'Forces of Division'

Peter Baker's story from the front page of the NYTimes October 20, 'By Leaving out Trump's Name Message is Sent'  illustrates the dilemma this country is in. Dilemma is putting it lightly.

    How do we as citizens find a way to wrap our minds around these days of maximum discord. It seems the whole nation is facing a dark descent into civil strife.

   Not only do former President's Obama and Bush 'take aim at divisions' but so does the national Press Corp, and certainly the NYTimes talented staff of reporters.

But how good is their aim, how good is your aim? Are our bastions of decency, former Presidents of the Democrats and Republicans standing on ground that allows them to fire their moral directives with a clarity of vision that understands the frustration of the ordinary citizens who held their noses and voted Mr. Trump in?

  The trouble with the viewpoints of Obama, Bush and the National Media is that they are not very 'Liberal', using the word as it implies a free exploration of ideas including ideas that might even seem contrary to one's own. From my perspective 'the Liberal' viewpoint of today so permeated by fear and the hyperbole of hate, it is anything but Liberal, in it's certainty that Evil is confined to the current President and his supporters it is creating a counter wave of ugliness that will not go away.

   What the NYTimes and President Obama and President Bush see is that 'the Powers of Division' all come from 'the other side'

   Let's look at a couple of premises of supporters of President Trump. That all immigrants should obey the laws of the United States including Immigration laws and that those laws should be enforced. That an immigration policy that calls for extended scrutiny of applicants from Islamic Nations to 90 to 120 days, or by reducing refugee totals from 100,000 to 50,000 is not a Ban. Is this a ban, or is it the due diligence of a man elected through as honest a process as we have so far of one man one vote? How can he not do what the people of America deeply need and asked for. Restrain the flow of illegal immigration. 11 Million is insanely way too much. How can the media go on about Lies and not own it's own distortion?

   As a car free, California Tree Hugger, who watches the destruction of this Planet on a daily basis  I have come to the conclusion that there will be no future for our children and their children until individuals live lives of personal responsibility.

The policies that we have inherited of centuries of expansion of an Economic engine that thrives on more and more people, now wrapped around notions of compassion is completely doomed. This blind compassion will lead to massive death and destruction down the road. We are in the full blossom stage of the human population bloom without regard to consequences. The knee-jerk, America First, nationalism is at least a modest form of waking up to a nightmarish future that the 'Liberal' state of civilization seems to offer. If those who call themselves Liberals could remember some basics, such as we are all one, then we might stop ripping the supposedly less educated people of America for standing up as best they can in the face of forces that seem out of control.

  Try to take an objective look at this world of information. I am speaking to all my friends, and everyone who reads this might be in that category, and I am speaking directly to the editors of the NY Times, who every day with their crack reporters attempt to wrestle that steering wheel of .. the control of truth … to work on behalf of restoring civilization into the hands of the likes of George Bush or Barack Obama. I out of my .. reckless, noble, foolish, ignorant call it what you will, attempt to understand the truth have joined sides with the deplorables and those of Brexit and every indigenous voice of aspiration and sovereignty that says let me be me. If you want a borderless planet then kiss Democracy good bye. Borders define communities, communities have a right to exist and have a right to and a duty to defend themselves from invasions. If someone wants to explain to me how a borderless planet will still respect communities through self government, please let's talk.

   The Planet is in the midst of an unprecedented transformation, I hold no faith in the 'Liberal'  democratic state nor much in the Trumpian rebellion but at least there is a rebellion and all I can hope with the Monkey Wrench he represents that President Trump represents an opportunity for America and the world to ask where are we going?

  

    Beyond that it is probably best to resume a sense of being in God's hands and good luck to us all.

     I can't provide a link to this story that is only 4 days old as the New York Times Search Engine despite typing the Front Page Headline as written or the first seven words of the article, does not find the story. Perhaps it is an issue of me not owning a digital subscription to the Times. I have been thinking of doing just that. Though this causes me to pause in paying out money and supporting the organization that for most of my adult life have used even more and more in the last few years I have to wade through the spin.

California 'The Golden State'

Calif. Just Got 90 New Laws In 4 Days: Here They Are

From housing to business to healthcare, the governor has had a busy work week.

1

By Renee Schiavone (Patch Staff) - Updated Sep 29, 2017 6:07 pm ET

29

It certainly has been a busy week for California's governor, who has signed nearly 100 bills into law in the last four days alone. On Friday, he capped off his most recent efforts with the high-profile signing of 15 new laws that are part of a legislative package aimed at increasing the state's housing supply and affordability.

"These new laws will help cut red tape and encourage more and affordable housing, including shelter for the growing number of homeless in California," Gov. Jerry Brown said while signing the package at Hunters View, an affordable housing project located in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco.

"This package has everything from A to Z – affordability to zoning," said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon. "It’s not a magic wand, but it is going to put a lot of drafting tools, backhoes, hammers, and door keys to work. I’m proud of how the Assembly helped shape this package and of the real results it will deliver for Californians."

