Bush set fire to the country and now the GOP members of Congress seem to let that sucker burn.
All 178 Republican members of Congress voted against the stimulus bill of Obama.
The GOP is trying to repeat the play on Clinton in ‘92, where they cockblocked him on everything, then blamed him for the failure of the health care bill, and were rewarded with retaking control of Congress. This is just how these guys think. As in “Just ignore that our president started two wars and torched the economy. Don’t put those fires! In two years, we can blame Obama from amidst the rubble and smoke damage. Then we’ll gain a few seats in this arcane electoral body.”
Republicans are behaving as a ‘disloyal opposition.’ Wikipedia defines the root term this way: “Loyal opposition is the concept that one can be opposed to the actions of the government or ruling party without being opposed to the constitution of the political system.”
A loyal opposition is loyal to the country first, while still in opposition over ideological reasons. Country first, dogma second. A disloyal opposition seeks to undermine the ruling party with everything they’ve got, whether legal, illegal, moral or immoral.
Rush Limbaugh said he wants Obama to fail and the GOP is acting to make that so. The GOP so lacks vision that it takes marching orders from a cold-hearted sociopath turned mean and bitchy from ongoing opiate addiction. Someone with an opiate addiction once told me that a side-effect of the dope was a grumpy bitchiness snuck into his personality. I hear that bitchiness in Rush, and I wish his mean voice wasn’t polluting our national dialogue.
At the risk of aiding a disloyal opposition, the obvious direction for the redemption of the Republican Party is towards Ron Paul. Otherwise, the GOP will go the way of the Whigs. Which would be good for the planet and fun to watch.
But the stakes are high. The human species could wind up in Mad Max pretty quick here if we don’t play our cards right. Hopefully the GOP won’t burn us all out on the way down.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Letter to Obama on healing the planet and the economy
Dear President Obama and allies,
I write to offer some ideas for solving the environmental crisis while encouraging economic growth.
Executive summary
1. Scale up existing solutions.
2. Catch up to European laws first.
3. Create a national composting and recycling system.
4. Parlay the whole foods movement into an economic engine.
5. Get pioneering green innovation brought into the mainstream.
6. Encourage eating less meat.
7. Create a long-term human survival plan to encourage economic development.
1. “Scale up” existing solutions.
Solutions already exist. Now we need a massive ‘scaling up’ of existing technologies and practices. Every roof should have a solar hot water system. Every city should have a “Complete Streets” with bike lanes. And so on. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but rather, we need to mass produce the wheel that’s already working fine in small numbers. “Scaling Up” deserves to be an organizing theme in coming years.
2. Catch up to Europe first.
The EU is ahead on environmental issues and the US should start by copying them to catch up. While corporate America stalled, Europe raced ahead.
The US should adopt EU standards on toxic substances in products. For example, European kids are safer than American kids because their laws prevent phthalates in toys. In the last five years, the EU economy has flourished while adopting this strong eco-regulatory framework, according to Mark Shapiro, author of Exposed. We can start by making American products comply with European law so we have access to those markets. Easier still, we can require products to be labeled if they’d be banned in Belgium, as a new California law requires.
The city of Hague in the Netherlands has the best public transport in the world: street-level trams link to subways and trains, plus a bike system of bike lanes and bike racks. On the tram, they have little TV screens that announce each stop! As the green proverb says, “It’s not impossible if it already exists!” Let’s make our cities rebuild and flourish around a 21st century post-car transportation system. We can start by having one aspiring city install and model the Hague’s system as an engine for urban renewal.
3. Let’s create thorough national composting, recycling and E-waste program.
Our responsibility to future generations is to leave a planet that’s not a toxic swamp. Let us become conscious of our society’s digestion processes of our waste. We need national programs to deal with e-waste, recycling and compost. These programs are win-win for creating jobs, educating the public, creating a durable society, forging new technologies, and encouraging good design by manufacturers.
Cities should have composting facilities and curbside pick-up. This would create some industrial jobs creating the compost turning equipment. Lawn waste makes up 1/3 of trash, and so just composting it saves vast dollars and gives us the compost to use. The city of LA has done great work in this area with the help of Andy Lipkis, founder of Tree People.
Most importantly, composting teaches people about the recycling process inherent in matter. From old lettuce to compost pile and then the garden and back to lettuce. People think they can throw things “away”, but there is no “away” in a closed system like the test-tube of the Earth.
E-waste is an opportunity for economic development. We can build electronics so that we can easily reclaim the valuable metals for re-use. Currently, our E-waste is going to China to the planet’s most toxic work sites. People burn bonfires to melt the plastic off the wires, sending plumes of smoke into the sky and pollution into the rivers. This system will cause birth defects for generations around the world. The book High Tech Trash documents this problem in spooky detail.
Green jobs and a green economy ultimately mean creating products and jobs in harmony with Earth’s biological life-support systems. We need clean production processes and safe disposal for a product’s afterlife. We must “make a way out of no way” and create new methods for responding to our criminally disorganized trash system.
