The Flim Flam Enablers
Psst, Psst. Hey, you there. Yes, you. You are the one, aren’t you? One the many anonymously hiding right there behind all of your righteous indignation about Government running amuck, CEOs lavishly rewarding themselves with millions and millions, society with no morals and no sense of right and wrong, everything going to hell in a hand basket, your IRA, savings and retirement stash fading to chump change. Yes, I thought it was you. Well to be honest, it’s also me too. We are all part of the vast American majority that stands shoulder to shoulder in our infamy; we are the Great American Flim Flam Enablers. The good ole Politicians, Grift’ers, Money Managers, Corporation Moguls, Stock Brokers, you know, the Flim Flammers who rely on us enablers to keep the Flim Flamming vocation alive and functioning well. Come on now, be honest, you know what I’m talking about here, don’t you? I mean you’re not really averse to getting something for nothing, are you? You know, supporting taxing the hell out the “rich” so that you can get a break on your health care and stuff like that. Oh, by the way, now that I broached the subject of taxes, let’s talk about how taxes really work, OK? Now don’t forget, Taxes are power, i.e., more taxes equals more power and less taxes equals less power. So, if you want more power, how do you do it? Well let’s look at how they did it in Indiana. They latched on to the idea of imposing a “sin tax” on cigarettes as a win-win situation because increasing taxes on cigarettes would reduce consumption and improve the general health and the increased revenue from the “sin tax” would be used to establish a program to provide health care for underprivileged children. Now who could be against something like that? Bear in mind now, the Flim Flammers don’t do bad things by advocating bad things, like taxing cigarettes to get more money to increase their power, oh no, they always wrap their Flim Flamming around something glorious, like providing health care for needy children. So, let’s think this through to the logical end. A big tax increase is imposed on cigarettes and the result is indeed a reduction of cigarette consumption. Let’s say they impose a really large tax (like the American tea tax that shifted tea consumption to coffee consumption during the revolution) and cigarette consumption went to effective zero. What happens to the underprivileged child health care program? Do you really think the program will be stopped because of the loss of cigarette tax revenue? Not hardly. You will be taxed to continue the program because who could be for stopping the health care program for underprivileged children. Brothers and Sisters, we have been Flim Flammed into a situation where there is no good solution and we did it to ourselves because we voted for a new tax that increased the power over us and we did it willingly because we thought we could get something for nothing by taxing the despicable cigarettes and their addicted multitudes to pay for child health care that we really didn’t want to pay for ourselves. In short, we enabled the Flim Flammers. But I digress. A word about Flim Flammers might be in order about now. Most people think Flim Flammers use deception and trickery (see above cigarette tax discussion) to affect a dishonest gain from unsuspecting and sometimes cognitive challenged people. The truth is, Flim Flammer use their deception and trickery to target dishonest people (that would be us All-American electorate) because dishonest people are amenable to the suggestion that cheating other people for gain is acceptable (we cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you). This dishonest attribute makes us easy prey, because it’s not too difficult for a cleaver person (Politician) to orchestrate situations that will appear to the dishonest that they are getting something for nothing. When we listen to, believe and vote for Politicians who tell everyone that they are going to reduce taxes and increase benefits for all, well now, we are enabling the power hungry Flim Flammers because we actually believe their tripe that we are going to get something for nothing. How can we continuously be so stupid? It one thing for the Slugs of society to work the system to get all they can get from the productive citizens because they are simple thieves, but it is quite another thing when good, basically honest and hard working people succumb to the notion that it is alright to get something for nothing. Somehow greed has been turned into a virtue by the Flim Flammers because why else would we think that getting 20 and 30% interest on our money while everyone else is getting 1.2% is because we are so cleaver and not because we are stupid enough to actually buy into a Ponzi scheme with our hard earned money. When the current economic situation cascades into an awful depression as I have predicted, don’t go blaming the Flim Flammers because, Brothers and Sisters, we are the very ones that enabled the Flim Flammers to bring ruin upon our heads, not anyone else.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Getting Riled Up While Parked In a Lazyboy
Getting Riled Up While Parked In a Lazyboy
Getting older is such a drag, and I really do mean drag, i.e., So many reasons not to do something; Looking longingly at a Playboy pin-up; Wondering if there will be enough money to bury your wrinkled old ass; The humiliation of young people shooting you the bird during your driving experience. I could fill a few pages with this kind of draggy stuff, but you get the picture. I am also apprehensive about writing this piece in the first place because when and if a young person ever reads this, they might become frightened that this is how they will end up one day (if they are lucky, that is). After reading this piece, they (young people) might even be inclined to uphold the Bob Dylan advisement to “never trust anyone over 30”. Oh, by the way, Robert Allen Zimmerman, Bob Dylan, will be 68 on 24 May, and it’s hard to believe old “All of the Tired Horses” Bob would ever say; Never trust anyone over 70. No, he wouldn’t say that, would he? However, I would hazard a guess that even good old “Blowing in the Wind” Bob has come to realize that old age is a moving target, i.e., as you get older the notion of old is an age more advanced than yours, and getting a young person to trust you is not part of the aging agenda anyway. The agenda of old age is to remain upright and on the sunny side of the grass for as long as possible and staying the hell out of the way while doing it. But I digress. I was just thinking, while staying the hell out of the way, how it seems to me that nowadays people seemed inclined to be angry a lot. They seem to be angry at every thing. Things big and small, important and trivial, personal and impersonal, etc., you name it and chances are there is an angry person out there ready to cause a ruckus about it. I’ll swear that a lot of people examine every word spoken to them to see if there is some reason they should be insulted, disrespected, or just plain ticked-off and they are always eager to be angry and confrontational about it. Because I am getting older, I tried to think back to earlier times in order to determine if people were as angry then as they seem to be now. I can’t really recall people ever being as angry as now even if my “Tired old Horses” brain can’t recall reality as good as it used to. God only knows that people in days gone by certainly had much more cause to be angry than people nowadays because life was rather rough then and not nearly as good and convenient as modern living is now. Perhaps I should clarify that last remark. When I say things are much better in the modern world, I meant from a physical perspective of just staying alive and getting enough to eat while hoping you didn’t wear out your body with physical labor, you know, stuff like that. I guess a case could be made that living is more stressful now than in the older and simpler times because we have nuclear war hanging over our heads, terrorism, investments and IRAs, endless gadgets to get and maintain, cars to constantly feed, HD Television and on and on. Living during modern stressful times could certainly make a case for being angry in general because things that cause stress in today’s world seem to be beyond anyone’s personal control. Older things, like staying alive, getting enough to eat and the like, were more physical things and were mainly in one’s personal control. Perhaps it’s the not being in control of our own lives that is causing people to be angry all of the time. That very well could be true, but I think there is something else just as fundamental that is causing all of the anger. Believe it or not, I think we are too connected nowadays. E-mail, texting, 24-hour news, cell phones in our pockets, political correctness, credit cards, goggle and on and on. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing all of the time. For example, do I really need to know that the Tutsi are hacking to death every Hutu they can find in Africa, or is it Hutus killing Tutsi? I remember when I lived in on the north shore of Hawaii many years ago we had no TV, one FM radio station and did not receive a newspaper. We walked on the beach, read books and were not angry with anyone mainly because we didn’t know what other people were doing most of the time. Here is something else to think about. Remember when we used to write letters to communicate with people? It took a lot of time to compose a thoughtful letter. Enough time in fact that when one reread the letter before posting, one would have time to remove any unintended offensive rhetoric before it could do harm and cause a person to be angry. Now we can bang away with “quick fingers” on e-mail or a text message and the communication can be in the recipient’s domain before regret can have its say and save the day. I try not to be angry today but Lawyers, Flim Flam politicians, Hedge funds, Bailouts, religious fanatics of every stripe would make any thoughtful person angry and knowing every possible detail about these and endless other crappy things causes me to be as angry as everyone else. Being old also causes me to notice things like this “everybody is always angry” thing and small wonder young folks like to steer a course around old fuddy-duddies mouthing off about such esoteric things. Well excuse me as I recline back in my Lazyboy, get my “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” brain back into gear, and receive my nightly anger fix by clicking onto Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Getting older is such a drag, and I really do mean drag, i.e., So many reasons not to do something; Looking longingly at a Playboy pin-up; Wondering if there will be enough money to bury your wrinkled old ass; The humiliation of young people shooting you the bird during your driving experience. I could fill a few pages with this kind of draggy stuff, but you get the picture. I am also apprehensive about writing this piece in the first place because when and if a young person ever reads this, they might become frightened that this is how they will end up one day (if they are lucky, that is). After reading this piece, they (young people) might even be inclined to uphold the Bob Dylan advisement to “never trust anyone over 30”. Oh, by the way, Robert Allen Zimmerman, Bob Dylan, will be 68 on 24 May, and it’s hard to believe old “All of the Tired Horses” Bob would ever say; Never trust anyone over 70. No, he wouldn’t say that, would he? However, I would hazard a guess that even good old “Blowing in the Wind” Bob has come to realize that old age is a moving target, i.e., as you get older the notion of old is an age more advanced than yours, and getting a young person to trust you is not part of the aging agenda anyway. The agenda of old age is to remain upright and on the sunny side of the grass for as long as possible and staying the hell out of the way while doing it. But I digress. I was just thinking, while staying the hell out of the way, how it seems to me that nowadays people seemed inclined to be angry a lot. They seem to be angry at every thing. Things big and small, important and trivial, personal and impersonal, etc., you name it and chances are there is an angry person out there ready to cause a ruckus about it. I’ll swear that a lot of people examine every word spoken to them to see if there is some reason they should be insulted, disrespected, or just plain ticked-off and they are always eager to be angry and confrontational about it. Because I am getting older, I tried to think back to earlier times in order to determine if people were as angry then as they seem to be now. I can’t really recall people ever being as angry as now even if my “Tired old Horses” brain can’t recall reality as good as it used to. God only knows that people in days gone by certainly had much more cause to be angry than people nowadays because life was rather rough then and not nearly as good and convenient as modern living is now. Perhaps I should clarify that last remark. When I say things are much better in the modern world, I meant from a physical perspective of just staying alive and getting enough to eat while hoping you didn’t wear out your body with physical labor, you know, stuff like that. I guess a case could be made that living is more stressful now than in the older and simpler times because we have nuclear war hanging over our heads, terrorism, investments and IRAs, endless gadgets to get and maintain, cars to constantly feed, HD Television and on and on. Living during modern stressful times could certainly make a case for being angry in general because things that cause stress in today’s world seem to be beyond anyone’s personal control. Older things, like staying alive, getting enough to eat and the like, were more physical things and were mainly in one’s personal control. Perhaps it’s the not being in control of our own lives that is causing people to be angry all of the time. That very well could be true, but I think there is something else just as fundamental that is causing all of the anger. Believe it or not, I think we are too connected nowadays. E-mail, texting, 24-hour news, cell phones in our pockets, political correctness, credit cards, goggle and on and on. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing all of the time. For example, do I really need to know that the Tutsi are hacking to death every Hutu they can find in Africa, or is it Hutus killing Tutsi? I remember when I lived in on the north shore of Hawaii many years ago we had no TV, one FM radio station and did not receive a newspaper. We walked on the beach, read books and were not angry with anyone mainly because we didn’t know what other people were doing most of the time. Here is something else to think about. Remember when we used to write letters to communicate with people? It took a lot of time to compose a thoughtful letter. Enough time in fact that when one reread the letter before posting, one would have time to remove any unintended offensive rhetoric before it could do harm and cause a person to be angry. Now we can bang away with “quick fingers” on e-mail or a text message and the communication can be in the recipient’s domain before regret can have its say and save the day. I try not to be angry today but Lawyers, Flim Flam politicians, Hedge funds, Bailouts, religious fanatics of every stripe would make any thoughtful person angry and knowing every possible detail about these and endless other crappy things causes me to be as angry as everyone else. Being old also causes me to notice things like this “everybody is always angry” thing and small wonder young folks like to steer a course around old fuddy-duddies mouthing off about such esoteric things. Well excuse me as I recline back in my Lazyboy, get my “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” brain back into gear, and receive my nightly anger fix by clicking onto Lou Dobbs Tonight.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
President Barack Hussein Obama
(BHO)
PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
Without any reservations at all, I am hopeful that Pres BHO will be successful as President and lead our country with a consensus of the all of the people. I also hope that now that the Dems, lefties and ideologues in the mainstream media have had their satisfying orgy of demonizing Pres Bush, the personal destruction of our leaders will become a thing of the past. I also have hope that I will win the lottery any day now, but what the hell; we shouldn’t lose hope just because the odds for success are so formidable. But wait, you know what, I think that Pres BHO will probably be a success because I believe the man has shown definite signs of being a gamer and a winner and not just another political ideologue. If you are one of those who have read my book, “Flim Flam”, I am hopeful that you became aware that the inspiration for the book was Pres Bill Clinton and the basic point of the book was that Pres Bill Clinton was also a Gamer, and not just another political ideologue. And if Clinton or any other big time Gamer decides to play in a game, they are winners, because Gamers won’t play in a game they can’t win. That’s what I mean by being a winner. You will recall that Pres Clinton had his Triangulation method of co-opting all of the positions of an issue into his position thereby making his triangulated position the one that would achieve the most support from the greatest number of people. This is how a winner does it because he is not so much interested in or married to any particular position on an issue (a strategy for losing), he is only interested in using the issue to demonstrate that he alone always has the solution to an issue that most people agree with, i.e., this is how you play so you cannot lose. You will also note that Clinton augmented his Triangulation method of consensus building with continuous polling of carefully selected people to ensure his triangulated position being taken was being met with approval from a cross-section of the political spectrum. Again, this is how a (political) winner does it. Now if you carefully consider the political career of BHO to date, you will note many similarities in the successful Modus Operandi of Bill Clinton and MR. BHO. For example, during BHO’s time in the Illinois Legislature, there were an extraordinary number of contentious issues that BHO abstained from voting on. A lack of backbone you say? Not hardly. Mr. BHO was not yet into a position where he could triangulate a position and take credit for it, so he did the next best thing. He abstained from voting and therefore he never had to be on the losing side of a contentious issue or create a possible harmful legacy, this is how a winner operates. Also there are those who say that BHO is in reality a Socialist at heart because so many of the causes and programs he has supported during his political formative years seem to support a socialist agenda notwithstanding how comfortable he appears to be with socialist rhetoric. Lets think about this. If one considers the political arena that HBO grew up in, south side of Chicago, this is what a political person would do and sound like if they were expecting to be popular and enjoy success with the local electorate and political hierarchy. In other words, BHO did what he had to do, and took the necessary positions to be successful in his inaugural career and it is not at all likely that these sophomore positions represent an ideological framework that will support his Presidency. It instead, looks more like a potential winner doing “on the job training” to me. As proof of what I just said, consider that there are a growing number of positions that had to taken during the primary and general elections that are now being triangulated and morphed into a more popular (winning) position for the general electorate. Winners do this, political ideologues don’t. Also, think back during the primary and general elections and you will recall that a number of people were dismayed by the soaring rhetoric and generalizations that substituted for positions and presented nothing of any substance for opponents to grab hold of. Winners know you only take potential positions under duress, and charm and grace created an adoring public that shielded Mr. BHO against potential duress. And the winner soldiers on. One other thing you might want to consider. There were a number of people who were saying that Mr. BHO was following the philosophy of Vito Corleone that holds that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Well that might be how old Vito did it but that not how political winners do it. Think about it. Mr. BHO gathered up the students and practitioners of the Clinton triangulation formula for political success and these people require no OJT, “On the Job Training”, they already know what the game is and they are comfortable with it. Well Brothers and Sisters, I think we have a winner here and you know what, that may not be a bad thing at all. What I mean here is that thinking back to the Clinton Presidency, notwithstanding the blue dress thing and other peccadilloes, most objective people will agree that it was a very successful presidency. And you know why? A gamer and winner may as close as one can get as an ideal leader who will do the will of the people because he wants to be a winner and not force a potential losing agenda upon the people. Sounds like practical Democracy to me.
PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA
Without any reservations at all, I am hopeful that Pres BHO will be successful as President and lead our country with a consensus of the all of the people. I also hope that now that the Dems, lefties and ideologues in the mainstream media have had their satisfying orgy of demonizing Pres Bush, the personal destruction of our leaders will become a thing of the past. I also have hope that I will win the lottery any day now, but what the hell; we shouldn’t lose hope just because the odds for success are so formidable. But wait, you know what, I think that Pres BHO will probably be a success because I believe the man has shown definite signs of being a gamer and a winner and not just another political ideologue. If you are one of those who have read my book, “Flim Flam”, I am hopeful that you became aware that the inspiration for the book was Pres Bill Clinton and the basic point of the book was that Pres Bill Clinton was also a Gamer, and not just another political ideologue. And if Clinton or any other big time Gamer decides to play in a game, they are winners, because Gamers won’t play in a game they can’t win. That’s what I mean by being a winner. You will recall that Pres Clinton had his Triangulation method of co-opting all of the positions of an issue into his position thereby making his triangulated position the one that would achieve the most support from the greatest number of people. This is how a winner does it because he is not so much interested in or married to any particular position on an issue (a strategy for losing), he is only interested in using the issue to demonstrate that he alone always has the solution to an issue that most people agree with, i.e., this is how you play so you cannot lose. You will also note that Clinton augmented his Triangulation method of consensus building with continuous polling of carefully selected people to ensure his triangulated position being taken was being met with approval from a cross-section of the political spectrum. Again, this is how a (political) winner does it. Now if you carefully consider the political career of BHO to date, you will note many similarities in the successful Modus Operandi of Bill Clinton and MR. BHO. For example, during BHO’s time in the Illinois Legislature, there were an extraordinary number of contentious issues that BHO abstained from voting on. A lack of backbone you say? Not hardly. Mr. BHO was not yet into a position where he could triangulate a position and take credit for it, so he did the next best thing. He abstained from voting and therefore he never had to be on the losing side of a contentious issue or create a possible harmful legacy, this is how a winner operates. Also there are those who say that BHO is in reality a Socialist at heart because so many of the causes and programs he has supported during his political formative years seem to support a socialist agenda notwithstanding how comfortable he appears to be with socialist rhetoric. Lets think about this. If one considers the political arena that HBO grew up in, south side of Chicago, this is what a political person would do and sound like if they were expecting to be popular and enjoy success with the local electorate and political hierarchy. In other words, BHO did what he had to do, and took the necessary positions to be successful in his inaugural career and it is not at all likely that these sophomore positions represent an ideological framework that will support his Presidency. It instead, looks more like a potential winner doing “on the job training” to me. As proof of what I just said, consider that there are a growing number of positions that had to taken during the primary and general elections that are now being triangulated and morphed into a more popular (winning) position for the general electorate. Winners do this, political ideologues don’t. Also, think back during the primary and general elections and you will recall that a number of people were dismayed by the soaring rhetoric and generalizations that substituted for positions and presented nothing of any substance for opponents to grab hold of. Winners know you only take potential positions under duress, and charm and grace created an adoring public that shielded Mr. BHO against potential duress. And the winner soldiers on. One other thing you might want to consider. There were a number of people who were saying that Mr. BHO was following the philosophy of Vito Corleone that holds that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Well that might be how old Vito did it but that not how political winners do it. Think about it. Mr. BHO gathered up the students and practitioners of the Clinton triangulation formula for political success and these people require no OJT, “On the Job Training”, they already know what the game is and they are comfortable with it. Well Brothers and Sisters, I think we have a winner here and you know what, that may not be a bad thing at all. What I mean here is that thinking back to the Clinton Presidency, notwithstanding the blue dress thing and other peccadilloes, most objective people will agree that it was a very successful presidency. And you know why? A gamer and winner may as close as one can get as an ideal leader who will do the will of the people because he wants to be a winner and not force a potential losing agenda upon the people. Sounds like practical Democracy to me.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Peace
PEACE
Peace, She is a shadow,
A Phantom cast from every Man’s longing.
Deliciously dancing just beyond reach,
A dichotomy that cannot soothe the weary soul.
As you can see from the above verse, I believe that Peace is unobtainable, i.e., if indeed Peace is a shadow of every man’s longing, then if one were to obtain Peace, there would be no more longing for Peace that produces the shadow that is peace. Therefore, the longing for Peace and obtaining Peace are mutually exclusive making it (Peace) a dichotomy. I hope I didn’t lose you in explaining the verse, but hopefully a further explanation of why I believe that Peace is indeed a shadow will be helpful and then perhaps the verse can be accepted as the truth in the matter. First, most all agree that Peace is in reality, the absence of strife. The absence of strife, best described as being a human condition where mindless bliss would prevail, is a situation where only mindless life could enjoy. Because mankind has been blessed with a cognitive mind that is always on the job, bliss is more of a fanciful notion rather than human reality. Therefore, I believe that strife is as much a part of human life and living as eating, drinking, thinking and breathing, so living without strife, is another mutually exclusive situation. The reason that I believe strife is a part of life is due to the nature that life has been designed, or has developed, if you prefer. Most agree that we all have a survival instinct hard wired into our life’s architecture and that instinct drives us to compete with other life for the planet’s resources to ensure survival of ourselves as well as our families. That competition for the planets resources, in its most basic form, is that if life is to endure on this planet, life must feed upon life to do so. You may think that this is an unpleasant situation, but it does not change the fact, and the reality is, humans sit atop the food chain. If any of the readers of this piece has been brave enough to read my book, The Grace of Being, you will know that I went into a very long and boring logical explanation why life is required to feed upon life. Nevertheless, regardless if you believe it or not, or understand the reason for it, life must feed upon life in order to survive and endure. I always marvel at the naiveté that vegetarians display when they explain they are vegetarians because they are abhorred at the thought of feeding upon once living flesh while they instead feed upon plant life and the embryos of plant life (seeds like wheat, oats, etc.) that is endowed with the exact same life giving DNA as animal life. Make no mistake about it, DNA is that which defines all life on this beautiful blue planet, and plant DNA is as much alive as animal life (which includes humans). But I digress. Competing for resources is a very stressful and the resulting competition promotes strife in all of its forms and this situation makes peace a dichotomy. I further believe that in addition to the survival instinct there is also a dominance instinct that drives us to be competitive amongst those of our own kind (humans) in order to satisfy the “survival of the fittest” demands of evolution. The continuous competition that our instincts demand will ensure that strife will be our companion as long as we enjoy the gift of life and there can be no such thing as peace, indeed, only death (the absence of life) brings peace. This should be a very sobering realization that we all personally and collectively keep striving for something that is unobtainable. However, this situation, if true, should not be cause for despair. The human race has developed into a social society that has made use of our cognitive abilities to institute rules, laws and behavior conventions to manage strife by fostering benevolent civil competition as a substitute for unbridled competition that our instincts demands. History has proved that a law-based society that requires benevolent civil competition as a nondestructive means to advance and endure, is a workable situation that is as close to peace as can be managed even though it still creates manageable strife. Surely you can immediately see that when our laws, social and behavior conventions fail, and our most basic instincts are allowed to gain control, unbridled competition will foster the greatest competition of all. War. And if our advanced technology is use to gain advantage in a great war, then the destruction of us all will be our reward, and at long last, Peace.
Peace, She is a shadow,
A Phantom cast from every Man’s longing.
Deliciously dancing just beyond reach,
A dichotomy that cannot soothe the weary soul.
As you can see from the above verse, I believe that Peace is unobtainable, i.e., if indeed Peace is a shadow of every man’s longing, then if one were to obtain Peace, there would be no more longing for Peace that produces the shadow that is peace. Therefore, the longing for Peace and obtaining Peace are mutually exclusive making it (Peace) a dichotomy. I hope I didn’t lose you in explaining the verse, but hopefully a further explanation of why I believe that Peace is indeed a shadow will be helpful and then perhaps the verse can be accepted as the truth in the matter. First, most all agree that Peace is in reality, the absence of strife. The absence of strife, best described as being a human condition where mindless bliss would prevail, is a situation where only mindless life could enjoy. Because mankind has been blessed with a cognitive mind that is always on the job, bliss is more of a fanciful notion rather than human reality. Therefore, I believe that strife is as much a part of human life and living as eating, drinking, thinking and breathing, so living without strife, is another mutually exclusive situation. The reason that I believe strife is a part of life is due to the nature that life has been designed, or has developed, if you prefer. Most agree that we all have a survival instinct hard wired into our life’s architecture and that instinct drives us to compete with other life for the planet’s resources to ensure survival of ourselves as well as our families. That competition for the planets resources, in its most basic form, is that if life is to endure on this planet, life must feed upon life to do so. You may think that this is an unpleasant situation, but it does not change the fact, and the reality is, humans sit atop the food chain. If any of the readers of this piece has been brave enough to read my book, The Grace of Being, you will know that I went into a very long and boring logical explanation why life is required to feed upon life. Nevertheless, regardless if you believe it or not, or understand the reason for it, life must feed upon life in order to survive and endure. I always marvel at the naiveté that vegetarians display when they explain they are vegetarians because they are abhorred at the thought of feeding upon once living flesh while they instead feed upon plant life and the embryos of plant life (seeds like wheat, oats, etc.) that is endowed with the exact same life giving DNA as animal life. Make no mistake about it, DNA is that which defines all life on this beautiful blue planet, and plant DNA is as much alive as animal life (which includes humans). But I digress. Competing for resources is a very stressful and the resulting competition promotes strife in all of its forms and this situation makes peace a dichotomy. I further believe that in addition to the survival instinct there is also a dominance instinct that drives us to be competitive amongst those of our own kind (humans) in order to satisfy the “survival of the fittest” demands of evolution. The continuous competition that our instincts demand will ensure that strife will be our companion as long as we enjoy the gift of life and there can be no such thing as peace, indeed, only death (the absence of life) brings peace. This should be a very sobering realization that we all personally and collectively keep striving for something that is unobtainable. However, this situation, if true, should not be cause for despair. The human race has developed into a social society that has made use of our cognitive abilities to institute rules, laws and behavior conventions to manage strife by fostering benevolent civil competition as a substitute for unbridled competition that our instincts demands. History has proved that a law-based society that requires benevolent civil competition as a nondestructive means to advance and endure, is a workable situation that is as close to peace as can be managed even though it still creates manageable strife. Surely you can immediately see that when our laws, social and behavior conventions fail, and our most basic instincts are allowed to gain control, unbridled competition will foster the greatest competition of all. War. And if our advanced technology is use to gain advantage in a great war, then the destruction of us all will be our reward, and at long last, Peace.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
War
WAR
From my book, The Grace of Being.
“First there was the fist and the tooth,
Then there was the stick and the stone,
Then there was the club and the ax,
Then there was the arrow and the sword,
Then there was the bullet and the bomb,
Then there was the chemical agent and the biological agent,
Then there was the mystery and energy of the universe let loose.
All of these things that increasing knowledge has wrought only brings conflict and strife at increasingly greater levels, and portents ruin, not glory.”
You will be hearing a lot about December 21, 2012 in the coming days. That’s the precise day your world will end and is well past the day you got married. December 12th, 2012 is the day the Mayan Calendar ends its Long Count at 13.0.0.0.0 and coincides with the Earth’s winter solstice on that date. Also at that precise date and time, the sun will pass the center and galactic equator of our Milky Way Galaxy and this event is considered by many to signal the: End of Days. The End of Days, if it comes, will be brought about by a great war, cosmic cataclysm, planet earth ruin, or any other infinite number of catastrophes that might happen be it manmade or act of nature. There are many prophesies out there about the End of Days occurring approximately in the same 2012 time period, depending upon interpretation, but for my money, a great war will be the most likely cause of man’s demise and the Mayans never predicted or knew about weapons of mass destruction that can cause a final war (God, what a detached and dreadful phase, “Weapons of Mass Destruction”). For example, look at this remarkable prophecy by the Hopi Indian, White Feather of the Bear Clan:
“The fourth world shall end soon, and the Fifth World will begin. This the elders everywhere know. The signs over the many years have been fulfilled, and so few are left.
This is the first sign: We are told of the coming of the white-skinned men, like Pahana, but not living like Pahana men who took the land that was not theirs (note: Pahana means “Lost White Brother” and is the Hopi messiah) and men who struck their enemies with thunder.
This is the second sign: Our lands will see the coming of spinning wheels filled with voices. In his youth, my father saw this prophecy come true with his eyes---the white man bringing their families in wagons across the prairies.
This is the third sign: A strange beast like a buffalo but with great long horns, will overrun the land in large numbers. These White feather saw with his eyes—the coming of white men’s cattle.
This is the fourth sign: The land will be crossed by snakes of iron.
This is the fifth sign: The land will be criss-crossed by a giant spider’s web.
This is the sixth sign: The land will be crossed with rivers of stone that make pictures in the sun.
This is the seventh sign: You will hear of the sea turning black, and many living things dying because of it.
This is the eight sign: You will see many youth, who wear their hair long like my people, come and join the tribal nations, to learn their ways and wisdom.
This is the ninth and last sign: You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star (note: the Hopi Blue Star of Kachina is the star Sirius). Very soon after this, the ceremonies of my people will cease.
These are the Signs that a great destruction is coming. The world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle against other people in other lands – with those who possessed the first light of wisdom. There will be many columns of smoke and fire such as White Feather has seen the white man make in the deserts not far from here. Only those which come will cause disease and a great dying.”
I really don’t know if there are such things as prophecies, however, I do believe war will be the likely cause of man’s demise, if that is our fate, because I am agreement with Carl Sagan’s hypothesis that the reason that there is not abundant life being observed throughout the universe is because life always develops to a point where it discovers technology and 99.99% of the time, technology is used to destroy the very life that discovered it due to great struggles and wars. So, at any point in time, there is little alien life to observe because what life had been before has already vanished because they destroyed themselves. This theory does not provide an optimistic outlook for the fate of mankind that already knows war and has the technology to make war ever more destructive. There is little doubt man’s technology has advanced to the point where we are capable of destroying ourselves many times over and man’s history shows a willingness to engage in war to either resolve problems or gain mastery over others. Perhaps war is inevitable because of how life is designed, i.e., for life to survive, it has a dominance and survival instinct that is hard wired into our beings and these instincts makes it impossible to resist our destructive inclinations, even while we destroy that which we all hold dear (life). We all engage in war on a personal level every day due to these driving instincts. We battle each other for a better job, for a better life, for more power, for sex, for money and on and on. So when we engage in bigger and bigger impersonal wars, it’s a road we all have traveled many times on a personal level and provides for a sense of propriety. There are those who have subscribed to the notion that war is glorious and is the engine that drives man’s advancement. Well, that might have been true when sticks, stones, arrows and swords were technology’s offerings, but with today’s and tomorrow’s weapons of mass destructions, no alien life will even be around to stop by and wonder at our ruin and demise (instead of glorious advancement).
From my book, The Grace of Being.
“First there was the fist and the tooth,
Then there was the stick and the stone,
Then there was the club and the ax,
Then there was the arrow and the sword,
Then there was the bullet and the bomb,
Then there was the chemical agent and the biological agent,
Then there was the mystery and energy of the universe let loose.
All of these things that increasing knowledge has wrought only brings conflict and strife at increasingly greater levels, and portents ruin, not glory.”
You will be hearing a lot about December 21, 2012 in the coming days. That’s the precise day your world will end and is well past the day you got married. December 12th, 2012 is the day the Mayan Calendar ends its Long Count at 13.0.0.0.0 and coincides with the Earth’s winter solstice on that date. Also at that precise date and time, the sun will pass the center and galactic equator of our Milky Way Galaxy and this event is considered by many to signal the: End of Days. The End of Days, if it comes, will be brought about by a great war, cosmic cataclysm, planet earth ruin, or any other infinite number of catastrophes that might happen be it manmade or act of nature. There are many prophesies out there about the End of Days occurring approximately in the same 2012 time period, depending upon interpretation, but for my money, a great war will be the most likely cause of man’s demise and the Mayans never predicted or knew about weapons of mass destruction that can cause a final war (God, what a detached and dreadful phase, “Weapons of Mass Destruction”). For example, look at this remarkable prophecy by the Hopi Indian, White Feather of the Bear Clan:
“The fourth world shall end soon, and the Fifth World will begin. This the elders everywhere know. The signs over the many years have been fulfilled, and so few are left.
This is the first sign: We are told of the coming of the white-skinned men, like Pahana, but not living like Pahana men who took the land that was not theirs (note: Pahana means “Lost White Brother” and is the Hopi messiah) and men who struck their enemies with thunder.
This is the second sign: Our lands will see the coming of spinning wheels filled with voices. In his youth, my father saw this prophecy come true with his eyes---the white man bringing their families in wagons across the prairies.
This is the third sign: A strange beast like a buffalo but with great long horns, will overrun the land in large numbers. These White feather saw with his eyes—the coming of white men’s cattle.
This is the fourth sign: The land will be crossed by snakes of iron.
This is the fifth sign: The land will be criss-crossed by a giant spider’s web.
This is the sixth sign: The land will be crossed with rivers of stone that make pictures in the sun.
This is the seventh sign: You will hear of the sea turning black, and many living things dying because of it.
This is the eight sign: You will see many youth, who wear their hair long like my people, come and join the tribal nations, to learn their ways and wisdom.
This is the ninth and last sign: You will hear of a dwelling-place in the heavens, above the earth, that shall fall with a great crash. It will appear as a blue star (note: the Hopi Blue Star of Kachina is the star Sirius). Very soon after this, the ceremonies of my people will cease.
These are the Signs that a great destruction is coming. The world shall rock to and fro. The white man will battle against other people in other lands – with those who possessed the first light of wisdom. There will be many columns of smoke and fire such as White Feather has seen the white man make in the deserts not far from here. Only those which come will cause disease and a great dying.”
