Last Day Of November 2008

by Aloysius

I was never too interested in Philosophy or Theology.
My uncle says that Jesus died due to God's desire to experience Death, and understand it in a human way. From this, He is able to properly transcend the realm of Death and create life everlasting.

He quoted:

http://danieljohnclark.wordpress.com/2007/05/28/arminians-and-an-atonement/
Black Beans and Chips
Arminians and Atonement
May 28, 2007

...there is a universal aspect to Arminian understanding of atonement in that the death of Christ set aside the guilt of original sin. However, the death of Christ provided possible salvation for all, but this is conditional on a person accepting it through repentance and faith.

He said that if there is guilt from original sin, from a non-personal past history which affects us, then the same thing applies to the future: a future guilt non-personal which we shall bear...even if we have passed on!
Since this is nonsense, he denies original sin as action, yet accepts it as a Symbolic structure, and thus it does have symbolic life, and thus, may influence all of creation, past, present, and future.
It is part of the Spirit, yet not part of the Material world.
He seems to consider the spirit and matter to be co-terminal: matter processes spirit and hence preceeds it logically;
spirit is the reason for matter's existence, and hence preceeds it logically, also.
Since Matter is that which processes Symbols, actions in the present may destroy the symbol of original sin, whether Christ dies to do so or not.

I do not pretend to understand this.
I only loyally copy what he tells me.

The Grapes Of Consumerism

My uncle says that the crowds of consumers that trampled a Wal-Mart worker are a sign that consumerism is still burning bright in the hearts of Americans.
The Market sets the price high enough to drive the less wealthy insane with consumer longing. Then goods are allocated efficiently by large, blood-thirsty riots.

I sense sarcasm.
Austin

The Brothers A

November 29 2008: Aloysius

Hi. I am Aloysius, Montag's nephew, and the last of the three to speak. My name is pronounced Ah-LOY-shus, as if I were an Irish immigrant, as he would say.

My uncle tells us that human beings are not defined by their rationality, rather we are defined by our passions.
We come into life, we live life, and we exit life in a passion and rage of life; the Passion of Christ reflects our lives of passion, the Jihad of the Prophet is a mirror of our battles, the passage to Nirvana of the Lord Buddha follows our weary footsteps from despond to enlightenment.

Therefore, he says, anything that promotes love and understanding and well being is good, and hate and discord and suffering are decisively evil.

The suffering of 1 man or 1 woman or 1 child is reason enough for God's entire creation to be outraged.
Therefore, he says, an economy which cycles between surfeit and starvation cannot be good in God's eyes.
The "faith" in the autistic infallibility of self interest working in free markets is a faith built on sand. In our day, it has become very evident.

So he tells us today.
I record what he said. I am Aloysius, and the name may be derived from "loyalty".

November 29 2008 I Am A Mumbaikar

From Ayden:

http://pakistaniat.com/2008/11/28/mumbaikar-mumbai-terror-pakistani-view/

I am a Mumbaikar: In Prayer and in Solidarity
Adil Najam

I, too, am a Mumbaikar today.

...in prayer and in solidarity, I stand today with Mumbaikars everywhere. In shock at what has happened. In fear of what might happen yet. In anger at those who would be so calculated in their inhuman massacre. In sympathy with those whose pain so hurts my own heart but whose tears I cannot touch, whose wounds I cannot heal, and whose grief I cannot relieve...

The Brothers A & Santa's Bail Out

My name is Austin. I am one of the brothers A, or les freres A, as my uncle refers to us; myself, my brother Ayden, and my brother Aloysius ( pronounced A-loy-shus ). I am one of his nephews, one of the gang of three, which manner of speaking was the fashion of his times.

I have been recruited to fill in the blanks, during his self-imposed exile. He will be writing, but only for himself. I do not write for myself, and I am not a writer, but I guess I can take up the slack here and there.



So, here goes:







During the congressional testimonies on whether Santa Industries should receive a government bail-out, a congressman asked whether Santa had flown to Washington by regular commercial airline.







Of course, he flew in by his usual method: a luxurious North Pole Cutter Deluxe with 12-deer power; inefficient and uneconomic, but, as Santa said,



" ...uneconomic, but......Iconic !"


Congress will take up his application for $ 20 billion after the Xmas holidays.

Ater Xmas...EST et NON EST

I shall be incommunicado until after Xmas....at least. I shall still write my bleeding poem per week for peace, only I shall amend the prayer to incorporate "well being" also. We have a simulacrum of peace, now, only because the USA is to prostrate too launch a strike against Iran. I fear that the powers that be that listen to my poetic prayers for peace gave me what I desired, but I did not specify that the well-being of mankind should not be infringed in this quest for peace. I hate to think that peace is only achievable if we are too exhausted to lift our weaponry. Anyhow, I need time to think. Reading today in re Citi group: Robert Reich http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/11/citibank-scores.html Citigroup Scores If you had any doubt at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street; the utter lack of transparency behind the biggest government giveaway in history to financial executives, and their shareholders, directors, and creditors; and the intimate connections the lie between Administrations -- both Republican and Democratic -- and the heavyweights on Wall Street, your doubts should be laid to rest. Today it was decided the government will guarantee more than $300 billion of troubled mortgages and other assets of Citigroup under a federal plan to stabilize the lender after its stock fell 60 percent last week. The company will also will get a $20 billion cash infusion from the Treasury Department, adding to the $25 billion the bank received last month under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. This is not a particularly good deal for American taxpayers, but it is a marvelous deal for Citi. In return for all the cash and guarantees they are giving away, taxpayers will get only $27 billion of preferred shares paying an 8 percent dividend. No other strings are attached. The senior executives of Citi, including those who have served at the highest levels in the US government, have done their jobs exceedingly well. The American public, including the media, have not the slightest clue what just happened. Meanwhile, more than a million workers in the automobile industry, along with six million mortgagees, and a millions of Americans who depend on small businesses and retailers for paychecks, are getting nothing at all. I must plan the future. I mean, even an old bird like me must now plan his future. This country has become a bear-trap, a punji pit, a cage for the unwary. Blah,blah,blah...I love America...blah, blah, blah. O.K. Now you have to look out for yourself. I am Ausonius, Decimius Ausonius - grammarian, rhetorician, soldier, poet, and confidant of emperors - and I stand in Gallia. I am at my place in Burdigala, and I feel the cold wind of Fall blowing from Alemania upon my leathery cheek.

