Hip, Hip,...Boo!

Hallucinate Without the Use of Drugs

2008-08-09T01:52:00.003Z

Thomas Troward: How to Master Life

2008-07-15T05:42:00.005Z

(The Science behind "The Secret")

From a century ago, in the formerly out of print, Edinburgh Lectures.

Glenn Greenwald: The Baseless, and Failed, ‘Move to the Center’ Cliche

2008-07-01T01:01:00.006Z

Published on Monday, June 30, 2008 by Salon.com

Republican Nancy Johnson of Connecticut was first elected to Congress in 1982, and proceeded to win re-election 11 consecutive times, often quite easily.

In 2004, she defeated her Democratic challenger by 22 points. The district is historically Republican, and split its vote 49-49 for Bush and Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

In 2006, Rep. Johnson was challenged by a 31-year-old Democrat, Chris Murphy, who ran on a platform of, among other things, ending the Iraq War, opposing Bush policies on eavesdropping and torture, and rejecting what he called the “false choice between war and civil liberties.” Johnson outspent her Democratic challenger by a couple million dollars, and based her campaign on fear-mongering ads focusing on Murphy’s opposition to warrantless eavesdropping, such as this one:

The result?

Johnson was crushed:

Rep. Nancy Johnson, a 12-term Republican who ran a tough-on-terror campaign and touted her co-authorship of the Medicare prescription drug legislation, lost her re-election bid Tuesday to anti-war Democrat Chris Murphy.

Murphy had 56 percent to Johnson’s 44 percent with 12 percent of the precincts voting.

Johnson was the longest serving representative in Congress in state history.

Johnson’s final margin of defeat was 12 points.

Despite continuing to represent a tough, split district, Rep. Murphy — as he runs for re-election for the first time — recently voted against passage of the FISA/telecom amnesty bill, obviously unafraid that such Terrorism fear-mongering works any longer.

That pattern has repeated itself over and over. In the 2006 midterm election, Karl Rove repeatedly made clear that the GOP strategy rested on making two National Security issues front and center in the midterm campaign:

Democrats’ opposition to warrantless eavesdropping and their opposition to “enhanced interrogation techniques” against Terrorists.

Not only did the Democrats swat away those tactics, taking away control of both houses of Congress in 2006, but more unusually, not a single Democratic incumbent in either the House or Senate — not one — lost an election.

With Rove’s National Security, Terrorist-fear-mongering campaign, huge numbers of GOP incumbents were removed from office and replaced with Democratic newcomers.

Voters were simply impervious to claims that Democrats should be denied power because their opposition to eavesdropping and torture made them Soft on Terror. Earlier this year, Bill Foster made opposition to the Iraq War a centerpiece of his campaign — and emphatically opposed both warrantless eavesdropping and telecom immunity — and then won a special election to replace Denny Hastert in his bright red Illinois district.

As the 2008 election approaches, the Democrats’ position has strengthened further still.

In fact, in attempting to determine the best targets for the $325,000 we have raised so far to target Bush-enabling Democrats in Congress, the most difficult obstacle by far has been to find even a single Democratic incumbent who is vulnerable.

Not only does it appear that they all are likely to be re-elected, it’s actually difficult to identify ones who have any real chance of losing. That’s how weakened the GOP brand is and how vehemently the country has rejected their ideology and politics — in every realm, including national security.

* * * * *

So what, then, is the basis for the almost-unanimously held Beltway conventional view that Democrats generally, and Barack Obama particularly, will be politically endangered unless they adopt the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism and National Security, which — for some reason — is called “moving to the Center”? There doesn’t appear to be any basis for that view.

It’s just an unexamined relic from past times, the immovable, uncritical assumption of Beltway strategists and pundits who can’t accept that it isn’t 1972 anymore — or even 2002.

Beyond its obsolescence, this “move-to-the-center” cliché ignores the extraordinary political climate prevailing in this country, in which more than 8 out of 10 Americans believe the Government is fundamentally on the wrong track and the current President is one of the most unpopular in American history, if not the most unpopular.

The very idea that Bush/Cheney policies are the “center,” or that one must move towards their approach in order to succeed, ignores the extreme shifts in public opinion generally regarding how our country has been governed over the last seven years.

One could argue that national security plays a larger role in presidential elections than in Congressional races, and that very well may be.

But was John Kerry’s narrow 2004 loss to George Bush due to the perception that Kerry — who ran as fast as he could towards the mythical Center — was Soft on Terrorism?

Or was it due to the understandable belief that his rush to the Center meant that he stood for nothing, that he was afraid of his own views — the real hallmark, the very definition, of weakness?

By the time of the 2004 election, huge numbers of Americans already turned against Bush’s position on the War and ceased trusting him even in the realm of National Security.

Thus, the defining claim of Bush’s 2004 acceptance speech at the GOP Convention — the central distinction he drew between himself and Kerry — was not that his National Security views were right, but rather, was this:

This election will also determine how America responds to the continuing danger of terrorism — and you know where I stand.

. . .

In the last four years, you and I have come to know each other. Even when we don’t agree, at least you know what I believe and where I stand.

Bush’s ability to project “Strength” came not from advocacy of specific policies, but from his claim to stand by his beliefs even when they were politically unpopular.

For that reason, isn’t the perception that Obama is abandoning his own core beliefs — or, worse, that he has none — a much greater political danger than a failure to move to the so-called “Center” by suddenly adopting Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies? As a result of Obama’s reversal on FISA, his very noticeable change in approach regarding Israel, his conspicuous embrace of the Scalia/Thomas view in recent Supreme Court cases, and a general shift in tone, a very strong media narrative is arising that Obama is abandoning his core beliefs for political gain.

That narrative — that he’s afraid to stand by his own beliefs — appears far more likely to result in a perception that Obama is “Weak” than a refusal to embrace Bush/Cheney national security positions.

What’s most amazing about the unexamined premise that Democrats must “move to the Center” (i.e., adopt GOP views) is that this is the same advice Democrats have been following over and over and which keeps leading to their abject failure.

It’s the advice Kerry followed in 2004. It’s why Democrats rejected Howard Dean and chose John Kerry instead.

And in 2002, huge numbers of Congressional Democrats voted to authorize the attack on Iraq based on this same premise that doing so would enable them to avoid looking Weak on National Security.

The GOP then based its whole 2002 campaign on attacking Democrats as Weak on National Security and the Democrats were crushed — because, having accepted rather than debated the GOP premises, there was no way to challenge GOP National Security arguments.

What makes Democrats look weak is their patent fear of standing by their own views.

A Washington Post article last week on Obama’s move to the center included this insight:

“American voters tend to reward politicians who take clear stands,” said David Sirota, a former Democratic aide on Capitol Hill and author of the new populist-themed book “The Uprising.”

“When Obama takes these mushy positions, it could speak to a character issue.

Voters that don’t pay a lot of attention look at one thing:

‘Does the guy believe in something?’ They may be saying the guy is afraid of his own shadow.”

The central problem is that if Democrats embrace the GOP framework of National Security — that “Strength” means what the GOP says it means — then that framework gets enforced and perpetuated, and it’s a framework within which Democrats can’t possibly win, because Republicans will always “out-Strength” Democrats within that framework. It’s only by challenging and disputing the underlying premises can Democrats change the way that “strength” and “weakness” are understood.

The Democrats had such a smashing victory in 2006 because — for the first time in a long time, and really despite themselves — there was a perception (rightly or wrongly) that they actually stood for something different than the GOP in National Security (an end to the War in Iraq).

Drawing a clear distinction with the deeply unpopular GOP is how Democrats look strong.

The advice that they should “move to the center” and copy Republicans is guaranteed to make them look weak — because it is weak. It’s the definition of weakness.

The most distinctive and potent — one could even say exciting — aspect of Obama’s campaign had been his aggressive refusal to accept GOP pieties on National Security, his insistence that the GOP would lose — and should lose — debates over who is “stronger” and more “patriotic” and who will keep us more safe.

The widely-celebrated foreign policy memo written by Obama’s adviser, Samantha Power, heaped scorn on Washington’s national security “conventional wisdom,” emphasizing how weak and vulnerable it has made the U.S. When Obama took that approach, he appeared to be, and in fact was, resolute and unapologetic in defending his own views — the very attributes that define “strength.”

The advice he’s getting, and apparently beginning to follow, is now the opposite: that he should shed his prior beliefs in favor of the amorphous, fuzzy, conventional GOP-leaning Center, that he should cease to insist on a re-examination of National Security premises and instead live within the GOP framework.

That’s likely to lead to many things, but a perception of strength isn’t one of them.

One of the very few things in the universe with a worse track record than America’s dominant Foreign Policy Community is the central religious belief of the Democratic consultant class and Beltway punditry that Democrats, to be successful, must shed their own beliefs and “move to the Center.”

* * * * *

As a brief follow-up to the Keith-Olbermann-promoted claim that Obama’s support for the FISA bill is justifiable not only because it lets him avoid being depicted as “soft on terror,” but also because it leaves open the possibility that Obama can criminally prosecute telecoms once he’s President, NPR correspondent Daniel Schorr said last January that he “can imagine Mr. Bush, if nothing else avails, issuing a blanket pardon for phone companies that may have broken the law.”

As I pointed out on Friday, a Bush pardon would completely foreclose any Secret Plan to prosecute the telecoms criminally, even if Obama really did harbor such a plan and intended to execute it (despite never having even hinted at any such thing).

On Friday, Olbermann announced that he intends to deliver a “Special Comment” on Monday’s show to elaborate on his “Obama/FISA” defense.

When doing so, he should address this rather towering defect in his Obama-defending theory.

UPDATE:

To clarify, I’m not making an argument here about why Democrats (including Obama) “really” support Bush policies in terms of their “true motives.”

The term “Democrats,” even when confined to those in Congress, includes several hundred individuals, and their motives can’t be discussed monolithically.

Many Democrats support Bush policies because they believe in them.

Others don’t believe in them but are persuaded that they must support them in order to be re-elected.

Still others have no beliefs at all other than their own re-election and do whatever they perceive is most likely to achieve that.

Here, I’m simply taking the political argument at face value — that Democrats must “move to the Center” in order to win — and arguing why that’s empirically false.

UPDATE II:

Without my endorsing every point that’s made, Digby adds several thoughts in a post that is well worth reading.

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York.

He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power.

His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.
© Salon.com

Grit TV with Laura Flanders

2008-06-30T15:17:00.001Z

A Glimmer of Light in Television Wasteland
By MIKE WHITNEY

It's time to knock the cobwebs off the television and fish the remote from the trashcan. Believe it or not, there's finally something worth watching on TV. GRIT TV with Laura Flanders is a fast-paced political talk show that leaves its mainstream competitors in the rear-view mirror. This is the real deal and Flanders is hands-down the best interviewer in the business. She's bright, cheerful, well-informed and engaging. She also keeps the topic moving briskly from panelist to panelist, an art in itself. She even has a good handle on what's going on in the financial markets which is typically a weak-spot for liberals.

This isn't a half-hour free-for-all like the McLaughlin Group or another tedious spitting-match between a Loofah-wielding simian and his faux-liberal guest. GRIT TV is a forum for intelligent, articulate progressives to discuss the issues in depth without a script or an agenda. It's what TV is supposed to be, a way to strengthen democracy by maintaining an informed public. It's taken a while, but GRIT TV is headed in the right direction.

Political junkies don't have to wait for Bill Moyers Journal on Friday nights anymore to get their fix of thought-provoking analysis. GRIT TV runs Monday through Thursdays on Free Speech TV with a new panel every night covering everything from the environment, elections, race, gender, energy, to the economy. There's no lull in the action. The guests are the people who never get a shot at network TV; the activists and authors who are working for change but don't have the right-wing bone fides to appear on Chris Matthews, Wolf Blitzer or the other corporate-friendly talk shows. GRIT TV provides them with a platform to give their perspective and Flanders, thankfully, lets them talk. She doesn't sit like a coiled snake ready to pounce whenever someone challenges the conventional wisdom on the war or (heaven forbid) disparages a corporate sponsor. GRIT TV is not underwritten by big oil, Boeing or King Coal like so much of the crap on PBS. It’s all contributions from people who still believe that television can perform a public service.

Do you care whether your new "gas saving" Prius was made with sweatshop labor, or whether Obama's platform really offers progressive change, or what Kevin Phillips had to say about the global financial crisis? GRIT TV is a good place to start. It's all issues without the attitude.

Thursday night Flanders reviewed the recent Supreme Court rulings on the second amendment (gun rights) and habeas for Guantanamo detainees. That was followed by a 4 minute video which showed how African Americans were disproportionately victimized by the subprime meltdown. After that, Flanders led a lively discussion on "executive pay" and America's ever-expanding "wealth gap." It was all first-rate coverage.

This is television at its best; broadcasting that does not assume that its viewers are nincompoops that need plunging necklines and endless car chases to keep them entertained. GRIT TV doesn't provide bread or circuses, just hard-edged politics for people who really want to know what is going on. That's Flander's beat and she does it better than anyone in the business.

GRITtv airs Mon-Thurs,at 8pm & 1 am ET, on Free Speech TV (DISH Network ch. 9415) & at http://www.firedoglake.com. Laura Flanders is Alexander Cockburn’s niece.

Group Wants Pot-Smoking Allowed in Airport Lounges

2008-06-29T01:41:00.007Z

By Felisa Cardona
The Denver Post

Marijuana proponents want to know why federal officials continue to allow people to use alcohol on airplanes, but won't allow pot smoking in the lounges at Denver International Airport.

"Does it make sense to allow adults to use a drug that causes problems on airplanes and not allow them to use one that does not cause problems on airplanes?" asked Mason Tvert, executive director of Safer Alternatives For Enjoyable Recreation.

SAFER held a press conference on Tuesday outside the offices of the Federal Aviation Administration in Denver to propose a solution to the rash of in-flight disturbances on airplanes over the last year.

Last week, a New York woman, Christina Szele, was arrested after she started smoking in her JetBlue airline seat and punched a flight attendant who stepped in to stop her. Her plane, enroute to San Francisco from New York, was diverted to Denver because of the situation.

And in the last few months, DIA has been a hot spot for arrests of drunken, unruly airplane passengers.

Tvert argues that marijuana alleviates anxiety for people who are afraid to fly and that passengers could use pot in the smoking lounges at the airport as a safer alternative to alcohol.

DIA spokesman Chuck Cannon said he does not foresee marijuana smoking in the airport.

"Marijuana is illegal isn't it?," he said. "All the bars and restaurants are concessions and they sell what they sell. I do not know that we are going to tell them what they can sell. Alcohol is legal and tobacco is legal and marijuana is not."

Tvert said he doesn't have a problem with alcohol being sold in airports, he just wants people to have another option, which he believes is more sensible, available to them when they are flying.

"It just goes to show how brainwashed they are," Tvert said. "Alcohol and pills are perfectly acceptable, but they have a problem with marijuana being available in any way, shape or form. God forbid you use a drug that is proven less harmful than both of them."

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_9688987

Royal Freeloaders

2008-06-28T21:01:00.005Z

Friday, Jun. 27, 2008
UK Royals: We Don't Cost Much
By AP/GREGORY KATZ

(LONDON) — Buckingham Palace accountants insisted Friday that the cost of maintaining Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family is a bargain for taxpayers, despite a price tag of 40 million pounds ($80 million), while a prominent anti-monarchist group said many of the true costs are hidden.

The Republic group also complained that the queen and her husband, Prince Philip, spent more than 22,000 pounds ($44,000) of public money to take a helicopter to the Kentucky Derby during a prolonged official visit to the United States.

"She took a day off and went to the horse races and it cost the taxpayers a lot of money," said Republic spokesman Graham Smith. "We're going to raise serious questions about that. Why are we paying for a day at the races?"

The figures released Friday are incomplete, he said, because they don't include such things as security and the costs to local governments of royal visits.

In their annual report on the use of public money to support the queen and senior royals in their officials duties, Buckingham Palace officials stressed that the cost of the monarchy for each taxpayer is just 66 pence ($1.30) for each British subject.

It costs each Briton "less than the cost of two pints of milk or a download to an iPod" to fund the monarchy, according to a statement posted Friday on the queen's Web site.

Palace officials said public spending on the monarchy has increased from 38 million pounds ($76 million) to 40 million pounds ($80 million) for the year ending March 31 compared with the year before, but accountants said this was because of rising travel and maintenance costs, not a freespending lifestyle.

Accountants pointed out that real costs had dropped more than 3 percent in the last seven years due to cost-cutting measures.

Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse, said the queen's financial advisers pay "continuous attention to obtaining value for money."

He said the increase in overseas travel spending is a result of a higher number of requests from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the queen and other senior royals to make official visits abroad.

The reports made public Friday also show that taxpayers kicked in more than $560,000 to pay for an official two-week visit to the Caribbean by Prince Charles and his wife Camilla. This included $420,000 for a 12-day yacht
charter.

What's Up, Doc?

2008-06-28T05:58:00.006Z

Work like you don’t need the money
Love like you’ve never been hurt
Dance like no-one is watching
Screw like it’s being filmed
And drink like a true Irishman.

Anonymous

Politics and the Big Picture

2008-06-25T05:45:00.020Z

A citizenry always gets the government that is a perfect vibrational match to the national consciousness. A nation of people who resonate to freedom cannot and will not have a dictatorial government. Political organizations and societies are not immune to the operation of the Law of Attraction. Neither can governmental edicts negate the operation of the Law of Attraction.

