Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Terrorism is far less dangerous than rich industrialists high on greed and stupidity

If the housing bubble and its resultant economic collapse have shown us nothing, it is that terrorists are far less destructive to the US economy, and with it the country's national security, than good, old-fashioned greed. The September 11th attacks killed thousands of people, completely obliterating two of the most significant pillars of capitalism on the face of the Earth in what seems now to have been the blink of an eye.

At the time, our economy slumped and stumbled, as we and our financial markets tried to absorb how radically our perception of the world had changed. It was obvious we were going to war, just as it was obvious that our country was far from impervious to the perils that had beset the world "over there" for decades. September 11th changed the game in much the same way Pearl Harbor did in 1941. Thousands of civilians died without a single rifle being fired. That sort of tragedy was not supposed to happen here, and absolutely not without such horrific effectiveness. But it did happen and America was on its heels. The country went to war with Afghanistan, the President's cronies decided Iraq was the next logical step, and the rest is history.

Things slowed, but the economy did not crash. There was no talk of another Great Depression, and there was confidence that our nation would quickly be back on course and steaming ahead once again.

Meanwhile, a housing boom began to gain momentum throughout the country, with Florida being one of the hottest of the hot zones for real estate. I remember it well, because I was house shopping around the time things began to really take off. The "interest only" and "80/20" loans, things I had not ever heard of before, were discussed repeatedly with the mortgage broker working on my potential deals, despite my stated desire for a 30-year fixed arrangement. Ultimately, I ended up going back to school, rather than buying a home, right around the time that the market peaked. People were buying homes they could not afford and banks were writing loans as if the good times would never end. Fast forward 2 years, and it is pretty clear luck was on my side at the time.

Apparently, the wealthy egomaniacs running America's financial institutions had decided that giving loans to people with below par credit ratings was as good as money, assuming one bundled all of these high risk loans into packages called mortgage backed securities. Unless you have been smashed beneath a financier leaping to his death, you are already well aware of what happened next. In less than 2 years, the economy has been ground down to a near halt. Many Americans are out of work because of failed businesses like Lehman Brothers and even more are expected to find themselves unemployed as the awareness that our economy is in deep trouble begins to sink in.

If you believe what the "experts" are saying, we are in an incredibly deep pile of dog dung. The credit markets have slowed to a halt, the government, which has already been running record deficits for nearly a decade, is now trying to find a means of committing $700,000,000,000 in taxpayer moneys it does not have to a bailout plan that no one is sure will work, even as many economists are saying that things can only get worse, before they will get better. This crisis has nothing to do with terrorism, or September 11, 2001, but it is much closer in size and scope to the sort of thing that could actually cripple this country for decades to come.

The company I work for has laid off over a thousand employees for no other reason than to cut costs, and plans to layoff hundreds more over the coming year. These people are Americans, being replaced by Indians with fewer skills and far less experience, undermining what is left of a dwindling pool of intellectual capital. These madmen share the mindset of greed and profits at all costs that guided Washington and Wall Street down this road to ruin. To these people, humans are not humans, they are corporate resources to be acquired, drained and discarded. Our executives have turned their backs on America and Americans, even as America and those Americans have worked to make them filthy rich, just as Wall Street seems to have turned its back on common sense and sound financial practices in favor of a quick buck. And just like Wall Street, a few people will reap the benefits, becoming even more obscenely rich, while a far greater number of Americans suffer. And what will be done about this treason? Well, I can assure you there will be no employee bailout.

In the end, corporate profits are more important than the collective health of hundreds, thousands and millions of Americans.

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Posted by Erik @ 9/30/2008 09:51:00 PM :: (0) comments

Thursday, September 18, 2008

And the chorus goes

And the chorus goes

a sound like wilted roses
their petals colored shale oil
with buds of crimson silk
stems bent with concentration
and roots tiny tentacles
searching deeper and deeper

and the chorus goes

It doesn't mean a thing to me
It doesn't mean a thing to me
And it's about time you see
Things ain't like they used to be


remembrance and regret sharpened razor blades
carving grand canyons into hollow veins
where once mighty tides ebbed and flowed
now a tendril stream gasping hard
frail, vulnerable to sun and dam
growing shallow and insecure

and the chorus goes

It doesn't mean a thing to me
It doesn't mean a thing to me
And it's about time you see
Things ain't like they used to be

Posted by Erik @ 9/18/2008 09:03:00 PM :: (0) comments

Monday, September 15, 2008

I'm feeling political lately

With election fever consuming the land, it seems only fitting that my mind should continue down the political road. Today I was reminded that John McCain was an adulterer and that he allegedly referred to his wife as a "cunt" in front of campaign aides and media reps during a 1992 campaign stop. I was reminded of the adultery thing by some Photoshopped photos at Jill Greenberg's website. For those that don't know, as I didn't before today, Jill Greenberg is a well known photographer who shoots for magazines like The Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, etc and so on. Her homepage (where all of her McCain pics can be found) is here.

