The Mystic's Dream.

I was listening to a program recently and this guy said that people that are into the psychology of religion are aware of what they call the primary mystical experience. They’ve gone through the writings of the mystics down through the ages and defined characteristics with a cross cultural generality.

Unity. There is a feeling of oneness with the universe and a loss of ego boundaries. Self is experienced as pure awareness.

Transcendence of Time and Space. There is a loss of usual references of time and space. Time seems to slow down or even stop. Experiences of eternity and infinity are common.

Deeply Felt Positive Mood. There are feelings of blessedness, joy, and peace, and a sense of unconditional love. The uniqueness of these emotions is in the level to which they are elevated, the intensity of the experience.

Sense of Sacredness. There is an intuitive sense of wonder and peace, a sense of special value, and a feeling of the holy and divine.

Subjective Nature of the Experience. The knowledge seems remarkably insightful. It is conveyed not through words, but through the experience itself, and there is a certainty that this knowledge is authentic and direct.

Paradoxicality. When attempting to explain the experience to others, there are frequently logical contradictions in explanations, such as emptiness in which one simultaneously feels full and complete, or a dissolution of self in which something of the individual remains to experience the phenomenon. There is both separateness from and unity with the surroundings.

Alleged Ineffability. The experience seems to be beyond what words can define. Logical descriptions or interpretations are incapable of accurately describing the experience, partially due to the paradoxical nature of the phenomena.

Transiency. The actual time spent in the mystical state is temporary. A return to the everyday surroundings occurs after a short period, whether through sudden awakening or a gradual shift of awareness to the immediate environment.

Persisting Positive Changes in Mood and Behavior. In many cases, the individual integrates these revelations into future life experiences. Pahnke divides these attiitude changes into four areas: toward self, toward others, toward life, and toward the mystical experience itself. The individual is more able to recognize and deal with the negative aspects of his own personality, acts more open to others and is more authentic and more tolerant. The attitude is frequently more optimistic. Purpose and meaning are more prominent in everyday life. There is a new, deeper understanding of the mystical experience and the individual feels more connected with spirituality and religion.

This is what I have faith in, what I mean when I talk about direct spiritual experience of God and the Spirit, gnosis. This is what I seek in my religion and spiritual practice. This is what I see as the substance of my faith and what it means to be in the Spirit. I’ve had a few experiences such as this, and many more glimpses or flashes, such that I can only consider it evidence of its reality. This is what I think its all about.

The Mystics Dream

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Xtians.

I have had it with these people, these bloviators who presume to speak in the name of the Lord. From henceforth I shall call these people Xtians, as in Christ-less Christians. They don’t deserve the honorific prefex, as they bear no more resemblance to the Christ than Osama bin Laden. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, let’s start with the late Jerry “Fat Man” Falwell and James Kennedy. Still kicking are Pat Robertson and James Dobson, though they’re aging fast. There’s the gnome John Hagee and Franklin “The Prodigal” Graham. I suppose you have The Xtian Channel at TBN where you can see a veritable zoo of these types. Other lesser lights include Benny Hinn, Rod Parsley, Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye., Cal Thomas, and we might as well throw George W. Bush into the mix. I’m sure you can come up with your own list.

(h/t to Maha for the word Xtian).

Now before any start screaming how anti-Christian I am let me say unequivocally that I am a Christian and have been for at least thirty seven years. I’m even a member of a very traditional Christian denomination. However, all of my views are mine and mine alone and in no way represent the particular church I go to, or any church for that matter. It’s my experience of God within the Christian context that I speak from.

Now some may say, “Gee, Oldguy, isn’t that way harsh, calling them Christ-less Christians? Shouldn’t you have some Christian charity yourself?” Well, maybe so, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade, and if something is particularly odious it needs to be called out. It’s what’s called the prophetic ministry.

The latest to move onto the celebrity Christian stage is “Ricky Boy” Warren. That would be he of the Purpose Driven Saddleback Church Candidate Forum where he purposely set Obama up and drove it for McCain. Recently Rick was on Sean Hannity’s show and had this exchange:

HANNITY: Can you talk to rogue dictators? Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, wants to wipe Israel off the map, is seeking nuclear weapons.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: I think we need to take him out.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?

WARREN: Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped. And I believe…

HANNITY: By force?

WARREN: Well, if necessary. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.

HANNITY: I’m just gotten, thanks to my wife, who you know, you know, been reading the Old Testament. Because as a good Catholic growing up, I studied more the New Testament.

WARREN: Just ignored that part.

HANNITY: I ignored the Old Testament. But what about King David? What about the — all the battles, all the conflict, you know, going back - - you know, Abraham — Adam and Eve and their children, going forward?

WARREN: The point is, there are some things worth dying for. There’s no doubt about that. And I would die for my family. I would die for my freedom. I would die for this country.

HANNITY: If somebody broke into your house, you would be justified to kill them?

WARREN: I would be justified to protect my family. Absolutely.

HANNITY: And if it took killing them?

WARREN: Absolutely.

HANNITY: But it’s not murder at that point?

WARREN: No. Murder is not self-defense.

