The 18th Brumaire

 Napoleon On the 18th Brumaire

On  the 18th Brumaire - according to the French Republican Calendar - Napoleon overthrew the French Directory and replaced it with his Consulate. It was a coup d'etat, and it began his dictatorship.

What we witness today is a coup d'etat in a vacuum... in reverse! By abdicating it responsibilities and beseeching the Senate and the White House to come up with a deal to soften the fall from the fiscal cliff, the House of Representatives has overthrown itself, and asked a whole group of "Napoleons" to take over its role in government!

We are suddenly mindful of Karl Marx, who wrote The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon in 1852,  an account of the 1851 coup by Napoleon's nephew, which begins with:

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

As noted yesterday, the abdication of responsibility by the Congress in the Gulf of Tonkin resolution led to the tragedy of Vietnam.

Today we witness the farce of the House of Representatives and its right wing in their inability to formulate any sane policy beyond sound bytes.
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Metropolis, Megachurch, and the Towns of Rural America

I am not going to say much here. I know that is surprising, for the title was so ambitious, but I am merely going to point a thing or two out, and leave it to you to do the rest.

There is an article in the Daily Yonder, a publication geared towards rural America:  
Rural Social Activism, Born in a Stable
By Timothy Collins
http://www.dailyyonder.com/rural-social-activism-manger/2012/12/17/5546

...Walter Rauschenbusch, a Baptist minister and leading Social Gospel theologian, outlined the movement’s principles in A Theology for the Social Gospel in 1917. Echoing the title of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum, that sought justice for workers, Rauschenbusch wrote: “The new thing in the social gospel is the clearness and insistence with which it sets forth the necessity and the possibility of redeeming the historical life of humanity from ... social wrongs.... Its chief interest is concentrated on those manifestations of sin and redemption which lie beyond the individual soul.”

This reminds me mightily of what I was trying to discover in talking about the group mind or the extended mind:  we have a nation full of good individuals who go on to form extended groups, crowds, and factions, that are anything but good.

Megachurches have not addressed the Spiritual Evolution to the attainment of a higher morality of the group mind. Megachurches come about by the simple logic that there was an injunction to go forth and teach, and the way we judge success in any endeavour is the absolute numbers of heads under our tent or marquee.

The Metropolis is a similar misbegotten creature, large and lumbering and unenlightened. Ditto for the Nation State.

In this so-called era of Globalization, the minds of all mankind touch. Whether their touch will be Charity or whether it will be Flint to the Powder is up to us.
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The Fiscal Tonkin Gulf

 Gulf of Tonkin

The Congress has abdicated its power and responsibilities many times in my life. I remember the Tonkin Gulf resolution:

Tonkin Gulf resolution, in U.S. history, Congressional resolution passed in 1964 that authorized military action in Southeast Asia.

On Aug. 4, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin were alleged to have attacked without provocation U.S. destroyers that were reporting intelligence information to South Vietnam. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers decided upon immediate air attacks on North Vietnam in retaliation; he also asked Congress for a mandate for future military action.

On Aug. 7, Congress passed a resolution drafted by the administration authorizing all necessary measures to repel attacks against U.S. forces and all steps necessary for the defense of U.S. allies in Southeast Asia.
Although there was disagreement in Congress over the precise meaning of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Presidents Johnson and Richard M. Nixon used it to justify later military action in Southeast Asia. 

The measure was repealed by Congress in 1970. Retired Vietnamese general Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1995 meeting with former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, categorically denied that the North Vietnamese had attacked the U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, and in 2001 it was revealed that President Johnson, in a taped conversation with McNamara several weeks after passage of the resolution, had expressed doubt that the attack ever occurred.

Now the House of Representatives has fallen prey to its own internal Tea Party-Republican discords - a problem anyone with an ounce of sense saw coming when the Republicans embraced the Tea "Baggers" - and can no longer execute its responsibility to oversee national finances......

This is the fiscal counter-part of the surrender after the Gulf of Tonkin charade.
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Mozart, Cezanne, and Einstein

There are geniuses of Science.
They change the paradigm and the way we see the world.

So also are there geniuses of the Spirit, and they change the way we experience the Holy.

There are geniuses of Art  - music, painting - and they change the way we experience those aspects of our lives.

There are intelligent beings and their behavior. There are the innovators of behavior, for good and for ill. Life is a continual odyssey of change for the better. If not, it recedes from Paradise; even though you may feel you are not moving, the stagnant world moves beneath you.

This is the point at which we say "Excelsior!",   I suppose.
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All Grown Up

A young man whom we have known since birth stopped by after Christmas. He is working in China and living there, and is betrothed to a young Chinese woman. They are expecting a child in the summer of 2013.
His sister, my goddaughter, is to be married in 2013 also.

I could say "circle of life", but then I would betray the spirit of The Poetry. Therefore I repeat a poem I wrote about their father upon his return from some corner of some world in 2010. It is to him and to them I refer in the poem. The people are not static, and the father and children are facets of family, not individuals strictly speaking. It is never quite clear whom is being addressed or spoken of.

I have used the Anglo-Saxon word trūw in the last stanza in order to try and capture the many meanings of "true", which range from "not logically false" to "firm and steadfast" to "aligning tires to run in a straight line". It should be pronounced as the modern "true", however.
The "Georgia" referred to is the Caucasian State of Georgia.

Nomad Mikhail

when did you get home?
and did the ocean roar?

did you see your pals again
at the Georgian shore?

did you look into a store,
did you hold your child high?

and why was he a kid again,
and why was I a sigh?

i have already been there...
i shall not go again.
go and find your future
and sometimes i will send

an email of Christmas time,
Easter email too,
picnics, woods, and running twain
for we shall ne'er be trūw...

-------
note:
It seems to be trūw to the yearnings of past and the dreams of future.
When I say "Therefore I repeat a poem I wrote about their father upon his return from some corner of some world in 2010",  it is written in the Apparent Future, referring to a time when one may travel to other worlds.
I use the Apparent Future a lot these days.
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Les Miz

Hugh Jackman as Jean Valjean

I was shanghaied into Les Misérables. I do not know about the rest of the audience, but I was très misérable.

Rarely do I enjoy plays made into films, and rarer yet do I like musicals made into films.
In the theater, actors of a human scale and size are dwarfed by large stages and great scenery. The only way these actors can transcend their size is Song; their voices and the music makes the action inflate to fill up the entire universe of the spectators, filling every nook and cranny.

That is not the function of Music and Song in the film, a medium in which the actors already appear to be great heads about 30 feet high.

The Song and Music perform no magic in the film. We may hum along and smile and are amused, but we are not for the most part entranced.

I mean, I like Anne Hatheway, but to see her close-up 40 foot head and 10 foot lips singing her farewell song was more than I could bear to look at and feel any human emotion other than an urge to flee... which I did... to the friendly Mens' Room; then I stood around the candy counter for a few; then I trudged back, like Jean Valjean,

Everybody was very good, and Hugh Jackman was superb, and he promises to be a great actor, not merely a very good one. The material, however, was not right. The film worked only from the rising of the barricades to the beginning of Cosette's wedding: images were conveying the story, not the music so much;
images and a flowing story.

I was bored by everything else. Little things flitted about, like whether that was Helena Bonham Carter or not. I saw Sacha Baron Cohen and mused whether 'twas Borat or not, and I remembered Bruno instead, which led to unfortunate montages.
The worst part was the fact that I had a hard time with the English singing voices at the volume it was set at. The very climax of disgust came with the introduction of the street urchin, Gavroche, who at the funeral of General Lamarque pops himself up upon the catafalque and sings in an indeterminate Englishy accent so thick that I really needed subtitles.
I mean, why in the name of heaven was I watching a film set in Paris and being totally befuddled by English-speaking actors?!!? I could have understood Françoise Hardy much more easily.
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Enough About Guns

No more gun posts.

I recalled the 2011 shootings in Norway, and there is pretty strict gun control there: 80 dead and sacrificed at a youth camp.

I think the answer is in learning virtue, and no laws can be passed to teach that, nor can any laws be repealed to let it flourish. It is in our hearts.

This is a matter I meditated on. There was a very quick intuition that this was a matter of the general violent attitudes that are so prevalent, combined with a meaningless parade of religions, mixed into a general lack of virtue and honor.
I may speak of virtue, but it is a waste of my time to speak of guns, and I recognize and accept it.

There are other, bigger fish to fry than guns. We have a lot to do in the short term.
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Weather or Not

 Unisys Weather Home Page  December 26  2012

Weather Underground sucks.
It used to have Model Maps that were great; now their functionality has been reduced to almost nothing. I was so surprised recently when I went there...  I was so surprised I sent an email immediately telling them that I found it of little value anymore.
I mean, there is a drop-down menu upon which the last 5 items are superimposed over each other! Everything is very crammed together.
Furthermore, once you are at the Model Maps and give up, there does not seem to be a link back to the rest of the site. I can't remember seeing anything like this on the net.

I am told that The Weather Channel has purchased it. Last week I was at my parents and I turned on The Weather Channel to get the forecast, and then I was amazed to see a long documentary on some sort of weather activity - Tales From The Climatologist's Crypt or something like that. It went on and on.
It used to be that you could get "weather" on The Weather Channel.

The Weather Channel itself had been purchased by NBC last year. I knew when I heard about it that it would be the death knell of weather reporting. Soon Al Roker was on doing Today Show schtick, and weather was given the pink slip.

I am back at Unisys at

http://weather.unisys.com/

which was the original site with good weather modeling maps, and is still serving up weather 24/7.
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Industrial Cloisters

 

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pix: synapticism  on Flickr

Japan Memories

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Where I Stand On Guns

I uphold the Second Amendment.
I do not think the Second Amendment need be construed to be imagined as allowing automatic assault weapons, a weapon type I believe should be strictly regulated.

The Second Amendment does not care if people who own guns take pleasure in automatic weapons, it does not care if they wish to collect such guns as a hobby. Some people actually state that they wish to collect such weapons, and the Second Amendment gives them that right.
That is nonsense.
There is no right conveyed to hobbyists and collectors; the need and support for a "militia" does not include any notion of  pleasurable pastime, nor is it reasonable to imagine such a right is granted.

I believe that the basic tenet of Conservatism is that all rights require some sort of limitation, else they transform into anarchy, and freedom transforms into limitless license.
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Veni, Veni

Brad DeLong had this hymn that I used to sing in choir at Midnight:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/12/veni-veni-emmanuel.html

Theotokos -  God's Mother

VENI, veni, Emmanuel,
 captivum solve Israel,
qui gemit in exsilio,
privatus Dei Filio.

Responsa
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
nascetur pro te Israel!



Which we sang as:

Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here,
until the Son of God appear.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
will come to thee, Oh, Israel!



and the literal trans is more like:

Come, come, Emmanuel
and free captive Israel,
which groans in exile,
deprived of the Son of God.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
is born for thee, Israel!


The music is there, also. I have it in  my head.

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Christmas

Christmas in Fukushima 2011

Merry Christmas... just in case no one else has said it to you so far today.

I have been up whipping up yeast waffle batter since 6:00 AM. That is no biggie... it was the staying up until Midnight on Christmas Eve that was sorely out of character.
When I stay up late, I feel as if I had smoked 2 packs of cigarettes (non-smoker) and drunk a couple of pints of vodka (tee-totaler). I guess virtue must be it own reward.

This year - and next, actually - we try to celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, incorporating thereby Orthodox and Coptic Christmases with our friends in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Greece and the Balkans, Egypt and all over the globe.
Smile and wassail all the way to the Epiphany!

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New - like - Speak ?

What's the new - like, mmm - speak dealy word for the present state of government?

Dyskratia?
Meaning "bad power"?

Dysarchy? Misarchy?  "bad leadership"? "hate leadership?"

Hmmmmmm... dunno?
Say, did you ever notice how much Ted Nugent looks like Nicholson's ice-cube Jack Torrance in The Shining ?
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The PHYSICAL Cliff

I have decided to make fun of the theater of the absurd play "Fiscal Cliff" and its actors by calling it "The Physical Cliff", as if I were some sort of tosser released from the dafter for a home visit, Christmas time.

We live in an age where the speed of light has dumbed down to 55 MPH.