I really don’t know if there are such things as prophecies, however, I do believe war will be the likely cause of man’s demise, if that is our fate, because I am agreement with Carl Sagan’s hypothesis that the reason that there is not abundant life being observed throughout the universe is because life always develops to a point where it discovers technology and 99.99% of the time, technology is used to destroy the very life that discovered it due to great struggles and wars. So, at any point in time, there is little alien life to observe because what life had been before has already vanished because they destroyed themselves. This theory does not provide an optimistic outlook for the fate of mankind that already knows war and has the technology to make war ever more destructive. There is little doubt man’s technology has advanced to the point where we are capable of destroying ourselves many times over and man’s history shows a willingness to engage in war to either resolve problems or gain mastery over others. Perhaps war is inevitable because of how life is designed, i.e., for life to survive, it has a dominance and survival instinct that is hard wired into our beings and these instincts makes it impossible to resist our destructive inclinations, even while we destroy that which we all hold dear (life). We all engage in war on a personal level every day due to these driving instincts. We battle each other for a better job, for a better life, for more power, for sex, for money and on and on. So when we engage in bigger and bigger impersonal wars, it’s a road we all have traveled many times on a personal level and provides for a sense of propriety. There are those who have subscribed to the notion that war is glorious and is the engine that drives man’s advancement. Well, that might have been true when sticks, stones, arrows and swords were technology’s offerings, but with today’s and tomorrow’s weapons of mass destructions, no alien life will even be around to stop by and wonder at our ruin and demise (instead of glorious advancement).
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Fear, It's Frightening
Fear, It’s Frightening
Most of us have seen the old newsreel of Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting there during the depth of the depression in 1932 and with jutting jaw and his trademark clinched teeth smile say to the Congress and American people, “The only thing we have to fear, (patented FDR pause for dramatic effect) is fear itself.” Of course the reason that this quote comes to mind nowadays is that unbounded fear is spreading throughout the land once again because our economy is collapsing just like in 1929 and the leadership that is responding to this crisis are the very same ones that permitted and encouraged greed to replace honest enterprise, and without a doubt, greed is the primary cause for the cascading collapse that our economy is experiencing. We all should be very much frightened because greed is not being addressed in any manner whatsoever in the headlong rush to mitigate the continuing economic crisis. In fact, rather than stamping down greed, it (greed) is being encouraged to take advantage of the bankrupting of America as dollars are flowing from the Fed printing press to the very same Financial Services Robber Barons that enabled greed to replace honest enterprise in the first place. To bring this more into focus I am going to quote what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standingarmies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issueof their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks andcorporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people ofall property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent that theirfathers conquered”.
What I am talking about here is the fact that Financial Services (a synonym for practical greed) enabled our manufacturing sector to go from 25% of the nation’s GNP in the 1970s to less than 12% of GNP today and they accomplished this feat by replacing honest enterprise with greed. How this occurred is that financial entities, such as Hedge Funds, have bought into Public Corporations using worthless leveraged money and gained overwhelming control. Once in control, they (financial entities) demanded more and more profits until the only way to satisfy the insatiable demands was to ship jobs and factories overseas in the search of cheap labor and intellect in order to boost profits until today the displacement of our manufacturing sector is nearly complete. The result being that we are becoming a country that can no longer “make it here.” This is important because when countries (like the old British Empire) can no longer make its goods and things domestically, they lose control of their destiny and become relegated to third world status. Greed is causing this to happen (see my pieces “OBL and the 3rd Deadly Sin and One World Eggheads and Credit Default Swaps”) because greed only craves money, not the necessary honest enterprise that is required to make money that represents something of value (like an automobile, corn, house, pig, intellectual property, etc). Sometimes we forget in order for money to be viable, it has to represent something of value that people have faith and trust in and greed just makes money off of money and does not really represent anything of value. Oh, by the way, Financial Services now represent over 21% of our national GNP today. Think about it. A segment of our economy that makes nothing of value is 21% of our GNP. Now that’s something to become frightened about Mr. FDR.
Most of us have seen the old newsreel of Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting there during the depth of the depression in 1932 and with jutting jaw and his trademark clinched teeth smile say to the Congress and American people, “The only thing we have to fear, (patented FDR pause for dramatic effect) is fear itself.” Of course the reason that this quote comes to mind nowadays is that unbounded fear is spreading throughout the land once again because our economy is collapsing just like in 1929 and the leadership that is responding to this crisis are the very same ones that permitted and encouraged greed to replace honest enterprise, and without a doubt, greed is the primary cause for the cascading collapse that our economy is experiencing. We all should be very much frightened because greed is not being addressed in any manner whatsoever in the headlong rush to mitigate the continuing economic crisis. In fact, rather than stamping down greed, it (greed) is being encouraged to take advantage of the bankrupting of America as dollars are flowing from the Fed printing press to the very same Financial Services Robber Barons that enabled greed to replace honest enterprise in the first place. To bring this more into focus I am going to quote what Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standingarmies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issueof their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks andcorporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people ofall property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent that theirfathers conquered”.
What I am talking about here is the fact that Financial Services (a synonym for practical greed) enabled our manufacturing sector to go from 25% of the nation’s GNP in the 1970s to less than 12% of GNP today and they accomplished this feat by replacing honest enterprise with greed. How this occurred is that financial entities, such as Hedge Funds, have bought into Public Corporations using worthless leveraged money and gained overwhelming control. Once in control, they (financial entities) demanded more and more profits until the only way to satisfy the insatiable demands was to ship jobs and factories overseas in the search of cheap labor and intellect in order to boost profits until today the displacement of our manufacturing sector is nearly complete. The result being that we are becoming a country that can no longer “make it here.” This is important because when countries (like the old British Empire) can no longer make its goods and things domestically, they lose control of their destiny and become relegated to third world status. Greed is causing this to happen (see my pieces “OBL and the 3rd Deadly Sin and One World Eggheads and Credit Default Swaps”) because greed only craves money, not the necessary honest enterprise that is required to make money that represents something of value (like an automobile, corn, house, pig, intellectual property, etc). Sometimes we forget in order for money to be viable, it has to represent something of value that people have faith and trust in and greed just makes money off of money and does not really represent anything of value. Oh, by the way, Financial Services now represent over 21% of our national GNP today. Think about it. A segment of our economy that makes nothing of value is 21% of our GNP. Now that’s something to become frightened about Mr. FDR.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Change and Chance
CHANGE and CHANCE
All of the knowledge
That can ever be earned,
And all of the wisdom
That can ever be gained,
Will never give the hand of Man
The power to stop the flow of Change
Or prevent the Happenstance of Chance.
Change and Chance is like
Wind and Wave,
They both will blow and roll
To wherever they will go.
Folly will reward all who try
To change the Wind and Wave,
Because they will always blow and roll
To wherever they will go.
So set your sail to Wind and Wave
To mount the unstoppable forces,
And ride your splendid advantage
To wherever your fancy advances.
Knowledge and wisdom can be your sail
To set to the forces of Change and Chance,
And you can cruise to your good fortune
With bended might for your circumstance.
All of the knowledge
That can ever be earned,
And all of the wisdom
That can ever be gained,
Will never give the hand of Man
The power to stop the flow of Change
Or prevent the Happenstance of Chance.
Change and Chance is like
Wind and Wave,
They both will blow and roll
To wherever they will go.
Folly will reward all who try
To change the Wind and Wave,
Because they will always blow and roll
To wherever they will go.
So set your sail to Wind and Wave
To mount the unstoppable forces,
And ride your splendid advantage
To wherever your fancy advances.
Knowledge and wisdom can be your sail
To set to the forces of Change and Chance,
And you can cruise to your good fortune
With bended might for your circumstance.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Honk if you love Peace and Quiet
Honk If You Love Peace & Quiet
I am as guilty as anyone else when it comes to taking note of what we consider negative things or trends while ignoring the many positive things that constantly surrounds us. Indeed, if one reads all that I have written lately, the conclusion would certainly be that I only feel compelled to give voice to things that I consider wrong or at least, not correct. Sadly, I can say that upon rereading my stuff, few words can be found that point out what is going well with the world, only wording that promotes concern and worry. Perhaps the reason for this imbalance is that I am only running the master DNA program that God, or Mother nature if you prefer, programmed into all of us standard Mark 1, Mod 0 human type people, i.e., we have a survival instinct that is inherent to us all and this programmed instinct causes us to focus on negative things more than positive things so that we can consolidate our actions to prevent circumstances from disturbing our well-being, or worse still, cause our ruin. Well, that my ten-cent theory, if you have a better one, I would like to hear about it. One thing I know for certain is that how we look at things to determine if they are positive or negative depends in large measure upon our perspective and our perspective is a result of our respective life experiences to date. For example, my Grandfather had a sign over his desk that he would always point to when I complained about a perceived injustice or that everyone always seemed to have more desirable stuff than I had. The sign read:
“I complained I had no shoes to wear until I saw a man with no feet.”
I think that old sign sums up the perspective thing rather nicely. I can also remember how my Grandmother once told me how wonderful things had gotten during her lifetime (circa 1887-1954). She said the most important improvement was that people are so much better looking now than in her day because modern faces are no longer being scared by the Pox and everyone was more graceful because contemporary people were no longer being broken by hard physical labor. I know about the hard physical labor thing because labor killed my Stepmother’s Father before he could reach 50 years. His premature death was a result of the hard physical labor required of him by being a laborer in the Stone Quarries of Bedford Indiana and he was done in before disease and other age related infirmities could take their due. My own personal perspective about things like this is that I can remember winters in Indianapolis when the primary heating for residents was coal fired stoves and the like. The coal burning produced black soot that fell from the smoke stacks and covered everything and everyone so that just staying clean and breathing was a full time job. With this coal soot perspective in mind, it’s understandable why someone like me would find it difficult to get all excited when the Penthouse Environmentalists* tell us that we must continuously do more and more to help Mother Earth get back to a pristine state of cleanliness or we all are gonna die while gasping for breath in polluted air that will not sustain life worth living. So when a contemporary person’s perspective about air quality is that today’s air is dirty, it is because they have been repeatedly told that the air is indeed dirty and needs to be made completely void of man’s byproducts in order to arrive at the final desired state of cleanliness. Of course my perspective about today’s air is that the air is wonderful compared to what I lived in during my younger days when we had soot, sulfur, and God only knows what, to breathe. My perspective about clean air causes me to be concerned about the necessity of wrecking our economy and jobs to arrive at an unreachable and mostly academic notion of clean air when today’s air, while not perfect and can always be prudently improved, is a remarkable improvement over what was before. As a matter of fact, I am thankful that the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) was created and is responsible for the wonderful air we have today. Here is the problem. Once an Agency is created and the bureaucrats are entrenched, they must continuously expand their reach and authority in order to remain viable. This means that the air will never be clean enough, the water will never be clear enough and the environment will never be pristine enough. So how do we determine when enough is enough of a good thing? Therein lies the dilemma of being positive or negative. In any event, young people have no idea what a blessing modern life is today and the idealistic notion that we need to get to a more natural state of living is naivety at its grandest folly. I just wonder when today’s youth grow up to become old geezers like me, will their perspective be that their modern lives are much better than when they were young? I hope so. However, I’m afraid they too will be mostly negative about things because they also want things to continuously improve just like those who proceeded them and that requires that we be mostly negative. So keep on honking those horns for peace and quiet, it’s really not as illogical as it sounds.
* Penthouse Environmentalists.
Those well meaning, but out of touch souls, who bang on Teflon covered pots and stainless steel pans about the necessity of saving Mother Earth from the evil humans. They have actually persuaded the ideologues in the Environmental Protection Agency to rule that the exhaled breath of animals, which includes humans, is a pollutant. I kid you not. All plant life will also be surprised at the news that CO2 is a pollutant, because CO2 is the building block for all things green. After a hard day’s work saving Mother Earth from all things human, the Penthouse Environmentalists climb into their Beamers to go home to their electrically wired, air-conditioned and WiFied Condos, and feel really good.
I am as guilty as anyone else when it comes to taking note of what we consider negative things or trends while ignoring the many positive things that constantly surrounds us. Indeed, if one reads all that I have written lately, the conclusion would certainly be that I only feel compelled to give voice to things that I consider wrong or at least, not correct. Sadly, I can say that upon rereading my stuff, few words can be found that point out what is going well with the world, only wording that promotes concern and worry. Perhaps the reason for this imbalance is that I am only running the master DNA program that God, or Mother nature if you prefer, programmed into all of us standard Mark 1, Mod 0 human type people, i.e., we have a survival instinct that is inherent to us all and this programmed instinct causes us to focus on negative things more than positive things so that we can consolidate our actions to prevent circumstances from disturbing our well-being, or worse still, cause our ruin. Well, that my ten-cent theory, if you have a better one, I would like to hear about it. One thing I know for certain is that how we look at things to determine if they are positive or negative depends in large measure upon our perspective and our perspective is a result of our respective life experiences to date. For example, my Grandfather had a sign over his desk that he would always point to when I complained about a perceived injustice or that everyone always seemed to have more desirable stuff than I had. The sign read:
“I complained I had no shoes to wear until I saw a man with no feet.”
I think that old sign sums up the perspective thing rather nicely. I can also remember how my Grandmother once told me how wonderful things had gotten during her lifetime (circa 1887-1954). She said the most important improvement was that people are so much better looking now than in her day because modern faces are no longer being scared by the Pox and everyone was more graceful because contemporary people were no longer being broken by hard physical labor. I know about the hard physical labor thing because labor killed my Stepmother’s Father before he could reach 50 years. His premature death was a result of the hard physical labor required of him by being a laborer in the Stone Quarries of Bedford Indiana and he was done in before disease and other age related infirmities could take their due. My own personal perspective about things like this is that I can remember winters in Indianapolis when the primary heating for residents was coal fired stoves and the like. The coal burning produced black soot that fell from the smoke stacks and covered everything and everyone so that just staying clean and breathing was a full time job. With this coal soot perspective in mind, it’s understandable why someone like me would find it difficult to get all excited when the Penthouse Environmentalists* tell us that we must continuously do more and more to help Mother Earth get back to a pristine state of cleanliness or we all are gonna die while gasping for breath in polluted air that will not sustain life worth living. So when a contemporary person’s perspective about air quality is that today’s air is dirty, it is because they have been repeatedly told that the air is indeed dirty and needs to be made completely void of man’s byproducts in order to arrive at the final desired state of cleanliness. Of course my perspective about today’s air is that the air is wonderful compared to what I lived in during my younger days when we had soot, sulfur, and God only knows what, to breathe. My perspective about clean air causes me to be concerned about the necessity of wrecking our economy and jobs to arrive at an unreachable and mostly academic notion of clean air when today’s air, while not perfect and can always be prudently improved, is a remarkable improvement over what was before. As a matter of fact, I am thankful that the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) was created and is responsible for the wonderful air we have today. Here is the problem. Once an Agency is created and the bureaucrats are entrenched, they must continuously expand their reach and authority in order to remain viable. This means that the air will never be clean enough, the water will never be clear enough and the environment will never be pristine enough. So how do we determine when enough is enough of a good thing? Therein lies the dilemma of being positive or negative. In any event, young people have no idea what a blessing modern life is today and the idealistic notion that we need to get to a more natural state of living is naivety at its grandest folly. I just wonder when today’s youth grow up to become old geezers like me, will their perspective be that their modern lives are much better than when they were young? I hope so. However, I’m afraid they too will be mostly negative about things because they also want things to continuously improve just like those who proceeded them and that requires that we be mostly negative. So keep on honking those horns for peace and quiet, it’s really not as illogical as it sounds.
* Penthouse Environmentalists.
Those well meaning, but out of touch souls, who bang on Teflon covered pots and stainless steel pans about the necessity of saving Mother Earth from the evil humans. They have actually persuaded the ideologues in the Environmental Protection Agency to rule that the exhaled breath of animals, which includes humans, is a pollutant. I kid you not. All plant life will also be surprised at the news that CO2 is a pollutant, because CO2 is the building block for all things green. After a hard day’s work saving Mother Earth from all things human, the Penthouse Environmentalists climb into their Beamers to go home to their electrically wired, air-conditioned and WiFied Condos, and feel really good.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Why, Why, Why
Why, Why, Why
Why do they put rear pockets on women’s jeans? Why does my brother do a comb-over? Why does our Government think it can pay off a credit card with a credit card? Why did God put all of that easy to get oil in the middle of Islam lands? Why does gray hair look awful on a woman but great on a man? Why is it that only bellies and ears get larger with a man’s age? Why does Osama bin Laden smile when he says that all Infidels must die? Why be a dirty old man when you can’t do anything about it? Why do women’s breasts succumb to gravity while their butts seem to defy gravity? Why doesn’t hair on your arm grow longer? Why are black people called African Americans but white people aren’t called English, French, German, Irish, Indian, Italian, et all Americans? Why does my Sunday Newspaper contain 90% ads and 10% news mostly gathered by outside sources? Why is my Newspaper called a Newspaper? Why are the chairs called Lazy Boys when nothing but Lazy Men buy them? Why are they allowed to advertise “Free” with purchase? Why can only white people be racists? Why do Brides smile so broadly when they say, “I do” while Grooms have a vacant, almost innocent look on their faces? Why are prisons called “Correctional Facilities?” Why do I fall asleep watching television? Why is the Democratic Party called the Democratic Party? Why do small children and old men keep asking why? Why do Politicians swear an oath? Why does Dolly Parton seem so different? Why does Hip Hop produce a mind-numbing throb? Why is it called Social Security? Why are women generally referred to as “Ladies?” Why aren’t men generally referred to as “Gentlemen?” Why does Senator Barney Frank look like a fag? Why do all of the really smart people live in Hollywood? Why is it called investing? Why do little old people buy really big automobiles? Why is it called the “Armed Services?” Why are most Lawyers rich? Why did they put the pointy ends on a football? Why do they build Churches so big? Why did the great scientist Albert Einstein believe in God? Why do they build Schools so big? Why does beer make you fart but wine doesn’t? Why do new cars go 120 mph? Why do Thongs cost more than Mumus? Why do they pass the plate before the sermon? Why does my childhood house seem so small now? Why do I have an urge to say, “Have a Nice Day”, to strangers? Why does “thinking outside the box” only works for others? Why is it when I have a 50/50 chance of being right, I’m always wrong? Why do long lines (queue) move faster than short lines? Why does it require force to produce good change but bad change is spontaneous? Why do I become frightened when a woman says “Fine.” Why do men try to understand women? Why don’t women want to understand men? Why are black people color blind to the red color of stop signs? Why do white people think Perry Como is the greatest singer of all time? Why won’t grocery carts go in a straight line? Why does too much sleep make you tired? Why do women wear bras? Why do men wear really big belt buckles? Why are gay people really not? Why does the phrase “Oh, By The Way” cause a cardiac arrest?
