Or God "knows"...take your pick. Here we go!
"Best-selling 'God' author faces plagiarism claim".
www.msnbc.com/id/28538509/
I thought all of these "god" writer people were born knowing that God had already written and read everything (Intelligent Design?), but apparently they are not beneath stealing from one another to sell books. Shocking.
"For Eastern Orthodox, gas crisis means chilly Christmas".
www.msnbc.com/id/28515983/
For most people in the US, we look forward to a white Christmas. But it seems that Russian energy moguls are not content unless Jesus freezes his little swathed ass off. Praise the Lord and pass the gasline.
"Fighting resumes In GAZA after truce for aid." Both sides mull cease fire plan; three hour pause for humanitarian supplies ends."
www.msnbc.com/id/28404637/
"What God hath wrought, let all men put asunder? " There will be a slight pause for food, water and penicillin before we resume pounding the living crap out of you, you filthy heathens." Is this the pause that refreshes?
This just in:
Obama announces the appointment of a "Waste Czar". A Chief Performance Officer. The pres-elect says his pre-election campaign promised more change, but that the way things are (not) going, we need "more change than that."
www.msnbc.com/id/28538966
I am not certain I like the idea of a government official (should be Czarina, anyway?) to oversee or manage waste. There is a company here called "Waste Management" and all they do is haul mountains of trash to the land fill, down the road. Maybe waste eliminator? Or "terminator"? Maybe we need Arnold? Maybe it should the Office of "Waist" Management. Then she could logically talk about tightening our fiscal belts and reducing our pork intake?
Then Harry called:
An email from Give 'em Hell, Harry. "Yesterday was a terrific day to be a Democrat". Seated seven new Senators (screw Roland Burris). But we have a slumping economy. OK. Got that part. Then down at the bottom:
Contribute
These miserable jerks just don't get it, do they?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Three Witches
For a very long time now, I have lamented, railed against, screamed about and been oftentimes completely incensed by the (almost impossible to ignore) fact that the United States of America has been and is being run by gray-haired, old men, in expensive suits (Barack Obama excepted, although I hear the gray hair thing is already started.). Bill Clinton and George W, Bush, our two most recent top dogs, didn’t start out their tenures with gray hair, but would you look at them now! Wow!
A note, here: I have seen countless portraits and portrayals of the founding fathers; Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams; (old guys?), almost always wearing one of those silly gray or white powdered wigs they carried over from England. It could have been that there was some intent to set a standard for future hair styles of the members of the legislative branch, but somehow I don’t think so. Of course, the first group to give their King George the boot also tried to make it clear that ours was NOT to be a Christian nation, but we have screwed that up, as well. So who the hell knows?
As for the “old” part of the description, I give you the likes of Strom Thousand-Year-Old-Egg Thurmond, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Give ‘em Hell Harry Reid and Ted The-Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens. These guys are but just a few of the current standard bearers of the coiffes which are salt-and-pepper hair to gray to barely there. But I know the Capitol building has a whole raft of “guys”, not many years on the junior side, just waiting to take up their places as the aging keepers of the public trust. (I also believe that there are more walkers and wheelchairs parked outside the doors of the Senate chambers than any of us imagine).
The expensive suit observation is partially speculative, but during the vice-presidential debates (with all due respect to Sarah Palin and Nieman-Marcus) and Democratic nomination acceptance speech celebrations (somebody finally bought Barack a new tie), Joe Biden’s threads hardly looked like they came off the rack at the J.C.Penney store in Dover, DE or Scranton. And I don’ think you will find Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank picking up their wardrobes at the thrift shops in their local home environs. (I don’t recall seeing any thrift stores on Martha’s Vineyard…although I vacation there often, as I am certain you do…but I’m sure Martha must have some old grape-stained dresses lying around somewhere).
However…
(You’ve been wondering where the three witches come in, haven’t you?)
Now come the three women of the epoxy-snit. I say this because they seem to be glued together in a permanent state of whining and hormonal minstrel misery. Who are these women, you ask? Why, I give you the Pugilist and Pecuniary Barbara Boxer, the Indignant Feisty Feinstein and the Nasal Nancy Pelosi. As a trio of malcontents, they have trumped my contempt, disdain and disavowal of the gray-haired old men, as they stand together and stir the cauldron of Washington politics, like characters from a modern day MacBeth. They appear, all too often, as a boil on the complexion of the political landscape, and seem intent on stirring up toil and trouble. They are a triad of dis-chord in the nearly atonal harmony of the rakes regress across the business of Capitol Hill. They just piss me off.
I think it all began
Sometime during the latter part of the recent election cycle. For some seemingly inexplicable reason, I began to perceive all women as relentless, nasal, gold-digging, petulant opportunists, and I knew I couldn’t blame it all on the Governor of Alaska. As I recall, there was not a lot of Fein-steining going on, but Boxer and Pelosi had set several repugnant practices into motion. I have no proof that the three of them actually sat and plotted out this attack on the general populace, but they may well have. It did (and does) seem like a concerted effort, a sort of gender-based maliciousness.
