Musings

Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon 

but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency 

are coming to an end. 

Our divided, schizophrenic worldview,

with no mythology adequate to coordinate our conscious and unconscious — 

that is what is coming to an end. 

The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, 

the idea that there is a single religious group 

that is in sole possession of the truth — 

that is the world as we know it that must pass away. 

What is the kingdom? 

It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence 

in our neighbors, 

in our enemies, 

in all of us. 

~ Joseph Campbell~
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

Rotations: Blue-Eyed Soul Vol II

Michael McDonald is a blues man to the bone! His deep, distinctive baritone - somewhat similar to James Ingram - is instantly recognizable. It was hard to narrow down my "best of"  as I've been a fan of McDonald since the beginning when he was with the Doobie Brothers all the way to his stellar Grammy-studded solo career - that's 40 years of bad-ass music, folks!

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Bobby Caldwell is all over the map with his signature sound. From Soul/R&B to adult contemporary to smooth jazz to big band, his voice is able to adapt & swing to whatever. Many Hip Hop artists have sampled his music - from 2PAC to Notorious B.I.G to Common - which makes him part of the Hip Hop world as well! There are only a handful of artists who can move effortlessly between genres and be successful - Only Lionel Ritchie, Darius Rucker, George Benson, Quincy Jones come to mind. Add Caldwell to this elite group of genre-bending artists.

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 I have always looked upon Sting as more of a poet than musician. Lyrically, he has always been depths beyond his contemporaries and has impressively kept true to himself & his art in spite of fame & fortune. If you have never sat down to ponder over his brilliant lyricism, consider purchasing or downloading Lyrics by Sting. Brilliant stuff!


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George Michael first came across (to me) as a one-hit cream puff when he started off his career as part of a duo called Wham! I didn't take to this bubblegum-pop vibe as it seemed too processed & forgettable - like elevator or office music. It was only when he dropped his first solo joint in '87, Faith, did I take notice of his soulful vibe. Four albums later, Michael is still at the top of his game, musically. The influence of classic soul & rock music (most notably, by Stevie Wonder & Queen), is quite evident in his work & he does a masterful job of keeping the golden era of music (the 70s) alive.
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More Blue-Eyed Soul
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

Musings

Compassion hurts.

When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others.

You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it.
You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

—Andrew Boyd

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OneLove

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:::MME::: 

Nietzsche's Universe

In some remote corner of the universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever animals invented Knowledge. It was the most arrogant and untruthful minute of “world history,” but still only a minute. When nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and solidified and thus the clever animals died. It was time too, for although they prided themselves on knowing a lot, they had finally discovered, to their great annoyance, that they knew everything wrongly.They died and as they died, they cursed truth. That was the way of those desperate creatures. One could invent such a fable, but one would still not have adequately illustrated how pathetic, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect seems within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist, and when it is gone nothing will have happened.For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life. It is human, and only its owner and creator takes it seriously–as if the hinges of the world turned on it.~~Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche is on  point, acutely so. In layman's terms, he is saying that we humans are full of shit. We think we know, but most of what we deal with in our lives is just “bullshit." If you have never read Nietzsche before, read On Truth and Untruth to get you started. Take a look around - there are more than enough examples that illustrate his points perfectly. Sadly, the lies and delusions we're buried in make up the story of our modern lives so in the end, as Nietzsche darkly projected, we're cooked unless we drastically change.

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OneLove
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:::MME:::

MME's Jam Of The Day

 For a Child
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Love is the answer to a child
Just as hope is the answer to us all
But it's there at the beginning
That we learn to hope at all
And God help us if we don't


Tell me where is this place
From which there's no return
What can we know of another road
From the one that we made
With our anger and our rage
We dare not go where there is no hope
Not even for a child

If dreams fly over the rainbow
Truth lies waiting for us all
If siren's voices cloud our reason
Can we still resist their call
'cause God help us if we don't

For so many people livin' their whole lives
Waiting to be saved
For so many chilren taking that short trip
From the cradle to the grave.....
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

Poet's Nook: "..sit and be still.." by Wendell Berry

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Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind’s
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.
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(from ‘Sabbath")
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OneLove
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:::MME:::  

Musings

..a moment of silence for our innocents...