Apparently, ol' Jill got herself in a bit of trouble with the shoot she did for The Atlantic a few months ago. John McCain was the coverboy, and Greenberg is a militant Bush-hater, so when Bush's new best friend came through her studio, she decided to take a bunch of shots in unflattering light, which is to say she made him look like a film noir villain. Honestly, with the way this man has sold his soul for the sake of a shot at the Presidency, I think it was a fitting choice, if not very well thought out. Radar Online has some of the details here.

Thing is, John McCain once carried some appeal with me. He used to be a reasonable alternative to the militantly right wing nutjobs holding so much sway over the Republican Party. He even went so far as to speak out in favor of keeping Roe v. Wade on the books, until her recently declared that it must be overturned. He's done a lot of incredible flip-flopping for the sake of this election and is catching nearly no heat for it from Republicans, which is to be expected.

At this point, I have more respect for someone like Sarah Palin, who has a lot in common with the right wing screwballs that have made the Repiblican Party their playground. She's anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, pro-war, pro-free markets, etc. And I will give her credit for the fact that her son is actually an enlisted man in the Army. Normally, the most pressing danger to life and limb for a politician's son or daughter is drug addiction or drunk driving, but Palin's son is willing to put his ass on the line for what he and his mother believe in. That's respectable, but John McCain has essentially turned his back on the entirety of his political career, effectively divorcing himself from any credibility by continuing to refer to himself as a "maverick", for the sake of a shot at the White House.

He and Palin now admit that Republicans effectively blew over the past 8 years, to the point that they are talking about "massive reforms" and "shaking things up", but they accept endorsements, support, and advice from the same people responsible for nearly a decade of fucking up. They bill this political move as "change". Things have changed, that's for sure, but I do not believe McCain or Palin will bring any real change to Washington or the Republican Party. What they will bring is a weathered, broken, discredited war veteran with little gas left in the proverbial tank and a woman with some scary religious views and a history of taking money from the government, while claiming to have told them "no thanks".

Republicans are eating this shit up and it is looking very much like this election could come down to another clostely guarded, Diebold controlled, vote tally, which is to say, this will very likely end up being another tight Republican "victory". If that's the case, we may as well call it a game and give up, but it will be amusing to see what McCain might call Palin, should the two ever end up in a heated discussion. Maybe he'll score with her and leave Cindy for his younger, MILFish VP. Now THAT would make for some good photoshopping! lol

My favorite Photoshop job of the bunch would probably be the image below. Not because I fully believe he was actually stupid enough to say such a thing to a woman he supposedly loves, but because that smile, those wrinkles, and that creepy lighting are a golden combination. :)



In honor of McCain's abandonment of principles and integrity, I leave you with this most excellent song by The Black Keys. Enjoy. :)

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Posted by Erik @ 9/15/2008 08:47:00 PM :: (4) comments

Monday, September 08, 2008

Sarah knows best

Sarah Palin is making a lot of noise and USA Today is reporting that her performance at the Republican National Convention has given McCain's campaign a significant bump. Will it last? It's hard to tell, but the Republican embrace of this woman looks very much like a desperate attempt to establish their own cult of personality like that which has built around Barack Obama. That's to be expected, as conservatives are not immune to envy, regardless of their claims of religious piety, but Sarah Palin is no Barack Obama.

Sarah Palin is rigidly pro-life, to the point that she has gone on the record as believing that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances save those where the mother's life is in danger. In a promiscuous society where statistics would seem to indicate that plenty of Republican women are terminating pregnancies. The latest statistics I could find online seem to indicate that roughly 1.2 million abortions were performed in 2002…surely, not all of those women are Democrats. There is some evidence that the pro-life movement has made progress in recent years, but the teen pregnancy rate has recently showed an up-tick and Palin's own 17-years old daughter is knocked up, so there might be reason to believe the number of abortions is likely to rise once again. McCain is also anti-abortion, and with 3 Supreme Court justices set to retire within the next few years, a McCain presidency would very likely mean the appointment of 2-3 more anti-abortion justices, meaning a woman's ability to choose could be eliminated within the next 4 years. That will probably give some people pause, once it becomes an issue in the campaign.