I am writing a poem: It Is and It Is Not...the very title portrays my frame of mind, the quandary in which I find myself. For the present is so fallen, that no one reads what I write. I write for the future ages, thousands of years hence, when new continents churn the seas, and the clangorous conflicts of nations have given way to brotherhood. I am alone, even though there is activity just behind me, as the table is set for the mid-day meal. The people hovering about it appear as ghosts; the meat is a caricature, the wine dispirited, and the sweet desserts taste like the after-life of Egyptian burial chambers. I am alone.

May Capitalism Lead Us To The Stars?

Capitalism as it is historically defined in the United States of America is not the economic system which will enable mankind to establish its presence in Space.

 American Capitalism is too prone to recurring cycles of destruction. Whether this is due to the theory itself, or the impossible nature of the American businessman is not clear, but it seems to be a bit of both. Today as we watch the resurrection of Citi group after its near death experience, we wonder at the wisdom which created such a system, wherein such monstrous institutions are allowed to roam the land, only to create chaos when they possess no homeostasis to regulate their vital processes.
Some economists and thinkers have lauded the "creative destruction" of American Capitalism. However, as an economic system gets larger and more complex, the recurring destructive cycles become more and more destructive: as the highs get higher, the lows become lower, thereby creating an Event Horizon of economy, a dark hole from which nothing will emerge.

It is obvious from the past year that the down and destructive part of the cycle is prey to panic and fear in a short time frame more so than the up part of the cycle is prone to exuberance: exuberance is spread over years; panic destroys in the blink of an eye...before the "rational" mind can encompass what is occurring.

Do not misunderstand; I love America. And for those who believe that America is the land of opportunity, I fully agree. However, I shall add that as you come to America to make your way in this land of opportunity, your children will enter into one of the cycles of destruction. Be aware of it. Every parent should teach their children what to expect in this economic system. We should try to understand that we cannot always lay up our wealth where rust corrupts, moth consumes, and the financial system spreads cancer. Such an Economy cannot build the structure required for the emigration of mankind into Space. The movement into Space requires investment over years and years.

This may only be effectively accomplished by a system which is not recurrently self-destructive. If we step into Space with a large footprint, a severe crash of the economy when it occurs will wreak havoc on a gargantuan level. The process of going back to square one, or square five, or whatever it is, will eventually be discerned as being too expensive, and resources will turn inwards to salvage what remains of the Earth-bound populations. Neither American Capitalism nor American Democracy, love them as we do, as they are understood in the present day of 2008, will lead mankind into the future.

When the Frame of Mind arrives that will do so, it will be accompanied a revolution in religious feeling among the large part of the peoples of Earth, for only Religion possesses the dynamic which may change large groups of human beings from inward and selfish looking tribes and nations into higher level communities, capable of controlling the Form of the Present and Future, as well as the lessons of the Past.

A Last Hurrah

An article in the NY Times says that Bush should resign, rather than hanging around,destroying things for 2 more months. Just wanted to mention, I believe I spoke about there being a finite probability of the economy being so bad that Bush would resign back in January, 2008. I forget the probability. But I have been asking for his resignation on the right sidebar - in the words of Oliver Cromwell - for most of the year. Blowing my own horn, as usual.

A Thought On A New Mania

The film "Twilight" is the new madness. That is all well and good. ...And teenage girls have been going ga-ga and crazy over stuff ever since the Beatles, the Salem Witch trials, and all the way back to running maenad naked through the woods of Athens. That is well and good, for it apparently is a prerequisite for the female of the species before she enters into a more "sedate" (?) role of mother. What has changed, and I think for ill, is the iconic focus of the frenzy; now it is Vampires. People who allow their naked and sensual and passionate souls to embrace the avatars of evil will not like the consequences... ...human beings and icons, myths, and symbols grow like oaks: from the small and simple acorn there is a long and complex route to the many branching tree. AND even though the DNA within the acorn contains the directions for the chemical development of the oak tree, it does NOT continue the directives for the eventual Form that the oak tree takes. That is something else. Something else not yet discovered by science. Ask them, they will tell you. I thought I should mention this before I boogie...

Favorite Fowl

I could not say good-bye without putting up a picture of my favorite Rooster: le Coq St. Hubert, the mascot and logo of the fast food chicken business St. Hubert in Canada.

You may have to be Canadian to properly appreciate him in his world setting, so look to it! You may have to be Quebecois, aussi, alors...

This second example I include because it is the very Coq Hubertien which I used to see from the hill between Saint Sauveur and St. Hippolyte. We would descend from Chemin de la Montagne ( a continuation of Chemin de Mont-Rolland) by way of Boulevard des Monts, drive through Mont Rolland, cross the river that runs parallel to the Autoroute des Laurentides, get on highway 117, and come into Ste.-Adele-en-Haut, the first sight to greet us being:

At this time, we would be staying with my brother -in-law, Billy. God bless Billy! The world has gone downhill ever since he left......

.......I myself yearn for the St Hubert des Bienvenues.

Morning News

This is the type of post Henry Jacubowski likes. He says that it requires no thought.

He also says that my other posts require no thought, either, but they go under the disguise of depth and subtlety.

I find it hard to disagree with him.

I have some thinking and serious writing to do, so that I may clarify in my own mind what the heck I am talking about.

It is all sort of new. I mean, a lot of this stuff has only come about in 2008. All that mish-mosh about past, present, and future only got off the bus about 2 months ago.

Mr. Irony was a pilgrim little seen before.

...work to be done.

Full Stop

I think I shall be silent for a while. I am going to think about things, meditate, and find my way in a totally new world. My God is intimately involved in life. I do not go so far as to consider the present illness to be a judgement of God, although many theological "wits" have so considered other disasters - the 9/11 comes to mind. As I said before, I cannot believe that I know the mind of God. As soon as I make that step, I become an idolator of myself. I absolutely refuse to do that, and thus join the ranks of 99% of the rest of the believers of the present day. I do not believe, nor believe in. I expect. I expect because it is my habit. Habit! Something habitual, done before, over and over and over... I am also becoming a Platonist! The divide between Spirit and Matter has returned, and I see our everyday world of Matter as sort of a support system for the Symbolic realms of the Past and the Future. The World of Matter is the Present, and that is where the Consciousnesses made of Matter, e.g. human beings, work and rework the symbols of past, present, and future. The Spirit realm is that of Symbols. Irony was the cause of this. Irony used to be a type in Literature; it was a style, a form, a twist and a turn... But it may also be judgement. The quicker the judgement, the sharper the Irony. Irony shapes the world. If you are corrupted, Irony will reverse you into your just deserts. If you are pompous, Irony will bring you down a peg. The mighty are brought down, and the lowly are raised... And in no place do I see a coming together of the opposites, a coincidentia oppositorum according to Jung. I do believe this to have been the most unGodly age of mankind, for even the devout are arrogant and puffed up. There's going to be a lot of chaff to blow in the wind, before the harvest feast.

