Monday Morning Musings

Actually, these thought came to me last night, but lets see if they sound right today. On NPR yesterday they interviewed several educational pundits. These people spoke of various changes to our educational system in order to fulfill it's mission statement. Curiously, it seems that the purpose of American education is to produce good, happy workers. Not CEOs, not entrepreneurs, not Nobel prize winners, just happy workers who know that everything has a price and nothing is free, even knowledge. It costs more and more to obtain knowledge. This discourages people, poor people especially, from trying to obtain deep educations. You remain undereducated and happily playing with trinkets, like Blackberries, PSP and the like. It sounds very good, to the CEOs, but it emphasizes that everything has a price and this cuts into profits. Things like wages and health care for the workers, for instance, are costs to the CEOs. So they move to cheaper labor camps and fire their American workers who need lots of money to replace their 2 year old car, their last years model game machine etc. This satisfies their need for more profits, but by firing workers you reduce their incomes and fewer products can be purchased. The solution is to make cheaper trinkets for the Americans, who after all are valued for their ability to spend. Since they aren't very educated their tastes are crude. Violence and sex is all it takes to interest them for hours. When they get bored with these trinkets and games the CEOs can simply release old products with new names and new commercials. All this maintains the level of profit the CEOs expect.

Profits represent labor, past and future, in the form of money. Money can be used in a Ponzi scheme or a hostile takeover. This works as long as people accept that numbers on paper really represent something. Once they don't, the jig is up. Witness 1930's Germany with their wheelbarrows of marks representing one potato. If people are unemployed, undereducated and unaware, money becomes next to worthless since it is part of an economy which produces inferior products by uneducated workers. Market Law kicks in and either somebody steps in from the outside to manage resources or somebody steps up from the inside to control the resources, or the resources are largely ignored while labor remains primitive, agricultural and stagnant.

What do you do with stupid, ignorant workers who produce shoddy products which can only be sold back to the ignorant workers? If you educate them they expect to climb the ladder to success, to replace the ruling class. Can't have that! If you replace them with robots to make better products they can't afford to buy them. The difficulty only exists because the intent of the ruling class is not to "raise all boats" but to ram the small ones. They call it social evolution", a testament to their own ignorance. If the little fish can't compete we'll eat them. Of course if the food chain is broken then even the big fish go down. How to maintain control over the workers, keep them ignorant and happy, and maintain the royal lifestyle to which the big fish have become accustomed? Lotteries start up, advertising millions for free! But as any gambler knows, gambling only serves the house, that is the Ruling Class. You can try to gain their trust by starting easy to finish wars and declare "Mission Accomplished!" when in fact nothing is further from the truth. You could buy up the media and control it, serving up pap and bullshit and propaganda. "We are the best in the world!" Food is imported, clothing is imported, vehicles are imported, clean water and entertainment. America watches British sitcoms re-formatted to sound American. American children watch cartoons made in South Korea, a military dictatorship under our protection.

Every single President in modern times, upon finding themselves Commander in Chief, has sought a war in order to try out the new toys. Our undereducated children wage the wars, bringing home bent and broken bodies, brains bruised and dysfunctional. They get low paying jobs and gradually go insane, remembering the faces of the children they have killed and raped. But even insane people buy trinkets, so the President is happy because the CEOs are happy. This is why we bail out banks instead of hospitals or schools. When a bank does badly and is failing at it's purpose the government gives it billions. When a school in the ghetto goes badly, failing it's students, the government comes in and closes it, giving the task of education to for-profit corporations to move the money up to the CEO level. Recall that every member of the past administration and the current one came from business to protect business even at the cost of the lives of thousands of workers and children.

