Excerpt from an old interview of Noam Chomsky conducted by former Ca. gov. Jerry Brown...

... originally in Spin Magazine Aug., 1993...
JB: But now, the economics profession is arrayed against local power because it puts the greatest value on increasing the size of markets--the larger the market, the more efficient the enterprise.
NC: Yeah, look: The economics profession is basically a tool of private power. They have a doctorate, which is kind of a theology, which points out, sometimes correctly, that you can increase output by moving to market arrangements. Market arrangements essentially give more power to the powerful. That's what it amounts to. It's like a parliamentary system where the number of votes you have depends on the number of dollars you have. Well, we know what kind of democracy that would be, and we know where it would end up.
For one thing, future generations can't vote with their dollars in the market. My grandchildren can't decide how they want things spent, but they're going to have to live with it--which means the environment.
Take other issues. Suppose the people around here decide that instead of having more consumer goods they'd like to have more leisure. The market system doesn't allow you that choice. It drives you to having more consumer goods because it's all driven to maximizing production. But is the only human value to have more and more goods you don't need? In fact the business world knows that it's not. That's why they spend billions of dollars in advertising, to try to create artificial wants.
JB: The economists have a word, "autarchy," which they use to denigrate the notion of local self-reliance.
NC: Yeah, they say it's bad What "autarchy" means is people in some area saying, "Look, we'd like our lives to be like this, not like you guys tell us." Take Japan. Part of the Japan-bashing now is because Japan protects, say, mom-and-pop-style stores, and that blocks big supermarket chains from the West from coming in and taking over. Well, suppose Japan would like to have a community where you have mom- and-pop stores. I can remember that from childhood. You go 'round the corner and you pick up a loaf of bread, and you talk to the grocer. It's a lot nicer than going into the supermarket.
Now it's economically inefficient by the economist's measures. It means that things cost a little bit more. But suppose people say, okay, I'm willing to spend a little more because I want a nicer life. The economists say you're not allowed to make that decision, because the only human value in the world is maximizing profit and efficiency. Who says that's the only human value?
Adam Smith didn't think so. You go back and read their hero. What he said, in fact, is that in any civilized country, the government is going to have to intervene to prevent market forces from destroying people and reducing them to creatures as ignorant and stupid as is possible for a human being to be. The natural effect of the division of labor, maximizing efficiency, is going to turn people into tools.
There's one well-known truth of economic history, and that is that every developed society has succeeded by radically violating these principles. You get this in the current negotiations on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). One of their prime elements is to increase protection on things like patents--it's called intellectual property rights. The idea is obvious. You want to make sure that the transnational corporations monopolize the technology of the future, meaning that U.S.-run biotech corporations or pharmaceutical firms will have all the capacity to produce food and drugs and India won't be able to produce drugs for itself at 10 percent the cost. That's protectionism, that's not freedom.
We've always had industrial policy, but ours was hidden behind the Pentagon. The Clinton people said, "The state has to become involved more aggressively in paying the welfare for the rich"--which is what industrial policy is. The Berkeley Round Table did studies which pointed out that just about every functioning aspect of the U.S. economy is publicly subsidized. You've got computers, agrobusiness, lasers, pharmaceuticals. Why do you have them? Because the public pays a lot of the cost.
JB: But subsidizing the growth of multinational companies continues the trend toward greater inequality and the growing assault on the environment. So something is going to have to give.
NC: The executives who live in Connecticut and go into New York where the big offices are and have a branch office in Zurich and have production plants in Poland and Mexico--they don't care what happens to this country. They care what happens to the part of the country that they live in. But that's protected. The suburbs of Greenwich, Connecticut are going to be great. There will be golf courses and police and they keep black people out and soon.
Walk through New York City now. It's beginning to look like San Salvador. You've got very rich people living behind walls. Once in a while a gate opens and a limousine comes out from this complex, and outside you have people starving in the streets. That's a third world country. You drive through LA, you see it. And the people who are behind the walls, their goal is to enrich themselves. For them, it's crucial that there be an attack on democracy, because if the general public becomes involved in these things, well ....
You take a look at polls. This is a very heavily polled society, because business wants to keep its finger on the public pulse. They know that over 80 percent of the public thinks that the economic system is inherently unfair. Half the population thinks both parties ought to be disbanded. Alienation from institutions goes up every year-like, two-thirds of the population thinks none of the institutions function. I think that's where Perot came from. People would have voted for Mickey Mouse if he came down from Mars and said, "I've got 50 billion dollars and big ears, go vote for me. Why not?
People are desperate. If this can be organized into a functioning democracy, wealth is in trouble. Serious trouble.
JB: Can you really have democracy when more and more power is lodged in distant private and public bureaucracies? Do we need to break things up, to decentralize?
NC: The Financial Times, which is the main international business journal published in London, had a lead article on this about a year ago in which they pointed out, quite accurately, that what's happening --they think it's great, of course --is what they called a de facto world government of executive agreements with its own institutions, like the IMF and the World Bank, the EC executive, G-7 meetings--and GATT and NAFTA would be part of it. This whole structure of executive power operates independently of public involvement. Even parliaments can't influence it. Who knows what's going on at IMF meetings? You can't subpoena World Bank records.

