not gruntin’ today, heavy lifting comes later.

not puntin’ today, gotta write something

just stretching.

before we dive in again to take a proper gander into the propaganda, an even balder dash straight to heart of balderdash, hoping to …learn something and then to DO that something that marks truly having learned and believed.

be well.  be good.

(Steps 2 & 3 in separate saucepan, far away from topic…)

2.  Ad hominem

3.  Ad infinitum

4.  Heat reductio ad absurdum to boiling (in order to intensify flavor)

5. Pour all over topic.

Enjoy!

Even in the midst of our crisis, we don’t cut back.  We want.  We can hardly blame the bankers and big corporate as long as we are willing accomplices/dupes.

Among others, this death is the darkest and most logical of symptoms.

Listen to the comments in the video here and you will see that we are far from learning or a change in behaviour despite this consequence.

CNN says, “President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team is subjecting prospective employees to rigorous vetting.” The horror!!

I think this news is evidence that we creep down a slope ever so gently, into soft non-thinking oblivion flavored by declining faith in integrity.  And I’m only smart enough to see my demise – because we’re all in this together.

This article is emblematic. Let’s start with the title: “Obama’s vetting could chase away candidates”  Is this an opinion, news, or statement of the obvious? ” The article is not in the Opinion section.

Now, take away “Obama” and read it again:  “Vetting could chase away candidates.”  Compare: “Interview questions may screen new hires.”

Seems like they were remiss in qualifying Obama’s vetting as “onerous” in the headlines or scared to do so.  But, “onerous” is the implication, and that takes us into the next problem.

The article quotes many sources to say that it is, but does not give proper context, instead assuming a technical and closed set of qualifications, and that without divulging them.  By doing this the article offers subtle, but real opinion that tiptoes as news here. The opinion: Being good matters.  Being Good is not relevant.

But we don’t even have to go moral on you here.  We could just do some journalism, maybe by rightfully expanding the concept of “qualified” by saying something like:  “While the vetting may seem onerous to many, it is possible that Obama is seeking to add a certain degree of moral authority to his administration, something political analysts have noted as lacking in recent administrations. “   It’s not “being in the tank” to note that a President aims for integrity as well as strategy in his cabinet.

Read these statements from the article:

“But political analysts say the Obama team’s unprecedented degree of scrutiny could result in several qualified individuals deciding to forgo consideration for a top post. This could especially be true among individuals considered for economic roles in the administration from the private sector who might be more financially entangled than those who have been longtime public servants.”

[my note:  What if Obama defines "qualified individual" as one who along with technical qualifications also has an impeccable financial record? or... as someone with integrity?]

“It could in several instances cause people who are qualified who will do a great job in the administration say, ‘Look, I’m just not doing it.’ “

[my note: Do we really believe that we're at such a low point that there are no more people of a statesman's quality?  If they propose that these are the only persons left to "do a great job," then I disagree.  It is not mathematically possible that we are left to rummage through the garbage to find that one sandwich that might be edible.]

The article is also closed in another sense.  You won’t find a perfect person.  I am sure there will be people with less than perfect pasts.  That’s who we are.  But you cannot say that there is not a whole lot of room for correction in the integrity range when you look at the last four presidencies.  I recognize that when we talk politics and business, we’re talking about ostensible integrity.  So, I’m not a blind fan, just given the history of integrity in those spheres, but I at least want a politician to make accountable steps toward doing the right thing.  That’s all we have to go on until someone is revealed as honest or a criminal.

You cannot give Obama the keys to “Change” and then point him to the “K Car” on the lot.  Change hurts.  It’s easy to shout it, to sing it, but once it hits you, you feel it and not usually in a good way.  We’re all in for some real pain if Obama is true to his word.  But, to ostensibly build an administration from a remnant of untainted people would be real change.  It would be a new moral underpinning that would give decisive military and economic advantage in the form of leveraging allies.

…

John Mellencamp: “That’s what’s so cool about “Hurts So Good,” because the whole song deals with the breakdown of illusions when it says “maybe we can walk around all day long.”

We can’t just walk around all day long in the same old same old.

Go, Dogma, Go!