Why do they put rear pockets on women’s jeans? Why does my brother do a comb-over? Why does our Government think it can pay off a credit card with a credit card? Why did God put all of that easy to get oil in the middle of Islam lands? Why does gray hair look awful on a woman but great on a man? Why is it that only bellies and ears get larger with a man’s age? Why does Osama bin Laden smile when he says that all Infidels must die? Why be a dirty old man when you can’t do anything about it? Why do women’s breasts succumb to gravity while their butts seem to defy gravity? Why doesn’t hair on your arm grow longer? Why are black people called African Americans but white people aren’t called English, French, German, Irish, Indian, Italian, et all Americans? Why does my Sunday Newspaper contain 90% ads and 10% news mostly gathered by outside sources? Why is my Newspaper called a Newspaper? Why are the chairs called Lazy Boys when nothing but Lazy Men buy them? Why are they allowed to advertise “Free” with purchase? Why can only white people be racists? Why do Brides smile so broadly when they say, “I do” while Grooms have a vacant, almost innocent look on their faces? Why are prisons called “Correctional Facilities?” Why do I fall asleep watching television? Why is the Democratic Party called the Democratic Party? Why do small children and old men keep asking why? Why do Politicians swear an oath? Why does Dolly Parton seem so different? Why does Hip Hop produce a mind-numbing throb? Why is it called Social Security? Why are women generally referred to as “Ladies?” Why aren’t men generally referred to as “Gentlemen?” Why does Senator Barney Frank look like a fag? Why do all of the really smart people live in Hollywood? Why is it called investing? Why do little old people buy really big automobiles? Why is it called the “Armed Services?” Why are most Lawyers rich? Why did they put the pointy ends on a football? Why do they build Churches so big? Why did the great scientist Albert Einstein believe in God? Why do they build Schools so big? Why does beer make you fart but wine doesn’t? Why do new cars go 120 mph? Why do Thongs cost more than Mumus? Why do they pass the plate before the sermon? Why does my childhood house seem so small now? Why do I have an urge to say, “Have a Nice Day”, to strangers? Why does “thinking outside the box” only works for others? Why is it when I have a 50/50 chance of being right, I’m always wrong? Why do long lines (queue) move faster than short lines? Why does it require force to produce good change but bad change is spontaneous? Why do I become frightened when a woman says “Fine.” Why do men try to understand women? Why don’t women want to understand men? Why are black people color blind to the red color of stop signs? Why do white people think Perry Como is the greatest singer of all time? Why won’t grocery carts go in a straight line? Why does too much sleep make you tired? Why do women wear bras? Why do men wear really big belt buckles? Why are gay people really not? Why does the phrase “Oh, By The Way” cause a cardiac arrest?
Monday, November 24, 2008
Standarization and the US Constitution
Standardization and the
US Constitution
The other day I went to my neighborhood Home Depot to purchase a much needed bathroom faucet replacement. After clucking like a mother hen over the price of faucet assemblies that now range up to and exceed $200, depending on how fancy you want to get, made our selection, self-checked out with a swipe of a well-worn Visa, set off the “please step back” shoplifting alarm because I didn’t rub the faucet box over the “integrated security device” disabling area on the check-out stand, headed home with the “please step back” automated voice ringing in my ears while muttering over and over about how in the hell can a made in China faucet cost $200 when the Government says inflation is fully contained, got home, started the process of hauling out tools that would eventually empty out my entire tool stash, pre-positioned the band-aids, said a few out-loud cuss words to warm-up, pulled my work pants low enough to expose the butt-crack so that I could at least look professional, and got to it. Finally got the old faucet assembly removed and slipped in the new assembly that fit nicely into the 4 inch on-center holes that is the standard precut that comes with all bathroom sinks here in the good old USA. All of this sounds like just another day in paradise, don’t you think? Thank your luck stars that it is routine. Sometimes the most mundane and “take for granted” things, particularly in the physical world, are the most important because they make our everyday world, “practical”. What I am talking about here is the esoteric and very boring world of Standardization. The new faucet assembly fit into my old sink because of the standardization of the precut holes, pipe threads that would accept the old fasteners, and on and on. This standardization allows real competition in the market place because everyone who wants to manufacture and sell a faucet assembly must comply with a whole range of standardization requirements so that competition will be on the basis of price and quality and not because only company Z’s widget will only fit Company Z’s widget holder and so company Z can charge anything they want because competition can’t really work in such a old world regimen. I know a lot about standardization because I spend most of my professional years as a design engineer working for the US Navy (Government). Most people are surprised to learn that most of our present day standardization has come about through the mechanism of Military and Government Specifications because when you are in the South China sea doing battle with bad guys, you can’t afford to have your really big gun not shoot because a broken bolt can’t be replaced. Why can’t the bolt be replaced? It can’t be replaced because the idiots that stocked the replacement bolt didn’t use the proper specification and the replacement bolt won’t fit. I could fill the Library of Congress about the benefits of standardization that most of us learned about in grade school when we were taught about how the railroads standardized their rail gage, and viola, commerce began to roll on standardized tracks and America became a great nation. My cluttered mind thought about these things when it occurred to me because America is the world’s greatest marketplace and to participate in our marketplace you must comply with our bazillions of standardization requirements and by so doing we are inadvertently making the physical world a common place that transcends politics and national borders. Oh my God, Globalization done on behalf of pipe threads and on-center holes. Well what the hell, if Globalization is good enough for faucets, it should be good enough for politics and Governments too. When you began to think like this it is rather a small leap to consider that the US Constitution is in reality a Standardization Specification about how to establish and maintain a society that is peaceful, prosperous and stable, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, i.e., if you standardize the behavior of people in accordance with the US Constitution, you will have a just and stable society. History proves this so. This can explain why the current Globalization effort is such a contentious issue because the world does not have, or will it accept, a proven Constitution like the US Constitution to standardize global human behavior. If the world had such a Global Constitution, then its varied people could socially compete in a meaningful way to obtain and maintain peace and prosperity much like companies can all build faucet assemblies and compete equally on the basis of price and quality. Standardization of human behavior is the only current mechanization to ensure common justice and equality without sacrificing personal liberty. It seems to me that the League of Nations and the current United Nations are the first attempts at Globalization but the League of Nations is long gone and the United Nations is doomed because it is not relevant and will suffer the same fate as the League of Nations because the United Nations Charter is in no way a Constitution that can standardize human behavior in a just way. Indeed, just like Washington DC is the place where reality goes to die the United Nations is the place where Common Cause goes to die. So until someone can come up with a better way, the US Constitution, and others like it, should become the template for the world to standardize human behavior that will in turn, standardize justice and equality so that the world can ensure the peace and promote prosperity for all humankind. In short, Standardization not only enables equality, it is your friend.
US Constitution
The other day I went to my neighborhood Home Depot to purchase a much needed bathroom faucet replacement. After clucking like a mother hen over the price of faucet assemblies that now range up to and exceed $200, depending on how fancy you want to get, made our selection, self-checked out with a swipe of a well-worn Visa, set off the “please step back” shoplifting alarm because I didn’t rub the faucet box over the “integrated security device” disabling area on the check-out stand, headed home with the “please step back” automated voice ringing in my ears while muttering over and over about how in the hell can a made in China faucet cost $200 when the Government says inflation is fully contained, got home, started the process of hauling out tools that would eventually empty out my entire tool stash, pre-positioned the band-aids, said a few out-loud cuss words to warm-up, pulled my work pants low enough to expose the butt-crack so that I could at least look professional, and got to it. Finally got the old faucet assembly removed and slipped in the new assembly that fit nicely into the 4 inch on-center holes that is the standard precut that comes with all bathroom sinks here in the good old USA. All of this sounds like just another day in paradise, don’t you think? Thank your luck stars that it is routine. Sometimes the most mundane and “take for granted” things, particularly in the physical world, are the most important because they make our everyday world, “practical”. What I am talking about here is the esoteric and very boring world of Standardization. The new faucet assembly fit into my old sink because of the standardization of the precut holes, pipe threads that would accept the old fasteners, and on and on. This standardization allows real competition in the market place because everyone who wants to manufacture and sell a faucet assembly must comply with a whole range of standardization requirements so that competition will be on the basis of price and quality and not because only company Z’s widget will only fit Company Z’s widget holder and so company Z can charge anything they want because competition can’t really work in such a old world regimen. I know a lot about standardization because I spend most of my professional years as a design engineer working for the US Navy (Government). Most people are surprised to learn that most of our present day standardization has come about through the mechanism of Military and Government Specifications because when you are in the South China sea doing battle with bad guys, you can’t afford to have your really big gun not shoot because a broken bolt can’t be replaced. Why can’t the bolt be replaced? It can’t be replaced because the idiots that stocked the replacement bolt didn’t use the proper specification and the replacement bolt won’t fit. I could fill the Library of Congress about the benefits of standardization that most of us learned about in grade school when we were taught about how the railroads standardized their rail gage, and viola, commerce began to roll on standardized tracks and America became a great nation. My cluttered mind thought about these things when it occurred to me because America is the world’s greatest marketplace and to participate in our marketplace you must comply with our bazillions of standardization requirements and by so doing we are inadvertently making the physical world a common place that transcends politics and national borders. Oh my God, Globalization done on behalf of pipe threads and on-center holes. Well what the hell, if Globalization is good enough for faucets, it should be good enough for politics and Governments too. When you began to think like this it is rather a small leap to consider that the US Constitution is in reality a Standardization Specification about how to establish and maintain a society that is peaceful, prosperous and stable, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, i.e., if you standardize the behavior of people in accordance with the US Constitution, you will have a just and stable society. History proves this so. This can explain why the current Globalization effort is such a contentious issue because the world does not have, or will it accept, a proven Constitution like the US Constitution to standardize global human behavior. If the world had such a Global Constitution, then its varied people could socially compete in a meaningful way to obtain and maintain peace and prosperity much like companies can all build faucet assemblies and compete equally on the basis of price and quality. Standardization of human behavior is the only current mechanization to ensure common justice and equality without sacrificing personal liberty. It seems to me that the League of Nations and the current United Nations are the first attempts at Globalization but the League of Nations is long gone and the United Nations is doomed because it is not relevant and will suffer the same fate as the League of Nations because the United Nations Charter is in no way a Constitution that can standardize human behavior in a just way. Indeed, just like Washington DC is the place where reality goes to die the United Nations is the place where Common Cause goes to die. So until someone can come up with a better way, the US Constitution, and others like it, should become the template for the world to standardize human behavior that will in turn, standardize justice and equality so that the world can ensure the peace and promote prosperity for all humankind. In short, Standardization not only enables equality, it is your friend.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
A PC Holiday Greeting
A PC Holiday Greeting
Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, winder solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your particular choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion, as well as those who choose not to practice any religion at all. Additionally, a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, whose contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to race, creed, color, religion or sexual orientation.
(Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)
Courtesy of the December 2008, American Legion Magazine.
Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, winder solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of the religious persuasion of your particular choice, but with respect for the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their own religion, as well as those who choose not to practice any religion at all. Additionally, a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, whose contributions have helped make our society great, without regard to race, creed, color, religion or sexual orientation.
(Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and no responsibility for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to those not caught up in the holiday spirit.)
Courtesy of the December 2008, American Legion Magazine.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The 17th Amendment
The 17th Amendment,
and the rise of Special Interests
There is another date other than 7 December 1941 that will live in infamy. The other date is 8 April 1913, the date that the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified. On that date the Congress and states changed Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution that required each State Legislature to select two Senators for representation in the United States Senate. The Amendment requires instead that each Senator be elected by popular vote of the people rather than be selected by their respective State Legislators, to wit, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years, and each Senator shall have one vote”…….. The 16th, 17th, 18th (Prohibition) and 19th (Woman right to vote) Amendments were conceived during the “Progressive” movement that was gaining influence at the time and you will of course recall that the 16th Amendment allowed the Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes. The “Progressive” movement has morphed into the “Liberal” movement of today and these two terms have come to mean that force is required to change people’s actions for the good of all, and Brothers and Sisters, as I have said on many occasions before: Taxes Are Power and the 16th is the single most important enabler of the power requirement that can force change. This Amendment was the legal basis for enacting legislation that began the collection of payroll taxes in 1937 for the Social Security Program. The 16th Amendment eventually enabled Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign into law the Payroll Withholding Tax Act in 1943, another date that infamy should lay claim to. But I digress. The importance of the original Constitutional requirement for Senator selection cannot be overstated because the Article 1, Section 3 requirement was carefully crafted to complement the Bicameral organization of the legislative branch of Government. I really don’t think I command enough of the reader’s respect to provide the reason for this, but perhaps one of the Country’s founding fathers could. I’m referring to James Madison and in the Federalist Paper No 10 he explained the reason for Bicameralism, “Before taking effect, legislation would have to be ratified by two independent power sources: the people’s representatives in the House and the State legislatures’ agents in the Senate.” This requirement would not only provide the means to ensure the concept of Federalism but would thwart the influence of special interests because of the requirement of satisfying two separate constituencies. Mr. Madison further explained the concept in Federalist Paper No 51: “In republican government, the legislative authority, necessarily predominate. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principals of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions and their common dependencies on the society, will admit.” You may be surprised to learn that the original method of Senator selection was so important that it was one of the few principals that enjoyed nearly unanimous approval by the founding fathers. Because of the Seventeenth Amendment, the authority of each State has been greatly reduced and due to the power of incumbency, each Senator has become a Potentate instead of a representative in a Senate that is coming to resemble the Senate of Rome in its last days. Also, because the Senators are now elected, special interests have a corruption avenue equal to that in the House of Representatives to funnel money and power to ensure election and satisfy plain old greed in exchange for favors in the legislative process. Indeed, the current financial catastrophe we find ourselves in can be traced directly to the influence of special interests in causing the Gramm-Leach-Blily (GLB) act in 1999 to become law. That law was enacted in spite of repeated warnings by knowledgeable and responsible people that its enactment would produce a financial crisis of Biblical proportions. The GLB act repealed part of the Glass-Steagall act of 1933 that was enacted to prevent the kind of financial crisis that produced the great depression. The GLB act removed most all restrictions and separations between commercial banks and all other investment and financial entities. Viola, financial crisis circa 2008, and all because special interests have gained a foothold that the founding fathers tried with all of their wisdom to prevent. I could even make the case that Article 1, Section 3, of the Constitution addressed the most fundamental special interest problem indigenous to a mature society. The special interest that I’m referring to is the special interest of the Cities versus the rest of the country. The cities always attract the most intellectual and financial capital and this concentration of wealth always demands more and more resources from the rest of the country. The ever-increasing demands of the Cities always causes a schism to develop between the whole of the people because one cannot exist without the other yet the cities keep making demands that would cause the rest of the country to fall into ruin (much like Rome in its final days). The cities can do this because there have the greater population concentration and can easily overwhelm the rest of the country with superior political power especially within a “one man, one vote” system. I refer you to the USA Today 2004 Presidential Election map down to the county level (commonly referred to as the “Red/Blue map) that clearly shows the cities (population areas) voting one way and the rest of the country another. The requirement that Senators be agents of the State instead of being directly elected by the people addressed the City/Country schism in a remarkable and effective way. I invite you to consider other areas that the 17th Amendment ratification may have influenced upon but suffice to say, the consequences of the 17th Amendment are far reaching and quite possibly damaging to our country as well.
