Long Time No Rhyme

Long Time No Rhyme

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Moonrust

Wait?

why wait?

bite this bait

Its called elections

pretends to be Democracy,

squirms as an impaled worm

alleges Freedom

but of its children

it demands pledges

YES!!!

Money talks, then stalks the facts

like that Sasquatch old footage

going forward gazing back

last moments sunlight

rusted without rain

never quite to be found this time around

and around

dizzy

Democracy

nearly extinct meltdown

drowning in a bathtub

rising “values” voting

moral crusaders

hiding immoral background

handcuffs upon our moon,

powdered crater face smooth smile

our circus is backward around

this time around

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.

.

.

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.{photo: Benafia}

 

 

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF STEALING ELECTIONS

From Truthout; Greg Palast’s perspective on this election’s potential for voter repression.

Whole story by clicking on; How McCain Could Win below.

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Linked to as a public service:

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How McCain Could Win

Monday 03 November 2008

by: Greg Palast, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Two Obama canvassers prepare their pitch before knocking on registered Republicans’ doors in Arvada, Colorado. (Photo: Kevin Moloney / The New York Times)

It’s November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the “Bradley effect”: Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats’ Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia.

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CONSERVATIVES VOTING FOR OBAMA

I know we can cherry pick from the population to find for and against on most any topic. It is the reason’s they give here that carry the weight.

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DESTROY THE NATION . What?

Hum? How will Americans help destroy their nation faster this election? That is the question.

We have found that naivete blooms eternal in corporatized America. All one has to do is control the subjects being considered relevant. How hard is that? Not very.

Rumor, especially specious and misleading innuendo, has become one of our leading opinion wind vain indicators. We see how easy deception is, and how much of it is the political meat of the right wing especially, but the left is an easy mark for stupid think as well.

The right is propped up for anti-commons “individualism” poll up the but passion. Don’t help anyone unless they are already really, really rich, or you need them for votes. What else do they really have? The firebrand liberals who founded this nation would not recognize these “patriots” or “people of faith” as anything more than pawns in someone else’s chess game.

But wait!

On the left you have “principled” dumb think as well. Do you really want no protection from the government or aberrant other individuals? True for the Second Amendment; if it was intended to power the individual to overturn an unjust authoritarian government, that ability is essentially long gone. The 2nd Amendment proponent does not get to have crowd control weaponry, or radiation, or sound, or chemical and all the other ones the State can bring upon the individual “freedom fighter”. But why then, should not honest citizens still have a modest local ability to protect themselves? Especially when it is known the government is not always the first responder.

Yeah. Go ahead and slaughter my family. I have a few calls to make. Is that really to be the new security provided by non violent principle? To some gun owners, limiting their weapons completely is tantamount to strapping them down and killing them, emotionally. From there it is perceived as literally, no matter how many nuanced conceptions one brings to the table to tell them they will be more safe without them.

But get real again. In these times, when all can be lost, almost literally by one dysfunctional persons behavior, do you really believe the state has no right, in your name, to spy on those who wish you harm? Has this not been the case for ages? No matter the nature of the State, do you believe individual freedom includes the right of the individual to freely destroy everyone else? Really? Who are you kidding? The argument should be over justice and oversight of the governments actions. Freedom comes at a sacrifice of one kind or another; to get it, to have it, to keep it, and yes to protect it.

The false, but often proclaimed sanctimonious or sacred, right to ones own will has always been conditional. Both sides of the debate over individual and nation rights, and which is more important than which has been used to create illusions of ideological purity, when there never was any in the real world.

We see the political parties, for whatever rationalizations, catering to notions of individual safety, both to concepts of individualism and collectivism, in manners meant to assuage fear, real or conjured. What the founding firebrand liberals tried to do is create both balance and justice. These are both endangered by the reaction and overreaction psychologies being driven in the US, to pretty much make the individual citizen a pawn to interest that can manipulate both parties quite effectively. While the parties are relegated to viewpoints that go up and down on the political teeter-totter, just who has taken over the rest of life’s playground?

In some ways, it is less the so called “issues”, that will determine our fate, than the awareness of each individual voter to the power interest that are refashioning America into a dependency addicted corporatised world-state. Divide and conquer is alive and well, and quite possibly occurring in a passionate partisan near you.

