Paul Ryan's Refusal to Work with President Obama on Immigration: Why History Matters

New House Speaker Paul Ryan says he will not work with President Obama on immigration reform.

Extremists have said President Obama cannot be trusted.

However, these same extremists also refused to work with Republican President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain when they proposed immigration reform.

Based on that history, the extremists are unwilling to work with anyone on immigration reform which means a continuation of the system we currently have.

That means the agriculture, construction, and other big money interests will continue to make huge profits by using a pool of undocumented workers whom they can continue to pay low wages and employ in unsafe working conditions. 

Paul Ryan and other Republicans lack the courage to tell the extremists in their ranks that legalization is not "amnesty" and deporting 11 million undocumented immigrants would require:

• Turning the U.S. into a police state to find the undocumented immigrants, Everyone will be required to carry proof of citizenship or their visa at all times. Police will be allowed to randomly demand "show me your papers" and to set up residency and citizenship papers checkpoints.

• To prevent harm to our economy from the loss of the deported workers, a new program to immediately issue massive numbers of work visas for new immigrants to replace those undocumented workers being deported.

• A massive tax increase to fund those programs.

Ironically Paul Ryan's extremist free market Ayn Rand libertarian ideology probably would advocate open borders to allow the free movement of workers to seek the best deal for their labor. But his same lack of courage cited above suggests that he will not be discussing that either.

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors.

Celebrate Native American Heritage Month By Ceasing Undocumented Claims of Native American Ancestry

President Obama just proclaimed November Native American Heritage Month.

To celebrate I urge all who claim American Indian ancestry to review their family history.

If they do not have documentation, I urge them to state their claim is based on undocumented family oral history or to refrain from continuing to make such claims until ancestry is documented. 

Claiming American Indian ancestry without documentation can be disrespectful of American Indians and is best discontinued.
Many claims are found to be family legend and not to be true.

I urge public figures who have claimed American Indians ancestry but have not provided any documentation to cease such claims.

Confirmation can be a family tree with supporting documents showing a direct descent from an American Indian.

Attempting to benefit from a claim of American Indian ancestry without documentation is a form of "white privilege" and needs to stop.

Europeans expropriated all American Indian land and almost completely exterminated them. Among the ways we can make amends is to cease falsely claiming to be descended from them.

Revised: November 1, 2015

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors.

The Anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 Theses and the Roots of the Holocaust

October 31 is the anniversary of Martin Luther's posting of his 95 theses and the start of the Protestant Reformation.

Remembrances of Martin Luther are incomplete without acknowledgement of his antisemitism and its relationship to the Holocaust.

For 1,000 year prior to Martin Luther's posting of his Theses Germany and Austria were dominated by Roman Catholicism.

Tragically Martin Luther failed to reform Roman Catholic antisemitism. Instead he continued it. His writings are filled with vile antisemitism.

Almost 100% of the Germans and Austrians who actively committed the Holocaust or passively enabled it were Christians in good standing with about 50% being Roman Catholics and 50% being Lutherans.

Fourteen hundred years of antisemitic teachings by the Roman Catholic Church together with 400 years of antisemitic teachings by the Lutherans created a very fertile ground for the Nazi ideology of the Holocaust to emerge.

In the 1960s Pope John XXIII made great progress in purging antisemitism from Catholic teachings. 

His predecessors have done an extremely poor job of following up as antisemitism remains widespread among Roman Catholics.

With the number of Roman Catholics who actively and passively implemented the Holocaust, ending antisemitism among Roman Catholics should be one of the Roman Catholic Church's highest priorities (along with ending clergy sex abuse). 

As an recovering ex-Catholic I am most familiar with Roman Catholicism. I am not familiar what the Lutheran Church has done to purge antisemitism from its teachings and deal with antisemitism among its members.

In my teens among the first times i had questions about the moral authority of the Roman Catholic Church was when I learned of the Pope Pius XII's silence in response the Holocaust. 

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors.

Concern About Police Use of Force is Not Advocacy of Violence Against the Police

Politicians and police leaders continue to falsely charge that citizens concerned over police use of lethal force are advocating violence against police, with Gov. Christie being the most recent.

An excellent report in the October 24, 2014 Washington Post on police use of force features the tragic death of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin Trooper Trevor Casper.

Trooper Casper was one of the 31 officers killed this year.

Trooper Casper was  murdered by a European-American bank robber and not by a politically motivated African-American.

How Trooped Casper died is probably how most of the other 30 died.

The only politically motivated murders of police this year of which I am aware are by right wing European-American extremists. (That is from my memory as I did not review the year's news for this post.)

This year two African-Americans who may be suffering from mental illness murdered police officers. If their psychotic delusions, hallucinations, and paranoia included political concerns, that does not change that their behaviors were related to their mental health problems and not to political ideology.

The Washington Post's data makes clear the central issues:

• 10 to 26% of the approximately 800 citizens killed by police this year were not have armed and were not have attacking either a police officer or civilians. 

• 25% of the civilians killed by police were African-American. African-Americans are 13.2% of the population. Their rate of death by the police is almost twice their percentage of the population.

Asking for changes in police procedures to end the police killings of unarmed citizens not attacking police or civilians and ending the racial disparity in law enforcement which is has resulted in African-Americans being killed by the police at twice the rate then their percentage of the population is not advocating violence against the police.

Misrepresenting our advocacy dishonors and disrespects the service and sacrifice of officers such as Trooper Trevor Casper.

When politicians and police leaders make such false allegations journalists need to ask them to cite specific attacks on police where such a link has been established. However a friend has repeatedly reminded me that may be expecting an awful lot of our current crop of journalists.

---

A Wisconsin trooper faced down a gunman who planned to go out fighting

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/10/24/on-duty-under-fire/

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors.

We Are All In This Together

The death of Master Sergeant Joshua Wheeler in the recent rescue of ISIS prisoners is a reminder that this is not a battle between Muslims and non-Muslims.

This is a battle between an extremist form of Islam and the rest of the world with most of the victims being Muslims.

Sergeant Wheeler died fighting side by side with Kurdish Muslims rescuing Kurdish and Arab Muslim captives from Islamic extremists.

Muslims such as the Kurds are our allies and fight alongside men women such as Sgt. Wheeler.

The anti-Muslim rhetoric in the U.S. is neither supportive nor respectful of the service and sacrifice of our troops such as Sgt. Wheeler.

---

As much as I wish to share this in public, I am not emotionally up for the possible negative reactions.

---

Sgt. Wheeler is from Oklahoma. I first learned his identity from the 45th Division Museum Facebook page in Oklahoma. While Sgt. Wheeler was not in the 45th, the 45th Museum covers stories about Oklahoma troops. 

Felix A. Cizewski, my late father, served in the 45th in WWII.

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors.

Drug and Alcohol Testing Should be Mandatory in All Traffic Accidents Involving Injuries

An investigation has concluded that a bicyclist who was killed in collision with a car pulled into traffic and that the driver will not be charged.

However a careful reading of the news article indicates that the car driver shares responsibility.

The skid marks indicate that the driver was from 7 to 10 miles over the speed limit. Obviously that decreased the driver's ability to stop when a bicyclist pulled in front of them. The driver should have at least been cited for speeding.

The news reports that the officer assessed the driver did not appeared impaired nor smelled of alcohol. Subjective officer assessments of impairment are extremely unreliable and frequently inaccurate. They should be discontinued and replaced with science based breath and blood tests.

The driver apparently immediately contacted an attorney. On advice of the attorney, the driver refused a blood test.

That was the driver's Constitutional right. I have an equal Constitutional right to wonder why.

I hope the family brings a wrongful death suit against the driver.

Wisconsin law is notorious for enabling and shielding impaired drivers. That Wisconsin law allows a driver involved in what was ultimately a fatal accident to refuse a blood test may be another example.

Bicyclists should protect themselves by maintaining a high level of consciousness of the number of inattentive, speeding, and impaired drivers with whom they share the rode.

Wisconsin's implied consent laws should be amended to require blood tests of drivers involved in accidents that cause serious injuries or death.
Bicyclist in fatal Madison crash failed to yield to car, investigation concludes

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

---

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors. 

Has Senator McCain Forgotten How His POW Crimes Were Resolved?

The Army judicial process is deciding the fate of Sergeant Bernie Bergdahl, the soldier who was captured by the Taliban and released in a prisoner exchange.

Headlines report how outraged Senator McCain is that Army is recommending that sergeant Bernie Bergdahl not be charged with desertion, not be given a prison sentence, and not be given a punitive discharge.

While Lieutenant Commander McCain was a POW he was broken under torture. He then signed propaganda statements and made propaganda broadcasts for the North Vietnamese.

When he was released at the end of the Vietnam War, the Navy judicial system was very understand, generous, and forgiving.

Not only was he not prosecuted, he was so effectively shielded that during his presidential campaign his psychological fitness for office because of the trauma of being broken under torture was never raised as an issue not meaningfully discussed.

Instead of condemning the Army, Senator McCain should be commending them for showing Sergeant Bergdahl the same compassion the Navy showed Senator McCain.

---

My readers are free to use anything in this blog in any way without attribution.

I consider what I post to be background research and talking points. I would be honored if others found something useful for their work.

If you wish to acknowledge me, please ask me me before doing so.

---

This is for me to practice my writing and blogging skills so please ignore grammar, spelling, formatting and other errors.