Useful Idiots

I'm not sure what to make of this.


Yuri Bezmenov
Uploaded by onmyway02

An Essene

A quote from one Alex Bowles expressing a point of view that says it well:

For me, the change we need isn’t about swings from left to right. It’s about moving from the darkness below to the light above. My hope is that we start to worry less about ideology, which has provided cover for all sorts of nefarious agendas, and, instead, start worrying about corruption as such. Until we start naming it directly - and punishing it accordingly - we’ll continue to sink.

Until we get our values right, the ideology doesn't matter, but my experience is that we pick our ideology in accordance with what we value, and then it is easy to tell the light from the dark, the Essene from the Sadducee and Pharisee. I value truth and as Gandhi said, the only way to know truth is through non-violence. As long as we lust for dominion, we violate truth.

Without truth, only darkness has dominion.

Anoushka Shankar

Here is a video for you that is simply breath taking, or breath giving. The artist is Anoushka Shankar, daughter of Ravi Shankar, demonstrating a mastery of sitar that few can claim and even fewer women have demonstrated. This is stunning and will give your day a wonderful respite from the rage and demonizing out there. Turn off the TV, avoid the political blogs, delete those emails your friends and family are sending you full of vitriol, and enjoy the serenity of her playing and marvelous spirit.

Feeding the Fire: Part 3

Since there are some things being said that are false on their face:

1. I am a Democrat. I've been a registered Democrat since 1972. I'm not supporting Obama because I don't trust him and my encounters with his supporters prove to me they are neither credible nor honorable. The thuggery is too evident to ignore and means do matter.

2. Sarah Palin is a fine woman. That seems to bother people who can't find anything else to disparage her for. I suspect the Hollywood crowd would like it much better if she didn't have a husband and a good family. Their therapists can't make money off normal people.

3. I notice that when the left gets angry, they go immediately to the topic of sex. I realize they are mammals, but they are also a bit addicted to that subject in their rants, their critiques and their politics. Sex is good but so is housekeeping. It tidies up the spirit. Angry sex is the mean street of power. Don't go there.

4. No matter who is elected, raising taxes is a bad idea right now. Only a fool fights in a burning house. I've never said anything about Obama's comments on "spreading the wealth around". I don't think it necessary and I'd like to get some of that too. I don't mind doing it the way I always have: work. The economy can't be 'fixed' particularly with more stimulus packages. We have to restore manufacturing and adjust costs. Anyone who tells you the situation is more complicated than a checkbook is part of the problem. It's like weight loss; eat less, do more. The rest just works.

5. The politics of rage depend on getting everyone riled up through frustration. The more calm one tries to be, the more they "get in your face" as Obama told them to do. Leave their signs alone. Ignore their insults. There will be plenty of time for bonfires after the election and lots of leftover tinder. Obama will win if the polls are right. Then we'll see what he's made of. May having be as good as wanting.

6. If Peter Paul and Mary and the Kingston Trio hadn't covered Bobby Zimmerman's songs, he'd be teaching English in a junior college in upstate New Jersey. For my tastes, he is like Hank Williams: I like his songs when other people do them. He had a heckuva good band years ago. They went out on a high note and haven't done anything since. Some people know when to get off stage.

Now is a good time to meditate on shunyata. It calms the spirit and reveals the true nature of reality. Peace.

Feeding the Fire: Part 2

As I thought it might, the first part of this riled the Taplin bloggers. I was told that as a troll, I could only comment on cultural issues or leave.

I said no deal.

I'm disappointed. There are some there who's names I know from the music business and respected, but like John Lennon said, it's not always good to meet your heros.

Oh, I know this creature of yours... Vermithrax Pejorative. Look at these scales, these ridges. When a dragon gets this old, it knows nothing but pain, constant pain. It grows decrepit... crippled... pitiful. Spiteful!

In my past, these were the good guys, but like the dragon in Dragonslayer, with age comes only pain and that makes them spiteful. In all my years on the web and before, I've never encountered a group quite like that. The rage turns any claim they make for their candidate into a shrill scream for justification to hurt their enemies.

Driven by the news media, shows like The View and the speeches of the candidates, the rage is building. I don't know if it can be stopped. The left wing has traditionally been the peace party in this country. Now it is something unrecognizable, a twisted characature of itself spitting back obscenties and intimidating anyone who dares dissent.

