The other thing I find interesting is that bank profits are tax deductable. Of all the industries with one slight exception, the more profit the bank makes the more you get to deduct from your taxable income.

That seems a bit odd doesn’t it? The more money the banks make, mortgage interest you pay, the less you get taxed. I wonder who was behind this concept.

Deducting mortgage interest from your taxable income decreases the amount of tax you must pay. In doing so does this help the borrower or the banks?

I guess it helps both, but more so the banks I would think. First it creates an incentive to provide profit to the banks. The reduced taxes create more disposable income for the borrower which actually means the banks can actually charge more interest then they could if you had to pay several thousand more in taxes.

So who really loses out? The renters do, they end up having to pay more taxes. Since you are the home owner are paying less into the public funds the renters make up the difference since they don’t have the advantage of mortgage interest deduction. And who wins again? The banks of course because when the tax revenue is less than the country’s expenses congress must incur debt on behalf of the citizens and that debt includes even more interest payments creating a perpetual need to create more debt.

And as well all know “all the interest” can never be paid back, because only principle dollars are created never interest dollars. So we have to create more debt with more interest until they can’t create money fast enough to pay the interest owed on the money previously created and the principal.

That other slight exception is the Medical Industrial Complex, if you pay them over X amount in profit you can deduct the profit going to them from your taxes if you itemize and it is greater than your standard deductions.

I think we will let Google become a bank now; the Do No Evil People, the banking system just needs a few data centers and lot’s of servers even less hardware if the economic system participants share a little processor time and storage space on their home computers.

The monetary system doesn’t need all these bank buildings anymore and their associated costs and green house gas generation. We can also do away with all the other travel expenses, and there is no reason to maintain and lease multiple software applications and systems to support the monetary system. We can have an open source system.

In other words we can greatly reduce the cost of monetary system maintenance and therefore the cost to participate in the economic system when creating value for others. Personally I don’t think we should have to pay a fee to be able to provide benefit to others, there should be no tax on economic contributions.

Think about that.

Who in their right mind would tax an economic contribution? Exactly!

Not the founders of the United States, this is why they said that only income could be taxed which is interest earnings, dividends and capital gains. Their intention was not to tax economic contributions, this would be ludicrous in that direct economic contributions are what make the economy grow and allow society to actually function on a daily basis providing essentials.

Greetings!
(sigh) Sometimes there is so much to say that one simply cannot say anything. So I will just send a heartfelt hug to all.

Is it just me...

Or is the world falling apart?

Where is the progress of civilization?

Oh! What seems to be interesting is suddenly special. Why?

Either, we have special interest or we're gaining no interest. Hello. hello?!!!

.

I know it's just me going through a phase.

Some trips we have to take alone, and this is one of those.

Maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to drum something up on The Way.

Just for the sake of interest, I'm going to see what's over the hill.

Just as I am, I go. Broken or just plain broke, I come.

No longer wondering about meandering, I disappear!

.

Please excuse my stupidity. It comes with the territory.

goodwednesday everyone,

well, the markets went south yesterday, and Bush is fixin to make a fix that won't really fix anything, but will make folks think someone is lookin out for their financial well being, and therefore, they can all go back to sleep, again, for a time, that, is, until the markets go south, again, and the next time they may go too far south for any ridiculous band-aid stimulus package to put back together again. how easily we are lead back to the pasture..such good little sheep, we are.

You know I get the feeling we(Americans) don't know the half of it, don't know, don't really understand the "new and improved" accountng practices from the school of "hide it and hope know one catches on" until we have all made off with accounts in the Islands.

I hope everyone is brushing up on their Chinese because I heard we owe them plenty..let us hope they don't come to collect too soon.

being on the lower end of the financial tree I do not have too far to fall, meaning nothing will get broken and I can get back on my feet again to "chop wood and carry water."

heads up...tree coming down...to the left...timber!! ruth

Hillary Clinton salivates about fighting with the Republicans. She brags about waiting for them to attack her. That's an opinion based in fact.

With that said, how can anyone recognize the ineffectiveness of our government due to insane partisan bickering and believe that Hillary Clinton will be able to get anything done as POTUS with her mentality of demonizing Republicans? How in the world will she be able to carry Democrats in Congressional races across the country in to office with her brand of polarizing politics?

Wake up! Democrats can not win the WH with just Democrats and Hillary's rhetoric proves that we will see a continuation of the same type of "politics as usual" from not only the last 8 years, but the wars and hyper-distrust from the 90's if she is elected. Where's the attraction in that for Independents and Republicans disillusioned with their own party?

Obama offers the best hope to lead a unification of our country around healing our many divisions, achieving the big goals needed to move our nation forward domestically and internationally, and he has the proven legislative record and campaign success to show that he can draw Independents and Republicans to join in that goal.

Cynicism is not the answer, nor is hardened loyalty that diminishes if not outright ignores reality. We need that "working coalition" or else we'll sink deeper in to the depressive malaise that has effectively paralyzed our once great American spirit.

sorry, #4 wrong thread.

seriously dude...have u ever seen an uglier wrinkled old hag than this homely poser trying to be prez? damn! yuk...enuff! no more old school types in DC! damn! time for change...not more of the same disguising under a dif. banner!

Afternoon all,

I may offend some people here so I will try and deliver this as subtle as I possibly can.

It is mainly about this Heath Ledger Story that is unfolding in the press at the moment and also similar stories of tradgedy from around the world that we hear about on the news.

There are so many people especially on Internet blogs like this one who are Jumping with both feet onto the band wagon to Lie about how extremely sad they are to hear the news that this man has died. Unless you knew him or he was your favourite actor (Which is unlikely as he hadn't really been in that much) then why are you sad? People die every single day. Why are you so sad about this man dying so tradgedly. Every few minutes a baby dies in a cancer unit somewhere. A soldier gets their head blown off or somebody gets hit by a bus. I don't hear you balling your eyes out then....so why now?

I watched a show on TV the other night and the show was about Billy Connoly and his tour of New Zealand.
For those of you who have never heard of the Big Yin then click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Connolly

SO anyway he come out with this Joke on stage that actually makes a lot of sense to me and probably to a lot of other honest, straight talking people who come on to this blog. Billy said what about when you are sitting at home and you haven't got enough money to pay the electric bill or you just found out your mother has cancer or something and on the news comes a story about an earthquake in a part of the world you have never heard of and fourty thousand people have died. As if you don't have enough to worry about with all of your problems now you have to start feeling upset about these poor people somewhere in the world you didn't even know existed. And then something else comes on the news about how how a few million people have just starved to death and before you know it you are sitting there with all of the guilt that you can't even stand up because you are so covered with all of the worlds problems.

Really people could't care less about what is happening to other people in the world that is the reality.

Also in reality there are far more people who pretent to care but really don't care.

What is worse is that a lot of the people who pretend to care are usually the ones using the situation for their own advantage.

Is it a sad story that a young man took too many sleeping tablets and died leaving a young daughter behind?

YES quite sad. But not the saddest thing I have ever seen or heard.

Should we cry on about it to people saying how terrible it is and make such a big thing out of it?

NO, life isn't always fair, s### happens get over it and move on. Leave this poor mans family in peace to mourn their loss and keep your nose out of it.

Regards

Simon

Hi Simon,

your post is kind of funny in the sense that you are talking about people over-reacting to the news about the death of someone they do not know personally....yet, your post is very much an over-reaction to what the comments written on Mallika's post and other internet blog...there are only a few who commented and I think they all were just showing a little empathy for the loss of this young man's life and the effect it would have on his family..

I think it is called empathy, yes, %*$& happens, to us all, even the tragic unexpected accidental death of a loved one, so it is easy to relate.

On hearing the news of this particular young man's death I was sad, especially, for his family because "I know" and I am sure there are others who also know how a sudden, tragic loss feels for those left behing to grieve.

ps..
maybe you need to step off that high horse and put your feet on the ground for awhile...

have a great day, ruth

Goodmorning from the Pacific West Coast,

How about WE beam some good news? How about WE spread some joy? How about WE lift hearts and minds? How about WE broadcast health?

How about WE turn from the negative aspects of this world? How about WE see through new eyes?

How about We tell a positive story for every negative? How about We balance with injections of Light's Love?

Who will be the eyes, mouth and ears for positive change? Do WE think it starts with the economic or political system? It starts with WE one by one. WE ignite new systems as the old crash. WE stand above the crash.

We are pro-active. We are a positive force. WE laugh and cry in a loving universe. Anything less is good old illusion. Anything less is trickery. We are not tricked by ego and its shadow in this world. WE are humble.

We stretch new muscles. We take new steps. Inch my inch, row by row, gonna make my garden grow. I love that song. All I need is a rake and hoe and a piece of fertile ground.