and the rise of Special Interests
There is another date other than 7 December 1941 that will live in infamy. The other date is 8 April 1913, the date that the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified. On that date the Congress and states changed Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution that required each State Legislature to select two Senators for representation in the United States Senate. The Amendment requires instead that each Senator be elected by popular vote of the people rather than be selected by their respective State Legislators, to wit, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years, and each Senator shall have one vote”…….. The 16th, 17th, 18th (Prohibition) and 19th (Woman right to vote) Amendments were conceived during the “Progressive” movement that was gaining influence at the time and you will of course recall that the 16th Amendment allowed the Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes. The “Progressive” movement has morphed into the “Liberal” movement of today and these two terms have come to mean that force is required to change people’s actions for the good of all, and Brothers and Sisters, as I have said on many occasions before: Taxes Are Power and the 16th is the single most important enabler of the power requirement that can force change. This Amendment was the legal basis for enacting legislation that began the collection of payroll taxes in 1937 for the Social Security Program. The 16th Amendment eventually enabled Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign into law the Payroll Withholding Tax Act in 1943, another date that infamy should lay claim to. But I digress. The importance of the original Constitutional requirement for Senator selection cannot be overstated because the Article 1, Section 3 requirement was carefully crafted to complement the Bicameral organization of the legislative branch of Government. I really don’t think I command enough of the reader’s respect to provide the reason for this, but perhaps one of the Country’s founding fathers could. I’m referring to James Madison and in the Federalist Paper No 10 he explained the reason for Bicameralism, “Before taking effect, legislation would have to be ratified by two independent power sources: the people’s representatives in the House and the State legislatures’ agents in the Senate.” This requirement would not only provide the means to ensure the concept of Federalism but would thwart the influence of special interests because of the requirement of satisfying two separate constituencies. Mr. Madison further explained the concept in Federalist Paper No 51: “In republican government, the legislative authority, necessarily predominate. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principals of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions and their common dependencies on the society, will admit.” You may be surprised to learn that the original method of Senator selection was so important that it was one of the few principals that enjoyed nearly unanimous approval by the founding fathers. Because of the Seventeenth Amendment, the authority of each State has been greatly reduced and due to the power of incumbency, each Senator has become a Potentate instead of a representative in a Senate that is coming to resemble the Senate of Rome in its last days. Also, because the Senators are now elected, special interests have a corruption avenue equal to that in the House of Representatives to funnel money and power to ensure election and satisfy plain old greed in exchange for favors in the legislative process. Indeed, the current financial catastrophe we find ourselves in can be traced directly to the influence of special interests in causing the Gramm-Leach-Blily (GLB) act in 1999 to become law. That law was enacted in spite of repeated warnings by knowledgeable and responsible people that its enactment would produce a financial crisis of Biblical proportions. The GLB act repealed part of the Glass-Steagall act of 1933 that was enacted to prevent the kind of financial crisis that produced the great depression. The GLB act removed most all restrictions and separations between commercial banks and all other investment and financial entities. Viola, financial crisis circa 2008, and all because special interests have gained a foothold that the founding fathers tried with all of their wisdom to prevent. I could even make the case that Article 1, Section 3, of the Constitution addressed the most fundamental special interest problem indigenous to a mature society. The special interest that I’m referring to is the special interest of the Cities versus the rest of the country. The cities always attract the most intellectual and financial capital and this concentration of wealth always demands more and more resources from the rest of the country. The ever-increasing demands of the Cities always causes a schism to develop between the whole of the people because one cannot exist without the other yet the cities keep making demands that would cause the rest of the country to fall into ruin (much like Rome in its final days). The cities can do this because there have the greater population concentration and can easily overwhelm the rest of the country with superior political power especially within a “one man, one vote” system. I refer you to the USA Today 2004 Presidential Election map down to the county level (commonly referred to as the “Red/Blue map) that clearly shows the cities (population areas) voting one way and the rest of the country another. The requirement that Senators be agents of the State instead of being directly elected by the people addressed the City/Country schism in a remarkable and effective way. I invite you to consider other areas that the 17th Amendment ratification may have influenced upon but suffice to say, the consequences of the 17th Amendment are far reaching and quite possibly damaging to our country as well.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Credit-Default Swaps
One World Eggheads
And
Credit-Default Swaps
It has been a surprise to me how the banking and capital generation system works in the real world. To say I am ignorant about the finer points of the current financial system that is in such disarray today would be a colossal understatement, however, with a little research and in simple terms that normal people can understand, I believe this is how it works. You deposit one ($1.00) dollar in your local bank, get your receipt, and feel good about putting a little away for a rainy day. Your bank is now authorized to provide a loan to a credit worthy person in the amount of ten ($10.00) dollars for every one ($1.00) the bank has on deposit of the real money real people deposited. Where did this $10.00 of “artificial” money come from to lend to a credit worthy person desiring a loan? A very good question Holmes. The $10.00 is borrowed from the Central Bank at the “discount rate” to provide the money for the loan. The Central Bank is part of the U.S. Federal Reserve System and the money it supplies is printed-up money based on some esoteric reasoning usually influenced by political reality. The Federal Reserve System was created for a number of good reasons but the main reason was its ability to provide for an “elastic currency”. The Federal Reserve officially defines “elastic currency” as: “currency that can, by the actions of the central monetary authority, expand or contract in amount warranted by economic conditions” or in everyday terms, it can print-up money or take money out of the system. Now if the loan originated by your bank happened to be a large amount backed by a physical asset as collateral, such as your home mortgage, the bank will sell the loan to another financial entity, like Fannie May or Freddie Mac for a fee and the fee received now provides more “real money” the bank can then leverage into even more loans. Fannie May and Freddie Mac (or other financial entities) takes your loan and bundles it with other loans it bought (some made to not so good credit risks and distributed within the bundle to hid them) and then sells the investment bundle to investors at a profit, of course, for its stockholders. It should be noted that Fannie May and Freddie Mac had the implicit backing of the Federal Government to “insure” that the investment package being sold was safe so the investment bundles being sold are very marketable. Other financial entities also buys bundled investment packages but they lacked the implicit government guarantee of safety so companies, like AIG, issued “Credit-default Swaps” policies for a big profit-making fee to insure the bundled investment instruments and the “Credit-default Swaps” insurance policy made the investment packages marketable to all investors. “Credit-default Swaps” is just one of many so called “derivatives” offered to investors (like your local government, IRA accounts, insurance companies, ad infinitum) by various financial institutions that are, in reality, instruments that further leverage money on top of leveraged money in order that everyone in the food-chain can continue to make a handsome profit without ever providing something tangible in return that would provide real value in exchange for the money earned. You may be surprised to learn that some financial entities have leveraged already leveraged money up to 30 or 40 times (not just the 10 times your bank did) to sell investment “derivatives” for big profits to “Hedge Funds” and other really smart people who then leverage the money that the “derivative instruments” represent to buy real companies that make things and provide jobs to real people. A case in point, Carlyle Capital, a division of the Carlyle Group, loaned out leveraged money at a ratio of from 20 and 30 to 1 and has, of course, failed. If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. There are a large number of criminals in the slammer serving time for concocting such schemes as these and these schemes, when done on an individual basis, is call a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns (“profits”) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequence investors, rather than from real net revenues generated by real business (it was named after Charles Ponzi). Well if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, what the hell, it really must be a duck. If all of this hasn’t started to make your stomach churn, I know something that will turn you into a fetal ball. Christopher Cox, Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote in a 19 October 2008 New York Times article that there are $55 Trillion Dollars in outstanding “Credit-default Swaps” out there right now. Oh by the way, $55 Trillion Dollars is more money than all of the GNPs (Gross National Product) of all of the nations on earth combined. I’ll just pause here a moment to let that fully sink in. So what does this have to do with One World Eggheads? Thomas L. Friedman writes in the same New York Times issue that the current leveraged mess is indeed a Global mess and only a fully connected Global economy and regulations can properly “fix” the mess. The One World Eggheads are dancing in the streets.
And
Credit-Default Swaps
It has been a surprise to me how the banking and capital generation system works in the real world. To say I am ignorant about the finer points of the current financial system that is in such disarray today would be a colossal understatement, however, with a little research and in simple terms that normal people can understand, I believe this is how it works. You deposit one ($1.00) dollar in your local bank, get your receipt, and feel good about putting a little away for a rainy day. Your bank is now authorized to provide a loan to a credit worthy person in the amount of ten ($10.00) dollars for every one ($1.00) the bank has on deposit of the real money real people deposited. Where did this $10.00 of “artificial” money come from to lend to a credit worthy person desiring a loan? A very good question Holmes. The $10.00 is borrowed from the Central Bank at the “discount rate” to provide the money for the loan. The Central Bank is part of the U.S. Federal Reserve System and the money it supplies is printed-up money based on some esoteric reasoning usually influenced by political reality. The Federal Reserve System was created for a number of good reasons but the main reason was its ability to provide for an “elastic currency”. The Federal Reserve officially defines “elastic currency” as: “currency that can, by the actions of the central monetary authority, expand or contract in amount warranted by economic conditions” or in everyday terms, it can print-up money or take money out of the system. Now if the loan originated by your bank happened to be a large amount backed by a physical asset as collateral, such as your home mortgage, the bank will sell the loan to another financial entity, like Fannie May or Freddie Mac for a fee and the fee received now provides more “real money” the bank can then leverage into even more loans. Fannie May and Freddie Mac (or other financial entities) takes your loan and bundles it with other loans it bought (some made to not so good credit risks and distributed within the bundle to hid them) and then sells the investment bundle to investors at a profit, of course, for its stockholders. It should be noted that Fannie May and Freddie Mac had the implicit backing of the Federal Government to “insure” that the investment package being sold was safe so the investment bundles being sold are very marketable. Other financial entities also buys bundled investment packages but they lacked the implicit government guarantee of safety so companies, like AIG, issued “Credit-default Swaps” policies for a big profit-making fee to insure the bundled investment instruments and the “Credit-default Swaps” insurance policy made the investment packages marketable to all investors. “Credit-default Swaps” is just one of many so called “derivatives” offered to investors (like your local government, IRA accounts, insurance companies, ad infinitum) by various financial institutions that are, in reality, instruments that further leverage money on top of leveraged money in order that everyone in the food-chain can continue to make a handsome profit without ever providing something tangible in return that would provide real value in exchange for the money earned. You may be surprised to learn that some financial entities have leveraged already leveraged money up to 30 or 40 times (not just the 10 times your bank did) to sell investment “derivatives” for big profits to “Hedge Funds” and other really smart people who then leverage the money that the “derivative instruments” represent to buy real companies that make things and provide jobs to real people. A case in point, Carlyle Capital, a division of the Carlyle Group, loaned out leveraged money at a ratio of from 20 and 30 to 1 and has, of course, failed. If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. There are a large number of criminals in the slammer serving time for concocting such schemes as these and these schemes, when done on an individual basis, is call a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns (“profits”) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequence investors, rather than from real net revenues generated by real business (it was named after Charles Ponzi). Well if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, what the hell, it really must be a duck. If all of this hasn’t started to make your stomach churn, I know something that will turn you into a fetal ball. Christopher Cox, Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote in a 19 October 2008 New York Times article that there are $55 Trillion Dollars in outstanding “Credit-default Swaps” out there right now. Oh by the way, $55 Trillion Dollars is more money than all of the GNPs (Gross National Product) of all of the nations on earth combined. I’ll just pause here a moment to let that fully sink in. So what does this have to do with One World Eggheads? Thomas L. Friedman writes in the same New York Times issue that the current leveraged mess is indeed a Global mess and only a fully connected Global economy and regulations can properly “fix” the mess. The One World Eggheads are dancing in the streets.
Monday, October 13, 2008
John McCain
John McCain
Have you ever decided to do something with the feeling that if you go ahead and do it, there is a good likelihood you will eventually regret that having done it? Has that ever happened to you? Trying to decide if I should vote for John McCain leaves me with that kind of conflicted feeling. But of course there is another option and that is, I could abstain from voting and avoid this whole decision conflict thing altogether. However, lets think about trying to decide whether to vote or not to vote. On the one hand, if I vote for John McCain, I will be voting for the lesser of two evils and I have grown weary of always voting for the lesser of two evils because it somehow violates my sense of dignity to keep doing something that is contrary to my real beliefs and values. On the other hand, if I do not vote at all, I will, in effect, enable those who do vote to multiply their vote due to my abstention by increasing twofold the value of their vote should they vote for the greater of two evils. Why are real life decisions like these always so complicated? Why even ask why. I believe John McCain is the lesser of two evils because there are a number of times I do not agree with the positions taken by him or agree with a large number of his votes cast over the years while serving in the United States Senate even though he has identified himself as being a Republican. I believe there are those who call John McCain a RINO (Republican In Name Only) because of his positions taken and votes cast. Nevertheless, Senator McCain wistfully celebrates his record as being proof that he is in reality a “Maverick” and not a prisoner of any particular dogmatic persuasion and that is the reason his record does not coincide with any one party philosophy or another. His position is that his Maverick record should be celebrated and not condemned because he is beholding to no one or any one party. When I reflect about this notion of being a potential “Maverick” leader, one has to consider the value of a leader who does not adhere to any particular philosophy to guide his decisions other than his own notion of what is fair and right. I’m not so sure what we need is a “Maverick” in our complicated world full of nukes, religious fanatics, ideologues, greed hustlers and tree-hugging raised to a religion notwithstanding the everyday complications of governing the most powerful country in the world. Having said all of this, one cannot help but admire the man who has served his country so unselfishly and endured what would break the resolve of most any man. I could even make the case that being mistreated and tortured during his captivity as a prisoner-of-war has made him hypersensitive about the treatment of people to such an extent that it is very likely that his judgment ability is impaired (witness his calling Obama a good and decent man and his refusal to condemn Obama’s nefarious associations and actions). Even though he may be the lesser of two evils in my mind, John McCain is certainly not the greater of two evils that the other potential President represents. So on November 4th, the dilemma of voting for the lesser of two evils or not voting at all requires all of the wisdom that Solomon could ever muster up. This voting dilemma can be placed squarely at the feet of John McCain because he is in reality, just the lesser of two evils.
Have you ever decided to do something with the feeling that if you go ahead and do it, there is a good likelihood you will eventually regret that having done it? Has that ever happened to you? Trying to decide if I should vote for John McCain leaves me with that kind of conflicted feeling. But of course there is another option and that is, I could abstain from voting and avoid this whole decision conflict thing altogether. However, lets think about trying to decide whether to vote or not to vote. On the one hand, if I vote for John McCain, I will be voting for the lesser of two evils and I have grown weary of always voting for the lesser of two evils because it somehow violates my sense of dignity to keep doing something that is contrary to my real beliefs and values. On the other hand, if I do not vote at all, I will, in effect, enable those who do vote to multiply their vote due to my abstention by increasing twofold the value of their vote should they vote for the greater of two evils. Why are real life decisions like these always so complicated? Why even ask why. I believe John McCain is the lesser of two evils because there are a number of times I do not agree with the positions taken by him or agree with a large number of his votes cast over the years while serving in the United States Senate even though he has identified himself as being a Republican. I believe there are those who call John McCain a RINO (Republican In Name Only) because of his positions taken and votes cast. Nevertheless, Senator McCain wistfully celebrates his record as being proof that he is in reality a “Maverick” and not a prisoner of any particular dogmatic persuasion and that is the reason his record does not coincide with any one party philosophy or another. His position is that his Maverick record should be celebrated and not condemned because he is beholding to no one or any one party. When I reflect about this notion of being a potential “Maverick” leader, one has to consider the value of a leader who does not adhere to any particular philosophy to guide his decisions other than his own notion of what is fair and right. I’m not so sure what we need is a “Maverick” in our complicated world full of nukes, religious fanatics, ideologues, greed hustlers and tree-hugging raised to a religion notwithstanding the everyday complications of governing the most powerful country in the world. Having said all of this, one cannot help but admire the man who has served his country so unselfishly and endured what would break the resolve of most any man. I could even make the case that being mistreated and tortured during his captivity as a prisoner-of-war has made him hypersensitive about the treatment of people to such an extent that it is very likely that his judgment ability is impaired (witness his calling Obama a good and decent man and his refusal to condemn Obama’s nefarious associations and actions). Even though he may be the lesser of two evils in my mind, John McCain is certainly not the greater of two evils that the other potential President represents. So on November 4th, the dilemma of voting for the lesser of two evils or not voting at all requires all of the wisdom that Solomon could ever muster up. This voting dilemma can be placed squarely at the feet of John McCain because he is in reality, just the lesser of two evils.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Expediency
Expediency, Expediency
Hurry me down to Calamity.
