Open Thread – Think About Your Troubles
This Harry Nilsson song is from the classic animated 1971 movie The Point. It’s oh so 1971, and one of those movies that kids and adults can both appreciate in different ways. It’s lots of fun if you haven’t seen it. There’s plenty of great music in the soundtrack but this is my favorite, and today it got stuck in my head. Enjoy!
This is great fun and frankly one of the best discussions one can find on the net for these types of issues. Mudflats is the real McCoy, people from diverse backgrounds and similar but not identical or doctrinaire points of view. To all of you who have praised my thoughts, those thoughts are the result of reading your thoughts. We can learn from each other, we can collectively influence outside events if we come to a consensus. I am reminded of a poem by Yeats. It is called A Drinking Song.
On the Rachel Maddow Show tonight, she made an analogy that I thought was great. She was talking about how everyone is so focused on cutting the deficit when the REAL crisis in our country is the lack of jobs and the long-term unemployment.
She said that the current discussion is like telling the firefighters who are battling your house fire to step aside because you’ve got some rhododendrons to plant. Yes, the foundation plants may increase the value of your house in the future, but it won’t matter much if the house burns to the ground!
Along those same lines, I also heard another one recently (don’t remember where) which said that, if you have cancer and your hair is on fire, you need to deal with both eventually, but you really should take care of the fire first and then deal with the cancer.
Naturally, the only people who seem to be interested in actually doing something concrete about job creation are Democrats. So much for that Republican ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’ campaign last year! Clearly, they believe that protecting corporate jet subsidies and passing laws taking control of my lady bits are far more important.
All true and quite clearly the crux of our problems at the moment. It has been a long time since I have seen a reference in the pundrity wash cycle to the consumer economy. What happened to the advice of “just go shopping”? Oh yes, now I remember, people borrowed tons of money because they were fooled into thinking that the rapid appreciation of their real estate holdings would continue forever. Shame on them. They were complicit in an enormous fraud, but almost without exception the victims of that fraud, not the perpetrators. The perpetators are all living the life of Riley in their villas and estates in tax havens without extradition treaties.
Jobs are the result of right actions on the part of the economy. The super rich make money from money, not from doing anything. The less they do the better, doing things involves some risk. Making money from money is virtually risk free. A credit card contract is invioable gospel. A collective bargaining contract, not so much.
There is an enormous amount of infrastructure in the US that needs to be maintained and in many cases rebuilt. Instead of spending that money here, we have spent more than a trillion dollars in Afgahnistan and Iraq inciting the people there to hate us.
Slipstream –
Saddly I don’t think the Gov. cares a whit what you say or think, his interest is purely in his own future and that involves ingratiating himself to moneyed interests who will make him wealthy provided he does their bidding. The should be a penalty for malgovernance. And george bush should be the poster boy for it. Imprisonment is not punative enough, after all those imprisoned are at least fed and sheltered from the elements. Homelessness seems more appropriate.
Krubozumo Nyankoye, , ” his interest is purely in his own future and that involves ingratiating himself to moneyed interests who will make him wealthy provided he does their bidding”. So well put. He should be ashamed of himself for not fairly govenoring the Alaskans he promised in his OATH . Homelessness would be the worst punishment of all. Imagine how many people would take advantage of him .Imprisonment, like you mentioned is not punative enough. I think he should make a PROCLAIMATION that EVERYDAY he promises to be fair to the Alaskans and honor his OATH.
He should take back his proclaimation from August 6, when he proclaimed to be in the same realm of thinking as Rick Perry, I am so ashamed of him for being so biased. Please Krubozumo, write all the letters you possibly can to support what you feel in your heart. People don’t know how you feel until you tell them. govenor@alaska.gov. Thank you for telling us how you feel..
Does anyone actually believe any politician runs for office for a reason other than enriching themselves and their friends and families? Why do we never hear pols express how honored they are to serve their nation and how humble they are to be elected? Serving your country in politics and being a leader used to be the pinnacle of a politician’s career,now its just a beginning step to obtain wealth at the expense of “American” ideals. Most pols today are crooked liars. They know it and they know we know it and they don’t care that we know they know that we know. Its business as usual because chances are they will be re-elected regardless.
Mike, regrettably you are mostly correct. There are far too many multimillionaires in congress and in state government across the board. Oddly you don’t see people like the Kochs, Gates, etc. etc. running for office. They have so much money they know it is easier, simpler and more subtle to just buy the politicians in order to get the government they want. They don’t give a rodent’s posterior for anyone who doesn’t measure up to their “crass”… oops I think I meant class.
