Another Question and Answer (this one applies to everyone)

From a reader:

Denise,
Our community’s position/predicament and then my question….
Thoughts
I’m a 65 yr. older guy (a former teacher) who’s take on the economic recovery is tempered by both optimism and years of patience.

My wife and I, both empty nesters, live in a small community of about 10,000.

The economic “bail-outs” were/are intended to have an eventual trickle down flow of monies and confidence to the people.

It is very difficult for my wife and I and many of our close blue-collar friends (NOT rich/wealthy/well-to-do people) to believe or convince ourselves that a total or even meaningful recovery will happen soon, since the mass economic downturns that we all find ourselves sharing is many years in the making.

Yet, it seems as if a large number of folks expect miracles in the short to medium term.

Most of us still have work, which runs the gambit of part-time restaurant workers (me) to office workers, struggling small business owners, truck and cab drivers, and $16/hr. chefs and $10/hr. (plus tips) waitresses.
Question
Will patience and optimism eventually prevail to help guide us into a better future as envisioned by our new administration?
Thx

This is an excellent question and one that I’m sure everyone has thought about at one point or another the past couple of years. And my answer is complicated so here goes…

We are facing a paradigm shift, not just in how our countrymen have lived in the last century, but one on a much deeper level. Reality tells us there are limited resources – current research shows  it literally would take one and a half earths to sustain the lifestyles we have become accustomed to. If one takes into account the loss of jobs to China and the restructuring of how we do business that started to happen 30 or more years ago, we can see a flaw in the logic of our politicians at the time, who may have thought they were positioning us to be the bosses and intellectual captains of industry of the world. However, as we know no-one country can guarantee this to all of its people, we all have different gifts and to rely on an economy where we come up with the ideas and have other people produce them may have seemed like a good idea when the dot-com economy was booming. However we aren’t all meant to be inventors or captains of industry, even on a small scale.

We championed this new Skymall (the internet), however that’s really all it has amounted to in terms of dollars and sense. If anything it has caused a horrible spiral of deflation where people (in order to get the internet going) do more work and often for free in order to compete. People also take what used to be paid for – the very intellectual property that was supposed to be the back bone of this new economy. We don’t pay for music, films, ideas (I blog for free and many others who would probably be publishing books, instead now put their work out for no money). The good side of this is it broke down the very narrow gates and allowed each individual to play the role of gatekeeper.

However, it has literally broken the back of the middle-class people which has always relied on being paid for services rendered. For example this person is a retired teacher, perhaps instead of waiting tables this person could have tutored students part-time – they would have made better money, and it would have been less taxing physically, but because their neighbor the journalist no longer works for the paper (you can get all that news stuff on-line for free), the journalist can’t afford a tutor, let alone her mortgage. And the lawyer who would have made a comfortable living doing basic services like drawing up wills – well, there is Legal Zoom for that. The musician who goes on the road can no longer make money as people aren’t coming out (sales in this industry are down about a third from a couple of years ago). And all the major labels have collapsed, they don’t actually offer people money anymore to do deals (from the people I know who have been given offers). They also have no real foothold or power to distribute and radio’s back has been broken, first with the inception of Clear Channel which tried to control everything in old-fashioned Robber Barron monopoly style – this backfired due to XM and the internet and so on and so forth. The domino effect has been enormous.

All this is actually because after the rush into this new technology (the internet) and the ridiculously over-bloated expectations that came with it, “the bubble” as it was called on Wall Street, behind it all was a cold beast – a new paradigm we all rushed into without sorting out first. We are currently in the wild west without a Sheriff and while people have tried to “monetize” the internet, those attempts have been far too late and far too lame so far. It’s also pretty hard to monetize something when people have gotten used to getting that service or product for free and we are in a downward spiral of deflation.

Here’s the thing though, the internet does have amazing potential – the problem was, we rushed after this future and then were sent back 5 steps to the old economy we’d had during the Cold War, and all the advances were frozen – no one stepped forward to regulate or help organize this new economic world mall. Only those that followed a relatively conventional version of the new paradigm thrived, retails, wholesalers, people who already had built-in systems to deal with what this was – a new way to sell stuff or E-Bay which was based on the old paradigm of the auction.

Problem is all those who controlled intellectual property blew it off, the publishers, music industry, the film/TV industry. Instead of embracing MP3s when they first came out, and figuring out how to monetize this technology and get it under control, they ignored it. Instead of newspapers like the LA Times figuring out how to get online subscriptions up and expanding their staffs to check out stories on the internet, perhaps show that they had something real to offer and respond to or find a new way to do their job like focusing on more in depth reportage, stuff you can’t easily find online or some other new niche, they too ignored it until they were (and are) being replaced by it.

You get the picture.

And when you have one government (the Clinton Administration) setting our country up to be the purveyors of content, invention and intellectual property (which has its own set of problems like this is not for everyone just because they were born in the USA and limiting people’s options is always stupid) we dipped our toe in the water and got scared and ran back to our towels on the beach.

All of this, shipping jobs overseas, not controlling this new economic paradigm, burying our head in the sand (which is currently being done right now on the stock market, by the way, just as it was during the 90s so look for another rectification there) all leads to no jobs and deflation. And to answer the age-old debate, which is worse inflation or deflation? Hands down, deflation. Because deflation is what undeveloped nations deal with. People working their butts off for no money and not being able to pay anyone else for their work. That’s a lot worse than everyone’s salary and housing steadily going up 5% or whatever.

I know out of control inflation is also horrible, however, the course we are on is deflation. Meaning we are going to have to downsize our lives, we are going to have to stop living in this over-bloated consumerist way. We are going to learn to be happy with the little things and count our blessings and watch our money. It’s not fun, but we put ourselves in this position by being greedy, shortsighted and self-centered (I’m not talking about the average person, I’m talking about those who had the power to do the right thing but didn’t) and now we are all suffering for it.