If your government suspends the constitution and declares martial law, you may find policemen on every street corner. You can either rage, or wave. Freedom depends on your state of mind, not the decisions of some paranoid political leader. In any political environment, it is possible to remain positive and so attract positive things.

Many people consider it their duty to 'stay informed,' but ask yourself "Of what am I being informed?" Ask yourself whether the latest disaster is relevant to your life, and whether you can do anything about it. If you carefully examine the information being fed to you in the “news,” you may discover its true value.

It is irrelevant whether you agree or disagree with the madness presented on the news. It is your focus upon it that activates it within your vibration. Therefore, if you are a person who becomes emotionally involved with the news, you may want to rethink your participation.

Once a person truly understands universal principles (which can only occur by applying them in daily life and noting the results) he or she cannot ever be fooled again. No one can ever convince such an empowered person that danger exists anywhere that must be fought or protected against.

Once one understands that what is resisted always persists, no one can ever persuade you of the necessity of fighting war, or fighting poverty, or fighting pollution, or fighting anything; for those who hope to continue such things must count on your active cooperation in the continuance of them, or your resistance to them, which amounts to the same thing. Remember that resistance to "X" or participation in "X" both focus your attention on "X"! This is the brilliant equation of all master manipulators.

By the way, here’s what I call the First Law of Politics: “Politics is a subset of economics.” In other words, if you really want to discover the political truth, find out where the money’s going.

Ignorance is Bliss

When talking about politics or ‘current events’ (what are “current events” anyway? Stuff that other people write about), the common idea is that if you are ignorant of current events, you are some kind of moron, or a sort of air-head that hasn't a clue about the important things in life, and that in this state of ignorance you are likely to be blind-sided by the latest terrorist, murderer, or government edict. But this is backwards. Only by NOT activating the thoughts, feelings and vibrations corresponding to the murderer, terrorist, or government edict, will you be safe from it!

Current events are all about what-has-already-manifested. Most people would consider that if something has happened, then it is true, and that if something is true, then it is important, but this too is backwards. An event (like a war or an earthquake or the Fed raising interest rates) might be interesting, but it cannot influence your life until you get on the vibrational bandwagon.

Truth is what comes forth from the thoughts and feelings of a conscious being, for that is what is always being manifested, in every instant. Truth is consciousness, not the creations or manifestations of consciousness! So if you really want to change something, pay no attention whatsoever to what exists. Place your attention solely upon what you want to create, keep it there, act upon it, allow it to come into your experience, and watch the world change around you.

Become ignorant only of what you do not want. Ignorance is truly bliss, IF you are ignorant of that which you don't want.

-

(from the website, The Big Picture)

Despite Media Blackout, Protests Against Secretive Group Gaining More Attention

2008-06-24T21:53:00.020Z

-

(Bilderberg Conference ... June 5-8, 2008 ... in Northern Virginia)

For more information about the global elite knuckleheads, click here.

-

13 Principles of Spiritual Activism
-

‘Friendly Disrespect’ for Market

2008-06-18T23:08:00.012Z

by Linda McQuaig

It’s been refreshing to see the General Motors workers in Oshawa refusing to submit passively to the dictates of the market.

We’ve been taught that the market knows best. So workers are supposed to simply accept that market conditions have dictated the closure of their plant, eliminating 2,600 jobs. (The company’s signed commitment to keep the Oshawa truck plant operating is supposed to count for nothing, when the market speaks.)

Some 180,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada in the past two years while the federal government stood by doing nothing.

Such wilful impotence wasn’t always the norm. In the 1930s, the brilliant British economist John Maynard Keynes figured out that the marketplace isn’t the all-perfect instrument it’s cracked up to be, and it’s sometimes necessary for government to intervene.

That insight effectively solved the Depression.

Such interventionist thinking was also behind the 1965 Canada-U.S. Auto Pact. Rather than leaving it to manufacturers to decide where cars should be produced, the Auto Pact imposed “domestic content” requirements ensuring jobs for auto workers on both sides of the border. (Essentially, for every car sold in Canada, one had to be produced here.)

Within five years, the production of assembled vehicles in Canada had doubled, driving up employment in the auto industry and spurring economic growth throughout the country.

But starting in the 1980s, neo-conservatives revived the notion that decisions should be left to the market. In that spirit, the North American Free Trade Agreement ruled out “domestic content” requirements and the World Trade Organization outlawed the Auto Pact.

So pervasive is this market orthodoxy today that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that it’s just one school of economic thought, not a set of immutable laws.

Even Donald Macdonald, who headed the 1980s royal commission that endorsed Canada’s move to a more market-oriented approach to trade, described the conversion as requiring a “leap of faith.”

And nations that now urgently insist other nations abide by strict market rules haven’t always played by those rules themselves.

Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz notes that both the United States and Britain defied market orthodoxy by using strong measures to protect their domestic industries in the early stages of their development.

Only after their industries were internationally competitive did these countries become advocates of “free market” economics, vigorously preventing others from using the protectionist strategies that had worked so well for them.

It would make sense for Canada to press for a new auto pact with countries like Japan, China and Korea, requiring their auto makers to build as many cars here as they sell here.

What stands in the way is the same rigid thinking that blocked innovative action in the 1930s.

We should take inspiration from Keynes. “The future holds in store for us far more wealth and economic freedom and possibilities of personal life than the past has ever offered,” he wrote in the depths of the Depression, when the established order stood firm against government intervention. “There is no reason why we should not feel ourselves free to be bold … to try the possibilities of things.

“And over against us, standing in the path,” Keynes continued, “there is nothing but a few old gentlemen tightly buttoned up in their frock coats, who only need to be treated with a little friendly disrespect and bowled over like ninepins.”

Linda McQuaig’s column appears every other week in the Toronto Star.

New Door Opens

2008-06-01T19:43:00.001Z

last show

Submitted by SEDER on Sun, 06/01/2008 - 10:35am.

cross posted at aar

After 4 plus years, this Sunday's Seder on Sundays very well may be my last regular appearance on the Air America Radio schedule. I've been told that I am one of those being considered for the 3-6pm slot but,frankly, particularly in this economy, I'd advise you not to place a bet on it.

Anyway,...I will remain and am very appreciative to AAR for letting me continue as the online editor for AirAmerica.com. We are building an important online component to progressive talk.

That said, I am confident this will not be the last opportunity for you to hear/watch me on political talk.

I am proud of my work over the past four years. I started out as a pretty bad broadcaster, but think I 've certainly become mediocre! Whether on the Majority Report, The Sam Seder Show or Seder On Sundays, my ratings have always been an improvement of the show that I have replaced, or better than those that have replaced mine.

Some moments I am particularly proud of..

On the Majority Report, we gave now Senator Jim Webb his first national exposure when he was still a primary candidate, during our Fighting Dem series we did with DailyKos.

I gave Ned Lamont his first national exposure before he declared for Senate in CT, and he ultimately first "unofficially" declared his run with me on a Friday when I was filling in for Randi.

The time I got the right wing caller Dewey to cop to having some "feminization issues".

My long talks with the disputed Senator of Florida, Katherine Harris.

Just last month in the 3-6p slot, in interviewing Phillipe Sands, author of "Torture Team," I played some exclusive audio of John McCain for him which he then went on to cite in Congressional testimony.

I've had a great opportunity to interview folks like Eddie Vedder to Ricky Gervais to Desmond Tutu to Gore Vidal to Howard Zinn to Sen. Russ Feingold to Robert Altman to Fran Liebowitz, Triumph, Lawrence Lessigand on and on and on (and of course, Peaches).

Geek Alert...Believe it or not, some of my biggest thrills were having the opportunity to meet bloggers I had read before starting doing radio--

It was and remains a real honor to have been part of launching Air America and institutionalizing commercial Left Talk Radio.

Finally, thank you folks for the tremendous support you have shown me through the years. I have an unfortunate habit of being outspoken about things that don't behoove me professionally, and I suspect I would have been gone long ago without you folks watching my back.

All is Well

2008-05-12T06:23:00.001Z

Olympic torch burns US candidates

2008-04-12T23:08:00.005Z

Looking for the Olympic torch in San Francisco on Wednesday was every bit as uncertain as a snark hunt and, by the end of a bleak day for Chinese dignity, the likelihood of a US boycott of the opening ceremony in Beijing in August had markedly increased.

San Francisco was selected for transit by the torch on its tumultuous journey from democracy's cradle to the people's republic because the city has many Chinese. No doubt the majority of these turned out to cheer for the motherland, but the Bay Area also holds many passionate supporters of Tibet's rights.

The trans-Pacific China trade is a very significant factor in California's economy and Gavin Newsom, the city's mayor, supervised an intricate plan to avoid any embarrassment. After landing at San Francisco airport the torch appeared briefly at an opening ceremony, then scuttled into a warehouse and was rushed off in a car, away from a scheduled event on the Embarcadero where protesters had gathered.

It popped up again on the other side of the city, near the Golden Gate bridge, where relay runners carried it south, back towards the airport. One such bearer, 41-year old Majora Carter, whipped a small Tibetan flag from her sleeve, but was swiftly pounced upon by San Francisco cops.

Soon the torch was airborne. Mayor Newsom wiped the sweat from his brow and the Chinese press said the torch's San Francisco touch-down had been "a harmonious journey". This was an overly rosy assessment since Barack Obama chose that same day to inch closer to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's call upon President Bush to boycott the opening ceremonies.

Obama said that a boycott "should be firmly on the table" but that a decision should be made closer to the Games. "If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the president should boycott the opening ceremonies."

The Republican nominee, John McCain, has thus far been playing for time, caught between popular dislike for China and the fact that a Republican president, George Bush Jr., has declared that sports and politics are differing realms. McCain's spokesman says his boss condemns "the brutal oppression" of Tibet, and advises the president to "keep his options open".

But that's a fence-straddling posture which McCain, eager to burnish his reputation as a straight-talking, two-fisted kind of guy, will find hard to maintain. If he finds it politically necessary to call on Bush to avoid Beijing this August and go off to Texas and ride his mountain bike instead, the President will be in an awkward spot. Bush, a big sports fan, yearns to go to Beijing. Such outings are among the few pleasures left for a deeply unpopular president who will at that point be four months shy of retirement.

Pious talk from the White House about keeping sports and politics apart will certainly raise a snigger in the Kremlin, whose

Bush yearns to go to Beijing. Such trips are among the few pleasures he has left denizens will remember that in 1980 President Jimmy Carter led an international campaign which in the end prompted 62 nations - including the US, West Germany and Israel - to boycott the Olympics in Moscow because the previous year the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan.

In 1984, a year after the US had invaded Grenada, the Olympics were held in Los Angeles. No Western nation felt the need to boycott, though Russia and 13 of its allies did stay away, citing only "security concerns".

The official position of the US government has long been that Tibet is part of China. Cheap goods from China sold through Wal-Mart and other chains are a vital prop for lower-income Americans reeling at the inflation in the price of fuel, milk and other essentials.

A boycott by Bush could lead to reprisals by a furious Chinese leadership, which could make life difficult for the US in any number of ways. Life is not as simple as it was in 1980, though John McCain appears to think otherwise.

-Alexander Cockburn-

Thanks to Eric M. in San Francisco for the photos.

For Alice

2008-04-11T05:46:00.002Z

With Love

-

It’s ok, allow yourself a little hate
Hatred is not so bad when directed at injustice
You can turn the other cheek, just don’t turn the other way

Enemy of the planet we finally have a common aim
a reason to forget about our differences
and stand as a united front

It’s up to us, we must expose,
Humiliate American errorists
We’ll start with one
The war has just begun

The war has just begun!

-

nofx

What Are You Going to Allow?

2008-04-10T05:16:00.002Z

We Can Choose It!

Whatever you choose to give your attention to is your choice, and whatever you give your attention to, will activate a vibration within you. Whatever activates a vibration within you, will eventually manifest into your experience. And whatever manifests into your experience is always a perfect vibrational match to your vibration. The way you’ve been feeling matches your vibration; your vibration matches the way you’ve been feeling—and everything is in perfect order when you understand the management of Law of Attraction.

As we talk about Creation, we say to you that there are three parts in the equation: The first is asking: When you ask, Source Energy always answers. Step two: Source Energy answers. Step three: You allow it.

The Universe is big enough for all to create whatever it is they choose.

We Can Prefer It!

You are not asking with your tongue or words, you are asking with a vibration that emanates from you. You’re asking from that which you feel, know, and desire. You are asking from your preferences. And every preference is read, and instantaneously responded to, by the Energy that creates worlds—by the Energy that has the ability to line up circumstances and events for the fulfillment of any amazing thing that you have conjured or determined in your physical environment. And the next thing that you must do is be a vibrational match to that which you are asking for. So the big question is, what are you going to allow?

We Can Allow It!

It is a vibrational Universe. The Universe is magnetic, in the same way that your radio signals are, and when you come to accept that what you think and feel is always a vibrational match to what you get—then everything else falls easily into place.

When you understand that nothing comes to you that you are not vibrationally inviting or allowing, then you are less needing to change conditions around you—that you really have no control about—in order to be in your happy place.

--Abraham-Hicks--

Olympic Torch Anarchy

2008-03-25T06:13:00.000Z

Sensible Regulation & the Mortgage Fiasco

2008-03-24T06:52:00.002Z

Ashley Alexandra Dupre & Eliot Spitzer

2008-03-14T05:26:00.004Z

-
(more)

Changing the Game

2008-03-11T00:44:00.007Z

There is something else going on that does not relate to programmed astrological movements or cycles of time.

It is a transformation emitting from a level of awareness in which illusions like cosmic cycles are irrelevant.

To continue the computer analogy, Oneness is hacking into the system.

Synchronicity or coordinate ‘coincidence’ can have many causes.

It can be the Matrix program;
it can be consciousness caught in the cause and effect illusion we call the cycle of reincarnation and karma;
and it can be reconnecting in awareness—knowing—with the One, All That Is, and being drawn to similar states of consciousness.

The synchronicity of knowing frees you from the synchronicity of the program.
The trick is knowing which is which.

It is reconnecting with Oneness that carries the energy of true transformation and anyone can do this by ceasing to identify with the illusion and being the One that they are.

The Matrix ‘transformation’ and the Oneness transformation are running together and the way to tell them apart is their effect.

Does a change or event bring love or conflict?
Balance or imbalance? Justice or injustice?
Does it further divide or bring together?
Does it imprison or does it set free?

The Matrix transformation is about changing the game;
...
the Oneness transformation is ending the game
as we have come to know it.

David Icke

The Frequency-Holders

2008-02-26T00:28:00.011Z

The outward movement into form does not express itself with equal intensity in all people.

Some feel a strong urge to build, create, become involved, achieve, make an impact upon the world.

If they are unconscious, their ego will, of course, take over and use the energy of the outgoing cycle for its own purposes.

This, however, also greatly reduces the flow of creative energy available to them and increasingly they need to rely on “efforting” to get what they want.

If they are conscious, those people in whom the outward movement is strong will be highly creative.

Others, after the natural expansion that comes with growing up has run its course, lead an outwardly unremarkable, seemingly more passive and relatively uneventful existence.

They are more inward looking by nature, and for them the outward movement into form is minimal.

They would rather return home than go out.

They have no desire to get strongly involved in or change the world.

If they have any ambitions, they usually don’t go beyond finding something to do that gives them a degree of independence.

Some of them find it hard to fit into the world.

Some are lucky enough to find a protective niche where they can lead a relatively sheltered life, a job that provides them with a regular income or a small business of their own.

Some may feel drawn toward living in a spiritual community or monastery.

Others may become dropouts and live on the margins of society they feel they have little in common with.

Some turn to drugs because they find living in this world too painful.

Others eventually become healer or spiritual teachers, that is to say,
teachers of Being.

In past ages, they would probably have been called contemplatives.

There is no place for them, it seems, in our contemporary civilization.

On the arising new earth, however, their role is just as vital as that of the creators, the doers, the reformers.

Their function is to anchor the frequency of the new consciousness on this planet.

I call them the frequency-holders.

They are here to generate consciousness through the activities of daily life, through their interactions with others as well as through “just being.”

In this way, they endow the seemingly insignificant with profound meaning.

Their task is to bring spacious stillness into this world by being absolutely present in whatever they do.

There is consciousness and therefore quality in what they do, even the simplest task.

Their purpose is to do everything in a sacred manner.

As each human being is an integral part of the collective human consciousness, they affect the world much more deeply than is visible on the surface of their lives.

...from the book,
"A New Earth,"
by Eckhart Tolle

Hello New Day

2008-02-20T22:49:00.000Z

The Fake Transformation

2008-02-20T22:37:00.004Z

“We are in the midst of a collective transformation, at least at this level of perception, although I don’t believe it’s the one the New Age and others talk about.

I would suggest there are actually two ‘transformations’ and one is a fake designed to mislead us.

The year 2012 would appear very significant to the Illuminati and this is also the point at which the Mayan Calendar says there will be a transformation to a new world.

The ancient Mayans, in what is now Central America, developed their own measurement of time and observed repeating cycles that they detailed in the calendar.

They said that a Great Cycle began on August 11th, 3114 B.C. and would end on the winter solstice, December 21st, 2012, the point when a ‘Great, Great Cycle’ of 26,000 years would also come to a conclusion.

It relates to the New Age belief about moving from the astrological Age of Pisces to the ‘enlightened’ Age of Aquarius.

This is the moment when new cycles will begin,
it is said, and humanity will be infused with love and light. A Mayan Calendar website summarized this basic theme:

‘There is no reason not to take a leap of faith into imagining what may be in store.

