Why I am Sad...

It seems like white men over 50 are becoming more mean, hateful and bitter day by day. Why is this so? Maybe it is because they feel their power and dominance slipping away. Maybe it is just as simple as they are mean, hateful, bitter human beings. Go to any right-wing (I prefer to call them wrong-wing) blog or website and the hatred is unbelievable. I think they were always hateful, it is just easier to see in this techo-world. Why am I sad? Because they think I am one of them. I hear comments all the time from other old white men who think, because I look like them, that I am like them. I asked a new liberal African-American friend who had seen me for months, what he thought my politics were. He replied "let's see, old white guy with short hair from the south who used to be in law enforcement - yeah, conservative." I am not like them.

Sam Donaldson - My New Hero!

Neil Munro of the Daily Caller interrupted President Obama's speech yesterday, an act of rudeness and disrespect for a President I have not witnessed in my 50 years of political observation. Munro's boss, Tucker Carlson, defended his reporter's actions by comparing it to Sam Donaldson's tough questioning of previous Presidents. Donaldson took exception to this by pointing out that he never interrupted a President's speech and only asked questions during the appropriate time for questions. Donaldson's response follows: "Never once did I interrupt a president in any way while he was making a formal statement, a speech, honoring awardees or in any other way holding the floor. Yes, almost always when he was finished in the Rose Garden or in the Briefing Room or at a photo opportunity with other world leaders I tried to question him (only rarely was it a shout on the rope line, more often a more normal tone of voice) and other reporters of course did the same thing along with me. What this man did yesterday is something new, to me wrong and unusual. I think it is probably the result of the growing incivility of the times, the competition among reporters and news organizations to be noticed not only for the work product but for the theatrics of the gathering…and there is one more factor, let’s face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American! These people and perhaps even certain news organizations (certainly the right wing talkers like Limbaugh) encourage disrespect for this president. That is both regrettable and adds, in this case, to the general dislike of the press on the part of the general public. For Tucker Carlson to say that he would if he can give this man a raise for this rude attempt to interrupt the president is reflective of what I’ve said above and, to me, lowers my opinion of Tucker." Sam Donaldson had the guts to challenge the conservative lie - they can't stand having a black President. Let's face it, they treated President Carter terribly, then they treated President Clinton even worse, but nothing comes close to the disrespect they have shown President Obama. They should all be ashamed of themselves.

Let's Talk Facts About Global Warming

Updated on 12/2/2019

Did you know...a gallon of gas weighs 6.3 pounds, yet burning it produces almost 20 pounds of carbon dioxide?

Gasoline is basically 87% carbon and 13% hydrogen. When gas burns, carbon is released and combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to form CO2 (hydrogen is also released and combines with oxygen to form water and water vapor, but this does not create the same problem as CO2 formation). Carbon has an atomic weight of 12; oxygen has an atomic weight of 16; so CO2 has an atomic weight of 44. Therefore, each new CO2 molecule weighs 44/12, or 3.7 times as much as the original carbon atom. 87% of 6.3 = 5.5; 5.5 X 3.7 = 20...that is 20 pounds of CO2.

The average person on earth produces 4 tons of CO2 per year (counting everything we do...burning gas, burning wood, deforestation, etc.); multiplied by 7 billion people means that, in addition to naturally occurring carbon dioxide, we add 28 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere per year. Although this may not sound like a lot since naturally occurring CO2 amounts to 700 billion tons per year, the earth can handle the naturally occurring CO2, and it can even handle some of the man-made CO2, but it is the portion of the excess we create that is not being naturally "exchanged" that we must be concerned about. Part of the problem is that the "half-life" of CO2 is about 27 years, so although about half of the CO2 humans are currently creating is "exchanged" or absorbed by the earth, half is not. Due to the fairly long "half-life" of CO2, the result is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from 280 ppm (the level it has been fairly stable at for the past 10,000 years) to 415 ppm since 1750. Almost two-thirds of that increase has occurred in the past 50 years, so the level of CO2 measured in the atmosphere appears to be accelerating. The level of 415 ppm has not been seen in the past 20 million years. You may have heard lies like, "The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo released more CO2 than all of man's activities in history." In fact, average volcanic activity produces less than 1 billion tons of CO2 each year, and, according to volcanologists, the super eruptions like Pinatubo or Mount St. Helens added the equivalent of CO2 produced by humans in one day.