The thing worth fighting for is that which is essential for us all, not just those of a particular opinion on an ideological spectrum. The greatest threat to that is now the disequilibrium promoted by predator interest wherever they really are. They will chew us all up and leave the world we live in consumed alive. While we bicker over who is more right.

20 Million secret votes a day

20 Million secret votes a day is my possibly conservative estimate. 20,000,000 decisions to postpone or not do something because of gas prices.

I will be shopping less, driving less each day, and there is likely not to be a return to what was once normal. Less income will be available for all the things of life. That will then trickle up to mean less sales at stores, more unemployment, and most of all we have a government that is fine with its citizens being drowned in the bathtub. Unlike New Orleans, where the political and ideological contempt for our commons was on full view. This inflationary rain will quietly kill jobs, and prior lifestyles will be destroyed and washed away.

Some percentage of the population is now in this situation, 20 million may well be conservative. Certainly some of us will condense our car ventures, but the overall continuous rise in prices an not in income will translate to a decreasing ability to buy things.

The stupid are fine with this, particularly those who remain stupid because this money squeeze is not an issue for them. The cut tax mind blank will make sense to these types. After all, everyone can use some more money right? This truly is stupid-think. It is as if the interrelationship of things is oblivious to the short term, bottom line dwellers. They do not give a thought to the declining infrastructures. They seem to be unconcerned with the desperation any will be driven to to get more money. Sure, there will be both legitimate and illegitimate attempt to increase income. There is a point of no return in this though.

For some percentage of us, we may be too old to do what we spent a lifetime doing. A people, a wholesome people, know each ones interest is their own. These are the wise ones and not the institutionally dumb. Just as there is a response to the nation attacked from without, the wise know that every insult from within does have ramifications for all. Much of the population does seem to have been institutionally brainwashed into the individualism that pretends we are not connected, and so are left all unto our own. This is what is known as misanthropy, in this case an inebriated conception of separation from the whole.

As it just happens to turn out, the self divided and conquered country is a predatory set up mindset. It is truly stupid-think. The commons that connects us all and is the primal infrastructure is cognitively denied, or thought of as; So what? This is how the hurricane Katrina showed us New Orleans, a moment unscripted. Some of us woke up from our stupid delusion that government had interest other than the wealthy.

Actually, the Governor did try to address the situation, but she was up against the ideological machinery of separation and alienation. Rove was in charge of metaphorically drowning her, and the media obliged. She could not fathom that the federal government would use the occasion to seek political advantage as its ultimatum for assistance. How had this nation of the once upon a time “We the People” been metamorphosed into a country that says; well, we will only help our kind? Think like my party or you will be abandoned.

As it turns out again, if one can keep fear in front of common understanding and so common sense, all manner of perversion of the commons can be made to seem like the thing to do. One of our political parties is a fear machine. People do vote for it out of a fear based hope, that change or understanding will be kept away. That they need not change a thing to feel right about themselves. They are willing to abandon the commons over this fear based separation anxiety. Might makes right becomes the answer to most conflict, that and just abandon whomever, since to give help or aid will only weaken them and so make them dependent.

This dependency addiction does seem to happen when those who are helped are assisted in a kind of contempt for their problematic situation. Unfortunately for those who conditionalize their willingness to be human, behavioral blackmail creates the same reactive dysfunctions in adults as we see in children who are emotionally blackmailed by their parents or guardians. But if we think humans are inherently evil, we worship what is evil in them and us, not what is right.

And so it is necessary for these conservative, or separation based self interest, to constantly “program” the population into alienation based behavior. Contempt for those not like us becomes “natural” under the divided and conquered mindset, basic tribalized suspicion of the “other”. Aberrant, or questionable behavior in the population, serves to reinforce their broken off perception, along with the superiority/inferiority complex driven by sycophants of the powerful who are well funded to keep the emotionalized contempt alive and unwell in cognitively dissonant alienated identities. The corporate press and media are loaded with those who are willing to spout their mental illnesses as common sense, good and true.

But I digressed a bit. We are all in Katrina’s New Orleans now. There are no plans to address the atrophying state of affairs in many of our pocket books. The poor in China are currently being used to hold above watter the credit card debt being run up by our in denial lifestyle. The land allegedly of, for, and by the people, has become the land of, for, and by those with money only. And for a while, those who will vote against their own interest while thinking they are standing up for what is right. Which s a self defeating behavior.