Among the bills that were signed Friday, along with a brief synopsis from the governor's office, are:

• SB 2 (Atkins), the Building Homes and Jobs Act, establishes a permanent funding source for affordable housing through a $75 fee on real estate transaction documents. The fee is capped at $225 per transaction and exempts real estate sales. The fees would generate roughly $250 million a year, which would be split among state and local housing programs.
• SB 3 (Beall) authorizes $4 billion in general obligation bonds for affordable housing programs and a veteran’s home ownership program. SB 3 must be approved by voters next November.
• SB 35 (Wiener) streamlines the approval process for infill developments in local communities that have failed to meet their regional housing needs.
• SB 166 (Skinner) ensures that cities maintain an ongoing supply of housing construction sites for residents of various income levels.
• SB 167 (Skinner) increases the standard of proof required for a local government to justify a denial of low- and moderate-income housing development projects. (SB 167 is identical to AB 678.)
• SB 540 (Roth) streamlines the environmental review process for certain local affordable housing projects.
• AB 72 (Santiago/Chiu) strengthens the state's ability to enforce laws that require local governments to achieve housing goals.
• AB 73 (Chiu) gives local governments incentives to create housing on infill sites near public transportation.
• AB 571 (E. Garcia) makes it easier to develop farmworker housing by easing qualifications for the Farmworker Housing Tax Credit.
• AB 678 (Bocanegra) increases the standard of proof required for a local government to justify its denial of low- to moderate-income housing development projects. (AB 678 is identical to SB 167.)
• AB 879 (Grayson) authorizes a study of local fees charged to new residential developments that will also include a proposal to substantially reduce such fees.
• AB 1397 (Low) makes changes to the definition of land suitable for residential development to increase the number of sites where new multifamily housing can be built.
• AB 1505 (Bloom/Bradford/Chiu/Gloria) authorizes cities and counties to adopt an inclusionary ordinance for residential rental units in order to create affordable housing.
• AB 1515 (Daly) allows housing projects to be afforded the protections of the Housing Accountability Act if the project is consistent with local planning rules despite local opposition.
• AB 1521 (Bloom/Chiu) gives experienced housing organizations a first right of refusal to purchase affordable housing developments in order to keep the units affordable.

Since the legislative deadline of Sept. 15, Brown has been sifting through hundreds of proposed laws from lawmakers across the state. All of them need to be reviewed by Oct. 15, or they become law by default. Over the weekend, these 14 laws were signed — one of which included the naming of an official state dinosaur.

   A series of laws that rams through State power over local municipalities and the wishes of their citizens.

  I attempted to write a  clear cogent letter to the editor of the Sf Chronicle today. I haven't done this ever still... I got hamstrung by the 200 word cap on a letter.. here's what I had left after my too harsh editting left me unsatisfied and now I wait for tomorrow to have another go at it.
Despite the back-slapping and glad handing in Sacramento with signing the recent housing bills, the people of California are not served by this blind reaction to ‘the crisis’.
 California is becoming more and more unlivable not just because of the dramatic differential in those on board the new Corporate wave and those who would choose a career far from that – for instance one that serves communities. We are becoming unlivable through the shear numbers of newcomers that clog our highways and have transformed daily life in to a wretched slog. 
  That there is ‘a deficit of 2 million housing units and growing by 80,000 per year’ as stated in your editorial should point to an alarming truth. The damage is not just loss in quality of life, that damage is real, but the impending damage of a very living geologic California event striking on a regular basis requires all persons who claim leadership via Democratic elections to brace and prepare for that fact and represent the families and children whom live here now not the flood of potential newcomers. 
  Unlimited growth is the biological definition of cancer. While business leaders and housing advocates celebrate, democracy takes another hit, ‘we are past the point where we can treat individual cities as kingdoms unto themselves, whether they can decide whether or not they want to produce housing’. Megalopolis grows with no thought of for how long or whether it ever should decide to stop ‘growing’. Steamrolling California in the name of Humanity.  We need some new thinking on the world’s great Environmental Challenge …Us.

Once Again Here We Are..

 Let me introduce myself, I have been living in Marin County mostly San Anselmo since 1975 when I came out here at the young age of 23 from points NorthEast in the USA. Part of that longhaired music loving crowd that migrated to the Bay Area in those years.  .... OK enough about me.

Rainbows and Trump

  I would if I could …. pour the color Red, and the color Blue, and the color (?) White, or delegate and have some Leprechauns and Bush People (Bush people - as in the Dude from the movie the Gods Must be Crazy) do it for me, pour that stuff, sparkling as the Colors combine into one …. that white has some good properties -- now I see --- it's the Color Kittens, pouring it down from Heaven and these three would form Three Strands of beautiful chord fiber wrapping around each other through the 'ringed grooves of Time' (as some old White Poet named Tennyson once described existence)

  The Red and Blue form a two step, a do si do, a dance of sharp debate and repartee through the ages. No... my fellow Americans, it is only through your complete giving to your own Self Happiness will you make the World a better Place.. No… my fellow Americans, only through your Selfless Happiness in giving to everyone else will you make yourself Happy…. No, no. ...  only through more strong guidance and protection provided by Law and only then will Peace and Security exist, No! .. not at all, only through less Law and more absolute dependence on the Self Regulating inner spirit will we find Peace and Security… who is who? what is what? Where is the give and take … the dynamic balance… the harmonic resonance? Republican Democrat….