Please bear in mind that two important and indomitable movements were afoot at that time: the first was of course the all-out campaign by the Democrats, liberals and the progressives to sweep all manner of Republicans (especially that Shrub fellow) from office. Doing that would require heroic amounts of effort and mountains of cash. Nearer the end of the cycle, we were beset by the Paulson-Bernanke-October-Wall Street surprise: we had all been robbed and would starve to death any moment, only Congress and the Treasury could save us, the sky was falling while hell was freezing over and we were all going to freaking die in the next 11 minutes. Other than that, everything was fine. Except…
Almost as nicely formatted as a country-western female duo from Nashville, Boxer and Pelosi both attempted to take and steal the national stage. The only elements missing were tin cups and twangy guitars. While on the one hand, I was receiving emails, almost daily, from Boxer, asking for cash (in our national time of dire straits) for some of her projects that were absolute musts if she were to save the world, poor people and medical aid programs in CA (hell, I don’t even live in CA), Pelosi was front and center before the press cameras, warbling about what “she” would and would not let Congress do or not do to save the financial futures of America. Boxer (thankfully) remained largely invisible, save her picture and plaintive messages in the emails, but these belied her expensive suits and carefully coiffed hair (remember the old guys?). Meanwhile, Pelosi was highly visible (and shrill), standing up next to ( and trying, it seemed, to be on top of) Harry Reid, making pronouncements about how powerful she was while acting like this was all monopoly money, playing both politics and her side of the sad song record on the jukebox she shared with Boxer. She always looked gaunt, but she always had a nice suit and her hair looked fabulous (remember the old guys?) Later on, Boxer stopped asking for cash (because the Dems had won) and Pelosi settled in to a more complacent demeanor after she and the Congress let Paulson slip $85B to AIG. Talk about hiding the salami.
I was beginning to get over this (these two women had almost turned me against women) until Obama’s team leaked out the news that Leon Panetta had been selected to run the CIA. Feinstein went as indignantly ballistic as a Sec. of Defense, and threw a linguistic plate of matzo balls against the walls of the intelligence committee hearing room:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732447.aspx
Then we got this:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/panetta-feinstein-rockefeller/
Some time later, the Obama camp apologized for the leak, saying they had fully intended to consult Feinstein before hand, but, as Rumsfeld might say, “Stuff happens”. (I am quite certain that Feinstein would have said “s$#@ happens, but it would not go well with her suit. Besides, it is hard to say “s@#^” and sound whiny and California at the same time).
I had a grandmother like Feinstein once. Even now I can hear, “Well, I declare!”, and “Well, nobody asked me before they did that!”, and, “That was very inconsiderate and I don’t appreciate it one bit”. I always wanted to say to my grandmother (as we would say today), “Get over it”. I should like to say the same to Ms. Feinstein. And I saw her picture today. She was not hiding her displeasure, but she had on really nice clothes and her hair looked great, too. (Old guys, again)
And so it seems that I must back down somewhat, from my disdain and disappointment when it comes to my views about “gray-haired old men in expensive suits” running the country. I must, it seems, temper that ire with the added knowledge of the activities of the female contingent (at least as regards this trio) whom equal gender opportunities hath wrought. Perhaps you can cage a chauvinistic leopard but you can’t change his (my) spots.
I was reminded today of the movie, “The Witches of Eastwick”. Those ladies were fun until they decided to join forces and go after Jack Nicholson with a vengeance. I don’t know what “aspirational horizons” Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi have their eyes on for the next four years, but they are all living together in the same cottage on Capitol Hill, and if I were Michelle, I’d watch my Barack.
Life Goes On In Texas.
A note, here: I have seen countless portraits and portrayals of the founding fathers; Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams; (old guys?), almost always wearing one of those silly gray or white powdered wigs they carried over from England. It could have been that there was some intent to set a standard for future hair styles of the members of the legislative branch, but somehow I don’t think so. Of course, the first group to give their King George the boot also tried to make it clear that ours was NOT to be a Christian nation, but we have screwed that up, as well. So who the hell knows?
As for the “old” part of the description, I give you the likes of Strom Thousand-Year-Old-Egg Thurmond, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Give ‘em Hell Harry Reid and Ted The-Bridge-to-Nowhere Stevens. These guys are but just a few of the current standard bearers of the coiffes which are salt-and-pepper hair to gray to barely there. But I know the Capitol building has a whole raft of “guys”, not many years on the junior side, just waiting to take up their places as the aging keepers of the public trust. (I also believe that there are more walkers and wheelchairs parked outside the doors of the Senate chambers than any of us imagine).
The expensive suit observation is partially speculative, but during the vice-presidential debates (with all due respect to Sarah Palin and Nieman-Marcus) and Democratic nomination acceptance speech celebrations (somebody finally bought Barack a new tie), Joe Biden’s threads hardly looked like they came off the rack at the J.C.Penney store in Dover, DE or Scranton. And I don’ think you will find Ted Kennedy or Barney Frank picking up their wardrobes at the thrift shops in their local home environs. (I don’t recall seeing any thrift stores on Martha’s Vineyard…although I vacation there often, as I am certain you do…but I’m sure Martha must have some old grape-stained dresses lying around somewhere).
However…
(You’ve been wondering where the three witches come in, haven’t you?)
Now come the three women of the epoxy-snit. I say this because they seem to be glued together in a permanent state of whining and hormonal minstrel misery. Who are these women, you ask? Why, I give you the Pugilist and Pecuniary Barbara Boxer, the Indignant Feisty Feinstein and the Nasal Nancy Pelosi. As a trio of malcontents, they have trumped my contempt, disdain and disavowal of the gray-haired old men, as they stand together and stir the cauldron of Washington politics, like characters from a modern day MacBeth. They appear, all too often, as a boil on the complexion of the political landscape, and seem intent on stirring up toil and trouble. They are a triad of dis-chord in the nearly atonal harmony of the rakes regress across the business of Capitol Hill. They just piss me off.
