The Lord/Lady of Love

For Love is so much brighter than any "sun" (even leo!), it makes galaxies look like snuffed candles. And God's eternal bliss is so very high that it makes all other joys look like mourning by comparison. The ecstasy of God (Love) is more than an instant; in time, it can grow into a steady state for the one who has been "blinded" by Its glory, blown away by Its Power, and metamorphosed by Its Love.

God is much more than the beauties of all earthly and celestial beauties combined; She is beauty Itself, and nothing exists that can ever rival the beauty of Her Love.

In the Light-filled Mind, every second of every day is a celebration of Love; it is always Christmas, and always spring, and the world always overflowing with sweet-smelling roses in every color; they blossom in billions, filling the heartmind to overflowing with the delightful and ever-pleasing scent of Love.

Just thinking about this infinite Love, for only a minute, is a "healing" experience; it leads to greater integration. If taking small sips can elevate, then gulping the glittering Ocean of God can drive into irreversible ecstasy. This incomparable, ineffable, indescribable Love can heal anything without exception. There is no body in the universe that She cannot heal. But, for the sake of karma, and also, for the sake of a gentle exit, some conditions are not healed by the great Healer in her omniscient Love.

So, when healed, we praise the God of Love. And, when not healed, we also praise the Lord and Lady of endless Love.

Thoughts on bush and bushies

The bushies and their ilk not only ignored the middle class, but made actual, deliberate attempts to destroy it, leaving in our country only the very rich and the very poor.

They tried to dissolve the very backbone of our society and culture.

What might be even worse, they did everything possible to destroy, or to allow the destruction of, the ecology, our very Mother Earth. (As it is right now, it will take at least fifty years to undo all the damage done by bush and bushies.)

That was the administration ruled by greed alone, without a single thought of "compassion" for the people. Not only are bushies responsible for a million deaths in the Middle East, but for over four thousand American girls and boys in their insane oil-war, also based on greed. And they will kill many more Americans, through activation of respiratory diseases and toxic reactions to chemical pollution. These include allergies, emphysema, bronchitis, asthma, lung cancer, and others.

If there is anything to the old superstition of "demons," the bushies fill the bill completely. While strutting and parading, at every opportunity, their "pro-life" position, they have been violently and consistently anti-life from the beginning. The most "pro-life" position is Love, and their activity has been antiagapic since the beginning. The figures that we have heard, for example, take the tally of this insane war to over three trillion (three million million) dollars!

The ecological costs have been even more absurd and destructive in many ways, on many levels. When corporations rule the government, that is the very definition of "fascism." So bush et al are fascists. It will be an enormous joy and relief to get this monster and his brainless cronies out of office! The entire world will heave one gigantic sigh of relief!:):)
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Forbes says Paulson is THE WORST Treasury Secretary

Thanks to Barbara Baty.
Forbes says Paulson is THE WORST Treasury Secretary
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Forbes: Paulson Worst Treasury Secretary
Monday, November 24, 2008 12:56 PM

By: Gene J. Koprowski

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is the "worst" Treasury secretary the United States has had "in modern times," and has poorly handled the government's response to the mortgage market crisis, Steve Forbes, editor in chief of Forbes Magazine, is saying.

In an interview with CNN, Forbes said that Paulson is not being on the level with the American people about the funds being used to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage giants.

"Have Henry Paulson do at least one thing right, and, that is, have the government explicitly guaranteee the debt of Fannie and Freddie," Forbes says.

Forbes, a former GOP presidential candidate and billionaire, told the cable news network that he does not have confidence in Paulson's ability to perform his job during the last two months of the Bush Administration.

"No. Sadly, he's the worst Treasury secretary we've had in modern times," said Forbes.

Paulson is a former CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs.

During his career, he worked with other, former Goldman CEOs who held key leadership positions in the U.S. government, including Robert Rubin, who was Treasury Secretary for President Clinton, and Jon Corzine, as a U.S. Senator and governor of New Jersey.