Fundamentalists Lose Big One

The Fundamentalism of Democracy as expounded by the obscurantist Bush Administration has essentially given up in Iraq. The radical and ignorant belief in words and platitudes that were only dimly understood by the backwards Bushites, was never substantial enough to endure.

Road Map

Congress and the White House make a road map for...just about anything, Peace, Prosperity, Bail-outs, etc.

A Round Of Joes

Which is to say, a group of Joes. If more than 2 Joes come together, they formed a round of Joes, as in "Another round here, sweetness!" while pointing to your table with the index finger, rotating it in a circle, thus indicating a "round".

Joe the Plumber has a book.

I shall buy it. I shall put it on my bookshelves, right between The Federalist and John Stuart Mill's On Liberty and Representative Government.

There will be a lot of Schadengelachter ( shadow laughter ), I can assure you. At least, I hope we may still laugh.

I Wish I Were At...

Fairs and Tourneys of the Imagination

Declaration Of Independence

Thomas Jefferson

If you wish Government to act, first you must suffer...and make it a great deal of suffering, too, otherwise they still may just go on vacation. We no longer have a government of the people. This Union, this Government, no longer promotes our general welfare; it is iniquitous to our well being. It takes our money in taxes, and returns to us nothing, except that which was already ours in diminished portion. A President whose every act has been an act of repression, illegality, and moral offence now refuses to act. A Congress made up of just enough cowards from his same party refuses to act. The Acts of King George and the British Parliament were in good part acts of Economic Oppression: We are impoverished by the taxes drained to support almost 800 military bases around the globe; We are cruelly taxed to support illegal war; We are expected to shoulder the burden of military ventures which start as victories, then with the continued presence of troops in foreign lands, slide into disaster after years of occupation; We support oppressive governments around the world; We are taxed to create a climate of constant war and nuclear adventurism; Our needs most pressing: the ownership of homes, the health of our families, the viability of our communities, is ignored. When the Government refuses to act, or cannot act, then it is time for the people to create a community more perfect for their needs, for their lives, for their liberties, and for their pusuits of happiness.

I sign my:

The Big 3 Auto Bailout

Yahoo News During the House hearing Wednesday, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., asked the three auto chiefs seated at the witness table before him to raise their hands if they had come to Washington on commercial airliners. No hands went up. Then he asked if any planned to sell their corporate jets. Again, no hands went up. Sherman and Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., told the auto executives they were having a hard time justifying to their constituents bailing out companies whose chiefs fly around in expensive private jets. Ackerman said there was "a delicious irony in seeing private jets flying into Washington D.C. and people coming off them with tin cups in their hands." All very funny. The Great Depression did not start overnight. There was a period of time over which the nation unwound. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 immediately rallied, then went into an up-down series we are seeing today also. The people in charge are jokers and fools, and they do not know what to tell their constituents. They cannot tell them that the USA made a decision 50 years or so ago to emphasize automobile transportation, letting railroads wither. Like it or not, the Auto Industry was, and in many respects still is, the Manufacturing paradigm of the USA. The fools that run the Industry and other Industry and the Government allowed more than 60% of manufacturing be relocated overseas. Now is the time to correct it. The White House fears it. The White House fears to do anything. They always did evil, anyway. The Nation is unwinding. Our retirements and that of our parents will be lost.

Our children will work as temps, often in deserted commercial real estate.

Our grandchildren will drive to deserted shopping malls to work in spaces rented from failed stores, empty Penney's, abandoned Sears, millions of empty square feet of space to cramp them into.

They will buy their lunches in convenience stores.

They will nap in the heat of the summer in their cars, essentially living most the day in their old cars made overseas. This nation is dying. It is an archipelago of islands of poverty and despair, the paranoid archipelago.... ...kept together with ghost ships steaming between the langolier gaps of what is left of our lives.

Tell your constituents to face the storm, or face the fire storm. Take your choice.

As time goes on, more and more the skeletal carts of our beliefs fall silent, returning to the emptiness which gave them birth......

From the Grip of Despair... O, Lord, Deliver us!

Do We Learn From History?

A friend, visceral, sent me a link. I use the term "friend" a bit loosely, for I am speaking of a chap that makes me attempt to think at 5:00 A.M. No matter how one slices it, it is no jocose matter to stoke the mental boiler at that hour. That's how accidents happen, railroad accidents as well as mental accidents: premature stoking of the boiler. I mean, the old Great Northern jumps the tracks, would you want to be around? Anyway, the link is: http://thisisby.us/index.php/content/history_has_taught_us_nothing and is the article: History has Taught Us Nothing we were put on earth to destroy each other by abaciscus You will have to read the article, for I am not in the habit of synopsizing at 5:00 A.M. If you wish that someone give you summaries in the A.M., hire a valet or gentleman's gentleman or a personal secretary. The only people who learn from History are the evil. Evil people have learned to compel and force others. Evil people have learned to control the mythic symbols of memory, to compel obedience in the present, and to shape the mythic structures of the potential future. We have not so learned. When we are confronted by school boys taking rifles to school and shooting their mates, we are aghast, wonder what remedies to apply, then shrug and say, "I dunno." ( I don't know). We are aghast, because it is so evil and so new. The evil have thus created a new future, which now becomes the Present, and nowadays we have many such shootings: the new age has thus been defined. I look and see a great chain of Memory: guns and violence in film, books, and everyday life; I see violence and vengeance celebrated; I see scenarios of the lone yet good individual who goes up against a society evil in its rule over him; I see rogue justice and wanton violence portrayed as saving our way of life. Thus has the new age been defined. Symbols are Spirit...they never go away! No one thing renders a man evil. The fact that I played "cowboys and Indians" does not mean that I shall be violent in the future... ...but it does create a web of imagery... It creates the background for growth, the sets, the staging, and it does so over long years, not short term. As we live our lives beset by everything from Capital punishment to "cowboys and Indians" to Abortion, our dialogue of death become ever and ever extensive, and we spin out a web like a Wolfram process that leads...we do not know where. If we believe History has taught us nothing, we have created the scenario for Armageddon. Read the above article as if it were a documentary, a collage of vile images flashing before us. The script reads, "History Has Taught Us Nothing, a documentary, running time 20 minutes..." and it employs what? It employs images: Pol Pot, Nazism, Eichmann...words and images and sub-plots all woven together to create the script. CREATE your own script. Build your own scenario. Take control of the Past, the Present, and the Future. How? The Founding Fathers did so. They said "...we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal..." They learned from the Past, defined and created symbols in the Present, and determined the Future up until the present day. It takes a whole Village to teach Myths: the narratives, the stories. Stories are memories, told in the present, and have the power to affect the future. Past, Present, Future...all tied together with symbols. The Present is the short, brief time we have available to work on symbols; the Present is the forge of the symbolic web we weave. Therefore, the Present must know full well what its business is and what it should be doing. Simply put, where are the Mother Theresas in the article? There are none. The writer's sense of despair is a direct result of his imagery: no redeeming image of holiness to grace the page. Without images of Redemption, our story will be the story of destruction. Reach out and choose a Saint or Sidi or Arhat to study for today. Let that be your first step. Laugh if you will. I promise I won't laugh when you can't do it.

