We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Just when you thought air travel couldn’t get any more invasive, authoritarian and downright miserable, the Department of Homeland Security and two U.S. carriers are determined to prove you wrong.
The banker bailouts of the 2008/09 period changed my life forever. I was working on Wall Street at the time, and the way in which the government rallied around the financial institutions that torched the world and left its victims in the dust threw my entire delusional worldview into disarray. Prior to that, I had bought into the absurd assumption that I was financially successful at a young age primarily because I was hard-working and talented.
If there was ever any doubt that most members of Congress work for themselves and not the people, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia wants to dispel you of such hallucinations. Here’s a disturbing excerpt from a section of a recent post on his official website, Manchin Pledges to Return to Era of Bipartisan Cooperation and Agreement:
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
I owe my soul to the new Google modular home
Last December, I noted the following in the post, ‘Then We Will Fight in the Shade’ – A Guide to Winning the Media Wars:
Ever since it became obvious that the Democratic Party had no interest in pivoting to addressing the very real economic insecurities faced by tens of millions of Americans following Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing loss in the 2016 election, I knew that Trump was being gifted a very real opportunity for a second term. That’s how corrupt and stupid Democratic leadership is.
Comedian Lee Camp has hosted a show on RT called Redacted Tonight since 2014. While I certainly don’t always agree with his conclusions, he’s clearly a passionate, genuine and highly intelligent American who cares deeply about the country and the people living in it. He believes (rightly), that our fellow citizens are are suffering unnecessarily due to our demonstrably parasitic, corrupt, imperial, oligarchic, corporate-state.
Irresponsible and dangerous lending practices in the U.S. automobile market have been flagged by many people for a long time, but nobody knows exactly when it will all come to a head and create real problems. Today, I want to flag the latest warning sign.
Bloomberg reports:
