Love watching Rachel Maddow.  Also enjoy Keith Olbermann.  His hour long piece on Health Care was a masterpiece.

Horrible stories.  Sad stories.  Makes me feel that a great deal of the real picture of human existence is whitewashed and made to look glowingly perfect.  Sort of like the pictures of perfect families as portrayed on television during the fifties.

I do sense rather strongly, however, that a cruelty has crept into people that was not there when I was young.  Eighty now, I grew up in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley.  There was segregation, and it was taken for granted and not spoken of.  But there was also mutual respect and caring.  The poor among us were looked after by the entire community as much as possible, and we children were taught this was an important aspect of our lives as "good people."  We did not, so far as I can remember, think or say cruel things or act in a mean manner.

Frankly, and I may be mistaken in my belief, but I really think a lot of the snowballing of unconscionable behavior came about because our numbers have become overwhelming.  My home town had 432 people in it, rich & poor, black & white, when I was in elementary school.  Now they tell me it has tens of thousands of citizens! 

As a woman, I cringed when I heard Governor Palin exhibit a total lack of understanding of both the domestic and foreign policies of our country.  What she said, and what she failed to be able to say, allowed the more ignorant masses of men across our nation feel smugly superior to her and thus put her forward as their ideal in womanhood.  Yes, I cringed.

Oh, how I wish the mud-slinging and lies would stop being hurled by those who feel they must stand and yell at the top of their lungs.  This is, and has been throughout the history of mankind, a sign of desperation trying to drown out reason.  This desperation is almost always based on fear of having a belief-system eroded or destroyed by Truth, as we have seen over and over again.  Galileo proved we were not at the center of the universe, and that was unacceptable, albeit true.  Impossible that living things we could not even see could be responsible for disease, sickness and death!  We do not want to accept the new, the different, the unimaginable, or, worst of all, that which shows us to have been mistaken.

We need serious sweat exerted on rational debate and intelligent research as to how we can clean up the debris of the financial collapse caused by deregulation and unmitigated greed in our marketplace.  Those hurting most are those who were already working hard and living paycheck to paycheck.  Today they cannot comprehend what has happened to them;  especially as in most instances they were doing everything right. It is those they trusted to protect them from the wolves of Wall Street who failed them.  Regulation is a means of protecting our vast public from the voracious avarice of the much smaller numbers of wheelers and dealers.  The same ranchers who build and patrol fences to protect their herds of sheep show total disinterest in laws meant to protect their fellow human beings who are unfortunate enough to carry smaller balances in their bank accounts.  I simply cannot understand this distain for others.

All this useless, meaningless chatter about viewpoints and opinions is drowning out the really crucial things such as the future of the entire human race.  Global Warming is about to reach a point beyond which we representatives of the most "intelligent" animal on our small planet are going to be able to do anything except yearn for the opportunity to go back in time and change our habits and "opinions." 

If another species one day rises from the ashes of this sphere or visits from another place in our galaxy, they may well study our books and tapes and say of us in summary:  "they had a lot to say about nothing, while doing nothing about things of most importance to their very survival." 

Eons ago there was an outstanding author named Mary Webb, and she wrote a book called Precious Bane which altered me, but it must be 66 years since I read her Gone To Earth, which blew me away.  At the end, oh, I keep hearing it:  I think her name was Hazel, and like the fox, she had "gone to earth," as that cry echoed in the air across the fields.  Gone to earth, gone to earth!

I still hear it in my ears.  And I never did hear it:  I read it!

Not sure what her name was. 

It was a chain, but when it left it took with it forever my favorite lunch treat:  Hot Shoppes, Junior’s filet of haddock sandwich on a sesame seed steak roll with lettuce and tartar sauce.  And an Orange Freeze to wash it down!  Heaven!

Oh, please somebody, bring back filet of haddock sandwiches and orange freezes.  Have we fished away all of the haddock?  You rarely see it anymore, and it was my fav. 

I remember Trader Vic’s in the basement of the hotel at the corner of K & 16th Streets in Washington, D.C.  Was it the Statler Hotel?  Heavenly food.  Wonderful drinks!  As I recall, it was said to be Richard Nixon’s favorite place to eat out.  It sure was one of mine!

Gifford’s in Silver Spring, Maryland and Bethesda, Maryland;  both right outside of our Nation’s Capital.  High ceilings, lazy fans moving, those same ice cream parlour chairs (we used to call them coca cola chairs?) and tiny little round marble tables.  Swiss Chocolate ice cream, and many other flavors, made right on the premises.  Hot nights in the days before a/c, whole families walking downtown just to cool off there.  Creme de Menthe parfaits in tall glasses eaten with an iced tea spoon.  Glassed in shelves filled with their homemade chocolates and red checkered napkins in huge baskets full of their creamy soft caramels in twists of bright yellow waxed paper.

Where did it all go?  WHY did it all go?  Everything evolves;  everything changes.  But some things that are missed should have stayed around to become cherished experiences of later generations.

I was fascinated by this story in my hometown Annapolis, Maryland paper.  It shows vividly that grown up people really do make stuff up out of their imaginations and claim it is true!  Staggers MY imagination!

 http://www.hometownannapolis.com/news/nbh/2009/06/26-23/Sources-Say-Obama-bans-mids-swords-at-graduation-not.html

Diane, I am an historian, I am 80 years old, and I am referring back to the fact that OVER 2,000 years ago much propaganda and untruth was told that, even today, people fervently believe to be true.  I am trying to draw the picture that IF, today, in this very literate day and age, people propagate and believe so many untruths, than what can we assume about the few who wrote in a period of great illiteracy?

I do not believe one word of it.  I believe Robert Kennedy, in typical Kennedy fashion, gave Jackie and her children his full emotional and tactical support because of his love, first, for his fallen brother and second for his family as a whole.  Period.

But the lies, myths, controversies and conspiracies prevalent in all of our communication highways of today should make inner eyes open for everyone and people question places where our own national histories differ remarkably from those of other nations (and research with an eye to reconciling those differences) and make them question the dependence of religious faiths upon writings often penned many decades, if not hundreds of years, after the described events supposedly took place or the quoted words supposedly were spoken.

Considering the many errors, mistakes, and inventions throughout our newsways during these days of instant communication, one can but wonder at the reality of facts written down long after their alleged occurrence in an age of no technology when very, very few human beings were even literate!  Thank about it!