I never got a job from a poor person....... Really?

Y'know, I heard today for the umpteenth time this rationalization against returning to Clinton era tax rates with higher levels on folks making over $250,000 a year: "Well, I never got a job from a poor person." and it hit me..... "Really? you never got a job from someone who made less than $250,000 a year?"

There are tons and tons of folks who make less than that a year who run businesses and hire people. I got no problem with rich folks; they are folks: some good, some bad. But they are not the only people who contribute to this economy as bosses and business owners. Not by a long shot.

I've got much more respect for a guy who runs the butcher shop around the corner, busts his butt  and manages to pay his bills as well as the salaries of his few employees, and DOES IT, than I do someone who trades in shady investment "products", busts the entire economy, takes billions in bailouts, and then gives himself a bonus. Of those two examples, I'm gonna call the smart businessman the first guy. I'll take small stability over monolithic volatility any day. And of those two, the second one can and should be the one we look to help with a proportionally small increase in public revenue generation.

Rich people are very important factors in this economy, but they are not the only factors.

Notes Based on a Conservative Repudiation of Karl Rove

The best thing that I've read since the election last night?

This:
Conservative activist Richard Viguerie said in a statement Wednesday that "in any logical universe," Rove "would never be hired to run or consult on a national campaign again and no one would give a dime to their ineffective Super PACs, such as American Crossroads."

So much for you, troll. You built your entire adult life on making a fortune off of dirty tricks. The public believes NOTHING that you say. Nothing. Even Megan Kelley called you for looking like a pathetic fool on FOX last night. Go away, now Karl. You have done enough damage.

Now.......... Republican Party.........consider what voices like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and Savage have done for you.... have done to you. And realize that this is your chance. This is your chance to get those cancerous tumors off of you.  I know that there are many of you who don't consider yourselves followers of those yahoos, but in the past they all just had too much popularity and power, so that if you spoke up and said what you thought of them, then you knew others would brand you as a RINO.

 Well, those guys can't really do that right now. The Bullshit Avalanche has just slid.  And the yahoos and the wingnuts can bellow and moan, but they all took a serious gut punch last night. So, take your chance, now: Dump those guys. Do it before they get back up with a fresh lungful of billowing BS fumes. Do it now.

Rupert Murdoch is not you. Charles and David Koch are not you. The crazed religious zealots are not you. You are the Party of Lincoln, of Teddy Roosevelt, of Eisenhauer, of Goldwater. Founded on ntellects like those of Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, of modern thinkers like William F. Buckely. All of these, your old friends,  would likely get drummed out of the current incarnation of the Republican Party by the usurping voices who tell you that they are "The Right". But they aren't "The Right", those yammering yahoos. They are the bullies on the playground field. And this is a grown-up world. Time to tell them where to go. They are "The Wrong". They are not you.

 Get your voice back, Republicans. Get your party back. Stop worrying about "taking back your country." Take back your party.  Come back to us.

Signed,
Your friend in the Middle.

Representative Paul Broun and His Abuse of Truth and Beauty

Georgia Representative Dr. Paul Broun

I don't care that he's a Republican. I don't care that he's a hunter. Neither of those things make the slightest bit of difference to me, although some of my friends on the more Lefthanded side of the equation may wish that they did. I know many good folks who are Republicans and many fine folks who hunt.

I don't care that he perpetuates the worst stereotypes about a certain type of  legislator from the part of the country where I was born and raised.

OK.... I do care about that a bit................ Maybe more than a bit.....

But I very deeply care that he trades in ignorance,arrogance, and resentment. That he sows the seeds of desolation and calls this a pious act.  I care that, despite his medical degree, he either fundamentally misunderstands what science is, or at the very least, misrepresents what science is for his own gain. I care about this because as a Member of the US House of Representatives, he sits on the Science Committee and determines government policy concernng scientific matters.  How does anyone believe that the sort of reasoning espoused here is sound or rooted in anything other than the politics of pandering toward ignorance and resentment?

If this was a Muslim leader saying these same things and only substituting the Koran for the Bible it would be hard to believe that he wasn't an angry extremist workng to create a more dark and dangerous world.     Extremist views have far more in common wth other extremist views than the respective faiths of which they so arrogantly claim to be the sole voice.

As someone who considers himself a Christian, I am really tired of people mis-using my holy book as a science text, a history text, an archeologic text, or a work of journalism. Do the contents of The Bible deal with those things? Yes. But a huge disservice is done to the Bible when it is forced to be a manual, text, or reference work for which it is ultimately ill suited. I find The Bible to hold many of the most sacred and holy truths for me.... and yet, I know it's not a very good stand-in as a manual to fix an engine or to find a recipe. I don't ask it to be what it is not. And I find the use of it to fan the flames of passionate ignorance more distasteful and blasphemous than if it were employed as a door stop.

I find truth in Genesis. For that truth to be real for me, I don't need for it to function as journalism.

I find truth in the various tellings of the birth of Jesus in the Gospels. I don't need to ignore their discrepancies to recognize an underlying truth.

I find the most beautiful truth in the story of the loaves and the fishes. I know it is an inspiration for the poor in spirit. An inspiration for those who wish, along with the help of others, and also with the help of the transcendent mystery I choose to call God, to strive to bring forth something from nothing.

 Although I was not physically there at that gathering related in the Bible, I know the truth of that story from many other gatherings that I have be fortunate to take part in. I have felt the truth of that story in my soul. In that sense, it is the most true and heartening story for me. In no small part, that story has lead me to make my life about working to spread what is good and nourishing among a group of my fellows. I have made my life about working with others to make something out of nothing. I cherish the truth of that story. A challenge to me about whether or not I believe that x number of fishes and loaves were actually multiplied on x day by anyone means less than nothing to me. I know the truth of that story, and no challenger can take that truth from me. Not Jerry Falwell. Not Bill Mahr. And certainly not Rep. Paul Broun.

Concerning meetings in life with its Paul Broun's.... here is the way that it usually goes down: You, Dr. Broun, ask me if I believe in the Bible. Do I believe that it happened?  I tell you that I know that it happened in the story. You tell me that is not true belief. That I must believe that it happened in history. I tell you that history is a story. You say that history is truth. I tell that I believe that truth need not be historical.  I don't believe that the truth of that of which you are speaking to be appropriately revealed by the precepts of science. I believe that the essence of that truth is beauty. And for any man to make that beautiful truth to have to adhere to the strictures of science or history is to cut the heart from the deep and transcendent Mystery. And that is an abuse of truth. A desecration of beauty. 


The song I was taught to sing as a kid told me that I loved to tell the story. And I do. And besides that one story, so many more.  I take the telling of stories very seriously. From many people. From many places. From many times. And from no time or place that you might consider ever actually...... existed. And yet true... very true.  I have made this activity my life's work. I find truth in stories. I sometimes find far more truth in these non existent times and places than in the more mundane realm of actual happenstance.

And, while you, Dr. Broun,  stake a claim to a book so holy and believe that the literal truth of it is the best or only truth, I will hold its truth in my heart and know my heart to be with the heart of the universe. And I hope that you will live to actually feel that. A truth that you don't have to "take back" . Because you never lost it.  It is only there to gain. The Big Bang does not take that away. Dinosaurs do not take that away.  The footprints at Latoli do not take that away. Charles Darwin does not take that away. These things... all things... are but a local manifestation of a transcendent Mystery. Gain this knowledge, Dr. Broun, and divide the bread and the fishes with us all.


From my friend, Joe Campbell: "There’s no real conflict between science and religion. Religion is the recognition of the deeper dimensions that the science reveals to us. What is in conflict is the science of 2000 B.C., which is what you have in the Bible, and the science of the twentieth century A.D."

I think I can safely extrapolate this to be truthful for the 21st Century, as well.

If I might quote.........

One of the more bizarre and interesting developments in the the last couple of decades is a greatly increased popularity and usage of aphorisms and quotes by nearly everyone who has a keyboard connected to a power source. If you're on one of the big social networks, I'm sure that you see this every day. Suddenly, all of your friends have the wisdom of the ages tumbling from their lips, or at least pasted on their daily "Wall" posting.

I've seen posts from folks whose reading habits don't stretch any further than the sponsor labels on NASCAR racers that quote Nietzche's, "That which doesn't kill us......."

And I can't exclude myself from this trend, either. Often when a friend is going through trauma or sorrow I'll Google up something soothing and pithy. When I'm in the midst of a political argument and need the weight of a pronouncement made by a founding father to smack some armchair radical State-ist (of whatever stripe) back in line, well....  I set my search engine to humming.

Usually this search entails the hunt for some quote that I vaguely remember, so there is at least that much of my own composition of other's ideas that is actually "composed" by me, but sometimes I will just make my first effort to address injustice by simply typing "Injustice" and then clicking on the little magnifying glass icon. And I feel fairly certain that nearly everyone online is doing this to a greater or lesser degree.

So.... what exactly are we doing when we engage in this activity? Are we just slightly more subtle plagarizers of the thoughts of others when we say, "I believe it was Montaigne who said....." just after we have googled up a quote that just happened to be by Montaigne? Or are we just accepting our status as cells in the growing gestalt organism that is now the mass of written modern communication? And, unwittingly, are we becoming a bit smarter than we were as we pretend to be smarter than we are, since now that we have ganked certain thoughts in print,  we may possibly yet bring up in a face to face conversation: "I believe it was Montaigne who said......" ?

I  don't really feel bad about what we're doing as a written culture. I'm not playing Holden Caufield here, and calling us all phonies. ("I believe it was Holden Caufield who said.......")Everyone seems to know that this is going on, and in the long run nearly all knowledge has passed from one person to another by various media. I just wonder sometimes if we are collectively giving credit where it is due, or are we backing up our own shake-y cred by willy-nilly name dropping all of antiquity. Little bit of both, I guess.

And really, this all could very well could be the most positive of any development. Just a shift in facility, ehhh? For example,  I've got a "Bartlett's Favourite Quotations" on my desk that I used to use on occasion when I actually wrote things.( I mean, when I actually put pen or pencil to paper. ) and I never felt like I was "cheating" when I found a good quote. I think that any guilt I'm going through concerning instantly having the world's wisdom at my fingertips  is the relative amount of ease involved in utililzing the treasure trove of accumulated human thought.  Are we smarter? Or, are we more stupid because we no longer go to the encyclopedia, the dictionary, the Bartlett's, or to books at all for the resources for our composition?

Most would say, "Calm down. It doesn't matter what medium is used to communicate. What matters is the communication."

May be. May be.

But I believe it was Marshall McLuhan who said, "The medium is the message."

I didn't Google that, BTW.