Inch by inch, row by row
Someone bless these seeds I sow
Someone warm them from below
Till the rains come tumbling down

Pulling weeds, picking stones
We are made of dreams and bones
Need a place to call my own
For the time is near at hand

Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way thru nature's chain
Tune my body and my brain
to the music of the land

Plant your rows straight and long
Temper them with prayer and song
Mother Earth will make you strong
If you give her love and care

And old crows watching hungrily
from his perch in yonder tree
In my garden I'm as free
As that feathered thief up there.

Sorry, I don't know who wrote that song.

This world is uncertain and change is swift. One thing is certain: it's time to garden and grow our own food. So dig up that patch of earth in your city or town. Put some seeds down. WE provide food for ourselves and our community. Mother Earth will thank you for your massaging and healing touch.

Trish~~

Simon makes a good point; the leading cause of death in the United States is the medical industry. More people die from mistakes and legal pharmaceutical drug usage then heart disease or cancer.

We pump, donate billions of dollars into The American Heart Association and The American Cancer Society to help fund pharmaceutical companies with all kinds of free money trying to develop high profit drugs to cure / solve these heart disease and cancer killers but nothing is spent to find a cure for the leading cause of death in the United States, the medical industry.
I think I am going to start the American Medical Industry Society to help fight the leading cause of death in the United States which is industry ignorance and profit blindness.

Not only that, but some 80%+ of the population is deficient in two or more compounds needed for operational efficiency by the human body. What kind of advanced nation would have a population where the majority would have disease causing deficiencies that could be easily remedied?
Can any one guess why that is?

Where is our attention?

Who benefits from our attention being in the wrong place? Who might be steering it?
Shocking statistical evidence is cited by Gary Null PhD, Caroly Dean MD ND, Martin Feldman MD, Debora Rasio MD and Dorothy Smith PhD in their paper Death by Medicine - October 2003
"A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics. The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251.
Health Care expenditures in the US have reached 14% of the Gross National Product and a staggering $1.6 trillion in 2003. No wonder, one might be tempted to say. With such an appalling record of efficacy and such an unbelievable death rate for the treatments routinely administered, the current medical system can only be said to be in great need of deep reform.
Certainly it would appear more urgent to investigate the rationale, efficacy and relative cost-effectiveness of pharmaceutical medicine than to legislate restrictive rules for supplements of vital nutrients, as most governments and some international organizations are doing in these times.

The end of disease is coming. Had the trusted agents focused on low profit methods we would already be there. However they focused on methods which they could patent and monopolize.

Yo Keith,

It isn't just you. I see the same thing. I think it has to do with America coming out of adolescence and into adulthood.

One day everyone wakes up and realizes a lot of the stuff they took for granted or thought was real when they were 18-25 was bull.

The simplistic answers breakdown. Not only that but as you get older, longer-term sytemic issues start showing up in your body.

I think that's happening to the country as a whole.

The problems we are seeing now are not temporary inconveniences from which we bounce back quickly. They are deeper systemic issues that will be much harder to shake.

A young crook can go around sheistering his associates for afew years, and then one day, he discovers everyone is onto his game, and he cannot sheister his friends anymore. Not only that but some of them are coming around to collect on promised rewards he never delivered.

And so America has gone around the world, destabilizing countries with economic hit men and covert actions, cold wars, and hot ears, exploiting and taking from people all over the world while smiling in their faces and makiong big promises about freedom, democracy, and the "free market".

Unsurprisingly, the world has gotten hip to it after 50 years and no longer believes we are here to save them. Not only that, but they are starting to demand from us the big things we promised and never had any intention of delivering.

In much the same way a 20-year-old can throw off a drunk and get up up at sunrise and go to work the next day, but an old alcoholic is debilitated by the same amount of drinking, so it is with the USA's problems.

We could always bounce back when we were young, and our myths hadn't been tested yet, and inflation and "creative accounting" hadn't caught up with us.

The whole subprime thing is analogous to a teenager with a credit card - "I can spend all this money, and by the time I have to pay it back, I'll be a grownup and be making good money." Well, 20 years later, when all the mythologized big bucks have yet to materialize, you are saddled with the long term effects of irresponsible actions.

And that is what America is experiencing now.

This time, throwing off the blame, ignoring the problem, or covering it over with "positive talk" are not going to buy us more time to lie to ourselves.

On the international stage, a big smile and vague phrases about freedom and democracy aren't having the same hypnotic effect that once worked in our favor.

So far we haven't wanted to make the necessary changes to get the country healthy again.

Reality check time is coming.

From what I see, America has not been listening to its "inner guidance".

The Zen Stick is going to necessary to wake us up.

Hi Richard,

You have a good point about the drug situation but the fact of the matter is people like taking drugs, they like the idea of taking a pill to feel better, eat less, eat more, "get it on" more and for hours longer, a pill that takes all the bad stuff out of your arteries so you do not have to stop eating the bad stuff, a pill to be happy, happy, happy, and a pill to be able to turn into a walking "mellowcup." There are pills to poop or not to poop, to soften the poop and harden the poop, pills to counter the effects of other pills, pills to speed you up and slow you down, pills to awaken and to make you sleep, pills for the cough, fever, the sniffles, and the whistles(snoring)....

the drug industry would be nothing without people's desire to make it all better with one quick swallow, one tiny little pill. Only when people take control of their own bodies instead of leasing them out to their family MD who is in cahoots with the well dressed ever so nice, ever so happy to please, drug representatves, will people just STOP popping their pills.

people do not want to take the time to be with their body, to get to know their body, they want to keep it quiet, keep is under conrol, at all times...because they are busy and busy bodies NEED PILLS.

have a great day everyone, speaking of busy I gotta get busy...ruth

Hi Simon
Nice to see you.

I read an article not long ago about how people react to tragedy in other people's lives. Don't remember where it was, but the gist of it was that people would react with empathy to a single or relatively small number of people, but when the number reached thousands or millions, they simply could not relate and 'tuned out.'

bonnie

A prestigious study shows BUSH LIED *935* TIMES to justify Iraq War!

False Pretenses

Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

Read on...

http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

To the biased, ignorant or the unaware -- like Yogi-one, Ruth or Bonnie above -- who may have been bought into Clinton Campaign distortions and are blinded by Obama voting 'present', the rationale behind it and his stance on "Abortion" issue might benefit from reading this article by Tracy Fischman(someone who really knows what she is talking about):

A Vote for Obama is a Vote for Women
January 23, 2008

Yesterday -- January 22, 2008 -- marked the 35th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that guarantees a woman's right to choose an abortion. It was on this day that I felt particularly compelled to speak out about my experiences with Senator Barack Obama -- a man who should be honored, not condemned, for his consistent and unwavering support for reproductive freedom, women's health, gender equity and -- more broadly -- social justice.

I recognize that outsiders are attacking Senator Obama on the "chutzpah" factor -- suggesting that he lacks courage or real commitment on the "hard" issues such as reproductive rights or other issues such as gun control and violence against women. My experiences could not be further from that depiction.

I formerly worked for Planned Parenthood in Illinois. I had the honor of working with Senator Barack Obama during his tenure in the Illinois Senate. He was -- and remains -- adamant about his support for women's health and access to reproductive healthcare services. His present votes on abortion-related bills were part of a broader pro-choice strategy designed to ultimately defeat bad and dangerous legislation that would have compromised the health and safety of Illinois women. As Planned Parenthood's lobbyist in Illinois has said, Senator Obama was asked to facilitate a strategy designed to help provide cover for other Democrats. Specifically, Planned Parenthood turned to Senator Obama because of his strong record on reproductive rights. At the time, Republicans were trying to force Democrats from conservative districts to register politically controversial no votes. Senator Obama initially resisted the strategy, as he wanted to vote against the anti-abortion measures, but decided to work with our strategy to help defeat these anti-choice bills. It is important to note that a present vote on a bad bill is essentially the same as a "no" vote, as the bill needs "yes" votes to pass. However, it is difficult for Republicans to use "present" votes in their campaign literature against Democrats from moderate and conservative districts (also see December 20, 2007 NY Times article: "It's Not Just 'Ayes' and 'Nays': Obama's Votes in Illinois Echo"). This strategy is now being used against Senator Obama in the same way we planned for it to work in our favor then.

It is confounding to me that Senator Obama is being demeaned and attacked so vociferously on this. I came into this campaign season feeling relieved and thankful that our two main candidates support women's health and reproductive freedom. I am now deeply disappointed that politics has led to deceitful misrepresentations of Senator Obama's commitment and work in this area.

Senator Obama was a leader in the Illinois legislature, and has continued to demonstrate leadership in the U.S. Senate. He understands reproductive rights within a broader context of health and prevention. He promotes, both in words and in action, a public health agenda that includes (but is not limited to): prevention of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases; access to contraception; comprehensive sex education programs (which include information about abstinence as well as age-appropriate information about prevention and the availability of health services); and reducing disparities in health access for low income communities.