We may trust that it is time for humanity to awaken in to a true partnership with each other, with the earth, and the Cosmos.

By accepting this partnership we may claim our birthright and become Galactic Citizens who care for and sustain the planet, thus sustaining ourselves.

This is clearly the challenge of our times.

Yet, arriving just in time and on schedule is the Winter Solstice dawn on the day we may remember that we are truly Children of the World.’

At the risk of upsetting many in the New Age, I say this is the fake transformation.

I have no problem with the fact that 2012 is significant in Time Loop terms, nor that the Mayans clearly had a remarkable grasp on the planetary and cosmic cycles they related to time.

I just say they were measuring the computer program, the cosmic planetarium, and that the predicted transformation is as illusory as the rest of this holographic reality.

It is another part of the DVD, another diversionary subplot.

There is no time, and anything that identifies with it is not a transformation to Oneness.

We are not ‘truly Children of the World’, we are truly Infinite Consciousness.

Identifying self with the ‘world’ is identifying with the Matrix.

It is a belief system that still relates to form, with being ‘human’, ‘Galactic Citizens’, and sustaining a holographic illusion we call ‘earth’.

Millions are caught by the Matrix in the fake transformation.

The Mayan Calendar is one example…”

(David Icke)

Electric Funeral

2008-02-14T06:01:00.001Z

The Streets When You Wasn't Famous

2008-01-30T17:58:00.001Z

Grow Rich with Peace of Mind

2007-12-28T05:00:00.000Z

No Breadlines in the Headlines

2007-12-09T05:26:00.003Z

-----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.majorityreportradio.blogspot.com/
(contains the updated Sam Seder Show Open Mic blogger links)
----------------------------------------------------------------

"I never thought that the GOP
posed a threat to the well-being of our nation.
...
But these days, I no longer recognize my old party."

Editor's note: The following passage is excerpted from
John W. Dean's new book, "
Broken Government

with permission of Viking, © 2007
by John W. Dean.

By John W. Dean

Sept. 11, 2007

In almost four decades of involvement in national politics, much of them as a card-carrying Republican, I was never concerned that the GOP posed a threat to the well-being of our nation. Indeed, the idea would never have occurred to me, for in my experience the system took care of excesses, as it certainly did in the case of the president for whom I worked. But in recent years the system has changed, and is no longer self-correcting. Most of that change has come from Republicans, and much of it is based on their remarkably confrontational attitude, an attitude that has clearly worked for them. For example, I cannot imagine any Democratic president keeping cabinet officers as Bush has done with his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, men whom both Democrats and Republicans judged to be incompetent. Evidence that the system has changed is also apparent when a president can deliberately and openly violate the law -- as, for example, simply brushing aside serious statutory prohibitions against torture and electronic surveillance -- without any serious consequences. Similarly, but on a lesser scale, Alberto Gonzales faced no consequences when he politicized the Department of Justice as never before, allowing his aides to violate the prohibitions regarding hiring career civil servants based on their party affiliation, and then gave false public statements and testimony about the matter. When the Senate sought to pass a resolution expressing "no confidence" in the attorney general, the Republicans blocked it with a filibuster. The fact that Bush's Justice Department has become yet another political instrument should give Americans pause. This body was created by Congress to represent the interests of the people of the United States, not the Republican Party, but since the system of law no longer takes account when officials act outside the law (not to mention the Constitution), Republicans do so and get away with it.

In the past the White House (whether occupied by Republicans or Democrats) placed tight restrictions on who could contact the Department of Justice regarding pending business. It was typically limited to only the president, the vice president, the White House chief of staff and White House counsel, who were authorized to speak with the attorney general, the deputy attorney general or the top assistant and associate attorneys general. However, in the Bush White House no less than a startling 471 White House aides are authorized to speak with 30 senior Justice Department officials. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Bush administration has made the Justice Department a political extension of the White House in the area of law enforcement, which is unprecedented and seriously dilutes the credibility of the government when it goes to court. It will take years to depoliticize the Justice Department, and countless nonpolitical career attorneys -- including some of the most experienced and able men and women ever to serve in the department -- have left because of the way Bush's people run it. Ironically, when Republicans find Democratic officials with even a toe across the line, they raise unmitigated hell for that official. But when a Republican official crosses the line, Republicans close ranks around the miscreant, as they have done with the former chief of staff to the vice president, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby, a sophisticated Washington attorney, leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity. Libby had leaked her name as part of the effort to discredit Valerie Wilson's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, who had traveled to Niger to determine for the CIA if Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium -- a claim that would be made by the Bush White House. When Ambassador Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed putting the lie to that claim, Scooter Libby led the attack against him, notwithstanding the fact that he was telling the truth. One of his tactics was to claim that Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative, had sent him on a boondoggle. Libby, as Cheney's national security adviser, was quite familiar with the potentially dire circumstances of leaking the identity of a covert agent. When special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald (the U.S. Attorney in Chicago) was appointed to investigate, Libby lied to the FBI and then to the grand jury about how he had learned of Valerie Wilson's CIA connection, claiming a newsman had told him, when, in fact, he had been told by the vice president. Although Special Counsel Fitzgerald found no criminal statute had been violated in leaking Valerie Wilson's name, he indicted and convicted Scooter Libby for false statements, perjury and obstruction of justice. Even before federal judge Reggie Walton (a Bush appointee) sentenced Libby to 30 months in prison and a $250,000 fine, Republicans were demanding that Bush pardon him.

Republicans have offered an array of explanation and justifications for a Libby pardon, but when one cuts through the smoke, what they are really arguing is that one of their own should not be punished criminally. It is an absurd position. Conservatives once claimed they stood for law and order, and that no person was above the law, but their words belie their true beliefs as expressed in their actions. Frankly, I hoped that Bush would pardon Libby, as it would have served as a particularly egregious and conspicuous example of the Republican double standard -- the authoritarian's "do as I say, not as I do" mentality. Voters understand hypocrisy, and another solid abuse of process (and power) could only help the Democrats get back into the White House.

Having watched the GOP's evolution as it embraced the radicalism of authoritarian conservatism, slowly ceding control to its most strident faction, the authoritarian conservatives, I can no longer recognize the party. These new conservative leaders have not only sought to turn back the clock, but to return to a time before the Enlightenment when there were no clocks. As former vice president Al Gore nicely stated it, the Republicans have undertaken an "assault on reason." Indeed, they have rejected their own reasoned philosophy by ignoring conservatism's teachings -- based on well-documented history -- about the dangers of concentrations of power. They have done so by focusing on the presidency as the institution in which they wish to concentrate the enormous powers of the federal government. Nixon led the way, and Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II learned from his mistakes. Nixon scowled as he scolded and secretly investigated his opponents in the name of national security; his GOP successors have smiled and reassured Americans they are operating to protect them as they have proceeded to convert the American presidency into an elective monarchy, with its own high council, which was once known as the federal judiciary.

Fortunately, the power of the authoritarian conservatism that has so dominated the Bush/Cheney presidency is waning, although it is not likely there will ever be less than about one in four Americans who will follow such authoritarian leadership without question. For authoritarian conservatism to win another presidential contest, its candidate would have to attract independent voters in addition to their hardcore base. But polling of independents reveals that they have largely become disgusted with the Republicans, and lean heavily toward the Democrats. In surveying all of the Republican contenders for the GOP nomination, I have found that to the man, they all are far more authoritarian than even the most authoritarian of the Democrats. This raises the almost certain likelihood that, regardless of how great a distance any of these GOP candidates might attempt to place between himself and the Bush/Cheney presidency during a general election campaign, in fact, if elected he is going to continue in the vein that has already caused this nation so much trouble. (There is no doubt that the GOP will select an authoritarian standard-bearer, because these are the people who are most active in the primaries and the most devoted workers in the general election. It is almost impossible for a non-authoritarian to win the Republican nomination, as the party is now structured.)

As I was writing this closing section an old friend from the Nixon White House called. Now retired, he is a lifelong Republican who told me that he voted for Bush and Cheney twice, because he knows them both personally. He asked how my new book was coming, and when I told him the title, he remarked, "I'll say the government's broken." After we discussed it, he asked how I planned to end the book, since the election was still a good distance away. I told him I was contemplating ending midsentence and immediately fading to black -- the way HBO did in the final episode of the Sopranos, but that I would settle for a nice quote from him, on the record. He explained that he constantly has to bite his tongue, and the reason he does not speak out more is because one of his sons is in an important (nonpolitical) government post, and we both know that Republicans will seek revenge wherever they can find it. How about an off-the-record comment? I asked. That he agreed to.

"Just tell your readers that you have a source who knows a lot about the Republican party from long experience, that he knows all the key movers and shakers, and he has a bit of advice: People should not vote for any Republican, because they're dangerous, dishonest and self-serving. While I once believed that Governor George Wallace had it right, that there was not a dime's worth of difference in the parties; that is not longer true. I have come to realize the Democrats really do care about people who most need help from government; Republicans care most about those who will only get richer because of government help. The government is truly broken, particularly in dealing with national security, and another four years, and heaven forbid not eight years, under the Republicans, and our grandchildren will have to build a new government, because the one we have will be unrecognizable and unworkable."

Have you had your
hugs
anD
rugs
today?

What about the New Westerns?

Is that the wailing of Caterwauls?

And, alas, do we?....

...

Do we enter
the new year
trippin'
& flipping
all about
with high-flying
trailblazing
Sons and Lovers?

Sure hope so.

Love. Love. Love.

As we remain ... always ...
blank forever.

Love to be continued...

Hollywood, we'll be right over.
Just waiting for some cold beer to go.

Once Upon A Time, 100 Years Ago in America

2007-12-01T22:47:00.000Z

Anything, everything, is possible.
-- Thomas Edison, 1908 --

The Boy and the Machine

New Year's Day

"On the cool, fine afternoon of January 1, 1908, a sixteen-year-old boy named Terrance Kego -- or Tego, as several brief accounts had it in the next day's papers -- stepped onto his bicycle at his home on West 131st Street and began pedaling down Amsterdam Avenue in the direction of Central Park. Other than his address and his occupation as a clerk, few details about the boy survive. A few more, though,
can be surmised.

As he started down the wide avenue, descending from Harlem Heights to the valley at 125th Street, he would have passed through a sloping neighborhood of row houses and low apartment buildings occupied by working-class families. Because today was a holiday, and because the weather was pleasant, some of the families would have been out on the avenue, strolling the bluff above the river. Young children would have turned to watch Terrance glide by on his bicycle, hunched over his handlebars, cap pulled low on his head, wind pulling at the tail of his coat. Perhaps a few flecks of confetti escaped from the furls of his coat and fluttered out behind him like tiny bright moths.

Certainly Terrance had gone out to greet the New Year the previous evening. What sixteen-year-old boy could have resisted the tug of the street? He may have joined the swollen tide of revelers on 125th Street, where the festivities had continued, with occasional interruptions from the police, until nearly dawn. Or more likely, being a self-supporting and spirited adolescent -- the kind of go-getter, according to the next day's New York World, who had made a New Year's vow to "take no one's dust when on his bicycle" -- he'd traveled downtown to Forty-second Street to cast himself into that great cauldron of humanity that was Times Square on New Year's Eve.

Only a few years earlier, well within Terrance's young memory, New Year's Eve had been a quiet and civilized affair spent at home or on the streets of lower Broadway, where the chimes of Trinity Church rang harmoniously at midnight. These last several years, though, it had metamorphosed into something entirely different -- more like an election night bacchanalia, with a bit of Independence Day bumptiousness thrown in, plus some frantic energy all its own. The chimes still rang at the old church downtown, but the action was uptown now, and its pulsating center was right here at the nonsectarian intersection of Broadway and Forty-second street.

Arriving in Times Square, Terrance would have climbed directly into a press of bodies and a blizzard of confetti swirling under the dazzling lights of Broadway. The streets had been filling since early in the evening, tens of thousands of bodies funneling in from Union Square and the Flatiron district, from the Tenderloin, still others from the outer boroughs by streetcar or subway or ferry. "An acrobat could hardly have managed to fall down for a wager, so tightly did the people hold each other up," reported the next day's New York Evening Sun. A special correspondent for the Chicago Daily Tribune judged the noise in Times Square to be more varied than in previous years. "Slide trombones that yowled like a cat in torture, a combination of cowbells and street car gongs, tin horns with a double register, sections of iron pipe that could be rasped with files till they gave forth bellows that carried for blocks," were a few of the sounds the correspondent recorded. Shouts and squeals blended with these other sounds to create, as the New York Tribune put it, a "terrifying reverberation."

To step into that crowd was to release all sense of direction and decorum.
It moved as an organic, unruly mass, drifting, lulling, then surging spasmodically.
A sixteen-year-old boy on the last night of 1907 would have been astonished to find himself squeezed in among so many strangers; or, more to the point, among so many young women. While the usual distaff armor -- overcoats, ankle-length skirts, petticoats, shirtwaists, steel-plated corsets, undergarments -- did its job of keeping feminine flesh secured, the rules of Victorian modesty lapsed that night. Men and women ground against each other indiscriminately.

At every corner, meanwhile, temptation beckoned in the form of vendor carts stocked high with horns and nickel bags of confetti. Assuming you could get to one of these vendors, you could stick a horn into your mouth and stuff your pockets with confetti, all for a dime, then dash back into the swarm to discharge your colored specks into the face of a stranger. More aggressive boys and men squirmed through the crowd with small feather dusters -- "ticklers," they were called -- brushing the exposed flesh of women's faces and ears, then vanishing before they could be reprimanded or cuffed. Police Commissioner Bingham had issued an edict against the use of ticklers this New Year's Eve but nobody paid him any mind. Many of the women had taken matters into their own hands, covering their faces with heavy veils to ward off the feathers.

Near Forty-second Street, a group of enterprising young men pulled a clothesline across the sidewalk, tying one end to an iron post and drawing the other end taut to the curb. When young women approached, they raised the line a foot or two off the pavement. "Leap year, ladies!" they called. "Take the jump. Show what you can do for leap year!" Some women stepped down onto the street to walk around, but many accepted the challenge. They lifted their skirts above their ankles and jumped.

Young men executed most of the pranks that night, but the females were hardly blameless. Groups of them clasped hands to each other's shoulders to form daisy chains, then ran into the crowd, whipping through it with merry violence. Late in the evening, at Forty-sixth Street and Broadway
-- was Terrance there to see it? --
a dozen young women encircled a well-dressed young man. Locking their arms together, they refused to let him escape. The young man repeatedly tried to bash his way out of their circle but the young women only pushed him back into the center, taunting and jeering him. A policeman finally rescued the hapless young man, but not before the women had kicked his silk hat down Broadway.

What Terrance could not have witnessed that night were the diamond-clad women smoking cigarettes inside the glittering precincts of Rector's and Martin's.
These two Broadway restaurants, among others, had relaxed their usual restrictions and allowed female patrons to indulge in tobacco, a fact so remarkable it was recorded on front pages of newspapers around the country. Much as Americans would tune their television sets to watch the ball drop in Times Square in later years, they looked to New York that New Year's Eve for excitement, dismay, and provocation. On the night of the first-ever ball-drop, New York did not disappoint.

Just before midnight, a hush fell over the crowd. All eyes rose to the top of the Times building. Up there, hovering over the city beyond the glare of powerful searchlights, poised at the tip of the seventy-foot flagpole, a giant glittering sphere waited to fall. It was five feet in diameter, seven hundred pounds in weight, and cloaked in 216 white lights. Nobody could have guessed they were about to witness the debut of a custom that would still mark the New Year a century later; nor was it likely, at this moment, that anyone was peering so far ahead.
It was enough, in the remaining seconds of 1907, to contemplate the difficulties
of the year behind and the promises of the year ahead.

The crowd began to count backward: tens of thousands of voices rising to the sky above New York, joined together in anticipation of something new and marvelous.
Then the gleaming orb fell and bright white numbers flashed on the roof of the Times building: 1908: 1908: 1908.

At the end of the long glide down to 125th Street, Terrance could either pedal furiously to gather speed, then take his chances dodging whatever traffic might be passing along 125th Street -- thereby preserving his momentum for the long ascent
to Morningside Heights -- or he could veer east on 125th Street.
The latter was the easier, more sensible route. The thoroughfare would have been quiet on New Year's Day. A few horses would be standing at the curb before their carts, snorting patiently. An automobile might rumble past, but automobiles were still scarce in Harlem, since not many people living on fifteen or twenty dollars
a week could afford one. Other than the piles of horse manure,
which Terrance would be mindful to dodge, the street promised a smooth ride
over macadam.

A few effortless blocks, then Terrance would turn south again, skirting Morningside Park. To his right, across the park, rose the stony cliffs of Morningside Heights. Atop them, blotting the weak afternoon sun, loomed the gray walls of St. John
the Divine, the great cathedral begun the year Terrance was born and still in the infancy of its construction. The plain of Jewish Harlem spread out to the east.
The road was flat all the way south to Central Park. Terrance's legs would
still be fresh when he got there.

Had there ever been a finer time to be an American boy on a bicycle than on that first day of the new year of 1908? Certainly the interests and passions of a
sixteen-year-old had never coincided so perfectly with those of his country.
America was very much an adolescent itself, brash and exuberant, stirring with strange and urgent new longings, one moment supremely confident and clever,
the next undone by giddiness and hormones. The psychologist G. Stanley Hall had recently coined the term "adolescence" to describe the passionate "new birth"
that occurred in humans between childhood and maturity. It was, wrote Hall,
a phase characterized by "storm and stress," but also by joy and delight,
as "old moorings were broken and a higher level attained."
The description fit the America of 1908 as well as it did any teenager.

