Curmudgeons Anonymous

There is a bright new movement, being born in Arizona (of all places), called “Curmudgeons Anonymous”.  You will start to notice the members, around the world, wearing their member T-shirts, reading, “A proud member of Curmudgeons Anonymous.”  A curmudgeon is normally defined as a white, elderly male, unhappy with his world and the direction that he sees it going, but not prone to do anything constructive about it.  We are second only to the United States Congress, as a group of elderly white males, sworn to accomplish nothing.

The T-shirts will be available in red, for conservative members.  Blue, for the liberals.  Green, for the tree huggers and gray to identify associate members.  The gray T-shirted, non-voting, associates are either politically undecided, or men of color.  As you can see, we don’t exclude any male, over 65 and retired who spends a good percentage of their waking hours complaining.  We will also allow associate membership to someone who is employed, if along with their application they will include a letter from their employer, stating that they are an elderly disgruntled employee.  Any member of the group is allowed to take individual action, politically or otherwise, against anything, but doing so with your Curmudgeons Anonymous T-shirt on, or in unison with any other member or members, is strictly forbidden.  Elderly men of religion (the gullible) are offered full membership, with voting rights.  How is that for being open-minded?  Voting rights are not all that important, as the group takes no action.

You will be seeing Curmudgeons Anonymous discussion groups whining around the world, in coffee shops or bars and library meeting rooms.  We will be complaining about anything and everything, including our individual health and the doctors that we are forced to endure.

The membership fee is $10 for full members and $12 for associate members.  The fee is required as often as you feel that you need a new T-shirt.  The membership does include a new Beefy Tee shirt, with the group logo on the front and nothing on the back.  Please don’t send cash, stamps, a check, a credit card authorization, until the T-shirts are ready.  I’ll let you know when they are and where to send the payment.  For you young men who would like to join the organization, sorry, but at least you now have something to look forward to as you grow older and less effective.

Cheers, Old Buz, Founder and Chairman of Curmudgeons Anonymous  

"Uber-Capitalism"

The United States of America has entered into the era of Uber-Capitalism.  What does this mean?  It means that large dollar interests control the nation.  And we, the gullible, like it that way.  The most obvious sign of Uber-Capitalism taking control is capitalism moving from being controlled by the government to being in control of the government.  This is simply accomplished by allowing unlimited, corporate, unidentified funds to be “donated” to political campaigns to aid them in covering the skyrocketing costs of advertising required to be competitive in an election.  These giant funds may be unidentified to you the voter, but the candidate is well aware of the sources and their influence is absolute.  So….what do you care?  Well, it affects your quality of life, your cost of living, your health and your rate of taxation.  Otherwise, you are little affected. 

Let’s start with quality of life.  When corporations release pollutants into the air you breathe or the water you drink, the limit of pollutants is set by government agencies.  These agencies are controlled by your elected representatives and these representatives are controlled by large corporate dollars.  It is more cost effective in the short run to pollute rather than clean their waste.  If there is a cleanup down the road, it is done with taxpayers’ dollars.    No corporation ever gave a dime to a politician out of the goodness of its heart.  It wouldn’t be fair to their stockholders.  No, they expect returns from those “donations”.  They are seen as a wise investment and surely they are that.  What about energy production?  We don’t have to use coal and natural gas to degrade air quality.  We could use clean renewables like solar, wind and waves.  Someday we will.  But, we could develop these power grids very quickly with the funds we give to munition manufacturers to supply our endless wars of choice.  To switch to clean renewable energy is an attack on the corporations supplying our coal and natural gas.  Are you in one of the states where users of solar roof panels are taxed for trying to clean their air and the air of their neighbors?

A simple example of your cost of living being affected by large dollars can be seen in large sudden increases in the cost of gasoline at the pumps.  Most often these jumps in price are not brought about by the cost of crude oil, but by a gambling institution called the oil futures market.  Recently these very wealthy gamblers cost you over a dollar a gallon, at the pumps.  You working folks bought their yachts.  Each time you fill your tank, you are making a political donation.   Are you good with that?