I think it all began
Sometime during the latter part of the recent election cycle. For some seemingly inexplicable reason, I began to perceive all women as relentless, nasal, gold-digging, petulant opportunists, and I knew I couldn’t blame it all on the Governor of Alaska. As I recall, there was not a lot of Fein-steining going on, but Boxer and Pelosi had set several repugnant practices into motion. I have no proof that the three of them actually sat and plotted out this attack on the general populace, but they may well have. It did (and does) seem like a concerted effort, a sort of gender-based maliciousness.
Please bear in mind that two important and indomitable movements were afoot at that time: the first was of course the all-out campaign by the Democrats, liberals and the progressives to sweep all manner of Republicans (especially that Shrub fellow) from office. Doing that would require heroic amounts of effort and mountains of cash. Nearer the end of the cycle, we were beset by the Paulson-Bernanke-October-Wall Street surprise: we had all been robbed and would starve to death any moment, only Congress and the Treasury could save us, the sky was falling while hell was freezing over and we were all going to freaking die in the next 11 minutes. Other than that, everything was fine. Except…
Almost as nicely formatted as a country-western female duo from Nashville, Boxer and Pelosi both attempted to take and steal the national stage. The only elements missing were tin cups and twangy guitars. While on the one hand, I was receiving emails, almost daily, from Boxer, asking for cash (in our national time of dire straits) for some of her projects that were absolute musts if she were to save the world, poor people and medical aid programs in CA (hell, I don’t even live in CA), Pelosi was front and center before the press cameras, warbling about what “she” would and would not let Congress do or not do to save the financial futures of America. Boxer (thankfully) remained largely invisible, save her picture and plaintive messages in the emails, but these belied her expensive suits and carefully coiffed hair (remember the old guys?). Meanwhile, Pelosi was highly visible (and shrill), standing up next to ( and trying, it seemed, to be on top of) Harry Reid, making pronouncements about how powerful she was while acting like this was all monopoly money, playing both politics and her side of the sad song record on the jukebox she shared with Boxer. She always looked gaunt, but she always had a nice suit and her hair looked fabulous (remember the old guys?) Later on, Boxer stopped asking for cash (because the Dems had won) and Pelosi settled in to a more complacent demeanor after she and the Congress let Paulson slip $85B to AIG. Talk about hiding the salami.
I was beginning to get over this (these two women had almost turned me against women) until Obama’s team leaked out the news that Leon Panetta had been selected to run the CIA. Feinstein went as indignantly ballistic as a Sec. of Defense, and threw a linguistic plate of matzo balls against the walls of the intelligence committee hearing room:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/01/05/1732447.aspx
Then we got this:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/panetta-feinstein-rockefeller/
Some time later, the Obama camp apologized for the leak, saying they had fully intended to consult Feinstein before hand, but, as Rumsfeld might say, “Stuff happens”. (I am quite certain that Feinstein would have said “s$#@ happens, but it would not go well with her suit. Besides, it is hard to say “s@#^” and sound whiny and California at the same time).
I had a grandmother like Feinstein once. Even now I can hear, “Well, I declare!”, and “Well, nobody asked me before they did that!”, and, “That was very inconsiderate and I don’t appreciate it one bit”. I always wanted to say to my grandmother (as we would say today), “Get over it”. I should like to say the same to Ms. Feinstein. And I saw her picture today. She was not hiding her displeasure, but she had on really nice clothes and her hair looked great, too. (Old guys, again)
And so it seems that I must back down somewhat, from my disdain and disappointment when it comes to my views about “gray-haired old men in expensive suits” running the country. I must, it seems, temper that ire with the added knowledge of the activities of the female contingent (at least as regards this trio) whom equal gender opportunities hath wrought. Perhaps you can cage a chauvinistic leopard but you can’t change his (my) spots.
I was reminded today of the movie, “The Witches of Eastwick”. Those ladies were fun until they decided to join forces and go after Jack Nicholson with a vengeance. I don’t know what “aspirational horizons” Boxer, Feinstein and Pelosi have their eyes on for the next four years, but they are all living together in the same cottage on Capitol Hill, and if I were Michelle, I’d watch my Barack.
Life Goes On In Texas.
As Then Economy Turns (Bad)
Dr. Reich is at it again, and rightly so. I recommend his blog today, 1/6/09.
Here is what I told him (he of course listens closely to me):
My concern is this: you have stressed repeatedly that the question is not whether the government will do too much or too little, and that 'too little" will be a big mistake, a waste of time. The problem is, that while that all makes perfect sense, we do not have economists and people looking out for the good of the country making these decisions: we have politicians.
The stink and discussion for the last 24 hours has revolved around what has come (to some) as a surprise that the Obama stimulus package will include a 40% portion devoted to tax cuts rather than cash infusions. Lefties are horrified and righties are gloating. Republicans have already vowed to assail, contort, delay and hamper all efforts to get a package signed unless they have their way and the Obama folks seem to be working toward a compromise which will be only a luke-warm solution which fails to do enough. I.e., it will do "too little" but the politicians will be happy because their side "won".
You are preaching to the choir, Dr., but the choir is still paying the salaries of the politicians,and they have the purse strings and the check book. Unless this paradigm is altered, you and Krugman, et.al, are pissing into the wind.
