To no one specifically:

I found this article that I thought was really something.
There is a saying I like to ponder on occasion:

Any system that takes responsibility from the people dehumanizes them. Dr. Robert Anthony from THINK.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/the-limits-of-control/?ref=opinion&apage=1

June 15, 2009, 9:36 PM
The Limits of Control
By LEONARD MLODINOW

(I like this guy!: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~len/)

Metaphysically speaking, you will indeed be with him again on the other side, while he reflects himself to be in the prime of his life, as will you. Just keep the love for him alive.

I got a dog in Sept. He is the first dog I have had since I left the farm. Oh my gods he rocks. Had no idea that one could have a love so fine-tuned as the love for a dog.

I have a cat too. She is around the age of my son. She was the runt of the little and is slight and small.

I pretty much feel about you as I always have. My regard for you wasn’t conditioned upon my believing you perfect nor upon never disagreeing with you.

These are rather trying times for us. We’re used to ranting about the things and people we disagree with — only now — many of those people are people we thought/think of as “friends” (to various degrees).

Just goes to show you the enormous task involved in trying to build a big enough political coalition to make big changes. We lack the skill to hold on to the “friends” we have — yet — at times we think what we do is somehow likely to help expand our particular political movement.

I really only hoped you might reconsider some of your remarks — I certainly wasn’t aiming for making you feel anything negative.

I thought everyone was being especially civil, lately, so no apology necessary, but accepted if you wish.

“I love that you have ten cats.”

We’re down to 7, and that’s one of the reasons I’m in a shitty mood, today. The next time I’ll be home, next weekend, we’ll be down to 6. I said “good bye, I’ll see you over the rainbow bridge” to Thomas, today. He’s 16 years old, “the first cat I ever really loved”(TM), can barely walk and is barely eating. That’s bad enough, but I have to dump the responsibility for taking him to the vet on my wife, because I’m not home enough any more. Which I ALSO feel shitty about.

And I love that you have ten cats.

And I want to apologize for being so acidic. No one on this board has precipitated my acidic nature. I am agitated by hormones flux, an 11 year old son and his bragging on how many KILLS he gets on his X-box games. His X-Box activities are totally against everything that I AM and everything I think.

Like you, I am tired and drawn, sick at heart, at myself, at my son, and at the world, discouraged by the trends I see this world taking.

So I created a mantra and it seems to be working. I see results ever since I started doing it.
“The price of gas will fall to $2 per gallon by June 2012″
It really is working in this neck of the woods, where the price has already fallen 20 cents since I started the mantra.
So I added to it: “…will fall to $2 per gallon by June 2012 and will remain there until Oct. 2012.”
Today, I added a new part to it: “The price of gas will never again exceed $4 per gallon.”

BTW, I think oil is abiotic.

I believe I CAN change the world.

I remember talking to my wife about it as our house hit it’s peak value. I had been at my job for less than 5 years, so I wasn’t vested, yet. We felt trapped, knowing that we could sell at the peak, but would have to stay in the area for another couple of years and had (at the time) 10 cats to worry about. We decided to keep the house, and thankfully we aren’t underwater.

That experience has me wondering what to do. I’m miserable, these days. My job isn’t what was promised, by a long shot. As it was sold to me, I’d be moving home in about 9 months, but in reality I’m looking at at least 2 more years of paying rent in one town while paying a mortgage in another. And, I’ve started to wonder if I can even do the job. It’s incredibly hard, and it’s not just me saying that. Virtually everyone I work with agrees, including my boss. And here’s perhaps the most ironic part; I’m waiting to see how the SCOTUS rules on Obamacare before I can make any decisions on my own. I’d quit tomorrow and figure out what to do, next, but I’m 55 years old, wouldn’t have health insurance, and the job market isn’t going to get better. High paying jobs with benefits are literally a thing of the past.

So anyone that tells me that “the Supreme Court doesn’t matter”, IMO, is a fucking idiot hasn’t heard how the SCOTUS DIRECTLY affects my life, right now, in real time.