I remember the first time I logged onto the internet in 1994. It was still very unorganized and nothing like it is now. I felt this very cold chaos on the other end, and I stayed away from it for a long time after that because it felt very creepy to me. I think I was  picking up on all that would be lost as a result of it and all that would change. I’m not saying the internet is bad, in fact I love it now that it is more organized. But I am saying that we rushed in where we should have tread lightly and had a battle plan. I just don’t think we knew what we were unleashing here and it will take us a long time to figure this new business paradigm out, at least for the remainder of Pluto being in Capricorn, until around 2024. This is going to be a long painful process. I’m not saying everything will be horrible it will just be a very unstable financial period, especially for big business which unfortunately has been ruling the world for the past several decades if not more.

If we want to make things better sooner, the best way to do so would be to break up the big corporations and look for solutions via regulation, to make sure people get paid fairly for whatever they contribute, but the likelihood of this happening is not great right now. I think Obama is keeping things status quo which is better than letting everything plunge into a dark abyss. I see him as a pilot using all his might to keep the airplane on course through a terrible storm, but even after he lands the plane this situation or storm will still be going on and it is imperative that whoever is elected next has a clear plane to get above the clouds and not be talked down into that storm by anyone, no matter how powerful.

Obama is pretty much what I first felt about him. I wish he could and would (or will) surprise us with living up to his greater nature instead of letting fear, power and insecurity keep him in a janitorial position rather than in a leadership role. He certainly has the intellect and capacity to be great. But my fear (which is why I voted for Hilary in the primary – probably couldn’t tell that from my blog) was that he is too reasonable and we are not in reasonable times. Sometimes we must take a stand, a strong one and take the heat that goes with it. Sometimes we are forced to fight and be strong when protecting those who can not protect themselves. In my opinion this is the main job of being president – to protect the people from those who would exploit or hurt them – that means all people, the rich, the poor, the religious, the atheists, the jerks, the saints, the sinners.

Our country is a melting pot for all human beings of the world, a place were we are all guaranteed freedoms that have been slowly whittled away by that wealthy one percent – who by the way are doing just great, unlike the rest of us.

And so to answer the question more directly, the only way we can truly get out of this is to face reality, tighten our belt, and count our blessings. Being positive, thinking positive and connecting to one’s higher power are excellent personal ways to get through this and of course being kind to others will help as well.

We will actually be OK, it’s just going to take a lot of people doing a lot of thinking and inventing and putting plans into action with the help of visionaries and those who would back visionaries in their plans. I actually believe this is the lesser version of that which we had sown. And I believe we will get it together because I do believe that the vast majority of human beings are truly good even if they don’t always do the right thing.

I believe we are all divine and have tremendous untapped power. If we tap into it to help, even in the smallest of ways, we will lift ourselves to a better place than we were before all this began.

Many blessings,

Denise

World Economic Collapse…

If nothing proves else proves that we live in 2 Americas the wealthiest one percent and everyone else then this should: How is it possible that we have double digit unemployment – the worst since the Great Depression, inflation, people continue to lose their homes, businesses, jobs and the majority of the middle class has slipped down from upper to middle, or middle to lower, yet Wall Street remains in a bubble of its own?

How is this possible?

The wealthiest one percent aren’t directly effected by the down turn. But they eventually will be. The market, which is in some sort of fantasy driven bubble, will eventually get hit when no one can buy things anymore. I don’t know about you guys, but I end up at Target a lot because I have a toddler. I’ve noticed everything I normally buy for her is at least a dollar more per item. That’s some serious inflation! And only about ten percent of the people are shopping there compared to just a year or two ago. I’m not an economist, but that doesn’t bode well for the economy.

Slobbadon wrote a post which I skimmed over, but according to an astrologer he’s been following the crash is due next winter. Frankly, I keep feeling the labor pains and then they disappear. I feel the Oh, No, energy and then it recedes and the economy seems to stay afloat through the sheer will of investors and a lot of lying which I’m sure will come out later.

But whenever the next crash comes, and it will come, we are still in trouble. There’s talk of unemployment being high for a very long time. Reason being is most jobs have been shipped overseas. What I don’t understand is why our government doesn’t make it financially impractical for this to happen. Whatever happened to regulating this with tariffs and import/export duties? If if cost company A more money to manufacture their flashlights in China due to taxation and an international wage law that required Company A to pay a universal minimum wage (based on Europe or the US standards) and on top of that they had to pay shipping and exporting and importing taxes, chances are pretty good they’d just take those jobs back to the US.

There have to be solutions. It’s not right that our corporations exploit people in other countries (in old timey Dickensian fashion) and it’s not right that laws don’t seem to apply to companies. People died here in the 30s trying to get rights for unions and fair wages only to have it be pissed away and thrown out with the bath water during the Reagan years. Thanks Reagan for setting us on the course of economic ruination of the middle-class, you know the trickle down economics where the lack of cash trickles down to the point of starvation and we become akin to a developing nation.

Sometimes I wonder if we can change our trajectory, the one I envisioned in the novel Americhrist (published on this site). It feels all too real, all too inevitable which is why Obama really needs to push back. He’s a wonderful man, but so was Carter, and if he’s not careful his presidency could go the way Carter’s did. It seems there is enough of a majority of mentally challenged people in our country who not only can’t relate to an erudite, intelligent, thoughtful, peaceful, diplomat, but who actually hate people like that. It seems there are Americans who just love the sound of a big fat bully bellowing. Sad.

Get involved.

Bug your congresspeople and Obama to put the public option back on the table and pass it!

Best wishes all you kind, intelligent and gracious people,

Denise

And seriously read the book Americhrist it will make the hair on your neck stand up. I wrote it in 2000, the first draft was finished shortly after Bush took office the first time around.

R1a1, the Economy and Other Things!

Well the whole genetic testing thing is very confusing. I think because the science is still in its infancy, hopefully it will resolve later on. All I know for sure is that it is Ashkanazi Levite and accordingly a priest class which is ironic. My mom’s side is some bizarre haplotype that very little is known about, which doesn’t surprise me.

Now I’d like to talk a bit about the economy. I’ve been trying to get a psychic read on it for awhile now but keep feeling this amorphous, neptunian energy that feels gestational. So far things are not decided, paths are not walked down and things are stagnent in terms of how we are going to get out of this hole. A reader also sent me a link to a group of people who have been doing mass meditations for the earth and their own development. And after looking at the site I wondered if this was perhaps part of the over-soul’s sputter. It feels a bit like a tug of war right now. The only thing I get for sure is it will take about 2 years for us to get back on track economically and that is for sure here in America and pretty much world wide. There are a bunch of undecided moves that need to be made before I can cast my gaze into the future because we are still at a cross road and not enough has been decided to predict with any real accuracy what will happen in the long term. I do know however that it’s much better than it would have been if Obama hadn’t won. But there is a lot to be done, a lot to be corrected and a lot to be accounted for and this will take time, unfortunately.

I just want to say to all those out there who are feeling depressed, alone, and/or financially strapped: this is a temporary situation, things will get better and it’s important to recognize you as an individual have gotten caught in the cross hairs of a much bigger problem. Don’t blame yourself personally (unless of course you voted for George W, then blame away!) This is a time when I feel people are confused about what’s coming up next, nothing is going as planned and it’s scary. Many of us haven’t taken a direct hit yet but have seen others around us suffering with the weight of this. Now is the time for bargaining, cooperation, spirituality, bartering and community so get involved and re-evaluate the values we have been stewing in for the past 20 or more years. Consumerism isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, our grandparents and great grandparents had it right buy what you need only and repair what you can, don’t be wasteful. What you can’t use give to someone who can or trade it for something you need.

Here is a link to the international group meditation website. In a couple of days they are going to do a mass meditation again. It might be an interesting experience for people out there to try connecting to this energy. We are often much more powerful when working together than separately. So if you have time check it out and join in and write in about your experiences. Perhaps I’ll put up a page for comments about the experience if enough of you decide to try it.

I haven’t read all the ideology on the blog but I like the idea of people meditating together so here’s the link:

http://www.firethegrid.com/eng09/FTGII.htm

Best wishes,

Denise

Readers & Questions & Premonitions…

From Wei:

Thanks for the analysis of the stock market. I try not to think about it too much. I’m kinda hedging against a bad economy since my financial health depends on a good economy, so it’s fine either way, I will wind up flat in the end. I’m not meant to make a million dollars.
I bought a tibetan singing bowl recently and I love its sound and vibration. I dedicated it to the light and it seems to clear out some negative energies. The vibrational qualities and sound has some healing properties that I’m interested in. I’m played a CD of tibetan singing bowl music with headphones on, and it buzzed my third chakra, never happened before and it became slightly uncomfortable. Hands and feet were buzzing also, but I’m used to it. Really interesting instrument. Some antique bowls are said to call up certain deities and spirits.

Hi Wei,

Tibetan singing bowls are marvelous. They are amazing at clearing negative energy.

OK now about GM. I’m not that much of a freak about the moon void of course but I do think it indicates what the natal chart and transits showed, that it will eventually go belly up. So perhaps the moon void of course is a sign that this attempt to restructure won’t work.

Did anyone see the special I think it was called 2100 or something like that about climate change? It was on NBC tonight. It really creeped me out because it was so similar to the visions I had back in the 1990s about this century and the changes we were going to go through if we didn’t shift our course. We don’t have much time and unfortunately having Bush in office for 8 years really threw a monkey wrench in the wheels of progress. Not just in terms of the Kyoto Treaty and green energy, but also the insane deregulation that has pushed us into this horrible economic disaster which is taking our focus off of the extinction level event we are currently facing. It’s sort of like we are in the final stages of cancer and trying to figure out how to pay for our hospice bill when if we focused on taking care of the cancer there would be a chance of survival.

I want to share something with everyone. For years I would see the future, usually between 5-10 years ahead of time. There were a few instances when I saw things further down the road than that but usually my visions were on average about 7 years before the event played out like the LA riots, the big earthquake of 1994 here, etc.

But in the mid 1990s there were 2 distinct paths we could choose and we chose the wrong way. But then we made a correction so I felt a sense of optimism about our potential fate. Then in the  late 1990s something shifted. It was as if a wall was erected and things were so out of control and random that the future could only be seen about 6 months to a year ahead of time, closer to 6 months.

It was as if time had sped up and our collective decisions we rebounding and coming to fruition more quickly. For a long time I couldn’t figure out why this strange shift had happened. Why it seemed we no longer had a fate if you will, but rather a co-creating sort of interaction with time. I have come to believe this is because we are at a cross road and within the next 5-10 years if we don’t truly make some dramatic changes our fate will be sealed. It won’t be good. But right now we have the opportunity to change things. This is a rare gift and we need to push ourselves and our leaders to really embrace serious changes in the way we interact with our planet.

We are killing her. And she will fight back. She’ll burn us off and our race will start over again. We’ll loose all our technology and all that we’ve achieved so far and be relegated back to a small presence on this planet just trying to survive. We will have blown it and taken a bunch of innocent species along with us. We will in essence (as a collective) jump back on the karmic wheel, and go backwards instead of forwards to the next level of development.

This makes me very sad. I sometimes cry over all the pain and suffering we are creating and the world we are leaving to the generations to come. It’s as if the earth herself is always weeping and I can feel her pain, like those statues of the Virgin Mary who bleed tears.

Our world is in peril. I don’t want to be a pessimist because we still have a chance to change our future and I believe that most of humanity leans toward the good. It’s the people in power  who are at the helm and pressure has to be put on them to do what is right, not what is easiest.

I have to be honest. I was worried early on that Obama would be too diplomatic, too much of a people pleaser to be the bad guy when necessary and really lead the charge. But when Hillary Clinton did her bull dog routine on him, I turned as so many did away from her. Anyone who could do that to someone in their own party seemed too hungry for power and anyone that hungry for power seemed ripe for the abuse of it.

Our government is a mess. Our economy is a mess. Our world is a mess. And we are individuals. We can’t clean it all up by ourselves. We have to make our world governments do the hard work. Please stay active in the environmental causes and put pressure on our world governments to do the most radical things we can possibly do. It’s either that and a little bit of sacrifice now or there won’t be anything left. I don’t think it will be 2100 when we see the population decline to almost nothing. I think we will start to see some very radical shifts in our lifetime if something isn’t done now.

I hate to be a bummer, but we need to stay on task. The economy is just a small problem compared to what we will see. It will be a time of reckoning. Not the kind the Christians are pushing for, no savior will come and save us. We have to save ourselves and our world. We were given the keys to this car and if we wreck it, we will be responsible. And that karma will be on all of us.