The stink and discussion for the last 24 hours has revolved around what has come (to some) as a surprise that the Obama stimulus package will include a 40% portion devoted to tax cuts rather than cash infusions. Lefties are horrified and righties are gloating. Republicans have already vowed to assail, contort, delay and hamper all efforts to get a package signed unless they have their way and the Obama folks seem to be working toward a compromise which will be only a luke-warm solution which fails to do enough. I.e., it will do "too little" but the politicians will be happy because their side "won".
You are preaching to the choir, Dr., but the choir is still paying the salaries of the politicians,and they have the purse strings and the check book. Unless this paradigm is altered, you and Krugman, et.al, are pissing into the wind.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
And Now For Something Completely Different
What good is a blog if you can't let your mouth run-over, occasionally?
This is Not Fun
This recurrent dream
Keeps playing again
And again
A peek-a-boo
Déjà view
About a part
Of life’s past
Particulars
That I wish had not been
A part of mine.
Particularly when they keep
Coming and going
And calling at Will
E. Nilly’s own proscribed time.
This can make a long sleep
Not worth
being had
And ruin completely
A short nap,
Cats or know.
There is always a holy
Of some grail of sorts
Or
A grail of some holy sort
Needing to be sought after,
Cleansed, found, rehabbed, delivered
Or
Retrieved
Or
Just plain nabbed, grabbed quickly
For
Redemption or salvation
Or
Kept from immolation, ordination
Interpretation, induction or inauguration.
But in the end
There is never resolution
Or
Absolution and I wake
Tired and confused.
Perhaps proseletyzed.
Always there is somewhere
Where I must get to
To pick up
Or
Deliver what I do not
Know as gospel
Or have as any
Tangible evidence of the quest
In question,
Any glimpse of what
I am in search of
(get your own damn preposition;
This one is mine).
After an Order has been given,
In the name of my father
The Sun or some Holy
Grail ghost sonuvabitch
Who talked me into
This,.
I then find to run
My errant errands
That there are always
Two cars,
One mine, the other
Something other than mine.
I leave the one
And take the other
Only to misplace it,
Myself and my way
Along the way
Along with all the keys
To both.
(If you have never been stranded
In a dream, I don’t recommend it.)
I have learned
That these are the keys
To my kingdom
But they always land
On a dirty floor
before
They open
Any door.
On one trip I drove an Audi
That had been fitted
For James Bond
And the scenery I passed
Exploded all along the way.
The last was black Saab
Turbo, of course
Another spirit-packed
Power-horse that got
Misplaced like the others,
In a sub-terranean dungeon
Which was really
A garage with many exits,
All of them
Old wooden doors
With writs tacked on them
That none of the keys
would open,
And then I then remember
That the view would be
Made fine all over
Again
If I could make my way
Back
To the other car-
The one less flashy-
That I’d left
Full of books
That I’d not read
Yet
Back
In the university parking lot.
But I can’t
And I’ve just dropped
The keys
To the menacingly black turbo
Down a drain grate
In the garage dungeon floor
And
It is cold and damp
In here
Where
I am all alone
And
I hate cars now
And
Unread books.
Every time I dream
This dream I learn
Again
I have learned so little.
Then this voice says
“Just shut up and give me
The fucking keys.
This time I’ll drive.”
This is Not Fun
This recurrent dream
Keeps playing again
And again
A peek-a-boo
Déjà view
About a part
Of life’s past
Particulars
That I wish had not been
A part of mine.
Particularly when they keep
Coming and going
And calling at Will
E. Nilly’s own proscribed time.
This can make a long sleep
Not worth
being had
And ruin completely
A short nap,
Cats or know.
There is always a holy
Of some grail of sorts
Or
A grail of some holy sort
Needing to be sought after,
Cleansed, found, rehabbed, delivered
Or
Retrieved
Or
Just plain nabbed, grabbed quickly
For
Redemption or salvation
Or
Kept from immolation, ordination
Interpretation, induction or inauguration.
But in the end
There is never resolution
Or
Absolution and I wake
Tired and confused.
Perhaps proseletyzed.
Always there is somewhere
Where I must get to
To pick up
Or
Deliver what I do not
Know as gospel
Or have as any
Tangible evidence of the quest
In question,
Any glimpse of what
I am in search of
(get your own damn preposition;
This one is mine).
After an Order has been given,
In the name of my father
The Sun or some Holy
Grail ghost sonuvabitch
Who talked me into
This,.
I then find to run
My errant errands
That there are always
Two cars,
One mine, the other
Something other than mine.
I leave the one
And take the other
Only to misplace it,
Myself and my way
Along the way
Along with all the keys
To both.
(If you have never been stranded
In a dream, I don’t recommend it.)
I have learned
That these are the keys
To my kingdom
But they always land
On a dirty floor
before
They open
Any door.
On one trip I drove an Audi
That had been fitted
For James Bond
And the scenery I passed
Exploded all along the way.
The last was black Saab
Turbo, of course
Another spirit-packed
Power-horse that got
Misplaced like the others,
In a sub-terranean dungeon
Which was really
A garage with many exits,
All of them
Old wooden doors
With writs tacked on them
That none of the keys
would open,
And then I then remember
That the view would be
Made fine all over
Again
If I could make my way
Back
To the other car-
The one less flashy-
That I’d left
Full of books
That I’d not read
Yet
Back
In the university parking lot.
But I can’t
And I’ve just dropped
The keys
To the menacingly black turbo
Down a drain grate
In the garage dungeon floor
And
It is cold and damp
In here
Where
I am all alone
And
I hate cars now
And
Unread books.
Every time I dream
This dream I learn
Again
I have learned so little.
Then this voice says
“Just shut up and give me
The fucking keys.
This time I’ll drive.”
Friday, January 2, 2009
News Flash! Real Thinking Found NOT To Be Dead!
Just before real writing, and the inclusive nature of the circumspect thought which it requires, was about fall from the precipice of our extremely temporal, sensationalistic and immensely dissatisfying existence, this comes along.
I never read The New Republic, and would never had seen this, if it were not for David Brooks in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02brooks.html?th&emc=th
“The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam — to achieve a decisive and final break with history — has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past — in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities — has a way of lingering around.”
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a559152f-70db-4183-8a8e-ed818ce6df7c
Happy New Year(s).
I never read The New Republic, and would never had seen this, if it were not for David Brooks in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/opinion/02brooks.html?th&emc=th
“The American instinct to continuously remake ourselves in the image of Adam — to achieve a decisive and final break with history — has periodically proven seductive to voters. And, sometimes, this instinct can produce important, transformative results. Yet the past — in the form of race or war or deeply held partisan animosities — has a way of lingering around.”
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a559152f-70db-4183-8a8e-ed818ce6df7c
Happy New Year(s).
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Woe is Me..And the Bombs Bursted in Air
I can’t decide what's worse, my crippled communications status (my TV died) or the lack of immediately incendiary political news. I am really glad that “yes we did”, but now what?
With no television, I cannot watch Christ Matthews yell and spit at his guests or Rachel Maddow crucify Rick Warren (again). The shortage of political firewood (Blago is asleep, Obama is in Hawaii) since Sarah Palin went away makes it tough, because no one wants to hear about the mundane realties of urban hunger or listen to another “expert” tell us why our economic conundrum sucks. But life must go on. And one more re-hash about why some Wall Street CEO thinks he deserves his multi-million dollar bonus and I will vomit. But anyway…
The economy: Today (12/28) the NYT had a new op ed from Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) in which he quotes and defends his use of the phrase:”niggling nabobs”. He essentially concludes that if you listen to all of the experts, you will, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that “nobody knows nuthin’ “. In the same newspaper, Thomas Friedman speaks up (Op-Ed Columnist: Win, Win, Win, Win, Win ... ) and while I think he makes some good points about the (needed) gas tax hikes, I have heard dissenting remarks from others who think he has got much of it wrong. You decide. All I know is I don’t “know nuthin’ “ except that somebody ran off with all the money.
I got this in an email from NOWAR (http://thirdcoastactivist.org/) this afternoon:
Hello, all. Over the weekend Israel has killed over 300 Palestinians and wounded at least 900 more with F-16 jets and Apache helicopters supplied by the United States. Anger at this assault has ignited spontaneous demonstrations in many cities, including Austin, where a protest called by UT's Palestine Solidarity Committee will take place at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 29 in front of the State Capital (11th and Congress). To read more about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the complicity of the United States, and the broader historical context visit http://electronicintifada.net
The home pages of MSNBC.com and the BBC have been covering this firestorm and violence all day as well.
I am baffled about who to blame and why. Condi Rice and the Israeli Foreign Minister say the whole thing is the fault of Hamas for pitching rockets over the walls into Israel after breaking a truce. Hamas says it should be expected, since Israel won’t allow humanitarian food stuffs and medical supplies into Gaza. So Israel retaliates against the rockets with several hundred tons of bombs and kills at least 300 people right out of the box. The word “overkill” comes to mind.
However, I think this is all an environmental problem. Or rather a problem of environmental disruption. Perhaps we keep forgetting to remember that Palestinians and Israelis were both once nomadic desert warriors. They shared the sand, the sun, camels and brutality. Their morality was determined largely by desert survival. As the centuries progressed, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and (eventually) arrogant Protestant democracy got mixed in there and now these two camps live in artificial walled cities. They still hate one another for a thousand thousand wrong and bigoted, short-sighted reasons and religious tenets, but their environments have been altered to maximize the terror they can inflict upon one another. They are now walled-in and have much better and more lethal weapons to use against each other (perhaps if they were forced to hack one another to bits with scimitars and hurl camel dung back and forth at each other things would slow down). . There is nothing new in their brutality: they brought it with them from the desert. They are just much more efficient in how they can go about slaughtering one another in this new environment. It is very much akin to the economic “experts” Krugman decries: “Nobody knows nuthin”.” And nobody wants to be confused by the facts. Pardon my use of the phrase, but when it comes to the use of logic, it appears that both sides can only say, “God forbid”.
The Mid-east has high-powered explosives; Wall Street has loan default/debit/credit swaps covered by a TARP. In either case, the result is dead bodies and rubble. If there were a website for all of this, it would be called "Screwup.disorg/".
ThinkProgress.org is having great fun (as are the readers) with the fact that it looks like the Bush “libery” will be a “white elephant”. It seems that many of the restrictive directives that Bush has issued will prevent many of the materials that should be in a presidential library from actually being there, making it largely an empty building. But that is to be expected as we endure the attempts by the administration to make “valedictory” (say what?) speeches and to rush to artificially create W’s “legacy”. You can read about the legacy efforts anywhere you might care to look, but I can create only this one dominant image:
A legacy, something that one leaves behind, trailing after him/her following their time in the leadership limelight, should be at least somewhat noble and awe inspiring. But when I close my eyes, all I see is W leaving a stall in the men’s room, with a long trail of toilet paper, dangling from the back of his pants, following him down the hall. And he has made it clear he has no intention of looking back. So be it.