Humanity has yet to redesign around Rachel Carson’s central truth that the borders between things are permeable, and toxins in the environment enter the flesh, bioaccumulate and cause disease. One in 150 kids is autistic from toxins disrupting the brain’s delicate biochemistry. In 20 years, that ratio might be 1 in 5. We need to end “laissez-faire” environmental regulation too.
Global pollution is on track to bioaccumulate into “Global Toxicity.” Future generations may all be born with birth defects due to inescapable environmental toxins. Already mother’s milk around the world contains DDT traces.
Therefore, Green Jobs initiatives should focus on areas of municipal recycling and bioremediation. Our universities should invest all out in Biomimicry, Biodegradable Design, and Green Chemistry.
I recommend Professor William McDonough to head the Dept. of Design.
4. Build on the healthy food movement to create an economic boom that also solves root causes of the health care crisis.
During the Bush Dark Ages, many Americans took refuge from politics by retreating to make change in the private sphere of health choices. Many started ‘voting with their dollar’ for earth-friendly products and food. One of America’s most vital social movements surrounds healthy food.
The Obama Administration should amplify and invest in this whole foods movement. A vital web of people are ready to serve as a platform for a great national endeavor of healing the food supply.
Many food advocates support planting a “Climate Crisis Victory Garden” for the White House. Starting that garden would encourage all the right people.
Furthermore, our schools can serve healthy food. We can build school yard gardens. We can create a national network of farmer’ markets. We can insure poor people have access to fresh, clean food. We can make sure our hospitals serve healthy food. We can heal our food supply and that will help solve the health care crisis from the front end.
Next, we can get America’s industrial agriculture system to convert to ecological methods by ‘scaling up’ the best practices coming out of the organic farming movement. The Department of Ag spends 2% on organic Ag and 98 % on chemical Ag. We should flip those numbers. The Dept of Ag should create an Advisory Council headed by Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and Francis Moore Lappe. These are the names that need to be involved in healing American agriculture. These people have been throwing down the truth for decades.
We should assist US farmers in transitioning to organic methods. We should have organic farming development zones to create hubs of new green agribusiness.
5. Encourage into the mainstream green innovations and ecological ideas that have developed at society’s periphery.
America has a strong environmental movement that hasn’t gotten enough government support or cooperation. This entire movement has grown and thrived at the margins. Let’s create an onramp for ideas from the alienated progressive environmental movement. For example, Elliot Colemen is famous among organic growers for pioneering production of salad greens in unheated green houses in New England. This carbon-neutral technology should be massively scaled up.
For decades, many good people have been working steadily on environmental solutions. Remember, hairy post-hippies pioneered the Internet in California. One of America’s great strengths is a counterculture that has been steadily moving in the right direction for decades. Co-housing, organic farming, alternative medicine, vegetarian diets and less-consumptive lifestyles are all innovations from the progressive edge that now need to be scaled up for the mainstream.
Unfortunately, this movement has been largely opposed, discouraged, un-funded, harassed by government during this long Ice Age of Reagan. The Right wing has made cultural war on all things “60’s” for 40 years through various forms of prohibition. I think some Republicans oppose windmills because they don’t want that ethical vegetarian family member to win that long-running cultural argument.
So how does an aspiring to-be-green America access and upload all this waiting wisdom?
I recommend starting with organizing an idea-sharing project with the network surrounding the Bioneers Conference. This conference has been a real hub of dedicated, well-intentioned ecological thinking.
The Post Office can issues stamps of Rachel Carson, Helen and Scott Nearing, and J.I. Rodale to honor American pioneers of a sane relationship to the Earth.
We can install waterless toilets at the rest area’s along the highway system. Vermont Law School has toilets that should be replicated far and wide, with long drops and fans pushing the air downward. Let’s mainstream this ready-to-go technology.
America's indigenous First Peoples have ecological wisdom to offer and would be healed and uplifted in the process of being asked to share.
Humanity faces the challenge to integrate an surging population into the fragile life web of the Biosphere. Luckily, people have been working on it for years. Now let’s get the government to support, fund, and replicate the efforts of America’s grassroots environmental movement.
6. Encourage the reduction of eating meat.
Dealing with the Climate Crisis will require getting people to eat less meat. The crunched Climate Crisis numbers show that meat is a prime villain. While the gov’t can’t dictate private dietary choices, it can stop funding “perverse incentives” that encourage meat consumption. The gov’t should end subsidies for meat production on federal land, cut meat budgets to schools and prisons, make meat priced at true cost, and enforce safety standards in the meat industry. This would help decrease meat consumption and thus promote health and cut carbon emissions.
Make the prisons largely vegetarian. Studies show that vegetarian diets reduce prison violence, and meat production creates a lot of carbon. The motto could be “Can’t do rice & beans all the time, don’t do the crime.” A program could teach people in prison how to grow food and how to prepare healthy food. The link between diet and behavior problems in young people is well established. If America starts eating well, many other problems dissipate.
