When I was a very small child, my family had a big console TV--black and white, because I'm old. I had heard that there was such a thing as color TV, but I hadn't seen one. The news of such a device, however, inspired me. After that, I would watch shows and 'see' them in color. One time, I was watching a movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, in which a wimpy guy played by Don Knotts transformed into a fish. My mom was watching with me and I said something about the color--how cool it would be if you could live under the water and see everything in that pretty blue-green hue. She looked at me like I was nuts and said something about my 'imagination.' I was quite offended, because to me, the color was what was 'real.'
Many years later, watching the movie What Dreams May Come, with Robin Williams, I was actually moved to tears by the incredible scenery that the main character created for his version of Heaven. The colors and textures were astonishing as he recreated scenes from his wife's paintings for his 'reality.' At the time, I shook off my mushy nature and joked about crying at such stupid things. But now, I think those events may have been sort of like my cosmic training wheels.
You see, recently, fate has been pushing me to practice my art of innovative perception again. I've realized that about 2/3 of all that ails we humans is a failure of imagination. We focus most of our attention on the bad stuff--wars, scarcity, violence, division. And when we do notice anything good, we mostly write it off as trivia, or sentimentalism, like I did when I cried at the beauty of the movie. We've trained ourselves to experience life in black and white--a specter of the real world, but without vibrance, shadings, or nuance. Only contrast.
We need more color. We need to see the blue of sky, the green of the trees, the amber brown of doggy eyes, even the red of the blood. In black and white, it's too easy to miss the astonishing beauty in our world, and it's too convenient to overlook the incredible horror. I read a line some time ago that says that you can't fix any problem at the same level of consciousness that created it. Well, we need to shed our black and white blinders and see both the problems and the beauty in our world with new technicolor eyes. Then we'll be able to envision something different, even if the rest of the world is still convinced that Mr. Limpet is grey.
I'm going to be pushing to reach back and find the person I used to be who thought that the color was real, even when no one else could see it. Join me.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Congratulations...It's a Planet!
In the past several months, I've been noticing an intensification of things. Emotion. Conflict. Understanding.
People have told us the world is ending--by comet, death-star, renegade planet, natural disasters, financial collapse, Biblical Apocalypse. And yet here we are. Against all odds, we're still standing. And for the first time in a long time, it seems that the log-jam of apathy and denial that engulfs and paralyzes us is beginning to move. For years we talked about the same things, over and over, as if talking about them and blaming people for them would somehow fix them. Deficits, Terrorism, Spending, Evil Republicans, Evil Democrats, Facists, Socialists, and on and on. This led many people to get sucked into the swirling vortex of unending and unproductive drama. It's 'their' fault--they started it--they're the evil ones--they're the threat. If only everyone saw things like I do, the world would be so much better. For those of you who have spent the last year or so expecting the worst, look around--we're getting better.
Maybe it's hard to believe that the place we find ourselves today is an improvement, but think about it. A whole lot of people have come out of their electronically induced coma to protest in the streets, to criticize people for protesting in the streets, to begin losing interest in a political system of two parties who tell us to hate the other side to fix the world. We're talking. We're demanding that something finally give. And it is. Here's an example.
Yesterday, I tried to get on the Oakland City Government website to give Oakland Mayor Jean Chan a piece of my mind about the stormtroopers who shot Marine Veteran Scott Olsen in the face as he stood in front of a police barricade at Occupy Oakland. The website was down--crashed by activity. I tried to call. Busy on numerous occasions. I managed to get an email in this morning, as I would guess thousands of other people have. In 24 hours, Oakland authorities went from 'everything is as it should be' to 'we're awfully sorry about this.' Things they are a changin'.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that we're anywhere near "there," wherever that is. But a month ago, Occupy Wall Street wasn't even reported in the mainstream, the Iraq troops weren't leaving Iraq, Mitt Romney had the Republican nomination sewn up, the "news" consisted largely of excited chatter about Chaz Bono being on Dancing with the Stars, and all was spinning the greased grooves, as Steinbeck said. But I predicted several weeks ago that the wheels were coming off the bus--and they are. There's going to be a lot more upheaval and chaos, a lot more inconvenient change, a lot less certainty that we actually know what we've been told we know. We are seeing the result of regular people envisioning a world that's different in fundamental ways--more peaceful, less corrupt, less opaque and secretive, and less stacked against the regular folks.
So don't give up. Maintain the daringly insane thought that maybe, just maybe, a world could exist where trillions in war spending gets cut and instead spent on education or Social Security or healthcare. Where, when trillions of dollars "go missing" from Federal budgets, someone bothers to look for it and maybe even prosecute the people who took it. Where our government captures, tries and convicts people who do bad stuff, not murder them by fiat. Where currency means value and rich bankers don't just get to make up electronic monopoly money and give it away to themselves and their buddies for the rest of us to pay back later, with interest. Where public officials meet with regular constituents instead of lobbyists and drug cartels and warlords and tyrants. Where we don't have to be constantly asking 'where are we going and what are we doing in this handbasket?' Picture that world; think about it every day. Occasionally do something that would lead in that direction. The cumulative effect of several billion people making tiny changes amounts to a huge revolution.
If we're crazy enough to believe it, we can conceive it. We can give birth to a brand new bouncing baby world.
People have told us the world is ending--by comet, death-star, renegade planet, natural disasters, financial collapse, Biblical Apocalypse. And yet here we are. Against all odds, we're still standing. And for the first time in a long time, it seems that the log-jam of apathy and denial that engulfs and paralyzes us is beginning to move. For years we talked about the same things, over and over, as if talking about them and blaming people for them would somehow fix them. Deficits, Terrorism, Spending, Evil Republicans, Evil Democrats, Facists, Socialists, and on and on. This led many people to get sucked into the swirling vortex of unending and unproductive drama. It's 'their' fault--they started it--they're the evil ones--they're the threat. If only everyone saw things like I do, the world would be so much better. For those of you who have spent the last year or so expecting the worst, look around--we're getting better.
Maybe it's hard to believe that the place we find ourselves today is an improvement, but think about it. A whole lot of people have come out of their electronically induced coma to protest in the streets, to criticize people for protesting in the streets, to begin losing interest in a political system of two parties who tell us to hate the other side to fix the world. We're talking. We're demanding that something finally give. And it is. Here's an example.
Yesterday, I tried to get on the Oakland City Government website to give Oakland Mayor Jean Chan a piece of my mind about the stormtroopers who shot Marine Veteran Scott Olsen in the face as he stood in front of a police barricade at Occupy Oakland. The website was down--crashed by activity. I tried to call. Busy on numerous occasions. I managed to get an email in this morning, as I would guess thousands of other people have. In 24 hours, Oakland authorities went from 'everything is as it should be' to 'we're awfully sorry about this.' Things they are a changin'.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that we're anywhere near "there," wherever that is. But a month ago, Occupy Wall Street wasn't even reported in the mainstream, the Iraq troops weren't leaving Iraq, Mitt Romney had the Republican nomination sewn up, the "news" consisted largely of excited chatter about Chaz Bono being on Dancing with the Stars, and all was spinning the greased grooves, as Steinbeck said. But I predicted several weeks ago that the wheels were coming off the bus--and they are. There's going to be a lot more upheaval and chaos, a lot more inconvenient change, a lot less certainty that we actually know what we've been told we know. We are seeing the result of regular people envisioning a world that's different in fundamental ways--more peaceful, less corrupt, less opaque and secretive, and less stacked against the regular folks.
So don't give up. Maintain the daringly insane thought that maybe, just maybe, a world could exist where trillions in war spending gets cut and instead spent on education or Social Security or healthcare. Where, when trillions of dollars "go missing" from Federal budgets, someone bothers to look for it and maybe even prosecute the people who took it. Where our government captures, tries and convicts people who do bad stuff, not murder them by fiat. Where currency means value and rich bankers don't just get to make up electronic monopoly money and give it away to themselves and their buddies for the rest of us to pay back later, with interest. Where public officials meet with regular constituents instead of lobbyists and drug cartels and warlords and tyrants. Where we don't have to be constantly asking 'where are we going and what are we doing in this handbasket?' Picture that world; think about it every day. Occasionally do something that would lead in that direction. The cumulative effect of several billion people making tiny changes amounts to a huge revolution.
If we're crazy enough to believe it, we can conceive it. We can give birth to a brand new bouncing baby world.
Cruel and Unusual
Remember our friends from the NYPD in the video linked to my post, Have You Seen This on the News of September 24?
Well, he got his. The NYPD found that Inspector Anthony Bologna, the white-shirted PD supervisor who pepper-sprayed a bunch of young women penned up by other police behind orange netting, had violated policy in his use of pepper spray. Boy will he be sorry! He's losing TEN vacation days.
Now, I must confess a certain ignorance of this, having never falsely imprisoned a group of people and then blasted them with mace, but I'm guessing that if you or I did something similar, without legal justification--which is exactly what it means when a police officer violates policy in the use of force--you or I would find ourselves on vacation for at least a few days--in jail. Inspector Bologna gets to spend a few extra days bullying civilians as punishment for his crime.
Funny, isn't it, how the people who get paid and trained to know just how to act in those situations are held to a lesser standard than those of us who are winging it.
Well, he got his. The NYPD found that Inspector Anthony Bologna, the white-shirted PD supervisor who pepper-sprayed a bunch of young women penned up by other police behind orange netting, had violated policy in his use of pepper spray. Boy will he be sorry! He's losing TEN vacation days.
Now, I must confess a certain ignorance of this, having never falsely imprisoned a group of people and then blasted them with mace, but I'm guessing that if you or I did something similar, without legal justification--which is exactly what it means when a police officer violates policy in the use of force--you or I would find ourselves on vacation for at least a few days--in jail. Inspector Bologna gets to spend a few extra days bullying civilians as punishment for his crime.
Funny, isn't it, how the people who get paid and trained to know just how to act in those situations are held to a lesser standard than those of us who are winging it.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
To Protect and Serve
This video is a shining example of how our system has been corrupted, our freedoms taken, by the big money interests and wussy politicians who get their power by licking their masters' boots. It shows Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old computer systems analyst from San Francisco, and 2 tour Iraq War veteran (Marines), who goes to work every day and then goes to sleep on the streets with the Occupy protesters to support them. You know, he's one of those Marxist hippies who lives in his parents' garage and mooches off the government that the small minded opponents of the protests say all the participants are.
In the video, Olsen is standing peacefully between crowds of protesters and a police barricade as the police order protesters to leave the area. He is shot in the face with some kind of projectile-possibly a tear gas canister-fired by police. The police then stand, motionless and without so much as a twitch toward helping the young man, who is lying on the ground, bleeding. When fellow protesters run back to help him, a police officer tosses a 'flash-bang' explosive canister at them. Another protester is then shot by police with a rubber bullet as he is trying to carry Olsen to safety. See the surprisingly unbiased coverage of this event at Fox News.
Olsen has been upgraded from critical to serious but stable condition, with a skull fracture and bleeding in the brain, in a Bay Area hospital.
Oakland officials say there will be an investigation. We'll see.
Are you about ready to see this system end?
In the video, Olsen is standing peacefully between crowds of protesters and a police barricade as the police order protesters to leave the area. He is shot in the face with some kind of projectile-possibly a tear gas canister-fired by police. The police then stand, motionless and without so much as a twitch toward helping the young man, who is lying on the ground, bleeding. When fellow protesters run back to help him, a police officer tosses a 'flash-bang' explosive canister at them. Another protester is then shot by police with a rubber bullet as he is trying to carry Olsen to safety. See the surprisingly unbiased coverage of this event at Fox News.
Olsen has been upgraded from critical to serious but stable condition, with a skull fracture and bleeding in the brain, in a Bay Area hospital.
Oakland officials say there will be an investigation. We'll see.
Are you about ready to see this system end?
Sunday, October 23, 2011
A First
It nearly causes me physical pain to do this, but I am about to link to . . . Fox News. Judge Andrew Napolitano has hit the nail on the head, even in the eyes of someone who hasn't seen much on Fox News to agree with, ever. See the video here.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Unarmed Robbery
Need to know why to support Occupy Wall Street and anyone else who is trying to bring down the big banking cartel in the US? Here's the latest reason:
Everyone's favorite bank, Bank of America, has recently transferred $75 TRILLION in low quality derivatives (read: worthless paper) from its investment arm to its depository banking arm. More here. Why?
Well, its so that when the bank tanks, and it will, US taxpayers will be on the hook for the losses. The Fed is so corrupt that it seems to be saying this is perfectly ok. So get ready, your share of this heist is over $200,000--for every man, woman and child in the US--and of course that doesn't include the interest the Fed will charge.
Don't forget to send a thank you card to Ben Bernanke.
Everyone's favorite bank, Bank of America, has recently transferred $75 TRILLION in low quality derivatives (read: worthless paper) from its investment arm to its depository banking arm. More here. Why?
Well, its so that when the bank tanks, and it will, US taxpayers will be on the hook for the losses. The Fed is so corrupt that it seems to be saying this is perfectly ok. So get ready, your share of this heist is over $200,000--for every man, woman and child in the US--and of course that doesn't include the interest the Fed will charge.
Don't forget to send a thank you card to Ben Bernanke.
Getting Yours
Our world is all about getting. Get more stuff. Get more money. Get more food. Get more. I've renounced and condemned such a philosophy regularly and often vehemently in past posts. Today, however, I want to discuss an exception. I want you to get out and get more. More power.
Not the "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too" kind of power. That's the kind of power that our government and business and many people are after. That's the kind of dualistic pitting of Ds against Rs, rights against lefts, blacks against whites, gays against straights, Christians against Muslims, religious against atheists, rich against poor kind of BS that passes for power in this near-powerless world. That kind of power acquisition is motivated by fear. Whoever advocates for it always does so by some sky-is-falling scenario that your rights are being eroded by the very existence of someone else.
We all fall for it. It motivates every donation to a political candidate--we don't know these people or their positions on every issue; we donate and vote because we think they're 'better' than their opponent because of a letter behind their name or a bumper-sticker slogan--their 'platform' is less scary to us than the other guy's. And so we give them our money and our support--our power--because we're afraid of the other guy and whatever it is we surmise he stands for.
The news and every 'cause' from Aryan Nation's to Michael Moore's is about this kind of power. Stop the rich guys so the rest of us can have more. Stop the poor, because they're trying to get yours for nothing. Stop the blacks because they want to take what we whites have. Stop the fundamentalists, because they'll insist on everyone being fundamentalist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I do it. And if you're honest with yourselves, you'll admit you do it too. But what I'm talking about isn't that kind of power at all.
The kind of power I'm talking about is the kind that doesn't involve disempowering anyone else. It doesn't raise the bridge by lowering the water. It doesn't get more by ensuring that someone else gets less. This kind of power is unlimited, so it doesn't need to take from anywhere or anyone else to get more. It comes from three places.
The first source of true power is knowledge. Knowledge is something there's always more of--you never have to take any from someone else in order to get more. No one can tax it or take it away from you. And it's sorely lacking in most humans at most periods of history, including now. Knowledge requires that you look at all information--even that with which you disagree--and critically evaluate it. When you have knowledge, you can't dismiss something by merely calling it a name; you must make a rational argument against it. Knowledge requires that you find not just one side or the other, but both sides. It requires that you shine light into dark corners, both others' and your own, and expose the prejudices and fears that live there, since operating from prejudice and fear take your power and give it to someone else--someone who's always there claiming to know just how to stop the other side or fix the problem. Knowledge leads to understanding, and with more understanding comes less prejudice and fear--less giving away of your own power.
The second source is love. Like knowledge, love is infinite. If you run out, you can always make more. Unfortunately, most people only even try to make enough for a few people they know well. But by working at it, we can make enough to feel compassion for people who we've never met. Imagine what happens if people started to feel compassion for the very same people that our culture has indoctrinated us to believe are unworthy of our love--the 'other.' We stop fearing them, we stop prejudging them as being scary and evil, and see them as perhaps just like us. And then, just like with knowlege, we have less prejudice and fear, and we don't need to give away our power to stay 'safe' from them.