How about healthcare cost?  We just experienced legislation that gives us “Affordable” Health Care.  The large health insurance companies, through their large political donations, pretty much wrote the law.  Don’t blame Obama.  All politicians are on the corporate teat.  The first clear sign of this you saw was the disappearance of “The Government Option” for health insurance.  It would have competed with corporate healthcare, if it were not controlled by corporate healthcare.  The second thing you might have noticed is that single payer AmeriCare was never considered.  Most of the other nations of the world with universal healthcare, have some form of single payer (government sponsored) healthcare.  Your healthcare is given for profit, not for your health.

“Taxation without representation” is the way of Uber-Capitalism.  The examples are endless, but the cause is that large dollar influence on tax law is much more powerful than your influence on tax law.  You can’t blame them; they are only trying to protect and grow their estates.  A simple example of money influence on taxation is “Capital Gains Treatment of Income”.  This treatment of income allows the taxation of the sale of property, sale of stocks, dividend income to be taxed at a much lower rate than income earned from fighting fires or loading trucks.  A friend of mine, who once worked for Price-Waterhouse, as a CPA, told me that, “Only those who work pay taxes.”  Does that mean that those who work pay more than their fair share?  Ever wonder why renters get no tax break, while homeowners get a deduction for the interest paid on their mortgage loan (usually most of the payment), as does the landlord of the rented residence they occupy?  It is all the same game, but it was made official by the recent Citizens United decision of your Supreme Court.  You belong to The United States of Uber-Capitalism.  We don’t need any new anthems.  The old ones will suffice.

Does any of this need fixing?  Superman is dead.  He fell off of a horse, was paralyzed and later died.  The job of saving the World is now yours.  “There is only time to iron your cape…..then, back to the sky.”

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

Faith Is The Mother of Error

This is not to say that faith is the cause of error.  Error is created by random possibilities.  But when human error is not corrected, look to faith for the cause of sustaining the error.  A simple example of this would be that the Sun and stars rotate around the Earth.  Simple observation would lead to this error of observation.  Through science and technology, it has been proven that this is not the case.  The theory of the universe rotating around the Earth was loved by both humans and the religions that they created, because it placed humans at the center of it all.  But long after there was proof that this was not the case, Faith held the concept to be true.  Early scientists were even jailed and put to death for contending that the Earth was not the center of the Universe.  Martin Luther, a founder of protestant Christianity once said, “Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has …”   If you leave out the “whore” part, his statement is true.

Faith is born from a belief in any source that one would see as absolutely reliable, such as your church, your country, your parents, your teachers, your work place, your doctor, your friends or your political party.  An excellent filter to use on the “facts” from any of these sources would be my son’s line from a song he wrote.  “See what is plain to see.  Doubt what is not.”  Doubt here, to me, means research and apply knowledge and reason.    Another example of a faith inspired error can come from the above mentioned, “your political party.”  A man that I often have coffee with, in the morning, believes a Republican inspired piece of mythology (error), that President Obama is a Muslim.  Now, I don’t believe that The President’s religion is relevant to his job effectiveness, but my Republican friend knows that President Obama has said that he is a Christian, that the President doesn’t pray to Mecca the required five times a day, and that during the campaign the Republican party claimed that President Obama was a member of retired senior pastor, Jeremiah Wright’s, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  Obama did affirm this membership.  To be a Republican who believes that Barak Obama is a Muslim requires suspending your memory and your reason.   This is a true test of Faith, that is, “To believe the unbelievable.”

As Americans, we have faith in science.  We spend billions of dollars to reach the Moon and beyond.  We spend billions of dollars to research “The God Particle” (Higgs boson).  The question is, “If you were going to donate $100 to scientific knowledge of the universe or to save several starving children, which cause would you donate to?”  Of course, you are never asked that question.  The decision is made for you in our democracy.  How long has Ebola been a problem, or is it not a problem until it reaches our shores?

Comments are welcome, Old Buz (a man of little faith)

An Independent Voter

I'm an independent voter, in the State of Arizona.  I recently voted early in the primary election.  I choose to be an independent because I am not a soldier for either party.  In the Arizona primary election, a registered independent must vote either on a Democratic or a Republican ballot.  This seems counter intuitive, but it is the law.  Since I generally, but not predictably, take a liberal stance, I was limited to accepting a Democratic primary ballot.  This was not a good experience.  The ballot was a page full of government offices to be voted on.  There was only one candidate listed for each office, with the exception of positions with two seats available and since you were allowed to vote for two candidates there were two listed.   There were no alternatives on the entire ballot.  Was that actually a vote I placed?