I thought Bush was bad. He was just dumb. These are the intellectuals, the elite, the people America lavished its best in education and opportunity on howling at the moon like wolves in blood lust. They are even quoting Dave Winer as a supporter. Dave is familiar with the flame wars and what the RSS zealots did to him should be enough to make him understand a rage machine. I wonder if he approves.

The right is little better. All you have to do is read the blogs, follow the links and you see what this is about. McCain's campaign was pretty docile during the primaries. With the negative campaign and the left in their faces, they've surrendered to the madness too. Now we are in the eye for an eye part of the campaign and nothing good will come of this.

Are either of the candidates worth this? In my opinion, absolutely not.

My love for nonviolence is superior to every other thing mundane or supramundane. It is equaled only by my love for Truth, which is to me synonymous with nonviolence through which and which alone I can see and reach Truth.

....Without ahimsa it is not possible to seek and find Truth... Ahimsa is the means; Truth is the end. Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty. If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or latter. When once we have grasped this point, final victory is beyond question.

Ahimsa is not the goal. Truth is the goal. But we have no means of realizing truth in human relationships except through the practice of ahimsa. - M.K. Gandhi

Feed the Fire

I've had a jolly good time debating the ObamaBots at Jon Taplin's blog. These are the true believers who have made his campaign a raging success. It is noticeable throughout the primaries and now just how much his supporters depend on rage and feed on it. It is a destructive technique for culture in general.

The trick is to frame the opponent in a bad light. Jon and his friends are practiced at this but not terribly skilled. It seems to be a reflex move when they are confused by a reply or contradicted. This is something they share with Obama who is thin skinned when his intellectual superiority is questioned.

The framing of his organization as intellectually superior and all others as inferior ('dumb', 'moron', 'scoundrel') has been their most consistent approach throughout the primaries and beyond. This results in the 'self/other' antipathy that feeds the rage machine. They are doing this deliberately because they are doing it consistently. Means matter when considering a candidate and the means used by the Obama campaign indicate his term in office should he win will be a divisive one with little achieved except to drive divisions deeper into the American psyche.

Don't respond with rage or hurt. It just empties your life into their hell instead of feeding your own fire.

Where Do the Children Play?

Someone asked:

How does one, as CEO, lose billions and make millions?

?

Fund investors take run up money from the stocks and leave the companies trying to pay off the leverage. If the leverage isn't paid, they break it up into pieces and sell them.

Someone said to me that if I am better off today than I was eight years ago, I should vote Republican. The funny thing is, I am better off. By about 40%. My 401k has taken a beating but I am much better off. Why?

The last company I was working for was bought by a San Francisco-based investment firm. During the previous ten years, we had worked hard to bring our stock value up from about $4 a share to around $30. That is when the Board tossed out our President and replaced him with a fund manager from Wall Street. He brought his Harvard grad buddy in and they began to squeeze the company down to show higher profits on the books theoretically through cost reductions.

It sounds like good business. Why isn't it?

Where we had been careful and scrupulous in our bidding for work, they tossed the safety rules aside and had us pursue work we couldn’t do at prices we couldn’t perform. We won a lot of business that way. So when they began to look for buyers (the plan the board had from the beginning), on paper, we looked like a great buy or so the story went.

The truth was, our money in hand was cash from winning intellectual property lawsuits. The value was the patent portfolio, but the time was running out on that, so the cash in the bank was a lottery ticket we couldn’t play again.

So they squeezed. Result: while we looked good on the books, we had devastated our human capital which is the real engine of a business. There was no way we could perform.

Smart engineers and managers knew it and bailed fast. I was one of those. That company is now having to buy back parts of their contracts as their customers are becoming furious with their underperformance. The investors who bought them don’t care. They were buying the cash on hand and they took it out of the company at purchase.

So how do they do it? They descend on a company like locusts and hollow out the value while polishing the outer shell. It takes a while to notice this and people believe what they are told. This is why XBRL and other technologies are so important to achieving transparency.

Me? I went to work for a company run by sharp immigrants from Mumbai who’s company is also their passion. We stay lean, we stay smart, and we meet our deadlines with good technology. We work hard. We have a good time together. Our products save lives. We are proud of that.

