Surrender / Entrega

Most people who quit smoking become nightmares to those who still smoke, and that includes myself.
Today I will talk about something that by the same token with smoking and quitting, hopefully will help somebody else, like it did with me.
When my son was diagnosed with autism I spent a long time going in circles, resentful, hurt, and primarily disappointed with God. I felt that after all his promises he had abandoned me.
It took me 7 years of banging my head against the wall to come to the realization, thanks to the words of two good friends whom I value their opinions, that I could not go on the way I was.
One of them in a conversation over a cup of coffee, and of all the things I had to say, he turned around and said: “You said that you hold a grudge against God, and when we hold against a grudge against somebody the right thing to do is settle it with the person, and then as God forgave us, we should forgive.”
In this case it meant forgiving God. He had forgiven me first, so obviously there was no question what the right thing to do was.
The second person, a friend, former missionary, and, as I call him, my adoptive father, and I call him that because my parents live 5,000 miles away and it made it easier at the time to talk about things that were on my mind. He said: “The weight that you are carrying on your shoulders it too much to bear for one person. You need to ask God to help you carry that weight, and as Christians, we believe that Jesus Christ is the one that can do that for us. And this one meant surrendering.
For 7 years I had been trying to do it my way, wrestling not with God, because he is the almighty, and there is no way of winning, or beating him, I was wrestling with myself, like a child, thinking that I could have it my way.
And when that day came it was like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. The wrestling was over. I had been stuck for seven years. My attitude, my perspective, had changed. I accepted that God was at the helm. Now I could go on with my life, and looking at my son not like a burden, like a talisman, but as a blessing, an instrument of God, which we all are, and a way for God to communicate with me, to teach me.
Again the whole key is SURRENDER. There is a hymn that as Christians we sing that says: I surrender all. You can understand that as giving your possessions. I thank it's great, like St. Francis did, give all your belongings away. For me they are just material goods. I view it as surrendering our most precious possession, us, to his will, whatever that may be, wherever it may take me, because at the end of the day God is in command.
Now somebody can come and say easier said than done. I never said that it was easy for me. It took me seven long years of pain, struggle and hardship to realize that I was going nowhere. I think that that shows that it was not easy for me. But it is the only way. Sooner or later we come to that realization.
Once a week I meet with a person who God put in my path to teach me, to look at myself in the mirror through this person. And many times I’ve felt like giving up, and now I see that God has used me to his benefit as an instrument to help this person. We talk about life, Jesus, God, work, and many more things. Recently he’s been more focused on trying to develop a relationship with his creator. And it gives me great joy to see that, because I feel God’s power at work. For those of us who are Christians the Lord’s Prayer says it very clearly: THY WILL BE DONE, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. Jesus taught us that to pray to the Father we have in heaven, but it clearly states that his will will be done here as well. God sent his son to die on the cross for all of us, Jews and Gentiles, and the only thing that he wants in return is our total surrender, to surrender to his will. By doing that we have the weight lifted off our shoulders, of all the burdens that may afflict us, health, finances, love, loneliness, etc., and by then we can then become instruments for his glory.
Many times when we have a relative or a friend who is need, in poor health, who could pass away, we pray for their health. We also need to pray for God to give us his comfort, the peace of mind, like he gave Jesus, to accept his will, regardless what that may be, and to know that in the midst of the storm we are not alone, that he is always with us, until the ends of the ages.



Normalmente siempre escribo en ingles, salvo casos excepcionales, o por pedido, pero me parecio que este tema nos afecta a todos. Reconozco que me he vuelto un gringo, no tanto al hablar pero si para escribir.
Lo que sigue es la “adaptacion” de lo que escribi en ingles.

La mayoria de la gente que deja de fumar se vuelven una pesadilla para los que todavia fuman, y en eso me incluyo.
Cuando mi hijo fue diagnosticado con autismo me pase un tiempo largo dando vuelta en circulos, resentido, dolido, y primoridialmente decepcionado con Dios. Senti que despues de todas sus promesas me habia abandonado.
Me llevo siete años de golpearme la cabeza contra las paredes hasta que finalmente llegue a la conlusion, la realizacion, gracias a las palabras de dos buenos amigos, a los cuales les valoro la opinion, que no podia seguir de manera en que estaba.
Uno me dijo durante una charla, café de por medio, y entre todas las cosas que le dije, el agarro y me dijo: “Dijiste que tenias una bronco con Dios, y cuando uno tiene una bronco con alguien lo que corresponde es que lo hables con esa persona, y despues, de la misma que Dios nos perdono a nosotros, debemos perdonar.”
En este caso significaba perdonar a Dios. El me habia perdonado a mi primero, asi que era obvio lo que debia hacer.
La segunda persona, un amigo, ex-misionero, y como lo llamo yo, mi padre adoptado, y lo llamo asi porque mis padres viven a 8.000 kilometros de aca, y se me ha hecho facil en muchas ocasiones de hablar cosas que tenia dando vuelva en la cabeza.. El me dijo: “Estas tratando de cargar mucho peso en los hombros para una sola persona. Tenes que pedirle a Dios que te ayude a cargar ese peso, y como Cristianos, tenemos la fe de que Cristo es el que lo puede hacer por nosotros. I esto significaba entrega.
Por siete años habia tratado de hacer las cosas a mi manera, luchando no con Dios,porque es todo poderoso, y no hay forma de ganar or vencer, sino conmigo mismo, como una criatura, que queria tener su capricho.
Y cuando llego ese dia era como un peso que se habia levantado de mis hombros. La lucha habia terminado. Habia estado estancado por siete años. Mi actitud, my perspectiva, habia cambiado. Acepte que Dios estaba en el timonel. Ahora podia seguir con mi vida, y mirar a mi hijo no ya como un carga, como un talisman, sino como una bendicion, un instrumento de Dios, como somos todos, y una manera de Dios de comunicarse conmigo, de enseñarme.
Al final del dia la palabra es ENTREGA. En ingles hay un himno que Cristianos cantamos que dice: Yo entrego todo. Uno puede entender eso como dando todos sus posesiones. San Francisco de Asis hizo eso, y me parecio maravilloso. Para mi esas son cosas materiales. Yo lo veo como entregando nuestra mas preciada posesion, nosotros, a su voluntad, cualquiera ella fuese, cualquier lugar que nos llevase, porque al final del dia Dios esta al comando.
Ahora alguien puede venir y decir eso es mas facil decirle que hacerlo. Nunca dije que fuese facil. Me llevo siete largos años de dolor, lucha y dificultad para darme cuenta que no iba a ningun lado. Me parece que eso prueba que no fue facil para mi. Pero tarde o temprano llegamos a esa conclusion.
Una vez por semana me junto con una persona que Dios puso en mi camino para enseñarme, para que me mire en el espejo por medio de esta persona. Muchas veces pense en abandonar, y ahora veo que Dios me ha utlizado para su beneficio como un medio para ayudar a esta persona. Hablamos de la vida, de Dios, de Jesus, y de muchas cosas mas. Ultimamente ha estado mas interesado en entablar una relacion con su creador. Me gran alegria poder ver eso, dado que veo el poder de Dios trabajando. Para todos los que somos Cristianos El Padre Nuestro nos dice: HAGASE TU VOLUNTAD EN LA TIERRA COMO EN EL CIELO. Jesus nos enseño a orar al padre que tenemos en los cielos, pero claramente dice que se haga la voluntad aca tambien. Dios envio a su hijo a morir en la cruz por nosotros, Judios y Gentiles, y una de las cosas que nos pide en devolucion es nuestra entrega absoluta, de entregarnos a su voluntad. Al hacerlo sentimos el peso que tenemos sobre nuestros hombros removido, de todas las cargas que nos puedan aflijir, salud, finanzas, amor, soledad, etc., y al hacerlo podemos convertirnos en instrumentos para su gloria.
Muchas veces cuando tenemos un familiar o un amigo que esta en necesidad, tal vez en mala salud, que tal vez podia morir, oramos por su salud. Lo que tambien debemos hacer es orar a Dios por su espiritu, por la paz interior, como le dio a Jesus, de aceptar su voluntad, no importa cual fuere, y de saber que en el medio de la tormenta no estamos solos, que el nos acompaña, hasta el fin de mundo.

Romney talks about appeasement

Romney, in his latest speech said that Obama has pursued a policy of appeasement that betrays a lack of faith in America.
"Obama doesn't understand America," Romney said. "This president appears more generous to our enemies than he is to our friends. Such is the natural tendency of someone who is unsure of America's strength – or of America's rightful place in the world."
This sounds like a speech of a desperate person who sees his “guaranteed” candidacy to the Republican Party for president slipping away.
I guess we should remind Mr. Romney that it was this president who got rid of Osama Bin Laden, not Bush, that it was this president who got rid of Kadafi, not Bush, that even though the Palestinians (whom I will talk about in another blog) tried in the United Nations to get statehood it was this president who blocked it, and had the British and the French rally behind the United States in this measure.
The word appeasement is in reference to what Mr. Chamberlain, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, had towards Nazi Germany in the 30s, when he asked the president of Czechoslovakia to give up any region that had a majority of Germans to avoid war. We know what ended up happening.
He says that he will stop Iran from getting or building nuclear weapons. He says that if need be he will attack Iran. I guess he doesn’t know that we are still involved in two conflicts at a very high cost in terms of life and money, thanks to the previous administration.
If we base ourselves on Romney’s backbone, and how he stands and defends each of his positions we know how that will end as well. He is the king of flip-flops. If you look in the Webster Dictionary for the meaning of the expression “flip-flop” it says Romney.
Romney should be ashamed of himself for using the word appeasement and trying to scare Jewish-Americans.

