FROM PYRAMID TO PLATE

With a wedge of purple protein... Looks like about 2000+ calories... This is not the old US food pyramid, it's the new US food plate! Filled to the brim with a red fruit wedge, a green veg wedge, a beige grains wedge and a ... purple ... protein wedge. Name me a purple protein. No knife, spoon, napkin or drink... unless the Dairy disc is a glass of blue milk... Could be blue yogurt, blue ice cream or ... bleu cheese?

Looks like the dairy lobby still has some clout, though it's no longer in the inner circle... The meat lobby lost out big time on this one, merged into not a RED MEAT wedge (that would anyway conflict with the red fruit wedge) but a mysteriously purple protein wedge... (eggplant?), which would include legumes, nuts, eggs etc., plus purple meat (for all you manly guys afraid of soybeans and tofu)... But purple protein on a blue (or chartreuse?) placemat?

As for me, I try to avoid government restaurants...

 

What They're Covering Up at Fukushima

By HIROSE TAKASHI

" ...if you are so sure that they're safe, why not build them in the center of [Tokyo],
instead of hundreds of miles away where you lose half the electricity in the wires?"

+

Government Adviser Quits Post to Protest Japan's Policy

on Radiation Exposure for Fukushima Schools
+

Unsafe at Any Dose

"Nuclear accidents never cease. We’re decades if not generations
away from seeing the full effects of the radioactive emissions from Chernobyl."
+
she makes a VERY important point [emphasis mine]:

"Still, physicists talk convincingly about 'permissible doses' of radiation. They consistently ignore 
internal emitters — radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests
that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells.
They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body,
whether from isotopes emitted from nuclear power plants, medical X-rays,
cosmic radiation or background radiation that is naturally present in our environment." 

WINDY RAMBLE: THE DEBRIS OF FREEDOM

Well the wind came barging across the landscape last night like it owned the place - which I suppose it does - carrying on all through the dark, toting in skyloads of Siberian chill without so much as a  how-de-do-- no passport, no visa, no customs fees, no license, no permission of any kind, not even a declared nationality such as we all have.

The rampant wind is no respecter of national borders, fences or property; it just laughs that air-sized laugh at national boundaries - roars in fact, as it  flies right over them - tossing aside all the KEEP OUT! signs like so many snowflakes, sending immigration officials scurrying indoors holding onto their hats, toying with temperatures, breaking off trees, tearing off roofs like King Kong and flinging them all over-- throwing big stuff around in general and having a greater time than any of us ever has, except for maybe that long July night in 1967 when I - but that's a tale for another time - and doing so whenever it wants.

If any of us did that we'd be in jail in a flash and deported to other borders without recourse, but governments just don't treat wind (or precipitation either, for that matter) the way they treat people, you'd think they'd be all over that blustery phenomenon and right away get it under lock and key, or at least put up a big wall like they currently want to have between Mexico and Texas to keep out people, though the even bigger Great Wall of China didn't work, either people- or weatherwise, and now it's a lucrative tourist attraction that draws folks from all over the world, puts China even more on the map historically, so you've gotta hand it to the Chinese, they take the long view of things in important matters-- but the fact that governments do pretty much whatever they want with us humans while letting the weather run free just seems like favoritism to me.

Over a century ago Mark Twain, who knew a thing or two about wind, directed public attention to humanity's chronic inaction regarding the weather; yet we've made no real advances in that regard since his clarion call. Makes me wonder about the old hierarchy of intelligence that has us humans at the top, getting all windy about freedom and such, well I'd put the wind way above us in those regards, seeing as how it's crafty enough to completely evade the fetters of human governance and run roughshod over restraints of any kind, doing pretty much what it damn well pleases despite whatever borders we sapients decree, just as it always has.

Just imagine all that the wind knows about the world. It has its songs, it has its voice, its music and its rhythms, it dances in the leaves on the ground, in sand across the deserts and in the tips of trees across the forests, flings itself along atop the waves of the sea in lyrics we can't begin to fathom. It is the breath of pure freedom, blowing wherever it will, leaving us to clean up after it, such as me right now on my deck, up to my knees in the debris of freedom.