The last source of true power is unity. One of the biggest myths in history is the "two sides to every story" cannard. There aren't two sides. There's one side for every person on earth--so many sides that it's really all one side. Every human on this planet struggles with the same stuff. We want to feel safe, loved, and worthwhile. The two sides myth tells us that there's always somebody out there who threatens our safety or structures or values, and we can't rest until that person or group is overcome. My god is bigger than your god. My country is stronger than your country. My bombs will blow up more than your bombs will. My philosophy is "righter" than your philosophy. It's all a way to stratify our world in a way that makes us feel we're not at the bottom of the safe/loved/worthy totem pole. There are no winners-ever-and so it's the perfect game for the manipulators to make us play. It never ends, and we'll keep giving them our money and support until we have nothing left. We're afraid of terrorism. We give the manipulators tax money and support to bomb a village in Pakistan with drones to kill terrorists. Some Pakistani gets annoyed that we blew up his village and decides to suicide bomb something and our manipulators play it a thousand times on TV to make sure we're petrified of being blown up. Repeat cycle. But if you recognize there's not a two-sided distinction-say, Pakistanis and Americans, but a side for every person, the idea that you must wipe out all the 'other' becomes ludicrous. If people just became unwilling to see a difference between "us" and "them," the game would stop. We'd see that just as 99.99999% of "us" wouldn't go bomb someone for no reason, neither will "they."
Maybe every now and then someone would come off the rails, but for the most part, if people just refused to see the conjured up boogeyman as different than them, a whole lot more people would go about their business without ever a thought that someone needed killed. We'd stop spending our time worried about getting blown up or attacked by commies, or whatever the fear flavor of the week is. We'd stop tilting at the monsters with long ferocious arms that those of clear mind would know to be only windmills. We'd stop feeling the need for preemptive strikes, or banning things we're unfamiliar with, or hurting people we don't know. We'd stop giving away our power out of fear and prejudice. And then, my, how powerful we'd become.
Not the "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too" kind of power. That's the kind of power that our government and business and many people are after. That's the kind of dualistic pitting of Ds against Rs, rights against lefts, blacks against whites, gays against straights, Christians against Muslims, religious against atheists, rich against poor kind of BS that passes for power in this near-powerless world. That kind of power acquisition is motivated by fear. Whoever advocates for it always does so by some sky-is-falling scenario that your rights are being eroded by the very existence of someone else.
We all fall for it. It motivates every donation to a political candidate--we don't know these people or their positions on every issue; we donate and vote because we think they're 'better' than their opponent because of a letter behind their name or a bumper-sticker slogan--their 'platform' is less scary to us than the other guy's. And so we give them our money and our support--our power--because we're afraid of the other guy and whatever it is we surmise he stands for.
The news and every 'cause' from Aryan Nation's to Michael Moore's is about this kind of power. Stop the rich guys so the rest of us can have more. Stop the poor, because they're trying to get yours for nothing. Stop the blacks because they want to take what we whites have. Stop the fundamentalists, because they'll insist on everyone being fundamentalist, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I do it. And if you're honest with yourselves, you'll admit you do it too. But what I'm talking about isn't that kind of power at all.
The kind of power I'm talking about is the kind that doesn't involve disempowering anyone else. It doesn't raise the bridge by lowering the water. It doesn't get more by ensuring that someone else gets less. This kind of power is unlimited, so it doesn't need to take from anywhere or anyone else to get more. It comes from three places.
The first source of true power is knowledge. Knowledge is something there's always more of--you never have to take any from someone else in order to get more. No one can tax it or take it away from you. And it's sorely lacking in most humans at most periods of history, including now. Knowledge requires that you look at all information--even that with which you disagree--and critically evaluate it. When you have knowledge, you can't dismiss something by merely calling it a name; you must make a rational argument against it. Knowledge requires that you find not just one side or the other, but both sides. It requires that you shine light into dark corners, both others' and your own, and expose the prejudices and fears that live there, since operating from prejudice and fear take your power and give it to someone else--someone who's always there claiming to know just how to stop the other side or fix the problem. Knowledge leads to understanding, and with more understanding comes less prejudice and fear--less giving away of your own power.
The second source is love. Like knowledge, love is infinite. If you run out, you can always make more. Unfortunately, most people only even try to make enough for a few people they know well. But by working at it, we can make enough to feel compassion for people who we've never met. Imagine what happens if people started to feel compassion for the very same people that our culture has indoctrinated us to believe are unworthy of our love--the 'other.' We stop fearing them, we stop prejudging them as being scary and evil, and see them as perhaps just like us. And then, just like with knowlege, we have less prejudice and fear, and we don't need to give away our power to stay 'safe' from them.
The last source of true power is unity. One of the biggest myths in history is the "two sides to every story" cannard. There aren't two sides. There's one side for every person on earth--so many sides that it's really all one side. Every human on this planet struggles with the same stuff. We want to feel safe, loved, and worthwhile. The two sides myth tells us that there's always somebody out there who threatens our safety or structures or values, and we can't rest until that person or group is overcome. My god is bigger than your god. My country is stronger than your country. My bombs will blow up more than your bombs will. My philosophy is "righter" than your philosophy. It's all a way to stratify our world in a way that makes us feel we're not at the bottom of the safe/loved/worthy totem pole. There are no winners-ever-and so it's the perfect game for the manipulators to make us play. It never ends, and we'll keep giving them our money and support until we have nothing left. We're afraid of terrorism. We give the manipulators tax money and support to bomb a village in Pakistan with drones to kill terrorists. Some Pakistani gets annoyed that we blew up his village and decides to suicide bomb something and our manipulators play it a thousand times on TV to make sure we're petrified of being blown up. Repeat cycle. But if you recognize there's not a two-sided distinction-say, Pakistanis and Americans, but a side for every person, the idea that you must wipe out all the 'other' becomes ludicrous. If people just became unwilling to see a difference between "us" and "them," the game would stop. We'd see that just as 99.99999% of "us" wouldn't go bomb someone for no reason, neither will "they."