The wealthy have the spiritual perversion disassociation that is required to justify or rationalize their privileges over the rest of us. If we fundamentally worship evil, this is not a difficult task for them to do to achieve the contrapuntal notions necessary to have them seem more god-like and obviously then deserving of their much greater slice of the commons. I earned all I got! Good for you then?

This fact remains; there are no plans, not for healing and restoration. There are plans for larger prisons and containment camps. There are plans for that universal tax called profits to be raised no matter the consequence. There are plans to eliminate any rights that get in the way of the rule of the elite. There may be no plans to help the average Americans, but there certainly are plans to restrict their options for the future. For those who seem proud of their separation identification and achievements above the Commons–the earth under your identities containment dike is starting to liquefy.

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THAT BITTER WHITE THING

What a dance through absurdity as I go through the political spectrum on my wordpress tags!

Obama’s wonderful, his wife/friend is truly proud of him. Obama and McCain are twins! Hillary conceding means women have been oppressed again!

Then there are the ones who say any vote is a waste, since they (candidates) are all identical. Or, I’m voting for the opposite party cause my favorite lost. What about some reality checking!

Do you really think that the first woman or black is of no importance? One is OK but not the other? I’m switching parties based on race or sex or age? Those “conservatives” of yesterday knew how to trade off favors and vote for many to their disliking, over common contempt for the liberals. The party of elite interest ran over the country with their demolition tractor some 25+ years now.  We have had an unprecedented administration that served the Republican party, and not the Republic.  Though some are surely deluded into believing the two area actually the same.

Now that some people who thought the conservative party was always superior have seen how utterly contemptuous the “conservatives” they have let in have been, this season, some might even vote for the Democrat, as long as it is not Hillary. Since she has been “branded” by those manipulative types way back when presumably. Some taggings never leave.

WHEN IDEOLOGY MEETS REALITY

Some come to their senses over being used, while others may have never really had them? Certain liberals don’t like somebody, so they vote for their known opposite? It is apparent that Obama and Hillary are, as of now, very close on the issues claimed this election season.

Do you alleged switchers really intend to vote for the opposite of your candidates philosophical identity because you “feel” a loss is some kind of betrayal? It is as if we live in a nation (some segment anyway) who see democracy as a game, that they will then take their ball away if all the rules produce some end they do not like. What a bunch of babies.  We are faced with the corruption of the American commons by a self serving bunch of predatory opportunist seeking to fashion their own totalitarian state, and you are contemplating voting for their next stooge?  Children.  Get over your tantrum!

Now I know the forces at work in the culture seek overall stability, and some of that is currently to the detriment of many hardworking people. Some things will not change a whole lot, some will improve surprisingly so, yet it is always about steps that can be taken without falling and breaking the nations neck. Can we at least acknowledge the issues at hand, and where we can do some creative work for the betterment of all?  Unlike the bunch in their now driving the nations interest to ruin. No! Not if I don’t get everything I want! It’s all or nothing? I don’t like her voice so I’m voting for a guy?

While I would never think of voting for heart deprived conservatives living in fear of every insecurity card placed into the mailbox of their lives (at elections!), it has been astounding to see both old and young allegedly Democrats ready to profess to bolt from the electorate if they don’t get their way.

We may need a Cabinet post for the distribution of baby blankets.

NEWS BULLETIN: Breaking Bitter White People

It seems the bitter white people are still bitter about Obama’s pegging of their angst over being screwed by the very conservatism that seduces them as “good”. Bitterness remains, as it often does, when someone outside your group identifies certain pacifiers that hold your head in some ways under watter. When reactive emotions are used to distort the contextual meaning of a statement, that statement takes on the values of those using it for demolition purposes. Oddly, such statements can hold more reality than ever acknowledged by those reacting to the tagged version.

You (anyone) may see your attachment as a moral, virtuous and an honest necessity for your cosmological view.  We claim grand intentions for our self identity. While someone outside the group can see how your values are leveraged and wedged to get you to support a cause nearly opposite of those interest–the propagandist have you hooked on the pandered line of your own historical context. You, unable to see outside the box.  Instead of reacting like a child, adults can grow by examining the concerns others have of us.  An unexamined life has been called one not worth having.

