Wednesday, August 3, 2011

SOLD DOWN THE RIVER OF DUBIOUS DREAMS




Tuesday
August 2, 2011


 The Senate  Approved it - The President Signed it
Deal Done - The Epilogue's Begun

A  Brief Pause to Look Back before going forward,
because Socrates, at his trial for the heresy of exhorting his followers to question
the assumed verity of the edicts of the powerful, said


"the unexamined life is not worth living"


Monday
August 1, 2011
Front Page N. Y. Times Today
 


In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
From the mountains of faith
To the river so deep
I must be lookin' for something
Something sacred I lost

But the river is wide
And it's too hard to cross
even though I know the river is wide
I walk down every evening and stand on the shore
I try to cross to the opposite side
So I can finally find what I've been looking for
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the valley of fear
To a river so deep
I've been searching for something
Taken out of my soul
Something I'd never lose
Something somebody stole
I don't know why I go walking at night
But now I'm tired and I don't want to walk anymore
I hope it doesn't take the rest of my life
Until I find what it is I've been looking for
(Three beat Pause)
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the jungle of doubt
To the river so deep
I know I'm searching for something
Something so undefined
That it can only be seen
By the eyes of the blind
In the middle of the night
Im not sure about a life after this
God knows I've never been a spiritual man
Baptized by the fire, I wade into the river
That is runnin' through the promised land
In the middle of the night
I go walking in my sleep
Through the desert of truth
To the river so deep
We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We're all carried along
By the river of dreams
In the middle of the night


Sunday
 July 31, 2011
 Question and Answers
"President Obama announced an eleventh-hour deal with congressional leaders
o raise the nation's debt ceiling,, possibly staving off
a first-ever default on the nation's debt".
READ IT HERE
*
"Complete intellectual surrender."
 READ IT HERE
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/linguistic-note/
*


"How Can It Feel This Wrong"


December 2010

The Earlier Surrender
"Obama, at his press conference announcing his surrender to the GOP on tax cuts -
the questioner was Marc Ambinder"
READ IT HERE
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/31/tax-cut-memories/
*

Non Personhood for the Non Rich
by Peter Laarman in RD Magazine
"Many of us have talked for years along the lines first sketched (I think) by Gore Vidal.
that we don’t have a two-party system in the U.S.
we have a single party—the Party of Wealth—with two branches."
READ IT HERE
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/4949/new_for_democrats%3A_non-personhood_for_the_non-rich/
*

1923

"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"
A blues standard, written by Jimmy Cox
. Its lyric, told from the point of view of a one-time millionaire during the Prohibition era, reflects on the fleeting nature of material wealth,
and the friendships that come and go with it
.

Bessie Smith 1929


See You in Our Collective Dreams

8.4.2011
Update
A post today from The Rumpus led me to this really interesting piece

about leadership and what mental conditions contribute to leaders in history
"In his provocative, fascinating new work, 'First Rate Madness' Nassir Ghaemi,
an author and professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine, argues that...."
*


 

6 comments:

jude said...

he looks older doesn't he?

Ms. said...

Indeed he does, and who wouldn't. He's on his way to Chicago to celebrate his fiftieth birthday with supporters who are fund raising for his re-election campaign.

deanna7trees said...

interesting how the truth is so different for all of us. i think we are blinded by our circumstances. and then again, maybe not...i used to think it was possible to understand. i no longer think that.

Ms. said...

Speaking of not understanding. I don't think I understand your comment dear Deanna. Feel free to elaborate or not.

deanna7trees said...

well, that would probably take a dissertation. in short, i always try to understand both sides of an argument even though i know which side i am on. the more i listen to the politicians and the decisions they make, the more i am convinced that they do not even understand the side they are on (or maybe it's me who does not understand). that probably makes less sense than my first comment...

Ms. said...

Deanna
Yes, now I understand you. I too feel that the wheeling and dealing has got so bound up in gamesmanship, everyone, me included, is lost in the sauce, deluded, drowning in details that no one fully understands. It's dark days and a rainy night here (wish I could send it to Texas, the rain, that is)- I'm getting emails about how the cost of everything is creeping up, and forecasts that it will all triple by 2013. It's like watching a tide rise to flood level. And-off the issue kind of, unless one considers that 'ownership' is the issue, I just discovered that Sony removed the Billy Joel clip so I replaced it with a different one and republished, but that one might disappear too. In which case, I'll insert a photograph of my own and leave the printed lyric, which is fantastic in it's own right. I will lighten up again soon. Such is the nature of dark and light.