 Harmonic resonance? Never mind, dreaming. Lost. Long gone. Went that away. --------->  Give me a gun and a sturdy wall.

 Guns seem weak to me. Only someone who had no experience with that ' spirituality' stuff might feel the need but who am I to judge, with the nation armed to the teeth, I guess I better be on friendly terms with gun owners and non-gun owners… But the unarmed hostility of my colleagues dare I say friends. They are ready to thrash me, they will toss me out, they will take that Red White and Blue Rope and throw it over a Tree and say take that you scum, friend of fascists, this is War. I guess they will have to take that Red out of the Rope somehow.. ‘that Red is full of hate, that Red is against all things good, that Red is against our Noble Liberal souls…’ that seems to be the collective sentiment .. I don’t think that zeitgeist is going anywhere.. I am still thinking the next wave, a big one, is more like getting back to Music and not just the Power of Non-Violence --- but what is that Force? That spirit that dissolves Fear.

 Yes I said publicly 'I Like Trump.' I posted it in Big Type and put it on Facebook. I guess that was a pretty rash thing to do. I did watch the whole unfolding of the Presidential Race I did see and hear dark and disturbing words from candidate Trump. I have heard some dark and disturbing words from President Trump. There is no real need to feel much of any affection for the man.. it's just that the amount of slander, the relentless pummeling in the press, that is solely based on innuendo, fear, exaggeration, hysteria and yes, lies, is deeply disturbing. It's not simply the Press, the Press is the People and the flood of emotion that seems to be kept at fever pitch without diligent or responsible examination of facts is unbalancing America to a degree that outweighs Trumps heavy handed gifts to what he thinks is his Conservative base.

 Actually maybe the fever pitch is dying out.. As Hurricane Trump maybe has dumped most of the rain, and wobbles across America, leaning left, centrist and right. Making deals with Democrats. ‘All one or all Done’ says Dr. Bronner.

 I find inspiration from strange places, my sister Lynn up in Maine, reports that Dog Parks might be the salvation of the nation - she says a bunch of dog owners can’t help but laugh and enjoy themselves as their non-political pooches enjoy themselves with reckless abandon.

 As Bob Dylan sang , ‘If dogs run free, why can’t we?’

 But then again Dogs don’t run free in America any more unless you are living in deep country. Cheers to deep country, hang in there!

Let's Get It On!

So August 24, the eclipse has taken place and so far world disaster hasn't leapt forward yet, just that overall world disaster schlepping onward ….  or is it the world phenomenon of Love Wins and a multitude of effortless sweethearts overwhelm —  the brief surge of neo nazism… but let's be frank. Nazism Shmatzism this crap isn't going anywhere these young fools of America, are mostly lost American fools, not far removed from me …  Who's your Daddy? Remember that saying …. How long did it take you to separate yourself from your parents perspective of life? 

  I mean it. Can we all acknowledge that the inherited perspective of our parents is pretty powerful and some of us take a little longer than others in finding out that despite everything we hold near and dear that sometimes we must stretch our necks out there and say….  say what? …. say… maybe I'll look at the world with fresh eyes? 

  I love the defenders of America on the Right and the Left and even more so if they were the defenders of the Ecological Systems of North America or the Planet, but that is a distant dream as everyone wants  'everything now' and yes we are all caught up in our own compromises.  Do you really feel the need to always buy 'the upgrade'…. don't you ever want to just say take your s*** and shove it ... to the purveyors of the New. Isn't that a position that may not be either Left or Right.

  So if there was some ‘Alt Right Asshole’ gathering and then we would have the Alt Left Assholes.. we ain't gonna let them get away with 'Hate' .. those Fuckers Ill get my baseball bat and defend multiculturalism to the end… Beautiful. It's so good to finally have a world where we can just flat out go to War again. Let's kick Ass!! 

  Enough of that. i mean it come on people.. Dig this (as they used to say back in the 60's.. Dig this…) The number one enemy continues to be ourselves.. as Pogo eternally reminds us of. The young or even old fools can be redeemed, quit giving into self-righteous fear…. oh oh oh Fascism! Wake up Humans the crap that went down in the Obama administration was terrible .. go back to sleep. the Frog is waking up kicking …. Doubling the population in your lifetime seems inevitable but it is not pretty and you should wake up! from France to Sweden to Germany to America your local communities matter. The fabric of your communities matter. A world of incessant growth… of the Human Population is a disaster. A people who promote the incessant growth of the Human Population are blind, you might think Oh.. there is plenty of room look at all that space on the Great Plains… on behalf of Sitting Bull and the Bison and every person who has some love of Nature in America say no! 

  Let's rethink this. .  I think that within 3 generations we can pass the word across the Planet and the Children rewarded and loved for not bringing more Children into the world and we will be on our way to a Sustainable Planet with a People from every corner of the Globe who are the new Indigenous People and would not think about abandoning the homes of there ancestors for the promise of more wealth…  but are empowered to make there homes in Oaxaca, Ireland, Kenya or some remote Island in the South Pacific the greatest place on the Planet and the people of the US are with you a 100 Percent . .. and heck yes lets travel on 'Green Trails' ... and we are ready to flip the Corporate Greed and Control of the Planet around 100 Percent and 'Let's Get it On' as Someone Once Said!

Zombie ... Redux

   I'll try this chapter over again..

 
 On waking from a Zombie Nightmare-----

   A lid to a frying pan fell off a chair, a desk, a dresser… the clang reverberated through my ears/my mind as it hit the floor. It was about 2AM. I had been asleep up until just a minute before. The dull Clang matched my brainwaves ..somehow this Clong!, I guess the lid had landed on some piece of clothing or newspapering... as I lay pondering the dream, life, why did it seem so real…? the dream.. ? and then, as I lay in bed. Clong! I swear I hadn't moved or disturbed it.

  Awakened and chilled to the bones from a nightmare.. where I was the last man on Earth fighting like Hell, cajoling, begging, arguing, dream state, at  a beach after the waves had repeatedly swept through my cabin/tent and I was on the shore and people kept arriving at the beach and don't eat it… 'Don't eat that shit!' it was me trying to tell the People, they wouldn't listen they behaved like they were already zombies. They reached down and grabbed something it looked alive they ate… then there eyes glazed and they were gone. Don't do it! Don't I can't remember as the dream's images begin to evaporate. My fellow worker Eli --- I can depend on Eli.. reached for a bigger fish he grasped it in two hands it was actually small. I couldn't stop him. I looked around. I couldn't stop anyone. I wanted to turn away maybe if I could shoot the food first and reveal the the alien green crud it it is actually made of.. people would stop… people might join me… they might save themselves, it was hopeless.. the only one left was going to be me.. what good is me alone. Life was coming to an end.

  I lay in bed. I breathed through the intensity of the Fear that had swept my emotions in dream state, now awake, sort of…. Clong!

  I turned on a light. I paused for a moment to look at the lid on the floor. Why did the lid fall? Why did my dream happen? … at so near the same time. What If I am the Zombie what if everyone else knows the truth and I have convinced myself of an alien plot to turn the people towards a slavery ...... , that just might be the construct of a Free Mind… with too much imagination.

  At my chaotic desk i turn on my old Mac Book that I bought last year again trying to maintain some connectivity to humankind.. at least what is called connectivity. (what is called humankind) I have no internet connection in my cabin.

  First I picked up my acoustic guitar, my beat up Spanish style made in Mexico guitar who once before had survived a frying pan lid falling on it in this same 11x7 cabin. My woodshed. My Cave in the hills. My Mexican Guitar … Find some thing to play.. make up a song of 'Resistance' I thought… The guitar was out of tune… my tuners battery was almost gone.. The strings tightened up but.. 'Use your ears you lazy musician' I said and gradually tuned it, got it -- struck three chords DGA …

  But I wanted to grasp that dream and the Clang before it faded away and so opened up the MacBook and started typing.

  Meanwhile right next to me on the desk is the issue of Nation magazine, front page story 'Zombie Ideology' It was given to me by my landlord, he made some comment as he handed me the magazine… he thought I might be interested in 'Zombie Ideology'  I think I have had the article by my bedside for almost a week. Why have I dragged my feet reading it. 'Zombie Ideology'

  The article begins like this… 'The Global tide of Populism, right and left is sweeping neoliberal ideology inexorably into it's grave, and none too soon. The neoliberal agenda pushes globalized markets, the entrepreneurial individual, and states that use technocratic means to pave the way for maximum market efficiency.'

   I wish it would sweep it away.

   Earlier today i leaned over the wall and listened to friends in a band called 'Koolerator' on the patio at Peri's Bar. On the way home… (My ears are weakened by bad listening habits and getting old… Can't stand in front of a band's Amplifiers like I used too .. though Darren's Sunday show at the Paper Mill had me for a good long set..) 'I hear you have been banned from Fairfax?' a friend asks me. Not true just being me… haven't been banned yet.

  Try harder Guy keep speaking your inner thoughts in your inner guide to Liberty and see who wants to ban you.

  In the meantime ..... I am a zombie again today. Consciousness is everything.
Inner thoughts what inner thoughts? Where is the rhythm and joy?

Who is responsible?

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-charlottesville-witnesses-20170815-story.html


If you claim to be for understanding, harmony, the unity of races etc....
Isn't their a high bar you should set for yourself. There is an Alt Left -- though just passionate young idiots convinced that they serve the greater good, and probably inner fascists who just really want an excuse to beat, kill and otherwise destroy 'evil' as it exists in other humans.  Mirrors of the Opposition.

The lives of Martin Luther King and Ghandi is the standard of behaviour in confronting 'evil'.

Yes Trump could have more forcefully said Nazi's and White Supremacists are completely irrelevant
to this country that supposedly wants to be Great Again. Yes the counter demonstrators share responsibility.