Again -- based on my experience, I can personally say that Senator Obama comes to his positions and his work from very deep-seated principles about justice, opportunity, equality and freedom. He also is strategic about finding ways to accomplish goals. It is these principles combined with his strategic sensibilities, experiences and ability to bring people together that garnered my personal support for his candidacy.

We are at a juncture in our nation. Over the last eight years, we have faced unprecedented challenges to reproductive freedom, justice and equality. President Bush and his administration did more to turn back the clock on issues of concern to women and undeserved communities than we have seen in generations. These assaults came in many forms, including (but not limited to): the reinstatement of the Global Gag Rule prohibiting international family planning programs from receiving US funds if they even counseled on abortion (with their own private money); the appointment of two anti-choice fundamentalist Supreme Court justices and many more like-minded Federal judges; increased funding for dangerous abstinence-only until marriage sex education programs; censorship within administrative agencies and with grantees; dismantling of family planning programs; broad barriers to contraception and reproductive health care services; and a general environment in which politics has trumped effective public health and good science.

We must make a change and elect a president who believes in an America for us all. An America that values women and families, promotes both prevention and access to abortion, and fosters and implements programs to support the values that Senator Obama so deeply holds. Senator Obama is 100% pro-choice and is a champion for women's health and equality. For these reasons -- and many more -- he is getting my vote this year.

***

Tracy Fischman is a consultant for non-profit and political organizations, where she helps organizations move vision to action by providing strategic management, advocacy and organizational development services. Prior to her consulting work, Tracy was the Vice President of Public Policy for Planned Parenthood/Chicago Area (PP/CA), where she led the organization's public affairs, public issues education and political organizing activities. Tracy has consistently worked to advance social justice, human rights and reproductive freedom, both in her work and volunteer endeavors. Before PP/CA, Tracy was the Director of Policy and Legislative Affairs for the Chicago Department of Public Health, Division of STD/HIV/AIDS, and also worked for organizations such as the Illinois Maternal and Child Health Coalition and the California Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. She has served on a number of organizational boards, and is currently Chair of Girl's Best Friend Foundation and on the Board of Illinois Health and Medicine Policy Research Group. Ms. Fischman recently received the Pro-Choice Leadership Award from Personal PAC (a state political action committee in Illinois) and the Miguel Aguilar Leadership Award from Citizen Action of Illinois. Ms. Fischman holds a Master's Degree in Public Policy from the Harris School at the University of Chicago.

I deleted my typical judgmental rant and settled on this.

What I see in the world is a direct reflection of what I see in myself.

peace comes from peace

derek

I finally broke down and got an HDTV. Cosmos is running on the science channel again. It never looked better.
Yo 'Planet Earth' on HDTV, on DVD, no commercials, golden.

There are amazingly talented, gifted, intelligent people changing our world. Even under the leadership we have now there are people working on their passion to create a more sustainable world.

In my eyes no matter what happens in Washington, the people will continue to create, from their passion, ways to to live a more sustainable life without sacrificing my HDTV and my latte.

Couldn't resist a little rant

derek

Taken from a book I've had since the 70's...Common Herbs for Common Illnesses by: William R. McGrath B.A.,N.D. 1979

WHAT IS DISEASE?

Disease migth be defined as any condition of the living body which prevents normal function. Some disase re caused solely from the lack or oversupply of certain esssential biochemicals produced by the body. Two such example are insuling deficiency(diabetes) and cortin deficiency(Addison's disease). Other diseases result from the body's self-intoxication due to improper elimination of its own wastes.

Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, was one of the first to point out that many diseases are a result of constipation.

There are also diseases caused by germs and viruses which gain a foothold in the body when natural defenses are crippled by imbalance and disharmony.

Finally, in our times, a new class of diseases has emerged known as "iatrogenic(doctor-caused) diseases.

These maladies are a result of medicinal malpractice and side-effects of harsh chemical drugs used as antidotes and antibiotics.

Realistically, the doctor does not cure the patient. Hippocrates stated that the ideal doctor works ans an artist to enable NATURE to cure the patient.

"The physician is the servant of Nature."

The Romans had a proverb for it: "Vis Medicatrix naturae curavit", or "the healing power of nature cures!"

The writer, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was also an M.D., stated somewhat humorously, "Nature cures but the doctor collects the fee!"

Because of the effects of drug shock, serum sickness, vacenosis, pain-killers, radiation, malformation of the unborn by experimental drugs(like thalidomide), overmedication, and surgery, the public is groping for a RETURN TO NATURAL THERAPIES.

-----the above, taken from the book, page: 1 - History of Natural Therapies. For the record, myself being on disability; I was put through the ringer with Disability a few years ago; they tried to kick me off...because I REFUSE narcotic pain-killers for pain, of which cannot be described. I am adamant, I'll not be another statistic...I prefer natural remedies, such as marijuanna; which gives me, what narcotics cannot; and that is freedom, far away from the possibility/probability of addiction to narcotics; and lining the pockets of doctors whom care only for the balance in their savings accounts!!

Sadly, because marijuanna is illegal, and getting outrageously expensive, it's been quite some time since I've been fortunate enough to have some; I suffer tremendously(but, not silently) being denied--the freedom and right, to free-choice of medicinal preference....

I ask you.. why does the government support narcotics addictions, and not marijuanna, which is non-addictive, and non-cancer causing?

Money... from the sales of synthetic drugs, dictate our loss of rights to choice; and corruption, allows the illigalization of marijuanna, merely to employ civil workes with jobs post-graduation.. cops, doctors, lawyers, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists and lastly, and perhaps more profoundly... addictions councellors, which are the "many."

WE are the collective guinea-pigs, and financial "employers" for "them."

NORTH

Lastly.. Simon? I think it very immature of you, to profess to know/understand what anyone else is thinking, feeling..when clearly; you barely know or understand yourself! I agree with Ruth.. time to get off the box, outta the clouds; and stop thinking you are holier than thou....

#17 yo! derek

I recently saw a lecture by Craig Venter on BBC about his vision for human future on Earth. I think you will love it.

Here's the transcript.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2007/12_december/05/dimbleby.shtml

It is long but worth reading.

YouTube has the video of Craig Venter's Richard Dimbley Lecture(5 parts):

http://tinyurl.com/2c34ty

In the lecture Craig Venter talks about disruptive technologies and creative solutions like synthetic life-forms to Energy Crisis and Climate Change.(Also addresses people's reservations to new ideas of science.)

***

Disruptive technology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that uses a "disruptive" strategy, rather than a "sustaining" strategy, to overturn the existing dominant technologies or status quo products in a market. Disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into low-end and new-market disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption, whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers who were ignored by established companies. Sometimes, a disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as more expensive, lower capacity but smaller-sized hard disks did for newly developed notebook computers in the 1980s) or by successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents (as digital photography has begun to replace film photography).

The concept shares many similarities with biological evolution.

Ruth,

You are correct in that the individual has the ultimate responsibility for the state of affairs. If we seek cheap products being greedy industry makes cheap products. Why make quality if people always shop for the lowest price?

Keith,

Yes the world is falling apart (change, evolution) due to mass shifts in awareness and something better is replacing it. I have those days as well.

Derek,

Thanks for reminding me to SEE NO EVIL I get so caught up sometimes. Of course I will still be seeing ignorance my own and the world’s and attempting to shed some light on it. I have an HDTV as well and isn’t this the wonderful place to put our attention, nature and the cosmos so full of reality and a break from the daily fictions.

Whoever becomes president we will collectively embrace and transform.

Read this post by Greg Sargent and see how truth is distorted to an average consumer who wants to believe:

ABC News Badly Mischaracterizes Obama's Alleged "Testy Exchange" With Reporter
January 23, 2008

Okay, this is really a bad one. Late yesterday, ABC News posted a story called: "Is Bill Clinton getting in Obama's head?"

The piece reported that Obama had had a "testy exchange" with New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny on a South Carolina ropeline, after Obama had been asked whether Bill Clinton was getting "in his head." The whole tone of the story implied that Obama had had a very confrontational moment with Zeleny. Here's the key ABC reporting, with the language implying confrontation in bold:

---------------------------
"I am trying to make sure that his statements by him are answered. Don't you think that's important?" Obama *shot back*, while walking away.

When Zeleny yelled a follow up question suggesting the Illinois senator had not answered the question, Obama *fired back angrily*, "Don't try cheap stunts like that."

Obama then walked away and shook hands with the mass of voters that surrounded him.

A few minutes later, Obama came back and *confronted* Zeleny again.

"I will answer your question though off the record, would you like to talk off the record?" Obama asked. Zeleny refused to go off the record and then motioned toward the gaggle of TV cameras gathered around him.
----------------------------

Did it happen this way? Nope.

If the ABC piece initially linked to any video of the moment, I didn't see it -- I'm pretty certain it didn't. Subsequently ABC and Fox News posted video. If you watch it, you can't escape the conclusion that ABC badly mischaracterized what actually happened:

****

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CieWZVoLi1M

****

The only remotely defensible characterization here is possibly ABC's claim that Obama "shot back" with his first answer, and even this seems tenuous.

More broadly, it's clear that the tone of the exchange wasn't anywhere near as acrimonious as ABC claimed it was. When Obama said, "don't try cheap stunts like that," he was smiling -- he certainly didn't "fire back angrily."

ABC also mischaracterized the exchange about talking "off the record." ABC's telling implied that Obama did something very bizarre -- he offered to talk off the record in front of a gaggle of TV cameras! But if you watch the vid, it's hard not to see Obama's comment as a sardonic reference to the huge press presence there. "You want to talk off the record for a second? It's hard to do," Obama said, gesturing at all the cameras with something approaching a grin.

By packaging a story implying a sharp confrontation with that headline about Bill "getting in Obama's head," ABC strongly implied that Bill is getting in Obama's head and rattling him. But the video plainly shows that the event doesn't support that storyline.

By the way, I'm hardly blameless here. Yesterday I did a post over at Election Central on this ABC story that carried the headline, "Obama Gets In Verbal Tussle With Reporter." The post characterized the exchange as a "row." We featured the story on TPM's front page before we'd seen the video. But our descriptions -- which were based on ABC's reporting of the episode -- also mischaracterized what happened.

Anyway, this is a really bad one.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2008/01/abc_news_badly.php

The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."

Five Western military leaders.

I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Owellled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The astounding statement comes from a paper prepared for a Nato summit in April by five top military leaders--an American, a German, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and a Brit. It can be found here.

The paper, prepared by men regarded as distinguished leaders and not as escapees from insane asylums, argues that "the West's values and way of life are under threat, but the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them." The leaders find that the UN is in the way of the West's will, as is the European Union which is obstructing NATO and "NATO's credibility is at stake in Afghanistan."

And that's a serious matter. If NATO loses its credibility in Afghanistan, Western civilization will collapse just like the Soviet Union. The West just doesn't realize how weak it is. To strengthen itself, it needs to drop more and larger bombs.

The German military leader blames the Merkel government for contributing to the West's inability to defend its values by standing in the way of a revival of German militarism. How can Germany be "a reliable partner" for America, he asks, if the German government insists on "special rules" limiting the combat use of its forces in Afghanistan?

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund and a former US State Department official, welcomed the paper as "a wake-up call." Asmus means a call to wake-up to the threats from the brutal world, not to the lunacy of Western leaders.

Who, what is threatening the West's values and way of life? Political fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, and the imminent spread of nuclear weapons, answer the five asylum escapees.

By political fanaticism, do they mean the neoconservatives who believe that the future of humanity depends on the US establishing its hegemony over the world? By religious fundamentalism, do they mean "rapture evangelicals" agitating for armageddon or Christian and Israeli Zionists demanding a nuclear attack on Iran? By spread of nuclear weapons, do they mean Israel's undeclared and illegal possession of several hundred nuclear weapons?

No. The paranoid military leaders see all the fanaticism, religious and otherwise, and all the threats to humanity as residing outside Western civilization (Israel is inside). The "increasingly brutal world," of which the leaders warn, is "over there." Only Muslims are fanatics. All us white guys are rational and sane.

There is nothing brutal about the US/Nato bombing of Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, or the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, or the genocide Israel hopes to commit against Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this, as well as America's bombing of Somalia, America's torture dungeons, show trials of "detainees," and overthrow of elected governments and installation of puppet rulers, is the West's necessary response to keep the brutal world at bay.

Brutal things happen in the "brutal world" and are entirely the fault of those in the brutal world. None of this would happen if the inhabitants of the brutal world would just do as they are told. How can the civilized world with its monopoly on morality allow people in the brutal world to behave independently? I mean, really! God forbid, they might attack some innocent country.

The "brutal world" consists of those immoral fanatics who object to being marginalized by the West and who reply to mass bombings from the air and to the death and destruction inflicted on them through myriad ways by strapping on a suicide bomb.

Unable to impose its will on countries it has invaded with conventional arms, the West's military leaders are now prepared to force compliance with the moral world's will by threatening to nuke those who resist. You see, since the West has the monopoly on morality, truth, and justice, those in the outside world are obviously evil, wicked and brutal. Therefore, as President Bush tells us, it is a simple choice between good and evil, and there's no better candidate than evil for being nuked. The sooner we can get rid of the brutal world, the sooner we will have "freedom and democracy" everywhere that's left.

Meanwhile, the United States, the great moral light unto the world, has just prevented the United Nations from censuring Israel, the world's other great moral light, for cutting off food supplies, medical supplies, and electric power to Gaza. You see, Gaza is in the outside world and is a home of the bad guys. Moreover, the wicked Palestinians there tricked the US when the US allowed them to hold a free election. Instead of electing the US candidate, the wicked voters elected a government that would represent them. The US and Israel overturned the Palestinian election in the West Bank, but those in Gaza clung to the government that they had elected. Now they are going to suffer and die until they elect the government that the US and Israel wants. I mean, how can we expect people in the brutal world to know what's best for them?

The fact that the UN tried to stop Israel's just punishment of the Gazans shows how right the five leaders' report is about the UN being a threat to Western values and way of life. The UN is really against us. This puts the UN in the outside world and makes it a candidate for being nuked if not an outright terrorist organization. As our president said, "you are with us or against us."

The US and Israel need a puppet government in Palestine so that a ghettoized remnant of Palestine can be turned into a "two state solution." The two states will be Israel incorporating the stolen West Bank and a Palestinian ghetto without an economy, water, or contiguous borders.

This is necessary in order to protect Israel from the brutal outside world.

Inhabitants of the brutal world are confused about the "self-determination" advocated by Western leaders. It doesn't mean that those outside Western civilization and Israel should decide for themselves. "Self" means American. The term, so familiar to us, means "American-determination." The US determines and others obey.

It is the brutal world that causes all the trouble by not obeying.

From: http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts01232008.html

I was going to post just that article earlier Naj!

Paul Craig Roberts is usually right-on target with his articles, and he certainly is with this one!

pax vobiscum

Justin Raimondo is good also over at antiwar dot com.

And Chalmers Johnson has just wrote a piece that is eye-opening and here is a link (don't forget to take out the -[DELINKER]-) to the article: http://[DELINKER]www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA24Ak04.html

pax vobiscum

STUNNING SENIOR MOMENT

A very self-important college freshman attending a recent football

game, took it upon himself to explain to a senior citizen sitting next

to him why it was impossible for the older generation to understand his

generation.

'You grew up in a different world, actually an almost primitive

one,' the student said, loud enough for many of those nearby to hear.

'The young people of today grew up with television, jet planes, space

travel, man walking on the moon, our spaceships have visited Mars. We

have nuclear energy, electric and hydrogen cars, computers with DSL,

bsp; light-speed processing ....and,' pausing to take another drink of

beer.

The Senior took advantage of the break in the student's litany and

said, 'You're right, son. We didn't have those things when we were

young.....so we invented them. Now, you arrogant little shit, what are

you doing for the next generation?'

The applause was resounding...

I love senior citizens

Hi Lyogi, Craig Venter is a positivist who reminded me of Stephen Hawkins in a way. His life is an inspiration.

A little info from Wikipedia about him and his work for those who wish to know:

J. Craig Venter (born John Craig Venter October 14, 1946, Salt Lake City) is an American biologist and businessman. Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research and was instrumental in mapping the human genome. He was listed on Time Magazine's 2007 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.

********
*Biography

Venter is an ex-surfer and a Vietnam war veteran. He enlisted in the United States Navy and served a tour of duty during the Vietnam War. While in Vietnam, he attempted to commit suicide by swimming out to sea, but changed his mind more than a mile out.

*********
*Current work

Venter founded The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in 1992. He is currently the president of the J. Craig Venter Institute, created and funded by TIGR's board (which Venter chairs). In June of 2005, he co-founded Synthetic Genomics, a firm dedicated to using modified microorganisms to produce ethanol and hydrogen as alternative fuels. He used his sloop, Sorcerer II, in the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition to help assess genetic diversity in marine microbial communities.[11]

Venter has been the subject of articles in several magazines, notably Wired,[12] The Economist,[13] Australian science magazine Cosmos,[14][15] and Atlantic Monthly.[16] Additionally, he was featured on The Colbert Report on both February 27, 2007, and October 30, 2007.

Venter appeared in the "Evolution" episode of the documentary television series Understanding.

On May 10, 2007, Venter was awarded an honorary doctorate from Arizona State University.[17] He was on the 2007 Time 100 most influential people in the world list made by Time magazine.

On September 4, 2007, a team led by Craig Venter, published his complete diploid DNA sequence[18], unveiling the six-billion-letter genome of a single individual for the first time.

On BBC News on October 22, 2007, when asked about his religious view he replied that he thought that a true scientist could not believe in supernatural explanations.

On December 4, 2007 Venter gave the Dimbleby lecture for the BBC in London. He outlined his current work and future developments in Genetics.

***********
*Genome

On September 4th, 2007, a team led by Venter published his complete DNA sequence,[19] unveiling the six-billion-letter genome of a single individual for the first time. Some of the sequences in Venter's genome are associated with wet earwax, increased risk of antisocial behavior, Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases[20]. This publication was especially interesting since it contained a diploid instead of a haploid genome and shows promise for personalized medicine via genotyping.

***********
*Mycoplasma laboratorium

Venter is seeking to patent the first life-form created by man, possibly to be named Mycoplasma laboratorium. There is speculation that this line of research could lead to producing bacteria that have been engineered to perform specific reactions, e.g. produce fuels, make medicines, combat global warming, etc.

*************
*New Scientist Interview

In a recent interview with New Scientist when asked "Assuming you can make synthetic bacteria, what will you do with them?", Venter replied

Over the next 20 years, synthetic genomics is going to become the standard for making anything. The chemical industry will depend on it. Hopefully, a large part of the energy industry will depend on it. We really need to find an alternative to taking carbon out of the ground, burning it, and putting it into the atmosphere. That is the single biggest contribution I could make.

Furthermore it suggests that one of the main purposes for creating synthetic bacteria would be to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels.

Yo Richard
I can see no evil when I'm looking at our universe on HDTV. We are what we focus on.

Irvine
I scanned the transcript. I saved it to my bookmarks so I can read it in the morning. I does look very interesting and worth the read.

derek

Yo, derek.

Jacob Bronowski(January 18, 1908 - August 22, 1974) turned 100 last week.

His "Ascent of Man" aired in the 70's and had the similar impact as Sagan's Cosmos later did for millions of people.

"The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader and yet are his own experience because he recreates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself in art or in science, the heart misses a beat."

--Jacob Bronowski

"He was an extraordinarily whole person and his thinking had a consistency unusual in these times. He was a thinking man, an endangered species. All his life he treated art and science as the same expression of the human imagination. The theme of the imagination ran like a bright ribbon through the fabric of his thought."

--Rita Bronowski

***

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

-Jacob Bronowski (January 18, 1908 - August 22, 1974) was a British mathematician of Polish-Jewish origin, best remembered as the presenter and writer of the BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.

-During the Second World War Bronowski worked in operations research, and afterwards became Director of Research for the National Coal Board (UK). Following his experiences as an official observer of the after-effects of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings, he turned to biology, as did his friend Leo Szilard, to better understand the nature of violence. Bronowski was an associate director of the Salk Institute from 1964.

-He first became familiar to the British public through appearances on the BBC television version of The Brains Trust in the late 1950s, but is better known for his thirteen part series The Ascent of Man (1973). This was an inspiration for Carl Sagan to make Cosmos in 1980. During the making of The Ascent of Man, Bronowski was interviewed by Michael Parkinson, and Bronowski's description of a visit to Auschwitz — he had lost many family members during the Nazi era — was described by Parkinson as one of his most memorable interviews.

*****

If you had seen Cosmos and haven't seen "The Ascent of Man", it should be on your must see list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ascent_of_Man

Irvine
I must have seen this. The Ascent of Man. I turned away from watching sports in the 70's and became a documentary junkie at the tender age of 14. Because of those early documentaries I called myself a conservative. I thought it meant someone who conserves energy. Silly me. I'm still not very savvy when it comes to politics.
Yo, can't wait to watch The Ascent of Man.

Art, Science and the Human Spirit, a rich and colorful foundation in which to enjoy our moment in the Sun.

derek

http://www.slate.com/id/2182663/?GT1=10837

INVENT A DRUG, WIN $1 MILLION?

dear derek & irvine & logisch,
I have been enjoying the Cosmos series - as I have been homebound and trying to recover from a cold which lingers on.
My father loved the night sky and had a telescope that opened up the heavens to this girl's eyes, when I was growing up.
Carl Sagan is a great storyteller. The episode I watched recently had him sitting near a beautiful tree, and as the segment ends, he stands and walks away, the wind picks up and the tree branches sway.
love,
~ Kate

hi keith,
invisible guy - catch this -
a warm embrace for you
from
~ Kate

Here's an interesting talk that shows the overall progression of humanity towards less violence over the millenia, centuries and decades:

Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence
scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/01/steven_pinker_a_brief_history.php

I agree with some of it, but note that he omits an important statistic when tallying up war casualties, and that is the number of civilian deaths caused during wars.

While the number of soldiers killed may be declining, other factors like the percentage of civilian deaths of the overall tally is on the rise.

For example, if one includes the civilian death toll in WWII, the figure jumps to over 20 million.

Often I hear people say that by historical standards, losing 4000 soldiers in a war is a very small number, but when you add civilian death tolls of Iraq, the number is several hundred thousand, even by moderate estimates.

Still the point is well taken that we don't go around raiding our neighbors and raping their women, as a standard practice as during tribal times in our evolution, nor do we have executions as a public form of entertainment as in Roman times and up until the "Enlightenment" of the 17th century.

Oh, and just for the record, I have *never* once complained about Obama's stance on women's issues on this blog or any other place I post.

I also do not look to Hillary Clinton for *any* of my opinions whatsoever.

My complaint about Obama is that people should be digging through his past record of votes while in legislature, and analyzing the funding sources for his campaign, rather than being blinded by Oprah and Saturday Night Live Cameos.

Actually, Irvine has made a good argument because he has, for a change, posted up something based on Obama's actual past actions instead of the usual bleating about how he's the candidate of "hope".

If sufficient evidence based on physical actions (not speeches) can show that Obama stands for right values and takes action based on sound ethical principles, then I'm all for him.

So far, he is appearing like a mixed bag, coming through strong on a few issues, waffling on some others. In particular, his campaign's financial backers contain enough special interest lobbies, that he comes across more or less looking like a standard politician.

My point is that people seem to want to elevate someone to demi-god status and worship them.

I think instead he should be analyzed for what he is: a politician. Then we can see his strengths and weaknesses and compare them to the strengths and weaknesses of the other candidates. That is how the process is supposed to work.

My point stands that the candidates that actually would all bring deep structural change to politics-as-usual (not all of them I agree with either) have all been marginalized completely.

People like Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, and Ron Paul are locked out of the debates because they would bring questions to the discussion that the other candidates could not cope with.

If Obama was really an advocate of deep change in the political process, he would have been locked out too. My fear is that he is more of the same with a million dollar smile plastered over the top.

I am open to being proven wrong, but arguments must be based on his record, not on an emotional desire to believe in "hope".

Hey we all want to believe we will make a better world under the next administration. I don't have to be convinced to hope for a better America. I already hope for that.

Hillary, Barack, Experience
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

With all the sniping from the Clinton camp about whether Barack Obama has enough experience to make a strong president, consider another presidential candidate who was far more of a novice. He had the gall to run for president even though he had served a single undistinguished term in the House of Representatives, before being hounded back to his district.

That was Abraham Lincoln.

Another successful president scorned any need for years of apprenticeship in Washington, declaring, “The same old experience is not relevant.” He suggested that the most useful training comes not from hanging around the White House and Congress but rather from experience “rooted in the real lives of real people” so that “it will bring real results if we have the courage to change.”

That was Bill Clinton running in 1992 against George H. W. Bush, who was then trumpeting his own experience over the callow youth of Mr. Clinton. That year Mr. Bush aired a television commercial urging voters to keep America “in the hands of experience.”

It might seem obvious that long service in Washington is the best preparation for the White House, but on the contrary, one lesson of American history is that length of experience in national politics is an extremely poor predictor of presidential success.

Looking at the 19 presidents since 1900, three of the greatest were among those with the fewest years in electoral politics. Teddy Roosevelt had been a governor for two years and vice president for six months; Woodrow Wilson, a governor for just two years; and Franklin Roosevelt, a governor for four years. None ever served in Congress.

They all did have executive experience (as did Mr. Clinton), actually running something larger than a Senate office. Maybe that’s something voters should think about more: governors have often made better presidents than senators. But that’s not a good Democratic talking point, because the candidates with the greatest administrative experience by far are Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee.

Alternatively, look at the five presidents since 1900 with perhaps the most political experience when taking office: William McKinley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. They had great technical skills — but not one was among our very greatest presidents.

The point is not that experience is pointless but that it needn’t be in politics to be useful. John McCain’s years as a P.O.W. gave him an understanding of torture and a moral authority to discuss it that no amount of Senate hearings ever could have conferred.

In the same way, Mr. Obama’s years as an antipoverty organizer give him insights into one of our greatest challenges: how to end cycles of poverty. That front-line experience is one reason Mr. Obama not only favors government spending programs, like early-childhood education, but also cultural initiatives like promoting responsible fatherhood.

Then there’s Mr. Obama’s grade-school years in Indonesia. Our most serious mistakes in foreign policy, from Vietnam to Iraq, have been a blindness to other people’s nationalism and an inability to see ourselves as others see us. Mr. Obama seems to have absorbed an intuitive sensitivity to that problem. For starters, he understood back in 2002 that American troops would not be greeted in Iraq with flowers.

In politics, Mr. Obama’s preparation is indeed thin, though it’s more than Hillary Rodham Clinton acknowledges. His seven years in the Illinois State Senate aren’t heavily scrutinized, but he scored significant achievements there: a law to videotape police interrogations in capital cases; an earned income tax credit to fight poverty; an expansion of early-childhood education.

Mrs. Clinton’s strength is her mastery of the details of domestic and foreign policy, unrivaled among the candidates; she speaks fluently about what to do in Pakistan, Iraq, Darfur. Mr. Obama’s strength is his vision and charisma and the possibility that his election would heal divisions at home and around the world. John Edwards’s strength is his common touch and his leadership among the candidates in establishing detailed positions on health care, poverty and foreign aid.

Those are the meaningful distinctions in the Democratic field, not Mrs. Clinton’s spurious claim to “35 years of experience.” The Democrats with the greatest Washington expertise — Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson — have already been driven from the race. And the presidential candidate left standing with the greatest experience by far is Mr. McCain; if Mrs. Clinton believes that’s the criterion for selecting the next president, she might consider backing him.

To put it another way, think which politician is most experienced today in the classic sense, and thus — according to the “experience” camp — best qualified to become the next president.

That’s Dick Cheney. And I rest my case.

Excellent Post by Russ Wellen

Experience Is to Hillary as 9/11 Is to Giuliani

January 23, 2008

Rudolph Giuliani's ritualistic incantations of 9/11 have become a national joke. In truth, his inspirational presence was overshadowed by his failure to prepare the city for a terrorist attack.

Also he failed to upgrade the infamous faulty radios used by first responders, many of whom he infuriated by calling off the search for bodies at Ground Zero just when the volunteers felt they were on the brink of finding more.

Hillary's got her own equivalent of Giuliani's 9/11: her "experience." It's gospel to much of the public but some in the media aren't buying it.

Like Timothy Noah at Slate: "Oh, please."

And Ari Emanuel on Huffington Post: "Give me a break,"

What's the problem? For starters, the amount of experience she claims. "Thirty-five years takes you back to 1973," Noah writes, "half of which Hillary spent in law school, for crying out loud."

Emanuel asks, "And what about [Obama's] time at Harvard Law (where he was the first black president in the history of the Harvard Law Review)? Doesn't count? But your time at Yale Law does?"

Second, how much of that time was spent in government? Hillary's electability derives in large part from what she calls her "firsthand knowledge of what goes on inside a White House."

But, Noah writes, her "chief role [was] that of kibitzer." She "did not hold a security clearance, did not attend meetings of the National Security Council, and was not given a copy of the president's daily intelligence briefing."

Emanuel makes the case that, with Biden, Dodd, and Richardson out of the race, and Kucinich, who practically teethed on politics, marginalized, neither of the leading Democratic candidates has significant government experience.

"Going by years spent as an elective official," he writes, "Obama's 11 years exceeds Clinton's seven." But "even when you factor in Clinton's previous experience in the company of power," it comes out the same.

When Emanuel asks, "Where the hell does she come off claiming superior experience?" he shines a spotlight on the problem with the word. Experience, it seems, has two meanings, one nested inside the other.

First, experience refers to the quantity of your various experiences. Second, however presumptive, is the presumption that they lead to wisdom.

Which is why Obama's people oppose Hillary's vaunted experience with the concept of judgment. In other words, does the sum of Hillary's experiences pave the way for their metamorphosis into experience infused by knowledge?

According to Susan Rice at Huffington Post, Hillary has "fought to ensure our troops have the body armor they need while in combat, and she has passed laws so that returning soldiers are treated with dignity when they return home. She has placed education at the center of U.S. international assistance. She has been a leader in combating nuclear proliferation and the threat of nuclear terrorism."

On the other hand, we have her vote for the Iraq War Resolution. It not only helped condemn the Iraqi people to hell on earth, but became an open wound in her campaign. Thanks to judgment that can only be called short-sighted at best, there's no way her vote can be added to the tote board of her experience.

The same with the martial strains of her foreign policy in general. You probably remember when, speaking as the self-anointed voice of experience, Hillary told Obama that a president shouldn't make "blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons."

Other questionable decisions that she made slipped beneath the radar. Unfortunately for her, they couldn't fit beneath the gateway of judgment. Like the examples above, they were thus barred from the realm of genuine experience.

For instance, during the Senate debate over the Iraq resolution, Hillary was the only Democrat (bear in mind that includes Lieberman) to sign off on all of Bush & Co.'s claims about Iraq.

Back in 2002, she voted in favor of an amendment prohibiting the United States from cooperating with the International Criminal Court. You know -- that body of justice that comes in handy for prosecuting little things like genocide in Darfur.

Also, she defended Israel's right to occupy Palestinian territory, not to mention its erection of The Wall. Then she disrespected another international body of law -- the International Court of Justice -- which she denounced for calling on Israel to abide by international humanitarian law.

Finally, she refused to support the international treaty to ban land mines. Then she voted down a Democratic-sponsored resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries using them against civilian-populated areas.

Picture her sending those last two down the pipeline to the land of experience. Judgment's gatekeeper must have laughed in her face.

Bottom line, imagine if Clinton wins the nomination and, as Noah writes, "a certain white-haired senator now serving his 25th year in Congress (four in the House and 21 in the Senate) wins the nomination" for the Republicans. "McCain could easily make Hillary look like an absolute fraud."

It's starting to look like playing the experience card can win Hillary the nomination but lose her the election. As Noah sums up, "If Clinton doesn't find a new theme soon, she won't just be cutting Obama's throat. She'll also be cutting her own."

Any reflective American can't help but wonder at politicians like Giuliani, during 9/11, and Clinton, with her front-row seat in the White House, enduring what for us would no doubt constitute transformational experiences.

But all that's affirmed to them is their preconceptions. What's more empty than a life filled with experiences that don't add up to experience?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russ-wellen/experience-is-to-hillary-_b_82969.html

Russ Wellen is on the staffs of Freezerbox, OpEdNews and Scholars & Rogues. He writes about nuclear deproliferation, as well as the enduring enigma that is the American mind.

yo skep ...dude...here's a trivia for u...bet u don't know it...how many aliases have u used here so far? damn! whoa! i remember the time when u got confused and slipped up...tryingtobereasonable....hehe! any way dude...peace!

yogi-one and Richard:

Nations are like women and coded, as ours is, as "SHE".

"She" is one hell of a book, btw! Rider Haggard

You know, half of my genes did advocate for femininity at one time.

And now, the t'rone declines whilst the es'gen bitches. Although,

by noon yesterday at work, the day took a fun turn.

I had to orientate and initiate three young women, and begin their training.

Their names(I'm not kidding) were Zalah, Noya and Nya.

Two were from the Sudan, and Zalah(the cutie) was from Kurdistan(?).

Their English was magnificent, with nary an accent.

What a strange afternoon it turned out to be.

And now, as Simon says, I could care less about the worlds problems!

I still have time to become a dirty old man if I so choose. Ha!

.

Yo Derek!

I will be in the market for an HDTV, too? What did ya get and how much?

.

Hello Kate!

Luvz~

Those of you who might have got an impression, seeing my posting pattern, that I am a fan of Obama, Nope -- I am not. A few days ago I posted a Slate article by Christopher Hitchens criticizing Obama in which he shred him apart. I think that was one of the best criticisms I have seen unlike the distortions and mis-characterizations by the Clinton campaign, and unlike what you see here from pseudo-intellectuals like Yogi-one or ignorance, denial and rants from people like ruth and bonnie.

Here's the Hitchens article on Hillary. Enjoy:

**************************

The Case Against Hillary Clinton.

Why on earth would we choose to put the Clinton family drama at the center of our politics again?
By Christopher Hitchens
Jan. 14, 2008

Seeing the name Hillary in a headline last week—a headline about a life that had involved real achievement—I felt a mouse stirring in the attic of my memory. Eventually, I was able to recall how the two Hillarys had once been mentionable in the same breath. On a first-lady goodwill tour of Asia in April 1995—the kind of banal trip that she now claims as part of her foreign-policy "experience"—Mrs. Clinton had been in Nepal and been briefly introduced to the late Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest. Ever ready to milk the moment, she announced that her mother had actually named her for this famous and intrepid explorer. The claim "worked" well enough to be repeated at other stops and even showed up in Bill Clinton's memoirs almost a decade later, as one more instance of the gutsy tradition that undergirds the junior senator from New York.

Sen. Clinton was born in 1947, and Sir Edmund Hillary and his partner Tenzing Norgay did not ascend Mount Everest until 1953, so the story was self-evidently untrue and eventually yielded to fact-checking. Indeed, a spokeswoman for Sen. Clinton named Jennifer Hanley phrased it like this in a statement in October 2006, conceding that the tale was untrue but nonetheless charming: "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add."

Perfect. It worked, in other words, having been coined long after Sir Edmund became a bankable celebrity, but now its usefulness is exhausted and its untruth can safely be blamed on Mummy. Yet isn't it all—all of it, every single episode and detail of the Clinton saga—exactly like that? And isn't some of it a little bit more serious? For Sen. Clinton, something is true if it validates the myth of her striving and her "greatness" (her overweening ambition in other words) and only ceases to be true when it no longer serves that limitless purpose. And we are all supposed to applaud the skill and the bare-faced bravado with which this is done. In the New Hampshire primary in 1992, she knowingly lied about her husband's uncontainable sex life and put him eternally in her debt. This is now thought of, and referred to in print, purely as a smart move on her part. In the Iowa caucuses of 2008, he returns the favor by telling a huge lie about his own record on the war in Iraq, falsely asserting that he was opposed to the intervention from the very start. This is thought of, and referred to in print, as purely a tactical mistake on his part: trying too hard to help the spouse. The happy couple has now united on an equally mendacious account of what they thought about Iraq and when they thought it. What would it take to break this cheap little spell and make us wake up and inquire what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?

What do you have to forget or overlook in order to desire that this dysfunctional clan once more occupies the White House and is again in a position to rent the Lincoln Bedroom to campaign donors and to employ the Oval Office as a massage parlor? You have to be able to forget, first, what happened to those who complained, or who told the truth, last time. It's often said, by people trying to show how grown-up and unshocked they are, that all Clinton did to get himself impeached was lie about sex. That's not really true. What he actually lied about, in the perjury that also got him disbarred, was the women. And what this involved was a steady campaign of defamation, backed up by private dicks (you should excuse the expression) and salaried government employees, against women who I believe were telling the truth. In my opinion, Gennifer Flowers was telling the truth; so was Monica Lewinsky, and so was Kathleen Willey, and so, lest we forget, was Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who says she was raped by Bill Clinton. (For the full background on this, see the chapter "Is There a Rapist in the Oval Office?" in the paperback version of my book No One Left To Lie To. This essay, I may modestly say, has never been challenged by anybody in the fabled Clinton "rapid response" team.) Yet one constantly reads that both Clintons, including the female who helped intensify the slanders against her mistreated sisters, are excellent on women's "issues."

One also hears a great deal about how this awful joint tenure of the executive mansion was a good thing in that it conferred "experience" on the despised and much-deceived wife. Well, the main "experience" involved the comprehensive fouling-up of the nation's health-care arrangements, so as to make them considerably worse than they had been before and to create an opening for the worst-of-all-worlds option of the so-called HMO, combining as it did the maximum of capitalist gouging with the maximum of socialistic bureaucracy. This abysmal outcome, forgiven for no reason that I can perceive, was the individual responsibility of the woman who now seems to think it entitles her to the presidency. But there was another "experience," this time a collaborative one, that is even more significant.

During the Senate debate on the intervention in Iraq, Sen. Clinton made considerable use of her background and "experience" to argue that, yes, Saddam Hussein was indeed a threat. She did not argue so much from the position adopted by the Bush administration as she emphasized the stand taken, by both her husband and Al Gore, when they were in office, to the effect that another and final confrontation with the Baathist regime was more or less inevitable. Now, it does not especially matter whether you agree or agreed with her about this (as I, for once, do and did). What does matter is that she has since altered her position and attempted, with her husband's help, to make people forget that she ever held it. And this, on a grave matter of national honor and security, merely to influence her short-term standing in the Iowa caucuses. Surely that on its own should be sufficient to disqualify her from consideration? Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care, and flippant and fast and loose with national security: The case against Hillary Clinton for president is open-and-shut. Of course, against all these considerations you might prefer the newly fashionable and more media-weighty notion that if you don't show her enough appreciation, and after all she's done for us, she may cry.

http://www.slate.com/id/2182065/

Yo Ho Ho Keith
Sorry I just watched Pirates of the Caribbean. Just an off brand. You can spend way too much on TVs now a days. They even have financing. Yo
I opted for few hundred bucks knowing that in a year or two it will be obsolete.

Kate
I remember the first time I realized I could see the Milky Way. A man standing next to me pointed it out. I thought it was just some kind of cloud but he said it was stars. Then in Cosmos I was able to see our place in that cloud of stars. We are apart of that cloud. A miracle for us to enjoy.
peace

Yo Irvine
Thanks for the Jacob Bronowski hook up. My googler is tired.
I found a clip of him at a concentration camp, powerful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA

derek

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

--William Carlos Williams

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

--William Carlos Williams

North,

Maybe if I think I am Holier than thou it is because you have a good reason to think it. My views are none exclusive and are also none conformative to the misleaded views of most people. if you want to live in the moment without any subscription to any fraction of society then you will be able to quite easily see through the world rather than being in it.

As far as claiming to know what people are thinking; I think you are confusing that with being able to spot a Phony a mile away and trust me I have met plenty in my time to know one when I hear/read their stuff.

Pretense how ever is as plain as the nose on your face and that is something that I can't stand. I really hate pretense. People who are acting in particular fashions when in reality that is not them at all. I really can't stand that.

Stereotypes and pretentious people get right up my bugle and I don't mind telling you. That is one of the reasons I couldn't get away with living on the west coast of Canada as they lay it on with a shovel when it comes to be pretentious. Some people are so far up themselves that they are walking around inside out. They say things and come out with things just so that people will take notice of them such as "Oh my god Heath ledger has died I don't know what I am going to do" when in reality they couldn't care less. They want the drama of saying that and the drama of being upset so that people will take notice of them.

In my experience of people who are genuinely upset about something, they do not go around broadcasting the fact. The only time they slaver on about something is because they are trying to draw attention from a tragic event and focus that attention on themselves.

I appreciate you might not like the hard cold truth but I am a realist to the bone and I think it is important to be a realist otherwise our entire lives become a fabrication of lies and false hopes.

Regards

from a realistic point of View.....

How do i feel about Heath Ledger being dead?

I really don't feel anything about him being dead. I didn't know him, heard lots of good things about him Like I have about many many other people who are alive and are also dead. I can imagine it is extremely painful and sad for his wife, Mother, Father, Daughter friends and other members of his family right now that he has died so suddenly and it will take quite some time for the grieving process to run its course.

What effect does his death have on me and my life and what is happening around me?

None what so ever.

Will I be grieving about the next celebrity to die?

I doubt it.

What about if Heath Ledger had been my next door Neighbour would that have made a difference?

I am sure it would... I would have probably been quite shocked after seeing him for a while coming and going and often saying hello and now to suddenly hear he is dead. Initially I would be quite shocked but after a couple of days probably wouldn't think anything more about it.

Why?

Life goes on man...one day it will be you in a box...GET LIVING!

honest answers from a real person

(Auditory Imagery...)

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--William Butler Yeats.

Michelle Obama defends husband's voting record, experience

Published: Thursday, January 24, 2008
By Ben Szobody
STAFF WRITER

Michelle Obama countered increasingly fierce criticism from Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Wednesday in an impassioned speech at a Greenville restaurant, defending Barack Obama’s votes in the Illinois Senate, his experience and his ability to stand tough to Republicans.

"The one thing that is clear is that when power is confronted with real change, they will say anything," she said.

She also told nearly 100 local women at The Lazy Goat that when it comes to the difficulties they face balancing work and family, her husband is "one of the few people who gets it," in part because of her own dilemmas as a "regular person."

Michelle Obama never mentioned the Clintons by name, and she told The Greenville News afterward that despite the involvement of former president Bill Clinton in his wife’s campaign, her role will remain "that of spouse," and that she’s "not a politician."

Referring to criticism -- renewed by Hillary Clinton this week -- of her husband’s more than 100 "present" votes in the Illinois Senate, Michelle Obama highlighted his work passing ethics reform, expanding child care, gaining tax credits for the working poor and dealing with racial profiling and the death penalty.

"So let me tell you, when people talk about Barack’s voting record in the state Senate, they will not talk to you about that because that would be too much information for you, wouldn’t it?" she said. "It’s much easier to focus on a few ‘present’ votes," instead of his work for "regular people" that "no other front-runner in this race can claim at all."