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....from Gaza to Congo to Connecticut...a moment of silence for the tragic, senseless  loss of innocent lives... . 

OneLove
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 :::MME:::

Pay Attention

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(3rd eye opened....)
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OneLove
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How To Rob

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This is quite a revealing look inside the shady underworld of offshore banking.  A new report has revealed that around the world the extremely wealthy have accumulated at least $21 trillion in secretive offshore accounts (this may be a conservative estimate). That’s more than the gross domestic product of the United States! The report’s analysis, based on data from many sources including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, indicates that enough money has left some developing countries since the 1970s to pay off all their debts to the rest of the world.
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“The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments,” the report says. Money has especially flowed out of oil producing states. Some $700 billion has left Russia since the 1990s: $305 billion has flowed out of Saudi Arabia since the 1970s, and about the same amount from Nigeria. And where does this money end up? In places like Bermuda, Dubai, Cayman Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Seychelles.
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It has been estimated that some 92,000 people, a thousandth of a percent of the world’s population, control $9.8 trillion, and that if all the $21 trillion that has been offshored earned 3% a year and were taxed at 30%, it would raise $188 billion in revenues, more than rich countries spend on aid to the developing world every year. Greed has no bounds - the world can be pillaged & the majority of its population exploited as long as there is a good return on investment. Let the future generations fend for themselves. 
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Mammon grips and whispers, "More....more...morrrrrre...."
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

Diamond In The Rough

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 It is quite sad how peoples' thoughts are channeled into narrow, one-dimensional views of themselves & the world. Through the filters of artificial constructs like race and ethnicity, we label and box people into our cognitive cages & oversimplify / negate their complex lives & circumstances - they're either "this" or "that" and nothing more. So when I saw this video today, I just had to shake my head and sigh as individuals like the young man featured are everywhere - they're just invisible. You see, criminals get the full spotlight and make for more "exciting" stories than those who are trying to make positive changes in their lives and communities. Many of us know how the game is run - you know, he who controls the image (media) controls the mind of the public - so it is important that we set the record straight whenever we can. This young man's story is but one of many extraordinary examples of talent so great, that were it not for the fact of geography & politics, the possibilities would be endless...... I hope videos like this can inspire our young ones to dream & reach for the stars. 
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

Quotes For The Damned

 

 

 Here we go again. 

The US and NATO are set to invade Syria under the pretext of Assad's potential use of chemical weapons. This may or may not be true, but this strikes many of us as darkly reminiscent of the Bush Administration's false claim of Saddam Hussein's possession of nuclear/chemical/biological weapons. Assad is no saint as he has brutalized his people before, but aint it funny how the media is so quick to take any bait that the government feeds them? This is the sad state of journalism today, as I see it.  Journalists are, for the most part, nothing more than stenographers for power as Amy Goodman once said. In an ideal world, the press serves us - the governed- & should be free to censure the government, bare its secrets& deception & keep us fully informed. This is not happening which is why many of us have turned to alternative sources for information. 

In any case, it does appear that we are being set up again to go along with a plan to invade yet another country. Lest we forget those who recognized the lies of the State......

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back” - Carl Sagan

 “All governments lie.” - I.F. Stone

"All warfare is based on deception"- Sun Tzu

"Leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. " Hermann Goering

 “The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned....The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information....With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”
― Henry A. Wallace

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OneLove

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:::MME:::

 

 

