No solutions just whining

Barack Obama may be making a mistake with the economic stimulus, that remains to be seen. It seems to me though, that he's at least trying to get things back on track. Meanwhile yet another harping Republican, this time the Goeringesqe Karl Rove, chimes in with more of the same old Republican claptrap about lowering taxes for his rich pals and how the Democrats just don't get it. Wake up Karl! Your ideas didn't work and actually sent our country into the poorhouse. Why should we listen to you?

Ah at least some things still work

I can't complain for the moment because I just spent a pleasant evening with some of my students. Sometimes they frustrate me terribly but at other times their youthful spirit reminds me that I used to be free of all these concerns. I get to be a part of their world for a few minute, though I'm not really a part in full. I don't care what some may say about teaching, about the low pay and long hours, about how teachers aren't really doing their jobs properly. I just relax and let the kids relax and things are fine

Corporate Oligarchy

We are no longer ruled by Washington. Instead our country, our lives are run by a group of wealthy and exceedingly corrupt business thugs. It happened because starting with Reagan, financial institutions in America were given free reign to solidify their positions, to set policies that allowed loan shark style lending through credit cards, the repackaging of home loans into these ridiculously risky but still, somehow, A1 rated, commodities, the bloating of insurance management into this giant that pays it's widget managers like princes while putting the poor out without medical care...and on and on.

We are fooling ourselves believing we have elected leaders. The real leaders of our country are a pack of rich and exceedingly greedy businessmen and those guys need to go. Their businesses need to be broken down into smaller entities and it needs to happen to nearly every large corporation in this country.

I'm sick of my life being run by a bunch of businessmen.

Funny

It's amazing the number of Republicans, like Mark Sanford, that have suddenly become champions of fiscal responsiblity. It's almost as if they didn't set spending records every year of Bush's two terms. It's almost as if they didn't preside over massive deficits and then leave us with the biggest economic mess we've faced in a century. This is infuriating.

Who's to Blame

Time Magazine published a great article with the pictures of 25 people responsible for our economic crisis. Since I live in the Republican heartland I've heard a good deal of how Democrats are to blame for our economic problems. I wonder how many of them bothered to read this article. Probably dismissed it out of hand as just another example of the liberal press, even though the article doesn't spare Bill Clinton, who went along with the Republican policies happily.

Republican vision

It seems to me the Republicans have not yet figured out that in a supply and demand economy you cannot continue to pump money into the supply side when folks haven't an extra dime to spend.
Yet they continue to sing their same old song, tax breaks for the rich, protect business, food stamps bad, big money for corporations good, blah blah blah.

In addition they have so blinded themselves to their own failures many believe the current economic crisis is all the fault of Democrats. As if they haven't spent the last thirty years chantng about the efficacy of the free market.

Well the free market bit us in the ass. Corruption ran wild and while it was working everyone was happy to turn a blind eye. Now that the house of cards has collapsed the Republicans are careful to sit on the sidelines snarking at everyone about how they had nothing to do with any of it.

Chewing the cud on Social Darwinism

My blog is about how American Christianity has morphed into a way for Republicans to morally justify the greed of their economic policies and violence of their foriegn policy, and how Evangelical teachings no longer has much to do with Biblical doctrine. It seems to me Republicans, who are almost universally Evangelical Christians, have evolved into something less like a Christians, and strangly have adopted many of the ideas posited by philophers such as Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's life affirming message seems to mirror some modern Christian dogma. Yet the new Evangelicals seem oblivious to the fact that they have become adherents to a philosophy written by a man who dismissed Christian morality as a product of self deception. Ironic?

Central to Nietzsche's writing is the notion that power is mankind's main motivator. In a Capitalist society power is most tangibly represented by wealth, but can take other forms. Certainly Fame, and Political Influence weild mighty swords upon our society's power scale.
In other words, if one sets out to achieve wealth, and that goal becomes that individual's obsession, or to put it more kindly, his main line of thought, then it is inevitable that individual will achieve some level of wealth. Nietzche does not attach riders to his philosophy such as "based up intelligence" or "based upon background, family wealth, etc.." but rather bases his notion upon how well a person can come to terms with the awareness that rests within all of us. This is a similar message to what prosperity Christianity leader Joel Osteen preachs. Look at these two quotes
You've got the very nature of God on the inside of you. Joel Osteen There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophies. ~Friedrich Nietzche
Notice how they both allude to some knowledge each of us possess within ourselves, though I feel neither of them view that knowledge as being magical or even difficult to access.
For Nietzche, I think, the access to our inner knowledge comes by casting away the mores of society, religion, etc... and listening most closely to our instinctual inner I.
For Osteen the process is much the same, we cast off the voice of the world and listen carefully to ourselves. In Osteen's case, however, the voice we hear is not our own, but rather the voice of God whispering in our ear.
I'm not certain which is true of course, but I will say this. By attributing that instinctual voice to God, Christians can avert any guilt they may feel when it becomes clear their decision was wrong. The prime example being George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. It seems completely possible to me that Bush listened closely to his inner "I" voice, deemed it to be the voice of God telling him to wage war in Iraq. Now that the war has gone terribly wrong, he can reason that he was only following God's lead. This same reasoning works on a larger scale for the greater populace as they tacitly accept the notion that despite the horrors in Iraq, God must have some reason beyond their reckoning for the thing to have occured. This lends a moral rightness to the situation that cannot be achieved through solid reasoning. So Christianity, and the inner voice of God become cemented into their consciences as a means to forgive any poor decision they might make. So they blend the inner I of Nietzche to excuse their human weaknesses by calling that voice, the voice of God.