The stresses of life, then, are projected onto scapegoats, just watch the “conservative” whipping-boy targets rolled out to seduce good folks to shoot themselves in their lives, coming to an election near you.  And if you vote, why not vote for someone who actually believes in the stability and change you honestly feel this nation should represent.

Here is a cartoon to lighten things up.  But Clinton supporters may not approve of it.

Note; a brief image of a profane F word, so rated R

Bateman: Hillary concedes nothing

THE ALWAYS DISINGENUOUS RIGHT

ALWAYS, BECAUSE IT SEEMS THEY CANNOT HELP IT.

Two interviews in the last two days on Comedy Central displayed the mental disturbance that seems to be endemic to the right wing ideologues. Douglas Feith was interviewed by John Stewart. Host Stewart of the Daily Show, pressed Feith on the rationalizations that led up to the Iraq invasion, and met that wall of no admittance, typical of the architects of the War. I imagine they are doing what Rumsfeld and others did which is to insist they were always right and only the public, or the bad media, anybody, somebody else is responsible for all that seems to have gone wrong.

Meanwhile, last night Steven Colbert interviewed the legendary right wing instigator (I am using instigator like the right wing likes to distort perception by leading with an emotional ad-hominem tag-frame), Grover Norquist. While Colbert plays a right wing instigator of his own, it is in parody. Norquist has a book out that seems designed for the dim wits that are to be implied to be out there in the title. To paraphrase the books title, it goes something like; Keep the government out of all our lives, except where we need it to kill or contain bad people attacking us anti-government Americans.

Colbert did not give him a completely free ride. He asked him if he wants paved roads, since he, Colbert, drives around a dirt road in his back yard and it drives the neighbors crazy. The point of course being that government has a myriad of other services that as of yet are not being taken up by the private sector. Interestingly, and tellingly, Norquist would not even go to answering about us having roads to drive on. Perhaps he is invested in a flying car venture capitalist project?

These people need to keep rolling out the manure spreader for reasons that are up to speculation; Are they fertilizing the fields for the next right wing administration they hope to replace the last pile of crap? Are they covering their own tails with the dysfunctional right wing psyche demonstrated in all its inbreeding, which is tantamount to declaring insanity as a future defense? Or is it just the, plant the propaganda and make a buck off of those who are in a blank about history and civic/cultural responsibilities to the whole scheme?

The John Stewart interviewee refused to see even what the public knows from the time frame in question regarding the war; the, ‘sweep up all connections to 9-11 and Saddam valid or not.’, nor the Downing Street memo. Seeming to forget most viewers were alive at the time, and not totally brainwashed by the propaganda war on America of the period. Just as with Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, anyone with critical truth was shunted and undermined for the pro-make war machinery. Hello! We were not all asleep at the civic wheel. Hello! Feith still proclaims they just did not fully convey what they knew. Which was what? All the now proved untruths were true? The mind boggles!

It remains a painful period in American history; that the media was so complicit in blinding the public to the full truth, and instead, accommodating a policy based on distortion and innuendo masquerading as realities. It is apparent that some “existentialist” are still making up their own realities, but insisting we accept them or suffer some fate to come, as if we are not already suffering from their own misgivings.

We still have a president, in case we forget with all the electioneering around, who claims the war was justified because people were telling him it was. That those people were found manipulative, unreliable, highly questionable, is apparently of no interest. Just that they were telling him things. It is good to know we are safely tucked under such a warm blanket of knowledge.

When I view these right wing nincompoops who are drowning this nation in the bathtub of fear and paranoia, it is hard not to see their mental disturbance, it is something in their eyes. There near blindness of world view is stunning in its myopic focus. It remains to be seen whether the darkness will again descend over America come election time. The ever weather vaned media, spinning us once again into the black holes vortex.

{To view Keith’s comment on the President last night, click below}

Olbermann: Mr. President, the war isn’t about you

ELECTION REJECTION

OR WHICH WAY TO OZ?

Today we will see again if one of the two Bush lite candidates “survive” to later on, pretty much keep things spiraling downward the way they are. Doesn’t really matter where they have been or who they are, were, or promise to be.

