[Note from Steve: Maybe the timing of this seems off…consider it corn beef and cabbage leftovers….]

Item: The new traitors.  I’m not going to pussyfoot around this issue.  While I abhor the general tone of New York’s leading rag, The Daily News, I’ll agree with its recent headline: the forty-seven (47) senators (nearly the entire GOP majority) are the new traitors in America.  Arrogant, egotistical, and uncouth, they have trampled on the U. S. Constitution, period.  I quote Article II, Section 2, Clause 2: “The President…shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur….”

That clause doesn’t say that the Senate has any power at all when it comes to initiating and pursuing treaties, which makes sense because the President and Secretary of State handle foreign policy and the President is Commander-and-Chief, traditionally the one who has to initiate peace in time of war.  These 47 GOP senators are traitors to the Constitution—their only job is to advise (the President doesn’t have to take their damn advice, ever!) and finally approve.  Their horning-in on the peace process with Iran is treason, plain and simple.

It’s ironic when this same GOP, especially Tea Partiers, often champion the U.S Constitution as the law of the land.  (It really isn’t, of course—it’s how the Supreme Court interprets it, ever since the days of Chief Justice Marshall.)  It’s ironic when these senators lower themselves to the level of Dennis Rodman (where are their ink and bling?).  What they did is more than disrespect for Obama (yeah, they hate the guy, but fortunately their hatred doesn’t usually elect their fellow fascist hatemongers, because national demographics are against them).  Inviting Netanyahu to speak as a slap against the President and the State Department was disrespect.  Writing the letter to Iran was treason.  Kudos to The Daily News for calling it like it is.  We don’t need traitors in the U.S. Senate!

Item.  Young bigots.  Last year at our Montclair Film Festival, Michael Moore (no relation) opined that we just have to wait long enough for the bigots to die.  Wow, is he wrong!  At the Selma ceremonies commemorating Bloody Sunday, the KKK was passing out pamphlets “just to let people know we’re still around.”  The video of ΣΑΕ frat boys and some sorority girls from God knows where chanting on the bus with lyrics about hanging n*&^#%s has rocked that Oklahoma University campus, but I’d bet this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Neo-Nazis teaching their children about Aryan supremacy, anarchy, and white power against all minorities, but especially Blacks, are a festering cancer on our body politic.  Bigots are just creating more bigots, Michael!

In that Selma event, Fox News’ coverage reduced to whining that the NY Times was cropped out of their front page picture (he wasn’t—the photographer had centered President Obama and Dubya was off to the side).  In other words, instead of the true news item—reminding us that today voting rights are still being attacked, mostly by the GOP—Fox News pandered to their bigoted base.  Who pushes yellow journalism more?  I don’t even consider the NY Times liberal media (there aren’t any, to tell the truth) because it’s very often biased and has lies of omission, but Fox News—indeed the whole Murdoch empire—is the epitome of biased and bigoted reporting.

The Westboro Baptists, who have interfered in too many veterans’ memorial services, tried to find where Leonard Nimoy’s was, presumably so they could pray for his Jewish soul so it wouldn’t burn in Hell?  The Jews killed Christ, you know, say the bigots.  I’m waiting for these fanatics to ride into Philly in a motorcade to protest the Pope’s trip to America.  He’s the Anti-Christ, don’t you know?  These people are nuts, but crazy bigots still spawn more bigots, sometimes even crazier ones.  The sad thing is, they hide behind their First Amendment rights, even though they’d be the first to rip them apart to create a fascist America.

No, Michael, you’re going to have to revise your statement.  Old bigots procreate and spawn younger bigots.  The only real solution to bigotry is for society to come down hard on the bigots every chance we get.

Item.  Ferguson, MO.  Of course, we can’t talk about bigotry in America without mentioning that little Missouri town so often in the news recently.  The Feds have determined that the town has institutionalized bigotry, primarily in its police department.  That’s been pretty obvious.  A number of resignations surrounded that determination, probably a long time coming, but likely only a small part of the solution.  The town needs to come together.  That’s hard to do with bigots among the white minority.  It’s also hard to do when there are thugs of any race or creed intent on spreading anarchy.

Micahel Brown, the youth whose death initiated all the violence and looting in Ferguson, was obviously a thug, yet there still remain questions about the use of excessive force in his case (stealing from a convenience store and being arrogant and disrespectful of authority does NOT a death sentence make).  The assassins who shot the two cops a few nights ago are more than thugs—they’re much worse.  Whether white or black, this was an action designed to exacerbate the problems Ferguson faces by creating more unrest.  It’s now suspected the two cops were targeted.

This violence has to stop.  We cannot descend into either anarchy or fascism.  We have come a long way since Selma.  We still have a long way to go.  But the solution to the problems that remain—problems that are linked to poverty, lack of opportunity, and the increasing income gap between rich elites and the rest of us, aren’t problems dependent on race—these problems cannot be solved if we sink into the abyss of a race war in America.

Item.  Two important numbers.  On a lighter note, last Saturday was π-day.  I protest!  What happened to e-day?  The base of the natural logarithms, the Euler number e, is just as important as π.  Along with the imaginary unit i, 0, and 1, you pretty much have the list of the five most important numbers, the superstars of our number system (I’m including imaginary numbers, which are just as real as the real numbers, except for semantics).

Yeah, I get it.  The date and time lined up to produce the first digits in the irrational number expansion describing the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.  The Euler number e, approximately 2.7182818285, is also irrational; 3.141592654 just happened to work out to March 14, 2015 (at least here in the States, and dropping the “20,” which is a stretch), but e was February 7, 1828, legitimately (I’ll take the second 1828 as military 24-hour time).  So e wins!  But here’s a thing of great beauty to put it all together: The equation e ^{i π} + 1 = 0 connects all these numbers!  (The exponential term is just -1.)  So, I’m campaigning for the historical recognition of e-day as the first day dedicated to numbers(0 and 1 already get enough press).

And so it goes….      

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