chuck kottke

> Yes Nancy, indeed it is a national holiday for us in the US! >> Hm, interesting, Stevie Wonder did a song advocating for a Martin Luther King Jr. day?? Good for him!!:cool: U2 did pay him a great deal of heartfelt respect when they included him in their song Pride, and in their video about the song. He deserves the adoration and admiration for being the voice of the civil rights movement, his beliefs and messages are timeless. I thought about what he might have said were he here today to reflect on the times, and I am sure he would have seen the tragedy of foreclosed homes in America, of how the African-American community took the hardest hit of all, loosing a great deal of the wealth in their homes and investments from the recent economic crimes which have been committed. >I'm curious, what do you know about him, what's the feeling in Denmark about King?

============================ <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< <><><><><><><><><><><><><><> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> ============================ Always wanted to do some Navaho rug patterns on here, though just a facsimile. :indianbrave::flutterby:

I've had enough of this! I'm going to go... bake some kolachys. :chef::daisy:

Hm, it sounds more like this to me : Robert Reich (The Bain of Capitalism) And I recall this area loosing one big paper mill to a corporate takeover type, who sold off the company's assets to raise profits artificially, boosted the share values, then sold all his holdings on the market and got out, after which the company basically went bankrupt and was later sold to a competing firm on the cheap, and I know what this did to the employees, dedicated and loyal to that company all those years. What makes you so certain those businesses would have gone bankrupt anyway? Is Robert Reich not telling it like it is??

please, not the llama song!:laugh3: Amy, I'm not sure you want to hear the Llama song.:stunned: It's a bit shocking. For mature audiences only.;)

Hm, name sounds familiar, I know some Shaws.. :thinking: Sounds like you're an artist... There are several possibilities for 'a band of the future' - I ran across two: Future | Washington, DC | Progressive Rock /Neo-Psykédélique Soul, Electronica | SLM - B2TS The Band Future And reverbnation? Why not adverbnation? :P ReverbNation Shadows of the City.. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEs4SMPbauE]Marcus Foster - Shadows of the City + Lyrics.m4v - YouTube[/ame] Beginning reminiscent of YES's mountain's come out of the lake and stand there. nice, mellow. :cool:

Welcome aspiring musician from Canada named Rava, hope you enjoy the banter here at Coldplaying central. ;)

I think it's just hilarious, as though being worldly wise and cultured is somehow un-American?:laugh3: Mitt Romney speaks French! Oui, c'est merveilleux!! :cool: But Romney's business ethics speak for themselves: Robert Reich (The Bain of Capitalism)

Good reporting, Nancy. ;) I will go to the care2 - BRAC partnership link shortly. Good to see so many Haitians have been helped thus far! Still many more in need though. It is telling about how the US government promises help and then delivers slowly on that promise, half or more of the money not sent even after two full years. I understand some is earmarked for long-term rebuilding, but a lot more of the funds need to be made available to rebuild faster and help create a stable environment in Haiti.

Enjoy the acceleration on take-off Mike, it's like riding in a race car! ;) And besides, take-off takes maybe a minute or two, the jet engines are at full throttle, you're thrown back in your seat a bit, it's very momentary.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs]Martin Luther King - I Have A Dream Speech - August 28, 1963 - YouTube[/ame] Listen. Welcome to MLKDay.gov

Linda was prettier! :rolleyes::P Queen Elizabeth.

It's just an airplane, think of it as a bus with wings.. ;) And the gremlins usually only come out at night, during stormy weather. :P

Rhondo, in Lindi Tanzania! Rondo - Travel, City, Map, Facts - Lindi, Tanzania

I don't even have to watch that, I know why politicians don't cut spending! However, what gets cut when cuts are made are often the very things which do the most good for ordinary citizens, since the money from the big banks and corporate groups buys the most political influence to prevent cuts in their pet sectors. If we do cut spending significantly on the excess expenditures in areas such as armament production and spending on bailouts for banks, then I am concerned the tax breaks will basically flow to the super-wealthy who will simply invest in whatever gives them the biggest return on investment, which often isn't what helps a flagging economy. More bubbles isn't the answer; instead the answer is to keep those sectors of the government strong which offer the greatest benefit to the citizens, and reduce the taxes on the working classes, who will actually purchase goods and services, as opposed to giving it primarily to the .01%, who will simply put their money into investment schemes, foreign manufacturing that undercuts US workers and exploits workers in poorer nations, and into predatory lending by banks. What is needed is a reform over the way in which campaigns are financed, to restore representative government. Here's what happens when we allow schemers to flourish in our economy, unchecked by regulation: Robert Reich (The Bain of Capitalism)

Peking, China:daisy:

The problem with flight 1549 was that two Canadian geese hit the engines simultaneously, which is a pretty rare occurrence, and the geese were larger than normal, probably park geese fattened up on popcorn. So all you people feeding geese in the park, see what can happen!:laugh3:

Speed of Sound or High Speed!;)

Most of the time if something goes wrong with the engines, and the runways are too far off, the pilot just lands the plane in the river. That's what Captain Sully did when leaving LaGuardia! So he put the plane down in the Hudson River, and none other that Captain Vince Lombardi on the NY Waterway Ferry Thomas Jefferson came to the rescue!:) (but we all know Sully was the real hero) US Airways Flight 1549 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I keep thinking there ought to be inflatable pontoons which can be popped out of the underbelly of the plane, since splashdowns are a common antidote when engines quit. But this is the rare problem, most of the time flying is mundane.. and where's the thrill in that! :laugh3:

>Since this thread is about the Occupy Wall Street movement, I would like to get back to that topic. >Clearly, the lobbyists in Washington who front for the giant Wall Street firms, putting forth legislation (which they're not supposed to do, but they write it anyhow), and writing it to benefit themselves, enticed our elected congress members into allowing the big banks to engage in unscrupulous lending practices. This is why we occupy. > And so I ask that we take the time to write an amendment, to state clearly that no outgoing representative of the people be allowed to enter into lobbying or consulting with present representatives; the clear conflicts of interest we see today, with all their negative impacts on our government, must be addressed, and the need to deal with this matter is as urgent as ever, since the foreclosure continue, the practices go on unabated. Occupy Wall Street | NYC Protest for World Revolution

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56mjwycKuXA]Pride - U2 - Martin Luther King - YouTube[/ame]

The gold rush: miners scrambling over the land, shooting each-other over claims, hucksters selling shovels at hyper-inflated prices and taking advantage of all those deluded into the head-west, get-rich mentality. Then the big boys stepped in, hired all the sour doughs, and set up hydraulic mining to blast the gold out of the hills, and the big investors made it on the backs of those poor miners. The mess went down river, and filled the bay area with a toxic wash of mining wastes and mercury. A peaceful time, where there was enormous income inequalities, vast numbers of Americans without their due rights, and anyone who rose up generally had the Pinkerton's or the National Guard to make sure they went right back to work, without improvements in wages of working conditions. Hardly the idealistic world of some golden age.. except for the aristocrats. I don't recall suggesting that a few monopolistic men would spread the wealth, which is why we need the reforms we do - to prevent the unchecked amassing of wealth into the hands of a very few, since the monopolization of certain sectors of the economy damages fair markets, as it leads to the lack of choice by consumers, scams set up by the banks, allowed through control over the agencies that are supposed to regulate those banks, profit unfairly on the backs of the working classes, and it is wise then to demand those with excessive control over any given industry to diversify their investments, so those industries cannot be captured by a few, with the resulting corruption and rackets being run. I'm not talking about just giving people money, I'm talking about compensating people fairly for their work so they can afford the goods and services being produced. Even Henry Ford new this, pay the workers a fair wage, and they can buy the cars made in the Ford plants. But today, we must include the externalities, for neglecting them is doing great harm to the commons, to the environment, to social needs that nurture citizens so they can be productive. But what does it benefit us to shrink government, when the sectors which do the most shrinking are those which provide the most unaccounted for benefits to society? Clean air, clean water, safe roads and bridges, excellent schools, quality hospitals, social safety nets - all the things which benefit citizens also allow citizens to prosper and contribute more to the economy. And if the money is to go back to the upper income earners, then will they actually stimulate the economy through purchases, or simply put it into the most lucrative payoffs, that being the banking sector, which then lends to the poor who haven't enough in wages to pay off their debts? That's part of the problem, the income inequality, and where it goes makes a big difference. If wages increase for the working class, and they buy goods, then the economy is stimulated, production increases, and profits rise. Plus, they can then afford the things which make their lives better, and in turn improve their productivity. But the idea of giving the tax money saved by shrinking the government mostly to the rich, leads to more off-shore investment into factories elsewhere, more investment schemes and derivatives, into anything that leads to bubbles. We could shift the government's investments into things which broadly help businesses prosper, like the roads, the new internet and attending infrastructure, promoting a trade policy to stimulate manufacturing jobs here in the US. We could also invest in the future, into wind and solar energy production to end our dependence on oil and coal and nuclear, to producing more water desalination systems to water the farmlands, to invest in education so our workforce is productive and capable of competing in this 21st century.

The creation of the housing bubble: Since "free" markets were allowed to run amok, bubbles happened when the rigged system of allowing unsecured bank loans to go forward happened, and when real wages adjusted for inflation are held flat. Giant firms, the great Wall Street "Banks" knowingly set up these home loans, they were the primary source of the problem and in turn those "banks" gave heavily to political races to ensure the deregulation and thus allow the unsecured loans to be granted, and marketed to ordinary citizens, and packaged as AAA rated investments behind the scene, and sold on the markets. So housing bubbles are the inevitable result of a pay-to-play system that ignores the citizen's collective will for honest government and oversight over markets. >Government's role as Bridge Builder: Now, had the government been functioning to serve the best interests of we the people, and had it been fully funded to do it's job of investing in infrastructure as it should be, then there would be a boom in construction jobs to rebuild the roads and bridges held in the commons - that increases safety, improves transportation of goods and services, and provides jobs in a sector that makes all things flow smoothly. And it can do this, if we ask it to. But to get the money to do it, we might have to actually tax the super-rich plutocrats, at least back to the levels before the massive Bush-era tax cuts, and in turn the improved infrastructure will allow businesses to flourish, peoples lives to improve (so the bridge you're driving over doesn't collapse, like the one in Minnesota did, for instance.). But the government cannot make things happen when the lever-pullers in charge see only the big players, see plutocrats as the ones to listen to, and do the bidding of wall-street financial firms and the like over the interests of all citizens. The government we have is working for plutocrats, plain and simple. And that's why it is dysfunctional as it is. Without a government that works for us, we can't break up virtual monopolies, we can't regulate financial actions to prevent future financial melt-downs, we have lost control of the arbiter of fair play.

I think that's a common perception, but in truth, we're actually synergistically interacting with one-another within society, empathy is innate in our nature, as is societal structures. The idea that we are islands unto ourselves, trading as free agents on the earth is a wonderful libertarian fantasy, albeit enjoyable as a romantic dream. What we do is as much a part of a societal structure that we collectively determine, as it is of our own individual initiative. As the motto goes: from the many, one. The pursuit of happiness is as much a result of the works we put forth collectively as it is a matter of individual initiative, and I think the framers had this in mind. Free markets are a utopian dream, they existed in a world of long ago before there was civilization, when the world was populated by very few of us; today, it is fair markets, fair and representative governments, systems which include all stakeholders and see both long and short-term matters which need to become the norm. We must account for the environment, for those affected by market decisions, by those who's rights are otherwise ignored or trampled on by market forces, and to do that, we need to reclaim honest government as the arbiter of fair play, to promote the general wellness once again. Maximizing self-interest is a recipe for anarchy, a return to the mistakes of the past; I recall the madness of the goldrush days! I don't want to go back to that.

Watch the twilight zone episode with William Shatner.. The best cure for one's fears is to face the unknown, to enjoy the thrill of the Twilight Zone![ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=827OGkGn_Kk&feature=related]Twilight Zone "Nightmare At 20,000 Feet" - YouTube[/ame] Gremlins at 20,000 feet! :P