Palin is a fundamentalist religious personality. She has been quoted as saying that the Iraq war is a task from God and that a massive oil pipeline is part of God’s will(see the video below). In a country that once prided itself on being intelligent enough to separate Church and State, a person who is stupid enough to believe war is a task from God is a danger to us all, particularly when she would be one McCain illness away from becoming Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful war machine the planet has ever seen. You would think Republicans would learn something by watching what fundamentalist religious figures have made of the world during the past 5,000 years, but it appears that a person who describes a pipeline through Alaska as “God's Will” is the type of person Republicans gravitate toward. If she were a Muslim, she would be hated, but because she is crediting Christ with a mission of war and a project to drill for oil, she is trumpeted as a hero. Do believers think Jesus is pro-War because he gets lonely in eternity? Last I checked, the 10 Commandments didn't make any exceptions or qualifications on that "Thou shalt not kill" thing, but maybe I missed the bylaws and small print. It seems that Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, and their ilk know the will of God, but isn't claiming to know the will of God a sin in and of itself? Maybe there is an exemption for neoconservative, authoritarian, American politicians…after all, Americans are God's Chosen. It seems every society of leaders and followers are "God's Chosen"…monotheists are always so sure! I guess we'll all just have to slaughter each other and find out who's right, once and for all.

In another interesting bit of potential authoritarianism, Sarah Palin also contacted Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Emmons during her time as Mayor of the tiny, Alaskan city, and inquired about the possibility of banning undesirable books. Last I checked, book banning was not a function of government in an allegedly free society. For a lady who gives lots of lip service to small government, it sure seems like she is the type that wants to inject government deeper into everyday life. There is no excuse for allowing government to tell you what you can or cannot read and there is no intelligent explanation for allowing government to tell libraries which books they can or cannot have available to a public that is supposed to have the right to choose what they read. The fact that this woman would even think this was an acceptable course of action should raise red flags to anyone with any concept of what Freedom is supposed to mean. Strangely, Republicans are applauded her as the Second Coming (not literally of course, since everyone knows Jesus could only be a European looking Caucasian male).

So as the McCain-Palin ticket begins to metamorphose into a Palin-McCain ticket, what will Republicans do when faced with the knowledge that Palin is a woman who wants the government to tell every American woman what she can and cannot do with their body, and every American citizen who they can and cannot marry. She wants government to tell you what you can and cannot read, and she wants us to share her belief that war and oil drilling are part of God's will, His divine plan. So far, they're thrilled, which should worry the rest of us immensely.
The only true threat to freedom is government. No terrorist is ever going to take away or restrict our rights, only the government is capable of doing such things. Of course, the Constitution is supposed to stop the government from restricting our rights, but no one in government seems to be very concerned with that little piece of paper these days. So it should come as no surprise that Sarah Palin is the kind of politician that is becoming wildly popular among Republicans, who have overseen the dismantling of many supposedly inalienable rights during the past 8 years. Combined with John McCain's continued waffling and his creeping subjugation to the religious right (Republican America's favorite religious fundamentalist voting bloc!), for which Palin is an obvious champion, it seems inevitable that Palin would become the dominant figure on the Republican ticket.

As a religious fundamentalist, she is also against gay marriage, as is John McCain. It seems like these people are very into restricting the activities of American citizens. Here's to smaller government! It looks like someone of Sarah Palin’s mindset is what Republicans really want. I'm afraid even their pro-war God won't be able to help us, should she be what we all end up getting.

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Posted by Erik @ 9/08/2008 10:20:00 AM :: (4) comments

Saturday, September 06, 2008

The war in Iraq is God's war

What would Jesus do? He'd blow away some fucking Muslims, that's what he'd do!!



My bet is that Sarah Palin has a lot of trouble separating Church and State. My bet is that she is the type of person who believes that all people everywhere should believe in her God, or be taught to believe in her God. I could be wrong, but stuff like the above, and her fundamentalist Conservative sound make me think it would be a safe bet. It's all God's Will, apparently...building gas lines, sending American soldiers off to fight and die - God's Will, not the will of humans who lust for power, but God's Will. Who would have guessed God was so into violence and money? Jesus was huge on killing and dying in the name of power. Brilliant! :)

And more proof that The Daily Show is more informative than everything on FOX News:

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Posted by Erik @ 9/06/2008 01:01:00 AM :: (0) comments

Friday, September 05, 2008

The eternal conflict

On the other hand, there is an obvious rebuttal to the idea that one is failing if one isn't having casual sex as often as the simple-minded souls I referred to in my last post. And I should probably explain what I mean by "simple-minded" in this context, or at least explain why I use the term. In my mind, physical gratification, whether it be sexual, adrenal, masochistic, etc, is a dumb form of gratification. When I say dumb, I use it in the context of a dumb terminal, meaning that it is biochemical and physical response to input. A dumb terminal does not process or manipulate data, it is only capable of relaying information that is input from external sources, hence "dumb". Our physical selves, particularly our bodies, are dumb. Our bodies do not process information, they merely react and respond to input. The body is a collection of tissues and fluids, but it is not sentient and without a mind to guide it, it is nothing but a lump of carbon-based matter and water.