The related not-very-new news today was that both Condi Rice and Laura Bush gave separate TV interviews and defended the Bush leadership record. Condi gave him an A+ (she must be smoking crack) and Laura Bush said , “history will tell”. It sure will. So be it. And I hope he will be “it” soon, so can all tag him and run away. There is sad irony in the fact that at the end of W’s “reign” his two most prominent Sunday morning apologists are two women, both devoid of a sense of the real world and devoted to perpetrating lies.
“Hi. My name is Dick Cheney, and I’m here to help you”. That is written on the toilet paper. The stuff legacies are made of.
We are but three days from a new year. In the absence of a television, I am rummaging through my CD collection for entertainment. I have just heard singer/songwriter Steve Goodman go on with great eloquence about the fact that, no matter how bad or gruesome or awful that which has gone before us has been, every year on Jan 1 we get the chance to begin anew. And country singer Gretchen Wilson just warbled that she was “one Bud wiser than I was a minute ago.” Perhaps in three days we will all acknowledge Steve’s admonishment to begin anew and be like Gretchen, “one Bud Wiser”.
I don’t know if that will keep any bombs from bursting over head in Gaza, make our economic experts any smarter or keep money out of he hands of some Wall Street tycoon. , but it might be a start. It would certainly be better than “nobody knows nuthin” and “one Bud wiser” would be better than none. Of course, things could get worse, but “God forbid”.
Happy New Year.
Life Goes on in Texas.
With no television, I cannot watch Christ Matthews yell and spit at his guests or Rachel Maddow crucify Rick Warren (again). The shortage of political firewood (Blago is asleep, Obama is in Hawaii) since Sarah Palin went away makes it tough, because no one wants to hear about the mundane realties of urban hunger or listen to another “expert” tell us why our economic conundrum sucks. But life must go on. And one more re-hash about why some Wall Street CEO thinks he deserves his multi-million dollar bonus and I will vomit. But anyway…
The economy: Today (12/28) the NYT had a new op ed from Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) in which he quotes and defends his use of the phrase:”niggling nabobs”. He essentially concludes that if you listen to all of the experts, you will, sooner or later, come to the conclusion that “nobody knows nuthin’ “. In the same newspaper, Thomas Friedman speaks up (Op-Ed Columnist: Win, Win, Win, Win, Win ... ) and while I think he makes some good points about the (needed) gas tax hikes, I have heard dissenting remarks from others who think he has got much of it wrong. You decide. All I know is I don’t “know nuthin’ “ except that somebody ran off with all the money.
I got this in an email from NOWAR (http://thirdcoastactivist.org/) this afternoon:
Hello, all. Over the weekend Israel has killed over 300 Palestinians and wounded at least 900 more with F-16 jets and Apache helicopters supplied by the United States. Anger at this assault has ignited spontaneous demonstrations in many cities, including Austin, where a protest called by UT's Palestine Solidarity Committee will take place at 5 p.m. on Monday, December 29 in front of the State Capital (11th and Congress). To read more about the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the complicity of the United States, and the broader historical context visit http://electronicintifada.net
The home pages of MSNBC.com and the BBC have been covering this firestorm and violence all day as well.
I am baffled about who to blame and why. Condi Rice and the Israeli Foreign Minister say the whole thing is the fault of Hamas for pitching rockets over the walls into Israel after breaking a truce. Hamas says it should be expected, since Israel won’t allow humanitarian food stuffs and medical supplies into Gaza. So Israel retaliates against the rockets with several hundred tons of bombs and kills at least 300 people right out of the box. The word “overkill” comes to mind.
However, I think this is all an environmental problem. Or rather a problem of environmental disruption. Perhaps we keep forgetting to remember that Palestinians and Israelis were both once nomadic desert warriors. They shared the sand, the sun, camels and brutality. Their morality was determined largely by desert survival. As the centuries progressed, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed and (eventually) arrogant Protestant democracy got mixed in there and now these two camps live in artificial walled cities. They still hate one another for a thousand thousand wrong and bigoted, short-sighted reasons and religious tenets, but their environments have been altered to maximize the terror they can inflict upon one another. They are now walled-in and have much better and more lethal weapons to use against each other (perhaps if they were forced to hack one another to bits with scimitars and hurl camel dung back and forth at each other things would slow down). . There is nothing new in their brutality: they brought it with them from the desert. They are just much more efficient in how they can go about slaughtering one another in this new environment. It is very much akin to the economic “experts” Krugman decries: “Nobody knows nuthin”.” And nobody wants to be confused by the facts. Pardon my use of the phrase, but when it comes to the use of logic, it appears that both sides can only say, “God forbid”.
The Mid-east has high-powered explosives; Wall Street has loan default/debit/credit swaps covered by a TARP. In either case, the result is dead bodies and rubble. If there were a website for all of this, it would be called "Screwup.disorg/".