The largest voting bloc in the State of Arizona is the independents.  We outnumber both the Republicans and the Democrats.  We don't vote as a bloc, we vote as individuals.  Some are ultra-conservative.  Some are ultra-liberal.  Some are moderates.  It is kind of the way a democracy should be.  Independent voters are generally tired of partisan politics and would like to see problems solved rather than opposing party positions taken.  The parties of today are more responsive to large corporate dollars than they are to the needs of the voters.  Political parties are the legal conduit for corporate bribery and dollar influence.  Their delegates go to conventions every few years and wear funny little hats.  They like balloons.

So, how does Arizona welcome an independent, non-partisan candidate?  Well, first off, it requires three times as many signatures for an independent candidate to be placed on the ballot as it does if one is running as a Democrat or a Republican candidate.  To put the icing on the cake, by state law, independents must be listed last on the ballot.  How would you guess that the party wonks justify this treatment of independent candidates and voters?  They justify it by the concept that power begets power.  It works for them.

How would you run an election properly?  The primary ballot would list all candidates for a given office, alphabetically, with party affiliation being listed, as an option.  The general election would offer the top two vote getters from the primary, regardless of party affiliation.  That would be simple and fair.

When I was a young voter, half a century ago, I was disappointed when I saw only one choice available for an office.  Every so often, you would see one position on a ballot like that.  But, an entire ballot that way… never.  The problem with Arizona’s Democratic primary is that the party powerful made the choice of who would be the candidate for each office, not the people.  God Bless Our Democracy.  It was great while it lasted.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

"Thinking about Buddhism"

I'm reading a book by Steve Hagen, bestselling author and renowned Zen teacher, titled, “Buddhism Is Not What You Think”.  The basic theme, which I have seen before in Buddhist writings, is that the raw data you receive through your primary senses is “Truth”.  After you apply thought to the data, you have corrupted the Truth with your thoughts and previous life experiences and you no longer have Truth.  That is true, but if pure perception were how you observed the world and went no further, you would not be able to draw any meaningful information from your perceptions.  A simple example of this would be the page you are now reading.  The raw data, without thought applied, is black spots on a white background.  You have learned to interpret these symbols as letters, words, sentences and thoughts.  You deal with them in the English language.  The same thoughts would obviously appear differently if written in French.  So, the new data that you take in is affected by the previous truths (not a capital “T”) that you have received in your lifetime.  When I say the word “dog”, you may envision a Toy Poodle, while my mind’s image may be of a German Shorthair Retriever.  The individual’s interpretation of any word is based on their personal, previous life experiences.  It can't be any other way.  Oh, I suppose you could learn to sit still and attempt to only take in raw data and do nothing with that data.  I would rather water ski.  You don't accomplish more by water skiing, but I think it is a lot more fun.

The famous author and philosopher, J.R. Pirtle once said, “Life is what you think.”  This is a far more useful and realistic way to view your real world.  Life, to you, can be no more or no less than what you think.  Even if you were a fundamentalist Buddhist (in other words, catatonic) and only saw raw, unaltered data, that would be what you think.  A friend of mine, a professor at our state university, in reaction to Pirtle’s, “Life is what you think,” responded, “Sometimes I think that life is not what I think.”  My response was, “Well, then it isn’t.”

 

I apologize to you Buddhists for this blog post.  I should have written it sooner.  I have already made it a point to insult the fundamentalist Jews and Christians.  Fundamentalist Muslims do not require ridicule.  They do it to themselves.  But, I have held off on Buddhists and that is probably because they claim not to be a religion and they compose only about one percent of our nation’s population.  However, their eyes do glass over, just like fundamentalist Christians and Jews, when they state one of the gullible beliefs of their religion.  The Buddha knew and stated that he could not pass down his wisdom.  The Tao is an individual’s journey, not a group’s.  His followers often tinkle their little bells and try to shy away from the undeniable awareness of the concept, “self”.  Buddhists had better hold their nuttiness down or they will be classified as a religion.  I certainly can't blame them for trying to avoid that.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz (an agnostic who accepts any belief, as long as it agrees with his own)

Did We Win In Iraq?

