So What!

THE FACT THAT a professional athlete in a major american sport has openly proclaimed that he is homosexual became a public affair of the highest importance, as the nation reacted, mostly by praising said athlete's courage, which might be considered a testament to our modern enlightened society.

He's a ground breaker, a brave soldier in the fight for sexual orientational equality. Also, he is nearly thirty five years old, and currently without a contract to continue playing professionally, so, its possible that, like eisenhower, he timed his shocking revelation to coincide with consequencelessness.

Then again, does this indicate that we have become more enlightened, or that our benighted state has merely assumed new characteristics?

There is somethng surreal about all this. Like, who in the hell cares, or, who in the hell should care, or, why should anyone care? There was a time, not long ago, when one simply did not discuss sex in any way, shape, fashion, or form, for any reason, ever.

Might we live to long for a return that time? Or perhaps long for an evolved version of it, based on acceptance and indifference, rather than denial. WE might hope that there will come a time when nobody cares who, other than ourselves, is gay and who isn't.

Maybe we could get the ball rolling this very moment. Someone is gay? So what!

Until such a time arrives,

Avoiding the Verifiable

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW. The minute you think you're on safe ground, the shells start landing. It all started like this. In a typically fascinating email, a good frined of mine casually mentioned that the galaxy is inhabited by quite a few lifeforms that are genetically very similar to humans.

My first mistake was to ask: "how do you know this"? Just leave it alone, right?  But no. After enduring a cobbwebbish exposition exploring the rhetorical question "what does it mean 'to know'?", i shoulda known i was whipped, or dead meat, or whatever.

Instead i plowed straight ahead, joyfully explaining that the scientific method has, for four hundred years now, provided a solution to the problem of gaining knowledge and communicating it to others, by defining a standard, universal process of logical steps to examine, test, retest, verify, and explain.

In other words, i crooned, the question of whether there are human like beings scattered around the galaxy is an answerable question, answerable by direct, clear observation, accessible, explainable, presentable to everyone. another mistake.

By implication, by extension, said question has yet to be answered, remains open, eh?

Well, free freee to try that on a true believer, and see how far you get. Its just that I never in a million years thought I would end up using and defending the scientific method as an aswer to a intellectual argument; and be rejected summarily.

WE live in credulous times, maybe because we seek escape from verifiable reality.

Education, not Legislation

SOMEWHERE IN THE good ole U.S. o f A., the land of freedom, (is it new york) there is a movement afoot to raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products to twenty one. Currently , its eighteen, just about everywhere.

Since new york city now prohibits the sale and purchase of large sugary drinks and cholestoral, new york figures.

If we really want to keep cigarettes legal, but discourage people from smoking them because  people are too young and ill informed and cigarettes too harmful, why not raise the legal age for purchase to, say, ninety five?

When will we finally accept the basic reality that we can educate people against smoking, and other self indulgant hedonistic pleasures, such as drinking, but we cannot, and should not, attempt to legislate against it.

It simply does not, and will not work. Not in the land of freedom, where freedom is designed to give the individual maximum control over his or her own destiny, whatever it may be.

Surely this is one issue upon which right wing conservatives and left wing liberals can agree: freedom. What we put into our own bodies should be our own choice. Government should not exist for the prspose of protecting people from themselves, but for the purpose of protecting them from others, domestic and foreign.

Should public schools teach sex education? Yes, in biology class.
see how easy this is?

Getting Started

THE VERY MOMENT an american gets into an argument, he, or she becomes a historian. people who ignored history in high school and avoided it in college are suddenly, magically overflowing in knowledge of the past.  Such people are the most likely to utter such banal platitudes as "history repeats itself".

 Red flag raised, your next decision is whether to correct the standard misconception, and how. Just explain that whenever two different people, or groups of people seem to be doing the same thing that other people did in similar circumstances, history is not reallyrepeating, but imitating, and only because we say so, only in our categorization.

Then, when you have them thoroughly confused, start talking about patterns of human hebavior , and how sociology and psychology can be used to help explain history. And explain that making causal connectons in history does not change or create history, but only helps us try to understand it a bit better.

Telll it like it was, admonished the great german historian von ranke, and who could argue."Wie es eigentlich gewesen!"  You see, not only does every historian have a unique version of history, but  how history should be researched, interpreted, and written: "historiography", the study of the writing of history.

Soon enough historians will be asking about cultural connections between all the random mass murders in early twenty first century america, so why not start now?  why all the violence?

was american society in the early twenty first century competitive, individualistic, unequal, with high rates of poverty, depression, lonliness, alienation, and anger, they might ask? future historians need to make a living too. let's help 'em get started.

Just Like the Rest of Us

THE MORE WE LEARN about the boston marathon massacre the spookier, eerier, yet somehow more strangely familiar it all seems. The two russian kids have turned out to be more american than russian. And they have turned out to be much like the rest of us, very "normal".

WE're used to the carnage by now, of course. It happens too often for us not to be innured to it, to an extent. We are reminded that weapons can be anything other than a gun. And that in modern america, violence is random, frequent, and deadly.

What's amazing is the testimony of the people who knew these brothers best. By all indications, they were so normal as to be beyond even remote consideration as mass murderers. Pleasant, quiet, friendly...normal... just reagular guys. Whatever darkness lay within, it lay deep.

And so it makes you wodner what lay deep within the rest of us. So often the serial killer is comebody nobody would ever have suspected. Somebody whom you would never even think capable of murder.

These two newest enignatic murderers never would have been denied a gun permit based on any  personal history or psychological profile. They are just like the rest of us. And so you can't help but wonder what lives deep within the rest of us, and next time, who from among us will emerge as the next mass murderer.

when they finally caught the younger brother after a lengthy dramatic pursuit, the entire nation (U.S.of Advertising) paid rapt attention. After all, that's what its all about, isn't it? Who knows how many suspects will be cornered next time, or what kind of ratings they'll get...

The Power of Better Behavior

SOMEONE SUGGESTED THAT, as we go about the business of exploring space and looking for life in teh solar system, we should look at place other than mars, places such as the satellites of the big gaseous planets, like jupiter and saturn.

That's a good point, though the best way to really look is to probably train our telescopes on distant stars and galaxies, rather then sending rockets and space probes around the solar system. Another advantage of this method is that anyone can particpate, helping out from the comfort of one's backyard or compter. For information on how to get started, contact NASA.

we could really kick start the exploration  of space, and thus give us something worthwhile to do, to keep us off the streets, and out of trouble. kids in india could be logged on...listening, while reading or doing other homework.

THE point we all seem to be missing in our eternal debate on whether to require paperwork for gun sales and a limited amount of bullets per firing, is that the problem with pervasive violence in the united states is too deeply rooted in basic american culture to be remedied by some new weak willed gun law.

The problem is our self serving narcissistic twisted sense of entitlement,  which leads us to renounce our communities in favor of violent fantasy entertainment. we want to be successful so desperately that we forget to even attempt to be valuable.  

Mind foreruns all consitions, says the first line of the Dhammapada. Our behavior is greatly influenced by our environment, our cultural values. IN america, we are constantly being told by our corporations that we want to experience violence and sex, vicariously. Those are the two great corporate drugs.

if we could just keep our addictions and seductions down to a dull roar, think positive about our own lives and our value, we might do less damage to ourselves and others, and begin to build a better world through the power of better behavior. 

The Fun Part of Space Travel

THE GREAT ROCKET STANDS on its pedastal, magnificent, gleaming in the sun. Anyone in the area is strongly encouraged to go by, and take a look at it. In fact, everyone is so encouraged, no matter where you are now.

This rocket, being readied to go to mars, or wherever else we want it to go, is the greatest thing since sliced bread, a true tribute to human greatness. Pardon me while we all pat ourselves on our backs...

in only eight short years people will land on and walk around on the surface of mars. maybe they will stay there awhile, and even leave a couple of folks there when they leave, while back on earth we prepare for  return flight, many return flights. 

A permanently manned and constantly growing colony on mars is just what the doctor ordered for humanity. Among othedr things, it'll get us focused on something good and healthy, instead of the banal cultural trash which consumes most cultures.

also, it will provide a role model in efficiency, in how to live sustainably, providing new technologies with which to save our damaged ecosystem on earth.

