Fiscal Cliff

Doing Coast to Coast brought a lot of conservative readers to this blog. I want to clarify for you that I was raised in a conservative family, in a conservative neighborhood and I am married to a man whose parents are also conservatives. When I’m talking about Republicans I am not talking about people who are the voter class – I’m talking about the leadership class. It’s my experience that people are people and when given the hard truth do the right thing no matter what label they may take on when they go into a voting booth.

I know Republican voters believe in hard work and personal responsibility – so do liberal people – the big difference is liberal/progressives believe there are some people who can’t pull themselves up by their own bootstraps not because they are lazy, but because circumstances are too great and overwhelming to do so alone. I would really encourage everyone to watch the Ken Burns documentaries on PBS about the dust bowl. The dust bowl happened in a very maverick part of the country – where people believe in personal responsibility and were and still are very hard-working and believe in contributing to society. However the scope of the problem (and seriously just look at pictures and you’ll see how enormously devastating this ecological disaster was year after year for about a decade) was just too enormous for any one family no matter how big their extended family. It was as if every other day a major hurricane or tornado devastated the region – this went on for a decade. These dust storms were miles high and would drop 3 feet of earth over everything making all farming impossible. It was so enormous that the storms actually dropped earth from Kansas and Oklahoma in Washington DC and New York City. The government stepped in to save lives – children and elderly people were dying of “dust pneumonia.” The story is almost too much to bear but I suggest people take a look at this because the parallels of the Great Depression and our situation with the Great Recession are enormous.

So for those who think I want only blessings for people of like mind that is more than insulting it’s insane. However I am equally insulted when we have Republican politicians who want to take away benefits to Veterans, raise the age of social security, take money and medicare away from the elderly and make the middle class pay an extra 2000 a year in taxes when they are struggling like never before. All so the wealthy one percent (who pay less than anyone else in taxes) can keep their tax breaks. It’s disgusting.

The SIN of AVARICE and GREED are at the heart of these ideals. These are not Christian values and they are not Spiritual values which is why I am against them – that is why I take issue with these spiritual diseases that I see as eating away at the fabric of our world. These evils have somehow (in the past 30 or so years) turned from being society’s seeing Greed as despicable  and shameful to a virtue.

Well, I want to remind everyone GREED IS NOT A VIRTUE! In no religious text and on no spiritual path is GREED considered anything but one of the roots of EVIL  And what we have seen during the Bush jr. years was a ramping up of this disease to the point where we the average American tax payers are being asked to pick up the tab for the frat party on Wall Street. Lots of people got rich scamming the middle class and the poor. And now we are being asked AGAIN to pay for IT! TWICE – seriously how is that good for anyone? Except the shameful few.

So now onto my prediction about the fiscal cliff.  Democrats will stay firm and there will be a period of inaction until Republicans are forced to go ahead with the program. Republicans will come to realize if they stick to their guns there will be civil unrest and if they keep with their ridiculous “plans” they will not just be killing their future careers, but putting the nail in the coffin of their party for years to come. Which honestly I do not want to happen.

Democracy needs a viable two party system – but Republicans are making a huge mistake playing to the one percent and then using trickery to try and cover their tracks. The cat is out of the bag now and continuing on this path is suicidal for their party. This will have a long-term effect on the political system and will put them into the position of being a very small minority party for years to come. My compliment to them presently for at least honestly showing their hand instead of hiding behind the BS “Trickle Down Economics,” stuff. At least they are clearly showing that they have no compassion for people who were either born after 1960 or born into families without an express lane to Harvard or Yale.

The biggest disgrace in my opinion is starting two wars, destroying hundreds of thousands of lives, forever injuring those who served along with their families not to mention the highest cost – all the people who had to die for what? Both our troops and all the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of the Bush/Cheney oil grab that turned into a reckless pointless war which the Bush/Cheney administration lied us into.

All of us whether we want to admit it or not actually rely on systems to help us evolve whether that is the family system, the educational system or in the worst case scenarios people who are forced to take help from the government. No one wants to be in that position despite the propaganda of “welfare queens,” welfare has been reformed so that people can’t stay on it for any length of time. Not to mention if you have ever known anyone who has had to take government assistance (which includes social security, disability, medicare, food stamps, unemployment) they do it because they need to generally they aren’t proud of it. Many people are embarrassed about having to use food stamps, or get help of any kind.