.. your Reverences and Worships

August 10, 2017

So… your Reverences and Worships, it is a fine hour to be fast asleep and not quite so --- to feel an urge, a responsibility to tap tap on a keyboard telling a little story --- that will likely entertain no one..  but as an alternative to the notion of riding naked on my bicycle the mile and a half down to the Inkwell and jumping … or even chicken style… wading in, scared of every inch of wonderful cold Marin mountain water …. allright,l hill water then. hill water. To relieve this tension of existence.

 I am writing away….

 So believe it or not this night I got an early start to getting some sleep, because,  my tired brain said enough and I have to get up at 7 AM tomorrow .. However I do not remember if I slumbered or not because my flip phone is my alarm clock various buzzes kept going off .. in annoying fashion. Which is a good reminder to not send off texts in the evening unless you want people to respond at what seems to them a reasonable hour.

 So at 11:38 PM on August 9, I looked at the flip phone again… to see what day it was. About 5 minutes before I had opened up again my beautiful soft cover novel that is taking forever to read. 'Tristram Shandy' the first volumes published way way back in England sometime around 1760, I could feel that arggh!! --- tension building of brain activity (bzzzttt !)… Don't go anywhere yet. Here comes the story…

 This book, Tristram Shandy, is like an annoying but wonderful Ice Cream Cone … it never disappears … but here, read this…

  Chapter 17 Volume 5 page 306….  the chapter begins thusly…

~~~~ 'Twas nothing, ----- I did not lose two drops of blood by it ---- 'twas not worth calling in a surgeon, had he lived next door to us-----thousands suffer by choice what I did by accident,. Dr. Slop made ten times more of it than there was occasion: some men rise by the art of hanging great weights upon small wires, and I am this day (August the 10th 1761) paying part of the price of this man's imagination. ~~~~

 Zounds!! August 10…. What day is today? The author had placed that date in parenthesis August 10, 1761...

 

 You know this was the first time I recall the author, Laurence Sterne including any dates of any event in his very peculiar novel that I think almost rises to the level of Moses or Mahomet -- for at least a portion of the novel.

…. here at the desk, The Pen in an actual Inkwell is preferable to these damn computers as I look down and see that a sentence I just wrote has disappeared … but this is close to what I said a minute ago….  

  I rolled over and consulted my phone and found out it was August 9, 2017 but that was a couple of minutes ago  and now August 10 2017 has arrived… and getting damn late for me to think that anyone else has any interest in a silly coincidence. Exactly 256 years later! Hah! Make of that what you will and for sure Tristram's Dad would know it's significance.. for if you do some math you can plainly see that 4…. 4 ! ,  65 and 3/4 year old men have lived since that time. Yes 4 and Is it possible that I (65 and 3/4 of age give or take) that I and Tristram have experienced some strange coincidental convergence .. or that even if not I certainly am the 4th ..

 

     but the author continued...

    ~~ O 'twould provoke a stone, to see how things are carried on in this

world ~~~~

  The chambermaid had left no ********* under the bed: Cannot you contrive, Master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one hand, as she spoke, and helping me into the window seat with the other,----- cannot you manage, my dear for a single time to **** *** ** *** ******?

  I was 5 years old. ----- Susannah did not consider that nothing was well hung in our family, so slap came the sash like lightening upon us: Nothing is left,----- cried Susannah-----nothing is left----- for me, but to run to my country.-----

  My Uncle Toby's house was a much kinder sanctuary so Susannah

fled to it. ~~~~~

  

   It's now 2:12 AM should I continue --- knowing two trips to Santa Rosa must be completed up and back and up and back before I get to finally go to work a 5/3/4 hour shift at Safeway, Safeway, That Dickensian mass of Venality, Villainy and a Whole Lotta Love, truly, where I still work. A 5 3/4 hour shift means the good company can get by with giving you only one 10 minute break instead of the 2 equipped by law for a 6 hour shift.

  Let's jump forward and skip a few chapters to Chapter XXVI  … 26. The author is just finally getting around to the end of his digressions …

   ~~~~  Fifty thousand pannier loads of devlls----(not of Archbishop of Benevento's, ----- I mean of Rabelais's devils), with their tails chopped off by their rumps, could not have made so diabolical a scream of it as I did ---- when the accident befell me: it summoned up my mother instantly into the nursery, ----- so that Susannah had but just time to make her escape down the backstairs, as my mother came up the fore.~~~

 Jezus Christmas Guy!  Go to sleep! No circumcisions for you tonight.. Praise the Lord!

Zombies

    On waking from a Zombie Nightmare-----

   A lid to a frying pan fell off a chair, a desk, a dresser… the clang reverberated through my ears/my mind as it hit the floor. It was about 2AM. I had been asleep up until just a minute before. The dull Clang matched my brainwaves ..somehow this Clong!, I guess the lid had landed on some piece of clothing or newspapering... as I lay pondering the dream, life, why did it seem so real…? the dream.. ? and then, as I lay in bed. Clong! I swear I hadn't moved or disturbed it.