Another useless bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed new legislation.
One would assume that they dealt with the extension of the payroll tax holiday, or maybe that they passed a jobs bill that would put Americans to work.
Unfortunately that would be wishful thinking.
They passed another bill that would cut the powers of the Executive branch, and its supposed group of bureaucrats who pass new regulations.
This has been possibly the most do-nothing Congress in history.
They have worked arguably the least amount of days in the history of country, and have passed bills in the House of Representatives that they know perfectly will never make it to the floor of the Senate. And the reason that they will never see the day of light in the Senate is because they do nothing for the millions of unemployed in the US.
This bill would actually give the party who only runs one chamber of the U.S. Congress the power to veto regulations that supposedly would stop business from creating jobs.
I should clarify that the actual do-nothing is the House of Representatives. These are the same members who wanted to push the country into default and who ended up causing the lowering of the credit of the country. They are a group of extremists who want to see the safety net of this country dismantled.
This same group will hurt millions of Americans as of January 1st of 2012 because they don’t want to touch the pockets of the ultra wealthy. Almost 70% of Americans say that they believe that the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.
This people are a disgrace to this country.
And when last week they saw that the unemployment had gone down from 9% to 8.6% they went berserk. The unemployment has gone because of the stimulus that was put into place in 2009, and now we are starting to see the effect of it, with people spending more. Housing saw in increase of over 10%.
These are all bad news for people like Mitch McConell, U.S. Senate minority leader, and who said almost at the beginning of the current administration that his main goal is to defeat Obama at the next. Republicans are more concerned in blocking, stopping, and potentially damaging the country as long as they can defeat the current president in the next election in 2012. That is truly pathetic. These representatives should start representing the will of the people, and not their own agenda, they should start governing, not passing useless bills that do absolutely nothing for the country. The U.S. is in a financial bind, with high unemployment, high deficits, and a bleak future, and these people are only worried in bringing down the current administration at whatever cost.
Let us not forget that many of the same people spent precious time over a decade ago impeaching a president for infidelity, while many of them where being unfaithful during the process.

The Buffoons at the debate

Last night we saw a new debate of the Republican Party. With few exceptions they were a bunch of buffoons. When I say that I mean literally. Let us look at the meaning of the word buffoon:
1. a person who amuses others by tricks, jokes, odd gestures and postures, etc.
2. a person given to coarse or undignified joking.
That fits perfect the candidates for the Republican Party. They talk about invading or attacking countries around the world, to keep on increasing the defense budget, crying foul at the fact that the Super Committee failed in its negotiation and thus 1.3 trillion in cuts will start as of January of 2013, half of it coming from defense, the Republican Party’s favorite cow.
Now let us look at the Super Committee, it was a concept of Congress for their unwillingness to negotiate and reduce the budget by over 4 trillion in the next 10 years, and the only reason the Super Committee failed is because Republicans are so obsessed with protecting the income and taxes of the top 1% of income earners that they will allow the country to go to hell in a hand basket. 67 % of the U.S. population believe that the wealthy should pay higher taxes.
Now going back to the debate, it is really worrisome to watch these comedians and think that they may be a possibility for one to become the next president.
The only one with some senses is one that will not win the nomination, Governor Huntsman. He says that the only way of maintaining a large military is based on our financial picture. We are on the brink of bankruptcy, and the main reason is because we exported all the technologies and manufacturing jobs overseas, based on lack of incentives in the tax code passed by Ronald Reagan in the 80s, reduction of taxes for the wealthy, passed by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who have only hurt the country, by eliminating money that was being invested in education and research.
The U.S.A. is no longer the number country. Unless we accept that for a fact we will not deal with the issues we have as a country. We are like the alcoholic or drug addict who says that he controls the drink and drugs he or she consumes. This is a joke.
These candidates talk about privatizing the TSA (Transport Security Administration), not that I am a big fan of them, but the last time that we had private security at the airport, that was making five or 6 dollars an hour was on 09/11/01. Is that what we want to go back to? They want whoever replaces the TSA to do racial profiling. That is another way of discrimination.
These candidates are so out of sync with the majority of the country, just like the rest of the Republican Party, that they will say and do anything to please the right fringe of the country.
The next election unfortunately will not be a choice of the best candidate but a referendum on Obama’s performance, and that is what so worrisome to consider that one of these ignorant, multi-position, fanatic group ofjokerscould be the next commander in chief.

Occupy Wall Street

For weeks I have reluctant to comment about the “99%” or Occupy Wall Street movement. The main reason of that is because I did not want to sound that I was jumping on the bandwagon. I have supported this ideology because I have said time and time over that the right thing to do as a nation is tax the people who have the money, just we did until 1981.
Recently a chart has been shown about the income disparity between the 1% of income earners or like the Republican Party calls “Job Creators”. What a crock. They may be creating jobs but not in this country, maybe in China, Mexico or other country that has no regulations against pollution or child labor exploitation, like many countries out there.
Isn’t it just a coincidence that the disparity starting growing since 1981, this is in my book the beginning of running this country into ground, and it starts with Ronald Reagan and his policy of government destruction, except for the wasteful Department of Defense, and the reform of taxation favoring the wealthiest at the expense of the rest of the country.
Now let’s look at what O.W.S. (Occupy Wall Street) stand for compared to the Tea Party. The OWS believes that Wall Street and the wealthy should start paying their fair share of taxes, not what they are paying now, they believe in a function of government, by loaning or pardoning loans to students, fairness in society. They represent different walks of life, different backgrounds, different income levels, different age levels. This movement has spread across the country to many cities including L.A., Denver, Boston, Chicago, Oakland, Kansas City. They were small business owners, students, retired people. There were no guns at any of the Occupy rallies across the country. They were funded by donations by people who supported the people who were camping in these cities. The OWS say they are unhappy with both parties because both of them have sold themselves to Corporate America.
Now let us look at the Tea Party. They cannot say that they represent the vast majority of the population as they only represent the fringe of the Republican Party. They are in their vast majority white people. That in itself tells me that there are not representative of the country. The Tea Party was funded by groups such as Americans for Prosperity who is funded by the Koch Brothers, the oil barons of the country, and by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads that is funded by 3 billionaires. They showed up at events with hand and machine guns, because they said that the 2nd Amendment protected them.
This group believes that the wealthy should pay less in taxes, even if it means bankrupting the nation, and that we should “flatten” the tax code, so that the 46% who don’t pay federal income tax, because their income is not high enough start paying more, that only the few have options with education, that we should spend limitless amounts of money for the Department of Defense, that we should cut benefits for seniors and the poor by cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The Republican Party and its spokesperson Fox News have started name calling the people who have been demonstrating now for two months, by calling them bums, drug addicts, criminals, while there is no proof of any of this. This shows a total lack of sensitivity for what the middle class and poor are going through as the OWS is Middle America. Those same republicans we saying in 2010 that America was taking back the country from the socialist measures of Obama. I guess that the 99% does not suit the needs of the Republican Party and its radical agenda.
The OWS has its work cut out for itself as rough days lay ahead because as we have seen lately cities across the country are using brutal force by the police to disband them. Many of these mayors have received campaign funds from Corporate America, so they cannot allow the middle class and the poor to rebel against the status quo.
Pundits such as Bill O’Reilly are saying that the Occupy Wall Street group is finished. I disagree with that opinion, not only because I believe in their agenda but also because I believe that you cannot kill an ideology, even if you beat up or get rid of their leaders. If that would have been the case the Civil Rights movement would have died, the demonstrations against the Vietnam War would have faded with no results, Gandhi’s non-violent movement would have failed and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette would not have been beheaded.
We will need to see if this grass movement will use its message and energy to put their ideas into action next November elections.

The middle class fights back

When Governor John Kasich, Republican from Ohio won the governorship last November his main objective was, just like other Republican governors across the nation, to dismantle the unions at the state level, and by doing so weakening one of the pillars of the Democratic Party.
The Republicans governors have used the excuse in states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Nevada was that cutting costs was good for the economic health of the states. That made sense to a lot of people, but what people were not being told was that in the case of Ohio, the governor gave himself a pay increase of $10,000 dollars, he cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, cut funding for education and services, including firefighters and police, thus not helping but hurting communities.
When Governor Kasich, and his majorities in both the State Assembly and Senate were not counting on was that the people would organize a recall of the law to ban collective bargaining, the main tool that people have to negotiate their income and benefits, as a unite, not individually, also called union.
This election is being watched across the country because it may indicate how the middle class may look at the election of November 2012. It also is being watched because, as I said earlier, people in many states are unhappy and are having second thoughts with the people whom they elected in 2010.
It is also an indication of what a president Mitt Romney or Herman Cain may be if they win the White House in 2012, cutting taxes for the wealthy, for corporations, eliminating protective regulations and the institution that control some of those regulations such as the E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency), cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, thus hurting the middle class and the working poor.
The Obama Administration was more involved in the Ohio voting at least supporting the people who did all the leg work by making phone calls, knocking on doors, than it was with the recalls of some of the senate members in Wisconsin.
Let us hope that the working people of this country use this election as a reason to fight back against the obstructionist Republican Party that has controlled the U.S. House of Representatives since January, and they fight back, not just only in Ohio, but also across country in the election of 2012.