Everyone wants to be independent and we must remember that if we are to be a “Christian Nation,” as is the herald of the Republican party, then we must actually posses those Christian values. If you have any doubts about what they are just ask yourself, “Would Jesus walk past a poor distraught person without helping him? Would Jesus want to rob the poor to give to the wealthy?” No. That’s the answer. If you are a Christian I can’t see how the current Republican plutocratic platform in any way conforms to your values. Either the Republican leadership needs to change or those who are staying loyal to a party they once believed in need to take a closer look at what is actual and factual and see if it squares with their real values. I contend it does not.

I do not think that 98% of Republican voters would vote that way if all the facts were broken down without the incendiary rhetoric that is used to make the leadership appear to be in the same camp as the good people who vote for them.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Yule and anything and every other holiday I am forgetting or don’t know about – Have a great holiday season.

Many blessing to all,

Denise

War is here… now

Here’s my answer to a reader about Donald Trump and all that he represents:

Besides Donald Trump being a dangerous horrible idiot he’s also a narcissistic egomaniac. I think he really believes he could win the presidency because he’s a dangerously delusion person. Of course he would completely ruin this country if he were elected into office because he is about as diplomatic as a live grenade. Do I think he could win? Well all I have to say is Arnold Schwarzenegger. People seem to be in love with celebrity – we have replaced the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses with morons, narcissists and idiots. Perhaps we need the old religion which had more examples and pathways to the Great Spirit. Perhaps we yearn for connection through those who mirror us. Unfortunately if this is true we are in a very sad state.

We are currently in a class war – one that dates back to the blowing open of the gates – the Watergate era, followed by the first truly corporate president Ronald Reagan. I’m not sure Reagan knew the damage he was doing. I like to believe that he was hoodwinked by the right to be the spokesman of their (internal in terms of doing it inside the government) coo without really knowing he was. His son, whom I greatly respect, is primarily the reason I believe Ronald senior was most likely a descent man used (as so many middle and lower-income people are being used now) by the wealthy to advance a truly amoral agenda.

I always scoffed at the notion of “trickle down economics” firstly because I grew up in a very affluent neighborhood (that we didn’t belong in – we lived in a townhouse on social security checks and life insurance my father had bought years before his passing when I was 10). I knew the hearts and minds of the very wealthy in ways very few are privileged to know. I knew their children who espoused their values without the crust of age and experience to keep their real feelings and philosophies covered. I heard some of the most unimaginably amoral, immoral and hideous things said as common truths – social Darwinism was a given in the most extreme sense of that statement. There was no empathy for the underprivileged, only a social club that went into the ghetto to teach illiterate children as a sort of bait and switch to their true value system which was the belief that the wealthy are better – they deserve more, they are supreme and the poor are lazy, stupid and deserve what they get even if that means suffering and death. Hideous but absolutely true – many probably won’t believe me. In fact I know people won’t believe me because I’ve been telling people, friends, descent human beings this since I was entrenched in this bizarre world where people went to church on Sunday and then sucked the earth dry of every resource in order to hoard it for themselves. Yes, it is easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than a wealthy man into heaven. I saw this first hand.

The first stage of the war against the poor and middle class was to dismantle the unions. Sure some were bloated, some were corrupt but lest we forget what life was like before they existed – just pick up a book by Dickens and you’ll see clearly the way the rich like it. The civil war – a rich man’s war to keep their slaves, using the poor southerners via their racism and pride as a tool against their interest (living) to fight a war that only the wealthy truly had a stake in and only the wealthy benefited from – this is a perfect example of the way many of the wealthiest one percent would like to see our country go – if they could have slaves again, they’d do it in a heartbeat, hence the dismantling of the minimum wage, next it will be age restrictions for working if they get momentum on the wage issue.

There are two kinds of rich – old money or the idle rich as I like to call them, who do nothing but live off the achievement of some great, great, great, great, grandparent who actually contributed something to the world during their time and then invested the family money for generations to inherit. These idle rich hate the “Nuevo riche” the people who newly acquire money – meaning the people who actually earned the money they became wealthy from, the Bill Gates and the Steve Jobs of this world. You know the people who actually really produce jobs for regular folks, not the people who live off the fat left over from their (once common low to middle-class) ancestors. Those “old money” people spend their days taking care of themselves and their money, buying influence, protecting their interests and making sure they can make more money in the market. It’s interesting that they are usually the very same people who accuse poor people of being lazy when truly they have no purpose on this planet and are more akin to tics than human beings. They live off all of us who actually work and keep their world moving forward. The biggest way they contribute to the economy is through buying things, fancy furniture, fine art, clothing, etc.