We live in an age where ideology is a paraphrase of "The Always-Denying Spirit" - der Geist der stets verneint as described by Goethe.

The geniuses of religion said "yes" to life, and we are being tutored to say a resounding "NO!"

The Physical Cliff is not as bad as the Spiritual Cliff we face.
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LaPierre's Answer

2 firefighters killed in an ambush at a fire in New York... have armed guards on every fire truck.

1 killed and 1 wounded in a bar near Seattle... have armed guards in every bar.

Or maybe it would be sufficient if everyone in the bar had a gun themselves; I always liked going to bars where drunks had guns.

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Movies

I am going to see some major cinema soon.

Lincoln, Hyde Park,... certainly the Seth Rogen and Barbara Streisand film. I mean, I can usually judge from the trailers on TV whether a film is terrible or not.
The Hobbit looks terrible. The book was 1/40 the size of Lord of the Rings, and the megalomania of success is driving Cameron to extend it to a trilogy.

Mr. Cameron, how shall I put this?  Even Tolkien had some pretty boring and tedious moments... quite a few, actually, and those moments are the basis for the fluff to fill up your flick.

Les Miserables?
No way.
Django Unchained?
Only if I can indulge my fantasy - that first came into being when I heard of this film - that it is a story of Django Reinhardt and his discovery of the guitar.
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The Gun Priests Sacrifice and Dance

 Elijah and the Priests of Baal

More laws probably will not work, because any such laws will be compromised and watered-down by the running dogs of the NRA; right-wing lawmakers will ensure that the mantra "More gun control laws won't work" will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This society has set itself on a path of self-delusion. Our deceits will only be corrected by disasters, such as the suicide of the Financial Sector in 2008, enormous climate events, such as Hurricane Sandy, and larger and larger immolations and sacrifices of citizens to a Second Amendment that has been deformed into the repugnant Idol in whose face danced the priests of Baal.

They danced, and the reality was revealed to them also.
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Guns Don't Kill People?

There are drones that make their own decisions to fire upon their human targets...

So?

Well, so technology has created Guns that kill People...
and no longer pass the moral burden onto mankind.

The NRA would say true gun lovers would not want weapons that do their own shooting... that takes away the fun.
However, there is nothing in that shibboleth Second Amendment that forbids such technologically handy weapons.

Guns (and Drones) kill people... and people do, too.
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War and Morals: Zero Dark Thirty

In war and violence, there is no grey area: murder is murder, torture is torture, and there is no way to escape the accountability of the outrage of the moral order. Patriotism is nothing compared to the vengeance of the Furies.

There must be an admission of guilt, and there must be remediation and reparation and forgiveness

There is no escape from wrath that we bring upon ourselves... none.
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Op-Ed as Stupidity

Ross Douthat

Bloomberg, LaPierre and the Void

By ROSS DOUTHAT

Published: December 22, 2012 123 Comments

FOR a week after the Newtown shooting, the conversation was dominated by the self-righteous certainties of the American center-left. In print and on the airwaves, the chorus was nearly universal: the only possible response to Adam Lanza’s rampage was an immediate crusade for gun control, the necessary firearm restrictions were all self-evident, and anyone who doubted their efficacy had the blood of children on his hands.

The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York’s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite. Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan’s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole...

The fantasies and metaphors of a fool are once again forced upon us by a media that is too ignorant for its own good, much less for ours. We have enough idle baggage in our minds without Op-Ed columnists who are as obtuse - or more so - than we ourselves.

If it is not a certainty that the destruction of children is evil, then what is to a mind like Mr. Douthat's which is prepared to accommodate itself to any Lord of the Flies that happens by.

Prepare yourself now for Vile Lie to be heaped upon Vile Lie by the running dogs of death on the installment plan.
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Metaphors We Live By

Look up the pdf of Metaphors We Live By by Lakoff and Johnson in Google, download it, read it, and think over and over how it applies to our fantasies of governance and guns.
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Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers had Slavery in the Constitution.

They also had guns.

They had good things and bad things. That's life. If we cannot make the bad better, it is not their fault: it's ours.
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Not Compute... aarggh!

"That does not compute!"

Let us get this straight:

The Republican party does not want to raise taxes; therefore, it is going to allow us to go over the fiscal cliff so that everybody's taxes will go up.

This is a script from a Star Trek episode, where the alien machine intellect is confronted with a paradox, and spins around in an infinite loop, until it breaks down, steam pouring from its orifices, saying despairing, "That does not...compute!"

Augustus Caesar

Augustus as Pontifex Maximus

I think I wrote about this before, but I'll repeat it.
I am thankful to the Republican members of Congress for such perspicacious insight into the dynamics of the times of Julius and Augustus Caesar.

For, indeed, I never had any first hand experience of ancient institutions falling by the wayside, and the freedoms and rights of the Roman ruling class being usurped by dictators.

But here is is right in front of us all:  The House has abdicated its role in governing the nation.

The Extreme Right Republicans have discovered they have ideology and a grudge and an attitude, but nothing more. In particular, they have no plan other than to disagree.

MARK my words:  the people will not sit by idly while these congressmen and women fiddle while the country burns.
Someone will push the House of Representatives aside, and most of the population will breath a sigh of relief and get back to their lives.

The Founding Fathers weren't always right.
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NRA

The NRA seems to have hit the nail right on the head:  when you have created a society thoroughly saturated with guns, the only possible thing you can do is have more guns in the hands of some para-military force whose job is to use guns to keep the gun-toting population under control.

As they were speaking about this plan from another planet, 3 Pennsylvania state troppers were being shot and wounded.

I guess what they wanted to say is that this society is so certifiably insane that guns must be in the hands of the certifiably sane... and those certifiably sane will remain always good and godly, only killing when killing absolutely has to be done.

I at least agree that we are insane.
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Bringing Home The Tree

Remember the Taliban

Polio workers in Pakistan have been killed. Threatened previously by the Taliban, they are now dead.

The thing I regret most about the Afghanistan war is the fact that the Iraq debacle took the front seat, and the Bush administration allowed the Taliban to re-establish themselves.

The Taliban are destructors of the soul, and wherever they rule there will be a realm of crap floating on the sea of history.

