A Conscious Outpost

Terence McKenna

2012-02-04T20:49:00.002-07:00

Quotes Of The Year

2011-12-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

2012 is going to be a big year all over the world. But before we move on lets look back on 2011

Memorable Quotes

Not meant to be a factual statement." - Jon Kyl's April press release responding to questions about his claim on the Senate floor that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood's activities are abortion

"I put an asterisk on my support... One position that I’m concerned about shifting the cost burden to senior citizens. Seniors are saying, look, I’m not in a positon to be able to handle that. I also share that real fear, that’s why I put that asterisk out there." -- Michele Bachmann on her vote for the Ryan Medicare Budget.

"So let me say on the record, any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood." - Newt Gingrich flip-flopping on Ryan Budget

"Corporations are people, my friend." Mitt Romney at the Iowa State Fair

"Oops." - Rick Perry not able to remember the third cabinet department he would eliminate at a GOP debate

"And when they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I'm going to say, you know, I don't know. Do you know?" - Herman Cain

"Every barrel of oil that comes out of those sands in Canada is a barrel of oil we don’t have to buy from a foreign source." - Rick Perry

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T15:31:00.001-07:00

Here's something to listen to if you get some extra time over the holiday.

It's A Fearmongering Clown Circus!

2011-11-19T19:18:00.001-07:00

Remember how proud these very same people were when the Teaparty was disrupting townhalls by shouting down anyone who disagreed with them? Remember what great patriots they were for trying to take their country back? Well suddenly they are now victims of anti freedom loving people.

This may cause them to think twice about pushing us off the streets and inside.

I've got to tell you I rarely watch the foxnewsdrama videos. To much drama and not enough news for me. However, I watched this one to see what his defense could be. You can tell its been awhile since I watched foxnewsdrama because what they were going to say should have been clear as day. its the same as always, fear mongering.
The difference is this time it was hilarious. The fear mongering is so blatant. First Sean was counting on his fingers all the evil people foxnewsdrama has found at #Occupy. Then later counting on his fingers all the terrible crimes and moral turpitude that had taken place. Not a word about their complaints or issues except to say they just cant figure out what they are. Not a word about the teachers and the councilpeople and the elderly and the war veterans and others who take part. Its only about the socialist commie pinkos raping people on the way to their mission to destroy america.
Alert Rachel Maddow: All of foxnewsdrama is an art project.

Why The Debate Is Over

2011-11-19T14:47:00.001-07:00

I quit taking the right seriously alongtime ago. I finally became totally disinterested in what they had tosay around a year ago. Being the kind of person I am the latter wasvery tough to do. I'm a seeker. I crave new and interesting ideasand thoughts. Things that can be integrated, in part or in whole, toa bigger understanding of the reality that surrounds me day to day.

Unfortunately what passes forconservative thought these days offers me nothing.

I have been interested in and followingpolitics and our social organization from a young age. I havelistened to conservative thought for 40 years now. The only thingthat changes is that it gets more and more extreme all the time. I'mnot talking about the political right, I’m talking about the rankand file populous right. The politicians on both sides,to one extentor another, are there for money not to make society function. Therank and file are the people that count.

Those that were on the rightwing fringeback when I first started following current affairs closely are now the thinking of the so called conservativemainstream. The thinking never changes, regardless of circumstances.It just gets more extreme. There's nothing new or inspiring oradaptive. As a matter of fact the culture of fear and suspicion thatsurrounds the right is far from inspiring, its damaging. I wantnothing to do with that. I have no room for argument when it comes to things like that.

Regardless of the issue there is nopoint in debating the rightwing kneejerk reactionary.

Here's a simple analogy. They will tellyou the sky is green. You will observe and study it and after a timedecide that while it may be possible for the sky to be green the vastmajority of the time it is blue or white or gray. Still, no matterwhat you say they will continue to push the point that the sky isgreen. They will get a study from the Hoover Institute that waspublished in the Washington Post that proves fer sher ,fer sher thatthe sky really is green. Then they think they win. They aren't interested in growing in understanding. They just came for the brawl.Its pointless.

While it's all basically irrelevant tome, occasionally they come up with something that just sets newmarkers, if you know what I mean.

That came this week with the whole“Obama says Americans are lazy” bit. The out of context part ofthat is its own issue and not really notable. It happens all thetime.

My amazement is the fact that thesepeople would dare look someone in the eye and condemn them forcalling Americans lazy. Pardon me but , Holy Shit! These are thevery same people who have been filling my eyes and ears on a dailybasis that the problem with America is all the lazy bums who wontwork and blah de da de da de da. It's not a thread in their beliefsit is, at the core, a part of the very essence of their message! On adaily basis for 40 years now I have heard ad nausem about all thelazy bums who wouldn't pull their bootstraps ruining America. Nowthey find it insulting if someone else is even imagined to say the same thing!!?

The cognitive dissonance has reached anew high. The nerve of them. Bite me.

Competition can be a good thing.Unfortunately it has been turned into something very negative.

The mantra is “destroy” thecompetition. Why would you want to do something like that? I work ina highly competitive industry. Its competitive both industry wise andon an individual basis. I know me some competition. My idea ofcompetition however is “I'm going to make you better”. Then whenyou get really good you are going to make me better. Why would Iwant to destroy something that makes me better?

That is not the way the vast majorityof people are taught to perceive it anymore.

This concept has passed on to ourpolitical picture. The mantra now is to destroy the competition. Ihave no way to have a political dialogue with people who's intentcoming in is to destroy me. There is nothing there that allows me togrow or get better. As a matter of fact, it seems to me a sane personwould avoid something that had a harmful effect or intent. This kind of competition is a war, that isn't growth for both of us as proper competition shouldbe. Why is everything a war now? It's extremism writ large. Or Ijust live in some alternate universe? I have no respect or time forit. This kind of thing holds true for many things in our societytoday. From individualism to capitalism to religion/spirituality andmore. It's been stripped of all its beauty and only the uglinessremains.

For the vast majority of people this isno longer the land of opportunity, the place where hard work counts.Workers are a liability not an asset. What is necessary to get aheadin 2011 is far different than it was in 1953. And it goes way beyondeducation. To pretend it is still 1953 is wasting my time. Thisparadigm(age) is dead. It's a stinking rotting corpse. Let it die andbuild a new one.
Here's what I would like to talk about: It's a new day.
What kind of world would you like to create?
I want one that includes us all.

It's a Fox And Friends World

2011-11-12T13:10:00.001-07:00

Congressman Joe Walsh(no not the musician, the deadbeat dad) shows just how far our society has sunk. In this video clip Walsh sounds like some wingnut talkshow caller and not an aware, informed person representing the people.

First of all does he expect us to be unaware of the fact that the corporations and banksters control our government?
Second of all does he expect us to believe that our government took down the economies of most of europe?
No that was international banksters that did that.
Did Joe Walsh notice that right before the world economies fell off a cliff that the international banksters all over the very same places were crashing. It would tend to make the two seem related somehow wouldn't it?
He and the right wing reactionaries just look completely unaware of the reality that surrounds them to me. Just say government is the problem with everything. That should be deep enough.
The story of what happened is not a secret yet some seem to want to deny reality. Barney Franks tanked the Greek economy or something. The film "Inside Job" is worth viewing if you STILL don't know what happened. Look up what they say and I think you will find oodles of confirmation.

The government did not force the banks or rating agencies to commit fraud, and the government did not make them suck up huge profits from those fraudulent sub prime loans. As a matter of fact, what they did with their freedom to invest should be all the proof that is needed for more regulation not less. Nope the free market believers think that the less rules the better. Many of them apparently think none would be ideal.
I wonder if there were no rules who would win? Hmmmmmm , I'm thinking it would be the biggest and ones with the most power(money) in society. A kind of an aristocratic corporatocracy. Nope, I'm not for that.

OWS

2011-11-12T11:20:00.001-07:00

Matt Taibbi starts this piece with this: I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street.

I had no such problem. As a matter of fact, as anyone who knows me will tell you, I have been screaming most of this from the rooftops for many years now. Often times to the detriment of my personal and professional life. When I saw that there were millions of others popping up all around the country it gave me one of the best feelings I ever experienced.
While Matt may not have understood at the beginning he gets it now and wrote an excellent piece that you can read in its entirety here. Here's the gist of the matter:

This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.The right-wing media wasted no time in cannon-blasting the movement with its usual idiotic clichés, casting Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of dirty hippies who should get a job and stop chewing up Mike Bloomberg's police overtime budget with their urban sleepovers. Just like they did a half-century ago, when the debate over the Vietnam War somehow stopped being about why we were brutally murdering millions of innocent Indochinese civilians and instead became a referendum on bralessness and long hair and flower-child rhetoric, the depraved flacks of the right-wing media have breezily blown off a generation of fraud and corruption and market-perverting bailouts, making the whole debate about the protesters themselves – their hygiene, their "envy" of the rich, their "hypocrisy."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, there were scads of progressive pundits like me....trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes.
..modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money.

..We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something.
...People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes.

Its not 1953 anymore and this isn't the land of opportunity where hard work always pays off. It's now luck and cronyism that are the linchpins to success.Why is George Clooney, just as an example, fabulously rich and people that work just as hard and as many hours are not? Why is it that CEOs are worth 2 to 4 hundred times the pay of the median worker in his company? And that ratio has been rising for 30 years with no sign of abatement. No ,you cant have all there is, there's others here too, and many of us are sick of a system that depletes our national resources and makes us debt slaves to our corporate masters just to survive.
Many probably have a far different perspective on the reality of the world in which we live. Fine you go on and have it. I've watched this all my life and no wingnut rationality is going to move me to drop what I see to be real in my own experience. Thats what many on the right that want to continue to debate this dont seem to get. My days of debting the right are done. They don't express the reality of the dream of the world I seek or have found in my everyday life.

Solyndra

2011-10-08T23:07:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while I must venture into wingnut world just to keep a grip on the world at large. It's a scary enterprise which I rarely have the stomach for anymore.
It seems one of the latest rages on the right is the Solyndra debacle. I must admit that I have only some knowledge of the story but I think I have enough to make a few points. First is it a shady deal. I don't know but I'll say should it be its something that shouldn't be happening. It surely went wrong and turned out to be a bad investment. I have no issue with that point. What I have an issue with is the undertone that says this is a repudiation of alternative energy and pushing it as a society through our government.
There is a long, probably boring, argument that I could make in favor of the government assisting in advancing society at a rate that exceeds corporate confidence. That businesses often fail and that is a slight on private enterprise as much as it is the government. I would rather make another point though.

I think many people aren't aware that giant corporations are fined for government fraud all the time and STILL have government contracts. You'd think intentionally cheating the government out of its money would be a bad thing but most say nothing. Nope but Solyndra is worth weeks of coverage.
Actual, confirmed corporate fraud is happening on a regular basis. Even just with the ones who are getting caught. Here is the latest one.

Oracle will pay the General Services Administration (GSA) more than $199.5 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the vendor of overcharging the federal government for software and services......Paul Frascella filed suit against the company in 2007 claiming that Oracle was not providing the government discounts that were as low as some other customers were receiving, even though the company said it was."Because of these allegedly fraudulent dealings, the United States alleges that it accepted lower discounts and ultimately paid far more than it should have for Oracle products," according to the DOJ.

Thats right they were suppose to give their big customer, the government, best price. But hey, its the government. You know how it goes. Everybody is for cutting government spending as long as it isn't theirs.
Yes Solyndra as a company was a mistake and a failure. To use Solyndra as any kind of club against free/alternative energy is making it obvious that you have no interest in changing the status quo.
Don't think the rest of the world is going to wait for us to catch up.
What is so objectionable about a big push to start making individuals self sustainable? That is the goal. Here's an argument that may have universal appeal.
Our enemies can't take down the power grid. If each home is equipped with their own free/alternative energy system it would be impossible to disable the country at anything near the rate it could be done now.
Unfortunately bubba seems to think it impossible to push forward and all that modern technology is jus dreamin',apparently content and anxious for his 5 dollar gas. "Hey you socialist pinko you're destroying my freedom for 5 dollar gas, I want my damn five dollar gas, shut up!"

