8/2/11

Has Rachel Maddow Read "A Pattern Language"?

If I could sit Rachel down sometime - she is less than a mile from where I live in the Apple - I would say we do not need to be told how terrible things are and we do not need what is actually superficial instruction on how to recover.
And there is simply something about the tone that I find grating.
Does Rachel really believe that oil and sprawl and building cars and houses is a recipe for a sustainable and prosperous economy?
Does she believe that without reforming the scale of our communities to provide some basis for viable local economies that we will have anything other than a structure designed for anomie and ultimate stasis?
Does the phrase car free cyber cities resonate with her?
Has she read A Pattern Language?
I could go on.
  
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Big Oil Koch Coup Watch Your Back

George Monbiot – How the Billionaires Broke the System: "What’s taking place in Congress right now is a kind of political coup. A handful of billionaires has shoved a spanner into the legislative process. Through the candidates they’ve bought and the movement that supports them."

These people will stop at nothing.
Thugs are not out of the question.
They are only a step or two to what they want.
They want to win the war for the domination of the economy by oil and the car.
That is exactly what will kill the global economy.


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The reason the economy is dysfunctional

No group public or private has built a model of what the future could  be.
The future must be beyond oil, beyond beyond rural, beyond metro sprawl.
Car free cyber-cities which have everything within walking distance is the wave of the future.
These can be in many forms but all will have common means of achieving green sustainability.
All will have new forms for renewed education, renewed commerce, renewed work and renewed housing.
We have not even gotten to the point of saying we intend to move beyond the oil-car economy. 
Cars and houses are too expensive for our future
Compact, mass-produced cyber cities will create full employment and the sense of a true new frontier.
There is no reason the culture of any current hopping city cannot become the culture of cyber-cities build anywhere and everywhere.
There is no reason existing areas cannot be converted into car-free cyber cities.

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A praiseworthy gesture

US to aid groups: Feed the starving, even if Al Qaeda gets collateral benefits - CSMonitor.com

On Abba's scale of values - the values I infer from a reading of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark - children and their well being rank as high as anything. This translates to the core value of helpfulness. But in the case of this situation, it also taps the core value of tolerance. Tolerance in this case is the strength to rise above a natural inclination to see these terrorists as they appear to be. For there is no greater evil than the callous disregard for life regardless who it comes from. The third core active value is democracy - the honoring of the preciousness and rights of all. If this is an honest account of US action, it is praiseworthy. Humanitarianism is a confession of the failure of these values to take sufficient root in human beings. We need to hold these values high against our inherited Aristotelian list of virtues which masquerade as values.


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What's this retroactive salmonella

Ground turkey linked to fatal salmonella outbreak - CBS News: "The agency said preliminary information showed that three of the samples have been linked to the same production establishment but did not name the retailers or the manufacturers."

Wonderful. Be sure not to tell us. The damage has been done. What else is there that happened that we never knew about? That in some narratives would amount to a betrayal.

Maybe we should have a name the manufacturer wheel of fortune game, just to keep in practice for the day we finally hold corporations responsible for their wonderful achievements at our expense.

Actually the Tea Party and the GOP are Consuming a Boatload of Peas

No “I” in Tea Party? Think Again. — BagNews

You see the cuts are so unpopular on the Left that the President does well to have them blamed entirely on the other side and to absorb the sympathy of the center when the left pounds him for conceding.

And actually the Tea Party became one with the GOP when all was said and done. They have both agreed to a wonderful result that they will live to see as the President's greatest victory. Ending the fiscal killing conducted by George W. Bush.

When history is written, we will say it took Obama a full eight years to undo the wreckage wrought by W. Obama will be known as the patient slayer of the most pernicious nightmare ever inflicted on the American people. And the Tea Party will simply remain a side show the President can use as a perfectly willing protagonist in his subterranean narratives. Am I wrong to be happy that David Plouffe finally got back to where he once belonged?