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Hell Reconsiders Its Agenda

CNN today:

Private equity firm Cerberus has put U.S. firearms maker Freedom Group up for sale following Friday's killing of 20 children and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut. Freedom Group includes Bushmaster, maker of the rifle used in the shooting at the school in Newtown. Cerberus bought Bushmaster in 2006 before adding another 10 makers of firearms, ammunition and accessories to the group.

"Cerberus" is the name of the hound that stood guard at the gates of Hell, or Hades; same group that bought Chrysler and did not have a clue what to do with it.

Why would you name your private equity firm after the hound of hell?

Unless....
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Sgt. Apone, Tough Love Principal of Regina High School

Sgt. Apone, Principal of Regina High School, Warren

I just finished listening to a news story on the ABC Detroit channel, wherein having armed teachers was discussed: it was seen as cheaper than having a policeman in every classroom.

So the guy sorta sez that if a teacher had laid down a burst of covering fire (the exact words are a little different), it may have distracted the guy, and then the lunchroom militia could have taken him out.

I like it when we take Fantasy for Reality.

I mean, we have already tried to turn reality into Ted Nugent's dreams, and it is not pretty so far. But what if we just take it and extend it into a reductio ad absurdum of having elementary school teachers act like the interstellar Colonial Marines in Aliens:

Using a Catholic Girls High School as an example,

Sister Mary Leanne, Principal, as  Sgt. Apone, leader of the Colonial Marine squad,

Mrs. M. Weinert, Advanced Placement English, as Pvt. Vasquez,

Mrs. C. Tarpley, Math, as Pvt. Hudson,

Mrs. S. Capizzo, Fine Arts, as Pvt. Hicks

Mr. Beveridge, Maintenance, as Pvt. Spunkmeyer

Vasquez

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Theology

God is never a waste of time.

Theology, however, usually is.
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The Fantasy World Has A National Discussion On Guns

Some people say that it is time for a national discussion on guns. Even members of the NRA  say it is time. Isn't that great.

Too bad 20 children had to die before some people saw the light. Too bad those slow people were the ones who hold power. Too bad we had to go through that again. But apparently we need the sacrifice of children to knock us out of our fantasy world.

Too bad we had to have the financial system come to the edge of collapse before the government admitted anything was wrong.
Too bad we had to come to the verge of destruction in Iraq in 2006 before we realized Shock N' Awe did not work well.
Too bad we listen to people like Ted Nugent...

If the only way we learn is by mortal hard knocks, the next few years will be killers.
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Susan Rice Runs Afoul of Republicans..... and... anyone? anyone?

I guess I never got the whole story on Ms. Rice.

http://www.dailyyonder.com/

Nebraska landowner group applauds Rice's withdrawal from Secretary of State nomination 

Rice Out — Susan Rice has taken herself out of the running to be the next Secretary of State. She had run into Republican opposition for how she had portrayed the attacks that killed a U.S. ambassador in Libya.
She had also come under scrutiny by environmental and landowner groups for her ownership of up to $600,000 in stock in TransCanada, the company building the Keystone XL pipeline. Keystone would carry tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. But first the pipeline must receive a permit from the, you guessed it, Secretary of State.

Rice's conflict of interest was not mentioned in stories in the Washington Post, New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Nor were her extensive holdings in other companies active in Canadian tar sands noted. Not only are the tar sands reserves an economic issue, they are an international issue, as China has begun investing in the field.
Landowner group Bold Nebraska, which has opposed the pipeline, favored Rice's withdrawal.

Let's hear it for the press and news media.

Fun With Gun

Ooohhh, fiscal cliff....!

The publicity of the fiscal cliff, and the endless and fruitless negotiations are part of the charade of fear and terror being used against us to make us embrace a dismal future of poverty.
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Meditation 12/16/2012

reprint from 2008
Thinking of My Father in 2012

God is simple.
As seen in time, God becomes complex. Particularly the divine looks complex when it interacts with consciousness like ours.

We are made in God's image. Not a physical image, like some sort of body, for that is not what the Hebrew words mean in Genesis. Our consciousness is similar to the divine. Our life in the World is like the land under the sun, going on for mile and mile until it reaches the sea. At the beach and tidal pools, where the land meets the sea, it is like an interface between the World and the Self. All that has been experienced flows from the disappearing land and into the sea.

On the sea waves form in different patterns. Beyond these wave patterns, the surface of the sea reflects the sunlight in a million different shining facets, each one a new and different bit of data, and under the sea are unknown currents flowing boundlessly.

Within the utter complexity of the sea lies the Self.

Within the Self are Images and Memories and Language and Habit which bear with them the odors of land. In time, the sea comes to an end at some shore and the Self flows back into the external world, hopefully as good or better than before, for the land has its own complexities of a more durable nature.

We go from land to sea and back. The interface between the World and Self forces the complex to become simple, in order that the Self may assimilate the complexities of the World. In turn, the simple state of the Self begins a Wolfram process ( cellular automata) which leads to greater complexity within consciousness. To exit from the Self and return to the World, the complexity of the Self must become simple again and be re-incarnated into the World as a new day, and begin the process of complexity once more.

Then another complex of the working day begins until we tire and, with the setting of the sun, start to divest ourselves of our intricate costumes and cease to talk and shut down in sleep. We see sleep as withdrawal from the World and a parable for death. With God, there is no death and the sleep of God is a parable for life. (This was known from antiquity and is the reason why we see the picture of Persephone as Queen of the Underworld seated with Hades, both of them bearing symbols of life and increase.)

Absurdities

The logical reductio ad absurdum takes a premise and turns it into extremes, thereby highlighting various aspects of the internal logic of the premise itself.

Proposition A:  Guns don't kill people; People do.

(1) If guns do not kill people, then our focus is on the people themselves.
So what do we do about people?
Most proponents of unlimited guns think we should promote (at what cost?) programs for gun ownership, care, and safety.

OK. Good idea, but it is obviously not enough if Civic Virtue is not also taught to people.

To teach gun safety alone implies a future of gangs and mafiosi who are very conscientious about their weaponry.

This is an absurd result, but it is what will happen if the mechanics alone are taught, and virtue is ignored.