This is mostly how it goes. I could explain how to free us of this constant control, manipulation and destruction, but you can't explain to an Angus how that ramp is not the way to go. Well, you can but they won't listen. See, we have to be educated in social history. This has to accurate and as devoid of propaganda as possible. It must include all our mistakes and deviations from the Law so we can avoid those traps. Then we have to be active in local politics, we have to either go to town hall meetings or watch them on cable. Everybody should have access to information via the web so they can learn not just what the government wants to them to hear, but what the world says is happening. We have to place role models up who deserve it. Not skinny alcoholic strip-tease dancing "entertainers". Not lying political hacks, nor partisan news sources like Faux News. Sen. Byrd is one of the most eloquent speakers in Congress but his speeches get buried because they often say unpopular things, like "War against Iraq is a crime and a huge mistake!" just before we invaded that poor country. Dennis Kucinich was also a truth teller who was ignored. I honestly think the news people didn't like trying to pronounce his name. In other words, we need an educated population who knows history, rhetoric, logic, and the Law of the land, the Constitution.

That's what we need, alright, but we won't get it. Just like my boy needs constant stimulation and therapies in order to heal enough to communicate America needs democratic processes and education to survive. So, just like my son, my country is doomed to die a pitiful, unnecessary death. Oh the houses will still stand and many of the tall buildings will be filled with businesses, but mostly we will move numbers around and quietly, obediently, march up that ramp towards the man with the gun.

America the Once Beautiful

Obama is a failed President because he presides over a failed government. Our Bill of Rights is now a Limited Contract of Privileges under the control of the President. Our Constitution is seen as a set of guidelines, not Laws. And all of our Legislature, minus maybe Byrd and Kucinich, are businessmen selling themselves and any part of the government over which they have control. WE, the People are seen as commodities which are sold to the highest bidder. We are guaranteed to consume ten times the amount of any other population, so the foreign owners of what was American business can expect great profits over a long term. Obama was sold out before he began and he is as domesticated as the rest of us. He resists conflict like a man who grew up in an alcoholics family, beaten by a man stinking of gin. He wants to be liked and he does not want to be lynched. So he has compromised the heart of America just as Bush compromised her soul. We get the leftovers, the bones and dried flesh of a once great Republic.

What we have here, clearly, is the evolution of the United Corporations of America and Beyond. Every person at any reasonably elevated post in the government, say maybe anyone elected, is invested in the businesses of America. Some specialize in real estate, some in weapons, some in more arcane dealings. White slavery is very profitable and legal if you call it something else.

If we use the analogy of a dairy farm, one of my favorites, we the cattle are trained from birth to be domesticated consumers, docile and if not content at least not organized effectively. But in this current form the farmers are no longer caring for their cattle in a way as to insure their survival into old age. Why? Because we only give milk in our youth. Like chickens and other farm critters Americans can be profitable only into middle age and then they start needing more than they give out. So, what is a modern farmer to do? Cull the herd. So they start a war.

It works out especially well since the farmer owns a munitions factory down the road. He's also fond of steaks and leather seating. His gardens use bone meal and blood meal. So everything works out well for the evolutionary peak animals, Corporate Capitalists.

But in the woods and nearby fields are feral critters like deer and wild oxen. They come to the fences and encourage the cattle (us) to leave the farm and live a natural life. The response of most domesticated animals is a slow chewing of their cuds and a few belches. Some, however, listen well enough to try to leave the farm and join the woodland creatures, maybe open up a mom and pop cheese store. How can the farmer keep up their obscene profit margins if parts of the herd leave? Well you can regulate the small farms out of existence, you can buy them up and sell their parts to small parts of themselves, little connected farms that used to be privately owned and operated. Now they are part of the United Corporations of America and Beyond. What about the ferals themselves, the free thinkers, the Liberals? Outlaw them, build tall concrete fences around the farm. Land mines can be placed along the Mexico border and twelve packs of beer blocking the Canadian border. Change the school so the calves can't read worth beans. Encourage mindless hours of violent games and movies. Encourage breeding of the calves, selling off the unwanted offspring. You could take a page from Jefferson's journal and breed with members of your herd to make more cattle for sale or milking.

