I just found this guy, Lee Camp, online. If I were wryly and profanely funny, and a guy, I would be him. I already need a haircut almost as badly as he does.
I warn you, it contains a goodly portion of what my kids call "colorful lanuage." Don't watch it at work, but watch it.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Going Home
Home. It's wherever we hang our hats. It's sweet. It's a man's (or woman's) castle. Charity begins there. It's where our hearts are. It's wherever we hang our hats. And there are about as many versions of what it means as there are people.
For me, the word home conjures up different things, depending on the context. If I'm talking to someone else (at least most other people), "home" right now, is a house in Oklahoma where my husband, kids and I live at the moment. I would guess that's most people's definition of home--where they park their physical body and their stuff. Now, I like my house, and I love my family, but I have a hard time thinking that's all there is to "home." I've always had a place to live, and I've always had a family, but a lot of times, I haven't felt at home.
I used to have a little plaque someone gave me that said "Home is Where Your Story Begins." If that's the definition, I suppose most people would think of home as where you grew up and started your life. For me, that's not the case. I don't view my former haunts around Denver, Colorado, as home, even though I spent the vast majority of my life there. I left there because I wanted to, and I left behind a version of myself that I don't like very much--one who spent a lot of time on stuff that didn't matter much, like a lot of "education" that had mostly to do with going along with a lot of stupid ideas in order to not seem like a kook or a malcontent, and being a lawyer, which had mostly to do with making money.
In many ways, my existence prior to my 40s was much more a prelude than a life. It was the product of careful programming of society that tells you to do what's expected of you and not what makes you happy--to work harder to get ahead, so that you can pay someone to mow your beautiful lawn, and clean your beautiful house, and raise your beautiful children--since you don't have the time for all that foolishness, you're busy working to get ahead. So, yes, Denver was where my story began, but that's not home. I'm not that person any longer.
Some people would say that home is the place that you most want to be--where you feel most comfortable and part of something. By that definition, my home is a little town in northwest Iowa, where in my 40s, for the first time in my life, I finally had the guts to do what I wanted to do, and not what I thought I was supposed to. My decision to do that caused both admiration and consternation in people who knew me. Some said that running off to the boonies was a waste of my education and training. Some said they wished they had the courage to do the same. Some said I was just nuts. To all of those--maybe, but that was the closest I'd been to "home" in my life up to that point. And until recently, I thought it was that town and the people in it who made it feel that way.
But over the New Years' weekend, I had another spiritual awakening. I went on a road trip with my daughters and my friend back to my little Iowa "hometown." And on the way, I learned a bunch of important stuff (see my post titled Tea, Strippers, and Tie Dye for details), the gist of which is...if you want to be happy, do whatever it takes to really enjoy the stuff you're going to do anyway. And that's when I got within shooting distance of my new definition of home.
Home has to be more than where you live, or where you came from, because what if both of those places are not what you'd like them to be; are you then homeless? No, can't be. Home even has to be more than a dream of where you want be. What if you haven't yet found that place? Or what if you can't be there? I know there's more to it, because over the last several years, wherever I've been physically, I've felt like I've been getting closer and closer to home as I staged a coup to take over my own life.
Quitting my law practice and getting off the hamster-wheel lifestyle in the Denver burbs was a big first step. Taking my family to that tiny town where people know each other and wave at perfect strangers was the next. Shutting down the confounded TV machine, through which we are told a thousand times a day that we need to look a certain way, buy a boatload of stuff, and act like complete idiots to 'fit in,' was still a third. Learning who I am, really, and what matters to me, without listening to all the messages from the external peanut gallery, really got me rolling. Starting to take care of myself, quitting smoking and starting to eat right and exercise--took me further down the road. And then, for the past couple of years, learning to take with a large grain of salt just about everything that is "common knowlege" and starting to think more critically about what is (and what is not) got me right into the neighborhood. My aforementioned road trip weekend taught me how to be happier without changing a single thing about the world outside me--and got me so tantalizingly close to my new "home" that I felt like I needed to find a parking spot and start looking seriously for the address.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I listened to a lecture about spiritual growth, and in it was recommended a kind of ritual where you visualize being "safe in the arms of God." It referred to an inner knowledge that everything is as it should be--notwithstanding all the chaos and craziness that passes for a world right now. And suddenly I had it. Home is indeed where your heart is, but not in the sense we always think.
In native American lore, the turtle is a very honored creature. The tradition is that a turtle is at home, wherever it is--it carries its home with it. When stuff around the turtle gets crazy, or it needs protection, it goes inside itself, within the protective shell of it's own making, where all is calm and safe, and distinctly turtle-ish. That's where all my lessons have been leading--not back to my roots in Colorado, not to my adopted hometown in Iowa, and not to where I am now, but to a place of calm and safety inside that I carry around wherever I go.