We know that CO2 can increase temperatures, especially night-time lows and winter temperatures. We know that increased temperatures can result in climate changes, including melting of glacial ice that can increase sea levels. We know that if the temperature on the planet increases at the upper range of scientific forecasts, we could see dramatic (as in bad) changes in agricultural production, mass species extinctions, flooding of low-lying coastal areas, weather extremes and even challenges to our very survival on the planet within the next 100 years.

These are the kinds of scientific facts we should be considering as we plan the future of this planet for our children and grandchildren and discuss the causes of "global warming" and what we can and should do about it.

Why I am for President Obama Still

In spite of the most unprecedented obstruction from the Republican Party in modern times...in spite of inheriting the worst economy in almost a century...in spite of those who oppose anything this man proposes, I am for President Obama still because he has delivered an amazing list of accomplishments. Just a few include: 1) He got Osama bin Laden and has wiped out most of the al-Qaeda leadership; 2) after inheriting the worst economy in 90 years, we have had 27 months in a row of job growth; 3) ended the longest war in US history in Iraq that he didn't start; 4) ending the war in Afghanistan that he didn't start; 5) Lillie Ledbetter Act - fair pay for women; 6) ended DADT; 7) efforts to reform healthcare in spite of obstruction from the Republicans who did nothing to reform healthcare under Bush except give half a trillion dollars to Big Pharma; 8) got a tax break for working Americans in spite of Republican opposition; 9) increased infrastructure spending; 10) ended the wasteful F-22 saving billions; 11) Race to the Top beginning improvements to education; 12) saved the US auto industry and millions of jobs; 13) stimulus saved millions of jobs; 14) expanded SCHIP healthcare to 4 million additional children; 15) enacted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; 16) allowed increased embryonic stem cell research; 17) New Start arms reduction pact with Russia; 18) protected us from terrorists within the bounds of the Constitution; 19) new weekly unemployment claims at 4-year low; 20) hiring initiatives for veterans; 21) permits Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices ending Bush practice of paying top prices to Big Pharma and saving hundreds of millions; 22) ending tax breaks to companies that send jobs offshore; 23) ended torture programs; 24) provided additional fairness to gay citizens; 25) came out in support of marriage equality; 26) Dodd-Frank Act to bring sane regulation back to our financial institutions; 27) continued to protect our environment including demanding a sane review of the issues related to the Keystone Pipeline; 28) prioritized immigration enforcement resources implementing a policy to allow productive law-abiding young people to stay in the country; 28) while serving as an incredible role model for fathers and husbands. These are just a few of the reasons that I am thankful for what this man has done for my country.

Homo Sapiens Sanus

I was discussing politics and policy with a liberal friend of mine the other day. We were talking about the fact that conservatives tend to take positions that only favor themselves and their closest family and friends, while liberals tend to take positions that favor everyone, including groups of which they are not even a member. This becomes glaringly evident when people like Nancy Reagan change their position on stem cell research, but only because her husband developed Alzheimer's; or Dick Cheney changes his position on gay rights, but only because his daughter announced she is gay. My friend asked, "Why are we the way we are and they the way they are?" I thought about his question, and the answer became obvious to me.

Why is homo sapiens the dominant species on the planet Earth? We are smaller, weaker, slower, and have poorer vision and hearing than most other animals. The reason is obvious, it is because of our brain, we are smart! But it is not just our intelligence. How did we survive attacks from bigger, stronger and faster predators? We survived because we banded together into tribes. Alone we would have been eaten; but together we protect the group and survive. However, the same traits that protected us from predators, that resulted in our survival; our tribal instincts, also became one of our least admirable traits once the predators were overcome. That tribal instinct that became dominant through natural selection became the same instinct that resulted in war, death and destruction once the external predators were gone. We ended up taking the trait that enabled us to survive when we had enemies and turning it on ourselves, making us our own enemy.