(2)
Consider this change:

Proposition B:  Atomic Bombs don't kill people; People do.

Is this as easily understood and absorbed and acceded to as proposition A usually is?

Consider this change:

Proposition B.1:   Atomic Bombs don't kill great scads and heaps of people; People do.

This is harder to agree with. Why? It seems that since the intention of atomic weaponry is to kill large numbers of people, and people left to their own devises, like fists and even clubs, can only kill a limited number of their fellows, that we tend to creep over to the side that says that atomic weapons actually do kill people.... at least great bloody heaps of them.
This proposition can flip-flop in our minds like a perpetual Romney-machine.

(3)
Proposition C:  Power does not tend to corrupt, nor does absolute power corrupt absolutely; People do.

This becomes very involved at this point.
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The Cree Once More

Good read:

Rather than speaking to convince (cf. Aristotle’s ‘Rhetoric’), a Plains Cree speaker’s communicative intent is understood as coming from a need to express what they believe is the truth, individualized to the particular audience they are speaking to (Lightning 1996:63).

The mechanisms of discourse, then, are organized to set up the proper events for “truth to happen” (Lightning 1996:63).

This means that accuracy in representation, both of the Speaker’s beliefs and the beliefs they convey from others, is absolutely crucial to the Speaker’s goals for the discourse; the Hearer(s) must trust the Speaker, and the Speaker must be trustworthy." ...

The Plains Cree language is ‘soft,’ then, because its users prize the “mutual-thinking” (Lightning 1996) that develops between Speaker and Hearer through careful representation, and they value this over the force of logical or charismatic persuasion. 

This means that, to a speaker of Plains Cree, the grammatical material covered in this thesis relates to how the Speaker “makes truth happen.” ...

 http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/07/cree-is-soft-and-unforeseen-connections.html
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Arthur C. Clark's Law

"Any civilization sufficiently advanced to have engendered a Governor Snyder-class entity must appear to have taken leave of its senses to other civilizations."

pic: (Governor Snyder of Michigan)
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Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Usually when it is time for some half-hearted attempt at spiritual rejuvenation, people like to get back to the basics of their religion, and rediscover the well springs of faith which inspired their ancestors.

Our problem is that the godly themselves are corrupt.
We cannot turn to religion, for our religion has compromised itself with War, Greed, and Intemperance... and the pursuit of Power.

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A Second Feast of the Holy Innocents

 

Brueghel's Slaughter of the Innocents

In the post The Feasts of All Children

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-feasts-of-all-children.htmlwealth

I spoke of how this season may have developed, beginning with the miracles of St. Nicholas of Myra, who discovered the crime of the young students being murdered for their wealth, urged the criminal responsible to confess his crime, and then restored the students to life.
All in all, a fine inspiration for a Saint of innocent children.

With St. Nicholas on December 6 we have a narrative about Children being abused, Children being innocent victims, and Good triumphing over Evil.

Then with the Christ Child on December 25 we have a narrative of Good triumphing over evil and a Child of unsurpassed innocence and purity. This Child, however, has his own history inextricably linked with liturgies and holidays soon to come of Abuse and Violence, as this Christ Child will grow into an adult who will be violently killed - not by marauders and thieves - but in a social setting and by socially approved ways of justice.

Lastly we had The Holy Innocents, or Childermas, on December 28, and we have the narrative of those children killed by King Herod's order to slaughter new  borns, lest they be the King born to supplant his rule. Here again we have Innocence, Abuse and killing, and the fact that these children are martyrs or witnesses to the faith: Good triumphs over Evil.


What we have construed as some mad dash to the mall, it seems that our ancestors wove together with statements, hints, nuances, suggestions, story and fable to create a quilt-like story of the cycle of the miracle of renewed life as children are born into the world, the harsh environment into which they are born, and the moral responsibilities of all society to ensure one thing above all other things! Above ideologies, above politics, above retail shopping, above fiscal cliffs and other self-created stumbling blocks!!!...........
....
One thing the hearers and viewers of the stories are supposed to do is to ensure that Good triumphs over Evil.

We have turned away from the story of the Feasts of Children and created a diorama of our diseased souls.
The trampling of shoppers at the mall and the fights and shooting over toys reflects our endless wars and threats of wars.

So we add to the season of Children, not by a triumph of Good over Evil, not by actions which our progeny will remember for centuries as great feats portrayed in icons, but by a new Childermas, a new slaughter of the Innocents:  December 14.

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Gun MAD

I refuse to "take part in a national discussion" about our horrifying need to shoot each other, because it is grounded in irrational delusions of the almost insane. I believe that our society is going quite mad. (and MAD... mutually assured destruction).

Here are the scenarios:

(1) It is the case that more weapons create more shootings. The Sheriffs and law enforcement agencies seem to think that more weapons leads to more violence, being on the front line as they are.
If this is the case, then we are following an insane and counter-productive ideology, and we have allowed it to rule our political minds for a long time,

or

(2) More weapons are a very important part of the mix to ensure our freedom and social well-being.
If this is the case, this assumes that our country has become so hostile to life itself (for example, we no longer shoot only criminals, but also feel the urge to kill school kids) that we are groping in the smog of an extremely toxic society.

Both possibilities condemn us for fools who have thrown away a precious inheritance and who are anything but admirable, and who should not be trusted to be a world leader.
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Michigan Becomes a Republican Trash Receptacle

After the news came in from Newton, Connecticut, we learn that the gang of imbeciles referred to laughably as the Michigan Senate and House have passed a law allowing concealed weapons to be carried in schools, churches, and restricted areas.

In their minds, they conceive of this as the answer to shootings is to arm elementary school children, teachers, choirmasters, and choristers. Each and every individual not only has the right, but apparently has the ability to be a dead-eye shooter. Even a second-grader can do a quick-draw and drop a gun-toting mad man from 100 paces, then spit tobacco into the spitoon.

"If you have pistol free zones they are actually mass murderer empowerment zones," said Steve Dulan, attorney for the Michigan Coalition of Responsible Gun Owners, who represents sportsman clubs throughout Michigan backing the bill. "If you actually look at the history, even over the past 10 years in the U.S., you find that maybe all but one mass shooting has occurred in a so-called gun free zone."

