Re: Do you have a message for President Obama?

Since you provided an easy means for me to send a message, I did so.  However, I do not think you would like it.  

You see I would prefer to paint "it," (presumably Texas) blue.  

Nothing personal, but I regard most (probably all) of your political positions contrary to the ethical precepts of most religions--especially Christianity and probably including "secular humanism."   

Passionately hoping for your defeat and the defeat of all Republicans in November of 2014,

Roy Griffin

P.S. And you may as well take me off your list.  It will be cold day in the Bad Place before you or your party get a penny from me.  

On Friday, July 18, 2014 3:13 PM, John Cornyn <john.cornyn@johncornyn.com> wrote:

roy, President Obama isn't listening to Texans. In fact, he was here just the other day and failed to address concerns about very serious issues impacting our state. So I have a simple question: If you could tell President Obama one thing, what would it be? roy, when he was here, President Obama was too busy fundraising for Democrats to spend much time hearing from regular Texans about what's important to them. . . . But if he asked, what would you say? From the border crisis to Battleground Texas, it's clear that we've got a lot to discuss.  Leave your message for President Obama here. Thank you for standing with me. For Texas, Senator John Cornyn P.S. What would you say to President Obama if you saw him in Texas? Leave your message here. This email was sent to roygg9@yahoo.com. To unsubscribe to this publication, please click here. Use Gmail? Make sure to move us into your primary inbox.

Old news?

Maybe especially to Roger, but Wallerstein's *The End of the World as We Know It* is giving me cause to re-think some of my assumptions. Like liberals and social democrats everywhere, my default position has been toward an incrementalist and "lesser evil" politics & for all its flaws, to look to the state as an arena where the struggle for a better world takes place, as a (potential) countervailing power to the forces of capitalism...

Not that I'm completely persuaded--(for one thing I haven't finished the book yet), but I am particularly struck by the force of his argument that the state is the ultimate friend to, and guarantor of, capitalism.

The problem of capitalism these days is that the state is losing legitimacy, even at the hands of a right wing populism originally stirred up and maintained as a tool of the status quo--but the beast is getting out of hand.

Increasing demands are made on the state, yet because of an increasing legitimacy crisis, the state is more and more powerless to meet those demands, thereby exacerbating the legitimacy crisis...

So Wallerstein believes that capitalism is entering its final--and only real--crisis. It will play out over the course of the next 50 years and the nation states even in the developed world could fall apart & within them violent conflicts reminiscent of Afghanistan or the Balkans could erupt.

Per Wallerstein the process actually represents an increase in democratization, but one that will contribute to the disorder as the process plays out.

Wallerstein is not a pessimist. His view is informed by the Marxist analysis, but he is willing to talk about morality and such. But he believes the outcome of the collapse of capitalism is anything but certain and barbarism may be the result. Neither Leninism, social democracy or liberalism can provide solutions based on the structures of the current world-system of states--and certainly not contemporary conservatism.

David Graeber and Noam Chomsky's anarcho-Marxism? Anarcho-syndicalism itself? Guild socialism? The folks at Parcecon (Participatory Economics). Do any of those point the way?

I don't know. I will finish the book.

Assuming Wallerstein's diagnosis is correct, I don't know if that will help either.

R.

Fw: It’s surprising to see the lengths they’ll go just to keep this secret (cuts across the political spectrum)

On Sunday, June 1, 2014 10:04 AM, The Nation Magazine <emails@emails.thenation.com> wrote:

Dear Roy, This is huge: a plan to transform the Internet is being finalized in secret meetings taking place around the world. Over 3.1 million have already spoken out, but we need all hands on deck at this crucial moment. Click HERE to join our friends at OpenMedia in fighting back. Here's the situation: right now, industry lobbyists are pressuring key decision-makers of twelve countries to sign a secretive agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The Obama administration even wants fast-track authority to force a yes or no vote on the plan from Congress without any public input or debate. There's a reason these negotiations are happening in secret. We know from leaked documents that if we sign on to the TPP, ISPs could end up acting as "Internet Police" monitoring our Internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites. Dubbed "NAFTA on steroids," the trade agreement also threatens to kill jobs, undermine environmental regulations and thwart attempts to rein in Wall Street. We need your help to fight back. Over 3.1 million people have already spoken out against the secrecy of the TPP, but we need you to join them. Will the President feel the pressure from industry lobbyists or will he feel the pressure from you? Join OpenMedia in sending decision makers a powerful message before it's too late. All the best, Sarah Arnold

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Most dubious form of psi phenomena...

Of all the forms of High Weirdiness that are claimed to have some degree of scientific validation, the one that I find most difficult to believe is precognition--the idea that it is possible to see into the future in some way that is inexplicable through ordinary means.  

My own philosophical presupposition is that as the future has no actual existence, there is nothing there to intuit by so-called psychic means.  

But the mathematics here seems to prove that it is a reality.  

Entangled Minds: Feeling the future meta-analysis

			Entangled Minds: Feeling the future meta-analysis Before Cornell University psychologist Daryl Bem published an article on precognition in the prominent Journal of Social and Personality Psychology, ...
			View on deanradin.blogspot...	Preview by Yahoo

 

Well, I do posit that it is possible for there to be extrasensory perception of things that are far away in space and also those that are in the past, for the past does have a certain concreteness even if it only exists as a sort of appendage to the present.  

As I understand it, the "presentiment" effects that are claimed are only for things that are a few seconds into the future (but which the subjects can sense quicker than it would be possible for the nervous system to communicate to the brain.)

 I submit that what is actually happening is a kind of extra-sensory grasp of the present or the immediate past and an extrapolation from it into the  immediate future, based also on the a subtle power of the human mind to immediately grasp, process and project patterns of cause-and-effect, a power that is most clearly seen in autistic savants;  for example, some can tell you in an instant what day of the week that April 17th will fall on in the year 3170 A.D.  Whether that power itself is to be considered extra-sensory or, as they say these days, paranormal, is another question.  

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

A Defense of the Higher Weirdness From a (Very) Unexpected Quarter

I've been working on an essay, off and on, in which I attempt to sketch a sort of unified theory encompassing the areas variously referred to as the paranormal and/or the mystical--or by many as the the king hell crazy...

Initially, it seems there are two kinds of people--those who don't believe in that stuff and those who have experienced it.  

I'm opting for a middle ground of sorts--I vaguely believe a great many of these odd experiences have a reality that goes beyond mere delusion--I'm not sure I ever want to experience any of them myself & exactly which of those experiences I am willing to credit as "real" in some non-trivial sense--well, that fluctuates on a weekly, if not daily, basis.  

The phenomena though are elusive and don't seem to fit  easily into a single explanatory system (but when I finish my essay--hah!)  But long time social activist and author Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book, *Living With A Wild God* that seems to occupy just that middle ground (but to be honest, I haven't read it yet--just reviews)   Not that she has found Jesus or even God, but it seems to me clearly that she gives her unusual experience its proper due.  

Perhaps I will incorporate her conclusions, if any, in my essay.  

BTW, Barbara Ehreneich's book, *Nickeled and Dimed* is the most insightful book I have ever read about the plight of the working poor in the U.S.   Just as John Howard Griffin dyed his skin black and lived as black man (*Black Like Me*) for a whole year in order to find out exactly what it is like to be black in America, so Ehreneich undertook to live for a year on such wages as she could get working as a maid in a hotel and similar venues.  One thing of note:  she found that so-called menial and unskilled jobs actually required a lot of intelligence and skill if an employer was to be satisfied.  

 A Rationalist's Mystical Moment

			A Rationalist's Mystical Moment Since I recognized no deities, I had to assume I'd had a breakdown.
			View on www.nytimes.com	Preview by Yahoo

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

God the Supreme Abortionist?

Googling the statistics one finds that about 70% of pregnancies end in miscarriage if failure of the fertilized ovum to implant in the uterus is included.  

Not counting implantation failures, 15-20% of confirmed pregnancies end in miscarriage.   

Either way, one can only surmise that  there are millions of spontaneous abortions each year.   I use the word "abortion" advisedly because according to those who regard a fertilized egg as a "person," a miscarriage is also the death of a "person."    The objection to certain forms of contraception is framed precisely in terms of those methods being "abortifacient" because they can result in miscarriages, even if undetected by the prospective mothers.  

But wait.  Those spontaneous and natural abortions are not really the same as those brought about by human intervention.    Because in the traditional view of God, it is God's mysterious will that those spontaneous abortions should occur.   Preventing babies and their birth by means of human knowledge and applied techniques is wrong because it goes against nature, which is surely a realm where everything happens according to God's will.  And human beings (oops, I mean "mankind") therefore should not do anything contrary to nature.  In which case, we should get rid of all our technologies, both simple and complex, including  the technology of fire and the use of tools,  and  return to living as naked apes.  But wait again.  Is it not "natural" for human beings (dang, I mean mankind) to create and use technology to enhance and enrich survival?  

But if its okay for humans to use technologies on behalf of their sundry biological needs, and for that matter, there mere wishes, why is contraception wrong.  

Well, I suppose there is the religious argument  that specifically in the case of contraception (and abortion) God doesn't want human beings to apply their technology.  But that is an argument only for a certain class of religious believers who cleave to a pretty specific interpretation of a Holy Book that many simply don't share.  So why should that class of believers feel that it is right to force their standards to everyone? 

(By way of a non sequitur, one doesn't see priests running around trying to baptize miscarriages.)

And regarding the specifics of that religious argument, as far as I can tell, there are no unambiguous biblical passages that forbid contraception, or even abortion.  Neither in the Old Testament is there much sentimentality about babies, as when God apparently ordered the Israelites to bash out the brains of the their enemies' infants.  (In another passage, Onan got in trouble because he didn't want to impregnate his late brother's widow, which was a very specific rule at the time.  That passage also is often taken as forbidding masturbation, which plainly is not the issue.)  

It is also clear from some of the remarks that Jesus and Paul made about family life that they and thus many of the early Christians thought there were definite limitations on the Old Testament command to "be fruitful and multiply"--meaning at the least that it was not to be taken as an admonition to individuals, but only to the generality of mankind (I mean, human beings)--if that.  

It is a complete travesty of the notion of "religious freedom" that contraception should figure as an issue before the Supreme Court of the U.S.  If a Court majority sides with Hobby Lobby, Roberts and the conservative judges will likely try and craft some clumsy narrow ruling that would prevent the principle involved from being applied to other medical issues, such as blood transfusions and vaccination.    Even so, the fallout from breaching the wall between church and state looks to be an awful, awful mess.  

One hopes that Kennedy will be a Good Guy on this one.  

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Weisbrot on Venezuela

Thanks to Russ T. for the link.  

U.S. media distortions of political reality in Latin America are even more annoying to me than those elsewhere because they concern people and places that are far less alien than, say, the people and places of the Mideast and Central Asia--not to mention the Russian Federation.  

Even the reporting in the NYT (?) shows a flair for uncanny inaccuracy when it comes to Latin American and particularly Venezuela--(such things have never happened before, of course)  

Any way here's  a on-the-scene account of the situation in Venezuela by Marc Weisbrot of the Center for Economic Progress, a progressive think tank whose relative objectivity is such that its facts and figures often are considered reliable even by its enemies on the Right:  

The Truth About Venezuela: A Revolt of the Well-off, Not a 'Terror Campaign'

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38027.htm

U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America seems to be a habit inherited by each succeeding presidential administration, rather than something thought out by...well, anybody in particular...

R. 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/