Look Out America!

Here is a freaky political Ad for this Republican candidate for US Senate. YIKES!!!

Funky Day!: Let's Welcome Humidity

Good morning! It's  Wednesday, May 22 I woke up this morning

Add caption

planning to have breakfast, coffee, and then go to the meeting. well today was to be different!!  As I poured my raisin bran in my milk out came out ANTS! they came out like little pepper flakes in my cereal. I was stunned! so 

and thought, "well that was that." I had to go in the closet and throw

out stuff and junk that had accumulated over the past 18 months. I then needed clean out all the mice poo and whatever was up there. I then decided to bring a pile of dirty clothes to the laundromat since I was already late for the 7:15 meeting. I finally finished eating breakfast so I am going down towards the meeting. I'll show up at 8:00. I then will go to TD Bank for Pat to pay Mike for work he did last year.

Good afternoon ! Today I  worked hard  at work Now it's 330 and the weatherman has turned up the heat. It is hot out here but fortuitous enough it's not disgustingly humid It looks like tonight's the night the AC gets installed just-in-time for the Memorial Day holiday just like last year  I went to Fresh Grocer  two slices of pizza at me running around because everybody is taking off Friday I'm taking off Thursday anyway anybody taking off Friday and are scheduling people today like mad that's it.

Under a Full Moon!!

I worked hard but it was a good day as work can be. I stayed till about 8 and got some messes off my desk. I even cleaned it too. I am just sitting now at Pat's just sweating to begin the ending of this week. We are coming to the end of May and the warmth will stay with us until August when the cool air will begin to return and clear our minds.
Speaking of mind-clearance, I have been isolating a bit this week. I think it starts with the traveling. I see friends and have nice times. I really get a kick out of it. The flip-side is that I soon sense a feeling of isolation from folks here at home. I have this tendency but its been mitigated by going to meeting and mostly due to Drew Pat and Larry. Group is cool but I do not see them after or before hardly at all.
Connecting can be difficult for me since I get in my own way.
I can feel a change in my mind and not sure if its leading to anything. I am not ready to jump in a relationship in over my head but I do have to wonder if I might be missing something. Life is kind of short and I am not getting any younger and the women are not either. I am glad I am not in the 20's or 30's where every woman HAS to have a boyfriend to show to all who care to watch.  That was not much fun back in the 80's and 90's. I think it may be worse for folks in that age group.today where the competition amongst smart folks is way up.

Had 2 Plain Slices at Lunch

I still have this cold but I am feeling better I think I will take a nap after Sunrise THEN go to New York. Its going to be exciting but it

At LaColumbe

will tire me out. I know I will want to stay local this weekend just to sit still for a moment. A moment before Dean moves in. A moment before I am involved, A moment before the next phase.
There is a neighborhood clean up this Sat at 10am. I plan to attend that. I think the block captain is very nice. She is smart and is mentally balanced and seems to very well adjusted and successful.. I know its not good to compare my inside with someone Else outsides but in this case I will just state the obvious....
I am writing while I wait for Pat to get up from his power nap. I am now listing to REM "Fables of the Reconstruction." Its an early one from REM

and I am on iTunes with the earphones in my own small world  of work and computers. Where the woman are in distant places that are safe for them and myself. I can email them and text them as well. Facebook is another way to communicate. Its lightweight communication and I say that as an observation not a pejorative statement. Its easier for those where non-verbal cues can not be missed. You know like a train or bus. You miss one, there is another one to catch if you want to go anywhere in life.
Frankly the political world is not right. All I hear is the press being self-righteous towards the Obama Administration about the IRS targeting of the Tea Party, Benghazi and the Justice Department peering into the media. The IRS got coughs in the terminology of the regulations. The tax-exempt code that the IRS was trying

to enforce was the 501 (c)4. This states in simple terms that these tax-exempt organizations have to provide some kind of "social service". Well, I don't know but my dear readers, most Tea Party groups are political in nature.Steven Colbert shows why he is the most knowledgeable satirist when it comes to  big money in politics. He points out the absurdity of the politics and the power of the monied interests to create a closed system of money and influence. The rules are written by the insiders and the rules are made so that only ones who really benefit from from political

combat are the consultants lobbyists and lawyers of every\stripe. On to a more cool topic. I am visiting New York tomorrow for the day. The main reason that I wanted to go was to see a show at the Claire Oliver Gallery. The opening reception with the Artist Judith Schaechter. She lives in Philly and her work is awe-inspiring. I read up on how she creates these stained-glass works and it really shows how skilled and creative she truly is. I will let the intro on her website describe the show. I will give just a short snippet.

The Battle of Carnival and Lent, Judith Schaechter's new exhibition at Claire Oliver Gallery, tackles one of the most fundamental struggles known to man, the war humankind wages between good and evil. Dancing on the psychological border between spiritual aspiration and human suffering, the Artist questions the association of an environment of confinement/reflection in the name of self betterment and the harsh realities of the physical experience of imprisonment; She is speaking about the 'prisons' we all encounter, be they mental or physical.

I have never seen her work in person, she must have shown at the ICA where Carolyne worked for a few

My Birthday: State of the Nation

Image via Wikipedia

Good mornng. Its November 5th and its now 49 (not 48 like I thought earlier today. My mother corrected me!!) years old for me. How many more to go? Well, that all depends of course on fate and decent decisions.
I was browsing the Web since I am driving and slept in till 6:30 this morning. I saw an article in the Atlantic and one article was called Billy Joel Explains the Election. In it Marc Ambinder explains how the deindustrialization of the Midwest and Rust Belt states has decimated the old Democratic Party base, Labor. Hard working middle class people losing their jobs that had benefits and salaries that could pay for a comfortable middle-class living. His take on that Billy Joel song Allentown:

Billy Joel, in Allentown, caught the moment decades before it happened... the last time the economy in Pennsylvania transitioned away from coal and steel. Educated, hard-working people. The generational tension. The sense that the next generation will be worse of than the current one. The lack of an economic foundation. The sense that they've been abandoned by the powers that be. (The union people went awaaaaay).... So long as this state of affairs persists, the entire stretch of land, from Indiana to Pennsylvania, will be competitive nationally.

Quite the Political Stew we have today :(

This has led to frustration and anger that has been repeated by the media ever since the Health-Care bill was debated in Congress last year. Some of this this frustration has been used by wealthy corporate(and oil) interests to fund the Tea Party and make HUGE political contributions to fund the campaign against Obama and Democrats. The Koch brothers have been big contributors to the Tea Party movement since its inception back in February 2009 when CNBC's Rick Santelli went on a rant about Obama's plan to help folks unable to pay their mortgage. In it he mocks "losers" who can't pay the mortgage. Its the typical class warfare that Republicans have employed for years. Now with FOX News (The Pravda for Republican Party)and the 24 hr news cycle its pitted Americans against each other. Check this out and see for yourself:


Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote on October 31st 2010 about Mr. Santelli and his ilk. Mr Krugman states the issue quite correctly and clearly. He states that "Debt Moralizers" are winning the battle of ideas of how to treat the economy during this, the worst recession since the Great Depression. He states that during a deep recession when private companies and individuals have slowed or stopped spending, the govt needs to take up the slack. I will let Mr. Krugman take over:

“How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?” That’s the question CNBC’s Rick Santelli famously asked in 2009, in a rant widely credited with giving birth to the Tea Party movement.
 The message is the same: debt is evil, debtors must pay for their sins, and from now on we all must live within our means.
And that kind of moralizing is the reason we’re mired in a seemingly endless slump... 

So what should we be doing? First, governments should be spending while the private sector won’t, so that debtors can pay down their debts without perpetuating a global slump. Second, governments should be promoting widespread debt relief: reducing obligations to levels the debtors can handle is the fastest way to eliminate that debt overhang.
But the moralizers will have none of it. They denounce deficit spending, declaring that you can’t solve debt problems with more debt. They denounce debt relief, calling it a reward for the undeserving.
And if you point out that their arguments don’t add up, they fly into a rage. Try to explain that when debtors spend less, the economy will be depressed unless somebody else spends more, and they call you a socialist. Try to explain why mortgage relief is better for America than foreclosing on homes that must be sold at a huge loss, and they start ranting like Mr. Santelli. No question about it: the moralizers are filled with a passionate intensity.

I will finish with a nice quote from the Auburn Journal which explains the foundations of our political and national state of affairs:

Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ hatred of taxes, big government and Obama, but there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business, whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.

Yet inexorably, the Koch agenda is morphing into the standard G.O.P. agenda, as articulated by current Republican members of Congress including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner, and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block, Alaska’s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin protégé, Joe Miller.

Their program opposes a federal deficit but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the super-rich; it apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a “slush fund”; it opposes the extension of unemployment benefits for workers and it calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even food industries (among others) have been outrageous.
The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that concerned working Americans are being manipulated into aiding and abetting their selfish interests.

As Billy Joel sings in Allentown:

To get at least as far as their old man got.
If something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our face, oh oh oh

Billy Joel - Allentown (Official Music Video). Watch more top selected videos about: Billy Joel

Related articles

• Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann Mock Rick Santelli (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Live within your means, neighbor (nowpublic.com)
• Danny Schechter: After the Election, What About the Economy? (huffingtonpost.com)
• CNBC Promotes Election Coverage With Rick Santelli's Tea Party Rant (mediaite.com)
• Best economy reads: Is Canada a refuge for bad managers? (theglobeandmail.com)
• Billy Joel Is Kind Of Hateful, Awesome (blogs.forbes.com)