Like I said, it's stomach churning.

Oops

2011-10-08T17:22:00.000-06:00

A little footage that Fox Newsdrama decided not to air. Damned liberal media!

Money For The Weekend

2011-10-07T20:00:00.000-06:00

Great song and timely at that! Go OWS! You make me proud!

Sorry for the ad on this video. I haven't had a drink in 15 years but if you'd like, bottoms up.

It's You

2011-09-29T22:14:00.000-06:00

I think its time to admit that their is no hero out there to save us. Its up to you and me.

The Problem Is Obvious

2011-09-04T12:11:00.000-06:00

Here's one of the best looks at US politics today that I have seen in a while. It comes from a guy who worked as a Congressional budget staffer. He claims to have once been a Republican. That has nothing to do with any point that needs to be made. It matters not to me who says it, it is what is said.

Read the entire article here.

Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot.

The Republicans boldly support the elite, the Democrats play just weak enough to allow them to win.

Far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for Senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a Republican filibuster. Under the circumstances, it is no wonder that Washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting.

See government doesn't work! They are right. They made it so.

Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

They are their own proof.

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. Paul Krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "I joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'Views Differ on Shape of Planet.'"

Many call this the false equivalency problem. Just because people have differing opinions doesn't mean that they are equally valid or should they be treated as such. Such as – we can have tax cuts during a war because tax cuts to the wealthy actually produce more income. Hows that workin out for you? Hows that for prudent, adult management of our economic policy? Why did we never have war time tax cuts before? Because everybody always knew better.

Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear. ….....Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's alleged murder.

Welcome to the definition of fearmongering.

What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China.

This should be all the evidence that one needs to know that corporate America owns enough of our government to get their way at will.

To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

Look over here at this bright shiny thing. Don't look to deeply our you will see that the monied elite are the real masters of your universe.

You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune.

Funny thing how they so vehemently protect the comfortable and how hard they want to make it on those that struggle.

It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis. After a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by Wall Street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? At "Washington spending" - ...unemployment compensation, food stamps and Medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. Or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

Funny thing how they so vehemently protect the comfortable and how hard they want to make it on those that struggle.

Likewise, Republicans have assiduously spread the myth that Americans are conspicuously overtaxed. But compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. In particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory Bolshevism. But again, the effective rate is much lower. Did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? No, it paid zero.

When pressed, Republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that the America's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact.

Of course; it would not serve Wall Street interests if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes as against that of a bank CEO. As Spencer Bachus, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, says, "In Washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."

It would seem to me that if 50% of people are not paying taxes that would include a lot of Republicans and likely some wealthy people. Why holler tax cut when you are going to get upset about it. Oh, you mean tax cuts for the rich.

Funny thing how they so vehemently protect the comfortable and how hard they want to make it on those that struggle.

About a month before Republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same Republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. To borrow Chris Hedges' formulation, war is the force that gives meaning to their lives. …..A million dollars appropriated for highway construction would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for Pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious. …...a psychological predisposition toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. This undoubtedly arises from a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio. Militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic. …..the Democrats' cowardly refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous both strategically and fiscally. It has made the United States less prosperous, less secure and less free.

Everyone is for cutting spending. That is not an issue. It is where we cut spending. We are spending billions a month on war. Other countries have much lower military budgets. We pay for their defense for the privilege of being the worlds policeman.

The idea that they must have a dragon to slay is spot on. This is a centerpiece of their very existence.

And the Democrats, he said it pretty well. They are accomplices.

It seems clear to me there are no heros. No one is going to save us. We must see through the Plutocracy that now controls both parties and let them know we aren't being fooled. That is the first step in fixing it.

Art Department

2011-08-28T12:36:00.001-06:00

I found a pretty cool new song. There is a line buried in it that seemed quite significant to me living in the times we are in.
It says "You've got the heart without the ache. Pretentious thieves have you believe it is theirs to take. "
Wow, that pretty much sums it up as to the extreme redistribution of wealth we are seeing right now. Yes it is happening, go look up any chart on the subject and the direction is impossible to miss. As a matter of fact it has now reached an alarming speed. Go look up income distribution up and see for yourself.
Then we have nearly half the country that are doing things that support and encourage this extreme redistribution. I must say you people are becoming hard to bear these days. Please, KNOCK IT OFF!

Please note the song is hard rock so if that isn't your cup of tea, pass.

Memes, Slogans and Bumper Stickers...Not deep

2011-08-15T17:48:00.001-06:00

It seems almost useless to even make a point anymore. It's gotten so mind numbingly stupid that I can barely watch. It's embarrassing to see these wingnuts parade around with their puffed chests and hackneyed shallow thought. Obviously there is no compromising with them. There is no way to get along with them. Its my way or the highway for them now. All I can say is I will never be a part of your immoral, disgusting,self centered, victim theology.

The whole tax debate is a perfect example. They refuse, just absolutely refuse, to raise taxes on the richest 1%. Why?, they're the "job creators"(TM). Bullshit. At the top of the ladder they have been buying out companies that actually did create jobs and then firing people and shipping jobs overseas. They have actually cost jobs. Millions of people in the country can attest to this.
We can't tax them because they need the money to create jobs. Bullshit. The top companies and their CEOs are sitting on trillions in cash.
But they pay X amount already! ...Well, we are suppose to feel sorry because they will have to save a little longer to get that 3rd or 4th house? Many of these people have more money than they could spend in a lifetime.
The fact that these people are worshiped as Gods and providers in our society and freely granted privileged is sickening and disgusting. It's all propaganda to prepare you for what is to come.

This is not really a secret, many right wingers will freely attest to this, but here is the reason they want to eliminate taxes. They want to eliminate government,make it basically powerless, down to protection and law enforcement.
No money to operate means no government.

Let's just imagine their utopia. Once the government is toothless who do you think will fill that power vaccum? The people? If you said that please tell me you are either joking or 12.
No, the people with the resources, money, media, land will control things.
Here is how that will be different than what we have now. The people in control will not have to spend big money on lobbyists and campaigns and will not have to worry about those who might dare challenge them.
Government is not of the people now and not working for the people. That I grant you without reserve. The idea that eliminating government will solve the problem is such shallow thinking that it is undeserving of respect.

Just one more example of thousands from Digby:

We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.( and mind you these are the same people that turn around and push for tax cut after tax cut )

.....Overall, less than a quarter of the nation’s households don’t contribute to federal tax receipts — and the majority of the non-contributors are students, the elderly, or the unemployed. Does Perry believe that these people are really undertaxed?

At the same time that Perry is crying foul over the poor and the elderly paying too little in taxes, income inequality in the country has skyrocketed. Just the richest 400 Americans hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of Americans combined, and the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the country’s net worth. But its low tax rates at the bottom of the income scale that have Perry all riled up.

Rick Perry is an idiot. So is Bachmann by all accounts. These are people with strong social intelligences, but not a lot of analytical firepower or intellectual curiosity.

They appeal to less educated conservative voters who vote their "gut" and "common sense", and take the mockery and rejection of their heroes' ideas by educated elites as proof of their righteousness. By definition, these less educated voters tend to be lower income as well. A great many of them are almost certainly in that poorer 47% than has no federal income tax liability.

And Perry and Bachmann are the conservative candidates trying to win election by promising to raise the taxes of the very constituency to which they are trying to appeal.
Matt Taibbi called it best:

It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists. They’re completely blind to how offensive the very nature of their rhetoric is to the rest of the country. I’m an ordinary middle-aged guy who pays taxes and lives in the suburbs with his wife and dog — and I’m a radical communist? I don’t love my country? I’m a redcoat? Fuck you! These are the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you listen to Tea Partiers expound at awesome length upon their cultural victimhood, surrounded as they are by America-haters like you and me or, in the case of foreign-born president Barack Obama, people who are literally not Americans in the way they are.

It’s not like the Tea Partiers hate black people. It’s just that they’re shockingly willing to believe the appalling horseshit fantasy about how white people in the age of Obama are some kind of oppressed minority. That may not be racism, but it is incredibly, earth-shatteringly stupid.

They're the sort of people who can suck up the nation's tax dollars, while pretending to buy Ayn Rand's Atlas, holding up the entire world on their shoulders, desperate to shrug off the riffraff for a change. Even when they themselves are the actual riffraff. The less-educated conservatives who will vote for Perry and Bachmann see themselves as oppressed taxpayers even when they are in the 47% that Perry and Bachmann promised to tax, because they don't see themselves as a member of that economic class. The "poor who pay no taxes" aren't them: they're of a different race, in a different place filled with rap music and urban blight. They're not real Americans who drive trucks and SUVs, and do their shopping at Wal-Mart.

Progressive elites can spend all day and all night proving how wrong Perry and Bachmann are about the economic facts. But they're wasting their time....

Yep

How To Understand Current Right Wing Philosophy

2011-07-11T22:13:00.002-06:00

Empathy and compassion upsets them.

Whatever you may think about that ,heres a couple of things
to keep in mind.

A New Vision

2011-07-09T13:53:00.002-06:00

I've taken to putting more videos on this blog. One of the reasons I did that is because it seems that some people seem to identify and comprehend things in that form better than the written concepts and ideas. I fear I have so many videos on here now that it may be making it hard for those with older or less memory powerful computers to load the page. So for a while anyway I will provide links to video. Should you become disgusted or bored with television and be so inclined to spend some time watching something different or a little more food for thought please check them out.

Links below

After a campaign of jobs, jobs, jobs from both parties we've seen action on nothing of the kind. Lots of other stuff but no move towards jobs.
Our current debate is about the debt. That is a discussion for another day. Today I'd like to focus on creating jobs.
The large companies are making record profits and sitting on mountains of cash. They lack no money for hiring or investment. They are sitting on it because of lack of demand and the profits new technology brings. Why is there a lack of demand? Many are unemployed, underemployed and working for less and less money. That might be a major factor? So what do we do?

My proposition here is that we are a nation with nothing to do. We are like the teenager on summer vacation. Let me explain.
In the beginning we settled the West. We built a railroad from coast to coast. Something that benefited all of us and gave us a sense of pride as a people. Yes, there were some ugly things that went along with getting there but that again is another discussion.
We later built an interstate highway system that is still benefiting us to this day.
We went to the moon and back and in the process developed new products and technologies that changed the world.
What are we doing now? Fighting evil so we don't all die? That is the only one I can come up with. One based in fear. We are all just trying to survive.
Let me proffer the idea that what we need is a change of perspective, a new vision. We need a national effort that benefits all of we the people similar to the ones above. I'm not insisting that this be a government effort. I think the government can spur it on, help with organization etc but we should utilize all the resources of our nation. This could bring jobs, a new optimism and benefits to our nation as a whole. Just what might that be?

I asked my radio listeners that and left it there. As far as I am concerned it's the purpose of the effort and not the specific effort it's self that is important. Hell, you may come up with a wonderful Idea that I hadn't considered.

The likely possibility is that many people who took the time to think about it would come up with the same answer. For that reason and because you are my dear friends and associates I will continue.
Let's get as close to free energy as we can. The technology to do it is advanced and improving exponentially every year. A push would put us over the top.
Apply the technology to businesses and houses, then to cars.
Next a push for vertical farming. Allowing people to have their own clean organic food.
One of the beautiful things about this vision is that it leaves that money spent on energy and much of our food free to be spent on something else. It also makes each home more self sufficient and self sustainable and far less dependent on the system. Isn't that the rugged individualism that the right always dreams of? It's this lefties dream too.
Now there will be those that worry about all the jobs lost in the energy field.
There is no one better positioned on the planet to do this and financially benefit from it than our current energy companies. If they want to fossilize their thinking then I have the same sympathy I have for the carriage, stagecoach and buggywhip makers. They have a prime opportunity but if they want me to wait til they get good and ready they have another think coming.

