Last night as Mark and I were parked in front of the T.V. relaxing, we were wandering through YouTube and I was recommended a  video from KOMO 4 a Seattle news channel called “Seattle is dying“. Apparently since we moved away the homeless problem has become particularly egregious there. This reminded me of previous news I had read about here in Cincinnati about a homeless problem.

I’m willing to bet these homeless problems which are apparently on the rise everywhere actually represents the reality of the economy unlike what the media presents as representative which would be how well Wall Street is doing. Business doing well in no way tells use how everyday people are doing, especially when those business have the ability to do stock buy backs and inflate their own worth through those buy backs.

I also think the rise of homelessness is representative of the growing opiate crisis we have here in this country.  But until this country decides to start treating addicts for the medical crisis they are in instead of locking them up in jail we’re going to continue to have problems in my opinion.

So after all the Brown immigrants are deported, and denaturalized, will they come for my husband and/or mother in law next? I’m genuinely afraid of where all this hate is taking us. Right now they are only going after brown immigrants, but they are doing so at all levels. Discharging them from the military, revoking citizenship and taking children from their parents.

What happens when all that is accomplished? Who will they want us to hate next?

I think a bunch of people are confused about free speech. The constitution simply guarantees no repercussion from the government for speaking your mind, it does not guarantee you no social, financial or business repercussion because you chose to say something.

I was reading through the Facebook page of my local channel 9 news station and I came across the article they did about Heather Heyer’s (The poor woman who lost her life in Charlottesville Virgina) Mother and her refusal to speak with Trump after she saw him on the news and heard his own words. There were 162 comments on that article and a huge portion of them were denigrating the woman, accusing her of being paid off and a number of other insults were heaped at this poor mother who recently went through the horror of losing her daughter to hate. I just don’t understand how people can be so filled with hate and Anger. You don’t fight hate and anger with hate in anger it never works and it’s a horrible thing to propagate.

I also can’t believe how well that south has done at selling the story of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy So many people, even people who have never been to south have bought into this narrative that the south fought a heroic battle against great odds. It has definitely had a lasting effect on our social conscious. The Confederates were not heroes they were enemies of the state and they should be remembered for that alone.

This page from the Library of Congress allows you to hear in their own words the voices of those who were enslaved, who the confederacy fought to keep enslaved. It’s surreal to me to listen to Fountain Hughes talk about how his grandfather was owned by Thomas Jefferson. I’m so glad that slavery no longer exists but we still have a long way to go to remove the stain of hate from such a legacy. Removing monuments & plaques which seek to honor those who fought to preserve such an oppressive existence is just the beginning.

The Voices from the Days of Slavery Collection provides sound recordings of former slaves describing their lives. The former slaves discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, how slaves were coerced, their families, and freedom. Those interviewed spoke sixty or more years after the end of their enslavement, and it is their full lives, rather than their lives during slavery, that are reflected in these audio interviews.

Source: Voices from the Days of Slavery – Faces and Voices from the Presentation (American Memory from the Library of Congress)

As an Ohioan I’m utterly ashamed of anyone who would advocate for anything honoring the confederacy. Ohio raised nearly 320,000 soldiers for the Union army, third behind only New York and Pennsylvania in total manpower contributed to the military. Ohio played an important part in the Underground Railroad prior to the war, and remained a haven for escaped and runaway slaves during the war years. Several leading generals were from Ohio, including Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Philip H. Sheridan. Five Ohio-born Civil War officers would later serve as the President of the United States. Anyone fighting for the confederacy was a traitor to our country and while we shouldn’t forget what happened we should not honor them by giving them monuments and plaques in places of honor, those things should be in museums where people can learn & ask questions.

Someone stuck a sign in the ground where a Confederate plaque once stood in Franklin.

Source: Sign placed where Confederate monument was removed in Franklin – WCPO Cincinnati, OH

Please take a few moments and watch this, then share it.

The only nightmare I have is one of going backwards where I manage to rack up thousands of dollars in medical debt and am Once again forced to file bankruptcy.

I don’t want Health Insurance I want Health Care and I want all my fellow Americans to have equal access to that health care. We need single payer so that people aren’t forced to choose between their health and their bills.

Insurance on health is a losing bet. It’s us paying into a company hoping we don’t need it and then expecting it be there when we do. The problem is unlike car insurance, Homeowners, or renter’s insurance which you may never need, we will all need health care at some point.

Insurance companies want to make profits, that’s what companies do, that’s why prior to the ACA they would do things like deny people with pre-existing conditions, and set life time limits so that you and your sickness wouldn’t bite into their bottom line.

We should be fighting for Medicaid for all, not trying to bandage what was made into a crippled system because of partisan infighting.

Celebrating a slim but symbolic health-care win in Washington, President Donald Trump told supporters in Ohio that the nation was one step closer to liberation from the “Obamacare nightmare.”

Source: President Trump says liberation from ‘Obamacare nightmare’ is close | PBS NewsHour

NPR tweets Declaration of Independence, inciting an outcry from some on Twitter who called the tweets “trash” and said they incited revolution. July 5, 2017

Source: NPR tweets Declaration of Independence, and Trump supporters are angered | The Kansas City Star

So I was reading through an article on PBS about School lunch’s. It’s a good objective article, nothing wrong with it. Then I began to read through some of the comments on it. I honestly can’t believe how many people would be okay if we stopped providing free/reduced lunches for children in school. It’s the same scenario I see played out all over the place. People angry at the poor. As if they somehow wish to be in that situation. I just don’t understand it.

U.S. schools rethink ‘lunch shaming’ policies that humiliate children with meal debts

New Mexico this year became the first to outlaw school meal shaming. Several other states are weighing similar laws.