I suppose that's why I've had so much cause to change myself in the last decade or so--I was remodeling before I moved in. And, you know... it still needs a little dusting, or maybe some new curtains, but it's looking pretty good inside myself right now--the kind of place I could call home.
For me, the word home conjures up different things, depending on the context. If I'm talking to someone else (at least most other people), "home" right now, is a house in Oklahoma where my husband, kids and I live at the moment. I would guess that's most people's definition of home--where they park their physical body and their stuff. Now, I like my house, and I love my family, but I have a hard time thinking that's all there is to "home." I've always had a place to live, and I've always had a family, but a lot of times, I haven't felt at home.
I used to have a little plaque someone gave me that said "Home is Where Your Story Begins." If that's the definition, I suppose most people would think of home as where you grew up and started your life. For me, that's not the case. I don't view my former haunts around Denver, Colorado, as home, even though I spent the vast majority of my life there. I left there because I wanted to, and I left behind a version of myself that I don't like very much--one who spent a lot of time on stuff that didn't matter much, like a lot of "education" that had mostly to do with going along with a lot of stupid ideas in order to not seem like a kook or a malcontent, and being a lawyer, which had mostly to do with making money.
In many ways, my existence prior to my 40s was much more a prelude than a life. It was the product of careful programming of society that tells you to do what's expected of you and not what makes you happy--to work harder to get ahead, so that you can pay someone to mow your beautiful lawn, and clean your beautiful house, and raise your beautiful children--since you don't have the time for all that foolishness, you're busy working to get ahead. So, yes, Denver was where my story began, but that's not home. I'm not that person any longer.
Some people would say that home is the place that you most want to be--where you feel most comfortable and part of something. By that definition, my home is a little town in northwest Iowa, where in my 40s, for the first time in my life, I finally had the guts to do what I wanted to do, and not what I thought I was supposed to. My decision to do that caused both admiration and consternation in people who knew me. Some said that running off to the boonies was a waste of my education and training. Some said they wished they had the courage to do the same. Some said I was just nuts. To all of those--maybe, but that was the closest I'd been to "home" in my life up to that point. And until recently, I thought it was that town and the people in it who made it feel that way.
But over the New Years' weekend, I had another spiritual awakening. I went on a road trip with my daughters and my friend back to my little Iowa "hometown." And on the way, I learned a bunch of important stuff (see my post titled Tea, Strippers, and Tie Dye for details), the gist of which is...if you want to be happy, do whatever it takes to really enjoy the stuff you're going to do anyway. And that's when I got within shooting distance of my new definition of home.
Home has to be more than where you live, or where you came from, because what if both of those places are not what you'd like them to be; are you then homeless? No, can't be. Home even has to be more than a dream of where you want be. What if you haven't yet found that place? Or what if you can't be there? I know there's more to it, because over the last several years, wherever I've been physically, I've felt like I've been getting closer and closer to home as I staged a coup to take over my own life.
Quitting my law practice and getting off the hamster-wheel lifestyle in the Denver burbs was a big first step. Taking my family to that tiny town where people know each other and wave at perfect strangers was the next. Shutting down the confounded TV machine, through which we are told a thousand times a day that we need to look a certain way, buy a boatload of stuff, and act like complete idiots to 'fit in,' was still a third. Learning who I am, really, and what matters to me, without listening to all the messages from the external peanut gallery, really got me rolling. Starting to take care of myself, quitting smoking and starting to eat right and exercise--took me further down the road. And then, for the past couple of years, learning to take with a large grain of salt just about everything that is "common knowlege" and starting to think more critically about what is (and what is not) got me right into the neighborhood. My aforementioned road trip weekend taught me how to be happier without changing a single thing about the world outside me--and got me so tantalizingly close to my new "home" that I felt like I needed to find a parking spot and start looking seriously for the address.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, I listened to a lecture about spiritual growth, and in it was recommended a kind of ritual where you visualize being "safe in the arms of God." It referred to an inner knowledge that everything is as it should be--notwithstanding all the chaos and craziness that passes for a world right now. And suddenly I had it. Home is indeed where your heart is, but not in the sense we always think.
In native American lore, the turtle is a very honored creature. The tradition is that a turtle is at home, wherever it is--it carries its home with it. When stuff around the turtle gets crazy, or it needs protection, it goes inside itself, within the protective shell of it's own making, where all is calm and safe, and distinctly turtle-ish. That's where all my lessons have been leading--not back to my roots in Colorado, not to my adopted hometown in Iowa, and not to where I am now, but to a place of calm and safety inside that I carry around wherever I go.