Ever notice that there are a lot of holidays and songs dedicated to War events but damn few dedicated to Peace? We had more but they started lumping the Presidents' birthdays together as Presidents Day. We never have a day off to celebrate non-wars, like when we landed on the moon. Shouldn't the first human on the moon be celebrated as much as the end of our first nuclear war?

It would be so nice if our children had accurate history books instead of propaganda and lies. It would hurt to see the harm our nation has caused, but most nations have black spots on their history. We just have mostly black spots on ours. Personally, people coming to hear the President with automatic weapons and handguns seems like a black spot. Oddly enough, the more they threaten his life directly the more Obama steps back and waters down the help we need in this pasture. He looks brave enough, but he's a black man in a white government and the sheets are on the line, the crosses have been planted on the White House lawn. I don't blame him, but it would be swell if he stood before a microphone and said, "I quit! You sons of bitches are too fucked up for words. All you think about is your stock holdings! You don't give a rats ass for the People. I'm going back to Chicago to run a soup kitchen." I could respect a man who did that. I can't respect a man who thinks secret prisons are okay, the Geneva conventions are mere suggestions, and kidnapping people from the streets of the world and torturing them is a "necessary evil." NO, it's not, Mr. President. Treating people like animals is not a necessary evil, it's just plain evil.

I move we consider a motion to sell off our assets and dissolve this corporation as of July 4th 2010.

Poop

So there's this great show on PBS talking about Yellowstone Park, and they said "it's the first National Park in the WHOLE WORLD!" and that somehow pissed me off. I mean, I think it's great we teach our children not to eat the molten yellow flow, but it is a fact that many parts of the rest of the world have EARTH under their feet. The thing is, these "Progressive" shows really fail to teach our children how to, for instance: grow enough of the right food to last for four seasons or until you could plant: protect yourself from seasonal rains and winds. How to prepare food so youncan eat it.

It just seems to take so long.

Now they're teaching us how to train our dogs to find certain poop.

I can't stand it.

Checking Reality

When Bill Clinton got into the White House one of the first things he did was break his word about allowing gays to be out of the closet while in the military. The homophobic uproar over this promise was too great for the Commander in Chief. He capitulated so fast, in fact, that it seemed to me that the original plan must have been just that. But was it something he couldn't control or was he a ratfucking liar? Only time would tell.
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."
When Barack Obama took the White House he did so on a promise to end the Iraq War, an illegal war pre-planned and plotted for by a team of liars and thieves who happened to have lied their way through Big Business into the biggest Business of all: Politics. He was faced with mass murderers, child killers, war criminals and fraudsters of the greatest dimensions. So he moved a lot of troops to Afghanistan and planned to bring in many more. Afghanistan is that country which is known as the one only Genghis Khan could take and he couldn't hold it. So Barack, in his measured, pragmatic, easy-on-the-ears, way of doing things failed to mention upon moving those troops out that Iraq ordered us to take our child-raping, crowd-killing bunch of soldiers and contractors and get the Hell out. They gave us a deadline and oddly enough pretty much none of the MSM ever mentioned that aspect of Barack's great military adventure. They made it sound like he was keeping his promise, mostly. But you and I know that he was avoiding a scene in which we had to admit we figured that we owned Iraq, it's oil and blood, and Iraq figured we were invaders, occupiers and unwanted guests. They do like our money, which by the way is a way to record labor accomplished or promised and we, boys and girls, we are the collateral, WE are the workers backing those dollars. Barack chose to let their leash out a bit and send the boys and girls to Afghanistan, where no doubt our Marines will find some little girl to rape and murder, after all, boys will be boys.

Of all the industrialized western nations only America fails to recognize a citizen's right to health care. Or actually, to be more accurate I should say, "a poor citizen's right to health care". We demanded to be equal to the Europeans. We wanted our health care for everyone and we wanted our taxes to pay for it. Trouble is, most of our taxes goes to feed the Beast of War. Quite a lot goes to stuff the pockets of well-placed friends. There isn't much left for health care. Besides which, we breed very well and replace dead workers with young ones. Why heal the sick when there are plenty of people waiting to take their place in the factory?