Our Democracy First is nearing its "real world" launch...

... and my role as launcher of said entity is to go out on the limb of trying to actually do, in my own small and humble way, what lots of people are calling for and saying is what we need to ever get the kind and depth and breadth of change we need for America the Beautiful to better live up to her/our/its potential to be a true beacon of:

• democracy, freedom, power in the hands of the many as opposed to the few etc.etc.
• reasonably equal opportunity structure and resultant access to: education, decent employment, health care, a safe environment to live and raise kids, and on and on and on...
• leadership in the world as the whole world has to move away from neo liberal globalization and toward undertaking the "Great Work" (with more than a nod to Thomas Berry's book of that title along with the rest of his thinking and life's work) of our epoch which is to find a way into our collective future that allows for the continued existance of humans on the planet along with the rest of the life forces on the planet along with us...

Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Democracy Solidarity...

... Yeah old E.P.G.T.D.S.- a movement needed in this country to solidify and unite all of the progressive Democracy types out there and through doing that bring the Democratic Party back to or closer to actually representing the interests of the people in this country- and in delivering on what they claim to be "for" when they go before the people at election time and insist that they're Democrats. And now, with Obama having pulled off the shocking reality of getting himself elected- largely by appealing to the hope for change in many- but especially the progressive radical lefty types who have been most marginalized in "Mainstream" American electoral politics with the right wing pendulum swing we have been on since Nixon/Agnew (with a little help from speechwriting nabobs of business right libertarian hegemony)- now such a Solidarity Movement might be needed more than ever because Obama's win has galvanized the right into pulling out all the stops of an obstructionist "hoping he'll fail" campaign and the Democrats thinking they are safe to continue their incrementalist "Republican Light" appeasement, capitulation, working toward bipartisanship, and miscellaneous other weak kneed drivel that has definately helped things get this bad in the first place.

The 30% solution...

... as the G-20 meetings take place in Pittsburgh- just 100 or so miles to the Southeast of where I sit now in a 9th and 10th grade day of "intro to life science" classes... subbing my brains out... and these kids, more the cool hip kids than your College Prep Ap set- show a fundamental reality of the Great Divide in the economy, in education, and opportunity structure.
The elephant at the dinner table of any talk of Democracy, development, change, justice, jobs, globalization (it's simply inevitable according to wunderkind Bary `O Bama, which of course means that pretty much all of the fundamental "reforms" or core changes that are needed, many of them he gave support to that helped him get elected on the hope for meaningful change that he partly inspired and partly he simply, as it turns out, utilized to get elected... in other words he road the wave of hope for real sea change only to come to power already marginalized and co-opted be the structures of economic power that override any attempt at Democratic power over their operational structures and systems that give us a world and conditions that those of us who yearn for that change live in the "RealEconomique" consequences of every day. Not to mention the social, cultural, educational, and political consequences of...
Which brings us back to the 30% solution- to be discussed next post...

The Great Polarization Divide...

...is really nothing more than the current incarnation of the culture wars of the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and of course- the Oughts. Which up until Obama got himself elected meant the Age of the Cheney-Bush-Neocon Nutjob Ascendancy that started with the stealing of the 2000 Presidential election from the guy who won the popular vote and Florida but who stepped aside politely because, hey, that's what mainstream Democrats do: they wimp out in the face of right wing extremist bluster because in the final analysis they don't want to believe that the system they do so reasonably well themselves in could be as corrupted and in need of radical overhaul as it is. That, and the way that corruption works is that they get their share and the Right wing reactionary zealots get theirs and if our good Nation and Democracy itself are in peril then hey, we'd better not point that out too stridently or we might be schmeared as un-American commie socialists and lose our slice of that juicy and ever more corrupted pie.

Restarting with a vengeance...

...well, restarting anyway. And this time it's with an eye to making the pro Democracy activist thing a party styled real world entity- and that means party in the sense that we, once this deal is launched and it's more than just a me thing, stage events and shindigs of all shapes and styles in order to help raise the monies necessary to carry on the necessary work proposed all the "our democracy first" writing and proposals I throw out there...

Using the potential of social networking to fundamentally change the mainstream...

... woops- I started out in that title talking about changing the "painstream"- what a classic freudian slip. And of course, we have heard already about first how television and then the Internet and then blogs were all going to make possible the radical positive changes that are needed at the bedrock of our social, economic, and political Democracy. You know: the kinds of changes that are required if the vast majority of us... We the people if you will... are going to live in any sort of a civil society with much hope at all for meaningful work, secure career, safe communities, stable families, reasonably sane kids- in short, all the sorts of things that go into allowing an indidvidual a shot at much of a self actualized life.

And obviously, social networking as it can be applied to grassroots and progressive organizing in the direction of my old "EPGTDS" (Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Transformational Democracy Solidarity) catch term... though, to be honest, it never caught on much cuz nobody hardly ever saw my, like, "work"... Anyway social networking combined with and used to enhance some new styled bricks and mortar boots on the ground movement that does a better job of mobilizing and articulating the positions on issues that will deliver on big ticket quality of life, social justic, peace and freedom, security and prosperity, and all around equal opportunity structure types of issues- that's what all my effort is to be all about addressing.

It's not all meant to be tweets and blogs and trying to monetize my work as a writer slash thinker poet philosopher adventurer explorer type of hunter and warrior fellah. I have to work up the gumption to combine that kind of New Media sort of advocacy to actually throw some events in the real world around the general notion of launching a real world activist organizational entity that promotes the ideas and positions that I articulate, propose, or call attention to in, like, the writin'.

Now that I have the new Credit Billing cycle to work with I will splurge for my new Web Space and domain registration and start the ball rolling. The readiness is all! That's write, I used an exclamation point.

Thinking about the phases and stages of life, man...

... Sometimes the personal just overwhelms the careerist secular side of the times we have. I will get going soon, I have faith- cuz you gotta have faith, eh? In any case the welling up of childhood memories and ongoing life reflection precipitated by the closure surrounding the loss of parents, the reconnection with the oldest and in some ways most fundamentally deepest and closest friends... who are dealing with many of the same or parallel kinds of things and wrenching emotions that me and my sister and brother have been dealing with really since our mother died suddenly and accidentally just over nine years ago- and we began the long slow goodbye with our father who could barely stand to "just hang in there" after his wife left but had to strong a constitution and life force and core will to live despite his deteriorating and shrinking self to get out any earlier than this past December.