I think we should all be impressed though at what happened in Wisconsin, it was not a game changing victory across the board, it was not a rout, but it is a wind change spelling serious problems for republican over-reach if we can maintain the momentum, stay riled up and focused and reinstate rights that have been usurped and trampled.
Does anyone remember right after Obama came into office the dustup over cancelling huge bonuses for bank employees that had just been bailed out because they wrecked the whole world economy? The RWNJs then were saying how sacred a contract was. Well apparently contracts with wall street white collar grifters are far more sacred that union contracts with police, fire fighters, EMTs, and a multitude of lazy good for nothing union thugs we used to call teachers.
I have to stop thinking this way….
Really? – nice handle.
Oaths are odd things are they not. They have a context in a legal sense that if you lie under oath of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god, there are consequences. But if you ‘believe’ that YOUR god is the only law that applies to you, then such an oath is really meaningless is it not? Government officials are a class of people that are generally easy to recognize. They in fact have some obligation at some level to identify themselves as such. Thus they are also very easy to classify as “the other”, not one of us. Not a believer. A heathen. Thus lying under oath is perfectly fine.
Perhaps Mudflats should hold classes, or symposia (from the greek for drinking party) on specific topics such as dominionism, the apostolic reformed church, the seven mountains strategy, prayer warriors and such like code words that the rw is infested with at present. It might enlighten the many other moderate religious people to the fact they they too are considered heathens. To return to the context of this reply, I think the word “friend” may well have a special meaning to members of the LDS. Just speculating…
Arrrrg! Punitive.
A young man came to my door this evening. He is going door to door through the neighborhood asking people to email Gov. Parnell and ask him to keep his promise not to “trade one resource for another.” This is about the proposed coal mine which would destroy the salmon spawning grounds of the Chuitna (or “Chuit River”) to mine coal. Mudflats has written about this:
https://themudflats.net/2011/03/17/i-cant-eat-coal-and-other-lessons-from-tyonek/
I will write Gov. Parnell and ask him to stick to his promise and oppose the Chutina coal mine proposal. I hope other Mudflatters do the same. The email address is governor@alaska.gov
Slipstream, Thank you for this information. I read the Mudflats link , and I sure learned alot about the Chutina coal mine proposal and how the community feels so strongly about it being opposed . I sent an email to govenor@alaska.gov telling him to stick to his promise and oppose the Chutina coal mine proposal. Under subject I wrote: Honoring Promises.
Good, but correct spelling counts. The river is the Chuitna. The email address is governor@alaska.gov
Thank you slipstream.
I never heard of 1971’s The Point. I know John Lennon wished he could sing like Harry Nilsson (and I’ve heard rumors it was Nilsson who got Lennon into junk).
OTOH, this is an open thread, and here’s some news about Oregon, salmon, and jobs (and the judiciary), which I found out about through a Sierra Club email alert:
http://sierraclub.typepad.com/layoftheland/2011/08/a-huge-win-for-salmon-and-jobs.html
There’s also a “take action” on the page. When I signed it, I customized my message with a mini-rant about Pebble Mine, and Alaska salmon and jobs.
Zyxomma, I read the link you gave and I thank you. “salmon inspire us for their persistence and determination” , I was moved my this quote. , also responded to “take action”.
Willard Romney met some people at the Iowa State Fair that weren’t overly polite. They kept interrupting this goon with chants of Wall Street greed and he answered back”Corporations are people.” He finally got the idea that some people in the crowd weren’t going to vote for him. He isn’t as clueless as certain female pols. I’m proud that not all Iowans are extremely polite to everyone all the time. Go Hawkeyes!
My jaw about hit the floor when I heard him say that! The tone he used was so angry, that for a minute there, I thought he was mocking the SCOTUS and their decision! Then I realised he was serious…
When he continued the “Corporations are people” statement with: ““Of course they are; everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?” I honestly, went into fits of nearly uncontrollable laughter! The great conviction with which he said it and the absurdity of it were a combination too great for me!
Sadly, I have a feeling everyone is going to be concentrating on the first part of what he said..the part everyone already knows…the ho-hum, SCOTUS already decided that…the wtfever part. What folks should be concentrating on, IMHO, is the second part of his statement.