If you don't like this vision then come up with one of your own. As I said, it's the conscious intent that counts. I'm tired of a nation of people living in a milieu of fear. It's time to evolve.

Garbage Warrior- A pioneer in self sustainability.

The Race To Free Energy-Tesla got it all started.

Our Technical Reality- It's a slow moving film but includes some great technology. Even this is somewhat dated today.

Farms of the future- How about an appropriately sized one of these in your back yard!

One last note. If you are here to debate and flow negativity please find other masterdebaters to masterdbate with. Please get your self gratification somewhere else.
If you are here to improve and expand on ideas, if you are a seeker, welcome home, let's do it together combining our individual skills and talents to build something better for all of us.

Always food for thought and new stuff being added all the time to my Youtube channel. Take a look . Stirring the mental processes is fun and rewarding!

We're Broke?

2011-07-05T21:32:00.001-06:00

Some of us are. Others are doing very well, and asking us to foot the bill.

Van Jones and Move on all in one place. Wingnut mouths are salivating just imagining the havoc they are about to reap on the evil liberals.

Netroots Nation

2011-06-18T20:49:00.001-06:00

Here's a great piece from Van Jones at Netroots Nation. Go to about 22 1/2 minutes in for the meat of it. I encourage all concerned Progressives to do so.

freespeechtv on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Here is a bit from the end for those with ADD.
Or foreign visitors, or wingnuts that saw the name Van Jones and need to see just enough to have something to despise.

Let's All Blame Obama!

2011-06-16T11:11:00.001-06:00

I'm far from an Obama fan but the right is doing an even better job of driving me away.

Seriously, It Really Is All About The Money

2011-06-15T17:58:00.000-06:00

Who woulda guessed. The wingnuts are taking payola. As a person who has spent a lifetime in radio I can assure you this is really on the thin line of legal. The FCC needs to look into this.

In search of donations and influence, the three prominent conservative groups are paying hefty sponsorship fees to the popular talk show hosts. Those fees buy them a variety of promotional tie-ins, as well as regular on-air plugs – praising or sometimes defending the groups, while urging listeners to donate – often woven seamlessly into programming in ways that do not seem like paid advertising. “The point that people don’t realize,” said Michael Harrison, founder and publisher of the talk media trade publication TALKERS Magazine, “is that (big time political talk show hosts) are radio personalities – they are in the same business that people like Casey Kasem are in – and what they do is no different than people who broadcast from used car lots or restaurants or who endorse the local roofer or gardener.”
The Heritage Foundation pays about $2 million to sponsor Limbaugh’s show and about $1.3 million to do the same with Hannity’s – and considers it money well spent.

What Do You See When You Face The Waterfall?

2011-06-12T19:41:00.004-06:00

Gallup Poll. May 5-8, 2011. Adults nationwide.

"Do you believe in God?" N=530 (Form A), margin of error ± 5

5/5-8/11 Yes No Unsure
         %   % %
                    92 7      1
"Do you believe in God or a universal spirit?" N=488 (Form B), margin of error ± 5

5/5-8/11 Yes No Unsure
                     %     %    %
                     91   8    1
It appears that somebody or somebodies said they believed in God but refused to acknowledge that when another interpretation was thrown in. This would likely be the fundamental thinking that sours people to religions. We all have our own journey towards the truth. We are all at differing stages of that journey. No one is or can describe that truth for another. One can only hope to place manna on the path.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you

Here's my growing collection on Youtube.   If you are tired of the banality of popular culture everynight give it a try. If you are a rigid thinker who is comfortable with the reality you get from education and the media and religion then it will not be a place for you.
If it seems to you there is more to know and you have an interest in seeking it out then hopefully you will find many kernels of truth and nutritious food for thought as you discover what resonates with you. I suggest you start with the top one by Terrence McKenna on the right hand side. It is the cornerstone for viewing all the others.

A Musical Interlude

2011-06-04T18:21:00.004-06:00

Black Country Communion-The Great Divide

Holy Mackerel!

Almost Like They Planned It That Way!

2011-06-01T22:25:00.000-06:00

If you had ever wondered if this economic situation is a homegrown or more universal experience this should offer some food for thought.

Wingnut Motto, Blame Someone Else First

2011-05-28T10:22:00.002-06:00

Don't worry, American youth: Mike Huckabee has fixed American history. No longer will you suffer under what Huckabee calls "the 'blame America first' attitude prevalent in today's teaching."

You know I try hard to be a peaceful, loving, empathetic person but sometimes these wingnuts just get me incensed with their cognitively dissonant bullshit.
It's why I often view them as other planetary. I'm not even sure if we are working from the same sense of reality.
If we don't blame America first then that means we blame someone else first. That is the way it works. Still that seems the beacons of personal responsibility way to roll. It's also the reason we hear them so often utter, usually false, equivalencys like "well both sides do it". That is shallow thinking and shallow thinking drives me to distraction.
Every conscious adult knows it does no good to blame someone else for your problems. You must find the problem with you and fix that. Ultimately that is the only way to bring about change.
It would be logical that it works the same way on a larger scale. Unfortunately they seem to think it is proper to teach our kids that it is always someone elses fault. Not what I want my children to think, either personally or on a larger scale.
Is it always our fault? No. Regardless, it is our job to see where we can improve ourselves, not to look to see what the problem with the rest of the world is. That is called LEADERSHIP/SETTING AN EXAMPLE.
If everyone recognized what our corporate masters had done to the world and its people they would have a very different take on all this. They would also more clearly recognize "why they hate us".
Yes, I prefer to blame America first to assure that I(we) have done my(our) part to make sure I have done all I can to make the situation better. Ultimately that is the most effective and really,the only thing we can do in a positive vein.

So I am sure the response would be: Well, why don't you tell those poor and middle class to do that and quit their whining!?
The fact is a majority of them ARE doing the best they can with what is their lot in life and the playing field they are given.That's why the higher education facilities are packed. People are taking on massive debt in an effort to be responsible. That is how serious they are.
Another fact is that Walmart and McDonalds are the country's biggest employers. More than the next 6 combined. SOMEBODY is going to have those jobs. We can't all be in the top 10%. It is a mathematical impossibility. So for those that are higher on the totem pole it is a matter of love and empathy to believe people should have access to health care and shelter and food and water. It is not about blame it is about math, a lack of opportunity and for any number of reasons variously capable people.

Blame America first? Yes, then move on from there. To do anything else suggests a blind adherence and jingoism.

The Demon Seed

2011-05-24T23:06:00.000-06:00

Here's Eric Cantor, proving again that they have nothing I want. They've fully engrossed themselves in the money culture. The end all be all God of our planet. Money. We always have the money for wars. Barely even a whimper or question about giving them all they want for that. For what? To save us from death and destruction? How about citizens facing that very thing right now? How come our hearts are so big for Haiti or the Tsunami struck Indonesia? How come he wasn't asking for sacrifice elsewhere for that? I guess it is different when it is your own huh Eric?
Cantors' statement is immoral and evil.

To clarify here is my understanding of evil. It's not something that infects you, that is lurking until it can consume you. You are not in the least powerless against it. It is a part of duality. Evil is the other side of the coin from good. Just like dark and light, man and woman, fast and slow etc. Evil exists but it is optional on an individual basis. It comes from the same place inside one that good comes from. What you do with that energy is what makes it good or evil. Mr. Cantor found the wrong side of the coin this time. If he thinks this is bold or leaderlike or powerful, I pray not only for his soul but for his sense of reality. Just planting those seeds aren't you Eric?

All You Need To Know

2011-05-23T19:58:00.000-06:00

No matter what else you think is going on this is really all you need to know. Once enough people get tired of it and insist it change it will.

Freakin' Awesome

2011-05-22T21:31:00.002-06:00

To bad it needed sub titles but not surprising. Mustn't have us thinking like this.

Trashing At The Reflection

2011-05-20T20:43:00.002-06:00

2011-05-10T22:25:00.002-06:00

Charts

2011-04-27T19:33:00.003-06:00

Think the rightists would cry if we asked the top .12 to make a little additional sacrifice? The answer is yes. Sacrifice social programs that help people that don't qualify for the top third. Punish those people for not being superior money earners.

Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2011-04-25T18:11:00.000-06:00

The future is here and somebody is figuring out how to deal with it. God Bless you.

Debt

2011-04-16T14:21:00.000-06:00

Here's an idea.

Welfare For The Rich

2011-04-16T12:44:00.000-06:00

Vast sums(resources) for people who already have resources in abundance.

It could barely be more obvious that the top of the money chain is running the show.

[...] In the case of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, here's what we know: The company was founded in June 2009 with $14.87 million of investment capital, money that likely came from Christy Mack and Susan Karches. The two Wall Street wives then used the $220 million they got from the Fed to buy up a bunch of securities, including a large pool of commercial mortgages managed by Credit Suisse, a company John Mack once headed. Those securities were valued at $253.6 million, though the Fed refuses to explain how it arrived at that estimate. And here's the kicker: Of the $220 million the two wives got from the Fed, roughly $150 million had not been paid back as of last fall — meaning that you and I are still on the hook for most of whatever the Wall Street spouses bought on their government-funded shopping spree..

.....During the financial crisis, the Fed routinely made billions of dollars in "emergency" loans to big banks at near-zero interest. Many of the banks then turned around and used the money to buy Treasury bonds at higher interest rates — essentially loaning the money back to the government at an inflated rate. "People talk about how these were loans that were paid back," says a congressional aide who has studied the transactions. "But when the state is lending money at zero percent and the banks are turning around and lending that money back to the state at three percent, how is that different from just handing rich people money?"

You will likely find that there are those who will defend these people down to the very last straw. For many in this country these people can do no wrong. Or at least not as wrong as their lazy shiftless lessers. They are the ones that bear the greatest of burdens and the ideal aspirations. They look up to these people and aspire to be one of them. It would be my description of worshiping the rich. I'm sure they don't see it that way.

Speechless

2011-04-15T10:40:00.001-06:00

Funny, I was having the same reaction.

Could Be A Problem

2011-04-14T21:05:00.000-06:00

Children of God

2011-04-03T19:32:00.000-06:00

You've probably seen this story.

Demonstrators battled police in southern Afghanistan's main city on Sunday and took to the streets in the turbulent east for the first time as Western pleas failed to halt the third day of rage over a Florida pastor's burning of the Quran.

This is the same Pastor Jones that was going to have the burning several months ago. All our military and political leaders said it wasn't the thing to do. He relented but apparently decided that he just couldn't help himself.

If this is a free country he certainly has the right to do this. The reaction from those in Afghanistan was outsidedly violent. They could have burned a bible or a flag, not kill people trying to help.
The fact remains that these people have been under constant attack, violence and corporate corruption for the last ten years now and their nerves might be a little frayed.
The bottom line to me is to wonder if Pastor Jones thinks Jesus is proud of him now. Does he think he was emulating the Christ?

I'm not a Christian because of people like this. I also could not be a Muslim with the example above.
All religons and faiths profess to support love and peace, goodwill toward men. None seem to be able to meet the standard though. As far as I am concerned, if you want love and peace and goodwill toward men it is up to you. I've been there a long time, encouraging, cajoling, and you will find me when you get there.
I frankly support anybodys religious or philosophical beliefs if they use it to make themselves a better person. Otherwise its just another authoritarian control system.
If I dare offer something I have discovered in my spiritual studies: The personal connection to God or the higher spirit isn't "out there". It is inside you. I found it when I looked inward.
If you've found it another way that's fine. Just a suggestion.

