Ramona | dagblog

Personal Information

Website

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.

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.

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.

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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Wolf Blitzer says Michael Moore is Alone out there. Oh Boy!

By Ramona on Sat, 03/20/2010 - 9:31pm |

Wolf Blitzer just told Michael Moore he's pretty much alone out there when it comes to universal health care. Moore said something like, "I don't think so, there are millions of people out there who are fighting for the same...

Integrity, you out there? Is Honesty with you? Gonna be Gone Long?

By Ramona on Wed, 03/17/2010 - 9:41pm |

Today I watched a video clip showing some of Dick Armey's fine, upstanding Tea Partiers harassing a man sitting on the ground. The man has Parkinson's Disease, but is out there working hard for health care for everybody. They had to bend down to get in his face. One of the white-shirts threw dollar bills at him. Someone in the background shouted "Communist!" He sat quietly throughout it all, not because he knows his place, but because he knows he's right.

Job fairs, census jobs, and--wouldn't you know? Nut jobs

By Ramona on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 2:19pm |

How many jobless people took in what those baboons were saying? What does it take to get those jobless, demoralized folks mad as hell? I know it's a struggle just to get through the day for millions of people these days, but, damn! Enough is enough. They're thumbing their noses at us, spitting in our faces, and, in the case of Tom Delay, grinning like Jack Nicholson in "The shining" while he's thumbing and spitting.

No, really - The Sky is Falling!

By Ramona on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 12:54pm |

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits. Economists...

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Breaking News! A People Person Discovered in Congress!

By Ramona on Thu, 02/25/2010 - 12:07pm |

It's the morning of the Day After Weiner Socks it to Congress, calling the Republicans a "wholly-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry", and the video is going viral--I can only hope. I'm going to do my part today to pester...

Square Deal, New Deal, Fair Deal, Raw Deal: What's it gonna be?

By Ramona on Thu, 02/18/2010 - 10:25pm |

Their strategy is to overwhelm us when we're looking the other way. They scatter divisive issues among us, like religion and communism and abortion and taxes and elusive presidential birth certificates and death sentences for our grandmothers, and while we're preoccupied with the stuff that makes us really, really mad, they rob us blind and revel in the spoils.

False Labor: After Elaine Chao, You Owe Us

By Ramona on Fri, 02/12/2010 - 1:00pm |

Name me one Republican congressperson who backs the unions. Name me one who has EVER backed the unions. Now give me one good reason why any of us who support unions and equity in the work force should be hopeful...

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Maddow on the Repub Hypocrites and the Dem Chickenhearts: Priceless

By Ramona on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 1:58pm |

Just wanted to pass along the most incredible piece of responsible journalism I've seen in a long, long, LONG time. Rachel Maddow is the Edward R. Murrow of our age. The Republicans can have their Sarah Palin. We have Rachel...

Sarah Palin Tea Party Speech SIMULCAST: Surrender NOW

By Ramona on Sun, 02/07/2010 - 1:12pm |

Remember how much fun we had with those people? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? That it was all a clever ruse designed to put us off-guard until the actual Saturday-night Tea Party massacre?

Help Needed: Heroes. Must relate well to Huddled Masses

By Ramona on Fri, 02/05/2010 - 11:05am |

Toward the end of my last blog, American Dreamer posted a Help Wanted ad:<blockquote>Help Wanted: inspiring, credible national spokesperson(s) to lead a nonviolent social movement that reflects widespread popular grievances in a vocabulary consonant with popular perceptions of what is...

We are the Ordinary People of our Time

By Ramona on Tue, 02/02/2010 - 10:01pm |

t takes some bodacious, mendacious audacity to write in the Wall Street Journal about hubris or ". . .a bureaucratic elite [that] disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will" after those not-so-long-ago (but really, really long) Bush years, but if anybody can pull it off, it's the WSJ. Their audience has the most to lose if Obama wins his battles.

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Labor's Cries are Getting Weaker. Who is Going to Dig Them Out?

By Ramona on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 3:30pm |

We have a history of putting blinders on when things get tough, and we have a history of not learning from our own history. We're in the midst of another severe economic crisis, for all intents a repeat of our Great Depression, and still we hear the voices telling us it's not so bad--and we want to believe them.

The SCOTUS Five: Just Asses

By Ramona on Fri, 01/22/2010 - 7:41pm |

Yesterday those five scamps saw another chance to give their corporate heroes the gift that keeps on giving--namely US on a platter--and made into law the right for "corporations, trade associations, unions and nonprofit groups" to spend any amount they wish from any old source, in order to bash, lash, eviscerate, decapitate, or otherwise destroy, any political candidate who might seriously get in their way. No holds barred anymore. None. Free at last, free at last. . .

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A Year of Obama: The Hope Still Lives

By Ramona on Wed, 01/20/2010 - 12:38pm |

A year ago today, as I sat watching the inauguration of Barack Obama, listening to our new president's call to duty, it suddenly occurred to me that it might be a good day to start a political blog. I already...

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Robertson, Limbaugh and Why They Matter

By Ramona on Fri, 01/15/2010 - 8:54pm |

Hour by hour, day by day, we've been watching the devastation that is Haiti. The plight of that sad, forgotten country is being forced on us in such a way that it is no longer possible to turn away from...

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Take Me to Our Leader

By Ramona on Thu, 01/07/2010 - 1:21pm |

For eight long Bushwhacked years, we moaned and groaned and predicted the predictable outcomes. And when they came, we got nothing for our troubles except to be able to utter a wholly unsatisfying "We told you so". Because for eight long Bushwhacked years we, the Liberals afraid to speak our own name, had no real leaders.