Ships of the Paranoid Archipelago

The Sea of the Paranoid Archipelago

Hoover-itis

The Republican Party is just itching to create a depression; it is in their blood, I guess. There is the realization that many GOP candidates did well by opposing the Bank bail-out, so they have concluded, in their own pithy limited way, that to oppose everything is the way back to power. It could also be the path to extinction, and I for one would not miss what has become of the Republican Party. Witness Senator Shelby: Shelby, however, said that a bailout of the auto industry would be "the wrong road to go down right now," and said he would prefer troubled automakers file for bankruptcy rather than get taxpayers' money. (CBS) "Some people believe that Chapter 11 bankruptcy would be a lot better management than what they have today," said Shelby (left), "where they would reorganize, they would get rid of the management that has brought them to where they are today, bloated contracts, everything that goes with it. No profits, no products to sell, to speak of. " [It's] headed down this road to oblivion. Should we intervene to slow it down, knowing it's going to happen? I say no, not for the American taxpayer.” [ Rep. Barney ] Frank disagreed: "It might be one thing to tolerate a bankruptcy if we had a lot of jobs out there, if there was prosperity. I aply the same logic to the GOP itself: let it destroy ityself entirely, finishing the job it has so well begun. Chapter 11 will be slow and laborious. The unemployment rate will climb, first with autoworkers, then with everyone connected to the industry, then those who used to sell things to the auto industry families. No problemo: chapter 11, right Senator? You do not say NO for me, Senator. You did not ever say NO to anything in the past 8 years, and by neddy-jingo, you will not say No now, when for the first time you may actually do some good. The New York Times had a stupid opinion that somehow the foreign automakers would take up the slack, leaving us with a foreign owned auto business. Firstly, the total foreign ownership of almost all manufacturing is a disease, not health for our economy. Secondly, the process referred to will take 10 years of more. And there is no guarantee that foreign owners will produce all their cars here, anyway. One of the best ways to phenomenally increase one's Wealth would be to plunge the USA into a Depression... Sit back on your funds in Switzerland and Dubai... Then move back in when things get better, and pick up everything you want, since everyone with wealth of 5 million dollars or less has been destroyed.

Forever Shoah

"Reading the Signs" sent me a poem by Paul Celan, born Paul Antschel.
He was bar Mitzvah, or a son of the Commandment, born in 1920, or thereabouts, and died in 1970, or thereabouts, by suicidal jump into the river Seine. Mr. Celan lived through the Holocaust, and the experience had great influence on him.
A great deal of the biography I read of him seems to focus on his poem "Todtnauberg", which was influenced by his readings of and meeting and discussion with Martin Heidegger, the philosopher. One motive for his journey to see Heidegger was the fact that Heidegger wrote in his "Introduction to Metaphysics" about the "greatness" of National Socialism.

Seen from the vantage point of the post-Holocaust world, such an insertion cries for explanation. However, the great Heidegger provided none, neither to posterity, nor to Celan. When Celan published his "Todtnauberg", he sent Heidegger a first edition. Heidegger responded with a perfunctory thank you note. I found this an interesting story. I have always considered Heidegger to be a whirly-gig type of philosopher, whipped across the asphalt world's pavement like a schoolboy's top.
Heidegger walked a tight-rope between heaven and the abyss: the awesomeness and the awe-fullness of creation. He finally fell into hell. End of story.

But this brings us back to the poem:
  
TENEBRAE Near are we, Lord, near and graspable. Grasped already, Lord, clawed into each other, as if each of our bodies were your body, Lord. Pray, Lord, pray to us, we are near. Wind-skewed we went there, went there to bend over pit and crater. Went to the water-trough, Lord. It was blood, it was what you shed, Lord. It shined. It cast your image into our eyes, Lord. Eyes and mouth stand so open and void, Lord. We have drunk, Lord. The blood and the image that was in the blood, Lord. Pray, Lord. We are near.  

note: "tenebrae' means "shadows".  

When I first read this, I did not know Celan's history, and I gulped, "Gadfrey Daniels! What cunning deviltry is here?!" I crossed myself and hastily glanced about into the far, dark corners of the room, where demons tend to congregate - if they would do someone harm.
My immediate reaction was an image of Milton's perverse kingdom of the fallen angels, grasping and clawing, standing over the pits and bomb craters of the divine effulgence, eyeing the wasteland where they found themselves, withered trees laced with the mosses of despair.
The compulsive prayer to the Lord struck me as an obsessive and fear filled chant, aimed not at love and obedience, but at power and force, intending by the abject spectacle of the weakness of the praying vermin to compel pity in a God, whose anger has blasted them and whose anger may possibly be diminished, post-cataclysmic, in a divine state of satiety with vengeance.