Who's Control Is It In?

2011-03-31T22:08:00.000-06:00

I've been dealing with some personal and family matters but here's some thoughts from Terence McKenna.

The Liberal Media

2011-02-27T11:15:00.002-07:00

The last thread of the myth of the liberal media is dead.

The Future Has Arrived

2011-02-21T18:57:00.003-07:00

I hardly know what to say about the situation in Wisconsin between the public workers and the government. I seemed so obvious at the outset, yet here again, beyond all comprehension, comes the reactionary right. It should be clear by now that that is what they are, reactionaries. They aren't conservatives or republicans or any cogent philosophy. They are purely reactionary. They are consciously looking for a way to oppose. No matter what. It has become a game on blogs I frequent to predict what kind of outrage they will fabricate and how they will say it. It's not to hard to do and many people have become quite good at it. Seems it's not as hard to write good fiction as it may seem. For example with the National Guard on alert and the State Police sent to chase the Democrats in Wisconsin. ..If the situation would have been reversed it would have been "Governor alerts security forces and sends special agents to detain legislators." It has to be big, ominous and most of all scary. Somebody asked me about talking with Marxists. They seemed to think that people do it all the time. I don't know any except in reactionaries imaginations. It's all fearful Blah, Blah,Blah.

The fact that these same people that spent a summer screaming down everyone who dare oppose them and carrying firearms to political events is now calling the current situation a scary near riot is purely laughable. Imagine that kind of gullibility and disconnect. They pretended to fight so hard to protect people from the government and the government controlling our lives. Especially our economic lives. Now they want these citizens to give over their economic bargaining rights to the government. Firemen, Policemen, Teachers, the people who collect your garbage. They want these peoples economic lives to be at the whim of the government. The fact that they now suddenly take the governments side against the citizens shows you why it is pointless to debate them. They don't even know what they think past today. They are quick with a ready excuse why yesterdays strongly held value is today's rationalized exception. One can never guess who they are discussing with. Yesterdays government hater or today's we the people.

While the budget debate is obviously a phony WMD argument(he's gotten a promise of all the money he has asked for) to listen to the sad arguments is quite disillusioning. First they don't make more as a rule than the private sector. But lets leave that debate behind. If our public employees are doing so much better than everybody else then THAT is a serious indictment of the private sector. A private sector that can barely provide the policy or pay that makes health care possible for their employees let alone their families. A private sector that can't pay enough to make a middle class income look anything but lavish. Seriously, what's wrong with this picture?
The median income in the US is currently around 40 thousand dollars a year. Half above, half below. Tell me how the half below does it? Health care, car, car insurance, rent, food etc. Add up what just those are likely to cost monthly. Sadly your health care policy may actually be the highest on that list. And don't forget, gotta save some of that for retirement. Let me point out a simple truth. Half the jobs pay over 40thousand dollars a year. No matter how hard we all try not everybody is going to get one of those jobs. There aren't enough of them. Hell a large percent of the country can't get any kind of job at all. To call people lazy and say they aren't trying hard enough is not the answer to the problem. That should be apparent to anyone based on basic math.

These days it's all about fears and sitting on the precipice of disaster. Don't come to me with your fears. I live in this world too. I am quite aware of the fears. I am not served to hear more of yours. Come to me with answers. Not tax cuts or welfare programs. We've done that for decades and it doesn't work. This country needs some really big fixes. It needs a new design. We have the technology and intelligence to solve our problems. Many people are on it right now but with the media dominated fear culture we are too busy finding fears to conquer. I'm tired of the old debate and I have finally lost all guilt at completely dismissing the the right as anything other than shallow, constipated Social Darwinists.
For those that are aware and imagining I repeat, the technology and intelligence are out there. Let's talk. Dismiss the right and let's start talking about how we build a new way that utilizes the good in all we have.

Here's a Wisconsin legislator that is willing to call a spade a spade. God Bless him for standing up to the reptilians.

For The Seekers

2011-02-13T19:12:00.001-07:00

This film will give those of you who are seekers a good look at the positive possibilities. It contains regular people, many of which I consider today's heroes of the planet.
Warning to those of you who are cynics or stuck inside the box, you will find some of this quite bizarre. I offer it purely for your examination and as something to store for reference in the back of your mind.

Just So The Work Gets Done

2011-02-13T17:00:00.003-07:00

No Core

2011-02-13T11:24:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, those purveyors of virtue and constancy strike again.

As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains. "The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."

This is one of the prime reasons I find these people not worth listening to anymore. Another is that one of them will likely come here with more sloppy reasoning on why it doesn't apply to them or how it is not really how it seems, blah, blah, blah. I'm am truly(truly I am) sad to admit this but I have lost any ounce of respect for them or their views.

CPAC(Crazy People At Conference)

2011-02-12T14:13:00.002-07:00

I've been watching with unshocked disgust at the CPAC(rightist) confab this week. The only place I could find anything that didn't make me physically ill was some things that Ron Paul had to say. Specifically on our foreign policy and the Federal Reserve we are on the same frequency.
Honestly I must tell you, I have my entire life debated and discussed with conservatives. I have found it sometimes frustrating but sometimes actually stimulating and educational. That is up until the last 3 or 4 years. The new modern conservative gives me nothing but a truly,physical sick feeling at the pit of my stomach. Not in hyperbole but an actual physical feeling of discomfort. Everytime I hear this extreme radicalism that has become the right or they come to this blog and defend that insanity it solidifies my opposition. There is no enlightening or educational aspect to that debate anymore. It's just authoritarian thought that demands rigid conformity. There is no room for free thinkers. I have come to the point that I find it a waste to even engage these people. They are other planetary as far as I can tell with the reality they describe.

Of course we heard about tax cuts. The answer for everything is tax cuts don't cha know? Well, we had 2 tax cuts under Bush. A third of the stimulus money went to tax cuts and we just passed them again at the end of the year. Still things are getting worse not better. It isn't working. Why would a thinking man disbelieve what he sees with his own eyes? I recognize that many things are factors in our economy but the idea that further tax cuts are the answer is shallow thinking on my planet.

I'm truly wondering what these people are talking about when they say American Exceptionalism. Just what the hell is that suppose to mean? Is that just a flag waving bunch of mumbo jumbo or what? The greatest country on Gods green earth stuff? Well the statistics and facts on quality of life, science and technological and medical advances say otherwise but that is no problem for the righties. They have their own set of facts produced by their own think tanks. No we are not the worst statistically. Far from it but it does us no good to pretend to be the greatest when we aren't. We should be striving to regain that position if that is your goal. I guess the modern conservative just loves to play pretend.

Tim Pawlenty borrowed a bumper sticker line that the President should quit apologizing for America. That we have nothing to apologize for. First I'm not sure that I have seen the President doing much apologizing. I'm sure our loyal rightists have the chain emails to prove it though.
Beyond that ...We have nothing to apologize for!? Holy crap! That is jingoism run amok. I can't think of a more naive statement to make. Maybe he should go to the countries where people are upset at us and ask them why instead of trusting his chain emails or Kid Hannity . Maybe he should go read what decorated General Smedley Butler has to say about our foreign policy. Or maybe he should have a conversation with John Perkins. If he thinks we have nothing to apologize for he is as heartless a bastard as you'll find. Or far to naive to even look at being President of a nation who's aim is to be great and good.

They are full of bluster and chest thumping pride but beyond that I see nothing of value.

While I disagree with much this is I found the first 12 minutes or so worthwhile. That is all within my frame of reality. Other than that they offer me NOTHING.

Check Out My New Car!

2011-02-10T19:50:00.004-07:00

Disclose.tv - Car commercial of the future Video

Meeting Of The Minds, Not

2011-02-05T12:48:00.001-07:00

Rachel did a great job of expressing my, and likely many other peoples frustration. This is a good example of why I say that this country lives in two different worlds now.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

These people are masters of verbal manipulations. Notice how they distill fear down to key buzz words on which they can attach any scary thing they want. Words like liberal or socialist or marxist or Islamisist or death panels or Muslim or Caliphate. If you've spoken with the adherents you can see how quickly and effectively the buzz is spread with the directed emotionalization of certain words.

If Glenn wants to talk about the New World Order I'd be more than happy to look at it with him. I agree it exists but Glenn is actually defending those powers not exposing them. I can't think of anyone who is pushing the New World Order agenda more effectively than Beck. Give it over to the "achiever" class. Another one of those word salad words. Hint Glenn money is power. Who has the money? Islamists, liberals? Nope. You defend the big money and demean everyone that doesn't bow to them. Why?

How The World Works

2011-02-01T21:01:00.001-07:00

John Perkins Interview from MrXfromPlanetX on Vimeo.

Fear, It's Whats For Dinner

2011-01-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

Corporate and government control that mainly benefits the corporation. All the way back in the 50s! Surely things have gotten better since then though huh?

What's All The Shouting About?

2011-01-23T11:52:00.002-07:00

"A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self".
-- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer (1951)

I haven't had many posts lately. At one time I had plenty to say but things have moved so far into fantasy land that it feels to me barely worth acknowledgment. This last few weeks the rightwingers have entered a land I have no desire to even view. It's like trying to have a serious discussion about the life lessons of Jersey Shore. Pointless,sophomoric, because there is so little there. The entire philosophy is a mile wide and an inch deep.

It should be beyond obvious by now that the crux of the strategy is
Rule 1- never retreat, never admit guilt, never accept blame
Rule 2-regardless of circumstances, repeat rule one.
That's about it. They are the shallow end of the pool. About an inch deep.

Their idea of character and personal responsibility. They've taken potentially good traits of competition and individuality and turned them into the most horrendous, destructive character traits that one could imagine.

I am at the point that the daily baubles and bright shiny things they discuss to take up radio or tv time seem rather pointless to debate. No minds are being changed on either side. The debate only serves to shine a light on the one speaking it. When I hear conservatives defend something I believe to be wrong it just sounds like they are willing to reinforce something that is wrong. There is no thinking or insight or growth. Just a repetition of what has already been said. An inch deep.

In my mind, as wacky as it may be, there is only one overall issue that needs to be communicated over and over again at this point. We live in a corpratocracy. This is the crux and core of everything else that is going on. Once one begins to look it is easy to see. Big money, as in international bankers and mulitnational corporations own us, and most of the rest of the world. This is the new world order control by a few of the many living it's self out in our daily lives in the here and now. We need not fear the new world order. It's not coming, it is here. When we awaken it ends.

Permit me to issue and control the money of the nation and I care not who makes its laws. — Mayer Amsched Rothchild, a prominent European banker in the eighteenth century.