A colony on mars will enhance our long term chances of survival and expansion, assuming, perhaps a bit presumptiously, that this would be beneficial to the uuniverse in general, and its life. For our own sake we must so presume, assertably.

Wouldn't it be nice if one of the american televison networks started on ongoing drama, "Mars Colony", running it week after week, year after year, replete with all the melodrama, sex, and violence of any normal, healthy american TV show, with a little science and wonder thrown in?

Then, when the real colony takes shape, we can of course add in all the entertainment options we want. Entertainment is a basic human need, and project mars, project space exploration and colonization is pure, unudaltered entertainment potential.

But gt this: NASA, even though its spaceship is nearly completed, does not have a plan, any plan, to use it, other than to say vaguely that in the year 2021 a mission will go to mars! Well, good enough, i reckon. Build the reusable spaceship first, then, decide how to use it. Only in america, as they say.

Still and all, though, might not be a bad idea ot at least get a few ideas going...after all, that's the fun part...

NO Way To Stop Progress

FLASH BULLETIN! ALERT! the gay marriage movement is gaining ground, creeping stealthily across the globe, threatening to overtake the world, and render gay marriage the order of the day. New Zealand has now become the thirteenth nation to legalize gay marriage. It is quite evident that more will follow soon, most notably France, followed by still others, until...

Even in staid, conservative america about one third of the fifty states have legalized gay marriage, and the best guess is that all fifty will have done so within a few years. The tide of gay marriage is sweeping through america.

The republcians and conservatives must decide how to deal with this, because this is most certainly not the america they envisioned and strove mightily for. Same is true for the issue of illegal immigration, of the eleven or twelve million "illegal residents", and so forth. they, the conservative republicans, must determine how to proceed in a society moving away from them.

They asimply appear to be softening on both issues, gay marriage and immigration. Leaning more towards the middle, trying to ameliorate, to slow down america's porgressive momentum rather then derail or reverse it. Sensible approach, altogether. 

Of course, that's the way conservatism always goes; slowy towards liberalism, following behind it, kicking and screaming. enslavement becamde segregation which became separate but equal which became integration and racial equality. Change always occuring, inevitably, albeit being slowed down a  bit through the futile but stubborn resistance of conservatism.

But, its all good, as they say. There's no way to stop progress.

A Few Good Suggestions?

SO WHEN ARE THE NRA boyz gonna chime in?  The two most recent editions of  the american massacre of the week involved no firearms of any kind. This proves that guns don't kill people, people kill people, and to do so they can use guns, knives,  ball bearings, nails. or anything.

Point well made, NRA. We all agree, guns do not kill people. Having congratulated ourselves on our percipience, we have the opportunity to develop even more insightful truths. There are a lot of random mass murders in america these days, involving all sorts of weapons. How's that?

so who are the good people, and who are the bad? aren't we supposed to identify them apriori, so we can know to whom to sell firearms? ought not all the good people be armed, to stop the bad ones dead in their tracks, a priori? we'll see.

The point is, this "sort of thing"  happens all the time, or often, or too often, however you want to say it, argue it, since we must all have our say and argue,  about seemingly everything. and maybe that's part of the problem. an angry, assertive culture, in which we all feel  desperate to mold our immediate environment to fit our image.

are we too competitive? in america we line up six year old girls on stage, then vote on which one is cutest. are we too aggressive? have often do you see an america driver who is not following you too closely?

arrogance, pride, individualism, and personal success? or humility, cooperation, service to society?
try not to become a man of success, but rather, a man of value, suggested einstein. whatever else we may or may not need about now, surely we could all use a few good suggestions.

Conservative Progress Denied, by...

IT WOULD BE really nice if obama's idea to sell off and privitize the tennessee valley authority could get some support from the republican party, and the american people. After all, its the sort of thing the republican conservatives claim they want; reduced national debt throught spending cuts, and less government.

it might be that there are many government entities that could be similarly sold off to the betterment of the american people and the american government's financial ledger, including the U.S. postal service.

how many can you name? what about combining medicare, medicaid, and obamacare into one program, and call it..whatever we want to call it...health care insurance for poor people? and let's make it work, while we're at it.

legalize marijuana and place a national moratorium on all new prison construction pending adjustments to prison population resulting from legalizing of marijuana. Everybody in prison for selling marijuana would be turned loose, allowed to sell marijuana, and elected to memebership in the local as well as national chamber of commerce is he does so successfully. Economic growth!

Imagine the tax revenue from legal marijuana sales in america, and the money saved by changing our sick depraved policy of locking up drug offenders as crinimals, rather than treating them as  health care victims and violators.

Strangely, its the inexplicable conservative republicans who are against all this proposed progress. Why? because obama and the liberals want it, for one thing, and because the consrvative republicans don't really want to reduce the size of government, like they claim they do.

Its time to show your true conservatism, conservatives!

Arrogance

PRESIDENT OBAMA wants to sell the TVA, (Tennessee Valley Authority) thus privatizing it. The world turned upside down. The big government liberal wanting to downsize the U.S.A. . And what's funny, the republicans aren't having any of it.

you'll recall that during the great depression president roosevlet rammed the TVA electricity production system down the throats of congress and the american people, as part of his sweeping socialistic response to stimulate a dead capitalistic economy.

and it has worked great, so far. But the time has come for the government to get out of the way, and cut its costs, as part of our national reslove ( what there is of it) to balance our budget.

the small government anti obama anti big government conservatives do not, suddenly, believe in the power of free enterprise. At least, not enough to agree with president obama, or anything he does.

and herein lies our national illness, an illness of attitude, an illness of arrogance. next thing you know, the reublicans will come up with a bill to convert the entire nation to socialism, and obama will veto it, because he just can't bring himself to vote for anything the republicans do.

if the democrats and republicans each simultaneoulsy embraced each other's party platforms, they would simply continue the argument, with each other's ammunition, it almost seems. but of course, they're all americans, and very arrogant.

Talking: firm convictions

I'VE A GOOD FRIEND who waxes at length on topics which lay, for the most part, beyond my ken.With great authority he speaks about extra dimensional beings,other worlds, unseen political conspiracies,and such things.

the UFO talk intrigues me. I believe in 'em, and the talk stimulates thought, imagination. Where i get off the rail is when the talk turns to politics, and the pope becomes a puppet, the federal reserve an evil empire, run by evil aliens and illuminati.

all spoken with the same self assured degree of certainty.

america is a divided house of polarized opinion, left right, liberal conservative, gay straight, christian non christian. Not to leave out perhaps the most important divide: rich poor, which may, ultimately, underscore all the others.

and everyone has the line drawn, and the wagons circled, and the weapons primed. we are a culture of strong beliefs, and little give or middle ground. a nation of winners, unwilling to lose, or admit defeat. A nation of type "A" arrogance.

My friend said there's a difference between having firm convictions and being arrogant. I said I disagree. We admire firm convictions. Maybe we should admire open mindedness, willingness to change.

Then, maybe we could begin to talk to each other, rather than at and through each other.

Too Much To Ask

SO NOW WE KNOW: if you want to rally public support for a cause, just fuel the jet, load up the victims from some tragedy of the week, fly them to washington, parade them around town.

Works like a charm. Reportedly the newtown victim's families swayed the united states congress to open debate on a gun control bill. Rumor has it that one thinned skin conservative shed tears.

and all this is well and good, merely reminding us that humans are far more susecptible to sensory stimulation than pure thought or reason. Coulda saved a bundle on jet fuel and hotel bills footed by we the tazpayers, but, what the heck.

one wonders whether stationing the same victim's families around the floors of the house and senate might bring about passage of the  weak bill under consideration, or even of some spartan, no nonsense firearms control. We'll never know; even obama wouldn't go that far...would he?

You'd like to think we could all get together and through a process of series community deliberation and dialogue arrive at a consensus concerning the cause of our perpetual national nightmare, and a 
sane plan to solve it.

But that just might be too much to ask, mighten it...

ON Ancient Aliens: strong hope

SEVERAL THOUSAND years ago people evidently built huge structures out of huge rocks, all over the world, which look incredible today. Stone cutters using lasers and computers claim that they cannot build the same structures themselves with  huge granite and marble and limestone rocks as perfectly, flatly shaped and fitted, with holes as round and perfect, as the ones built, evidently, by ancient, supposedly primitive peoples.

this is why many people believe that humans had help from aliens. It truly seems possible, even necessary. But beware. We have always underestimated our ancestors. We have no proof. A nice super high tech ancient artifact would be nice, but, so far, no go. Ancient manuscripts describe godlike beings, which might be aliens.

Will we ever know the truth? The apparent answer might be "no". However, there is still much information to discover, and a strong liklihood that future human technology will be the key. Perhaps a time machine to watch stonehenge being built.

Even people wearing togas and feathers and cooking over campfires can work together in large numbers, over longs periods of time, with remarkable precision. Slave labor is cheap. But still, how do you take a fairly large, fairly flat rock, and make it even flatter to within a millionth of an inch of perfect flatness, over and over again, using nothing more technologically advanced than chisels, hammers, rope, grease, fire, knives, sharp edged wood planes, and nails?

By being very very patient and careful? Could our humble modern stonecutters, with their lasers and computers, match the ancients after all, with just a little more patience? No, they say, and who are we to argue?

Consider the question fifty fifty, with strong hope for future resolution.

Going NOwhere

THE FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL, a right wing christian organization which doubtless does exhaustive research on the topic of families, somehow, is threatening to pull its financial and political support of the republican party because the republican party is considering the possibility of accepting gay people as human beings, rather than sinful devils.

This highlights a simple, obvious fact; both right wing christianity and right wing political parties are so hopelessly out of step with the vast majority of modern americans that both are confronted with a huge choice: change with the times, or become extinct. Likely both will choose the latter.

With each passing year more and more people are accepting gay marriage as harmless, if not altogether desirable. Within ten or twenty years anyone who objects to gay marriage will quite probably be considered a bigot, a relic to be cast into history's proverbial dustbin.

And likewise, the christian faith, at least the extreme fundamentalist wing of it, is losing favor throught europe and north america, while fighting a losing battle to replace the losses with gains in latin america, asia, and africa.

The latest news is that the die are long cast; flash bulletin; those continents are already saturated with their own religions, religions other than christianity. There's nowhere for them to go, other than away.

A third political part in america consisting of a bizarre alliance between conservative christians, the national rifle association and militia types might have stood an outside chance in previous centuries, but their fourteenth century ideologies are, shall we say, a tad anachronistic.

May the dear lord bless and keep the extreme right wing, they know not what to do, and, ultimately, they've nowhere else to go.

The right to bear muskets

THE GUN CONTROL battle rages on, unabated. Civilized countries, like those in europe, have long since realized that having millions of people armed to the teeth is risky at best, downright dangerous at worst. They seem to understand that the world does not come neatly divided between good people, who should  be allowed to own guns, indeed should own guns for their own protection and the safety of all, and bad people, who should be prevented from owning guns by some mysterious process of screening.

They the civilized understand that the dermarcation between good and bad people is a fuzzy squiggly line which cuts right through the hearts and minds of us all.. Put a gun in a man's hands, said my wise grandfather, and the first thing he wants to do is use it. 

The arguments in favor of unlimited access to firearms by all the right people seem surrealistic, almost humorous, as would the fools who propound them, were they not in such deadly earnest.

According to mitch mac, he of the recently allegedly bugged office, to even so much as think about limiting access to deadly weapons would be a disaster of monumental proportions, depriving good people of a fundamantal right, destroying neighborhoods, families, and whole cities as surely as a blockbuster bomb.

Very well then. Let's stick strictly with original constitutional intent. Let's read the minds of our founders. Let no american citizen be denied the right to bear a muzzle loaded musket. Yet, according to our conservative histrionicists, to even suggest denying good people owndership of automatic assault weapons is to devastatingly attack the very foundations of the union.

the vice president said, profoundly, that most of the people who own guns today do so simply because they like guns. This drew ridicule from our conservative geniuses, even though the majority of american people are intelligent enough to understand that there is no reason on earth for anyone other than a member of the military to carry an M16. With people of such mentally on the loose, can it be long before the nation disintegrates in a flaming firefight? Or has it already done so?

We Want to Believe

THIRTY SEVEN PERCENT, or something like that, of the american people do not believe in global warming. In other words, nearly three out of ten americans deny the obvious reality of the irrefutable presence of global warming and consequent climate change.

People tend, as we know, to believe what they want to believe. Otherwise billions of people wouldn't believe that god speaks to us in books and stories, or that god sits in judgment of creatures of his own creation, first making it irrestistably tempting to sin, then requiring the brutal torture and death of his own son to atone for the very sins made possible, available, and tempting...by god.

Carl Sagan pointed out that there is no shortage of intelligence in the land, but a severe shortage of education. High school chemistry would be a good place to start. Do the deniers of global warming accept the fact that millions of tons of carbon compounds are being injected into earth's atmosphere each year by industrial activity? Surely not, but who knows.

Perhaps the problem adheres in a lack of understanding of the chemical properties of the chemical "carbon", which, with a full set of two electrons attached to its nucleas, then six more electrons just beyond, in the second layer, seeks ceaselessly to unite with the element oxygen, and seeks to retain heat, naturally.

So, with all this carbon and the oxygen attached to it, "carbon dioxide", the heat which would otherwise readiate back into space from the earth's surface instead is lapped up by CO2, in the form of infrared radiation.

Its simple, straightforward, easily demonstrable science, and its amazing only in that we did not understand and accept if before, like, early in the industrial revolution. But we believe what we want to believe.

Oh, that the global warming deniers were correct, and that we could do whatever we want and get away with it, without repurcussions. Somewhere there may be a universe where this happens, but not here, not on this planet of chemistry, and carbon, and heat.

Shhh

STANDING near the site of the former world trade center, in case anyone is interested, is a huge, tall, gleaming new building, also called the world trade center, looking for all the world like something out of an imaginative science fiction movie.

Its absolutely gorgeous. A fitting replacement to what was lost, and a testament to the strength, courage, and resiliency of the american people, indeed, of people. thing is, nobody seems to know about it. Its almost as if its invisible. One might wonder why.

Shouldn't something this magnificent be highly publicized, the talk of the town, on the front cover of publications ranging from news magazines to architectural digests to gossip tabloids? Well, one would think. Its almost as if the magnificent structure is just another office building, hardly worthy of notice or mention, a ho hum affair. 

Suddenly a thought comes to mind. Maybe its intentional. Maybe the plan is to undersell, to downplay any excitement or publicity, the strategy being to attract as little attention as possible, to appear nonchalent, to avoid the sort of spectacular achievement celebration which might draw fire, literally.

Bear in mind that the first trade center was attacked not once, but twice. Those who were determined to destroy it were willing to give it more than one try, disinclined to give up the quest after a "failed" attempt.

An avoidance of hubris. The world trade center sat like a proud beacon of prosperity and capitalism, among the first sights for those  closing in to new york from abroad, an obviously target of opportunity for anyone wishing to harm america. Let's not brag too much about this one, lest it attract the same fatal attention as did the previous version.

But is that really the way to go about this? In fear? or is it common sense, and modesty? Let the thing speak for itself. That's loud enough, nothing more is necessary, or desirable.

But haven't we been awakened to the ever present danger, and eliminated all threat of further attack through response, perparation, and due diligence?

If ever in new york, you might want to wander down towards battery park on the south end of the island, and take a look. You won't have to get too close to see it. You might not even be allowed to get too close, or stare at it too long.

But enjoy the awesome sight, its truly magnificent. Just don't tell people about it, or make too big a fuss over it. Its hard to protect buildings, and we want this one to last more than forty years.

Cutting Where It Hurts Most

PRESIDENT OBAMA, DILIGENTLY SEEKING TO ASSAUGE the seemingly  unassuagable, is prepared to offer a slow down in the rate of increase of social security and other entitlement benefits, which is being described, perhaps erroneously, as "cuts".

The republicans, not surprisingly, are having nothing to do with it. Well, of course not. After all, the idea comes from obama, and thus, is impure. One would think that our republican brothers and sisters would jump at the opportunity to further damage the poor; when have they not, and why not now?

Obama needn't worry about the national american gang of elderly bullies; whatever the AARP does in retalliation will pass by the president without much notice; he'll retire in three years to a life of copious money making appearance making.

After a sixteen percent self imposed salary cut, a little globe trotting will be just what the doctor ordered to replenish the pocket book, and make the obamas multi multi millionaires, after the fashion of reagan, clinton, et al. (The bushes don't do this so much, they already have it).

Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. Did the AARP get this backwards, somehow? Soon as they take their meds, eat their jello, and have the newspaper read to them, AARP soldiers across the fruited plain will doubtless raise up a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, of biblical proportions.

And maybe, just maybe, after the furor over free money has died down,  obama and his conservative adversaries will show a willingness to consider other, more drastic means to reduce our staggering national debt and postpone bankruptcy and economic collapse unto the third generation;

that is, if they can agree that we can somehow manage to get by with say, ten aircraft carriers rather than the present twelve. but then, that might endanger the far flung edges of the imperial realm, and further embolden the north koreans.

Turning Blue

THE SECRETARY GENERAL of the united nations astutely proclaimed that the detention of  foreign prisoners at the american military base at guantanamo cuba is illegal, a violation not only of international law, but american law as well.

Presumably, in deference to the united nations and the international law it is charged to uphold, the united states will immediately close the prisoner camp and either try the hundred and sixty or so prisoners for something anything,, or release them. Or, not.

Arguably, the united states of america has never been a stickler for either international or american law. Millions of foreigners are allowed to cross the mexican border and live in the U.S., possibly because of the cheap labor they proved.

Then too, there are such small matters as wiretapping and harassing american citizens, like martin luther king, dealing drugs in latin america to fund uprisings against socialist governments disinclined to embrace american corporate "investment", aka imperialism, (see: oliver north), and, the convenient ignoring of habeas corpus by abraham lincoln.

when an american citizen is arrested, the rule is that the arrestee must either be charged with a crime within twenty four hours of the arrest, or released. lincoln found this annoyingly inconvenient, so he simply overlooked it. Also, he overlooked freedom of the press, and a few other annoyances.

Thrown in a few illegal undeclared wars, like viet nam, a few kidnapped dictators, a couple of murdered dictators, and you start to get tyhe impression that the american government, unfettered by any scrutiny by the people it purports to represent, and, well, you start to move beyond the realm of mere misdemeanor.

The coercive manner in which a chunk of cuba was "obtained" by the U.S. upon completion of the spanish american war about a hundred and fifteen years ago fits in there someplace. If the secretary general is holding his breath, he'll soon turn blue.

Stupid, and Lazy

PRESIDENT OBAMA announced, quietly, that he intends to give five percent of his presidential salary to the federal treasury in order to help offset the budget cuts brought about by the great "sequester", "sequester" being the cute code name given to the inability of the legislative and executive branches of government to agree on a budget.

This inability to reach a reasonable agreenemnt triggered automatic budget cuts, you may recall, in accordance with an agreement reached over a year ago, in which future agreement failure would automatically result in cuts.

This amounts to a sixteen thousand dollar donation to the country by obama, whose annual salary is about four hundred and fifty grand a year. Should he ever choose to double his donation, he could call himself a secular tither. It could be argued that he could return to the treasury much more of his income without reducing his salary to an appropiate level.

The next step could be for the rest of us to mimic the president's behavior. Five percent from us all!The distribution of wealth in america is a matter of shockingly unbalanced graph paper. Several weeks ago such a bar graph appeared online, and shocked the heck out of millions of people who had no idea.

Forty percent of the wealth in the hands of one percent of the population. This provides more material for conservatives to use in order to belittle and ridicule people who are in poverty, over forty million in america, for being lazy and stupid.

Go they way, and sell whatsoever thou hast, and give unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. It seems strange that jesus encouraged people to behave lazily, and stupidly.