I never liked the imagery of blood. Depictions of the Sacred Heart I find too, much too akin to ancient hearts of Egypt encased in mortuary alabaster jars, preserved for the sons of Horus. I do not like the religions and icons of the dead. I know Jesus died, but he lived for 33 blood-less glorious years before that! And the "water-trough" filled with blood repels me.
I do not like the translation "water-trough". I suppose it is "Trog" something something originally: Wassertrog or something............. and it is filled with blood!
And "It cast your image into our eyes, Lord."
Is there no hope?
 For instead of the Lord, in Whose image we were made, and tacitly assuming a glorious image, we have an image of the Lord reflected to our eyes by the blood within the trough! A charnel-house image of God. A God of the abattoir!
Yes. That indeed sounds like the 20th Century; like the Holocaust. I glanced and saw that the sender was "Reading the Signs". This calmed me considerably, because I know she would have no evil intention; the poem is not some spell nor incantation. It was Celan's continuation of the Holocaust, however, in a symbolic structure we call poetry.

I reacted like one who wanders into a museum dedicated to the horrors of the time, and felt the great pain behind the depiction. Yet, we cannot be forever Shoah. We must take back the control of our own Imagery. We must be the rulers of our own Symbols. At the end of World War II, the era of the Holocaust, we entered into an age we never experienced before: we had the Image of an Eternal Enemy, the USSR.

Our enemies required constant vigilance:

Increased military spending even in peace time, for there was actually no peace, Addition of the phrase "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance, for we must differentiate ourselves from the godless enemy, Propaganda and Symbolism and Imagery of the greatness and goodness and sanctity of our way of life versus that of the enemy, ...and when that Enemy fell apart, we wandered comatose...until we found a new enemy to consecrate our lives to: our lives, our souls, our works and economy.

We must end the era of Constant War; we must end the era of the Primacy of the Holocaust, the Primacy of the External Enemy; We versus Them, for God has not chosen in our day: He has not rendered one people special and set aside and beyond retribution for the sins they commit, for no sin may any more be committed in God's name.

We must leave the blood-filled trough and see the face of God .
No one ever successfully taught me where to see the face of God. I had to fight for it every year of my life, through excessive elation - when one thinks oneself so strong they need not God - and through horrific despair - when one thinks oneself unworthy of another breath.
We are running out of time. If......... If we do not break free of the Shoah, of World War II, of always searching for an Enemy to destroy and to be destroyed by, of the Religion of Blood and Blood's Passion, we shall die in the leaking catacombs of the Past, down among the vampires of our out-of-time Symbols, where even our mothers suck our blood.
This is the meaning of the trend in vampire and undead imagery in cinema. A new film "Twilight" opens this week, based on a successful series of books. It is young people as Vampires. Part of us finds glory in the National Socialism of Vampires and their absolute Power. So we fall down and worship.
Then, when the lights go up, we are back to normal, and the films have not hurt us. No, for the films are mostly a mirror we hold up to ourselves. Vampires in films do not cause our love of Death; they show us as we are, the destructive and fallen. Deus Lumen resurrexit ex tenebriis
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Is The Holocaust Over?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-burg16-2008nov16,0,4227786.story Holocaust's unholy hold
The deeper we are stuck in our Auschwitz past, the more difficult it becomes to be free of it.
 By Avraham Burg November 16, 2008 

 ...The Shoah is so pervasive that a study conducted a few years ago in a Tel Aviv school for teachers found that more than 90% of those questioned view it as the most important experience of Jewish history. That means it is more important than the creation of the world, the exodus from Egypt, the delivering of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, the ruin of both Holy Temples, the exile, the birth of Zionism, the founding of the state or the 1967 Six-Day War...  

...I voluntarily withdrew from political life in Israel. I couldn't help feeling that Israel has become a kingdom lacking in vision and without a prophetic horizon. On the surface, everything is in order; decisions are carried out, life moves on, the ship sails along. But where is this movement heading? No one knows. The sailors are rowing without seeing anything; the lower-ranking officers are holding their eyes up to the leadership, but the leaders are not capable of seeing past each coming, rising, tumbling wave...

  ...utopian vision has fallen silent in Israel. Concerns for personal survival and well-being, as well as fear about the ongoing bloodshed and security emergencies, about Gaza and Iran and the realities of demographics and population, have silenced the moral debate and blocked the horizons of vision and creative thinking. I believe Israel must move away from trauma to trust, that we must abandon the "everything is Auschwitz" mentality and substitute for it an impulse toward liberty and democracy...  

The Past as a Mutual Panopticon Prison, wherein the Past imprisons the Present, the Present imprisons the Past, and both imprison the Future.

[No Title]

I just could not think of an appropriate title for this picture.

Friends

I have only one friend to whom I say and write what I quite actually intuit as the future. I write here as sort of a tarnished Jeremiah...sometimes. And sometimes as a supercilious observer... And sometimes as a business man... and a lover... But I do prevaricate, at least in the sense that I do not set down the exact truth IN THE WAY you are used to seeing it put down before your eyes. I do put it all down. However, I do it in such a way that people think it is STYLE rather than foresight. It is my style to throw in some outrageous metaphor...he surely cannot literally mean what he has written here?! Case in point: In Port Desespoir where live my parents in the impenetrable gloom of the clouds blown in off Fox News, there is some land where I used to work. The last ten years of that life did not give rise to any pleasant memories. When I finally was quit of it, I said to someone that there was an ancient curse on the land there, laid on it by an aboriginal shaman centuries ago. Of course, people to whom I said this believed it was my style, a bit of an exaggeration for emphasis. Well, woe to them, then. Since that time, the benevolent and local rich institution that bought the land - a benevolent despotism that broadcast money hither and yon - has done some construction work there. The contractor involved in the site renovation and stabilization of the land lost his shirt. A YMCA has been built, and the construction manager chosen to head the project apparently took off with bundles of cash intended for the sub-contractors, causing severe problems for long established local institutions. The benevolent despot had no help to offer. ( I believe their sights are set on greater prey: a future casino. Being thus beguiled by riches of Persian splendor, how could the despot be involved in his neighbors' despair?) I said to the fellow who told me this...I said that I am not witty; I say what I mean. If you choose to think me a supercilious type, sort of a Lord Peter Whimsey of the present day, so be it. I do not think I am witty. If I were witty, why is it that when I converse with people, they often seem to develop that eye-in-the-headlight look of roadway deer? What I mean is, I seem to engender comatose states so often, that I think of a "fugue" state as if it were a wind instrument, and I the master of it: a Pied Piper of amnesiac states. I say what I mean. Period. Full stop. Pause.... whatever....

Fast In Sin, Come On In

The word "fast" in the title means "steadfast" or "firm". It is my homage to Andre Lenoge this morning.