I wish I knew who was responsible for maintenance of the Seven Deadly Sins list because I would waste no time in lobbying for an addition to that deadly list. The most urgently needed addition that should be added to the malevolent list of deadly sins would be the most pervasive sin of all, Expediency. Those of us who have bought and paid for all of the gray hair that has so graciously adorned our bowed heads know exactly what I am talking about when we consider the ramifications of Expediency. You know, when we do something in a hasty manner because it is more convenient to do so and the supposed need is so great and urgent that there is no time to carefully consider all aspects of the decision. For example, who among us has not rationalized a quick decision to buy that 60inch flat screen television because we really did not want to invest the time or effort to consider the worth, value or necessity of the 60 easy payments because, after all, it was extremely important that the Colts versus the Patriots game be viewed in a manner befitting the august nature of the contest. And now we, as a collective people, are faced with all of the ramifications of a Governmental decision to “Bail-out Wall Street” that was done with all of the haste and urgency that Expediency could ever demand. Never mind that we will print $700 billion new dollars to enable the “bail-out” and that those printed-up dollars will be added to the currency now in circulation and further devalue our already shrinking dollar value. I believe when that happens it is called inflation and inflation is the cruelest tax of all. That’s right, we will not only pay for that printing press money someday (make that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will do the paying) but we will be taxed tomorrow to pay for this spending by the most cruelest tax of all, Inflation. And never mind that greed and irresponsibility is being rewarded by the “bail-out” while those who acted responsible and played by the rules will once again get slapped in the face as a reward for their prudence. Have we all not been appalled by the lady dressed to the nines getting out of her new SUV to buy the finest cut of meats with food stamps while sneering at us poor dopes for working two jobs to pay for the whole thing. This “bail-out wall street” thing just keeps the disincentives coming for the good productive citizens while the leaches and gamers keep on getting rewarded with other peoples hard earned money. Not only will we have the welfare professionals sneering at us dopes as they buy their choice cuts of meat with food stamps, we will now suffer the indignity of the wall street fat-cats sneering at us dopes for being too dumb to play in the new economics game and for not getting on the gravy train with the rest of the smart people. Expediency is also being employed to justify many other things today, for example, the supposedly global warming “crisis”. There is no doubt that human activity is causing some perturbation of earth’s climate, but how much and is the effect positive or negative for humankind? I direct your attention to a Scientific American article by William F. Ruddiman (a marine geologist and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia) published in March 2005 to help answer the question. The article is entitled “How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?” and suggests, backed-up with scientific evidence, that human activity may have well prevented an ice age that all scientific evidence suggests was due several thousand years ago. If the predicted ice age had occurred and was not prevented by human activity warming up the climate modern human society, as we know it today, would not even exist. Here are some additional facts to factor in when considering the question of Global climate change having either a positive or negative effect for mankind. The only time humankind has ever advanced is when there has been a climate warming. The reason for this is, of course, obvious. Also, which is more catastrophic for human society, a mile-deep ice sheet over our heads or a 12inch rise in the oceans? The reason this question is so important is because before all of this Global climate change became the expedient cause du jour, science was predicting that a modern ice age was coming upon us. So perhaps, global warming due to human activity can once again prevent another major ice age and save mankind. The Lord surely does work in mysterious ways. So the burning question is: Why all of the expediency to act to prevent global warming from continuing? My theory is that the One World Eggheads, along with other ideologues, have co-opted the Global Warming issue to advance their goal of one world government by proclaiming only world government can address a global problem. Also, why all of the expediency to bailout wall street with printed-up money? I don’t think we will truly know until all of the facts are fully known but what I do know is that when Expediency is employed calamity is usually along for the ride. Why? Because used car salesmen and government always use expediency to cloak the real reason for acting urgently.
Hurry me down to Calamity.
I wish I knew who was responsible for maintenance of the Seven Deadly Sins list because I would waste no time in lobbying for an addition to that deadly list. The most urgently needed addition that should be added to the malevolent list of deadly sins would be the most pervasive sin of all, Expediency. Those of us who have bought and paid for all of the gray hair that has so graciously adorned our bowed heads know exactly what I am talking about when we consider the ramifications of Expediency. You know, when we do something in a hasty manner because it is more convenient to do so and the supposed need is so great and urgent that there is no time to carefully consider all aspects of the decision. For example, who among us has not rationalized a quick decision to buy that 60inch flat screen television because we really did not want to invest the time or effort to consider the worth, value or necessity of the 60 easy payments because, after all, it was extremely important that the Colts versus the Patriots game be viewed in a manner befitting the august nature of the contest. And now we, as a collective people, are faced with all of the ramifications of a Governmental decision to “Bail-out Wall Street” that was done with all of the haste and urgency that Expediency could ever demand. Never mind that we will print $700 billion new dollars to enable the “bail-out” and that those printed-up dollars will be added to the currency now in circulation and further devalue our already shrinking dollar value. I believe when that happens it is called inflation and inflation is the cruelest tax of all. That’s right, we will not only pay for that printing press money someday (make that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will do the paying) but we will be taxed tomorrow to pay for this spending by the most cruelest tax of all, Inflation. And never mind that greed and irresponsibility is being rewarded by the “bail-out” while those who acted responsible and played by the rules will once again get slapped in the face as a reward for their prudence. Have we all not been appalled by the lady dressed to the nines getting out of her new SUV to buy the finest cut of meats with food stamps while sneering at us poor dopes for working two jobs to pay for the whole thing. This “bail-out wall street” thing just keeps the disincentives coming for the good productive citizens while the leaches and gamers keep on getting rewarded with other peoples hard earned money. Not only will we have the welfare professionals sneering at us dopes as they buy their choice cuts of meat with food stamps, we will now suffer the indignity of the wall street fat-cats sneering at us dopes for being too dumb to play in the new economics game and for not getting on the gravy train with the rest of the smart people. Expediency is also being employed to justify many other things today, for example, the supposedly global warming “crisis”. There is no doubt that human activity is causing some perturbation of earth’s climate, but how much and is the effect positive or negative for humankind? I direct your attention to a Scientific American article by William F. Ruddiman (a marine geologist and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia) published in March 2005 to help answer the question. The article is entitled “How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?” and suggests, backed-up with scientific evidence, that human activity may have well prevented an ice age that all scientific evidence suggests was due several thousand years ago. If the predicted ice age had occurred and was not prevented by human activity warming up the climate modern human society, as we know it today, would not even exist. Here are some additional facts to factor in when considering the question of Global climate change having either a positive or negative effect for mankind. The only time humankind has ever advanced is when there has been a climate warming. The reason for this is, of course, obvious. Also, which is more catastrophic for human society, a mile-deep ice sheet over our heads or a 12inch rise in the oceans? The reason this question is so important is because before all of this Global climate change became the expedient cause du jour, science was predicting that a modern ice age was coming upon us. So perhaps, global warming due to human activity can once again prevent another major ice age and save mankind. The Lord surely does work in mysterious ways. So the burning question is: Why all of the expediency to act to prevent global warming from continuing? My theory is that the One World Eggheads, along with other ideologues, have co-opted the Global Warming issue to advance their goal of one world government by proclaiming only world government can address a global problem. Also, why all of the expediency to bailout wall street with printed-up money? I don’t think we will truly know until all of the facts are fully known but what I do know is that when Expediency is employed calamity is usually along for the ride. Why? Because used car salesmen and government always use expediency to cloak the real reason for acting urgently.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Oh No, Mr. Bill
Oh No, Mr. Bill.
Not another new word.
Illiquid….Illiquid?….Huh?…Sick liquid? Don’t you just love these Orwellian attempts to put a happy-face on really bad things? You know, really bad things like massive bad debts that stand no chance of being satisfied. The word “Illiquid” is trying to put a positive spin on a situation that greed cooked-up with such a complicated and esoteric Ponzi scheme that it defies the normal meaning of words to explain. The shameless and faceless charlatans who conjured up this new word for public consumption, created the word to subliminally suggest a connection with a normal business type of situation where frozen or untouchable assets cannot be used to service cash flow needs. That normal situation is called a liquidity problem and even us everyday people find ourselves in this situation when we need cash but our money is tied up, for example, in a CD that cannot be redeemed until a future maturity date. A trip behind the tool shed would be a good first step for those trying to describe a Ponzi scheme that has collapsed with a word that suggests a normal business situation. Why would anyone create this word unless they were purposely trying to deceive and confuse? Because they are purposely trying to deceive and confuse so that they can engineer an even more brazen attempt to pickpocket the hapless public in order to save their ill-gotten bacon. I hope this new word does not become part of our new age lexicon like “downsizing”, “outsourcing”, “delayering”, “smartsizing” and other such horrible words have become because these words, in reality, are always a harbinger for more bad times for ordinary people.
Not another new word.
Illiquid….Illiquid?….Huh?…Sick liquid? Don’t you just love these Orwellian attempts to put a happy-face on really bad things? You know, really bad things like massive bad debts that stand no chance of being satisfied. The word “Illiquid” is trying to put a positive spin on a situation that greed cooked-up with such a complicated and esoteric Ponzi scheme that it defies the normal meaning of words to explain. The shameless and faceless charlatans who conjured up this new word for public consumption, created the word to subliminally suggest a connection with a normal business type of situation where frozen or untouchable assets cannot be used to service cash flow needs. That normal situation is called a liquidity problem and even us everyday people find ourselves in this situation when we need cash but our money is tied up, for example, in a CD that cannot be redeemed until a future maturity date. A trip behind the tool shed would be a good first step for those trying to describe a Ponzi scheme that has collapsed with a word that suggests a normal business situation. Why would anyone create this word unless they were purposely trying to deceive and confuse? Because they are purposely trying to deceive and confuse so that they can engineer an even more brazen attempt to pickpocket the hapless public in order to save their ill-gotten bacon. I hope this new word does not become part of our new age lexicon like “downsizing”, “outsourcing”, “delayering”, “smartsizing” and other such horrible words have become because these words, in reality, are always a harbinger for more bad times for ordinary people.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The Comming Age of the Borg
The Coming Age of the Borg
The Ballad of John Henry, Steel Driving Man
John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big stream drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
He hammered his fool self to death.
Who among us could not feel a grudging kinship with the Steel Driving Man, you know, fighting the inevitable with sprit even though the outcome was as certain as death and taxes? Besides, who could feel the slightest affinity for that big mechanical steam drill that was taking a man’s livelihood away and all for the sake of the dollar that some faraway good-smelling Dude laid down so he could make even more dollars without breaking one iota of steel driving sweat. We all may crack an amused smile at the thought of a real live man actually challenging a steam machine to a steel-driving contest with only his muscle, grit and determination to match the power of steam. We smile, of course, because of the foolish nature of the contest. But then again, I wonder what most contemporary people were thinking and feeling at the time when in 1997 they witnessed a more recent contest between a real live man (Garry Kasparov) challenging a thinking contest with only his brain, grit and determination matched up with the power of billions and billions of silicon switches fastened together with the lifeless software of the chess-playing computer, Deep Blue? Somehow I think we probably feel a little differently about the thinking contest due to the contemporary and cognitive nature of the contest. But, I don’t know why! The two contests are identical and the outcomes just as inevitable! Perhaps we don’t even think the chess match was a foolish contest because of the notion that the magnificent organic thinking machine, the human brain, is surely the ultimate cognitive device that no mere machine could ever match. The human brain will surely prevail for all times just like John Henry thought his muscles could surely prevail over the mighty mechanical steam drill even though we now concede our magnificent muscles are no match for lifeless machine power. Here is a thought to muss up your day when trying to decide what to do about being outsourced by the machines of automation and all because some faraway good-smelling Dudes are still trying to make more money without breaking a contemporary sweat. John Henry and Garry Kasparov are not the only contestants in a continuing struggle between man and machine that started when Gorg rubbed two sticks together to make fire. We all are front and center in the enduring contest and so will all of our progeny. Research shows that we are loosing far more contemporary jobs to automation than jobs that are lost to distant lands where labor is cheaper and more abundant. Indeed, one of the biggest loss of jobs today is due customer outsourcing. What that’s you say? What is customer outsourcing? Customer outsourcing is transferring a job that was once done by a paid employee to a paying customer instead. Here is just one minor scenario of customer outsourcing. You drive your rattletrap Chevy to the local gas station emporium where you get out of your seat, pop in and quickly remove your Master Card or Visa (a lot of lost jobs of people taking money, counting money, bookkeeping, accounting, depositing, etc.) and wait for the computer screen to instruct you to continue. After being authorized by a great big computer somewhere that is connected by satellites, relays and God only knows what, lift the pump-handle and pump your gas (more lost jobs of gas attendants). Hell, I’m even checking myself out at the local Wally World and Home Depot and buying stuff off of the Internet by clicking a mouse and causing a massive whirling of untold computers that fetch my latest Ronco gadget, package and ship it without a single paid employee in sight. All of this is made possible by technology and (oh no Mr. Bill!) machines. Because this is a continuing process, it is less noticeable in our everyday, put the meat-on-the-table lives. For example, before the industrial revolution, well over 50% of all people in the country was working on farms while today we produce all of our food needs by less than 1% of the population, i.e., million and millions of jobs lost to machines and we rarely think about the farm job losses as we rant about all of our current jobs going to China, India and machines. And the non-physical jobs like engineering, accounting, marketing, research are also being outsourced to machines and cheaper labor, so no one is immune to job loss except the rich (that is if you believe making money off of money constitutes a job). I think you get the picture and if you get the picture then you know that contemporary job losses will continue on at an ever-accelerating rate and due mostly to automation (machines). What to do? Hell, I don’t know either but I do know that at some distant point in the future the Cyborgs will have all of the jobs and I really don’t know how humans will make a living. That’s right John Henry:
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE,
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!
The Ballad of John Henry, Steel Driving Man
John Henry was hammering on the right side,
The big stream drill on the left,
Before that steam drill could beat him down,
He hammered his fool self to death.
Who among us could not feel a grudging kinship with the Steel Driving Man, you know, fighting the inevitable with sprit even though the outcome was as certain as death and taxes? Besides, who could feel the slightest affinity for that big mechanical steam drill that was taking a man’s livelihood away and all for the sake of the dollar that some faraway good-smelling Dude laid down so he could make even more dollars without breaking one iota of steel driving sweat. We all may crack an amused smile at the thought of a real live man actually challenging a steam machine to a steel-driving contest with only his muscle, grit and determination to match the power of steam. We smile, of course, because of the foolish nature of the contest. But then again, I wonder what most contemporary people were thinking and feeling at the time when in 1997 they witnessed a more recent contest between a real live man (Garry Kasparov) challenging a thinking contest with only his brain, grit and determination matched up with the power of billions and billions of silicon switches fastened together with the lifeless software of the chess-playing computer, Deep Blue? Somehow I think we probably feel a little differently about the thinking contest due to the contemporary and cognitive nature of the contest. But, I don’t know why! The two contests are identical and the outcomes just as inevitable! Perhaps we don’t even think the chess match was a foolish contest because of the notion that the magnificent organic thinking machine, the human brain, is surely the ultimate cognitive device that no mere machine could ever match. The human brain will surely prevail for all times just like John Henry thought his muscles could surely prevail over the mighty mechanical steam drill even though we now concede our magnificent muscles are no match for lifeless machine power. Here is a thought to muss up your day when trying to decide what to do about being outsourced by the machines of automation and all because some faraway good-smelling Dudes are still trying to make more money without breaking a contemporary sweat. John Henry and Garry Kasparov are not the only contestants in a continuing struggle between man and machine that started when Gorg rubbed two sticks together to make fire. We all are front and center in the enduring contest and so will all of our progeny. Research shows that we are loosing far more contemporary jobs to automation than jobs that are lost to distant lands where labor is cheaper and more abundant. Indeed, one of the biggest loss of jobs today is due customer outsourcing. What that’s you say? What is customer outsourcing? Customer outsourcing is transferring a job that was once done by a paid employee to a paying customer instead. Here is just one minor scenario of customer outsourcing. You drive your rattletrap Chevy to the local gas station emporium where you get out of your seat, pop in and quickly remove your Master Card or Visa (a lot of lost jobs of people taking money, counting money, bookkeeping, accounting, depositing, etc.) and wait for the computer screen to instruct you to continue. After being authorized by a great big computer somewhere that is connected by satellites, relays and God only knows what, lift the pump-handle and pump your gas (more lost jobs of gas attendants). Hell, I’m even checking myself out at the local Wally World and Home Depot and buying stuff off of the Internet by clicking a mouse and causing a massive whirling of untold computers that fetch my latest Ronco gadget, package and ship it without a single paid employee in sight. All of this is made possible by technology and (oh no Mr. Bill!) machines. Because this is a continuing process, it is less noticeable in our everyday, put the meat-on-the-table lives. For example, before the industrial revolution, well over 50% of all people in the country was working on farms while today we produce all of our food needs by less than 1% of the population, i.e., million and millions of jobs lost to machines and we rarely think about the farm job losses as we rant about all of our current jobs going to China, India and machines. And the non-physical jobs like engineering, accounting, marketing, research are also being outsourced to machines and cheaper labor, so no one is immune to job loss except the rich (that is if you believe making money off of money constitutes a job). I think you get the picture and if you get the picture then you know that contemporary job losses will continue on at an ever-accelerating rate and due mostly to automation (machines). What to do? Hell, I don’t know either but I do know that at some distant point in the future the Cyborgs will have all of the jobs and I really don’t know how humans will make a living. That’s right John Henry:
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE,
YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED!
Friday, September 12, 2008
OBL and the 3rd Deadly Sin
OBL and the 3rd Deadly Sin
Remember the movie Wall Street? Remember the famous scene that has Michael Douglas playing the role of Corporate raider Gordon Gekko and Gekko stands up before the hapless hard working people of Teldar Paper and delivers the famous line: “The point is, Ladies and Gentlemen, that greed --- for lack of a better word --- is good!”
