need them?

When people of impoverishment are faced with death for attempting to better their quality of life as in Bangladesh (click here) they realize there is no one to care about them except themselves. I would think such a reality could be taught and propagated into empowerment that saves lives and improves health.

Unions are desperately needed throughout the world. It won't be easy, but, it never has been easy. It is time for unions to expand in every country where there are workers. That is the only requirement. Workers.

Oppression of any kind is not a pretty picture. Leaders should be aware of their role in allowing this level of abuse of their citizens. The leaders should be out front demanding better conditions for it's people. In the past, as with the petroleum industry, the leaders of a country were well paid while the people suffered and died. We still see the remaining suffering in countries such as Nigeria and Ecuador.

Unions need to move to end suffering and bring about dignity to all people and all countries.

May 16, 2017
By Molly Harris Olson

We might think slavery (click here) is something relegated to the annals of history, but it is a huge modern-day problem. And a global one.

The Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people in 167 countries are in some form of modern slavery. And the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said that 21 million people were in forced labour in 2012, generating a profit of nearly $200 billion.

Slavery in the 21st century is a complex issue, and stretches far beyond the bounds of human trafficking. The ILO recognises a continuum of human exploitation from forced labour and debt bondage through to exploitative work places and withholding of wages.

Modern slavery may not always mean physical shackles, but financial ones that make it impossible for people to ever work their way out of debt, or to gain the education required to move beyond manual labour.

Most instances of modern slavery are found in Asia, notably India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Central Asia. It is no coincidence that Asia is where forced labour yields its highest profits globally – an estimated $68 million a year....

Well said, thank you.

May 16, 2017

By David Brooks

At certain times Donald Trump (click here) has seemed like a budding authoritarian, a corrupt Nixon, a rabble-rousing populist or a big-business corporatist.

But as Trump has settled into his White House role, he has given a series of long interviews, and when you study the transcripts it becomes clear that fundamentally he is none of these things.

At base, Trump is an infantalist. There are three tasks that most mature adults have sort of figured out by the time they hit 25. Trump has mastered none of them. Immaturity is becoming the dominant note of his presidency, lack of self-control his leitmotif.

First, most adults have learned to sit still. But mentally, Trump is still a seven-year-old boy who is bouncing around the classroom. Trump's answers in these interviews are not very long – 200 words at the high end – but he will typically flit through four or five topics before ending up with how unfair the press is to him....

...By Trump's own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase "priming the pump" (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself....

...He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he'd be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies....

...Which brings us to the reports that Trump betrayed an intelligence source and leaked secrets to his Russian visitors. From all we know so far, Trump didn't do it because he is a Russian agent, or for any malevolent intent. He did it because he is sloppy, because he lacks all impulse control, and above all because he is a nine-year-old boy desperate for the approval of those he admires....

...But Trump's statements don't necessarily come from anywhere, lead anywhere or have a permanent reality beyond his wish to be liked at any given instant.

We've got this perverse situation in which the vast analytic powers of the entire world are being spent trying to understand a guy whose thoughts are often just six fireflies beeping randomly in a jar.

I think Mr. Brooks has it exactly right.

"We badly want to understand Trump, to grasp him," David Roberts writes in Vox. "It might give us some sense of control, or at least an ability to predict what he will do next. But what if there's nothing to understand? What if there is no there there?"

And out of that void comes a carelessness that quite possibly betrayed an intelligence source, and endangered a country.                  

 Mitch McConnell is a traitor to the people of the USA. He facilitated the exploitation of power through obstructionism. We need to see more drama from him on Russia.

The Republican state governors and their Republican legislators are balancing their.budgets on the backs of the impoverished elderly by cutting the cost share of Medicare Part B by $500.00 to $1000.00 of monthly income. As example; if a person has a monthly income of $1400.00 per month and had their Part B paid for will no longer. That means their monthly check will go to $1250.00 with the new cost of Part B increase. There is also a good chance if they fell of the cost share program they are now paying the new increased cost of Part B rather than the cost of $104.00 per month. The higher amount to these people is illegal. The deception is the they enrolled at the new rate. In fact even receiving cost share they never paid $104.00, but, this is Trump World where cheating the vulnerable is encouraged.

The Democrats need to pay attention the elderly, especially the impoverished, are easy prey.