Additionally, we should raise stiff taxes on antibiotic use in factory farms to discourage the overuse that’s causes antibiotic resistance. Future generations need antibiotics to work.
7. Create long-term strategic plan for survival of the planet. Make this “design assignment” the inspiration and container for economic development.
We need to plot a trajectory towards a healthy human future. In some ways, the Economic Crisis comes at a good time. Better the economy collapsing now than the Biosphere collapsing in a decade or two. We have a real opportunity to start moving towards a 21st century civilization that won’t just eat all the resources and go off the rails in 20 years.
We can create comprehensive strategy for long-term human survival. We can make economic and strategy decisions within the constraints of good Earth stewardship. Our design assignment is the creation of a sustainable world civilization.
This is a tall order. We are very far from it now. But if we put our best minds on it, if we unleash human potential on the truest of true goals, we can surely do this.
Furthermore, economies flourish on continuity and long-term investment. When we get the parameters set for the next 300 years of human civilization, people will know where to invest. We can create a global renaissance of business, innovation, cooperation and prosperity. When humanity understands the design assignment, we will know how and what to build. When companies know what the environmental laws will be in 20 years, they will know where to invest their efforts. When industry knows there are taxes for creating toxic waste, they’ll reengineer the manufacturing process towards ‘green chemistry.’ Government can provide the vision and direction and the carrot and the stick for the new society’s design parameters.
Now is the time to create a vision and plan for the long-term survival of human civilization.
May humanity get it together and live happily ever after.
Theo Talcott grows certified organic food professionally, writes on environmental issues and studies green issues at the Bioneers Conference. He blogs at thinkingaboutsurvival.blogspot.com
I write to offer some ideas for solving the environmental crisis while encouraging economic growth.
Executive summary
1. Scale up existing solutions.
2. Catch up to European laws first.
3. Create a national composting and recycling system.
4. Parlay the whole foods movement into an economic engine.
5. Get pioneering green innovation brought into the mainstream.
6. Encourage eating less meat.
7. Create a long-term human survival plan to encourage economic development.
1. “Scale up” existing solutions.
Solutions already exist. Now we need a massive ‘scaling up’ of existing technologies and practices. Every roof should have a solar hot water system. Every city should have a “Complete Streets” with bike lanes. And so on. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel, but rather, we need to mass produce the wheel that’s already working fine in small numbers. “Scaling Up” deserves to be an organizing theme in coming years.
2. Catch up to Europe first.
The EU is ahead on environmental issues and the US should start by copying them to catch up. While corporate America stalled, Europe raced ahead.
The US should adopt EU standards on toxic substances in products. For example, European kids are safer than American kids because their laws prevent phthalates in toys. In the last five years, the EU economy has flourished while adopting this strong eco-regulatory framework, according to Mark Shapiro, author of Exposed. We can start by making American products comply with European law so we have access to those markets. Easier still, we can require products to be labeled if they’d be banned in Belgium, as a new California law requires.
The city of Hague in the Netherlands has the best public transport in the world: street-level trams link to subways and trains, plus a bike system of bike lanes and bike racks. On the tram, they have little TV screens that announce each stop! As the green proverb says, “It’s not impossible if it already exists!” Let’s make our cities rebuild and flourish around a 21st century post-car transportation system. We can start by having one aspiring city install and model the Hague’s system as an engine for urban renewal.
3. Let’s create thorough national composting, recycling and E-waste program.
Our responsibility to future generations is to leave a planet that’s not a toxic swamp. Let us become conscious of our society’s digestion processes of our waste. We need national programs to deal with e-waste, recycling and compost. These programs are win-win for creating jobs, educating the public, creating a durable society, forging new technologies, and encouraging good design by manufacturers.
Cities should have composting facilities and curbside pick-up. This would create some industrial jobs creating the compost turning equipment. Lawn waste makes up 1/3 of trash, and so just composting it saves vast dollars and gives us the compost to use. The city of LA has done great work in this area with the help of Andy Lipkis, founder of Tree People.
Most importantly, composting teaches people about the recycling process inherent in matter. From old lettuce to compost pile and then the garden and back to lettuce. People think they can throw things “away”, but there is no “away” in a closed system like the test-tube of the Earth.
E-waste is an opportunity for economic development. We can build electronics so that we can easily reclaim the valuable metals for re-use. Currently, our E-waste is going to China to the planet’s most toxic work sites. People burn bonfires to melt the plastic off the wires, sending plumes of smoke into the sky and pollution into the rivers. This system will cause birth defects for generations around the world. The book High Tech Trash documents this problem in spooky detail.
Green jobs and a green economy ultimately mean creating products and jobs in harmony with Earth’s biological life-support systems. We need clean production processes and safe disposal for a product’s afterlife. We must “make a way out of no way” and create new methods for responding to our criminally disorganized trash system.
