BLIND MAN / PLaying For Change

Grandpa Elliott gives an unbelievably soulful performance in Playing For Change‘s rendition of this beautiful blues number.

Antique Postcards ~ Fatherless Children of France, World War One

This card is dated 1918, and World War 1 had created approximately 3 million widows and 10 million orphans. Europe was in ruins, but the United States homeland remained completely unaffected, with a booming economy and the good times of the roaring twenties on the way. Obviously, this card is sent to let someone know that you donated to a charity for French orphans, in their name. What a wonderful gift!

Any Parsonions related to Mrs. Stella Lynd, 2718 Main?

For more about The Fatherless Children Of France; http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=940DEFDD133FE433A25755C0A9679C946996D6CF 

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Click the photo below to read the entire book of letters from orphans to their American benefactors. The book is ‘public domain’ from google.

The book above is priceless. Sweet, cute, and heartbreaking all wrapped up in one.

The true spririt of Christmas, COMPASSION.

The Power of Words

Via I WANT ICE WATER ( got you linked on the Associates page Izaak)

Autism And The Inhumanity Of The Right Wing

By Justin “Filthy Liberal Scum” Rosario

Today I stumbled across an old acquaintance from my camp counselor days and found out that she has two children with autistic spectrum disorder and a third with developmental delays. As you may or may nor know by now, I have a child with ASD as well. Apparently this old acquaintance is a frothing liberal just like me. This got me to thinking: Is it possible to have a special needs child and still be a Right Wing ideologue? And if so, how?There are millions of children and adults with ASD in varying degrees of severity and dozens of other kinds of physical and mental afflictions. Many, if not most, require some kind of special attention, whether it be home based services like my son received, a special school or a home for adults that cannot care for themselves. These services require special training and is not necessarily something you can take a class or two or read a book to learn. Especially if the ASD is as severe as it was in the case of my nephew who had it much worse than my son.

So who pays for it?

Well, in my case, the State of NY picks up the tab in the form of Early Intervention. They provided a speech therapist, an occupational therapist (for fine motor coordination), a physical therapist (gross motor coordination) and a teacher that spent 10 hours a week with him. Now, I am a stay at home father (voluntary, TYVM) and I have the time this kind of help would require of me but I don’t have the training. The overwhelming majority of parents don’t have the luxury of having one parent at home and they certainly don’t have the specialized knowledge. So let’s say that you are a “small government” conservative that hates having your tax dollars spent on other people (because you are a dick). How do you go about taking care of your special needs children? These services would be quite expensive to pay for and medical insurance doesn’t cover autism last I looked. So what do you do? Let your child languish in the prison that is autism? Hope you find a private charity that just happens to provide ALL of the necessary services? Or do you rely on the government to build a system of professionals that can help parents and their children without incurring crushing debt?

What would be the pinion of a conservative? We don’t even need to ask. We know it. It’s already a conservative mantra that people without children shouldn’t have to contribute to public schools. Just like people with jobs shouldn’t have to help those without. Just like those who can eat three meals a day shouldn’t have to help those who can’t. Just like those who are Christian shouldn’t have to help those who are not. It takes exactly zero effort to extend that philosophy of greed and selfishness to not wanting to pay for special needs children if they don’t have one of their own. Some of them don’t even think autism is real.

The Conservative creed: I got mine, screw you!

Autism does not discriminate. So presumably half of all autistic children have conservative parents. Do they all throw their children to the wolves? Or do they turn to the government for professional help. I’m guessing they turn to the professionals since most of them can’t possibly afford to go it alone.

How do they reconcile that with their hatred of all things government? It’s easy enough to ignore all the stuff government does in the background. No one thinks about how clean the air and water is compared to 70 years ago. No one remembers that rivers used to routinely burst into flame from all the pollution. No one wonders what life would be like without firefighters and police. These services are essentially invisible to us and so the Right Wing pretends that they don’t exist or that they would be just fine if the government didn’t do it.

These are, of course, childish people putting their fingers in their ears and yelling “LALALALA! I HATE GOVERNMENT!”

But they can’t pretend the services for special needs is invisible. It’s right there, in their face, day in and day out. They KNOW that they need it and they KNOW that, without the government, They wouldn’t have it. Do they pretend that they are a special case? Or that it’s THEIR tax dollars, knowing full well that they’re receiving far more than they put in? Or do they just rationalize that they deserve it for being a good American and those lazy Negros welfare people shouldn’t get a dime for their welfare kids?

How do they choke down that kind of hypocrisy on a daily basis? How do they vote for politicians that they know, for a fact, want to cut the very services that they desperately rely on for their children?

Is it even possible to be that stupid?

So my question to you, the reader, is: Do you know any Far Right, Glenn Beck loving, Fox News watching, Tea Party loving parents that rely heavily on government services for their child and how do they rationalize it?

From The Christian Left

Higher Ground

Bachmann’s Government Benefits

  For someone whose ideology is really defined by a strong dislike for government, if you look at the way she’s supported herself over the years, it’s mostly through the government. After law school, she works at the IRS, she’s there for four years, then in 1992 she starts taking in foster children and does that from 1992-1998 and is paid by the state to do that. She then works briefly for a local charter school and then she starts running for office and becomes first an employee of the state of Minnesota and then a congresswoman, an employee of the federal government. … Her husband is a psychologist [who] has two counseling clinics that like any other medical professional [clinic] takes lots of money from Medicare and Medicaid — and then on top of that, has received generous farm subsidies for a farm he owns in Wisconsin.

IMAGINE….

Concrete Canvas Shelters

A LYING HYPOCRITE FOR PRESIDENT

by Jim Hightower

If you find it necessary to declare on national television that “I am a serious person,” you’re probably not.

Meet Michele Bachmann. She’s currently running for president, but suffering a few credibility problems. One is that she keeps creating her own fanciful version of history. For example, she recently bewildered Iowa voters by asserting that the Founding Fathers had magnanimously included every American in the nation’s new government: “It didn’t matter the color of [people’s] skin,” she marveled, “it didn’t matter whether they were of a higher class or a lower class, it made no difference.” Seriously.

Indeed, Bachmann plowed straight ahead into a fantasy about the Founders’ glorious work to free the slaves. She insisted that these wealthy, white, slave-owning men “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.” Seriously.

No surprise, then, that the congresswoman also invents her own personal history. While she unsparingly attacks “Washington’s spending addiction” – she apparently doesn’t own a mirror. It turns out that her husband’s counseling clinic has received thousands of dollars in state and federal grants. Oh, she dodges, those tax dollars didn’t come to us. Seriously? Yes, she explains, the money went to train our clinic’s employees – as though that’s not a subsidy for their business. Then there is the $260,000 in subsidies for her family’s farm. Oh, she dissembled, that went to my father-in-law, adding that, “I have never gotten a penny from the farm.” Seriously? But wait, she’s listed as a partner in the farm, and her financial disclosure forms report that, in fact, she has received $105,000 in income from it.

Bachmann says she wants to take government back – and, in all seriousness, it looks like she’s already clawing back her piece of it.

“Psycho Talk: The 32 Craziest Things GOP Presidential Contender Michele Bachmann Has Said,” www.alternet.org, June 30, 2011.

“Michele Bachmann denies benefiting from government aid,”www.chicagotribune.com, June 26, 2011.

“Bachmann and the LA Times report,” www.exchange.yrd.com, June 26, 2011.

“Bachmann’s had her share of government aid,” www.latimes.com, June 26, 2011.

Gimme Shelter