Capitalism Has Got the Goods (and Services) – In Song
November 10, 2011 Leave a comment
Hinterland of Youth
November 6, 2011 Leave a comment
Hinterland of Youth
On that rapidly growing dark afternoon of November 23rd, 1972, two friends called on me. They came to take me to Mauston, Wisconsin, a nether-land up north. The trip would be a get-away weekend of exposed anima with just the guys. We were headed to a hunter’s cabin on loan to us from a local town alderman. The three of us, Jack Kerouac, Bill Caulfield and me, Tom Merton said goodbye to my parents. We then hit the road and headed north on I-90, leaning forward into the “next crazy venture beneath the skies.” So Jack began the scroll of our trip.
Just across the Illinois-Wisconsin border and somewhere on an isolated back road Bill had Jack stop the car. Bill got out and went around to the trunk. I watched him not knowing what he was doing. He pulled out a small insulated lunch bag. Apparently Bill hid the bag in the spare tire cove of the trunk. He returned to the front seat, opened the bag and handed me my first cold beer – a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I figured then that Bill had made off with a six pack from his father’s beer refrigerator in his family’s basement.
I tasted my first beer in the backseat of Jack’s ’69 Ford Galaxie. I slurped it slowly thinking it smelled strangely familiar, something in the order of wet wheat-germ or chilled sweat. I dug its mystic cold smarminess.
As we drove north drinking beer we listened to Bill’s eight track tapes. The eclectic collection included Woodstock, Jethro Tull’s Hard as a Brick, The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, the Beach Boys, Jimmy Hendrix and many others. I had to beg Bill and Jack to get them to listen to my Chicago CTA album and to my Simon and Garfunkel Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album. When I did get to play them, I do so with the Marantz turntable sitting next to me on the back seat. The road yielded to the beat.
After three hours and thirty-one minutes of driving and several “Nature’s calling” stops we arrived at the cabin, about ten miles outside of Mauston. It was around 10:30 pm. The cabin was dank and cold. We found the thermostat and switched on the furnace. There was a small hutch filled with firewood and so we started a fire going in the brick fireplace. Not long after that we hit the bunk beds strained from the day’s massive carb-loading and the red-eyed myopia of night driving.
The weekend at the cabin gave me new insights into what the body can and cannot handle. Drinking alcohol for the first time in my life and without reservation had me revisiting the first seventeen years of my life from the inside out. My stomach doesn’t suffer fools well. In the morning my brain pummeled me with its version of smashing clay pots filled with forget-me-nots on my head.
It was during this next morning that I came up with a throbbing new insight: I told Bill and Jack that we should buy milk shakes to coat our stomachs before drinking again that night. They mumbled an agreement and we drove to Dairy Queen that afternoon. We drank large vanilla milk shakes in hopes of staving off the stomach sucking creatures of the night. The ultimate effect, though, was thorough expurgation. I was to find out later that a more prudent trade-off was to not drink so much that one would up running around in twenty degree weather in their underwear howling at the moon.
One of the more sober highlights of our weekend was using a .38 special to shoot at beer cans and bottles lined up on a fence behind the cabin. The gun belonged to Bill’s father. His father was a Brink’s truck guard. As I learned Bill had secretly taken the gun and some ammo from his father’s bedroom. We used the gun to shoot at bull’s eye targets nailed to unsuspecting trees. The exhilarating effect of shooting a handgun though quickly wore off. I wanted more and more fire power. I eagerly wanted to shoot a shotgun or a bazooka or a cannon or an ICBM – anything that provided a flesh-shaking ear-deafening “KER-POW!!!!”
This was the first time I had ever shot a gun. In my hand the cold hard steel loaded with more cold hard steel sent a hot rush of testosterone through my extremities. I had to pull the trigger to release the pressure or I felt that I would have exploded.
The cabin, being a hunter’s paradise, was filled with Playboys – Playboys which included Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield. This was not the first time I had been exposed to these magazines. Men seemed to keep them in places where boys would find them. All I needed besides the Playboys was a smoking jacket and a pipe. Instead of those Hugh Hefner type accoutrements Jack supplied me with Tiparillos. A blanket would be my smoking jacket.
At night Bill and I looked at the collection of Playboys by the light of the glowing fireplace. Reading the ‘articles’ warmed our sensibilities and the centerfold’s siren call would make drooling cave men of us all. Well not all of us. I found out a year later that Jack was gay. I realized then why he would want two guys alone with him up at the cabin. I do remember being especially thankful at the time for Marilyn’s company and being curious about Jack’s ambivalence toward the women who were stapled down for our viewing pleasure.
The weekend in Wisconsin with the guys worked out all of my unexercised stupidity. And it all happened under the gauzy star-filled night pointed at by thousands of towering conifers just outside of Mauston, Wisconsin. Fire-in-the-belly embers would burn through the fabric of my being leaving my satin youth singed. The weekend was a rite of passage of sorts which thankfully didn’t regress into a Lord of the Flies sequel.
If I had a time machine I would not go back to Mauston and the cabin. I might, though, go back to that Thanksgiving dinner, say “Thank you” to my parents, push away from the table and go take a long nap, not waking up until November 24th, 2011. I wouldn’t miss the self-obsessed oblivion of those in-between detached days.
Where do I go when the music starts?
October 28, 2011 Leave a comment
Where do I go when the music starts?
When I blow my horn and jazz blurts out?
Maybe I am holed up in the right hemisphere with the shades drawn
– the motel existential.
Maybe I go underground and then
Maybe, man, I am submersed head-to-toe in liquid sublimity –
Me being all lava-in-a-lamp like.
Where do I go when the music starts?
I go with it.
© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved
Sowell Man Friday
October 28, 2011 Leave a comment
Here are just a few insightful quotes from Thomas Sowell’s new book, The Thomas Sowell Reader. I highly recommend this down to earth book by Thomas Sowell, economist. These quotes are to be found in the chapter Random Thoughts. As you will see, the quotes are apropos for today’s political scene and the profligate Left.
“Many of those people in the so-called “helping professions” are helping people to be irresponsible and dependent on others.”
“Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.”
“People who cannot be bothered to learn both sides of the issues should not bother to vote.”
“”Funding” is one of the big phony words of our times – used by people too squeamish to say “money” but not too proud to take it, usually from the taxpayers.”
“Envy plus rhetoric equals “social justice.”
“The national debt is the ghost of Christmas past.”
“Historians of the future will have hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence.”
“Those who want to take our money and gain power over us have discovered the magic formula: get us envious or angry at others and we will surrender, in installments, not only our money but our freedom. The most successful dictators of the 20th century – Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao – all used this formula, and now class warfare politicians are doing the same.”
“No matter how much people on the left talk about compassion, they have no compassion for the taxpayers.”
“Too often what are called “educated” people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years.”
“Some ideas sound so plausible that they can fail nine times in a row and still be believed the tenth time. Other ideas sound so implausible that they can succeed nine times in a row and still not be believed the tenth time. Government controls in the economy are among the first kinds of ideas and the operations of the free market are among the second kind.”
“Much of what are called “social problems” consists of the fact that intellectuals have theories that do not fit the real world. From this they concluded that it is the real world which is wrong and needs changing.”
“Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all – inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable.”
“The people I feel sorry for are those who do 90 percent of what it takes to succeed.”
“Have you ever heard a single hard fact to back up all the sweeping claims for the benefits of “diversity”?
“A careful definition of words would destroy half the agenda of the political left and the scrutinizing evidence would destroy the other half.”
This Empty Old House
October 16, 2011 Leave a comment
Jesus, after responding to the Pharisees and teachers of the law regarding a sign of his authority said this:
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” The Gospel of Matthew chapter 12 vs. 43-45
Notice here that everything is “swept clean and put in order”. There is a sense that everything is OK because everything looks so good. In fact, things appear normal. Yet, the home is vacant, not being used for its purpose. It is a shell of a place waiting for life.
The homeowner is not home. Maybe the owner is out living wildly, living the high life. Maybe, he is out being busy helping others or the environment or …
It doesn’t matter where the homeowner is. If the homeowner doesn’t come home, if he doesn’t even look inside he won’t see what is going on inside, he won’t see who or what is living in his home.
You should know that the whole purpose of the Evil One and His minions is to keep you occupied ‘outside’ of yourself so that you never realize what is going on inside. He doesn’t want any meaningful introspection or self-examination. This might lead to a person to seeing their need for Christ. And, without the homeowner’s honest self-reflection the pretense of a normal well-polished life goes on uninterrupted.
While a homeowner is narcissistically occupied with how he looks on the outside instead of reflecting on what is happening on the inside his home is an easy target for vagrants that move in unnoticed. Unbridled chaos is sure to ensue in the home without the homeowner present. This type of “non-resident” homeowner will operate under the guise of a well-controlled “normalcy” and will even use lies and scapegoating to protect that veneer of normalcy.
Martin Buber, a noted philosopher, has said that the malignantly narcissistic insist upon “affirmation independent of all findings.” In other words, they want you to tell them that their house is looking good and that things are normal but don’t dare tell them the rest. These people, these “homeowners”, do not want you to name the problems that you see going on inside. To name it would mean that there is a problem, a defect within the home. Denial by these “homeowners” keeps them at a safe distance away from the problem. And while they are away they chose to be occupied full-time with attention-getting measures well apart from their true unexamined self. This leaves the house “unoccupied, swept-clean and in order”.
Reinforcing the homeowner’s self-valuation of his “property” is the world community with a culture promoting narcissism. Keeping up with the Joneses means more and more external fixes and less and less real home inspections.
Add to that the newest electronic gadgetry which is endlessly sought in order to pacify the mind and to fill our time with endless chatter and noise – anything but to face the drip, drip, drip of our conscience.
The homeowner’s absence can often be accounted for by a prodigal’s lust for secularism and/or atheism and/or a playful agnosticism – anything to keep from being at home alone with the truth.
Consequently, our lives and our country have become vacuums for whatever is “out there” waiting to come in. and, it is the Evil One Who wants to come in to your “home” and put his feet up. He knows that the empty and disillusioned will be out busy doing his bidding seeking to hold it all together, seeking to make the world a better place through pagan ideologies, to rise above the fray of imperfection. He knows that these same people will seek social policies and reforms to dress up the neighborhood, increasing the value of his own “home”
Postmodern man while looking through the windows of his empty clean house searches for something to fill its void. He spots man made rainbows with their promises for self-fulfillment, brotherhood, world peace, etc. He then scurries out to grab hold of those colorful ribbons. But they are empty promises, condensation which evaporates in his hand when he returns home and stands at the threshold of his empty home.
Postmodern man fancies himself as an intellectual above and beyond the simple wisdom and knowledge of the Creator Christ and His Good News of Atonement, the Gospel. Countless verbose posts blather on in confused pagan ideological nonsense. And, pretentious rapid-fire Tweets pretend to be “so knowing” in 140 characters or less. The words come from empty places, filling the space and time given us by the Creator with constant noise and endless chatter. This din blocks out the voice of God. He is calling us home.
In his swept and clean house, modern man often feeds his self-pity with promiscuous self-serving behavior. He papers the walls of his empty house with tattoos – banners testifying to the past demons that have lived there. He is lord of his manor or is he?
Turning to main point of this post, sadly, many Christians are standing outside their homes. They are compromised. And, many churches teach about a kind and compassionate Jesus but not about the fire and the sword Lord Jesus Christ. Many people, Christian and non-Christian “homeowners”, want the Jesus who welcomes them home but not the Jesus who will cast out the demons who are living there.
Because of soft-selling doctrines and the preaching of partial truths via synthetic gospels the person in the pew begins to feel that he, too, can compromise his Christian doctrine-ethics at every turn. He will tell himself (compassionately, of course) that he is only trying to survive and at the same time trying to be socially concerned and accepting about others. These same “followers” of Christ are never told that lukewarm Christians will be spewed out of the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ and that sexual fornicators do not enter the kingdom of heaven.
As I see it, much of the American church, has lost the touchstone of the Early Christian church creeds and Truth. Many have left behind doctrine in search of Holy Grail social and political reforms hoping to fill the vacancies of our empty “homes”.
Dorothy Sayers, author of the Peter Wimsey mystery novels and Christian apologist would say that we as Christians have a choice: Creed or Chaos? She would say that we must know what the creeds are and what they rightly stand for before we go to battle with the pagan world. She notes that we as Christians are in a war of dogmas. Only, the pagan side’s dogma is termed “ideology”.
I am praying for a revival in this country. Revival will begin when the early Christian church creeds and dogmas are held to be true by today’s Christian, when the Christian is present to them and to himself. It will happen when Christians pour the foundations of their own homes with the concrete truth of those creeds and the Christian puts his whole weight on those creeds. It will happen when the abundant life brought by the Holy Spirit indwells the homeowner as he stands in his home. Then, from out of this place, as Dorothy Sayers wrote in Creed or Chaos, the Christian may speak to his neighbor about God, man, sin, judgment, matter, work and society.
A swept-clean house is great but of what value is it if no one comes home and is present. And, what else could be living in this empty old house?
Obama is No Lincoln
October 11, 2011 Leave a comment
Below are excerpts from an article written by FRANK MIELE posted on the Daily Inter Lake website on Sunday, July 12, 2009. The article is titled “Lincoln’s warning: Beware changes brought about by ‘towering genius’”. Miele contrasts the protector and conservator of the union, Abraham Lincoln, using Lincoln’s own words and the ambitious, legacy driven, Barack Obama hoping to be seen as Lincolnesque:
Lincoln warned against those who would strive to reshape the institutions of America for their own purposes of legacy building, and it is worth considering today whether President Obama and his “transformational” presidency would fall under Lincoln’s watchful eye as a potential danger….
“Men of ambition and talents’ will continue to spring up among us, he warns – men comparable to “an Alexander, a Caesar, or a Napoleon” – and, when they do, “they will… naturally seek the gratification of their ruling passion, as others have so done before them… Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.”…
“Towering genius disdains a beaten path.” Lincoln warns us. “It seeks regions hitherto unexplored… It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen.”…
“At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”..
Lincoln referred to the arrival of an ambitious leader as one such “probable case” and classifies it as “highly dangerous’ to the future of the union.
“Distinction will be ‘such a leader’s’ paramount object; and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”
“Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense. Let those [materials’ be molded into general intelligence, ‘sound] morality and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws,” said Lincoln.
Cindy Wity 
It’s Time to Cut the Crap
October 14, 2011 2 Comments
Get your shovels ready.
Until we get a president in the White House and while BO is out playing with himself and passing the buck here is what I think should happen to kick-start the economy and downsize the national debt:
1. Stop government funding of public TV and radio immediately. I am not renouncing TV or radio. Instead, I am saying that these communication vehicles can be funded via commercials or donations from viewers/listeners who want what they put out.
2. Stop government funding of the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities immediately. I am an ardent fan of all the arts (except ballet, “Twinkles Down” *on that). Art, in all its forms, should be subsidized by those who want it. e.g., I support my local artists by buying their original art work.
3. Abolish all public education within the next five years. All schools should be privately owned and operated. Remove the NEA teacher’s unions from the classroom. The government can provide vouchers for the very poor. Aspirations are what people need to go forward and not the never-ending government hand outs.
4. Abolish all minimum wage laws and all other unfunded mandates immediately so people can go back to work.
5. Put a five-year moratorium on all EPA regulations. Then, dispose of the EPA altogether in the sixth year.
6. Create a personal income flat tax of across the board on two income levels. Below a yearly income of $40,000.00 (this is an arbitrary number up for discussion) the flat tax rate would be 5% (e.g., $2000.00 for a $40,000. income). For incomes of $40, 000.00 and above the tax rate is 15% (e.g., $6000.00 for a $40000.00 income).
Simplify the tax code to one or two sentences: “You shall pay 15 % of your income for the year XXXX” if you made $40,000.00 or more in that year.
State Sales taxes would be tied to the previous year’s income tax paid as one-ten thousandth of what you paid in income taxes the previous year. (e.g., you made $40,000 last year. You paid $6000.00 in taxes. You next year’s sales tax on any item is $0.60.) A card would be mailed by the government to show what your maximum sales tax would be on any item. (This amount is given that the state should no longer fund education or social programs).
(BTW: These are just some ideas about taxation. The tax code must be simplified. How many tax bureaucrats does the taxpayer pay for by using the current tax code nightmare? We have to think outside the box.)
7. Cut corporate taxes in half for three years and then abolish all corporation taxes. Corporations provide jobs and benefits for people.
8. Abolish all tariffs
9. Immediately repeal the onerous Obamacare and Dodd-Frank Acts and all over-reaching Federal and State regulations so that the economic engine of America can fire properly. Currently, Obamacare is an unfunded mandate.
10. Give each Congressman a six-year term and one term only. Doing this will make the Congressman concentrate on his job and not on creating populist programs that will win him re-election while costing the taxpayer mega-dollars. Term limits would also be devastating to any lobbyist trying to buy the Congressman’s power via re-election campaign monies.
(BTW: The only expertise that long-term Congressmen and Congresswomen receive is how to craft a re-election. Let’s not give power-hungry people more power.)
11. Did it say it already? Abolish the EPA.
12. Privatize the mail delivery system.
13. End social security in five years for those under fifty. Those people can use IRAs or 401k plans instead (These people will make more money and more secure retirement money with these financial vehicles).
14. Limit the use of FEMA to national security emergencies such as 9/11. People living in hazardous locations can buy flood insurance, hurricane insurance, etc or they can move to a safer location.
15. Illinois house cleaning: remove Pat Quinn (D-governor), Dick Durbin (D-senator, his wife is a lobbyist for Government Affairs Specialists, Inc.,in Springfield!), Mike Madigan (D-speaker of the house) and Rahm Emmanuel (D-Chicago mayor) from office ASAP.Illinois has the worst credit rating in the union thanks to the tax and spend Democrats. (And, the most felonious governors)
16. Drill our own natural resources for natural gas and oil.
17. Leave Afghanistan immediately and rebuild our own national fence.
18. Never send another dollar to Pakistan or to the UN, for that matter.
19. Get government out of the housing market. Tear down those Fannie and Freddie walls. (and, remove Democrat Senators Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi from office)
20. Tie government spending to 1.1 % of GDP or better, pass a balanced budget amendment.
21. Eliminate all Social/Economic Tinkering: all of the laws passed (using Stage One thinking*) in order to help Americans (e.g., Dick Durbin’s debit card price controls & the $5 BofA debit card charge) do not operate in isolation. These laws, in the aggregate, affect us negatively and hurt Americans more than they help. You will have to pay more for the use of your debit card in other ways. What goes around comes around, ipso facto.
(* as Thomas Sowell, economist, defines thinking that does look at all of the possible ramifications of a proposed law. Laws do not operate in a vacuum. I highly recommend his latest book, The Thomas Sowell Reader, copyright 2011.)
22. We need free trade agreements passed now.
23. Breakup the monopoly of the US government and Federal Reserve Bank. Better, get rid of most of government and shut down the Federal Reserve Bank.
24. Because lobbyists are voters with lots of campaign money attached and because we have a representative government we must make congress accountable to the people and not solely to lobbyists and special interests. I propose a full disclosure statement be written and posted online every time a representative interacts with a lobbyist. This statement would disclose the date and time of contact, the means of contact, the purpose of contact, the information exchanged and our representative’s disposition to said matter. This statement must be signed by both parties and posted online. This disclosure statement must be done every time – pre, post and during office, night and day, during working hours and during their free time. To not disclose interaction with a lobbyist (I will need legal language here to define lobbyists and special interests.) whether via phone, email, texting, in person or via a third-party would be considered a felony and would be punishable by a minimum of 30 years in prison. This law would affect aides and family, as well.
25. Elect Presidents with business savvy, leadership and management experience – “Twinkles Up”. Do not elect “buff” spoiled brats who spend most of their time looking in the mirror, blaming Bush and playing golf. That would be “Twinkles Down”.**
(**For everyone who is working and NOT a OWS protestor, “Twinkles Down” means “bad” in protestor speak.)
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Filed under capitalism, Conservatism, conservative, Culture, Economics, Liberalism, Life As I See It, Political Commentary, Politics, Progressivism, social commentary Tagged with 2012 elections, alan greenspan, Barney Frank, democrats, Dick Durbin, Dodd-Frank, Economics, Fannie Mae, freddie mac, George W. Bush, housing crisis, housing market, Illinois credit rating, less government, Libertarian, monopoly, NPR, Obama, Obamacare, PBS, politics, public policy, public radio, public tv, The Thomas Sowell Reader, Twinkles up & down