Maybe every now and then someone would come off the rails, but for the most part, if people just refused to see the conjured up boogeyman as different than them, a whole lot more people would go about their business without ever a thought that someone needed killed. We'd stop spending our time worried about getting blown up or attacked by commies, or whatever the fear flavor of the week is. We'd stop tilting at the monsters with long ferocious arms that those of clear mind would know to be only windmills. We'd stop feeling the need for preemptive strikes, or banning things we're unfamiliar with, or hurting people we don't know. We'd stop giving away our power out of fear and prejudice. And then, my, how powerful we'd become.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Ignorance Is Strength
At the risk of being told (again) that I need to get a tune up of my tinfoil hat, I'm going out on a limb to send you here to see an inappropriately funny and under 5 minutes explanation of why I believe our government is lying to us about 9/11.
Next, I'd suggest you go here to view another video in which we discover that a German company, under contract to the Department of Defense, documented that just before 9/11, over $100 million in short sales of the companies who would lose the most value as a result of the attack on the World Trade Centers. Oddly, the 9/11 commission never addressed that evidence, nor did anyone ever look into just how so many people knew that airline stocks, insurance company stocks, financial company stocks, etc., would so precipitously drop in September, 2001.
Finally, you might have a look at this one, to see why exactly we never hear about this stuff on the mainstream media.
So now, if your tinfoil hat also needs some adjusting, you might begin to question whether, in light of the fact that we have yet, ten years and two wars later, never gotten a straight answer from our own government about what happened to get several thousand Americans killed on 9/11, you might also begin to doubt the veracity of the current drama in which we are to believe that a used car salesment and a Mexican drug cartel conspired to kill a Saudi diplomat on American soil--a plot twist which Hillary Clinton is sure that 'you can't make up.' You might even think that the only real conclusion about the whole situation is that our government is lying to us AGAIN.
And if you don't think that, please give me a call about a lovely piece of oceanfront property I've got for sale in Arizona.
Next, I'd suggest you go here to view another video in which we discover that a German company, under contract to the Department of Defense, documented that just before 9/11, over $100 million in short sales of the companies who would lose the most value as a result of the attack on the World Trade Centers. Oddly, the 9/11 commission never addressed that evidence, nor did anyone ever look into just how so many people knew that airline stocks, insurance company stocks, financial company stocks, etc., would so precipitously drop in September, 2001.
Finally, you might have a look at this one, to see why exactly we never hear about this stuff on the mainstream media.
So now, if your tinfoil hat also needs some adjusting, you might begin to question whether, in light of the fact that we have yet, ten years and two wars later, never gotten a straight answer from our own government about what happened to get several thousand Americans killed on 9/11, you might also begin to doubt the veracity of the current drama in which we are to believe that a used car salesment and a Mexican drug cartel conspired to kill a Saudi diplomat on American soil--a plot twist which Hillary Clinton is sure that 'you can't make up.' You might even think that the only real conclusion about the whole situation is that our government is lying to us AGAIN.
And if you don't think that, please give me a call about a lovely piece of oceanfront property I've got for sale in Arizona.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Why The Government Is Trying to Start a War With Iran
And it ain't because of some middle aged used car salesman who was set up by a paid government informant in a bomb plot. It's been planned for ten years! Watch.
Suppose we ought to do something to stop them before they get WWIII going? Perhaps, since it's not going to be the old farts in Congress whose kids are going to get blown to smithereens.
Suppose we ought to do something to stop them before they get WWIII going? Perhaps, since it's not going to be the old farts in Congress whose kids are going to get blown to smithereens.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
And Now a Word
Not a word from our sponsors, since I don't have any--just a word--a word that will come to mean everything some time soon. The last few weeks, I've been posting about things that I hoped would poke and prod you enough to make you rethink some of the things we've all believed were true, or at least to start looking into them yourselves. Stuff that leads someone of even moderate intelligence and skepticism (and I'm sure you're all above average in both) to think that perhaps we've been hornswoggled, as they used to say in the Westerns.
My initial reaction to such things when I have learned about them would have to be censored even on late-night television. To put it mildly, I was pissed. As I've shared recently, I always had a fairly high regard for America and Americans. Of course there have been times when I didn't like what I saw, but overall, I believed in our system and our ideals.
Trouble is, lately it has been becoming increasingly clear that both the system we thought we were operating under and the ideals we thought were being upheld on our behalf were equal parts smoke, mirrors, and BS. Over the last year or two, I've realized for the first time that our problem isn't one side or the other, but both sides being corrupted in a very systemic and intractable way. No one's been considering whether our collective resources should buy guns or butter (for those of you who took Econ 101), but merely how to get all the guns and all the butter under the narrowest control in the shortest time possible.
We've all been, for quite some time, riding a train that doesn't exist--an illusion. We've thought that our train, the economic and political system, is incompetent, stupid, and wasteful--if it were a movie, it would be called The Three Stooges Run a Country-starring Executo, Legislato, and Judicio. In truth, it seems that our system is quite competent, pretty clever, and very efficient. It's just that it's trying to accomplish different goals than the ones it tells us it's trying to accomplish.
For example, if the last few years were a government trying to keep an economy growing, reduce unemployment and make regular people more prosperous, it has quite obviously sucked at it. But it has been amazingly competent if, as I now believe, it has been working to scare people so that we will focus on their game of economic collapse and doomsday three-card-monty while they work on their real goal, which was to make history's largest transfer of wealth to the wealthiest among us, grow the government to the point where it tells us what we're allowed to eat, drink, and think, suspend civil liberties we were told were "inalienable," and position our military industrial complex to take control of the most desireable and valuable resources throughout the world. Capiche?