Think they don't own you? Miss a payment or two, for any reason, on your house or car and see who owns it. Look around you. How much of what you see around you right now was provided by the corpratocracy? It is safe to say nearly all of it. As a matter of fact the corpratocracy is such an interwoven part of peoples lives that they have a hard time even imagining that it could be any other way. Which is my guess as to why some seem so comfortable with the nearly total monopoly control that they are wielding. We are down to 4 or 5 companies, at the most, in control of nearly any business you can mention. Sure new ones come on and supposedly new wealth is created but it isn't long, if they are successful, that the big boys have 80 percent of any new wealth, own the company and have fired a number of people, effectively neutralizing any entrepreneurial job growth.
They own our government(and many others). Lobbyists and think tanks run the show in Washington. And who do you think funds them?
These are INTERNATIONAL bankers, as we have seen in the world wide meltdown. These are MULTINATIONAL corporations that see no borders and want none. They own us, our media, economic system, our defense, our government.
They could care less about the well being of the US. There are literally billions of people in China and India. Thanks to "achiever class" the wealth of this nation has gone to those countries and now they are loaning it back to us at interest. Not what I would call a good business plan for the US but a real money maker for them. They've convinced large numbers of the population that they are the good guys and the poor people and middle class are shiftless and lazy are the ones that are breaking the nation. That there is a horrid redistribution of wealth going on.
Certainly there is but it isn't to the poor and middle class. And not to the people in this country. They are using the advantages they have to rob us and then using the media to convince us to blame our fellow citizens.
I'm not saying that this is only with the Republicans. They own it all. Lock stock and barrel. Look at the people Obama appoints. Not your guardians of the poor and middle class. Look and you will see that the policies that have been put through are as big a benefit to the elite as anyone. It's not about party or philosophy at this point. Those are only smoke screens for the real battle that is (not) going on. The war between the rich and the poor. Yes, class war. They get Kid Hannity or someone to utter that in bold amazement that anyone could think that way kind of tone and it all sounds so horrible. Yet the war against the so called Socialists or Fascists is fine. Well Kid, I have found your socialists and fascist and they are the very people you defend on a daily basis. The rich ARE the powerful and if your reality can't grasp that then I have no further need to even consider a discussion with you because we exist in realities so different that we couldn't possibly ever understand each other.
I am much like a mirror in my personality. Call me americahater, treasonous, a destroyer socialist etc and you will get it back in full measure. Speak kindly and thoughtfully to me and you will get it back in full measure. If you are of the position of no compromise. Me too. If not, then we can talk.

What 10% Are You In?

2011-01-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

Disclose.tv - 2011-2012 mix Video

It Seems Appropriate Right Now

2011-01-17T22:21:00.002-07:00

Left or Right?

2011-01-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

Congresswoman Giffords is shot and more are killed or wounded. We now reflect on another tragedy in our country. It is quite sad to me how so much of what I am reading, especially in blog comments,is immediately trying to attribute a liberal or conservative philosophy to this man/shooter. From what I have been able to determine he is more a free thinker than any one side. I encourage whole heatedly freethinking. One thing should however be easy to say about all of this no matter what philosophy he personally may have held. The philosophy held by me does not see any redeeming value and does not support pre meditated murder. I would hope we could all at least say that. Which is really the point isn't it?

I also felt necessary to comment on this because some of his writings included something about conscious dreaming. I am assuming he is referring to lucid dreaming. Briefly, that would be being aware of the fact you are dreaming and directing it. That would be the traditional definition. What he meant by those words, especially considering his concern with grammar is unknown at this point.
Because of his use of the word conscious and that word being in the title of this blog I feel it necessary to mention that his actions have no relation to anything that is trying to be transmitted here. A conscious person in the terms of this blog would be aware. Awareness would lead to the understanding that each of us are as sacred as the other and that we are all a part of the great learning experience we call life. I pray we will again remember how to be the UNITED States, not America, the UNITED States. I pray we again join together to go forward with a great society that provides hope and opportunity and world leading progress in innovation and humanity. That is the country I want to love. The one here right now is pretty pitiful.

Unity-Sustainability

Empathy Test

2011-01-04T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here's a little exercise to test your ability to hold a thing called empathy. While viewing the film below put everything in traded places. Imagine the words of the Muslims as the words of christians and the words of the Christians as the words of Muslims. Put the US as the country these people are coming to as Muslims and put the Christians as the ones that are being approached in the same circumstance. See how you would feel on either side if the situation was reversed.

If you were able to maintain the reversal all the way through congratulations. You have an ability to live an empathetic life if you so choose. If you had period(s) while viewing it of lapsing back into the original scenario then you are still more or less stuck in a reality that has been created for you. If you could barely bring your self to even do it at all then I would suggest you think about if you are living in a box of fear. Just a suggestion.
I understand these people truly feel they are doing what they have been called to do. I understand that idea intimately. After this exercise I would hope one would rethink the ways they could be most effective in doing that.

2010-12-31T19:34:00.000-07:00

Of all the ways to start the new year Bill Hicks is one of them. If you understand the opening sequence of this film then welcome fellow seekers and enjoy.

Cognative Dissonance Express

2010-12-30T11:49:00.003-07:00

I think what bothers me the most about the right wing is that they insult my intelligence and ability to discern when they try to pass off all their cognitive dissonance as a coherent policy. I think I am also quite saddened that so many of them just go with the flock and never see it for themselves. One hot meme in on the wingnut planet is that they are trying to bankrupt the country to impose socialism on it.
First we hear that health care and other government services would be too expensive and socialism would will eventually bankrupt us. Just go ask those European countries about their higher taxes. Yet now they are saying they are trying to bankrupt the country so they can take it to socialism. So they are going to bankrupt it so they can take over and bankrupt it again? I'm a connoisseur of conspiracy theories and actually think some of them have merit. That argument though would be debunked in an instant. At least have a consistent line of thinking. It's just stupid and I am insulted that someone would even was my time with such idiocy. Not to mention he dissed the President in front of little kids and the military on a holiday. The Dixie Chicks are jealous.

It sound to me like their goal is to just make sure they bring up bad things and say socialism a lot so you will have a fearful reaction whenever you even hear the words....Pavlovs dogs.

You thought Obama was going to turn over America to the socialists...or the blacks...or the Muslims. Nope today he is turning it over to the Indians(native Americans). Are you scared yet?
Remember the oh so serious fears that Obama was going to ban fishing? Remember those right wing emails? What happened to that fear? Seems everyone is still fishing as usual. When I say Obama or socialism, you bark. Pavlovs dogs.

Republicans plan to read aloud the Constitution of the United States when the 112th Congress kicks off on January 6th, 2011.

So the ones that annually have big dust ups that it needs change or reform are now the ones that love the Constitution? God you must think we are stupid.

Blast From The Past

2010-12-28T22:02:00.002-07:00

Still admired by dirty hippies the world over. We miss you John.

Disclose.tv - John Lennon interview on Illuminati Video

Justice

2010-12-18T14:41:00.002-07:00

So you're somebody who brags about their innocence
While playing on the ignorant storm
Now I'm just here to criticize the lies, the lies, the lies...

What Is Money?

2010-12-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

As he says, this game has been played for centuries. Even in this country people have caught on a couple of times. During Andrew Jacksons time and during Teddy Roosevelts time. It's time again to have a thorough examination of how this most vital piece of our life really works...or doesn't.

Spawns of satan

2010-12-12T11:30:00.006-07:00

You know, the right seem to be very comfortable with their adjectives and disdain for everyone who is not them. Try pointing out their defects, which could easily be seen if they would hold a mirror up to their actions, and oh they are so insulted and enraged that any one should say such a thing. Why, here's Kid Hannity having one of his frequent temper tantrums now! They're now even attempting to convince us we could or should ban ...are your ready for this...Karma!! ??? Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha. They prove again they have no idea what they are talking about.

The complete and total immorality of nearly everything they believe in is astounding to me. I can barely watch these days. Which is why the posts have become less frequent. It is a sad occasion to see people I should feel at least some kind of affinity with become so foreign to everything I consider important. They spend copious amounts of time demeaning the poor and even the middle these days.
Trying pointing out that the rich are robbing them blind (it aint the poor or they wouldnt be the poor. Where are all those BIG government checks going?) and they dig themselves in deeper. This little immoral spawn of satan named Bernard Goldberg wants to build a monument to the rich! Why not build a monument to all the people that got less than they deserved in the process of making them rich? The rich have already received their reward. Nobody does it alone.
Even worse he is using the same thread worn argument that has been debunked roundly and thoroughly while blithely ignoring the real point. They don't care, they keep using it anyway. Making themselves more evil every time they try to pass off evil as something noble. People that comment on this very blog have done(and likely will do) the same thing. With the explanation of how easily they dismiss the evil of torture and preemptive war and inhumanity and disdain for their fellow man and a panoply of other issues I find no common ground.

This was actually the inspiration for this post.
Here's some more of them lamenting on what a pain in the ass it is to care about unemployed people. Even when there are not enough jobs to go around for people that REALLY WANT TO WORK! Apparently this is no longer the UNITED States, apparently it's everyone for themselves and let the musical chairs mayhem begin. Again their rationalizations and justifications for their view makes them look even more evil not less.

It is nearly impossible for them to see what everyone around them sees plain as day. The fear and distrust that permeates every opinion or thought they have these days. You see if you keep people in fear mode it occupies the brain so completely that you don't have time to contemplate love, unity or cooperation or how to actually make progress.
You don't have time to dream of a better world when your time is full of fearing today and tomorrow. This is the plan of their so called New World Order(they are right about this it does exist, but its not run by socialists its run by the biggest of capitalists you'll find on the planet.) and they are doing everything needed to provide smooth sailing to their dreaded NWO.

A Musical Interlude

2010-12-04T14:29:00.002-07:00

Human Nature?

2010-12-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

I was watching some world news(not US based) tonight and found it amazing how with such diversity on the surface, how many things are so similar in quite different nations.
There are many 2nd and 3rd world countries having elections and trying to use them to unify people so they can have an organized society. Unfortunately they, no matter where they are, work pretty much like we do. What ever side loses they say that the election or the results are illegitimate and go back to knock down drag out. Should you think that it is an insult to compare the great American nation to 2nd and 3rd world countries remember;
George Bush was never elected and Barack Obama won't show us his REAL birth certificate and Bill Clinton? Impeach!

My friends I'm rooting for the US as strongly as anyone can. I've been fortunate enough to live all over the country in many different regions and cultures. I have never stepped foot outside the country. Absolutely everyone I know and love from personal experience lives in the US. I'm not a wealthy person. There is no foreseeable way that I will ever do anything but live my life out here.
That all said I think it is quite easy for flag waving, patriotism and nationalism to go too far.
When I was a young person in the 60s and 70s the US lead the way. We were truly, by understandable statistics and by proof of invention, number #1 in vast swaths of positive important benchmarks. This is not to say that many dark things weren't happening then. We live in a world of duality. The fact remains that the US blazed the path. How long has it been since we have done that?

Many of the numbers are somewhat dated but you can fish around here for a while for a perspective. Now we are #1 in defense spending and obesity. Education, science, healthcare, things one might call worthy advances...not so much. My point is not that there are no reasons to be proud, or whatever affectionate feeling you want to apply. There's no lack of people to tell you what all of those things are if you don't already know.
Sadly there are more and more places that, beyond nationalism, we don't have the greatest nation anymore. I don't think it is unpatriotic to point that out. As a matter of fact until people decide to hold the respect of what the nation is and does to the same standard that we do each other we will never be that great nation again. I'm guessing if we choose to look and act more like 2nd and 3rd world countries then we will become one.

Unity-Sustainability

No One Is Smarter Than You

2010-12-02T19:21:00.000-07:00

And we mean that seriously.
"Nobody is smarter than you. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?"

Arab/Muslim Looking

2010-11-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it appears necessary to belabor the obvious, to paint the picture so to speak, hence:

The first guy I thought was the guy that works the overnight cook shift at Dennys. Turns out it is Richard Reid, the shoe bomber.
The second guy I thought was a running back for Ohio State. Turns out he is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the underwear bomber.
I was thinking the third guy was a good ole boy from Missouri. Turns out he's from Virginia and his name is Major Nidal Malik Hasan MD, the Fort Hood Shooter.
Living here so close to Mexico the fourth guy looks very similar to thousands of people in my town. Turns out he's not Mexican at all. He's Faisal Shahzad and he may be the planets ,most thankfully, incompetent bomber(times square).

Then we have the last three. Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols of Oklahoma City and Scott Roeder who killed an abortion doctor in his church at a service.

Now my question. How is this whole profiling thing suppose to work? ............really? how's that suppose to work? Whos witless idea was that?

Frankly if you were asking me Nichols and Roeder look the most like terrorists of any of them. They look exactly like the people that I see around me everyday of my life stoking fear and hate. Those guys are the most direct link to a culture of terror that I can imagine.