I suppose that's why I've had so much cause to change myself in the last decade or so--I was remodeling before I moved in. And, you know... it still needs a little dusting, or maybe some new curtains, but it's looking pretty good inside myself right now--the kind of place I could call home.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Very Interesting
An article from Huffington Post Friday raises some interesting questions about the recent disclosure of Mitt Romney's tax returns. Apparently, Romney's returns show that he's parked many millions of dollars offshore, in the Cayman Islands in dubious partnerships, and in Swiss bank accounts.
Of course, as the Huffington Post article points out, this isn't so his money can work on its tan. He's avoiding taxes by taking advantages of loopholes in the tax laws that rich people paid Congress to make in the first place.
When you read the article, and I strongly recommend you do, pay particular attention to the postscript at the end. It questions how, given the annual limits on individual IRA contributions (around $35,000 per year), Romney managed to accumulate somewhere between $20 and $100 MILLION in his IRA. At $35,000 per year, that's a minimum of 571 years worth of contributions! Wow. Mitt doesn't look a day over 70.
I'll be accused again of having my tinfoil hat on, but I'll bet you dollars against dimes that in the very near future, we'll be finding out that there's some pretty interesting stuff going on in old Mitt's finances. I'd even venture to guess it might not be strictly legal... Stay tuned.
Of course, as the Huffington Post article points out, this isn't so his money can work on its tan. He's avoiding taxes by taking advantages of loopholes in the tax laws that rich people paid Congress to make in the first place.
When you read the article, and I strongly recommend you do, pay particular attention to the postscript at the end. It questions how, given the annual limits on individual IRA contributions (around $35,000 per year), Romney managed to accumulate somewhere between $20 and $100 MILLION in his IRA. At $35,000 per year, that's a minimum of 571 years worth of contributions! Wow. Mitt doesn't look a day over 70.
I'll be accused again of having my tinfoil hat on, but I'll bet you dollars against dimes that in the very near future, we'll be finding out that there's some pretty interesting stuff going on in old Mitt's finances. I'd even venture to guess it might not be strictly legal... Stay tuned.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Even I Didn't Think of This
Ok, so I've raved about food from time to time. But even I wouldn't have thought of this:
From Natural News:
Did you catch that? Not only do they use a chemical from varnish and oil fields, but one ingredient in McNuggets used to be used as filler for breast implants, until they determined there were "safety concerns," so they decided to put it in childrens' food. Yeah.
Ready to plant a garden now?
From Natural News:
Did you catch that? Not only do they use a chemical from varnish and oil fields, but one ingredient in McNuggets used to be used as filler for breast implants, until they determined there were "safety concerns," so they decided to put it in childrens' food. Yeah.
Ready to plant a garden now?
And Now, Back to...
Back to what? That's the question for today. I've been getting the sense, from the political scene, the mainstream news, and the US' take on world events that people are feeling like things are going back to the status quo. Personally, I have my doubts that the genie will go back in that cramped little bottle, but just in case, I'd like to review what that would mean, if any of you are among the people saying, "please, please, please, just one more century where we Americans get to dominate the world, print money like it's toilet paper, use far more than our share of ... well, everything, make messes and not clean them up, and ignorantly march along behind the phony stories of what has happened, is happening, and will happen in the world."
Is that where you want to go? Back? Back to world wars, children starving in [insert name of this week's third world poster country here], third world civil wars manufactured by world powers, world domination through scorched earth attacks followed by "nation-building," nuclear bombs and nuclear arms races, energy "crises," dot-com bubbles, housing bubbles, penny-stock scandals, manufactured recessions and depressions and degradation of everything we touch?
Or, do you want to move on? Do you want to demand a world where government is here to serve the people, where we don't live by that line in Animal Farm, "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," where our children, and those in that third world poster country, all get to have a chance at a happy, healthy life? How about peace and leaving each other the hell alone, instead of perpetual boogeymen, holy wars, and hatred?
Martin Luther King, Jr., once said,
Cowardice asks the question, "is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "is it politic?" Vanity asks the question "is it popular?" But conscience asks the question, "is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."
We've got a choice. The powers that be are trying very hard to convince the world that if we just stay home and be quiet, let the banks run the economy and the military-industrial complex go attack Iran so they can make a cool few trillion building it back and stealing its oil--if we just keep on sucking in their 'bread and circuses' and staying blind to all the ways they're screwing us and the rest of humanity, everything will be ok. If you're still reading me, you're among those who know that just ain't so. But you may be tempted. So, let's just put it like this...
We can start standing up, making ourselves clear, and requiring that things change at a very fundamental level. Or we can go back. And depending on what we decide, we're going to wind up with the world we deserve.
Is that where you want to go? Back? Back to world wars, children starving in [insert name of this week's third world poster country here], third world civil wars manufactured by world powers, world domination through scorched earth attacks followed by "nation-building," nuclear bombs and nuclear arms races, energy "crises," dot-com bubbles, housing bubbles, penny-stock scandals, manufactured recessions and depressions and degradation of everything we touch?