Now here’s the thing. The 1960s was a very scary time for them, coming off the heels of the most financial growth of anytime during American history. The middle class grew to enormous proportions, the rich got richer as did everyone. You’d think that the wealthy would look upon the economy booming and love it because it means more money in their coffers. But with more money, more education came and people started asking questions. Why do we have to fight the communists in Vietnam? Isn’t that a sovereign nation with the right to decide its own fate? Riots took place, the left became extremely radicalized and the wealthy started to become the target of the growing understanding that a capitalist culture is antithetical to democracy as it stood. Money buys influence and effects legislation. The tying together of corporate interests with the government is fascism and as we all know corporate interests are generally not in line with what’s good for the average person, such as toxic dumping, air pollution, and endless problems associated with industry. Not to mention the corporate bottom line is biggest when they have low overhead, cheap labor and don’t have to pay taxes. Break up the unions, you break up people’s collective bargaining power, work on the congress – lobby for tax breaks for corporations and pay less taxes you get the idea.

All of this has been going on – this war began after FDR put in place regulations to control monopolies (the original source of the world financial crisis that plunged us into the Great Depression as well as Europe, especially Germany). It was those regulations or laws, which were based on the same sort of laws we as ordinary citizens would have to follow (in principle) that kept capitalism on a relatively even playing field. The breakdown of which over the past 30 years we are now seeing the results of.

Forget the history lesson above, here’s the point I want to make invention, intellectual leaps, progress and solutions don’t come from the rich, even jobs don’t, only a very small minority of jobs come directly from those newly rich people who actually are contributing members of society. Invention and intellectual leaps come from the middle-class, the class of people educated enough to want to reach upward and grab the golden ring not people sipping Manhattans while tanning themselves in Tahiti. The wealthiest one percent don’t have an incentive to solve anything, for them everything is solved, they are taken care of. Sure there are those rare individuals who want to contribute and who I salute like the young documentary film maker who exposed his world in “The One Percent,” an excellent entrance into the way people are indoctrinated into this bizarre entitled ideology and also a revelation on many other fronts.

If we lose the middle-class we become a third world country. And we also lose any chance we have of solving Global Warming, of advancing civilization or developing space travel. The rich will own us (as they wish to) and we will eventually be pushed into fighting or dying or both. They have successfully used racism/sexism/homophobia and fear to divide us. They have so confused the average person that he/she often votes against their own interest.

It is not a coincidence that the world is literally being flooded, deluged with tornadoes, earthquakes and soon hurricanes at unprecedented levels. It’s a wake up call: we must come together and fix what is broken.

I ask those who have the power and money to actually make a difference in this world these simple questions: What will it be worth when you have everything and there is nothing and no one left to lord it over or give it to? Are you that insecure you need to feel better than other people, is that what blinds you to the suffering and pain surrounding you? Do you love your family? If you answered yes to that, then what the hell are you doing to preserve this world for them?

Many blessings to the good and may the greedy find the world as wicked as they are,

Denise

Generations Continued… (And kind of answering some readers)

I will get to the financial questions this weekend. I never looked at an exact date for the actual total bottom out of the market just gave a general time frame from the end of December until about the 20th of January because this is when Pluto goes over the Dow’s ascendant. Except for the exact start was December 21, 2008. To me the main message was to get out back in the fall before the first drop hit which was why I started the blog.

But unfortunately I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the free fall, and I will look at other factors that could set off another big scary plunge coming up in January.  

As I said before Pluto going over the ascendant of the Dow was going to bring to light some serious scandals, criminal activity going on behind the scenes, and a loss of faith in the market itself because of ethics issues. Maidoff (ironic name) is the biggest, but I doubt he will be the only one to be exposed, and fall.

We are in a time of reckoning. A very karmic time, for those who have been greedy and materialistic they will learn major lessons now. Remember that old quote from the bible, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” We are seeing the beginning of the powerful’s fall and a new respect for those old time values, things you can’t buy like politeness, kindness, caring, empathy and good old thriftiness. It’s about time greed became the disgusting word it always has been.