WILD GOVERNMENT

Wading into the bamboo over-and-undergrowth, a broad green tapestry woofed with vines of kudzu, wild grape, wisteria, yamaimo and other strivings wrapped around every rising stalk, all battling for a bit of the sky...

You're trying to get to the opportunistic locust tree, one among the many that rise up here and there on untended properties, the flexy bamboo and curly vines grabbing at your boots and buttons, legs and arms, feet and tools, you have to be free of artifice and shaped like a snake, boar or fox to flow like life through this kind of mountain growth, this vegetable government, but you're unsuited in about every way possible so progress is slow, a constant leaning against the relentlessly buffered presence, much like trying to deal directly with a human government, which everyone living and dead knows is akin to madness, but once you get started, the further you advance the more of a waste it is to turn back, so you keep on going, you keep on trying, working at leaning farther, pushing harder, falling forward with all the meager weight you can bring to bear against it all while forging forward with your shoulders, legs and feet and you do... appear... to... make... some...... progress... though only a little—it takes a while…

But did you really advance, did you really, drenched in sweat but perhaps truly halfway there now, with scythe, clippers and saw, all targeted by the vines that pull at them, trying to wrench them from your hand or pocket, loop or holster, take them back to the earth, and you too, you might wind up here forever one big green verticality, overgrown before too long, wrapped in green, kudzu grows as fast as any bureaucracy, and you're really part of all this anyway, over your head out here in this green expanse, eyes peeled for a true sign of progress through all this green tape, this tangle that is home to snakes and hornets' nests, wild pig dens, deer beds and bear lairs, trying just to get to a tree-- the tree--

Is the view all that important from the living room of the house you used to live in back there in that other time, that other place so far away on one shore of this green sea, becoming the illusion that perhaps it always has been - that may be the true nature of things - fuzzy at the edges and shimmery at the center like an old movie, do you really need that comfort to which you may never return, can you have it more than once, be again where you spent such a pleasant portion of your life as it passes before your eyes and then you are at the tree itself, struggling to regain your focus, clippers and folding saw at the ready...

Wiping the sweat from your eyes you climb a bit, reach up and clip off the tips of the highest branches, saw off the big one that splays its fingers in front of the nose of the Sleeping Buddha out on the Lake, or so it looks from that living room you had back there, the cut branches fall, you climb down and turn around like a world turns around and begin the falling struggle of your journey homeward across and through this green governance, fighting for each step, the well-organized wildness plucking at everything about you that has an angle and seeks to be elsewhere-- and may be, before too long...

IS THERE TRUTH IN GOVERNMENT?

U.S. Unemployment Rates (SGS: Shadow Govt Stats)

via: shadowstats.com

But why would the government lie? Aren't the people the government? Why would they lie to themselves? Either they're not the selves they think they are, or they're not the government they think they are... There seems to be a major fallacy in the framework, something the people don't want themselves to know... Wonder what it is...

In any case, now that Wall Street knows what it can get away with, better watch out below!

+

"Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), BP (BP), Total (TOT), Shell (RDS.A), Deutsche Bank (DB) and Societe Generale (SCGLY.PK) founded the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate 'dark pool' trading in the commodities markets. Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se. They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel."

--The Global Oil Scam

+

"I believe we have not begun to see a fraction of the damage inflicted on Western economies by the sociopathic, short-sited banksters and their control of government. Perhaps that is why we see so little rage. People really have no idea what is coming."

Richard B.

+

“Bloomberg reported: 'Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses.' Goldman Sachs is on pace for the best year in the firm’s history, and it is also benefiting by only paying 1 percent in taxes."

15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams

LET US RESOLVE OUR PROBLEMS OVER DRINKS

Here at the depths of the economic depression brought on by the major financial entities who were subsequently rescued by the taxpayers, said financial entities and taxpayers met over drinks last night in a welcome attempt to discuss and resolve the economic crisis vis-a-vis the vast profits and bonuses recently accrued by those entities, who at the event paid for their champagne with IOUs against rumored equity at 0.01% non-compounding that mature in 2050 if not later, to be backed by several generations of taxpayers, who drank from plastic cups of water from a well surrounded by economic cesspools; but upon seeing the tailored silk suits, breast pockets holding million-dollar bonus checks, the Grand Cru, the crystal goblets, Cuban cigars, $500 haircuts, $2000 eyeglasses, $1000 shoes, easy laughter and waiting chauffeurs, the greasy work-clothed taxpayers took their work tools in calloused hands and charged, throwing the financiers into the cesspools, reclaimed their own money and country, then walked home.

Looks like it's already beginning...

+

NY AG: Banks Paid Bonuses That Were
Substantially Greater Than Their Net Income

"...combined, these three firms earned $9.6 billion,
paid bonuses of nearly $18 billion,
and received TARP taxpayer funds worth $45 billion.

+

Five Firms Hold 80% of Derivatives Risk, Fitch Report Finds

+

Goldman's new 'American Socialism Manifesto'

+

THE ROYAL SCAM

THIS COULD BE THE START OF SOMETHIN' WEIRD

Hey, I love cute as much as the next guy. Well, maybe not THAT guy, he's registered, but you know what I mean. Cute has its place. Mainly in little kids, teddy bears, baby animals, tiny birdies and - in a tempered way - rational young men and women of higher school age. Cute is fine and good as long as it doesn't become manic, or malignant, or require exorcism. This seems as though it might be all three.

Internationally speaking, things could hardly get any weirder right now, but Japan is going to give it a try, in the ancient Japanese tradition of East-meets-Westness. There's no danger of things getting any shallower.

I doubt if there's a country in the world that hasn't had an ambassadorial embarrassment now and then - to say nothing of electoral disaster - but I don't recall any country actually risking so much on the face of it, other than when Japan tried Doraemon as its anime ambassador at about this time last year, or when a couple months later Hello Kitty gave it a treacly try, efforts that cutely vortexed into ambassadorial black holes from which no later information escaped, a blessing of sorts.

But now, in a continuing advance into whichever cultural depression we're entering at the moment, the Land of the [insert desired verb here] Sun is sending out as its envoys of cuteness three young women who patently do not wish to be other than obsessively formuletically derivativo-permutations of notness regarding whoever they actually are, or might once have been going to be... this gets confusing... Is, like, really cute Japan going, like, anywhere cute?

"We want people abroad to know these kinds of people exist in Japan and to feel close to them."

Damn. I'm beginning to feel cute again. I thought I was over that.

--Some thoughts on the shifting perception
of female beauty in Japanese art
(w/thanks to Delwyn)

THERE'S CHANGE ALREADY.

"Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:

Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.

Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.

Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it."

WHERE IS THE WILD?

"I love the wild not less than the good," said Henry, in the Higher Laws chapter of Walden, and "In wildness lies the preservation of the world." Henry was wild about wilderness, just couldn't stop talking about it one way or another, and who can blame him, he saw it disappearing.

But that was a long time ago, over 150 years now. The interesting thing is that even back then, when the wild must have still been pretty much all over the place, Henry was already condemning its decline, already lamenting the relentless incursion of the artifactual.

His were admirable early sentiments, though they fell on mostly deaf ears in those times of righteous conviction regarding clearcutting of the greater soul. Walden wasn't a big success until well after the results of manifest destiny had become manifest.

Since then, it seems we still haven't realized that the outer wild is the counterpart, the balance, to the wild we carry in ourselves, in every cell and sinew in our bodies; remove the wild from our outer lives and in our hearts and souls we suffer, our compass goes awry. All who still revere the wild know this, as Henry did; he recognized it as the greater part of the soul. So now, some 150 years later, where has it gone? Is it out on the lawn? On the hiking trail? In the Winnebago window, the satellite image, nature video, national park, endangered species, inner child, urban shaman, modern warrior, rabid zealot? Is it caught on the Net? Can it be seen with commuter eyes?

In our nowadays, with government keeping us anxious about government, business keeping us unbalanced and selling us the next step at a discount, the further we get from whatever wild there once was, and the more we are isolated and channeled by the careers, garments, incomes, appliances, habits, sciences, arts, rebellions, religions, schools of thought and mannered ways we think comprise us, the less we are the creatures of creation, one thrust of all the universe, and the more we are the static but remarkably lifelike exhibits in that big fancy museum of our own construction we call modern life.