Ok, now here's the hard part--before anyone thinks I'm advocating anything to do with torches, pitchforks, or hoisting anyone on pitards. It's happening because WE are making it happen. Just like the serial battered woman keeps finding guys who beat her until she fixes her own emotional problems, we're getting this result because collectively we have valued money and power and our own comfort over the common good. We've ignored the plights of the rest of the world so long as we have our Xboxes and plasma screens. We've ignored the damage we're doing to our environment so we can keep driving SUVs and consuming plastic junk wrapped in plastic. We've ignored investigative reports that tell us all the ways our government is corrupt by blaming it on "gotcha journalism" or the evil "other party."
We've stuck our noses firmly in front of our Jersey Shore and our Farmville to keep from looking around at all the neon signs pointing at the fact that something has gone terribly wrong. We've turned up our I-pods and smart phones to keep from hearing the voice in our heads that's telling us it's time to smell the coffee. Last week, our government openly and triumphantly announced it assasinated an American citizen without even a trial, much less a finding of guilt, and when I looked at the comments on the mainstream news web article about it, there were at least as many saying that the guy deserved it because the government said he was a terrorist as there were saying it was wrong. As a country, we have decided it's perfectly ok for our government to kill us, as long as they call us a bad name first.
So now the word. The word is Love. Not the smooshy, teenage, TV show, or sexual variety, but the real thing. The kind that means that the system doesn't work for us until or unless it works for others too. The kind that makes us do unto others as we'd have them do unto ourselves. The kind that doesn't allow for the "screw the other guy-I've got mine" mentality that we Americans have elevated to an art form.
It is my firm belief that the wheels are quickly coming off our illusionary train. Every day, if you look, there's disclosure of another way we've been laboring in delusion--missing trillions in budgets, protests, scandals, abuses, conspiracies, plots, exposures of lies and omissions. Some--maybe even most--are starting to see the man behind the curtain who's operating this great and powerful wizard that has bullied and threatened and cajoled and stolen its way to dominance in this world. Many are beginning to see that our country has become more about stealth and secrecy and lies than about truth and justice. Some of us are even starting to get the message that the man behind the curtain is, in fact, us. And I for one am ready to try something different.
In the time to come, we're likely to continue to see the disclosure of an unflattering and unwelcome truth about what we've allowed to happen in our world--what our indifference and preoccupation and self-absorption has brought to life. When that happens, as much as we'll want to play the victims of people with an unending supply of greed and lust for power, we need to remember that our world is what we've created. And the only way to start changing it is to change us. Give up the out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality that lets us ignore that our government murders people every day based on lies, innuendoes, accidents of birth and calling them bad names. Give up the fear of the unknown and the hatred of those who are different or with whom we disagree. Insist on justice, not vengeance, toward the people who have engineered our train of delusion and deceit, because we were at least conductors. Stop blaming and pointing fingers and start examining and considering--especially self-examining and self-considering. And above all, start doing unto others. If we don't, we may just find that this train we've created runs right over us.
My initial reaction to such things when I have learned about them would have to be censored even on late-night television. To put it mildly, I was pissed. As I've shared recently, I always had a fairly high regard for America and Americans. Of course there have been times when I didn't like what I saw, but overall, I believed in our system and our ideals.
Trouble is, lately it has been becoming increasingly clear that both the system we thought we were operating under and the ideals we thought were being upheld on our behalf were equal parts smoke, mirrors, and BS. Over the last year or two, I've realized for the first time that our problem isn't one side or the other, but both sides being corrupted in a very systemic and intractable way. No one's been considering whether our collective resources should buy guns or butter (for those of you who took Econ 101), but merely how to get all the guns and all the butter under the narrowest control in the shortest time possible.
We've all been, for quite some time, riding a train that doesn't exist--an illusion. We've thought that our train, the economic and political system, is incompetent, stupid, and wasteful--if it were a movie, it would be called The Three Stooges Run a Country-starring Executo, Legislato, and Judicio. In truth, it seems that our system is quite competent, pretty clever, and very efficient. It's just that it's trying to accomplish different goals than the ones it tells us it's trying to accomplish.
For example, if the last few years were a government trying to keep an economy growing, reduce unemployment and make regular people more prosperous, it has quite obviously sucked at it. But it has been amazingly competent if, as I now believe, it has been working to scare people so that we will focus on their game of economic collapse and doomsday three-card-monty while they work on their real goal, which was to make history's largest transfer of wealth to the wealthiest among us, grow the government to the point where it tells us what we're allowed to eat, drink, and think, suspend civil liberties we were told were "inalienable," and position our military industrial complex to take control of the most desireable and valuable resources throughout the world. Capiche?
Ok, now here's the hard part--before anyone thinks I'm advocating anything to do with torches, pitchforks, or hoisting anyone on pitards. It's happening because WE are making it happen. Just like the serial battered woman keeps finding guys who beat her until she fixes her own emotional problems, we're getting this result because collectively we have valued money and power and our own comfort over the common good. We've ignored the plights of the rest of the world so long as we have our Xboxes and plasma screens. We've ignored the damage we're doing to our environment so we can keep driving SUVs and consuming plastic junk wrapped in plastic. We've ignored investigative reports that tell us all the ways our government is corrupt by blaming it on "gotcha journalism" or the evil "other party."
We've stuck our noses firmly in front of our Jersey Shore and our Farmville to keep from looking around at all the neon signs pointing at the fact that something has gone terribly wrong. We've turned up our I-pods and smart phones to keep from hearing the voice in our heads that's telling us it's time to smell the coffee. Last week, our government openly and triumphantly announced it assasinated an American citizen without even a trial, much less a finding of guilt, and when I looked at the comments on the mainstream news web article about it, there were at least as many saying that the guy deserved it because the government said he was a terrorist as there were saying it was wrong. As a country, we have decided it's perfectly ok for our government to kill us, as long as they call us a bad name first.
