U.S. farmers commit suicide

Farmers in India are not the only farmers committing suicide due to the stresses of an agricultural lifestyle. The ones committed to feeding and clothing much of the rest of the United States are under enormous pressures, many of which (nature, greed to name two) no one has the power to ameliorate.

The suicide rate for [American] farmers is more than double that of veterans. Former farmer Debbie Weingarten gives an insider’s perspective on farm life – and how to help [The Guardian]

Finland, where kids count and dads pitch in

To Americans and Britons, the Nordic countries have come to represent a near-mythical paradise of gender equality and family harmony, where legions of happy fathers push prams through the streets, relaxed mothers enjoy lengthy paid maternity leaves, and well-nourished children in chunky sweaters glow from their free healthcare.
But even against that backdrop, one statistic about Finland, a nation of 5.5 million, stands out: according to a recent OECD report, it’s the only country in the developed world where fathers spend more time with school-aged children than mothers, to the tune of eight minutes a day.
The Global Gender Gap report rated Finland the second most equal country in the world in 2016, and the Economist recently rated it the third best country to be a working mom.

passing a tax bill

Despite owning majorities in both houses of Congress and the executive, Donald Trump has failed to produce a single piece of legislation during his year in office. Health care -- the framework he promised to "repeal and replace" -- fell flat on its ass. A wall across the Mexican border (another promise that the Mexicans would pay for according to Trump) is nowhere. And there are other initiatives that likewise have failed and Trump has invariably blamed on someone else's incompetence.

Currently, a revision of the tax laws is in House-Senate conference, with the two houses allegedly trying to hammer out a compromise to send for the president's signature. Each body managed to come up with a bill without letting the rest of the nation in on the forging of their measures. Given Trump's other failures, I predict it will pass. Aside from anything else, legislators know who buys their jobs and the tax bills both favor the wealthy and, over ten years, screw the middle and lesser classes. A trillion dollars added to the deficit the Republicans claim to be concerned with. Entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in the sights of those who need them least and have made it clear that the cash reserves of big corporations will NOT be spent on more hiring or fatter pay packets. But these are the tax-write-off guys who buy our legislators and it's an odd-on bet that for all the corruption, voters will forget when given the opportunity... and the coffers will remain open to those in need of a new legislative term.

Today, the top news items focus on Donald Trump's considering naming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Israel would be delighted. Others -- Palestinians and other Middle Eastern countries -- see it as a spanner in the works of what is sometimes unsmilingly referred to as "the peace process."

Israel and Jerusalem ... in a kerfuffle that puts Trump in the spotlight (where he needs to be) and, coincidentally, deflects too much interest in the tax bill Republicans and Democrats are going to vote for because they want the money that will pave the way to re-election. Yes, there will be endless news stories, dutifully delivered, but in the end, the tax bill will pass, Trump will claim victory, and legislators will spin it all to their best advantage... and those with less will have less still after a few years.

Israel is a good diversion. The chaff effect stings my eyes as well and pumps up my shame at being unwilling to look up the relevant links that would support my conclusions. I'm tired lately, which I'm sure will delight those angling for a meal ticket or relying on voter forgetfulness.

Congressional estimates show that taxpayers in every income group would initially see tax cuts, with the biggest cuts going to the wealthiest Americans. However, after several years, many low- and middle-income families would see tax increases, according to the analyses by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official scorekeeper for Congress.

I can only pray that those younger than I and more full of sauce and sass will do a better job.

follow the [Trump] money

I'm not sure which noose special counsel Robert Mueller is tightening in his investigation of alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but a Reuters story -- piggy-backed on a story by the German Handelsblatt -- smells like potential red meat to me.

FRANKFURT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal investigator probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election asked Deutsche Bank for data on accounts held by President Donald Trump and his family, a person close to the matter said on Tuesday, but Trump’s lawyer denied any such subpoena had been issued.

Germany’s largest bank received a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller several weeks ago to provide information on certain money and credit transactions, the person said, without giving details, adding that key documents had been handed over in the meantime.

Deutsche Bank has lent the Trump Organization hundreds of millions of dollars for real estate ventures and is one of the few major lenders that has given large amounts of credit to Trump in the past decade. A string of bankruptcies at his hotel and casino businesses during the 1990s made most of Wall Street wary of extending him credit

According to the story, Reuters had at least eight reporters on it. That ain't chopped liver.

missing an old friend

Today I miss my old friend Bill McKechnie, a guy with whom I was in the army and the kind of man who could see the whimsical title, "The Complete Book of Dwarf Tossing" as an opening to a long and fruitful conversation about ... about ... about whatever came next. The topic might be washed down with a beer or two or three, but it would be ranging and unafraid and imaginative. Worm farms and other solemnities would not be out of bounds -- a silliness whose seriousness would be acknowledged sotto voce ... lord, the world was a miraculous place! Nuclear war and the girl with three tits might make an appearance ... anything, everything was open to a meandering pouncing on one topic or the next or the next or the next.

I miss Bill, who died a number of years ago.

We had a few laughs. It was Bill who rewrote Benjamin Franklin with the doggerel

Early to bed
And early to rise
And you never see any of your friends.

We lived in a time (1960's) when graffiti in men's rooms were literate and included

A kiss that lasts forever
Is a strange gift.

And also, in one handwriting,

Niger (sic), go back to Africai (sic)

Followed by, in a second hand-writing,

I'm taking your mother and sister with me.

encouragements maybe

Posted elsewhere, but it seems to want a wider footprint:

If others are like me, there is a collection of nudges that accumulates on the mental book shelf as time in spiritual practice advances.... second-hand stuff that rings your bell. Two that popped up in my mind this morning were these:

1. Once upon a time, at an introductory forum with the Korean Zen teacher Seung Sahn in New York, an audience member said approximately, "Sometimes during [meditation] practice, I feel like such a liar and a phony and a schmuck. What can I do?" And Seung Sahn replied, "You're either a Buddha or a schmuck. There is no in-between."
2. The Zen teacher Ta Hui [1089–1163] once said approximately, "I have always taken a great vow that I would rather suffer the fires of hell for all eternity than to portray Zen as a human emotion."

FWIW.

"happiness" cartoon

Passed along in email ... this take on happiness

colonial throwbacks

What I want to know is, if, as India suggested, the Sri Lankan cricket team was made up of a bunch of sissies who faked their reactions to Delhi's toxic smog, did this mean that the Sri Lankans had practiced up on vomiting prior to the game?

A cricket Test match between India and Sri Lanka was repeatedly interrupted on Sunday with claims players were “continuously vomiting” due to hazardous pollution levels in the Indian capital....
Airborne pollution levels 15 times the World Health Organisation limits confronted players on the second day of the third Test at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in Delhi on Sunday....
The interruptions drew boos from the crowd for Sri Lanka’s opening batsmen as they made their way to the crease, where they played without masks.
The acting president of India’s cricket board was also unimpressed and said he would write to his Sri Lankan counterpart about the incident.
“If 20,000 people in the stands did not have problem and the Indian team did not face any issue, I wonder why the Sri Lankan team made a big fuss?” CK Khanna said....
The extremely poor air in the city is the result of a combination of road dust, open fires, vehicle exhaust fumes, industrial emissions and the burning of crop residues in neighbouring states. Indian weather agencies also blame dust storms that originate in the Gulf....

a world of mimicry

Back in a time when a million dollars was not chump change, there was a joke about two black guys sitting in the sunshine on a back porch. "John," said one to the other, "if you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?" John cocked his chair back and closed his eyes. "If I had a million bucks," he crooned, "I'd get me a white Cadillac convertible with white leather interior. I'd get a white suit and a white shirt and a white tie and a white hat and I'd cruise down some Main Street down south slow and easy and give the white folks something to look at. What would you do with a million bucks, Pete?" "Well," Pete replied in the same dreamy world his friend had adopted, "if I had a million dollars, I'd get me a black Cadillac convertible with a black leather interior. I'd get a black suit and a black shirt and a black tie and a black hat and I'd cruise down your Main Street and watch the white folks hang your black ass."

I once asked my mother for some tip about writing. Since she knew how to do it, her words were worth listening to. When it came to writing, she offered a one-word response: "Read." All art, writing included, is based on thievery and to be a good thief, it makes sense to bone up on what the good thieves before you have practiced.

Mimicry is a wondrous human tool. How is anyone to learn without in some manner mimicking the behavior of others? Sports, arts, die-casting, safe-cracking, money-making, speaking, walking, spiritual adventure ... the list is endless: Mimic what seems to work or what is admired.

For example, there is love in the world. If you want to be loving, mimic those who appear to love. There is decency and kindness. Mimic them as well if the goal seems attractive. Mimic those who appear to have succeeded. Be prepared to fall off the bike if you want to learn how to ride it. Mimicry.

Of course, the other edge of the mimicry sword is to base a practice in cruelty and unkindness -- strong-arming the world to accord with your desires. Same tactic, different ends. Mimicry.

Mimicry exercises the muscles within in ways that may at first be foreign and clumsy. Over and over again ... over and over again ... mimic. You want to be holy (by whatever definition)? Then act holy (by whatever definition). Over and over until one day ... one day ... what was only mimicry shifts gears and becomes second nature. What was "theirs" is now "yours." This is no longer a copy.

But there's a sticky wicket with the wonderment of mimicry. Where some may mimic to the point where mimicry falls away, others may become trapped in a world where being a good mimic is the sole result. Having the right clothes or the right car or the right religion or the right status becomes a satisfactory result. Everything continues to rely on endless comparisons with or connections to someone or something else. How many people have you met -- worst of all, the one in the mirror -- who can mimic the spiritual teacher or the loving soul or the professional manager, but are lost in the quicksand of their training and mimicking? A Cadillac remains their touchstone. There is no fluidity, no ownership, no real understanding, no balls and no peace. Everyone becomes Kim Kardashian.

And it is at this point in the mimicry world that reality comes calling ... proposing the possibilities that will hang your black ass. The shoes, the tummy tuck, the car, the slick lingo, the gun, the labels on the T-shirts, the holy texts, the right parties ... it may look like the real McCoy, but it lacks the last daring step....

Just because the mimicking student is doing the same thing as the adored master does not mean s/he is mimicking anything. Nor does it guarantee they are not mimicking ... except for the sense of tinny reality it can exude... you know, the folks who can beat you to death with a 'compassion' stick.

Ah mimicry....

No more living in the shadows ... except when the shadows are too comforting to relinquish.

just a little button whining

Perhaps Donald Trump has taken a fake-news page from Mohandas Ghandi's works and will don a button that reads:

BECOME THE SWAMP YOU CLAIM TO DRAIN

Other buttons that seem to be all I am good for:

MAKE AMERICA GREAT ... FOR A CHANGE

IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HONOR OUR VETERANS, STOP MAKING THEM

 HEAL THE HEALTHY! TAX THE BEGGARS!

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IS BETTER THAN NO INTELLIGENCE ... I THINK

U.N. probes effects of poverty in U.S.

The United Nations monitor on extreme poverty and human rights has embarked on a coast-to-coast tour of the US to hold the world’s richest nation – and its president – to account for the hardships endured by America’s most vulnerable citizens.
The tour, which kicked off on Friday morning, will make stops in four states as well as Washington DC and the US territory of Puerto Rico. It will focus on several of the social and economic barriers that render the American dream merely a pipe dream to millions – from homelessness in California to racial discrimination in the Deep South, cumulative neglect in Puerto Rico and the decline of industrial jobs in West Virginia.
With 41 million Americans officially in poverty according to the US Census Bureau (other estimates put that figure much higher), one aim of the UN mission will be to demonstrate that no country, however wealthy, is immune from human suffering induced by growing inequality. Nor is any nation, however powerful, beyond the reach of human rights law – a message that the US government and Donald Trump might find hard to stomach given their tendency to regard internal affairs as sacrosanct.

The U.N. point man is Philip Alston, an Aussie known for skinning those who have done such a good job of skinning others. I'm not sure why, but Aussies reassure me: They speak English, laugh and are not above punching your lights out.

homosexual blowback

Every now and then something will yank my ingrained chain and I will marvel at the ignorance I had consumed and digested and to some extent remained wedded to. And so it was this morning when I read the local paper and saw that the state's Senate president was in hot water because his "husband" had used the relationship to hit on various political staff members.

BOSTON — The Democratic leader of the Massachusetts Senate said Thursday he supports an independent investigation into allegations that his husband sexually assaulted and harassed several men, including some with business before the Legislature. 

Senate President Stan Rosenberg, in a statement, also promised to recuse himself from any matters related to the investigation or the allegations reported by The Boston Globe.

The newspaper said it spoke with four men who said Rosenberg’s husband, Bryon Hefner, sexually assaulted and harassed them over the past few years. Three of the men told the Globe that Hefner grabbed their genitals and one said Hefner kissed him against his will.

[Daily Hampshire Gazette]

"Husband?" I had been unaware that Stanley Rosenberg was gay -- let alone openly gay. So much for my keeping up with the news. So much for being any closer to figuring out how homosexual couples determine who is "husband" and who is "wife," a small matter I have always wondered about.

And reading the story took me back in time to a bar in Berlin where a band played Dixieland and I had a stammtisch or regular table. I was sitting there some 50-plus years ago when a guy I knew vaguely from the top-secret army unit we both worked for pulled up a chair. He was a nice-looking guy whose name I've forgotten. I assumed was letting off army steam, as I was, by consuming beer.  As we chatted aimlessly about this and that, it came home to me that he was drunker than I was, an assessment I had confirmed when suddenly he blurted out that he was homosexual and scared shitless about it. I was aware that the admission might in fact might be an invitation (I had grown up in Greenwich Village in New York where homosexuality was part of the tableau), but the anguish on his face was compelling. Homosexuality, in our unit, was a distinct no-no: There was too much potential for being outed and giving away the secrets our unit strove to keep secret. Anyone admitting he was gay risked being sent to a punishment post ... counting snowflakes in Alaska or some such. Not ratting out a homosexual likewise risked some punishment, so I was immediately on guard.

I grew up in a world where homosexuality was aberrant. Men went with women. Women went with men. That was the social norm. I couldn't imagine choosing a male partner over a female one, but that was just my enduring bias. Anyway, the information I was being given was ... off the social rails. But it was the look on his face .... It was as if he had been carrying a painful tumor and simply had to get it off his chest. I determined then and there never to mention what he had told me, whether it was a camouflaged pass or not. The pain on his face was too great ... like being forever an outsider because you had five fingers on one hand. The judgment was horrific and cruel and intrusive and totally fubar ... fucked-up-beyond-all-recognition. Why would I want to do that to anyone? I was jolted.

And yet I was jolted today as well to feel the old up-bringing floating to the surface. "Husband?" How wonderful that I have been left behind, left in the dust. Having passed through a time when homosexuality was out of bounds both legally and morally -- and not my taste in any event -- I had come into an era where gay and straight simply flowed into society and was subject to the same manipulations and wonderment that any relationship might evince.

Time passes and things change -- sometimes actually for the better. But it is hard to think that I might ever have bought into something less than equality ... in love or anything else.

Oh well, live and (possibly) learn.

sexual feeding frenzy

Portuguese man o' war

The feeding frenzy engulfing an increasingly milquetoast news media is focused on the past advances made by men in power on younger and less-powerful women. Grab-ass, rape, groping, grabbing, manipulation, demeaning sobriquets ... every day a new allegation is lodged; every day some pooh-bah is fired or urged to resign; every day a new story bubbles to the surface and someone's ox is gored. Women who have carried a burden for a long time step forward ... and the mighty are brought (sort of) low. Am I wrong or are these men all millionaires in one way or another?

Irrespective of financial status, they are getting what they probably deserve. Getting such matters out in the open is some relief, I imagine, to the powerless who suffered at the hands of the powerful.

But I also sense that the media ink and glee is facile. No journalist who wants to keep his or her cred suggests that the bird-dance of sexual attraction is more faceted. Isn't sex both capable of manipulation and incredibly delicious? Can't it be a vortex of wonder and a tsunami of cruelty? Men may be horndogs and assholes, but women are not beyond cozying up to the dizzying deliciousness of that precipice. No, I am not blaming the victim: I am saying that sex is a wowsers world in which joy and enjoyment can lie cheek-by-jowl with withering selfishness ... shall I be fired for saying I think a woman has an attractive ass? or trying to pick up someone in the same bar I went to in order to pick someone up who may herself have hoped to be picked up and ... well, you know the routine.

I can hear the yowls even as I type: This is not the same; this is blackmail and disrespectful and manipulative and unkind and ... yup, it's all true. All true and yet with a soupçon of something less maleficent, perhaps. Everyone wants to be adored, for example... or accepted, or enfolded... and perhaps there is an admixture of "I deserve it" which may be arrogant ....

The tendrils of sexual attraction dangle like the tentacles of a Portuguese man o' war jellyfish ... sometimes stinging, sometimes nourishing, sometimes wondrous, sometimes demeaning....

But woe betide the journalist who suggests in a money-making feeding frenzy that sex, while capable of generating great harm, is also capable a myriad other rocketing delights and dismal results.

In the midst of these endless stories, is there no room for the confounding and contradictory and painful and scrumptious potential underlying the matter? If right and wrong were the true yardstick of sex and all its magic and potential ugliness ... well, how would that work? Do I get penalized for liking a woman's ass?

I favor listening to those who were manipulated. I dislike manipulators. But I also favor some nod to human beings and their capacities, good and bad, sane and insane, stupid and smart. Without injecting some element of life into their stories, I think the media are both mistaken and far from helpful.

gift-wrapped shame

From the department of agitation and propaganda: Which is it?

TOO STUPID TO BE ASHAMED

or

TOO DEPRIVED TO BE ASHAMED

Or is this just one of those oh-so-cute non-dichotomies?


From my point of view, the psychobabble railings against shame are too extensive by half. These are times when shame is a sadly-lacking and much-needed tool.

But maybe I'm wrong ... hold on a sec while I dust off my American flag/Confederate battle flag lapel pin and promise one more thing I won't deliver.

Remember when the 'naughty' kids could expect a lump of coal in their Christmas stockings? Well there are plenty of lumps -- and the jobs that go with them -- scattered about.

And then, yesterday, there was....

Bosnian Croat war criminal dies after taking poison in UN courtroom

Former commander Slobodan Praljak drank from bottle moments after judges upheld 20-year sentence in The Hague

Shame or defiance -- who knows ... though his defense lawyer was quoted as describing him as "an honorable man who could not live with the war crimes conviction and leave that courtroom handcuffed."

Trump's own words

It is hard to be calmed even by so flinty a wit as Winston Churchill to whom the line is often attributed, "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others" -- hard to be calmed in the face of the words of U.S. President Donald Trump which internet researcher Snopes concludes are true -- words delivered July 19, 2016, in South Carolina as Trump campaigned for the office he subsequently attained.

President of the United States.

The richest and most powerful nation on earth.

An office so pivotal in the world that care and caution might be thought a sine qua non.

Read the words, as John Oliver did on his latest installment of "Last Week Tonight."

Just read the words and see if Churchill can calm the gob-smacked amazement. Trump was talking about the U.S. nuclear agreement reached with Iran when he stepped on the associative gas and was suddenly out of sight. Even trying to punctuate his remarks is, if my efforts are any yardstick, all but impossible.

He wasn't the president on July 19, 2016, but he is now and his words then are not that far out of synch with remarks he can make now:

“Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.”

When I was a kid, there was a line adults might flog naughty children with: "Ignorance is no excuse." To parse or guess about or interpolate what Trump said, to apply the cold compress that Churchill offered, just won't wash. The man is off the charts. Period. Yes, we elected him, but that's no excuse. Yes, when offered lemons, make lemonade ... if you can. But in this case, if you can, you are simply salving your own I'm-so-wise-and-well-rounded ego.

Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Luckily, we no longer live in a democracy ... I guess. When the horse's leg is broken ... well, ouch!

Ignorance is no excuse.

curling with Donald Trump

Curling is a kind of shuffleboard on ice. During the competition, the curler or skip slides a stone towards the concentric rings of a target. In the course of the stone's travel, sweepers work to enhance the route of the stone so as to knock out an opponent's stone and/or come closest to the center of the concentric rings.

Somehow Donald Trump's stone-tossing tweets and other casual idiocies reminded me of the sweepers he keeps in attendance... one stone and a bunch of people paid to clean up before and after him.

art from Guantanamo prison camp

NEW YORK (AP) — An art exhibit at a New York City college seemed innocuous enough, mostly seascapes and still-life paintings of flowers and fruit.
But it’s the background of the artists — current and former terror suspects at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention center — that drew protest and prompted the Pentagon to bar the further release of works created at the military-run prison.
The exhibit, Ode to the Sea, has been on display since October at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. It shows 36 paintings and sculptures created by eight men during their years being held at the U.S. military facility for terrorism suspects in Cuba.

As grotesque as the idea of holding men for years without trial may be -- and Americans with more than two brain cells to rub together might say it's positively 'unamerican' -- there is something somehow 'grotesque-er' about wishing to disallow the display of their "art." The Congress hasn't got the nerve or coherence or decency to declare war and yet can offer its implicit stamp of approval to holding prisoners of war.

In my country, powerful men fucking or manipulating little girls is currently enjoying a moment in the hand-wringing spotlight. It's pretty revolting all right.

Maybe later the spotlight will get around to how and why it's OK to fuck grown men.

out and beyond

Out beyond the whispering fierceness of old age -- out where parallel lines meet and the edges of a flat earth are unfurled -- there seems to be an unintended tenderness.

Think of it: No more pills, no more doctors, no more disconnect between what can be thought and what achieved ... and it's not as if some diaphanous hand had compelled it or were 'loving' or some such. It's just the way things are, perhaps. Like a dog wagging its tail -- of course it wags its tail... if wag its tail it does.

There -- doesn't that feel better?

John Oliver on Trump trickle-down

I have to admit that I wish other news outlets and individuals adduced similar logic and resources:

new feudalism gets an infusion

The new feudalism in the United States has gotten a boost from an increasingly vocal segment of the population that feels public funding of higher education is both reckless and useless.

Antenori is part of an increasingly vocal campaign to transform higher education in America. Though U.S. universities are envied around the world, he and other conservatives want to reduce the flow of government cash to what they see as elitist, politically correct institutions that often fail to provide practical skills for the job market.
To the alarm of many educators, nearly every state has cut funding to public colleges and universities since the 2008 financial crisis. Adjusted for inflation, states spent $5.7 billion less on public higher education last year than in 2008, even though they were educating more than 800,000 additional students, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

"Practical skills" means many things, but one of them is that universities are being asked to become trade schools honing the widget-making capabilities of those receiving a college education. This dovetails nicely with an ever-widening divide between those can-do and those who can-think-and-therewith-connive.

Those raising the alarm are largely conservative and Republican. For them, practical applications are preferable to protests and criticisms. Strangely, those who raise the alarm are the ones most in need of the education they might once have received in college. Their position sounds reasonable -- if a $1.4 trillion-dollar student debt can qualify as "reasonable" -- but the net effect is to shoot themselves in the foot. Drone bees are a necessity, but a drone lifestyle is part of what compelled this angry constituency to enthrone drain-the-swamper Donald Trump. They were sick of all the fruits and fags and fringe groups grabbing the attention and money they felt they deserved. It's my tax money, they seemed to say, and I'm sick of pissing it away.

So the solution is to bleed the bleeding hearts. Let everyone c'mon down to my way of living and see how s/he likes it.

The 1% couldn't be happier, I imagine. Drones fight drones while the dividends roll in and "practical skills" gain traction. Widget production couldn't be better and MacDonald's has its quotient of burger flippers.

After all the studies debunking the notion of trickle-down economics, the nobility is still allowed to posit the theory in support of its rose-petal projections. Talk about needing an education!

The peasants and the nobles.

A renewed feudalism.

shave my eyelids, please

CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - Chinese street barber Xiong Gaowu deftly scrapes a straight razor along the inside of his customer’s eyelid....
Customers swear by the practice of “blade wash eyes”, as it is known in Mandarin, saying they trust Xiong’s skill with the blade....
The technique appears to unblock moisturizing sebaceous glands along the rim of the eyelid, said Qu Chao, an opthalmologist who works at a nearby hospital in Chengdu.

Trump vs. Time magazine

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he’s not playing ball with Time magazine as it decides its Person of the Year. The magazine counters that Trump has it all wrong.

Meanwhile, passed along in email, there was this send-up of yet another journalistic kerfuffle that says nothing or perhaps everything about these political times:

"beauty"

I have always been a sucker for beauty. I 'know' this is true in my heart of hearts, but I have a hard time defining what I am a sucker for -- this "beauty" thing. No, I am not talking about the rice bowl maunderings of what is called "aesthetics." But if not that, then what?

The question crossed my mind when skimming various news stories about the feeding frenzy of shopping that precedes Christmas. Where there is no space, no room, there is likewise no beauty in my book. Beauty requires space and Christmas stuff creates less of it. Stuff is seldom, if ever, beautiful.

What is beauty? To me, it is just what melts me. It is not something I have control over. Music, art, a cocked eyebrow, the touch of a single finger -- it can come from anywhere at any time. Suddenly I am somehow 'gone' and 'home' simultaneously. Whooosh!

If all of this sounds self-centered and piggish, well, so be it. I remain a sucker for beauty both in its particulars and in its spaces. It is not something that requires a philosophy or the agreement of others. Like the Supreme Court observation about pornography, "I may not know what it is, but I know what it is when I see it."

flogging an idea

Like a pinball bouncing from bumper to bumper and yet never seeming to drop, the idea has banged around in my head -- a question of what spiritual life's upshot might be and a hypothesis gaining traction as the answer: The sole purpose of spiritual life is ... to outgrow it.

Having written this down, I cringe even now. Not because I fear it might put me on some fast track to hell or some other writhing punishment, but because postulating an answer has all the earmarks of a proposition that seeks to convince or convert someone else. That is not my intention. My intention is to offer a possibility that may not yet have occurred to others, who, like me, are of an age to look back more than look forward. As any aging person can tell you, the nearness of death has much to do with shedding the snake skins donned during a lifetime of activities. What was once possible is now highly unlikely at best. I am 77 and wonder whether spiritual endeavor was worth the price of admission and what, if anything, might put a relaxing period on that sentence.

Yesterday, the pinball took up its endless cha-ching rambling and I spent quite a lot of time trying to find a publication that might be willing to consider my written meanderings after 45-50 years of spiritual interest and endeavor. I think it's a good topic -- aging, death, religion -- but I can imagine both true believers and true disbelievers preparing to pounce on my sorry ass.

Anyway, I got one nibble. We'll see if it anyone might say, "OK, if you're stupid enough to try, I'm stupid enough to listen."

I don't even know if I could write the thing if I received an invitation, but the careening, ding-dong-ing of the pinball idea was irritating: Put up or shut up.

Strangely, the effort at finding an outsource calmed my mind and I could remember with a smile that spiritual endeavor did teach me one invaluable lesson -- how to eat oatmeal with chop sticks. That makes me smile and smiling is ... well, try it.

"Breaking the [Israeli] Silence"

JERUSALEM (AP) — A former Israeli combat officer turned whistleblower has found himself in the fight of his lifetime, leading a campaign against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and drawing relentless criticism from the country’s leaders who have labeled him a traitor.
For Dean Issacharoff, the battle is even more personal: his father is Israel’s ambassador to Germany, a respected longtime diplomat tasked with defending the same policies his son so adamantly opposes.
Issacharoff is the spokesman of Breaking the Silence, a group of former fighters who served in the West Bank and now collect testimonies about the damaging impact of the occupation. While the group says it’s acting in Israel’s best interests by sparking a public debate, it has become perhaps the most reviled anti-occupation protest group in the country. The nationalist government sees it as foreign-funded subversives seeking to shame Israel by targeting its most hallowed institution, the military.

Who is a better source of information than the people who have actually "been there and done that?" Are they all -- an estimated 1,100 -- liars and provocateurs? Are they all, to use a much-bandied and poorly-defined word, "anti-Semitic?" Is it really conceivable that Israel and its motives and public face are all, so to speak, washed in the blood of the lamb? Is it really conceivable that "Breaking the Silence" is without flaws? Does it make sense for the U.S. to implicitly condone the human rights abuses attested to by those who are and have been there? It all sounds remarkably like the program used to such good effect by the former Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels... tell a lie often enough and people will start to believe it.

Don't discuss it, just believe it ... and devalue the latter-day "Untermenschen."

the wide, wide world of bullshit

I don't know that I need to read a whole book about it, but this Guardian excerpt was pretty enjoyable:

From inboxing to thought showers: how business bullshit took over

Vacuous management-speak is easily laughed off – but is there a real cost to talking rubbish?

the Jewish ... err American... conspiracy

And when it comes to letting a cat out of the bag -- not entirely, mind you, but close enough -- there is the case of and Israeli diplomat who goofed:

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A top Israeli diplomat was rebuked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday for suggesting that American Jews have a poor commitment to service in the U.S. military....
“Most of the Jews don’t have children serving as soldiers, going to the Marines, going to Afghanistan or to Iraq,” [Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely] said on i24 TV news on Wednesday.
According to a 2009 survey published by the congressionally-mandated Military Leadership Diversity Commission, an estimated 1.09 percent of the members of the U.S. armed forces are Jewish. The Pew Research Center estimated in 2013 that Jews make up about 2 percent of the U.S. adult population.

Naturally, Netanyahu rebuked Hotovely, who is in other times a Netanyahu ally. "Anti-semitism" was shoehorned into the critique. Israel has too much riding on its links with the U.S. to have some upstart rattling the financial apple cart.

But my feeling is that Hotovely's observations do not need to be reined in -- they need to be expanded beyond their Jewish flavorings to include a majority of Americans of whatever religion. Congress -- remember when they represented the country? -- has not mustered the nerve to declare war in the Middle East where it is fighting "wars" if the media are to be believed. Dead American bodies are being shipped home under a decorous and politically-useful anonymity. And the Veterans Administration copes with wounds that may be worse than death. It sure smells like "war" to me. Isn't it time that those who know how to don cuff links commit their spawn or ... get out?

if it doesn't work, do it again

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan/KABUL (Reuters) - As U.S. and Afghan forces pound Taliban drug factories this week, farmers in the country’s largest opium producing-province and narcotics experts say the strategy just repeats previous failed efforts to stamp out the trade.
U.S. Army General John Nicholson, who heads NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, announced on Monday a new strategy of attacking opium factories, saying he wanted to hit the Taliban “where it hurts, in their narcotics financing”....

“The Taliban will not be affected by this as much as ordinary people,” said Mohammad Nabi, a poppy farmer in Nad Ali district in the southern province of Helmand, the heartland of opium production.

“Farmers are not growing poppies for fun. If factories are closed and businesses are gone, then how will they provide food for their families?"

According to Wikipedia, opium production in the land of America's longest war, Afghanistan, has risen each year since the U.S. invasion of 2001.  "As of 2017, opium production provides about 400,000 jobs in Afghanistan, more than the Afghan National Security Forces."

When the Taliban, a scurvy lot to say the philosophical least, were in charge, such production was banned. And it worked. So it seems that the U.S. in all its wisdom is attacking the only group to have successfully achieved what the U.S. claims it want to achieve. Does that count as "enabling" and supporting the heroin trade?

sex -- the feeding frenzy

In the long ago and faraway, when the Soviet Union was so big that it had 13 time zones, I used to wonder at the muffled coverage accorded to that behemoth by The New York Times, a newspaper whose motto was, "All the News that's Fit to Print." How could so little be accorded to so much? How could nothing of note be happening in so much inhabited space? Was "Moscow" really the alpha and omega of Soviet datelines? The word "arrogance" did not cross my mental lips at the time ... this was The New York Times, after all.

A little of the same awe crosses my mind lately as one sexual allegation after another is laid at the feet of powerful (mostly) men. Every day, there's a new member of the club. Politics, sports, business, medicine, religion ... and I seriously doubt that the no-name women are included or assuaged.

The allegations are decades old, perhaps, but enough disparaging of women appears, for the moment, to be enough... and it makes an easy news story ... the feeding frenzy ... whose facts are probably true, but it's still a feeding frenzy that tends to blunt the very cause it seeks to air. I hope it benefits the women who have come forward and whose courage I applaud.

Day after day.

Here's a truncated laundry list.

And it's hard not to wonder what is happening in the other time zones where news organizations are now assiduously not looking. It's sort of like a blackout: What a great time to rob a bank.

"manipulative cowardice"

"Manipulative cowardice" -- the tart observation came unbidden into my mind after a phone call I received yesterday from a woman seeking information about a woman who used to run a Zen center here in Northampton. It was a cold call: I didn't know the woman calling and was forced to say that I was pretty much out of the Zen loop of teachers and centers and various activities. I did point her towards various sources that might help her.

I might have shut the conversation down sooner, but I spun it out partly because I was interested in my own reactions.

The caller's voice was top-heavy with that treacly and little-disguised self-congratulation of being willing (and by extension able) to help others. She pressed the go-to buzzers of "mindfulness" and "being centered" and "enlightenment" and "we" and ... well, you get the drift. She had practiced for ten years, she said, and had written and lectured and ... well, you get the drift.

It was nothing I hadn't done myself at one time, so I was equipped to recognize the activity. What interested me was the fact that her observations and threads yesterday failed to surprise or even irritate me very much. Who knows what will inspire whom to find out something useful ... or useless: there's not much difference?

I did stop her when she got around to the word "we" and said I wasn't much interested in what "we" did or thought, but I was curious about what "she" did or thought. Yes, I could sympathize with the unwillingness or inability to speak a singular truth or appreciation. But not to give a gentle nudge to the "manipulative cowardice" -- the need to be buttressed by some amorphous and presumptuous group that agreed with you -- seemed unkind. She paid my query little heed. She was neck-deep in her formulae and, well ... sometimes that the way things are... having an answer or explanation or improvement for everything.

OK ... let 'er rip. No one can outflank or sweet talk life into submission. Talk as much as you like. Be as "kind" as you imagine you are. Life is not a place that offers or promises safety. It's just life.

Anyway, I wasn't as irritated as I thought I might be. I listened and I asked if she had ever thought of giving it all up and then listened to the answer "we" might long to hear and she could round up kudos for.

Without disrespect, it was a bit like listening to a drug addict who, despite his or her best efforts, simply cannot put a cork in the self-referential miasma. Calling it "cowardice" is a bit too tart, perhaps, but it's in that neighborhood, I think. And "manipulative?" Well, everyone (did I just say "we?") has to put spaghetti on the table.

I was pleased I wasn't more crabby. Being crabby presupposes that my own lift-off yardstick in spiritual trekking ("I don't want to convince anyone else; I just want to know -- for me -- whether spiritual adventure is bullshit or not") is somehow correct or without confused flaw.