As a result, I am better off. Should I vote Republican? Well, I won't vote Democrat and oddly, I AM a Democrat. Obama cheats and lies to win and just as the story related above, means matter.

Fried Chicken and Watermelon

Fried chicken and watermelon are the new left code words for race in this election. I've bad news for you. Fried chicken and watermelon are straight up southern food on many a table regardless of ethnicity. Add some pinto beans, collards (with fatback of course), corn bread, mashed potatoes and some fresh tomato slices to round it out and you have the meal that my colleagues from the land of the northern aggression would stay an extra day for.

Those of us who lived through the worst of racism in the 60s are innoculated against the attacks from the intellectual left that condescend to tell us what we think and feel to give themselves a smug sense of being superior.

They practice domination by belief in intellect and mystifyingly believe their souls are pure of the disease they so freely accuse the rest of the nation as passing to their children. Because politics swing hard from side to side, just as Bush guaranteed a surge to the left from the right, Obama is guaranteeing a surge to anti-learning, and that will be a far harsher penalty box.

As the twig is bent, people, as the twig is bent.

Obama showed his vulunerability early in the campaign when he patted his opponent on the shoulder condescendingly for being the only 'white guy'. It isn't race. That is his cudgel and all the right can do is avoid it. He showed it in the debate with his smirking when McCain called him out for lieing about his past.

Obama is smugly intellectual and very thin skinned when challenged on it. When told he is wrong, you can see the blood rush to his head. This is the ObamaBot disease that infects his supporters and causes them to rage in the face of opposition.

They picked up on his cue of 'smarter than thou' and it is amplified by the notion that the only way George W. Bush could have been elected President twice was by the so-called "low information voters", a code word for "stupid" ganging up on the smarter and more deserving to judge.

Instead, it is they who should be judged for infecting the country with its most virulent strain of elitism.

If you want to take them down, show them for what they are: insecure and inexperienced pretend intellectuals, or in short smart-butt bigots.

Remember, their ranks are filled with intellectual pretenders trying to look and sound smart. Think about the kid in high school who wore fake glasses.

As for Sarah Palin who has been attacked by both left wing wackos and a wacko media, then mishandled, I say:

Keep reminding them of who you are and what you achieved, Sarah Palin.

You worked your way up from a small town girl all the way to Governor of Alaska. You didn't do that because you were born at the top of the social ladder, went to the best schools, got the highest grades, or were voted most likely. You did it the old fashioned way: you worked your butt off, you made your own luck, and when the time came to step up or step out, you put the elbow to your opponent and stepped forward.

They believe they are smarter like the kid programmer who believes because he can make a circle dance on a screen he should run the company. But it is the person who understands other people, who gets up earlier, who works later and who never quits, never surrenders and never gives quarter that runs the company. The values that made you who you are are the values that made this country the most admired and successful in history: hard work, decency, putting family first, and love of God as realized through helping a neighbor.

Remember that, Governor, and no matter how this election goes, you will still be a winner. Screw the speechwriters. They are not running. Screw the handlers. Their names aren't on the ballot.

Be Sarah. That has always been the winning move.

A Thousand Glints of Light Hurt

Many years ago, Richard Nixon came to my hometown to begin his attempt to regain respectability in the face of his impending impeachment. I watched him speak from a tree across the parking lot noting the glints of light from tall buildings on the horizon as my brother and I took turns looking through an old detached rifle scope. When the elderly lady in the pink suit walked beneath the tree and whipped out a small walkie talkie and said, "No, it's just two kids with an old scope." I realized the meaning of those glints of light.

Gary Trudeau published his "Fritters Alabama" strip in Doonesbury about the event depicting one of the most modern cities in the South at that time as two coots in suspenders sitting on a broken down porch thus reinforcing the bigoted stereotypes of the left intellectuals about places they had never been. For me, it was the realization that the radicals of the Sixties that I had admired were in fact more bigoted than the people of my State who had become synonymous with the term during the Wallace years.

And during this campaign, I've seen the results of that undisguised bigotry. Obama supporters claim that their bottom up tactics have upended the Reagan Revolution and are putting the country back on the right path. Except that bottom up approach is not how he is winning.

The Obama campaign is cheating and Obama is lieing.

This election could have been about trust. Instead, it has become about fraud. As a result, an Obama win will be the beginning of a deeper penetration of cynicism and mistrust into the American psyche than even Bush managed ineptly. This time it is being done expertly and there will be hell to pay for it. Worse, anyone who tries to take a closer look and discuss it can see those glints of light and feel the threat from the far left.

The country swung far to the right extreme and now it is swinging just as far to the left. Neither extreme is healthy, so by our own hand, we will pay for our inability to evolve beyond these extremes into a nation moderate in all respects except our willingness to defend the nation. Instead, we have become a nation dedicated to self-abuse.

Good luck out there.

Economics For The New World Order: Argh Matey!

o Marxism: the belief that if I have the scalpel and book I am qualified to do brain surgery.

o Communism: the belief that if I need brain surgery, any surgeon can do the job.

o Socialism: the belief that everyone needs brain surgery.

o Capitalism: the belief that I can sell enough books and scalpels to enough surgeons that I can buy enough insurance to pay for brain surgery whether I need it or not

It is the theory of scarcity or in the new web version, no market where scarcity exists is interesting to an investor.

Except there are two scarcities that are more or less permanent: good ideas and talent. Then there is training but it is resolvable given talent. Good ideas appear to be at a fixed scale so these have become the treasure the pirates set their masts toward.

One Toke Over The Line

Just as I think the Obama campaign can't get more self-serving, I find yet another nitwit proposal.

We are being asked not to defend ourselves because that is bad for the 'cultural goods' market in California. Jon Taplin, the Annenberg Chair of Communications at USC and movie executive writes in his paper proposing that California become a city-state, "America's aggressive military posture has led to a rise in Anti-Americanism in cultural goods."

Wow. So now we are told that California is to become independent just as Governor Schwarzenegger goes hat in hand to ask for $7 billion dollars from the Federal government because California can't pay its bills due to the astronomical (30%) difference in pay to State employees.

The California entertainment moguls are the same people holding those big private soirees to contribute to Obama's campaign, but we are messin' with their business by fighting global terrorism.

It doesn't get kookier than that. I hope. If it does, it's time put up a fence in Nevada before the crazy people come rolling home. The state that has been one toke over the line for forty years has decided being high is more important than being safe.

Oprah Finds Her Groove

Oprah Winfrey is holding a two event to raise money for Obama this weekend. It seems that they just can't get enough money from the grass roots so they are holding another "you can't afford to be here, Reverend" event. In fact, even Obama isn't going but Michelle is.

Meanwhile the market will continue to vote with its feet over the immediate prospect of an Obama presidency like Jack with his magic beans watching the troll come down the beanstalk looking for the magic cow.

"The bucket's going down down down."

Michelle is rumored to say, "Let them eat cake!" and Oprah responds, "Don't you let them anywhere NEAR my cake!"

And the Chinese ambassador says, "Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart."

And Hillary Clinton? She just sits back sipping her tea smiling that Cheshire Cat smile.

Obama Camp

So you're supporting Obama because he is for change, or maybe because you hate Bush, or maybe because you think nothing can be worse than the last eight years.

Guess again.

Here is what you are supporting.



This one is from Venice California. Obama is going to change it all.

Understanding Economics

I found this on Jon Taplin's blog. Don't ask; just watch. The only difference is today that person in the string vest would be Hispanic.

Class War

If you cast it in the terms a talking head journalist understands, diction, erudition, breath control, pacing, sophistication, Palin lost. That was Rachel Maddow's take.

If you cast it in the terms the average American understands, courage of convictions, honesty, forthrightness, direct approach to the problems, Palin won. That was Greta van Susteren's take.

If you cast it in terms of who understands what a working mother wants to hear regarding taking the fight to the corruption in DC and New York, Palin won. That was the take of the women at the coffee pot this morning.

For the person who had the most distance to cover, Palin clearly won.

Will all that sum up as leadership? That is to be determined.

The disappointment was the utter predictability of each network's reaction. The candidate they are in the tank for, they still are.

But here's the kicker: sophistication is telling people losing their homes they are the reason for the credit crunch because they bought what they could not afford while the sophisticate telling them that is eating fish eggs at $330 an ounce. Gore and Kerry didn't get that.