  Awakened and chilled to the bones from a nightmare.. where I was the last man on Earth fighting like Hell, cajoling, begging, arguing, dream state, at  a beach after the waves had repeatedly swept through my cabin/tent and I was on the shore and people kept arriving at the beach and don't eat it… 'Don't eat that shit!' it was me trying to tell the People, they wouldn't listen they behaved like they were already zombies. They reached down and grabbed something it looked alive they ate… then there eyes glazed and they were gone. Don't do it! Don't I can't remember as the dream's images begin to evaporate. My fellow worker Eli --- I can depend on Eli.. reached for a bigger fish he grasped it in two hands it was actually small. I couldn't stop him. I looked around. I couldn't stop anyone. I wanted to turn away maybe if I could shoot the food first and reveal the the alien green crud it it is actually made of.. people would stop… people might join me… they might save themselves, it was hopeless.. the only one left was going to be me.. what good is me alone. Life was coming to an end.

  I lay in bed. I breathed through the intensity of the Fear that had swept my emotions in dream state, now awake, sort of…. Clong!

  I turned on a light. I paused for a moment to look at the lid on the floor. Why did the lid fall? Why did my dream happen? … at so near the same time. What If I am the Zombie what if everyone else knows the truth and I have convinced myself of an alien plot to turn the people towards a slavery ...... , that just might be the construct of a Free Mind… with too much imagination.

  At my chaotic desk i turn on my old Mac Book that I bought last year again trying to maintain some connectivity to humankind.. at least what is called connectivity. (what is called humankind) I have no internet connection in my cabin.

  First I picked up my acoustic guitar, my beat up Spanish style made in Mexico guitar who once before had survived a frying pan lid falling on it in this same 11x7 cabin. My woodshed. My Cave in the hills. My Mexican Guitar … Find some thing to play.. make up a song of 'Resistance' I thought… The guitar was out of tune… my tuners battery was almost gone.. The strings tightened up but.. 'Use your ears you lazy musician' I said and gradually tuned it, got it -- struck three chords DGA …

  But I wanted to grasp that dream and the Clang before it faded away and so opened up the MacBook and started typing.

  Meanwhile right next to me on the desk is the issue of Nation magazine front page story 'Zombie Ideology' It was given to me by my landlord, he made some comment as he handed me the magazine… he thought I might be interested in 'Zombie Ideology'  I think I have had the article by my bedside for almost a week. Why have I dragged my feet reading it. 'Zombie Ideology'

  The article begins like this… 'The Global tide of Populism, right and left is sweeping neoliberal ideology inexorably into it's grave, and none too soon. The neoliberal agenda pushes globalized markets, the entrepreneurial individual, and states that use technocratic means to pave the way for maximum market efficiency.'

   I wish it would sweep it away.

   Earlier today i leaned over the wall and listened to friends in a band called 'Koolerator' on the patio at Peri's Bar. On the way home… (My ears are weakened by bad listening habits and getting old… Can't stand in front of a band's Amplifiers like I used too .. though Darren's Sunday show at the Paper Mill had me for a good long set..) 'I hear you have been banned from Fairfax?' a friend asks me. Not true just being me… haven't been banned yet.

  Try harder Guy keep speaking your inner thoughts in your inner guide to Liberty and see who wants to ban you.

  In the meantime the ardent …. the ardent… I pause ---  and wait for the right wave of ardency … the true wave right from the heart where truth follows without effort. Don't wait Guy. 

.. On Navigation

 Sometimes a feeling of certain inability ... a complete void of personal Power to build affect anything a frozen ... a desire to simply fold into the flow of Life and not raise my hand to volunteer for anything to sink or float  with the stream in abject ignorance ... Why? How is it that some people accomplish so much and others.. well forget others. Me.

 Dizzy with ideas but incapable of the discipline to forge something knowing the Tenacity and singular Fire of Purpose dedicated to one idea .. necessary. As the forces of Civilization tug at me and demand Participation in the simplest matters... (maintaining a car for instance, taxes, money, rent, insurance, responsibility, family..) I need a Secretary. Wah Wah! Your'e giving me a Wah Wah!

  George Harrison's delightful comment on existence.

  What is the G.. O..  D.. factor? How do I accept? How do I take my sword and give the proper
swing at the Whirld. World. Is that the answer? The old 'Do Be Do Be Do..' of existence. Burn up your worries and don't waste another moment of Life. Hah! Rise into the daily flow paddle along where I will.. no I want to paddle to another world.. tired of the lack of the Alternative.

  It's a Vision thing people. What's the Vision Guy? Sustainable world, beautiful world.. 'Only God
Can Lead his People Back unto the Earth again' From Hamilton Camp's Quicksilver classic 'Pride of Man'. His People. Shocking ignorant song, imagine writing a song using both the word God and then His in connection ... obviously a misguided piece of 60's lyric.

  How do we even begin to live in a world where we respect our Environment as long as the Population Blossom of Humanity is not even 'acknowledged' as a .. as a.. as a .. What? A problem.
A challenge. A manifestation of Collective Blindness.. a Necessary phase of the flow of Civilization
in reaching a greater sense of Consciousness.

