3/14/12

Obama and Cameron With Stiff Upper Lips

Obama and Cameron Stand United on Afghanistan - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

I''m betting ASAP while saving face as much as possible. Hopefully this spells the end of US ground wars anywhere.


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Obama Experience Just To Get Up to Speed

Barack Obama's career timeline compares favorably with JFKs in terms of experience prior to making a time-consuming bid for the Presidency. I remember watching JFK in the Senate when he was newly elected in 1952. JFK's six years of service in the House of Representatives was not so interesting to him that he applied himself rigorously. But even by 1952 he had shown a capacity to write and speak with conviction and effect.

Barack Obama became a State Senator for the Hyde Park area of Chicago in 1996 and has been a US Senator only since 2004.

Abraham Lincoln was for many years a member of the Illinois House of Representatives. He then served in the US Congress for a single term -- two years. His efforts during the 1850s to win election to the US Senate failed.

Hillary Clinton's total legislative service wss less than that of Obama. She was elected in 2000 and reelected in 2006. That adds up to seven years.


Chris Matthews still shooting at Newt


Chris Matthews still shooting at Newt
Has a manner that warrants disdain
His bilious twist is Newt you don't exist
But it's Chris who's becoming a pain

Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Hmm a Groupon competitor

SaveLocal--Constant Contact:

'via Blog this'

This sounds like a pretty good deal.



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Congolese Warlord Thomas Lubanga Guilty - ICC

Congolese Warlord Convicted of Using Child Soldiers - NYTimes.com:

'via Blog this'

A first. A month to appeal. Sentence and reparations hearing in the works.


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

We have not heard the worst of Syria

Written last March
True today
Despicable slaughter of innocence
the only positive result being that Russia
finally joined other states in condemning Syria and Assad

+

To say that Syria is fratricidal
Is being nice
To say that Syria is being homicidal
Is being nice
What Syria is doing 
is nothing less than tragical
To say that we can solve it from outside
seems sadly laughable



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Panetta was obviously the victim of an attack

Panetta Safe After Nearby Truck Crash at Afghan Base - NYTimes.com: "No explosives were found on the driver, a civilian, or in the truck, the officials said, and the Pentagon was not immediately considering the episode an attack on Mr. Panetta."

'via Blog this'

People do not ordinarily self-immolate while approaching a plane carrying a high American official without motive.


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Charles Sanders Peirce on Secondness

We may say that the bulk of what is actually done consists of Secondness — or better, Secondness is the predominant character of what ''has been'' done. The immediate present, could we seize it, would have no character but its Firstness. Not that I mean to say that immediate consciousness (a pure fiction, by the way), would be Firstness, but that the ''quality'' of what we are immediately conscious of, which is no fiction, is Firstness.

But we constantly predict what is to be. Now what is to be, according to our conception of it, can never become wholly past. In general, we may say that ''meanings'' are inexhaustible. We are too apt to think that what one ''means'' to do and the ''meaning'' of a word are quite unrelated meanings of the word “meaning”, or that they are only connected by both referring to some actual operation of the mind. Professor Royce especially in his great work ''The World and the Individual'' has done much to break up this mistake.

In truth the only difference is that when a person ''means'' to do anything he is in some state in consequence of which the brute reactions between things will be moulded [in] to conformity to the form to which the man's mind is itself moulded, while the meaning of a word really lies in the way in which it might, in a proper position in a proposition believed, tend to mould the conduct of a person into conformity to that to which it is itself moulded.

Not only will meaning always, more or less, in the long run, mould reactions to itself,  but it is only in doing so that its own being consists. For this reason I call this element of the phenomenon or object of thought the element of Thirdness. It is that| which is what it is by virtue of imparting a quality to reactions in the future.