If there are no pistol-free zones, it is due to the machinations of people like Steve Dulan. He must be held responsible when, in the near future, it is our turn in Michigan.

Michigan is now an official Republican Trash Dump for the wretched ideas of the monstrous idiots of extremism.

Impeach Snyder!
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Tlamictīliztli:____Second Amendment Sacrifice

 The Aztec God Tlaloc

Month of Atemotzli

Newton, Connecticut: 27 people sacrificed, possibly 18 children among them.

This is the month, as luck would have it, of the sacrifice of children according to the Aztec calendar.

The god Tlaloc smiles widely over the watery ways and the earthly beaten paths of the dead.

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Gotcha!

Some people think that since Buddhism has no concept of the Soul nor of God, that it must be some higher form of Atheism.

It needs to be pointed out that "not having a concept of X" does not imply "X does not exist".

--

Prideful Death

Bonnie Young John Donne

With my father dying, I am facing a terrible fact of life: the inflexibility of it all as far as the ends are concerned. I never really think I conceived of a brick wall before, totally adamantine and immoveable, but so it is.

Strangely enough, this realization and acceptance of death turned into one of those ironic twists that life  -  at least, my life, I guess  -  is full of; it seems that only by facing the inevitability of death and the terrible finality of it do we begin to see a glimmer of life beyond death sort of sparkling around the edges of that immense cloud.

I am here, and I am with death every day now. I have been here, and I have been with disasters and murmurs and visions of disaster for a number of years. So have you all. The Mayan Calendar on December 21 is only the latest, even though it actually precedes the Fiscal Cliff. The Government did not create the Cliff until some time after Mayan end-of-time was being chattered about:  blah, blah, blah, end of the world, blah, blah...

We have come to expect some sort of political disaster or environmental disaster or wars and tortures with a fairly strong regularity of tempo and beat. In August I was beset with the strong sense that I was to very soon die. Perhaps I am, but it became clear within three months that it was not I, but my father who had this appointment in Samarra with death.
We are marching in a danse macabre, are we not? Every bloody holiday that comes along is ruined by some sort of nonsense  born of the ideology of the weak-minded, fearful, and clueless.

When disasters are everywhere, and you realize that we cannot escape them, whether they be fiscal cliffs or debt ceilings or wars in the Middle East.... Cannot! We cannot escape!
THEN
and only then can you realize that we have been living a scenario of death and destruction which was made up before our birth, and which we studied as eager catechumens, and by which we have lived our entire lives so far.

Some, like the poor Rev. Camping, have their End of the World and the Second Coming, and they have it embarassingly over and over; some have war after war after war; some have futile surrogate wastes like "wars" on drugs and other things they have demonized...

Inevitability is a literary device.
It is alien to God's will.
Nothing really dies forever, and nothing is disastrously vile and evil, except that which we choose to allow to be so.

I told a friend this. He said, "What if a comet were to strike the Earth and destroy life? Wouldn't that be a great evil beyond our free will and choice?"

I do not think so. Life paces with life everywhere. When we have achieved the intelligence to protect ourselves from destruction from space debris, we should be spending time and effort to do so, not wasting money on greedy pursuits. We are technologically advanced. If bad things happen which we could have addressed by our technology, but did not do so, then we made our choice: the wrong choice, but we freely made it, and once again in our time we have chosen evil.

The Pride and Arrogance of Death depends upon our continued ignorance and fear.

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee   
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,   
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,   
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.   
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,            
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,   
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,   
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.   
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,   
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,     
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,   
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;   
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,     
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

May death itself die? Again, an irony that makes me happy, for I have learned to embrace the ironic, knowing everything will change: the bad to good, but also the good to bad.
The only way to avoid the ironic change from good to bad is to be so thoroughly humble that one's good estate does not even dawn into one's consciousness.
This requires long discipline in the present day.
This is the goal of religion, all religion. It is the basis of the Golden Rule, for we cannot even approach the morality of that Rule unless we are able to live unfettered by the idol of  "self-awareness"  (best exemplified in the endless Cult of Celebrity on TV and in print) we have set up for ourselves.

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History Traps Again

A History Trap is a cycling and re-cycling of the same ideas and actions over and over. For example, the widely spread anticipation of the end of times, whether by Mayan calendar or  by Holy Writ, is a history trap that many people in our civilization fall into. In fact, there a bunch of them waiting for December 21, 2012 and the End-Of-A-Mayan-Era history trap to unfold with destruction.

Tsk-tsk.

Look at all the people now who say 2013 is going to be a mega-bummer, and a buzz-killer much worse than Buzz Killington. We flock to history traps like lemmings. It is in the blood.

Then there are always the Messiahs and Mahdis just waiting to pop out on stage, only things do not work out the way they are supposed to in a properly built History Trap.

The notion of Life Eternal as a static and unending choir practice in Heaven is another history trap, a boring image born of the repetition of the mundane.

Life Eternal will be tazer juice!

 http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/free-creation-and-history-trap.html

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Moral Blindness

The banks involved in a blatant money laundering scheme get a $1.9 billion fine, but our government will absolutely not charge any individual for the crimes they committed, even though it is quite clear who the guilty parties are.

British banking giant HSBC agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion settlement Tuesday after a broad investigation by U.S. federal and state authorities found the bank violated federal laws by laundering money from Mexican drug trafficking and processing banned transactions on behalf of Iran, Libya, Sudan and Burma.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2012/12/11/hsbc-laundering-probe/1760351/

If the Immoral can never be confronted and be known for what it is, then the Moral can never be confronted and known. 
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=24659266#editor/target=post;postID=5124006508953533422

This is why we are as a society grossly immoral.
As individuals, we can be saints, and many of us are, but as groups, we are little more than participants in a Walpurgisnacht of corruption and degradation.
--

Second Amendment Sacrifice 12/11/2012

PORTLAND, Ore. - A masked gunman wearing camouflage opened fire Tuesday in a busy Portland, Oregon, mall, leaving the gunman and two others dead and forcing the mall's Santa Claus and hundreds of Christmas shoppers and employees to flee or hide among store displays.

. . . . . The gods' thirst for blood will be slaked.
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Michigan: Mitten to Boxing Glove

Michigan's Lower Peninsula

I do not know much about Right To Work laws, but it seems that in any workplace,  there are benefits: those which are due to union influence and those benefits which accrue to workers without any influence from the union.
Under Right To Work, the benefits - if any - which are due to union influence are open to all workers, whether they wish to remunerate the union or not.

In its essence, I, as a strict Libertarian, agree with the Logic of Right To Work, and I suggest my Right To Life law to be ramrodded through the Michigan legislature before the end of the year:

Even though the State of Michigan and its various subdivisions have provided many things for my use, some of which are extremely beneficial to me  - roads, sewers, and what not -  I believe that as long as I live in the State,  I alone should have the Right to determine whether I wish to pay taxes for those benefits.
I alone may choose whether to pay taxes for any services or benefits without any outside pressure from Government Bosses and their Toadies.

Therefore, State and City and County taxes should be by choice only.

This is my Right To Life law, and it is a freedom to exist within or alongside a group, and never having to pay any price for any benefits which may accrue to me for doing so.

--

On a more sober note, I cannot understand why Governor Snyder willingly tainted his administration with this acrimonious business. Everything in the State from now on will be a controversy; the well-known Michigan outline of a mitten is now a boxing glove.

If you recall, I said that there was something wrong with this guy and his Republican cohorts who began their depredations by raising taxes on the elderly.
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The Big Poetry Theory

"Poetry is the Large Hadron Collider of Intelligible Reality."

 http://peace-weaving.blogspot.com/2012/05/fast-day-258-may-11-2012-engaged-couple.html

--

Our Lady of Chimayo

reprint from my poetry blog, March 29, 2008


Anna (and her sisters) are coming off a long winter in the land of long winters. Like we have "Indian Summer", once winter has past its prime in Anna's land, winter returns for a brief visit or two, bringing gifts of snow and ice and grey skies.
So we dedicate this poem to them.

notes:
Chimayo is a sanctuary in New Mexico. Starting from Los Alamos where the atomic age was born, descending to the desert into Espanola, the low-rider capital, to the eastern mountains wherein lies Chimayo is about 60 some miles.

Sandia is a mountain.

An acequia is a water-course or aquaduct in the desert.

Chimayo is the locus of miracles, and people who have been cured have left crutches and splints and wheelchairs there.
----------

Our Lady Of Chimayo


He was an acequia
and she a cottonwood tree;
The Lady of the desert placed them
outside the church at Chimayo.

She:
I am rooted in the soil.
What is it to run o'er the earth?
(she looks into the distance)
I see far off within the sky
clouds as big as Sandia,
running faster than a ghost!

He:
I hear your voice in wind and leaf...
I sense small lives upon my course.
From afar, from ridge and mountain top,
I burst free to come to you!

The Lady of Chimayo who stands within
Her holy sanctuary filled with emblems
made from mankind's suffering,
has turned her and him upon Her loom
and wove their souls from cactus fiber,
so that she would not live without his blood,
nor would he flow without her need.


--
more notes from 2012

I mean... I really like this poem.  I also find it very sexy.
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The Gods of Xibalba and Second Amendment Sacrifices

MERCER, Pa. (AP) — A man's handgun went off while he was holding it as he got into his truck in the parking lot of a western Pennsylvania gun store Saturday, and the shot killed his 7-year-old son, authorities said.

The gods will require their sacrifice, no matter how painful it is.We must get used to it. It is for our own good.... apparently. The Founding Fathers said, the Founding Fathers said.... and they never made a mistake....
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My Father

 Wind and Dunes

I did not write a post about this for a time; I did not know what to say.

On the day before Thanksgiving this year, my parents had an appointment with my father's pulmonologist. It was just after 3:30 in the afternoon, and I had watched an episode of Doc Martin and was going to call them about their doctor visit.
At 3:49 I received a call from my father's doctor, and I knew this was not a good sign.
I was informed my father had probably 6 months to live, and the chances of treatment for the lung cancer  -  which had already invaded the bones of the chest  -  were not good for someone of his age, almost 93 years.

The Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Companionship has sent his RSVP.
It is something we know will happen in advanced age.

I handled it pretty well, until it came time to set up the Christmas tree - which I did early since 6 months was only a guess.

Then my wife's cousin Honora died... then a best friend's mother, who was 101, died totally unexpectedly just this last week. We spent yesterday Saturday split apart by two funerals being held at the same time, one west of Detroit presided over by a priest who often officiates at rites for the Order of Hibernians and the other well north of Detroit presided over by a priest from Colombia.

Our society has a fascination in the Resurrection.
We have focused on that Day of Power when the dead shall rise again, but we have done it in our own peculiar emphasis on despair and degradation: we have chosen the figure of the Vampire and the Zombie to be the vehicles of our speculations on the state of Life coming after Death.

We have created a popular image of Diseased Resurrection.

The Resurrection is not of corruption: it is a newness and new creation as well as a invigoration of the past.
This I expect. This I know.
This is not what the unbelievers hold, nor is it what the believers believe, for although they speak of Life eternal, they imagine an endless repetition of the past as they stand in endless choirs. A thousand years ago, thinking of Life as a immobile and unchanging thing could be forgiven; not so anymore.

Life is growth and change. Life Eternal is endless growth and change, not merely some divine rescue mission: it is the epitome of Creation.
We differ from all of them who think small of the Resurrection, and we have no words to express what others might term our "belief system". It is something that we shine in our minds and souls.
--
painting: Barbara McGeachen

When Is A Question Not A Question?

When does Life begin?

If there is a "spiritual" marker  -  such as, say, the moment when a newly conceived human life receives a soul  -  and yet that event is hidden from us, then the question above is equivalent to "When may we see that which we may not under any circumstances see?"
As such, it is not a question, but a contradiction with a "?" at the end.

If there is no "spiritual" marker, then everything depends upon a functional definition of "beginning of life". This would seem to be open to an unlimited number of subjective definitions, and the question above is seen to be equivalent to asking for a consensus opinion, which in itself may become obsolete in time and practice... have we not seen the consensus of time of death involved in organ donation become suspect due to supplies and demands?
Or the question may be equivalent to "Pick the one white marble out of a bag containing an infinite number of marbles." coupled with a suspicion that somehow some undefined force will guide our hand unerrantly in this choice.
At this point, it is no longer a matter of defining life, but of defining the force which encompasses the entire process of question and marble-picking. At this point, the original question is seen to be not the "real" question after all.