The pundits will probably go on to wonder which one will be the chosen one in the one party still running, despite the suspicion that one already crossed the line long ago. For there is believed to be a wizard behind the super delegate veil. It is the pubic who continues the race by the will of appearances. Believing in the convoluted reasoning, pandering to identity, and all the fear and loathing that can be generated to keep those minds a changing like wind vanes, will keep the imperfect storm a-spinning.

The ambiguity is not in the candidates, but in a public who still shows all evidence of Rovian double-think; where the best case of persuasion into the negative, blows those middle of the roader’s to one side or another, no matter how true or false the negative assumption. “We were avoiding a twister! At least it seemed like one at the time. Didn’t they say a storm was coming right at me?“

Once we come to see a winner as one who will do anything to succeed at even delusion, we are right back to where we are. Unable to tell delusion from viable vision. We have crossed that yellow line, without knowing which way the traffic of the world actually is going. Our political Doppler radar is off-line.

And that is the risky self defeating place many interest wish us to stay. For later, when the damage begins to show, it is too late to have the excuse that the road signs were so misleading.

Votes for sale! Come and get it! Save a few nickles on me! Extra bonus, free gas for voting for me! Voters for sale here! In a heartbeat those nickles will be swooped up by the oil vultures. Tax breaks become profit vacuums that then are swooped up by the few who actually control where your money goes and to whom. It is supply and demand; your supply of income increases so the demand for more profit does the same. Duh!

POLITICAL WORD GAMES

It can be fun to make a point at the expense of context or reasons of false premise. I can remove someones notion, put a new conception around it, then show it as a contradiction. Time, space, intention, and ignorance can allow facts to be rendered misleading enough, that they can appear to be lies, when in fact they are grounded in history and not necessarily the manufactured opinion “reality” of word-play. Yes we can make deceptions seem evident where they had never existed!

Our government for several years now seems to have operated on the above mentioned logical deceptions. Political campaigns are now assumed to be made up of these, even to the degree that those who do not use false analogy or out of context reconfigured facts are thought of as being weak. The conflict game does not care if the debates are on steroids, or changing rules for themselves mid game and not the others in the campaign. Is the art of deception really what we wish to see running the country to ruin for 4 or 8 more years?

It may be too late to get the candidates who really should be president, but now we must make do with what we have. Anyone can protest and go against the two party monopoly, if that is the wisest thing to do will be up to each voter.

My view is that we have two super flip-flopper’s at the moment, and another one showing more mild political expediencies as his modus operandi.  He is the first black candidate (Discounting Bill Clinton).  It has been a rude awakening for many Democrats to see how Rove-like the first woman candidate seems to be.  It is a shame that some feminist and workers are voting for manipulations seeming to be seen as strengths.  Is it some shoot yourself in the foot loyalty that locks them into fantasy land despite the evidence?

We see in the degree of applied manipulations, how, if any different that “change” people claim to be for will be.  Hopefully America is sick and tired of the plunder of the party of money, and its wedge issue shell game diversions.

But will there be a party of the vast majority of the people?  Not if corporate control of culture has anything to say about its continuing to undermining elections.  How?  A crippled fourth estate, a one way street of pubic propaganda access, votes not even sure of being counted etc…  Bush, Cheney and Rove might seem to be gone, but who they serve above all the rest of us, are still in control.  Smoke, mirrors and diversions, can keep one from seeing the operational realities on the ground.  They will be the subjects of word play.

IT’S A BLACK, A WHITE OR A WOMAN THING

Polling has indicated that many will vote their color or sex in the coming elections. This means division and even tribalism is on the ascendant.

As is often said; make no mistake about it, in an allegedly two party system, this likely bodes ill for one party.

If you read my post regularly, you know I find the two party system deeply flawed, as I do see plurality victories as the same. It is a guaranteed way to not get things done. Many claim they are for change, after seeing the contempt evident by conservatives for the state and common citizen relationship. Liberalism was coming on strong. Liberalism happens to be the container of majorities of the operational values held by most of us in everyday life. Status quo power must confuse and diffuse this reality, and has the resources to do just that most of the time, unless conditions overwhelm manipulated impressions.