If we progressives can just keep hammering away at the bonafide *statististics” of exactly how much of the corporation’s profits actually *ever* goes “to the people” who are NOT part of that corporation (ie — doesn’t go to the corp’s middle and upper management and, mainly, to their CEOs), I think we stand a good chance of truly making Mitt and those who think like him *cough* $arah *cough* into MAJOR laughingstocks. beth.
beth –
You have to bear in mind that most of the stock of corporations is owned by other corporations and banks. That is one of the great illusions of the so called free market. Little people holding a few hundred or a few thousand shares are chaff in the wind.
Oh, NOES!!eleventy11!! You mean to tell me St Ronnie’s “trickle down economy” is nothing more than $arah’s, Mitt’s, the rwnj’s, et al’s completely fabricated mythfull thinking? beth.
Beth – Yep, sorry to break it you ya sistah but somebody had to do it right?
One thing that is deeply troubling about the entire republican field so far as I can see, all of them are wearing their religious righteousness on their sleeves. They are the chosen (seems someone is having a bit of a dither over decisions from on high). Not only do they all ‘believe’ they are the exceptional people, born and destined to rule over all us infidels. but by definition however they choose to interpret their delusional world view has got to be right, evidence, events, everything else be damned. There are still a little over 12,000 deliverable nuclear weapons in the world and we have a little less than half of them. Any city on earth can be eradicated within about an hour’s time (allowing for retargeting) by one of these morons in a fit of pique. You want to talk about hostage taking?
I get what you are saying, I know you are on the side of reason and governance, so just mark down my rather dolerous reply as the product of 50+ years of disillusionment.
What really frosted my posterior was the the little patronizing bit he added to the end: “my friend” He actually did it twice and it sounded extremely arrogant and condescending, as though he was schooling someone who was clearly less intelligent than he is.
Sort of like that unspoken “you idiot” that we all add to the end of our sentences sometimes. The difference is, we usually don’t actually verbalize it AND we’re not running for President.
I suspect that that kind of superior attitude doesn’t go over well at the Iowa State Fair!
See my reply to beth above…
Well then..hats off to the filmlette, and song..and as to the Colbert ad..from last night..sigh..loved it too!
Stephen Colbert’s 1st two superPAC ads: “with an A ~ for Iowaaaaaa” 🙂 !
http://www.colbertsuperpac.com/episodeiv-anewhope/
🙂
This is a cool article from Organic Consumers Association about steps we can take to try to right the U.S. Titanic before we hit the iceberg:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_23752.cfm
“The reason we now suffer a ruthless Corporatocracy is because we no longer control our own democratic system. Puppet candidates have rigged themselves into office and manipulated our government to hand corporations the keys to the kingdom. We the People are now the rabble outside the gates, reduced to begging the rulers within to please be just a little less ruthless. Funny how they don’t listen.
Our elections have been bought or stolen for decades, but the People are only now waking up. Most of the public (including Al Gore) knows that George W. Bush stole the Presidency in 2000, and many are aware (including John Kerry) that he stole it again in 2004. Republican operatives apparently decided not to steal the White House in 2008 once it became clear that Obama was headed for a landslide. But whether elections – or politicians – are literally stolen, or simply bought (including Barack Obama), the outcome is the same.”
Zyxomma –
I am sorry but I can’t be that cynical to think that Obama has been as you say bought. To be frank, I have to say that is a cheap shot. If you consider the amount of opposition he has had to face, and the vitriol, deprecation and blatent racist hate, I think he has done an amazing job of keeping a clear head, trying to fix seriously broken things and at the same time appealing to the obvious self-evident fact that we will not work our way out of the mess we are in unless we cooperate. So his theme of compromise, though it seems so passive, is really the only available option to becoming just like your enemies and adopting a policy of scorched earth.
I would not trade places with him. If he had any sense he would resign like the quitter queen did and in more frank and forthright terms depart with a speech that said, since all you think you can do so much better than me, have at it. And good luck, I am moving to Kenya.
Krubozumo Nyankoye, I love the way you think.
The above was not my opinion, but a quote from the link I posted above, hence the quotation marks. There are plenty of things President Obama has done that I disagree with, including cabinet posts (Vilsack, Salazar). However, I wouldn’t trade places with him for all the quartz in Tibet. For that matter, for all the rocks in the Smithsonian (world’s best rock collection, as I’m sure you know already). President of the United States has got to be one of the hardest jobs on the planet, especially in the current political climate. I couldn’t do it. I get it, he’s playing poker, a game I’ve never learned (although I’m sure I could; I learned contract bridge).
The problem does not lie with him. The problem is that we need more progressives in both houses of Congress, and need to support more the few we have. I’m not abandoning him. I’m not giving up. We can’t “do over” the last 30 years of bad legislation, and I do appreciate every glimmer of hope. Health and peace.
Zyxomma – sorry I misapprehended your comment I simply lost track of the quotes, but I still strenuously disagree with the quote.
Although the poker analogy is good, I am reminded more of that scene in the movie Deer Hunter, playing Russian roulette with the long term weflare and stability of the US and the rest of the world.
Thanks for this link, Zyx.
Clean elections = foundation of democracy = peaceful transitions of power
paper ballots and purple fingers, if that’s what it takes
I’m into my 6th decade and am surprised to acknowledge that I completely, totally, missed “The Point”, back in the day. Of course, I frequently “don’t get the point” of something, which is probably due to me not being the brightest light in the harbor, but regarding Ol’ Harry and The Point, I’ve never even heard of it, or else, I totally forgot about it from all those years ago.
That surprises me. In trying to reconstruct where I was and what I was doing back then, in 1971, I remember it as the year that I completed college. I graduated, exhausted, one Saturday in August, after which, together, my husband and I moved me back to our home 150 miles away. After “vacationing” on Sunday, I began employment on Monday.
As to it being now, exactly 40 years later, I can speak with some assuredness that TODAY I miss what’s left of my mind.
Oh well… Cute song, sweet video. Thanks for sharing that, AKM.
Unfortunately I too am surprised that I missed “The Point” in 1971. Back in 1971 I was a first time mom and now I wish I would have heard “the Point, and I, too, would have been singing the song. I do remember “Put the Lime in the Coconut”,another song sung by him.
Last evening we watched three science programs on Public Television – two on Mars and one on the history of the telescope. There are serious lessons to be taken from the information gathered thus far from the ever closer study of Mars: 1) protect our water, 2) protect our atmosphere, and 3) protect our magnetic shield. Our planet is very small in what is, apparently, an ever-expanding universe and there’s no place else to go. Actually, there’s a fourth lesson: working together (many nationalities teaming up to tackle the technology and costs of these incredible telescopes) is the only way forward for our planet. Since he was an underwriter of the two Mars documentaries, I hope that David Koch watched and learned from them. We should all, here and in every other country, be doing our best to protect our planet.
Good advice.
beaglemom –
I want to applaud the sentiments you have expressed here, they are salient to all of our current worries as well as to the ultimate history of humanity whatever it might be. We are an extraordinary species. We have been extraordinarily succesful for the past 300 years or so. For a few thousand before that we managed to increase and support our population out of all reasonableness in terms of our niche in the global ecosystem, we populated virtually every corner of the planet. But this kind of thing is really not all that unique, many times in the past, organisms have achieved a kind of dominance or hegemony that allowed them to persist and diversify for not just a handful of millenia, but hundreds of millenia of millenia.
I am not so keen on the planetary comparison between Mars and Earth. Though it has some credibility, it is a stretch because we don’t really know much about the ancient history of Mars and probably won’t for a long time. What we know of our earth is of far greater and momenous importance. Both water and oxygen are commodities that we utterly depend upon to live. Both of them are subject to a capitalistic mindset that would monetize them. I am not at all worried about the magnetic field. I can’t grasp how that might be subject to human intervention.
Again, I have to stop…
OT-
As I sit here with my morning coffee, nursing my head ( late golf round yesterday)and musing a bit, I’ve rememberd a cartoon strip from an old Playboy issue, where Annie and her sidekick attend a KKK meeting,and thru a series of revelations and misadventures, the KKK end up striking out a number of the items in their oath…. and ending up with the remaining words …”We Are Sick”. I’ve decided to apply the same principle to Sarah’s next TV interview, and to strike out the buzz words to see what’s left.. Liberal Democrats, Lame Stream Media,Obamacare,Real Americans ..wonder what I’ll end up with at the end…..
What do you use to hit golf balls with that makes your head hurt? I like your idea and can see where you would have to nurse your head some more.
I don’t golf myself but I used to run golf tournaments quite often for my old job.
From what I recall, it’s not the first 18 holes that cause the aching heads the next morning…it’s the ‘nineteenth hole’ that’s usually the culprit! 😉
And Ben, I suspect that listening to Palin’s interviews would give you a much worse headache than even getting hit in the head with a golf club!
I played soccer for 20 years, so “heading” the ball is sort of ingrained, but golf balls don’t go as far that way… hence the need for the 19th hole !
Another Harry gone to soon.
I so love the point. “he’s got a point there!”
One of the best stories I read to my kids.