Argentina y otro traspie

La eleccion para presidente en la Argentina en el dia de la fecha es una nueva prueba de como la gente de distintos medios economicos y sociales aprueba de la epoca y la situacion en la que el pais vive.
Para la gente que no trabaja y que no le interesa trabajar sabiamos que votarian por el modelo actual, un modelo que no unicamente ayuda a la gente desfavorecida (algo que yo creo que es necesario, dado que toda sociedad debe tener una red de sosten para los que no pueden mantenerse) sino que fomenta la vagancia.
Es muy facil, como lo hizo Peron en sus dos primeros gobiernos y con la influencia de Evita, de derrochar las arcas del pais para contribuir, como dije anteriormente, a la vagancia.
Esto no hace a un major pais, sino a un pais donde la mitad de la poblacion esta sentada en el carro mientras el otro 50% tira. Tampoco debemos olvidarnos que los mandatarios de este gobierno han visto sus fortunas personales incrementadas de una manera considerable, como tambien lo hicieron Peron y Evita en su momento.
Lo que es inexplicable es que parte del otro 50% este no solo conforme sino que pareciera feliz con el “Status Quo”.
La falta de seguridad, la vagancia, el robo y la dictadura que representan estos mandatarios y su circulo de secuaces es un muchos casos algo nunca visto antes en la Argentina.
Cuando yo era joven uno sabia que los gobernantes tenian metida la mano en la lata, dado que los politicos son iguales en todos lados, siempre tratando de beneficiarse, pero la inseguridad, la vagancia y el robo han alcanzado niveles record. Han vuelto a los juicios de los militares, muchos de ellos que fueron enjuiciados en el gobierno de Alfonsin. Un pais mirando siempre para atras no puede planear para el futuro,
Mucha gente piensa que la falta de seguridad es algo que nunca les va a pasar a ellos, hasta que les pase, lo mismo con los secuestros y la violencia.
Cuando estuve recientemente en la Argentina y comente lo que leia en los diarios sobre estos problemas se me dijo que las cosas publicadas en El Clarin y La Nacion eran mentiras. Hay un dicho que dice que la mentira tiene patas cortas. La mentira nunca subsiste. Pero cuando se le bloquea la entrega de los diarios que opinan algo distinto, o que tratan de investigar las cosas cuestionables a esta administracion eso me da la pauta que tal vez parte de eso es verdad. Este gobierno ha tomado todos los peores ejemplos de la epoca de Peron, como cuando cerro el diario La Prensa. El diario se cerro porque era una voz opositora al gobierno. Tambien se me dijo que en EEUU hay mas violencia que en Argentina dado que mas de un loco ha asesinado gente en universidades, etc. Jamas negaria eso. Pero yo saco a caminar a dos perros por el vecindario todas las noches y nunca he tenido alguien con un revolver que me quiera secuestrar o robar. No tengo barrotes en mi casa. Cuando escucho gente discutiendo en la calle llamo a la policia y viene en menos de 5 minutos. En Argentina hay 40 millones de habitantes, en EEUU hay 320 millones. La diferencia de poblacion es un poco mas que considerable.
Una alternativa es hacer como hace el avestruz, y meter la cabeza en el agujero. De esa manera no tiene que lidiar con la realidad. Todos esos impuestos que "supuestamente" se le retienen al campo por exportar, a donde van a parar? Van a parar al bolsillo de algun funcionario?
No podemos decir que van a inversiones dado que se importa combustible y gas, cosas que anteriormente eran en gran parte de produccion local.
La realidad es que van a la cuenta corriente de la presidenta para que en cada viaje al exterior se pueda comprar joyas, o bolsos Louis Vuitton, al mas puro estilo Evita.
Que va a suceder cuando esas exportaciones de soja disminuyan, o aparezca un competidor mayor?
Lo que mucha gente que piensa que esto va a durar para siempre, pero nada nunca lo hace. Uno lo puede ver en Europa y en EEUU. Esa ola de problemas economicos va a llegar a las orillas de la Argentina, como llega todo, como llego en su momento la depresion del 30, y mas con la interrelacion del todos los mercados.
Cuando esta eleccion sea parte del pasado, como lo han sido toda otras elecciones anteriores, que les va a quedar a los argentinos? La misma inseguridad? La misma violencia? Los robos? La misma clase parasita?
Seguramente van a tener algo nuevo, aumentos de las prepagas, de luz, de gas, de nafta, de telefono, de costo de celulares. El dolar bajo como esta tampoco va a durar, como nunca en el pasado ha durado.
Los argentinos tardo o temprano despertaran de esta “burbuja” y descubriran, como le ha pasado en otras epocas, y descubriran que era otro mirage, como vivieron en los 90s, en la epoca de Martinez de Hoz, y otros tantos en el pasado.

The End of "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds"

In the 1990s former President Menem of Argentina started selling all the companies that were under the jurisdiction of the Central Government. In order to make these companies more attractive for investors he first went through the process of dismantling them, selling parts of them, shutting down part of their operations, or cutting funds so that the service would deteriorate to the point where the public asked for something to be done. The President and his cronies were all involved in the sales, receiving kickbacks from the institutions that purchased these enterprises.
Representative Issa from California, Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and arguably the wealthiest member of Congress, has a proposal to put up of 120 thousand Post Office employees in the street. His real objective, and of his buddies, is to privatize an institution that has been in service 235 years delivering mail to both cities and rural areas.
The United States Postal Service is a self-sufficient entity, that receives zero dollars from the Federal Government. They deliver to the most remote places in the country. Federal Express and UPS, the two private competitors only cover 75% of the US. The USPS delivers packages of their competitors to the other 25% that the private sector does not cover.
The reason he wants to propose the dismantling of this great institution is because in the lame duck session of 2006 the Republican Majority, knowing that it had lost the election, passed a law that forced the Postal Service to fund its pension plan for the next 75 years in 10 years.
That put the USPS in the red. No other federal or private organization is forced to do such a thing.
The cost of a stamp is less than 50 cents. The private sector does not and would never deliver for such a lower price.
This measure would also force to cut delivers from 6 days to 5 days a week.
It would hurt rural areas, small businesses, lower income people and put a huge amount of people in the street.
This is another proof that the fanatics running the US House do not have the best intention for this country. They only want to benefit their friends in the private sector, and in the words of Senator McConell: Making Obama A One-Term President Is My Single Most Important Political Goal, even if that means the destruction of the country we used to know.

A do-nothing U.S. Congress

The United States has as of today a 9.1% unemployment or 25 million people without a job.
We are also seeing was is probably the most “do-nothing” Congress in history.
They ran on jobs. As of today October 14th, 2011 they not have not offered one single proposal to reduce unemployment.
They have spent the last few months trying to push the country into default, its first in history, regardless the cost to the wellbeing of its population.
October 13th the U.S. House of Representatives spent the whole day proposing a ban on finding abortions with public funds. This ban has been in place since 1976.
Since the House has been in session since January 2011 the main topic has been abortion. They have brought the same proposal to the floor 7 times.
The U.S. has faced weather related in 2011 including tornados that destroyed cities such as Joplin, Missouri, and hurricanes such as Irene that left many states devastated such as Vermont, where there are still feeling the effects, even though the storm didn’t hit at its worst. The position of the republicans in the House is that there is no money to help these communities unless it comes from another part of the budget, therefore taking the money out of programs for people who need them. In other words you help one group of people at the expense of another.
But the interesting thing is that does not happen with the people making millions and billions, such as hedge fund managers. Their taxes are in many cases half of the average middle class person pay.
We can also subsidize oil companies, and corporations such as GE that didn’t pay a penny in taxes.
So the hypocrisy is that there can be tax breaks and money to give away to the top 1% percent and corporations, but we cannot help the people who need money to rebuild their communities.
The House has been hijacked by fanatics who don’t care about unemployment, don’t care for the future of the country, but that their only drive is to stop abortions, to outlaw it.
Polls show that Americans want the government to deal with unemployment, not with abortion.
I find it very interesting that in the first 6 years of the previous decade republicans had the three branches of the Federal Government, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial, and DID NOTTHING to challenge Row vs. Wade.
The only thing they want to do is take women’s rights away, and push people into poverty, and the shameful thing is that they want to rap themselves in the Christian flag.

