It's starting

I sure didn’t want to link to Cao. Sorry that the link didn’t come out properly. I am a total Luddite.

But when a person reports on a news item without having real facts to back their argument what are they really saying?

A Copiatic Christian family in New Jersey–Jersey City–right across the Hudson from here was known to proselytize to Muslims. They were killed; their killers haven’t been found. I know and almost respect the argument; if it sounds like; tastes like–it is.

But without facts to back that argument, and I’m sure Fox news and the New York Post are doing everything possible to find facts to keep that argument alive, what is the argument?

They say that we’re wrong for believing a small minority of Muslims want Jihad. Do they know any Muslims? Do they know if any Muslims are trying to start peaceful dialogues?

If the government had acted upon the things mentioned in the new 9/11 report–the one that’s being kept from us, would 9/11 have happened? Rhetorical question as we don’t know since the report is being kept from the people in this country.

I’m going to do my Al Franken thing here: As a Jewish woman (though not the old lady he imitates so well) I can’t help but believe that after they get rid of the Muslims….they want this to believe that this is a Christian country–so they will come after me and my people.

I am not a religious Jew; I am a cultural Jew. As Jews, my family had no place to call home until they came to America–one hundred and one years ago.

Well we had 100 good years.

My family just wanted to live in a place where they were allowed to own land, vote, have careers, and practice or not practice their religion.

Then Hitler happened. I would ask my father why they didn’t protest. “We didn’t know.”

Yes everybody’s idol, himself, the people’s president Roosevelt kept many facts from our country. That’s known now. I don’t have to go into my research files to support that.

I’m proud of my Jewish heritage. While I have big problems with organized religion, Judiasm is something I will always support and fight for the right to exist because it’s my cultural identity.

I will always fight for its right to exist because we have always been singled out.

We’re a mere two percent of the population, but we are represented in various professions way outside the percintile.

My dad was a CPA. he couldn’t get a job in a large accounting firm or in a corporation. He could have now. Yes we have come a long way. But….

We are big supporters of The Constitution and The Bill of Rights, again way outside of our numbers because we know what can happen if the Constitution is tampered with.

We have another president who sits on facts.

We have a president who makes everybody who doesn’t agree with him the enemy.

We have a president who is trying to screw Black people out of their Social Security–life expectantcy–and all that (more about that when I have time to research it).

We have a president who answers to a higher father.

We have a president who didn’t try to make it easier for the people of the metro New York area after 9/11–and I can never forgive him for that.

But of course Montana’s a big target.

He helped make the current generation of college and high school students scared, and leaning toward modifying free speech by not being a decisive leader at first.

Ari Fleisher, who was his Press Security then, told people to be circmspect in their speech. Ari Fleisher’s parents were Survivors–and he told people they shouldn’t exercise their right to free speech? Shame on him.

Bush didn’t come back to New York often to tell us that he supports us and can’t understand the fear we live under but will try to learn how we feel.

Do you know what life’s been like in New York for the past three years? Every single person I know who works for a corporation is scared for their jobs. So much easier to have management in Texas or North Carolina. Every person I know who makes under 75K a year is thinking of leaving. Our cost of living has hit the roof.

We have never recovered from 9/11 but that’s never acknowledged. Lucia and Little Luce live in a one bedroom, rent stabilized apartment. It’s too small for two women. They can’t afford to move; they can’t afford not to move. Lucia’s salary doesn’t cover basic expenses in New York today. Is she supposed to send her fourteen year old daughter out to work? (I’m not going to go into the Bush tax reform scam here.)

As a New York Jewish woman I have the right and the responsiblity to say that I’m scared of what’s happening in this country. I’m also scared that people see the New Times Square and the gentrification of the city, and forget that real people live here.

While, since blogging, I have met many “blue” people in “red states,” I fear the “red'” people in “red states” who so easily talk about subjects that they have not personally experienced, and of course “the red people in blue states” who have always hated Manhattan and everything that it stands for.

I totally admit that I can’t be rational about this subject right now.

Lucia works in Penn Plaza. When I went to meet her for lunch on Friday, I met the National Guard also. Let me say that I think they belong there–it’s just a constant reminder.

Yesterday I went to see my family on the Island. Met the National Guard again.

My niece is ten. I want her to live a long and happy life-in freedom. She’s the first member of my immediate family to go to Hebrew school. She’s bright, enthustastic, funny, and eager to embrace life with all its warts. Fave niece overlooks people’s flaws. She champion’s kids who are disabled or different in anyway. I love her more than I can say. Fave niece represents the best of all of us.

While I’m not big on organized religion I do believe that people have the right to practice any religion–as long as it doesn’t hurt themselves or others.

The Shiatte Muslims hurt others. They should be stopped.

Muslims who want to live in peace (and there are many; I know because I know some) should be allowed to live in peace.

Don’t try to make my country into a Christian country. I know all your arguments and they are old and not true.

When Alexander Hamilton with Thomas Jefferson’s help wrote the first draft of the First Amendment, they specifically said that. It’s in one of my posts on The First Amendment.

I have to put my new blog into categories. I also have many non blog related things to do this week–such as jury duty–my right and my responsiblity as an American.

I wasn’t looking forward to it. But then I read Cao’s post. Then I thought about my grandparents and how to them that was an honor beyond any. It meant that they were citizens of a country and could help “judge” another human being

I didn’t want this to be a political blog; and I am trying to concentrate on stories.

But this is the time in our nations history when every person who believes in The Constitution and The First Amendment has to stand to be counted.

Thank you, Norman Lear, for starting People for the American Way, and a newer First Amendment organization. For those of you who don’t know who he is, he produced All in the Family, among other seminal sit coms.

Thanks, fave niece and Little Luce (who is Hispanic) for giving me two kids I love and I can fight for. You two (and many other kids) give me faces that can make this fight the fight of my life.

I mention Little Luce’s ethnicity because she’s not the right kind of Hispanic. She’s Caucasion, (oh right, that might give her points) may or may not be an atheist, (she’s only fourteen) and hates Bush.

Why does she hate Bush? She was just turning ten when we had an election. She thought Gore won when she went to sleep. She woke up to the after-election. She was a bit too young to really understand it.

She wasn’t yet eleven when 9/11 happened; she sure understood that one. She knew somebody who had lived in the apartment building closest to the Financial Center (fave niece who moved when she was two to Long Island).

Little Luce considered the Trade Center to be a Kool mall; and a place where fun things happened. She wanted to go to war. We all did. We would have supported an action against Bin Laden in a second.

But it didn’t happen. If adults can’t understand or explain things how can we expect kids to?

There was a long period where most of us would have supported a war. But finally, the most drawn out prelude to a war ended. Iraq? Hussein? Where did this come from?

How could we support it? We weren’t going after the person we thought responsible for the attack.

Oh right, Weapons of Mass Desruction. We didn’t find them. The war ended; the war just began.

Viet Nam was just a sratch; this is a deep festering wound that’s becoming totally infected.

We, the people at home, can’t claim ignorance anymore–except to the real report about 9/11.

It’s time to take sides. I can’t be a voice of reason when people don’t use reason on the other side.

Hint: Quoting Scripture makes me want to fight.

Saying that this is a Christian country makes me ready to do battle.

For all you people who are going to tell me to move to France or that I’ve shown my true colors and am unpatriotic–maybe you should think about moving.

I love this country too much to live anywhere else.

Patriotism comes in all races, religions and ethnic backgrounds. It doesn’t mean being loyal to things that are wrong; it does mean fighting to make them right.

Let me make it clear that I admire people who truly believe in a God. But I believe that those people don’t want war or anything fought in the name of God.