New Orleans Rocks

I had the distinct pleasure recently of attending a concert in New Orleans sponsored by AARP, of all organizations, given the following of the ladies involved.

It was a concert by Melissa Etheridge, Gladys Knight and Stevie Nicks, in conjunction with the National AARP Convention.

It would appear an attempt to change the image of AARP and give it a much "younger" vibe, as the focus of the convention was for those 50 and over.

Melissa Etheridge barely made the cut, at 51, but rocked the house with her soulful guiter riffs and songs. She looks better than she has in years, and made reference to her past battle with breast cancer.

You wouldn't know it to look at her, really.

Next up was Gladys Knight, and the season on Dancing with the Stars appears to have given her more energy and could hardly believe she is over 65.

She has the moves, and her brother (one of the Pips) contribution really made the show.

Next up, one of my rock idols for many different reasons, Stevie Nicks.

All three of these particular ladies were actually born within a week of each other the end of May. Geminis, all.

Which perhaps makes this review a little biased.

My own birthday is May 30, and connect with their music on almost a spiritual level. The pain, and the angst, and the soul, that is.

Stevie was for many years a resident of my former home state, Arizona, whose father owned a concert venue there for many years, Compton Terrace.

She was absolutely incredible and sounds better than ever with the maturity her age and experience have given her.

Some of the "older" AARP members left during her set, which was a shame but then Stevie is a taste best left to the under 70 crowd, at least. She rocks and makes no bones about it.

She performed a particularly poignant song about New Orleans from her current album, which was well received and appreciated.

She also performed a song "Soldiers Angel" which was written after a visit some years ago to Walter Reed Hospital and speaking with wounded servicemen. She has become heavily involved in this cause, from what it appeared.

It was a more "national" crowd at this show, although the people of New Orleans and the surrounding area right now are pretty hard pressed to offer much in the form of donations - it was a very touching story and song.

As a matter of fact, I had gotten the tickets as a gift from a daughter who knew how strung out her mother was after Isaac and its aftermath, and caring part-time for elderly parents for months on end before that.

And although I had lived in Phoenix for over 45 years and graduated not but a few years behind Stevie, had never seen her live so when I mentioned the concert, sent me the tickets by return email.

But it was Ms. Nicks rock anthems and incredible voice that stole the show.

Rhiannon

Landslide

Stand Back

Edge of Seventeen

All poems set to music, actually, from an incredibly gifted poet.

I guess as a footnote, in order to truly help all those soldiers, and soldiers wives, mothers and families - I hope someday she will lend her incredible voice and support into stopping some of these senseless wars - as she should also know as one from the Vietnam era herself.

Since it does appear that neither party is willing to end one at this point, without shortly beginning another...

How many men have been lost through five decades of war?

Rock on, Stevie....

AARP isn't ready for us...

Not yet, anyway...

Hurricane Isaac: Katrina, Part II

After being in a heightened state of anxiety for most of the past ten days due to the 24/7 reporting on the approach and devastation surrounding Hurricane Isaac, I feel compelled to give my first person narrative as one who experienced Isaac first hand.

My 90 year old father and 84 year old mother have been 35 year residents of the State of Louisiana, living in the New Orleans metro area, approximately 25 miles from Slidell, Louisiana.

After losing a home in Arizona five years ago and political and quality of life issues there at the present time, after 45 years I have taken up residence with my elderly parents for both financial, and personal reasons as their part-time caretaker.

Which, at almost my retirement age with absolutely nothing left in savings to speak of, is no small task. I was mostly entertained over the weekend watching the reporting from the mainstream news media, especially the weather channel and Fox News.

One Fox report from Slidell, an area hard hit by the flooding which occurred, had a young, blond reporter wearing L.L. Bean hip waders, a powder blue (tight) t-shirt, manicure and spray tan standing in the middle of Old Town Slidell while the waters rushed by.

I hope she got her shots, but I guess her commander in chief was unaware that there are water moccasins in those waters, and those L.L. Bean hip waders weren't going to give her much protection in any event.

But such is the reporting on this major "natural" disaster.

The drama all began a week ago today, when the path of the hurricane was taking it's northwestern turn toward New Orleans.

Each and every hour the reporting confirmed the path, and those in the area started preparing for the worst. We were going to leave, as my parents had done for both Katrina, and Gustav before only this time my father was on thrice weekly dialysis, as he has congestive heart disease and has been in and out of the hospital at least a dozen times in the past year.

He has stabilized for the time being (this month), but we knew due to the severity of his condition, we couldn't go far so decided to "hunker down" for the duration, as one of my sisters who still lives in Arizona so aptly put it.

My other sister and brother-in-law, also long term Louisiana residents, decided to also do likewise since they, at least, did own a generator which my brother-in-law purchased during Katrina when he patrolled the neighborhoods with his neighbors during the month long power outages at that time.

He was born and raised in Pennsylvania, but became one of those dreaded gun-toting Southerners within a few short years of moving here.

My parents truly do not get out much anymore as both suffer from heart disease...my mother merely to the store and back, or to my father's dialysis appointments. Short trips, mostly, to places she is familiar. Due to also his debilitating arthritis, my father stopped driving years ago.

I went to three stores looking for "D" batteries since the entire community was out. None at Wal-Mart or Walgreens. I got the last two at the local Radio Shack.

Why is it that all flashlights require "D" batteries, anyway?

There were lines and lines at the gas pumps. And, surprise, surprise...only Supreme was available at $4.25 a gallon.

There were recurring messages here to report any and all "gouging" to a local enforcement agency. I just wonder how many reported those out of control gas prices...up over $1.25 a gallon from where it was a month ago around here.

Then the grocery stores.

When the power goes out, there is no electricity for those ovens and stoves, or crock pots. So I bought tuna, canned chicken, snack crackers, energy bars, water, bread and peanut butter.

My father is on a special diet due to his dialysis, so other than the peanut butter which was a no-no, I thought we were set for the long haul.

I decided to go to the local bookstore to get a book, just in case.

Walked in about 7:00 Monday night and all the shelves were covered with blue tarps and plastic wrap. The store was closing and wouldn't reopen until after the storm had passed.

We decided that as soon as the electricity went out here, we would all go to my sisters where there would be a room air conditioner.

Six of us in one room for the duration, since my niece had decided to stay at LSU and attend the Hurricane parties there. Of course, the real brunt of the storm had yet to come.

Tuesday passed, and we waited...as did everyone...there were no cars on the road, all who were leaving had left on Monday or Tuesday morning and there was an eery quiet that night as we waited for it to make landfall.

I was up until after midnight listening to the progression.

It hit around 12:30 and it was windy for an hour, and then silence again.

Isaac had gone back over the Gulf again, waiting... I slept on the floor that night since my parents house is surrounded by trees...pines, oaks, and number of other varieties. Huge trees that had also experienced both Katrina and Gustav during their ownership, and for which they merely got a new roof for Katrina.

But then they were not living where there was the most damage that time.

My father was a wood technologist, and bought this house in the late 1970's due to its brick construction, and an old 100 year oak on the property which he liked.

The builder had built the house for his son, who had died in an auto accident when they were looking for house to live in.

I, asthmatic that I am, had stayed in Arizona when they moved, but had visited since my children were babies almost annually until a divorce.

Living in Arizona, I had experienced our annual monsoons (now haboobs?) and flash flooding. The desert isn't used to quite so much rain, and there is nowhere for it to go in the parched ground which is the Arizona desert.

But this was unbelieveable.

Almost 24 straight hours of gusting winds, and pelting, horizontal rain. I had also been here during Gustav in 2008 (my mother had two heart attacks that year). The winds were much stronger then, but it only lasted about six or seven hours.

We were fortunate. We never lost power, although the neighborhood looked like a tornado had gone through it.

The rebuilding has started, although Slidell and the surrounding communities are still under water. And the heat now is unbearable, even to a former desert dweller who isn't used to the off the charts humidity which is also a result of the storm.

Traffic was backed up for miles on Friday, with all those who left returning to survey the damage to their property.

The Lakefront took a huge hit, and the rivers are swollen and overflowing, with a number of dams in danger of breaking.

Life goes on.

But the question I would have liked to ask those reporters, and photographers with all their equipment and spray tans, and the manufactured dramas in many instances...

Why is it that science can now create life in a test tube, created the nuclear bomb, put a man on the moon, and can seed clouds for agricultural purposes in order to make rain - but at this point we don't have the technology to redirect or stop a hurricane?

Or due to all the coincidence with this hurricane which occurred...not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything...but with the timing of this during the Republican convention (as with Gustav), seven years to the day after Katrina, and with all those out of work and with the oil companies continuing to use any excuse imaginable in order to continue to bleed the public dry at the gas pumps.

Maybe, just maybe, perhaps we have the technology to create these hurricanes for "economic" and political reasons?

Where is that female reporter in those hip waders, anyway?

I watched part of that convention...at least the end...and I have only one observation with all the hoopla and celebrating that went on.

As with the many here that suffered through Katrina, and seeing the literally hundreds of dollars per month my parents pay for their medications in order to survive, and what I have experienced personally in the years since Katrina...

No, we are not better off than we were four years ago...or even ten years ago...

This tragedy was definitely not a Katrina, Part II...the government did not fail the citizens of New Orleans THIS time.

But as an aside, in order to assist my parents and myself as an Arizona homeless refugee...

I'm working a temp position that pays me what I was making in 1982, with no benefits, the only position that I had been able to find, and which is not at all in my field of expertise (corporate law, and then subsequently leisure travel & tourism, which just about died with 9-11, and Katrina here).

And what's broken politically, can not be repaired as easily as the Louisianans will rebuild after Isaac...

Not by a long shot...

Roberts Rules of Constitutional Obliteration

It has taken me over a week to process the latest desecration of the United States Constitution promulgated by no other than the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice John Roberts.
The Roberts Court I predict will go down as the most liberal Court in U.S. history.

And that's saying something.

Much has been made in the media of the decision reached by Justice Roberts on the most contentious provision contained within the 1,300 page "(Un)Affordable Care Act."

His holding in that respect defies any and all Rules of Law and the common law in this country, and wipes out any illusion that the Bill of Rights was written in order to protect individual Americans from federal (OR STATE) overstep.

Upholding this provision was not only overstep, it was crushing the American people under federal jack boots.

Now the "talking heads" on the cable news networks, who make their profits over sensationalized news and cases such as this one they can milk for weeks and years to come, are arguing whether this mandate is a "tax" as Justice Roberts defined it (is this man insane, or what?) or a penalty.
From Websters:

Definition of PENALTY

1: the suffering in person, rights, or property that is annexed by law or judicial decision to the commission of a crime or public offense

2: the suffering or the sum to be forfeited to which a person agrees to be subjected in case of nonfulfillment of stipulations
-------------------------------------------------

It is, no question, a penalty and not a "tax," or within Congress or the Supreme Court's taxing authority under our Constitution or those founders intent.

But more importantly, just what was the purpose of Justice Roberts defining it in such a manner, since there did have to be an ulterior motive here with such an outrageous ruling.

Well, the Supreme Court has, for literally decades, refused to hear cases involving taxation due to a decision either it made independently, or after passage of another of those back door bills, that it will not hear any cases involving taxation.

Since, of course, the federal income tax itself and its passage was by no means a popular move by that Congress so very long ago...

As long as the Supreme Court defines it as such, it never, ever again has to re-examine its own ruling on this provision.

By its own edict...

In other words, Roberts both ruled it a tax, and then protected this Court (and any future Court also) from ever having to hear any more cases with respect to that provision in ObamaCare ever again.
I still haven't figured out how the Supreme Court has the power anywhere in the Constitution to refuse to hear any case brought by an American citizen, but it does so rather regularly.

This, in an of itself, is a demonstration of the high regard the Court holds for itself as the Court of last resort.

And it is still unclear to me just who the appealing parties were in this case, since it was announced that it was brought by several of the states (who also stand to gain revenue from this ruling, revenue which they can now use elsewhere in their states for more and more unconstitutional functions when they cut many of their also state funded programs).

From what I read in briefly having a chance to read the Supreme Court opinion in full before it was yanked from the web, it was brought by a "corporate" entity I had never heard of (and additional appellees).

This was not just a wacko ruling, it was a wacko ruling that had a further political purpose as its objective.

Which makes the Roberts Court one of the most liberal and political courts ever in this country.
I wonder just how much stock Justice Roberts has in the insurance and health care sector?

Since it is clear that most of those in Washington who hold all those insurance, hospital and pharma stocks will be making a killing on this ruling - and Mr. Romney is also no exception.

They all should be ashamed...as this provision actually was the most contentious, and yet most important provision within that 1,300 page bill.

Make no mistake about it....

It set a "precedent" like no other ruling before it...that the federal government's power is absolute with respect to using any means necessary to pass any old legislation it wishes...

And the first order of business in this country for any new Congress should be re-examining the law school curriculum in this country, particularly those Ivy League schools on the East Coast...

Since the amount they are charging for tuition for such a legal education as obviously Mr. Roberts must have received seems like highway robbery...or money down the drain.

I hope Mr. Roberts paid for that education, and not his parents...

And if the penalty was upheld as a tax, then it would stand to reason that the mandate to provide health insurance for individual Americans and that cost is also a tax, and all dollars paid by Americans for their own health care should then be fully deductible on their federal and state income taxes.

You can't have it both ways...