Tag Archives: politics

Connotations of rainbows….

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Ffolkes,
I think it’s safe to say we all get pretty tired of the political circus as played out here in the USA; it all seems so pointless, until you realize it is directly affecting your own life, then it just gets irritating. Everyone I know has beliefs and convictions, with their own methods of dealing with the world, and their own methods of how to treat other people. Mostly they all get along just fine. Then I look at what is being said in the arena of public discourse, and there doesn’t seem to be any correlation, no connection with what I know is real for most folks. The avaricious ones, the ones who seek public office, have an entirely different view of reality than most of the Americans I know. Even the conservatives I talk to think differently than the politicians, except for those few who allow the politicians to do their thinking for them, and merely parrot those talking points currently in fashion. It’s unfortunate that there are a LOT of the last category, which is part of the reason why the talking heads are able to maintain their death-grip on the almighty profit margin.


Since the whole point of the above is how sick I am of hearing the nonsense in the news, I won’t rant any further today on that subject. Don’t really feel like ranting anyway; it’s already been a tough morning, and I’d rather turn in a more positive direction. It took over 25 minutes on the phone, but I was able to complete a necessary task this A.M., and I’m using that to act as the driver for the rest of today’s tasks. All of this is just a long, convoluted and obfuscatory way to say, enjoy!……

“Confront them with annihilation, and they will survive; plunge them in a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.” — Sun Tzu

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance,
I have not winced nor cried aloud
Under the bludgeoning of chance;
My head is bloody but unbowed.
It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll;
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
— Henley

I know you think that you understood what you thought I said, but I am not  all that sure that you understand that I seldom say what I think and even less often do I mean what I say.

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

If you think women are moody and bossy – get a cat.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
— William Butler Yeats, “The Stolen Child”

There you go; a little whimsy is good for the soul…..so is epiphany. Y’all take care out there…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Pockets full of mint jelly….

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Ffolkes,
The young man’s adventure will have percolate for awhile; my creative juices are a bit dried up just now…. I once read an article that discussed the effects of stress, and how certain seminal events can put one’s level of stress through the roof. Events that were named in this category included major job stress (nasty boss, gossipy co-workers, not having a job, getting fired, etc.), death of a relative or close friend, divorce or other relationship stresses, moving, economic stress (poverty, etc.), medical issues (cancer, etc.), and a couple others I don’t recall. The author assigned a numerical value to each type of event, and a high score in a short period of time was, he contended, a short road to depression, or other mental disorder if not recognized and treated. It was a well-thought-out premise, with plenty of statistical support for his argument. I can only say that I found it convincing, but not totally accurate in its predictive function, i.e., he really had no idea what the stress did to people in a realistic sense, and seemed to not really have a feel for how much people can really take before they break. Nonetheless, it was a good yardstick to determine how much stress one has in one’s own life.


So, I went ahead and marked down how many of the events mentioned I had experienced in the last year. It turns out that I have had EVERY ONE of the above listed events to deal with in the last year. I got forced out of my job, and make half of what I made while at work. At the same time as that was happening, the woman I had loved and lived with for 10 years decided she no longer wanted me around. For six months I fought with the State bureaucracy over my retirement. Then, just as my income dropped by 50%, my Mom got sick, and I spent 6 weeks performing 24 hour nursing care, and spent my entire savings to purchase the materials needed. I missed going on a cruise I’d looked forward to for months in order to nurse her. Then she left, and I was left to deal with my geriatric dog, and barely enough money to eat with for the next few months. Then my dog died. My Mom had a stroke, and went into the hospital and died there without ever really waking up. This whole time, my own medical issues continue to dog me, sucking out my energy, and alternating bouts of severe pain in my back with bowel problems that leave me feeling like I am wading through molasses.


Now let’s be clear here….I’m not laying this out to garner sympathy; I know there are many people out there suffering the same kinds of issues every day, and there are still others who are worse off than I am (like having all this to deal with, and NO retirement check to count on coming in every month. Small as it is, my check is more than a lot of folks in this country have, thanks to our beloved ruling class). What I am going through is, of course, a result of my own karmic burden, and there is scant blame that can be placed elsewhere than right here inside my own head. But, as I read the news each day, I am struck again and again with how badly our society here in America has fallen into disarray. The absolutely outrageous crap being spouted of late by the Republicans who wanna be Prez has been not merely ignorant, but actively stupid. I shudder to think about how things will go if any one of them manages to pull the wool over enough eyes to get elected. I am of the firm opinion that anyone who wants the job of President of this country is literally insane. Not figuratively, literally. The desire for that much power is insane, period, and anyone who wants it should never, ever be elected. Mean-spirited, spiteful, and deliberately ignorant, the zealots of the world have grown to such numbers that reason, truth and compassion are being buried under cries of hatred and fear.