Mainly, what a sixteen-year-old American boy and his country shared was a sense of their own glorious futures. Only a few months earlier, in October of 1907,
a financial panic -- "the flurry," the papers insisted on calling it
-- had sent stock prices tumbling and thrown millions of Americans out of work. Already, though, the economy seemed poised to rebound and resume its relentless growth. To an ambitious boy already in possession of a bicycle and a job,
the future was limitless.

This morning, the World had published an essay to greet the New Year in which the paper's editors looked back to the past, then ahead into the future.
The title of the piece was simply "1808 -- 1908 -- 2008."

The World began by noting how far the country had progressed over the previous century.

In 1808, five years after the Louisiana Purchase and two years after Lewis and Clark returned from their transcontinental journey,
the country's population was a mere seven million souls.

The federal government was underfunded and ineffectual.

The state of technology -- of transportation, communication, medicine, agriculture, manufacturing -- was barely more advanced than
during the Middle Ages of Europe.

Now, in 1908, with the population of America
at almost ninety million, the federal revenue was forty times greater than it had been a century earlier and America was on a par with Britain and Germany
as a global power.

U.S. citizens enjoyed the highest per-capita income in the world
and were blessed with the marvels of railroads and automobiles,
telegraph and telephone, electricity and gas.

Banks of high-speed elevators zipped through vertical shafts of the tallest buildings on earth.

Pneumatic tubes whisked mail between far-flung post offices
in minutes.

Men shaved their whiskers with disposable razor blades
and women cleaned their homes with remarkable new devices called vacuums.

Couples danced to the Victrola in the comfort of their living rooms
and snuggled in dark theaters to watch the flickering images of the Vitagraph.

Invisible words volleyed across the oceans
between the giant antennas of Marconi's wireless telegraph,
while American engineers cut a fifty-mile canal
through the Isthmus of Panama.

From the glories of the present, the World turned to the question of the future:

"What will the year 2008 bring us?

What marvels of development await the youth of tomorrow?"

The U.S. population of 2008 would be 472 million,
predicted the World.

"We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses
swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades
and around dizzying curves.

We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air.

The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place
of our spent coal
and flash their strength by wire
to every point of need.

Who can say?"

Not a day passed without new discoveries and advances achieved or promised.

This very New Year's Day Dr. Simon Flexner
of the Rockefeller Institute
was publicly declaring his conviction
(in a medical paper read at the University of Chicago)
that human organ transplants would soon be common.

Meanwhile, the very air seemed charged -- it was, actually --
with the possibilities of the infant wireless technology.

"When the expectations of wireless experts are realized
everyone will have his own pocket telephone
and may be called wherever he happens to be,"
Hampton's Magazine daringly predicted in 1908.

"The citizen of the wireless age will walk abroad
with a receiving apparatus compactly arranged in his hat
and tuned to that one of myriad vibrations by which he has chosen to be called....

When that invention is perfected,
we shall have a new series of daily miracles."

As a New Yorker, Terrance would have been keenly aware of how abruptly daily miracles were transforming the modern world.
The city provided an education in rapacious progress,
evolving at the jumpy speed of a Vitagraph picture,
escalating toward some yet unwritten but marvelous destiny while accompanied by
the tune of pounding rivet guns and 310,000 jangling telephones --
six times more phones than in Paris, the New York Telephone Company bragged,
and twice as many as in London. Though London remained the largest city
in the world, New York was a close second, and twice as large
as its nearest American competitor, Chicago. And still growing by leaps and bounds.

"The great city of New York is in that stage of its development in which
it may be likened to a youth who is neither man nor boy,"
observed the New York Tribune later that January. "It is in the transition stage.
It has not yet lost the ungainliness and awkwardness of the growing youth,
but every day can see fresh evidence of its coming symmetry, strength and beauty."

The population of the city had risen by one million inhabitants since Terrance turned nine and continued to grow at a rate of ninety thousand per year.
In 1907, the largest influx of immigrants in the nation's history -- 1.29 million -- had arrived on American shores, most of them sluicing through New York's
Ellis Island, and many staying to settle in East Side tenements and add themselves to the enormity of the city. As the population grew, the city's infrastructure expanded at a mind-boggling rate. Terrance was twelve when the longest
and most intricate subway system in the world opened under the streets of New York. A year before that, the Williamsburg Bridge had opened, and since then two new remarkable bridges, the Manhattan and the Queensboro, had been rising over
the East River. Tunnel workers were meanwhile blasting and digging beneath
both the East and North (Hudson) Rivers. Within the next two months of 1908,
two tunnels would open under the rivers, one to Brooklyn, the other to New Jersey. Back aboveground, the Singer Building, the tallest skyscraper in the world,
was nearly complete downtown. Already ironworkers were raising the steel
of a taller building, the seven-hundred-foot Metropolitan Life tower
on Madison Square.

Like giant fingers, these towering new structures pointed insistently to the sky. Railroads and automobiles had penetrated the terrestrial interior, subways and tunnels and mine shafts had delved into the subterranean, and now man
would conquer air. Architects and visionaries imagined future metropolises
of one-thousand-foot towers connected by webs of high-altitude bridges and catwalks; of civilizations of airborne people who would live above the earth and traverse
the crowded skies in various aircraft. A headline in that morning's Times
echoed the prediction: many may fly in 1908. The newspaper quoted
the French aviator Henri Farman: "Twelve months from now we will have aeroplanes which will fly ten or twelve miles easily without once touching the earth."
It was an absurd, fantastic proposition, and yet --

Anything, everything, was possible. If you doubted Thomas Edison's confident assessment, you might look to Harry Houdini for confirmation.
The famed illusionist lived with his wife and mother at 278 West 113th Street,
just down the block from where Terrance was passing now. Inside his handsome brownstone Houdini was putting the finishing touches on his latest act,
the Milk Can Escape, for a late January debut in St. Louis.
But even Houdini's Milk Can Escape paled next to the marvel of flying.
Nothing, really, compared to flying. (A point Houdini himself would concede
when he purchased an airplane a few years later.)
Most Americans still considered airplane flight more of a fantastical dream
than a practical reality in these early hours of 1908.
The names of Wilbur and Orville Wright were only vaguely familiar,
and those who knew of them had little reason to assume
these taciturn bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio, would emerge
as victors in the race to the sky.

How strange, then, that before the end of the year the Wrights
would be more celebrated than Houdini -- more celebrated, in fact,
than just about anyone on earth. And the boy, who turned and leaned now,
swooping across 110th Street to the park entrance, would learn the story,
along with every other American, of how Wilbur Wright discovered
the secret of aerial equilibrium by riding a bicycle. ..."

-

(from the new book, "America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation," by Jim Rasenberger)

The Dawn of a New Era

2007-11-26T19:13:00.000Z

The dawn of a new era necessarily declares
that the existing order of things cannot much longer be.

The issue between the old regime and the new,
the crux of the social problem,
is entirely a question of conviction
in the minds of the people
as to the nature of the Universe. ...

As long as the people regard the Cosmic power
as a power non-human and alien to humanity,
so long will it be comparatively easy
for a supposed privileged class
to rule by Divine right
in spite of every protest of social sentiment. ...

No human being has any more power
than any other human being,
except such as may willingly be delegated to him. ...

The Divine Mind is the Universal Mind;
it makes no exceptions, it plays no favorites;
...but when the individual understands
and realizes his Unity with the Universal principle,
he will appear to be favored because he will have found
the source of all health, all wealth, and all power.

http://www.psitek.net/pages/PsiTekTMKS43.html

If You Want a New View of the World...

2007-10-16T07:04:00.000Z

...by Bill Tchakirides

"My wife and I celebrated our 29th anniversary today, and, as we have for the past five years, we traveled to Baltimore for a Brunch at the Rusty Scupper (expensive, but as lovely view of the inner harbor and a live jazz quartet) and a visit to the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM). The AVAM changes it's exhibition each year about two weeks before our anniversary, and this year the show is All Faiths Beautiful, showing views on spirituality "from Atheism to Zoroastrianism."

As we are atheists, it is a pleasure to visit a show which realizes that atheism is a faith, has a moralistic premise, and is as important as the "religions" that are also included.

The show is dedicated to and filled with quotations from Jalaluddin Rumi, a Zoroastrian poet and philosopher who lived in Persia 800 years ago. In fact, Rumi is the largest selling poet in both America and Europe... and the UN has declared 2007 the International Year of Rumi. It struck me as interesting as I read this information entering the Museum that George W. Bush is celebrating the Year of Rumi by getting ready to bomb his ancient home (Persia, as you know, is now Iran)... and I'm sure that Bill Kristol and other NeoCons are planning other big celebrations for Rumi's tear.

One quote of Rumi's that I found particularly memorable:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field.
I'll meet you there.

The exhibition is full of what we used to call "naive" art, but "visionary" art seems a much better label. This is work by non-professionals, addicts, religious country people and others who do not make a living from art but are forced to express what they feel. Sculpture, paintings, drawings, tapestries... phenomenal and inspiring. I never leave without a mind full of thoughts about the world we live in.

I encourage visitors... the show runs through August."

Under the Lobsterscope

Thanks, btchakir.

Ani DiFranco -"Both Hands"

2007-10-14T20:14:00.000Z

...live,...newly surfaced home-made footage,...

Recognizing

2007-09-25T18:15:00.000Z

There is one constant steady Stream of pure positive Energy flowing to you at all times, and in any moment, you, as an individual, are allowing or resisting that Stream. When you’re allowing the Stream, you feel wonderful, you feel clarity, you feel vitality, you feel health, you feel abundance. You feel good. But if you are not allowing the Stream, you don’t feel so good. That’s what blame or doubt or fear is about.

You came forth into this sea of diversity, this sea of contrast, but you did not intend to make that contrast resistance.

Contrast is seeing all the stuff to choose from—sort of like a breakfast buffet—and choosing from it what you want. That’s saying, “Ah, I don’t like that. Don’t like that. Ooh, I like this. This is better. Ah, this is what I am wanting.” That is benefiting from contrast.

Most physical beings are oriented to push against what they don’t want because somehow you got some idea that that stuff has the ability to assert itself into your experience. And so, most of you believe that if you don’t get real strong and real capable of holding bad things away, that they’ll slip in and get you. So you’ve gotten very, very good at developing a resistant stance, believing—wrongly—that, in your resistance, you will keep it away, never dreaming that, in your resistance, the only thing you manage to hold away is your own Stream of Well-being.

When you start feeling how your thoughts feel, then you start recognizing when you are allowing and when you’re resisting. But as long as you are just thinking thoughts, those old habitual thoughts feel normal even though they’re full of resistance.

Now we know that sometimes things get quite a bit of momentum going, so much so that you can’t stop it, or so it seems. Sometimes a nice lobotomy would help, or a bit of unconsciousness, a little slumber or nap, some sort of distraction from whatever terrible treadmill you are upon. But the more you are in conscious connection with your resonating pure positive Energy Source, the less able to tolerate any deviation from it you become, and, therefore, the more aware at the early stages when you are stepping into that sort of situation.

-Abraham-Hicks-

What Takes You Beyond

2007-09-15T19:25:00.000Z

The ability to imagine what you are wanting,
...
rather than only observing what-is,
...
is what takes you beyond.

You are a physical being,
...
but you are much more.

Abraham-Hicks

The Bar is a Beautiful Place

2007-09-01T18:17:00.000Z

The Furniture of Your Own Mind

2007-08-18T06:16:00.000Z

You form your reality directly.
You react consciously and unconsciously to your beliefs.
You collect from the physical universe, and the interior one,
data that seems to correlate with your beliefs.

Believe, then, that you are a being unlimited by nature,
born into flesh to materialize as best you can
the great joy and spontaneity of your nature.

Core beliefs are those about which you build your life.
You are consciously aware of these...

Data that seems unrelated to this core belief is then not assimilated
but thrown into the corners of your mind, unused,
and you are denied the value of the information.
... inactive material.

This information will not be a part of the organized structure of your usual thoughts.

A core belief is invisible only when you think of it as a fact of life,
and not as a belief about life...

... you must become aware of your own structures.
Build them up or tear them down,
but do not allow yourself to become blind
to the furniture of your own mind...
it will help you, in fact, if you think
of your own beliefs as furniture that can be rearranged,
changed, renewed, completely discarded or replaced.

Your ideas are yours. They should not control you...

Imagine yourself then rearranging this furniture.
Images of particular pieces will come clearly to you.
Ask yourself what ideas these pieces represent.
See how well the tables fit together.
Open up the drawers inside.

You must understand that these are not simply dead ideas,
like debris, within your mind.

They are psychic matter.

In a sense then they are alive.

They group themselves like cells,
protecting their own validity and identity.

You feed them, figuratively speaking, with like ideas.

(Seth excerpts)

http://sethquotes.paradisenow.net/seth_excerpts_part_i.html

PAUL KRUGMAN: Workouts, Not Bailouts

2007-08-17T16:57:00.001Z

In April, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, declared that all the signs he saw indicated that the housing market was “at or near the bottom.” Earlier this month he was still insisting that problems caused by the meltdown in the market for subprime mortgages were “largely contained.”

But the time for denial is past.

According to data released yesterday, both housing starts and applications for building permits have fallen to their lowest levels in a decade, showing that home construction is still in free fall. And if historical relationships are any guide, home prices are still way too high. The housing slump will probably be with us for years, not months.

Meanwhile, it’s becoming clear that the mortgage problem is anything but contained. For one thing, it’s not confined to subprime mortgages, which are loans to people who don’t satisfy the standard financial criteria. There are also growing problems in so-called Alt-A mortgages (don’t ask), which are another 20 percent of the mortgage market. Problems are starting to appear in prime loans, too — all of which is what you would expect given the depth of the housing slump.

Many on Wall Street are clamoring for a bailout — for Fannie Mae or the Federal Reserve or someone to step in and buy mortgage-backed securities from troubled hedge funds. But that would be like having the taxpayers bail out Enron or WorldCom when they went bust — it would be saving bad actors from the consequences of their misdeeds.

For it is becoming increasingly clear that the real-estate bubble of recent years, like the stock bubble of the late 1990s, both caused and was fed by widespread malfeasance. Rating agencies like Moody’s Investors Service, which get paid a lot of money for rating mortgage-backed securities, seem to have played a similar role to that played by complaisant accountants in the corporate scandals of a few years ago. In the ’90s, accountants certified dubious earning statements; in this decade, rating agencies declared dubious mortgage-backed securities to be highest-quality, AAA assets.

Yet our desire to avoid letting bad actors off the hook shouldn’t prevent us from doing the right thing, both morally and in economic terms, for borrowers who were victims of the bubble.

Most of the proposals I’ve seen for dealing with the problems of subprime borrowers are of the locking-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone variety: they would curb abusive lending practices — which would have been very useful three years ago — but they wouldn’t help much now. What we need at this point is a policy to deal with the consequences of the housing bust.

Consider a borrower who can’t meet his or her mortgage payments and is facing foreclosure. In the past, as Gretchen Morgenson recently pointed out in The Times, the bank that made the loan would often have been willing to offer a workout, modifying the loan’s terms to make it affordable, because what the borrower was able to pay would be worth more to the bank than its incurring the costs of foreclosure and trying to resell the home. That would have been especially likely in the face of a depressed housing market.

Today, however, the mortgage broker who made the loan is usually, as Ms. Morgenson says, “the first link in a financial merry-go-round.” The mortgage was bundled with others and sold to investment banks, who in turn sliced and diced the claims to produce artificial assets that Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s were willing to classify as AAA. And the result is that there’s nobody to deal with.

This looks to me like a clear case for government intervention: there’s a serious market failure, and fixing that failure could greatly help thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of Americans. The federal government shouldn’t be providing bailouts, but it should be helping to arrange workouts.

And we’ve done this sort of thing before — for third-world countries, not for U.S. citizens. The Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s was brought to an end by so-called Brady deals, in which creditors were corralled into reducing the countries’ debt burdens to manageable levels. Both the debtors, who escaped the shadow of default, and the creditors, who got most of their money, benefited.

The mechanics of a domestic version would need a lot of work, from lawyers as well as financial experts. My guess is that it would involve federal agencies buying mortgages — not the securities conjured up from these mortgages, but the original loans — at a steep discount, then renegotiating the terms. But I’m happy to listen to better ideas.

The point, however, is that doing nothing isn’t the only alternative to letting the parties who got us into this mess off the hook. Say no to bailouts — but let’s help borrowers work things out.

-

Free Democracy

Thanks, Kevin.

The Bottom Line

2007-08-17T16:27:00.005Z

The subprime-lending crisis is worse than you think,
and could crush financial and real-estate markets for years.
By James J. Cramer

You’re losing money right now. This very minute. You’re losing money if you own an apartment. You’re losing money if you own a country home. You’re losing money if you own a stock or bond mutual fund. You’re losing money if you have a pension plan. You’re probably losing money here or there, you’re probably losing money everywhere (except maybe from your savings account and wallet). But this is no Dr. Seuss story. It’s more of a John Steinbeck tale, and we are the victims, a new generation of Tom Joads, and it’s the damn bankermen who broke us. No, there won’t be a police officer to investigate, and the government, at least this federal government, won’t save us.

Our tale of woe starts not in New York but in flashy places like Las Vegas and South Beach and faraway onetime Okie haunts like Riverside, San Bernardino, and Ontario, California. In these towns, and dozens more like them, housing companies erected colossal communities of homes. Eager homebuyers and speculators fought each other for these properties, armed with cheap financing, courtesy of Alan Greenspan, who wanted to boost an economy reeling from 9/11 and create a legacy of homeownership for all, including those who could not document steady income or, for that matter, citizenship.

