Monday, Jun 16th
Last update08:07:31 AM GMT
Editorial Glance
Remember when the credit card offers came in your mail by the handful? Those days maybe about to return. Credit card debt backed securities (they call them bonds now) are now the hot investment with tens of billions being issued by the big banks.
The reason these new bonds are so popular is that investors are suddenly seeing credit card debt as a safe again. In fact they are so popular that they aren't paying returns all that much better than government bonds that pay hardly anything at all.
The civil right achievements of Martin Luther King are quite justly the focus of the annual birthday commemoration of his legacy. But it is remarkable, as I've noted before on this holiday, how completely his vehement anti-war advocacy is ignored when commemorating his life (just as his economic views are).
By King's own description, his work against US violence and militarism, not only in Vietnam but generally, was central - indispensable - to his worldview and activism, yet it has been almost completely erased from how he is remembered.
It's a chicken-and-egg sort of a situation, wondering how much language determines thought, and the amount that's the other way around. Maybe there's no way to know which came first, or whether it's at all relevant -- or if "both" is the correct answer.
Somehow, I find it easy to get distracted by such chicken-and-egg considerations, especially whenever the feathers really get flying at the Congressional chicken coop, and when every besotted member of that prideful roost feels the urgent, imperious need to crow, squawk, cry, or flail around in the dirt and mud.
Scribbles on a page are just placeholders for errant thoughts and daydreams, drifting here and there, looking for anchor points of purchase. These symbols and squiggles we call writing are feeble things, unable to hold a candle to personal observation. It is a shame we haven't evolved the ability to directly share our observations with one another, whether singly or a few million at a time.
In a science fiction film, there would have to be wires, connections, and a massive control panel choked and jammed with clusters of lights and switches. In my version, it would be accomplished without machines or equipment, but be done by a simple thought process one could learn early in life -- and be about as complex and demanding of you as having the inspiration to move across the room in order to get a drink of water, and then doing so.
The mega store chain Walmart, that one that likes to drape itself in Red, White and Blue in order to better sell its Communist Chinese goods, has announced it will 'create' 100,000 jobs for military veterans.
Why will it push 100,000 already poor people out of the way in favor of giving poverty wage jobs to the veterans of George Bush's imperialist follies? Because it will get hundreds of millions in cash from the government for doing so. They wouldn't do it otherwise, this isn't without risk. These people are trained in combat, and have served under fire...
Through the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Christian Crusader and Faith Healer Kathryn Kuhlman cured my father-in-law twice from liver cancer … before he died of liver cancer. I do not hold Jesus responsible for the death of my father-in-law.
I’d say Jesus’ role in the whole affair was pretty much nonexistent because at the time He, The Son of Gawd, had been dead for almost two millennia. You can’t blame Him if His batteries were running a little low.
Teasing out a thought sometimes means pulling along any number of odds and ends you didn't know were attached, like tugging a thread on your sweater. Such is the case with plain ol', unpretentious Patience. I had no idea it was hooked to so much until I started messing around with the concept.
I thought about Patience and gave it a short jerk -- like a test-yank, to see what was attached to what -- and all sorts of things fell off my mental shelf onto the floor of my skull.
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