7/8/11

Three Simple Steps To A Job Recovery

Jobs Data Dim Recovery Hopes - WSJ.com: "The U.S. economy barely added jobs for the second month in a row in June and the unemployment rate rose to the highest level this year, dashing hopes the economic recovery is getting back on track and putting pressure on policymakers to react." 1. Initiate a CETA-like program which enables employers to easily add needed jobs at modest wages for specific periods of time. It worked in the early-1980s. 2. Create government-private sector teams to build models of alternative communities that will be car free and feature cheap but eco-competent development at densities sufficient to enable populations of five to ten thousand to exist in an area where everything can be reached on foot. 3. Create a national trainer corps where people with skills can mentor individuals in concert with potential employers. One to one training.


Global Online Privacy

Heavy snow does not mean we are not warming

Bundle Up, It's Global Warming - NYTimes.com: "As global temperatures have warmed and as Arctic sea ice has melted over the past two and a half decades, more moisture has become snow."

Nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic

The Fixation of Belief: "The truth is, that common-sense, or thought as it first emerges above the level of the narrowly practical, is deeply imbued with that bad logical quality to which the epithet metaphysical is commonly applied; and nothing can clear it up but a severe course of logic." Charles Sanders Peirce was not a knee-jerp metaphysician. He was thee forerunner of a mentality which is now becoming the default. One that understrands the vagueness that lies at the edges of our capacity to grasp and comprehend.

Obama is not embracing Hooverism.

Hullabaloo: "Mike Konczal has a good post in which he muses on the perennial question: why is the administration embracing Hooverism? I'm not sure he's come up with a better answer than anyone else, but it's a fun read." Obama is not embracing Hooverism. He is dealing with a genuine and reasonable fissure in understanding. People are ultimately responsible for their actions. States cannot substitute for individuals. But they can and should serve needs that are agreed to be beyond the ken of individual power to effect. Obama is embracing centrism and listening to both sides of a dialectic that will lead to a new synthesis that will be neither the New Deal or whatever vision digby associates with Hooverism.

Global Online Privacy

Alarmed Democrats are the flip side of wingnut Republicans

Obama's debt talks alarm Democrats about Social Security | McClatchy: "Obama is pressing for a 'big' deal that would total about $4 trillion in cuts to projected deficits over the next 10 years. He had proposed a $4 trillion plan in April that would be spread over 10 or 12 years, but recent talks had focused on a $2 trillion goal." Neither the alarmed Democrats or the wingnut Republicans give a damn about following the lead of a President who has had a reasonable answer to the deficit for months and months. Now we know why Teddy Roosevelt gave up on both houses. And why that won't work. And why it is sad to see Democrats behaving so predictably and commentators having their meltdowns. Good thing we can switch channels.

Global Online Privacy

People like this should start by shooting themselves

Gunman dead after killing kid, ex-girlfriend, 5 others - US news - Crime & courts - msnbc.com: "GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A man suspected of killing seven people ended a hostage standoff late Thursday by shooting himself in the head, Michigan police said." I am serious. If someone is angry enough to off multiple victims and then himself, why not start with himself? He will have no chance to be guilty or happy at his slaughter once he has done himself in. It is a formidable lapse in logic. We should encourage all marauders to begin with themselves. We should post signs to this effect. START WITH YOURSELF!

Global Online Privacy

Pawlenty may be the candidate who wasn't

Pawlenty Campaign Puts Hopes on Iowa - NYTimes.com: "AMES, Iowa — Tim Pawlenty was first in line to enter the Republican presidential race. He is now fighting to avoid becoming the earliest major candidate to be shown the door." Sort of a cross between Zelig and the Invisible Man.

Global Online Privacy

The people are ready for some entitlement change Washington not so much

The Politics Behind The Debt-Ceiling Drama : NPR: "A new Pew Research Center poll shows that there is broad public opposition to possible reductions in benefits provided by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, according to poll director Andrew Kohut." Since the GOP has Citizen's United working for them they probably think they can lie their way past any problem, even if they foment a global depression. We must prove them wrong starting now.

Global Online Privacy

I had a dream the ghouls of advertising mutely ceased

I had a dream
The ghouls of advertising mutely
Ceased
Their murderous assault
Upon my body
The metrosprawl 
Suburban tracts
Were all
Ploughed under
To make room for
Planting things
God gives for free

Agribusiness
Was in the dust
Their chemical bombs
No longer detonating in our bodies
To make us
Diabetic
And unable to set foot
Before foot
We are a walker nation again

No more baconater triples
Supersonic burgers
Bk quad stackers
Bread bowl pastas
No more archer
No more davis
No more midland

Global Online Privacy

No more double double toil and stomachs all a-bubble

No more
Double double toil and
Stomachs all
A-bubble
No more infernal deep fries
No more
Monster meals
Sodium 1700
No more anything with
Calories 900
No more
Eat up dearie
Waddle to the car