Thanks to 30 years of Reaganomics, the job prospects for someone my age suck in the extreme. (Not to say they’re good for others, like young adults graduating from college.) Another person my age who was laid off the day I was, and was at roughly my level, is still unemployed over 2 years later. (And there’s been another round of layoffs, since. BOTH of the supervisors I reported to are now gone.)

With the backing of the extremely wealthy, the GOP has been going after people like me for 30+ years, and they’re succeeding. (Again, I’m not limiting that to just my age group, or even Americans. The “conservatives” have been destroying the middle class in Europe, as well.) We’re in an extremely bleak time, worldwide. It’s hard to find anything to look forward to, any more. And instead of looking for leaders who will change that, nearly 50% of Americans think that Romneybot, the vulture capitalist, might be a better POTUS than Obama?

It’s really stunning how the marketing of “we can all be wealthy if we just give more money to rich people” has paid off for the greedy bastards who funded it. To take such an absurd concept and convince half of America it’s true is mind-boggling. This Presidential election shouldn’t even be close. The elections for the House and Senate shouldn’t be close. Liberals should be taking over our Federal government by large margins. Yet, we keep going back to the same old tired policies that are killing most of us.

I can see why people just give up.

I love irony — and I suspect that individual efforts to enlighten what we see as the ignorant might always contain lots of it.

When we were posting at Yahoo, I was involved in several discussions about the housing bubble. Lay people were talking about it — as were pundits. I know there were others — but on the old Soars board — the poster Cowens frequently talked about housing — too. She was in the business and talked about her and husband trying hard to avoid what she saw as dangerous trends in the industry. I didn’t think it took any genius or extra research to see that widely available news items were pointing to housing bubble that was heading toward a horrible crash. It looked like a no-brainer to me.

Everything anybody else tells us reflects what they see — even when they believe themselves to be speaking nothing but truth. The lies you speak of could easily be the truth as they see it — as I’m sure your recollection that nobody was talking about the housing bubble several years before it crashed was the truth as you see/saw it.

I haven’t given up wishing that more of us stuck to arguing points rather than trying to convince other people that we’re smart and they’re stupid and they need to listen to us. In a sense — that’s what even the most disreputable “news” sources out there are trying to do.

You cannot blame a person for take the time, time that maybe you did not take, to go out there and gather their own intelligence about the world and what is happening within it.

And rationality is NOT the only legitimate and valid way to assess the world. In fact, I think the true world view is limited by rationality.

http://www.nti.org/gsn/
http://www.epi.org/
http://www.cepr.net/

And some of you don’t want to think that your government will lie to you. Strange little illusion to hang on to, I think. But Tim, I gave you all the information you needed to know that there was a housing bubble at least three years before it popped. I found the info. But no one but CEPR was talking about it. Why do you suppose that was? No Democrat in Congress talked about it. No Republican in Congress talked about it. But you were presented with that info years before the bubble popped.

Sometimes, the truth-telling isn’t mainstream.

Aretha is singing to me. I am empowered while I type this.

*Ike (who is to say that Romney will not be another Ike?!)
*Clinton (I sure did like the guy, and a blow job is NOT sex, as considered by one who gave a lot of blow jobs, for it never felt like sex to me.)
*Carter
*Reagan (an emotional issue since sis worked for him)
*Nixon

I grew up with a mother that hated Kennedy. So I really have no idea what he did or didn’t do that was good or bad. But I really do like what I am finding out about him. He took on the CIA and THAT can only be good, good, good.
The CIA needs to be shut completely down. It is hard to believe that there is anyone in it that is not crooked in some way or another, including the bro-in-law who gave my sister the disease that killed her (HPV).

And the bottom ones
< Fourth from worst – Ford (things are very, very seldom as they seem)
< Third from worst – Johnson
< Second from worst -George HW Bush
< First from worst – Obama (Proof that things are very, very seldom as they seem.)
< Worst – GW Bush