Nobody REALLY Likes Liberals

2010-11-16T17:50:00.001-07:00

I think I am catching a meme developing on the right. A guy I talk about stuff with has mentioned it several times now so that tells you that the meme is set. That meme is that people who support eventually fail to support liberal ideas or policies once they have been explained to them. That most Americans are conservative by the polls and liberals are only 20%.
Likely the decade long daily pounding and twisting and stretching the right has applied to the word has had some influence in what people respond in those polls. But who knows for sure. Let's just look at liberal policies and ideas that make the meme merely a weak talking point. Generally accepted and supported by most of the country and generally opposed, at least at the time of their origination, by conservatives:

Social Security
Medicare
Child Labor Laws
40 Hour work week
the minimum wage
Civil/Voting Rights
The Interstate Highway System
Rural Electrification

Just to name a few pretty darned big ones. Yes, I am sure there is a list somewhere of stuff that liberals did that people hate but such is life. My point is that people who understand are against liberal policies is an empty phrase.
If not most Americans should be fine if we just eliminate all of the above and let the free market work it out. Don't think they are going for that righties. We are a mixed economy. All countries, even China are mixed economies. It's not a bone chilling,365 halloween fright that we have a mixed economy. Drama Queens, one and all.

Money As Debt

2010-11-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

I have put these films on here before. It is time to play it again Sam. I hesitate to put on any video over 10 minutes or so because I know that peoples tolerance for watching long things is low. These are 45 minutes or an hour a piece. The are really key to fully understanding why our system is irretrievably broken and why a fundamental change in our system is not some radical far out thought. Give up your Netflix for a night, Watch and see.

Thoughtful Comments From Beckistan

2010-11-15T17:26:00.000-07:00

Kind of clears up that question of why these people only make sense to themselves.

Obama Is Taking Everybody But You And Me To India

2010-11-04T20:31:00.000-06:00

And it's on our dollar!! More proof that they will believe anything if the right person says it.

The Comeback

2010-11-03T18:05:00.002-06:00

A friend had this comment on the post below this one.

Ron. Bill Maher refers to those so elected as Corporate America's Useful Idiots, and those who elect them too. Unfortunately, there are Ds in that category as well. We'll just see how the elections go and plan accordingly.
Which inspired this post.

There are fewer Ds in that camp today then there were yesterday. The loss of most of the blue dogs was really a victory that is not yet apparent. We never had as many votes as it appeared.

Just for history, here's the story. Many Democrats watched the Republicans getting a huge advantage in money because of their kindness toward big business. Some decided that they needed to be brought into the fold(the nicest way I could say it) or they would be destroyed by money.
Hence the birth of the DLC.
Rahm, thank god he's gone, Emmanuel led the charge in hunting down blue dogs to run and pushed triangulation. The advantage is that regardless of philosophy when you have the numbers you get the committee chairmanships etc. I understand that.

Unfortunately you also, in my book, throw away your morals and values.
It's time to get off the road of conciliation. There is no conciliation with these people.Many of them don't even consider us real Americans. You can't be a real American and think any socialism would be a good idea. Goodness Gracious! That would be treasonous! Everybody knows that our noble "achiever class" Plutocrats are what makes America great! It's what they all aspire to be.
Because there is no conciliation doesn't mean you have to be at constant war.
Stand proudly for what you believe in. That is all you have to do. You don't have to fight about it. Just stand for it proudly. Say your paragraph and let them write a book, let them debate the nuance and rationalizations among themselves. Let them play drama queen. They do it oh so well anyway. Just continue to stand proudly for that paragraph.
If the Democrats can learn to do that I think they will find the answer that they most certainly are seeking right now.

Election

2010-11-01T18:01:00.004-06:00

Well, the election is hours away at this writing. I have thought and even written that when it came right down to it people weren't going to pull the lever for crazy and todays evil de jour. It appears I am wrong.

It is obvious that the modern right find anything from the center to the left as illegitimate government. They will never see it any other way.

Clinton needed to be impeached. Obama is strange and not really an American. Yet George W Bush could not be criticized for fear of being called muslim sympathizers and America haters and troops are in harms way(as they still are PLEASE don't forget) and blah de blah.
How does one take these people seriously? They think I'm suppose to buy that pant load? They are propagandists extraordinaire however their thinking is so scattershot and inconsistent that only they can keep track of it. Even then much forgetting is necessarily involved.

Many crises await us but Mitch McConnell thinks the most important thing is to make Obama a one term president. As the article notes, they will even obstruct and oppose there own ideas. As a matter of fact the new health care bill is basically what the Republicans were proposing under Clinton. To wingnuts, this is why the left is none to happy with it. Not for the reasons you suppose or have made up in your head.
Don't get me wrong, I understand they are the opposition party but we aren't the enemy, just ask John Boehner.

Don't worry, even if they win they will still be a crotchety bunch. You should have figured out that by now:

But mostly he was pissed off at a system that he believed to be rigged, in favor of... well, President Obama, but also illegal immigrants. Those taxes he was paying? Illegals didn't pay any of them. That health-care bill he hated? Illegals were going to benefit from it. That school his son was going to attend in the fall? He'd be going to a better one, if his last name was Gonzalez. That trouble that he had gotten into when he was a kid? It would be enough to keep him out of politics, but if Obama had gotten into the same kind of fix, "the media" would have agreed to ignore it, the same way they agreed to ignore Jeremiah Wright. ("There's a memo!", he claimed.) And those four children who were doing so well in sports and in school? They were doing well because they worked hard, and they worked hard because their parents reminded them that they had to — "I tell my kids all the time, You're not going to get the breaks some other kids get," my friend's wife said. "They might be able to make mistakes, but you can't, because of who you are."
It is what poor black folk used to tell their children. Now it is what wealthy white folk tell theirs. Because of who you are, you are not getting a fair shake. Because of who you are, you are lacking in opportunity.....

.....The Sore Winners are easy to find. They are most visible at their flagship, Fox News, which dominates both cable news and the political conversaton and yet is always embattled, defending itself against the heathen.

It is one of the biggest dividing lines between liberals and conservatives: sensitivity. Liberals are supposed to be the sensitive ones, but even the liberals who worked themselves into a froth over George W. Bush never really cared very much about what he thought of them. But conservatives care what President Obama thinks. They care to the point of imagining what he thinks. I get the same feeling listening to them that I've gotten living in the South and listening to Southerners tell me about Yankees and the War of Northern Aggression. Well, although I've lived in the South nearly 30 years I'm a Yankee born and raised, and I can tell you with reasonable authority that no one in North thinks or talks about the Civil War. Nor do they talk about SEC football. Nor do they worry about what Southerners think of them.

Notice how they are always on defense, even on offense they are on defense. Physiologists would say that is a poor sense of self identity. I would have to agree. Of course all this is tilting at wind mills while the real evil right in front of their noses fails to even occur to them.

The deficit is 120 billion less this year than last. Taxes are at lows not seen in many decades. But yes, we have lots of work to do, things are bad. The entire world is in a financial crisis yet it appears that some think this is a national problem. Nope, this is a world wide problem. Free trade, globalism, lack of proper regulation. That is the problem. The people running the show aren't the government. It's the people and industry groups and such that use vast sums to buy whatever they need, including governments. They make sure there is enough of "their people" to get the rules written to their favor. Then somehow they convince vast sums of people that it is all real American and patriotic and "achiever class" and word salad, word salad, word salad.

Well, should we get Repblican gains we surely know what to expect. Hearings if they win the house. More stall even to the point of shutting down government. Fighting regulations and limits on the powerful. You know the story. Oh and of course, everything that goes askew, regardless of their increased numbers, is because someone else is doing it or out to destroy them.

They've turned it into an insult to expect me to take them seriously.

Ya See,

2010-10-28T22:48:00.000-06:00

I was born this way. It's only natural.

The effect is caused by a neurotransmitter in the brain called DRD4 which could be stimulated by the novelty value of left of centre opinions, say US researchers.....the feature encourages them to seek out companions with unconventional views as they grow up. This in turn means they tend to form less conventional political viewpoints as adults.......It found those with a strain of the DRD4 gene seek out "novelty" - such as people and lifestyles which are different to the ones they are used to. This leads them to have more liberal political opinions, it found.

Reading Room

2010-10-24T11:07:00.000-06:00

Pictures of Muslims wearing different things. Obviously trying to confuse Fox Newsdrama viewers.

There's no question America has a Bill O Reilly Problem.

Another quandry for those who slam opponents as outsourcers while supporting those on their side that do. Project much? The rightwing media won't cover this stuff.

8 things the newsdrama viewers think they know but really don't. Of course when your best education comes from the Glenn Beck newsdrama it's easy to see how it happened.

Oh ya, Juan Williams got fired for something he said. Not illegal or necessarily wrong, just apparently offensive to a particular audience. The exact same thing happened to me a while back and no one was shedding crocodile tears and I was denied unemployment, so I guess I find it hard to work up any sadness or feeling of being done wrong for Juan, especially considering it meant a 2 million dollar contract for him. Again the right defends the wealthy while demeaning or ignoring the problems of the poor. No tears for Juan on this blog. At least not until he shows up to empathize with me.

Art Department

2010-10-19T21:32:00.000-06:00

A little rarity for you from the art department.

Liberal Media My Fanny

2010-10-19T19:31:00.000-06:00

It takes the real liberal media to expose the phony one.

Duh

2010-10-12T21:46:00.000-06:00

Glenn Greenwald

In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies": specifically, "American direct intervention in the Muslim world" through our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan" (the full report is here). Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years: namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather. . . . foreign military occupations.

The Politics Of Rationalization

2010-10-07T15:31:00.000-06:00

What an awesome post. Seems I'm again not the only one that sees something rather nonsensical about the modern right.

Orwell even described rationalization in the Newspeak word crimestop, which means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest of arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which might lead in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

Read it all. It's a thorough look at cognitive dissonance.

One: The Movie

2010-09-23T20:33:00.001-06:00

Lazy Bums

2010-09-20T17:57:00.000-06:00

Nothing alienates me more from todays wingnuts than their assumption that our economic problems arelargely do to bums and lazy bastards. That most people out of work or on any kind of assistance are just not trying hard enough. Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit.
They hate the American people and they hate our government but oooooooh they love America, why they are the real Americans by crackey. Not like the rest of us who are just screwing it up for them.

Thousands apply for McDonalds jobs.

Thousands apply for 71 teaching jobs in Chippewa Valley.

10 Thousand apply for 1350 jobs at Toyota.

I can think of few things that cause me to feel more of a lack of respect for someone than the lazy bums theory. The demeaning of the poor and those who need help. Yep not everybody authentically does need help. Some need to work harder. Welcome to reality. The problem is making them the vast majority or the root of the problem. Overwhelmingly people want to work, work hard, try and give it their best effort. I'm sure there are many more stories about the increasing number of people going back to school for new salable skills. They are going into debt for years, maybe decades, and know it but see no other avenue. So don't tell me about the lazy bums. Get off your elitist high horse and quit being such a fudgepacker.

Ah Reality, Ain't It Grand

2010-09-16T20:15:00.001-06:00

I offer this up not as truth or reality or facts or proof. I offer this up as something to ponder as you look at the world around you. You can read it all here if you choose.

Naive Realism
The authors believe that people never really fully develop a purely rational intellect that fully understands the implications of individual construal. They see adults as thinking:
1. I see reality, and my actions and beliefs are based on a rational interpretation of reality.
2. Other people would share my view and actions and opinions if they had access to the same information that I do and if they have processed that information in a reasonable way like I do.
3. If others don't share my views, it's because:
* they have different information, and by sharing information we can reach an agreement
* they are lazy, or are not making rational decisions based on the information
* they are biased by ideology or self-interest, or some other distorting influence

On #3 I see A as conservative mindset B as both liberal and conservative mindset and C as liberal mindset.