It's a lot like owning a flock of chickens. We lay our eggs, we scratch the soil, eat the bugs off the vines and poop near the stems of the vines. All is well in the Garden. But if a hen goes sick we bring in the rooster and we fertilize a few eggs and we make new replacements. Thomas Jefferson did the same thing with his slave population, except of course HE was the rooster. Same thing, though. You can't get a vet to look at a chicken, so when they get sick we separate them from the other hens until they die, which they usually do. Then we bring in the new chicks. See, in a flock the individual is not as important as the flock. It's obvious. In America, which is like a lot of big flocks of hens, we don't care about the individual so long as the corporate world is well. Here's a great example. Every day the PBS station has news on the hour and about a third of the news is how well the corporations are doing, which are sick and failing and what they are worth to the owners. Unless the flocks are threatened by a hurricane or a wildfire the farmer doesn't care, and so the radio says nothing about how healthy we are, or how sick we are. They could broadcast the number of successful heart transplants this month, or cancers cured. That is all news which touches us easily as much as the price of a stock I do not own. In short, they care about how much money they make off us, not how we are doing.

I've written and thought about this a lot. It seems to me that as humans we should resent being treated as herd animals. But we continue to work for others, even false-humans: the corporation. WE continue because we are domesticated and know no other lifestyle. We don't go to Europeans because our masters tell us they like to "eat stinky cheeses" and they are rude to us and they even don't know that America saved the world twice and now stands as the premire force for good and justice for the rest of the world to admire and emulate. None of this about the Europeans is true, though maybe the french do like stinky cheeses, but who doesn't, nes pa? The Europeans, for their part, think that they defeated the Nazis in Europe and Africa and Russia took them out in eastern Europe. The Americans came late, worked hard and then claimed the victories. In our world history books that our children are herding about from class to class it is written that John Wayne killed Hitler. Until the Internet we had no reason to doubt it.

A recent report documents sickness among populations. It seems that the Europeans are healthier than Americans. Just looking at the figures we have more heart attacks and strokes. We also have the longest work week and the shortest vacations and even no vacations for a great number of Americans, who can't afford to go on vacation. In most modern industrialized nations the workers are afforded long vacations, up to a month even, paid for by the employer because it is a basic human need: rest. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" We are allowed to be born, mostly, and we have no chains on us, mostly, and we can watch TV. In fact, we HAVE to watch TV in order to know what to buy next. See, the masters don't eat us, not literally. They don't drag our bodies to the knackers and make dog food out of us, although in Philadelphia it's not wise to sleep on the park benches overnight. They don't want our flesh yet, but they do take from us most of those dollars they give us for our labors. The food we require in order to be strong enough to work for our masters is paid for by us, as is the water, the housing and the health care. We sweat for them, they give us dollars, we hunger so we give the dollars back. It's all very civilized and orderly.

This would never have happened if we didn't have big fences around our herd. The Atlantic and Pacific prevent us from easily finding out that the other people in the world see health care and housing as basic rights. After all, they are basic needs. It makes sense, too, that we should take off some time to regain our sanity. We shouldn't work so damn hard, it'll give us a heart attack. Do a little every day and it gets done. The Europeans are portrayed as slackers by the American MSM in order to make us proud of working ourselves into an early grave. So we sneer at them as we fall into the soil.

Have you ever debated with a Jehovah's Witness? Notice how they all fall back on a faith that the Bible must not be self-contradictory and it contains all the answers except we are too stupid to see them. That 5th amendment that says, "Thou shall not kill unless and until you are ordered to." is a problem for many people. I often wonder what would have the history of the world been like if the Bible had been translated to read, "Thous shall not MURDER, which is a human taking the life of a human" so that wars could be seen as violations, even though Joshua claimed he was ordered to burn those cities and rape those women and sell those children into slavery. He wasn't, he was simply greedy and cruel. So he told the people he was God's Right Hand of Something and it was time to modify those Commandments slightly to allow the taking over of several regions of Holy Land. It has been observed by several accountants and lawyers that some animals are more equal than others. Four legs good, two legs better. The rich have two legs, the rest of us are crawling, which is a four legged stance, in a way.

