Good Ideas From All Sorts Of Places

Raskalinikov of Dust My Broom, has an interesting and thought provoking post, here. In it he discusses Canadian aboriginal issues as they relate to society, culture and responsibility.

Sure fire way to justify dropping a $100M on Indians: Say it’s for health care and education, because if there’s one thing we Indians need it’s another program set up to tell us about diabetes, the evils of white flour and how those nicotine sticks we smoke are bad for us; not to mention yet another “re-culturalization” program where we don’t graduate, grade each other (have we not been graded and found failing enough in the last 500 years?), or study such superfluities as science and math but instead sit around and talk about how whitey is stopping us from having educational programs where we can sit around talking about how whitey is stopping us from having educational programs that allow us to discuss how whitey’s colonialism is keeping us down.

His post is a continuation of other thoughts, found here and here. There are other posts worth reading. Raskalnikov's posts are cogent, thoughtful and above all, frustrating. We are faced with the truth that there is plenty here at home that we need to deal with, before we take on problems that are far away or deal with issues that on their face, are manufactured and self serving. Whether a tenured professor of poetry transgendered and then gay sexuality are ideas that might merit discussion, that discusion should not precede matters of life, death and hopelesness in the aboriginal communities.

Maxed Out Mama's post, The Schumer Doctrine, is more subtle- and more important.

I don't believe that we will have a Supreme Court in our lifetime dedicated to protecting the constitutional rights of the citizens, and I believe we will have to start organizing on the grass-roots level to overrule the Supreme Court's misdeeds of the past twenty years. We are going to have to overrule the fools a few times with new constitutional amendments before they will get serious.

The Lost Budgie has a somber reminder as his effort- and somber is only a mild adjective. His post is cold, bitter and more than a bit of a splash of cold water.

On a lighter note, Tommy, of Striving For Average, shows us some heretofore hidden humor. See this and this, for starters. His posts really are funny and sharp.