Humanity has yet to redesign around Rachel Carson’s central truth that the borders between things are permeable, and toxins in the environment enter the flesh, bioaccumulate and cause disease. One in 150 kids is autistic from toxins disrupting the brain’s delicate biochemistry. In 20 years, that ratio might be 1 in 5. We need to end “laissez-faire” environmental regulation too.
Global pollution is on track to bioaccumulate into “Global Toxicity.” Future generations may all be born with birth defects due to inescapable environmental toxins. Already mother’s milk around the world contains DDT traces.
Therefore, Green Jobs initiatives should focus on areas of municipal recycling and bioremediation. Our universities should invest all out in Biomimicry, Biodegradable Design, and Green Chemistry.
I recommend Professor William McDonough to head the Dept. of Design.
4. Build on the healthy food movement to create an economic boom that also solves root causes of the health care crisis.
During the Bush Dark Ages, many Americans took refuge from politics by retreating to make change in the private sphere of health choices. Many started ‘voting with their dollar’ for earth-friendly products and food. One of America’s most vital social movements surrounds healthy food.
The Obama Administration should amplify and invest in this whole foods movement. A vital web of people are ready to serve as a platform for a great national endeavor of healing the food supply.
Many food advocates support planting a “Climate Crisis Victory Garden” for the White House. Starting that garden would encourage all the right people.
Furthermore, our schools can serve healthy food. We can build school yard gardens. We can create a national network of farmer’ markets. We can insure poor people have access to fresh, clean food. We can make sure our hospitals serve healthy food. We can heal our food supply and that will help solve the health care crisis from the front end.
Next, we can get America’s industrial agriculture system to convert to ecological methods by ‘scaling up’ the best practices coming out of the organic farming movement. The Department of Ag spends 2% on organic Ag and 98 % on chemical Ag. We should flip those numbers. The Dept of Ag should create an Advisory Council headed by Michael Pollan, Alice Waters and Francis Moore Lappe. These are the names that need to be involved in healing American agriculture. These people have been throwing down the truth for decades.
We should assist US farmers in transitioning to organic methods. We should have organic farming development zones to create hubs of new green agribusiness.
5. Encourage into the mainstream green innovations and ecological ideas that have developed at society’s periphery.
America has a strong environmental movement that hasn’t gotten enough government support or cooperation. This entire movement has grown and thrived at the margins. Let’s create an onramp for ideas from the alienated progressive environmental movement. For example, Elliot Colemen is famous among organic growers for pioneering production of salad greens in unheated green houses in New England. This carbon-neutral technology should be massively scaled up.
For decades, many good people have been working steadily on environmental solutions. Remember, hairy post-hippies pioneered the Internet in California. One of America’s great strengths is a counterculture that has been steadily moving in the right direction for decades. Co-housing, organic farming, alternative medicine, vegetarian diets and less-consumptive lifestyles are all innovations from the progressive edge that now need to be scaled up for the mainstream.
Unfortunately, this movement has been largely opposed, discouraged, un-funded, harassed by government during this long Ice Age of Reagan. The Right wing has made cultural war on all things “60’s” for 40 years through various forms of prohibition. I think some Republicans oppose windmills because they don’t want that ethical vegetarian family member to win that long-running cultural argument.
So how does an aspiring to-be-green America access and upload all this waiting wisdom?
I recommend starting with organizing an idea-sharing project with the network surrounding the Bioneers Conference. This conference has been a real hub of dedicated, well-intentioned ecological thinking.
The Post Office can issues stamps of Rachel Carson, Helen and Scott Nearing, and J.I. Rodale to honor American pioneers of a sane relationship to the Earth.
We can install waterless toilets at the rest area’s along the highway system. Vermont Law School has toilets that should be replicated far and wide, with long drops and fans pushing the air downward. Let’s mainstream this ready-to-go technology.
America's indigenous First Peoples have ecological wisdom to offer and would be healed and uplifted in the process of being asked to share.
Humanity faces the challenge to integrate an surging population into the fragile life web of the Biosphere. Luckily, people have been working on it for years. Now let’s get the government to support, fund, and replicate the efforts of America’s grassroots environmental movement.
6. Encourage the reduction of eating meat.
Dealing with the Climate Crisis will require getting people to eat less meat. The crunched Climate Crisis numbers show that meat is a prime villain. While the gov’t can’t dictate private dietary choices, it can stop funding “perverse incentives” that encourage meat consumption. The gov’t should end subsidies for meat production on federal land, cut meat budgets to schools and prisons, make meat priced at true cost, and enforce safety standards in the meat industry. This would help decrease meat consumption and thus promote health and cut carbon emissions.
Make the prisons largely vegetarian. Studies show that vegetarian diets reduce prison violence, and meat production creates a lot of carbon. The motto could be “Can’t do rice & beans all the time, don’t do the crime.” A program could teach people in prison how to grow food and how to prepare healthy food. The link between diet and behavior problems in young people is well established. If America starts eating well, many other problems dissipate.