ThinkProgress.org is having great fun (as are the readers) with the fact that it looks like the Bush “libery” will be a “white elephant”. It seems that many of the restrictive directives that Bush has issued will prevent many of the materials that should be in a presidential library from actually being there, making it largely an empty building. But that is to be expected as we endure the attempts by the administration to make “valedictory” (say what?) speeches and to rush to artificially create W’s “legacy”. You can read about the legacy efforts anywhere you might care to look, but I can create only this one dominant image:
A legacy, something that one leaves behind, trailing after him/her following their time in the leadership limelight, should be at least somewhat noble and awe inspiring. But when I close my eyes, all I see is W leaving a stall in the men’s room, with a long trail of toilet paper, dangling from the back of his pants, following him down the hall. And he has made it clear he has no intention of looking back. So be it.
The related not-very-new news today was that both Condi Rice and Laura Bush gave separate TV interviews and defended the Bush leadership record. Condi gave him an A+ (she must be smoking crack) and Laura Bush said , “history will tell”. It sure will. So be it. And I hope he will be “it” soon, so can all tag him and run away. There is sad irony in the fact that at the end of W’s “reign” his two most prominent Sunday morning apologists are two women, both devoid of a sense of the real world and devoted to perpetrating lies.
“Hi. My name is Dick Cheney, and I’m here to help you”. That is written on the toilet paper. The stuff legacies are made of.
We are but three days from a new year. In the absence of a television, I am rummaging through my CD collection for entertainment. I have just heard singer/songwriter Steve Goodman go on with great eloquence about the fact that, no matter how bad or gruesome or awful that which has gone before us has been, every year on Jan 1 we get the chance to begin anew. And country singer Gretchen Wilson just warbled that she was “one Bud wiser than I was a minute ago.” Perhaps in three days we will all acknowledge Steve’s admonishment to begin anew and be like Gretchen, “one Bud Wiser”.
I don’t know if that will keep any bombs from bursting over head in Gaza, make our economic experts any smarter or keep money out of he hands of some Wall Street tycoon. , but it might be a start. It would certainly be better than “nobody knows nuthin” and “one Bud wiser” would be better than none. Of course, things could get worse, but “God forbid”.
Happy New Year.
Life Goes on in Texas.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Re-Cycling When We Shouldn't
Robert Reich had an interesting blog posting on Christmas eve:
(http://robertreich.blogspot.com/).
“The Debate to Come over Wall Street, Autos, and Everything Else: Cyclical or Structural?”
The crux of the post is summarized in the last lines:
---whether the economic crisis we're experiencing is basically cyclical (in which case, nothing really needs to change over the long term, after the economy gets back on track) or structural (in which case, many aspects of our economy and society will needs to change permanently).
Above these lines, Reich talks about the basic contradiction which exists in the thinking of the old-time Wall Streeters, that this economic mess we are in is “cyclical”, that soon things will be back to normal (in effect, telling the public…you me and us… to “get over it”) and the more radical thinking that says this nightmare is “structural” and cannot be counted upon. That is what he referring to in that quote above, about matters that will need “to change permanently”.
Reich is being immensely politic and enormously polite. As long as the financial powers that be can continue to convince us that this is an acceptable “cyclical” condition, they can maintain the stranglehold on the world’s money supply. It should be abundantly clear to almost everyone right now that the “structure’ of how we have been managing and mismanaging our money does not work any more. And it needs to be changed. And will make every mogul in the history of money manipulation and how wealth is accumulated damned unhappy.
Here is where I see a great irony posed by this (now worldwide) economic disaster and the natural resource stewardship we talk about so often today. If we accept the proposition that we should stand back and allow the existing monetary structure (and its’ practices) to “cycle over” again, as it done so often in the past, we will be “re-cycling” NOT a resource but a bad and deleterious habit. To put it even more succinctly, when I bemoaned this paradoxical dilemma to a good friend last night, she reminded of one of our favorite syllogisms (attributed to Einstein): Insanity is when you keep doing the same things you have always done and expect to get different results. Duh.
At that point I began to look at the existing monetary infrastructure that we have in play as a piece of the fabric of our society. S cloth, we have used it, worn it, laundered it, dry-cleaned it, heaped praise upon it and re-used it, soiled it, re-laundered it and used it again. And after every use and re-use, it has become thinner and more difficult to maintain. And the majority of the world’s wealth has continued to accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people at the top of the economic (pardon the terminology) “pyramid”. We have, in effect, “re-cycled” the very financial structure which does the least to provide for those who move the stones that build the pyramid. I am reminded of slaves in ancient Egypt and the Pharos who wore the golden adornments. And Henry Paulson does sort of remind me of Yule Brenner and AIG certainly has the festivity angle down cold.
Now before anyone jumps all over me for advocating of “spreading the wealth” and short-changing Joe the Plumber, or hyping Karl Marx, urging a revitalization of hippie communes or taking out the “fascist pigs” of high finance, I have to say that I am far more inclined to maintain the more measured “Reichean” overview and to think about this somewhat logically.
The system we have in place, the “structure’ as Reich refers to it in this recent post, is broken. The TARP sins that have been committed in the name of bail-out and the ugly and counter-productive results of those sins should be obvious to everyone. $350B has already been “thrown at” the banks, and virtually none of it has spurred the economy or stopped the foreclosure debacle. The AP reported that financial institutions have refused to account for how they allocated and spent at least $1.6B of that money. Sec. Paulson is now talking about dispersing the next $350B and no one seems to know what for. Jobless rates are skyrocketing on a monthly basis, and the generally held opinion is that the big real estate, medical groups and others will be close on the heels of Detroit for bail-out money. Meanwhile Chrysler has halted all production for at last 30 days, GM has closed the last of its plants that produce SUVs and word on the street is that General Electric is in as much trouble and General Motors. I don’t see how anyone can that what we have been doing financially for the last two decades has been for the “good of the many”, but has rather (and most recently and obscenely) been for the greater good of the “the few”. I wish someone would explain to me (and to everyone else) the contorted logic that promotes multi-million dollar year-end bonuses for Wall Street execs, only because “things could have been worse” without their leadership? Is someone daft?