Today’s Pearls each contain a piece of wisdom about society, at least if examined from around a corner. But each one of them is something I believe firmly, and will, I hope, help to understand and deal with the insanity currently serving in place of society…..enjoy!….

“No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.” — Aristotle

“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.” — Oscar Wilde

“History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — i.e., none to speak of.” — Lazarus Long

“But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and
State.” — Thomas Jefferson, [letter?] To S. Kercheval, 1810

Existing order thrives upon ignorance and lies.
Objective truth and individual reason are feared above all.

“Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self-love.  The first was when it realized that our earth was not the center of the universe, but only a speck in a world-system of a magnitude hardly conceivable…  The second was when biological research robbed man of his particular privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world.” — Sigmund Freud

I find your faith in reality rather amusing.

Actually, I had trouble limiting myself to only seven today; history has a lot of examples of men and women who observed the world through clear eyes, and all of them were distrustful of zealotry, with good cause….I could go on in this vein for a long time, but y’all probably have stuff to do, so I’ll leave this here….wherever here is…….y’all take care out there, and beware the ignorant and zealous….

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Dozer

Kowabunga!

Any old garage would do…..

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Ffolkes,
Everyone and his uncle’s brother’s cousin’s wife’s boyfriend will be writing their own take on 9/11/01 today, so I will limit my own response to the following:  Be patriotic – question authority. — Bumper Sticker   ‘Nuff said!….oh well, gotta say this too….. get over it!!! Learn to play nice and terrorism won’t be an issue any more…..
Okay, so maybe I will have a couple of points to make…..the part of the entire terrorism issue that bothers me the most is the absolutely idiotic response that one gets from most Americans when asked about the events of that fateful day. I call the reaction idiotic for a simple reason; because it is. No one seems to have any idea ‘why’ we were attacked, nor do they care. The act itself becomes the focus of attention, and the motivation is ignored. This is idiotic, for sure and for certain. In order for events like these to be prevented, the motivation of the perpetrators becomes paramount. How can you expect to be able to stop this kind of fanatic activity, if you don’t know why it happened to begin with?
It was obvious to me from the moment I first heard of the attacks that they were carried out by fanatic zealots; only those with a sense of martyrdom would have been able to carry out a mission that assured their own deaths, whether victorious or not. Faced with this kind of insanity, it seems obvious that determining motivation would be the most important detail needed to be able to find them; any competent hunter can verify that. And the motivation is so obvious anyway! But no one in our country is willing to accept the FACT that our own actions were responsible for the hatred felt by the misguided fanatics who carried out the attacks. Yes, us. It’s our own damn fault they hate us, for they are only mirroring the disdain we show to their beliefs. As I said above, if we would learn to play nicely, and quit acting the part of the bully, the other kids in the sandbox wouldn’t be ganging up on us.
But, there are very few Americans left who can be honest with themselves, much less with anyone else. Our leaders have indoctrinated us well to accept anything they say, whether it is in the same neighborhood as truth or not (usually not; they lie to us without shame, constantly). When I first heard about the incidents of 9/11, my first impression was that the whole scenario very much resembled the events one only heard about during the cocaine wars in South America in the 1970’s. You may or may not recall that G. Bush Senior was in charge of the CIA at the time, and was pretty clearly responsible for the growth of the drug cartels, and for the strengthening of the drug trade here. (A very damning book on the subject was written, called “The Cocaine Papers”) I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was found to have been the real mastermind behind the attacks on 9/11/01. His son’s presidency was in trouble in the summer of 2001. There were a lot of investigations going on into the chicanery involved in the hijacking of the voting system by the Republicans, and these investigations were getting pretty close to showing how the American public had been fooled into believing that the election was clean, and free of manipulation, when in fact the Republicans had been successful in hiding their manipulation of the results in at least one state. That state just happened to be the pivotal state; if Gore had taken that state (which, in reality, he did), instead of Bush, he would have been elected, and the world would be a different place.
What better time for a terrorist attack, to distract the public from the chicanery with a terrible loss of life, and make certain that those allegations would never be looked at again? No, it wouldn’t surprise me at all, because the whole scenario had GHW Bush written all over it. I wonder what would happen if somebody followed the money…..it’s also somewhat curious that there has been no real investigation into that aspect of the affair. We were told (by those who lie to us on a daily basis) that it was the Taliban who was responsible, and so we set off on a world-wide hunt for the bad guy. Several trillion dollars later, we are still trying to find them all. We managed to kill Osama bin Laden, and wasn’t it convenient that he died before he could be questioned, or make any public statements? Very handy, that…..
Whew, I should know better than to start a rant so early in the morning. Now my sense of outrage is fully stimulated, and it is NOT directed at the Muslims in the world; it is directed at the political tyrants present in EVERY government in the world, and especially our own,who will say and do anything at all to maintain their own status quo. These power-hungry zealots (yes that term does apply, to Catholics, Christians, Muslims, and every other religion fighting over who has the most powerful imaginary friend) are the ones who are responsible for the events of that fateful day, and I for one would like to see them punished for all the heartache and sorrow they have so callously pushed upon the rest of us.
Enough for one morning….if you have comments, questions, or whatever, feel free to respond. Dialog is essential in seeking truth….meantime, enjoy this morning’s offerings, and think good thoughts for all those who died ten years ago. Let us make their deaths worthwhile, by seeking out the truth, and by not allowing hatred to hinder the quest for peace…..

