Common Ground

There are so many different people with different beliefs and values all over the place. Our biggest challenge is to move beyond, "You have your head up your ass and your shit needs to be stamped out at all costs," to "Let's figure out how to live together and provide for those we care for despite our differences." Of course, all sides would have to acknowledge that.

Really, everybody should have access to what should be the basics of life...food, housing, education, and decent medical care at a minimum, as long as there are the resources to keep that up (and if there aren't the resources to keep that up we are in really deep trouble). Keeping up the fight for that should be a constant thing. But there seem to be so many people who fight back against that every time it is brought up. Everybody can (and will) have their own definition of who they care for...some will be more expansive than others.

Hopefully we could reach a minimum ground that everybody could agree on, and then we can keep trying to get more things that we believe in, while acknowledging that others will believe differently and that they are not necessarily enemies that need to be vanquished because of it. But has human nature become too deformed to even get to that point? When we look at seemingly intractable conflicts...Israelis vs. Palestinians, for example, neither side is willing to reach a minimum common ground and build upon it from there because they distrust the other side too much, and a mentality gets built up that the other side just needs to be wiped out because they are too unreasonable.

Fiscal Cliff?

• People are apprehensive about the "fiscal cliff."  Actually, we tumbled off the fiscal cliff in the 1980s, head over heels, limbs akimbo. We're still trying to mend our broken bones and climb back up.

A New Year, A New Beginning

Here's hoping that 2013 marks the beginning of a trend where those who put in the work to provide materials, goods and services benefit from the fruits of their efforts, rather than seeing them all sapped away by legalized theft. Let's also hope the new year rings in more original music. When every radio station is playing songs that our neighbors recorded at home, not songs that were forced down their throats by big corporations, you can be damn sure we're free.  2013 can be the year of the artist, the poet, the wanderer, the home gardener, and the revolution in neighborly love. Make it so. Happy New Year!

Letters To The Oppressors

Here is a letter sent today to Joe L. Price, Bank of America Executive, via Occupy the Board Room, which allows you to let corporate executives know what you think:

Hello. Kindly abdicate your position immediately and relinquish your misappropriated wealth to the hungry and homeless.

I like you. I want you to be able to support your family and do cool things with your friends. I think that your hard work should be rewarded. But at present, you are supporting an enterprise that (contrary to the propaganda about creating wealth for the economy) dilutes the economy's wealth and skims it off the top for your benefit, all for the sake pushing around electronic “money” that does nobody a whit of good except you and your conspirators. There is nothing being created here.

Except for you and your conspirators, who have purchased the suppression of laws that should be enforced against a possible plethora of criminal acts committed by your cronies (and your employees who get enough crumbs to keep them in your servitude), these activities do not feed anybody. They do not house anybody who needs housing. They do not clothe anybody who has trouble clothing themselves and their families. They do not provide medical care for people who need it. They do not provide college educations for those who cannot afford them. All they do is unconscionably enrich a group of executives and provide them with so much of an excess of luxury goods and property that the rest of us (the 99%) are struggling harder and harder every day to make ends meet.

I do like you, as I said before. I want to offer you advice to help you avoid a fate such as that which befell Marie Antoinette, or Nicolae Ceaucescu, or any of those other misguided souls who allowed their hubris to blind them, and who did things that made others' lives horrible and promoted suffering. People thought they were evil. I want them to think better of you. I don't think anything bad should happen to you at all. I hope that some day we can sit across a table with each other, sip tea, and know that our work contributes equally to the benefit of society, and that both of our families are doing well. Don't you want that, too? I hope so.

Dressing for Success at the Occupation?

There have been a number of people talking about how people should dress nice to participate in the occupation. Playing dress-up is fine for those who want to do it and feel they have to put up some kind of appearance for someone else (the media, the authorities, etc.). But an important part of what many participants are doing here is a rebellion against those whose only competency is in their manicuring skills. That is part of what many of us are doing with our participation. How many of us have been passed over for jobs, promotions or other perks in society, despite skills we might have that would absolutely qualify us for that perk, only to have it go to someone else who is willing to conform their appearance to what the authorities require of a good lapdog?

Those who will tell you that it is not them that require any certain mode of appearance or clothing will always say that it is for the benefit of the OTHERS who require it...it is just what is expected in society. That glosses over deep-seated prejudices that they themselves have, however benevolent they think their advice might be. We love them anyway...they mean well.

There is absolutely no reason why a male should have to wear a false representation of a flaccid penis around his neck in many social circumstances (Thank the stars that this is not required of females!). It's actually pretty darn ridiculous. However, it is a requirement, and a deep-seated expectation, in many situations.

How many news anchors have you seen with obvious piercings? How many contestants on game shows have you encountered with short sleeves showing multiple tattooes? Where are the transvestite police? The political system "looks like America?" I don't think so.

Please, please, please...dress how you like...if it involves a business suit, that is fine for you. If you feel like somebody won't take us seriously if we don't look a certain way, then take it upon yourself to look that way. Just please don't impose it on the rest of us who have lived our whole lives in the shadow of this often unacknowledged and commonly unredressable form of discrimination.

