ENVY

What do you do, when you don't have a grass roots movement or a young charismatic leader and your persons of color have failed you?

TEA PARTIES

`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don't see any wine,' she remarked.

`There isn't any,' said the March Hare.

`Then it wasn't very civil of you to offer it,' said Alice angrily.

`It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said the March Hare.

`I didn't know it was YOUR table,' said Alice; `it's laid for a great many more than three.'

`Your hair wants cutting,' said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.

`You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; `it's very rude.'

The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Why is a raven like a writing-desk?'

`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've begun asking riddles.--I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.

`Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.

`Exactly so,' said Alice.

`Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.

`I do,' Alice hastily replied; `at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know.'

`Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. `You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!'

`You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, `that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!'

`You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!'

`It IS the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much. (an excerpt)

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. by Lewis Carroll. Chapter VII: A Mad Tea Party

TAX DAY

Tax Man

Miracle Medicine

Today I have run into yet another comment about sugar being better than corn syrup . I think it is replacing the premise that honey is better sugar. Each claiming the other to be poison or unhealthful. It is the same pseudo science that makes natural better than chemicals. When I hear this, I want to say that snake venom is natural. Some people do not seem to know that every thing is made from chemicals and that something that does not naturally occur may not be harmful. It is not a given than chemical compounds made by humans are always harmful. The types of sugars that human ingest, are different only in how we may use them in food, which may hide calories (degree of sweetness per calorie) or taste differently, but not how we metabolize sugar. I am not saying that we should not be concerned about how food is processed or something like why whole grain is better nutritionally or metabolized more slowly, but I do think we need to know more about the science. I also know that those old home remedies work for illnesses. What bothers me is when people give advice about serious health problems to others based on the popular pseudo science of the day. The role of placebo may have had a positive effect upon them, but I have seen where their belief didn't jive with the outcome. I once overheard a patient's vitals being taken and the nurse telling the patient that their blood pressure was extremely high. The patient was protesting that this couldn't be the case, because of the herbs being taken. The nurse took the blood pressure several times to double check. The patients pressure so high, the nurses proceeded to admit the patient to the hospital. As most of my consistent readers know I have a kidney transplant and before that I was on Dialysis. At one Dialysis unit we had patient meeting, to talk about diet, other health problems and type of care we were getting at the Dialysis unit. When one has kidney failure, a lot of functions stop, beside the kidneys filtering the blood, it controls the calcium, potassium and produces a hormone which tells the bone marrow when to produce red blood cells. To minimize the effects, one has to control their diet and fluid intake. Diet is essential, especially if you are diabetic too. At one of the meeting, I hear one dialysis patient, say that he was replacing parts of his diet by taking herbs. I was disturbed by this , because what you ate created a delicate balancing act to maintain proper level of sodium, potassium, calcium and phosphorous, otherwise dialysis could not be effective. Since I have had the transplant I have become diabetic and once again diet is number one. Carbohydrates and sugar have to be watched, instead of counting calories I have to count carbohydrates(includes sugar); so many grams each meal. Since carbohydrates break down into sugar, it really doesn't matter what flavor it is. Corn syrup, honey, white sugar, brown sugar, refined or not, doesn't matter. I can't have more whole grain carbs; the only reason to eat whole grain carbs is because they don't dump sugar in your system as fast, but the total sugar is the same. You see our bodies are not as conflicted as our brain. It uses biochemistry to keep our stuff straight, when it sees a molecule of sugar, it reacts with it, without knowledge of origin. That comment's premise; that if one's blood sugar was increasing that using sugar instead of corn syrup would be helpful. This was just one substitute, there were other sugar sources that were suppose to be better, corn syrup was poison. This really disturbed me, because there are many people who are predisposed to diabetes are caught up in the pop science of the day and will jeopardize their health, because they will not get the proper medical advice or treatment.

A point of view

25 years later Julian Bond wrote this in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/special/mlk/perspectives/reflections/bond.html

You would think

Edward W. Brooke III would be the elder statesman of the Republican Party. But do they think?

Take It Back

Let all bloggers who lean to the left, consider themselves liberal or progressive, add Liberty to their name for at least one post.

Liberty Hathor

My take on what happened - I think easy to believe;)

Since I have not been posting very often, mostly because of new back problems and a cold virus which kept me off my feet for over a week, I want to catch up a little with thoughts that have been running through my head. I have been making some comments at other blogs, but haven't mustered the energy to post here. This post consist of comments I made on other blogs.

This comment I made at Gypsy Scholar in response to this post, Professor Jasper Kim on the Financial Crisis, is my take on the financial crisis.

I think it was the speculators that got over their heads, more so than the immigrants and poor people, but blaming those people is so gauche. That did not create the financial crisis, it was that funny paper that banks bought and sold, formerly known as MBS', CDO's, CDS' and other derivatives. People made money hand over fist on these sales and the banks and other financial institutions were stuck with the bad paper, most of it far removed from the original mortgages. Even if every mortgage had been paid, eventually the worthlessness of some paper would have caused failure. No one will say it but Bernard Madoff was not the only one running scams. This is my view of the financial crisis, which I think is as true as anyone else's. I came to this conclusion based on listening to what the economist, bankers and pundits have said, not on any knowledge of economics.