Earlier, Paulson worked as an aide to indicted Watergate conspirator John Ehrlichman, in the Nixon White House.

Other commentators, conservative as well as liberal, have been critical of Paulson too, including Robert Reich, a transition aide to President-elect Barack Obama, who said that Paulson "not been transparent" with the public and that the bailout he crafted was sold on "false pretenses" to the Congress, an argument that was made by conservative House Republicans as well, who initially refused to back the bailout.

Beautiful Prayer

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

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O hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,
O hidden Light, shining in every creature,
O hidden Love, embracing all in oneness,
May all who feel themselves as one with thee,
Know they are therefore one with every other.

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Past and Future

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.

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I had a feelin' i didn't wanna say much but the Rueben, Kissinger, Summers, Geitner, Greenspan clan is back from the dead. Let's hope & pray it's a different Larry Summers than the one who handled Russia after collapse, when the oligarchs income disparity quadrupled, as Yeltsin drank nearby. These guys helped engineer. As well as grease the skids of 'fast-track' capitalism that is killing us again. Make sure you read Wm Greiders 3rd-4th paragraph below; the collusion of the neocon Zion lions of modern western style capitalism. I am not criticizing Obama's choices so early. I'm an incorgible optimist. Yet, this proves once again the power of these zion lions--and we should [not] be surprised. I'm not sure Obama had any choice. The markets love these guys, and why wouldn't they.

Past and Future
By William Greider

A year ago, when Barack Obama said it was time to turn the page, his campaign declaration seemed to promise a fresh start for Washington. I, for one, failed to foresee Obama would turn the page backward. The president-elect's lineup for key governing positions has opted for continuity, not change. Virtually all of his leading appointments are restoring the Clinton presidency, only without Mr. Bill. In some important ways, Obama's selections seem designed to sustain the failing policies of George W. Bush.

This is not the last word and things are changing rapidly. But Obama's choices have begun to define him. His victory, it appears, was a triumph for the cautious center-right politics that has described the Democratic party for several decades. Those of us who expected more were duped, not so much by Obama but by our own wishful thinking.

Let us stipulate that these are all honorable people, smart and experienced veterans of Washington combat. But they represent the Democratic party that mainly sees itself as managerial--making government work better. The long era of conservative dominance has taught them to keep their distance from big reform ideas that promise fundamental change of the system. Their operating style is incremental and cautiously practical. They conscientiously avoid (or actively block) propositions that sound too liberal or radical. Alas, Obama is coming to power at a critical moment when incrementalism is irrelevant. The system is in collapse. Financial chaos won't wait for patient deliberations.

Events have confronted Obama with a fearful symmetry between past and present, illustrated by his choice of economic advisers. On Friday, we learned that Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, would become his new treasury secretary and Larry Summers, who held the same position in the Clinton administration, would be the White House overseer of economic policy. On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government's massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton's economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers' money.

The connections go way beyond irony. They raise very serious questions about where the new president intends to lead and whether he has the nerve to break from the weak and haphazard strategy of the Bush administration. It has dumped piles of public money on the largest financial institutions and demanded little or nothing in return, hoping for the best. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.

On Wall Street, Geithner is known as a highly competent technocrat, well versed in the financial complexities. But he has also been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once.

No wonder the stock markets rallied explosively when they heard Geithner would be their new boss in Washington. They think he is their guy. Summers may be a brilliant economist--everyone says so--but he, too, is a club member in good standing and now manages a huge hedge fund while he advises Obama. The president-elect needs to get a "second opinion"--someone from outside the financial club who can explain the flaws in the rescue strategy preached by Bush's treasury secretary Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner at the New York Fed.