Orgulloso de los Pumas

Cada cuatro años se juega un mundial, no el de football sino el de rugby.
A pesar de nunca haberlo jugado dado que crecí jugando hockey sobre cesped, el club en donde jugaba tenia un equipo de rugby, o los perros como los llamabamos carinosamente, que era una parte muy importante del club, y por lo tanto observe el deporte desde temprana edad.
También vengo de una familia donde mi padre jugó antes que yo naciera, y mi sobrino también juega.
Pero el mundial es algo muy especial, no es como observer un partido entre S.I.C. y C.A.S.I..
El nivel de las selecciones es extremadamente alto.
Este año el mundial se juega en Nueva Zelanda.
Argentina jugó en una zona muy difícil con tres equipos muy parejos y dos de un nivel inferior. Fue el grupo más duro y más parejo. En los otros tres grupos había dos equipos “fuertes” y tres de menor nivel.
Argentina tuvo la mala fortuna de sufrir dos bajas en el primer partido contra Inglaterra, un partido ya de por si dificil, pero que se vio mas complicado por los dos jugadores que se lesionaron, Felipe Contepomi, el pateador de los pumas y su capitán, y Gonzalo Tiesi que quedó fuera del torneo.
Argentina perdió ante Inglaterra por una pequeña diferencia producto de un error de concentración al final del partido.
Luego tuvieron un partido medianamente de menor nivel contra Rumania donde ganaron abultadamente.
Después vino el partido con Escocia. Un partido donde los fieles seguidores que nos levantamos a una temprana hora alrededor del mundo sufrimos hasta el final del partido, dado que Argentina perdía, y un error de los escoceces les permitió hacer un try, y la conversión, y con eso ganaron por un simple punto. Descorazonante para los escoceces y un triunfo con un dulce sabor, después del sabor amargo que había dejado la derrota contra Inglaterra.
El partido que dejó preocupados a todos los argentinos fue el jugado contra Georgia, dado que el rival salió con un plan de juego desde el comienzo de complicar a los pumas, y lo cumplieron casi a la perfección. Digo casi porque el seleccionado argentino se “despertó” con 20 minutos por jugar y “pisaron” el acelerador imponiendo su calidad y su superioridad.
Argentina con esto triunfo había pasado a la proxima ronda, en donde el rival era nada más ni nada menos que Nueva Zelanda, tal vez el major equipo actual de rugby en el mundo.
Si uno toma en cuenta el resultado si mirar el partido asume que el local se impuso facilmente, pero la realidad es otra. El visitante salió con un plan de juego que freno a los neozelandeses durante todo el primer tiempo, incluyendo un try de los argentinos que dejó asombrados a los presents en las tribunas como también a los All Blacks. Pero los pumas cometieron muchos penales, que los locales supieron aprovechar, y cuando terminó la primera etapa Nueva Zelanda estaba arriba en el mercador por un punto.
En el Segundo tiempo los hombres de negro salieron totalmente dispuestos a poner mas puntos en el marcador, cosa que no habían podido en los primeros 40minutos del partido. A medida que pasaban los minutos se hacia mas incesante el ataque local, y se veia la claudicacion fisica de la visita. Los All Blacks terminaron demostrando el porque están catalogados como el favorito para ganar este torneo. Tienen a todo el pais empujandolos, dandoles el apoyo que se da al ser locales.
Pero no nos olvidemos de los pumas. Los pumas jugaron como un gran equipo que son. En todo partido hay siempre un ganador y un perdedor. Pero hay ganadores y también hay perdedores. A lo que me refiero con eso es que los pumas pusieron el alma, el corazon en la cancha, Tienen que estar orgullosos de haberle dado la lucha a los neozelandeses que se les dió. Uno siempre quiere que ganen. Pero el rival fue superior.
Los pumas tuvieron un muy torneo, no tal vez tan bueno como hace cuatro años en Francia en donde terminaron terceros, pero bueno igualmente.
La posibilidad de jugar el año que viene con los tres equipos del hemisferio sur, que están entre los mejores, les va a dar la experiencia que les va a hacer falta para competir en el próximo mundial, y conseguir un mejor resultado al obtenido en Nueva Zelanda.

Incidents at Ezeiza airport

For many years I have traveled with American Airlines because of the fact that we use an American Airlines credit card that allows us to add 1 mile for every dollar spent, and because they fly every day from the New York area to several places around the world including my home country, the place that I go the most.
This year my return trip was on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Dallas/Ft. Worth, and then with a connection to Newark Airport. The total length of that trip is almost 18 hours.
At the same time they have a flight to John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, and a flight to Miami with a connection to La Guardia Airport also in New York City.
In the U.S. you can have a confirmed ticket on a flight and always stand by for another one, as long as it’s around the same time and on the same airline.
Both the nonstop flight from Buenos Aires to JFK, and the Miami alternatives were shorter than my choice was.
The logical questions would be why didn’t I chose the shorter options. The answer is also quite simple, that option was not available at the time.
So having traveled in the past and having worked in the industry like I did for more than 25 years I asked the agent if I could change my reservation to the nonstop or to the shorter connection. I was told that my type of ticket had no seats available. That is usually the answer that reservation people will give because they don't have the authority to override those decisions. The airport on the other hand does. They can move people from one flight to another with no problem.
Now to add insult to injury, or in other words to make matters worse, we are dealing with Argentinians, compatriots of mine. Why do I say this? Very simple, people in Argentina do not have ingrained in their system the concept of service. Everything is a major issue, from getting a passport to transferring the title of a car from one owner to the next. So I was dealing with back to back issues here, the lack of service from the “customer service” people and the fact that I was trying to change my reservation.
I ran into a wall of uncooperative agents from the one at the check-in all the way to the gate people. The answer was always the same: NO.
And they gave different excuses. The check-in agent said that I had to pay a penalty for changing my reservation, while one gate agents said that it could not be done because there was no time to put me on the flight because my bag was on another flight, that had been forced by the check-in agent. The last gate agent blamed the airport for their lack of cooperation.
So I ended up on the same flights that I was booked on originally, and both the nonstop and Miami flight left with empty seats.
A glorious end to my many other frustrations during my visit to Argentina this year.

Como hacen los argentinos para vivir en Argentina en el 2011

Todos los años cuando vuelvo a Argentina trato de escribir sobre mis reflexiones, mis vivencias. Normalmente escribo en ingles, dado que la mayoria de las cosas cuando escribo lo hago porque se ha vuelto mas facil para mi, pero este año gente amiga me ha pedido que lo haga tambien en castellano porque les hes mas facil para entender, y disfrutarlo.
El tema de mi reflexion este año es como dice el titulo ”Como hace la gente para poder vivir en Argentina”.
Otros años puede ser que porque no le preste mayor importancia a este tema nunca se me ocurrio esto. Esta vez puede haber sido que desde el primer dia cuando fui con mis padres al supermercado cercano a la zona de ellos y pagamos en el momento de pasar por la caja $300 me parecio exhorbitante dado que teniamos nada mas que tres o cuatro bolsas de productos en su gran mayoria comestibles, una o dos gaseosas, y unas botellas de agua mineral. No estabamos comprando nada que se puede decir productos de lujo.
De ahi en mas senti como una necesidad de empezar a hablar con gente conocida par aver que opinion tenian. Encontre muchas versiones al respecto, desde la frase 100 dolares no es nada aca, como tambien otras expresiones como la inflacion esta fuera de control.
Mucha gente me dijo que viajaba o compraba a EEUU a comprar porque todo era una “ganga”. Ahi comprendi el porque todos los vuelos desde y hacia Argentina estaban abarrotados, principalmente de argentinos.
Un ser muy querido me dijo “mira, es muy facil”. Cuando dijo eso yo pense deben ganar muy bien. Pero enseguida agrego, “antes me compraba un jean, ahora no lo compro mas, antes me compraba un par de zapatos, ahora no lo compro mas”, y asi me dio una lista de cosas. “Ahora solo compro lo que necesito que normalmente es comida y productos de primera necesidad, y las cosas que necesitan mis hijas.”
Ahi me di cuenta que esto no era simplemente mi primera impresion en ese supermercado sino que esto era un gran problema que estaba sufriendo toda la problacion. El costo de vida se ha vuelto muy alto, y sigue subiendo. El gran agravante es la inflacion. Esta persona me dijo “yo compraba mas en la epoca de Menem que ahora”.
Tambien note que las propiedades han subido muchisimo, al punto de gente preguntandome que podia hacer con la plata en EEUU. Yo trabajo en una inmobiliaria con lo cual algo de conocimiento, no mucho, de algunos mercados en otras zonas del pais tengo. He escuchado que las propiedades en Miami estan muy baratas. No se exactamente en que zonas de Miami, pero tengo entendido que muchas de las propiedades han perdido hasta un 75% del valor en partes de la Florida. Como consecuencia en estas ultimas epocas se estan ofreciendo departamentos en Miami comenzando en 40 mil dolares. Esos valores no se consiguen mas en la mayor parte de Argentina, con lo cual muchos argentinos consideran que es un buen negocio adquirir propiedades por ese valor. La Florida es un mercado que desconozco casi por completo por la distancia y por como esta estructurado el mercado inmobiliario en un pais tan extenso, con diferentes leyes en cada estado. Yo viviendo en la zona de Nueva York estoy a muchas horas de viaje y a una gran distancia de ahi, cosa que hace imposible el manejo y/o asesoramiento que pueda necesitar gente localmente .
Volviendo nuevamente al tema de Argentina y su alto costo de vida, tengo que decir que no puedo comprender y explicarme como hace la gente para vivir, subsistir, alimentarse, etc.
Asi y todo los argentinos parecen estar totalmente como insensibles a todo esto dado que consumen como si mañana no existiese, adquiriendo televisores lcds, computadoras,telefonos blackberrys o smartphones, adquiriendo vehiculos automotores en cantidades records, y como dije anteriormente llenando vuelos a distintos puntos en EEUU, y volviendo a decir el famoso “deme dos”, como se hizo hace muchos años atras.
Yo, a pesar de haber nacido en Argentina, al haber vivido en EEUU durante los ultimos 26 años he perdido la practica de no poder tener mas un presupuesto que me permita saber si el ingreso que tenemos en mi casa nos permita hacer los gastos que hacemos.