We think of him as Saint Alan now, but in a few years he will be known as the reckless Fed chairman who encouraged the creation and use of exotic mortgages that required you to put down very little money, odd creations like the “2 and 28,” an adjustable mortgage with low interest payments the first two years that explode into gargantuan fees for the next 28. Don’t have the money to pay for the 2 before the 28? Go “piggybacking”: Take out a home-equity loan against your new house to meet those minimal payments.

Where did the money come from? Banks lent it, mortgage brokers lent it, and even home builders themselves got into the act. The housing markets were so hot the lenders barely had time to check if their buyers were deadbeats, cheats, speculators, or actual honest-to-Betsy hardworking people who wanted nothing more than what Tom Joad wanted 70 years ago. Oh, and the buyers didn’t have time to check out the terms, either; the value of the houses was going up too fast. Gotta close now! Nor did the regulators tap the brakes—whoops, there were no regulators. If something went wrong, who cares? The buyers could always sell their ever-appreciating home to the next guy on the reservation list or the ten after him. The builders, brokers, and bankers then shipped these mortgages east to the big Wall Street firms, which bundled them together and merchandised them as high-yielding bonds often backed up by nothing more than the full faith and credit of, well, no one.

Over and over, Greenspan hailed these fabulous financial breakthroughs that gave everyone a chance at the American Dream (or multiple dreams, in the case of speculators who took down homes and flipped them). And why not? Don’t homes always increase in value? Won’t there always be willing buyers armed with ARMs?

Except that wasn’t how it went down. The same guy who prescribed the mortgage elixir for all Americans then laced it with seventeen straight interest-rate increases, increases that brought rates to levels so high that legions of people who bought a home with a teaser rate couldn’t afford the payments. Between 2004 and 2006, just as interest rates started spiking and homes kept being churned out in these saturated areas, 14 million families purchased houses, many taking advantage of teasers and piggybacks. Given that the average home went for about $250,000, that’s hundreds of billions in loans that cost a lot more per month than when they were taken. Now these people are stuck. They can’t refinance because the rates are too high, and they can’t sell their homes to repay their mortgage, either. In every area of this country—and in particular, in the once-hot markets like the ones I mentioned earlier—there are just too many other homes for sale and too many new homes still being pumped out.

What do the woes of these folks have to do with you? Can a housing fire sale in Phoenix or Fort Myers really affect your Hamptons beach house or your newly purchased Upper West Side classic six? Well, yes, and in even bigger ways than you might think. That’s because the people who ultimately bought the bonds backed by what now look to be billions in bogus mortgages are those who run most of the big pension-, hedge-, and stock-and-bond-market mutual funds in this country. These suckers bought such bonds because bonds backed by mortgage-payment streams paid a tiny bit more than United States Treasuries, a comparable low-risk, if low-return, vehicle, and were supposed to have very little or no risk themselves. Some managers, however, borrowed huge sums to buy tons of these mortgages to turbocharge their results. And the most aggressive managers bought billions in mortgages given to less creditworthy individuals, the so-called subprime loans you keep hearing about.

Even though these loans have been losing value for years, it wasn’t until June 2007 that any of this mattered. That’s because of what is known in the trade as the “marks,” the value of a stock or bond as it’s “marked” by a firm. You are getting poorer by the second because many of these mortgage bonds were priced way too high because nobody thought that large numbers of borrowers would ever walk away from their homes rather than pay the interest that backed the bonds. Such a disaster had happened only once, in the thirties, and that was before loans were federally secured. The buyers and sellers accounted for the bonds as if they were as reliable as cash, because as long as employment was robust—and it is—they thought they would be fine.

But now all hell’s broken loose on Wall Street because of those mismarks. This spring, as many homeowners stopped paying, the mortgage bonds—for the first time—starting losing value. Hundreds of billions in bonds that were thought to be worth more or less the price they were sold at, it turns out, are worthless. That’s triggered a chain reaction: Brokers like JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch that lent money to the firms that bought the bogus loans—most famously, Bear Stearns—basically foreclosed on those firms to get their cash back. But the firms, which are always running full tilt, didn’t have the money to pay up. Bear, at the direction of the now-fired former co-president Warren Spector, let one fund just go down the drain. But Spector thought the other was still worth a great deal, so he put up $1.3 billion to pay back what the fund owed to the lenders and take direct control of the mortgage bonds. Spector, maybe one of the best minds in the bond business, genuinely believed that these mortgage-backed bonds still had substantial value. If someone as savvy as Spector thought these bonds were still good when they were actually worthless, that tells you that thousands of other managers are simply dreaming if they think their portfolios are worth anything near what they claim they’re worth. In other words, we’re looking at the start, not the end, of the lending meltdown.

Now these funds, which were supposed to be brimming with cash—the “liquidity” you hear about all of the time—turn out to have not much at all, and there are virtually no buyers anywhere for these mortgage-backed bonds, because who knows if the mortgages that are in them are worth anything? We only know that each day they are worth less than the day before, because every week, thousands of borrowers are being foreclosed.

Seven million people could lose their homes. New York, where the architects of card houses live, will feel the full force of the storm.

Here’s another layer: The panicked managers of these firms were supposed to be the buyers for all of the high-yielding corporate bonds being issued to pay for the private-equity deals of Cerberus, KKR, Blackstone, and other private-equity firms. They were supposed to lap up the paper for all of the leveraged deals that are in the hopper for underperforming companies like Tribune Corporation and Chrysler. The Goldmans and JPMorgans had already promised the money to the Blackstones and KKRs. They are on the hook—“hung,” to use the grisly vernacular—but they can’t sell the bonds to their usual pension-, hedge-, and mutual-fund clients because those clients don’t have anywhere near the money they thought they had and are facing redemptions from furious investors. Now, pretty much every large financial institution in the country is caught in a web it can’t get out of. Bogus mortgage paper is infecting the system, and no one has a cure.

Which brings us back to your money and why you’re losing it. Unless you keep your money in cash or Treasuries or CDs or the First National Bank of Sealy, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re in a fund or funds that are mismarked and worth less than they and you think. If you own a home, you’re in the financial crosshairs, too. It’s not just that the lending crisis is causing interest rates to rise, jacking up your monthly nut if you have an ARM. It’s that the value of your home is endangered because of the hit Wall Street—the industry, if not the stock market—is set to take.

In the past half-dozen years, the major brokerages in New York added hundreds of thousands of jobs in three areas: mortgage-bond sales and trading, private equity, and prime brokerage (the management of hedge funds’ brokerage accounts). Each has grown by leaps and bounds each year. Now all three are frozen. There are no mortgages to package and sell and no clients who want them. The private-equity deals are all hung. And the way I see it, the hedge-fund business is liable to be cut in half by the chain of mismarking and redemptions. I think that many of these firms have as many as 30 percent more people than they need right now in these departments, and all of them will be cashiered by the end of the year. The lists are being drawn up; the HR people notified. Not too close to the holidays, please! And for those who are left, sorry, no bonuses. The money was all eaten up by severances. Unlike other times on Wall Street, the jobs will dry up across the board, because so many firms have beefed up the same divisions. This time, get laid off at Bear, no walking across the street to Lehman. The departed will be cut off from billions in disposable income that fuel the New York economy.

What can thaw this nuclear winter? What can cause these markets to defrost fast enough to save the jobs, and home values, of the rich in New York, if not the newly poor and evicted in Rancho Cucamonga? Spooked by the news that major foreign banks are now getting hit by the lending crunch, investors took stocks down sharply last week, prompting Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to order up a quick injection of liquidity into the system on Friday. I think the Fed will also cut interest rates soon—certainly sooner than it otherwise would have. That said, this Fed has been famously inflation-wary, and it may be reluctant to loosen rates too much, lest it overheat the economy, especially since the Fed seems to believe that the nonfinancial economy, the part not connected with home building or lending, is thriving. Of the 30 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, only two, Citigroup and JPMorgan, are directly connected to this mess. If Bernanke’s right, and the rest of the economy is as solid as he seems to think it is, it’s possible the lending crisis could be contained to only those who work in and around the credit business. But that’s a big if. If the lending debacle keeps spreading, or the rest of the economy heads south, the Fed may find itself too far behind the curve to do much good.

Who else can unlock the jam? Maybe we get some help from overseas, a Chinese buyer of a major brokerage, perhaps? A Middle Eastern purchase of some of a big bank’s equity—Washington Mutual, maybe?—wouldn’t hurt. That’s what saved Citigroup in 1990. Perhaps Warren Buffett can come in and buy a Bear Stearns; hey, he saved Salomon in a different decade. What we need is some deep, untorn pockets to step up and buy some of the good paper that is being thrown away with the bad, so the trading desks can catch their breath and stabilize themselves. Giant losses would still happen, but perhaps not institution-threatening ones.

In other times, you might expect a president or a Treasury secretary to get involved, perhaps to pressure Fannie Mae, the organization set up in the thirties to issue emergency loans to alleviate just the kind of homeowning credit squeeze that we have right now, to lend a hand. But this administration seems to be either totally clueless or totally heartless, or both, and doesn’t want to goad Fannie Mae into helping. Maybe they hate that quasi-governmental institution set up by bleeding-heart Democrats to help struggling home buyers of a different, more liberal and compassionate, era. Or maybe they just think that anything short of an FDR-era Agricultural Adjustment Act for homes, where we bulldoze whole housing projects instead of cornfields to get price stability, just won’t work.

I fear that the pain and contractions in the housing and credit markets could cause as many as 7 million homeowners who bought houses in the past few years to flee or be tossed from their dwellings, even if the rest of the stock market thrives. It’s why I went off the reservation and screamed about this problem on television the other day (my latest unhinged rant). I see what could go wrong. I see how the forgotten man gets forgotten, and I feel helpless because I don’t see anyone doing a whole hell of a lot about it.

Thousands of miles from where the walls began tumbling down, New York, the town where the architects of card houses live, will soon feel the full force of the storm. So much of our economy depends on these financial builders and their minions who buy and sell the products that the pain may actually end up being felt worse here than in the epicenters of the problem. You just don’t know it or feel it yet. It’s all happened too fast, in just a few weeks of another sweltering summer, with the worst, much worse, yet to come. Which is why I bet that in the time it took for you to read this article, the Tom Joad effect just took another few bucks out of your pocket. Get ready, many more dollars will soon vanish before you discover you’ve been robbed.

Welcome to Bizarro World

2007-08-13T18:54:00.000Z

Paris is Good,

Goldman Sachs is Bad, Bad, Bad!

Welcome to Bizarro World.

Monday August 13, 2007
By TradingMarkets Research

I sit here on a Saturday morning reading the papers, and I'm in disbelief at what I'm seeing.

Terms that have never seen their way outside of finance textbooks, are now not only in the Wall Street Journal, but are even in the New York Post (killing any future enjoyment I'll ever get from this paper). "Reversion to the Mean", "Quant Funds", "Statistical Arbitrage" and other terms never before seen in news print are now only a few pages from pictures of Paris and Nicky Hilton leaving the Playboy Mansion Midnight Summer Night's Dream party last weekend. And what's even more amazing is that Paris is being portrayed as one of the better people in the world whereas the people at Goldman Sachs (and many other big Wall Street firms and funds) are now the bad guys. The real bad guys!

...

There are things going on in the world today that no one has even seen before (including never being seen before by Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulsen). This is a Black Swan caused by the unwinding of sub-prime mortgages and their derivatives - a first in history. Therefore prudence is advised. But, if things do go back to order, we'll look back years from now and say that the summer of 2007 was one of the more exciting times the market has seen. And we may also say that it created one of the better opportunities of our time.

http://biz.yahoo.com/tm/070813/16176.html?.v=2

Go With The Flow

2007-08-08T19:13:00.001Z

2007-07-16T17:57:00.000Z

Milk the Pleasure

2007-06-25T05:41:00.001Z

Milk every moment
for all the pleasure
you can get from it.

When you say,
"It is my dominant intent
to look for things that
feel good, today.
...
No matter where I'm going,
no matter what I'm doing,
no matter who I'm doing it with,
it is my dominant intent
to look for
what I'm wanting to see,
to look for
things that feel good."

And, the more you develop the habit
of that kind of vibration,
the more the Universe
understands that
that's who you are!

And so, the more you have access
only to those kinds of things!

Abraham-Hicks

Axe: "Heat in the Street"

2007-06-14T06:46:00.001Z

Your Society Does Not Understand

2007-06-08T15:33:00.000Z

Your society wants to condemn them.

Your society would like to crucify them.

Your society would like to lock them up.

Your society would like to put them off in places
where they can never get near any of you.

Your society does not understand
that they are your creation.

As individuals, you have to accept responsibility for everything that's interacting with you.

Because it would not be interacting with you if you did not have an active vibration about it.

This is really, really important.

This means I cannot blame how I feel on my mate.

I cannot blame how I feel
on my children,
or on my mother,
or on my government,
or on my society,
or on my client,
or on the other drivers around me.

You say, "Oh, but it wasn't my fault because I didn't offer the vibration until they did that action, and after they did that action, then I offered the vibration."

In other words, the experience that I'm having is my job.

It's all my creation.

It's all my responsibility.

And we say, still,
you are the only one
that can change
your vibration.

And you say, "Oh, but if they'd behave differently,
then I'd change my vibration."

We say, "Oh, here we go again."

How many decades of life experience within this body
do you think it's going to take
before you finally convince yourself
that you can't get them to choose?

They're not going to hold you
as their object of attention long enough.

Pleasing you is not their job.

You pleasing you
is your job.

You've got to find something redeeming in them
so that you can be pleased.

And when you find it,
...
activate that in your vibration,
...
and then they will show it to you.

Abraham-Hicks

Abraham-Hicks Reveals The TRUTH about THE SECRET

2007-05-14T01:23:00.001Z

Time, Space Obsolete in New View of Universe

2007-04-21T01:16:00.000Z

Many physicists are embracing a revolutionary, still mysterious idea called string theory.
The concept rejects several familiar notions and includes the existence of 11 dimensions.

By K.C. COLE, Times Science Writer

Ever since early astronomers yanked Earth from center stage in the solar system some 500 years ago, scientists have been pulling the rug out from under people's basic beliefs.

"The history of physics," says Harvard physicist Andrew Strominger, "is the history of giving up cherished ideas."

No idea has been harder to give up, however--for physicists and laypeople alike--than everyday notions of space and time, the fundamental "where" and "when" of the universe and everything in it.

Einstein's unsettling insights more than 80 years ago showed that static space and fixed time were flimsy facades, thinly veiling a cosmos where seconds and meters ooze like mud and the rubbery fabric of space-time warps into an unseen fourth dimension.

About the same time, the new "quantum mechanical" understanding of the atom revealed that space and time are inherently jittery and uncertain.

Now, some physicists are taking this revolutionary line of thinking one step further: If their theories are right, in the words of Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, space and time may be "doomed."

Concurs physicist Nathan Seiberg, also of the institute: "I am almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated."

That conclusion may not affect anyone's morning commute. But it is rocking the foundations of physics--as well as causing metaphysical reverberations that inevitably follow major changes in our fundamental understanding of how the universe works.

The impetus behind this tumult is an idea that has become increasingly dominant in modern physics: string theory. According to string theory, the most basic ingredients in the universe are no longer point-like particles, the familiar electrons and quarks. Instead, they are unimaginably small vibrating strings of some unknown fundamental stuff.

String theory suggests that different configurations of strings produce different harmonic chords--just as a piano produces a sound different from that of a flute. The vibrating string gives rise to the particles, and the way the string vibrates determines each particle's properties. This all takes place in a convoluted landscape of 11-dimensional space.

It is a concept so strange that even theoretical physicists struggle to understand it. String theory offers a universe bizarre beyond imagining: Under powerful enough magnification, every known particle in the universe would resemble a complex origami folded out of sheets or strings of the three familiar spatial dimensions, plus one dimension of time, plus seven extra dimensions of space.

While string theory is far from proven, or even well formulated, its consequences would be enormous. Among other things, it would:
* Reshape fundamental notions of space and time, energy and matter, expanding the number of dimensions to 11.
* Give the first comprehensive list of all the ingredients that make up the universe.
* Reveal that every tick of a clock, every barking dog, every dying star, can be described by one master mathematical equation.

Being Involved in a 'Scientific Revolution'

Which practical fruits will flow from the new view of the universe remain unknown. But in the past, fundamental revolutions in physics have--against everyone's wildest expectations--flowered into everything from cell phones to brain scans.

"I've been in physics for 35 years, and this is the first time I've felt I'm involved in a scientific revolution," said Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind.
"In the last five or six years, I really have the feeling we're doing something as crazy, as interesting, as new as the revolution that Einstein wrought."

Perhaps most revolutionary of all, it appears that space and time aren't essential ingredients of a universe ruled by strings.

To grasp the extent of the current upheaval in physics, consider what has happened to our basic understanding of space and time over the past hundred years.

Until the early 20th century, scientists, like laypeople, assumed that space and time were fixed--like huge, metaphysical clocks and rulers in the firmament.
Objects that moved in this unchanging background could be pinned down to definite positions.

"Everything was where it was when it was supposed to be, and that was all there was to it," said Strominger. "Space-time was out there. You could count on it."

Then, Einstein revealed that space and time were woven into a single fabric that deforms like so much Silly Putty; indeed, it is the warping of the fabric of space-time by massive objects that produces the force of gravity.
We perceive gravity as a "force" only because we can't directly perceive the fourth dimension.

Because gravity affects everything, everything gets warped by its pervasive influence--including the clocks and rulers we use to measure time and space.

Even more unsettling, Einstein's now well-proven theories showed that the fabric of space-time, with its three dimensions of space and one of time, is not a passive backdrop for the events and objects in the universe. Space-time also creates objects and events.

Imagine the universe as a performance on a stage. The stage of space-time does not act like a static floor. It also pulls and pushes the actors around.

Quantum mechanics introduced even more uncertainty.

In the subatomic realm, the entire concept of fixed particles in time and space fuzzes out into an ever-shifting haze of probabilities. Trying to pin down a subatomic particle's location or motion is like trying to put your finger on a snowflake; the very act of measurement destroys the thing being measured.
"That means . . . space-time is an uncertain concept, so you've lost your firm footing," said Strominger.
"And that is a deep conceptual issue we have not yet come to grips with."

Now string theory appears to be propelling this evolution one drastic, perhaps inevitable, step further.

Certain approaches to string theory dispense with the notion of space-time completely. Yet, they seem to produce the same set of results as string theories with normal space and time.

To some theorists, this strongly suggests that space and time are superfluous. Space and time as fundamental concepts may be about to disappear altogether--literally pulling the floor out from under physics.

"The notion of space-time is something we've cherished for thousands of years, and it's clearly something we're going to have to give up," said Strominger.

Even before string theory enjoyed its recent successes, physicists knew they would have to grapple again with the inadequacy of our understanding of space and time. The reason is a glaring mismatch between gravity, which rules large-scale events in the cosmos, and quantum mechanics, which rules small-scale happenings.

Both gravity and quantum theory are well understood and have survived decades of experimental tests. Quantum mechanics gave rise to lasers and computers; Einstein's theory of gravity predicted everything from black holes to the bending of light by stars, insights since proved by observations.

The problem is, the two theories are mutually exclusive.
The space and time of quantum theory don't mesh with the space and time of Einstein's theory of gravity, or General Relativity.

In the language of gravity, the quantum mechanical aspects of the universe turn into gobbledygook. And vice versa.
"We can describe the world that we see and experience completely," said UC Santa Barbara physicist Sean Carroll, "but the explanations are internally inconsistent."

Some Things Don't Affect Everyday Life

Until recently, physicists found it easy to sweep this unpleasantness under the rug--in part because they didn't know how to deal with it, in part because it doesn't make a difference in our everyday lives.

The inherently uncertain behavior of subatomic particles affects only things as small as atoms, not everyday objects like chairs; the warping of space and time shapes the orbits of planets, but is too diluted to make itself felt on the scale of our own backyards.

Where the large-scale fabric of space-time gets tangled in the inner lives of atoms, however, chaos erupts; space and time fail to make sense. And increasingly, physicists find themselves face to face with situations where quantum mechanics and the extreme warping of space-time collide.

For example, physicists won't be able to understand either the innards of black holes or the origins of the universe until they come to grips with how gravity behaves at extremely small scales. Indeed, the ultimate laboratory for studying the collision of these two opposing realms is the infinitely compressed dollop of space-time that gave rise to the Big Bang.

That cataclysmic speck, physicists believe, contained everything now in our universe, so it would have packed a huge gravitational wallop. At the same time, it would have been small enough to behave according to quantum mechanical laws.
Because physicists can't study the Big Bang directly, they wind back the clock with equations and thought experiments--imagining what might happen, for example, if time really reversed.

The results are disturbing: As the universe gets smaller and smaller,
the warping of space-time gets stronger and quantum uncertainties get progressively larger.

Finally, the uncertainty becomes larger than any time interval that could possibly be measured. Measurement becomes meaningless.
Time at the first moment dissolves into nonsense.

"If you ask questions about what happened at very early times," said Harvard physicist Sidney Coleman, "and you compute the answer,
the [real] answer is: Time doesn't mean anything."

Or consider what happens inside a black hole--a region where gravity is so strong that space-time curls in on itself, in effect, shutting out the rest of the universe. Black holes are swirling pits of pure space-time.

And according to Einstein's theory, their enormous gravity causes them to collapse to an infinite point of zero size--what physicists call singularity. Is there such a nonsensical thing as infinite density packed into zero size?

"I remember puzzling about that when I was a kid," said Gary Horowitz of the Institute for Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. "I thought when I went to college I would find out the answer . . . I'm still waiting."

In the pinched-off centers of black holes, space-time appears to simply stop. "The singularity acts like an edge," said Horowitz. "You run into it, and it's the end. There's no time after that; there's no space after that. But we don't think physics should end [there]. That's why we're trying to" find new laws of physics, which will describe what happens beyond that edge.

Black holes, said Princeton physicist John Archibald Wheeler, "[teach] us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal dot, that time can be extinguished like a blown-out flame, and that the laws of physics that we regard as 'sacred,' as immutable, are anything but."

Space, Time May Be Doomed as Concepts

String theory has emerged as the only viable candidate to reconcile the differences between gravity and quantum mechanics. It does so by eliminating the notion of infinitely small particles. The loop of string is the smallest allowable size.

"You never get to the point where the disasters happen," said Seiberg of the Institute for Advanced Study. "String theory prevents it."

But rather than rescuing space and time, string theory only seems to make their doom as fundamental concepts more imminent.

When they are incorporated into string theory, "space and time get confused," said Seiberg. "It's telling us that the traditional understanding of space and time will evaporate and there will be a more interesting and subtle result."

Some string theorists believe that space and time somehow emerged in the early universe out of the disorganized, 11-dimensional strings. The strings are "shards" of space and time, said physicist Brian Greene of Columbia University.

Imagine grains of sand on the surface of a drum. If you tap the surface over and over at the same place, the sand falls into patterns--like iron filings around a magnet.

Did space and time emerge in the same way, as resonant patterns of vibrating strings?
Trying to make sense of such an idea is a struggle even for theorists.
"String theory has been giving us a lot of clues," said Strominger, "but we haven't been able to put them together into a unified picture."

Even philosophically, the challenge of replacing space and time is daunting.
What does it mean to inhabit a spaceless, timeless universe? Clocks and rulers not only measure hours and inches; they tell us where we've been and where we're going.

"When we talk about space and time, we think there is something there, and we live in it," said David Gross, director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. The idea that space and time might be illusions, he said, "is very disturbing.
Where are we? When are we?"

The almost unfathomable scenario of a universe without space and time in turn calls into question the very connection between cause and effect. If time can break down, how can one event be placed clearly "before" or "after" another?

Hypothetically, if there is no clear difference between now and the instant after, how can we say whether the gunshot caused death--or death caused the gunshot?

"We normally think of causality as a basic property," said Horowitz. "Something effects something else. But when you're getting rid of space and time . . . are we sure that causality is going to be preserved?"

New views of time could lead to even more bizarre consequences--for instance, more than two dimensions of time, a theory being worked on by USC physicist Itzhak Bars, among others.

Whatever the outcome of these efforts, it's clear, said Greene, that "space is undergoing a drastic rearrangement of its basic pieces; we will not understand string theory until we make a major breakthrough in notions of space and time."

If Greene and his colleagues are right, expanding the universe into 11 dimensions and looping it into strings are only the beginning.

On the horizon looms a new kind of physics, where space and time melt down completely.

"The real change that's around the corner [is] in the way we think about space and time," said Gross. "We haven't come to grips with what Einstein taught us.
But that's coming. And that will make the world around us seem much stranger than any of us can imagine."

The Secret: 1st 20 minutes

2007-04-12T17:34:00.001Z

Dave Chappelle Interview part 1 of 2

2007-04-07T00:36:00.001Z

Dave Chappelle Interview part 2 of 2

2007-04-07T00:23:00.001Z

Unchained

2007-04-04T05:24:00.000Z

We hardly ever realize
that we can cut anything
out of our lives,
anytime,
in the blink of an eye.

-Carlos Castaneda-

68 Seconds

2007-03-21T23:45:00.001Z

Your Playground

2007-03-19T05:38:00.005Z

This physical environment
is your playground of expansion.

And without it,
the Universe
could not expand
in the way that it does.

Abraham-Hicks

Abraham-Hicks

Page the Village Idiot presents...

2007-03-05T16:23:00.000Z

Dead
Rock Stars
...
(the video)

Page the Village Idiot

Trippy Music From Alice From Somewhere

2007-02-25T04:28:00.000Z

Alice said,
...
"See if you like this or not."

http://www.ohmbience.com/audio/Axis%20Mundi%20-%20Screwing%20With%20Superscience.mp3

http://www.ohmbience.com/audio/Axis%20Mundi%20-%20Sprung%20

(Part%201).mp3

http://www.ohmbience.com/audio/Axis%20Mundi%20-%20Sprung%20

(Part%202).mp3

http://www.ohmbience.com/audio/Axis%20Mundi%20-%20Sprung%20

(Part%203)
.mp3

http://www.ohmbience.com/audio/Axis%20Mundi%20-%20The%20Rites%20Of%20Spring.mp3

Further trippiness, courtesy of Alice... (below)

L@@K

The Truth About Cocks and Dolls
http://cocksanddolls.blogspot.com/

Girl with a one-track mind
http://girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/

Susie Bright’s Journal
http://susiebright.blogs.com/

Viviane’s Sex Carnival
http://viviane212.blogspot.com/

Naked Loft Party: Everyone wants to be naked
http://www.nakedloftparty.com/

Mistress Matisse’s Journal
http://mistressmatisse.blogspot.com/

Sexerati: Smart Sex.
http://sexerati.com/

ethnorotica: Colorful commentary on sex, race and culture
http://ethnorotica.com/

Kiss & Blog
http://kissnblog.blogspot.com/

and finally,...You Must Ejaculate

Let’s test out the top erotic blogs ok…? (to be continued...)

And then the madness continues...

Solar Punk Bitches In Heat

http://www.mattandtom.com/Audio/Assets/Full%20Songs/Rock%20Hard%20Retard.mp3

A New Triple H

2007-02-21T19:27:00.001Z

Anyone can do it.

You don't need talent.

You're all still gonna get credit for it, anyway.

Anyone can do it.

You ain't gotta have skills.

We can fix it all up in the edit.

As we come out
all wasted
and
ready to play.

Notice the Abundance Flowing to You

2007-02-15T22:13:00.000Z

Deliberately try to reduce your resistance around the word “money”,
and one way of doing it is to recognize that everything is flowing to you on this Energy Stream.

There are many things that are of a wonderful nature that are happening in life
that don’t have anything to do with dollars.

The abundance flows in many more avenues than dollars.

And so, if you could focus upon the gifts that the Universe gives you:

When you say “abundance”, think about it in the abundance of health,
the abundance of vitality, the abundance of clarity,
the abundance of enthusiasm, the abundance of delicious people in your life,
the abundance of loving letters in your life.

The abundance of free-flowing traffic in your life.

The abundance of wonderful experiences in your life…

As you start thinking in terms of this abundance that doesn’t have anything to do with dollars,
the abundance relative to the dollars starts flowing, too.

-Abraham-Hicks-

Making the Best of What-Is...

2007-02-13T16:19:00.000Z

Make the best of it.

When you make the best
of whatever you're focused upon,
...
your future will be better than your now.

If each moment you're making the best of what-is,
no matter what it is;
...
if you make the best of it, make the best of it,
make the best of it,
...
your future will keep getting better
and better, and better, and better.

Abraham-Hicks

Feng Shui in Action

2007-02-13T04:08:00.000Z

Two contractors.
A fist fight.
And a crash landing.
....
Escalated...
...Concluded.
....
In my
Prosperity
Corner.

(...to be continued...)

We've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.

Reporting live,...this is Stellar Lee.

Yo.

Note: This post has been flagged as drunken nonsense.

Talk About That Good Thing ... 1,000 Times

2007-02-07T23:52:00.000Z

There is something in most of you that says
“I don’t think I should allow it
to be absolutely easy
because a part of me seems
to want to justify my Well-Being
by a little bit of struggle,
…
as if it’s not right for me
to have any great success
without, at least,
a little bit of suffering.”

And we say, no suffering is of any value.

You don’t have to go
the hard way to things,
but you do have to go
from wherever you are.

If one good thing happens today
and a hundred bad things,
...
talk about that good thing a thousand times;

--talk not about any of the bad things.

Play the good-feeling things
over and over in your mind.

Emphasize everything that feels good.

The Universe has understood
the things you have been asking for
and is answering perfectly.

And if you won’t work to orchestrate
the how and where and when, and who,
...
but instead work to be in the receiving mode
...
--as you practice rampages of appreciation,
...
and as you collect fun things and beautiful things
and use them to become an Ambassador of Well-Being
...
—the things you have been asking for
will unfold in a continuum
of extraordinary life experience.

Those who don’t yet know what you now know
will stand flabbergasted as they see
the stunning unfolding of your life experience.

You’ve just got to get happy.
...
That’s all it takes.

--Abraham-Hicks--

Anarchy in Beantown

2007-02-05T19:49:00.000Z

Peter Berdovsky, 27, and Sean Stevens, 28, were both arrested
and charged with one count of placing a hoax device
and one count of disorderly conduct
for the lite-brite Mooninites placed around Boston,
an incident that led the Boston police to believe
it was a terrorist attack and shut down half the city.

The two emerged from the courtroom to talk with reporters...
and struck up a conversation about haircuts from the 1970's.

Watch as reporters
get frustrated
(and some play along)
with the whole gag interview,
...
and as Peter and Sean repeatedly tell them,
"I'm sorry, that's not a hair question."

Click HERE to watch.

PRONOIA: The Antidote for Paranoia

2007-02-02T00:57:00.000Z

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia.
It’s the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly.
It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect so you’re able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need,
exactly when you need it.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring. Cynicism is idiotic.
Fear is a bad habit. Despair is lazy.
Joy is fascinating.
Love is an act of heroic genius.
Pleasure is our birthright.

PROCEDURE: Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination.
Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be.
Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

Beautiful Agony

2007-01-27T18:40:00.000Z

BeautifulAgony.com
is a different breed
of adult site
— and my new obsession.

Noticing a severe lack
of true erotica on the Web,
Richard Lawrence & Lauren Olney
created Beautiful Agony
in 2003
with the help
of a few willing friends.

The site features hundreds of homemade videos
of men and women masturbating,
but you can only see them from
the shoulders up
— as the site creators say,...

"That's where people are truly naked."

(Mistress Maeve)

Leave it to Beaver

2007-01-18T16:58:00.000Z

Brit’s Bits: Anyone doubting Britney’s the biggest star ever just isn’t thinking vaginally.

Everybody knows the story about clark gable and undershirts. In 1934, he appeared shirtless in It Happened One Night and, according to legend, the men of America stopped buying undershirts, opting to go commando like Clark. And don’t forget JFK and hats — when he showed up for his inauguration sans chapeau, he killed off the hat industry, leading to his assassination in 1963 by hit men from the Borsalino family.

Which brings us to Britney.

This is a pivotal moment in world culture. Britney’s triumph over underwearism is a new paradigm, and we can only guess what the repercussions will be.
Britney only started showing her vagina a little while ago, but already, more people have seen Britney’s vagina than any vagina in the entire history of the cosmos.

Of all the times people have uttered the word “vagina” in history, ninety percent of them have referred to Britney.
It’s her V-J Day, liberating her loins from the Man,
taking her mons veneris to the people, naked and unashamed.

Anybody who still doubts Britney is the biggest pop star in history
just isn’t thinking vaginally.

Sharing the back seat of a limo with Paris? Wouldn’t that make you not only wear underwear, but double up and spray yourself with Raid? Not Britney.
But who didn’t feel a frisson of awe at the sight
of Britney, Paris and Lindsay
all squeezed into the back seat of the same car?
It was like the Yalta Summit of Vagina,
...
with Paris as Stalin, Lindsay as Churchill and Britney as FDR,
except instead of dividing up Europe,
they’re building a new empire of vaginal consciousness.

It’s a feminist appropriation of the classic crotch-flash power move.

Jim Morrison never tried anything like this.

Paris and Lindsay deserve credit in the war on underwear,
but nobody really cared until Britney got on the front lines.
She has made us question underwear itself — yes, even cotton,
the fabric of our lives, now seems like a tool of oppression.
This is something new.

You’ve never seen Madonna’s vagina, have you? No, you haven’t. (Especially if you’re Guy Ritchie — just kidding!)
She’s going to have to decorate her vagina with flowers and candy
just to lure us back.
Maybe vaginas are really the new orphans?

When Britney dumped K-Fed and went clubbing with Paris,
fans worried Paris would be a shady influence
— but it looks like it’s the other way around.

Once again, Britney is ahead of the rest of us,
showing us the path to the new frontier.
You’ve heard the expression
“She’s gonna wash that man right out of her hair?”
Britney didn’t stop there, did she?

It’s a new year, and to paraphrase Bono,
2007 might be a vaginal age,
and vagina is the reason for the wars we wage.

But as always, Britney is leading the way.

--Rob Sheffield (Rolling Stone)--

Today Issues

2007-01-12T05:46:00.000Z

You don't have to go back
and deal with childhood issues,
because those childhood issues
produced a vibration within you
that you are still offering
-- which is producing today issues.

You can shift your vibration
a whole lot easier
when you're dealing with today issues,
than trying to deal with childhood issues.
...
It's the same vibration.

That vibration that was creating
childhood issues,
now it's creating today issues.

Deal with it in your now.
...
"Which thought feels better?
Which thought feels better?
Which thought feels better?"

