Bizarre insult redux

 

"He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs".

• John McCain
  

 

From SMH - Ah, McCain, you've done it again - now he's after the middle class

Mira Oberman in Durango, Colorado

JOHN McCAIN has cast himself as the defender of the middle class and the American value of rewarding hard work while warning voters of his rival's plans to "tax and spend".

With frontrunner Barack Obama off the campaign trail - on a mercy dash to his dying grandmother, who raised him - Senator McCain continued to try to tar the Democratic presidential hopeful as a secret socialist in a bid to sway voters 11 days before the November 4 election.

"He believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs," he told a rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. "Senator Obama may say he's trying to soak the rich, but it's the middle class who are going to get put through the wringer, because a lot of his promised tax increase misses the target."

But the gap has narrowed this week as Senator McCain hammered away at Senator Obama for telling an Ohio plumber - wary of the Democrats' tax plans - that everyone is better off when you "spread the wealth around".

The Rise of the Idiots

(and don't forget ya roots: www.tvgohome.com)

Cute Spiral Dymanics Picture

State of the Union - Edmund Berrigan

I want you to understand

that I don’t know why I’m here.

I was born in another country

with which I now have no association.

I was raised in a New York City

that has been wiped away by economics.

Much of my immediate family has

been removed from this life,

& much of my sense of experience

of this life has been removed with them,

making all of us new people.

I have let much of my sense of self

be informed by an art that is little used

& undervalued. I have sacrificed many

social relationships to these experiences,

which are inextricably linked, because

I come from a family of poets. The life

& values of a poet are antithetical to the

political landscape of the country

I live in, & no political machination

that I may inhabit remotely serves

the causes for which I live, though

I am bound to this land by knowledge of it.

I continue in poetry & song

because the experiences of my senses

are wholly held in these continuous

& inexplicable drives, their reason

& mine never idle or held to law or language.

The Paranormal is Terrific

The paranormal make furnace fetishes,

beyond the will of a shoveller

I'm dumb enough to know coal

is a poor whore so I sleep not

where I work but where I dream.

• Edmund Berrigan

On Singing

I've attempted this post a couple of times this morning, each time left despondent in the face of a remorseless laptop nemesis.

So - the bare facts instead of the story.

I have fucked shoulders and neck pain after impacted wisdom teeth broke my jaw, a stupid bout of tomfoolery in my youth broke my shoulder and years of study and work at a computer when I should have been out sewing my wild oats broke my heart.

The worst of it is the way my throat locks up and makes it impossible for me to find my real voice. I haven't known how to catch it for almost four years, and trust me, not sounding like yourself really plays terrible tricks on the identity.

Coming out of it, I've learned that extended periods of singing works better than almost anything else.

I find it stretches my throat muscles, heats up my larynx, energises my bloodflow, and today the whammy... reminds me that I don't speak from my mouth. I speak through my mouth, but before that comes the voicebox.

This is a big realisation. I'm simply more embodied. I've been stuck in my head for a long time, but also feel very large in my heart - which makes the process of dragging the crown back down to the root is really difficult when my throat is so closed up. The bridge is busy.

Singing not from my mouth, but from my throat seems to give me access to a deeper expression of true intention... which, most happily, leaves me more transparent for others therefore making connections more authentic. The face of God which arises in the I-Thou relationship between people is my most cherished, and sadly, least frequent. It's lovely to have more access to this part of myself again.

The energetic crowd would say that I'm not speaking my truth thereby closing down the Vishudda centre - and they'd certainly be right. I haven't robustly known my truth for a long time through this existential crisis and dark night - and so authentically speaking anything other than that has been impossible (especially when I have competing needs for social communion and nobody's truly interested in hearing the depths of my process - not to mention of course, the clusterfuck of lies that make up my working life). Again, this process of singing has allowed me to capture a powerful location of manifestation in that region, and a sense that my crown is allowed to stretch up again, giving the postural channels for flow between chakra points more room to discuss their perspectives.

I'm endlessly touched by these powerful gifts we're handed, and the complexity of their unfoldment. Who do I thank for the gift of singing? It's always brought me such joy, and now also physical, emotional and spiritual therapy. And, like all that is truly nourishing, it don't cost a dime.

Is NZ the first hint of a Children of Men-esque crisis?

In uncanny timing, this article was published in the SMH today after Sass and I last night finally sat down to watch Alfonso Cuarón's superb apocalyptic flick Children of Men.