This is just so wrong I hardly know where to begin. First, if Rick Warren seems to be everywhere in the media lately, it’s because he is. He’s hawking a new book of his for Christmas. The Purpose Driven Life made him millions, and he wants more. He’s at the top of a mega-church pyramid with something like four thousand members, and you better believe he has them tithing. So they’re probably paying him at least a million a year (that’s what Hagee gets). There’s more to Rick than this, but we can get into that another time. Let’s get back to how wrong this whole thing is:

HANNITY: Can you talk to rogue dictators? Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, wants to wipe Israel off the map, is seeking nuclear weapons.

First, Ahmadinejad is not a dictator. He is the elected president of Iran, with powers defined by a constitution, which powers are much less than our own president. For example, Ahmadinejad is not over the military as our Commander-in-Chief. In fact, Ahmadinejad is not even the head honcho in Iran. That would be the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Ayatollah or some such mucky-muck, who is over the military. Now, I cannot believe, that after all this time, that someone has not brought this to Hannity’s attention. Yet he continues to cling to the bogus claim of “dictator” with all its emotional whallop. And he’s not just any old run-of-the-mill dictator, he’s a “rogue dictator” – something even worse. Can I not legitimately call Sean Hannity a false witness going into this exchange? Or given over to a lying spirit?

HANNITY: I think we need to take him out.

WARREN: Yes.

HANNITY: Am I advocating something dark, evil or something righteous?

WARREN: Well, actually, the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped. And I believe…

HANNITY: By force?

WARREN: Well, if necessary. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.

Holy Crap! Hannity is imagining killing Ahmadinejad and advocating for just that and he asks if it’s righteous. Have you no conscience, Sean? Of course it’s something dark and evil. But more importantly, does Warren reprove Hannity or spiritually direct him in the Word? No. He joins in with some nonsense about evil being stopped that simply encourages Hannity in his self-righteous delusions. Warren then goes on to say that “God puts government on earth to punish evil doers.”

In this context, Warren gives his sanction and blessing to at least assassination of someone some people here don’t like, or even bombing and war “if necessary.” Warren is positioned as a man of God, someone that is supposed to know God, so giving his blessing as it were, says to Sean and all the viewers that God’s all for this kind of thing. Not just no, but hell no! Not for one instant is Rick Warren speaking from God’s Spirit. He is only speaking from some self-delusional framework of his own mind. If you come right down to it, the man is spouting heresy and blasphemy!

Warren’s people confirmed that he was referring to Romans chapter 13 in the New Testament. He also referred back to the Old Testament. I’ll refer you to this guy’s take on the theology involved in this, along with some other insights I appreciated.

Note in the final exchanges how swiftly Warren’s passionate conviction that there are some things worth dying for morphs into what is really at issue: some things being worth killing for.

If Rick Warren wants to spout bible, maybe he should consider this:

James 4:1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

Romans 12:19-21 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

[ed: Ironically these verses immediately precede the section Warren was referring to.]

Mat 7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. (i.e. this is what the whole OT means.)

Mat 5:44-45 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:

As far as the Old Testament, or more accurately, the Old Covenant or the First Covenant, goes, as a disciple of Jesus, being born again of the Spirit, the old covenant just doesn’t apply. I’m under a new covenant. We have a new way of being. Jesus said, “It is finished,” referring to the old covenant.

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Michigan Reality Check.

I talked to my brother in Michigan today. He’s lived in Grand Rapids for thirty five years or so. Here’s the reality of the state that bases the auto industry. As I’ve said before, Michigan was a good place to grow up. The economy was humming and it was hoppin’ and poppin’. My brother told me that Muskegan, a city on Lake Michigan a little southwest of Grand Rapids, has an unemployment rate at twenty-two to twenty-five percent, and that up where my mother lives it’s near fifty. These are depression levels already and the auto industry hasn’t totally collapsed yet.

But if it’s up to a cabal of southern senators the American auto industry will collapse. These most vocal senators against making loans to the auto industry, who are ubiquitous in the media, every one of them has a foreign car plant in their state. Even in my own state of Georgia, where both of my Republican senators were filibustering against the auto companies, KIA is moving in. They even gave the governor a KIA to drive. It is obvious these senators are acting as agents for foreign corporations in an economic war against the remaining three American automakers. If the American companies go under, it is these foreign companies which stand to gain. These senators are economic traitors to the United States of America and to the American working people.

I called both of my senators 800 numbers Friday and chewed out the person on the other end of the line. I couldn’t believe the line of garbage they were trying to hand me. Then I saw this memo that was circulated among Republicans. This whole thing is about busting the UAW. It’s a union busting exercise. They want to take down the union. This confirms that the line they were giving me over the phone was utter garbage – a pack of lies. Not only do they not represent my interests as a working person, they have so little respect that they will literally bullshit me over the phone.

Every one of the states got these companies to build a plant in their respective states by giving all kinds of concessions, tax breaks, and most of all, assurance of help in keeping the unions out. They say Alabama shelled out what amounted to two hundred thousand dollars per job to get the Mercedes plant. On top of that, the state bought twenty five hundred of the first vehicles to roll off the line – the whole state fleet. That’s Shelby’s state. The loan would amount to five thousand dollars per job.

Never forget that it is so-called conservative, supply side, low tax, Republican, Reaganomic economics that has brought us to the brink of depression – and as I wrote in the opening paragraph, a very real depression already in Michigan. What is this type of economics? It is an economic system whereby wealth is transferred from the poor to the already wealthy. It is a system where the top one-tenth of one percent get as much as the entire bottom half, and it’s not enough!