My Dog, Dogma

my dog, dogma
quite the enigma

chases karma
fetches stigma

epilogue:

he should fetch stigma for his logic-free karma-chasin. but…   in the non-perjorative sense, my dog gosta run on logic, no? hence the enimga …just like science, this dogma relies on proofs, and ultimately, on faith in something we can’t see.

As local as it gets: A balmy night in Bedford-Stuyvesant, NYC

Just thinking out loud and testing a logic here…

Credit markets are frozen with no loosening in sight.  The US stock market will rise and fall in fits and starts, but equities do not look likely to gain any sustainable momentum any time soon as long as the market doesn’t come clean on housing prices.  The mortgage collateral at the root of the problem must be revalued and some people estimate the value deficit representing homes and other assets to be around 1T – yep, one trillion  dollars, a number too big to be thought of for most humans.  Why will banks lend when they still teeter on the verge of collapse with that revaluation pending and are focused on consolidation to prevent that?

For the full story on the one trillion and more, see Catherine Austin Fitts: http://solari.com/blog/?p=1598.

In short, theres no option but to return to a real economy, no longer relying on paper profits and financial engineering.  Although you may not rely on it directly (only a few of us do) your spending and your assets, especially if you own a home, are integral parts of the equation.  The current system counts on you to bank with Big Bank X and to consume like crazy all the things you don’t really need.  But the power is shifting: to you.

That is:  As the free flow of cheap credit is a thing of the past, we find ourselves in a new economy, one in which money is seeking what’s real just to keep its base value.  And what is real?  Commodities (gold, silver, and the minerals we need to build things) and whatever it is in your local community that you create demand for as a necessity.  Local goods and services are well positioned to be the new capital engines.  Big Bank X, and more importantly, Big Box Store X, know this.

Our government has a difficult problem: fix the problem (revalue and repurchase the overvalued assets) without startling the markets.  The Fed is continuing its undisclosed bailout (well above and beyond the now storied $700 billion) of financial institutions as a response to the problem.  If we knew how much was going out and to whom, people might well panic and start runs on those banks and foreign investors might do the same.

So, it may be a while before we get back to a reasonable flow of credit.  That leaves the local, real economy with opportunity: to bank local, buy local, create local opportunity, keep your cash and barter for what you need. The big boys will follow as they will seek any viable market.  One example: a major chain store setting up shop right in the heart of a structurally and perennially poor Brazilian favela (Casas Bahia in Paraisopolis, Brasil).  The government won’t serve the favelas, but the market will.  Thus, the way out of this global crisis seems to be local action.  The “think global, act local” cliche now gains new, real life.

Local is the new global.

My gosh, this should not only be disheartening, but also downright scary, to think that your parent is only somebody who happened to be near.  ENTER:  the examined life.  It strikes me over and over the saying of Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.

That is, if I only love my people because I’ve not known or been near any other random people, then where is the individual?  Where is the value of this particular person to me?  Now, as I examine my life and the people in it, I can move in and out of my geography.   It’s possible for the examined life to accomodate being a fan of my team that happens to be the closest to me as long as I have a consciousness of that.  More importantly, it is possible for me to love a person distinctly for more than that person simply being attached to my life.  Take your geography away and examine the people near you.  See what makes this person more than the nearest mother or father.  See what makes this person yours.

I know some people will say that, by my very argument, geography won’t allow me to detach these people from my space.  If so, that is a good thing.  Geography is not an enemy.  Unexamined geography is.  This proximity is the only thing that will allow me to really get to know the genius of any one person.   So, while I can know that I am capable of loving any one person at the deepest level, that’s not of value except in the way I treat people – equally.  But, my mother or my wife (one day) as I know her, in and out of my space, is wholly valuable and unique to me.

So, if there is only geography, then God bless latitude and longitude, and whatever has put me at this place and time.

h&f

...the smile of a president (source: International Herald Tribune)

“They said he canceled fireworks at the Tuesday night celebration to underscore the seriousness of the moment.”

That is a President, sober but not somber as he recognizes where he stands and rightfully assumes the mantle without fanfare, because it’s where he legitimately expected to be.  Lottery winners jump and shout.  You would hope that a President-elect would not be so shocked.

So, all credit to Barack Obama, but the real achievement of this election was not only his own.

No, this was bigger than a black achievement. On a much larger and more relevant scale, the real achievement was that enough people in the United States actually decided that a black man would hold the office heretofore defined by a very specific prerequisite having nothing to do with qualifications for the job.

Barack is unique, in and of himself and in this particular disposition of American and world history.  However, he is not the first black person to be qualified for the post.  Even further, we could still posit a reasonable argument for favorable phenotype…  If Michelle had been a very light-skinned black woman, would an Ivy League educated Obama have been able to escape elitist perception in the minds of black voters very familiar with the high coorelation between black achievement and the apparent search for lighter and lighter blood lines?  If Barack himself were black as that last crayon in the box, would non-black voters have been as comfortable with his stunning intellect, poise, and track record?  Given the relevance of these questions, we must still imagine a ways to go before considering this the post-racial moment many are so anxious to declare.

So the real achievement, even with these underlying imperfections, is ours.  We, the people, have taken a small step. May we keep toward a society not colorblind, a plain disability, but rather toward full recognition of humanity and potential in each other, one that can imagine that potential being enveloped in any color or geography.

Proof of intense progress would see this moment as ripe for a new Republican party, too.  Republicans have defined themselves as the “values” party while each year invalidating that stance with a clear embrace of racism in some quarters and malignant neglect of it in the upper ranks of the party.  The real division between Republican and Democrat for that electorate is…race.  Apart from that, most black voters show patterns of belief and values consistent with the Republican party.  Case in Point: In this same election, Blacks in California overwhelmingly voted for maintaining the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.  Yet, some commenters were shocked at what was perfectly expected among black voters.  Imagine now the feasibility of a black republican candidate who is anti-abortion, for controlling assault weapons, pro some form of affirmative action…  The so-called black republicans to date have openly held very undeveloped views of race and race-relations in America, assuming no need to even examine corrections that we have to make if we are to move forward as one nation.

We may also have given a great boost to people worldwide.  Even those sympathetic with black people and the black struggle in the US are not yet sympathetic to our basic and shared humanity.  Don’t confuse these observations with any sort of rant.  We are marking real progress, but it is not of the kind that we can build on by itself.

Obama is a beautiful outlier, an iceberg tip finally appearing above water with the entire body (and bodies) of the struggle lying beneath the water.  He’s exceptional in his own right, and not, since the body of the berg can only be built by similarly committed and qualified people, mostly black but not nearly all black.

Let’s keep marching toward the promise of truly collective will and intelligence, toward the integration of all of the human capital that can make a country move forward under one flag.  WE have achieved.

To the point: Have you ever considered how the perfection of any single event? A shot, for example.

When a shot is fired, a web of circumstances is created that can never be created again or lied about in perpetuity. This gun must have shot it. This person must have pulled the trigger. The wind must have been precisely of this speed and direction. It must have been this time on the clock. To trace the occurrence, all we have to do is fall somewhere on the web. The power of this perfection is even to allow us to be imperfect: we don’t need to discover all of the circumstances to discover the event. [We couldn't do that even if we wanted to.] The inherent power of those connected truths is what such phenomena as CSI and ShotSpotter are all about, the imperfect tracing of circumstances that lead us to the shot and the shooter.

Physics only discovered this in 1687 with Newton’s Third Law of Motion: Whenever a particle A exerts a force on another particle B, B simultaneously exerts a force on A with the same magnitude in the opposite direction. The strong form of the law further postulates that these two forces act along the same line. This law is often simplified into the sentence “To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

King Ahab, even while disguised as an ordinary solider, discovered it long before Newton, finding his death exactly where Naboth died. Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, set Naboth up to be killed for not giving up his vineyard at Ahab’s request. He wanted it because …it was near his house and he wanted to plant a garden of herbs. (What kind of warped imminent domain is that??). That act brought judgment from God, spoken by Elijah: I Kings 21:19 – And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, Hast thou killed, and also taken possession? And thou shalt speak unto him, saying, Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.

I don’t remotely pretend to offer prophesy or its fulfillment, but rather just the apparent evidence of newtonian law and biblical method. Just on observation, it looks like we in the United States, at this very moment, are living the verge of a major comeuppance…

What goes around comes around

Your uncle’s coffee.