No one disputes our need to recycle. We need to recycle wood, paper, plastic, water and virtually every natural resource at our disposal if we are to survive, as a world of bipeds, into the coming centuries. But the one central feature of our existence that we DO NOT need to recycle is the way we have come to handle and manage money and accumulate wealth.
There are some who believe this current phase will “cycle through” and there will indeed be a recovery. But any hope of another “re-cycle” beyond that is very doubtful. We may have washed this cloth, re-cycled this fabric, so often that it is simply “used up” and we need a new one. You can choose to get on this bandwagon or choose insanity. Your call.
(http://robertreich.blogspot.com/).
“The Debate to Come over Wall Street, Autos, and Everything Else: Cyclical or Structural?”
The crux of the post is summarized in the last lines:
---whether the economic crisis we're experiencing is basically cyclical (in which case, nothing really needs to change over the long term, after the economy gets back on track) or structural (in which case, many aspects of our economy and society will needs to change permanently).
Above these lines, Reich talks about the basic contradiction which exists in the thinking of the old-time Wall Streeters, that this economic mess we are in is “cyclical”, that soon things will be back to normal (in effect, telling the public…you me and us… to “get over it”) and the more radical thinking that says this nightmare is “structural” and cannot be counted upon. That is what he referring to in that quote above, about matters that will need “to change permanently”.
Reich is being immensely politic and enormously polite. As long as the financial powers that be can continue to convince us that this is an acceptable “cyclical” condition, they can maintain the stranglehold on the world’s money supply. It should be abundantly clear to almost everyone right now that the “structure’ of how we have been managing and mismanaging our money does not work any more. And it needs to be changed. And will make every mogul in the history of money manipulation and how wealth is accumulated damned unhappy.
Here is where I see a great irony posed by this (now worldwide) economic disaster and the natural resource stewardship we talk about so often today. If we accept the proposition that we should stand back and allow the existing monetary structure (and its’ practices) to “cycle over” again, as it done so often in the past, we will be “re-cycling” NOT a resource but a bad and deleterious habit. To put it even more succinctly, when I bemoaned this paradoxical dilemma to a good friend last night, she reminded of one of our favorite syllogisms (attributed to Einstein): Insanity is when you keep doing the same things you have always done and expect to get different results. Duh.
At that point I began to look at the existing monetary infrastructure that we have in play as a piece of the fabric of our society. S cloth, we have used it, worn it, laundered it, dry-cleaned it, heaped praise upon it and re-used it, soiled it, re-laundered it and used it again. And after every use and re-use, it has become thinner and more difficult to maintain. And the majority of the world’s wealth has continued to accumulate in the hands of fewer and fewer people at the top of the economic (pardon the terminology) “pyramid”. We have, in effect, “re-cycled” the very financial structure which does the least to provide for those who move the stones that build the pyramid. I am reminded of slaves in ancient Egypt and the Pharos who wore the golden adornments. And Henry Paulson does sort of remind me of Yule Brenner and AIG certainly has the festivity angle down cold.
Now before anyone jumps all over me for advocating of “spreading the wealth” and short-changing Joe the Plumber, or hyping Karl Marx, urging a revitalization of hippie communes or taking out the “fascist pigs” of high finance, I have to say that I am far more inclined to maintain the more measured “Reichean” overview and to think about this somewhat logically.
The system we have in place, the “structure’ as Reich refers to it in this recent post, is broken. The TARP sins that have been committed in the name of bail-out and the ugly and counter-productive results of those sins should be obvious to everyone. $350B has already been “thrown at” the banks, and virtually none of it has spurred the economy or stopped the foreclosure debacle. The AP reported that financial institutions have refused to account for how they allocated and spent at least $1.6B of that money. Sec. Paulson is now talking about dispersing the next $350B and no one seems to know what for. Jobless rates are skyrocketing on a monthly basis, and the generally held opinion is that the big real estate, medical groups and others will be close on the heels of Detroit for bail-out money. Meanwhile Chrysler has halted all production for at last 30 days, GM has closed the last of its plants that produce SUVs and word on the street is that General Electric is in as much trouble and General Motors. I don’t see how anyone can that what we have been doing financially for the last two decades has been for the “good of the many”, but has rather (and most recently and obscenely) been for the greater good of the “the few”. I wish someone would explain to me (and to everyone else) the contorted logic that promotes multi-million dollar year-end bonuses for Wall Street execs, only because “things could have been worse” without their leadership? Is someone daft?
No one disputes our need to recycle. We need to recycle wood, paper, plastic, water and virtually every natural resource at our disposal if we are to survive, as a world of bipeds, into the coming centuries. But the one central feature of our existence that we DO NOT need to recycle is the way we have come to handle and manage money and accumulate wealth.
There are some who believe this current phase will “cycle through” and there will indeed be a recovery. But any hope of another “re-cycle” beyond that is very doubtful. We may have washed this cloth, re-cycled this fabric, so often that it is simply “used up” and we need a new one. You can choose to get on this bandwagon or choose insanity. Your call.
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