“Virtue is but heroic bravery, to do the thing thought to be true, in spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations or menaces.” — Albert Pike (1809-1891)

O Lord, grant that we may always be right, for
Thou knowest we will never change our minds.
— Old Scottish Prayer

“Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.” — Stephen R. Covey

No words suffice the secret soul to show,
For truth denies all eloquence to woe.
— Lord Byron (1788-1824)
— The Corsair, Canto iii, Stanza 22

If a person deceives you once, shame on that person. If a person deceives you twice, shame on you! For of all hard things to bear and grin, the hardest is being taken in.

Well, this one should start a conversation or two……y’all take care out there……

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks,
and sometimes
I just sits.

gigoid

Just Dozer

Kowabunga!

World-weary gnomes travel light….

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Ffolkes,
And so it begins again. It’s enough to make you just want to rant sometimes. The news every day bombards us with the craziness going on in the world, providing us with the mental equivalent of dried dung in such quantities the Berbers could make a fire lasting all night. Politicians speak out every day, spewing tons of the most amazing crap, proving with every word just how insane they are, and people keep lapping it up like ice cream. The media that reports all this possibly plays the worst part in the charade, as they continue to report on the most trivial BS they can find. They don’t seem to care whether it is dignified, or if it makes any sense; they just want to increase ratings, and bad news does that better than good. Oh well, I could rant on this forever, and it’s not going to make any difference. It’s unfortunate, because I’m beginning to believe that it is too late for us humans; we passed the turnoff to sanity a while back, and nobody noticed. Our beloved ruling class has decided that they are not going to buy into the idea that we are killing ourselves, and will hold that opinion all the way to the graveyard. I’m of the opinion that we little people only have one choice left, and that is revolution. The conditions which produced the first American Revolutionary War are fully present today; government is NOT responsive to the will of the people. Hell, they could care less about the people; to them it’s all about what they can get before getting caught, and even then they don’t get prosecuted. How many bankers and Wall Streeters were put in jail for stealing all that money a few years ago? None…instead we gave them bailout money. Ah hell, that’s enough for one morning; if I continue I’ll end up with indigestion, and I’ve only been up for a half hour. F….. ’em, they’re not going to ruin my day….today’s Pearls were picked out when I had this on my mind, so they may reflect that…..they’re still a pretty good group….

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” — Francis Bacon

“When forced to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence.” — Thomas Jefferson

“I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.” — Clarence Darrow
(How long is YOUR list?…..mine runs to three or four pages….and the first two are just the politicians (most of whom began as lawyers) and preachers).

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.” — Humphrey Bogart to Lauren Bacall, in The Big Sleep

Existing order thrives upon ignorance and lies.  Objective truth and individual reason are feared above all.

“The seeker after truth must, once in the course of his life, doubt everything,  as far as is possible.  What is doubtful should even be considered as false. This doubt should not, meanwhile, be applied to ordinary life.” — R. Descartes, “1-3rd Principles of Human Knowledge”

Well, I feel a little better…..reading pearls always helps me regain my equilibrium. Hopefully, they do the same for you….. y’all take care out there…..

—
Sometimes I sits and thinks, a
nd sometimes
I just sits.
gigoid