Remembrances for the Occupation

To the 1%: You have looted everything we need to thrive. You have mined people as if they were veins of resources running through the earth. You have raised your champagne glasses in contempt of us. Please make your beds somewhere else, like Qaddafi suddenly did at the request of the people. Maybe you will have a good time trading anecdotes with fallen dictators. We will chase you out peacefully.

We will remember the trolls. We will remember the naysayers. We will remember the people who kept harping that it couldn't be done. We will remember the police who beat the innocent. We will remember the politicians who ordered the arrests. Because we need to show them kindness when the occupation is over, no matter what the ultimate outcome is.

Mr. Obama, Tear Down This Wall (Street)

There have been news sources popping up that have been talking about how the Democrats are trying to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street movement. It may be inevitable that sources of money and power will eventually try to infiltrate a movement and try to influence its direction.

But one form of infiltration would be infinitely useful to the occupation. Mr. Obama, come lead the protests into the buildings on Wall Street. Be there to protect the protesters from the police. Walk them into the institutions that they have been battered away from by the New York Police. Do you think the NYPD would stop POTUS? Then we will know that your sympathetic comments are not just lip service.

But there is almost no chance of that, since the President has been purchased by those interests. Maybe if they keep contributing to Romney for the 2012 election cycle...

Power to the...Umm...

Why is everybody who runs for president a power-hungry freak? Oh, yeah, because they want to be even more intense power-hungry freaks.

Dangerous Uses of Power

In Mexico, the state of Veracruz’s Assembly recently passed a provision making it a crime to use Twitter and other social networks to undermine public order. It boggles the mind to think of the possible oppressive interpretations of such a law.

Fun Things To Do With Knives

When the deputy chancellor of the Texas A & M System (a former chief of staff of Rick Perry) was fired from his job, he pulled out a knife and refused to turn over his keys and work badge. And then he later said it was a joke. You just can't make this stuff up.

Caring vs. Insuring

Everybody is talking about health insurance. But whatever happened to focusing on health CARE? All that seems to have happened is that we get mined on a monthly basis to be shaken down for a payment to a large corporation. If you dare to stop that payment, it possibly becomes much harder and more expensive to re-start it in the future. Many of us wouldn't even mind making that payment, and even making it larger, if it seemed like it was leading to getting health care covered for ourselves and our families. But those of us who are "insured" can (and probably will) go bankrupt if a major medical event were to happen, despite having "insurance."

"Everyone should have health insurance? I say everyone should have health care. I'm not selling insurance."--Dennis Kucinich

It's All Your Fault

It is amusing (yet sad) to hear about people who shrug their shoulders and say that it is someone's choice to take on some extreme hardship created by external constraints. Like, "It's their choice if they die because they didn't want to have health insurance."

What does that lead to? "It was your choice to get hit by that bus; you chose to cross the street at that moment. It was your choice to not have any food. It was your choice to contract that disease."

It seems to many of us that a lot of people really don't care if there are opportunities afforded to people, as long as they have some. We would probably like to be wrong about that.

They Are Going To Fight Her Tooth And Nail

‎"I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,'" Warren said. "No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody.

"You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect against this -- because of the work the rest of us did.

"Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."--Elizabeth Warren

Lies And Profits

Commercials and ads always talk how people can "save money" by buying whatever is being advertised. But you don't save money. There is no savings account with that money in it for you. You MIGHT spend less (assuming the offer is not just a trick or gimmick, which is entirely possible). You could spend even less (and maybe even save money) by not buying the vaunted product. They really should say in the commercials, "Buy this, and you'll save ME money."

And what about those commercials that advertise "no interest until..."? Let that happen. Have absolutely no interest in that stuff they are advertising.

Free To Be...

The biggest problem with libertarians wanting to get us out of the drug war is that there appears to be no interest from the libertarians in creating the infrastructure necessary to transform a criminal justice response into a public health response. All they espouse is a desire to legalize drugs and fill our streets with junkies in the alleys free to be deathly ill and to do whatever they want. If anyone thinks we will not be paying for that, they are deluding themselves.

Groucho Nailed It

‎"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." --Groucho Marx

The Sweet Sound of Sedition

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."--Eugene V. Debs, upon being sentenced for sedition

Is There a Mad Hatter at this Tea Party?

Once the Tea Party succeeds in shrinking the size of the government, the rest of us will be unencumbered to embark on entrepreneurial ventures. Like setting up toll checkpoints on the streets where they live.

The Jayne Mansfield Plan

Trying to balance the budget through tax cuts is like trying to achieve peace through decapitation.

Starving Our Country

The Republicans' insistence on starving the country of revenue is like a company telling its best salesperson, "Say, we expect you to boost sales, though you'll have to do it without shoes, a car, a phone, or any communication device that might cost money, and in your underwear. But here's a golf pencil and a toy plastic abacus; you can write on napkins from your local fast food place (if they still put any out)."

This doesn't even make sense from a business perspective. It seems like they have no interest in improving our nation. They just want to rid it of the "undesirables."

But don't despair; if worse comes to worse, we can always go to fast food places and get packets of parmesan cheese, litle containers of half-and-half, and a dab of jalapeno relish, and make alfredo sauce for our forty-cents worth of noodles. That is, until the armed guards at the fast-food places beat us to a pulp.

We're not broke. We're deliberately being broken.