In 2006, Republican Party strategist Kevin Phillips - the architect of Ronald Reagan's Southern Strategy - wrote a book, "American Theocracy," that accurately predicted the deeply damaging  impact of the Republican party's obsessions with oil, religion and debt upon the body politic of the natio… Read full post »

If I had bought in before
I would have lost more
I waited for the call to come
That never came at all
The charge laid against us
That we did not manage well
Belies the existential fact
That we do not manage circumstances
Circumstances manage us.

In the chutzpah of our hubris
We think ourselves players on the… Read full post »

This comes under the heading of, "Be Careful What You Wish For....."

On AOL right now, Bernie Meyerson is predicting five major changes that are going to affect the world over the next five years, and he really thinks they are all good things when, of course, they are not.… Read full post »

The problem is information overload.  

Divide the ambiant audience by the number of information outlets and you get a co-efficient that indicates the degree of saturation in a media environment.  

If you have 100 million twitter users, for example, you divide the 100 million users by 100 mi… Read full post »

 I could swear I wrote this story once before, but I went through my blog and couldn't find it there.

I recently went back to work as a mortgage banker and, from that perspective, I can tell you we are far from the end of this economic downturn....but that's not… Read full post »

The boy who cried wolf
Got eaten for his troubles
The boy who cried out
The Emperor has no clothes
Was shushed by his elders
The dark at the top of the stairs
Really does conceal the demons
Of our discontent in their shadows
Chicken Little was right after all… Read full post »

The Republican Party's strategy in the 2012 presidential campaign might best be described with the motto of the ancient Alchemists:  Solve et Coagula, Latin for "Dissolve and Coagulate."

In Alchemy, this term refers to the process of breaking down compounds and mixtures into their constituent e… Read full post »

The banks are robbing us blind....literally.

Two days ago, I received an overdraft notice from Bank of America to the effect that my account had fallen to zero. 

Approximately one-third of my life's savings had just disappeared.

Normally, if something like this were to happen to you,… Read full post »

Driven by the inexorable demands of a capitalist economy, we are fishing the seas out of fish, but there are conundrums in the explosion of commercial fishing at the expense of artisanal fishing.

Erase the idea of the independent fisherman from your mind, because they are themselves an endangered sp… Read full post »

Sometimes, it's interesting to see how news is covered...and how it isn't covered....by the national media.

Today - just today - a story aired on CNN about a missing $77 million Powerball ticket that wasn't cashed in before the 180 day grace period expired on Monday.

What's interesting about… Read full post »

     A young man was heading home upon hearing news that his aged mother was dying.  He came upon a river crossing, but he couldn't afford the ferryman's fee, so he had to go the long way around and arrived too late to comfort his mother in her… Read full post »

     A young man was heading home upon hearing news that his aged mother was dying.  He came upon a river crossing, but he couldn't afford the ferryman's fee, so he had to go the long way around and arrived too late to comfort his mother in her… Read full post »

Herman Cain is twisting in the wind of a very public exercise in the use of innuendo.

 Like “entitlement,” innuendo is now being redefined by the pro-Cain media to be much less than it really is, a highly suggestive metaphoric statement used to imply a dismissive comment aimed at a… Read full post »

The Occupy Wall Street protestors are protesting everything, which in the end means that their protests lack focus.

The anti-war movement of the  1960s and 1970s broke down when the protestors began to broaden the targets of their protests to include things that no one has control over,… Read full post »

 Censorship by the government is prevented by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which grants an unrestricted right to free speech to the American people.

 That right has been under attack ever since the Bill of Rights was first approved. 

 The most usual contention of… Read full post »

From my vantage point on a precious metals trading desk, I see a lot more information about economic trends than the average person does during the day.

I don’t like what I see.

Greece is tottering on the edge of default, closely followed by Spain and Italy.  The rest… Read full post »

Jonathan Wolfman wrote the following: 

http://open.salon.com/blog/jlw1/2011/10/13/our_targeted_killing_of_american_al-awlaki_was_justified

 My reply, as posted on his blog entry:

 I am surprised at you, Jonathan, and everyone else who supports murder as a government policy. 

I am… Read full post »

From the valley to the mountain top
It's a long hard climb to the summit
And the way down is just as hard
From the mountain top to the valley

You make the trip because you have to go
Something up ahead keeps calling you
Something far behind is catching up
And you always in the… Read full post »

Often a poem's no more
than a few words
 seeking an environment
in which to present themselves
to your collective attention
to achieve gnosis

And sometimes
you want to stretch the limits
of the format to squeeze in
the final… Read full post »

Hobo jungles are springing up again
Off the interstate, near the old freight yards
Where homeless people gather together
When there’s nowhere else left to go

 Bivouac tents and tar papered shacks
Huddled together for the safety in numbers
Once the last addresses of drunkards and madmen
Now… Read full post »

You reach a point in life
When you cherish recollections
That come in flashes
And fade away, fade away, fade away
Only to flash again

 You are one of those flashes of light
That… Read full post »

Lately we’ve been talking
About how much we love each other
And how much more we seem
To love each other than we did
Even just a few short months ago.

It started the day we met
I had seen pictures
But this was different
When she opened… Read full post »

The coral reefs are dying
As the ancient ocean warms again
When the reefs die, the fish die
When the fish die, fishermen starve

Bee hives are dying,
And, when the bees die,
Flowers go unpollinated
And then fruit don’t grow.

The Gloucestermen no longer set… Read full post »

They are sending me away
But where should I go
When no one is left alive
Obligated to let me in

They are sending me away
But I don’t know where to go
Or how to get there
Or what to do/… Read full post »