Their approach has clearly been designed to preserve what's left of the Wall Street establishment and maintain the supremacy of the largest financial firms while the taxpayers pick up their losses. That model has failed and too many smart people know why. The bailouts have been too little too late and aimed at an impossible objective--persuading private capital investors to believe in the phony assurances proffered by the bankers. AIG, the insurance giant taken over by the feds, has turned into a bloody hemorrhage. Citigroup will be another and may soon be joined by other major banks demanding the same favorable terms. Wasting more public money on insolvent mastodons is the least of it. The real scandal is it doesn't work. It can't work because the black hole is too large even for Washington to fill. Government should take over the failing institutions or force them into bankruptcy, break them up and sell them off or mercifully relieve everyone, including the taxpayers.

Stock markets rallied again with the salvage of Citigroup. But not everyone in Wall Street was cheering. Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, the bank monitoring firm that has repeatedly been right about the banks when the government officials were wrong, had harsh words for the deal. "Pretending that Citi is going to be a going concern I think is silly," Whalen said. "We should be thinking about breaking this company up and redistributing the assets into stronger hands."

Will Timothy Geithner or Larry Summers advise the next president to face reality and throw in the towel? One hopes so, because Whalen warns: "By embracing Geithner, President-elect Obama is endorsing the ill-advised scheme to support AIG directed by Hank Paulson et al at Goldman Sachs and executed by Tim Geithner.... This scheme to stay AIG's resolution cannot possibly work and, when it does collapse, Barack Obama and his administration will wear the blame."

Barack Obama is too smart and perceptive to let this happen to his yet-unborn presidency. Maybe he should find out what Whalen knows.

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This article can be found on the web at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081208/greider_web

The Fix We're In

Thanks to Mark Franzen.

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Joe Smith started the day early, having set his alarm clock (made in Japan) for 6 a.m. While his coffeepot (made in China ) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (made in Hong Kong). He put on a dress shirt (made in Sri Lanka), designer jeans (made in Singapore) and tennis shoes (made in Korea). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (made in India), he sat down with his calculator (made in Mexico) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (made in Taiwan) to the radio (made in India), he got in his car (made in Germany), filled it with gas (from Saudi Arabia), and continued his search for a good-paying American job.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his computer (made in Malaysia), Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (made in Brazil), poured himself a glass of wine (made in France), and turned on his tv (made in Indonesia), and then wondered why he couldn't find a good paying job in the United States of America.

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Walmart

Thanks to Jim Dwyer.

Walmart
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How big is Walmart?

1 . At Walmart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day.

2 . This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3. Walmart will sell more From January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Walmart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target + Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Walmart employs 1.6 million people And is the largest private employer. And most can't speak English

6. Walmart is the largest company In the history of the World.

7. Walmart now sells more food Than Kroger & Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only 15 years.

8. During this same period, 31 Supermarket chains sought bankruptcy (including Winn-Dixie).

9. Walmart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Walmart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are SuperCenters; This is 1,000 more than it had 5 years ago.

11. This year, 7.2 billion different Purchasing experiences will occur at a Walmart store. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within 15 miles of a Walmart

13 Let Walmart bail out Wall street

--Jim Combs

Some Thoughts About Love

Thanks to Mick Gallagher.

Some Thoughts About Love

Where did you ever get this insightful, informative truth serum? You might be experiencing an epiphany. Don't get scared. Just sit down, say a prayer for the good people of the world. And then open your eyes, and look within. It is there where you'll find LOVE, not fear. Those two don't mix very well. Love [comes] from, and is, God. Fear [is] from some other place. Dispel the false fear, and live through Love. Love is all that matters, Love is our only hope, and the answer to
all illusory questions.

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Nonviolence

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

Nonviolence
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Nonviolence belongs to a continuum from the personal to the global.... One of the most significant Buddhist interpretations of nonviolence concerns... daily life. Nonviolence... also pertains to the way one interacts with a child, vacuums a carpet, or waits in line. ...Whenever we separate ourselves from a given situation (for example, through inattentiveness, negative judgments, or impatience), we "kill" something valuable....[This] violence actually leaves victims in its wake: people, things, one's own composure, the moment itself.... These small-scale incidences... are multiplied on a social level, and become a source of the large-scale violence.... . . . One need not wait until war is declared and bullets are flying to work for peace, Buddhism teaches. A more constant and equally urgent battle must be waged each day against the forces of one's own anger, carelessness, and self-absorption.