One party was and presumably still is trying to manufacture a one party state here in effect. Corporate controlling influence on both parties is strong, and proceeding to create a de facto one way state. In the Democratic party, it is engaged in a fight over the “soul” of the party. Our system of access to voters is subject to monies influence, and so, biased against those without much money to influence elections, an obvious statement. Ask yourself why both parties hardly ever bring it up?

If you vote for your candidate because they are more like you on superficiality of color, ethnic or sexual type, you are also helping to divide a pluralist nation further from a cohesive and comprehensive self identity and purpose, along with likely having less interest in what happens to the “other guys”. We wonder why we cannot agree on things, and that the bad government is always stalemated except when fears are pushed to extremes.

THE DUCKS THAT CANNOT DUCK

We are in a shooting gallery of a sorts. The Media is compromised by corporate ideological bias. A pseudo-democracy exist here without the right to vote. Voters information is partially at the mercy of campaign financing incongruities. A machinery of mud slinging is entrenched, with an arsenal of fear that is kept well oiled to keep the average citizen from knowing much about our governments actual behaviors in the world and its collusion with special interest here.

And we are going to vote for the woman cause she is a woman like me, or the white guy because at least he is a white guy, or the black guy because only he can understand what it is like to be me. But what can you do for your country?

I do not deny the appeal to anyone’s own identity of the illusion, yes illusion, that if someone is more like me things will go more my way. This is exactly what the two party system has degenerated into; the manipulation of self identity interest for control. Then, often, the selling of that interest to our representatives own self interest as individuals to benefit themselves off of the nations interest.

You do not have a right to vote. You do not have a right to have a vote counted if you do vote. You do not have fair access to differing viewpoints and perspectives on all issues. You have no real mechanism for making sure all your representatives in government are held accountable for what is done in your name.

You live on a one way street where companies get to cover their expense increases or desires for more profit by upping prices. Oops! We left workers and most everyone else out of that formula. Wonder how that happened? You now live in a place where “We the People” are the subjects of wealth as it takes over the earth via transnational corporate hegemony. And yet for many of us, a wedge issue will have us cast our relativized vote for some foolish notion of a sure thing. “Down with Taxes”, or tricks like a “Death Tax”, are some of the best methods of getting that tax money for the common good out of your pocket, and now quite possibly, into the pocket of someone else across the globe…And you thought you were going to be the beneficiary recipient?  Come on.

DECEPTION JOB WELL DONE! I’D SAY!

So go ahead, certain woman, men, blacks, whites and others, vote for your kind.

Just do not expect any kindness to actually manifest to you, but a few words.

It is necessary to vote for who and what is right for the whole nation. You must determine what that is for yourself. The commercials will be pretty well conceived, but quite possibly, pretty misleading.

When will we be weaned from our pacifiers?

ART AND SCIENCE OF CONTROL

SCIENCE or ART or MORE?

At yesterdays family violence meeting with a family, we talked about health.

Health is a big topic that can go into differing directions and dimensions, but we had questions made. Why am I not taking care of myself in some area? Do I worry about my health and so, emotionally or subconsciously, open a door for a dysfunction? I know I should eat less, or not smoke, or get into more exercise, yet procrastination is in charge. Why? A few of us, for proposed economic reasons, or avoidance, avoid trying to find out what is going on. We wait to see if things get worse as a kind of control on what problem we are noticing.

In this group meeting we all set goals for the next one. After coming up with a desire to act on our own behalf, we set our sights on some realistic movement to be made by next meeting. Your word in made with yourself to get something good done in your life.

That will be all for that review of yesterdays event. I do wonder about all the rest of us; about politics, elections, society, the environment, our effects in the world on one another. Do I avoid looking honestly at them? Do I even want to know and be then possibly worried? What avoidance is there of issues that are of paramount importance to each of or lives, and yet we cover them over with a rug?

I believe politics, religion, the alleged cultural wars promoting ignorance and contempt for knowing something different and respecting it for that Golden Rule, I believe these things do have us hiding from knowing our effects on others, thus promoting their lack of respect for us. In conflict settings, we have learned to wall off our sense of empathy, compassion, full truth seeking and so understanding, because we may be told we are self defeating to entertain, enlightenment!

Many an ego stakes its credentials on not changing no matter what it faces. This may be a strength, or a recipe for complete stupidity. Arrogance, or “macho” displays are meant to be life saving in an odd way, yet they might just as well guarantee that that vulnerability one had to know something of oneself or another, is armored in, and a stunt person is now in charge of my life.