Oh yeah, my brother told me that his wife, president of the Michigan Diabetic Association who has even testified before Congress, lost her job of some twenty years at the hospital in a cost cutting move. It's starting to get ugly out there.

This is good: 7 Myths About Detroit Automakers

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Food.

Did you happen to see Bill Moyers’ Journal this past weekend on PBS. He interviewed Michael Pollan, whose two books, The Omnivore’s Dilemna and In Defense of Food, Moyers mentions at the beginning of the program, and which I have read and highly recommend. They will forever change the way you look at food.

As Time magazine recently put it: farm policy is ‘a welfare program for the megafarms [ed: that would be agribusiness – names like Archer-Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, Tyson] that use the most fuel, water and pesticides; emit the most greenhouse gases; grow the most fattening crops; hire the most illegals; and depopulate rural America.’

[Obama was talking of something he read] when he told Time magazine, ‘that the way we produce our food "is partly contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."’

What he had read was this article by Michael Pollan. It’s well worth the read.

As long as we think that the supermarket is where our food comes from we will be totally subject to what others are feeding us. Those others are large multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporations. Do you think they have our health interests in mind? Beware the edible food-like substances.

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Detroit and Class Warfare.

I’ve already written about how I grew up in Detroit and what it was like in the fifties and sixties. I can’t really tell you much about the fifties since I was just a kid first trying to figure out what the heck was going on with this life thing. I did go to a freshly built elementary school three or four blocks from my home and my class size was around twelve or fifteen. It really was a neighborhood school. In 1963 I went to a newly built junior high school that was still within walking distance. I do remember the sixties – albeit with some foggy time toward the end of the decade, but that’s another story – and Detroit was hoppin’ and poppin’ – at least on my white ass side of town.

I grew up right in the middle of square miles of working class families and we were solidly middle class. One of my friends’ father worked in mid-management for Chrysler, and another friend’s father sold Chevys. My uncle Eddie worked forty-five years for Ford. He retired with a good pension and lived a long life. Sometime around World War II my mother worked for Fisher Body. Later she worked for the National Bank of Detroit whose biggest customer was General Motors. She once told me about having to track down a million dollars of GM money. That’s when I first learned that the rich see money differently than the rest of us.

In ’69 I worked for Ford for a couple of months in the summer. I worked at the Rouge Complex at the stamping plant. We put together all the sheet metal that went into cars, operating huge machines that shaped and cut the steel or spot welders that put pieces together. I had to join the UAW and they took forty dollars out of my first check for union dues. I was paid 3.47 an hour – that would be seventeen something today. The next year I worked at a machine shop five minutes from my home that made parts for Chrysler, the quintessential small business interface to the auto industry. It was non-union and I got 2.50 an hour – or about twelve something now. Notice that jobs were available and they paid rather decently.

My brother worked for Ford after he got out of the Navy while he went to college and law school. He worked testing electronic components. Did you ever see the movie Class Action? It stars Gene Hackman. Fred Thompson makes a cameo, kind of like he did in Hunt for Red October. He explains how a company knew about a problem but that the beancounters, the company accountants, ran the numbers and saw that it would be cheaper to settle lawsuits later then have a recall to make the cars safe. My brother worked for the unit that informed Ford of the problem that the movie references.

This is what has gone wrong with American business over my lifetime. The beancounters got control and dictate to the rest of us. The executives have the power and they wield it ruthlessly. Heartless, they care nothing for the pain they cause thousands and thousands of families. They have made millions and millions off the blood, sweat, and tears of the workers, the ones that actually do the work of designing and building cars. Scumbags like Roger Moore (Roger of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me), Henry Ford III, and Lee Iacocca literally destroyed Detroit as heads of the Big Three, yet they made themselves richer. It’s the same aristocratic attitude that our forefathers had a revolution over.

I left Detroit in 1973, and my parents did in 1975 when my father retired. By 1980 when I returned to Detroit to bury my father, I was shocked to see how badly the city had been devastated. The executives made millions, the workers got screwed.

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Its a New Dawn.

This was going up last night when we had a power outage for a few hours and I went to bed.

Never in my life have I seen such a thing. The whole world is rejoicing over the election of an American president. They were dancing in the streets around the globe, not to mention all over this country: two hundred thousand in Chicago, thousands in Times Square, Harlem, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Oakland and hundreds of other localities from coast-to-coast. They came out in a spontaneous public display of collective joy honking horns, whooping, or chanting, “O-ba-ma”, or just all around having a street party. It was like New Year’s Eve. Again, over the election of a president.

It is an incredibly profound event for the African-American community, and it is going to have a tremendous affect on society as a whole.

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Yes He Did.

I’ll flat out say it, Tonight I am really proud of my country. Ten months ago I didn’t think it possible. I thought there was no way America would vote for a black man, no matter that he is as much white as he is black and is the quintessential mythical American Dream story. It was interesting when he took Iowa, but then he lost to Hillary in New Hampshire. Then he kicked butt Super Tuesday and went on the ten state run. When states like Montana and Idaho went with the black guy over the white chick, I thought that it just might be possible.