Commensurately, the less informed we are by what is ever ongoing in the currents of the universe: the sun that is shining, tides that are flowing, moon rising, spiraling stars, galaxies whirling, blooms that are opening, seeds that are falling, scattering on all the winds and swelling with the rain; we are no longer fed by the wild, that in us is ferally fertile, and so do not germinate, let alone grow into what we were all engendered for, which is beyond dimension, in the seed of wildness.

Mostly as published in Kyoto Journal #62

HANDI-BARF

Do you find yourself among the growing number of perceptive individuals suffering the onslaughts of modern life who don't want to cause dangerously slippery carpets, sidewalks and stairwells, yet are experiencing a steadily intensifying need to barf your guts out right on the spot, several times a day?

Well here's the solution to that nagging problem: new Handi-Barf, a compact, portable place to toss your cookies pretty close to spontaneously, anywhere irrepressible nausea is generated.

Handi-Barf is just what the intelligent and tasteful modern-day individual needs to keep in social trim without losing any throwup time from the metaphysical rollercoaster of modern living. Carried in purse, slipped into a pocket, hooked onto your tie, placed on your desk or suspended from the person in front of you on the subway, Handi-Barf affords civilized relief in a flash-- with no muss, no fuss and no apologies.

Bring Handi-Barf with you to bureaucracies, financial houses, art openings, fashion shows, political gatherings–- anywhere that old metaphoric finger can slip down your throat. And while you're reading the latest best-seller, just clip your Handi-Barf to the bottom of the book, so you can upchuck as you read; could anything be more convenient?

And if you have to watch the tube, simply suspend your Handi-Barf from the patented Handi-Barf headgear as you experience an evening of typical programming, and you won't have to stop watching, even during commercials, to ralph your tv dinner.

Or should you be unavoidably exposed to the fundamentally righteous, simply whip out your Handi-Barf and let your soul experience the truth and light afforded only by the joy that surpasseth the surrender of understanding.

No more waiting, hand over mouth! No more scrambling for a door handle, racing for a toilet bowl, groping for a wastebasket, searching for an open window, hassling with a coat pocket or wrestling with a handbag! No more panic at the surging of all those existential cookies that so urgently need tossing in these times of potentially non-stop nausea!

Handi-Barf, Inc.: pioneers in metaphysical hardware.

GREED PAYS.

"The bailout of AIG has exposed more than just the collapse of Casino Capitalism. It exposes the governmental system to be as much a sham as our economy has been! How is it that $85 billion can just materialize to bail out this one insurance company (insuring for the most part, opaque, enormously complicated and risky investments) without so much as a session of Congress? Where is the appropriations committee in this matter? Where were they when the Bear, Stearns/JP Morgan deal went down on a Sunday?

What has been exposed here is the complete absence of the United States Government as it is supposed to work. In its place are Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke making decisions about spending sums of money equal to the budgets of many small nations – money that will have to be paid back by the taxpayers, who have seen none of the gilded rewards. You have had no say – nor have your impotent representatives."

+

And as to Lehman's collapse the day before:
"The quoted amount of OTC derivatives on Lehman's books are not notional value, but some silly mark to no market. The real number is trillions. When either party to an OTC derivative fails the value of that derivative instantaneously become the size of what was previously called notional value. With one quadrillion, one thousand one hundred and forty four trillion (BIS) in notional value, there is NO means to stop this financial cataclysm." --Jim Sinclair

+

+

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." [emphases mine. RB]

What part of 'Democracy' don't they understand?

+

Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

+

"The double standard is stunning:
their profits are their profits,
but their losses are our losses."

SOLUTIONS TO WORLD HUNGER

MENU AT THE G8 FOOD CRISIS SUMMIT
You can sense the empathy...

SHADOW OF ICE

I have to laugh when I read US 'news' like I read this morning, where it said that "Republicans fear public has lost confidence" following another surprise congressional loss in Mississippi - after surprise losses in other special elections in Illinois and Louisiana - the well-spun headline indicating only a vague suspicion that there might be shreds of evidence here and there suggesting the possibility that perhaps some sort of negative change could be on the verge of occurring in a small way, or not... No hint of the Shadow of Ice that resides in the White House, of the deep voter revulsion that has been evident and growing to the full heave for some years now...

