Love Wisconsin Cheese? Is that what stinks in Wisconsin?

So. The recall election is over in Wisconsin, and it is a Republican sweep, albeit a close one. To be sure, Republicans outspent Democrats by roughly 7 to 1. To “win” the Florida governors election Scott out spent Sink by more than 6 to 1.

These elections by themselves are troubling, but totally legal. You are allowed to buy your way into power in this country. More troubling is the portent for the future: the party with the most money to spend has the advantage. Which party is that? Why, the Republican Party of course. For the past several decades statistics show plainly that the rich are getting richer, very rich under Republican presidents (Bush tax cuts that gutted the economy but padded the rich with lots of extra income), and the poor keep getting poorer. The income gap continues to widen as the “One Percent” out paces the “Ninety-nine Percent”. Which means that one party will continue to have the “cash” capacity to buy elections.
So what happens is illustrated by Wisconsin and Florida: Out spend your opponent by huge factors and buy the election.  This bodes badly for future elections. Of course as a liberal I naturally think it will be bad. My conservative friends (yes, I do have a few) will think it good. Get rid of “Obamacare”, keep the “Bush tax cuts”, eliminate the EPA, the DOE, the ESA (endangered species act), the CAA (clean air act) etc. Get “Big Government” off our backs. Good idea. And while they are at it, they will kill what is left of the future for profits now. Then they will suffer with the rest of us. Oh well.
My solution? You know, don’t you? Good beer and wine, good friends and family and good travel. In other words, live for today because tomorrow probably won’t be worth living in.

Image: http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/walker.jpg?w=300&h=300

Rough Ride Ahead.

The world’s oceans cover 140 million square miles and have remained stable for most of human history. But in the last 30 years, man’s impact on the seas has taken a heavy toll: global fish supplies are declining thanks to new technologies and overfishing. Climate change has led to a rise in ocean temperatures and the loss of 75 percent of large sea animals. Plastics and agricultural fertilizers are polluting our oceans and killing marine life.

Thus started another program on the crisis of the Earth. Those of us in the conservation field are getting pretty tired of having to answer the same question over and over again: What is the cause of the multiple disasters we find occurring every day around the world? Low fish stocks, fires, floods, droughts etc. The answer is always the same: People. To be more specific: Too Damn Many People. Estimates are that currently we are using one and a half planets worth of resources to keep the current population sustained. Not growing, just sustained. But the population is growing, and the demand for goods and services is not just sustaining, but is also growing. The obvious conclusion it that too many people are competing for too few resources.  And it will get worse: the population is still growing.
A woman caller to a talk show commented that she thought the guest was implying that the earth would be better off without people. The conservationist sidestepped slightly. I don’t. The world would be far better off without people. It was before we got here. I know. Some of you will think in Biblical terms here and invoke “dominion over the earth” or “God made man” or some other rationalization for keeping us around. Face it folks: even if we were given the earth for our own domain, we have systematically been destroying it. Don’t believe it? Energy extraction is a good place to look. Mountain topping for coal removal resulting in the destruction of the mountain, the adjoining watershed and all the things in it, the atmosphere and our health. Mineral extraction. Fishing. Unsustainable farming using fossil water. Over intensive farming of animals such as shrimp, pigs, chickens, and over intensive farming of plants like corn and soybeans. The list is long and sad.
We are the problem, my friends, and the only way we can solve the problem is to stop reproducing and let the population go down. Way down. Won’t happen though. Too many people who just love their children and grandchildren instead of opting to adopt the surplus of orphans. Too many people period. Live through the next 100 years or so and things might just get better. But, that will take a disastrous century of thinning. The tipping point has been passed, so hang on to your hats and buckle your belt. It will be a rough ride.

Image: http://llco.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/slum.jpg

Love, Actually

I was writing to a friend this morning and had occasion use the following: “Sometimes in nature you end up with a bluebird of happiness, and sometimes you end up with a killer flesh eating bacteria. Both good in their own niche.”

Now as I think back on this idea I am reminded of all the controversies that rage over Evolution. Change Over Time. Nothing terribly difficult to understand at the basic level. A process that goes ahead without benefit of plan, just relying on the latent survivability of each individual.

This is exactly what I believe is at work in relationships. Two people meet and the evolution of each separately and both together begins. Often without a plan, and entirely dependent on the latent survivability of each. Each of us brings strengths and weaknesses into the mix, and then they compete for survival. Sometimes the best “traits” make it, and sometimes the “worst”. We usually don’t openly compete for ascendance, sometimes but not usually. We just do our individual and collective best to reach the goal of mutual love, understanding and longevity of relationship. In the “doing” the traits each of us bring to the table work and wiggle for a place, and the end result, which I think never really ends until death do you part, hopefully is a wonderful blend of the best of both. Hopefully.

The friend I was writing to this morning and her partner has achieved a level of blend that is sustainable and good. The only continuous caution I would add is this: evolution moves ahead in time without a plan, and in relationships one needs to be mindful of the changes that are always occurring and evolve with them. Otherwise, boom, no relationship.

Image: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02133/swansHeart_2133563i.jpg

A Little Fun Today

Theft
Saturday 05 May 2012, 6:45 p.m.
Owner of a local business reported that an  individual had asked to see a $70 necklace from display case. The patron grabbed the necklace and attempted to flee the store. The Darwin Award nominee was unable to operate the front door which he pushed when it required that he pull. The clodpoll returned the necklace and apologized. The business owner declined to pursue charges.

And so goes entry after entry on the Unalaska Police blotter, published weekly in the KUCB community news letter. A wonderfully inventive Sargent named Jennifer Shockley manages the blotter for the department. Jennifer uses her ability with words and a pretty interesting sense of humor to report the daily calls her department answers. I check it every week, and always find something to laugh about. The third link takes you to the NPR article that led me to the blotter.

Image: http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2012/04/07/unalaska.jpg?t=1333803740&s=2

http://kucb.org/community/blotter/?page=1

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/07/150148340/small-towns-police-blotter-is-a-riot

Sex Workers? Oldest Profession

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What Did I Just DO!!??

Well, with the best of intentions, I had a quick look at some of my older essays. Then more, then more, and before I knew it I was back to 2009. An hour and a half reading stuff I wrote years ago. And you know what? Some of it is really interesting. The funny thing though, is that I couldn’t figure out where some of them came from. I mean what the motivation was for writing them or even where the idea came from. Some of them seemed like someone else must have written them. But I did.
I had an urge to bring some forward.  To say “SEE!! I TOLD YOU SO!!” or to share a thought again, or a story like the tortoise and the owl. I left them where they were. I figure if someone wants to know what I wrote 3 years ago, they are there. Some very interesting, some timed out by history, some very personal and some, well, just there.
I was struck by a few that found good news in the morass of crap in the world. I am looking for some good news now, and I gotta tell you, there ain’t much around. One bit of good news though: there is plenty of good IPA available in the Tallahassee market. Some bottles, some draft and one micro brewed. Life will always be worth living as long as there hope for good beer. That might make a good epitaph.

Image: http://assets0.pulsdcdn.com/system/images/10989/original/statue-liberty-beer.jpg?1311631328

“God” set us up - - Again.

Remember the commandment that forbids coveting your neighbor’s ass or wife or other stuff? Sounds good, right? Who wants his ass anyway? Well, ummm, never mind. Here is the problem: it seems that the human brain is hard wired to covet. This has to do with the parietal lobe and the premotor cortex and the ventral striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain. You remember these from biology right?
The bottom line is this: when you see a behavior or object that someone has, your brain evaluates its worth, and because of the way the parts are connected, your evaluation is nearly always that whatever it is is valuable because someone else has it, and that increases the desire for you to have it too. Covet it in other words. Hard wired. No choice.
Of course you can always just say “no” and move on, but that is very difficult with a hard wired brain. Try saying “no” to hunger for very long. And how many times have you changed your mind about what to order in a restaurant when someone else orders first? You were going to have the fish, someone orders the prime rib and you think “prime rib. That sounds good” and you order it instead of the fish. (The solution to that particular problem is to order first.) Your brain just mirrors what it perceives, evaluates the information and creates the desire.
So don’t worry about the tenth commandment. Or put another way, “covet away pal, covet away.”  The reason you should not worry? God loves you unconditionally. Un-con-dition-ally. Oh, wait a minute. This is the same god that in the second commandment says “I do not leave unpunished the sins of those who hate me, but I punish the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generations.”  So a fourth generation child will be punished for something that a great great great grandparent did. Now THAT’S LOVING!!!!

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/340905/title/Thou_can%E2%80%99t_not_covet

Image: http://www.the-goldenrule.name/Lust_files/image013.jpg

Part of My Story

Was talking to a friend the other day and had a real epiphany about my mother. Really. For many years I have on occasion talked about her in sometimes not glowing terms. She was a troubled woman from about 1950 on. I always assumed that the relationship she had with my father was the reason for her alternating depressions and bouts of protectiveness. And she was a lapsed Catholic and never recovered from that. And she was sexually abused by her sister’s husband when she was 10 to about 13. All reasons for her being the way she was.
Now I think there is a new element in the mix that could explain the timing. I was sexually abused by a cousin when I was 5 or 6 or 7, and she insisted that only she and I would ever know. So she never, as far as I know, told my father, his sister or anyone else. It would make sense if she felt guilty for not protecting me from the cousin. Her behavior viewed from this angle fits.
My behavior as a10 year old and up was rebellious and I wonder if she felt responsible somehow. And possibly every time I got myself in trouble she felt somehow that she had let me down and blamed herself. Then got depressed. This would make me an unwitting cause of her suffering.

She died youngish, 67, of what amounts self-abuse. She was a heavy smoker and user of many prescription drugs for depression, asthma and digestive issues and pain, all except smoking started around 1950.  Who really can know what was going on in her mind after years of electroconvulsive therapy, “happy pills” etc.? The answer is “no one”. I think, though, that the guilt she must have felt was a part of who she was, and how she was. Looking back from my perspective now I say to her “Ma, you did the very best you could with what you had. You did nothing wrong. The only thing you are guilty of is loving me. If you need to be forgiven then I forgive you. But please, forgive yourself. You were the best Ma you could have been. That is enough for me.”

And strangely (or not) I have lit candles for her in most Catholic churches and Cathedrals I have visited in Europe. I am not a believer, but somehow it felt right to do that simple act. Probably my behavior and hers are tied in some intricate knot of emotion, love, guilt and survival.

Anyway, that’s part of my story.

Image: http://somethingburning.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/telephone_shhh.gif

News of the Political Wars

In the last two days some really interesting things have happened, any one of which could promote great change, but taken together are surely going to have an effect on the outcome of the elections in November. Here they are:

1. President Obama comes out for same sex marriage. This is a huge risk for him and is bound to outrage a bunch of people. Personally, I am glad he did, and will work to support him in this important battle.

2. The Republican Senate and a few Democrats blocked the student loan reduced interest program. The House passed a similar bill but is cutting 6 billion dollars, more or less, from women’s health initiatives to pay for it. The President said he would veto any bill that guts women’s health coverage. Good for him.

3 Richard Lugar, Republican moderate lost his bid for another term in the senate to a tea bagger. He was one of the few Republicans left who would actually work across the aisle to get consensus items passed. He would have been impossible for a Democrat to successfully challenge. The tea party guy will be a much better target for the Dems.

4. 18% of registered voters in North Carolina vote to ban same sex marriages with a constitutional amendment. Press calls it an “overwhelming vote”; I think 78 % of the state has just had something jammed down their throats. But, they are lazy bastards so they live with it.

Just keeping you all posted. And by the way, don’t you be a LANOVOC. What? What the hell is that? It stands for LAzy NOn VOting Citizen. I would simplify it by just calling them lazy bastards that have no right to complain or get any government benefit.

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm1_GhASNPPUh9tVY0wpSpLwqc22VnPfnnWKW99Vtl5aVhtJcYXhsGaSIA34mEKNTrDv4iLw-TNvuCVogrQOovgCqdk83qATPJ73KPhvdmioKEs8iF5z_F9SDSqGsFqFPzdaCOQOSO1Cxj/s400/Vote,+Dumb+Ass!.bmp

Sooo Screwed

"Carolina passes the marriage amendment and Lugar loses. We are rotting from the inside out. And the world is laughing at us to boot. Who could blame them? The only country left that still debates climate change. The only country left that puts Genesis before evolution. The only first world country that executes its citizens by the hundreds. The only free world country where people die every day due to lack of access to health care. The only - - . Oh, what's the use."


I just posted this on Facebook. Makes me even sadder to reread it. The country and the world are on the edge of disaster and we still cannot seem to get past “God Said It, etc”. What a sad, sad way to go. When we should be leading the world out of the global problems, we lock the doors and pull the covers over our head. We fuss about what a marriage is and applaud fracking as the salvation of the energy industry. We are diverted from the real issues by corporate beings so powerful they can manipulate the very government that should protect us from them. We are Soooooo screwed.

Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYeIwIj3yctEh-mvnkepe2qIVPaxVsz2M6mCOwIDVrXBg7uiML-cc1f6k9AcQ1wEVrHyn0_TFPbAfN5p_EFisGrrpM4k9ASiKoLZVNVDxZvmJX0eDEBi4KbrDJ69w1ommUInCNOs4eHRwr/s400/_taxpayer-screwed.jpg