Now tonight. I’m an oldguy. I cut my political teeth on the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. There’s a very good reason African-Americans are ecstatic and in tears tonight. Hell, I’m in tears! Something I never believed possible in my lifetime has occurred. This is a tectonic shift. The world has just changed. I can think of no more historic moment in my lifetime. Maybe the fall of the Berlin Wall – but this is where that change picks up.

--- More to come ---

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24 Hours.

Finally, it will all be over. Yes, I am stressed. All night tonight they’ve been running an anti-Obama Rev. Wright ad telling north Florida to be afraid of the angry black men – gotta frighten all the white folk. That’s what the Republicans are all about, and all they got in their bag. The past month has been the ultimate revelation of what their kind of politics brings us to, the brink of economic meltdown. Just because the DOW stopped its freefall, don’t believe we’re out of the woods. More than likely, the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Treasury just sent over to Wall Street was greatly appreciated and there were bargains to be had, with the result of a rise back above nine thousand.

Anyway, I have absolutely no trust in these people. They have no regard for the American people. We are merely sheep to be fleeced in their eyes. As a computer professional, I absolutely cannot trust computerized voting – it’s just too easy to mess with the votes. In our form of government, a citizen’s vote is sacrosanct, regardless of what the fascist judge Antonin Scalia would have us believe. My hope is that if Obama’s supporters turn out in overwhelming numbers, it will not be denied. I’ll be watching Virginia as an early barometer. If it goes Obama, it’s all over but the shouting. We can only hope and pray. Oh God, let justice reign.

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How Despicable.

I find people like this extremely abhorrent. I don’t mind this woman’s anti-abortion stance, that’s her right and freedom. What I take issue with is her arrogant self-righteous attitude and spirit that makes me question her Christian bona fides in much the same way she wants to question mine. She starts right out:

To all those who name the name of Christ who plan to willfully disobey Him by voting for Obama, take warning. Not only is our nation in grave danger, according to the Word of God, so are you.

I didn’t get that memo. In fact, God told me to vote FOR Obama. Also, I don’t take too kindly to fear tactics like she’s employing and whenever anyone does it sets off the alarms. Frankly, I’m willing to bet (and I’m not a betting man) that I know the Word of God better than she does, so I’m not worried about the nebulous danger that she’s trying to make me fear.

In one week, America will make a choice. And to those who call themselves "Christian" who are planning on voting for Barack Obama, put down the Obama talking points and read God's voter guide before you go to the polls:

I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:19)

.

I not only planned on voting for Obama, I ALREADY HAVE!!! Putting Christian in quote marks tells me that she doesn’t think I’m a real Christian since I don’t believe like she does. I assume she means the Bible when she says “God’s voter guide,” because she quotes me a verse from the First Covenant saying it like GOD is speaking to me right now. Is she prophesying? I don’t think so. She’s merely swinging the verse that someone taught her was good and kind of apropo like some kind of cudgel.

Then she rattles off a bunch more verses which I could just as easily apply to her when she comes out with this doozy:

Obama-Biden are pro-death.

What can you do but call that out for what it is: just a flat-out goddamned lie. Let me say that again, that’s just a FLAT-OUT GOD-DAMNED LIE! As in, the statement bears no resemblance to reality. The woman is being hysterical at best, but since she likes to throw the Big Ten around how about:

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Ex 20:16

Then she goes into an anti-gay screed. What gay people do affects me not in the least, but could someone tell me why they’re usually nicer, more creative, and have better taste than nearly every religious person I ever met – and I met a lot.

Then she goes into redistribution of wealth like it was a bad thing. I can only gather for all her bible-spouting that she has never read the book of Acts, as in Acts 2:44-45 and 4:34-35, not to mention Matthew 19:21. What most people don’t understand is that we’ve had an enormous redistribution of wealth over the last thirty years, only it has been from the poor and middle class to the already rich, and it’s impoverishing us. I think it’s a good thing to turn that flow around, back to what it was like in the fifties and sixties when the country was at its peak.

She wraps up by basically condemning again anyone who doesn’t think like she does, rattling off a few more condemnatory verses, again wielding the cudgel of fear that we won’t be saved.

I’ll be simple, fear is not of God. Anyone that goes there is not in the Spirit of God. However, it is a staple technique of charlatans and oppressors. When it happens we can know that we do not have to trust the source of it.

This is par for the course with these “Pro-Life” people. I don’t believe for a second that they care one whit for the fetus they say they want to “protect.” Why? Because they won’t have anything to do with it once it’s born. They couldn’t care less about the child. After it’s born it’s YOYO (You’re On Your Own). The only reason they posture themselves this way is because they think it gets them brownie points with God.

There is nothing in the entire essay to lead me to believe this woman actually knows God in any direct experiential way. It’s entirely legalistic in a warped Old Covenant sort of way. It’s the spirit of the Pharisees, not Jesus. A “Christian” is a disciple of the teachings of Jesus. Honestly, I think she needs to get to a nunnery and do some major studying about the New Covenant and engage in serious meditation, prayer and devotion to the Lord. It would do her spirit good.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

FYI: This is what Sarah Palin is all about.

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Seven Days.

Thank God, only one more week left to this endless campaign. While it’s looking good right now for Obama, I will be holding my breath until he’s declared the winner by the Electoral College, whose are the only votes that really count in this republic. It’s not a done deal for me. There’s been a LOT of shenanigans being pulled by the Republicans with voter suppression. I shudder to think of what will happen if Obama wins by millions of votes, but McCain/Palin get elected by the EC. It just so happens that the day after the Election Day is November fifth, Guy Fawkes Day:

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

It’s really an admission of failure of the McCain campaign that a week from the election and all they can do is raise the specter of the boogeyman of socialism – Obama’s a socialist, they say. Anyone that believes that Obama is a socialist first does not know what socialism is, and second does not know what Obama believes. Again, it’s just utter bullshit. It always seems that it’s the Republicans that shovel the most bullshit. It’s like it’s all they got. They certainly can’t run on redistributing the wealth to the already wealthy (which is what they’ve done the last thirty years). They’re saying that Obama’s for “spreading the wealth around,” as if it were a bad thing. I certainly hope so! I could use a little more wealth coming my way, but I’m not going to hold my breath. We haven’t seen the end of this crunch.

It seems the Republicans are fearing a real bloodbath on Election Day. We can only hope that our long national nightmare be over. I’m talking about thirty years of national insanity. It looks like this could be one of those realignments that come about once a generation. The Democrats were swept into domination of the government in 1932, due to the First Great Republican Depression. I personally believe Franklin Delano Roosevelt to be the best president we ever had. The Republicans tried to make a comeback after World War II, winning the White House with Eisenhower. However, Eisenhower was what was called at the time a moderate Republican, and the Republican Party soured themselves on the electorate with Joe McCarthy. Interestingly, I would say Eisenhower was to the left of Clinton economically. That’s how much things have changed in my lifetime. They tried making a comeback with the vile Nixon, but he nearly destroyed the party. Reagan made the comeback in 1980 and ushered in the sea change for the Republicans. Fortunately, the Republicans never got control of both houses of Congress, until the 2000 election. Then after 9-11, Republicans got whatever they wanted for a solid five years. The Democrats regaining Congress merely put the brakes on the Republican agenda.

Now we are on the brink of the Second Great Republican Depression. It’s good that the Democrats are poised to take serious control of government. Obama is very familiar with the struggles of the poor and middle class. It has been his life. With the notable exception of his pow years, McCain has been nothing but a spoiled brat of privilege his whole life, much like George W. Bush.

So, yeah I’m with Obama. I think he’s one of us.

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Oh. My. God.

Well, after waiting for it for thirty five years when I was a young guy, it seems The Crash finally decides to show up when I’m old and gray. Yep, it sure looks like they really screwed the pooch this time. When they actually start saying the words, “worst economic crisis since the thirties,” things have to be bad. Make no mistake, this is the direct result of conservative economic policies that have been pushed on us since Ronald Reagan. What we are seeing is the loudest repudiation of those ideas that could occur.

Let’s see, they come up with a 700 Billion dollar bailout, but the markets around the world precipitously drop. Last week the Dow drops 2500 points or near a quarter of it’s value, the largest in HISTORY. Everyone got excited when it went up over 900 points on Monday, only to see that wiped out by today two days later. Now the Dow is not an accurate measure of the economy, but it does reflect what the business class thinks of the economy, specifically, it’s future.

It isn’t through yet. They say the bailout got them through to the election three weeks away. More than likely there will be some more serious tremors after that, especially the beginning of next year.

Locally, pretty much everyone I know is in a slump and have been for months.

I’ll still be holding my breath for the next three weeks, but it seems that Obama may win this election unless it gets stolen by the Republicans which is still a very good possibility. There is voter suppression going on in a number of states that just happen to be considered “battleground,” and they still control the damn machines. The Obama campaign is pushing people to vote early, if possible. We did here in Georgia a couple of weeks ago. I read this morning that over 500,000 have voted in the state already.

I’m really thankful for the meditation practice that I’ve taken up this year. Things are getting pretty crazy out there, and it’s my spiritual refuge.

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Bullshit

Bullshit

1. A blatant lie, a fragrant untruth, an obvious fallacy,

Or just the excrement of cattle.

“I smell something…

Is it a dog? No…

Is it a horse? No…

I know, It’s BULLSHIT!”

1) noun. Stuff that is made up for the purpose of placating someone, or passing an exam, or getting elected to office. Most often false or ridiculous.

2) verb. To generate bullshit.

3) interjection. Accusing someone of bullshitting.

4) adjective. Identifying or suspecting something as bullshit.

- The Urban Dictionary

A little while ago I heard of a book called, On Bullshit. A review of the book reads:

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory."

Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.

Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. [emphasis mine]

Who Dr. Frankfurt calls “bullshitters,” I have always called “bullshit artists.” It has been my sad experience to have occasionally trusted them. Now I avoid them if at all possible.

Unfortunately, we have had a bullshit artist par excellence as President for the last seven and a half years with the result of a country teetering on the brink. Of course, all politicians generally are bullshit artists, it is part of the job description, but some shovel it much more than others or at least in a good cause like Bernie Sanders, my favorite senator. The key is to know shit from shinola.

Then there are times they just make it easy for us. Karl Rove commented on the Palin pick, “[it was] not a governing decision, but a campaign decision.” Indeed.

With Palin, they start with blatant sex appeal. Her selection adds another dimension to the phrase “firing up the base.” It’s wildly successful with the number one comment of Palin in the right side of the blogosphere being, “She’s hot!”

But since they’re Republicans and conservatives, having those impure thoughts cannot be expressed forthrightly, but must be left as naughty undertones and innuendos, and so her public persona starts with the Mother myth. Millions of working moms feel a reflexive identification.

She’s given a speech written by someone else for a man so that it had to be reworked for her, which she delivers with such snarky gusto showing that, yes indeed, she can shovel the bullshit with the best of the boys. Too which the fans went wild! All the High Mucky-mucks of Bullshit, Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, O’Rielly, and all the lesser demigods hail her magnificent bullshit delivery of bullshit.

On the way out of town, Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager told us this, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” In other words, Rick is telling us this election is about bullshit.

Damn, what bullshit.

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McCain, Republicans Desperate

Obviously, John McCain is desperate with his pick of Sarah Palin as VPILF, I mean Vice President. I thought he had to go with Huckabee for the Hagee/Dobson/Fundie vote, but this will work out just fine for them. She's a very hardline fundamentalist. James Dobson probably danced a jig.

By the way, did you see McCain checking out her ass? Here's a good YouTube clip. Very funny.

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Whose Side is God On?

I remember seeing this dork that works for James Dobson and Focus on the Family at the beginning of this month. In the video he calls for Christians, at least his type, to pray that it will rain on the Thursday night rally in the stadium when Obama speaks. Not just any old rain mind you but,

abundant, torrential, urban and small stream flood-advisory rain...

I thought, that's pretty ballsy. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Like, just what side is God on? Something like a would-be Elijah on Mt. Carmel moment.

Within a few days of being up on the FoTF website it was taken down and a statement that he was only joking. Yeah, right.

Like they say, be careful what you wish for. What does it say when Obama's night was fantastic weather, and just as the Republican convention was about to get started, a major hurricane hits still-Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, reminding everyone in the nation of the most glaring example of the Bush Administration's and Republicans utter apathy to the human condition and the abdication of their responsibilities as our elected officials.

Remember Bush was at a birthday party while New Orleans drowned. The birthday boy? That'd be our boy Johnnie, Johnnie McCain.

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Alley Garden Update

Well it continues to be a fun time with our gardens. I now have two patches for veggies. We’ve eaten red potatoes, broccoli, ichiban eggplant, green pepper, green beans, jalapeno peppers, collard greens, tomatoes and cherry tomatoes from our own garden so far this year.

It’s not like it has come in any great quantity, although the potato salad at a recent family gathering was made with potatoes fresh out of the earth. The tomatoes actually have a taste to them! And it’s delicious! Honestly, every bit of it is better than store bought.

This is my tomato bed. You can see them staked up. Those beautiful squash plants with the big green leaves and yellow flowers unfortunately all got diseased and died. We think it was powdery mildew that got to them. Everyone we know that had been growing squash all got it and died. The lighter green in the foreground are green bean plants.

This is from a Rose of Sharon that got totally diseased a couple of years ago and we completely cut it back. It came back. Isn’t that a beautiful bloom?

The view out the back door onto the carport/patio.

It simply pleases me to have these gardens, and this has really surprised me - just how much pleasure I've gotten from doing this. I never thought of it that much before, but there is something to it. It helps one to get a better perspective on the world. It moves one out of the programmed industrial city culture and into the energetic, vital, natural world that our genetic blueprint grew out of. I encourage everyone to have something growing. It doesn’t have to be big, just something that grows and needs to be taken care of.

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McCain. McSame. McBush.

Sorry that I’ve been offline lately. There’s really been too much going on, and one thing pushes out another, as Barleyman used to say, but we’ll try:

How anyone could be for John McCain I don’t know. The guy is a total lightweight. Wes Clark was right on when he said getting shot down and becoming a POW does not, in itself, qualify one for being president. Now all the pundits are blathering about him besmirching McCain’s service. Asinine! He praised McCain’s service, but said what happened to him does not ipso facto qualify him for the presidency. But since the right wing doesn’t have anything to run on, besides running the country into the dirt the past eight to thirty years they have to twist what was said to get sympathy for McCain, I guess.

I would like to see what McCain’s psychological profile says. I find it hard to believe that someone can be a POW for five years, tortured, stuck in a cage sometimes and not come out with some issues that need to be dealt with. I want to know if he has. His reputation is that he has a violent temper, serious potty mouth, and has been known to take swings at people. I guess this is quintessentially American, but it’s not what I want in the presidency.

But getting back, it’s obvious that he doesn’t know anything about economics (as he’s admitted). He’s supposed to know about foreign affairs (not!) which we’ve touched on before. About all he can do is give you that creepy smile of his and say vote for me I was a POW.

Barack Obama may not be the second coming of Christ, but he’s the best politician to come along in a very long time. At least there’s a measure of hope if Obama’s elected, none of it’s McCain, IMHO.

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Oil over $130; Gas at $4.