She described his decision after college to do community work instead of going to Wall Street to "make millions," then his decision after Harvard Law School to take on civil rights work and the state legislature. She said his books are the only reason they recently got out of debt.

"It would seem to me that before anyone would open their mouth to even claim to want to be president of the United States they would have to show that kind of commitment to regular folks," she said.

She said the candidates with Washington experience chose to support the Iraq war while her husband opposed it during a primary race he wasn’t supposed to win.

She also referred to detailed policy discussions in the presidential campaign, a trait Hillary Clinton casts as a strength.

"People always want to know the intricacies of candidates’ policies," she said, "but the truth is a lot of this stuff isn’t rocket science. We know what we need to do with public education because there are thousands of excellent public schools all over this country. We know what they look like, we know what they cost. Our problem is that they only exist for the fortunate few."

To the question of whether Obama is "tough enough" to run against the Republican nominee, Michelle Obama said, "Do you know where we live? Chicago politics. Illinois politics. Mean, tough politics."

http://greenvilleonline.com

Thanks for the Youtube link, derek. That short clip at Auschwitz just sums up Bronowski's life.

goodthursday everyone,

All I have to say, today, is.....WHATEVER..and blah.blah.blah.

have a good one, ruth

Well well well well... that sounds music!

Nice 'auditory imagery' of Yeats posted by mani. Sharply followed up by ruth! LOL

(Tactile Imagery...)

The rope I pull is stiff and cold,
My straining ears detect no sound
Except a sigh, as round and round
The wind rocks through the timbers old.

--Amy Lowell

****

Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing,
Where I may feel the throbs of your hear or rest upon your hip,
Carry me when you go forth over land or sea;
For thus merely touching you is enough, is best,
And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally.

-- Walt Whitman

should read "Where I may feel the throbs of your heart..."

says a #$%^& granny...

"All I have to say, today, is.....WHATEVER..and blah.blah.blah."

that is very enlightenin'...whoa!

Whatever makes your wheels turn Simon is all good. Continue to delude yourself; that you know what other peoples motives and feelings are...as it's part of your personal growth span.

as for Heath Ledger; I mourn his death, as I admired his acting ability. Not only that, but he's as part of me, as the trees, and you are; so how can I not genuinely mourn; a living being; whom is part of me, in the big scheme of things, right?

As for the "box".. yes, I will be in a box one day, sooner rather than later; but that is OK by me, as there are things far worse than death itself...

so, I DO live, regardless of my rants about life; I never stop designing; and for my efforts, have just learned today, I have permission from a celebrity, to sell 4 fanart pics, to a buyer in the USA!! I am so thrilled, and have emailed the buyer. I can hardly wait to get paid, as I"ve survived on $88 dollars since December 20th; when we last got our disability checques!! The $88 was a GST rebate; if not for that... I shudder to think about it... I've lost weight, quit smoking, and am selling my art..

yes, I live.. but, as I mentioned; there are things that are far worse than death itself. I do not fear my turn in the "box" of death at all, at all. it's been coming for nine years. For nine years, I have self-healed without drugs, without alchohol--using only mind-power.. I am proud of the purity of my body, mind and spirit.. though patience IS my worst virtue... to me, death cannot come fast enough.

Poverty and pain, is far worse, than death can ever be...

Love, North

he is a lowly patticake!

I enjoy reading all the comments BUT they are becoming TOO long in length. Can you please limit them to a few lines?

9/11 Guliani expects to win Florida...where he's got 16% support...it's 9/11 boss! 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11...can't u hear me? damn! America!

Hi North,

I did not know Heath Ledger, but, from the recent articles in the papers, i understand that he has made himself immortal by the movies he has made during his young life.

This reminds me of another legend in my younger days, a singer who will live forever in the heart of many of my generation: Buddy Holly.

Both great men, both died at a very young age. May this song be a tribute to Heath and everyone he and Buddy have touched during their short lives and therefore they will live forever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyCzxFgzlSE

May they rest in peace.

P.S. Good for you that you are enabled to sell those for fanart pics! You are becoming famous, mark my words :)

Love, Mieke

I mean four and not for in the last sentence :)

Mieke

Hi Mieke.. I loved the Buddy Holly movie!! His songs were fabulous.. unfortunately, I have no speakers anymore to listen to tunes on the PC; I had speakers on my Santa-list; but I really don't have a Santa in that respect per se, hence, did not recieve the speakers... LOL Maybe if my buyer is generous, I can buy a set?

I am also selling my 104 year-old Frank A. Stallman Theatrical Dresser trunk; it's been advertised on TV! lol A FREE service via our cable providers : )

When Lee were home for Christmas, we went through what he would want, or not want, when "I go" and though he loves the trunk(which houses my Christmas decorations) he does hold the same sentiments about it, as I do.. the trunk even has secret compartments(wink!)

I seek not fame(well, not really); only financial independance : )

I hope I can do your poetry book justice Mieke : )

Love to you,
North

A little bit of fame will do you good also dear North, gives you that immortality when "you go" :)

I understand about the financial independance though and keep my fingers crossed for you.

And as a matter of fact: for both of us.. :)

Love, Mieke

Hey Irvine
I tried to pluck a few quotes from this clip to post and realized it would be easier to just post the whole thing.
Very powerful warm and humble.

Yo North
I hope you are staying warm up there. Can you see the Northern Lights from where you are?
Much peace and love to you North

derek

I will work hard on it Mieke : ) It is oddly profound, but few in my real life, even see my artwork, OR read my poetry... why is it, that strangers value our gifts/talents far more than family and friends? lol

Hi Derek.. I've danced(in my heart) to the silent songs of the northern lights all of my life! There is no sight, more reflective of our universe... so beautiful to watch...

Love, North

Recently the special court in Maharashtra (India) gave the first significant verdict related with the Gujarat violence of 2002. 12 persons were given life sentence for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano by Judge U.D. Salvi. It was highly reassuring to see the institution of judiciary finally standing up and delivering its duty in a very significant way.
But no less important was the courage, grit and determination shown by the victim Bilkis Bano. This woman who was just 20 years old when the carnage happened went through a trauma that we shudder to even listen. On March 3, 2002 her family was trying to flee the village of Randhikpur, around 250 kms from Ahmedabad amidst the post-Godhra carnage. A mob attacked them and 14 members of her family were brutally killed. Her three year old daughter was snatched from her and the head of the child was smashed on a stone on the ground. They stripped the already six-month old pregnant Bilkis as well as her mother and her cousin and gang raped them till she fell unconscious. The culprits were her neighbours from the same village and easily recognizable.

From this absolutely pathetic situation Bilkis started showing what exactly courage means. She walked down and borrowed some clothes from a tribal woman and than later went to file the FIR. The sub-inspector Somabhai Gori, who has been convicted, refused to register the case. The policemen harassed her to keep quiet and filed a completely different complaint. A doctor couple, who has been released on bail, then fudged the post-mortem reports of the mutilated bodies of her killed relatives and produced a report full of discrepancies.

But finally on her perseverance the case started in Ahmedabad in 2002. The Sessions Court acquitted many of the policemen and the doctor couple. She was then helped by Jayanti Rani who helped Bilkis Bano insist that she did not expect a fair trial in Gujarat. In an extraordinary move the Supreme Court moved the case to Maharashtra in August 2004. In a prior relocation of the Best Bakery case the apex court had remarked “The public prosecutor appears to have acted more as a defence counsel than one whose duty was to present the truth before the court…The court in turn appeared to be a silent spectator, mute to the manipulations and preferred to be indifferent to the sacrilege being committed to justice”. The CBI was handed over the investigation and they arrested the 20 accused on Nov 22 of 2004. The trial finally began in Mazgaon in a special court on Feb 21, 2005.

During this whole time Bilkis lived in a constant danger to her life as she was the prime witness. She kept on moving locations for six long years and even today she lives at an undisclosed location. From any standards it is quite clear that she has shown a very high level of mental toughness where we all saw the case of Zaheera Shaikh (from Best Bakery Case) who kept on flip-flopping under coercion and greed. The same would have been tried on Bilkis too and she surely has shown the highest levels of her character. Getting into her shoes to imagine the trauma that she went through six years back and then a precarious life that she has lived since then to get justice, shows her determination and courage to fight back.

She continues to show the same character and equanimity in her thoughts. After the verdict she said “Yes I am satisfied with the quantum of sentence to those convicted. But I will fight till those doctors and others discharged are also convicted…My plan is to educate my children and live hereinafter in peace.” It is people like Bilkis and an institution like the Supreme Court which keeps the faith of the common man intact.

Many today say to forget about the crimes and tell that it is time now to move on. But just focussing on the layers of this case will show that the e