Michael Maiello is probably at the top of my list of internet and writing/publishing friends. He is a regular contributor at Dagblog and the author of several books and a comical play about the Iraq war. I have known him for three years now and he has helped me a bit - gotten me published and helped me through some traumatic life events such as my rehabilitation from SSRI antidepressant use and the loss of my fiancé Jennifer Reimer. He did all of this online too! Maiello, like me, is a deep thinker, and through our talks we don't really seek to avoid but rather to inform. This one is short but filled with some very weighty topics that I know are on many minds. Here goes.

I lost a longer version of this and that is probably for the best. Here is the shorter version in which I don't try to cover every possible nuance but just hit the high points to make my point.

The phrase “human shield" has, IMO, become Orwellian in its use in relation to the ongoing conflict between Israel and either Hamas or the Palestinian people as a whole. One aspect of actually using humans as shields is emphasized while another equally important aspect is ignored. The complete, true, and honest implications of the phrase itself, regardless of whether Hamas actually does use humans as shields, is intentionally obscured. A narrow and less than complete understanding of the implications of the charge is intended to be mentally embedded while the full implications are distorted or, hopefully, un-noticed.

There is nothing a snobbish Ivy Leaguer likes better than putting down the Ivy League. It's an easy way to signal that you are above your own Ivy League school and the privilege it confers -- all a big humbug that your superior perspective sees right through -- while holding on to every last scrap of that privilege. It allows you to position yourself as not only 1. better than people who didn't get into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, but 2. the benevolent champion of those little people who didn't get in and also 3.

This November the voters in Florida will be voting on Amendment to legalize medical marijuana. In order for it to pass 60% of the voters have to vote yes on it. This will amend the state constitution to allow it's use.  A group called United for Care was the force behind getting bill on the ballot. Florida will be the first state in the deep South to legalize medical marijuana if it passes.  

Mexican children, unlike their unfortunate neighbors from slightly to the south, are apparently to be envied for the secure and loving bosom  in which their enlightened country envelops them.

Notwithstanding the depravity of Mexican narco traffickers, who will not hesitate to decorate the public square with the heads of those who discomfort them, no Mexican children are forcibly recruited as drug couriers, sellers, or lookouts, unlike those unfortunates in Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala.