You know...I really don't care how you lean

It's interesting that my brother asked me if I agreed with everything in the Constitution, having noted before that the Founding Fathers were certainly better than the Smothers Brothers but fell short of the Three Stooges in terms of great groups in history. Okay. I fib. He didn't really say they were worse than the Stooges.

Funny thing is, I haven't responded to him yet. I think he makes a good point. Just because a group of old, dead guys said something 200+ years ago doesn't make it golden, evergreen. However, it doesn't necessarily make it irrelevant, either. As an old boss has said to me many, many times, "Arp, it's usually in the middle." C'est vrai!

We are a centrist nation. Not hard left, not hard right. Not strict constitutionalist, not Timothy-Leary zealots. So, as I dig deep and consider my younger brother's parry, I find myself dazed and confused. By the way, I wanted to say Zagnuts instead of zealots back there, but my instinct for prim and proper got the best of me. For those of you that get the Zagnuts reference...right side, middle of the ribs to you!

Where was I? Yes. Centrist America. No, no, I didn't say Central America. Centrist. I sometimes shudder at the prospect of us shimmying on that narrow ridge between right and left. We're too daft to understand that right or left is not the endgame. Yes, I know, the principles of each side is what we know to be the endgame. But let's consider this bit of folly: We all want the the other side to be on our side and vice versa. Despite the pure insanity (and idiocy) of that notion, we would all be pretty damn bored if it actually happened. Imagine? No name calling, no negative advertisements, no Pelosi/Gingrich sound bites, and no perfunctory insults hurled about during Bill Mahr's show.

What's all that mean? The fight between right and left - I like to call it the fight between wrong and wrong, but I digress - has become more about entertainment and human beings viciously cannibalizing one another. For what? That great feeling one gets from being correct and/or from watching modern-day gladiators wage a battle of neatly-packaged gaffes and stutters. It's a pretty sad state of affairs.

By the way, I still think the Founding Fathers are pretty awesome. They weren't perfect, right or left, but they had the courage to put it out there and create a system which has evolved (devolved?) into what it is today, right or wrong. We, the people, have much work to do to keep it headed in the correct direction.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace. Oh...write, call, or email your congressperson and tell them to support term limits.

A don of another day

"I have murdered sleep."

I read these words so many years ago I hate to consider how time has changed me, changed the world, and changed how time itself treats us both. Though there are many interpretations of this now hallowed line from Shakespeare'sMacbeth, I received yet another one today.

During a discussion this evening at a spiritual class, a nice lady asked the teacher who or what decides justice? Who makes that final, fateful decision? "God?" she asked. Our teacher is a funny man, but a very, shall we say, straightforward man. His brow ruffled and everyone knew there was a major dissertation coming down the pike.

I'll spare you the details, but it came down to this: the ultimate judge and jury is the tandem of cause and effect. For every cause, there is an effect. In the case of Macbeth, in a figurative sense of course, he murdered his own sleep even though he vaulted to royalty by murdering another. He can no longer rest peacefully. He will always feel the burden of guilt. He will always be dead even when he is alive. Cause and effect. Whether we like it or not, our actions today will face an increasingly hard or beautiful action at some point. Our ignorance of and desire for peace throughout the world will nullify much of the good that we sow. Our demand for things will far outstretch our ability to provide for those things. Our tradition and ritual only take from the earth and from each other time, energy, and intellect with the resulting reality only wanting more. "Chasing the high," as Tony Schwartz, CEO of The Energy Project, puts it, will get us nowhere but to the next high and the next one.

As the discussion climaxed, our teacher explained that we were, indeed, very lucky. Though we may not have much, as say compared to a mafioso, we had peace knowing we could get up, walk gingerly to our vehicles, and drive home in absolute safety. A don does not have that peace. That simple bit of heaven on earth is gone. "Even sitting here, under this window," teacher said, pointing to the transom above, is too much. Who has his aim on me, thinks the don? Who wants me dead? He has murdered sleep, too. His peace is gold-plated, perhaps, but it is fleeting.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace and bounty for all. Abundance thinking is a good thing.

Troubling week

Did you think, for one moment, they wouldn't raise the ceiling? Did you sense that the political bordellos of DC were out to milk the limelight yet again? I watched the debt ceiling debacle unfold from afar. No, I don't have cable TV. Yes, I'm just a little eccentric. I digress.

At the end of the day, the shogunate in our heralded capital got nothing accomplished that could not have been accomplished by just deciding to cut the this year's budget immediately. We have cemented that it is quite alright in this country to live beyond one's means and then celebrate jubilantly afterwards. The political cranes did very little heavy lifting this past week. They simply pushed the mortar around. You know it. I know it. Sadly, they know it. So what's new?

• The tea party folks certainly stood their ground. As a libertarian, I'm a little put off by the tea party crowd. But that's just me as many in my party appear to be moving in that direction. I do see their influence growing, not ebbing, as we approach 2012. That spells danger for centrist Republicans. Splinters in the offing?
• Obama further distanced himself from his core, or did he? He managed victories in the weeks and months prior: gays in the military (what a waste of breath...like we didn't already know that to be the case) and Osama's demise. Though the latter is not a core ideology closer, it certainly doesn't detract from Obama's role as commander-and-chief.
• There seemed to be very little noise from Republican presidential candidates. They all pretty much said the debt ceiling raise was dead on arrival, but then, well, even they had to relent when their fellow Republicans voted for the increase or shuck and jive to kowtow to the tea leaves.
• Tim Geithner continues to leave me unimpressed. Well, perhaps that one's not really new.

At the end of the rainbow (and you thought I'd let the gay rights issue alone), we all have a government that's running and will be able to pay its bills. Awesome. There's still very little discourse on moving heaven and earth to lower our expenses, passing along more of the people's hard-earned income to, wait for it, the people, and limiting the role and power of government in our daily lives. It's a glass ceiling if you ask me. You and I, well, we are, tragically, the rats in the hold.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace and bounty for all. It's far less expensive than regime change.

The flywheel turns

At the present time, I am undergoing a bit of spiritual rebirth. It will be slow. It will be painful. I may even decide, eh, it's not worth it and ask for permission to go back to the womb, warm and secure, of just being. What strikes me about this process of rebirth is that I don't truly know very much about how to live life: what to make of it, how to develop stronger relationships, and how it all functions. It is very complex. It has more than we can ever have of it. Think about that: we can never have all of life. Why do we struggle so to advance just that single notion, knowing full well it is an unrealistic desire never to be filled?

When we bring this to the public stage - this wanting, desire, drive for it all - it really starts to devolve us instead of helping us to evolve. We become focused on rights instead of action. We veer from the right path to the easiest path. We take when we need to give. Extraction is the core theme and not gratitude, benediction, and investment.

Philosophy and religion aside, this is part of the problem with life. The desire to have it all creates so much complexity and agita that we end up with less, in terms of real bliss and happiness, than where we started. Why? That time is gone. Those moments to cherish with family and friends....gone. That decisions to advance the beachhead or stifle the competition or take out a nation had far-reaching and, in some cases, devastating consequences then, now, and tomorrow.

The latter, miraculously, can still be changed. We still have influence. We can still provide leadership. Instead of deciding who has chosen path A or B or C to salvation, and which one is better, why do we not concentrate on acting on the premise that all people are born good and it is our job to help them stay there, or perhaps if they have strayed, which most of us have, to find the path again.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace and happiness for all.

Meh...it's late

I want to go to sleep really bad. But I have several things to say:

1. Don't debate when you can act. Time is wasting.
2. Don't worship when you can teach. I believe there's no greater way to honor God than teaching something to someone. Something good of course.
3. Don't play before you practice. I've tried it. It sucks.
4. Give direction and not pity. A culture of pity leads to many bad things.
5. And this one is for me: I'm full. Say out loud now...I'm full.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace.

Table 1297. U.S. Foreign Economic and Military Aid Programs: 1980 to 2008

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s1296.pdf

It doesn't make me angry. It doesn't even make me sad. It disappoints me that a nation, a nation that espouses the benefits of liberty and the glory of liberty-loving people, entangles itself in many, many side deals. What are we after? Peace? Commerce? Oversight? Unconditional acceptance? It is no wonder that we provide welfare to the world-at-large in much the same way we provide it here at home. It needs to stop. As I wrote about a few days ago, let the real change begin.

As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace.

To photo or not to photo

You know, I really don't care. Show us the photos of OBL or don't. Let's stop talking about it. With all the crazy things that have happened in this country over the last 5 decades, perhaps a showing to a group of journalists, as indicated on one of the talk shows I was listening to today, or a small group of chipmunks might be warranted. Whatever! Let's move on. The man is dead, we have an economy to save, and we have much work to do on reforming our own tired, byzantine military-industrial-government complex.

Be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace.