TEXAS LEGISLATURE GERRYMANDERED - I AM SHOCKED

It’s amazing the kind of honesty that will come out when someone, or something, is forced to defend themselves in court against harsh accusations.  And that’s exactly what we’re seeing with the State of Texas defending its new strict voting laws against the Department of Justice’s accusations that they’re targeting minorities.

You see, Republicans in the state of Texas are trying to keep the Department of Justice from overseeing their new voting laws by claiming that yes, the GOP gerrymandering within the state in 2011 did seek to disenfranchise Democrats. However, they’re claiming it did so only along partisan party lines—not racial.  They freely admit their redistricting plans were meant to weaken the voting power of a political party, they just insist those redistricting maps had nothing to do with race.  So that’s evidence that their strict new voting laws can’t possibly be about keeping minorities from voting—just Democrats.

Read the rest of the article at Forward Progressives of the chicanery revealed under oath in the court testimony by the attorneys representing the State of Texas, when they have sworn to tell the truth.  Of course, we are a post-racial society, so the gerrymandering can't possibly be about race.

Justice John Roberts, are you paying attention?  I expect not, or if you are, you excuse yourself from your responsibility in the farcical decision that the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had to be ripped out, because everything is hunky dory out and about in the land of the free with regard to voting rights.  Things may be bad, but they're not as bad as the 1960s.

Oh my, do I miss Molly Ivins.  "You can't make this stuff up." That's as far as I can go, but Molly would have hit one out of the ballpark with the story.  But wait!  Molly speaks from the grave.

When I linked on Facebook to the article on the Texas defense of its gerrymandered districts, that they admit are for the purpose of weakening the power of the Democratic Party in the state, a Facebook friend posted the link above to the website with Molly Ivins quotes.  More than one of the quotes were apropos to the situation.

"The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging."

"It's like, duh. Just when you thought there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, the Republicans go and prove you're wrong."

"It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America."

Then the discussion wandered off to considering how many citizens today know the meaning of gerrymander.  I remember learning the word in my elementary school civics class.  I even remembered the name Elridge Gerry, after whom the practice was named, and another friend from Gerry's home town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, pointed out that the name was pronounced with a hard "G".  My teachers did not use the hard "G", but I'm grateful to them that I know the meaning of gerrymander.

BEAR

A bear walks into a bar and says, "Give me a bourbon and  . . . . . . . . .
. . . . .  coke."

The bartender asks, "What's with the huge pause?"

The bear says, "I've had them all my life."


Cheers,

Paul (A.)



Image from Wikipedia.

STORY OF THE DAY - SAVE THE WORLD

Of course I want to save the world, she said, but I was
hoping to do it from the comfort of my regular life.

From StoryPeople.

JOHNNY CASH - "A BOY NAMED SUE"

"My name is Sue. How do you do?"

I heard the song on my way home, and now it's my earworm.  

FEAST OF ST MARY THE VIRGIN

Grotto in honor of Mary on Bayou Lafourche in Thibodaux, Louisiana

O God, who have taken to yourself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of your incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of your eternal kingdom; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Luke 1:46-55

 And Mary said,
‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

The Magnificat is one of my favorite prayers.  The words glorify God and remind us that the Kingdom of God turns the power structures of the kingdoms of this world upside down.

In today's Morning Prayer at The Daily Office, the Gospel reading for the feast day is the account in John of the wedding at Cana at which Jesus and Mary are both present.  During the course of the celebration, the wine runs out, and Mary tells Jesus, expecting that he will remedy the situation.  Jesus, though he is reluctant and impatient, honors the request of his mother after Mary tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”   He turns water into wine, the finest of wine, 

The instructions to the servants are Mary's final words in the Scriptures, words which all Christians might do well to live by, to do as Jesus tells us to do.  In her words, Mary directs attention to Jesus, and we honor Mary best when we remember that she always points to Jesus. 

BAYOU CORNE - THE COMMUNITY SWALLOWED BY A SINKHOLE.

About once a month, the residents of Bayou Corne, Louisiana, meet at the Assumption Parish library in the early evening to talk about the hole in their lives. "It was just like going through cancer all over again," says one. "You fight and you fight and you fight and you think, 'Doggone it, I've beaten this thing,' and then it's back." Another spent last Thanksgiving at a 24-hour washateria because she and her disabled husband had nowhere else to go. As the box of tissues circulates, a third woman confesses that after 20 years of sobriety she recently testified at a public meeting under the influence.

"The God of my understanding says, 'As you sow, so shall you reap,'" says Kenny Simoneaux, a balding man in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt. He has instructed his grandchildren to lock up the ammunition. "I'm so goddamn mad I could kill somebody."

But the support group isn't for addiction, PTSD, or cancer, though all of these maladies are present. The hole in their lives is a literal one. One night in August 2012, after months of unexplained seismic activity and mysterious bubbling on the bayou, a sinkhole opened up on a plot of land leased by the petrochemical company Texas Brine, forcing an immediate evacuation of Bayou Corne's 350 residents—an exodus that still has no end in sight. Last week, Louisiana filed a lawsuit against the company and the principal landowner, Occidental Chemical Corporation, for damages stemming from the cavern collapse.

The article by Tim Murphy at Mother Jones is excellent, one of the best of the accounts I've read of the events that led up to the sinkhole collapse, its increase in size, and the consequences that followed for the people who live or once lived in the area.  Since south Louisiana sits upon many hollowed-out salt caverns, which are often used to store natural gas and oil, with some of the oil containing radioactive materials, the question is not if, but when a similar disaster will happen.

Lax regulation and lack of oversight of the dangerous operations of oil and gas and chemical companies here in Louisiana contribute to the number of disasters.  When will we have had enough of the disasters to pass more rigorous safety regulations and provide timely inspections and stiffer penalties for companies who break safety rules?  When will we have had enough to get serious here in Louisiana about research and development in clean energy sources and provision of tax incentives for businesses that provide clean energy and for factories that manufacture equipment for use in supplying clean energy?  

I'm not holding my breath.

 

UNWANTED LINKS BANISHED

If I accomplish nothing else today, I succeeded in removing unwanted links from my blog description.  I don't know if the outside world could see the links, but I could, and I found them annoying.  After an online inquiry and reading several complicated suggestions for removing the links and trying a few without success, I found the solution was right there on my blog.  A big thank you to whoever provided the fix - presumably some kind person at Blogger.

UPDATE: Now I have a an unwanted panel with links that pops up on my left sidebar, and the unwanted links are back.

UPDATE 2: The unwanted links came from a program called WebCake, which I uninstalled.  I have no idea how the program was installed on my computer.   

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY JUSTIN WELBY IN GUATEMALA

Archbishop Justin Welby

Our friend Leonardo Ricardo was present when Archbishop Welby presided at the celebration of the Eucharist in Santiago Cathedral in Guatemala City on August 11, 2013.  Len posted a report on the event with pictures and his notes on the archbishop's sermon at his blog, "Eruptions at the Foot of the Volcano," here and here.

Archbishop Welby and Archbishop Armando Guerra Soria of Guatemala are seated in chairs by Leonardo from his series of furniture art creations.  In the picture on the left only a small part of one of the chairs can be seen.

The text of Justin's sermon, Reconciliation is our 'Gift to the World', is posted at the archbishop's website.  The words of the sermon give me hope.  As they say in Guatemala, "Vamos a ver."

Photo by Elizabeth Bell.

UPDATE: Below is a photo, also by Elizabeth Bell, of Leonardo's splendid chairs.  The chairs, with their gorgeous colors, are beautiful - true works of art.

Archbishop Armando Guerra Soria

Archbishop Armando Guerra Soria

Archbishop Armando Guerra Soria

GORGEOUS 0PEN-AIR CATHEDRAL

Aspen Alley Wyoming?

“Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

From Love and Social Justice.

PSYCHIATRIST VS BARTENDER

Ever since I was a child, I've always had a fear of someone under my bed at night. So I went to a shrink and told him:

'I've got problems. Every time I go to bed I think there's somebody under it. I'm scared. I think I'm going crazy.'

'Just put yourself in my hands for one year,' said the shrink. 'Come talk to me three times a week and we should be able to get rid of those fears.'

'How much do you charge?'

'Eighty dollars per visit,' replied the doctor.

'I'll sleep on it,' I said.

Six months later the doctor met me on the street. 'Why didn't you come to see me about those fears you were having?' he asked.

'Well, Eighty bucks a visit three times a week for a year is an awful lot of money! A bartender cured me for $10. I was so happy to have saved all that money that I went and bought me a new pickup!'

'Is that so!' With a bit of an attitude he said, 'and how, may I ask, did a bartender cure you?'

'He told me to cut the legs off the bed! Ain't nobody under there now!'

(Thanks to Doug.)