Let's Sage the White House - Get out all of Those Evil Spirits = Dark Energy

Kate Clinton said the idea grew from hearing about shamans who cleansed the area around Machu Picchu of evil spirits by saging after George Bush visited.

“We are going to meet in Washington at 6PM on January 19th at the new White House visitor's center,” Clinton said in a new interview. “We'll mill around there for a little bit. And then we're just gonna walk over towards the White House, or as close as we can get, with our little sage sticks and try to get out the bad spirits. So, we can clear out the bad spirits in time for the new Obama administration to come in on the next day.” (hundreds have signed up!)

http://lauraflanders.firedoglake.com/2008/12/19/saging-the-white-house/

above strategy superseded -

new meeting place & plan.....




This couldn't HURT......Indigenous people are onto something(s) alot deeper and more profound than our current level of human connection with the Soul of the World/Planet. Come to think of it, I'm gonna sage my house after the TV news broadcasting into my living room all of the horror going on in Gaza right now.....the heaviness is palpable. The sadness and deep psychic trauma of that circumstance is best left for another post entirely.

Maybe we should sage the entire planet, do a world-wide Puja....

Uncle Jay Explains the News ....

US Media Unconditionally Supports Israel.....Eyes Wide Shut

Once again, during an Israeli Military action against Palestinians, the US is silent, the media is silent, even left-wing bloggers are (for the most part) silent when it comes to questioning or criticizing Israel. On Huffington Post I found some excerpts of recent Israeli press commentary and even they have been asking questions that are more pointed than anything to come out of the US. To wit:

One Sunday analysis at Haaretz: "A million and a half human beings, most of them downcast and desperate refugees, live in the conditions of a giant jail, fertile ground for another round of bloodletting. The fact that Hamas may have gone too far with its rockets is not the justification of the Israeli policy for the past few decades, for which it justly merits an Iraqi shoe to the face."

Another opinion piece in Haaretz -- titled, "Neighborhood Bully Strikes Again" -- by Gideon Levy: "Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: 'Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!' Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation 'Cast Lead' is only in its infancy."

Also from Haaretz, Zvi Barel writes: "Six months ago Israel asked and received a cease-fire from Hamas. It unilaterally violated it when it blew up a tunnel, while still asking Egypt to get the Islamic group to hold its fire." Yet the U.S. media refers that only Hamas violated the ceasefire.

Could it be that the most conservative wing of the Israeli political spectrum, actually resides in the US?

And Now, for Something Completely Different

Well, I've got myself a head cold as of yesterday around lunch time.   Sneezed like I was getting paid for it, all day into the night.   Spent the afternoon on the computer listening to lectures on YouTube.   Had a limited night's sleep so I've been surfing the net today as I rest in bed, drinking tea.    In a conversation with a friend,  it was suggested I check out Red Ice Creations website which I did.    Found some very interesting info on, oh you know, Secret Societies,  Ancient Symbology, Astro-theology (Hi, Zacharia Sitchin, my old buddy....)  

Anywho, As Michael Tsarion (great series on YouTube entitled "The Origins of Evil" in 13 parts) kept mentioning the Atenists.....so I looked up Aten and here's what I found:

Here is wiki blurb:

Both Ra and Horus characteristics are part of the god, but the god is also considered to be both masculine and feminine simultaneously. All creation was thought to emanate from the god and to exist within the god. In particular, the god was not depicted in anthropomorphic (human) form, but as rays of light extending from the sun's disk. Furthermore, the god's name came to be written within a cartouche, along with the titles normally given to a Pharaoh, another break with ancient tradition.


Aten
The Aten, the sun-disk, first appears in texts dating to the 12th dynasty, in The Story of Sinuhe, where the deceased king is described as rising as god to the heavens and uniting with the sun-disk, the divine body merging with its maker.[2]
Ra-Horus, more usually referred to as Ra-Herakhty (Ra, who is Horus of the two horizons), is a synthesis of two other gods, both of which are attested from very early on. During the Amarna period, this synthesis was seen as the invisible source of energy of the sun god, of which the visible manifestation was the Aten, the solar disk. Thus Ra-Horus-Aten was a development of old ideas which came gradually. The real change, as some see it, was the apparent abandonment of all other gods, above all Amun, and the introduction of monotheism by Akhenaten.[3] The syncretism is readily apparent in the Great Hymn to the Aten in which Re-Herakhty, Shu and Aten are merged into the creator god.[4] Others see Akhenaten as a practitioner of an Aten monolatry.[5]

Pretty interesting eh?   The Sun (Son) rising to return to the Creator/Source/Light (Father).    This is even similar to the old Vedantists and Yogis of India saying that we are all a manifestation of Light and at death or total Enlightenment return to dissolve back into Light.   I can get with that.  :-)

Our god is a sun god, RA RA RA!
Our god is a fun god, RA RA RA!!! 

(feel free to wave your pom poms at any time)

Israel Vows to Keep Firing on Palestine

What else is new?!

I don't know if I even believe the official reports out of the New York Times on this subject anymore. Every time I read a story like this about Palestinians shooting rockets at Israel, JUSTIFYING Israel's MASSIVE response, I consider the source of the story. I used to think that Israel was a client state of the US, but I am beginning to see that, no, the US is a client state of Israel, no matter WHICH way the MONEY flows. It's not about the money, necessarily. It's about US foreign policy, middle east strategies, who is in Washington DC calling the shots, behind the scenes. I have heard news reports from sources other than American and Israeli during other conflicts such as this (same sh*t, different day...) and the reports are markedly different. Generally what I find is that the US and Israel exaggerate beyond all credibility Palestinian actions and couch the language so as to dehumanize and de-legitimize ANYTHING the Palestinians do, even if it is a young kid simply lobbing rocks at an Israeli soldier.

Israel is the sacred cow of our time. No one seriously interested in public office in this country, can dare BREATHE a word against Israel. Just as in the beginnings of settlement on this continent, no one dared breathe a word against the Crown in England. You were a loyalist or you were a Revolutionary. Before the revolutionary idea caught on most people were still loyal to King George and the idea of the Monarchy. These days, people would consider it a revolutionary idea, to questions out loud Israel's actions, Israel's legitimacy, Israel's "security" in the Middle East.

I supported Barack Obama as everyone who knows me is aware, but I was taken aback when he came out and stated in the strongest terms, that Israel and it's agenda was sacrosanct, basically. He had even stronger words of support than even some right wing neo-cons. I realize he had to come out and say SOMETHING signaling his alliance with Israel, especially in the face of those idiotic attempts to link him to Islam via "Barack Hussein Obama" etc. But what about Palestine?

What about the Palestinians? How long can the world's people just shrug this off? This whole two state solution idea is way past time to come, but even if that is the eventuality, how will the Palestinians avoid becoming just a state "in name only"? How will they be essentially sovereign? Is that possible and does anyone even care, other than Hamas?

Professor Juan Cole who runs a very informative website called "Informed Comment" had this to say today (excerpt):

The outbreak of hostilities affects Americans, since al-Qaeda hit New York and the Pentagon in some important part over the Israeli occupation of the Palestinians. The airstrikes and large death toll also present a challenge to the incoming Obama administration, which may find peace-making more difficult now.

The UN Security Council held a special evening session on Saturday and issued a call for an immediate ceasefire. The attacks drew a furious response from the Arab world. Egypt, which has collaborated with Israel in blockading the Gazans, branded its partner's air strikes "murder." The US, which for some odd reason holds an irrational hatred of the Palestinians, branded the dead Gaza policemen "thugs" and blamed the massive aerial strikes solely on Hamas, the fundamentalist Muslim party that controls Gaza.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, outgoing president of the European Union, issued among the more measured responses: "The President of the Republic expresses his lively concern at the escalation of violence in the south of Israel and in the Gaza Strip. He firmly condemns the irresponsible provocations that have led to this situation as well as the use of disproportionate force. The president of the republic deplores the significant loss of civilian life and expresses his condolences to the innocent victims and their families."

Sarkozy "requests an immediate cessation of rocket fire directed at Israel as well as of Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and he calls on the parties to exercise self-restraint. He reminds everyone that there is no military solution to Gaza, and demands the implementation of a durable truce."

This statement, which I seem to be the only news source to present in full in English, seems to me to be the best issued by any head of state on this particular incident, and shames the insensitive and one-sided statement issued on behalf of the US by Gordon Johndroe.

Israel blames Hamas for primitive homemade rocket attacks on the nearby Israeli city of Sederot. In 2001-2008, these rockets killed about 15 Israelis and injured 433, and they have damaged property. In the same period, Gazan mortar attacks on Israel have killed 8 Israelis.

Since the Second Intifada broke out in 2000, Israelis have killed nearly 5000 Palestinians, nearly a thousand of them minors. Since fall of 2007, Israel has kept the 1.5 million Gazans under a blockade, interdicting food, fuel and medical supplies to one degree or another. Wreaking collective punishment on civilian populations such as hospital patients denied needed electricity is a crime of war.

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime."

I agree and if you would like to really research the subject and study the history, I suggest you peruse Professor Cole's excellent website:

http://www.juancole.com/

The Mom Song

The Mom Song from Northland Video on Vimeo.

Mark Twain Quote

I know for a FACT that what Mark Twain says here, is the Truth! ;-))


“We are always hearing of people who are around seeking after the Truth. I have never seen a permanent specimen. I think he has never lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who thought they were permanent Seekers after the Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment- until they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. That was the end of the search. The man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather.”

– Samuel Clemens, What is Man?

Duck, Duck, Goosed!

Odd Job should have aimed better.....

FDIC Chair Has the Right (and FAIR!) Idea

Sheila C. Bair, Chairwoman of the FDIC has proposed several variations of a plan to help homeowners stay in their homes. The Treasury Department, officials at the White House are angry at her, however. Angry at her.

From today's NY Times Article:

"Around the time that the F.D.I.C. took over IndyMac, Mrs. Bair began urging Treasury and White House officials to use taxpayer money to encourage other lenders and mortgage servicing companies to modify large numbers of at-risk loans, a plan she expected would help 1.5 million borrowers avoid foreclosure and reduce an oversupply of homes on the market. She estimated the program would cost taxpayers about $24 billion."

Controlling the housing market by reining in the flood of homes for sale, would really help those who are watching their own homes decline in value. Equity, the investment homeowners have always banked on is slipping away like Santa Monica beachfront properties built on sand. Going, going, there they go....bye bye! GONE!

These vulture bankers have gotten theirs and are now using the cash to pay off stockholders, maintain their positions, basically indulge themselves, as per usual.

Meanwhile, people who have NOT screwed around financially, who've played by the rules are in danger of losing so much of what they've worked so HARD for. I am thinking of my brother right now, who owns a business which is poised to really take OFF. Orders for his products are better than last year; he has some very heavy hitters in his industry who have submitted orders that could really help his business take off. Yet he faces the bankruptcy of his business. Why? The S.O.B.s in the banking industry are not providing the revolving credit to businesses one month in advance of revenues, as they used to do. That is how business has been done. Not now though. They've gotten taxpayer funds, but are hanging onto the money themselves as already mentioned and people like my brother; always a fair and honest businessman who treats his employees and customers VERY well, is facing a total drubbing.

THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! I'll be looking for ways to put pressure on lawmakers about this; if any of you know of an organized effort to do so, let me know!

Senator Bob Casey D-PA, re: the Big Three Automakers

I have to say also, with regard to the labor concessions -- Mr. [Ron] Gettelfinger [UAW president], I wanted to review some of those. Because I am stunned by the kind of -- when you hear the talking heads on television and when you read what some people say in this town and across the country about the mythology that's out there about how we're -- how we got to this situation. And, frankly, the scapegoating of the men and women of organized labor, and in particular, autoworkers.

Point number one: In 2005, cuts in wages for active workers and health-care benefits for retirees -- point number one. I'm reading from your testimony. Cuts for new workers, bringing the wage level down to 14 bucks an hour. How many industries are doing that? Reducing the company's liability for retiree health care by 50 percent. And I realize these have been in the record before, but it is very important.

And wages and benefits. You said yourself that they're about 10 percent -- 10 percent of the budget? You would think listening to some of the people talk out there, some of the so-called experts, that wages and benefits were 70 percent of the cost. So there's a lot of mythology, a lot of myth generally that has been put on the record.

In 20-- since 2003, downsizing by the companies has reduced their workforce by 150,000 people. That doesn't get said very often. The labor-cost gap with foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated. OK? So, it's -- I think it's important to put this information on the record for this hearing. And then we've heard this garbage about 73 bucks an hour. It's a total lie, and some people have perpetrated that deliberately in a calculated way to mislead the American people about what we're doing here. It's a lie, and they know it's a lie.


This is what my husband Ted was telling me; it's all horse puckey, the whole $73 an hour hype. Designed to rile up other working Americans against Union workers.

Saving the Big Three for You and Me

So the Big Three Auto Execs are back on Capitol Hill with their tin cups in hand again today. They face a skeptical Congress and they SHOULD! The P.O.S.'s they've been manufacturing for DAYS.... are a joke and so is their management style. Michael Moore has a message for them, AND for us. I know, I know Michael Moore.....he can be so damned Michael Moore-ish....but he makes some good points and he's pretty funny too. Check him out:

Saving the Big 3 for You and Me...

A Message From Michael Moore

by Michael Moore
Friends,
I drive an American car. It's a Chrysler. That's not an endorsement. It's more like a cry for pity. And now for a decades-old story, retold ad infinitum by tens of millions of Americans, a third of whom have had to desert their country to simply find a damn way to get to work in something that won't break down:
My Chrysler is four years old. I bought it because of its smooth and comfortable ride. Daimler-Benz owned the company then and had the good grace to place the Chrysler chassis on a Mercedes axle and, man, was that a sweet ride!

When it would start.
More than a dozen times in these years, the car has simply died. Batteries have been replaced, but that wasn't the problem. My dad drives the same model. His car has died many times, too. Just won't start, for no reason at all.

A few weeks ago, I took my Chrysler in to the Chrysler dealer here in northern Michigan -- and the latest fixes cost me $1,400. The next day, the vehicle wouldn't start. When I got it going, the brake warning light came on. And on and on.

You might assume from this that I couldn't give a rat's ass about these miserably inept crapmobile makers down the road in Detroit city. But I do care. I care about the millions whose lives and livelihoods depend on these car companies. I care about the security and defense of this country because the world is running out of oil -- and when it runs out, the calamity and collapse that will take place will make the current recession/depression look like a Tommy Tune musical.

And I care about what happens with the Big 3 because they are more responsible than almost anyone for the destruction of our fragile atmosphere and the daily melting of our polar ice caps. Congress must save the industrial infrastructure that these companies control and the jobs they create. And it must save the world from the internal combustion engine.

This great, vast manufacturing network can redeem itself by building mass transit and electric/hybrid cars, and the kind of transportation we need for the 21st century.
And Congress must do all this by NOT giving GM, Ford and Chrysler the $34 billion they are asking for in "loans" (a few days ago they only wanted $25 billion; that's how stupid they are -- they don't even know how much they really need to make this month's payroll. If you or I tried to get a loan from the bank this way, not only would we be thrown out on our ear, the bank would place us on some sort of credit rating blacklist).

Two weeks ago, the CEOs of the Big 3 were tarred and feathered before a Congressional committee who sneered at them in a way far different than when the heads of the financial industry showed up two months earlier. At that time, the politicians tripped over each other in their swoon for Wall Street and its Ponzi schemers who had concocted Byzantine ways to bet other people's money on unregulated credit default swaps, known in the common vernacular as unicorns and fairies. But the Detroit boys were from the Midwest, the Rust (yuk!) Belt, where they made real things that consumers needed and could touch and buy, and that continually recycled money into the economy (shocking!), produced unions that created the middle class, and fixed my teeth for free when I was ten.

For all of that, the auto heads had to sit there in November and be ridiculed about how they traveled to D.C. Yes, they flew on their corporate jets, just like the bankers and Wall Street thieves did in October. But, hey, THAT was OK! They're the Masters of the Universe! Nothing but the best chariots for Big Finance as they set about to loot our nation's treasury.
Of course, the auto magnates used be the Masters who ruled the world. They were the pulsating hub that all other industries -- steel, oil, cement contractors -- served. Fifty-five years ago, the president of GM sat on that same Capitol Hill and bluntly told Congress, what's good for General Motors is good for the country. Because, you see, in their minds, GM WAS the country.

What a long, sad fall from grace we witnessed on November 19th when the three blind mice had their knuckles slapped and then were sent back home to write an essay called, "Why You Should Give Me Billions of Dollars of Free Cash." They were also asked if they would work for a dollar a year. Take that! What a big, brave Congress they are! Requesting indentured servitude from (still) three of the most powerful men in the world. This from a spineless body that won't dare stand up to a disgraced president nor turn down a single funding request for a war that neither they nor the American public support. Amazing.

Let me just state the obvious: Every single dollar Congress gives these three companies will be flushed right down the toilet. There is nothing the management teams of the Big 3 are going to do to convince people to go out during a recession and buy their big, gas-guzzling, inferior products. Just forget it. And, as sure as I am that the Ford family-owned Detroit Lions are not going to the Super Bowl -- ever -- I can guarantee you, after they burn through this $34 billion, they'll be back for another $34 billion next summer.

So what to do? Members of Congress, here's what I propose:
1. Transporting Americans is and should be one of the most important functions our government must address. And because we are facing a massive economic, energy and environmental crisis, the new president and Congress must do what Franklin Roosevelt did when he was faced with a crisis (and ordered the auto industry to stop building cars and instead build tanks and planes): The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

2. You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company! (You're going to demand collateral anyway if you give them the "loan," and because we know they will default on that loan, you're going to own the company in the end as it is. So why wait? Just buy them out now.)

3. None of us want government officials running a car company, but there are some very smart transportation geniuses who could be hired to do this. We need a Marshall Plan to switch us off oil-dependent vehicles and get us into the 21st century.
This proposal is not radical or rocket science. It just takes one of the smartest people ever to run for the presidency to pull it off. What I'm proposing has worked before. The national rail system was in shambles in the '70s. The government took it over. A decade later it was turning a profit, so the government returned it to private/public hands, and got a couple billion dollars put back in the treasury.
T
his proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.
In contrast, yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years -- layoff thousands in order to protect profits. But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car?
These idiots don't deserve a dime. Fire all of them, and take over the industry for the good of the workers, the country and the planet.
What's good for General Motors IS good for the country. Once the country is calling the shots.

Yours,
Michael Moore

Prop 8 ~ The Musical!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die