Our Mother Is Calling

The recent United Nations climate change conference concluded today and again, the major greenhouse  gas polluters, China, India & the U.S, bullshitted their way out of doing anything substantive to address this critical problem (they refused to ratify). The house is burning & all they have is a little bucket (half-filled at that!) to put out the fire. The 27-member European Union, Australia, Switzerland & 8 other industrialized nations signed up for binding emission cuts by 2020 - they represent about 15 percent of global emissions. At least they see the urgency. 
Greenpeace International's Kumi Naidoo (featured above) cut to the chase at the conclusion of the talks by offering this critique of the U.S role:
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"The US remains outside the Kyoto Protocol, and its delegation came to Doha and immediately launched into blocking progress on nearly every front. Despite the devastation of Superstorm Sandy and polls showing majority support for climate policy, Obama's team exhibits no improvement from previous COPs. With his administration’s subsidies of fossil fuel export that could negate domestic carbon pollution reduction, President Obama’s legacy could turn out to be no better than his predecessor’s"
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 Many observers have concluded that the only solution to this lack of urgency on the part of the major polluters is grassroots action. Thankfully, this is already taking place as people are resisting fossil fuels and dirty energy, building clean energy cooperatives, transforming our food systems, and protecting our forests, land and water from multinational corporations
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Whatever time & talents we have, let's put them to good use and save our Mother before there is nothing left to save.
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OneLove
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:::MME:::  

All Theory, No Action

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 (cool, penetrating, relevant).
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OneLove
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:::MME::: 

Musings

How can we find our rest in restless things,
In play and dreams to which desire clings?
If happiness you want, then close your eyes;
Silence is gold; and Peace is Paradise.

No heaviness is felt, no noise is heard;
Yet in this naught: God’s Presence and His Word.

~Frithjof Schuon, Road to the Heart~

Popeye Was Right!

Popeye was right - eating a bowl of spinach a day makes your muscles "profoundly" more efficient. 
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Recent studies confirmed eating just 300g of the vegetable reduced the amount of oxygen needed to power muscles by as much as five per cent when exercising. The secret is not in the iron as was previously thought, but in the abundance of nitrates in the vegetable. The effect is so powerful it works after only 3 days...
"It is like a fuel additive for your muscles - it makes them run much more smoothly and efficiently," said the lead author Dr Eddie Weitzberg of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. 
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The study found that the difference in energy intake was between three and five per cent - a significant figure. Thus the "Superfood," made popular by Popeye the Sailor Man in the 1950's, who popped open a can of spinach whenever he got in trouble has passed the test of time. 
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According to the study. nitric oxide is an important molecule which opens up blood vessels, lowers blood pressure, and improves circulation. Mitochondria, like all engines, lose a lot of energy through heat loss. The nitrate seems to stop this waste so the muscle works more efficiently. "We know that diets rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but the active nutrients haven't been clear...this is a profound and significant effect. It shows that Popeye was right all along." 
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Our research indicates that physical strength is often overlooked, by young and old alike, as one of the keys to living a long and productive life. As you age, getting stronger becomes more difficult, but with proper diet and exercise you can keep the strength you have for a long time therefore it makes sense to build up as much strength as you can by eating your spinach no matter how old you are... 

(SOURCE)
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

Crash?.....

Dr Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, gives us a heavy dose of reality in his latest piece, Our Collapsing Economy and Currency. His analysis is alarming but spot on judging from how the world economy is currently shifting. Read it & be very concerned...

Is the “fiscal cliff” real or just another hoax? The answer is that the fiscal cliff is real, but it is a result, not a cause. The hoax is the way the fiscal cliff is being used.

The fiscal cliff is the result of the inability to close the federal budget deficit. The budget deficit cannot be closed because large numbers of US middle class jobs and the GDP and tax base associated with them have been moved offshore, thus reducing federal revenues. The fiscal cliff cannot be closed because of the unfunded liabilities of eleven years of US-initiated wars against a half dozen Muslim countries--wars that have benefitted only the profits of the military/security complex and the territorial ambitions of Israel. The budget deficit cannot be closed, because economic policy is focused only on saving banks that wrongful financial deregulation allowed to speculate, to merge, and to become too big to fail, thus requiring public subsidies that vastly dwarf the totality of US welfare spending.

The hoax is the propaganda that the fiscal cliff can be avoided by reneging on promised Social Security and Medicare benefits that people have paid for with the payroll tax and by cutting back all aspects of the social safety net from food stamps to unemployment benefits to Medicaid, to housing subsidies. The right-wing has been trying to get rid of the social safety net ever since Franklin D. Roosevelt constructed it, out of fear or compassion or both, during the Great Depression.

Washington’s response to the fiscal cliff is austerity: spending cuts and tax increases. The Republicans say they will vote for the Democrats’ tax increases if the Democrats vote for the Republican’s assault on the social safety net. What bipartisan compromise means is a double-barreled dose of austerity.