So in effect people think they see clearly, but others see the world through biases and errant beliefs.
One demonstration is the famous Hastorf and Cantril study where Darmont and Princeton fans observed films of a football game between the two schools very differently, and assumed others would see it just as they did. A more recent study theorized that partisan opponents looking at data both for and against an issue would focus only on the information that supported their views, discount the other data, and emerge even more partisan. The results supported this theory

There are bountiful examples of two people seeing very different things in the same event. These things they notice are what enters their consciousness and what becomes truth to them.

Certainly perceptions and reality are different things. That is the where the rubber meets the road. For one to insist that their perception is the true reality is a determination that in the ultimate sense belongs to God. It is the reason we crave that connection to creation. It is what keeps us searching for Gods will. ....

One reality and one truth exist. Not in a world made from duality though.

An underlying principle in Taoism(no, I'm not a taoist or whatever) states that within every independent entity lies a part of its opposite. Within sickness lies health and vice versa. This is because all opposites are manifestations of the single Tao(God), and are therefore not independent from one another, but rather a variation of the same unifying force throughout all of nature.

All is the one and that will lead us further down the path to understanding. That one reality and one truth exists only within God. We can only seek and hope to grow on the path.

Reality(tunnel)

2010-09-13T22:25:00.000-06:00

In reference to a discussion that we have been having in the comments I thought I would pass this along.

Every kind of ignorance in the world all results from not realizing that our perceptions are gambles. We believe what we see and then we believe our interpretation of it, we don't even know we are making an interpretation most of the time. We think this is reality. - Robert Anton Wilson

The idea does not necessarily imply that there is no objective truth; rather that our access to it is mediated through our senses, experience, conditioning, prior beliefs, and other non-objective factors. The individual world each person occupies is said to be their reality tunnel. The term can also apply to groups of people united by beliefs: we can speak of the fundamentalist Christian ontological naturalism reality tunnel. reality tunnel or the

A parallel can be seen in the psychological concept of confirmation bias—our tendency to notice and assign significance to observations that confirm our beliefs, while filtering out or rationalizing away observations that do not fit with our prior beliefs and expectations. This helps to explain why reality tunnels are usually transparent to their inhabitants. While it seems most people take their beliefs to correspond to the "one true objective reality", Robert Anton Wilson emphasizes that each person's reality tunnel is their own artistic creation, whether they realize it or not.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. - Anais Nin

A New System

2010-09-13T20:44:00.000-06:00

It appears I'm not the only one.

Chris Hedges:

The menace we face does not come from the insane wing of the Republican Party, which may make huge inroads in the coming elections, but the institutions tasked with protecting democratic participation. Do not fear Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. Do not fear the tea party movement, the birthers, the legions of conspiracy theorists or the militias. Fear the underlying corporate power structure, which no one, from Barack Obama to the right-wing nut cases who pollute the airwaves, can alter. If the hegemony of the corporate state is not soon broken we will descend into a technologically enhanced age of barbarism. ......
.....Resistance means a radical break with the formal structures of American society. We must cut as many ties with consumer society and corporations as possible. We must build a new political and economic consciousness centered on the tangible issues of sustainable agriculture, self-sufficiency and radical environmental reform.......
......The more we expand community credit unions, community health clinics and food cooperatives and build alternative energy systems, the more empowered we will become. ....

...........The corporate state, whose interests are being championed by tea party leaders such as Palin and Dick Armey, is working hard to make sure the anger of the movement is directed toward government rather than corporations and Wall Street.......
........The game of electoral politics, which is given legitimacy by the right and the so-called left on the cable news shows, is just that—a game. It diverts us from what should be our daily task—dismantling, piece by piece, the iron grip that corporations hold over our lives.

It's not the American people, it's the system.
I don't agree with every bit of the article. I think all this needs to be done and voting needs to continue. Grab anything you can. I think he gets it and understands that a reshaping of the system is all that will save us now. The full article. Warning for sensitive knee jerk reactionaries, the word socialist is prominently displayed.

OH

2010-09-07T16:48:00.000-06:00

Not to hard to figure out if you are a little bit aware.

Why they hate us.

Or maybe it's this. Yep, he hates the troops too.

Just in case you weren't sure what started it all go here and read page two and three.
One of those radical extremists that thinks the only way to win is to destroy the other guy. Because the other guy is surely pure evil. Sound familiar?

He Has Arrived

2010-08-30T18:55:00.000-06:00

OMG! Glenn Beck is the antichrist......

.....according to this Conservative blog.

Two Minutes Of Hate

2010-08-27T22:50:00.003-06:00

It may be 2010 but 1984 is alive and well in the USA.

Disclose.tv - 1984 Big Brother: The Two Minutes Hate Video

Obama, a Priest, a Rabbi and an Imam

2010-08-22T12:56:00.000-06:00

Here's a great post about our "liberal" media.

Funny, I consider myself progressive but rarely find anything that resembles my viewpoint in the liberal media. I feel like I'm getting cheated here. Don't be sticking me with that horse manure, I want no part of association with that.

Loved this one:

Obama, a Priest, a Rabbi and an Imam walk into a bar on 52nd Street and the bartender says - "What is this, the end of the world?"

Nope, it's the beginning of a new one. We'll see you guys down the road. You're welcome anytime.

The Bubble Effect

2010-08-21T14:55:00.003-06:00

Digby writes about those rightwing emails and nails it. (Great post, you should read it.)

Because of modern communication, this bile is readily accessible to millions of people and because they tend to live in a bubble of conservative media and like minded folks it very quickly gets absorbed into their discourse and starts to feel as if its acceptable and normal. This is where you can see that the years of listening to bombastic hatemongers like Limbaugh and conspiracy theorists like Beck prepared the ground for this braindead know-nothingism. If you listen to Rush, over time you must develop total contempt for everyone who isn't like you. If you listen to Beck, you train your mind to believe anything, no matter how absurd. And then one day you open an email like this and it makes sense.

Beck's Triumph of the Wingnut "I Have A Nightmare" rally should be very interesting in this respect. They obviously cannot let these freak flags fly on national television so they will undoubtedly couch it in standard 9/11 victimhood and the flag. But underneath it all is this writhing fear and hatred of the other. Even each other.

The life in the rightwing bubble is just what is going on. They are rarely given a stern challenge, especially in the media or from prominent politicians. Even if there were, likely they would never hear about it because of that bubble thing. If they did hear about it would just be to strengthen the bubble and not to actually expand understanding or wisdom.

I went into one of the local stores yesterday. The guy at the register was listening to the local wingnut radio station. I wasn't paying attention to what they were saying. As I approached the register he said "well. I don't know how any president could be any worse than this one." He continued with some other wingnut teachings and was looking for my agreement. I said, "Actually I'm a liberal commie pinko. " He said "Oh, I'm taking to the wrong person then huh." I bet you love what's happening now." "Not really". He was notably surprised. "But he's the most liberal... socialism and all that?" " Well, he's not liberal to me". He again looked amazed. I shook my shoulders and said, "I'm just tired of all the corporate control." He lifts his head and proudly says..."Oh no! I like corporate con......capitalism." I said I like capitalism too I'm just tired of corporate control of our government and that is both parties anymore." That is as I was walking out and he was again looking like he had just heard something for the first time in his life.
What shocks me is that someone who follows politics and current events could still be unaware that big money has undue influence, to put it lightly, that needs to be kept in check. That takes a realllllly big bubble.

This points out something that I have been convinced of for some time now. The fundamental principal that guides today's conservative is competition. Every single thing in their life is a competitive exercise. Personal, political, economic, you name it. Think of any postilion popular on the right today I think that you will find that some kind of competitive root is behind it. For those of us that look at reality as more of a shared experience we look and shake our head. They think we are crazy and will soon be eaten alive.

When competition is the primary motivator there is little room for empathy or compassion. Unless you may benefit down the road of course.
Should you have room for empathy and compassion and it doesn't work out, well there is proof you can't do that. You're just asking for it.
Of course if competition and lack of empathy and compassion doesn't do anything but make things worse. Well, the theory is, that's just the way the world is.
And accepting the low road bears its own burdens.

I understand we live in a world premised on duality which is inherently competitive. I am a realist but duality still implies a choice in this case.

Love unites and builds, Fear divides and destroys. We will shape our own reality.

Somebody on another blog posted this in their comments. It says a lot in a few words: Satan has the easiest job in creation–all he has to do is sit around and take the credit for what assholes are going to do anyway.

Mosque Issue

2010-08-14T15:31:00.006-06:00

I spent a good portion of last night and this morning on line discussing the NY mosque issue. I haven't watched the TV news yet but it is garnering huge numbers of comments. Here's a HP article with tens of thousands of comments.

This tells me it is a huge issue and I think , with robust discussion, a huge game changer. Certainly the “strict Constitutionalist” has a tough time debating the first words of the first amendment of the Constitution. That implies pretty important stuff.

Once all the debate is fleshed out it really comes down to , are we at war with Islam? Answering this question will be a key to the foundations of where we go from here.

Certainly there will be a number of people who will say boldly that we certainly are at war with Islam and give you multitudes of reasons why.

I think there are also a large number of people who have rather subliminaly, through what is happening in our time and culture, been moved toward some kind of ill defined assumption that that is the case.

Here's what I see.

We should be protecting ourselves from radical extremists. People who are willing to kill and maim in the name of their philosophy or religion.

We are training and arming Muslims all over the middle east. If we are at war with them that would be something you would think people that feel that way would be opposed to wouldn't you? They aren't.

As the President noted in his speech, the Muslim radical fundamentalists have killed more other Muslims than they have Christians. If you watch the middle east news on tv or internet you can see that many Muslims disdain these fundamentalists as much as any Christian does.

Our proper fight is with radical fundamentalists not nations or religions. Making that a part of our reality instead of what passes for reality now is a game changer. A quite positive one for the entire world.

I noted many Christians that seemed to be rather upset that they take all kinds of guff from what they call liberals, and now they seem to be rising to the defense of Muslims.

There is a lot of exposure to Christians, including extremist ones in this country. Including ones that try to make religion and government like a Reeses peanut butter cup. Let me assure you that any attempt at Sharia law or replacing the law of the land with Muslim religious law will be met with much contempt from the liberal/progresive community. I can without a doubt assure Christians everywhere that will be a lead pipe cinch.

Nobody on the progressive side that I know of is trying to limit the number of churches or where people build them.

We can defeat the truly evil by banding together regardless of faith or we can have paranoid fantasies on both sides that all are evil and need to be stopped. Divide, divide, divide. Of course one road leads toward peace and the other toward endless war.

We are the people of the planet. We build the world or we let others do it for us. What say you?

Continuing addendum.

Some 9/11 families speak.

Political Courage

Conservative Ted Olsens view.

....and that we don't want to turn an act of hate against us by extremists into an act of intolerance for people of religious faith. And I don't think it should be a political issue. It shouldn't be a Republican or Democratic issue, either.

To the point. Thank you sir.

My kind of leader. Al Franken again puts to words my thoughts

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) is slamming conservative opposition to the Muslim community center project near Ground Zero in New York City -- the city where he formerly resided for many years -- calling the attacks against it "one of the most disgraceful things that I've heard."

Agreed. This whole thing brings me to great shame for my country.
For those that are reading from outside our country we are not all like the people the media focus on.

Reading Room:You're Being Robbed Special Edition

2010-08-02T18:34:00.000-06:00

The conservatives are right about one thing. There is a huge redistribution of wealth going on. As per usual even when they are right they are wrong. The redistributions main focus is not to the poor or lazy or people of color. It's to the wealthy and major corporations. Obviously(one would think) the trickle down idea openly promotes this redistribution. Why this wouldn't be glaringly clear to any conscious person is a mystery to me. Look at who has increasing percentages of the wealth and who has shrinking ones. If redistribution going on this would make it apparent where. Whadda ya think those charts say, huh?