Enough about that! Let’s talk about generational astrology and the first Gen-X president (barely gen-x but still) President Elect Obama. We will go from the mantel of the “Me” generation to that Uranus/Pluto conjunction (in Obama’s case it’s very loose, and his Uranus is in Leo, so he’s not full tilt, but kind of transitional) in Virgo.

Gen-Xers can be annoyingly idealistic on the bad side, and on the good side they actually really do try to walk their talk, whatever their talk is. They are good for their word. Most grew up in fractured families and were ignored not just by the families, but by the culture at large which had a literal boner for everything sexual. One could not enter a store without seeing statues of naked people humping. It was a very child inappropriate time. A time when being a kid or having one was seen almost as a sad debilitating disease that slowed down not only a chance to get laid and wasted (although being a parent has never stopped people from partaking if they wanted to) but also your chance to explore yourself. You know that ever fascinating Me, that has so many things to express and do. 

I found it deeply ironic (that’s the very nice way of putting this) that during the Vietnam war, all war was horrible, when Me’ers were being drafted. Now, I agree war is bad. They were right. But the lame thing was war became good, when it meant cheaper gas in the old Ford 4 wheeler and it was (mostly poor kid) Gen-Xers going to Bagdad, suddenly war wasn’t such a horrible thing.

“We have to protect our interests.” I actually heard old hippies (who had been at one time anti-war) say things like that. It was a major 180. “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” and once they hit their 50s I heard arguments from this generation saying that it wasn’t until people were in their 50s and 60s that they were most productive.

Hey, that’s a coincidence, you’re in your 50s and 60s.

And I won’t say more about this because we all get it just from these few examples. I don’t want to whip them, there are many amazingly good people in this generation, and not all fall victim to these convenient 180s. And not everyone backtracked on their principles, but even those in this generation who are the good eggs agree with me that they, too, have been sorely disappointed by their fellow Me’ers in this regard. Some so disappointed that they have made the mistake of projecting this problem onto all of humanity instead of seeing it as a distinctly Pluto in Leo character trait. Not that they are the only people all of the time, but it is a generational marker. I actually had a history teacher in high school who was a Me’er and he said once, “You can’t change the world. We tried in the 60s and look what good it did. It didn’t make any difference.” 

When I pointed out to him that things took time to grow roots, and that a lot of things actually did change for the better because of the activism of the 60s, which we have to give props to the Pluto in Leo people for, they were a big part of this and this is their good side. They can be very generous and trusting. Problem was they kind of got their dreams crushed after the assassination of JFK and MLK and Bobby Kennedy and many of them gave up and went toward the negative side of the Leo tendency, which was pure un-adulterated ego gratification in the form of materialism, greed, self-absorption, an inability to sacrifice the self for the greater good, and using sexuality as an ego pick-me-up.

Ok, let’s get onto the Generation Y which has more in common with the Me’ers, just as Generation X has more in common with children born during the 1990s (I’m not sure they have a name yet so let’s call them Zers). Generation Y has Neptune in Sag, Pluto in Libra, Uranus in either Libra or Scorpio. This period went from about the fall of 1972 until around the fall of 1984. If you were born in 1971-fall 1972, you fall in between Generation X and Y and will have qualities of both. In some cases you maybe an Xer or a Yer depending on your date of birth as the planets retrograded back and forth for about a year.

Y’s were the kids who went to rave’s. They are very social, and with Neptune in Sag, a bit of a lost soul generation. As a group they spent most of their young adult years floating, the economy was good when they came of age, but they grew up in fractured homes. They often just wanted things to be peaceful and hated confrontation.

They also do not have the same obsession with integrity that Gen-X’ers do. They are more bendable and willing to go along with trends, fit in with their generation and are more social, less critical of others and more accepting.

They had a hippie like feel when they were younger and were more akin to the Pluto in Leo types in terms of accepting (and abiding) excess, and had multiple partners where as Gen-X’ers never dated, they have one boyfriend or girlfriend and then moved on to another. They chastised anyone who even tried the multiple boyfriends or girlfriends idea unlike Y’ers or Me’ers. Gen-Xer’s were and are sort of prudish about sexuality unless it falls into the Neptune in Scorpio side of their personality, and has elements of bondage, S & M or a dark thing about it. Even then one could argue the sexual repression built into the X’ers finds a release in the darker side of sexuality and fantasy. 

Next I’ll go more into Y’ers  and those born in the 80s, 90s and compare them to the other generations as well…

Best wishes to all.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Denise