Many blessings,

Denise

Answering Readers…

More questions:

From Dera:

DERA

Denise,
I have noticed that the effects of “karma” (cause-effect relationships) have speeded up. Is something occuring in the universe to explain this? Please comment

Hi Dera,

I haven’t noticed this recently. But I have noticed at different periods of my life I have had this occur. I found it was at turning points when major life lessons needed  to be learned in order for me to move forward into the next phase of my life and usually this was in synch with the people who were close to me. They also would experience the instant karma effect at the same time. It was always most intense with those people who were involved in the same transitions. Hope that helps.

From Wei:

Wei

Any thoughts about the economy? There’s seem to be a turnaround in the stock market, but as those who knows technical analysis, the market is very over-bought and due for a fall.

I think the gov’t was corrupted a long time ago, but in our generation, I agree that Reagan era created a mindset of greed. i went to one of the best high schools in the country and had a fair share of hippies, well the minute I arrived, Reagan just came into office and there was one or two hippies left in the school. They had all graduated and I was left to learn with a bunch of mind controlled zombies. Sadly, we have continued that course and crash landed after the bubble burst.

 

Hi Wei,

I noticed the mind controlled Reagan zombies as well. It seemed to go hand in hand with the Alex Keeting generation of middle-class kids who believed the lies and amorality sold to them during the 1980s. We are still suffering under much of the delusions created then. 

I have a feeling the economy is still turning for the better. I don’t feel it is entirely stable yet and it will take until about 2011 for things to be rectified completely, but I’m not getting that horrible feeling. I had the sense that there would be a bookend crash. Meaning there would be two big market crashes. We had the one last fall but still haven’t hit the other one. However, this one should be better and the turn around much faster without the heavy consequences. If McCain would have won, it would have been a disaster but Obama has and is putting in enough netting to catch us when we fall.

Basically, I think there are some bumps ahead, but the worst part of the ride is over. I do think that the real estate market is going to hit its major low in 2010. And it will take a couple of years for it to get better from there. So I wouldn’t buy a home until 2010, but I’d do it before 2012 when the housing market should start to go up.

Best wishes and many blessings to all you good hearted people,

Denise

Answering Readers’ (Politics)

The first from Jeff:

jeff

complacency – ignorance – anger – class envy = socialism > marxism > fascism = Democratic Party = no belief in God = moral lawlessness.

“gave women choice and control of their bodies”

what choice does this baby have? who is accountable for the decision to terminate a life? the baby or the mother? Should our governement be funding abortion? God will judge…                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Hi Jeff,

First I’d just like to address your random thoughts there at the top which seems to be FOX news sponsored spew and more brain washing by people who wouldn’t normally read this blog because they don’t have the intellectual fortitude to comprehend basic history, politics or ethics. First though I have to address the ridiculous, blank is to blank, intellectually inferior SAT analogies. Complacency doesn’t usually start revolutions, check out the history on the Soviet Union and Communist China both by the way are and were not Socialist, but Communist inspired by Karl Marx which is where the term Marxist comes from. Socialist countries would include basically all western democratic nations except ours except perhaps (ironically) those that were once Communist. I don’t know enough about the state of Eastern Europe to comment on it as it seems to be in constant flux and has changed radically over the past two generations. So I’m leaving them out of this equation.

And Fascism is actually what we had under the Bush administration at least Mussolini the head of the Fascist movement in Italy, when it was an actual political party (before and during WWII) defined Fascism as a merger between the state and corporate power which is what we had for the past 8 years, about as close as we have ever come to Fascism in this country as is possible without shredding more of the constitution that the Bush administration had about as much respect for as toilet paper.

And to address the idea that no belief in God = moral lawlessness is an insanely naive and reckless equation that has nothing to do with reality. Firstly, I would agree that under some Communist rulers religion was forbidden and people were forced to give it up and this is horrible, disgusting and insanely naive. This idea came from the notion that religion was the “opiate of the masses” and it encouraged intellectual laziness. But that is about as ridiculous as demanding everyone be the same religion and/or be forced to participate in religion which people like you would have the US do.

We live in a free country and that means we are free to choose to believe, not believe or to believe ridiculous things like FOX news propaganda and whale sized blow harts like Rush Limbaugh. Throughout history many of the most moral people have been either agnostic or atheists. Morality naturally flows from the wellspring of compassion, understanding and tolerance. The KKK are an all Christian group, but I’d hardly call them moral. Hitler was a big believer in God and destiny, but he was pure unadulterated evil. Pope Innocent slaughtered all the Heuganauts and said, “Let God sort them out.” I’m pretty sure God sorted him out after he died.

Religion often is used to murder, torture and steal other people’s land/property and rights. It can be positive or it can be a mask used to rationalize evil deeds, a club to prop up egos, a magic key that lets otherwise sane people act insanely with the rationalization that God is on their side. I think it is a very sad for all of humanity that 20% of the population still doesn’t get it. I really wish Jeff and all those people who think like him would do the world and humanity the favor of reading and researching things based on reality rather than what the mind bombers want them to believe and then take the leap by actually thinking for themselves.

And on the topic of abortion let’s say for starters there’s a reason “God” didn’t make men the keepers of the gateway to life. And what man has the arrogance to question “God’s” decision to let that issue rest on women? Oh, yeah Jeff is arrogant enough to know what’s best for everyone else. I forgot he knows better than God. Let me say no woman I have known has ever had an abortion lightly. And if they did, they were severely mentally ill and the child born to them was better off. The spirit of the unborn child deserves the right to go to someone who will care for him/her without being abused or murdered. Not only are you, Jeff, not qualified to decide this issue for anyone because you are a man and will never have to risk your life, health or worry about being raped and made to carry a child in your womb. But you fail to realize that having a baby is a life threatening situation for the mother. I should know I almost died giving birth to my daughter last year. And I mean that literally, we both came so close to dying that my OBGYN told me it was too dangerous for me to have any other children. That if I did there would be a good chance that I would die, end up in a coma or have a stroke and then who would take care of the child I do have? You, Jeff?