Nothing better than a twice-born environmentalist

The invasive species war - The Boston Globe: "Suddenly, these environmentalists who have always identified with progressive ideals are themselves being accused of being conservative, backwards - even intolerant."

My position is clear. Go with the flow except when you cannot stand it. Then marshal your arguments for change. Watch as chronology reveals the current truth and assume it is hardly final.

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Were Marcus Bachmann and Rick Perry Separated at Birth? (Video)


Fundamentalism will die of its own absurdity.

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Rick Perry's conspicuous Christianity

The 10 Worst Things About Rick Perry (And Why It Would Be Really Bad If He Runs for President) | | AlterNet: "On August 6, Perry and right-wing evangelical leaders are sponsoring a a prayer rally in Houston's Reliant Stadium dedicated to “the One True God through his Son Jesus Christ.”"

The church has never retreated from giving Jesus a bad name
Rick Perry represents the most blatent manifestation of this sort of drill
Jesus never asked people to turn him into an idol
He joined Amos in his despising of religion and his affinity for justice rolling down as waters
Jesus would go to the lost and least before he would hold a rally
He would frown on a Governor taking his name in vain
Perry may be called to be a preacher of the TBN stripe but that does not qualify him to be President of all the people

Pelosi and other disgusted liberals will be thanking the President for saving their posterior

Nancy Pelosi Takes Gutsy Stand, Backs Disliked Obama-Boehner Debt Deal - The Daily Beast

Samuel Beckett wrote the most recent episode of the Pelosi and the Injured Liberals saga.

They played their part. They made the GOP feel like big winners.

They got their rocks off on the Milquetoast Man in the White House.

All these wondrous things were done before our comprehending eyes.

And we will be there to smile when our estimable President announces that, having ended the Bush nightmare by being elected in 2008, he is ending the Bush tax cuts nightmare by being elected, with predictably tepid from these folk, in 2012.



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If you ever thought skyscrapers were stupid

Saudis Plan World’s Tallest Tower - The Daily Beast

Skyscrapers are the worlds attempt to avoid truth. But sometimes they manifest some truth. For example we can now see that the creation of the world's tallest tower is sponsored by the heirs of the recently departed Osama Bin Laden. That's wonderful.

The requisite height of a building is four stories. Such structures have a human scale. Just because we can do things does not mean we should. That was made clear in Eden.

The stadium is the best image of how we should build our new cyber cities. They are about four levels. They can accommodate 10,000 with ease. They suggest a walkable space. They suggest strength to resist elements. They suggest a scale that could enable 10,000 to afford the sort of securities and amenities they never could afford living in the midst of detached, capital-eating, sprawl.

To date I have not had a note from the President saying this is a good idea. But he takes his time.

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Bloody Ramadan bloody Syria bloody mess

BBC News - Syria forces in Hama push as crackdown continues

This is supposed to be a month for fasting not killing. I predict that the government of Syria will go down. The people will be the very paradigm of the enacting of the ontological value democracy.

Our task is to light a million, not 1000, not 100,000, fires of affirmation aimed at impressing on the world the need to always be at the bloodiest and most repressive and most hidden point of the attack on Abba, for any bloody attack on anyone anywhere is an attack on Abba and Abba is the unknown one who stands behind and above every imagined deity of humankind, and whose residence includes the inner consciousness of every living being on the planet and whose way includes tolerance, democracy  and helpfulness. And the veneration of none other than Abba who, incidentally, hates and despises out religious observances and cares mainly for the child.





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GOP betwixt rock & hard place

Pentagon Faces Possibility of Hundreds of Billions in Spending Cuts Over 10 Years - NYTimes.com

The rock is their untenable no tax pledge. Their lips are about to be chapped big time.

The hard place is their amorous relation with the Pentagon. There will be a bump - or rather many bumps to come.

I am beyond suggesting that progressives should appreciate the President.


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We may infer from this story that Palin, Bachmann, Romney and Paul Are Damaged Goods

A tea party debt limit rebellion? Hardly - The Fix - The Washington Post

Make that 26 in opposition. Add in four mindless GOP Presidential wannabes who would have seen the nation go off the cliff.


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Yes you might say so

What the debt-ceiling battle means for 2012 - The Washington Post: "In 2012, the contrast between the two parties seems certain to be drawn in sharp relief."

A bring it on moment. Our rope-a-dope President has once more proved the wisdom of his ways. In order to restore centrism to its rightful place, he has had to patiently endure a first term of such profound animosity and immaturity that is has become palpable. And it will ultimately sink the GOP in the bilious juices of its own value system which may be summarized an unhelpful, intolerant and anti-democratic. Excuse me I meant American, exceptional, capitalistic and free market. The bottom line is that our president has skillfully hooked a big one, because as we all know he likes to do big things. The country knows it. The pro Democrats not so much.

Emotional moment and a long way to go

Gabrielle Giffords’s staff wept over her return - Jennifer Epstein - POLITICO.com: "Though Giffords’s brief return to Congress was a big step, Karamargin cautioned the congresswoman is still far from a full recovery."

I can believe that. If I felt a twinge I imagine many many others did too.

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McCain is used to swallowing hard

McCain says he'll 'swallow hard' and support deal - Topix

When McCain almost trashed an aircraft carrier in his reckless youth, he swallowed hard.

When McCain found himself cruising somewhat somewhat oddly right over the enemy in NV, he swallowed hard.

When McCain realized that he could parlay heroism all the way to the Senate, he swallowed hard.

When McCain realized he could get the GOP nomination, so weak the field, he swallowed hard.

When McCain was told to juice up his faltering campaign with Palin, he swallowed hard.

All told, McCain has swallowed hard many, many times and tasted many, many fates.

God ceased being evil when Noah's ark made it through the flood

Column: Atheist tells high schoolers God is evil - Orange County Register: "Gleason, 56, isn't just a nonbeliever. He thinks religion is actually bad. 'You will never see an atheist suicide bomber.'"

In my declension of the narrative, Israel blamed God big time all the way up through Noah, a period of some length. For setting up sin and becoming an on-your-side sort of God. This launched the Binary Antagonist which antagonizes to this very day, most often on the GOP side of the aisle. Noah, the prophetic writer tells us, was visited by the Deity who made a covenant which had as a bottom line, in the vernacular, the conclusion, Don't blame me. From now on you will either sink or swim. Since then values and triadic thought capacities have been gently given residence in the inner consciousness of every living person along with a limited but puissant freedom to choose among them. Those who choose such active values as democracy and tolerance and helpfulness, and eschew all idolatries, can be deemed the makers of progress in history aka chronology. As far as Christians and atheists go, we can simply think a pox on both houses but it would be recondite to maintain a seemly silence and pray for their release into the triadic realm where too much knowledge is an impossible thing.


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This is the sort of thing that fails to excite my interest

This is a flock of flamingos and this image has not been shopped (pic) - Digg

I must be nonobservant. It's pretty though. And I am curious about the nature of the pull.

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Democratic revolution appears to bite Netanyahu

3quarksdaily: "Netanyahu will stay in office for a time, but his time is up. Finished. He will squirm and make promises, make declarations and turn tail, he will trot out a few more tricks, but it won't help him an iota."

Would that Israel, the first of the Abrahamic line, defy the superstitions and prejudices of millennia and become the instrument of an aggressive nonviolent reduction of hostility in the world.

There is nothing to prevent such a sea change. Much of the foundation has been built. What may be most necessary is to grasp the idea of it as an alternative to the bunker mentality.

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Why does your beauty grow with age?

Sonnet for K on Our 24th Anniversary | Stephen C. Rose:

"Why does your beauty grow with age
As other beauties seem to fade"

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RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press