Abraham-Hicks

I Call, No Answer

2007-01-09T07:46:00.000Z

Has anybody else
ever
wondered
what
happened
to
Jack Green ?

His album, Humanesque, was a classic.
It featured Ritchie Blackmore on guitar.
And his other albums were pretty great, too.

Prior to his solo albums,
Jack played in T-Rex, and then, Pretty Things.

I finally came across an old interview with him from a few years ago.
Click HERE to read it.

You can listen to snippets of some of Jack's old songs
from his classic album ... HERE.

2007-01-08T05:05:00.000Z

The seven principles of HUNA

(IKE) the world is what you think it is BE AWARE

When one is aware of their thoughts, words and actions in nearly every moment throughout their day, one can, after a period of time, by choosing a more positive, peaceful,
loving and compassionate way of being,
find that the path that they are on
soon becomes nothing but positive, peaceful,
loving and compassionate...

(KALA)
there are no limits
BE FREE

There are no limits in this universe.
If we fully understand and believe this,
the only thing on this 3 dimensional earth plane that has limits
is our own mind.
Nine times out of ten, due to conditioning from society and our upbringing,
the only thing stopping us
from reaching our full potential, our goals and dreams
... is our mind.
So start NOW changing your thought patterns,
beliefs and habits that hold you back...

(MAKIA)
energy goes where attention goes
BE FOCUSED

Put all your energy into achieving what you want out of this life.
Be focused and clear on what it really is you want.
Place your energy into having a happy, joyful and loving life NOW...

(MANAWA) now is the moment of power
BE HERE

Especially in today's world, we all tend to be living either in the past or in the future,
... and are certainly not in the present moment.
When you're either in the past or future,
your energy becomes scattered and drained.
You miss so many opportunities by not being in the moment...

(ALOHA)
to love is to be happy with
BE HAPPY

This really sums everything up,... and that is love.
Love is the key to a wonderful, happy and fulfilling life...

(MANA)
all power comes from within
BE CONFIDENT

True power that is from the heart, and not from ego,
is very essential to achieving your goals.
We need to be strong, confident and courageous
in order to fulfill our potential on this planet...

(PONO)
effectiveness is the measure of truth
BE POSITIVE

In this day and age, it is very hard to stay positive when a lot of what's going on around us
seems so negative.
Remember its all about attitude,
about having a positive outlook on life.
Like attracts like.
Be positive NOW,
and soon you will start attracting positive people,
situations and outcomes.

As you can see, the Hawaiians have
some beautiful simple philosophies.

2007-01-06T22:35:00.000Z

Man
Catalogues
Every
Google
and
YouTube
Video
...
dealing
with
Consciousness
and
Reality

Just CLICK HERE to watch them.

2006-12-29T23:53:00.000Z

Looking
Back
at
History,

...
from the
imaginary
year,
...

2026

(...an essay about
a remarkable place
in time.)

2006-12-25T06:03:00.000Z

2006-12-21T06:51:00.000Z

Ironically,
she's
wearing
her
helmet.

2006-12-11T19:25:00.000Z

Portrait
of a
Lovely
Woman
...
and her
dumb ass
sidekick.

I Never Knew Franklin

2006-12-01T21:00:00.000Z

It occurred to me that

I am not writing directly to you,

my loving reading audience.

(But as I now type this,

I am endorsing

prior stoned thoughts.)

So here goes ...

... This is me talking ...

FRANKLIN DIED TODAY
I NEVER KNEW FRANKLIN

-----------------------

IF YOU READ THE
WORLD'S WORST POETRY
THEN IT'S EASY TO COME UP
WITH SOMETHING
TO SAY
OR AT LEAST WRITE DOWN

-----------------------------

25 years since Paul Stanley's
last solo album.

According to my math
that gave him
about 2 1/2 years
to come up with a good song.

Being as the CD's
got 10 songs ---- .

"Live to Win" ... One of the greatest albums of all time.
Okay, there, I said it.
It's a little safer and less frantic ...
than Marilyn Manson's, "Holy Wood," album
and much less frantic than ... "Mechanical Animals."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Yep, the new Paul Stanley album
joined the greats ---
... alongside old Dickinson/Maiden albums
... & the first Motley Crue & W.A.S.P. albums

------------------------------------------------------------

Yep, ... Nickelback channels Stanley.
I swear.

So does Pink.

2Pac, Stanley, Pink and Nickelback
...with cameos from Shakira ...
... and Ana Barbara with the cowboy hat ...

...

(of course)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe some Gallagher brother, Oasis antics ... somewhere in the mix.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

There.

You have it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The supergroup playing

the live soundtrack to the
overall general population

of humanity waking up.

I'm sure a second and third stage
could be set up for local music ...
and all rising stars
wherever they may hail from ...
... once they arrive ...
and then we're "good to go."

We're all standing
in our

most ideal

spot.

...

Or sitting. ... Lying down? ...
Chilling. ... Whatever.

One final thought.

Thank you, Universe.

And, ...
thank you
Marilyn Manson
and
Charles Bukowski.

Hey Ani. :)

Turd of a Dove

2006-11-26T05:57:00.000Z

The Ballad of Diana Ross

Most absurd word turd you ever heard of.
Turd of a dove.
Word from above.
It's the turd of a dove.

Only thing missing is massage oil, a diva,
And four javelina.
Security guard is standing on the stove.
Whacking the pigs with a broom.
All running wild in the living room.
... Except for the one in the kitchen.

She's screaming, not singing.
The whole thing was bitchin'.
And it's a true story.
Didn't make it up for this song.

Sometimes the universe isn't so backwards and wrong.
It's hilarious.

Most absurd word turd you ever heard of.
Turd of a dove.
Word from above.

Don't pet the javelina.
Don't the pigs know she's a diva?

Whacking 'em with a broom's only gonna piss them off.

Massage oils and open doors,
wild pigs, a naked diva,
and a security guard standing on the stove.

Sounds like trouble.

And it sounds hilarious.

Don't pet the javelina.
Don't they know she's a diva?

Now how would a pop star work the tale of the pigs into a song?

What part would she leave out?

Does she think back on it and laugh?

Is the security guard in therapy?

Is the turd of a dove what it's all about?

Word from above.

Most absurd word turd you ever heard of.

Coming down from above.

It's the turd of the dove.

Editor's Note: Empathy might have been applied to this song
had Diana Ross had a better reputation for treating people nicely,
the editor included.

Free The Poets!

2006-11-22T06:05:00.000Z

Farrah's still recovering from my Midas touch.

Sailing the Lunacy

2006-11-22T05:13:00.000Z

Known as the known troublemakers.

They're keeping their eye on us.

Arms wrapped around the toilet.

They call it "driving the bus."

What's a party without breaking it up?

'Spose our invitation got lost in the mail.

Through unchartered waters of lunacy.

On our drunken boat we sail.

Oh yeah, and ...

We just went up two blocks and to the left.

Once we sailed to the edge of the world.

She said, "Kansas, I don't think we're in Toto anymore."

And, then subsequently hurled.

2006-11-18T17:01:00.000Z

Your attention to anything is drawing it closer to you.

2006-11-17T18:00:00.000Z

Happy Birthday, Shelly !!

That Reminds Me. I Need A Vacation.

2006-11-11T22:43:00.000Z

2006-11-01T05:20:00.000Z

She thinks I'm a doctor.

Baby's Under A Spell

2006-10-01T06:54:00.000Z

Writing you a homicide note,
some might call it ... suicide.
But, as we ride on this ferris wheel,
I'm throwing you off my ride.

One human, talkin' shit to the spirit,
could get ugly, human probably loses.
But, the spirit's gonna crawl away from this fight ...
with a non-body and non-face full of bruises.

I'm supposed to be mad at myself, she said,
"Go within, take care of it."
Problem is ... I've been within.
What's goin' on now's a bunch of shit.

Wanna see me fuck it all up?
Wanna see me put it all back into place?

Wanna see me self-destruct in front of you
... as I punch you in the face?

Bring it on.
Bring it all on.

Like I said before, it shoulda all gone down yesterday.

I'll get my say. I don't care what you say.
Fuck you, anyway.

No, I don't care what it all means.

If you ask me, it's probably all somewhere in between.

Especially ... when it comes to women.
If you know what I mean?

Sober Sometimes (circa 1995)

2006-09-27T06:30:00.000Z

Juggalo! Juggalo!

2006-09-09T02:00:00.000Z

What is a juggalo?

Lemme think for a second. (well? )
Oh, he gets butt naked.
And then he walks through the street winkin at freaks,
With a two-liter stuck in his butt-cheeks!

What is a juggalo?
He just dont care.
He might try to put a weave in his nut hair.
Cuz he could give a fuck less what a bitch thinks,
He tell her that her butt stinks, and all that,
What is a juggalo?
He drinks like a fish,
And then he starts huggin people like a drunk bitch,
Next thing he's pickin fights with his best friends,
Then he starts with the huggin again, fuck,
What is a juggalo?
A fuckin lunatic.
Somebody with a rope tied to his dick,
Then he jumps out a ten-story windowéééoh!

What is a juggalo?
A juggalo? if thats what it is, well fuck if I know.
What is a juggalo?
I dont know, but Im down with the clown, and Im down for life, yo.

What is a juggalo?
A dead body.
Well he aint really dead, but he aint like anybody
That you've ever met before.
He'll eat monopoly and shit out connect four.

What is a jug-
What the fuck? connec-man, that shit's wack.
Don't worry bout my shit, just rap, mutha fucker.
What is a juggalo?
He ain't a bitch boy.
He'll walk through to the hills and beat down a rich boy.
Walks right in the house where ya havin supper,
And dip his nuts in ya soupéébloop!
What is a juggalo?
Well he ain't a phoney.
He'll walk up and bust a nut in your macaroni.
And watch you sit there and finish up the last bit,
Cuz you're a stupid-ass dumb fuckin idiot.

What is a juggalo?
Hes a graduate.
He graduated from......well,
At least he's got a job, he's not a dumb putz,
He works for himself scratchin his nuts, ha!
What is a juggalo?
A hulkamaniac.
He powerbombs mutha fuckas into thumbtacks. (bwa!)
People like him till they find out he's unstable.
He sabued ya mama through a coffee table. (oh my god!)

What is a juggalo?...

(Insane Clown Posse)

P.I.mp3 (Swallow This Nut)

Rock Star

2006-09-06T05:59:00.000Z

and
some of
the crew
from the

MRR

Rock Star

I'm through with standing in line
To clubs we'll never get in
It's like the bottom of the ninth
And I'm never gonna win
This life hasn't turned out
Quite the way I want it to be

(Tell me what you want)

I want a brand new house
On an episode of Cribs
And a bathroom I can play baseball in
And a king size tub big enough
For ten plus me

(So what you need?)

I'll need a credit card that's got no limit
And a big black jet with a bedroom in it
Gonna join the mile high club
At thirty-seven thousand feet

(Been there, done that)

I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and
James Dean is fine for me

(So how you gonna do it?)

I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name

[Chorus:]
'Cause we all just wanna be big rock stars
And live in hilltop houses driving fifteen cars
The girls come easy and the drugs come cheap
We'll all stay skinny 'cause we just won't eat
And we'll hang out in the coolest bars
In the VIP with the movie stars
Every good gold digger's
Gonna wind up there
Every Playboy bunny
With her bleach blonde hair

Hey hey I wanna be a rock star
Hey hey I wanna be a rock star

I wanna be great like Elvis without the tassels
Hire eight body guards that love to beat up assholes
Sign a couple autographs
So I can eat my meals for free
(I'll have the quesadilla, uh huh)
I think I'm gonna dress my ass
With the latest fashion
Get a front door key to the Playboy mansion
Gonna date a centerfold that loves to
Blow my money for me
(So how you gonna do it?)
I'm gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I'd even cut my hair and change my name

[Chorus]

And we'll hide out in the private rooms
With the latest dictionary and today's who's who
They'll get you anything with that evil smile
Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed dial

Hey hey I wanna be a rock star
Hey hey I wanna be a rock star

I'm gonna sing those songs
That offend the censors
Gonna pop my pills from a pez dispenser

I'll get washed-up singers writing all my songs
Lip sync em every night so I don't get 'em wrong

[Chorus]

And we'll hide out in the private rooms
With the latest dictionary and today's who's who
They'll get you anything with that evil smile
Everybody's got a drug dealer on speed dial

Hey hey I wanna be a rock star
Hey hey I wanna be a rock star

..............................Nickelback...

Beyond Hippie Voodoo Pimpin'

2006-08-22T00:03:00.000Z

Tales of a happy writer
And his blocks...
Tells them to choose joy
And they think he mocks.
Pimpin' a hippie voodoo cult,
Tokin' on positive thoughts...
"Don't you dare mess with our misery."
They take their shots.

Like unto itself attracts like...
It's all about vibrations, "Boo!"
Be a motherfuckin' big time lover.
It's 'bout time you got to know you.

Focus on what you want.
Feel the stream flow through.
Learn to allow what was given when you asked
...Is all you gotta do.

Bit complicated, a bit simple.
Yeah, it's both of those.
But, just know that how you feel right now,
Came from the thoughts you chose.
Your choice of actions might be limited.
But, your choice of thoughts are not.
And what comes to you is a vibrational
...match to what you brought.

Do I puke now, or wait 'til I reach the holy city?
What sick bastard writes a self-help poem that rhymes?
Ah, there's the old me roundin' out the verse
Gotta ditch these dumb bad habits of mine.

Nine Inches of God

2006-08-19T00:14:00.000Z

Tonight
the nun is learning how to speak in tongues.

Tonight she'll come to understand the evil one.

Nine inches of God will rise to sing her songs of praise.
Nine inches of God inside will rectify her ways.

Leve with the devil, kneeling in the night.
Take his tube and smoke his pipe.
Join loins, lock your glands.
Feel a roman spear in your hands.

Nine Inches of God!

Servants of the Lord may not beget.
But Satan's tool is always wet.
Lost sheep, on heat?
Let this be my body you eat!

Nine Inches of God!

Nine Inches of God!

Don't you see they've got it wrong.
Heaven is nine inches long.
God's beard is just a pubic grin.
Mother nature knows no sin!

And the Lord spake unto the nun saying,
"Lift up thy nasty habit
and let not thine candle holder be hid from my sight.
Neither let thy choir boys fall upon the stony ground
lest they should never rise up again".

And the Lord spake again saying,
"If a nun snog a priest she shall rejoice,
even as the rabbits of the field rejoice.
And if a nun puteth fire in the deacon's beacon,
she shall fall down and know the fruits thereof.
And when the spirit has entered into her,
she shall sit upon the right hand of God
... and know the joy of heaven

- Amen -

Kansas, I Don't Think...

2006-08-18T07:45:00.000Z

Kansas, I Don’t Think We’re In Toto Anymore

So, I was…reading this book, “The Covert War Against Rock,” and it mentioned how the biography of Jim Morrison titled, “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” was written by Danny Sugarman,…and that Danny also happened to be married to Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s secretary from the Iran-Contra days.,…and that he also happened to be a CIA operative.

And, it got me thinking how now I’m even less sure about what happened with Jim Morrison during the end part of his life in Paris, …about whether or not it was true that Morrison’s father was the admiral of the ship which claimed to have been fired upon during the Gulf of Tonkin incident (which led to the official start to the Viet Nam War),…and whether or not Morrison really smoked those outrageous amounts of weed.

I was most concerned about the last detail regarding the massive amounts of weed he allegedly smoked. Because, I, like many school kids my age, carried that book around like it contained gospel, (or kitten porn). :)
I didn’t even bother to bring my school books to class. My friends and I never accomplished
Morrison’s dope smoking feats,
but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

(If there really was a best, most surreal moment in my lifetime in which the world felt like it was our freakin’ oyster, it would be driving around with 3 or 4 friends in the Rambler with the windows intentionally shut…smoking crazy amounts of weed off in the undeveloped desert areas near our school, during lunchtime,…blasting the Van Morrison cover song, “Gloria”,…over and over again, singing at the top of our lungs… “…G.L.O.R.I.AAAA!!!..”.)

And then, poof!..., I’m back thinking about the New York Times newspaper…and thinking about people I admire like the economist/columnist Paul Krugman (…whom I think almost single-handedly defeated the Republicans’ attempt to mess with the Social Security program)…(as if Greenspan’s meddling hadn’t destroyed it enough).
…And how thankfully, due to Paul’s cable news appearances at the time…explaining the economics of the deceit in basic English (as well as Robert Reich’s, etc…), the farce was exposed and the campaign to dismantle the program failed miserably.

And, I started thinking about the professional propaganda artists at the Times, like Judith Miller and Thomas Friedman,…and the amateurs in their footsteps like Adam Nagourney. And, I wondered how it was that anyone could think that the news section in the New York Times is even remotely written from a liberal perspective. (My historical understanding of the Times is that it seemed to mainly contain White House press statements and unnamed official sources stating a steady stream of falsehoods;…and all of this was typically presented as the news…and as facts.)

And, then I wondered again about what parts of the book,
“No One Here Gets Out Alive,” were bunk.
Could the entire book have been 100%, officially certified…bunk?
(Did Danny Sugarman ever work for the Times?)

I wondered…could I survive this newfound revelation? This disappointment?
To quote Stiv Bators of The Lords of the New Church (and Dead Boys),
“Is nothing sacred?” (R.I.P. Stiv)

And, I inevitably concluded that I no longer care whether or not Morrison broke on through “to the other side.”

And, I just wished that 2Pac was still alive.