I am lucky I have never had to have an abortion. The women who I have known who did have to make that decision because they were in various states of trouble are still tormented by the guilt of doing it. But let’s say I was raped and got pregnant. Should it be your decision Jeff whether my daughter grows up with a mother or not? You think the state should decide what should be done to my family, my body, my daughter’s body? What? Because of some religion that you probably haven’t even studied? Don’t tell me you’ve bothered to read the whole of the bible because I’ve never met a righteous Christian who could even spew the 10 commandments. They don’t even know them. Yet they feel they have the right to decide someone else’s health and life? Did you know it said in the bible that “Life begins at the first breath.” Yes, until the 1960s and Vatican II a fetus wasn’t considered human.

I know as a psychic that the spirit of the person comes at inception, but I also know we have many lives, and if someone can’t bring through the soul of a person, and that soul needs to be born another opportunity will arise and that human being will come through. And let me tell you as a victim of some serious child abuse, I wish my mother would have had her tubes tied, and I would have been born to someone who was loving and kind. I believe it is every human beings right to be cared for as a child not just born. All you people care about is controlling the womb but once the baby is born you’d let it starve to death and have it’s head cracked open on a sidewalk in front of you and you’d not do one damn thing about it. This is an issue that the right better back off about. You people have not one clue. If you want to feed every unwanted baby and raise them yourself then I would give you the right to put in your two cents, but all you want to do is control other people.

Jeff, you are a perfect representative of the people who are ruining our Democracy, eroding freedom and are destroying our country. You have made a Faustian deal with the corporate devil so you can make your fifteen dollars an hour and then have them ship your job overseas because you don’t understand how you are being used and manipulated by these truly horrible people who use religion in the very way Marx said it was used, as an opiate for the masses. The Bush administration torture innocent people, but as long as they claimed to be one of your kind, well, then it was OK.

Take a cold hard look at yourself in the mirror. Ask yourself what your hiding behind that mask because that’s what your religion has become if you believe you have the right to decide what other people should do with their bodies or believe in their hearts. This is the definition of evil. People doing horrible things and justifying it by using God. Disgusting. Jeff your mindset is the worst kind of putrid filth mocking true morality.

I will say you got one thing right — anger. People like you are infuriating.

On a personal note having a child is the greatest gift anyone can be given. And that being said, people who don’t want that gift don’t deserve it. Human beings need more than just vessels to pop out of, they need love, support, kindness, compassion, warmth, food, clothing, healthcare, and respect. I would never want to damn any child to the life of one of those kids in a Romanian orphanage or sold into sexual slavery by their parents. Personally, as a spiritual person who knows souls are eternal, I believe we all have the right to be wanted and loved, and treated with respect, no child deserves the kind of torture an unwanted child receives. Better for that soul to be matched to someone who sees the gift in their life rather than their life as some kind of curse.

And from  Madhavi:

Madhavi

Obama is going to do a fine job of leading us into a major depression. Watch for inflation, outrageous spending (money that doesn’t exist) already happening. Humongoua TAXES all over the place…in the name of “fairness”, “socialism”…Obama wanted to win at all costs, not McCain. It’s important he won because of the race wound (in this country-and the world) but beyond that, he’s a disaster. And it’s only going to get worse!!!

Hi Madhavi,

News flash the economy is getting better. It tanked under your crappy president and is recovering now. And if McCain didn’t really want to win then why did he run so many times? And why was it important for him to always be married to a wealthy heiress?

Hmm, let’s see. A guy who works with impoverished youth who comes from nothing and marries a woman who is self made vs. a guy who people in his own political party called “insane,” and an “egomaniac,” and who turned life long Republicans away with his total lack of economic know how. He scared off so many rich Republicans that they were willing to pay 3% higher taxes than loose everything because they knew McCain would drive the sinking economy to the bottom of the sea.

You don’t have to be psychic. Just look at what happened, the mass exodus and the people who turned, way before Arlene Specter. Maybe you should give up listening to Rush Limbaugh. Try listening to some news and read a few papers in your spare time.

My best to all the kind souls — Denise

Readers…

Hey Everyone,

I’m posting a bunch of e-mails I’ve gotten from people who have things to say from global warming to the domestic issue of healthcare reform.

Global warming is my “thing.” As for effective organizations, I like the Union of Concerned Scientists, the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC), Rainforest Action Network to name a few. There are a number of good ones. Follow up on previous email…. One of the sticky wickets for people who are concerned about global warming is that both studies and experience show that the “catastrophe” narrative exhausts and overwhelms folks into putting their heads in the sand. Feeling helpless, they decide to believe the fossil-fuel-funded deniers and not worry about it, or, buy a compact fluorescent light bulb and feel like they have done their part. 

This reader recently went to a conference on the subject and I’ve asked her to write a post detailing the newest science. Hopefully, we’ll get that soon.

And on healthcare reform:

Here are some links for you to post regarding the Bill HR676:
http://www.healthcare-now.org/

And this is a summary of the bill:

The United States National Health Insurance Act (Expanded and Improved Medicare
for All Act) (H.R. 676), is a bill submitted to the United States House of
Representatives by Representative John Conyers Jr., D-MI, which as of March 31,
2009 has 74 recorded cosponsors. It was first introduced, with 25 cosponsors, in
2003,[1] and reintroduced each session since then. The act calls for the
creation of a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, in
which the government would provide every resident health care free of charge. In
order to eliminate disparate treatment between richer and poorer Americans, the
Act would also prohibit private insurers from covering any treatment or
procedure already covered by the Act. The bill is currently in the House Energy
and Commerce Committee, as well as the Committees on Ways and Means, and Natural
Resources. John Dingell (D-MI), former chair of the Energy and Commerce
Committee, has each session introduced a bill with a similar title (“National
Health Insurance Act”) H.R. 15, which was first introduced in 1933 by his
father, John Dingell, but which does not provide for universal health care.
H.R. 676 has drawn significant attention beginning in July 2007 because of the
release of the Michael Moore documentary Sicko which focuses on the status of
health care in the United States, which is the only developed country which does
not have universal health care.[2][3] The DVD edition of the film also included
a segment (Sicko Goes To Washington) promoting the bill.[4][5][6]
[edit] See also
• Canadian and American health care systems compared
• Health in France
• Health care reform
• Healthcare in the United Kingdom
• Healthcare-NOW!
• Medicare (United States)
• Progressive Democrats of America
• Single-Payer Action Network Ohio
[edit] References
1. ^ H.R. 676
2. ^ Insuring America’s Health: Principles and Recommendations, Institute of
Medicine at the National Academies of Science.
3. ^ The Case For Single Payer, Universal Health Care For The United States,
John R. Battista, M.D. and Justine McCabe, Ph.D.
4. ^ American Health Care Reform.org
5. ^ Towards Universal Health Care
6. ^ Universal Health Plan is Endorsed The Boston Globe August 13, 2003
[edit] External links
• H.R. 676 – Information on the act from the Library of Congress Database
• Congressman John Conyers, Jr., sponsor of the bill, official U.S. House
website
• HR676.org – A grassroots effort to inform the public about H.R. 676
Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Health_Insurance_Act
Categories: Healthcare reform in the United States | Medicare and Medicaid
(United States) | United States proposed federal legislation                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 In regards to the markets it was always my original feeling that there would be the major crash and then another bookend crash. My biggest fear is that Obama is just helping to reconstruct the same market that crashed and not enough is being done to fundamentally change it for the better. If the game is played the same way, with the same rules and the same mistakes it will just fall to its knees over and over until it is eventually restructured. I hope President Obama is just trying to stabilize things until he can get in there and do the surgery needed to really make the markets work. Those changes are pretty radical by wall street standards and would require not just major regulations and rule changes but also require companies to play by the same rules every other US citizen plays by: for example, if I can’t move to France than why can IBM move to China? Why should they (if they are a US company) be able to move jobs anywhere that’s cheaper. I’d like to live somewhere cheaper and make a higher profit too. Can I stop paying taxes, put my money in Swiss banks and move to France legally? No. So why can US companies ship jobs overseas? Why isn’t making butt loads of money good enough? This notion of constant growth is not only a falacy but dangerous. It is driving this bizarro world new economic model and basically its aim seems to be to turn the world back to a feudal peasant vs. royal class. This is causing so many other dominoes to fall like the reliance on a middle class that these corporations need in order to stay in business. They are actually driving us all into the poor house and themselves out of business because no one is willing to look long term at the big picture. And this mentally has also driven us to the state we are in with healthcare and global warming and nearly every other mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. It’s time to think long term and stop the crazy squirrel disease that has been eating away at the capitalist brain for the past 30 years. Ethics and morality have to come back into play in regards to business. That old expression “it’s just business,” is just b.s. Nothing can be separated out like that, everything is connected.

Best wishes and many blessings to all you good super brilliant people (check out IQ poll results pretty impressive group I must say),

Denise

P.S. I read a study that said people with high IQs and highly educated people were more likely to believe in psychic ability. Interesting, it was opposite of what most people would assume. I think its because the more you know, the more you know you don’t know anything, and you also can understand when someone takes a leap past logic that they couldn’t possibly have done without something else unexplainable by ordinary means.

Answering Readers and other things…

I just wanted to address some of the points Jeff has made. I think he really clarifies the differences in the two viewpoints between conservatives and liberals very well. I understand the lack of faith in our government and the fact that there is corruption and stupidity on all sides of every issue in politics. I would never advocate a one party system.

My back was fractured when I was 12 and a disc herniated. I spent the entire year laying on my back, by myself in my bedroom. The only education I received was American history and the constitution as I had to pass (this was in Illinois) a constitution test in 7th grade in order to move onto 8th grade. Needless to say, I got one hour a week from the principle who would come to my home and tutor me. I spent a lot of time reading the constitution, the bill of rights and reading about American History. The ideals and people that founded our nation were profound and beautiful. Our forefathers did an amazing job of working out potential problems. They had incredible foresight. However they did not foresee all things that came up in the last century which have truly corrupted our government. And of course they had built in the 2nd amendment not so people could hunt animals, but so we could have a revolution if the government got out of control. Problem is of course (which of course they couldn’t foresee, perhaps if DiVinci had been one of the founders) the advent of nuclear weapons and military technology that no rag tag militia could fairly fight against. 

I really don’t have total faith in the Democrats. I just think they are less corrupt, more like normal politicians than the Republicans. And not all Republicans fall into that category. And especially regular American people who are not politicians but who identify with the party and vote Republican. They are not any better or worse than people who vote for Democrats. I’m talking only about the leadership of the Republican party; since the Nixon administration there has been a clarion call attracting many corrupt politicians with agendas to exploit the common working American people for their own personal gain on that side of the fence.

There are 2 types of politicians, those who get into politics to serve and lead. And those who get into politics to exploit, loot and are on power trips. I don’t think the Republican party has always been this way, and certainly the vast majority of people who vote Republican are not this way. In actuality I think the Republican party has manipulated many people’s deep love of this country, of tradition, stability, pride and our identity as self-reliant people against us.

But if we left morality up to the wealthy one percent to take care of the poor, the sick and whoever else, do you think they would do it? No. Certainly the feudal lords of Europe weren’t going around giving out loafs of bread to starving children, they were to busy denying them education and prosecuting them for stealing bread so they could put them to work in prison camps. With Democracy and laws, came taxation built on levels of ability to pay, the end of debtors prisons (when you could actually go to prison for life for not being able to pay someone you owed money to, can you imagine how many people would be in jail now if this law hadn’t been changed.) Government can’t solve all of our problems, but it can and should create a moral bone structure to hang our civilization’s body on.

As much as we like to pretend that we are all working on a level playing field with the same amount of talent, intelligence and acumen as everyone else. This is just blatantly untrue. Many of us our handicapped by our environments as children. We seem to be able to muster compassion for the abused child, but as soon as he turns 18 we seem to expect this person to magically be able to shake off the horrors of their childhood and compete in a game fixed by the wealthy.

I grew up in an area of Chicago that was very wealthy and I knew countless kids who were of average intelligence who went to ivy league schools because their parents were wealthy enough to give endowments to those institutions and it was family tradition to go to Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth. Is that fair? No. All the conservatives who claim B.S. on the whole affirmative action thing don’t complain about the wealthy legacy kids who get in with subpar SAT scores and average grades. Because it’s really not that they mind the game being rigged, they just want it rigged in their favor. And the people who are in power in the political arena (especially on the Republican side) are from extremely privelaged backgrounds. This hasn’t always been the case, but in the last 30 years the Republican party has drifted into the lane that promotes corporatism, gives a pass to the wealthiest one percent and turns a blind eye toward graft. The Democrats still have real people participating, like Bill Clinton (despite his personal sex addiction problems and foibles) he was a real guy who was raised by a single mother, in a poor family and through his brilliance and determination made something of himself. This is the America I believe in. This is the America I want to see win out. I don’t want our country to become a feudal one, where the wealthy one percent control us through their lobbyists and corporations. I want all Americans to be represented and to have a voice. I want to stay a democracy and not be bowled over by corporate interests masquerading as moral voices.

You know, the Democrats aren’t all that. They are really annoying and pretty lame. They don’t take the reigns, they blather around, seem to try to bend to too many voices and don’t have the passion it takes to convince others to get on board. This has been their problem now for over 30 years and I totally understand why they upset people who want things to be dealt with cleanly. Democrats don’t do this. For those (and this is the majority of Americans) who want decisive, clear leadership the Democrats don’t always know how to provide this. The Republicans have a huge advantage here, they have a common goal that binds them together which the Democrats don’t have. Democrats go into public service for all kinds of different reasons with all kinds of different agendas and are forced to compromise and work together in a quilt work fashion.

The Republicans have the binding passion of greed which they found a way to sell (ironically) to average Americans as Christian morality. However their policies and private lives show nothing of them living up to their supposed morality.  I’m going to refer you to an earlier post here about the shadow self as it applies to the split that Republicans utilize to sell their advocacy for the wealthiest taking not only the share they already have but more of yours too so that the money can “trickle down.” Or so they want you to believe.

So far I haven’t been to any developing nation or as Jeff aptly stated, communist country, where the money ever managed to trickle down. Once those on top have anything their heart could ever desire at their fingertips why would they randomly want to share it with strangers? This goes against human nature. We are naturally selfish creatures which is why we have laws, moral codes, and religions that teach us how to be more than just self-absorbed, self-satisfying, opportunistic, uncompassionate beasts.

Let me just say here as an example I’ve known many very famous people (through my work). They can have anything they want whenever they want it, no one ever says “no” to them. They often surround themselves with adoring admirers (not all but many do this) and see themselves as better than everyone else. They often get sucked into a weird cartoonish state of being where they are living entirely a life of the ego. They may have started out as good people and are not necessarily bad people, but they loose percpective and do horrible things to others because they  no longer see other people as human beings anymore. And how could they? They are not participating in real relationships anymore, just the ego heroine of fame feeding their insatiable insecurity and making them more and more pathologically narcissistic. 

My point is, we all need to be held accountable. And we live in a very narcissistic culture where value has been placed on being special, famous and wealthy to the exclusion of common sense and common decency. It seems anything goes if you can get rich or famous from it.  I don’t believe in that. I believe in personal integrity and spiritual growth both of those values are almost impossible to hold onto once a person becomes famous or insanely wealthy (I’m not talking comfortable or even rich but in that one percent club wealthy.)

Spiritual growth requires honest mirroring by loved ones and the world around you which the obscenely rich and famous don’t get from others anymore because that person becomes objectified and identified as a symbol, no longer allowing others to have real exchanges. While this is great for the ego, no one ever disagrees with you, you are always the greatest genius and everyone stops to listen to what you have to say, you actually, eventually become something of a persona, an empty shell, and often this can lead to great feelings of isolation, depression and obsessive behavior. Which is why so many celebrities have drug problems.

And of course in the case of the insanely wealthy, everyone wants a piece of their pie, and they can’t trust anyone around them. They never really know if people love or care about them for who they are or for the money they have. You think this problem sounds easy, but it’s actually very messy and dark and leads to behavior like Bernie Madoff who so desperately needed to stay in that special billionare club that he started ripping people off when the market started going down and he realized it was easier to con people than to actually invest their money. This is the sickness that can happen with outrageous overabundance as Christ said, “it’s easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.” Because the disassociation that happens with that sort of wealth leads to callousness, and  bad behavior.

Average people like my in-laws, who are Republicans, make the mistake of believing that heads of corporations and the super wealthy have the same values they do. Let me tell you, they don’t. Their values are so far a flung from ordinary Americans that they may as well be Martians. There are of course good people who are exceptions and do amazing humanitarian work with the money they have made, but really they are probably less than one percent of the ubber rich.

While we all fantasize that our problems would go away and life would be perfect if we were just rich and famous, the opposite is actually true. Being in the spotlight only magnifies problems and immense wealth creates an emotional telescoping phenomena where your ability to relate to people who are struggling financially disappears and instead of feeling compassion for those people the wealthy find a bizarre righteous anger toward the unfortunate so they can stave off their guilt at not doing anything to help.

So what I want to say is that I don’t believe we can leave people’s lives, health and education up to the potential good graces of the wealthy one percent. I’ll leave everyone with this weird random example. The first time I went to London, when I was in my early 20s I met a guy who was a monarchist. I actually didn’t even know they still existed. He believed that the best form of government was what he called a “benevolent monarchy.” He explained that in that system things got done quickly and the benevolent king to good care of all of his subjects, sort of like a good dad takes care of all of his kids. But then I said, “But what happens if the monarch is not benevolent, like King Henry or Caligula.” 

“Well, I’m talking about a benevolent monarchy,” he firmly stated again.

“Yes, but that’s the problem if its a monarchy the people can’t do anything to get rid of the next in line and what if they’re crazy or a horrible person. In a democracy you can vote a nut jobber out of office. There are checks and balances in place that help eliminate the possibility of someone terrible taking over.” 

 And again his answer was, “Well, I’m talking about a benevolent monarchy.”

What we do in our Democracy with checks and balances, laws and amendments had its counter part in the world of business as regulations and the notion that corporations being led by the best people would perform the best and therefore those leaders would continue to move skyward. But instead with deregulation came easy money through scams, the ability to lie about your company, to cheat your shareholders and to fail upwards based on lies and fudging numbers. 