Did we win in Iraq?  To answer this question, you must first determine what “we” stands for.  If you look at that decade long war from the perspective of the CEO’s of our arms manufacturers, our logistics team (Halliburton) or our private army (Blackwater) it was a clear and decisive win.  Perhaps somewhere in America, in a very nice country club or aboard a two hundred foot yacht, there should be a celebration held by the wealthy war profiteers.  Off of the Cayman Islands would be appropriate.  I would guess that it has already been held, but somehow wasn’t covered by our news media.

For the rest of us, who hold our commemoration on the ship of fools, it is not so joyous, nor can it be considered a win.  We attacked an innocent people, who had nothing to do with our 9/11 event.  We murdered well over one hundred thousand human beings.  Remember, the dozen and a half nuts on the 9/11 planes were Saudis.  Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and we knew this before we started the bombing.  “United We Stand” was the war cry of the gullible who mindlessly followed the war drums of the Bush Administration.  As for “Freedom”, who the hell got freedom?  What we did was rekindle the flames between the Shiites and the Sunnis and Baathists.  Do you believe that the butchering of Muslims by the US helped relations between Israel and its neighbors?  And do you believe that this recent Crusade helped the relationship between Christians and Muslims?  Lt Calley, of Mia Lia fame, best summed your involvement in this war up by saying, “We of the military are a spear.  We are thrown by the American People.”  So, you no longer need to worry about going to Heaven.

Now for a glimpse into the future:  there are roughly 5,000 embassy personnel remaining in Iraq, with a little over 100 U.S. Marines providing security.  The U.S. Embassy there coordinates U.S. foreign military sales to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East.  Those arms will ultimately be used against us, if history repeats itself.

How many embassy folks were killed in Benghazi?  Was it five?  Well, that is but a drop in the bucket compared to what will probably happen in Iraq to our embassy there.  We are operating our largest embassy in the world in a country where we have no friends, but the vultures.   Americans are no more loved in Iraq than in Benghazi.  If you were a life insurance company, how would you feel about insuring those 5,100 lives and will the Democrats or the Republicans be blamed for this coming event?  I would guess that they will blame each other.

Will the religious wars ever end in the Middle East?  If you are a person of Faith, you know that Jesus will come down from the Heavens and sweep up His little darlings who chose to flame the fire.  There will be some suffering, then silence in our world.

    

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

Try a Great Game

Here is the game.  You pick the President of The United States for 2016 and beyond.  There is no game board, no video and you won’t even need your frickin cell phone.  Yes, I know, your left hand and your brain will not work properly without the cell there, but try the strange old world of no cell phone, if only for a few minutes.

Here is a sample:  “If I could choose any living American to become President, in the next election, it would be Bill Gates.”  Next, you have to support your choice with 5 or more reasons.

1.     1. The man is well respected and known, the world over.  His voice and his ideas will be listened to and respected by the voters and their representatives.  He would rule the independent vote and earn many votes from both Democrats and Republicans.  He has massive name recognition, without campaign spending and the name recognition is positive.

2.     2. He has no allegiance to either political party and will not be dictated to by them.  I don’t believe that either party can afford to buy him.  I believe that he will weigh each proposal before him on its own merits.  That would be a major change in our political system.  Our elected legislators may like observing this phenomenon so much that they may step back from the system and outlaw political parties.  This act would free these alpha dogs from the short choke chains that their party has them on.

3.    3.  Bill is smart.  His SATs were in the high 1500s and he attended Harvard, where he dropped out as soon as he realized that his time could be spent more effectively in industry than in studying industry.  It could not hurt our nation to have a smart person hold the office of President.  I believe that a Bill Gates would not lead this nation into an unnecessary war, like the one we are presently removing ourselves from.  He would have more respect for the intelligence of the people of Our Nation.

4.     4. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a place where the Gates family presently puts its money and its mind.  It is a force for advancing health and education, the World over.  The old cliché that “A rising tide raises all boats” could not be truer and Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are leaders of this concept on our planet.

 

5.     5.  Bill Gates is recognized among industrial giants as a giant among them.  When he speaks in front of TED.com, usually on the subject of future education or carbon’s effects on our environment, the “scarecrows” (those who are out standing in their fields) listen with respect.

The only problem I can see in getting Bill to take this step and run for office, is that he would have to give up the good life that he has now and move into a non-functioning neighborhood.  Perhaps he would enjoy the challenge.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz