Hill today, gone tomorrow

Here's to those Hill Country breezes... may many more come my way...

Self consumption

Arthur Silber is back and with a little help from Matt Taibbi , tells us, again:

Any individual who rises to the national political level is, of necessity and by definition, committed to the authoritarian-corporatist state. The current system will not allow anyone to be elected from either of the two major parties who is determined to dismantle even one part of that system.

I love Arthur's writing. I love his passion and his fire. After reading this article, however, I wondered if people sometimes read my rants and have the bitter taste left in their mouth that Arthur's rant left in mine-

Shorter Arthur: The system is fucked. All Progressives are fucked. You are probably a hypocrite for not noticing. But even if you do notice, you will still just eat shit and die.

Arthur's writings have had their own effect on me. I sometimes believe that if just enough people could see the truth or if they only believed what I do, that the country would change overnight. People would suddenly comprehend what Arthur says and what I say and what a thousand others are saying and we would rise up and force the politicians to change as a result.

I don't see Arthur leading a rebellion with his cats, his sickbed mounted on a tank. I don't see myself leading a crowd of veterans to storm the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys, even though I truly believe these lying, self-serving propagandists are destroying all that is truly patriotic in our country. I can't see Keith Olbermann calling Bush a traitor to his face. I cannot see the leader of a superchurch that says "Enough is Enough. Torture and murder is un-christian, we have sinned in this war". I can't see a few good millionaires standing up against the crowd in the whitehouse looting the treasury. I can't see a nation that rises up against a system that is self-destructing in a full rebellion against this 2 party corporatocracy.

That's a lot of pain to inflict upon ourselves for a nation that is still only partially broken. It will get worse before it gets better. It is bad now, but it hasn't quite fallen apart yet. We still do have options, even though they are not as pure, as perfect as we'd like them to be. From this high ground of self-awareness, nothing seems to be a good idea but to completely remove the ranks of politicians and fill it with our clones. Everyone else is just an appeaser to the system that has failed us.

At the end of Arthur's article, I get nothing but a world of eternal shit. It isn't that bad yet. It may get there. Arthur's writing has done me a service, over and over, by helping me understand the everyday hypocrisy that we all have had a hand in, as citizens of a nation that is responsible for a million deaths- and barring protests, have done nothing to stop it. Nothing really. We haven't sacrificed anything to stop it. Nor will we. Until it gets worse. Not for those damn Iraqis, of course, but worse for ourselves.

Arthur believes that Americans are fooling ourselves more than I believe we are. Look, we know the score, and deep inside, as a people, we just don't give a shit about those dead people half a planet away. Even the worst neocon anti-environmentalist understands that the world's resources are limited, and that we all will die, and that in order for some to prosper, others will have to die sooner. There is predator and there is prey. As long as the American people don't feel the full-fledged bite of the predator, then we will remain content. As long as we are the top predator in the food chain, we will not be overly concerned with the plight of the prey. We are animals. We are chattel, too.

If our "hope", in the form of Obama or Clinton, offers nothing in reality, then we will sink further into excrement. We will be one step closer to being prey instead of lead predator as a result of our gross depletion of everything in sight.

There is a place for balance. If we can find that balance, we can be self-sufficient and survive. In order to balance we must sacrifice efficiently and effectively against our consumption.

If not, the shit we eat and die from will be our own.

UPDATE: The link to Taibbi's piece has a lot of interesting comments as well.
UPDATE 2: Winter Patriot has a comprehensive post on Iraq

First Class Migration

But, but the rich people pay all the taxes, right? right? And the rich finance all of America's financial growth, right?

(from C&L)
Bush: If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.

The subprime mess (details below) was enabled by the mythological big taxpayer at the top of the foodchain. The underlying "logic" was that big business, big financials, and the Daddy Warbucks 1%'ers of the American multimillionaires were paying the lion's share, and as such, well, it would be okay to cut them a little slack... Their money went back to America investitures, financing most of the growth of American business. This was true up until a certain point. But as Daniel Gross of Newsweek points out, when the transparency and accountability disappeared, and with it- the profitability, these 1%ers quickly began shifting their money out of the U.S., which had become, largely due to their own machinations, a losing bet.

(from Newsweek)
The latest investment trends similarly lead me to think you may not be acting in the national interest. America's private-equity firms are plowing into India, China, Asia and Latin America, and private bankers are urging clients to drop the home bias (don't think condos in Palm Beach and ski chalets in Aspen; think beachfront property in Thailand and ski resorts in the Alps). A Spectrem Group survey of people with more than $500,000 to invest found that 31 percent are putting more capital to work internationally than in the past. "The rich are investing a larger share of their capital overseas," says "Richistan" author Robert Frank.

Just when the economy has started to take on water—and we don't know if we've just sprung a leak or we've hit an iceberg—it seems like the wealthy are piling into the lifeboats. So consider this a plea not to abandon us. Ski at Sugarbush instead of Gstaad. Invest in P.F. Chang's China Bistro instead of China. It might not be as rewarding, financially or psychologically. But your country needs you now, more than ever. And after all we've done for you, it's the least you can do.

I am afraid that a plea to the rich to help the country surely falls on deaf ears. Patriotism falls a distant second to personal profit. Capitalism trumps National pride. Their sense of duty to the so-called "Free Market" is more powerful than any duty to our country and a real Democracy. It's the poor people's fault they're poor, after all. And as these rats jump from a ship they are helping to sink, they can only blame everyone else.

These multi-millionaires, who are running the country, and lately, running it into the ground, talk a big talk about what this country was built on. Underneath their loud bluster, the truth comes out of the sides of their disingenous mouths... Their constitution is a prospectus, their bible is book of tax exemption codes, and their savior is a savvy investment adviser who raises his hands and exhorts "Buy China!" from the mountaintop. Buying America is as foreign to today's billionaire as the concept that all men are created equal. They can spout the virtue of a Global economy all that they want: Their rush to fill their own pockets at the forefront of whichever economy they talk up only hastens the demise of the American economy.

The thought that they, the self-appointed American aristocracy, knew what was best for the country by simply filling their pockets as fast as they could seems so outlandish that you wonder how these people got rich in the first place. But most of them didn't make this money, they inherited it. Their predecessors (the people who made the bulk of the money for these inheritors of America's riches) seemed to understand the concept of an economy that perpetuated its growth. You gave back and pumped some of your profits into the system, from the bottom up, in order to keep your cash crop coming in. By failing to comprehend this key principle in their gluttony, they are dooming the American economy.

The Subprime situation and Asset Securitization is, as F. William Engdahl puts it- "The Last Tango" of the dance of the American assetmongers on their own graves...

(Excerpts from Financial Sense)
The New Finance was built on an incestuous, interlocking, if informal, cartel of players, all reading from the script written by Alan Greenspan and his friends at J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, and the other major financial houses of New York. Securitization was going to secure a “new” American Century and its financial domination, as its creators clearly believed on the eve of the millennium.

Key to the revolution in finance in addition to the unabashed backing of the Greenspan Fed, was the complicity of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the US Government right to the Supreme Court. In addition, to make the game work seamlessly, it required the active complicity of the two leading credit agencies in the world—Moody’s and Standard & Poors.

It required a Congress and Executive branch that would repeatedly reject rational appeals to regulate over-the-counter financial derivatives, bank-owned or financed hedge funds or any of the myriad steps to remove supervision, control, transparency that had been painstakingly built up over the previous century or more. It required that the major government-certified rating agencies give their credit AAA imprimatur to a tiny handful of poorly regulated insurance companies called Monolines, all based in New York. The monolines were another essential part of the New Finance.
...
The Federal Reserve, the world’s largest and most powerful central bank with what was arguably the world’s most liberal market-friendly Chairman, Greenspan, would back its major banks in the bold new securitization undertaking. When Greenspan said risks “which seemingly challenge human understanding,” he signaled that he understood at least in a crude way that this was a whole new domain of financial obfuscation and complication. Central bankers traditionally were known for their pursuit of transparency among banks and conservative lending and risk management practices by member banks.

Not ‘ole Alan Greenspan.

Most significantly, Greenspan reassured his Wall Street securities underwriting friends in the Securities Industry Association audience that November of 1998 that he would do all possible to ensure that in the New Finance, the securitization of assets would remain for the banks alone to self-regulate.

Under the Greenspan Fed, the foxes would be trusted to guard the henhouse.
...
In the United States, between 1980 and 1994 more than 1,600 banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) were closed or received FDIC financial assistance. That was far more than in any other period since the advent of federal deposit insurance in the 1930s. It was part of a process of concentration into giant banking groups that would go into the next century.

In 1984 the largest bank insolvency in US history threatened, the failure of Chicago’s Continental Illinois National Bank, the nation’s seventh largest, and one of the world’s largest banks. To prevent that large failure, the Government through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation stepped in to bailout Continental Illinois by announcing 100% deposit guarantee instead of the limited guarantee FDIC insurance provided. This came to be called the doctrine of “Too Big to Fail” (TBTF). The argument was that certain very large banks, because they were so large, must not be allowed to fail for fear of the chain-reaction consequences it would have across the economy. It didn’t take long before the large banks realized that the bigger they became through mergers and takeovers, the more sure they were to qualify for TBTF treatment. So-called “Moral Hazard” was becoming a prime feature of US big banks.

That TBTF doctrine was to be extended during Greenspan’s Fed tenure to cover very large hedge funds (LTCM), very large stock markets (NYSE) and virtually every large financial entity in which the US had a strategic stake. Its consequences were to be devastating. Few outside the elite insider circles of the very large institutions of the financial community even realized the doctrine had been established.

Once the TBTF principle was made clear, the biggest banks scrambled to get even bigger. The traditional separation of banking into local S&L mortgage lenders, large international money center banks like Citibank or J.P. Morgan or Bank of America, the prohibition on banking in more than one state, one by one were dismantled. It was a sort of “level playing field” but level for the biggest banks to bulldoze over and swallow up the smaller and create cartels of finance of unprecedented scope.
...
J.P.Morgan thereby paved the way to transform US banking away from traditional commercial lenders to traders of credit, in effect, into securitizers. The new idea was to enable the banks to shift risks off their balance sheets by pooling their loans and remarketing them as securities, while buying default insurance, Credit Default Swaps, after syndicating the loans for their clients. It was to prove a staggering development, soon to hit volumes measured in the trillions for the banks. By the end of 2007 there were an estimated $45,000 billion worth of Credit Default Swap contracts out there, giving bondholders the illusion of security. That illusion, however, was built on bank risk models of default assumptions which are not public and, if like other such risk models, were wildly optimistic. Yet the mere existence of the illusion was sufficient to lead the major banks of the world, lemming-like, into buying mortgage bonds collateralized or backed by streams of mortgage payments from unknown credit quality, and to accept at face value a Moody’s or Standard & Poors AAA rating.
...
Very soon after, the new securitizing banks such as J.P. Morgan began to create portfolios of debt securities, then to package and sell off tranches based on default probabilities. “Slice and dice” was the name of the new game, to generate revenue for the issuing underwriting bank, and to give “customized risk to return” results for investors. Soon Asset Backed Securities, Collateralized Debt Securities, even emerging market debt were being bundled and sold off in tranches.

On November 2, 1999, only ten days before Bill Clinton signed the Act repealing Glass-Steagall, thereby opening the doors for money center banks to acquire brokerage business, investment banks, insurance companies and a variety of other financial institutions without restriction, Alan Greenspan turned his attention to encouraging the process of bank securitization of home mortgages.
...
Former Secretary of Labor, economist Robert Reich, identified a core issue of the raters, their built-in conflict of interest. Reich noted, “Credit-rating agencies are paid by the same institutions that package and sell the securities the agencies are rating. If an investment bank doesn't like the rating, it doesn't have to pay for it. And even if it likes the rating, it pays only after the security is sold. Get it? It's as if movie studios hired film critics to review their movies, and paid them only if the reviews were positive enough to get lots of people to see the movie.”

Reich went on, “Until the collapse, the result was great for credit-rating agencies. Profits at Moody's more than doubled between 2002 and 2006. And it was a great ride for the issuers of mortgage-backed securities. Demand soared because the high ratings had expanded the market. Traders didn't examine anything except the ratings…a multibillion-dollar game of musical chairs. And then the music stopped.”
...
The raters under US law were not liable for their ratings despite the fact that investors worldwide depend often exclusively on the AAA or other rating by Moody’s or S&P as validation of creditworthiness, most especially in securitized assets. The Credit Agency Reform Act of 2006 in no way dealt with liability of the rating agencies. It was in this regard a worthless paper. It was the only law dealing with the raters at all.
Moody’s or S&P could say any damn thing about Enron or Parmalat or sub-prime securities it wanted to. It’s a free country ain’t it? Doesn’t everyone have a right to their opinion?

US courts have ruled in ruling after ruling that financial markets are “efficient” and hence, markets will detect any fraud in a company or security and price it accordingly…eventually. No need to worry about the raters then…

That was the “self-regulation” that Alan Greenspan apparently had in mind when he repeatedly intervened to oppose any regulation of the emerging asset securitization revolution.

The securitization revolution was all underwritten by a kind of “hear no evil, see no evil” US government policy that said, what is “good for the Money Trust is good for the nation.” It was a perverse twist on the already perverse saying from the 1950’s of then General Motors chief, Charles E. Wilson, “what’s good for General Motors is good for America.”
...
None of that would have been possible without securitization, without the full backing of the Greenspan Fed, without the repeal of Glass-Steagall, without monoline insurance, without the collusion of the major rating agencies, and the selling on of that risk by the mortgage-originating banks to underwriters who bundled them, rated and insured them as all AAA.

In fact the Greenspan New Finance revolution literally opened the floodgates to fraud on every level from home mortgage brokers to lending agencies to Wall Street and London securitization banks to the credit rating agencies. Leaving oversight of the new securitized assets, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of them, to private “self-regulation” between issuing banks like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch or Citigroup and their rating agencies, was tantamount to pouring water on a drowning man.
(full article "The Financial Tsunami Part IV, by F. William Engdahl here

Which leaves us where we are now. And I hope that this will leave you with the FUNDAMENTAL knowledge that:

A "Free Market" does not regulate itself at all.
Greed is not a virtue. It is not a creator of wealth.
Capitalism without proper oversight destroys the many at the benefit of the very few.

Wrath of the Epiphanies

But would not change my free thoughts for a throne...
Byron

Untitled

Barstools and damned fools
with nuthin better to do
Shufflin up and sitting down
Forget the day with another round
Darkened walls, Dirty pool halls
the less seen the better
Blur this world to a murky grey
And let me drink this fools' life away

Hell is waiting, so I do, too
Bide my time until my Judgement Day
And God knows, I've had plenty of time to think
All these days in this bar, nursing my drink
Maybe he'll give this fool credit for his long regrets-
And, if not, the Devil will collect my debts-
Either way, I guess you can see,
In this old bar is where they'll find me
9/2001


Nothing Better

Scattered descendents of coherent thoughts
Not exactly lost, but too wrapped up in the moment-
Decisions, Decisions- too much to bear
Circle back around - let's try this one more time-

Traps that are of our own devising
A past that magically, we are constantly revising,
The only things we want, are what we can't get
And demeaning what we can, is this really it?

Just another fleeting Accessory
To a life full of junk food accomplices
Let me be your mediocre happenstance
Let me be your unused, forgotten toy
Nothing better to do, than to want to be wanted
And when I'm on my knees is when I need you most
And when I'm on my knees is when you don't want me at all.
2/03

The Only Ones Who Burn

I’ve seen Fire and I’ve seen Rain
I’ve heard the Choir, and still felt the pain
No Gods to Touch, No Dreams to Feel
I’ve lost the desire, but Never lost the Will

Found myself in the most unlikely of places
And the love that warms me is the empty spaces
Clear my head, greet the day, look deep outside
And I find, its not from me, I’d like to hide

I look around at this world I sometimes hate
And I give up on that crazy notion called fate
You've got to give if you want to live
And you'll never live if you've not the time to give

Sacrifice it all, it doesn’t matter what you try to keep
The more you let go, the more you will reap
If you don’t give it all you will never learn
That those who hold back are the only ones who burn.

Kirk 9/2005

The Casual casualties

After reading this over at Unruly Mob, I just can't put up my usual Friday goof-off bullshit...

Semper Fi

Okay - The time of mourning is over

Well, now that Rush and the rest are going to be amping up to Re-label McCain a true conservative to the Republican base, I guess I'm going to have to take off my shroud of mourning for John Edwards and get on the Democratic bus. There will be no more bitching about Hillary or Obama, unless they really do something stupid. My vote will go to whichever is the nominee for the Democratic party, because there really is no alternative.

I will still be pimping Ron Paul for the "I ain't voting for no women, no minorities, and no damn liberals!" crowd. Because like it or not, he's a thousand miles ahead of the Bush crony alternatives. And a vote for Ron Paul is, effectively, a vote for the Democratic party in the end.

So all of you undecided Republicans- Vote your conservative conscience! Vote Paul. Or just don't vote at all, that will show America!

Paul does have his strong points- he's one of the few who understand monetary policy among the candidates. And here was his view on Iraq, stated in the House of Representatives in 2002

I sure like the way he talks about ending the war in Iraq, not because it is a failure, but because it is and has been a farce, from the get-go. Hillary can't do that, because she can't admit she was wrong to vote for the war. I don't mind a little flip-flop, if its under the impression that she was fooled by the corrupt Republicans who wanted this war so bad they broke several laws and traitorously exposed our own anti-terror personnel to our enemies...

Whoever speaks out the strongest against the occupation and getting us out of Iraq will get the nomination. I understand that they are worried about how to frame the withdrawal. For that, they could definitely take a page or two or three from Ron Paul's playbook-

I understand the need to play it safe, but with 70% of Americans wanting our troops home, and most of the remaining 30% being die hard Republican hawks, I think You are safe to say "Support the Troops. Bring them home" And by the way, when we bring them home, we will be saving the American taxpayer a Billion a month (a week?) ...

I'm a gonna tell you how its gonna be...

She walked into the living room. It's 2am and I'm up, and when I'm not in bed next to her, she gets kind of antsy...

I'm not really doing anything, puttering around, drank my last two beers, watched a bit of Ed Norton's rant in 25th hour, put some dishes in the dishwasher, paced around for about an hour, contemplating the joys of eating bacon and eggs in the middle of the night versus ruining this resolution thang. She comes in, sits on the couch, looks forlorn. She doesn't say anything. Neither do I. She doesn't look at me or give me the usual "What the fuck are you doing up at this hour" look. She's just there, a presence, not altogether unwanted, but not really desired at this point. I turn the stereo up, I break the silence and ask her in an offhand way if she likes Dylan. She does. She's a country girl, so I didn't know. She loves Tom Petty and Mellencamp, but like most of the people I know, anything older than they are just doesn't register.

I peek in at Rain and Amy, they're 'snug as bug as a rug' as they would say. Subconsciously agitated, I am forced from my study of nothingness by her invasion into my solitude. I flit about, then I look over at her, really look, and I see that all that she wants is comfort. I stop my nervous meandering and set down next to her, close. She lays her head on my shoulder and her gentle hand moves to rest on the inside of my elbow. Buddy Holly comes on, "I'm a gonna tell you how it's gonna be, You're gonna give your love to me... I'm gonna love you night and day" The song twists in my head and the words turn to "I'm a gonna throw your love away...."

I take a deep breath and suppress the thousands of the same old thoughts. Is it really Fear? Fear of commitment? I don't think so. That's what they tell me it is. "They" being all the women I know, the exes and the too close friends. "It's going to end up bad". Well, no shit, I reply. It always ends up bad, why should I even dream that this will be any different. I feel sorry for my fiancee'. I feel her heart stir, next to mine, as we sit there in the muted chaos of the moment. She doesn't want to talk and neither do I. She knows how I feel deep inside and exposing those feelings right now won't help anything. I want to talk, but I know at this moment, any conversation will be doomed to, inevitably, a fight. She thinks she can change me. Sometimes I do, too. She believes it. She believes it because she loves me and she knows I love her and she has always been told that this is enough.

It isn't.

But, I don't really feel like her martyring herself on the cross of my emotional indifference right this second. A sudden urge to write hits me and again, I feel the nervous energy surge through me. Rocket man by Elton is playing now, and I want to be on that rocket. It occurs to me that she is awake and not in the bedroom. The computer is in the bedroom. I avoid it when she's here because I understand that she regards it as competition. It is the other woman that I submit myself to the way she would like me to submit to her. I ask if she can't sleep. She says no. I know she just wants me to lay down with her and go back to bed.

I stand, I tell her I feel like writing as I move towards the bedroom.
"Writing about what?" Everything is specific with her. Every thought must have a label, every action a reason. She follows.

"On my blog." I reply, avoiding the question. I sit down at the computer and log on to blogger.

"I thought you deleted all those blogs."

"everything but the political one. You know me and politics" The word politics affects most women the way the word shopping affects men. She dismisses me, then. It isn't about her. She realizes I am not coming back to bed, and now, what's worse, is that I have stolen the bedroom. She grabs a comforter, whines a little. When I don't respond, she disappears.

And here I am, once again wondering what the fuck I am doing and trying to reconcile the desire for a relationship and pleasing this woman, who I do love- with the conflicting desires that want to rip me away. It's an old argument. One that I am tired of having with myself...

So, the desire to write is spent. My urge has come, came, and went. The bed is empty now.

Romney goes bye-bye

A loser speaks out: Watching Romney drop out of the race...

... says Porn and welfare is to blame for my single-fatherhood... ...Europe is facing destruction because of immorality and lack of religion... ...Says Chinks are outbreeding us, we will lose if we don't change gear and breed more... ...Say to get off the oil tit... (well one truth for every four bullshit statements)

oh here he goes - We are being held hostage by Ahmadinejad. Shit. Does this mean I have to raise my hand before I go get my welfare check so I can buy porn?

High taxes on private sector kills the country. Govt workers make more than Corporate officers... Huh??? What the fuck is he talking about? He must be including lobbyist kickbacks to Republican Congressmen.

Unions bad, corporations good

Islam believes in a government run by religion. (Talk about talking out of both sides of his mouth) They hate everything we believe. They hate our freedom. To fight them, we sent the bravest soldiers in the world. He takes a swipe at our military intelligence. We apparently didn't have enough money to stop 9-11.

And give the veterans the care they deserve.. Woo Hoo. Like this tickturd gives a good goddamn. He wants to spend more. I don't know where he plans on getting this money, except maybe by cutting education, healthcare, and wages to american employees.

"Just like Ronald Reagan did" "We are a nation at war" "they would retreat, declare defeat"
He's hitting all the same bullshit talking points. Oh, they are booing McCain now, hehe

"OSAMA BIN LADIN" OH MY GOD! "I cannot be a part of surrender, but I am giving up"

"in this time of war" about six times...

No wonder this vapid lying scumbag is getting the boot. Thank God this dick is gone.
"We cannot allow the leader of the United States to retreat in the face of extremism"

No shit. We need Obama, Hillary, or whoever becomes President to fully destroy what remains of the Republican party. People that can lie over and over to Americans like Romney just did ARE Extremists: religious extremists, economic extremists, and right wing radicals who have just screwed America over the past 7 years. It it far past time for these people to go.

I smile when I think of every Republican bushbot dollar that went to this idiot in vain. I am doubly happy when I think of every dollar that Romney has lost as a result of this failed bid.

It is not over yet. McCain/Huckabee is coming. One more conservative crony has fallen by the wayside, a victim of being just another clueless bush acolyte. We have more work to do.

UPDATE: POLISHIFTER: Fuck This Election
UPDATE 2: Empire Burlesque on Romney: American Psycho

Which Book are you?

I ran across this Which Book are you? quiz via Atomic Romance...

I'm not so sure that I appreciate it's results much...

You're Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every way, though you admit that this probably isn't the best and you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless, you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real.

Ah, Technology - it only took 7 questions for this quiz to decide I was a freak... Thats just wrong. So I took it again, and switched the answer to "Do you feel Old?" from No to Yes, and I ended up with this instead... Feeling young at heart, apparently, isn't doing me any favors. This is better.

You're Les Miserables!
by Victor Hugo
One of the best known people in your community, you have become something of a phenomenon. People have sung about you, danced in your honor, created all manner of art in your name. And yet your story is one of failure and despair, with a few brief exceptions. A hopeless romantic, you'll never stop hoping that more good will come from your failings than is ever possible. Beware detectives and prison guards bearing vendettas.

hmm... no, that ain't right... Well, what's life if you can't tweak it a bit? Let's try again...

You're Siddhartha!
by Hermann Hesse
You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in. This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's time to chill out under a tree.

Okay, I can deal with that one, at least.

Day late and a Dollar short

PSoTD recommends we highlight the blogrolls of others in an actual post for more link-love.

Here is the Blogroll for the esteemed physician, Dr. Zaius...

The Accordion Guy
Alien Loves Predator
AlterDestiny
Anaïs Nohant
Angry Ballerina
The Aristocrats
All Hat No Cattle
Atomic Romance
Aunt Dahlia
Badtux the Penguin
Beautiful Day Rule
Beginning to Bird
BenettonTalk
Betsy Devine
Bella Rossa
Beware of the Blog
Bitch Ph.D.
Blue Gal
Bob Geiger
bradblog.com
Brainshrub
The Bree Walker Blog
CalPundit
Cap'n Dyke
Capitol Punishment
Carnival of the Liberals
Chapter 56
Chicken Head
Circle Jerk/Square Dance
Common Dreams
Comrade Kevin
Crooks and Liars
Culture of Life News
Cyberography
The Daily Howler
Darkblack
Darwin's Dagger
The Dean's Office
Devilham's Attic
Dictionopolis in Digitopolis
DistributorCap NY
Down With Tyranny!
The Dubya's Media
Dump Michele Bachmann
Electronic Cerebrectomy
Eli Lyons
Evangelical Right
Evil Mad Scientist
Eyeteeth
Five Public Opinions
FOX Watch
Fragmentia13
FranIAm
Freida Bee
Germaine
Get-Your-Zs
Gledwood Vol 2
The Great Endarkenment
Johnny Yen Again
The Hill
The Huffington Post
I Am Bossy
I Am Jacks Non-Blog
Ice Station Tango
Illustrated Daily Scribble
I Miss Fafblog, Spot!
I, Splotchy
I Make No Promises
Impeachment Dreams
The Inconvienent Truth
Indecision 2008
Indexed
Infidel753 J
Jess Wundrun
Jesus' General
Jon the Intergalactic Gladiator
Jon Swift
Jonestown
Jossip Cable Quotables
Kelly the Little Black Dog
Kimonomomo
Knock Knock
Kommandos Project
L'ennui mélodieux
Lady, That's My Skull
Last Turn B4 Hooterville
Left 'Toon Lane
Les Enrages.org
The Liberal Coalition
Liberality
Like Kryptonite To Stupid
The Lippard Blog 2
Luminiferous Ether
Mental Detritus
Mercury Rising
Midnight/Noise
Mock, Paper, Scissors
Mondo Marco
Monkey Muck
Morning Martini
My Two Sense
MWB's World
naladahc.com
Neural Gourmet
Neccoland
The Needs of the Few
Nine Pearls
No Smoking in the Skull Cave
A Noble Undoing
Old American Century
Omnipotent Poobah
the Opinion Mill
The Otherwhirled
Pam's House Blend
Patriotboy
Phydeaux Speaks
Pidomon's Posts
PoliTits
pollster.com
Political Arithmetik
Princess Sparkle Pony
PR Watch
Rabbits, Toyen, and so forth
Republic of Sestakastan
The Quaker Agitator
Qwerty's Qoncepts
Quit Your Day Job
Scholars and Rogues
Shakespeare's Sister
Shelley the Republican
Silly Humans
Skippy the Bush
Sleestak
Some Guy's Blog
Spocko's Brain [ 2 ]
spiiderweb
Stardragon the Canadian
Stump Lane
A Sunny Thought
They Get Letters
This Is It
This Modern World
Threading Water
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Two Minutes In The Box
Übermilf
Unruly Mob/Les Enrages
Vagabond Scholar
Vigouruex Artiste
The Yes Men Yikes! [ 2 ]
What I Like/Universe
Wink Studios
Witches and Scientists
Westcoast Walker
Wondertrash
Wyldth1ng

And yes, my html ability is that of a 3rd grade Dubya. This is as purty as I can make it. I can't even figure out how to use all the damn space on the left side of the blog.

Schnell und wütend

If you come to a fork in the road, take it!

Interesting side trips:

Terrorism and Radicalization- What Not to Do, What to Do - Comprehensive presentation on the WHYS of terrorism that was presented to the U.S. State Department by Scott Atran

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When Scientists flip-flop - Scientists discuss the matters that they have changed their minds about...

I, myself, am on the cusp of changing my mind about a personal scientific theory I've held for years. I've always believed that insects were evolved from plants. But, with each new year of experience and wisdom I am beginning to feel that my heartfelt theorem of Botanical Phytoplankton Insect evolution may have been merely a self-delusion. It's hard to let go of this gut scientific knowledge. ;)

The World's Greatest Rubbish Dump -100 million tons of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean
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Healthcare is NOT an issue in the greater scheme of things - There are bigger things afoot. If we cannot become more self-sufficient on a statewide basis, this country will fail in a big way. Our state governments need to worry less about the federal tit and more about building a localized system of energy, food production, and healthcare. If the oil crunch came today, we would collapse as a nation.

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The Poison Tree truth about Guantanamo Bay - Chris Floyd explains that America's Gulag is just about domination. Innocence or Guilt need not be a factor.

My Love for you is like a truck...

Support your local Blogger AND receive a beautiful memento of 8 years of Pure Fucking Hell.
From Actor212 at Simply Left Behind $2 Wotta Bargain!



Buy Now before Bush declares Martial law

And remember kids, I wouldn't sell anything on my blog If I wasn't willing to blow cash on it myself-

Iraq's Tragic Future

Common Dreams has an interesting article written by Scott Ritter...

EXCERPT
The continued ambivalence of the American population as a whole toward the war in Iraq, perhaps best manifested by the superficiality of the slogan “Support the Troops,” all the while remaining ignorant of what the troops are actually doing, has led to a similar amnesia among politicians all too willing to allow themselves to seek political advantage at the expense of American life and treasure. January 2008 cost the United States nearly 40 lives in Iraq. The current military budget is unprecedented in its size, and doesn’t even come close to paying for ongoing military operations in Iraq. The war in Iraq has bankrupted Americans morally and fiscally, and yet the American public continues to shake the hands of aspiring politicians who ignore Iraq, pretending that the blood which soaks the hands of these political aspirants hasn’t stained their own. In the sick kabuki dance that is American politics, this refusal to call a spade a spade is deserving of little more than disdain and sorrow.

Patterns and Waves II: Order and Form

Part I is here

EXCERPTS from Elliot Wave Principle (in black)
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"The logarithmic spiral has no boundaries and is a constant shape. The center is never met and the outward reach is unlimited. The core of a logarithmic spiral seen through a microscope has the same look as a spiraling galaxy viewed through a telescope. It is the only spiral that never changes its shape.

The logarithmic spiral further indicates that one can go to infinity in a minus quantity from any point in the spiral and one can go to infinity in a plus quantity from the same point. Both ends of the spiral must meet somewhere in infinity in the form of a circle (zero) as there is no other place to meet. Plus and minus quantities must meet somewhere, and added together give zero. Zero is never nothing; it is always something. If we start from zero, we go back to zero."

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"Within the progression from ashes to ashes and dust to dust then, there is something which meets the circumstances of awareness. Thus the logarithmic spiral spreads before us in symbolic form, as one of nature's grand designs, the image of life in endless expansion and contraction on the same plane, the within and the without sustained by a common umbilical law: the 1.618 ratio or Golden Mean.

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"History abounds with examples of learned men who held a special fascination for this particular mathematical formulation. Of course, the earliest known, and probably the most interesting, is that of the priests of the Gizeh pyramid of Egypt, who recorded the secret of phi in its construction. Furthermore, it has been reported that the Great Pyramid was used as a temple of initiation for those who proved themselves worthy to understand the great universal secrets. Only those who could rise above the crude acceptance of things as they seemed on the surface to discover what, in actuality, they were, could be instructed in "the mysteries".

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"For some then, the "light of god" has been revealed through an understanding of the principle behind the logarithmic spiral, a principle of continuous growth and unaltered form.

"It is this form which gives structure and unity to the universe. Nothing in nature suggests that life is disorderly or formless. The word "universe" means "one order."

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If life has form, then we should not reject the probability that even the most minute facets of life will have been composed and are being created in a manner that follows the same principles of the greater form. Elliott's theory "postulates that no matter how minute or large the form, the basic design remains constant."

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"Both Pythagoras, who in a self-portrait held a pyramid marked "The Secret of the Universe" in his right hand, and Isaac Newton, who had the logarithmic spiral carved on the headboard of his bed, would probably have agreed with this formulation."

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These mathematical forms may or may not mean anything to you. You may see or sense this intricate web in all things, concrete as well as abstract. And even in doing so, you may still discard these theories as useless- yielding you no greater fathoming of the depths around you.

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The Desiderata reads:

You are a child of the Universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Hill Knows Dick!

Hill Country Gal has a hilarious find- The Dikipedia!

Moby Dick Cheney

"Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it."

"It smells like the left wing of the day of judgment."

More Tales of Dick:
Dickspearean Theatre
Olbermann on Dick
Treasonous Dick
Dangerous Dick
Can't Shoot for Dick

Various Dikipedia entries that had me cracking up:

Tom Brady: "On February 3, 2008, Tom Brady brought his team, with their perfect 18-0 record, to the Super bowl where he promptly choked and was beaten by a banged-up team of young players led by a guy who is not even the best quarterback in his immediate family."

Sean Penn: "Often described as an acting “powerhouse,” Sean Penn is known for his intensity and humorlessness. He has been a druggie, a delinquent, mentally-unhinged, and a retard. He has also played those characters in films."

