'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

'Sparkin' a Joint'

Well it's 1:12 in the afternoon at the San Anselmo Library. In fact I have not 'sparked a joint' or joined in such activity -- though that friendly expression was relayed to me as to why there was no one at the counter at the local Coffee Shop immediately to serve me my usual, coffee, small with plenty of room for milk ... but --- well I'll not get into any more description of the circumstances -- though any business that is delayed by such circumstances gets my vote as a rare and wonderful business establishment.

  'Sparkin' a joint' I imagined .. I pondered the 'Placebo Effect' I welcomed a grace of consciousness
that might dissolve my brain's cotton and replace it with the deep Yeah effect. I looked up at some Redwoods through my cool polarized sunglasses and said Yeah... I wandered to the edge of some Blackberry Patches. The season has been very generous.. I have never seen so many big ripe and ready Blackberries waiting along the roads.

  'Sparkin' a Joint' I read about our County Marin County USA suing the energy companies.

http://www.marinij.com/environment-and-nature/20170717/marin-sues-energy-companies-over-climate-risks


The Marin lawsuit, filed in Marin County Superior Court, alleges that “major corporate members of the fossil fuel industry, have known for nearly a half century that unrestricted production and use of their fossil fuel products create greenhouse gas pollution that warms the planet and changes our climate.”
The suit goes on to say that even though the fossil fuel companies knew there was a narrow window to take action before consequences would be irreversible, they engaged in a “coordinated, multi-front effort” to “discredit the growing body of publicly available scientific evidence and persistently create doubt.”

  Whatever. Don't ask me I'm a Luddite... troglodyte, 'Almost Amish' wannabe. This action seems to me to be a classic Marin County type of action....and no doubt it serves some greater purpose. I am an optimist which is pretty stupid I admit.

    
No we won't have any of that talk around here. That kind of crazy enlightenment is long out of  fashion. Walt Kelly from his great comic strip from days gone by 'Pogo' actually a cartoon he did for Earth Day 1971.
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1882361

  Whatever you do don't ask some little kid from Marin County what your plans are for the Summer. Certainly you can and there is nothing wrong with the question or a modern childs answer. WE are going to Paris and then Montana.. Maybe throw in the French Class's week visit to Tahiti. Wow!
Flying to Peru to help build homes for Poor people. Flying to Iceland .. Cheap Tickets!! I can't handle asking.

  Jet Fuel number one.. no I don't worry about Chem Trails.

  Nope those Corporate Bastards have known about this for years. We however never seem to learn.

  My instincts back in the 1970's to salute some little old lady in her front yard Rose Garden in San Anselmo. You are the world's coolest Environmentalist. Keeping it local tending her garden.

  My friend Craig Slater wrote an Op Ed piece for the Marin IJ.. The Impeach Trump movement...
http://www.marinij.com/opinion/20170717/marin-voice-we-the-people-will-remove-trumps-regressive-regime

 If there is the transgression of constitutional law then he should be impeached. I haven't seen that 'smoking gun' yet.

  In fact after a 'Tweet' from last week that seemed particularly wretched I suggested to  a friend that President Trump should just resign. My friend answered you think that is bad, The Tweets he likes it's all the other stuff that would be what might upset somebody.

  Meantime I heard some interesting music Sunday at the Paper Mill Creek Saloon... actually it was more than interesting.. interesting that's a pretty weak endorsement of Kevin Meade's 'Highway One Band' ... good Rockin'!
One of the few local talents that I really want to listen to his lyrics. Not sure I got it all and look forward to a CD where I can really hear in the meantime.

  People in California can talk about 'Flyover States' and if it makes you feel good to not understand
where people are coming from, but if it makes you feel good knowing that Us are good and They is bad welcome to Planet Earth, no wonder we are where we are at.  Anyways I am Sparkin' a Joint sooner or later --- don't know what the results will be.. usually music involved.. Placebo's is just another word for Fool wakes up to Reality.

 



    

The Trump thing via Willie Brown

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/williesworld/article/A-second-Trump-is-in-over-his-head-11290598.php

  ..and so it goes..