I am in mind of Mr. Lenoge - a character from the universe of Stephen King - because I have talked to a gentleman who stated, quite openly and for all the world too see and with the sure conviction of the dim-witted, that he admired George W. Bush's stubbornness. I looked at him for a bit, rather as if he were standing there 4 sheets to the wind, unbuttoned or unzipped, shirt flap falling through a vent improperly opened to public view, perhaps also as if he were examining his nasal interior - in short, I looked at him with disgust, wondering whether to reply the long way or the short way.

 I decided to do both. I said briefly, " I admire Adolf Hitler, for even as Berlin lay levelled and burnt about him, his stubbornness did not let him admit defeat." I would like to say that I let this settle in for a while. However, I have found that sayings like that do not really settle in; they rather bounce off the intended target, and roll off in smaller and smaller rebounds towards some corner of the locker room. One is left in the "paint of uncertainty", as it were ( using all basketball imagery here!!), wondering if one should say, "Get it?" So I added, "Stubbornness in defense of the indefensible is not a virtue." (I realize this pithy saying is hardly "long" or lengthy, but we shall pretend it is so for the present.) Since this combined my moral superiority with a quasi-Barry Goldwaterism, I felt as if it were time for a victory tea from the Grace Tea Company, NY, NY.
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From The Pope

Pope Benedict has released an encyclical. I read: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2007/1201/1196375108232.html Pope says materialism and science are not the answer Saturday, December 1, 2007 ...Science "can contribute greatly to making the world and mankind more human. Yet it can also destroy mankind and the world unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it," he says. "If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth, then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world," he writes. "Amid our growing knowledge of the structure of matter and in the light of ever more advanced inventions, we clearly see continuous progress towards an ever greater mastery of nature. Yet in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man's freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew," he says. These decisions "can never simply be made for us in advance by others - if that were the case, we would no longer be free. Freedom presupposes that in fundamental decisions, every person and every generation is a new beginning." New generations may build on the moral treasury of the past "but they can also reject it, because it can never be self-evident in the same way as material inventions"... I was surprised, expecting the RC hierarchy to say something more along the lines that decisions may be made for us by others, particularly the hierarchy. I am in total agreement: Everything is always new...we create the future and we must be ready to create the best possible ones, no more thoughtless disasters.

Cantico del Sole

Cantico del Sole The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant Depart in peace. The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be likeIf the Classics had a wide circulation... Oh well! It troubles my sleep. Ezra Pound

The Automaker Bailout And Infinite Negation

No one despises the present day management of the US Auto Industry more than I do. I am presently engaged in a running battle with them, refusing to pay one penny more for a new car; not one penny more than a supplier or a person who has a relative who works for GM or Ford or Chrysler.

Four years ago, I picked up a mid-summer's weekend Detroit News and read about all the wonderful SUVs. I thought to myself, "They will not be happy when the price of oil goes skyrocketing again...as it did in the 1970s." Even though many in management and on the boards had lived through the 1970s, it seemed as if they had no memory of them, collective memory or individual, and acted as if bigger was better, since (1) SUVs were not subject to CAFE standards , as were standard autos, and (3) SUVs contained more profit per unit.

Just months before Hurricane Katrina, we had a Ford salesman expostulate at us, "You're the first people to ask about fuel economy in 5 years!" And so on. So my contempt for the Auto industry and their enablers, the American people who drove and demanded the SUVs - best exemplified by that evolutionary dead-end: the Hummer Owner - is very deep. HOWEVER, Money to the Auto Industry is money to an industry which creates a product which we use, not to scheming bankers. University Types may blather all they wish about letting free markets have their way. This exemplifies the stupidity of the smart and educated: they think they have found eternal truth.
Free markets are idiots! They are no smarter than the people participating in them and running them. It is Free Men and Women that are the "invisible hands" which determine the Course and History of Nations. Markets are the faithful servants of a free society, not their rulers. Allowing some half-baked economic theory ... and note here that I consider most present day economic theory to be "half-baked", and mainly because it derives from a society that has pushed the Divine aside; in doing so, that society has doomed itself to wander for eternity, searching and never finding, a Flying Dutchman without a port... to determine the fate of nations is to abdicate our responsibility.

Free Markets that no longer function as the servants of mankind become idolatrous Molochs, which will destroy us and our children. If the Auto Industry fails - and recall that the Auto Industry was for years the paradigm of the US economy - the entire Auto Sector goes down the tube for an indeterminate period of time. Unemployment will be in double digit figure within 3 months. The recession will become a black hole. This will surpass the Great Depression. All this may be just; it may be right; it may be what the Auto Industry deserves, and it may be what academic notions of "free markets" ( curiously insulated from the lives and sufferings of the common folk) call for, BUT I suspect very much that we shall have no stomach for the despair we shall undoubtedly witness. Ask yourself, how long can I endure to wander in the wasteland...east of Eden? 
I know this partly because of the Irony I spoke of; the reversal of fortunes where the mighty are cast down from their thrones. The absolute rapidity of the destruction of the so-called American Empire ( as Karl Rove called it ) points to a long time and very deep and systemic rottenness at the core of modern American society.

The Irony of the Reversal from Neoconservative preening upon the stage of history to being thrown into the dumpster is so absolute and so clear and so quickly done, that it not only takes one's breath away, it gives one pause and wonder about God's scenario for all this. Secretary Rice comes back from the Middle East with no peace. Of course she does. Did anyone expect anything else? The condemned are not allowed to be redeemed....yet. The Tzionistische Medina of right-wing Israel drives old people from their dwellings: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7729487.stm
This is the true face of the right-wing ally of right-wing America. ...and the right-wing justifies it by : "God gave the land to the Jewish people. Full stop." But, this is not verifiable as truth, for even Jews themselves may say that Israel cannot be established before the coming of the Messiah. It is not the present truth. It is a wandering desire from the past. This world is ruled by phantasms. Economic theories parading as eternal Truth, old tales from a history long ago, arrogant attitudes, and total disregard for the Divine. Do not do your Auto bailout. Let your Society be destroyed. It certainly deserves it. Just hang on a bit longer to complete your role as enabler and accomplice..... Earn your horns as spirits of Infinite Negation.

November Harvest

This year, deer baiting, or the practice of setting out various foodstuffs for deer in a forest clearing, in order to accustom them to eating there, and to being easy targets come hunting season in November, has been outlawed.

I forget the reason.