Evolution is ongoing and inevitable. Our tribal instinct is no longer a good thing; in fact, it is a bad thing. The trait that will serve the future is a completely different trait. This new trait is non-tribal. Actually it is a trait that coincides with a global reality, a trait that has at its core a respect and concern for the planet we live on, a trait based on cooperation, not competition.

It is a trait that liberals have and conservatives do not. The reality is that a new species of human I call Homo Sapiens Sanus, the Sane Man, has arisen. Evolution continues in its inevitable way. The day of the previous dominant species, with a strong tribal instinct, is coming to an end. The beginning of a new day, for a species that cares about the earth, cooperates rather than engages in conflict and war, uses natural resources in an efficient way designed to leave something for future generations, protects the entire species rather than just the tribe, has come.

Of course, as is the case anytime a dominant species is in its last days, and a new species time has come, there is a period of transition when the "dinosaurs" try to hang on. The "dinosaurs" we deal with today may be called many things, the "Tea Party" being just one.

It is not just our imagination. We are the way we are for a genetic reason. Since the Liberal-Sane (LS) gene is dominant and the Conservative-Tribal (CT) gene is recessive, according to Mendel, the possible permutations are as follows: CT/CT; CT/LS; LS/CT; LS/LS. Therefore, mathematically speaking, 3 out of 4 offspring will be Liberal-Sane. So the Age of Homo Sapiens, the Conservative Human Being who cares only about their own tribe, is ending and the Age of Homo Sapiens Sanus, the Liberal-Sane Human Being who cares about the Earth and everyone on it, is dawning and inevitable.

What Kind of Contract is This?

I just watched the Reverend Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, talk about hell and explain that if we do not accept Christ as our savior we will burn forever. I have spent my whole adult life dealing with lawyers and the legal system and if I have learned one thing it is that a contract entered into under duress is not binding nor enforceable. So how can we willingly enter into a binding and enforceable contract with God if we are threatened that failure to do so will result in horrific consequences? I guess God couldn't find a lawyer in heaven to write the contract, right?

Does Support for Life Include Adult Women?

Following is an interesting first-person account of what happened to one woman who faced a medical emergency involving the death of her unborn fetus and her inability to get appropriate healthcare services in the United States of America:

Between a Woman and Her Doctor
A Story About Abortion You Will Never Forget
by Martha Mendoza

I could see my baby's amazing and perfect spine, a precise, pebbled curl of vertebrae. His little round skull. The curve of his nose. I could even see his small leg floating slowly through my uterus.

My doctor came in a moment later, slid the ultrasound sensor around my growing, round belly and put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s not alive,” she said.

She turned her back to me and started taking notes. I looked at the wall, breathing deeply, trying not to cry.

I can make it through this, I thought. I can handle this.

I didn’t know I was about to become a pariah.

I was 19 weeks pregnant, strong, fit and happy, imagining our fourth child, the newest member of our family. He would have dark hair and bright eyes. He’d be intelligent and strong — really strong, judging by his early kicks.

And now this. Not alive?

I didn’t realize that pressures well beyond my uterus, beyond the too bright, too-loud, too-small ultrasound room, extending all the way to boardrooms of hospitals, administrative sessions at medical schools and committee hearings in Congress, were going to deepen and expand my sorrow and pain.


On November 6, 2003, President Bush signed what he called a “partial birth abortion ban,” prohibiting doctors from committing an “overt act” designed to kill a partially delivered fetus. The law, which faces vigorous challenges, is the most significant change to the nation’s abortion laws since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled abortion legal in Roe v. Wade in 1973. One of the unintended consequences of this new law is that it put people in my position, with a fetus that is already dead, in a technical limbo.