I was reading this yesterday - cuz that’s how weird I am, I read stuff like that – and I realized what an absolute whine it was: OPEC isn’t pumping enough oil out of the ground! What he’s saying is if Saudi Arabia pumped more oil out of the ground, what they call “production”, then the increased supply would bring the price down. If the price of oil was subject to supply and demand “laws” then maybe, but Stephen Hadley, the National Security Advisor, said, “Saudi Arabia does not have customers that are making requests for oil that they are not able to satisfy.” In other words, today’s price of oil is not related to a lack of supply driving the price up.

The related article referenced is particularly interesting. It’s from the Congressional Record by Byron Dorgan, a senator from South Dakota. Although Dorgan tries to say that Saudi Arabia cutting back production and the President continuing to put oil in the Strategic Reserve is pushing up price, he gets to what really is doing it:

“But there is something else happening with the price of oil. An orgy of speculation is occurring in the futures market for oil and gas. This didn't used to happen. The futures market is necessary. It is necessary to hedge. It is necessary to provide liquidity. I understand all that. [Really?] But the futures market has become something unbelievably speculative. We have hedge funds neck deep in the futures market. Do they want oil? They don't want any oil. They just want to bet on oil. They want to gamble on oil. These are people who want to buy something they will never get from people who never had it and make money on both sides of the transaction in a futures market. We have hedge funds making big bets on oil in the futures market. We have investment banks making big bets on oil. Investment banks didn't used to be engaged in the futures market, but they are now.

In addition to that, in addition to the investment banks working in the futures market, we have investment banks that are actually buying oil storage for the purpose of taking oil off the market and putting it in storage until oil is more valuable later.

That is what is happening. We have not previously had that occur. So we have this binge of speculation in the futures market that has nothing at all to do with the supply and demand of oil. Why is this happening? At least in part it is happening because in the stock market. If you want to buy stock on margins, you have to pay 50 percent of the margin. You have to come up with half the money. If you want to buy stock on the margin, come up with half the money. If you want to buy oil on margin in the futures market, all you need to come up with is 5 to 7 percent. If you want to control 100 million dollars' worth of oil contracts, $5,000 to $7,000 will do it for you. [Ed. Note: I think he meant $5,000,000 to $7,000,000, millions not thousands, five to seven percent of a hundred million is in the millions, not thousands.]”

It is a speculative bubble that is pushing up the price of oil. It’s not enough they trashed the computer industry, then the housing market with speculative bubbles. Now they are going after oil and other commodities (such as food) pushing the price up. These people think that speculation accounts for sixty percent of the price of oil.

In other words, rich people are bidding up the prices of commodities looking where they can make a killing. They have so much money it doesn’t affect them much, but it wreaks havoc on about eighty percent of us. That doesn’t matter to them. Their greed has overtaken and consumed them and no good can come from it.
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Peak Oil

If you don't know about Peak Oil, please take some time to check it out.

It's probably the most important event of the twenty-first century.

When? My guess is that it already has.
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Alley Garden Update

At the beginning of the month my garden looked like this:


The big plants in the picture are potatoes. There's also a row of broccoli, a row of red cabbage, and a row of collards, all interspersed with onions. Now it's looking like this:


Everything is getting so lush there's competition for sunshine! I've now added four varieties of peppers and some ichiban eggplant to the bed. Yeah it's getting really packed out. The potato plants got so big the stalks are falling down. It's not a big deal, just doesn't look as good as when they stand. A number are blossoming which means they're making potatoes down below. Today I noticed a couple of my pepper plants were blossoming.

If you were to turn directly around from the above view you would see another bed about four feet wide by about twenty two feet long. It took me about a week to prepare it properly, taking out two wheelbarrow loads of roots. Then we laid two hundred pounds of manure compost and eighty pounds of potting soil and tilled it all under. Yesterday I planted a dozen tomato plants, half a dozen yellow squash and a few zuccinni.

By the way, I harvested some servings of broccoli. There's something about eating food that you know where it's been. They also say that every bite of food we take has traveled an average of fifteen hundred miles... and God knows how many hands.

Eat well.
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It Was Forty Years Ago Today

April 4, 1968, my seventeenth birthday in my senior year of high school. Of the four thousand students in the school a bare handful were black. For kicks I had taken an elective class called Current Events, which was led by the first black teacher I ever had, Mr. Jackson, although that was over a year earlier when he taught early U.S. History for the eleventh grade. The way he taught history was pretty bad, but this class was fun. We basically sat around and discussed things going on in the news. We did have reading to do that provided us with a context on American foreign policy and the civil rights movement.

Let me give you some more context: The previous summer was a time the media referred to as “the long hot summer.” Civil disturbances swept through cities like Tampa, Buffalo, DC, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Newark. Sunday, July twenty third, it came to Detroit. For the better part of a week Detroit was under martial law and a dusk to dawn curfew. The National Guard was activated with one of their staging grounds being Northwestern High School. I had played football on the field they camped out on.

On Friday a bunch of us guys jumped into a friend’s car and went down to check out the riot area. It was a bit surreal, driving through the streets of Detroit having National Guard deployed on the corners and seeing bullet holes in the windows of shops if the shops hadn’t been fire-bombed. Although I had ridden through it before I had never seen the inner city this close up. Apartment buildings came right up to the sidewalks, which were only about five feet wide and then the busy street. The thought came to me, “Where do the kids play?”