This type of things hurts the head on a Sunday morning.
--

The Flowers of Creation

Papaver Somniferum

There is inequity in the world: it is divided into the Haves and the Have-Nots, and this distinction extends to the availability of morphine to ease the pain of those dying of cancer.

Morphine: The Cheap, Effective Pain-Relief Drug Denied to Millions
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20625482

In many ways, morphine is an excellent drug for use in developing countries. It is cheap, effective, and simple and easy to administer by mouth.
Yet according to the World Health Organization, every year more than five million people with cancer die in pain, without access to morphine.
"The fact that what stands between them and the relief of that pain is a drug that costs $2 [£1.25] a week, I think is just really unconscionable," says Meg O'Brien, head of The Global Access to Pain Relief Initiative, a non-profit organization that advocates for greater access to morphine.
O'Brien says in well-off countries, like the UK and United States, there is enough morphine to treat 100% of people in pain - but in low-income countries, it's just 8%

For today's meditation, ponder God's creation of the Poppy plant, and how it annuls the pain and suffering of Matter and restores Joy, that emotion immaterial, yet immensely strong and potent.

Our problem with drugs is a Social Distemper and a Economics.
There will always be people who abuse drugs. We have allowed too many people to be marginalized into despair and a sick boredom, and thus to seek relief in drugs. How do we change that?
Then, we allow consciousness changing things to become the playthings of markets; it matters nothing whether these markets are Legal or Illegal, white or black. The same economics of black and criminal markets which flood the urban areas of the poor in the cities of wealthy countries (Is there Irony here? The Poor areas of the Wealthy countries?!) are the same legal and proper economics that creates a drought in the poor countries!

Consciousness is our complex school that lasts our entire lives: it develops and grows and changes, and we must continually study and maintain our art of mastery. We cannot let it lapse into rigidity, impurity, and pain; those things are the denial of consciousness.
Pain points to the Void, not to the Fulfillment.

God did not create suffering. Yet, when it comes by the necessity of the laws of the Material World, God did provide sources of relief, even to the extent of establishing marijuana-like (cannabinoids) chemicals to be created within our bodies.
It is we who have allowed suffering to extend itself.

We are different from the prideful ones of Babel, for we do not seek to attain the heights of God; we seek to annul God and pray to our own "belief systems", laws, and political sciences.

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Text Twist

Yahoo's Text Twist game is no longer free. I have gone through textual rehab, and I have broken my dependency on it.

Huzzah!
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The Feasts of All Children

 Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit

Since researching Saint Nicholas Day on the sixth of December, I have been drawn to the role Nicholas played in our civilization's conceptual understanding of children and society. In particular, the fact that this season we are in begins on Saint Nicholas Day and finds an ending near Childermas, or the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the children who were slaughtered by the order of King Herod.

So we have something I had never noticed before: a season that starts with the Saint who restored life to two brothers who had been murdered for their belongings, and extends through the birth of the Christ Child, and then celebrates the Holy Innocents, a feast which is a climax of gore as well as a celebration of martyrdom.

I begin to suspect that there was a distinct awareness of the abuse of children in the past, and that this season was instituted and modified over time with that awareness very much in the intuitive and the active minds of the peoples of the time: they created a sequence of holy days to celebrate children - to illustrate the horror of crimes against the young and to contrast that with their innocence and sinless natures - all of which makes them counterpoints against the sordidness and evil of the World.

I feel as if I had been blind, and now I see.

This is a time to remember the children now orphans in Bangladesh whose parents and relatives made clothes and childrens' toys made in the factory where 120 people were killed in a fire. This is the season when we must keep the sight of the children slaves in India recently freed from their evil masters who forced them to make Christmas toys and ornaments..., for us.

Scrooge Sees the Boy, Ignorance, and the Girl, Want

As we fight, claw, and gibber madly in the spiritual wasteland of Black Fridays, we fail to realize how black we really are; we are the inhumane processes of Dickensian London portrayed in A Christmas Carol that condemns its own children to poverty, disease, and despair:

"Oh, Man, look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit, are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

And this realization of mine that our past generations have tried to build walls of inspiration and holiness and faith to protect the innocent, and we ourselves have not received this gift without debasing it and making it a wretchedness of material excess, leads me to a deep distaste for our ways and times.
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The Tea Party, Disaster Relief, and Voltaire : Écrasez l'Infame

Is the Federal Budget just like my budget? Or does it act like the coins that jingle in my pocket? Does the US Treasury have a George Costanza wallet like mine, one stuffed with old receipts that are so old their ink has faded, and they are nothing but a glossy white slip?

The Tea Party Thinks so.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's proposal for $60.4 billion in aid for states hit by Superstorm Sandy adds a huge new item to an end-of-year congressional agenda already packed with controversy.

Lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and other states had requested significantly more money, but generally praised the request Friday. They're urging Congress to adopt it without delay.

That's no easy task. Washington is laser-focused on the so-called fiscal cliff looming at the end of the year. And tea party House Republicans may demand budget cuts elsewhere to offset costs.   (Yahoo News)

 This is exactly what Eric Cantor tried to do to Joplin, Missouri, when it was devastated by tornadoes. This also shows the complete idiocy of Romney's idea of returning FEMA to the States to administer. It is no longer dysfunctional when a government cannot handle disasters: it is a symptom of death....

The Congress is showing us that it will take our money, but when we suffer disaster, it will not help.
--

Écrasez l'infame!

--
 news:
  http://news.yahoo.com/obama-request-sandy-aid-could-face-hurdles-083322677--politics.html;_ylt=Aobt_fjD9mvHhQgw46cu9Q8JVux_;_ylu=X3oDMTIxaG5xZDk5BG1pdANBVFQgSG9tZSBXaWRnZXRyb24gVGVzdCAxBHBvcwMyBHNlYwNNZWRpYUF0dFdpZGdldHJvbkFzc2VtYmx5;_ylg=X3oDMTFpNzk0NjhtBGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3