Legally, a doctor can still surgically take a dead body out of a pregnant woman. But in reality, the years of angry debate that led to the law’s passage, restrictive state laws and the violence targeting physicians have reduced the number of hospitals and doctors willing to do dilations and evacuations (D&Es) and dilations and extractions (intact D&Es), which involve removing a larger fetus, sometimes in pieces, from the womb.

At the same time, fewer medical schools are training doctors to do these procedures. After all, why spend time training for a surgery that’s likely to be made illegal?

At this point, 74 percent of obstetrics and gynecology residency programs do not train all residents in abortion procedures, according to reproductive health researchers at the National Abortion Federation. Those that do usually teach only the more routine dilation and curettage — D&C, the 15-minute uterine scraping used for abortions of fetuses under 13 weeks old.

Fewer than 7 percent of obstetricians are trained to do D&Es, the procedure used on fetuses from about 13 to 19 weeks. Almost all the doctors doing them are over 50 years old.

“Finding a doctor who will do a D&E is getting very tough,” says Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers.


My doctor turned around and faced me. She told me that because dilation and evacuation is rarely offered in my community, I could opt instead to chemically induce labor over several days and then deliver the little body at my local maternity ward. “It’s up to you,” she said.

I’d been through labor and delivery three times before, with great joy as well as pain, and the notion of going through that profound experience only to deliver a dead fetus (whose skin was already starting to slough off, whose skull might be collapsing) was horrifying.

I also did some research, spoke with friends who were obstetricians and gynecologists, and quickly learned this: Study after study shows D&Es are safer than labor and delivery. Women who had D&Es were far less likely to have bleeding requiring transfusion, infection requiring intravenous antibiotics, organ injuries requiring additional surgery or cervical laceration requiring repair and hospital readmission.

A review of 300 second- trimester abortions published in 2002 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology found that 29 percent of women who went through labor and delivery had complications, compared with just 4 percent of those who had D&Es.

The American Medical Association said D&Es, compared to labor and delivery, “may minimize trauma to the woman’s uterus, cervix and other vital organs.”

There was this fact, too: The intact D&E surgery makes less use of “grasping instruments,” which could damage the body of the fetus. If the body were intact, doctors might be able to more easily figure out why my baby died in the womb.

I’m a healthy person. I run, swim and bike. I’m 37 years old and optimistic. Good things happen to me. I didn’t want to rule out having more kids, but I did want to know what went wrong before I tried again.

We told our doctor we had chosen a dilation and evacuation.

“I can’t do these myself,” said my doctor. “I trained at a Catholic hospital.”

My doctor recommended a specialist in a neighboring county, but when I called for an appointment, they said they couldn’t see me for almost a week.

I could feel my baby’s dead body inside of mine. This baby had thrilled me with kicks and flutters, those first soft tickles of life bringing a smile to my face and my hand to my rounding belly. Now this baby floated, limp and heavy, from one side to the other, as I rolled in my bed.

And within a day, I started to bleed. My body, with or without a doctor’s help, was starting to expel the fetus. Technically, I was threatening a spontaneous abortion, the least safe of the available options.

I did what any pregnant patient would do. I called my doctor. And she advised me to wait.

I lay in my bed, not sleeping day or night, trying not to lose this little baby’s body that my own womb was working to expel. Wait, I told myself. Just hold on. Let a doctor take this out.

I was scared. Was it going to fall out of my body when I rose, in the middle of the night, to check on my toddler? Would it come apart on its own and double me over, knock me to the floor, as I stood at the stove scrambling eggs for my boys?

On my fourth morning, with the bleeding and cramping increasing, I couldn’t wait any more. I called my doctor and was told that since I wasn’t hemorrhaging, I should not come in. Her partner, on call, pedantically explained that women can safely lose a lot of blood, even during a routine period.

I began calling labor and delivery units at the top five medical centers in my area. I told them I had been 19 weeks along. The baby is dead. I’m bleeding, I said. I’m scheduled for a D&E in a few days. If I come in right now, what could you do for me, I asked.