Barbara at Mahablog has this.

Here's a similar discussion.

David Stockman, Reagans former budget director thinks the Republicans have gone crazy.
He's not the only one. The second page gets to the meat of the problem with the achiever class:

But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.

10 Republican lies about the tax cuts.

Even if one was ignorant of how things work, these things should make it blatantly obvious to the least bit open minded. Willing ignorance is stupidity. I'm ready to let the stupid argue in stupid world. They can catch up when they are ready.

What is God?

2010-07-31T22:48:00.001-06:00

I know most people won't spend the time to watch long videos on line. That is the reason I quit putting much that runs over 15 minutes on. This one is a couple of hours. Should you be interested in the subject this is an interesting film. If you have hdd skip the first 4 minutes or so. If not go below and read the post and watch the shorter video below.

Disclose.tv - Oh My God Part 1of2 Video

Disclose.tv - Oh My God Part 2of2 Video

What is God? As the film points out it is many things to many people. For me, if it makes you a better person then whatever you believe it's all good. If it makes you intolerant and fearful, exclusionary, or is your rationale for doing harm then it's all bad.
I, being an insatiably curious person ,have spent much time investigating this question over my lifetime. I have spent much time in study of comparative religions. I'm not claiming to be anything close to an authority. As a matter of fact think it is a highly personal journey. I'm just trying to say I haven't come by my beliefs in a casual or trained manner. I've come to them by personal exploration and contemplation.
For what it's worth here's my take on the question.

The question is so big that it would take a book to fully explain or cover it. I'm doing my best here to narrow it and do the cliff notes. Let me say here that my thoughts run strongly along metaphysical lines , although not completely. If you would like to discuss or question these concepts further I'm happy to oblige in that discussion.

Many question if there is a God at all. I have considered this and had to dismiss it. For a number of reasons but primarily because it appears obvious to me that there is a creation. That insists on a creator. What is that creator.? My understanding of Kaballah (not my religion)is that they see it as : We are the imagination of God. In the sense that thought and imagination create reality I understand this idea.

First, the idea the we were made in Gods image. Do we interpret that to mean God has 2 arms and legs etc? Many, I think, do. I don't. The idea of God as the guy with a big beard and a staff is not my understanding of it. I think it means we are of the spirit. God is not of matter, God is of spirit. We are aware, can think and consciously create.

Gods laws are nothing more than natures laws. The creative force set forth a dimension that would police it's self through cause and effect, action and reaction, or karma if you wish. The more one can align themselves with these laws the further they advance toward the goal and fulfillment and a connection to the highest. The further one strays the longer their struggle and the further they remove themselves from the goal and fulfillment. Oh , by the way, the goal is to unite as one in spirit. This is a teaching of most religions in one way or the other. When we can do this we have fulfilled the concept of the image of God. Right now the so called individualists are doing their best to divide us in as tiny parts as they can. This is not Gods plan.

Does God or this force personally intervene and watch everything everybody does? No, again it is a self regulating system and we have freewill. There's no rationalizing around it, there's no arguing with it, it's, I'm going to use the word “karma “ and I(and you) create it while reaping what I (we) sow. Not always immediately but the laws of nature(God) insist that my karma awaits, whatever I've created.

So that means praying and such does no good? Wrong again. Remember God has given us freewill in our own creation that we call our life. What we create is what we imagine,think about, and what we feel in our hearts. It's another one of those self regulating things the prime force (God) has put into the system. Focused prayer or meditation aligns one with the powers of creation(God). Be it loving or evil intent. Still, karma awaits your decision. I've always thought a prayer for another should only include a feeling of love and compassion or something along the line of “what's best for all concerned” hoping to avoid unintended consequences.

The spirit of God is within us all. The power of awareness and creation. It ultimately is all one and all subject irrevocably to the same natural laws. To unify that spirit in love and compassion is the purpose of life and the fulfillment of the creative forces efforts of a creation in its image.

So Ron, I don't see it quite like you. Does that mean I'm wrong and going to hell? …..Hell no!!! You may find much of the same thing using a different path. I care not. You may find something completely different. It's your karma. No matter what religion or path we choose I believe karma is the self regulator and will direct us all to the fulfillment of the goal in the end. What ever path the creative force sets you down, so be it.
Being the curious kind and all, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the question.

And the point is?

Bringing On A New Way

2010-07-30T23:08:00.001-06:00

The video and audio aren't syncing very well on this video but it is worth a listen. He calls it his simplistic view of 2012. Far better to ponder the future than languish in the past.

Disclose.tv - 2012 - A Simplistic Perspective Video

Who Runs The Show?

2010-07-26T21:01:00.002-06:00

It doesn't matter liberal or conservative, democrat or republican. Until we stop the people that are really running the show they will continue to use your illusion that you can effect things in any other way to continue to rob you down to your last Hanes no bacon collar t-shirt.

GEORGE CARLIN - Who Owns You Americans - The most amazing bloopers are here

I got a cell phone for the first time about a year ago. One of the very first things I did was figure out how to get this song on as my ring tone.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau-"When the people shall have nothing more to eat,

they will eat the rich..."

Go Read It

2010-07-25T23:39:00.002-06:00

It's a bit lengthy but excellent. Best post of the year so far. Here.

What About The Future?

2010-07-24T20:44:00.001-06:00

In our current society and culture the King Kong in the room is money. We need to decide what we are going to do about it.

Played Like A Fiddle

2010-07-19T18:41:00.000-06:00

The great accomplishments of the "achiever" class.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Immelt, the chief executive of General Electric, complained indignantly about China’s current and bitter hostility toward multinational corporations. According to the Financial Times, Immelt groused at a private dinner in Rome that the Chinese government was becoming ever more protectionist. “I am not sure that in the end, they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful,” he said.
........over the past year or two, and to their evident surprise, their earlier assurances were revealed to have gotten things exactly backward. Immelt was merely the latest representative of corporate America to ring the alarm about restrictions on business operations in China, taking his cue from the leaders of Google and other major companies. Both the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and the European Chamber of Commerce in China have issued reports in recent months conceding that the business climate for foreign companies there has steadily worsened.

American and European companies have vied for centuries, through all of China’s upheavals, to dominate what used to be called “the China market.” Now, increasingly, China wants to keep that market for itself. It opened up to foreign companies in the 1980s and 1990s not because it believed in free trade or because it thought the visitors were wise and wonderful, but rather because it wanted their technology and know-how. But China no longer needs the multinational companies as it once did. The Chinese government has proved ever more adept at running an industrial policy that privileges its own companies, many of them state-owned.
Western business leaders still don’t seem to grasp fully the extent of this fundamental change. Some of them still speak as though they have the same clout they wielded in the 1990s. “The Chinese authorities should not take the presence and commitment of European companies for granted,” Jacques de Boisseson, the president of the European Chamber in China, said last month. “We do not want to have to vote with our feet to be heard by the Chinese government.”
He seemed to assume Chinese leaders would be dismayed if the companies departed. On the contrary: China might be happy to see them go.

Sucks to feel unneeded huh?

Unsustainable

2010-07-17T19:33:00.001-06:00

I saw Mr Boehner on Tv saying something about" this unsustainable debt." I at least give him credit for realizing what unsustainable is. Now if he would just go after other unsustainable things with the same passion. The entire system is unsustainable! Since all monies are born with debt attached there is never enough money.

Kind of unsustainable if you ask me. The idea that companies must always increase profits and shareholder value quarter upon quarter seems quite unsustainable to me.
Our energy situation is unsustainable and now proving to be very dangerous to our very health and way of life.
The consumer driven society that demands more goods and more of the earths resources seems to me not ultimately sustainable either.
So thanks Mr Boehner for at least being willing to say the word unsustainable, now if you will only expand your mind and recognize how much we are doing that is "unsustainable".

How Facts Backfire

2010-07-11T17:01:00.000-06:00

Here's a story about how contrary facts only bring about more resistance and not a change of heart.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

It's an interesting story and they have some interesting theories. I think they miss the core of the phenomena though. The fact is people see life differently. They have different things that are important to them. It's much about perspective. If you called a friend and asked them to go to the window and describe their yard they may go to the window and describe it. Then ask the spouse to do exactly the same thing. Instead of going to the front window they go to the back window and describe what they see. They are both looking at their yard. Their perspective is true but certainly different because of where they are looking from.

Look Who's Screaming About The Debt

2010-07-06T16:59:00.000-06:00

Eschaton

2010-07-06T16:21:00.003-06:00

What Motivates Us

2010-07-05T20:17:00.002-06:00

Disclose.tv - The surprising truth about what motivates us Video

Reading room

2010-07-03T19:45:00.004-06:00

The 4th of July. Do you realize that most of our major holidays are military or religious. I don't think the 4th of July should be a military holiday. Memorial day, Veterans day, Flag day. All salutes to the military.
The 4th of July celebrates our independence. Yes with the Declaration they knew war was inevitable. As a matter of fact the war had been going on for a year or so already. The document did not focus on war though. It focused on principals. Those principals should be what we honor, what we salute and pay tribute to. They don't want you to think about that though. Instead it is again turned into a military holiday. That should assuage your Patriot quota.
Our culture is brainwashing us to think about war all the time. Most of what we honor or pay tribute to is about war. I respect the regular guy who is just following orders,the man or woman who needs a job and those who want to make a contribution. I think we owe it to them not to put them in harms way and to build a world where their services are no longer required.

I regret to report that on this 4th of July we appear to be under the influence of the backwards thinkers who are now just short of saying the United in United States is a socialist plot. Our unity in principals has been tarnished until it is unrecognizable to either side.

A good piece on State Of The Union:

There's a poison in the public bloodstream these days, and it's affecting the mind, as poisons will. One entire political party has lost its mind, and well may succeed for having done so. A congressional candidate in Alabama is running commercials equating progressive taxation with slavery and the Holocaust. A candidate for the Senate in Nevada seems to deny any role for a central government short of raising an army, and perhaps not even that, since she seems to suggest that, if the election doesn't go her way, her several followers may go to guns in response. The members of that party in the national legislature have utterly abandoned their duties to the public good for unalloyed obstructionism.......The government is unwilling to bring the criminals of the previous administration to justice, and seemingly unable to bring the corporate criminals of the previous decade to justice, either. Some 20,000 barrels of oil are spilling daily into the Gulf of Mexico, where now huge columns of smoke are beginning to rise from the surface of the sea.We accept what we cannot change and then decide we can't really change anything, and thereupon, we accept anything.
A political party that embraces public lunacy in its candidates, and public dereliction in its elected officials, should pay a political price for that. It will not, because the only people motivated at the moment are the people who are motivated in support of the lunacy and, in fact, who would like to see more of it. And they may well do so. Instead, we study the lunacy as if it were a phenomenon detached from our daily lives, the way that we have detached ourselves from the discipline and responsibilities of self-government, congratulating ourselves on how fair-minded we are for giving the lunatics a hearing and then becoming mystified when we realize that, if they are empowered in the government, they mean to do what they say.

How much difference one word makes. We are citizens, not subjects.
At least that's how it was intended to work

Another problem with conservatism.

Welfare and breaks for corporations are necessary to help them succed but when it comes to the individual? Well, hell no!
Whatever their rhetoric they spout they don't really honor that individual unless they can do something for them.

Finding Your Way

2010-06-29T23:00:00.001-06:00

The future is here. We learn to master it or it masters us. Those that want to go back to the "good ol days" are fighting a losing battle. Better idea? Improve the future.

What's it all about? Let's look to Terrance Mckenna:

So what do we do!? Let's go again to Terrance Mckenna:

Qualified Leader in 2010

2010-06-29T19:13:00.000-06:00

Ummmmmmmmmm........Oh nevermind.