I remember it well. I remember it because to me it was such a perfect example of how the glib and self-assured charlatans of this world get honest people to start believing that a vice, like greed, is in reality, a virtue. Once these Flimflammers can manage that trick, then it’s relatively easy for them to convince the gullible that they are being “cheated” by not being virtuous (greedy) enough and demand their fair share that Mr. Gekko alone knows how to obtain. Of course, all of this nonsense was in reality only a ruse because Mr. Gekko was not really interested in fairness or the welfare of the people. Gekko, in truth, only needed the people to believe in what he was saying so that they would do his bidding. All of this manipulation of good “honest” people was, of course, solely designed to eventually satisfy Mr. Gekko’s own virtuous greed. Never mind that a Company that had sustained the people for many years would most likely be destroyed in the process. Hard work and sacrifice is so old fashioned in the new economy because all you really have to do is listen to those like Mr. Gekko and wondrous riches can be yours, if you only believe. I listed greed as a vice, but we all know that greed was the third of the seven deadly sins. I know we don’t really like to talk about deadly sins all that much but to refresh our memories about these vices, I have listed them in order: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Greed has, without a doubt, replaced hard work and sacrifice as the engine that is now driving our unbridled Capitalism and let me say without reservation that unbridled Capitalism is just as poisonous to society as unbridled Socialism could ever be. Lets look at some of the dismal results that greed has fathered and unbridled Capitalism has fostered that will, unfortunately, be the legacy we stand to leave to our children and grandchildren to sort out. The national public debt now stands at $9,698,267,795,301 as of 9/11/2008. America’s total debt, pubic and private, now stands at $53,000,000,000,000 and is increasing at about $4.3 trillion per year. Hell, I can remember when the late Senator Dirksen of Illinois was reported to have said “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”, and now here we are talking about a trillion here, a trillion there. Are these trillions really money? You bet they are. They are our 401ks, our IRAs, our retirement funds, our insurance money, our equity funds and on and on. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not smart enough to know what is really going on here, but one thing I do know with perfect clarity and certainty, when people like Mr. Grekko (Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, et al) and Flimflammers (Politicians) tell us every thing is OK and just believe in what they say and we all can continue to “get something for nothing” (debt with no hope of repaying), I know we are in big trouble. However, I do know what real money is. It is the exchange for work and other things of value for a certificate we all agree has the same value as work or property and in so doing, facilitates the operation of an economy. Money relies exclusively upon the faith and trust of the people that money is as valuable as their hard work, property and sacrifice. When you think about it for a while it becomes obvious that money is in reality the basis of an authorized official Ponzi scheme that operates on faith and trust, and as long as things are in balance or value is always increasing, it works just fine. But when faith and trust begins to wane and money loses it’s value, the scheme begins to falter and if faith and trust isn’t restored in a timely manner, the whole scheme begins to cascades into an unstoppable demise. I believe we are now seeing the beginning of the cascade into ruin. Here is some evidence of the cascade and the impending ruin that it portents. Lehman Brothers, a 158 year-old investment bank, has lost 95% of it value due to greed and will no doubt fail and billion of dollars will disappear. Bear Stearns Companies, an 85 year-old investment company that was one of the world’s largest, has failed resulting in the loss of untold billions. Fannie May and Freddie Mac, a government sponsored and backed investment entity, has failed and precipitated a takeover by the Government with even more borrowed money (will someone tell our Government that you really can’t pay off a credit card with a credit card) resulting in untold loss of billions of dollars and property. Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual are next up on the failure docket with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler floundering as foreign companies complete their takeover of our last manufacturing capabilities. Need I go on? Unadulterated greed is the basis for all of this mess we find ourselves in, and that unbridled Capitalism has facilitated, be it individual greed or the collective greed of an electorate that buys into the notion that it can get “something for nothing” at the expense of others. So, if I were Osama bin Laden hiding in a cave somewhere planning our demise, I would not bother. Just wait a little while longer and the 3rd deadly sin, greed, will do the job just nicely.
Remember the movie Wall Street? Remember the famous scene that has Michael Douglas playing the role of Corporate raider Gordon Gekko and Gekko stands up before the hapless hard working people of Teldar Paper and delivers the famous line: “The point is, Ladies and Gentlemen, that greed --- for lack of a better word --- is good!”
I remember it well. I remember it because to me it was such a perfect example of how the glib and self-assured charlatans of this world get honest people to start believing that a vice, like greed, is in reality, a virtue. Once these Flimflammers can manage that trick, then it’s relatively easy for them to convince the gullible that they are being “cheated” by not being virtuous (greedy) enough and demand their fair share that Mr. Gekko alone knows how to obtain. Of course, all of this nonsense was in reality only a ruse because Mr. Gekko was not really interested in fairness or the welfare of the people. Gekko, in truth, only needed the people to believe in what he was saying so that they would do his bidding. All of this manipulation of good “honest” people was, of course, solely designed to eventually satisfy Mr. Gekko’s own virtuous greed. Never mind that a Company that had sustained the people for many years would most likely be destroyed in the process. Hard work and sacrifice is so old fashioned in the new economy because all you really have to do is listen to those like Mr. Gekko and wondrous riches can be yours, if you only believe. I listed greed as a vice, but we all know that greed was the third of the seven deadly sins. I know we don’t really like to talk about deadly sins all that much but to refresh our memories about these vices, I have listed them in order: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy and Pride. Greed has, without a doubt, replaced hard work and sacrifice as the engine that is now driving our unbridled Capitalism and let me say without reservation that unbridled Capitalism is just as poisonous to society as unbridled Socialism could ever be. Lets look at some of the dismal results that greed has fathered and unbridled Capitalism has fostered that will, unfortunately, be the legacy we stand to leave to our children and grandchildren to sort out. The national public debt now stands at $9,698,267,795,301 as of 9/11/2008. America’s total debt, pubic and private, now stands at $53,000,000,000,000 and is increasing at about $4.3 trillion per year. Hell, I can remember when the late Senator Dirksen of Illinois was reported to have said “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”, and now here we are talking about a trillion here, a trillion there. Are these trillions really money? You bet they are. They are our 401ks, our IRAs, our retirement funds, our insurance money, our equity funds and on and on. Now don’t get me wrong. I am not smart enough to know what is really going on here, but one thing I do know with perfect clarity and certainty, when people like Mr. Grekko (Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, et al) and Flimflammers (Politicians) tell us every thing is OK and just believe in what they say and we all can continue to “get something for nothing” (debt with no hope of repaying), I know we are in big trouble. However, I do know what real money is. It is the exchange for work and other things of value for a certificate we all agree has the same value as work or property and in so doing, facilitates the operation of an economy. Money relies exclusively upon the faith and trust of the people that money is as valuable as their hard work, property and sacrifice. When you think about it for a while it becomes obvious that money is in reality the basis of an authorized official Ponzi scheme that operates on faith and trust, and as long as things are in balance or value is always increasing, it works just fine. But when faith and trust begins to wane and money loses it’s value, the scheme begins to falter and if faith and trust isn’t restored in a timely manner, the whole scheme begins to cascades into an unstoppable demise. I believe we are now seeing the beginning of the cascade into ruin. Here is some evidence of the cascade and the impending ruin that it portents. Lehman Brothers, a 158 year-old investment bank, has lost 95% of it value due to greed and will no doubt fail and billion of dollars will disappear. Bear Stearns Companies, an 85 year-old investment company that was one of the world’s largest, has failed resulting in the loss of untold billions. Fannie May and Freddie Mac, a government sponsored and backed investment entity, has failed and precipitated a takeover by the Government with even more borrowed money (will someone tell our Government that you really can’t pay off a credit card with a credit card) resulting in untold loss of billions of dollars and property. Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual are next up on the failure docket with General Motors, Ford and Chrysler floundering as foreign companies complete their takeover of our last manufacturing capabilities. Need I go on? Unadulterated greed is the basis for all of this mess we find ourselves in, and that unbridled Capitalism has facilitated, be it individual greed or the collective greed of an electorate that buys into the notion that it can get “something for nothing” at the expense of others. So, if I were Osama bin Laden hiding in a cave somewhere planning our demise, I would not bother. Just wait a little while longer and the 3rd deadly sin, greed, will do the job just nicely.
Friday, September 5, 2008
Can't Do America
Can’t Do America
Have you ever gotten yourself into an unpleasant, dangerous or compromised situation, and while struggling to repair your position, reflected on how you managed to get into such an awful mess in the first place? I think we all have experienced a number of these “reality” offerings simply because we are all Standard Issue, Mark 1, Mod 0, Human type persons and while these unpleasant situations may well become a positive lesson-learned opportunity, most of us would just as soon be spared the “hard-knock” lesson that our Parents and Grandparents warned us about with waving fingers and the nodding gray heads for wise emphasis. One thing that is almost always certain about getting into most of these situations, is that the getting there is nearly without fail a slow and meandering process, and not a flash-bang, out of the blue thing that finally propels the uninitiated into an acknowledgement that all is not well. In other words, we almost always have been fully warned by converging events, large and small, about the coming happiness-interruption, if only we are wise enough to recognize the storm-clouds swirling about us for what they are and vigorous enough to make an effective change to prevent misfortune from having its merry day at our tranquil expense. So you ask, “What has all of this got to do with a Can’t Do America? Well if you think about it for a moment or two you will realize that the good old US of A is not a merely a place or thing, it is in reality, an amalgamation of standard issue, Mark 1, Mod 0, Human type persons that has a collective behavior not unlike anyone of its unique Human parts and can get into unpleasant, dangerous or compromised situations with the same ease as you and me. And my fellow Americans, we as a Country, have most definitely meandered into a number of unpleasant, dangerous and compromised situations without the wisdom or vigor to marshal the wherewithal to propel ourselves out of the mess we now find our country in. Just like your Great Aunt Betsy, who told you with bad breath and a weathered hand, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, that same road to hell for a country can likewise be traveled upon that have been paved with the collective cobble stones of “Good Intentions” and all laid down by a collection of Americans with sweetened breath and manicured hands that have somehow managed to acquired incredible power and persuasion without the necessity of being responsible for what they do. The fact is now obvious that the seemingly good intentions of environmentalists, one-world government advocates, naturalists, and other like “I know what is best for all of us” people and organizations, has so hobbled and muscle-bound this country with their “Good Intentions” that instead of the traditional Can Do America, we have become, for all practical purposes, the Can’t Do America. How on earth could we have conceived, planned and built the 6,636,360 Square Foot Pentagon in only sixteen Months and today we would not even begin the process of an environment impact statement for the project in sixteen months (has the Pentagon building wrecked the environment sans an environmental impact statement)? The situation reminds me of the pathetic “Help me, I’ve fallen and can’t get up” advertisement that can juxtapose a weak and helpless person bound by the infirmities of old age into a clueless and helpless behemoth that can’t get up and going because it is bound by the infirmities of an ever expanding infinity of laws. This has come about because each “Good Intention” faction has learned how to use the power of the money/power grubbing legal and judiciary system, aided and abetted by the ideologues and money grubbers in the fifth estate, to effectively block any action, including those of other “Good Intention” factions, that does not support their particular advocacy. And so all that occurs is that we can’t do this or we can’t do that and all because irresponsible people have somehow obtained the power to stop anything or anyone. Of course all of this can’t do nonsense uses up the precious intellectual and capital treasure of this country that should be used for positive Can Do purposes but instead is utterly wasted in epic and useless battles of such esoteric nonsense that even the reason for the battle is no longer important in the quest for power and advocacy (not unlike the great debate of how many Angles can fit on the head of a pin). And never forget, most of the battles being fought are not necessarily being fought for the purpose stated, for example, the One World Government advocates will enthusiastically support the Environmentalists goals as a vehicle to devise laws and policy that can eventually subjugate a Country’s sovereignty to a global sovereignty under the guise of Environment Protection and therefore satisfy the One World Government goals. Even if I knew how to fix our current Can’t Do malady and could support my remedy with irrefutable logic, legal and Constitutional support, it would do no good because it takes enlightened leadership to effect real change. The self-serving Yahoos who wrap themselves in leadership clothes nowadays in order to further their lust for power and wealth are hardly the giants needed to get us back to Can Do America. But you know what, we are the ones who let this situation happen because a Country is not a place or thing, it is amalgamation of Standard Issue, Mark 1, Mod 0 Human type people and it takes people to made real change.
Have you ever gotten yourself into an unpleasant, dangerous or compromised situation, and while struggling to repair your position, reflected on how you managed to get into such an awful mess in the first place? I think we all have experienced a number of these “reality” offerings simply because we are all Standard Issue, Mark 1, Mod 0, Human type persons and while these unpleasant situations may well become a positive lesson-learned opportunity, most of us would just as soon be spared the “hard-knock” lesson that our Parents and Grandparents warned us about with waving fingers and the nodding gray heads for wise emphasis. One thing that is almost always certain about getting into most of these situations, is that the getting there is nearly without fail a slow and meandering process, and not a flash-bang, out of the blue thing that finally propels the uninitiated into an acknowledgement that all is not well. In other words, we almost always have been fully warned by converging events, large and small, about the coming happiness-interruption, if only we are wise enough to recognize the storm-clouds swirling about us for what they are and vigorous enough to make an effective change to prevent misfortune from having its merry day at our tranquil expense. So you ask, “What has all of this got to do with a Can’t Do America? Well if you think about it for a moment or two you will realize that the good old US of A is not a merely a place or thing, it is in reality, an amalgamation of standard issue, Mark 1, Mod 0, Human type persons that has a collective behavior not unlike anyone of its unique Human parts and can get into unpleasant, dangerous or compromised situations with the same ease as you and me. And my fellow Americans, we as a Country, have most definitely meandered into a number of unpleasant, dangerous and compromised situations without the wisdom or vigor to marshal the wherewithal to propel ourselves out of the mess we now find our country in. Just like your Great Aunt Betsy, who told you with bad breath and a weathered hand, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, that same road to hell for a country can likewise be traveled upon that have been paved with the collective cobble stones of “Good Intentions” and all laid down by a collection of Americans with sweetened breath and manicured hands that have somehow managed to acquired incredible power and persuasion without the necessity of being responsible for what they do. The fact is now obvious that the seemingly good intentions of environmentalists, one-world government advocates, naturalists, and other like “I know what is best for all of us” people and organizations, has so hobbled and muscle-bound this country with their “Good Intentions” that instead of the traditional Can Do America, we have become, for all practical purposes, the Can’t Do America. How on earth could we have conceived, planned and built the 6,636,360 Square Foot Pentagon in only sixteen Months and today we would not even begin the process of an environment impact statement for the project in sixteen months (has the Pentagon building wrecked the environment sans an environmental impact statement)? The situation reminds me of the pathetic “Help me, I’ve fallen and can’t get up” advertisement that can juxtapose a weak and helpless person bound by the infirmities of old age into a clueless and helpless behemoth that can’t get up and going because it is bound by the infirmities of an ever expanding infinity of laws. This has come about because each “Good Intention” faction has learned how to use the power of the money/power grubbing legal and judiciary system, aided and abetted by the ideologues and money grubbers in the fifth estate, to effectively block any action, including those of other “Good Intention” factions, that does not support their particular advocacy. And so all that occurs is that we can’t do this or we can’t do that and all because irresponsible people have somehow obtained the power to stop anything or anyone. Of course all of this can’t do nonsense uses up the precious intellectual and capital treasure of this country that should be used for positive Can Do purposes but instead is utterly wasted in epic and useless battles of such esoteric nonsense that even the reason for the battle is no longer important in the quest for power and advocacy (not unlike the great debate of how many Angles can fit on the head of a pin). And never forget, most of the battles being fought are not necessarily being fought for the purpose stated, for example, the One World Government advocates will enthusiastically support the Environmentalists goals as a vehicle to devise laws and policy that can eventually subjugate a Country’s sovereignty to a global sovereignty under the guise of Environment Protection and therefore satisfy the One World Government goals. Even if I knew how to fix our current Can’t Do malady and could support my remedy with irrefutable logic, legal and Constitutional support, it would do no good because it takes enlightened leadership to effect real change. The self-serving Yahoos who wrap themselves in leadership clothes nowadays in order to further their lust for power and wealth are hardly the giants needed to get us back to Can Do America. But you know what, we are the ones who let this situation happen because a Country is not a place or thing, it is amalgamation of Standard Issue, Mark 1, Mod 0 Human type people and it takes people to made real change.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
The Iraq War
The Iraq War
Someone once said, “War is the last act of diplomacy” and that just might be true but to me it sounds like something the intelligentsia would cook-up to prove how really advanced and intelligent they are. From a practical standpoint, such esoteric uttering would matter little to a Grunt stuck in a mud hole getting his butt shot off and all because previous diplomatic efforts to effectively communicate with a potential enemy had failed and produced a real enemy instead. Moreover this diplomacy thing begs the question, is diplomacy only conducted by commissioned Diplomats and as such are they, therefore, the only ones responsible for the peace failure? I think not. Perhaps diplomacy is conducted by a great number of responsible people, maybe even a President, regardless if he realizes it or not. For example, I recalled I literally cringed when President GWB announced with a halting voice that sounded like a chain going around a broken sprocket with a few teeth missing, “Your are either with us, or you’re against us.” Who really knows how much diplomatic damage this pronouncement made but I’ll wager my last Krugerrand that it was extensive. Well, regardless if war is diplomacy laced with bullets instead of words, war was addressed in 1936 by FDR who said to a very apprehensive nation, “I have seen war, and I hate war” and yet we ended up in the biggest war to date. Even though all of the worlds best and brightest Diplomats and world leaders tried with all of their might to prevent war, Hitler, Mussolini and Togo were not dissuaded from their Imperial designs by mere words but finally by bullets. Even though I hate to give any quarter to the Intelligentsia, they indeed are probably correct about this “War is the last act of diplomacy” thing because does anyone really think they could talk and reason with today’s Osama bin Laden to stop doing his dastardly deeds and maybe even convert to Christianity and become, for instance, a Southern Baptist. That would be as likely as Nancy Pelosi marrying Newt Gringrich and forming the new Jeffersonian Political Party. So we will have war until we can find a better way and regardless if it be a containment, preemptive, defensive, unnecessary or whatever kind of war, it, like today’s war in Iraq, is not necessarily a failure of diplomacy or any other kind of non-violent persuasion but rather simply a problem that can only be resolved by acquiescence or force. With this in mind, here is what I think might be as good as any explanation of why we are in the current Iraq war. Lacking a viable diplomatic strategy to deal with a wide spread enemy that does not stand up a uniformed army, lacks a central command structure and hides within the general civilian population, I believe it was decided upon a military strategy that is as old as the teachings of Sun Tzu's, The Art of War. As part of a larger war on radical Islam that is heating up again after 1,500 years of on again/ off again battles and now enabled by petroleum, the anecdotal evidence suggests that the decision was made to use Iraq as a killing field. I believe you send out a patrol to find out where the enemy is and then present a target to draw him to your position of strength, which looks exactly like what we are doing in Iraq. We cannot go into every country where the bad guys are hiding and kill them, so you present such an irresistible target that they must respond or lose credibility and I believe the US (the Great Satan) right smack dab in the middle of Islam country is that irresistible target and is drawing the bad guys to our killing field. If true, this would only be a workable military strategy in lieu of a viable diplomatic or strategic strategy and one can but say, what a miserable situation for the long-suffering Iraq people.
