In Lobbyists We Trust

“If one person in this world, the NRA president, anybody, can tell me why we need assault weapons with 30 shots in the thing,” said Syracuse basketball coach JIm Boeheim after a news conference celebrating his 900^th “This is our fault. This is my fault and your fault. All of your faults if we don’t get out and do something about this. If we can’t get this thing done, I’m with (Mayor Michael) Bloomberg, if we can’t get this thing done, I don’t know what kind of country we have. This is about us. This isn’t about the President or those other people down there. We have to make them understand somehow that this needs to get figured out. Real quick. Not six months from now.” Outrage indeed. It is our fault just as it is our fault our democracy has been stolen with a government controlled by lobbyists.

In 1946 anywhere from 200 to 2,000 citizens in Tennessee attacked a jail where police had kept election ballots they had stolen during an election. This incident as well as “Shays’ Rebellion”, a 1786-87 uprising against local corruption are often cited by gun advocates in defense of assault weapons.  They are wrong simply because times have changed although I don’t see a problem with someone owning assault rifles if they and their weapons register with the FBI. Information and awareness are now our greatest weapons against tyranny and corruption. We no longer need machine guns to reform the government of the United States just as we in the information age no longer need lobbyists to reform our government. We now have a voice and as indolent and inadequate as we are the democracy is here, right here, right in front of us. About half the nation is very much lost in the manusha of political deception so this new thing called the internet and this even newer thing called the occupy movement is not going to work until we add necessary education to our school system. Lobbyists and their legally corrupt stranglehold is the root of all our problems in this country. Education and awareness is a powerful and necessary tool in order to have a just and equitable democracy. Once again the distortion of the news media’s need to find new angles and entertainment value to tell stories is clouding the argument and parsing our dilemmas. Issues concerning your life and the politics played to distort their status does not change with word games and "newspeak" or "washingtonspeak".

Beyond the dull siren of redundancy on gun control is something else being lost and that’s the need for spirituality and access to mental health care and education. It’s obvious that most if not all of the mass murders in our society suffered from anti-social behavior. It’s just common sense for our educational system to focus on anti-social behavior and major warning signs to initiate new programs for interventions. What better way to engage these types of behavior than thru spiritual studies or mental health education. Religious studies and mental health studies must be mandatory. In such an endeavor our society would also change into a more harmonious one. Former Governor Mike Huckabee’s reaction on Fox News was incorrect and somewhat insulting in saying it was purely a heart issue not needing any new gun laws. That is a very unchristian view but his comments about needing God in schools is partly true. "We ask why there's violence in our schools, but we've systematically removed God from our schools," Huckabee said. "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" The tone is harsh and crude, but this country was founded on religious freedom and in order to completely honor all religious freedom we must teach our children about the world’s major religions. Moments of silence and allowing students to have other means of spiritual outlets at schools should also be considered. Even atheists that rail against any violation of separating church and state cannot deny the benefits of meditation contemplation or prayer. Just as we seek to embrace our racial diversities so to must we embrace and more importantly discover our spiritual ones.  

Life so hot

beyond reproach it seems

beyond extremes

so fierce it slips

and magical it dreams to wit

my life so sweet to grasp

whatever means to sharpen tongue

like drooling doth my scheme undone

oh soul so soft to hold us dear

what passion still seeps deep in blood

a touch that screams

no fear in deed....

 our lord

What rests my soul apart from love

Just knowing more and more?

How safe I am ?

How sure?

How still I can become?

What gentle sounding trees?

Escaping storms and pain?

The warmth of tender song? no…

No …nothing rests my soul but love

Beasts of the Southern Wind; review

Like Meek’s Cutoff last year every so often comes a classic film that reaches into your soul and pulls out shreds of your heart. So rare does a film do so with such few words, such importance; like the poignancy of a saint's magical freedom from erroneous sensibilities through powerful acts of courage and faith.  