August 18th

On August 18th my family celebrates 2 birthdays. One of them, my son, Ian, who this year turned 17. The other one, my cousin Wendy who would have been 48.
Both of them have been a blessing to all of us who have known them.
My son has been a blessing because he has taught us through his disability how to be patient, compassionate and to value every day of his and our lives.
We cherish and value his progress, and although many times we would like him to be “normal”, in reality then it would not be Ian.
Ian loves people, he loves his family, his school, at church, going out and having fun with different groups that he enjoys going out with. Does he have his moments? Don’t we all? Do we grow sometimes impatient? That is where the teaching comes into the picture.
God will always be with him, Ian is an emissary of God to remind us that he is always in control, and that we need to stop, reflect and value every day of our lives.
My cousin, Wendy, because she taught us, all of us who were fortunate enough to have a relationship with her, that although life can be at times less than what we expected or wanted we can still be compassionate, loving and touch people who need love and caring. This was most evident when she worked at the hospital. She had found her niche there. She loved being around people, helping them in any way she could, many times by just being there, and sharing her love with them. Although she said she was not a believer in Christ she embodied everything that Christ taught us.
We still mourn her loss, it brings sadness to those of us who loved and cherished her. But in that sorrow there is joy to know that her suffering is no more, and that she is in a better place with her creator. More than anything what we miss is her presence.
The reason why we can celebrate her birthday is because she is remembered by people all around the world who came into contact with her, and while one person remembers you, you are alive.
So in this day we give God thanks for the lives of these two people who shared the same birthday. To him be the glory.

Las Primarias de Agosto del 2011

Hoy se celebraron lo que se podría llamar la antesala a las próximas elecciones en Argentina, ,y como era de esperarse ganaron la Presidenta Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, y muchos de sus protegidos como Scioli en la Provincia de Buenos Aires.
Sabíamos que las masas la apoyarían (y la apoyarán), pero con eso no le alcanza para una mayoría. El motivo por el cual ganó hoy y, posiblemente gane también en octubre, es porque no hay una oposición y, más que nada, porque parte de la clase media, y de la mejores ingresos sienten que esta administración los ha beneficiado económicamente.
Su trayectoria, y la de su marido, han dejado mucho por desear,inflación al borde del descontrol, falta de seguridad, cortes de rutas creadas por sus portegidos, agresión contra el campo, empobrecimiento de los jubilados a cambio de seguir manteniendo los gastos personales de la Presidente, y últimamente, el cierre de la importación con mayores costos o falta de mucho de los productos que no se fabrican en el país.
En Argentina, como en muchos otros lugares, el egocentrismo de unos pocos decidió ydecidirá el futuro del país

Each nation has the government it deserves

A few days ago I finished my last blog with the concept that every nation has the government that it deserves.
Back where I come from we would always laugh and make fun on the government, regarding its incompetence, trustworthiness and lack of leadership.
Since last December I have been disappointed with President Obama’s performance. The only exception was the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, I have criticized him for not going to Wisconsin and campaign for State Senators, showing that he has convictions, the same kind of convictions that he showed during the primaries and then in the general election of 2008. He seems in the last 9 months to have turned his back to his base. I had even sent an email to the White House saying that if he went ahead with cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with nothing in exchange such as tax increases and cuts in defense he had lost my vote.
Comes Thursday night and I sit down to watch the Republican Debate in Iowa.
What a bunch of light weights, amateurs. When Bachmann was challenged for her total lack of success, she defended the fact that she had stuck in a bill the option for people to choose the type of light bulb they could purchase, and the fact that she would through the whole country into default.
Kain, Mr. Pizza man, said that he is learning as he campaigns. Santorum believes we should make a federal mandate that a marriage is between a man and a woman. Don't we have enough issues at the federal level than to focus on marriage?
Ron Paul was the only candidate that made sense in many instances, for example when he said that the military should not be any longer overseas, and that the country is going bankrupt.
But the icing on the cake was when they all agreed that under no circumstances they would include in any deal any kind of tax increase.
Here is where the title of the blog comes into the picture, members of this party are a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and 47 senators.
Some of these people ran last November under the premise of creating jobs, but have proposed no job creation bill since there've been in Washington. To make matters even worse with unemployment they want to layoff 120,000 United States Postal Service employees. They are willing to create more unemployment so that they can blame it on Obama at the expense of the American people. Their recipe is the same for everything: less regulation, less taxes. That is what they did in the past decade and it put this country in the biggest recession since the Great Depression.
It is sad to see this great country heading in a path of rapid decline. The lack of investment, lack of education, lack of vision are the main causes of this rapid decline.
A friend of mine, who sadly past away, and I would always talk about how the poor and the middle are brain washed, to the point where they would vote against their own interests. They vote for a candidate who favors exporting their jobs overseas, but sugar coats it this by telling them that he or she shares their values by being pro-life, and is against gay marriage. At the end of the day they don’t have a job but they can proudly say that their government will ban abortions and will pass, like Santorum wants, a federal amendment against same sex marriage. They are also told that if taxes are cut for millionaires and billionaires that they will invest in job creation. Mr. Huntsman said last night that 90% of the jobs of his business were created in China, not in the U.S. That is how we now have a structural high unemployment, a rapid disappearance of the middle class, the wealthy getting wealthier at the expense of everybody else, and high deficits at every level because there is no industrial base, and therefore lack of employment paying those taxes. That is how we come to cities like Detroit that have lost huge sections of its population, with whole areas of the city now that have become abandoned with empty houses.
Again, these are the people running to be the “government”, and the reason I used the quotation is because WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT, but until WE take it back by showing up to vote, demanding different priorities from our politicians and forcing the haves to pay what they must, nothing will change. It is not the politicians fault, it’s ours.

The downgrading of the U.S credit rating

Last Friday August 5th 2011, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating from a AAA credit that it has held since 1917 to a AA+.
“Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.” This is a quotation of what the reason Standard and Poor’s gave for the downgrade.
Many Republicans took offense with this because they felt that Standard and Poor had no right to set policy. The entity was not setting policy, it was just basing itself on facts.
As one who believes in facts I have to agree with Standard and Poor’s reasoning.
What we went through during the last few weeks in Washington was inadmissible.
As a big supporter of President Obama is was very disappointed in his leadership. Although he found himself trapped in a situation that was not of his creation, my concern is his willingness in compromising too soon. He did that last December with the extension of the tax cuts, he did the same thing with a single payer health care system . He came across as a weak head of government.
As a big sport fan I look at a leader of a team putting the team on his shoulders, like Kobe Bryant does with the Lakers and Dwain Wade does with Miami Heat, both basketball teams.
When it’s time to deliver, that is when they show up to push the team over the hump.
I don’t think that President Obama has that particular talent. Maybe because he thinks that he should stay above the quarreling of the Congress.
We also now see the candidates, or suspects like a friend of mine would call them, for president on the republican side trying to blame the White House for the downgrading. They must think that most of the country will forget that this president inherited the whole that we are in. This is another reason for disappointment with President Obama, President Reagan kept talking about what he inherited even in his speech at the 1988 Republican Party, so that the country would not forget. President Obama should talk about this every time he addresses the nation. What’s most ironic is what this candidates are proposing is more of what got us in the ditch in the first place, deregulation, more tax cuts for what the republican party these days calls “job creators”, and what we used to call in the past “the wealthy”. It is also amazing is that they never look at what needs to be done to cure the problems we are in. It’s like having a patient with cancer and telling him to take two aspirins and then see how he feels in the morning.
I don’t consider myself an optimist, but I am not a pessimist either. I like to look at myself as a realist, but the future of this nation does not look good. Those days when our representatives used to challenge the population by telling us that the country should put a man in the moon and bring him back safely are long gone. Back then the “job creators”, although they have not been creating jobs for over a decade even when their taxes were lowered, used to pay 70% of their income in taxes; when we could afford to raise seniors from poverty by providing them Social Security first, and then years later, Medicare. When we also created the largest middle class the world had ever seen by having the G.I. Bill, giving people who returned from WWII a college education. Now we want to protect the “job creators” wealth at the expense of pushing grandma and the college students under the bus. Members of the same party are cutting funds in every state that they got their hands on, such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, and New Jersey, and labeling teachers as bullies, cutting their rights, saying that they make too much money, then turning around and passing on the savings in the way of massive tax cuts for their wealthy contributors. Those teachers that are so terrible are educating our young generation, the future of this country.
When I used to live in Argentina, many years ago, we would always say that every country has the government that it deserves. I later discovered that the same saying also exists in English. That is exactly how I feel about the government we have these days in the U.S.