Additionally, we should raise stiff taxes on antibiotic use in factory farms to discourage the overuse that’s causes antibiotic resistance. Future generations need antibiotics to work.
7. Create long-term strategic plan for survival of the planet. Make this “design assignment” the inspiration and container for economic development.
We need to plot a trajectory towards a healthy human future. In some ways, the Economic Crisis comes at a good time. Better the economy collapsing now than the Biosphere collapsing in a decade or two. We have a real opportunity to start moving towards a 21st century civilization that won’t just eat all the resources and go off the rails in 20 years.
We can create comprehensive strategy for long-term human survival. We can make economic and strategy decisions within the constraints of good Earth stewardship. Our design assignment is the creation of a sustainable world civilization.
This is a tall order. We are very far from it now. But if we put our best minds on it, if we unleash human potential on the truest of true goals, we can surely do this.
Furthermore, economies flourish on continuity and long-term investment. When we get the parameters set for the next 300 years of human civilization, people will know where to invest. We can create a global renaissance of business, innovation, cooperation and prosperity. When humanity understands the design assignment, we will know how and what to build. When companies know what the environmental laws will be in 20 years, they will know where to invest their efforts. When industry knows there are taxes for creating toxic waste, they’ll reengineer the manufacturing process towards ‘green chemistry.’ Government can provide the vision and direction and the carrot and the stick for the new society’s design parameters.
Now is the time to create a vision and plan for the long-term survival of human civilization.
May humanity get it together and live happily ever after.
Theo Talcott grows certified organic food professionally, writes on environmental issues and studies green issues at the Bioneers Conference. He blogs at thinkingaboutsurvival.blogspot.com
stop mailing dead people!
Dear Corporate America,
please stop mailing dead people.
I just got a direct mail for my beloved grandmother, who dropped her body 5 years ago, for Gevalia Kaffe, some fancy coffee mailorder thing. I did the ethical thing: I got the no-postage-necessary envelope, and filled out a little note and I'm sending it back to them, saying please take us off your mailing lists.
Think about how many trees it takes to mail dead people.
direct mail has gotta' go.
yours in the trees,
Theo
please stop mailing dead people.
I just got a direct mail for my beloved grandmother, who dropped her body 5 years ago, for Gevalia Kaffe, some fancy coffee mailorder thing. I did the ethical thing: I got the no-postage-necessary envelope, and filled out a little note and I'm sending it back to them, saying please take us off your mailing lists.
Think about how many trees it takes to mail dead people.
direct mail has gotta' go.
yours in the trees,
Theo
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Zeitgeist of Obama
"HAPPY OBAMA NEW YEAR!"
Try yelling that to friends and strangers, it feels good and true. We are transitioning to a new era. The Bush Dark Ages are over! Humanity pivots and races into the Obama Age of Light. Personally, I am gleeful and at regular intervals dancing around the room.
Zeitgeist is an useful German word that means roughly "the spirit of times" or "the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation." There is a lovely zeitgeist afoot right now. There is a national mood that's new. I've seen optimistic and idealistic pockets of Americans, but I've never seen gleeful, idealistic national unity as a pervasive pop phenomenon. In the collective emotional body of the nation, there is an exultation and healing and relief! There is a sweet joy and gratitude and hope. America is back, baby!
We are experiencing the literal spiritual Rebirth of America. Everything eternally good and true about America is being brought forward. America stands for some powerful ideas that humanity needs: national unity from ethnic and racial diversity, religious tolerance, progressive inclusion of all for equal rights, the Rule of Law, and a fair legal system to administer Justice. And when a person or country stands for Good ideas, we are aligned to that great moral force that guides the universe. And so America is being plugged into the Divine again.
Obama is also asking us to expand our sense of identity beyond our ego to a greater identity as Americans and as humanity. Transcending ego is essential mechanism of a mystical spiritual experience. That unidentified spirituality lurks beneath pundit commentary. I heard an CNN commentator striving to overcome embarrassment as she said the mood on the DC mall had a flavor of the 'Brotherhood of Man." Go with it, sister, because it's a relief to not have to live inside the tiny prison of the ego, and to be released from the narcissistic self-absorption of the ego. It is joyful to start caring about our larger identities, like the country and the planet and the Brotherhood of Man.
Something died in the America during the Bush years. I, like many, was embarrassed by America's Imperial wars. America was torturing and abandoning the Rule of Law. Democracy became Corprotocracy and Kleptocracy. America became aligned to historical forces that need to opposed. The Bush version of America is not an America I love, but that I loathe! I am against the America that sends a War-Machine to other countries to steal the oil that we shouldn't be burning anyway.
They say that "Patriotism is the last refuge for a scoundrel." The Bushites wrapped themselves in the flag and the name and the symbols of America, and then totally abandoned the deeper meaning and purpose of America. In doing so, they turned the American flag into a phony-baloney fascistic propaganda tool. America isn't great because we have a nice flag. It's great because Jefferson's Bill of Rights guaranteed so many human rights that our political arrangement is an evolutionary leap forward.