And then, coincidentally, the passing of Miss McMillan- the elementary school teacher of all of us- who was one of the other majorly influential adults of our childhood- all four of us I'm mostly referring to in this post- it all leaves me feeling oddly still in my prime and profoundly alive and pretty strong pretty fast like I can still go two tree rounds with the world... but that this euphoric high is self aware of its own tenuous gossamer vulnerability like perhaps never before. I feel like it is an adrenalin surge i must take advantage of to finally make something of the ongoing work I have been dancing around doing for my entire adult life.

Onward... Farward and faiyaka. Minnotuh- and den goasaka...

So it turns out the hippies were right about just about everything...

...well that might be just a wee bit of an overstatement but I am intentionally hyperbolizing here. And I'm not really just talking about "the Hippies" in any official monolithic sense but rather those who by choice or otherwise have given voice to opposition to the PR hoodwinking voice of the mainstream: media, junk culture, chamber of commerce cheerleading for the beneficiaries of how the economy does or doesn't function. And of course that means in large part the overbearing industrial economy most extremely illustrated by the merger of Big G'uvment, Big Military, and of course- Big Corporation. It has been a menage a trois made far from heaven but that in general operates falsely as if it is indeed all things God and Country. When of course the results of its inevitable agenda (unless We the people insist it be stopped- and we haven't been able to do so effectively yet) have little to do with the best interests of most of the people, communities, ecosystems, critters- not to mention the very Democratic ideals, institutions, and potential of these United States of America.

Those of us who have bothered to notice this reality have got to find a better path to create a different destination to the one the fundamentalist business right neocon coalition have us railroaded toward. It's not to late- but hey, time is of the essence.

Obama's window of opportunity along with the hope and possibility his ascendancy on the political landscape has catalyzed will wisp away quickly if his being head of the Executive Branch of mainstream government (that is way too far right of center- so much so it makes my head spin- with apologies to old Nixon cronie John Mitchell) is allowed to gridlock its way to stagnation while being challenged too meekly by Obama. If he doesn't use his 12 or 13 million member mailing lists effectively to help him really deliver the truly significant liberal, progressive, radical- whatever you want to call it- change that he was elected to bring about then he will be abandoned to the apathy and genuine lack of political will and informed outrage that really seem to be the keys to the status quo of the last 40-70 years being able to run roughshod over the basic quality of life realities and opportunity structures of a huge and growing segment of the American people.

To help make sure that doesn't happen We the people... of the progressive radical creative and working class left need to build our own social network of lists and operatives both large scale and individual to help the President not get to comfy with the notion that him making it to the mountaintop is enough. He needs to lead us to the promised land of a more just, fair, egalitarian, and civil society. We need a more Democratic divvying up of the opportunity, wealth and power that our Nation and Economy can create.

"A people that has lost control of its food supply...

...cannot possibly consider itself free" Which is a quote used by Wendell Berry in either The Unsettling of America (http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780871567727/The_Unsettling_of_America_Culture_and_Agriculture.html) or What Are People For? http://books.google.com/books?id=qAgkGwAACAAJ&dq=Wendell+berry

These are both classics in the argument that how we use our land, resources, and people is in damage mode and needs adjusting. Makes me glad to be back to my role as all around cowboy at an organic garden center where producing the highest quality food is the top priority- cuz hell- there ain't no money in it. The agribiz model of disease and strip mining the topsoil and destroying rural communities and households sees to that. Corporate and shareholder profits yes- fair sustainable prices to real farmers and producers no.

And some dare call it a miracle of the modern age. Hah!

“The world is so lacquered over with tendentiousness and cliché that to see with one’s own eyes for even a moment requires much work.”

Which is a quote from a Marilynne Robinson Writer's Digest interview- I couldn't find it at http://writersdigest.com/GeneralMenu/ but her writing is truly lyric poetic prose if I ever seen it and can heartily recommend Housekeeping as a must read of modern fiction. http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780312424091/Housekeeping.html

John Mellencamp: "Take some time to dream...

...'cause your dreams might save us all." This from a new song I guess recently recorded and performed at a minor league stadium concert Saturday night in Eastlake, Ohio where Mellencamp shared the bill with a couple of other guys I'm sure are gonna make it in the music bidness- Dylan and Willie.

So that's what any radical progressive democracy solidarity movement has to commit to: to be naively unrealistic enough to insist that we can dare to dream that Thomas Berry "Dream of the Earth"-
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780871566225/The_Dream_of_the_Earth.html
And, staying for a moment with the Thomas Berry reference, the political activism and committment to the real core foundation sea change that is needed in our political, economic, and social democratic functioning is the first phase in "The Great Work" that is Berry's follow up volume http://www.allbookstores.com/book/9780609605257/The_Great_Work_Our_Way_into_the_Future.html and delves into the nature of what our real job is once we do the simple little chore of profoundly changing our politics and our entire economic model as it relates to our relationships to the earth itself and then by extension all liffing things- including all us indiginous people and critters- that are now considered collateral assets, damage, or nuisance to the priorities of the corporate global "New World Order" that has emerged and evolved in the last 30- 80 years or so.

(and is the order that the Neo Con nut jobs of the ilk of Cheney, W., W's Daddy, Reagan, Nixon and their bosses and sycophant lackey knee pad Tories (sic) like to tell us is creating the best of all possible worlds for all of us and is the source of all our freedoms and opportunities)

Health care crisis link... Howard Dean Interview...

Check this out http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/4452

All I can say is as We'd better get organized to demand single payer National Health Insurance or the whole window for hope and change that Obama symbolizes will slam shut. This, and total "money in politics" reform are bedrock issues. "Our" democratic government is not, in many instances and respects, working in the interests of the vast majority of the American people becuase "our" representatives are in the pockets of various large vested corporate interests at all levels of government.

Change will require much more than everyone having hope because Obama was able to make an amazing rise to the pinnacle of our Executive Branch.

Personal, political, and for lack of a better term "professional" blogs...

...soon to have all their own manner of descrete blogs on blogger. There's just no way to write all to the same single blog. So I will have a few blogs under tboneblogs (IE sports, general communications with my peeps, personal "journal of a madman adventurer explorer" etc..) and the whole gamut of more ambitious writing- like the political organizing and advocacy one that this blog is the "beta" version of- and all the others that seem to evolve naturally from really being on task with "the writin'"... this will proceed apace under my gskalsky blog dashboard.

Meantime, I see the window of opportunity for me as I show up and produce on the big major pro democracy movement that is at the heart of what I consider my serious writhing- oops what a major Freudian slip that there was- you see I meant to say writing and well no sugarcoating it "writhing" just about typed itself right out...

And as I get all this writing going on blogs of various kinds I get the big companion Web Site to all of them, all my writing and work and such like, up and truly operational as an organizing, fund development, and marketing/ revenue producing site on as many levels as I possibly can. And if I stumble into a "real yop" in the course of doing all this then I can decide whether or not to take it once it really is a bona fide option or choice to make.

Health Care reform gridlock and Money Corrupted Democracy...

...Form the dual core issues that need to be organized around and illustrate the heart of what is needed for any meaningful progressive democracy re-awakening to be successful in this country.

More and more the news about health care reform shows just how deeply entrenched the mentality is in mainstream circles that the status quo can and will ignore the will of the people for real change in our incredibly corrupt for profit health care and insurance system. Both need to be transformed into Not For Profit Public Trusts that serve the needs of people and other kinds of businesses in this country by providing true Single Payer National Health Care For All. The drain of "business as usual" in this area is almost impossible to overstate.

And of course- the money behind keeping things as they are for the major profit centers of the "health care industry"- any oxymoron if there ever was one- is a huge reason why there is no "political will" on the part of supposedly "our" elected representatives for the only kind of health care reform that will really make a difference and get the suffocationg monkey of profit corrupted health care off the backs of the people and businesses of this country.

Single Payer National Health Insurance...

...Without a doubt a bedrock fundamental issue that has to be made a reality for any genuine pro democracy reform to be successfully implemented at any level of our society, economy, and politics. Yesterday's radio program of democracynow.org was an eye opener. 2.2 trillion spent each year in this country on health care- that's $7 grand for every man woman and child and twice the per capita amount spent by any advanced developed nation yet we rank 37th in outcomes. Atrocious and a high crime. I would guess that 40% of what we spend or so is nothing more than the vig skimmed by the big time profiteers of the ponzi racket that they themselves have set up- truly gamed and rigged ponzi system that benefits big insurance, big pharma, the big hospital industry, along with all manner of public officials that are funded by those entities to ensure that the interests of those "profit centers" are protected rather than the health and security of the people, families and communities of this country. Check out these links:
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/9/sen_bernie_sanders_and_nurses_union
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2009/5/14/amy_goodmans_new_column_baucus_raucous_caucus

I'm all a twitter and feeling pretty thweet...

...and inspite of how pervasively obnoxious some of the emergent media buzz about twitter and all these narcissist celeb types telling us how intereting their toe nail growth rates are and all- this seems to be a perfect quick posting and organizing social network tool perfectly suited to the type of pro democracy movement I am advocationg for... Sooooo: https://twitter.com/gskalsky

Needless to say I have a long way to go and a lot of work in front of me.

So I'm looking backward 30 or so years...

...and low and behold it leads to this discovery http://www.ieer.org/index.html which is a site that bills itself as advocating for "Science and Democracy" for 20 years now. From my quick perusal they look like they should be contacted for collaboratory purposes with whatever my pro democracy entitiy ends up getting called.

So, thanks Liz, and happy birthday one time almost Ms. Right for a year or there abouts.

Soon the personal journalizing will give way...

...to the more general efforts I want to have this blog be the initial catalyst to getting my own work started on. There is a lot of tinkering and playing with the capabilities of blogger that I have to just spend time on.

And before too very much longer I want to start building the companion Web Site to this blog so I can link here to more lengthy material (essays, articles, policy proposals, fund development, organizational framework stuff and whatnot) that will help move what I am proposing forward into the more real world "bricks and mortar" stages of its development.

Because, in the last analysis, at the end of the day, when we get down to brass tacks- or real nitty gritty, if you will- the purpose of much of my writing is to propose serious grass roots political organization all across America the Beautiful in order that "We the people..." might more successfully carry out the great work of our generation, or epoch more like it, that must- in order to be successfully undertaken at all or in time (given the magnitude and severity of the various crises and challenges we as a Nation face)- begin with a radical re-invigoration of our Democratic traditions.

And as I say at many times and places in my writing: this specific political movement I call for must, I believe, be undertaken peacefully utilizing the rich democratic traditions that are there for us as citizens to utilize for just such a momentous time in our history as we currently live in. However, that being said- the need for rapid and radical evolutionary transformation of the social, economic, and political aspects of our society must be approached and treated by all who participate as nothing short of another stage of our ongoing Democratic Experiment and perhaps even a true Second American Revolution.

Talking `bout, talking bout...

...My blog... or actually this blog. There is as y'all know, everything under the sun on the Internet and now, too, in the blogospere. It's "New Media", baby, and there ain't no Gatekeepers. Everything is there, and everything is possible. Thank you, Al Gore. Thank you, you genius you. And Bill Gates too. You big old creative entrepreneur visionary you. And of course, genius too. Not to mention squelcher of innovation and corporate behemoth. But that's another blogpost.

What I do here, and invite some people, a small cadre of trusted patriot peacenik progressive evolutionaries to join me in doing, is to try researching and filtering and adding to the mix of what's out there regarding what's possible, already being done, and activist encouragement/ organizing toward "what 'we the people' ought to do from here" (to bastardize and plagiarize the great philosophical question of the late and great Commander Scott)- in a peaceful yet urgent passionate no holds barred "2nd American Revolution" manner.

Eventually this blog will have all kinds of links to what I find and who I communicate with about "all of this, this great assed gaiea thing of which I speak". There will also be a companion Web Site that tries to organize both funding for the real world bricks and mortar activist-organizing- entrepreneruial boots on the ground entity that the movement I am calling must have in order to be more than the mere pipe dream of one slightly addled and agitated ghost poet-philosopher / writer-naturalist / adventurer-explorer / working class hero of the counterculture (and that is indeed something to be...

And besides fund development that companion Web Site will present, in a more cogent manner and "professional tone and voice" specifically what is being proposed, what I reccomend based on how things with my work evolve from here, and so forth...

But till then, tramps like me- maybe I was born to run, eh?

Moving forward in the post Obama euphoria of hope hangover mode...

...Which is, of course, what we had better do and get going on fast or the tremendous hope and optimism that came with this man's enormous and stunning rise on the American political firmament will simply de-evolve into the precursor to the next nutjob kneepad Tory NeoCon shift further right in a pendulum swing that I fear may not be over...

...If, that is, all progressive foment simply simmers in the "Obama as Savior" and be all end all of what is possible now that their might in fact be a new and long term demographic shift that makes it unlikely that the same tired old Conservative hoodwinking of the American people can continue mostly unabated as it more or less has since WW2 ended- those fabulous sixties notwithstanding.

So here are a couple of starting points for discussion:

• A little bittie article in the Cleve-A-Burg Pee Dee today notes that Obama has toughened standards on mining with regard to "Mountaintop Removal" practices that effectively enhance profits through "Strip Mining on Steroids" (and we thought the worlds biggest shovel was a travesty in its wreckless pirsuit of easy clean coal money) while in the process ruining land, watersheds, wildlife habitat, and of course, the obligatory lives of people, families, communities, etc. etc..
• Mind you, Obama the Be All End All that he is strengthened regulation but stopped short of taking a stand on ending the practice- because that no doubt might lead to a fight with Mr. Cheney, the political and bureaucratic pit bull operative shill of all things powerful and wealthy that eminate from the overall extractive industreis: coal, oil, nuke-ular...you name it.
• If the Democrats, starting with Obama at both the point and power forward positions, don't start spending their significant political capital they have gained finally after 40+ years of being the Republican Light Loyal opposition/ collaborators to the Hard Right- then the capital will be gone and an amazing window of opportunity will close quickly...
• And we will have a Republican team in power in the White House consisting of Sarah Palin or General Patreus playing the roll of "Cheerleader in Chief" made famous by Sonnie Dubya with perhaps, in a madcap ironic twist, Jeb doing a stint at Vice learning the ways of the control panel in the bunker perhaps from Cheney himself, or could be a Virtual Reality holigram of old Dick if he's out to pasture or quail hunting full time by then.
• And speaking of Quail- don't be surprised if his career can be resurrected by the NeoCon think tanks. And Newt Gingrich is a real man's man and supreme intellectual with honor and a code he lives by. Just ask Rush.
  

Just like starting over...

...And Again

Welcome to the new beginning of, like, my work. If you are looking at this in the early stages you probably are or have been at one phase or stage or another a pretty close friend and I have asked you to become involved with what I am trying to do with my writing and internet advocacy efforts. These next few weeks I will put in the time necessary to get past all the restart up glitches and questions. This blog, although Beta in a very real sense, should begin to explain itself and my intentions and function as a good starting point for whatever is to evolve from here.

And although I do like to think I have a fair idea of what that is supposed to be- from my personal point of view- I am always reminded at times like... this when I am attempting to wade back into the "work" and "the writin'" that I have been dabbling at for decades now... of William Least Heat Moon's mantra from his book and journey Riverhorse: "Proceed as the way opens". Yeah, that's what I'll do.