Matthew 12:25, JOY and the US Government

We are witnessing Washington in disarray. It starts with a House of Representatives whose own speaker is not respected by his own party. To that we should add the fact that Congress is divided even amongst itself, with the House with a majority Republican and the Senate with a majority Democrat.
It would be useful to this members of government who are Christians to read Matthew 12:25: Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, "Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.”
For those who do not read the New Testament and also for those who do they should also read a speech from who is with not doubt best president the United States of America has had, Abraham Lincoln. That speech said: A house divided against itself cannot stand. Although he was reflecting on slavery and liberty we should reflect on the stability of this country as a whole with a divided government who is so inflexible the only people affected by this lack of respect on both sides will be the vast majority of the population.
It is time to put arrogance aside and do what is the right thing for the future of this nation. We should always remember the real meaning of the word JOY (Jesus, others and then yourself, in that order).

The tyranny of the wealthiest

As we head into the last few days before the United States of America, the largest Gross Domestic Product in the world tell the world that its word means nothing, that it is not able and that it will not pay its bill we need to take a step back and analyze the whole picture.
We have on one side the Democratic Party willing to put everything on the table to be cut or at least reduce the growth of all the budget, and on the other side we can see a bunch of loonies, unqualified members of the House of Representatives who don't know what it means to make a deal, in other words to govern. We can quote Senator John Mcain today on the floor of the Senate: “The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue and the public will turn against Barack Obama, Republicans in the House who refused to raise the debt ceiling will escape, then Democrats will have no choice but to pass a balance budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party habits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.” Somebody like him who has been around the block a few times can see that creating a catastrophe not just to the country but would push financials markets across the world into chaos. This is the reason that I call these freshmen in the House unqualified.
There is no doubt that President Obama will pay a big price because this happened under his watch but Republicans will also face reality when people find that their 401k have taken a big hit, that the interest rates that they were counting on are gone, and that the unemployment will continue to go up because a new recession will be forced upon us. When the Chamber of Commerce, an ultraconservative institution who was behind many of these infantile House representatives is now running for cover, as they realize that the markets are starting to signal the inflexibility of one half of one branch of government to come to its senses. What we are actually seeing is how the top 1% of income earners have hijacked this country. They are represented through many different front lines groups or entities. One of those entities is Americans for Tax Reform headed by Grover Norquist, a radical right wing extremist that forces Republicans wannabes to sign a pledge that under no circumstance will they ever raise taxes. One would assume that this people would have the option to say no. The other side of the coin is for those who do not sign the pledge or who have signed it and broken that pledge American for Tax Reform will fund new right wing loonies to run against them.
We all really know, whether we want to admit it or not, that the main reason why we are in this whole is because of tax policies that have proved totally false, the theory “that if we reduce taxes there will be greater investment and thus the economy will grow and that will create jobs.” No better proof but just go back to the last two decades, Clinton signed at the time the biggest increase of taxes in 1993 and during his administration 23 million new jobs were created. Then came George W. Bush, he had huge tax cuts for the top 1% of income earners. Only 3 million jobs were created in the same period. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. To make matters worse Bush had two unpaid wars, both that still continue, and unpaid prescription bill. By the time he left we had a financial collapse of a housing bubble created under his watch, and we were losing 700 thousand jobs a month by the time Obama took office.
The top 1% of the population through these puppets in the House are presenting the rest of us with these options: we will protect the jets, the low taxes of the wealthy, their country clubs, but we want Granny to pay more out of pocket for her healthcare, we want to cut her social security benefits, we want the young students to pay more for their tuition to go to school, and cut loose the poor.
What is hard to believe in all of this is that a lot of these people in Congress call themselves Christians. I guess they did not read Matthew 25:40: 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
When I moved to the United States the thing that surprised me the most is how the middle class and the poor accepted the rules imposed by the wealthiest. If we look at society it tends to be a pyramid, with more at the bottom and fewer at the top. By not voting, by not going out and having their voices being heard they have allowed the most radical members of society to run this country to the ground, export their jobs and investment overseas, and then make them pay for the party in which they were never invited in the first place. In 1789 in France the masses said finished to the corruption and lavish lifestyle of the royals at the expense of the people. Maybe its time for the people of this country to wake up and take back what used to be theirs.

A sad story

I have a couple who are friends that I know are heading down a one way road to the abyss. You see them bickering at each other about everything. Every single issue becomes a reason for argument, regardless of the importance.
I’ve known them for a very long time, and it is very sad to see them in this state. I remember when they started dating, they loved being together, even if it meant not going getting together with other friends. They loved doing everything together. They used to walk back from work so that they could spend more time. It looked like 24 hours in a day wasn’t enough time for them to spend together. They shared the same taste for travel, music.
They went through many hurdles but there was always this sense of unity.
But then fate would have it. They were faced with their biggest test. They had a child with a disability.
I know what it means because I have a son with autism, so I know how life puts you to a test. Their son had cerebral pulsy.
And this test that they were faced with would challenge their faith, they belief in each other and primarily their love.
Both of them are professionals but nothing that they had studied in school would prepare them for this.
And the great wall starting cracking. They disagreed about how to raise that child, how to deal with his disability, how he should behave in public, where to go on vacation, etc.
And all of this starting taking its toll on both of them. Their love starting fading away, it didn’t just happen overnight of course. Like everything in life, it was a progression. Their disagreements became more intense. She sought a marriage counselor. It did not work out. It was just a time to disagree with a referee, instead of finding a way of communicating better.
Their lack of communication became silence. They spent less and less time together. When they tried spending some time alone it was just as bad.
Many times in life we put our interests ahead, even if it means hurting somebody else. I consider myself a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ, and if there is something that I can take with me from his teachings is that he laid his life for others. He always put others first.
We are all selfish, the temptation of looking out for our own interests first is something we wrestle with during most of our lives.
When talking with my friend he would go as far as to tell me that their moments of intimacy were very infrequent, if none, and that they were something that he would rather forget. I asked him if that was the way it always was and he said no, that when things were good their sex life was something special, something that both felt good about.
I asked him if he was contemplating leaving his house, and he said that he had thought about many times in the past, but that the only reason he had stayed was because of that child. He felt responsible. The one thing I do remember that he said was that he had tried to bend backwards, forwards and sideways for the marriage to work, but that it had not made a difference.
Time will tell how long they will be able to live under the same roof.
We live in a day and age where people are only focused on their own needs, that’s why marriages end up failing.

River Plate, su descenso a Primera B y el futbol argentino

Durante toda mi vida he sido un simpatizante de River. Primero esperé durante 18 años con grandes frustraciones de por medio para verlo salir campeón. Ganaron muchos campeonatos después de eso incluyendo la copa intercontinental.
Cuando en el año ’85 me fuí a vivir a Estados Unidos perdí casi total conexión con la institución, sus jugadores y quien estaba a cargo del club dado que era imposible saber de los resultados. Lo poco que me enteraba era cuando iba a de visita a Argentina o cuando un familiar o amigo me dejaba saber.
Con el advenimiento del internet pude seguir medianamente los resultados, inclusive he tenido la oportunidad de observer algun que otro partido por medio de la computadora en paginas que transmitieran los partidos. Pero debo admitir que al mirar estos partidos al igual que cuando leo los resultados en un diario publicado en el internet no reconozco ningun nombre. Reconozco el nombre actual del tecnico como tambien del presidente dado que datan de una epoca de gloria de este gran club.
Pero River se ha encontrado con una situación que para muchos inclusos hubiese parecido imposible, el descenso a Primera B. Los ultimos años han ido de mal en peor para este club de 110 abriles. Problemas financieros, falta de continuidad en el equipo tecnico, la falta de un plantel que representa el lugar que esta institución tan presitigiosa debería ocupar, y por lo tanto malas campañas llenos de pobres resultados.
Pero al reflexionar con estos detalles me doy cuenta que es muy probable que la misma suerte puede pasarle a otras grandes organizaciones de Primera A. Boca Juniors, San Lorenzo, Racing Club, Independiente y otros clubes se van a encontrar en el proximo campeonato con la misma suerte que River padecerá hasta que pueda armar un equipo que le permita ascender a la Primera división, ésto también incluye el problema financiero, como mencioné anteriormente, en el que el club se encuentra.
Muchos simpatizantes de muchos equipos rivales de River se estan bufando, riendo de la suerte de River y de sus simpatizantes.
Pero la realidad es que éste es un día desafortunado para el futbol argentino dado que el famoso “clasico de los clasicos” no se vera por un tiempo indefinido, como otros grandes clásico que River ha sido parte todos estos años. Esto no hace más que tambien confirmar que el futbol argentino está atravezando por una muy mala epoca, tal vez una de sus peores. Cuando uno mira a la seleccion argentina uno puede contar con una sola mano los jugadores que participan en un torneos locales. Casi todos juegan en el exterior. Esto produce pobres espectaculos.
Argentina ganó 2 copas en mundiales, la última en el ’86, y perdió en el próximo mundial en la final. Desde entonces ha tenido muy pobres resultados, como en la copa de Japon y Corea que no salió de la primera ronda, y en el ultimo mundial de Sudafrica que perdió apabullado por el seleccionado de Alemania por una cifra de 4-0.
Tal vez ha llegado el momento de empezar a hacer limpieza en el futbol argentino, y que major lugar para empezar que en la A.F.A. que ha presidida por el Sr. Grondona por demasiado tiempo. La A.F.A. es una organización discutiblemente corrupta.
Durante la presidencia de la actual mandataria, Cristina F. de Kirchner, el gobierno pagó 600 millones para “supuestos” derechos televisivos a la A.F.A. Ese era dinero que podría haberse utilizado para cosas mas productivas que derechos televisivos de futbol.
Yo, viviendo en el exterior, pregunto donde fue a parar ese dinero.
Para terminar, nuevamente, el descenso de River, la organizacion con mas campeonatos de la historia argentina, nos demuestra el posible nivel de decadencia del futbol argentino.