America is great because we have traditionally been aligned to a great forward march of history towards greater liberty, dignity, distributed justice, and freedom. Bush has taken us two steps back, but now Obama has realigned the nation's moral compass on that great march. For example, in the inaugural speech, Obama said that we won't sacrifice our sacred ideals for expediency. He has promised to close the gulag prison at Guantanamo Bay. This is Good America returning.
America died and been born again. On Election Night '08, Norman Lear had an epiphany on this subject and eventually created some art about it at www.bornagainamerican.org.
So if we are Born Again Americans, then now what?
Well, first of all, this country is a bit of fixer upper and needs work.
Luckily, Obama and friends seem to have pretty good bead on where to go.
So how do we become allies of Obama?
How do we become Good Americans in a time of a Good America?
I don't know, but I'm willing to learn.
May humanity learn to be cooperative, supportive allies in the effort to heal the planet.
Happy Obama New Year!
Try yelling that to friends and strangers, it feels good and true. We are transitioning to a new era. The Bush Dark Ages are over! Humanity pivots and races into the Obama Age of Light. Personally, I am gleeful and at regular intervals dancing around the room.
Zeitgeist is an useful German word that means roughly "the spirit of times" or "the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation." There is a lovely zeitgeist afoot right now. There is a national mood that's new. I've seen optimistic and idealistic pockets of Americans, but I've never seen gleeful, idealistic national unity as a pervasive pop phenomenon. In the collective emotional body of the nation, there is an exultation and healing and relief! There is a sweet joy and gratitude and hope. America is back, baby!
We are experiencing the literal spiritual Rebirth of America. Everything eternally good and true about America is being brought forward. America stands for some powerful ideas that humanity needs: national unity from ethnic and racial diversity, religious tolerance, progressive inclusion of all for equal rights, the Rule of Law, and a fair legal system to administer Justice. And when a person or country stands for Good ideas, we are aligned to that great moral force that guides the universe. And so America is being plugged into the Divine again.
Obama is also asking us to expand our sense of identity beyond our ego to a greater identity as Americans and as humanity. Transcending ego is essential mechanism of a mystical spiritual experience. That unidentified spirituality lurks beneath pundit commentary. I heard an CNN commentator striving to overcome embarrassment as she said the mood on the DC mall had a flavor of the 'Brotherhood of Man." Go with it, sister, because it's a relief to not have to live inside the tiny prison of the ego, and to be released from the narcissistic self-absorption of the ego. It is joyful to start caring about our larger identities, like the country and the planet and the Brotherhood of Man.
Something died in the America during the Bush years. I, like many, was embarrassed by America's Imperial wars. America was torturing and abandoning the Rule of Law. Democracy became Corprotocracy and Kleptocracy. America became aligned to historical forces that need to opposed. The Bush version of America is not an America I love, but that I loathe! I am against the America that sends a War-Machine to other countries to steal the oil that we shouldn't be burning anyway.
They say that "Patriotism is the last refuge for a scoundrel." The Bushites wrapped themselves in the flag and the name and the symbols of America, and then totally abandoned the deeper meaning and purpose of America. In doing so, they turned the American flag into a phony-baloney fascistic propaganda tool. America isn't great because we have a nice flag. It's great because Jefferson's Bill of Rights guaranteed so many human rights that our political arrangement is an evolutionary leap forward.
America is great because we have traditionally been aligned to a great forward march of history towards greater liberty, dignity, distributed justice, and freedom. Bush has taken us two steps back, but now Obama has realigned the nation's moral compass on that great march. For example, in the inaugural speech, Obama said that we won't sacrifice our sacred ideals for expediency. He has promised to close the gulag prison at Guantanamo Bay. This is Good America returning.
America died and been born again. On Election Night '08, Norman Lear had an epiphany on this subject and eventually created some art about it at www.bornagainamerican.org.
So if we are Born Again Americans, then now what?
Well, first of all, this country is a bit of fixer upper and needs work.
Luckily, Obama and friends seem to have pretty good bead on where to go.
So how do we become allies of Obama?
How do we become Good Americans in a time of a Good America?
I don't know, but I'm willing to learn.
May humanity learn to be cooperative, supportive allies in the effort to heal the planet.
Happy Obama New Year!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Befriending Bacteria: Kombutcha, Candita and the Bottom Floor of Creation
We should Befriend to the bottom floor of creation, the bacterial microherds. These are the support system of everything we do. Inside our stomach is a million billion trillion creepycrawly little monsters, I mean, hard working digestors. I admit it's a little spooky on first glance, and that explains our naive society's heavy reliance on antibacterial soaps and antibioitics.
I recommend the Synergy Cosmic Cranberry Kombutcha tea as a way to introduce your belly to a new friends in the microbiobial "probiotic' community.