Of course, the dealers in rotten cobs and malformed carrots and other mottled storage roots intended for deer feed protested from their roadside huts and gas stations, all to no avail. (This outcome was particularly sad, for every year along the miles of roads leading to the great killing fields, the tons and tons of roots would always offer up a few examples of bumpy and starchy storage roots which resembled Mary Magdalene or one of the Apostles. There is no limit to the creativity when one mixes booze and killing and testosterone.)

In return, this year saw the largest invasions and depradations of deer tribes across the boundaries between forest and sown, as they poured into the humble gardens of vegetables and flowers, biting off every succulent bud they could find.

Even ragged hostas, weary, torn, and snail-bit - as unattractive as ever was a plant - were consumed with epicurean relish.

...so from the fewmets in the forest will spring new flowers...

a consolation worthy of Boethius!

grace a: The Glass Doorknob

Rush 'n Recession: Childhood's End

I see where Rush Limbaugh has blamed the Recession on Obama. Interesting case of effect preceding cause. All very quantum mechanics, don't you know. It will be Mr. Limbaugh's Big Lie for years, and if he repeats it enough, it will seem as Truth to his band of quirky listeners. There is redemption in Limbaugh, but it comes as a garment woven over a warp of hate on a loom of fear. The redemption is a leap of faith to a higher prison, one where we may all be jailers, wardens, and prisoners in our imaginations. When I hear of a 60 year old man who has lost his job of 25 years, this happening a few years after building his dream house wherein he and his wife placed most of their savings, a house he cannot sell now for any price, much less anything near what it cost... I weep, but I also realize that this is the regime of human degradation in which we live. This is the Capitalism that we have had preached and praised to us from childhood on: creative and destructive capitalism, the genius of capitalism!!!!!!!! Real Economics does not require the destruction of individuals. The present day American economic theory does. Real Economics is not just based on self interest, but also on "moral and ethical" self interest. The present day American economic theory is not. A good deal of modern day American economics is cunning artifice designed to concentrate more and more wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people and institutions. It has been this way from my childhood on. Well, ....... Childhood's End. The Future is coming. Shall we grasp it with hammers of iron and tongs tempered by blood, or shall we mold it into a true community of mankind?

God's Experience Of Man

Heraclitus says that the diving being is like a playing child. By this he means, I believe, that the deity does not "work" for a living, rather he plays..meaning that there is no such thing as a matter of life or death for the deity; he just does, and it is all rather like playing: if someone dies, raise them up and play again tomorrow. He also means that there is some incredible innocence with the deity which we find hard to understand. The innocence of the child, not corrupted by evil...yet, his actions not yet coerced into working by the sweat of one's brow...just filling one's day with play, is an image we cannot deal with. Heraclitus is saying that God may be aware of man's sinfulness, but He cannot "know" this sinfulness in the same sense that man is aware of it, and sorrowfully "knows" it. Since God cannot know evil in the same way man does: that is, He cannot carry it with Him as part of his individual history of life!!; it seems God cannot experience the good that man experiences, either. if God is so innocent, then He is the paradigm of the being in an ivory tower. If a man exhibited such non-involvement in humanity, we would shun him. Yet our God does, and we assume we know Him...intimately even, although He is remote in the sense that we do not know His mind. We do not. How could we? God himself strives to relate and understand being-in-the-world , because if He were to live in the world, He would be limited, circumscribed, and prone to death. Thus, He sent his Son. He spoke to the Prophets. He created man to meditate and gain his release. There is a book titled "Towing Jehovah", wherein God comes to Earth, dies, and thus forms a rather large corpse - about the size of Baffin Island - to be removed from shipping channels. God is always coming to Earth. He is always dieing... and we are always dragging the remnants of the divine off to some dump.

Foreclosure Suicides

Two Rocks Standing Beside A Hard Place

Integrity

grace a marc l'esperance

"Uncommon Sense"

I awoke early with a Thomas Paine in the back of my mind. My common sense tells me that Barack Obama is just a man, not a miracle worker. My friends' common sense tells them this, too. In fact, just about every one's common sense tells them that Obama is not going to wave a wand of holly wood and phoenix, and magically everything will be better. All common sense. However, this is the point where I usually begin to diverge from "common sense"; that is, the point at which I begin to spout common sense, I realize that it is only words and language describing expectations previously experienced...some sort of medley or melange that passes for "knowledge". Mr. Obama is distinctly different in quality from any US leader I have laid eyes upon for at least...well, forever. I mean Reagan had charisma, but not much else. Certainly his economics was "voodoo" (no offense intended for those of Voudoun practice) and he and his wife seem to have had court astrologers. JFK had charisma and brains, but he fell short in the ethics department. Morality for the East Coast establishment has for a long time been the proprieties of the sports team of a limited number of players versus the large numbers of those in the entire "University". There was Jimmy Carter. He was very unique, but he was doomed to fall under the steamroller of the coming Republican Voodoo Economy, 1982 - 2008, 26 years approximately. LBJ was enormous, but he had no charisma. Ike is too misty in my memory, and much too much comforting to be real. Truman...FDR...all iconic images, upon whom various storms beat, about whom fires and wars raged... Perhaps Obama is a modern day worker of miracles. Miracles come from the future. The future does not yet exist...except in symbolic form; you see, I am writing about it: symbolic form. A good deal depends on how we take the possible futures and process their symbols into the Symbolic Structures of the present. If we are like the previous generations, we will crassly create a Tower of Babel from the future; as time goes on, we will build impossible structures to increase our power. Of course, to build a Tower of Babel requires the dynamic of Irony: you will build and it will crash! or it will be destroyed! or you will be driven forth, babbling in incomprehensible tongues! The dynamo of Irony joins together all the opposites: Mission Accomplished goes hand in hand with Abu Ghraib! Irony makes Odd Couples like "Overweening Arrogance" (such as exhibited by neo-conservatives) and "Tripping On History's Banana Peel" join together, as if they were two gentlemen, one 7 feet tall, the other about 5 foot 1", at their childrens' Activities Day Picnic and were entered into a three-legged race, and punctuated the racing turf with their stumbling antics: falling, struggling up, falling yet again, rolling through the mud, the large man dragging the smaller, people yelling and laughing................. If you follow what passes for "common sense" in today's world, you intrinsically embrace the power of Irony: the future will be turned against us! What struggles up, MUST come down! We seek peace, but we get war. We seek health, but we are visited by illness! We are wealthy society, yet millions starve! Free markets are the best economic system, yet every 20 years or so they are rendered immobile, while wealth is further concentrated into the hands of a few! Sin is this: a frame of mind; not the act as much as the ongoing tendency to act, and to act with no remedial measures, no correctives, no ability to be aware of one's sinfulness. "Common sense" is a frame of mind. It is how we judge things. Common sense is a way for the present to accept and work with the possible futures. If common sense leads us to provide for the hungry, tend to the ill, and visit those in prison, then that is one Reality. If common sense cynically leads us to enrich the few at the expense of the many, then that is another Reality. It is in our hands. Perhaps Mr. Obama will cause us to understand that fact. For, I tell you that what goes up need not necessarily come down. It is only our "common sense" that makes us willing accomplices in our own degradation. Strive, then, for Uncommon Sense.