I worked part-time at a carpet store, and worked with a man that lived in the riot area. He told me how he couldn’t sleep at night for the tanks and halftracks coming down the street. He said one night a halftrack came down and opened fire with its fifty caliber machine gun across the top of an apartment building across the street.

On April 5, 1968 I was working at a Shell gas station back when someone pumped your gas for you – like me. At three in the afternoon a curfew was announced for Detroit and people began literally lining up for gas. We had three straight hours of eight pumps continuously going, because during the riots of the previous summer you could only get five gallons at a time. The police made us shut down by six thirty.

I was surprised by how well Mr. Jackson took Dr. King’s assassination. He didn’t seem that fazed for some reason. Two months later, my father called me from work before I went to school one morning to let me know Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated the night before. When Mr. Jackson came in that morning all he had to say was, “I don’t want to talk about it. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

That may have been when the hope for justice was turned back – the high point of liberalism. Since then the country has moved inexorably to the far right.

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Alley Garden Update

I LOVE MY GARDEN!

The potato plants now cover the mound with big, strong, green leaved plants. The broccoli, red cabbage and collards have gotten hold and are beginning to grow. It's like I can see how healthy and full of vitality they are. As soon as the moon gets to the right phase (I think it's into first quarter), we'll plant peppers, tomatoes, squash, spinach and whatever else strikes our fancy. I'd also like to plant berry bushes. I think blueberry and blackberry grow well around here.

I am so excited about it! Like I said, it's the first time I'm doing something like this. I've been around gardens, but other people tended them. My grandmother had a beautiful garden. I spent a summer on a farm outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky where I learned what real yellow squash tasted like right out of the garden. It was delicious. That's where we had farmers coming from all around the area to see our fifteen foot corn. They'd ask how we got our corn to grow so tall and we told them we just prayed over it. Then they'd ask us to come pray over their corn. It was around then that I ate fresh spinach for the first time which I enjoyed so much. You see, I was brought up in a very modern home. I guess my folks figured canned veggies were as good as any, although they did some frozen (I was revolted by the frozen mixed veggies for some reason - I'd near vomit trying to eat them). Most all veggies were seriously cooked, it seemed. It was as a became an adult that I learned it was better to stay as close to raw as possible.

This is the first time I'm tending my own garden. Don't get the idea I'm doing this on my own, that would be impossible. My good friend lives next door, and he knows all about this stuff. It's just that I'm tuning into Life - real Life. I can feel, see and sense the vital spirit in it all like I never before have, and it's wonderful! Try it. You might like it.

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Iraq Program Part I

“Program! Getchur Program here! You can’t tell the players without a program!” the man used to call out on our way into Briggs Stadium to watch the Tigers when I was young. That was before they renamed it to Tiger Stadium then, much later, built a new one across the street.

So here’s a quick program on Iraq that Senator McBush can check out since it’s obvious he doesn’t have a clue to what’s going on over there and “doesn’t care what anybody says.”

First, there are three main groups in Iraq Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. The Kurds are a separate ethnic group in the north of Iraq (and the south of Turkey and northwest of Iran). They were semi-autonomous since the Gulf War I in 1991, protected under the cover of the No-Fly Zone. They were the closest things to friends we had in Iraq and where there have been the least problems. I won’t say no problems, but I’ll save that for another time.

Most of the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia is Sunni. Saudi Arabia is Sunni and so is Osama bin Laden (remember him?). The Shia are mostly in Iran and, wouldn’t you know it, Iraq. Yep, Iraq is predominantly Shia by about a two-to-one margin. Saddam was a Sunni, and he put mostly Sunnis in power. He was also pretty brutal in putting down the Shia such that a lot of them had to flee Iraq and live in Iran for some time. So with “democracy” coming their way it was okay with the Shia if the US came in and overthrew Saddam, since they would ascend to power by virtue of their majority. Of course the Sunnis weren’t so thrilled.

When the US took over in 2003, they disbanded the predominantly Sunni military and the police and sent everyone home. Several hundred thousand soldiers went home and took their weapons with them. Right after the US toppled Saddam, people in Iraq realized there were no cops on the street and serious looting began, old scores began to be settled and a general lawlessness set in. Beginning at the neighborhood level, militias were formed to protect the residents since the US couldn’t or wouldn’t do it – although the Oil Ministry building was protected quite well, thank you very much. This was when the genesis of the militias in Iraq occurred. The economy of the country was in shambles with sixty percent unemployment. Militias were able to pay a couple of hundred a month and sometimes there was a couple hundred dollar bounty for killing Americans. The Sunnis formed the core of the resistance to the US occupation. They also attacked the Shia for collaborating with the invader. One thing to remember is there isn’t one group of Sunni insurrectionists. There are a number of groups formed along tribal bases.

Prior to the war, a Jordanian named Zarqawi had spent some time in OBL’s Afghan training camps and was hanging out in northern Iraq, Kurdistan. Remember, this was the area beyond the control of Saddam. He was interested in having his own jihadist franchise, and started his al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as its called in the US. The US military actually had him targeted prior to the invasion and could have taken him out, but it was nixed by the administration because he made good propaganda. Anyway, his group created a lot of mayhem in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. It’s important to note that AQI is made up mostly of non-Iraqis. As bad as they are, it’s absurd to think that they can take over Iraq.

Next time: we deal with the Shia and Basra.