When we keep a healthy microherd, we are impervious to the baddies. Anti-microbial soap clear cuts the probiotic communities on the skin and leaves an open territory that the body must replenish and thus creates opportunity for sickness. Antimicrobial soap is a criminal abuse of consumer ignorance.
Likewise, Candita is a noxious, difficult-to-beat yeast infection that comes when the body is made vulnerable after heavy anti-biotics.
Humanity's lesson for the 21st century: Learn to live within the BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS in which we are embedded.
I recommend the Synergy Cosmic Cranberry Kombutcha tea as a way to introduce your belly to a new friends in the microbiobial "probiotic' community.
When we keep a healthy microherd, we are impervious to the baddies. Anti-microbial soap clear cuts the probiotic communities on the skin and leaves an open territory that the body must replenish and thus creates opportunity for sickness. Antimicrobial soap is a criminal abuse of consumer ignorance.
Likewise, Candita is a noxious, difficult-to-beat yeast infection that comes when the body is made vulnerable after heavy anti-biotics.
Humanity's lesson for the 21st century: Learn to live within the BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS in which we are embedded.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Obama and the Truth and Rebirth of America
Today at my chuch they had Jack Healy talk, in honor of MLK day, an organizer who was with Dr. King back in '63. The church was packed and the vibe was high. There is something profound afoot in this country. A rebirth of what it means to be American. For years, the American flag has been polluted with torture and war and waterboarding. But something is happening, and we are returning to that shining dream inside the American Experiment.
Obama says in an article from our Findhorn friends who advocate for visionary leadership
click here to read the article
that when he's talking the truth he can feel a special power in that isn't there if he's just being glib or clever.
i mean, it's an incredibly inspiring moment in our nation, this rebirth of what is possible.
People are pretty jaded about politics because we've been raped by savage heathens using all the sacred language to tie us in knots. And here comes Obama cutting through the clouds of illusion with spiritual clarity because he can actually talk about truth things and true issues without getting caught in a cloud of phoney language and posturing. That's was Obama's secret power in the primaries. All the other candidates felt compelled to speak in the gobbledeegook of triangulated posturing.
In the Hindu tradition, they talk about Satyagraha, or Truth Force, or Firmness in Truth. Gandhi named his movement after this and it explains alot about Obama's success.
Obama says in an article from our Findhorn friends who advocate for visionary leadership
click here to read the article
that when he's talking the truth he can feel a special power in that isn't there if he's just being glib or clever.
i mean, it's an incredibly inspiring moment in our nation, this rebirth of what is possible.
People are pretty jaded about politics because we've been raped by savage heathens using all the sacred language to tie us in knots. And here comes Obama cutting through the clouds of illusion with spiritual clarity because he can actually talk about truth things and true issues without getting caught in a cloud of phoney language and posturing. That's was Obama's secret power in the primaries. All the other candidates felt compelled to speak in the gobbledeegook of triangulated posturing.
In the Hindu tradition, they talk about Satyagraha, or Truth Force, or Firmness in Truth. Gandhi named his movement after this and it explains alot about Obama's success.
Friday, January 16, 2009
a picture of solar system
Here's a picture of the solar system on our house. These 80 evacuated tubes gather solar energy as heat, warming these wavey blue-ish sheets of metal that transfer the heat into proplyn glycal (or anti-freeze, like in your car's radiator), which circulates into the basement where it transfers the heat to a 500 gallon water tank. From here, the heat is then distributed to radiant floor heating. Awesomely warm feet in the winter, and free energy from the sun, though not free to put in the system, but with an expected 10 year payback in saved money on oil bills.
It's very exciting that the Obama administration is keen to help people hook up their homes on an environmental level.
A little insulation goes a long way.
I'm reading a book called "The Hot Topic" on the Climate Crisis and it says that investing in insulation and energy efficiency is by far the most cost effective way to cut carbon. So let's do it! Go Green America!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The Comedy of the Madoff Economy
The unfolding story of Bernie Madoff has been fun to watch.
Bernie Madoff is, of course, the Wall Street titan busted for running a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. It is fabulously ironic that Bernie Made-off made off with so much investor money. The Universe secretly runs on meaning, and people symbolically represent their true nature without even intending it. Assistant Treasury Secretary is Neel Kashkeri, as in Cash-carry. And Kashkeri certainly has carried out a ton of cash out of the Treasury to get snorted by his Wall Street pals.
It is sad/funny that Bernie Madoff is under house arrest, living large in his mansion still. How many poor black people are in jail for being poor? Ahh, but Bernie isn’t the class of citizen we use to fuel the great slave-machine of the Prison Industrial Complex. It reminds me of the proverb “They only hang the little thieves.”
So it was pleasant to see Bernie busted again for trying to mail $1 million in jewelry to relatives. Prosecutors want him to go to actual jail now, as this jewelry mailing violates his bail conditions. I wonder how they caught his wife at the post office? Was the box suspiciously heavy and jangling?