Someone once said, “War is the last act of diplomacy” and that just might be true but to me it sounds like something the intelligentsia would cook-up to prove how really advanced and intelligent they are. From a practical standpoint, such esoteric uttering would matter little to a Grunt stuck in a mud hole getting his butt shot off and all because previous diplomatic efforts to effectively communicate with a potential enemy had failed and produced a real enemy instead. Moreover this diplomacy thing begs the question, is diplomacy only conducted by commissioned Diplomats and as such are they, therefore, the only ones responsible for the peace failure? I think not. Perhaps diplomacy is conducted by a great number of responsible people, maybe even a President, regardless if he realizes it or not. For example, I recalled I literally cringed when President GWB announced with a halting voice that sounded like a chain going around a broken sprocket with a few teeth missing, “Your are either with us, or you’re against us.” Who really knows how much diplomatic damage this pronouncement made but I’ll wager my last Krugerrand that it was extensive. Well, regardless if war is diplomacy laced with bullets instead of words, war was addressed in 1936 by FDR who said to a very apprehensive nation, “I have seen war, and I hate war” and yet we ended up in the biggest war to date. Even though all of the worlds best and brightest Diplomats and world leaders tried with all of their might to prevent war, Hitler, Mussolini and Togo were not dissuaded from their Imperial designs by mere words but finally by bullets. Even though I hate to give any quarter to the Intelligentsia, they indeed are probably correct about this “War is the last act of diplomacy” thing because does anyone really think they could talk and reason with today’s Osama bin Laden to stop doing his dastardly deeds and maybe even convert to Christianity and become, for instance, a Southern Baptist. That would be as likely as Nancy Pelosi marrying Newt Gringrich and forming the new Jeffersonian Political Party. So we will have war until we can find a better way and regardless if it be a containment, preemptive, defensive, unnecessary or whatever kind of war, it, like today’s war in Iraq, is not necessarily a failure of diplomacy or any other kind of non-violent persuasion but rather simply a problem that can only be resolved by acquiescence or force. With this in mind, here is what I think might be as good as any explanation of why we are in the current Iraq war. Lacking a viable diplomatic strategy to deal with a wide spread enemy that does not stand up a uniformed army, lacks a central command structure and hides within the general civilian population, I believe it was decided upon a military strategy that is as old as the teachings of Sun Tzu's, The Art of War. As part of a larger war on radical Islam that is heating up again after 1,500 years of on again/ off again battles and now enabled by petroleum, the anecdotal evidence suggests that the decision was made to use Iraq as a killing field. I believe you send out a patrol to find out where the enemy is and then present a target to draw him to your position of strength, which looks exactly like what we are doing in Iraq. We cannot go into every country where the bad guys are hiding and kill them, so you present such an irresistible target that they must respond or lose credibility and I believe the US (the Great Satan) right smack dab in the middle of Islam country is that irresistible target and is drawing the bad guys to our killing field. If true, this would only be a workable military strategy in lieu of a viable diplomatic or strategic strategy and one can but say, what a miserable situation for the long-suffering Iraq people.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Flim Flam
You can buy this book directly from me for $12.00 instead of the $14.95 listed price, and I will pay for shipping. Send cash, check or MO to:
Flim Flam
c/o Ronald L Clark
12222 Huntington Circle
Indianapolis, Indiana 46229
Flim Flam Synopsis
Meet Wilhelm Thaddeus Quinton, AKA Spoon, the most likeable person you
would ever want to meet. How could you not like a guy who lives by the mantra a
six-pack a day keeps mediocrity away and draws a crowd of adoring people
by just walking into a room? When the Spoon Man comes upon the scene it’s like
a raucous parade beginning to form-up with plenty of excitement and adventure
awaiting all who only need to throw normal caution to the wind and join-up. But
there is another side to the Spoon Man, he is a Master Gamer and the Game
Meister has his sights set on playing in the biggest game of all, Politics. And
when you are a people magnet like the Spoon Man, you are a natural born
Politician. But wait, there’s more! When Wilhelm Thaddeus Quinton plays in a
game he is always a winner because winners won’t play in a game they can’t
win, i.e., winners always rig the game so they cannot lose and if they can’t rig the
game they will not play. Rigging the game of Politics is always done the old
fashioned way with the time honored practice of Flim Flam and the Spoon Man is
an accomplished and enlightened Flimflammer par excellence. With patience and
cold calculation Quinton gathers his Lieutenants and supporters about him as he
shows us all how to play the game of Politics. And never ever forget, it’s not
really about Politics, it’s always and forever about the game and winning!
The Grace of Being
You can buy this book directly from me for $15.00 instead of the $17.95 listed price, and I will pay shipping. Send cash, check or MO to:
The Grace of Being
c/o Ronald L Clark
12222 Huntington Circle
Indianapolis, Indiana 46229
Suppose for a moment that you are God, even if you don’t believe in God or that there is any sentient intelligent life other than Human for that matter. And you as God decide, for one reason or another, that you are going to see to it that there should be life other than your own. By using your very Human logic and reason, why would you do it and how would you do it? By becoming a proxy for God and using your Human logic and reason you can maintain a Human perspective about this fundamental matter without resorting to a faith bound divine imperative.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Barack Obama
Barack Obama
From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey…Homer, The Iliad.
We all have watched and listened with rapt attention as the Senator from Illinois has stormed upon our collective consciousness with pitch-perfect delivery and Hollywood star-quality image. The political arena has not seen such an accomplished practitioner of the persuasion arts since the late JFK marshaled the finest writers, idea Meisters and image-makers to promote the astonishing notion of a modern day Camelot to cure all of our political and social ills. Even God appears to be a loyal Lieutenant of Senator Obama because how else could you explain his recent trip to Europe when in cloudy and dismal Germany, the clouds parted and the sun begin to shine brightly just as the would be President began to speak to the adoring multitudes. With the brilliant Sun bathing the splendid new-age Man, he seemingly without visible effort, passed out soaring oratory and idealistic manna to the spiritually hungry modern multitudes rather like the Man who preached love and passed out the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitudes so long ago. And I say, why not? Who among us is not hungry for a satisfying spiritual meal in this modern materialist world that grinds us down to our least idealist parts? We all want to believe and faith is the coin of the political realm and when you have faith, all things are possible because change has been promised and I have faith that change is going to do us good, right? However, there is something troubling and vaguely familiar about self-described neo-Horatio person. This splendid new-age man who would have us believe that the age of Aquarius is finally within our reach, if we only we have faith and believe, has conjured up an old memory and the memory is a troubling one. Why this man’s message is troubling and familiar is because I experienced a man just like this when I was a young boy. When I was at the impressionable age of around 10 years old, I would accompany my Grandfather, who I thought was the wisest man on earth, to a marvelous Black Church where my Grandfather and I were generally the only white faces in the congregation. I really don’t know why my Grandfather went to a Black Church but I loved it because of the singing, the music and the flamboyant hell-fire and brimstone preaching among other things. But the preaching was the best! Oh that preaching, it would always encourage participation by the congregation that responded with rousing Hallelujahs and head-shaking Amens from every seat and corner. Juicy sin and everyday human failings were the usual targets by the soaring Reverend as he carefully revved-up the assembled to a raucous climax that captured every soul within reach. The Reverend, whom I will call Reverend G, was the undisputed Maestro of the congregation and was much respected as a man of the cloth as well as a spiritual and moral leader. Then one Sunday we assembled in the church and to my surprise it was unusually subdued and solemn and I soon found out why. Reverend G was not there and standing in his place was an older gentleman that only got an occasional Amen from the elderly as he struggled with his sermon. When the service was finally over, I asked my Grandfather why Reverend G was not there. With a nervous and embarrassed look, my Grandfather finally relayed the news that the good Reverend G had absconded with the church treasury and took one of the female parishioners, who happened to be another man’s wife, with him and had departed to points unknown. I was devastated! This troubling memory that has been revived by Barack Obama is because both Reverend G and Barack have a common attribute and that is to use soaring rhetoric and carefully crafted generalities to inspire and motivate those eager for change and spiritual fulfillment. Of particular concern is the ease by which these orators can captivate our young with their idealistic posturing. Our young are still idealistic (thank goodness) and do not have the benefit of a lifetime of reality to help shape their opinions and judgments and so they are become easy prey to lofty generalities and become active supporters. The troubling part is that my experience to date suggests that those who have used these kinds of attributes have usually done so for reasons not always associated with altruistic endeavors. Now I’m not at all suggesting that if elected President, Barack Obama would abscond with the federal treasury and take off with Nancy Pelosi and if you thought I am saying that, you missed the point. The point being that the more one relies on lofty generalities and inspirational rhetoric, the more likely that the person is not what he appears to be and the more likely it is that it is the less inspiring common lust for power that is the hidden endeavor.
From his tongue flowed speech sweeter than honey…Homer, The Iliad.
We all have watched and listened with rapt attention as the Senator from Illinois has stormed upon our collective consciousness with pitch-perfect delivery and Hollywood star-quality image. The political arena has not seen such an accomplished practitioner of the persuasion arts since the late JFK marshaled the finest writers, idea Meisters and image-makers to promote the astonishing notion of a modern day Camelot to cure all of our political and social ills. Even God appears to be a loyal Lieutenant of Senator Obama because how else could you explain his recent trip to Europe when in cloudy and dismal Germany, the clouds parted and the sun begin to shine brightly just as the would be President began to speak to the adoring multitudes. With the brilliant Sun bathing the splendid new-age Man, he seemingly without visible effort, passed out soaring oratory and idealistic manna to the spiritually hungry modern multitudes rather like the Man who preached love and passed out the loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitudes so long ago. And I say, why not? Who among us is not hungry for a satisfying spiritual meal in this modern materialist world that grinds us down to our least idealist parts? We all want to believe and faith is the coin of the political realm and when you have faith, all things are possible because change has been promised and I have faith that change is going to do us good, right? However, there is something troubling and vaguely familiar about self-described neo-Horatio person. This splendid new-age man who would have us believe that the age of Aquarius is finally within our reach, if we only we have faith and believe, has conjured up an old memory and the memory is a troubling one. Why this man’s message is troubling and familiar is because I experienced a man just like this when I was a young boy. When I was at the impressionable age of around 10 years old, I would accompany my Grandfather, who I thought was the wisest man on earth, to a marvelous Black Church where my Grandfather and I were generally the only white faces in the congregation. I really don’t know why my Grandfather went to a Black Church but I loved it because of the singing, the music and the flamboyant hell-fire and brimstone preaching among other things. But the preaching was the best! Oh that preaching, it would always encourage participation by the congregation that responded with rousing Hallelujahs and head-shaking Amens from every seat and corner. Juicy sin and everyday human failings were the usual targets by the soaring Reverend as he carefully revved-up the assembled to a raucous climax that captured every soul within reach. The Reverend, whom I will call Reverend G, was the undisputed Maestro of the congregation and was much respected as a man of the cloth as well as a spiritual and moral leader. Then one Sunday we assembled in the church and to my surprise it was unusually subdued and solemn and I soon found out why. Reverend G was not there and standing in his place was an older gentleman that only got an occasional Amen from the elderly as he struggled with his sermon. When the service was finally over, I asked my Grandfather why Reverend G was not there. With a nervous and embarrassed look, my Grandfather finally relayed the news that the good Reverend G had absconded with the church treasury and took one of the female parishioners, who happened to be another man’s wife, with him and had departed to points unknown. I was devastated! This troubling memory that has been revived by Barack Obama is because both Reverend G and Barack have a common attribute and that is to use soaring rhetoric and carefully crafted generalities to inspire and motivate those eager for change and spiritual fulfillment. Of particular concern is the ease by which these orators can captivate our young with their idealistic posturing. Our young are still idealistic (thank goodness) and do not have the benefit of a lifetime of reality to help shape their opinions and judgments and so they are become easy prey to lofty generalities and become active supporters. The troubling part is that my experience to date suggests that those who have used these kinds of attributes have usually done so for reasons not always associated with altruistic endeavors. Now I’m not at all suggesting that if elected President, Barack Obama would abscond with the federal treasury and take off with Nancy Pelosi and if you thought I am saying that, you missed the point. The point being that the more one relies on lofty generalities and inspirational rhetoric, the more likely that the person is not what he appears to be and the more likely it is that it is the less inspiring common lust for power that is the hidden endeavor.
Taxes are Power
Taxes are Power
Sometimes things are so obvious and well understood that we forget the importance of them. This thought occurred to me while enduring the continuous political season we call modern living here in the good ole USA during which Politicians trot out the perennial silly talk of reducing taxes while increasing benefits for all. The enduring truth we all know and continue to forget, while listening to this Flim Flam, is that Taxes are Power! More Taxes equals more power, less Taxes equals less Power so there is no way on this beautiful blue Planet that taxes are really going to be reduced because the one thing that is as certain as gravity is that Politicians crave power! I hasten to point out that I did not use the moniker Flim Flam inadvisably when talking about Politicians promising to reduce taxes while increasing benefits for all because Flimflammers can only Flim Flam those who think they can get something for nothing. Reducing taxes while increasing benefits for all sure does sound like getting something for nothing, doesn’t it? Perhaps we all have been conditioned by a lifetime of advertising nonsense that promotes the notion “We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you,” so getting something for nothing really does make sense when it’s the always the other guy that gets cheated. I feel like the child that naively points out to the conditioned adults that, Wow, the Emperor is naked as a Jaybird when I feel the necessity of saying, Brothers and Sisters, the other guy is always us! We all must surely forget that we are the “other guy” because the Politician that promises to reduce taxes and raise benefits for all is always the one who get elected even though I know our Mothers taught us with waving finger and squinted eye, “Boy, listen to your Mother, you really can’t get something for nothing.” Perhaps we still need our Moms standing beside us with her waving finger fanning our troubled brow when we scribble our mark beside the name of the current Flim Flam Politician. All of this begs the question, why do Politicians do what they do? Because they get elected when they do it. So the truth must surely be and what we also continuously forget is, Politicians crave power like an addict craves narcotics and unlike Moa Tse-Tung who reckoned that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, Politicians in a Democracy realize that political power grows out of the fiat of taxes. And so we continue to buy in to the nonsense that taxes are a good thing and all law abiding and enlightened citizens should do their patriotic duty and support every “worthwhile” tax while secretly hoping that it is always the “other guy” that is going to get cheated. Sorry Mom.
Sometimes things are so obvious and well understood that we forget the importance of them. This thought occurred to me while enduring the continuous political season we call modern living here in the good ole USA during which Politicians trot out the perennial silly talk of reducing taxes while increasing benefits for all. The enduring truth we all know and continue to forget, while listening to this Flim Flam, is that Taxes are Power! More Taxes equals more power, less Taxes equals less Power so there is no way on this beautiful blue Planet that taxes are really going to be reduced because the one thing that is as certain as gravity is that Politicians crave power! I hasten to point out that I did not use the moniker Flim Flam inadvisably when talking about Politicians promising to reduce taxes while increasing benefits for all because Flimflammers can only Flim Flam those who think they can get something for nothing. Reducing taxes while increasing benefits for all sure does sound like getting something for nothing, doesn’t it? Perhaps we all have been conditioned by a lifetime of advertising nonsense that promotes the notion “We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you,” so getting something for nothing really does make sense when it’s the always the other guy that gets cheated. I feel like the child that naively points out to the conditioned adults that, Wow, the Emperor is naked as a Jaybird when I feel the necessity of saying, Brothers and Sisters, the other guy is always us! We all must surely forget that we are the “other guy” because the Politician that promises to reduce taxes and raise benefits for all is always the one who get elected even though I know our Mothers taught us with waving finger and squinted eye, “Boy, listen to your Mother, you really can’t get something for nothing.” Perhaps we still need our Moms standing beside us with her waving finger fanning our troubled brow when we scribble our mark beside the name of the current Flim Flam Politician. All of this begs the question, why do Politicians do what they do? Because they get elected when they do it. So the truth must surely be and what we also continuously forget is, Politicians crave power like an addict craves narcotics and unlike Moa Tse-Tung who reckoned that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, Politicians in a Democracy realize that political power grows out of the fiat of taxes. And so we continue to buy in to the nonsense that taxes are a good thing and all law abiding and enlightened citizens should do their patriotic duty and support every “worthwhile” tax while secretly hoping that it is always the “other guy” that is going to get cheated. Sorry Mom.
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