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Tricycle: The Buddhist Review
92 Vandam Street
New York, NY 10013
Telephone 212.645.1143 | Fax 212.645.1493

Real Reason They Don't Want Gays in Military

Thanks to Barbara Baty.

Real Reason They Don't Want Gays in Military (or, Is God Mad at Republicans?)
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Seems that god is really pissed at the republicans. Actually, god's mad at the repubs for that whole Reich-wing conservative "christian" thing.

Here's proof. All those wild-eyed RWC's were told (and did as they were ordered) to pray for "hurricane force winds and rains of biblical proportions out of the so-called "christian" right wing Focus on the Family and other tax free pulpits. [They wanted God to "rain on" Obama's victory-celebration.] So millions of these sheeple did just that-- prayed and prayed and prayed like the buncha friggin idiots they are, that they actually believe THAT is what prayer is for?

And ya know what? It turned out to be just the most beautiful night in Denver. Couldn't have been better for a giant outdoor party (when Obama gave his acceptance speech in front of over 80,000 people at Mile High Stadium). I guess it was just simply not god's will to cause that rain and wind, to NOT answer the pleadings of the millions. So much for the power of THEIR prayer, of THAT type of cloaked-in-hate prayer, that is!

Then, a few months later in California, all those good christians and especially Mormons (who, like Catholics, are NOT real christians as we all know) according to the BOAC born-again variety of christians (only THEY are the real chosen ones.) Anyway, they (BOAC) all wanted everyone to vote YES on Prop 8 in California to ban gay marriage. And, sure enough, Prop 8 did fail, and now the christians and Mormons are all happy.

But guess what? God is pissed AGAIN. How can ya tell? Well, what about all those fires immediately after Prop 8? The defeat of gay marriage (a yes vote defeated) has shaken California. Indeed, if Prop 8 had lost and allowed gay marriage, then those fires would have been called (by christians) the judgment of god; after all, vengence is mine, sayeth the lord-- of dance or the lord of the rings or whatever. Yes, the televised preachers would be railing against the goddless left coast and all those queer liberal faggots and lezzies and homos and sinners. Yes, Sarah Palin's "Real America" could feel justified in its discrimination and justified by all those fires and acts of "gawd"!

But wait! If California has done what they say is god's will, then why is California being punished with these fires? Next will be rains and mudslides and all that. Hmmmm. I guess god got it wrong again. Maybe, just maybe, "Gawd" is NOT a republican as we've been led to believe.

Or maybe, just maybe, this god of theirs simply does not give a care for their particular brand of hate! Maybe, just maybe (and back to the original point) this old-time choir is not what the GOP needs!

As republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat earlier this month, they will likely overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G O D. (I'm bathing in holy water as I type this).

To be specific, the evangelical, rightwing branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't cometh soon, or is it soon cometh?

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the republican party. And the truth, as long as we're helping to set them free, is that if one were to eavesdrop on the private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that. Their choir has become absurdly off-key, and many republicans know it, but they need those votes! What to do?!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party (more emphasis now on Old and less on Party) since the 1980's or so. It has become beholden to a nutty element that they used to relegate to wooden crates on street corners. Yep, the GOP has surrendered its higher ground (moral authority?) to its lowest brows (Palins?) and in so doing alienated its base, including other people of faith and regular folks who prefer a more private
approach to worship. And what's so great is how defensive religious conservatives become at any suggestion that they've had anything to do with the GOP's erosion! Oh well, it just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

Whoops, my time is up, gotta run, gotta go pray for rain.
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