Peirce, CP 1.343

Cap tip Jon Awbrey  





Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

A Sensible Donation Strategy for November

A sensible strategy for November
Is focus all upon a victory
For every Democrat who stands with the President'
To me that means two donation centers
The DCCC
And the Obama Campaign itself

Here are the addresses for each

DCCC

Obama Campaign


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Mutual Parasitism Has A Nice Ring To It

Slavoj Žižek · Resistance Is Surrender: What to Do about Capitalism · LRB 15 November 2007: "These words simply demonstrate that today’s liberal-democratic state and the dream of an ‘infinitely demanding’ anarchic politics exist in a relationship of mutual parasitism: anarchic agents do the ethical thinking, and the state does the work of running and regulating society. Critchley’s anarchic ethico-political agent acts like a superego, comfortably bombarding the state with demands; and the more the state tries to satisfy these demands, the more guilty it is seen to be. In compliance with this logic, the anarchic agents focus their protest not on open dictatorships, but on the hypocrisy of liberal democracies, who are accused of betraying their own professed principles."

'via Blog this'






Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Superficial - Quality Trumps Everything

Capitalism, Version 2012 - NYTimes.com: "When the private sector overwhelms the public, you get the 2008 subprime crisis. When the public overwhelms the private, you get choking regulations. You need a balance, which is why we have to get past this cartoonish “argument that the choice is either all government or all the market,” argues Rothkopf. The lesson of history, he adds, is that capitalism thrives best when you have this balance, and “when you lose the balance, you get in trouble.”"

'via Blog this'

Friedman is superficial quality trumps everything
We thrive on creativity untrammeled by the corporate
China as well the future does not lie with sprawl
Upon this point I remain oburate


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

And if we move beyond the one to all

Abba's Way: 69 On Prudence:

And if we move beyond the one to all,
We see the shadow cast by lives long lost;
The sad light of imprudent gambling,
The sad commitment of the young to doom.
We lack the sure capacity we need
To see the future of what we decide.
Therefore we risk, whatever else we do!
(In vanity we act to be beheld.
We even act and then behold ourselves.
We make of life a drama or a film.
Let us not make believe it is not so.
The person who is speaking speaks for you!
The depths of our frail insecurity.)

'via Blog this'



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

So prudence counsels us to hold it all

Abba's Way: 69 On Prudence:

So prudence counsels us to hold it all
As we might hold a vulnerable child,
Not slighting what is rank or breeds distaste.
Yes, we would wipe the waste from helpless rumps,
And consummate our intimate transfers.
So where lies prudence in this confused maze?
Is it the foot that hesitates each step?
Is it the mind that knows not how to act?
Or is it letting go and rushing on?
Conceded there are times to risk and rush.
But prudence is the lesser move, the brake.
It is: Let’s live to fight another day.

'via Blog this'



Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

We live suspended between heights and depths.


We live suspended between heights and depths.
Our hearts are double-minded, they go blind.
We would ascend to heaven, ah, but then,
Our prudence tells us to descend again.
We do not know if heaven lies through death,
Or ugliness or slime or sheer disgust.
Or if celestial heights are best achieved
By careful steps and doing as we must.




Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

The Values of Capitalism Obvious Deadly Banal

Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs - NYTimes.com: "To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money"

'via Blog this'

Capitalism has nothing to do with free enterprise. It has to do with the values of nominalism, where everything comes down to the individual consciousness and the world is me me me. Free enterprise is a joyful affirmation of the grammar of Jesus in the Lord's prayer which has to do with we we  we. The community wins in reality. It loses at Goldman. And we become the victims because we refuse to cut ourselves loose from what hurts us.




Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

Creativity Is Exploding Via Spotify


Try Moodagent an app at Spotify
Realize that with one track you can create
A playlist like this one 
Based on Stir It Up
Spotify is free but I pay the low monthly
Unlimited rate to bypass the ads 
For a while it seemed to mess with my computer
But of late it has calmed down

Creativity is lodged within each of us
It is nudged by the advent of cyberspace
To do things which are moving toward the universal
Toward the connectivity that has always been there

Is it a higher plane that can somehow transcend
The banal evils to which we accede
I would venture a simple sort of
And hope for an amen from a desert somewhere


Charles Sanders Peirce - Thinking in Threes

RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press