And now for a happier moment ...

Indeed!

Sadly

Click on image to enlarge for easier reading.

Okay, the poster is brutal in one way, but it makes a point. 

We have an acquaintance who routinely gambles away his savings. I don't mean part of his savings. I mean his entire savings, which never amounts to much because ... well, gambling. He is divorced and shares custody of three children, one already in high school. He has a part time job that pays a little above minimum wage. In addition he gets a small monthly sum for an emotional disability that prevents him from getting a better job, although he once was manager of a restaurant. He has other addictive issues, but he thinks he deserves to have fun at the casino because, well, fun. 

He relies on another friend of ours for advice, but he seldom follows it. When it comes to the gambling, he never follows it effectively. Recently he called the friend to report that he was at a casino and was up two hundred dollars. (The week before he had blown several hundred dollars and the friend had told him not to go back there.) He couldn't figure out what to do. The friend talked him into leaving the casino, getting into his car and kept him talking on the phone until he arrived home.

Two days later he went back to the casino and lost the two hundred dollars and the little bit of savings he had left.

Does he have the power to stop? I want to believe he does.

And I am so glad I am not the friend who gets those phone calls in the middle of the night. I would not be good at handling it.

Just a reminder

I wonder?

Look for the anti-union label!

A lawyer friend in another state recently had a couple of revealing conversations with his neighbor. The neighbor has his own contracting and remodeling business, which muddles along in the best of times. His wife has encouraged him to get a job with the local power company where some of their friends work, where he would make much more per hour, work full time and have good benefits. 

He refuses because, "That's a union job!" 

Unions, in his conservative fundamentalist mind, are equivalent to the devil's minions. I note that his wife, equally conservative and fundamentalist, does not see the problem. What she does see is the low income he produces which barely sustains them and their four children -- whom she home schools -- and the fifth one on the way. But in her religion, the husband makes the decisions.

Anyway, my friend was recently helping the neighbor with a project and the neighbor began to complain that carpenters don't get paid enough where he lives and works.

"Now in [insert name of large city in neighboring Midwestern state], they make two or three times as much! Why can't I get paid that rate?"

My friend calmly remarked, "Well, those are union carpenters, aren't they?"

The neighbor didn't respond, just hammered harder.

So many people who hate unions fail to see that their own difficulties might be alleviated were they able to have the support of organized labor. But they demean unions and vote for politicians who avow to destroy them, often under the guise of protecting the worker.

From the newsdesk

Political candidates continue to pander and cast blame! 

Homophobes continue to claim God as their sole possession!

Religious leaders remain silent!

Calls for establishment of restrictive Christian law as only protection against foreign and evil Sharia law!

Xenophobes continue to demand walls along every border!

Sun continues to rise and set!

Updates as events warrant! 

Back to you, Dave and Eileen.

Do your job or resign

In 2002, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explained that if he were to conclude that the death penalty is fundamentally immoral, he should no longer serve on the bench:

[I]n my view the choice for the judge who believes the death penalty to be immoral is resignation, rather than simply ignoring duly enacted, constitutional laws and sabotaging death penalty cases. He has, after all, taken an oath to apply the laws and has been given no power to supplant them with rules of his own. Of course if he feels strongly enough he can go beyond mere resignation and lead a political campaign to abolish the death penalty” and if that fails, lead a revolution. But rewrite the laws he cannot do.

Although Justice Scalia was not addressing the Kim Davis case in these remarks, it is noteworthy that -- to the best of my knowledge -- he did not dissent from the court's refusal to grant her recent request that the court issue an emergency stay in her case, despite his record as a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage.