It was customary for Master and Student go spend time each day walking along the paths that wound through the mountains around the
monastery.  One day, while Master and Student were out walking, they came upon a cliff edge.  Master boldly stepped to the very
edge of the rock and gazed lovingly at the valley below and the surrounding mountains.  He then turned to Student, who was
standing quite safely back from the edge of the cliff, and said “Come closer so that you can see the beauty that is all around
us.”

“No thank you Master,” replied the student nervously.  “I can see quite well from here.”

“Nonsense,” said Master.  “You must come closer.”

“But I may fall.  Please Master, I am afraid.”

“Trust me,” said Master.  “I would not ask you to do anything that would harm you.  Now come closer.”

Slowly the student edged toward the cliff.  As he reached the edge, Master smiled and put his arm around Student.  “There,” said
the Master.  “Is it not a beautiful view?”

“Yes, Master,” admitted Student.  “It is quite beautiful.  I did not know the valley was so far below our monastery.  It is quite
a drop to the valley below.”

“It is not so far,” replied Master.  “Here at this cliff you need but take a single step to reach the valley floor.”

“But Master,” insisted Student.  “The drop from here is great. If I stepped out here, I would surely die from the fall.”

“You will learn that the distance between life and death is but a single step,” Master told him.  “Our life is one long series of
steps.  We go through life, step over step until one day we die.

“Each step brings us great joy and adventure as well as the possibility of death.  But you can not simply stand still in fear of
meeting death upon the road.  Walk boldly along the path of life.  Enjoy the wonders that are there for us all to see. So that
when the day comes when you you do meet death, you will know that you have not shrunk from life, but embraced it.

I’m using the above story to illustrate a significant difference between us as humans and other self aware creatures. A theory or explanation that Danny Brower first put forth and Ajit Varki continues on with in the book “DENIAL: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind“.   Part of which has been printed here in Alternet.

Here they propose that our evolutionary change came when we acquired self awareness which also includes the awareness of our own mortality.  However it also required us to gain the ability to deny our mortality in order to move beyond where humans were at the time. That other species also have this self awareness but were unable to move and became stuck where they were, since they were unable to deny it.

The next mental step beyond the basic awareness of one’s own personhood that many of the species mentioned above seem to possess could be awareness of the personhood of others—in other words, knowing that others of your own kind are also equally self-aware. But Danny argued that gaining this useful ability would also result in understanding the deaths of others of your own kind—and, consequently , realizing one’s own individual mortality. And he suggested that this all-encompassing, persistent, terror-filled realization would cause an individual who first made that critical step to lose out in the struggle to secure a mate and pass his or her genes to the next generation—in other words, such an individual would reach an evolutionary dead end. Danny suggested that we humans were the only species to finally get past this long-standing barrier. And he posited that we did this by simultaneously evolving mechanisms to deny our mortality.

. . . . . . .

Among key features of human uniqueness are full self-awareness and “theory of mind,” which enables inter-subjectivity—an understanding of the intentionality of others. These attributes may have been positively selected because of their benefits to interpersonal communication, cooperative breeding, language and other critical human activities. However, the late Danny Brower, a geneticist from the University of Arizona, suggested to me that the real question is why they should have emerged in only one species, despite millions of years of opportunity. Here, I attempt to communicate Brower’s concept. He explained that with full self-awareness and inter-subjectivity would also come awareness of death and mortality. Thus, far from being useful, the resulting overwhelming fear would be a dead-end evolutionary barrier, curbing activities and cognitive functions necessary for survival and reproductive fitness. Brower suggested that, although many species manifest features of self-awareness (including orangutans, chimpanzees, orcas, dolphins, elephants and perhaps magpies), the transition to a fully human-like phenotype was blocked for tens of millions of years of mammalian (and perhaps avian) evolution. In his view, the only way these properties could become positively selected was if they emerged simultaneously with neural mechanisms for denying mortality. Although aspects such as denial of death and awareness of mortality have been discussed as contributing to human culture and behaviour, to my knowledge Brower’s concept of a long-standing evolutionary barrier had not previously been entertained. Brower’s contrarian view could help modify and reinvigorate ongoing debates about the origins of human uniqueness and inter-subjectivity. It could also steer discussions of other uniquely human “universals,” such as the ability to hold false beliefs, existential angst, theories of after-life, religiosity, severity of grieving, importance of death rituals, risk-taking behaviour, panic attacks, suicide and martyrdom. If this logic is correct, many warm-blooded species may have previously achieved complete self-awareness and inter-subjectivity, but then failed to survive because of the extremely negative immediate consequences. Perhaps we should be looking for the mechanisms (or loss of mechanisms) that allow us to delude ourselves and others about reality, even while realizing that both we and others are capable of such delusions and false beliefs. – Letter to Nature magazine

In other words, it’s this ability to deny reality and the common truth that enabled us as humans to advance and kept other species – though they also had self awareness – from advancing.

But as we all know this ability to deny and self denial is a double edged sword.

It sounds like a Stone Age existentialist novel!

We’re not yet fully adjusted to all this. One of the theories about major depression is that depressed people are the true realists—if you really want to know the facts, talk to them. The rest of us, fortunately, are in a state of denial and optimism. What is optimism? Denial of reality. What is extreme optimism? Extreme denial of reality.

Yet you feel that the denial of reality that enabled our species to survive and flourish could now be threatening our collective future.

And at an individual level, too. We know what we are supposed to do in terms of exercise and diet, yet most of us ignore it; we have this magical way of thinking, of denying the reality we face. Look at our national debt: we just ignore it and somehow imagine it’s going to go away. Our failure to do anything about climate change is the ultimate form of denial—now, of course, that reality is staring us in the face. - You Think You’ll Live Forever: PW Talks with Ajit Varki

Or as one European put it “Americans think death is optional”. Even those of us who see ourselves as some kind of enlightened individual are not completely in reality of this – or many other things.

As the story above illustrates, ZEN Buddhist though is to completely accept reality, but without the emotional baggage that we bring along. All but a few ZEN masters are incapable of this.  Instead we must work toward that goal but in the mean time feel the emotions that go along with reality but accept it anyway and do what is necessary and needed to advance.

Still a tall order.

 

I have been meaning to do a dairy on this subject for a while, then I came across this item on the BBC website in their health section.  Early deaths: Regional variations ‘shocking’.   The article and those it speaks of miss the boat, I think. if you look at the map (sorry cannot embed) you might notice that the areas with the highest rate of early deaths are those around the major metro areas and the surrounding suburbs.

That it’s not their health care system that’s at fault but the very nature of the life styles of those who have to work for a living that is causing the premature demise. The continued stress our economic system creates along with the fast food diets we consume to save time.  This continued living a life in a “fight or flight” mode runs rough shod over our bodies. Effecting our immune system and circulatory system.

Another good reason to change it.

Seems that the Oligarchs in Washington are all a twitter over the revelations made concerning the NSA and Obama’s wiretapping in The Guardian.  The Boundless Informant supposedly can keep track of all the information coming and going and Washington would rather people not know of this.

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

Now I would like to know just exactly what American people have been put at risk by these revelations and the informant who made them.

Are they people in North Dakota ? Idaho ? How about Wisconsin ? Indiana ? South Carolina ? Utah ? Maybe they are concerned about Alaska and Washington State. Main or New Hampshire.  Funny because none of these places have been threatened by terrorists or outside enemies, let alone ever attacked. No…these aren’t the American people that they are concerned about.

I think they are mostly concerned about themselves. The Oligarchy and Elites themselves. Since it was NYC and Washington DC and Boston that has ever been attacked lately.  Yes it’s their precious rear ends that at the most risk. Not just from outside but from inside as well. And they jolly well know this.

But then this has always been the case in an autocracy.

Everything that the communists said about communism was a lie but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth. – 21st Century Russian Proverb.

Everything the capitalists said about communism turned out to be the truth but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be a lie. – 21st Century American Proverb.

I never really though much about it when I was growing up. Just kind of took it for granted. We were capitalists a and the other side communists. Went through the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Had to take Capitalism vs Communism in High School in Florida but was more concerned with the out come if both sides actually came to blows. So I was given a special assignment for the course – to read and give an in depth report on the book Alas Babylon.

Became involved in the anti-war protests while up in Cleveland in the 1970s.  Only worked for a while in the private sector, mostly as an electronic service technician. Also doing computer systems programming at the a Orlando Naval Training Center for a contractor over the summer. Some piece work for the Univ. Theatre off and on and then finally working for the computer center there.  Worked there for 30 years then retired.

Sometime and somewhere in all of this I began to question our economic system more and more and also our political system as well. Now being a staunch anti-capitalist to the core. Even though my personal experience in the private sector was not all that negative or my experience in the public sector was not all that positive.

I have since read quite a bit about the various economic systems. Maybe not enough for an advanced degree, but more than most. More and more I began to realize that what I had been told and taught over the years simply did not coincide with the reality of what I had experienced. That in fact there was considerable disparity between what the “common wisdom” was and what was happening on the street.

And I am not the only one. A number of people are having this same Epiphany.  Most much more knowledgeable than I.  Such for a long time such as Professor Wolff. And some recently like Chris Hedges.

But what has finally come together for me was how nearly everything we had been told about capitalism being to only good economic system, was pretty much made up out of whole cloth from the get go.

In his book – Debt: The First 5000 Years - anthropologist David Graeber examines and exposes how the myths of capitalism came to be and debunks them one by one.  From Barter – which there is no evidence that any culture really engaged in from the earliest Mesopotamian tablets to modern times.  To the necessity of money and “primordial debt,”

The “primordial debt,” writes British sociologist Geoffrey Ingham, “is that owed by the living to the continuity and durability of the society that secures their individual existence.” 39 In this sense it is not just criminals who owe a “debt to society”— we are all, in a certain sense, guilty, even criminals. For instance, Ingham notes that, while there is no actual proof that money emerged in this way, “there is considerable indirect etymological evidence”: In all Indo-European languages, words for “debt” are synonymous with those for “sin” or “guilt”, illustrating the links between religion, payment and the mediation of the sacred and profane realms by “money.” For example, there is a connection between money (German Geld), indemnity or sacrifice (Old English Geild), tax (Gothic Gild) and, of course, guilt. 40

To even the idea of society itself.

What makes the concept of society so deceptive is that we assume the world is organized into a series of compact, modular units called “societies,” and that all people know which one they’re in. Historically, this is very rarely the case. Imagine I am a Christian Armenian merchant living under the reign of Genghis Khan. What is “society” for me? Is it the city where I grew up, the society of international merchants (with its own elaborate codes of conduct) within which I conduct my daily affairs, other speakers of Armenian, Christendom (or maybe just Orthodox Christendom), or the inhabitants of the Mongol empire itself, which stretched from the Mediterranean to Korea? Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in peoples’ lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people’s lives quite sporadically, and many people in history were never entirely clear whose government they were actually in. Even until quite recently, many of the world’s inhabitants were never even quite sure what country they were supposed to be in, or why it should matter. My mother, who was born a Jew in Poland, once told me a joke from her childhood:

There was a small town located along the frontier between Russia and Poland; no one was ever quite sure to which it belonged.

One day an official treaty was signed and not long after, surveyors arrived to draw a border. Some villagers approached them where they had set up their equipment on a nearby hill.

“So where are we, Russia or Poland?” “According to our calculations, your village now begins exactly thirty-seven meters into Poland.”

The villagers immediately began dancing for joy. “Why?” the surveyors asked. “What difference does it make?” “Don’t you know what this means?” they replied. “It means we’ll never have to endure another one of those terrible Russian winters!”

He also shows how early cultures actually use a form of gift economy where debt and credits were much less important. Eviscerating Adam Smith and his Wealth of Nations, Nietzsche and most of the philosophy concerning wealth and money that arose from the French revolution.  That money had to be base on some kind of precious metal, when  historically if could be – and quite often was – what ever was convenient at the time. From bushels of barley to wooden tokens.  The book concerns debt through the ages but Graeber makes a good point that Capitalism cannot exist with out slavery. The most common type being enslaved to debt.

Geoff Mann makes this point even clearer in the last chapter of his latest book, “Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism” where he states the fundamental problem of capitalism is that “it is structured, in its very operation, to make it impossible for millions, even billions, to be free in any meaningful sense.”   That we have become so enmeshed in the capitalistic system that most people would find it nearly impossible to live any other way. That the idea of having to do so scares the living crap out of them.

Yet both authors state in their respective books it is the one thing that is imperative for us to do.

Mann in his book gives a very good rundown  of how capitalism really works as apposed to how we have been told it works by economists, politicians and various pundits.  And both conclude with the need for us to return to a culture where debt and money are only tools for the exchange of the necessary commodities necessary to live and grow.

Mann especially makes the assertion that we cannot just let capitalism ultimately self destruct since to do so would mean the environmental destruction of our planet and the unnecessary hardship and suffering of millions of people. But he pulls no punches and states that it will be very difficult to accomplish this dismantlement of capitalism. That nothing short of a revolution would be required.

This is it, what Zizek means when he says that resistance to capital is “surrender”. Capitalism is far too robust and entrenched materially and ideologically to imagine we can battle it by something we called “resistance”. Resistance would suggest we have some non-capitalist haven in the middle of it all which we must liberate or keep free from capital’s tentacles. But in much of the world, those spaces, if they indeed exist are inadequate, materially or politically, to an enduring noncapitalist mode of life. 

We must make it absolutely clear that capitalism is unacceptable.   That we demand a system/culture base entirely on freedom and humanism.

 

 

One of the main problems I see with this country is how out of touch the majority of people here are or rather still are. I would say that those of my mother’s generation and even most of my generation – the so called baby boomers – were more aware of what was going on outside the country than most are now. Radios from the 1930s through the early 1950s had shortwave bands so one could listen to international broadcasts. They even had markings as to where on each band you could find London or Berlin or Bonn or Paris etc.

There are now far too many people who are not only unaware of what’s really going on in the rest of the world but also are unaware of what is going on outside of their own little bubble.   They live in some sort of fantasy land where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. Like Carlin said, The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

And I don’t know how many I have talked to that when you bring up the unpleasant realities of the current situation, simply don’t want to hear it. This aversion is mind blowing. Like they want everything to end happily ever after.  Its what really got me about the PBS series on WWII, how when those that went through it as prisoners or troupes tried to relate their experience, no one wanted to hear. We were beautiful and that’s that.

That most of the country could not understand why a few people from the middle east – areas where we have been supporting dictators and worse for our own ends for decades – would want to get out attention on Sept 2001. And felt really ill used when they did.  Shocked.

Just look at the right wing. The so called tea party people. Waring what they think was revolutionary garb ? First off they look ridiculous.  You sure would not see French or German or English protestors dawning their period clothes. They’d be at the very least laughed off the streets.  And secondly those who did fight in the revolution, did not dress that way.  They scream bloody murder if you tell them they have to obey any rules, calling you a fascist or Nazi or some such.  And then turn right around and insist everyone play by their rules. The kind of behavior that one would expect from a badly parented 2 year old child. And the religious right is indistinguishable from the Islamic radicals they claim to hate.

All the while believing that if the “free market” were just left alone, it would work itself out. Ignoring the history that every time this has happened, every business that could – colluded with every like business and did so to keep prices high, compensation low and keep out any competition and anyone they personally despised.   I am convinced they have this picture of America as River City Iowa circa 1915 that they hold onto. Praise be Meridith Wilson.

A lot of those who identify as being “leftist” are no better.  Concentrating on such earth shaking causes as eating meat, second hand smoke, marijuana and marriage equality. Really truly believing if they could just apply enough pressure on those in Washington they will get single payer health care, an increase in social security, tax on billionaires, a green infrastructure and stop global warming.  When they have no money, no power, no influence what so ever, no media than anyone except themselves pays any attention to and they hate guns. They try to play nice nice with the cops during protests and perform ludicrous skits like “die ins”. Looking more like contestants from Lets Make a Deal. Come to think of it, that does kind of fit.

And those few still in the center. What can I say. I keep waiting for Graham Chapman to show up in a Brigadier Uniform and say “Carry On.”

But the biggest flaw I see is the selfish, self centered, narcissistic and arrogant attitude so many here have toward anyone who is not a college educated white American bourgeoisie. Even when they do bring up the atrocities committed in their name, it sounds condescending because they still want their imported SUVs and gated McMansions. Even when they don’t say it they do. This attitude that the world should be grateful to us just for being here is too surreal.

What this country needs to have their iPads and iPhones and PCs and what not taken away so they wake up and get a grip on what is really happening. That the same companies that are providing their entertainment and food and over price housing are doing so by destroying the planet for other people and they are getting very pissed.

 

Consider this now.

Advances in laser diodes, batteries and control technology will make a lethal hand held laser possible for anyone very soon.

And it can look like anything. Even a cell phone !

We already have home hobby laser cutters and laser diodes are getting more powerful.

Talk about a game changer….

OY !

I want to start off this diary with a nod toward Memorial Day which was this last Monday. When I was young Memorial Day simply meant that school would be out in a week or two and summer vacation began.

I also would like to pay homage to Maj. General Smedley Butler who gave this speech in 1933.

WAR is a racket. It always has been

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

Quite fitting, I would say.  He gave this speech before WWII. Little did he know how correct he was as that war and the so called cold war that followed would prove to be the most profitable ventures for corporate America and Wall Street investors there ever was.  What with the rest of the world still in the dark ages or having been bombed there, they had a captive audience and nearly free resources at their command.

This however would turn out to be the last hurrah of capitalism as is the subject of this audio interview with Chris Hedges, Morris Berman and Dmitri Orlov.  All speaking of the slow and eventual demise of capitalism and the society and nation state on which it was built.  With Hedges and Berman taking a more  nation view – Hedges advocating fighting it even if there is no chance of winning and Berman advocating leaving the country to save one’s self.

Orlov takes a more global view and looks more toward removing one’s self from the system – unplugging as it were. And looking toward forming new community(s) that do not require the currents systems.

However it falls out it won’t be pretty and as William Rivers Pitt says in this points out in this OPED, those self same elites will have no place to hide.

Not so very long ago, the Occupy Movement sought to draw a bright public circle around the terrible influence enjoyed by the few over the many. Mainstream opinion will say the movement collapsed due to its own inadequacies, but recent revelations have shown how the movement was attacked and undermined by law enforcement, elements of “homeland security” ostensibly meant to be part of the federal government’s anti-terrorism programs, and by private security firms hired by corporations and wealthy individuals to keep “undesirables” out of sight and out of mind.

Occupy was only the beginning, but may very well have been the last manifestation of peaceful resistance against the ever-widening chasm of inequality and desolation. The noose is tightening around the necks of average people, and more become radicalized with each passing day. The wealthy would do well to take note of this, and voluntarily move to square the savage imbalance that drives billions around the world into furious despair. It does not have to be this way, and if it continues in this way, eventually the dam is going to break. When that happens, woe be unto those who believe their wealth keeps them safe and cozy. On that day, the rock will not hide them, and the dead tree will give no shelter.

If it does not happen in my lifetime, it will happen in my daughter’s. I shudder to think what she will see. [Emphasis mine]

For the “left” as me and my generation of baby boomers used to know it has for the most part vanished.  Even those of my generation have become uninterested in making any kind of waves or trouble and their offspring even less so. For this would mean forfeiting their cushy life styles.

It is a bitter reality, brought into vivid focus by five years of Obama, that the Left is an immobilized and politically impotent force at the very moment when the economic inequalities engineered by our overlords at Goldman Sachs who manage the global economy, should have recharged a long-moribund resistance movement back to life.

Instead the Left seems powerless to coalesce, to translate critique into practice, to mobilize against wars, to resist incursions against basic civil liberties, powerless to confront rule by the bondholders and hedgefunders, unable to meaningfully obstruct the cutting edge of a parasitical economic system that glorifies greed while preying on the weakest and most destitute, and incapable of confronting the true legacy of the man they put their trust in.

This is the politics of exhaustion. We have become a generation of leftovers. We have reached a moment of historical failure that would make even Nietzsche shudder.

We stand on the margins, political exiles in our own country, in a kind of mute darkness, a political occlusion, increasingly obsessed, as the radical art historian Tim Clark put it a few years ago in a disturbing essay in New Left Review, with the tragedy of our own defeat.

Consider this. Two-thirds of the American electorate oppose the ongoing war in Afghanistan. An equal amount objected to intervention in Libya. Even more recoil at the grim prospect of entering the Syrian theater.

Yet there is no antiwar movement to translate that seething disillusionment into action. There are no mass demonstrations. No systematic efforts to obstruct military recruiting. No nationwide strikes. No campus walkouts. No serious divestment campaigns against companies involved in drone technology.

Similar popular disgust is evident regarding the imposition of stern austerity measures during a prolonged and enervating recession. But once again this smoldering outrage has no political outlet in the current political climate, where both parties have fully embraced the savage bottom line math of neoliberalism.  – JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

But this smoldering outrage will eventually manifest itself in some fashion. Maybe not as a confrontational direct approach but it will manifest itself in some form that may prove to be very unpleasant non the less.  So far the younger techie radicals have limited their activities to software hacking and penetration.

But I assure you that the technology and it’s use and availability to cause actually physical damage is out there and sooner or later frustration, desperation and hopelessness will drive these people to engage in subversion and sabotage of one form or another.  We have already had similar movements but the next time they will not be so easily put down.  As the Union movements of the past have shown, desperate people will take desperate measures and those who feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain are the most likely to take these measures.  Indeed and we may well see alliances between groups not imagined here.

The so called liberals and progressives who like to “play survival”  and  “play activism” all the while believing they can leave the game whenever they choose will be swept away by those who actually have to survive and take real action for they have little or nothing left.

At which point these pseudo-leftists will find their nice safe causes and life styles summarily ignored for the greater cause of human survival.   No one will care much about cell phones and internet sites and eating meat or smoking grass, the realm of the white upper crust.

Life will become real once more.

 

Why is it that people like Mark Sanford – who has been involved in scandal after scandal, Sen. Tom Coburn – who has come out with some of the most outrageous statements and James Inhofe keep getting elected to office ? As well as any number of outright liers and crooks ?

Why do those same people as well as those who voted for them hate the idea of bank and business regulation ?

Because the people who voted these folks and others like them into office really do believe in the same things that their representatives believe in.  That’s why.

They hate Obamacare and taxes and all regulation. Not just business regulation…ALL REGULATION.   They hate being told where they can drink or eat or smoke. Who they can keep out of their establishments and schools and housing subdivisions. Be they Irish or Jewish or German or Black or Latino or Native American or Gay or Female. They hate Affirmative Action and The Voting Rights Acts and anything that gives anyone special privileges – well except them of course.

They hate being taxed to help all those they despise or because they engage in some activity or indulge in some substance that others do not approve. To charge what ever they like and pay their employees whatever they like and work them as hard as they like.

It’s not because they don’t like Federal largesse, that has nothing to do with it. They see the Federal government as a bunch of meddlesome busy bodies and the left especially so. Getting down on their churches and private religious schools – the last place they see where they still have complete control.

They want to see a world like it was in 1957 where they could do what they wanted, where they want with out fear of someone getting on their case. Where they could deny access to anyone for any reason. Especially those they despise.   And they see the only way to accomplish this to to deny the government of the funds needed to enforce those laws.  Thereby neutering it.

A huge killer tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma this afternoon.  Entire blocks of homes and businesses completely destroyed, with at least one elementary school decimated with multiple fatalities.  Reported by the KFOR TV meteorologist as 3 times the size of the May 3, 1999 tornado that hit the area.  As many as 30 children may have perished in the storm.

Here is a link to the Live report from KFOR.  And one from KOCO TV.

UPDATE:  37 fatalities so far confirmed by the medical examiner.  AP – http://bigstory.ap.org/article/tornadoes-slam-plains-midwest-1-dead-okla

MyFDL Editor’s Note: Community activists, as well as members of Occupy, Anonymous and Tar Sands Blockade are creating community-driven relief efforts. Please check the hashtag #OpOK for info.

For a long time being a business major in college was considered to be a low rent degree. It was a major of the snot nosed upper middle class kid who could do nothing else. Too stupid for any of the sciences and to lacking in talent for the arts and too illiterate for english.

Even those who went into the trades were held in higher regard by most. In the last couple of decades this has all changed, as Sam Smith points on in his current essay.

By 2005 these schools graduated 142,000 MBAs in one year.

There are plenty of worthy arguments to be made correlating the rise of business school culture with the decline of our economy and our country. A cursory examination of American business suggests that its major product has become wasted energy. And not just the physical sort Compute all the energy loss created by corporate lawyers, Washington lobbyists, marketing consultants, CEO benefits, advertising agencies, leadership seminars, human resource supervisors, strategic planners and industry conventions and it is amazing that this country has any manufacturing base at all. We have created an economy based not on actually doing anything, but on facilitating, supervising, planning, managing, analyzing, tax advising, marketing, consulting or defending in court what might be done if we had time to do it. The few remaining truly productive companies become immediate targets for another entropic activity, the leveraged buyout and the rise of the killer hedge fund.