Ever since John Maynard Keynes, economists have understood that tax increases and spending cuts suppress, not stimulate, economic activity. This is especially the case in an economy such as the American one, which is driven by consumer spending. When spending declines, so does the economy. When the economy declines, the budget deficit rises.

This is especially the case when an economy is weak and already in decline. A declining economy means less sales, less employment, less tax revenues. This works against the effort to close the federal budget deficit with austerity measures. Instead of strengthening the economy, the austerity measures weaken it further. To cut unemployment benefits and food stamps when unemployment is high or rising would be to provoke social and political instability.

Some economists, such as Robert Barro at Harvard University, claim that stimulative measures, the opposite of austerity, don’t work, because consumers anticipate the higher taxes that will be needed to cover the budget deficit and, therefore, reduce their spending and increase their saving in order to be able to pay the anticipated higher taxes.

In other words, the Keynesian effort to stimulate spending causes consumers to reduce their spending. I don’t know of any empirical evidence for this claim.

Regardless, the situation on the ground at the present time is that for the majority of people, incomes are stretched to the limit and beyond. Many cannot pay their bills, their mortgages, their car payments, their student loans. They are drowning in debt, and there is nothing that they can cut back in order to save money with which to pay higher taxes.

Many commentators are complaining that Congress will refuse to face the difficult issues and kick the can down the road, leaving the fiscal cliff looming. This would probably be the best outcome. As the fiscal cliff is a result, not a cause, to focus on the fiscal cliff is to focus on the symptoms rather than the disease.

The US economy has two serious diseases, and neither one is too much welfare spending.

One disease is the offshoring of US middle class jobs, both manufacturing jobs and professional service jobs such as engineering, research, design, and information technology, jobs that formerly were filled by US university graduates, but which today are sent abroad or are filled by foreigners brought in on H-1B work visas at two-thirds of the salary.

The other disease is the deregulation, especially the financial deregulation, that caused the ongoing financial crisis and created banks too big to fail, which has prevented capitalism from working and closing down insolvent corporations.

The Federal Reserve’s policy is focused on saving the banks, not on saving the economy. The Federal Reserve is purchasing not only new Treasury bonds issued to finance the more than one trillion dollar annual federal deficit but also the banks’ underwater financial instruments, taking them off the banks’ books and putting them on the Federal Reserve’s books.

Normally, debt monetization of this amount results in rising inflation, but the money that the Federal Reserve is creating in its attempt to manage the public debt and the banks’ private debt is hung up in the banking system as excess reserves and is not finding its way into the economy. The banks are too busted to lend, and consumers are too indebted to borrow.

However, the debt monetization poses a second threat that is capable of biting the US economy and consumer living standards very hard. Foreign central banks, foreign investors in US stocks and financial instruments, and Americans themselves observing the Federal Reserve’s continuous monetization of US debt cannot avoid concern about the dollar’s value as the supply of ever more dollars continues to pour out of the Federal Reserve.

Already there is evidence of central banks and individuals moving out of dollars into gold and silver bullion and into other currencies of countries that are not hemorrhaging debt and money. According to John Williams of Shadowstats.com, the US dollar as a percentage of global holdings of reserve assets has declined from 36.6% in 2006 to 28.7% in 2012. Gold has increased from 10.5% to 12.8% and other foreign currencies except the euro increased from 38.4% to 44.4%.

Russia, China, Brazil, India, and South Africa intend to conduct trade among themselves in their own currencies without use of the dollar as reserve currency. The EU countries conduct their trade with one another in euros, and although not reported in the US media, Asian countries are discussing a new common currency for trade among themselves.

The world is abandoning the use of the dollar to settle international accounts, and the demand for dollars is falling as the Federal Reserve increases the supply of dollars.

This means that the price of the dollar is threatened.

Concern over the dollar means concern over dollar-denominated financial instruments such as stocks and bonds. The Chinese hold some $2 trillion in US financial instruments. The Japanese hold about $1 trillion in US Treasuries. The Saudis and the oil emirates also hold large quantities of US dollar financial instruments. At some point the move away from the dollar also means a move away from US financial instruments. The dumping of US stocks and bonds would destabilize US financial markets and wipe out the remainder of US wealth.