Ronald Reagan: "Despite being America’s most famous conservative, Reagan actually began life as a New Deal Democrat. He began to turn away from the Democrats, however, when they aligned themselves with the burgeoning civil rights movement. "I didn't leave the Democratic Party", Reagan later claimed, "The party left me.” (Probably at a Whites Only water fountain.)"

Lance Armstrong: "married Kristin Richard in 1998. After bearing him three children, caring for them while he spent up to half a year, every year, training in Spain, and then supporting him through major illness and recovery, Armstrong rewarded his wife by dumping her for singer-songwriter Cheryl Crow. He subsequently broke off his engagement to Ms. Crow after she was diagnosed with cancer. That, apparently, was too much of a downer for him.
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In October 2007, he began dating Mary Kate Olsen. Or was it Ashley Olsen? No, it was Mary Kate. Whichever one it was, for a brief period, Armstrong was putting it to an anorexic ex-child star more than half his age. Not bad for a guy with one ball. "

Pat Robertson: "After failing to pass the bar exam in 1955, Robertson underwent his religious conversion, entering a field that has a much lower bar than the actual bar."

Patterns within Waves

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the flow from whence the rivers come, thither they return again...
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes

The upward and downward swings of life are caused by excesses of human optimism followed by excesses of human pessimism. The pendulum swings too far one way and there is glut; it swings too far the other way and there is scarcity. An excess in one direction breeds an excess in the other and so on, and so on, diastole and systole in never-ending succession.

What actually registers in life's ups and downs are not the events themselves, but the human reactions to these events, as greater and greater ripples in the water.

And even in these greater and greater ripples, there are counterwaves and patterns that are reflected over and over again, in such repetition that one might consider them not just random reactions but components of a material lattice. Once you see past the flow itself, into the patterns that form this seemingly chaotic stream of reactions, you can find yourself enabled to create your own minor patterns instead of being swept along by whichever wave takes you.

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Jon Swift on Blogroll Amnesty Day and how to Blog Unto Others

Here are a few good lists of lesser known blogs for ya'll to check out:

Suzi Riot

The Aristocrats

Ice Station Tango

The Right Candidate for the Right Reasons

The Left will eat itself

Jim Booth considers why Edwards, who has stood far above and beyond Obama and Clinton, is out and they are still in. I have struggled to put these same feelings into words, but he nails exactly how I (and I suspect, many others) feel about this subject.

EXCERPT

What Edwards is really doing is paying the price for being a white guy at the time of historic (and mostly just) back lash against the “aristocracy of white guys” that has been the target of the concerted efforts of “liberals” who aren’t liberal at all. What these “liberals” (too often media pundits) are are ideologues who proclaim that someone would make a better (read “more media interest worthy”) Presidential candidate simply because that person is a) a woman or b) an African-American. Justice is one thing - ideology is another - this is ideology at its most reeking…. Yes, I hear your scornful retorts: “These are the times that try [white] men’s souls…” yadda, yadda….
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I don’t say this to discredit Hillary or Obama, both of whom have real merit. I say this because the drive to push forward a woman or black candidate is (I fear) a media creation that allows the media then to control the narrative of the Democratic campaign - and the election. And the Democratic Party, which plays the sucker to every narrative the media creates for it, is playing the sucker again.
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John Edwards has addressed overtly and directly real issues plaguing our country at this historical moment - the shift toward a class system that the “Repugnacans” have engineered - and their systematic removal of any realistic opportunity for those in the rapidly developing underclass to better themselves. Edwards, like me, Sam Smith, and many others across this country, has been able to work hard, gain success, and rise to a position of both (in a relative sense) wealth and power because of the past social and economic policies of the Democratic Party. I don’t begrudge him any of his success the way the entitled scions of the Right do - to do so would be to repudiate my own life. What I find most repellent in The Left’s rejection of JE is its own smug self-righteousness that it is doing so for the “correct” reasons.
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Not so. The Left is rejecting Edwards because he reminds too many of us in the Left® of what WE came from - how we scrambled and worked and took advantage of opportunities made available by FDR, HST, JFK, and LBJ. It’s easier to glom onto the myth of Hillary as a deserving member of her gender or Obama as a deserving member of his race (despicably patronizing behavior masquerading as visionary open-mindedness) than to stand up and say “offering opportunities for people to better themselves has been and should always be a basic tenet of the Democratic Party.” That would mean supporting Edwards - who espouses these positions - and rejecting the more fashionable idea of supporting Hillary or Obama because they represent a “historic opportunity.”

Another poster at Scholars and Rogues, Martin Bosworth, had this say of Edwards:

Yet, through all that, his message perservered.
But his campaign did not. I honestly think it was because he focused so much on the dark, broken side of American life that people were frightened away. As I said to a friend of mine yesterday, the difference between Edwards and Obama is that the former inspires you to fight, while the latter inspires you to hope. And people would much rather hope than fight.

I would rather have a fighter than a hoper. And I would rather have the right fighter, not Hillary Clinton. Can we get Edwards back? Before it's too late?