 The Vision is this I say.. wandering down a Path unfolding in it's Freshness of birth .. Yes We Can!
Live in a world of Life. Celebrate and awaken to a healing sense of Responsibility.. yes even 'response ability.' Cynicism Hah! Who cares?! wrap yourself around it protect my soul from Failure my own and the World's let me say Bleah everything Sucks and Me most of All!
  Phony tough guy! Look at the Millions of beautiful babies all over the earth coming into Life, and the Millions of gray hairs pondering this same Life approaching the next birth .. is this what I have left for the new ones.

  Life is one beautiful event ... We are all connected is not some hokey idiocy of the 60's it's the starting point or the basis of any actual understanding of Life on Earth. Later. I have to go to work now.

http://news.antiwar.com/2017/07/28/rand-paul-blocks-dod-authorization-until-september/

From today's NY Times: Many Republicans say the administration should not take any steps that would harm consumers.

Asked if the president should stop making the payments to insurers, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said: “I don’t think anybody ought to do anything to hurt the American people. Obamacare is not working. It’s bad enough on its own. Until we can get the thing fixed, I think we have to try to maintain the status quo.”

  Me: We definitely need something new as more and more people are seeing we are screwed as long as the Medical Industrial Complex gets to preserve their
power. The actual real solution seems to me to be some kind of radical new sense of what Healthy means to an individual or a Civilization.

  It needs to start with a sense of personal sense of responsibility as to how we live our lives. Then transform that to our Communities, our 'zoom culture' of entitlement where someone else will come along to solve our problems. (Dammit! Why can't someone  'show me the way'  .. and I can relate ... just today thinking ... it is not easy Navigating through a lifetime but.. somehow we persevere or go with the flow or not..)

  I have this fantasy of a 'Service' like the Military. Only it's the Medical, it's the Health Service... ... ... hopefully we figure something out soon. Practical and Generous.


   

'There must be someway out of here..'

..... ... ' said the Joker to the Thief'
Bob Dylan won the nobel prize for Literature, a controversial decision, based on his lifetime of lyrics to his songs.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/apr/02/bob-dylan-finally-accepts-nobel-prize-in-literature-at-private-ceremony-in-Stockholm

'There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.'

Too much confusion, seems to get the mood, the theme, the reality. I am thinking this morning about what is needed for the Planet to find some Peace... To achieve a 'sustainable' groove... and I put the quotes around sustainable because someone might tell me that we are on a 'sustainable' path right now. Maybe I need a little more faith in Technology as it stretches out in leaps and bounds. The momentum of blindness.

Maybe.

I recall and maybe some day I will find the quote from Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World Revisited'
a 1957 look back on his work from the 1930's, the world of over-population, the world of a hidden war against hidden enemies... the gist of his point was that the Planet would invariably be faced with Totalitarianism AKA 'gradual reduction in Freedoms' as long as we had never ending Population Growth and with it it's removal of people from 'the Land'.

 As far as I can see from the Kindergarten kindness Law Creation of Progressives to the Harsh enforcements of law of Conservatives.. we get the same thing,  a world designed to so protect us all from the 'dangers of the unknown'. In the meantime the consolidation of the Planet's wealth, by the Corporate system goes on unabated.

 'Businessmen they drink my wine, plowman dig my Earth, none of them up and down the line know what it is worth.'

  What can we do? Try to live it, it seems. Live 'It' ? Does any of us have an Idea what it is worth? If the value of what we are losing is of such a magnitude, if we are invariably, undeniably, connected to the future we cannot even experience, by the acts of Love and having Children we are compelled, we are bound by duty of some kind that knows no actual authority but some Higher Calling ... 'Highest Duty' as Captain Sullenberger called it... To land the plane striving with all one's powers, knowing that the failure of the landing is our impending disaster to humanity. 'But who'll stop the Rain' but that is another song. The Nobel laureate's song continues...

  'No reason to get excited, the thief he kindly spoke.
  'There are many here among us who think that life is but a joke.'

  The actors in the play of consciousness as Dylan describes it, a joker and a thief. The Thief tells the Joker... reminds the Joker that he is part of the cynical world. How long have we been cynical? Perhaps an ongoing historical heritage, likely based on every day life through the ages, the rise and fall of Kingdoms, the cruel loss of lives the suffering, cynicism gives some protection from being 'taken' from giving oneself to some great cause only to watch it shimsham, flim flam it's way, fractally flow Yin to Yang and back again. Out of our grasps the slogans fade away.. What is built to Last?

  But you and I have been through that and that is not our fate,
  So let us not be talking falsely now the hour is getting late.'

  So here the Thief and the Joker, not the highest level of humanity are confronting the essential conditions of this Trap of our world. Calling on each other to not speak falsely, knowing or maybe ignorant of their own shortcomings, their own shaky ground from which to judge the world. Feeling an impending crisis... perhaps in some existential anxiety of awareness not unlike our own.

   We say goodbye to the Joker and the Thief in this little song written back 50 years ago, by the young but already aged (is that a way to describe the process) Bob Dylan...