                A child is left alone in the wilds of an island bayou. Her father teaches her how to care for herself until the waters rise because of climate change. The child lets her imagination feed her fears more than reality. Her father shouts for truth as if you could cram belief and miracles down your throat, drunk and sick, yet in the cracks and glimmers of hope lies a spiritual surrealism whereby out of the mouth of a child comes the most essential of wisdoms.

                Beasts of the Southern Wind is a masterpiece of elegance and grace, gripping every nature of our being; putting to test our ludicrous mediocrities.  There is no greater effort than to stop the ice from melting and to live each day as a holiday, to hold each other; to love.  Don’t just watch this film; absorb it.

Shackles!

How dare anyone criticize our vice president for using this word? Whose interest do they serve? This was not a gaff; this was a whisper in place of a scream.  Desolate we have become in our chains. Blanketed and comforted by our own restraints, conformed in a distorted illusion of what was once a great system; the only system worth living in. We as Americans have an immense responsibility to the world for what we have created. Democracy and liberty for all are not hollow words reserved for the fortunate. It is for all who respect justice and fairness. They have distorted our freedom by dividing us with extremes, having us argue over misaligned details.

My eyes were opened wide during the crash of 2008. It was then that I realized as so many others have, that our way of being is in fact in jeopardy. That the notions of true freedom and law have been usurped by a group of kings and power brokers. A new war of independence is upon us. We must free ourselves from the strangle hold of greed that has rooted itself in our capitalist system and stained our sacred halls and marble floors of government. Even the occupy movement, although brave dedicated and honorable, was clouded in the American sickness of mediocrity. Why did they not demand money out of our politics?  All those who say this can’t be done wrongly embrace their chains because it is only laws that can save us from oligarchical crimes. Only laws can prevent trade with slave wage and dismantle the corporate Fed investment banks’ communist structure syphoning the globes’ investments through extraction and manipulation. Only with laws can we wean ourselves off of the fossil fuels destroying our planet. Only without legal corruption can we pass these laws. Politics and news should not be part of our entertainment. What we must do is simple and must be repeated until it is done. Special interests do not just influence our government, they control our government.  Now it is clear, nothing more be said or thought out, we must occupy Washington and demand all money out of politics. One single solidarity demand fulfilled and we can be free from these chains. We do not need to occupy any other city.

The truth is hard and cold, it’s a messy crayon drawing without the neat iconic shapes we want. The tightest most painful shackles we wear are those of mental complacency. There are two essential issues that are imprisoning us with neglect; a neglect and denial that can take our freedom, stripping us of our way of life and the planet’s destruction.  A big news story is one with constant updates and new angles to exploit for entertainment attention grabbing purposes. A big story is not a stalemate based on stagnant distortion but that’s the reality of these issues. THE ICE IS MELTING, AND FOSSIL FUELS NEED TO BE BANNED BECAUSE OF THAT, END OF DISCUSSION. To hell with conserving energy, that’s a scam for them to buy more time to distort. What issue is more important than converting to sustainable energy? The second essential issue being ignored and threatening to take away our cherish freedoms is the complete restructuring of the global economic system. Investment banks, headed by the Fed have created an unsustainable model that allows investors and shareholders the means to syphon off assets without them being allocated to further business and growth. Despite their incredibly successful effort to cloak this reality; CAPITALISM AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT NO LONGER EXSISTS. We are living a lie that will continue to eat away at jobs, the value of currency and the availability of credit until nothing is left but what has been syphoned off. What will the wealthy do if riots break out when the formerly employed middle class and working class masses join the anarchists? The conspiracies against us are blatant but they are so entrenched and wide spread in their methods that they are considered too complex and yet ironically too abstract for the media to consider the story that must be hammered on until things change; until those that our part of the problem are voted out of office. THE ONLY WAY TO SOLVE OUR ECONOMIC PROBLEMS TO IS GET MONEY OUT OF POLITICS because our government will not criminalize the continued syphoning of global assets until the hand that feeds them is cut off. It was a sad day when Dylan Ratigan went off the air, despite Spitzer on Current, a channel I don’t get, his was the only show banging the drum. There is a way to bang that drum while still paying the piper; Ratigan showed us that.