Revenge is a dish best served cold

For those of us who are Star Trek fans the phrase “Revenge is a dish best served cold” rings a bell. Although the phrase has its history before Star Trek and its routes are in French I thought it would be well applied to this blog.
Since the ascension of President Obama in January 2009 the Republican Party and a vast majority of its members have been nothing but deceitful and dishonest, primarily with the health care reform bill proposed and passed by the present administration and the Congress. The reason I say that they were deceitful and dishonest is because they ran ads telling people that their health care was going to be either taken away or rationed. At the town hall meetings across country and primarily in democratic held house seats people were being bussed in by groups paid for by the insurance company, creating havoc at many of these town hall meetings. They also campaigned against the mandatory requirement. The interesting thing about this last issue is that in 1994 when President Clinton was trying to propose health care reform the Republican Party was in favor on the mandatory requirement. Even Newt Gingrich on Meet the Press a few weeks ago, and before he changed his mind, said he was in favor of people being forced to purchase insurance.
But here is where the revenge comes into the picture, in one of the most red districts in the northeast, in the 26th district of New York State, a state that Obama carried by more than 25 points in 2008 but lost in the district by more than 10 points, a district that has only voted 4 times (including 05/26/11) since 1857, voted for a Democrat. After the punishment that the Democrats suffered in 2010 this is a rude awakening for Republicans.
Since they have become the majority in the House of Representatives this past January the only thing that they have tried to do is defund the health care reform bill, shutdown the government, maintain the welfare state for oil companies, although they are making record profits, and vote for the Ryan Bill which tries to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid. This last item is was cost the election to the republican candidate for the House of Representatives in this district, because she said that she would have voted for the Ryan Bill.
Republicans have also seen tremendous resistance from the population across country with that bill.
81 % of Americans believe that Medicare and Medicaid should be left alone, 71% of Americans say that the Bush tax cuts should be rolled back. A vast majority of Americans also believe that the giveaways to the oil companies should be eliminated. Everything that the Republican Party disagrees with.
But now, to their surprise, their candidate got voted down because she supported those unpopular and draconian measures, especially when the Ryan bill wants to reduce taxes by 10% for the wealthiest. There are other alternatives. It looks like Republicans have misread their hand, not only in New York but also in other places such as Wisconsin when they overreached, and now they find some of the State legislators being recalled because of their vote.
If Democrats stay on message for 2012 they should be able to keep the Senate, recover the House of Representatives and keep the White House. And the message is simple, keep the Corporations and their cronies off of Medicare, off of Medicaid, roll back the tax cuts for the wealthy and stop the subsidies for the oil companies.

Harold Camping and his followers

Harold Camping, a radio preacher had been telling us for many years that may 21st , 2011 at 6pm E.T. the world would be coming to an end, in other words that it was going to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Mr. Camping said that he reached this conclusion based on what the bible said , that the events that were taking place confirmed all his studies.
In the book of Matthew, chapter 24 versus 36-44 Jesus says: 36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[a] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
I don’t think you need anything clearer than that.
Many followers of Mr. Camping resigned their jobs, billboards across country were putting advertising the end of civilization. People were saying that we would have earthquakes.
May 21st came and went. Nothing happened.
As a Christian people like Mr. Camping offend me. He gives Christians a bad name.
But the thing that I find interesting is that Mr. Camping had 74 million in his bank account. If he thought that his prophecies were true why would he keep his bank account with all that money and not give it away, after all the world was coming to an end.
This completely discredits this gentleman.
He now says that he is flabbergasted that nothing happened this past Saturday.
When I hear things like this it reminds of Jonestown, Guyana, 1978 when 900 members of the Peoples Temple committed suicide.
Instead of worrying about the signs of the second coming we should focus on The Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Obama, Bin Laden y Perez Esqivel

Hace unos días una persona conocida me decía que no podia entender como se puede justificar la muerte de alguien, como fue el asesinato de Bin Laden. Es discutible que las fuerzas especiales podrían haber capturado a Bin Laden, que se lo podría haber enjuiciado en Guantanamo en una corte militar, o en una corte civil dentro de EEUU. Pero indudablemente si se determino que Bin Laden terminara de la manera que termino era porque capturarlo y hacer todos los otros procedimientos anteriormente nombrados sin lugar a dudas hubiese creado en terminos de seguridad muchísimas complicaciones como también dar al terrorismo internacional un motivo para tomar rehenes para hacer un intercambio por un largo período.
Podemos tambien criticar la política exterior de EEUU desde el final de la segunda guerra mundial, muchas veces apoyando golpes de estado en muchos paises del mundo, pero defender a Bin Laden como un héreo es como defender a los terroristas durante todo el proceso que termino en la guerra sucia de la Argentina desde el ’76 y el ’83. Yo nunca defendi los medios que utilizo el ejercito durante esos años, pero tampoco se pueden cerrar los ojos a la realidad que condujo a eso.
Simplemente recordemos como y cuando empezó todo el proceso de terrorismo en la Argentina. En 1970 el ex-presidente Aramburu fué secuestrado y asesinado por lo que después se terminó convirtiendo en Montoneros con Firmenich, Abal Medina, Arrostito y Capuano Martinez.
Esta persona conocida que nombre al principio también me envió un editorial que es una carta de Perez Ezquivel a Obama cuestionando los métodos de EEUU, y dónde cuestiona las calificaciones del premio Nobel de la paz otorgado a Obama.
Tenemos que ser conscientes y realistas de como se determina quien recibe el premio Nobel de la paz. Es un premio politico mas que nada. Obama lo recibe con unos pocos meses en su administración. Porqué es adjudicado el premio? A pesar de no conocer los motivos yo pienso que es muy simple. Es el primer presidente negro de EEUU. No ganó con fraude sino en total justicia, fue votado por una mayoría de votos y de estados (colegio electoral).
Yo encuentro la carta de Perez Esquivel particularmente graciosa. Supongo que porque no puedo contener mi cinismo. Sabemos que el Señor Perez Esquivel no puede ser etiquetado de derecha, me parece que ni siquiera de centro, a menos que el centro dejó de ser la línea de 50, siendo 0 la ultra izquierda y 100 la ultra derecha.
Yo he sido etiquetado de burgués, lo cual me causa gracia porque la persona que me puso esa etiqueta creció entre algodones y vive en un mundo que podríamos llamar de una clase privilegiada. Fernando Abal Medina también vino de familia privilegiada. Yo siempre digo que es fácil ser de izquierda cuando uno tiene una buena cuenta bancaria.
También he sido etiquetado de comunista en EEUU. Eso también es gracioso porque para los estadounidenses izquierda de Atila, el rey de los Hunos ya es ser comunista.
Yo me considero un social demócrata europeo, como piensan la gran mayoría de los países europeos continentals, como Francia, Holanda, Dinamarca, Suecia, etc.
Volviendo a nuestra figura principal Bin Laden, fué un oportunista, que no unicamente le declara la Guerra a EEUU por medio de una organización que utiliza el terrorismo llamada Al-Qaeda, sino que también asesinó gente de otros países. No nos podemos olvidar de la bomba de la discoteca en Bali, de bombas y asesinatos en Iraq, de las bombas en Kenya y Tanzanía contra embajadas de EEUU, pero en donde murieron mas locales que estadounidenses.
Muchos otros en el pasado como Guevara también decidieron tomar en sus propias manos el avance del “Norte”, pero a pesar de que no podemos dejar de reconocer que muchos de los medios utilizados por Guevara en Cuba no fueron los ideales, el “Che” trabajo en el campo y en industrias durante su período en Cuba, en donde buscaba la mejora de la calidad de vida de los cubanos. Pero no podemos decir lo mismo de Bin Laden. Que beneficios le trajo a la gente de Afganistan, a la gente de Sudan, a la gente de Paquistán. NADA. Por eso para mi el no califica como un libertador sino simplemente como un terrorista, sin ningún objetivo de bien sino de destrucción. Y una casualidad más antes que termine con este blog, Osama Bin Laden venía de una familia de ricos. Bin Laden no sera extrañado.
Y dado que Obama también juega un rol en este blog, el actual presidente tenía todas en su contra en su vida, su padre era negro (africano) que se casó con una mujer blanca, su padre los abandona cuando Obama tenía 2 años, fué criado por sus abuelos, y el también es negro, en un país que a pesar de haber pasado leyes contra la discriminación sigue teniendo mucha gente que todavía tiene dificultades con las minorías. Pero el puso todo eso de lado, fue a la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York, y después a Harvard. Se recibió con honores.
Perez Esquivel me parece tiene mucho para aprender todavía antes de cuestionar a Obama.