So now the word. The word is Love. Not the smooshy, teenage, TV show, or sexual variety, but the real thing. The kind that means that the system doesn't work for us until or unless it works for others too. The kind that makes us do unto others as we'd have them do unto ourselves. The kind that doesn't allow for the "screw the other guy-I've got mine" mentality that we Americans have elevated to an art form.
It is my firm belief that the wheels are quickly coming off our illusionary train. Every day, if you look, there's disclosure of another way we've been laboring in delusion--missing trillions in budgets, protests, scandals, abuses, conspiracies, plots, exposures of lies and omissions. Some--maybe even most--are starting to see the man behind the curtain who's operating this great and powerful wizard that has bullied and threatened and cajoled and stolen its way to dominance in this world. Many are beginning to see that our country has become more about stealth and secrecy and lies than about truth and justice. Some of us are even starting to get the message that the man behind the curtain is, in fact, us. And I for one am ready to try something different.
In the time to come, we're likely to continue to see the disclosure of an unflattering and unwelcome truth about what we've allowed to happen in our world--what our indifference and preoccupation and self-absorption has brought to life. When that happens, as much as we'll want to play the victims of people with an unending supply of greed and lust for power, we need to remember that our world is what we've created. And the only way to start changing it is to change us. Give up the out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality that lets us ignore that our government murders people every day based on lies, innuendoes, accidents of birth and calling them bad names. Give up the fear of the unknown and the hatred of those who are different or with whom we disagree. Insist on justice, not vengeance, toward the people who have engineered our train of delusion and deceit, because we were at least conductors. Stop blaming and pointing fingers and start examining and considering--especially self-examining and self-considering. And above all, start doing unto others. If we don't, we may just find that this train we've created runs right over us.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Corporate War
We've all heard how the United States is broke. We can't afford Social Security. We can't afford education. We can't afford health care. Makes one wonder how we can afford this.
Who's Responsible for All This Mess?
We could have save ourselves a lot of trouble if we'd opened our eyes in 1976, when this movie was first released. Since we didn't, we'd better open our eyes now.
Network
If that's not clear enough, the inimitable George Carlin told us a little more colorfully.
The Big Club
It's time to wake up.
Network
If that's not clear enough, the inimitable George Carlin told us a little more colorfully.
The Big Club
It's time to wake up.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Are You the One?
There's a watershed moment here in America right now. We're standing at the top of the Continental Divide, and we're soon going to have to decide which side we're on.
I'm going to explain which side I'm on in a moment, but first I want to tell you a few things about me, so that all my biases are right out there in the open. I'm pushing 50. I own a couple of very small businesses, together with my husband, who also has a 'regular' job and financially, we do ok. We live in a modest home, without all the 'desireable' features of granite this and marble that, but it's a nice place in a nice neighborhood with curvy streets and good schools-- my girls go to the top public middle and high school in our state, and they're both good looking straight-A students in college-bound curricula.
I've lived in a big city, the suburbs, and a small town at different times in my life. I don't have legal trouble, communicable diseases, or a history of psychosis. I give regularly to charity, especially animal shelters and food banks. I have excellent credit, money in the bank, and a reasonable retirement nest-egg. I scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT in high school, and graduated from a state university Magna cum Laude when I was 19 years old after 2-1/2 years.
I have worked continuously since I was 14 years old, as a waitress, a retail salesperson, a pizza parlor manager, a secretary, a paralegal, an attorney, and finally as a business owner. I've never been on welfare, food stamps, or unemployment. In fact, the only money I've ever taken from any government entity was a $3000 student loan during my first year in law school. I paid it back the year I graduated. Otherwise, I've done whatever I've done on my own since I left home at 17. I don't cheat on my taxes, and the only times I've ever stolen anything were a hair ribbon when I about 8 (my mom made me take it back and apologize), and a pair of jeans when I was in high school (I never got caught, but I always felt too guilty to wear the jeans).
I'm a recovering addict with many years clean, except from chocolate. I've never used patchouli. I don't burn incense or wear flowery long dresses from import stores, but I do yoga and meditate every day. I bathe daily, shave my legs whenever I get around to it, and wear makeup when I must. I consider myself a follower of Jesus Christ, but I don't belong to any organized religious group. I'm not a Communist, or a Socialist, or an anarchist. I am a registered Independent (except for in 2008 in Iowa, when I registered as a Democrat so I could go to the Caucuses).
I hope this tells you where I come from, because .... wait for it.... I'm on the side of the Occupy Wall Street (and elsewhere) Protesters. The very criticisms that the media has publicized about the protests are the very reasons I like them. They have no leader--that means that they can't be bought by someone who can make their leader miserable or confortable depending on his/her position on issues. They have no specific manifesto of demands--that means that they can't be brushed aside with a pat on the head and a token compliance with a few items only to have the spirit of the agreement corrupted through the back door. They aren't 'mainstream' and some of them are a bit nutty--that means that they're not just a front group for big money interests that seek to corrupt, co-opt, and capitalize on their momentum. Ahem--The Koch Brothers/Mrs. Clarence Thomas Tea Party---excuse me.
