The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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The Lunatic Fringe is No Longer Amusing. Let's get Serious.

By Ramona on Thu, 06/24/2010 - 1:03pm |
We have to stop pretending that what is happening in our country is a cyclical blip in our journey toward glory. We're being destroyed from the inside by our own citizens, and our real enemies couldn't be happier. They don't have to lift a finger. All it takes for them is patience.
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The Battle for Public Schools - Kids? What kids?

By Ramona on Thu, 05/20/2010 - 8:58pm |
These days we're looking, talking and acting more and more like some comic's version of a third world country, but so far we've kept the mercenaries at bay when it comes to our most sacrosanct obligation--basic education for all. The Right Wing in our country have been beating their gums for eons now about the need to turn public schools over to private interests, but so far we've been able to brush them off like the nasty little gnats they are.
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It's Official - Goldman Sachs harbors and nurtures Creeps and Crooks. But we love the rich, so lay off.

By Ramona on Thu, 05/13/2010 - 9:02pm |
The financial crisis has unveiled a new set of public villains--corrupt corporate capitalists who leveraged their connections in government for their own personal profit. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, many of these schemers were worshiped as geniuses, heroes or...
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Ernie Harwell - In Remembrance of You

By Ramona on Fri, 05/07/2010 - 11:04pm |
Baseball is the President tossing out the first ball of the season and a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm. A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from the corner of his dugout....
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May Day: Workers of the World, Hang in There

By Ramona on Sat, 05/01/2010 - 6:22pm |
In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:•Workingmen to Arms!•War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.•The wage system is the only cause of the...
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Don't take your guns to town, boys. There's nobody out to get you and you're just going to look silly

By Ramona on Wed, 04/28/2010 - 10:09pm |
So what's the natural progression, considering that the New World Order in all its blackness is honest-to-God almost almost here. Well, if you've got any brains at all, you strap on your guns and saddle up and then you go to wherever the President of the United States happens to be, or at least to wherever a prominent Democrat happens to be, because. . . . Because you have guns and you know how to show them.
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A Day to Celebrate the Earth. Tomorrow: Business as Usual?

By Ramona on Thu, 04/22/2010 - 10:57pm |
Enough had finally become enough, and under Lyndon Johnson and a congress that could see clearly now (even though the rest of us were still lost in a choking, eye-watering, salmon-colored, man-made smog), we saw a Clean Air Act, a Clean Water act, a National Wilderness Preservation System, a Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, a National Trails System Act, and, for what it was worth, a National Environmental Policy.
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Could we just have the Damn Tax Day without the Rollicking Tea Party?

By Ramona on Fri, 04/16/2010 - 2:29am |
So when I wasn't filling out forms I was snickering at those faux-Yahoos mugging their faces off for the TV cameras, pretending that they're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Who are they trying to kid? They're mad as hell that Obama is president and then the other thing is that they're mad as hell that Obama is president.
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Giving Legitimacy to Hate

By Ramona on Fri, 03/26/2010 - 11:21pm |
Memo to WaPo Front Page editor: You missed the big news. The big news is that American health care just took a baby step toward actual reform. You might be bored with it, it's been going on for so long, but trust me, the millions without adequate health care can't get enough of it.
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Fear and Loathing - The New American Vision

By Ramona on Tue, 03/23/2010 - 6:56pm |
The rabid crazies are being fed their favorite dish--publicity--and, gluttons that they are, they're eating it up and going after more. They understand how it works--in order to get more they have to give more, which means that each time they're out there in front of the cameras they have to step up the action. More hate! More fear! Louder! Louder!

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http://www.ramonasvoices.com
Favorite Quotes

 

"Leave safety behind. Put your body on the line. Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind - even if your voice shakes. When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Well-aimed slingshots can topple giants. And do your homework." . Maggie Kuhn

 

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.  Dorothy Parker

"Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow ... money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands" - Abraham Lincoln

 

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.-John Steinbeck

 

The moment you limit free speech it's not free speech. -Salman Rushdie

Biography

Ramona used to write nice feature pieces for newspapers and magazines, along with columns that, yes, got testy once in a while (Ronald Reagan was president. What could she do?) but were basically and overall nice.

But then. . .

. . .then came the hanky-panky and subsequent impeachment of Bill Clinton!  Then Bush v. Gore!  Hanging Chads!  Katherine Harris!  Supreme Court busy bodies! 9/11!  War with Iraq! (Iraq??)  The right wing!  The religious right!  The TEA PARTY, for God's sake!

Whatever she is today is the fault of all of the above.  She is not to blame.

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