EurasiaNet.org

If you want news about Central Asia, read EurasiaNet.org. It is about Central Asia, not some American media outlet repeating the party line about Kazakhstan, for example. http://www.eurasianet.org/ Here is a cartoon by Ted Rall in EurasiaNet:

US Automakers

First of all, I shall buy a new car if, and only if, I get the same deal that people on the A plan, the Z plan, a lessee coming off a lease, a supplier, et allii, get. Otherwise, I shall get a certified used car with some warranty left. ------------------------------------ The automakers want a bailout. Some people are opposed to it. They say that GM and Ford and Chrysler made bad decisions, so they should sink or swim on their own. This entire stupid country made bad decisions in the past 7 years or so. I never supported the Iraq War. I said that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I was right. Now this country is suffering for its bad decisions: economic decisions, war decisions, political decisions...you name it. The entire USA is suffering. I would bail you all out of your emotional suffering, if I could. Do not give me your crap about how you would let the automakers and the millions that depend on them go into the sewer. You did not give a plugged nickel for the Iraqis you were killing for quite a long time. You do not seem to care about the Afghani wedding parties you blast off the face of the Earth. What the heck do you Americans care about?

Bush: A Disgrace?

The Wall Street Journal and Jeffrey Scott Shapiro seem to think that the way President Bush has been treated is a disgrace. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace What must our enemies be thinking? By JEFFREY SCOTT SHAPIRO What, indeed, must our enemies be thinking? The big minds I bump into on the street say things such as, "Say wot yer will 'bout George Bush, we have not been attacked, mainlandwise, since 2001." Well, we were first attacked on the mainland in 1993, one month after President Clinton's first inauguration. This was the first World Trade Center bombing. Say what you will about President Clinton, we were not attacked again on the mainland until September 11, 2001, just over eight month's from President Bush's first inauguration. However, we must remember that we were also attacked - non-Islamically and mainlandwise - in 1995 in the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Building. Then there was Waco in 1992 and Ruby Ridge in 1986, both of which were government attacks on civilians. So we have not been attacked by our own government since Bush became President...but this may be due to the fact that they did strip our rights from us. The abilitity to illegally wiretap must have sated the government's desire to attack. And so on. We have not been attacked, but it seems a matter of time. Our "enemies" do not have the same ability to launch attacks as we do, witness yet another attack on an Afghani wedding party last week. I think that makes five or six instances of real wedding bell blues we've inflicted on that country. Looking at the dates of the above attacks, it seems one is due sometime in 2009 or 2010. I predict it and I predict it while Bush is still in office...furthermore, I place the blame squarely at his doorstep. The man who launched an illegal war based on ridiculously vague information and which has killed a million or so people is being treated disgracefully? The man who broached the topic of torture into the White House is treated disgracefully? The man who said ol' Wall Street has one too many and needs to sober up...he has been treated disgracefully? This is the man who has now directed the nation along the path of the next generation of nuclear warheads. The man who is about to pardon Scooter Libby for lieing, Abramov for corruption, as well as VP Cheney and himself for contravening the Geneva Conventions has not been treated the way he deserves. That I shall agree with; he indeed has not been treated with the full contempt he deserves.

Poetry

I do not usually embellish this site with unseemly boughs of poetry...is it not like planting a tree or two directly in the line of sight leading to a neo-classical building? However, I could not resist the one from Fast Day 74 last week from my other site, so here goes: http://peace-weaving.blogspot.com/2008/11/fast-day-74-october-31-2008.html When I was Episcopalian, and she was young and fair, I was a very young vicar who oft fell down the stair. The elders of the kirk came to counsel me, for I was Presbyterian, as drunk as I could be. And when I turned to RC, they had an intervention, and came to our sitting room, a reverend convention. I drank until the liquor dried up all my tears, and when I turned to sobriety they'd stolen all the years.

The New Economics: Animal House

“You f***** up, you trusted us.” — Otter advising Flounder, from the film Animal House You may read this: http://www.rgemonitor.com/us-monitor/254129/new_recommendations_to_solve_our_financial_crisis_and_i_admit_that_i_was_wrong New recommendations to solve our financial crisis (and I admit that I was wrong) Fabius Maximus Oct 23, 2008 Summary: Please vote, and do so carefully! This could be one of the most important elections in American history, as continued economic crisis might require a massive (and hopefully temporary) expansion of government power — unlike anything we have seen except during wars. ...Analysis from Pisquatwa Research shows that maintaining the US System's growth required either an annual 13% increase in household debt, or an annual 5% increase in household income. Given the Republoan phobia regarding increasing household incomes, debt was chosen, and debt reached the limit of sustainability, hence the current deflationary collapse. In my view, housing prices will revert to levels of previous bottoms ie: 3X household income. With household income plunging, to 40,000/ yr. we can expect mean housing prices to drop to ~ 120,000, or a further 40%. What this will do to the banking sector need only be imagined... I seem to remember talking about bulldozing excess houses... when FDR took over in 1932, they poured milk down the sewers to drive prices up... The fat lady has not yet sung.

The New Economics

I hope that everyone reads this, in order to grasp the damage done by Reagan's Voo-Doo Economic Myth of Adma Smith's invisible hand tweaking a tiny spigot of trickle down wealth.

Markets are very smart in a very limitedf area. Outside their area of expertise, they are rather like children afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome...only a large group of influential [?] feeble minds of Republicans and conservatives have seen fit to inflict this scourge upon us.

Anyway, read the following before the election:  
http://rethinkingdevelopment.blogspot.com/2008/09/fear-hope-and-great-transformations.html  
Rethinking Development Economics
Fear, hope, and great transformations  
By LaDawn Haglund  
Thursday, 18 September 2008 

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