Blue dawn Ice
Greetings and salutations from the sand, sun and surf of Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and the great island of Nantucket! Great to be with you on this glorious Tuesday morning here on Cape Cod and I pray that you and yours are safe and warm wherever this ‘message in a bottle may be reaching “ya’ll”.’ Sorry about that, sometimes I just can’t help myself from using that quaint southern phrase that always seems to denote “friendliness”, but when used in Palinesque terms, it turns on you a little bit, with a hint of sarcasm and anger towards anyone with a viewpoint that borders on sanity…but, I digress. My heart goes out to all of the people of Japan this early morning here on the east coast of the United States, and from seacapecod.net please know that WE all stand behind you in this epic struggle of a three punch nature. The combination of the earthquake that struck at 2:46 p.m. Japan time on Friday last, and the wicked Tsunami that ensued, literally engulfing entire towns, some as large as Sendai, with over a million souls, taking with it entire buildings, ships of all sizes, cars, trucks, and people, now washing ashore by the thousands, is now being added to by the real threat of a nuclear meltdown in the number two reactor in the Fukushima nuclear facility, where a core group of engineers are desperately trying to cool the metal rods that house the uranium that is heated to create electricity, putting this nuclear disaster at the number two position behind Chernobyl and ahead of the Three Mile Island disaster here in the U.S. decades ago. No one really knows the outcome of the nuclear facility as of yet, as scientists, notably a group called “concerned scientists”, international in scope, scramble to determine just how dangerous this radiation exposure will be for the tens of thousands of people who live beyond the rather conservative 12 mile ‘no man’s land’ that the government has already established. Over 10,000 people have been estimated to have lost their lives, with over 500,000 people evacuated from various points to the north, and over 2 million without power. The Nikkei average has dropped 6 percent in Monday’s trading, and with plants like Nissan, Toyota and Sony closed due to rolling power outages, as most of Japan’s energy comes from nuclear power, and it is hard to determine Japan’s economic future as many are without homes and basic supplies like food and water. Yet, as one journalist from BBC America, Katty Kay I believe, pointed out, in a brilliant broadcast last night, bringing us glimpses of the damage caused by this massive Tsunami, that the Japanese people, despite all of this devastation, are resilient, markedly so, giving us all pause to say a prayer for their plight and GOD’S SPEED for their recovery. Moving on to the natural, or rather unnatural disasters going on in other parts of the world, we turn now to our seasoned reporter in Washington D.C. to give us a sneak peak into what those rascal republicans are up to now…take it away Calgon! I’m of the mindset that the good in people will shine through in the end. That eventually “REPUBLICORP”, as it is now widely KNOWN, is an ugly, dirty term that “hits the nail on the head”, as to what is really going on in ‘this here U.S. of A.’ The epic outbreak of greed we see now on Wall Street, stoking the engines of legislation that was, and IS equally bought, one Senator, one congressman, one federal judge, on district court judge, on governor, and God forbid, one President at a time, that buys, of course, what the “man behind the curtain”, wants–the “man behind the curtain”, some being the captains of industry, the CEO’s of the big insurance, big oil, big banks, big coal, big natural gas, big retail, big pharma, you know, the Fortune 100 companies, and the small number of people who OWN them, now global (for tax reasons), who control the world’s natural resources, as well as the majority of it’s human resources, thus, controlling the ‘mind set’ of said pejorative population in many countries around the world–and what they want IS ultimate power to continue with the status quo, with no outside interference, as in regulations of any kind, regardless of how important they are, such as nuclear safety or deep offshore drilling regulations. America, being the largest, purely capitalistic society, that developed and distributed it’s business model to the world, or at least that is what Republicorp wants, leads the way in this “downsizing” of the middle class in the United States, as the newly elected corporate puppets strip the last defenses of a common sense (see Thomas Paine and the book authored by him, “Common Sense”) democracy, one we fought and died for 236 years ago. This downsizing includes the most vulnerable of our society, the working poor and the indigent, the ‘walking dead’, the masses of homeless people that we all turn our back on usually by screaming something like, “get a job you bum!”, when that “bum” could be a laid off teacher who just lost everything due to that “downsizing” of public education, and could not afford to pay his mortgage, while at the same time, his wife and kids left him, leaving him in a depressed, dare I say suicidal spiral to the bottom, hell, that could be anyone you have ever met in this current climate of “no honor amongst thieves”. The downsizing also cuts into the environment, because we can always ‘create’ a new one right, who’s with me?, where the ‘puppets in charge’ in D.C., a new reality tv show coming out on FOX this fall, have 61 billion dollars in cuts planned for the twelve percent of the ‘discretionary spending’ that is on the chopping block for now, as they grind their axes for another day regarding social security, medicare and medicaid. These cuts proposed by republican law makers cut to the bone and through it, as some fine reporters have put it (credit TRMS/MSNBC), slashing the EPA, the environmental protection agency, by 3-5 billion, creating a virtual loophole for the oil and gas, not to mention coal industries, where they will be able to continue emitting carbon dioxide into OUR atmosphere at alarming levels, with no real restrictions, thus producing more of the ‘greenhouse’ gases that do what you would think happens in a real greenhouse, raise the temperature of the room, or the earth if you will, like with the sun warming the glass, hence raising the temperature in said greenhouse, the carbon dioxide, with no where to go, gathers in the atmosphere creating a blanket that holds on to the sun’s solar heat, and as the temperatures continue to rise, as science has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, the polar ice caps begin to melt, which acted as mirrors before they began this melting process, deflecting a large percentage of the intense heating mechanism of the sun “shine’s” light, thus, creating a vicious cycle of continual warming that will have devastating global consequences in the not too distant future, yes, those puppets have been busy ridding US of those dirty environmentalists who constantly speak of global warming, or, for those of you who live in the world with your head in the sand, like the Ostrich, the politically correct terminology, “climate change”. This all being done in conjunction with the fact that defunding the EPA to the point of it’s very existence being inconsequential, will allow the monsters who are causing all of this to happen, corporations like Halliburton and KOCH INDUSTRIES, to now have free reign to continue with their terrorist activity of “fracking”, which is systematically destroying our fresh drinking water supply, perhaps irreversibly, for tens or tens of thousands of years. ‘Fracking’, the hydraulic fracturing of shale rock deep below the earth’s surface in order to gather ‘natural gas’, being done by companies like KOCH, are dumping their waste, or rather, not even bothering to clean it up to begin with, called ‘processed water’, ‘water’ containing 596 deadly chemicals, that is left over from the high pressure water procedure, in the ground in over 37 states now, and as it finds it’s way into our drinking water supply, many more Americans will meet the same fate as the good people in the foothills of Rifle, Colorado have already felt–intense physical and psychological damage, not to mention all of the dead plants and animals who wash up on the river bed surrounding that town. It’s an expansion on the “Halliburton Loophole” created in 2005, by our previous “vice president”, Dick Cheney, who opened up public land in Wyoming to drill for natural gas, without any regulation whatsoever. I’m sure we can trust old dick, can’t we? Oh, and as a bonus, we’ll throw in the enormous levels of airborne toxins emitted from the well heads themselves, wells that now dot the landscape in, again, over 37 states now, from sea to shining sea. Take the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where over 15,000 wells make that urban area more polluted on a daily basis than the worst days of pollution alerts in the Los Angeles basin, and if you have ever been to L.A., you know how bad the “smog” can be. Thanks David and Charles Koch!, we look forward to building a statue in your honor, complete with a gas mask, a shovel and headstone, for you and your friends represent death. The last, and certainly not least, of the whole “downsizing thing” is the “problem”, according to anyone with an ‘r’ by their name, of EDUCATION. With the well of KNOWLEDGE gone from public education, with the new ‘plan’ being taxing the poor to pay for new charter schools that will more likely than not, according to most experts, serve rich kids from rich neighborhoods, and as this becomes the norm, and as we simultaneously slash, say, as the republicans propose, another 5 billion from that budget, effectively crippling it, especially in inner city and rural school systems, the deterioration of our children’s, all of our childrens’ futures will become a reality for millions, as they have no path out of poverty, which was the ‘plan’ all along. Future teachers will then opt for a different career path, lending their talents out to different, better paying, and more rewarding sources of employment, thereby leaving those millions of kids much less educated than they ought to be. This fact coupled with the equally disturbing fact that their ‘collective VOICE’ has been silenced, starting with the southern states, and then moving north to great states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana, not to mention the great state of Michigan, go blue!, where, especially in Wisconsin, I’m sure WE can all agree, the whole fiscal meltdown, pardon the phrase, of 2008, global in scope, was not caused by the fraudulent banksters of Wall Street, making bets on other people’s lives, real people like your grandmother or your neighbor down the street, who lost half of the value of, say, their 401(k) in the house of cards, a completely rigged system of Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs, who then turned the fiasco into an opportunity to borrow more money form OUR Federal Reserve Bank at 0 percent interest, and then, instead of re-investing in OUR nation, making amends for their mistakes, while correcting the corruption so that it won’t happen again, no, they double down and tighten credit on small business, lending out at 20 percent at best, or, in the ‘pay day loan’ scenarios, 440 percent interest, and as they turned the corner for the ‘finish line’, they were given the greatest present of all, the ‘gift that just keeps on giving all year long’, (credit Randy Quaid from the classic film “Christmas Vacation”), the 2009 ‘Supreme’ court ruling of Citizens United, a decision by that rather suspect court that has opened up the flood gates for special interest monies, both foreign and domestic, to enter the political arena, paving the way for the bulldozer to follow, as has already been evidenced by Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker’s bully move to literally take away a worker’s right to have a voice, let alone a vote, became reality–which is the real agenda here anyway. This folly of a decision by the extreme right tilting court, hand picked by corporate interests, just ask Clarence about the accommodations in Palm Springs, “he’ll tell ya” (credit Rodney Dangerfield/film-Caddyshack), now views corporations as people, and with the capability to pour billions of dollars into governorship races, you saw what happened in the last election with republican governors picking up many northern states, along with the state senate races, congressional races, U.S. Senate races, district court judge races, and ultimately the Presidential race coming up in 2012, there seems little the democratic party can do to stem the tide of special interest corrupt cash, and hence our nation in general seems to be in peril of a hostile takeover of monumental proportions. As if the corporate monies were not bribery enough, the corporations can now hand pick their puppet of choice and then expect his, or her, Legislative wish list to be completed, for REPUBLICORP will be run like a corporation, with no sassing from those pesky democrats–who we will run out of town on a rail. This all being done in the name and “for” the “American People”, as head as$holes in the House and Senate, Boehner and McConnell speak so often of, making me literally want throw up on the television monitor, speaking of them as if they really have their best interests in mind and who they have, like Jesus, a deep, close and personal relationship with. Those “American People” are the ones who carry the burden of this often used word, “sacrifice”, all while they somehow convince those same American people that their slave owners, the top tenth of the top one percent, DESERVE to have tax breaks in this hour of “shared sacrifice”, for the complicated trickle down voodoo economics that you and your children don’t need to know about right now, with monies borrowed from China, while they claim the mantle of “shared sacrifice” at the same time, with no sense apparently of any shame whatsoever–truly convincing up to 55 percent of the American public the billionaire boys club is not only right, but righteous, and “we” should ALL somehow feel sorry for them and there suffering, therein creating the most beautiful definition by example of a real life Stockholm Syndrome the world has ever seen. “The world has ever seen…” Never before have so many people been duped into believing this GIANT LIE the republican party really represents, a continuation of “curveball”, the stooge used by the previous administration to sell the illegal war in Iraq, (see “60 minutes”/CBS- 3-13-11), the smoking gun of ‘weapons of mass destruction’, that was accented by Bush’s performance one night in a speech that ended with his words, “ending in a mushroom cloud…” So with the unions gone, the environmental protection agency about to go by way of the DoDo bird, our last line of defense against corrupt, maniacal corporations like Halliburton and KOCH Industries, as it’s budget is cut to the bone, not to mention the securities exchange commission (SEC) and the internal revenue services, and, I almost forgot, the newly formed consumer protection agency, along with the mineral management services, and finally, as cannot be mentioned enough, with the cutting of most public education across the board, exacerbating our national crisis of higher learning in this ever dumbing down of America, via real test scores, putting us in the same company as developing nations, all culminates in the proverbial frosting on the cake, the slashing of federal funding for public television and national public radio, eliminating one of the last voices of reason and common sense on our airwaves, airwaves that are filled with insane, toxic waste dumps like Rush Limbaugh and his fellow lunatic imitators, the hate filled paranoia machines, carnival in nature, promoted as “entertainment”, or brainwashing if you want to be technically correct, that now fill the air 24/7, saturating the airwaves of every town, city and county, leaving no other alternative voice, the “Other Voice”, if you will, the one of reason, love and kindness, whose “air” is now mostly owned by huge corporate conglomerates who maintain all editorial content and therefore, brainwashing control, whose interests do not lie in the Arts, the Environment, in Music, or in the Books of any value, or in matters of Spirituality, no, rather sadly, their interests lie in the dumbing down of America to the point where the masses are merely sheep to be herded into being told what to buy, where to buy it, how to buy it with and who to buy it from and where to work to earn the money to buy it to begin with, keeping the ‘economy’ going for THEM, yes, the “real economy”, the bigger picture, and when you add the declining test scores for the students who do want a real education, to learn to THINK for themselves, therefore hopefully helping the society as it sees itself clear of this current storm, yes, when you add all of these factors in, as you add those FACTS to the silencing of free knowledge via public radio and television, not to mention stripping out the arts from the classrooms, that enriches children at a young age, when they need it the most, yes, when you combine all of these factors, and many that I have not mentioned because this blog is far too long already, thanks for hanging in there, I do have a point, you can clearly see how pleased the coming PLUTOCRACY must be at this juncture. For if 300,000 people, the top one tenth of the top one percent can own 80 percent of the wealth in this nation, taking 80 slices of a 100 piece pie, leaving the remaining 309,700,000 million people left to divvy up the remaining 20 pieces, you must agree on one thing, “It don’t look like no democracy I ever seen…!” This is a sham and an outrage on so many different levels it would take more than one blog to quench the fire I have in my soul to let the world know how greedy and corrupt the United States of America has become. It is a sad statement. Not about it’s people, but about it’s leaders, who are only interested in the welfare of corporations and have left it’s people to fend for themselves, in a cold, dark world of global corporate indifference, indifference to human suffering and human “shared sacrifice.” America’s essence, her soul, has been held hostage for too long, and her Liberty has been hijacked and hoodwinked into believing that all of this was somehow the fault of 98 percent of the good, honest, hard working American people, who do most of the living and dying in this great nation, a nation at the crossroads, not Karl Rove’s Crossroads/GPS, but a real one, with a battle that will be forthcoming. That is precisely why I believe some corporations will see the folly of their ways, come back into the LIGHT, before it’s too late, and redeem themselves from their evil ways. There’s a word for you, evil. Think about it, do I exaggerate, or do I paint a true and accurate portrait? As a quick side note, I wanted to answer Lawrence O’Donnell’s question, well, three of them really, on his venerated show, “The Last Word, with Lawrence O’Donnell,” airing every week night at 8 and 11 p.m. EST, only on MSNBC, where he asked some questions of Michelle Bachmann’s sanity and/or ignorance level–Bachmann, the fine, upstanding bat$hit congresswoman from the great state of Minnesota, who does not seem to know her geography very well, or her American history. His first question was a) how ignorant is Michelle Bachmann and how did she get that way? (no academic reason, as she is a law school graduate, as well as nothing to do with the median income in her 16th district in Minnesota, of roughly 63,000 dollars a year) and b) where did she get her shockingly ignorant staff who, as I have written about before in previous blogs, told us, Bachmann that is, via her brilliant staff, that the founding fathers ended slavery, when that was not, by any stretch of the imagination the case, as the real beginning of the end of slavery began with the Emancipation Proclamation by our sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln, in 1861, who was solely responsible for the freeing the slaves brought from the continent of Africa. So, if second grade math serves me, yes, it does, thank you Ms. Wilcox, my second grade teacher, I will always love you, this all happened seven decades and ‘four score’ after the founding fathers had already begun to retire and then move on to their eternal resting place in Heaven. Nice try Michelle, and further, to her comment about ‘the shot heard round the world in your’, as she speaks to a crowd in the state of New Hampshire, ‘home state in the towns of Concord and Lexington’, actually right here in my home state of MASSACHUSETTS lady!, so I could not resist the temptation to answer a few of Lawrence’s frustrating surrender to those tough questions, such as the question of the 52 percent of voters in her district who buy into her Kool Aid cookiness. How can they be that ignorant?, in other words, Lawrence was asking… I will give my best answer to the question of ‘where does Michelle find such interesting help?’ Answer: Michelle Bachmann’s staffers are actually closet LIBERALS who secretly hate Michelle Bachmann and everything that the fake grass roots ‘tea party’, the cloaked corporate takeover, stands for, what the whole thing represents. So, in order to insure she is not elected to the high office of President of the United States, or for another term for that matter, they ran a few ‘test balloons bloopers’, easy enough to hide, gaffe’s designed specifically to make her look stupid, but not too stupid to be noticeable enough that someone might suspect fowl play, as in ‘an inside job’. This being successful, it destroys her chances of anyone with half a brain taking her seriously as a candidate and saving, really, all of our lives. These, Lawrence, are true American heroes, who demand our respect and our thanks, for a job well done. Saving us from one “michelle bachmann” at a time. GOD BLESS US ALL! Have a nice day folks and don’t take any wooden nickels! PRESERVE THE WILDERNESS! Peace~M