I had a friend, his name was Dan
He was not a happy man
His life was not the one he'd planned
We should feel bad for Miserable Dan.
I loved the boy, I love the man
We both made castles in the sand
It didn't turn out the way we planned
He's employed but I got canned.
Everyday he goes to work
A style of life he will not shirk
I have a little funny quirk
For evil men I will not work.
I wash the dishes for my wife
Who seems to stand the worker life
I changed the mouse and cursor bright
Into into a kitchen knife so light
I chop the veggies and oil the pan
And cook because I am the Man.

Sunday Morning

I suppose this habit of reading the world's newspapers in the morning is not a great idea from the standpoint of keeping happy. Too many bombs and dead babies for me and quite a lot seem to be the result of the actions of my homeland. I keep hoping someday to read about a person, maybe of the people, certainly it's unlikely to be a wealthy person, but one who is working with the sick, helping families and not taking a dime for their efforts. Silly of me, actually, to expect a myth to come into being like that. But even now in India wealthy men at a certain point in their lives give up all their worldly goods and go sit somewhere to mediate and occasionally find some food in their bowl. Can you imagine George Bush wanting to give up his wealth and power to meditate on life while enjoying from time to time some rice placed in his bowl? It would restore my faith in American men is just one wealthy individual did something like that. Hell, it's not a bad thing to go think about life rather than slave to get more money. I used to meditate until the sitting began to hurt too much. I've begged on the street for coins so I could buy fish and chips to share with the other homeless people. Here's a lovely story of faith should work: I was hitching rides north to visit a friend. It was in Oregon and a truck pulled over full of migrant workers and their kids. I squeezed in the back and settled down. None of the kids spoke English and my Mexican was all obscenities. As I sat there a little brown skinned girl, about 7 or so, reached into a bag she had and pulled out a piece of white bread. She handed it to me solemnly and I tried to pronounce "gracias". That little girl handed me three pieces of bread out of her stash of food and we didn't even speak the same language. We didn't even have the same gods. But she fed me until I got out of the truck to move down a different highway, always on the prowl for Newness. But isn't the giving of food a gentle way of reminded us that we are all children of the Divine?

Yesterday I watched a baby cardinal follow its mother from branch to branch, fluttering and chirping, asking for food. It was on the same branch as some ripe berries but didn't know how to eat them, or simply preferred it's mother to feed it. We're a lot like that: able to help ourselves but preferring things to be handed to us. With the birds it is different, though. The mother is not only feeding her child, but teaching it how to feed a baby. For humans it's similar but we seem to learn that it's easier to take from others. Granted the offering of a gift should have been a part of that thought, but mostly we seem to grasp that we got something for free.

One of the first deities worshiped by we humans was the Bird Mother. We gave Her credit for hatching the universe as well as us. Her eggs sustained us, Her feathers adorned us and kept us warm. Her flesh was easy to eat. If you thought that birds were physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit you would try not to screw up their world, wouldn't you?One of the things that always struck me about Yaweh was that he seems more of a real estate salesman, giving out the Holy Lands to the faithful, making deals on lands currently occupied by the unfaithful. None of which can be kept, though. Eventually you die, see, and then the land stays behind while you go to where land is insignificant. Makes me wonder why they kill so many over there, fighting over wells like it was the 2nd century. The Israelis bulldoze ancient trees which bore olives to sustain the people, which gave wood for fires to cook pots of birds, which shaded the weary road traveler. Now there is firewood but no food to cook and no water to boil eggs from birds which have fled the destruction of the trees. As an old fashioned guy I see this as sacrilege. It's not at all nice, too.