Big Oil and the U.S. government

The U.S. Senate blocked this week a proposal to stop handouts to the 5 big oil companies worth 5 billion.
All of the 47 Republicans and 3 Democrat Senators voted to keep the subsidies under the pretense that it would hurt customers at the pump. Customers are already hurting. The Energy Committee of the U.S. Senate had hearings with the Chairmen of the big oil companies. One of the chairmen said that the American public does not want the oil companies to sacrifice, they only want the wellbeing of businesses.
A poll taken by NBC/Wall Street Journal taken in February of 2011 showed that 74% of Americans believe that subsidies should be eliminated.
But the members that voted not to eliminate those subsidies have received 25 million in campaign contributions from these companies while the people who voted in favor of eliminating them only received 5 million from the oil industry.
I have said in the past that the oil industry together with other big contributors is one of the cancers of this country. They corrupt the system, poison the air we breathe and pollute the water we drink with leaks into soil.
The hoax of the republican party about cutting the federal deficit is nothing but a cover up of what it really is, the dismantling of ALL the programs that help the middle class and the poor, destroying Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Dond Trump and the shameful white majority of the US

Today is a sad day in the United States of America when an African American man had to show his papers just like in the times of slavery when white people considered a black man a second class citizen.
Donald Trump has proven to the whole country that he nothing short of a buffoon, questioning the fact that President Obama was born in Hawaii. He is also focusing on the fact that nobody can remember going to school and to college with this president. He is questioning Obama’s grades and how he got into Columbia and Harvard.
What makes this matter sad is that no other republican candidate or member of the Republican Party is denouncing Trump for this. When you have almost 50% of republicans who believe that Obama was not born in the U.S. and that he is a Muslim.
The main reason the Republican Party has behaved shamefully is because the president is an African American. Nobody would have ever questioned him if he would have been white.
It is hard to believe that the white majority in this country have not moved on since the Civil rights act of the 60s.

House Republicans getting a little bit of their own medicine

House Republicans voted last week to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid as we know it and provide vouchers to seniors so that people who have a hard time figuring out how to setup a VCR, how to turn on a computer and how to use a cell phone can negotiate their own policy with the insurance companies.
We have to imagine that these members of the House were expecting to be treated as, in the words of Vice-President Cheney, “liberators”. But that was not the case. People are not only extremely angry at this House members, but they are telling them that they don’t want their health coverage to be taken away so that the wealthy get more tax cuts.
If I didn’t say that I am extremely pleased with people’s reactions I would not be honest. I am very happy. All the networks are talking about this, all of them with the exception of one, Fox News. This does not come as a surprise as they endorse the destruction of all the programs that help the needy.
What the majority of people across the country are saying is the same that polls are showing, do not take away Medicare and Medicaid, raise taxes on the wealthy, raise taxes on corporations, take away subsidies for the oil companies.
Republicans are not in the business of listening to the middle class and the poor. They are there to defend the interests of the wealthy, the insurance companies, the banking industry and corporations that do not want to pay their fair share in taxes.
What the public needs to understand is that unless they show up to vote this will not change. The people who want to take their social security and Medicare and who whipped out their 401ks will make sure that no programs that benefit most of Americans will be left untouched.

Argentina y la eleccion del 2011

A pesar de haber emigrado de la Argentina hace casi 26 años sigo con interés y de manera casi diaria los acontecimientos que viven los argentinos. Mi incentivo son mis familiares y muchos amigos aún viviendo ahí, y porque he podido volver a visitar casi todos estos años de vivir en el exterior.
Durante este largo período he notado una gran cantidad de cambios, algunos más preocupantes que otros.
Primero está el tema de la inseguridad, que he notado en parte en carne propia la última vez que estuve ahí. El incidente me tomó por sorpresa, tal vez porque donde vivo no se da. Se ve de todo en EEUU incluyendo crimininalidad, pero el incidente fue algo inesperado. La falta de seguridad comenzo con el gobierno de Menem, pero se ha acelerado en estos ultimos años.
Segundo está el tema de los cortes de las calles, avenidas, rutas, etc. Yo soy un ferviente defensor de las libertades individuales, incluyendo el derecho de manifestar. Pero cuando las libertades de un grupo de gente invaden las libertades de otros, eso deja de ser libertad de expresion.
Tercero, la represion o el intent de callar las voces de la oposición al gobierno central de la República. Hago esta distincion porque tambien existen los gobiernos de la capital y de las provincias. Esta represion se da por distintos medios, desde no permitir la circulacion de diarios como tambien de traer juicios contra miembros de la oposicion.
Hay otras cosas que leo que tambien son de preocupacion como los sindicatos, que en mi opinion estan fuera de control, como exigir representacion en empresas. Si Argentina fuese Alemania lo aceptaria, dado que miembros de sindicatos tienen representacion en Mercedez Benz, como tambien en otras empresas. Pero los sindicatos de Argentina no son los sindicatos de Alemania.
Inflacion que se esta acelerando, a pesar de no reconocer esto, provocando un deterioro del poder adquisitivo, y creando mayores problemas sociales producto de la pobreza, como tambien relegando a los jubilados a decaer en su calidad de vida. La prueba de que se sabe el verdadero deterioro del salario son los constants reclamos de incrementos de los sindicatos.
En todas estas cosas hay siempre un factor común que no he nombrado, pero que para mi es evidente. La familia Kirchner. El desaparecido ex-presidente tenia sus tentaculos en todo. Durante su presidencia y durante la presidencia de su mujer.
La familia Kirchner y todos sus emisarios, desde Moyano, Fernandez, hasta miembros del congreso y el senado manejan todo, y se reprime o calla a la oposicion.
Y no he incluido en todo esto el enriquecimiento ilicito de la familia Kirchner y todos sus secuaces. Esto parece mas Ali Baba y los 40 ladrones.
La eleccion presidencial por venir es una de las mas importantes en la era post-militar 1976-1983. A pesar de no estar mas Nestor Kirchner para seguir con la dinastia, todo indicaria que la actual presidenta sera re-elegida, no por sus cualidades sino porque no existe una oposicion organizada. La falta de una oposicion es gran gran parte del problema. Da la impresion que todos quieren una parte de la torta. Carrio no tiene ninguna posibilidad por su cuenta, Alfonsin esta en la misma, Macri no puede ganar con la Capital Federal solamente, Duhalde, no se decide. En la ultima eleccion presidencial la actual presidenta no llego a la mayoria, pero tuvo la mayor minoria. En esta proxima eleccion da la impresion de que va a suceder lo mismo. Es hora de que la oposicion se unifique para destronar, y por fin terminar con todos estos abusos de poder que han vivido durante esta ultima decada.

The elimination of Medicare and Medicaid

Representative Paul Ryan, House Budget Committee Chairman, proposed yesterday what will become the dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid as we know it.
His plan proposes to eliminate the program and its place offer vouchers to senior citizens. He said that Medicare will be available to people 55 and older, but that, and I quote “the government should stay out of healthcare”.
What he is proposing is a fixed amount so that seniors can go out and purchase health coverage. What he is keeping in mind is that healthcare has had increases far above the inflation. That means that eventually, down the road, senior will have to choose between food and healthcare.
These are the same people who were saying that the healthcare reform that President Obama was proposing would kill granny.
Rep. Ryan as says that the problem is that the federal government spends too much, and not that it taxes the wealthiest and corporation not enough.
He is proposing together with the elimination of Medicare and Medicaid, programs that help the middle class and poor, the reduction of taxes for the wealthiest and corporations to a 25%, instead of the 35% that “they are paying today”. The reason I used quotation marks is because they do not really pay that percentage. They find loopholes to avoid their fair share of taxes.
Rep. Ryan is not interested in eliminating the welfare state for corporations that we have right now. He does believe of eliminating subsidies to oil companies. Companies that have made over 1 trillion in profit in the last ten years.
He does not believe in the reduction of the biggest waste in the federal budget, the Department of Defense. The 2011 budget for defense is 750 billion dollars. There is plenty of waste there.
The U.S. has not been able to get out of the war economy that brought the country from the depression during WW II.
After President Clinton reduced the size of the Pentagon, came the Bush-Chenney administration and almost doubled the budget that President Clinton had. We will have spent 3 trillion dollars by the time we are finished with Iraq, a war not only based on lies, but also unnecessary and that has not been paid.
After republicans will try to impose the demolition of the healthcare system in this country they will also try to sell us the idea of the elimination of Social Security.
And all this is under the premise that the country cannot afford these programs.
The beginning of the government having problems with its finances started with the Reagan administration when taxes on the wealthiest and corporations were reduced in half.
Republicans are now threatening a shutdown of government. This may be the only way that people who voted for these members of congress wake up and realize the mistake they made.