It is funny how Madoff perfectly symbolically represents the American economy. The US economy is running a giant Ponzi scheme. We have an $800 billion trade deficit annually. We keep borrowing, China keeps buying our bonds, we buy the cheap toxic crap. So, I guess the lesson here is: it’s only a Ponzi scheme if it’s small enough or after it goes belly up.
Another amusing story was the people sneaking into Madoff’s mansion and stealing a 5 foot bronze statue of Madoff! (I mean, it’s funny enough that Madoff has a statue of himself!) The statue was returned later with a note that said “Your days of plenty are numbered.” The note was signed ”the Edukators.” A German movie seems to have been the inspiration for this movie. (And the award for the guerilla marketing for film goes to....”)
It has been a pleasure to see Wall Street taken down a notch. These slick fellows with their suits have been racing an economic engine that’s consuming the world. Big Business has dismissively stonewalled on environmental regulation. Climate Change is breaking the sky and Wall Street blocks solutions. The thinking of paper pusher billionaires is sociopathically dissociative and cold-hearted and alienated from the Earth and the ecosystems that support biological life. It’s good that Wall Street’s blind confidence gets shaken now before we have full-on biosphere collapse in a few years.
Finally, it is joyful to see karma ripening for “The Masters of the Universe.” Wall Street has been dominating the world and the national dialogue for decades. Deal with the Climate Crisis? Nope, not economically feasible. Cutting down the Amazon rain forest? Nope, need the land for McDonald’s hamburgers. A terrible, foolish greedy mentality has run the world for too long. Robert Bly writes about “the greedy soul”, and how humanity is always struggling with an avaricious part of ourselves. The Muslims call these bundles of desires our 'nafs', and we purify them through effort and struggle to be good and generous.
Bernie Madoff suffers from a greedy soul. I feel a little sorry for him because he looks like a nice enough guy who won at the wrong game. He is just like thousands of other soft-handed, educated but amoral Wall Street money movers who have partied like rock stars on other people’s money for decades. And it’s satisfying to see them get what they deserve...
handcuffs.
Bernie Madoff is, of course, the Wall Street titan busted for running a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme. It is fabulously ironic that Bernie Made-off made off with so much investor money. The Universe secretly runs on meaning, and people symbolically represent their true nature without even intending it. Assistant Treasury Secretary is Neel Kashkeri, as in Cash-carry. And Kashkeri certainly has carried out a ton of cash out of the Treasury to get snorted by his Wall Street pals.
It is sad/funny that Bernie Madoff is under house arrest, living large in his mansion still. How many poor black people are in jail for being poor? Ahh, but Bernie isn’t the class of citizen we use to fuel the great slave-machine of the Prison Industrial Complex. It reminds me of the proverb “They only hang the little thieves.”
So it was pleasant to see Bernie busted again for trying to mail $1 million in jewelry to relatives. Prosecutors want him to go to actual jail now, as this jewelry mailing violates his bail conditions. I wonder how they caught his wife at the post office? Was the box suspiciously heavy and jangling?
It is funny how Madoff perfectly symbolically represents the American economy. The US economy is running a giant Ponzi scheme. We have an $800 billion trade deficit annually. We keep borrowing, China keeps buying our bonds, we buy the cheap toxic crap. So, I guess the lesson here is: it’s only a Ponzi scheme if it’s small enough or after it goes belly up.
Another amusing story was the people sneaking into Madoff’s mansion and stealing a 5 foot bronze statue of Madoff! (I mean, it’s funny enough that Madoff has a statue of himself!) The statue was returned later with a note that said “Your days of plenty are numbered.” The note was signed ”the Edukators.” A German movie seems to have been the inspiration for this movie. (And the award for the guerilla marketing for film goes to....”)
It has been a pleasure to see Wall Street taken down a notch. These slick fellows with their suits have been racing an economic engine that’s consuming the world. Big Business has dismissively stonewalled on environmental regulation. Climate Change is breaking the sky and Wall Street blocks solutions. The thinking of paper pusher billionaires is sociopathically dissociative and cold-hearted and alienated from the Earth and the ecosystems that support biological life. It’s good that Wall Street’s blind confidence gets shaken now before we have full-on biosphere collapse in a few years.
Finally, it is joyful to see karma ripening for “The Masters of the Universe.” Wall Street has been dominating the world and the national dialogue for decades. Deal with the Climate Crisis? Nope, not economically feasible. Cutting down the Amazon rain forest? Nope, need the land for McDonald’s hamburgers. A terrible, foolish greedy mentality has run the world for too long. Robert Bly writes about “the greedy soul”, and how humanity is always struggling with an avaricious part of ourselves. The Muslims call these bundles of desires our 'nafs', and we purify them through effort and struggle to be good and generous.
Bernie Madoff suffers from a greedy soul. I feel a little sorry for him because he looks like a nice enough guy who won at the wrong game. He is just like thousands of other soft-handed, educated but amoral Wall Street money movers who have partied like rock stars on other people’s money for decades. And it’s satisfying to see them get what they deserve...
handcuffs.
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