But then those media are heavily pwned, are they not...

image via

GETTING STIMULATED

When it comes to stimulation, often as not you'll find me first in line. I've got nothing against being stimulated, as long as it isn't by a government; that's like being stimulated by an oversized steam-driven contraption in desperate need of oil.

So I chuckled when I heard about the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the Diebold president’s Surge-like plan to save the US economy from what he and his crew have done to it, by giving each not-yet-completely-broke citizen a nanodrop to put in their personal debt bucket-- if they don’t, under the circumstances, simply blow the check on a few cases of beer.

With a national debt in the trillions and a derivative threat of many more trillions, the crew call $300 an Economic Stimulus. (Those with qualifying income of less than $3000 [!] and tax liability of zero don’t get stimulated at all; somehow that makes a GOP kind of sense.)

I expected, though, since I’ve been living outside the country for the past 35 years, that I personally would not get stimulated in such a way. But not long ago I received one of those classy tear-along-dotted-lines-to-open letters from my relentless friend the IRS, addressed precisely to my foreign home, informing me of my possibly being entitled to a payment of anywhere from zero to $600 "plus additional amounts for each qualifying child.” In natural disbelief I looked the pulp document over carefully, searching for the must-be-there clause along the lines of “...those who have lived overseas for more than 34 years and have never paid any US taxes do not qualify for the Stimulus Payment, and will be liable for $10,000 or more in Life Elsewhere Tax for every year spent abroad.”

But I could find no sign of the naysay clause that characterizes hopefully scanned government/financial/insurance documents; there was nothing specifying my ineligibility, not even in the small print or between the lines. Can I therefore expect-- my “Net Income Tax Liability” being “Zero” (Foreign-Earned Income Exclusion) and my “Qualifying Income” being “At least $3000"-– a check from the IRS for this summer’s beer? According to this hedgy letter, I can.

Actually, I suspect I’ll get the old steam-delivered naysay clause instead of a check, but that's ok-- I’d rather not be stimulated by the G-device; who knows where it's been.

Anyway, E pluribus unum, Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes and so forth.

+

In re which: How I Spent My Stimulus

THE DEPTHS OF HIGH OFFICE,
or
EVERYTHING MUST HAVE A BOTTOM

In looking at some of the electoids currently holding high office here and there in the world under the rubric of democracy, it's often difficult to credit the contention that a presumably educated, presumably discerning, presumably informed electorate actually searched among themselves, looked into their souls, culled out certain especially able individuals, carefully assessed them, then voted to elect them - over others of equivalent caliber - to serve as the governmental representatives of all.

I sense I'm giving far too much credit to the electorate concept, but what the hell. Even so, that such a process could result in certain of the leaders currently bulling in the world china shop is quite a distance beyond comprehension. Could any first-world polity truly be that uneducated, that undiscerning, that uninformed? (Or that misled?)

Of course, since strictly local representatives reflect their local electorate, it's understandable that some local officials could be far below par; such examples come easily to mind when considering the US congress, for example. As Honest Abe was aware, there are some people you can fool all of the time. But If Darwin's evolution really works, those folks would never grow to comprise a national majority, so how can the basement floor become the ceiling? If Abe and Chuck are wrong about this, the world is in big trouble.

But even though the world as we know it may be ending, let me pause here to point out how nonetheless astonishing it is that, once elected to congresses, senates, parliaments and whatnot, these electoids further select from among themselves some of their number to serve in even higher positions of important public trust, such as speaker of the house, minister of justice, minister of defense etc., who in fact are no such things. This phenomenon goes by the name democracy, but surely it must be something else. Cryptosomnolence, perhaps?

On the other hand, if every cycle must have a bottom, and if the present depth determines the subsequent peak, then the world has a few Everests in the offing, so maybe we should appreciate this current crop of electoids for the breathtaking heights (tsunamis?) they're about to beget.

So if history is any guide, I think I'll just leave this beaten path and head on up into these sparsely inhabited mountains for an unspecified duration...