Yaweh was a volcano god at one point, giving fertile ashes for growing trees and crops, but occasionally exploding and tossing molten earth around, killing all life in the immediate area. Then little buds appear in the ashes and new trees grow. Somehow people started worshiping the mountain rather than the life that it sustained. They were more impressed with the destruction of the beasts rather than Her great strength in opposing Him. Life is quiet and easily missed, but it's a greater miracle than the lava flowing into the valley, because after the lava cools and the mountain sleeps, life returns and She gives us food for our hungry and songs for our souls. I would rather bow to a pheasant and offer my thanks for it's song and flesh than pray to a mountain and ask that it not kill my family and friends. Different kind of relationship, wouldn't you say?

Waiting for the Man

Awhile back I started getting intense stabbing-burning pain in my left shoulder, especially when sitting and typing. It got worse and worse until it started feeling like a replay of the shingles I had a few years ago. So I called the pain management people and they suggest doubling up on my meds. Having been trashed by Neurontin I was not eager to see if Lyrica could leave me in a haze of non-memory. Well, so far it makes me slightly dizzy, but the pain has just backed up a bit, still waiting in the sidelines. Certain moves kick it up again and the weight of my shirt irritates it like a bad sunburn. Another issue is that standing in the studio working on clay can cause it to flare up and suddenly my left shoulder's on fire and my leg aches terribly. sigh. And the side story is, of course, that the legal meds don't quite help and have side effects and the illegal meds do work but aren't covered by insurance.

We had late blight this year that destroyed 90% of my tomatoes! German Striped, Lemon Boy, Better Bush, Genovese, Oxhearts, yellow pears and probably many other kinds of lovely tomatoes just started to form and Late Blight turns them all to brown mush. Some of the compost plants are still growing but it may be too late to get fruit. All that pain digging and planting and now I have to dig them up and burn them. Next year I will grow kelp.

In about a half hour the stabbing pain in my shoulder should fade. The ache in the lower back will take longer. But just for the record, this is about all I can type before the lower back knots up and the shoulder is too painful to stand any more typing. Time to cook breakfast anyway.

The elderberries and blackberries are ripe and deep indigo, almost black.

"The Rant" by Tom Degan: The GOP's Little Image Problem

"The Rant" by Tom Degan: The GOP's Little Image Problem

People need to read this blog in order to see that sanity is not lost.

In Memorium: Hidey Cat

 

I got frustrated opening doors for her, but it was a bit of a game and I really didn't mind, Hidey. Some time ago some slob of a civil servant gave Ernst Road the same speed limit as State Route 50. Posted at 45 MPH, our little tree lined, winding road has become hazardous for those who live here. In spite of warning her about the people flying along at 50-60 MPH Hidey liked to improve her hunting skills behind the dumpster across the street. Lots of mice over there, as well as her friend, Linus. Hidey was a purr machine and a real lady. She had a delicate grace and a sense of humor. Born in NYC, she came to our home via Jess, who wanted more for Hidey than being trapped all day in an apartment. Hidey became an excellent hunter and often stayed out late looking for critters to bother and sometimes eat. In recent weeks she had gotten to know Wrigley better, even touched noses a couple of times. She was settling down to be a country cat.

The problem with cars, aside from everything, is that when you drive along at ten over the speed limit you don't look down or up, you just fly along oblivious to the fact that there are hundreds of pounds of steel and plastic carrying you over other animal's paths and trails. Many critters can't comprehend this, can't SEE the car coming. I don't know who hit Hidey or if they like cats or dogs, but they don't realize the pain our family is suffering now. Another love is lost from life.

Hidey, come back if you get the chance. I hope your new kittenhood is in the country and filled with growing catnip and lazy mice. We miss you, I miss you. Wrigley would if he thought about it. Peace unto you, my furry friend, may Goddess Bless.