   

Background[edit]

Following a motorcycle accident in July 1966, Dylan spent the next 18 months recuperating at his home in Woodstock and writing songs.^[3] According to Clinton Heylin, all the songs for John Wesley Harding were written and recorded during a six-week period at the end of 1967.^[4] With one child born in early 1966 and another in mid-1967, Dylan had settled into family life.

The third verse says goodbye to the Joker and the Thief... or does it?

 

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl
 


In the booklet accompanying his Biograph album, Dylan said: "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way... Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

 Interesting in the last verse it hadn't occurred to me that the two riders who were approaching might be the Joker and the Thief. What can they tell the Princes? Who knows.


 'Every step helps...' said a young man in a very beat up VW Bug a couple of days ago upon picking me up hitchhiking, me with a portable battery charger and extension cord out in Inverness. He was just getting me up a short distance down the road.



All Along the Watchtower

 

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
The wind began to howl


  

Lies

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/12/central-america-migrants-rape_n_5806972.html

KAINE: When Donald Trump says women should be punished or Mexicans are rapists and criminals ...

PENCE: I'm telling you ...

KAINE: ... or John McCain is not a hero, he is showing you who he is.

PENCE: Senator, you've whipped out that Mexican thing again. He — look ...

KAINE: Can you defend it?

PENCE: There are criminal aliens in this country, Tim, who have come into this country illegally who are perpetrating violence and taking American lives.

KAINE: You want to — you want to use a big broad brush against Mexicans on that?

PENCE: He also said many of them are good people. You keep leaving that out of your quote. And if you want me to go there, I'll go there.

Now, it is true that Trump's infamous declaration that Mexican undocumented immigrants are "rapists" and "criminals" was followed by an aside that included the words, "some of them are good people, I assume." But this has indeed been reported, widely. What Pence (and anyone else sold on the idea that Trump's comments have simply been misunderstood or taken out of contest) seems unable to grasp is that the act of declaring an entire group prone to illegal activity is about as close to a textbook example of bigotry and xenophobia as possible.

  Washington Post

The number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. grew from 3.5 million in 1990 to 11.2 million in 2012, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. That’s a 220 percent increase. During the same years, the violent crime rate in the U.S. declined by 47 percent, according to FBI data.

Now, let’s get back to Kaine. His campaign, as we’ve noted, cited 16 times  when Trump said "rapists" and other violent sorts are coming into the U.S. from Mexico. But Trump, in none of the quotes, made the charge that "all Mexicans are rapists," as Kaine said. There’s nothing that even approached such a contention.

Our ruling

Trump has roiled emotions with his debunked claims that the Mexican government is sending "rapists" and other violent criminals into the U.S. as unauthorized immigrants."

Kaine has embellished the controversy by saying Trump has said "all Mexicans are rapists." The Democrat doesn’t come close to proving his claim; all of the Trump quotes Kaine’s campaign sent us pertain to unauthorized immigrants crossing the Mexican border into the U.S.

No doubt, many Latinos have taken umbrage with what Trump actually has said. But Kaine put an insult into the mouth of Trump that never was uttered.

So we rate Kaine’s statement False.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/23/opinion/trumps-lies.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=MostViewed&version=Full&src=mv&WT.nav=MostViewed

OPINION

T r u m p ’ s   L i e s

Many Americans have become accustomed to President Trump’s lies. But as regular as they have become, the country should not allow itself to become numb to them. So we have catalogued nearly every outright lie he has told publicly since taking the oath of office.

By DAVID LEONHARDT and STUART A. THOMPSON JUNE 23, 2017

JUMP TO STORY BELOW

JAN. 21 “I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq.” (He was for an invasion before he was against it.)JAN. 21 “A reporter for Time magazine — and I have been on their cover 14 or 15 times. I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time magazine.” (Trump was on the cover 11 times and Nixon appeared 55 times.)JAN. 23 “Between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused me to lose the popular vote.” (There's no evidence of illegal voting.)JAN. 25 “Now, the audience was the biggest ever. But this crowd was massive. Look how far back it goes. This crowd was massive.”(Official aerial photos show Obama's 2009 inauguration was much more heavily attended.)JAN. 25 “Take a look at the Pew reports (which show voter fraud.)” (The report never mentioned voter fraud.)JAN. 25 “You had millions of people that now aren't insured anymore.” (The real number is less than 1 million, according to the Urban Institute.)JAN. 25 “So, look, when President Obama was there two weeks ago making a speech, very nice speech. Two people were shot and killed during his speech. You can't have that.” (There were no gun homicide victims in Chicago that day.)JAN. 26 “We've taken in tens of thousands of people. We know nothing about them. They can say they vet them. They didn't vet them. They have no papers. How can you vet somebody when you don't know anything about them and you have no papers? How do you vet them? You can't.” (Vetting lasts up to two years.)JAN. 26 “I cut off hundreds of millions of dollars off one particular plane, hundreds of millions of dollars in a short period of time. It wasn't like I spent, like, weeks, hours, less than hours, and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars. And the plane's going to be better.” (Most of the cuts were already planned.)JAN. 28 “The coverage about me in the @nytimes and the @washingtonpost has been so false and angry that the Times actually apologized to its dwindling subscribers and readers.” (It never apologized.)JAN. 29