I am the 99 percent they are advocating for, and they are the only ones in recent memory who have. They advocate for the end to our pointless wars, the criminal Federal Reserve Banking system, and the corporate oligarchy that offers our government for purchase by the highest bidder. They seem to have nothing to gain from their risk in supporting this movement--they don't support any one candidate or any one political position or party, none of them is running for anything, and none of them have books on the market singing their own praises for being such "mavericks." They don't claim to have all the answers in the form of a bumper sticker solution like "_______________ for President," or "Tax the Rich" or "Go Whales." The problems we have are bigger than who is President, or who's in Congress, or who pays taxes or doesn't, or even what happens to whales, although I like whales a lot. The problems we have need to be solved by a razing to the ground of the political and economic systems that have gotten us to this place, followed by the re-creation of a system that isn't run by money and power, but for the good of the majority of the people. Are they the perfect movement? No, thank God, they're not, because perfect movements are phony movements. If they get their way, will it create havoc for a bit while things sort themselves out? Probably. But the alternative is more of the same. And, as I'm fond of quoting--the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.
So, if you're the One--that is, the one percent of people who have been and continue to get ahead on other people's pain and loss, and you like it that way, then by all means don't support these people. They're dangerous to the status quo and smell like patchouli. But if you're the 99, you owe it to yourself to get some information that doesn't come from a cable news network owned by the same people who are fiddling happily while Rome (Georgia) burns, and see if you don't support them too.
I'm going to explain which side I'm on in a moment, but first I want to tell you a few things about me, so that all my biases are right out there in the open. I'm pushing 50. I own a couple of very small businesses, together with my husband, who also has a 'regular' job and financially, we do ok. We live in a modest home, without all the 'desireable' features of granite this and marble that, but it's a nice place in a nice neighborhood with curvy streets and good schools-- my girls go to the top public middle and high school in our state, and they're both good looking straight-A students in college-bound curricula.
I've lived in a big city, the suburbs, and a small town at different times in my life. I don't have legal trouble, communicable diseases, or a history of psychosis. I give regularly to charity, especially animal shelters and food banks. I have excellent credit, money in the bank, and a reasonable retirement nest-egg. I scored in the 99th percentile on the ACT in high school, and graduated from a state university Magna cum Laude when I was 19 years old after 2-1/2 years.
I have worked continuously since I was 14 years old, as a waitress, a retail salesperson, a pizza parlor manager, a secretary, a paralegal, an attorney, and finally as a business owner. I've never been on welfare, food stamps, or unemployment. In fact, the only money I've ever taken from any government entity was a $3000 student loan during my first year in law school. I paid it back the year I graduated. Otherwise, I've done whatever I've done on my own since I left home at 17. I don't cheat on my taxes, and the only times I've ever stolen anything were a hair ribbon when I about 8 (my mom made me take it back and apologize), and a pair of jeans when I was in high school (I never got caught, but I always felt too guilty to wear the jeans).
I'm a recovering addict with many years clean, except from chocolate. I've never used patchouli. I don't burn incense or wear flowery long dresses from import stores, but I do yoga and meditate every day. I bathe daily, shave my legs whenever I get around to it, and wear makeup when I must. I consider myself a follower of Jesus Christ, but I don't belong to any organized religious group. I'm not a Communist, or a Socialist, or an anarchist. I am a registered Independent (except for in 2008 in Iowa, when I registered as a Democrat so I could go to the Caucuses).
I hope this tells you where I come from, because .... wait for it.... I'm on the side of the Occupy Wall Street (and elsewhere) Protesters. The very criticisms that the media has publicized about the protests are the very reasons I like them. They have no leader--that means that they can't be bought by someone who can make their leader miserable or confortable depending on his/her position on issues. They have no specific manifesto of demands--that means that they can't be brushed aside with a pat on the head and a token compliance with a few items only to have the spirit of the agreement corrupted through the back door. They aren't 'mainstream' and some of them are a bit nutty--that means that they're not just a front group for big money interests that seek to corrupt, co-opt, and capitalize on their momentum. Ahem--The Koch Brothers/Mrs. Clarence Thomas Tea Party---excuse me.
I am the 99 percent they are advocating for, and they are the only ones in recent memory who have. They advocate for the end to our pointless wars, the criminal Federal Reserve Banking system, and the corporate oligarchy that offers our government for purchase by the highest bidder. They seem to have nothing to gain from their risk in supporting this movement--they don't support any one candidate or any one political position or party, none of them is running for anything, and none of them have books on the market singing their own praises for being such "mavericks." They don't claim to have all the answers in the form of a bumper sticker solution like "_______________ for President," or "Tax the Rich" or "Go Whales." The problems we have are bigger than who is President, or who's in Congress, or who pays taxes or doesn't, or even what happens to whales, although I like whales a lot. The problems we have need to be solved by a razing to the ground of the political and economic systems that have gotten us to this place, followed by the re-creation of a system that isn't run by money and power, but for the good of the majority of the people. Are they the perfect movement? No, thank God, they're not, because perfect movements are phony movements. If they get their way, will it create havoc for a bit while things sort themselves out? Probably. But the alternative is more of the same. And, as I'm fond of quoting--the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again expecting different results.
So, if you're the One--that is, the one percent of people who have been and continue to get ahead on other people's pain and loss, and you like it that way, then by all means don't support these people. They're dangerous to the status quo and smell like patchouli. But if you're the 99, you owe it to yourself to get some information that doesn't come from a cable news network owned by the same people who are fiddling happily while Rome (Georgia) burns, and see if you don't support them too.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Fox News Thinks 'Occupy Wall Street' and Thomas Jefferson are Idiots
The Fox News arm of the Rupert Murdoch syndicate has been busily demeaning the brave people with Occupy Wall Street who are risking their safety to tell the corporate overlords and their criminal banking enterprise that we've had enough of paying for their excesses. Apparently, before the story ran, they missed the fact that one of our "founding fathers" who are so quoted and misquoted on Fox actually agrees with the protesters.
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. -Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to to John Taylor, Monticello, 28 May 1816.
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. -Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to to John Taylor, Monticello, 28 May 1816.
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