The quality of New Zealand men's sperm has halved in two decades - the most dramatic drop of any western country.

New research presented to a gathering of international fertility researchers in Brisbane today was told that the sperm volume carried by the average New Zealand man decreased from about 110 million to 50 million per millilitre between 1987 and 2007.

"It's rather dramatic indeed, and one of the largest seen in studies in other parts of the world," said lead researcher Dr John Peek, of Fertility Associates in Auckland.

He said the fall represented a drop from very good to good sperm quality.

But if the downward trend continued towards the 20 million "danger mark, we would definitely be running into trouble".

The findings, to be published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, are based on sperm quality data from men volunteering as mystery sperm donors.

The biggest drop was seen in the first decade with a slower decline in recent years.

This contrasts with Australia and the United States, where no decline has been seen. Studies from Scotland and France show marginal declines.

Dr Peek said there were two broad theories on sperm quality decline, one being that semen was affected by environmental toxins, diet and modern changes in lifestyle.

"The other is that it is a consequence of what happened when the guy was a baby in the womb, and what his mother was exposed to, but it's still unclear," he said.

Sydney specialist Professor Michael Chapman, from IVF Australia, said the trend was "worrying" for our Antipodean neighbours, saying it was to such a degree that it was unlikely to be random chance.

"Maybe they have something else going on over the Tasman," Prof Chapman said.

But Professor Rob McLachlan, director of Andrology Australia in Melbourne, said any trend was likely to be global, and the jury was still out as several studies were contradictory.

"Global trends are differing so we don't have a clear picture on this yet," Prof McLachlan said.

"New Zealand is unlikely to have a different situation unless," he joked, "you consider all the fertile New Zealand men may be heading over here".

Powell emphatically endorses Obama

Mind Games

Elephant In The Room - Banksy

A Most Bizarre Insult

"The whole premise behind Senator Obama's plans are class warfare plus spread the wealth around."

- John McCain revealing his core faith in systemic social stratification when shamelessly seeking to frame Barack Obama as a socialist in the 3rd and final Presidential Debate.

"Could this crisis get any stranger?"

Step right up for the $20b red-spot special
Annabel Crabb October 14, 2008

COULD this crisis get any stranger? We're now in a state of confirmed international fiscal panic, but there's money everywhere.
Six months ago, Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were heavily involved with two mysterious women - one called Budgetary Prudence, and another one called Inflation Jeannie, whom they were keen on stuffing back into some kind of bottle.
Everyone was most insistent that Australia should be saving all its pennies for tougher times. Yesterday, all that went out the window.
"Those tough times have come, and we are well positioned to act in anticipation of them," declared Mr Rudd, with the slightly alarming blend of conviction and nonsensicality on which we have come to depend in his historic public statements.
That's right, working families: if I may translate from the original Ruddese, it's time to spend the surplus.
Prudence be damned. If you can think of a good way to spend $20 billion, then step right up.
If you have a plan to irrigate the Red Centre by means of snowballs propelled by a series of giant pea-shooters ranged around the Antarctic, don't be shy - just ask Kevin for the seed funding.
Looking for funding for your chip-fat-fuelled personal jet pack?
Get yourself to Canberra.
Got a madcap scheme to put bags on the bottoms of cows to catch their gaseous emissions?
Actually, whoops - scratch that. We're already funding the bovine bottom-bags.
Even as the Prime Minister spoke, a faint drumming sound became audible, reminiscent
of wildebeest stampeding across the Serengeti.
No prizes for guessing what it was; hordes of lobbyists, descending upon the capital to share their ideas about how to blow a gazillion bucks, pronto.
Nation-building is the new national security.
It used to be that to prove your patriotic love for this great country, all you had to do was uncomplainingly surrender your right to habeas corpus.
Nowadays, you have to be cool about personally underwriting the Government's guarantee that by the end of this decade, no Australian bank will live in poverty.
Also, you have to be really, really enthusiastic about nation-building.
Yesterday, the Opposition suggested that the surplus should be spent on tax cuts for Australians.
Mr Rudd was utterly withering in his response.
It was as though the Libs had turned up to an Ashes decider wearing Barmy Army outfits.
The humble taxpayer, watching question time yesterday, could be forgiven for feeling a bit disjointed from all of this. We know there's a crisis, because we've seen it on television.
But apart from some nervous near-superannuants and those with speculative share-holdings, there aren't too many Aussies who have felt any actual pain yet, and for plenty of home-owners, the global financial crisis so far looks like kind of a nifty way of getting an interest rate cut.
Their greatest risk of injury at this stage is getting hit on the head by a falling wad of Government hundred-dollar bills, or hearing damage from Anthony Albanese noisily digging a Paris-style metro under the nature strip.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/13/1223749937096.html

Beneath the financial crisis waits a nastier beast

Waleed Aly October 13, 2008

The most lasting fallout of the global financial crisis is unlikely to be economic. This is the nature of true financial disaster: in the long run it brings down ideas, recasts societies and redistributes power in a way that resonates far beyond its lifespan. One day, the markets will stabilise and even recover, but the political terrain will likely be altered irrevocably.
Some ideological consequences are relatively obvious. Many commentators have already written obituaries for the creed of zealous deregulation that has prevailed throughout the Western world and especially in America. Indeed, that the Australian Government faces pressure to guarantee bank deposits establishes emphatically that people still want their governments to protect them, and are simply not soothed by promises of "market correction".
In short, regulation and state intervention are likely to become more fashionable than at any time since the end of the Cold War. In political science terms, it seems we're about to veer left. Witness a Republican president's $US700 billion example.
But few are yet asking what this might mean for social politics. Perhaps this is because it seems a separate matter to questions of economic policy. Yet it is foolish to assume that each can be quarantined from the other.
Economics is important precisely because it has the power to topple social dominoes. And it is in the realm of social politics that some of the most frightening possibilities of the financial crisis suggest themselves.
Consider the Great Depression, to which some are ominously likening this crisis. Latin America, which was hit particularly savagely because of its significant trade links with the US, retreated into a shrill form of nationalism. The result was the rise of fascism across the continent.
The Netherlands witnessed a series of riots, increased xenophobia, and the emergence of the National Socialist Party. And most infamously of course, there was Germany. With the national economy overwhelmingly financed by American loans, the collapse of the New York sharemarket had a devastating impact. A desperate working-class sought solace in communism, while an emasculated middle class leapt sharply to ultra-nationalism. The familiar consequence was the ascension of the Nazis, whose support base suddenly broadened.
This is what happens in times of great insecurity. As the foundations of our lives erode, we search for an anchor, and social politics very often provides it. When all else fails, we may still rally around old certainties: nation, culture, religion, race. We crave strong authority figures that can imbue us with certainty and articulate for us a sense of self. That often involves fabricating a scapegoat who becomes a mortal enemy.

In Germany, of course, Jews principally fulfilled that function, becoming the victims of an entire mythology that blamed them for the economic difficulties of "real" Germans. Such virulent prejudice soothes the insecure.
The bad news for us is that malignant social politics have been slowly returning for a while in Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, Britain, Denmark and Norway. And it is an affliction that spreads well beyond Europe in the form of radicalism in the Muslim world and Hindu and Buddhist nationalisms in Asia.
Ours is an age of hostile identity politics. These are not all directly referable to economic crises (even if they clearly have a relationship with the anxieties of globalisation), but they suggest something deeply troubling: that the world is rich in the kinds of xenophobic resources so easily amplified by economic turmoil.
Should the financial crisis become a global recession, there is no telling precisely what forms of extreme social politics might be unleashed. An explosion of anti-Americanism across Asia and Europe? Possibly. But what about America itself? Here, the seeds of xenophobic resentment are being sown.
Writing in The National Review, Michelle Malkin blames the crisis on illegal immigrants and Hispanics who were "greedy" enough to seek subprime loans. Blogging for the same publication, Mark Krikorian wonders if Washington Mutual's demise was caused by its propensity for employing Latinos and gays. On Fox News, Neil Cavuto blames congressmen who were "pushing for more minority lending" without disclosing that "loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster".
The audacity is extraordinary. Suddenly, this crisis is something poor blacks and Hispanics have inflicted on rich white people. That is beginning to sound, well, Germanic.
A reaction is inevitable: one that sees in the crisis the exploitation of poor black people who will lose their homes, by white fat cats who skip away from the rubble with millions. The potential cycle of conflictual identity politics is terrifying. And that is to say nothing of developments we cannot predict.
We can hope none of this comes to pass. Obviously much is contingent on precisely how deep this financial hole is, and how much suffering awaits. But however many reasons we have to hope this crisis will not match the depths of the Depression, after contemplating the possible social consequences, we may add several more.
Waleed Aly is a lecturer in politics at Monash University.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/10/12/1223749846530.html

Archetypes

Two-System Integration Chart
Focus/Motivation Core Desire Leadership Style (Element) Stability/ Structure Desire to feel safe and in control Administrator (Earth) People/ Belonging Desire to belong and feel valued Facilitator (Water) Results/ Mastery Desire to have a special impact on the world Manager (Fire) Learning/ Identity Desire to be yourself and find out about the world Mentor (Air) Stage One: Preparation Socialization Archetypes (Locates power in the group and social systems) Caregiver Orphan (Regular Guy/Gal) Warrior (Hero) Innocent Stage Two: Journey Change Archetypes (Takes back personal power and freedom) Creator Lover Destroyer (Outlaw) Seeker (Explorer) Stage Three: Return Restabilization Archetypes (Exerts personal power in the world) Ruler Jester Magician Sage From http://www.herowithin.com/arch101.html

Education for the Waist Down

From All Men Are Liars blogger Sam De Brito.
http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2008/10/social_intelligence.html

As I've written previously, for many people, walking up to a stranger of the opposite sex at a bar and starting a conversation can be more more terrifying than public speaking, swimming with sharks or showering in a maximum security prison.
This anxiety is magnified if they happen to find the other person just a little bit attractive. I've seen it countless times: grown men, absolutely paralysed, friends urging them to 'go talk to her' but they won't move except to sip the beer they're holding like a baby's bottle.
If they do manage to start a conversation they'll 'umm' and 'ahh', can't meet the person's eyes, default to brutally boring questions like "so what you do you do?" or just get so drunk before they 'make the move' their dialogue sounds like Barney from The Simpsons.
One of the greatest skills an adult can possess is being able to communicate with the opposite sex, yet you could scour every school syllabus in the country and not find a subject titled 'Social Dynamics' or 'How to Talk to a Girl' ...
I've got nothing against logarithms and algebra but I've used neither since the HSC and wasted hundreds of hours of my teenage life mastering what has amounted to useless crap.
On the other hand, I've spent hundreds of nights out trying to talk to the opposite sex, yet the number of minutes I was instructed in how to make a cute chick laugh was ... exactly none.
British creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson told the TED Conference in Monterey California recently that "as children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up and then we focus on their heads and slightly to one side (the left)."
One of Robinson's bugbears is that 'modern' schools are still based on an early 19th century model created to churn out workers for industrialism. As such, they value subjects like English and maths but not dance or drama, let alone body language or how to deal with a boyfriend hassling you to have a threesome.
His thoughts were echoed last month by Tim Hawkes, the head of Parramatta's The King's School, who wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald "the Western world does a poor job in preparing its students to be intimate ... in general students are required to navigate their way through the sexual swamp with minimal direction."
Arguing that "too many schools have lost sight of those things that will be used by our students when they become adults", Hawkes short-listed ten subjects that should be taught to children but are not, including "how to forge good relationships", "communicate well" and "handle intimacy and sex."
Some reading this might say "you can't learn this stuff, you pick it up along the way" but it is the belief of many experts that they're skills that can be studied and practiced just like your times tables, piano scales or goal-kicking.
Part of the problem is that some people are just born with "it", so we assume being able to walk into a party and charm the opposite sex is like having a big dick or good legs - a genetic Lotto win.
Thankfully, it is not, which has been proven by the success of the American Pick-Up Artist culture, popularised by David DeAngelo, Ross Jeffries and Neil Strauss, men who've made millions teaching socially awkward blokes the secrets of the 'alpha male'.
Unfortunately, much of what these 'love gurus' pioneered is exploitative and manipulative and ignores the needs of women, but it does show that boys (and girls) can be taught social intelligence.
Imagine then if kids were bought together and schooled in fundamental skills like 'how to talk to the opposite sex', 'body language and vocal tonality', 'how do I know if they want me to kiss them?', 'how to deal with rejection' and, conversely, "how to reject someone and not humiliate them'.Now imagine these subjects were taught just like geography - four times a week, for your entire school life: I doubt you'd have women getting double-teamed by Broncos players in toilet cubicles.
In his speech, Ken Robinson goes on to quote the United Nations, which says that in the next 30 years more people worldwide will graduate through education than since the beginning of history.
"While none of us have any idea what the world will look like in ten years, yet alone 30, our schools are educating children for that future," he says.
Now doubt we'll all need to be able to spell and count in 2038, but even more certain is that girls and boys will have to talk in pubs, ask each other to dance, kiss, have sex and get married.
I know which subjects I'd want my kids getting an A in.

He ain’t no Lucha Libre - Mexican Superheroes

These ain't the kinds of heroes usually seen on our big screens. They're amazing everyday heroes of struggle handed a rare moment of elevation in front of photographer Dulce Pinzon's camera. I found them on Mother Jones last night, as part of their impressive library of photo essays.

Tilt your hat and hand these dudes the 15 minutes they deserve.

Mexican Superheroes It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's a Mexican Immigrant

Photographer Dulce Pinzon posed undocumented Mexican immigrants in superhero costumes and captured their feats of derring-do in New York City.

From Mother Jones: http://www.motherjones.com/photos/mexican-superheroes/

Minerva Valencia (Catwoman) works as a nanny. She sends $400 a week home to Puebla

Luis Hernandez (The Thing) works in demolition and sends $200 a week home to Veracruz.

Window washer Bernabe Mendez (Spider-Man) sends $500 a month home to Guerrero

Oscar Gonzalez (Human Torch) is a cook. Originally from Oaxaca, he sends home $350 a week.

Straight, White, Middle Class Man... a surprising absence in Obama's definition of person.

Greed Fed Market Turmoil, Says Rudd

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has foreshadowed a stronger place for government intervention in business in a stinging attack on the "greed is good" ideology that he says fuelled the global financial crisis.
In his fiercest critique yet of what he termed "extreme capitalism", Mr Rudd said the market crash pointed to the need for a debate about corporate values and "the general values of our current age".
He spoke of "predatory financiers" who misled ill-informed consumers and of American bankers who were paid hundreds of millions but had no obligation to repay companies that later crashed.
"They literally laughed all the way to the bank," he said in a provocative address to the Federal Labor Business Forum on Friday night, which was only released yesterday.
Meanwhile, the former treasurer Peter Costello argued yesterday the banks should have passed on bigger rate cuts.
Mr Rudd said it was time to admit that people had not learned the full lessons of the greed-is-good ideology.
"We have seen the triumph of greed over integrity. The triumph of speculation over value creation … of the short term over long-term, sustainable growth. The fact is that Gordon Gecko was not tamed in 1987; he was simply ignored," Mr Rudd said of the character from the film Wall Street who proclaimed "greed is good" at the time of the 1987 market crash.
"Today we are still cleaning up the mess of the 21st-century children of Gordon Gecko."
Mr Rudd called for a rethink of the corporate culture of short-termism which, he said, threatens Australia's long-term future. "When we are through this crisis, it will be time to take stock."
With the Government under fire over its handling of Australian banks' interest rate policies, Mr Rudd's spokeswoman confirmed that the Prime Minister met the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Glenn Stevens, late on Friday for an update on the financial crunch.
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, yesterday defended the Government's relaxed stance on the banks' likely refusal to pass on the full extent of a mortgage interest rate cut expected tomorrow.
But Mr Costello said yesterday that "prima facie" the banks should pass on the full rate cut, given they had already kept back half a percentage point of previous interest rate adjustments. "They're already in front," he said. "They're highly profitable."
Mr Costello also accused the Government of "contradictory" policies on interest rates - on the one hand trying to pressure downward rates by spurring competition among the banks but on the other hand "giving comfort to banks to keep profit margins".
Mr Swan yesterday released Treasury analysis showing that since last month's interest rate cut "extreme turbulence" in global markets had blown out the banks' borrowing costs. He warned the banks that when global markets stabilised "banks will have absolutely no excuse not to pass on their lower funding costs".
In his speech, Mr Rudd said much of the cause of the subprime crisis was due to the financial markets rewarding people for taking extravagant risks.
The crisis had the fingerprints of free market ideologues "who believe that government is always the problem, never the solution".
They had opposed government regulation, having privatised their profits, but now argued the public should socialise their losses.
Instead of the culture of short-termism, Australia needed long-term planning for productivity, infrastructure, ageing and climate change, he said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/greed-fed-market-turmoil-says-rudd/2008/10/05/1223145175365.html

Question...

Is it only a vision-logic that can ponder the complex interactions like 'action-logics'?