As I have previously written, the Federal Reserve can create new money with which to purchase the dumped financial instruments, thus maintaining their prices. But the Federal Reserve cannot print gold or foreign currencies with which to buy up the dollars that foreigners are paid for their US stocks and bonds. When the dollars in turn are dumped, the exchange value of the dollar will collapse, and US inflation will explode.

The onset of hyperinflation can be as sudden as the collapse of a currency’s exchange value.

The real crisis facing the US is the impending collapse of the US dollar’s foreign exchange value. The US dollar’s value in relation to silver and gold has already collapsed. In the past ten years, gold’s price in US dollars has increased from $250 per ounce to $1,750 per ounce, an increase of $1,500. Silver’s price has risen from $4 per ounce to $34 per ounce. These price rises are not due to a sudden scarcity of gold and silver, but to a flight from the dollar into the two forms of historical money that cannot be created with the printing press.

The price of oil has risen from $20 a barrel ten years ago to as high as $120 per barrel earlier this year and currently $90 a barrel. This price rise has come about despite a weak world economy and without any supply restrictions other than those caused by the attempted US occupation of Iraq, the Western assault on Libya, and the self-harming Western sanctions on Iran, impacts most likely offset by the Saudis, still Washington’s faithful puppet, a country that pumps out its precious life fluid in order to save the West from its own mistakes. The moronic neoconservatives wish to overthrow the Saudi Arabian government, but what more faithful servant has Washington ever had than the Saudi royal house?

What can be done? For a number of years I have pointed out that the problem is the loss of US employment, consumer income, GDP, and tax base to offshoring. The solution is to reverse the outward flow of jobs and to bring them back to the US. This can be done, as Ralph Gomory has made clear, by taxing corporations according to where they add value to their product. If the value is added abroad, corporations would have a high tax rate. If they add value domestically with US labor, they would face a low tax rate. The difference in tax rates can be calculated to offset the benefit of the lower cost of foreign labor.

As all offshored production that is brought to the US to be marketed to Americans counts as imports, relocating the production in the US would decrease the trade deficit, thus strengthening belief in the dollar. The increase in US consumer incomes would raise tax revenues, thus lowering the budget deficit. It is a win-win solution.

The second part to the solution is to end the expensive unfunded wars that have ruined the federal budget for the past 11 years as well as future budgets due to the cost of veterans’ hospital care and benefits. According to ABC World News, “In the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, 2,333,972 American military personnel have been deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or both, as of Aug. 30, 2011 [more than a year ago].” These 2.3 million veterans have rights to various unfunded benefits including life-long health care. Already, according to ABC, 711,986 have used Veterans Administration health care between fiscal year 2002 and the third-quarter of fiscal year 2011. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-veterans-numbers/story?id=14928136#1

The Republicans are determined to continue the gratuitous wars and to make the 99 percent pay for the neoconservatives’ Wars of Hegemony while protecting the 1 percent from tax increases.

The Democrats are little different.

No one in the White House and no more than one dozen members of the 535 member US Congress represents the American people. This is the reason that despite obvious remedies nothing can be done. America is going to crash big time.

And the rest of the world will be thankful. America along with Israel is the world’s most hated country. Don’t expect any foreign bailouts of the failed “superpower.” 

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OneLove
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:::MME::: 


 

Musings

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(Talking to some people who have their heads shoved so deep in the sand is a soul-deadening experience. You would think that a people with a historical legacy of being dehumanized would know better, but sadly, a lot of them don't. They have sipped the poison & look down upon those who possess little or nothing save their own souls.... )
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OneLove
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:::MME:::

We Are One

This is beautiful. The making of this incredible virtual collection of 2000 voices from 58 countries is equally as fascinating as the video itself (check it here). Eric Whitacre does a masterful job in putting these voices together & compellingly demonstrates through song (& technological flair) the oneness that is the truth of all being. 
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(Also check out "Water Night" which virtually combines nearly 3000 voices from 73 countries.)
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OneLove
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:::MME:::