Left to its own devices, the physical self would eat, screw, and sleep all the time. If it did not feel good or give pleasure, the physical self would not bother with it. The physical self is animal, and while I respect animals more than a lot of people, their drives are primarily survival oriented, and therefore limited to the basic needs of physical reality. These base drives often lead to self-defeating or self-limiting behaviors. As sentient beings, should we never transcend our physical selves, we are essentially nothing more than destructive, selfish animals with a very limited shelf life. The one thing that gives us any worth as humans, and perhaps our lone saving grace, is that we have the potential for more.

Giving into base physicality is a waste of potential and possibilities. A dog can be taught to sit, speak, find dead bodies by scent, or lead blind humans through a crowded world, but it is still a physical being willing to roll in the rotten carcass of other animals or eat its own shit. Bonobos and similar primates are considered to be our species' closest genetic neighbors, but five minutes of searching on YouTube will yield videos of chimps drinking their own urine and Bonobos flinging feces at one another. The scary part is, ten more minutes on the web and you'll very likely find video of humans doing all those things and worse. These are people living dumb lives.

The physical world is one of blood and guts and dirt and the temporary. There is no physical construct that lasts forever, so all things in the physical realm are transient and ultimately trivial. So then it stands to reason that the idea physical gratification is the end-all, be-all of one's existence is a very uninspiring and primitive worldview. Gentility, sophistication, nuance, reason, all of these things exhibit themselves in humans because of our potential for higher understanding. Nature is a beautiful mechanism and it works marvelously to build and maintain balance amongst its more naturalized citizens, but humans stepped outside that balance long ago, and for better or worse, we developed an intellect and self-awareness that obligates us to explore the nature of existence on a level deeper than "this feels good".

For some, that might be enough, and for these people, embracing a life of pleasure seeking is the most obvious choice, but such a life is dumb, plain and simple. Their chosen reality will have been a waste of time and energy, which is the real crux of the matter. We have a choice. Our lives can be wastes of time and energy, or they can be something more. Eventually the energy that forms our molecules, cells, organs, and collective selves will change states and return to the world. What we do in the meantime defines who and what we, the temporary personae that carry names like "Erik", really are. Are you a simple-minded machine whose only purpose is physical, or are you something more? Questions like that are the root most of my internal conflicts. Finding a way to ease up on "something more", while not being overrun by the overwhelming temptation to be "dumb" is a complicated matter...

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Posted by Erik @ 9/05/2008 01:07:00 PM :: (0) comments

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Opposites obviously

What happens when you put a good girl with values in the same room as a good guy with values? Not much beyond conversation and a ballooning sense of awkwardness. Their collective values and resultant insecurities create a 600lb gorilla that looms and lurks ceaselessly in the room. Neither individual wants to transmit an impression that they are one of "those" people, even if they understand that the two of them are in no way "those" people. So you have a situation where both people are unsure of how to move any direction but laterally, or worse, backward.

In my personal experience, the idea that I must not be associated with the usual male stereotypes is so powerful that I find myself essentially paralyzed around exactly the kind of girls I am most interested in. We can have enjoyable conversation, enjoy spending time together, but ultimately, the situation goes "friend zone" and eventually ends up staying there. It is an amazing bit of psychology that sees a confident person rendered completely ineffective when the very thing this person is seeking lies within reach.

The why and what behind such psychological handicaps is at the least headache inducingly complex, buried beneath a mountain of morality, personal myth, ideology, ideals, and issues. This soup of cerebral debris clouds the mind and smudges any sense of clarity. You start to consider abandoning all the time and effort and work, dumbing down becomes genuinely attractive and you begin to wonder if there isn't some intrinsic value in following one's dick around, rather than the heart or brain.

The physical is stupid, and easy, and obvious. An endorphin explosion is an immediate, chemical escape from problems, issues, worries, questions, or troubles. An endorphin rush seems so much more fun than contemplative solitude, that the simple stop looking weak, and start looking like the enlightened ones. Perhaps gratification is a worthy end in and of itself, and all other values are illusory.

I sometimes find myself wondering at the nature of strength...if restraining and controlling the physical is really strength at all.

Cliche, isn't it? The disciplined, consistent, steadfast man/woman begins considering that the other side might indeed have greener grass. Simply thinking of the possibilities brings about a sense of clammy dread that he/she might one day fall in line with the simpler animals..if they are simpler at all. He/She begins to wonder at the virtues of a simple sensibility, creating a sort of mythology in which the simple mind is actually the freer, more natural mind. Sometimes I wonder...sometimes I wish to be simpler.

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Posted by Erik @ 9/04/2008 12:17:00 AM :: (4) comments