The “fiscal cliff” is a a metaphor for a government that no longer responds to the biggest challenges we face because it’s paralyzed by intransigent Republicans, obsessed by the federal budget deficit, and overwhelmed by big money from corporations, Wall Street, and billionaires.
If we had a functional government America would address three “cliffs” posing far larger dangers to us than the fiscal one…
Carlinisms…*
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
From my dad, of course…
*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…
If someone asks you, “What happens when I die?’ you may help that person by asking, “What is happening to you in the here and now?” If we know what happens to us in the here and now, we can answer the other question very easily. We are undergoing birth and death right now. Rebirth is taking place right now, because mentally and physically you are reborn every instant, you are renewed in every instant to become a new person, a new being. If we know how to do it, our renewal is beautiful. p. 24
From Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society by Thich Nhat Hanh
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Carlinisms…*
Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposites?
From my dad, of course…
*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…
The Bonnie and Clyde ending to two nondescript misdemeanors by the Cleveland police and their 137 bullets is just a reminder of how bad things are in Cleveland. It’s shameful.
What was it a rabbit chase?
What really does it say to Cleveland citizens – especially to black Cleveland citizens? What it says, I suspect, is that you are worthless. You are targets.
Are we back historically to the time when Cleveland Police Chief Richard Wagner took his rifle to house tops during racial strife? Have we advanced so little in reality? Is it hunting season?
I thought things were supposed to have changed. Or at least changing. Not so.
To learn that only a handful of Cleveland police cars have dashboard cameras suggests the lackadaisical approach to governance here. It suggests now wanting to know what is happening. Again, shameful.
It shows a sloth at City Hall hard to explain in a city as large as Cleveland.
To say funds are lacking is laughable.
The shooting is too predictable as events go here.
I have a sense that City Hall is on cruise control.
And why not? There has been a period – near a decade now – where we have seen little vision of a future for much of the city, other than Continue Reading »
Rule No. 1: Eat Food.
From Food Rules, an eater’s manual by Michael Pollan
I re-read Pollan’s book yesterday, selecting this time the new edition with illustrations by Maira Kalman and additional rules (there are 83 in this edition, up from 64 in the original) from readers since the book was first published in 2009.
The book is divided into three sections, one each for the basic, over-arching principle that we should: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.
Rule No. 1, Eat Food, seems simple enough, but rules nos. 2-13 are all about what isn’t food. (My favorites are rules nos. 4, Avoid Food Products That Contain High-Fructose Corn Syrup and 11, Avoid Foods You See Advertised On Television.)
I found reading Pollan’s book last year to be very helpful over the past 12 months in shedding 80 pounds and returning to the rules (and discovering the wonderufl illustrations) is helping me to maintain my new weight.
Found in my electronic chapbook.
Via What’s Up:
WHAT: Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work
WHERE: West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church, 20401 Hilliard Blvd., Rocky River
WHEN: Saturday, 8 December at 7 p.m.
WHO: West Shore Film Series
CONTACT: Bob Bemer at 440.333.2255 West Shore File Series
With the long decline in US manufacturing and today’s economic crisis, millions have been thrown out of work, and many are losing their homes. The usual economic solutions are not working, so some citizens and public officials are ready to think outside of the box.
There is growing interest in firms that are owned and managed by their workers. Such firms tend to be more profitable and innovative, and more committed to the communities where they are based. Yet the public has little knowledge of their success, and the promise they offer for a better life.
Shift Change, this 70-minute film by Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young, highlights some of the vibrant worker-owned companies across the nation: from bakeries to solar energy to manufacturing and engineering, – including the Evergreen Cooperatives right here in Cleveland! Through in-depth interviews with worker-owners, attendance at coop meetings, and visits to the factory floor, the film conveys the promise that these businesses offer to reinvent our failing economy, provide a pathway to long term stability, and nurture a more egalitarian way of life.
Once one decides in the name of electoral expediency to abdicate their primary duty as a citizen and especially as a journalist – namely, to hold accountable those who wield the greatest political power – then this becomes a permanent abdication
I occassionally wonder if our irrational devotion to horrible sports teams — especially those here in Cleveland — somehow facilitates this kind of slavish devotion to party over principles.
Carlinisms…*
Doesn’t expecting the unexpected make the unexpected expected?
From my dad, of course…
*I associate this kind of word play with the brilliant comedy of George Carlin…
Sheesh, the wrong wing nut jobs can’t even come up with a decent conspiracy. I’m reading this morning about how President Barack Obama is plotting to get a third term in the White House and the tin-hat brigade is twisting and turning every which way in an attempt to make their plot so complicated that even they can’t repeat the tale with a straight face.
What really gets me is that if he wanted to, I think Obama could win, constitutionally, a third term without violating the 22nd Amendment which reads:
Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.
Section 2. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.
So how does Obama get around the 22nd Amendment? Easy, run for vice president with an agreement that his running mate will resign immediately after taking the oath of office; thank you 25th Amendment and Presidential Succession Act of 1947. (The faux president could resign after the election, but I think waiting for the inauguration would be safer.)
Sure, the president would have to win the election, and there is no guarantee of what the political climate will be like in four years, but if you’re a wacko who can’t stomach referring to a Black man as Mr. President, you should at least put a little effort to making your conspiracy plausible.
That, however, would require a moment or two of clear, rational thought and well, you know.
Whatever one thinks of Manning’s alleged acts, he appears the classic whistleblower. This information could have been sold for substantial sums to a foreign government or a terror group. Instead he apparently knowingly risked his liberty to show them to the world because – he said when he believed he was speaking in private – he wanted to trigger “worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms”.
Compare this aggressive prosecution of Manning to the Obama administration’s vigorous efforts to shield Bush-era war crimes and massive Wall Street fraud from all forms of legal accountability. Not a single perpetrator of those genuine crimes has faced court under Obama, a comparison that reflects the priorities and values of US justice.
If Bradley Manning were the son of a rich New Yorker, this would be a very different story.
Paul Krugman on the GOP plan to avoid the fiscal cliff:
This is pathetic – and these people are definitely not serious.
There is no American politician, hell no living politician on the planet, whom I respect more than President Jimmy Carter. What he says here, and what The New York Times published yesterday, goes to the heart of why, as someone who speaks out for social justice, as an American, as a Jew, I do not support the current leadership in Israel.
In America, tragedy doesn’t count unless it happens to rich New Yorkers. Think Oklahoma City vs. New York, think Kiribati, the Maldives and Seychelles vs. New York, think New Orleans vs. New York, think Port-Au-Prince vs. New York, think Detroit vs. New York; are you as sick of whining rich New Yorkers as I am?
[Hurrican Sandy] victims who remain in their damaged homes, often without heat, electricity or running water, clutch knives against the threat of gangs that prowl at night through the wreckage.
This storm—amid freakish weather patterns such storms will become routine—resulted in at least $71.3 billion in property damage in New York and New Jersey. Many of the 305,000 houses in New York destroyed by Sandy will never be rebuilt. New York City says it will have to spend $800 million just to repair its roads. And that is only the start. The next hurricane season will most likely descend on the Eastern Seaboard with even greater destructive fury. A couple of more hurricanes like this one and whole sections of the coast will become uninhabitable.
This is the new America. It is an America where economic and environmental catastrophes converge to trigger systems breakdown and collapse. It is an America divided between corporate predators and their prey. It is an America that, as things unravel, increasingly sacrifices its own.
New York is not the center of the world, damn it!
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