We are our bodies
The devil doesn't do it
We do
The devil is the part of us that wants to see us pained
The devil is our ingenious generation 
Of an excuse for lassitude and sloth

Global Online Privacy

Fiscal machines create medications to delay death

Fiscal machines 
Create medications to delay death
As we self-slaughter at the trough
We make ourselves infirm
On jumbo whoppers
Stuffed burritos
We chase them with milkshakes
Made with chemicals
Whose names escape us
Our stomachs distend amiably

We make our selves
By everything we do

Global Online Privacy

In my dream the walk returns

In my dream the walk returns
The city comes back
The all-reality neighborhood returns
Jane Jacobs is revered
And Johnny Appleseed is known

No more
Calvacades in iron suits
Called SUVs
Ingesting rights of ways
On the way to
Hells of their own making
No more monster meals
No viscous burps
No plastic covered furniture

Global Online Privacy

In my dream devils are not defeated on the plane of states

In my dream
Devils are not defeated on the plane of states
But only on the plane of the individual spirit
Whose task is to
Climb Jacob's Ladder daily

In my dream we are our mind
We are our soul
We are our body
We are one

Global Online Privacy

Why being prepared for war is a very bad trip

Did you ever
Read about the ancient prophet
Named Micaiah
Miciah told the king
Go up and conquer
But the king knew the prophet was consigning him to doom
But still he took the doom in stride
Jailing the prophet for his pains

The cause of states
Breed the causes of state
The string that knots forever
Squeezes out
A child's learning
Consigns religion to
The role of compliant
Priests and scribes
Turns critics into dancing minions
Of the states
Or dancing minions who would rule the state

That first war we call world
Do you remember the name of the Archduke
Or why he was shot
Or what posturing preceded
That brief death

Micaiah and Jesus knew a thing or two
Do you think you know it all

States are irredeemable
They can only be brought to heel by a determined people
Only in those with ears to hear
Is spiritual progress made

Do you dream of peace
Or hear sad marching in your nightmares
Here at the epicenter I type away
Look down where Walt once walked
Methinks he would now shed a tear
For what we might become
If we have not already
Become it
And are already blind

Global Online Privacy

In China it is 1927

In China it is 1927
More oil please
India becomes an interstate
Hurry up dammit
It's time
This leak was
A love letter from God
Saying stop
Stop plundering my
Planet
But no
The only reason we want this to stop
Is so we can drill
All the more
Spiritual progress?
Perhaps in 2082

Global Online Privacy

We are the one all tending to the One

God's spark is in everyone 
This is a burden that would sap the life of most
For we would then acknowledge
That where life is
God is
The spark in all of life
And we would then
Look into the eyes of children
Leeched of life
And contemplate
That something or someone
Has extinguished a spark
Linked to the flame within us

It is no wonder that religion makes it easy
For us
Segmenting our salvation
Into chunks we can ingest
With confidence

All the Good Doctor's
Talk
Of none being an island
Is just the musing of a
Dead
Poet
Nothing more

But no we are all part of the same continent
Even when we are in rebellion
And leading lives of bitterness
And pinched anger
And righteous certainty
That is nothing but
Fear writ large
And faith destroyed

We are all one and tending to the one
We are all grasped by the same hand
We are all cared for by the same bright light
We all have Abba living deep inside
Ineffably giving us the endless leash 
Of our own freedom to say no
Until one day we say no to the lives we lead that 
Exclude Abba
And then we live in
Earnest happiness
At last

Jesus was the truest whistleblower of all

I once was asked to
Offer reasons for the death
Of many
Due to poisoning of well water
I found an Indian Doctor
Who saw those deaths coming apace
He shouted out a warning
But he went unheard
When I said he should now be recognized
My suggestion
Was shredded

Much whistle blowing has to do
With keeping sparks alive
True whistleblowers are
Messengers of Abba
Jesus was the truest
Whistleblower
Of All

There is a hard saying in our Scripture attributed to Jesus

There is a hard saying in our Scripture
Attributed to Jesus
It says let the dead
Bury the dead
On one level
It is simply a put down of
excessive sentimentality
But on another it suggests
God is so real
That part of God is lost
When deaths take place

I say God lives within us all a universal God

I say God lives within us all
A universal God
Beyond religions
Beyond capacities to
Fully grasp
To claim we know it all 

Why else would we know conscience 
As freedom to say no
And to be heard

Refusal is the beginning of freedom
And of proving Abba 
Lives within us all


The universal spark is In the murderer

The universal spark is
In the murderer
And in the murdered
In the father who mutilates
And in the mutilated
In Marine and Taliban
In wingnut
And reasonable soul
When we see beauty
It is the spark
Overcoming
All the evil we devise

RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press