IMAGINE

Let's say for the sake of extreme fantasy that you have an eminently capable government (stop laughing hysterically, it's just a fantasy), and in that government there is an appointed official with the title of Minister of Justice, who has just fully approved a new immigration system for fingerprinting and photographing visitors from abroad as a way of preventing terrorism and stigmatizing foreigners, even though your country depends a great deal on tourism and is trying to encourage more, and even though during the past 60 years the only terrorist acts in your country have been committed by fellow citizens.

If such a bizarre situation were to occur, you, as a responsible citizen of an honorable nation, would at once demand an explanation for this incompetence. Imagine further that this oxymoronic minister, in response to a question put to him only by a foreign reporter at a foreign press conference, further justifies his foreigner-stigmatizing system by saying: "A friend of a friend of mine is a member of al-Qaeda, and has entered Japan numerous times using false passports and disguises." He then adds: "This particular person was actually involved in the bombings in the center of Bali. Although he is a friend of my friend, I was advised not to go close to the center of Bali because it would be bombed."

As a loyal citizen you would rush to your nearest Center for Responsible Government (stop laughing, this is serious) and demand that this patently incompetent official be tried for treason, having knowingly allowed a terrorist to enter the country repeatedly under false pretenses, and for multiple manslaughter by omission in not passing along that tidbit about the bombing to Balinese officials, who might thereby have saved hundreds of foreigners' lives, one of whom was a fellow citizen.

But as I say, that's an extreme fantasy. Except for the quotes. And the oxymoron is still in office, in charge of the foreigner stigmatization program.

In most of the world, we're all foreigners. Try not to look too alien.

+

[Update Nov 13:

'Gaijin card' checks spread as police deputize the nation

and another aspect of discrimination:
Foreigners still dogged by housing barriers]

CAWCUS

Sitting out here often of evenings, keeping a studied corner of an eye on the natural ongoings, looking for any clues that may be offered to whatever the puzzle is, I note that all the crows hereabouts these days - at least several floppy dozen of them - head north each evening at around 5 pm, while the light for getting is still good, to take part in a general cacophony of some sort at a clandestine spot further along the lake, where the raucous cawcus assembles to decide and enact whatever dark corvine legislation the various committee members can agree upon. I don't know where the crow capital is, but it must be aggravating to the neighbors. Thank the bird gods it isn't in the trees around my house.

I don't see how the crows could ever agree on anything though, despite the fact that they have a goodly quorum, since each crow is solitary throughout the day, beakily independent and strongly opinionated, often standing atop the soapbox of a fence post, high tree or telephone pole to broadcast piercing personal views on things of direct concern to black-feathered individuals, for all the world to hear.

Theirs must be the only avian form of what we humans are pleased to call democracy (none of the other birds regularly gather from individuality to fly collectively to daily congress), though the way they fly overhead on their legislative trip, scattered into what could only be imaginatively characterized as a flock - with latecomers often lollygagging along 10 or 20 minutes behind schedule - seems to indicate that they don't really want to reach their capital, wherever it is, for getting there appears to be much more fun, but they are going nonetheless, in as omnidirectional a straight line as possible, complaining all the way.

Complaining is what it sounds like to me, at least in terms of human emotional expression, though perhaps I'm mistaking the squawks of corvine excitement and crowfoolery for human aggravation. One species' jubilation can often sound raucous to a quieter, wingless party on another facet of the infinite jewel.

JUST A THOUGHT...

Religion is the source of salvation as government is the source of freedom.

A REVOLUTION OF SORTS

As a result of yesterday's elections, for the first time in its history the LDP (the longest running single party rule in the world, since the fall of Mexico's PRI) will not control both houses of parliament. Yet LDP leader Prime Minister Abe, who was groomed for his office in the paleoJapanese tradition, and who is not popular with the young folks - partly because he's not 'cool,' but mostly it would seem because of his wish to change the constitution and restore the Army - is not resigning. Yet.

Anyway it's a revolution of sorts. This could lead to an actual two-party system of government! That would sure seem odd.

THE WORLD FOCUSES...


Tensions on Iraq border rile Turkey - all 828 news articles »

Lawmakers Oppose House Energy Plan - all 269 news articles »

Lincoln letter from 1863 is unveiled - all 151 news articles »

US adopts limits on clean water law enforcement - all 121 news articles »

Paris can still party-at home-with electronic ankle-bracelet - all 1,837 news articles»