For those not familiar with the acronyms MBS = mortgage backed securities, CDO = collateralized debt obligations, and CDS = credit default swaps .

At another blog, ResurrectionSong, I commented yet again where most think they know what will work to solve the financial crisis. This is a response to another comment.

"I’ve yet to hear one piece of regulation that was axed that contributed to the mess, and I’ve yet to hear one plausible alternate history where this mess wouldn’t have happened. (Emphasis on plausible.) “

You see I have read another blogger who says the opposite, whom should I believe? My common sense tells me that I don’t have enough knowledge to discern that. It also tells me that anything said here as a solution, has a high probability of being as right as the President’s proposals. Its all ideology, because you have no proof as to what will work. We have never seen in our history the exact same problem with opposite solutions. Many say what FDR did prolonged the depression, but there isn’t any proof, just a best guess that fits into a particular ideology.

We live in an era of bullshit, because we do fear the unknown, that outlier.

I also would say this also is an era of financial ignorance. We all have our take on what happened, like me, but like most, I can't propose any solutions. There may be some who know enough to provide a real solution, but we would not recognize it if we saw it? For some that would be because of ignorance and others, because it went contrary to their ideological beliefs. I really wish we could have an unbiased scientific approach to this financial crisis.

Terrorist attack a transformational act?

I was reminded of Ron Silver's death last week and thought of a tribute of another blogger. This said by R. G. Combs.

But after the 9/11 attacks, Silver had the courage and wisdom to rethink his own long-held beliefs, and — despite the hostility of the Hollywood community to which he belonged — he clearly, articulately, and passionately defended his new view of the world time and time again. For that, I greatly admired him. And I'm very sorry that he's gone.

I am thinking why would the attacks of September 11, 2001 push someone to change their political beliefs. There was no label when Al Qaeda claimed the attacks. In all of their messages, I have clearly understood their purpose is to kill Americans. A message also more religious than political. I didn't think infidel meant Democrat or Republican. Osama bin Laden's views of America had been shaped by both Democratic and Republican administrations and policies. Since the Republicans were in charge of the government, who else was going to lead the response, but George W. Bush. His leadership in this could not be compared; for no other president had had the same circumstances. If one admired Bush's response, it could only be to his response as a man, not of his party.

There were a few liberal voices, blaming terrorism on America's policies, but the majority of Democrats gave Bush everything he asked for, until his re-election and much afterward. The world view of the Republican party could not have changed the event, because it was under their administration with their world view that escalated their assistance and armed Osama bin Laden in his fight against the Soviets. Their only concern was to fight the Evil Empire, not the democratization of Afghanistan. If one thought of the Republicans as the only ones with neo-con sensibilities, there were Democrats that were complicit in arming the rebels and osculating the Afghan war with the soviets.

I have given my reasons why I think that one would not have had reason to change their political beliefs, so I can only assume that emotions cause by the attacks on September 11, were so strong that fear became their guiding force. I am one that also believes that neither war in Afghanistan nor Iraq has made us any safer; considering how few people it took to bomb the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19,1995 and those people did it for totally different reasons than Al Qaeda.

If beliefs have been held and molded most of ones life, terrorism becomes a transformational act when your intellect has been disturbed, such that your ideas change suddenly; I would say that the terrorist have achieved their purpose.

Optical Illusion

The Second Amendment

Grubs and Mushrooms

If you view the Astronomy Picture of the Day, everyday, on my sidebar, you eventually get to realize how vast the size of the universe. Man's ego cannot make us small, even though we are. In a religious sense some of us see an end, but that also includes the universe, not just the end of man. The rest of us do not see the end of man as a species. We think our technology, our humanness, that our ability to adapt will kept our species from becoming extinct or at least marginal.

Technology whether simple or complicated require resources. The simple tools of farming; plow, pitchfork, shovel, wagon, and a working animal, can not produce any crop if the soil is spent. When there is virtually little fuel left, it would more likely to use it to keep us warm and for cooking, than for reprocessing or reclamation. Machines will wear out and lie dormant, when parts can't be made to repair them. Innovation can also lie dormant for centuries. We have seen where in certain religious or political climates, innovation has been stifled on purpose.

We never think that this will happen. We think we can change the environment, slow global warning or we don't think of it at all. We hardly ever think of slowing ourselves down. As we grow in population we will pave over topsoil and move our food supply to each country until there is none left. Only in a crisis do we think grow locally. So far the crisis hasn't lasted long to influence all of us. We will shift out energy resources for oil, but when that happens, our use will be as great. Not to worry, there is plenty of wind; not thinking that the transmission of energy still takes its toll on resources, the copper, the fiber, the machines.

There will be creatures that will adapt without technology, that will live in the niches of the environment humans have left. We have to learn that innovation and technology can not always save us or we may fall into that niche, where we will be eating grubs and mushrooms.