Sep 22 2010
 Muse in the Morning |
An Opened Mind XXVII
| When I feel well and in a good humour, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as my mind might wish.
– Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
 Partisan
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Sep 22 2010
Do you ever have a desire to write? To express, to say “hey I fucking exist and have thoughts and ideas!” and then experience some sort of cyber-validation for said thoughts and ideas? Do you also wonder why, why do we need this? What is it about an anonymous post that makes us feel validated? It it that someone cares, or at least pretends to? Or is it that we can evoke emotions, thoughts, reactions from someone else?
Long ago, in a place far far away, a place where buhdy first introduced the concept of ponies, I rediscovered the joy of writing. Never made the wreck list, but didn’t care. In fact one of my first diaries was motivated by a diarist who complained because on one particular day he did not make the wreck list, and don’t you know he always made the “list.” My thought was, phht, get over yourself. But,to be honest, I, on occasion, go back and read what I wrote and still think about 75% of my musings were not all that bad, egocentric I know, but inside I wish that more folks would have read ’em. But more importantly, I cherished the comments, few that they were, the stories, the memories that were recounted because of the words I typed in the “main text” box. I loved the fact that once, one of the comments got like three times the recs my tip jar did, just because the story I told evoked a much better story. I like that kind of connection.
I originally came here because I wanted something different, I came here when it first arose via the gos. I wanted a place where “There are no rigid restrictions here, it is a salon and a laboratory and a place to create a new reality.” I wanted, I needed an new reality. And I continue to come to this place to read the thoughts and ruminations of others. I rarely comment, and have one diary to my name – nom de plume that it is – a diary written in a night of pain after a loss.
And in the days that has flowed in the river of time, under the bridge of life since that first day here, I have some questions, questions that I am sure no one can answer to my satisfaction, but that dog me day and night. So many questions…
I have gone through many changes this year. Maybe that is my problem. But something has changed, and I am struggling to discover what it is. Is it just me?
Sep 22 2010
We last got together about ten days ago, when I put up a story that hoped to explain to the Islamic world that, Qur’an burning aside, we don’t really hate either them, or our own Constitution.
I pointed out that, just like everywhere else, about 20% of our population are idiots, that this means about 60,000,000 of us might, at any time, be inclined to burst into fits of random stupidity, such as the desire to burn Qur’ans to make some sort of statement, and that the same First Amendment that protects the freedom of stupid speech also protects the rights of Islamic folks to freely build mosques…and finally, that this apparent “paradox of freedom” is exactly why the US is the kind of country that many Islamic folks the world over wish they lived in as well.
I then went off to enjoy my Godson’s wedding, and I ignored the posting until the next Monday.
On the two dozen sites where it could be found, this was apparently considered to be a fairly innocuous message…with one giant exception, which is what we’ll be talking about today.
Long story short, some portion of this country’s population has some bizarre ideas about Islamic folks…but maybe if they knew my friend Wa’el, they might see things a bit differently.
Sep 22 2010
in case you missed it …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Wall Street Wizard, Anthony Scaramucci, complained like a baby to the President yesterday:
I represent the Wall Street community. We have felt like a Piñata. […] we certainly feel like we’ve been whacked with a stick.
Waaaaaa!! …. 
I bet, The 8 million people who lost their jobs (or homes) are about to …
Sep 22 2010
One and a Half Cheers for American Decline: The Future’s Not Ours – and That’s Good News
by Tom Engelhardt, September 21, 2010
Here’s a simple reality: the U.S. is an imperial power in decline — and not just the sort of decline which is going to affect your children or grandchildren someday. We’re talking about massive unemployment that’s going nowhere and an economy which shows no sign of ever returning good jobs to this country on a significant scale, even if “good times” do come back sooner or later. We’re talking about an aging, fraying infrastructure — with its collapsing bridges and exploding gas pipelines — that a little cosmetic surgery isn’t going to help.
And whatever the underlying historical trends, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and company accelerated this process immeasurably. You can thank their two mad wars, their all-planet-all-the-time Global War on Terror, their dumping of almost unlimited taxpayer dollars into the Pentagon and war planning for the distant future, and their scheme to privatize the military and mind-meld it with a small group of crony capitalist privateers, not to speak of ramping up an already impressively over-muscled national security state into a national state of fear, while leaving the financial community to turn the country into a giant, mortgaged Ponzi scheme. It was the equivalent of driving a car in need of a major tune-up directly off the nearest cliff — and the rest, including the economic meltdown of 2008, is, as they say, history, which we’re all now experiencing in real time. Then, thank the Obama administration for not having the nerve to reverse course while it might still have mattered.