We are hearing in politics now both sides of the insecurity coin shown at once causing a kind of meltdown in-between. Is someone caring or strong? In front of one group they show the one, and in front of the other the other one, why can they not be real in all context, instead of chameleon like color changes designed to suit an audience? Now we seem to be trying to avoid these seeming perhaps contradictions of candidates by the marketing effect to make them just seem to look like the type on our side, without getting too specific about those worries we might have.

With the world in some ways at the mercy of our votes, (if counted) that might impact future well being as well as conflict for the entire planet, we need look more closely at those who would cut a one year old’s birthday cake with the swing of a four foot sword, not noticing the shock and awe in the room of the world.

What to look for?

First, unadulterated honesty, a consistency, not in claims and stances, but in steps to take to get from problem to solution. If candidates do not show respect, and I mean honest recognition and not just a grouping of words, they are not going to be elected to lead (or focus) the whole nation, they will be in it to promote the unacknowledged dysfunction addictions of their base, leaving the rest of us, not entirely innocent bystanders to an ever deteriorating state of the nation and planet.

SILENCE OF THE SCAMS

On Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC news and views show, he goes over the top 50 Bush scandals on occasion, to remind viewers of how they vanished from the news. I think the segment is called “Bushed”.

That is not exactly what I am talking about here. I am referring to our collective lack of perspective presented by the corporate news infotainment shows.

I remember many years back. One network’s expose’ news show was all about corporate and business abuse, misuse and scams. I’m sure this show drew some fire from powerful people. But after that network itself was found to be behind the corporate maneuvered takeover and consolidation lobbying efforts over the public airwaves, the show seemed to shortly vanish. Probably caught in the pot calling the kettle black hypocrisy thingy.

Those of you under forty might never have known how news networks once were. Bill Moyers PBS, is perhaps the closest representation of fact digging into corruption. Investigatory journalism was once a reality. Now it is pretty much considered a liberal bias to be avoided like the plague. Just as Richard Nixon would be considered quite the liberal by today’s standards, the conceptual paradigm in journalism has shifted far into existential relativism, were everyone’s view is just as good as anyone else’s, letting power and money buy much more time and perspective, just keep the contextual setting of facts out of the program overall. Well this has allowed truth itself to become a subject of conservative scorn and obfuscation. We the People, have in some respects, had the dunce cap put on our heads.

THE HEADS ON TALKING HEADS

The current senior crop of retiring news anchors are mere shadows of what came before, yet they are treated as if they were the nations wise elders. Certainly ego is always a factor in seeking out the limelight, but back in my childhood, news anchors seemed to be filled with and about the facts first, now they seem filled with themselves and what position’s them best in gaining market share. They retain a bit of the postured presentation of seemingly objective appearance, a style thing, but even that has followed the trend to excite the viewers, more so over celebrity dysfunctions, than endemic societal ones. Unfortunately, what one has not experienced, one tends not to miss.

The three still standing presidential contenders seem to grow silent over electioneering unless they have a particular problem raising funds, or it dawns on them that an extraordinary bias is afoot. Like biased news in relativity land pretending to be objective, a system where elections are dependent of raising big money, equals one systematically drowning out the voices of the poor and cash strapped. This undermines true democracy but is sold as some sort of Darwinian proving grounds of electability, nevertheless, those who can hardly donate are turned into Americans with out a say in who ends up finishing first.  Comes the Internet savior?  Nope.  Still not fair.  If the game is not fair, it is rigged.

QUITE! QUITE PLEASE!

This is where we enter the silence zone; where our fellow Americans have their voting rights tied with their hands behind their backs, and the rag of relativity stuffed into their mouths. Freedom and democracy? Shell game tricks played in the playground of abstractions. Why do our top three never mention truth, facts, ideas and accessibility to them? Those are fundamental nutrients for a healthy democracy and public voice.  We then can be had again.  Surprise!-NOT!

As long as we remain a society where truthful investigation is only occurring of the fringes, and the mainstream middle, while we are watching the side show inside, never hears the fog horn, and neither do we. The ship of state is evermore near the rocks, the gamblers inside, they will never know what hit them.

Unfortunately, they, may well be we.