The fat guy down front with five kids and a job teetering on layoff and the single mom raising a family don't either.

This election is a class war.

Loose Conversations: Fifty Foot Veronica

"One more thing, Truman was a Democrat, so what is your point?"

Truman was a haberdasher first, and considered for the ticket only because FDR thought him incapable of being a power player. No one thought him capable of stepping in and FDR knew he was himself, unlikely to make it.

He did it anyway.

Brad sez: "There is simply no possible way that a liberal, country-loving Democrat can understand those of you who helped elect W into office twice and we are almost paranoid that you will do it to us again."

I get that. I was a Democrat of the same bent. Then I read about Barack and realized there are deeper dangers than even W.

One is an arrogant self-confidence that if people don't vote for the man, somehow they are stupid.

Two is watching the left so afraid of losing that they become the right but worse. If you become that which frightens you, you lose anyway.

That breaks all deals.

@nat sez" It has been amateur night in the white house for 8 years. Clown season is over."

Clowns? Bush and Cheney? Only if you watch Tripping the Rift, Nat.

You offer us a bean counter who can't not smirk or get irritated when confronted.

We offer a point guard who can play through the pain.

I'll take Six over Chode or Bobo anyday. Are you guys afraid of a fifty foot Veronica?

Mary's Season

It is a beautiful Sunday. I found these and think them clever.

Ave Maria - Schubert (Bocelli)



Ave Maria - Gounod (Bocelli)

On Orbit and Walking: Congratulations to China!

An outcome of the focus in America on the elections was the Chinese did not get the coverage deserved for their outstanding accomplishments in space this week. They put a crew of three in orbit and their first spacewalk was successful.

Space buffs like me who grew up in the town that built the Saturn V and watched the improbable success of the American space program understand the exhiliration the Chinese people must feel.

Congratulations from the home of the Saturn V!! Well done!!

Something From The Americans

i love Presidential debates. These are where the real election season starts. As debates go, it was better than some, but a snoozer at the start. Obama seemed nervous going in and McCain seemed feeble. It got better.

Two moments:

1. Lessons from the war: Obama has it right. The critical decision is to go. Then he blows it. The critical American value lost was non-preemption. Our not being a first strike nation regardless of our power was the value we prized and for which we are admired. The lesson is the Bush Doctrine while tactical is not strategic. Instead, Obama talked about the effect on the economy and my wife muttered, "Bean Counter!" and the list he followed with followed that line of thinking.

He had a choice to make points on values but left them on the table for money. McCain was able to recover with the "not the decision the next President has to make. When to leave and what to leave behind are" which is exactly right and a smart way to get out of answering the question.

2. "I looked into Putin's eyes and I saw three letters, a K and a G and a B".
Classic straight talk McCain. Funny and understandable.

A wash except in style points. McCain looked old but deeply passionate about what he cared about. Obama looked young but easily irritated.

McCain wins this one but not by a knockout.

So on this most American night, something from the Americans.

Life's A Long Song

Sitting here waiting for the Boss to call and tell us how the demo is going, Southern breeze blowing windy and warm outside, I remember the night Jethro Tull came to play and the lords of our local civic center pulled the power plug on them promptly at 11PM in the middle of a flute solo.

I ran into Jeffery Hammond-Hammond in the parking lot walking back to the hotel. Boy was HE pissed.

"They pulled the f**** plug on us. How can you live in the sh**hole of a town??"

"ummm.... I understand. It's home."

"But what a rotten pissy thing to do!!!"

"Yeah I agree. Want to get high?"

"THOSE BARSTARDS!!!! ummm.... what... oh yeh"

Watching this election accompanied by the economic tsunami pouring over our shores as predicted, being personally pummeled on other blogs because I defend McCain and Palin and refuse to toss in with The One, I am somehow upbeat. I don't know if it's the cancer diagnosis that left me feeling every day above ground is a good one, or just my own curmudgeonly obstinacy, or that sense that neither of the parties has much moral high ground to retreat to and the mainstream media is going down in the suckage, but I just don't feel the terror and panic I see in the faces on the boob tube.

They tripped over the economy and now their acts are just short wonks whacking away at strings without amplification and all I hear is the shrill flute noises of their anger and rage at being left on stage in the dark with an audience filing out to continue their parties elsewhere.

Life's a long song.