Don’t come in, they told me again and again. “Go to your emergency room if you are hemorrhaging to avoid bleeding to death. No one here can do a D&E today, and unless you’re really in active labor you’re safer to wait.”


More than 66,000 women each year in the U.S. undergo an abortion at some point between 13 and 20 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC doesn’t specify the physical circumstances of the women or their fetuses. Other CDC data shows that 4,000 women miscarry in their second trimester. Again, the data doesn’t clarify whether those 4,000 women have to go through surgery.

Here’s what is clear: Most of those women face increasingly limited access to care. One survey showed that half of the women who got abortions after 15 weeks of gestation said they were delayed because of problems in affording, finding or getting to abortion services.

No surprise there; abortion is not readily available in 86 percent of the counties in the U.S.

Although there are some new, early diagnostic tests available, the most common prenatal screening for neural tube defects or Down syndrome is done around the 16th week of pregnancy. When problems are found — sometimes life-threatening problems — pregnant women face the same limited options that I did.


At last I found one university teaching hospital that, at least over the telephone, was willing to take me.

“We do have one doctor who can do a D&E,” they said. “Come in to our emergency room if you want.”

But when I arrived at the university’s emergency room, the source of the tension was clear. After examining me and confirming I was bleeding but not hemorrhaging, the attending obstetrician, obviously pregnant herself, defensively explained that only one of their dozens of obstetricians and gynecologists still does D&Es, and he was simply not available.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not the next day.

No, I couldn’t have his name. She walked away from me and called my doctor.

“You can’t just dump these patients on us,” she shouted into the phone, her high-pitched voice floating through the heavy curtains surrounding my bed. “You should be dealing with this yourself.”

Shivering on the narrow, white exam table, I wondered what I had done wrong. Then I pulled back on my loose maternity pants and stumbled into the sunny parking lot, blinking back tears in the dazzling spring day, trying to understand the directions they sent me out with: Find a hotel within a few blocks from a hospital. Rest, monitor the bleeding. Don’t go home — the 45-minute drive might be too far.

The next few days were a blur of lumpy motel beds, telephone calls to doctors, cramps. The pre-examination for my D&E finally arrived. First, the hospital required me to sign a legal form consenting to terminate the pregnancy. Then they explained I could, at no cost, have the remains incinerated by the hospital pathology department as medical waste, or for a fee have them taken to a funeral home for burial or cremation.

They inserted sticks of seaweed into my cervix and told me to go home for the night. A few hours later — when the contractions were regular, strong and frequent — I knew we needed to get to the hospital. “The patient appeared to be in active labor,” say my charts, “and I explained this to the patient and offered her pain medication for vaginal delivery.”

According to the charts, I was “adamant” in demanding a D&E. I remember that I definitely wanted the surgical procedure that was the safest option. One hour later, just as an anesthesiologist was slipping me into unconsciousness, I had the D&E and a little body, my little boy, slipped out.

Around his neck, three times and very tight, was the umbilical cord, source of his life, cause of his death.


This past spring, as the wild flowers started blooming around the simple cross we built for this baby, the Justice Department began trying to enforce the Bush administration’s ban and federal courts in three different cities heard arguments regarding the new law.

Doctors explained that D&Es are the safest procedure in many cases, and that the law is particularly cruel to mothers like me whose babies were already dead.

In hopes of bolstering their case, prosecutors sent federal subpoenas to various medical centers, asking for records of D&Es. There’s an attorney somewhere, someday, who may poke through the files of my loss.

I didn’t watch the trial because I had another appointment to keep — another ultrasound. Lying on the crisp white paper, watching the monitor, I saw new life, the incredible spine, tiny fingers waving slowly across my uterus, a perfect thigh.

Best of all, there it was, a strong, four-chamber heart, beating steady and solid. A soft quiver, baby rolling, rippled across my belly.

“Everything looks wonderful,” said my doctor. “This baby is doing great.”


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Martha Mendoza is a working journalist and a winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. She recently gave birth to her fourth child, a beautiful and healthy baby girl.