(Right after writing this and going to bed, it only then occurred to me that the true highlight of our "stoned out of our gourds" singing, ...was screaming out in out of tune unison...,
"Make me feel all right!!!") ...Yeah.

Doubting Thomas

2006-08-18T07:30:00.000Z

(Responding to Total Kaos Inc.)
...regarding Thomas Friedman...

I bought into the arguments presented in "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," originally... I even bought the book for my father, afterwards. Then, I got a broader perspective on Friedman and, well let's just say I don't use that book for a reference text anymore.

He strikes me as an offshoot of that whole University of Chicago, Milton Friedman-esque, trickle down economics, IMF "structural adjustment" policies in the third world, tax cuts increase tax revenues, "Greenspan's Fraud", Orwell-speak economic policy arguments,...which seem to always benefit the richest one percent of Americans, and of course the gun runners and bankers.

That's my take on him, anyway. And, it seemed that Sam (Seder) was implying similar observations in the book, (FUBAR). (Christopher) Hitchens did the same thing when he supposedly went after Kissinger in a book, only to then help sell the Iraq occupation to the American public...to help the Kurds, or whatever his intentionally deceptive argument was. (His arguments he knowingly knew were all based on media sources which had fabricated the entire behind-the-scenes policies of American foreign policy during this century.)

Now Christopher Hitchens' credibility in my mind has been reduced to the point where he recently wrote a feature article on the "history, relevance and evolution" of the blow job (fellatio)...in a Vanity Fair article a few months ago.

It'd be interesting to see if a similar writing fate befell Thomas Friedman if a critical analysis was ever done on the accuracy of his observations, and then presented in the mainstream media. Sam did a pretty good deconstruction job in the book, FUBAR, of his writings, though. And quite humorous.

But, most likely I'm jaded. I'm sure if one could read between the lines, once could find relevance in Friedman's "The World is a Flat Olive Tree" columns.

And, I'm sure Thomas Friedman fans could probably shed some light on what I'm not getting.

LOVE

2006-08-13T19:37:00.000Z

Poem to a Horse

You're too far to bring you close
And too high to see below
just hangin' on your daily dose.
I know you never needed anyone
But the rolling papers for your grass
How can you give what you don't have?

You keep on aiming for the top
And quit before you sweat a drop
Feed your empty brain with your hydroponic pot.
You start out playing with yourself
You get more fun within your shell
Nice to meet you but I gotta go my way.

[Chorus:]
I'll leave again
Cuz I've been waiting in vain
But you're so in love with yourself.
If I say my heart is sore
Sounds like a cheap metaphor
So I won't repeat it no more.

I'd rather eat my soup with a fork
Or drive a cab in New York
Cuz to talk to you is harder work.
So what's the point of wasting all my words
If it's just the same or even worse
Than reading poems to a horse.

You keep on aiming for the top
And quit before you sweat a drop
Feed your empty brain with your hydroponic pot.
I bet you'll find someone like you
Cuz there's a foot for every shoe
I wish you luck but I've got other things to do.

I'll leave again 'cause I've
Been waiting in vain
But you're so in love with yourself
If I say my heart is sore
Sounds like a cheap metaphor
So I won't repeat it no more

-Shakira-

2006-06-09T15:56:00.000Z

“Georgia…Bush”

LISTEN ONLINE HERE.
[spoken intro] This song right here is dedicated to the President of the United States of America. Y’all might know him as George Bush, but where I’m from? The lost city of New Orleans? We call him this…

[Ray Charles sample starts: “Georgia…”]

Bush! Let’s go…

Now… this song is dedicated to the one with the suit
thick white skin and his eyes bright blue
so-called beef with you know who
fuckit he just let ‘em kill all our troops
lookit all the bullshit we been through
had a nigga sittin on top of them roofs
Hurricane Katrina we shoulda called it Hurricane Georgia…Bush!

Then they telling y’all lies on the news
the white people smiling like everything cool
but I know people that died in that pool
I know people that died in them schools
now only to survive what to do
got no trailer you got to move
now it’s on to Texas and to Georgia…

They tell you what they want to show you
what they want you to see
but they don’t let you know what’s really going on
make it look like a lotta stealing going on
boy them cops is killers in my home
niggas shot dead in the middle of the street
I ain’t no thief I’m just trying to eat
man, fuck the police and President Georgia…Bush!

So what happened to the levees?
Why wasn’t they steady?
Why wasn’t they able to control this?
I know some folks who live by the levee
they keep on telling me said they heard explosions
same shit happened back in Hurricane Betsy in 1965
I ain’t too young to know this
that was President Johnson
but this is President Georgia…Bush!

[chorus]
We from a town where everybody drowned
Everybody died but baby I’m still praying wit’ cha!
Everybody cried but ain’t nobody tried
there’s no doubt on my mind it was…Bush!
[repeat]

I was born in a boot at the bottom of the map
New Orleans baby
now the White House hating
trying to wash us away like we not on the map
wait have you heard the latest
they saying you gotta have paper if you tryin’ to come back
niggas thinking it’s a rap scene
we can’t hustle and they drop
we ain’t from Georgia…

It’s them dead bodies
the lost houses
the mayor says don’t worry bout it
and the children have been scorned
no one’s here to care bout them
fat shout to all the rappers that helped out
yeah we lucky they called on y’all
but fuck President…Bush!

When you see them Confederate flags
you know what it is
a white cracker muthafucka that probably voted for him
now he ain’t gonna drop no dollars
but he do drop bombs
R.I.P. to they that died in the storm
but fuck President…Bush!

See us in the city man
give us a pound
if a nigga still moving then he holding it down
I had two Jags but lost both them bitches
I’m from the N.O….the N.O….

[chorus]
We from a town where everybody drowned
Everybody died but baby I’m still praying wit’ cha!
Everybody cryin’ but ain’t nobody tryin’
there’s no doubt on my mind it was…Bush!
Bush!

................................................Lil' Wayne

2006-06-05T03:40:00.000Z

Wisemen

She said to me, "Go steady on me.
Won't you tell me what the Wise Men said?
When they came down from Heaven,
Smoked nine 'til seven,
All the shit that they could find,
But they couldn't escape from you,
Couldn't be free of you,
And now they know there's no way out,
And they're really sorry now for what they've done,
They were three Wise Men just trying to have some fun."

Look who's alone now,
It's not me. It's not me.
Those three Wise Men,
They've got a semi by the sea.
Got to ask yourself the question,
Where are you now?

Really sorry now,
They weren't to know.
They got caught up in your talent show,
With you pernickety little bastards in your fancy dress,
Who just judge each other and try to impress,
But they couldn't escape from you,
Couldn't be free of you,
And now they know there's no way out,
And they're really sorry now for what they've done,
They were three Wise Men just trying to have some fun.

Look who's alone now,
It's not me. It's not me.
Those three Wise Men,
They've got a semi by the sea.
Got to ask yourself the question,
Where are you now?

................................................................James Blunt

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Something to Ponder...

You are a Physical Extension of that which is Non-physical.
All-That-Is, or God, is not finished and waiting for you to catch up. You are the leading edge of thought, here seeking more: more of all that feels good to you, more of that which is fresh and gloriously uplifting. (You are, in essence, bringing heaven to earth.)

You are here in this body because you chose to be here.
You wanted the opportunity to experience this delicious contrast in time and space, and with great anticipation you came to co-create with other joy-seeking beings, to fine-tune the process of deliberate thought. (What, where, when and with whom are your choices, too.)

The basis of your life is Freedom; the purpose of your life is Joy.
You are free to choose to discover new avenues for your joy. In your joy you will grow; and in your growth you will add to the growth of All-That-Is. (However, you are also free to choose bondage or pain... but everything anyone chooses is only because they believe it will help them feel better.)

You are a creator; you create with your every thought.
You often create by default, for you are getting what you are giving your attention to wanted or unwanted but you know by how it feels if what you are getting (creating) is what you are wanting or if it is not what you are wanting. (Where is your attention focused?)

Anything that you can imagine is yours to be or do or have.
As you ask yourself why you want it, the essence of your desire is activated, and the Universe begins to bring it to you. The more intense your positive feelings, the faster it is coming to you. (It is as easy to create a castle as a button.)

You are choosing your creations as you are choosing your thoughts.
Your loving, Inner Being offers guidance in the form of emotion. Entertain a wanted or unwanted thought and you feel a wanted or unwanted emotion. Choose to change the thought and you've changed the emotion and the creation. (Make more choices in every day.)

The Universe adores you; for it knows your broadest intentions.
You have come to earth with great intentions, and the Universe constantly guides you on your chosen path. When you are feeling good, you are, in that moment, allowing more of that which you have intended from your broader perspective. (You are Spirit Incarnate.)

Relax into your natural Well-being. All is well. (Really it is!)
The essence of all that you appreciate is constantly flowing into your reality. As you find more things to appreciate, your state of appreciation opens more avenues to more to feel appreciation for. (As you think you vibrate. As you vibrate you attract.)

You are a creator of thoughtways on your unique path of joy.
No one can limit where you can direct your thought. There are no limits to your joyous journeys to experience. On the path to your happiness you will discover all that you want to be or do or have. (Allowing others their experiences allows you yours.)

Actions to be taken and money to be exchanged are by-products of your focus on joy.
On your deliberately joyous journey your actions will be inspired, your resources will be abundant and you will know by the way you feel that you are fulfilling your reason for life. (Most have this one backwards, therefore most feel little joy in their actions or their possessions.)

You may appropriately depart your body without illness or pain.
You need not attract illness or pain as an excuse to leave. Your natural state coming, remaining or leaving is that of health and of Well-being. (You are free to choose otherwise.)

You can not die; you are Everlasting Life.
In grace, you may choose to relax and allow your gentle transition back into your Non-physical state of pure, positive Energy. Your natural state is that of Foreverness. (Have fun with all of this. Lighten up! You can't get it wrong.)

P.S. It is not necessary for even one other person to understand the Laws of the Universe or the processes that we are offering here in order for you to have a wonderful, happy, productive Life Experience for you are the attractor of your experience. Just you!

-

Abraham-Hicks

2006-05-14T05:39:00.000Z

I am a person, you are a person,
With flesh and blood and with mind and conscience.
The corporation is not a person.
That word belongs to you and me.

They rape and plunder the world’s resources,
Destroying forests and killing wildlife.
The corporation must turn a profit,
Trampling over you and me.

They dump big money into elections,
Buying our Congress and legislatures.
The corporation a legal fiction,
Now has more rights than you and me.

The Robber Barons bought off the judges
To give them rights in the Constitution.
Who said the courts had the right to do that?
That job belongs to you and me.

The First Amendment protects our freedom
Of free expression and of religion.
The corporations have gone and stole it.
Those rights belong to you and me.

The Fourth Amendment requires warrants
For search and seizure; but corporations
Evade the health codes and regulations
And environmental laws.

Whenever Wal-Mart destroys a Main Street
And all the people rise up in protest,
The corporate cries of “Discrimination!”
Override democracy.

If “We the People” are truly sovereign
And rule the country through our elections,
Then we must take back from corporations
Rights that were meant for you and me.

"The Personhood Song" by Jan Edwards

sung to the tune of

"This Land is Your Land"

2006-05-08T05:57:00.000Z

Abstinence pledges suck -- literally
As news spreads that teens who pledge chastity have lots more kinky sex, millions of aging boomers ask:

Where was Bush when I was in high school?

By Bill Maher

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2005/04/01/abstinence/index.html

2006-04-28T05:47:00.000Z

"Dear Mr. President"
(feat. Indigo Girls)

Dear Mr. President,
come take a walk with me.
Let's pretend we're just two people and
you're not better than me.
I'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly.

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye
and tell me why?

Dear Mr. President,
were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say
no child is left behind?
We're not dumb and we're not blind.
They're all sitting in your cells
while you pave the road to hell.

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say.
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine.

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye?

Let me tell you 'bout hard work.
Minimum wage with a baby on the way.
Let me tell you 'bout hard work.
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away.
Let me tell you 'bout hard work.
Building a bed out of a cardboard box.
Let me tell you bout hard work.
Hard work.
Hard work.
You don't know nothing bout hard work.
Hard work.
Hard work.
Oh,...

How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President,
you'd never take a walk with me.
Would you?

...........................................................................Pink

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower

2006-04-24T05:25:00.000Z

NOT

READY

MAKE

NICE
-

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting.

I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying.

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should.

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it.

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over.

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down...

......Dixie Chicks......

www.dixiechicks.com

2006-04-21T22:01:00.000Z

(Fleamail)...

Flea writes an email:

...george w bush should definitely be impeached
he is a liar
and his lies have bought misery to millions of people
and brought no good to anyone except for the corporate oil
billionaires who are making huge profits
they are profiting during wartime
that is unscrupulous and terribly sad

w bush has made the world a much less safe place
before the war iraq was not a place for terrorists
saddam hussein, brutal dictator that he was
was secular and had nothing to do with al-queda
and was sanctioned to death and had no power outside of his country
now it is a breeding ground for terrorism and anti-americanism is at
an all time high all over the world
and the people of iraq are no better off at all
all those people want is for the americans to leave
decent families and people like you and me
who never wanted america
there in the first place

goerge w bush has sent american soldiers over there to be maimed and
killed
only to serve his selfish oil company needs and for his ego
american soldiers who are loyal to each other and who only want to
have a good job get an education and support their country are being
used for an unjust cause
i support the troops
they, like all americans are being betrayed by george w bush
he has betrayed his country he should be impeached

the administration's line that they were over there because they
wanted to spread democracy and freedom
is nothing else besides a lie
if they had any interest at all in the well being of other human beings
they would be doing what they could for people who desperately need
and would love help in africa

i pray to god that george w bush and his administration does not
invade iran
it would be a bloodbath
why dont they just leave the iranians alone
and go through the united nations
and work on making the united nations as strong and as just as possible
an invasion of iran would be the worst possible thing that could happen
i pray to god that it does not happen

i am just another guy sitting in the car on the english motorway.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2006_04_16_atrios_archive.html#114565275013096349

2006-04-19T05:48:00.000Z

my old man

16 years old
during the depression
I'd come home drunk
and all my clothing--
shorts, shirts, stockings--
suitcase, and pages of
short stories
would be thrown out on the
front lawn and about the
street.

my mother would be
waiting behind a tree:
"Henry, Henry, don't
go in . . .he'll
kill you, he's read
your stories . . ."

"I can whip his
ass . . ."

"Henry, please take
this . . .and
find yourself a room."

but it worried him
that I might not
finish high school
so I'd be back
again.

one evening he walked in
with the pages of
one of my short stories
(which I had never submitted
to him)
and he said, "this is
a great short story."
I said, "o.k.,"
and he handed it to me
and I read it.
it was a story about
a rich man
who had a fight with
his wife and had
gone out into the night
for a cup of coffee
and had observed
the waitress and the spoons
and forks and the
salt and pepper shakers
and the neon sign
in the window
and then had gone back
to his stable
to see and touch his
favorite horse
who then
kicked him in the head
and killed him.

somehow
the story held
meaning for him
though
when I had written it
I had no idea
of what I was
writing about.

so I told him,
"o.k., old man, you can
have it."

and he took it
and walked out
and closed the door.
I guess that's
as close
as we ever got.

........................................................ Charles Bukowski

2006-04-13T17:22:00.000Z

excerpts from...

magic bullet theory

...we need a poet to slam some
new national anthem.
‘cause it’s the time of the season
for rhyming with reason,
and treason creeps
when my peeps are all sleeping.
it’s deep when
the corporate elite have been
cheatin’
for so long, they got total control,
got a hold on the whole game--
it’s profane.
George W. Bush ain’t shit to me.
i ain’t out to make headlines,
i’m out to make history.
resisting the
clique that’s addicted
to oil like a new global crack pipe
addicted to cash,
politicians can’t act right.

so I spit shit to flip the script from apocalyptic.

and the main thing to know about war in Iraq is
Bush lied, people died, and all war is a racket.

an illegitimate president,
an evil prince of smoke and mirrors
who hasn't had a self-reflective moment
since his days of coke and mirrors

a stolen election
a suspicious attack
a cover-up
legislation hastily passed
a pre-planned agenda
a nebulous war
pre-emptive invasion
secret military courts

corporate media
too afraid to follow the facts
in these days of charades
and fake patriot acts.

a military-industrial-petroleum complex
that can cancel democracy
by calling in bomb threats

... puppetmasters of catastrophe
assassinating democracy
rogue elements
targeting hope

... puppetmasters of catastrophe
hijacking reality,
but the truth is bulletproof...

by Drew Dellinger

...2004

2006-04-12T04:52:00.000Z

ONE AWAY

Even when I second guess myself
I'm wrong
I'm just one away
from being right one time in a row
how did that song go?
it mighta been a strike if there were pins
outta luck, outta money
and the forecast calls for pain
...or something?
shit
wish I could be down
with it
and not drown
from it
and just go with the flow.

.....................................................Sparky G.

2006-04-12T04:51:00.000Z

All Brokeback, No Cattle

Your inner Tucker Carlson

Ain't gettin' a response outta me

I'da hoped you'da known better

But it don't make me angry.

Because,...

Fairies wear boots to do their bow-legged walk

And all weekend cowboys dream gay shit

Homophobes of the red-necked variety I mock

But, I wish it didn't sound so mean when I say it.

I do hope that somehow the merits of this poem

Get Republicans' panties in a wet wad

Greedy racist chickenhawks, oh so sensitive

With their transgender they call God. (??)

.....................................................Sparky G.