Or, do you want to move on? Do you want to demand a world where government is here to serve the people, where we don't live by that line in Animal Farm, "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others," where our children, and those in that third world poster country, all get to have a chance at a happy, healthy life? How about peace and leaving each other the hell alone, instead of perpetual boogeymen, holy wars, and hatred?
Martin Luther King, Jr., once said,
Cowardice asks the question, "is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "is it politic?" Vanity asks the question "is it popular?" But conscience asks the question, "is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."
We've got a choice. The powers that be are trying very hard to convince the world that if we just stay home and be quiet, let the banks run the economy and the military-industrial complex go attack Iran so they can make a cool few trillion building it back and stealing its oil--if we just keep on sucking in their 'bread and circuses' and staying blind to all the ways they're screwing us and the rest of humanity, everything will be ok. If you're still reading me, you're among those who know that just ain't so. But you may be tempted. So, let's just put it like this...
We can start standing up, making ourselves clear, and requiring that things change at a very fundamental level. Or we can go back. And depending on what we decide, we're going to wind up with the world we deserve.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Couldn't Have Said It Better
In that decision, a majority of the Supremes thumbed their blue-blooded noses at the people of the United States and said that it is perfectly legal--no, actually "Constitutionally required" that for-profit corporations and unions be allowed to buy our government out from under us, rendering our votes meaningless and our freedom up for sale to the highest bidder, which of course is never going to be us.
They said it so well in a letter to Congress, that I'll shut up now, except to say that every American citizen who wants there to be an America ten years from now should be writing to their Representatives and Senators to demand the same. Here's their letter:
We the undersigned members of the Maryland General Assembly call upon you to pass a constitutional amendment to reverse the United States Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which declared that corporations enjoy the First Amendment political rights of the people and toppled dozens of state and federal laws and many decades of judicial precedent preventing corporations (and unions) from spending corporate (and union) treasury funds in political campaigns.
This radical departure from judicial precedent and democratic values has already brought a torrent of corporate money directly, much of it secret, into American politics, fundamentally distorting public elections and campaigns for public office. The decision poses a direct and dramatic threat to government “of the people, by the people and for the people”.
By bringing corporations into the heart of the political process, Citizens United changes the character of democracy. For-profit corporations (except benefit corporations) are legally bound to pursue the maximization of profits and economic advantage in all their endeavors. This is one reason why most United States Supreme Court Justices, from Chief Justice John Marshall to Chief Justice William Rehnquist to Justice Byron White to the four dissenting justices in Citizens United v. FEC, have rejected the claim that corporations have political rights.
Corporations enjoy special state-conferred economic and legal advantages not enjoyed by natural persons, including limited liability of the shareholders, perpetual life of the corporation itself, and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets. These advantages permit corporations to amass vast sums of money that are spent properly for economic purposes but not for the purposes of intervening in democratic politics and entrenching corporate power.
Article V of the United States Constitution empowers the people, the states and the Congress to use the constitutional amending process to protect republican self-government. This power has repeatedly been used by the people when the Supreme Court has undermined the progress of popular democracy.
As members of the Maryland General Assembly, we sharply disagree with the majority decision in Citizens United v. Federal election Commission and call upon the United States Congress to propose and send to the states for ratification as soon as practicable a constitutional amendment to reverse this decision and restore fair elections and democratic sovereignty to the states and to the people.
Needless to say, if members of the U.S. Congress fail to act responsibly (as requested by this letter) and forward an amendment to the Constitution for the states to ratify, the legislatures of 34 states could act independently and pass resolutions in their respective states calling for an amendment to the Constitution.
Ending the corporate takeover of our electoral process and repeal of Citizens United by a constitutional amendment is absolutely necessary to restore our democracy.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Spitting in the Wind
For everyone who is thinking that the way to change stuff is to vote:
Results of the 2012 Presidential election will be tallied in over 900 jurisdictions in 26 states by a company called SOE Software. SOE is owned by a company called Scytl, which is a Spanish company.
Scytl in turn is owned by a single investor, a company called Balderton Capital Management, a British company.
The partners in Balderton Capital Management include two former high-level executives of Goldman Sachs and a former member of a task force reporting to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "to drive delivery of the (British) government's key objectives." Hmmm.
Vote for the change? Probably not.
Results of the 2012 Presidential election will be tallied in over 900 jurisdictions in 26 states by a company called SOE Software. SOE is owned by a company called Scytl, which is a Spanish company.
Scytl in turn is owned by a single investor, a company called Balderton Capital Management, a British company.
The partners in Balderton Capital Management include two former high-level executives of Goldman Sachs and a former member of a task force reporting to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, "to drive delivery of the (British) government's key objectives." Hmmm.
Vote for the change? Probably not.
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