Our country is as much about capitalism as it is about democracy. And in order for capitalism to survive it needs to have enforceable rules to play by or no one on the world stage is going to want to play with us anymore. Those toxic loans we bought up that have been helping the stock market, are helping because by our government standing behind our corporations we are saying to the world, we screwed up and we won’t let everyone fall down, we stand behind our system and we want to continue playing ball with everyone. If we didn’t do this the entire world economy would fall apart due to lack of confidence in us the champions of capitalism.

Anyway, enough blabbing.

Best wishes to all and many blessings,

Denise

Answering Readers (a little) & Economic Warning

Hey everyone,

I don’t want to freak everyone out, but I wanted to warn everyone I’m feeling the other end of that hit in the market coming soon, in the next 6 weeks. Sort of like the next wave in the Tsunami about to hit the shore. I had looked at charts when I felt the first one (about 3 weeks before the -777 market  crash) and from the looks of it, it seemed likely some major stuff was going to hit the fan in December, the stuff about Bernie Madeoff came out then, and didn’t help, but the timing was off in the chart. Hence I’ve concluded that the chart I have for the market is not exact. So I’m going with my intuition which is usually more accurate anyway.

I’m feeling it coming. It’s going to get scary bad. We are about to hit bottom, the below 6000 points thing mentioned early on this blog. So try not to freak out, it will get better. It has to get super extreme, this is part of the correction. Things will turn around, but there’s about to be major panic for many. We are already in a free fall so for many of us who are not in the market and have started adjusting our lives this next hit won’t feel as dramatic at first. We will feel the punch a little later. 

As for President Barack Obama he is doing everything possible in his power and it is sickening that the Republicans are more interested in winning the game according to their party rules then they are in all of us winning. More has to be done to restructure the financial industry and our economy as I have said in earlier posts, and I think we are headed toward another near melt down and some kind of other government intervention via another bill which will become a huge deal as the economy will take another giant hit here. 

Hold on to your seats its going to be bumpy, but it will turn around.

For those who have argued against the fusion of a strong social net and capitalism (an argument you will hear in coming weeks more vehemently thrown out there as the richest 1 percent try to pursued us that they really their money will trickle down eventually) let me say that the wealthiest countries in the world with the highest standard of living are countries which have embraced mindful capitalism and a society where the standard is the working middle class, something we used to have in this country. As the metaphor goes if one person keeps winning all the cash on the table and everyone else runs out trying to stay in the game, then the game is over when the guy “wins.”

However if there were always cash for people to play with then no matter how much that one guy wins, he will just keep winning, and we will all win because we are able to keep money flowing. When a handful of people control all the resources we all loose, including the dumb people who greedily want to have all the resources. However, these people don’t get that they are losing more by holding onto this old model because they need to have things clearly defined in winning and losing rather than the idea of the economy and life being a process, a continual flow like a river rather than a guy running a marathon.

The mentality of this greedy winners vs. losers mentality is a Reagan era legacy that I’m sure has roots back to the B rated cowboy movies he used to be in. In truth life is not about winners and losers it’s actually about being in the flow, giving, learning, experiencing. It isn’t about being better than everyone else. But try telling those guys on Wall Street who were complaining about home owners getting help instead of the help they gladly accepted from George W. & our government to stay flying in their private leer jets when they were supposed to be using that money to bail out their companies.

And to answer Sinead’s question below. I was planning on this being the end of the contest. So I’m going to go through the posts and pick some winners which I will announce in the next couple of weeks. I may wait to post a picture though, for my own weird reasons. I will eventually post a picture but I have my reasons which someday, I’ll explain, maybe.

And by the way, everyone who participated got something right! I think that’s pretty remarkable. It just goes to prove that there is something to all of this nuttiness. And also I wanted to pass on some interesting stuff. I’m not sure how many people are familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality indicator (which is based on some of Jung’s theories) or on the ancient early psychological system called the enneagram but for those of you who are interested in learning more about yourself here are some interesting links.

It is a fascinating system and if you are interested in learning more about yourself I highly recommend taking the Myers-Briggs test. Here’s a place to take the Myers-Briggs test for free with some info on the types:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

And here’s a free Enneagram test. Also very fascinating:

http://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/test.php
 

I’d love to get people to take the tests and then do a survey and see what the breakdown of people is according to their type. Is there a type specifically wired toward interest in metaphysics or is it everyone in different ways? Hmm, perhaps we can find out!

Best wishes and many blessings to all you good people,

Denise

P.S. Below is Sinead’s question.

sinead704

Hey denise!     I know this has nothing to do with the above post, but i can’t find the birthday predictions on what you look like. Did the contest end? I already predicted but I wanted to see who was the most accurate? Thanks Sinead

Questions, Anyone? The Economy?

Since for the first time in a long time I know we are in good hands, in terms of our president, and politics will be politics, I want to expand questions from all of you about things you are worried about. I was doing a lot of stock analysis which seems pointless right now, but if there are other things that will effect the whole, but you have a personal investment in, feel free to post a question about it.  Here’s an example of a question like that: Will the Toyota plant in Kentucky close this year? Or whatever you want. Even if it is more personal, as long as you feel others will get something out of the answer, please post. 

For me right now the economy is the major concern. But I feel we are going to have to ride it out for the next couple of years. I do feel that this spring another bill will be passed that will change things more dramatically for the better and the economy will start to show slow movement toward recovery.

But don’t get too excited, it’s going to take at least the next 2 years to really build momentum again. In the mean time we will all learn a tremendous amount and I hope that as a result we will learn the lessons our grandparents and great grandparents learned during the Depression. They not only learned how to save their pennies, but how to plan for the future and think long term. This ideology has fallen so out of style, ironically it was “conservatives” who weren’t thinking much about conserving for the future. But it could be that this down turn is the very thing that saves us in the end. We are in such a desperate ecological situation, perched on some very scary earth changes which we still have the power to turn around. Now that instant gratification qualifies as obscene, we may actually be able to save our planet while saving our economy. 

Best wishes and many blessings to all of you good people,

Denise