The Weekly Notes 2007
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Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives Feedback is Nice: Recently I received this
brief note in an email. It’s nice to get feedback, even if it’s
brief. On Have hope.. I will step
up... But just like with
neitchze.. aren't you a simpleton yourself, if you can understand all these
things? Of course, I replied. Dear X: Thanks for your note. I am at a disadvantage
since I do not know what your message is referring to. For now, I will assume
you read my “Message to Simpletons” which is linked through my
home page site links. I hope you do step up
and do what you can. As to me, I believe I am on the right path but I have a
great deal of work to do before I catch up with Nietzsche. In the meantime, I
continue to study and write. Thank you: Bill: As I said, it is nice to
get feedback. I keep on writing, about what I believe, what I find wrong, and
what I hope for. Sometimes I get the feeling that my stuff is going into some
kind of black hole. I almost get depressed. Then I will get a message like
this one and I am revived for a time. Atheist: Since I began trying to
learn about spirituality and began writing about it, I have been accused a
few times of being an atheist. Even my own sister did it. She slid around a
bit and did not use the A word, but she sure meant it. For the record, I am
not an atheist. Atheism is a religion of negation. There is nothing at all
negative about my spirituality. What I am on is a quest for understanding. To
do that, I have had to look at the major obstacle in the way of our
understanding. Like it or not, I am convinced that obstacle is organized
religion with its archaic monster god and the myths that arose from that. Nothing Much Changes: The faces we see on the
news shows and ABC’s This Week change from week to week, but nothing
else does. We still get the same hackneyed political rhetoric. We still get
the worn out unworkable offers for solutions. We still get the same old
business-as-usual words presented as though they were fresh new ideas. None
of those buffoons has offered a new idea in the 5 decades I have been aware
of these fools. Even Obama, the one guy I had hope for, has fallen into the
same vaudeville routine of they say, I say. Nothing will change until we
abolish the two party system. Those morons, all of them, are locked in. They
have neither the courage, nor the creativity to escape the same-old same-old
song and dance. Give me my hat and my cane! For The major thing wrong
with our political system is that the Congress and the Senate are for sale.
That is why the drug companies can push through a dishonest drug plan and get
a brain dead president to say it’s good for us. That is why the major
corporations can get whatever they want in It’s Broken: Northwest and other
airlines are canceling flights at a record rate. People are being left
stranded all over the world. The authorities are saying the system is near
the breaking point. I wonder what they would define as being broken. These
nuts are just trying to put a nice face on it. The system is broken. It does
not work people! Paddy Wagon: I looked this phrase up
in Microsoft’s Bookshelf. Here is what I found. Slang. A van used by police for
taking suspects into custody. [Origin unknown.] Just four entries above
that nonsense, I found this: Paddy
(pàd´ê) noun Offensive Slang. Used as a disparaging
term for an Irishman. [Nickname for Irish
Gaelic Pádraig, Patrick.] Duh! It seems they could not
make the connection. When I was a kid, there was no doubt about what people
meant by the phrase Paddy Wagon. It was a vehicle for taking unruly Irishmen
to jail. This was before the Irish figured our how the system worked and got
into politics. Write to Your
Representative: I often receive missives
urging me to write to my representative about one thing or another. The most
recent was an email about a new tobacco tax to fund a children’s health
care program. Smokers are the current pariahs of choice and they are in a
minority. It is common for
congress to attack voter minorities, people who have little or no power in
the ballot box. It’s easier that way. I am supposed to write an
indignant letter about that. My question is why? Have you ever written to an
official with a complaint? I have. I used to do it whenever I had a concern
about some issue. The response has been invariable to the point where I no
longer bother. It is always some pappy bull from some gofer that promises
nothing. Those people are all swine. They never respond honestly to anything.
The only thing to do with these scumbags is continue to vote for the least
evil one every chance you get. As to the tobacco tax,
what they do will depend on what they want. If they really want revenue, they
will be punitive up to just within the bounds of irrationality. If they just
want to be punitive, they could be irrational about it. That could have the
same effect prohibition had way back when. That bit of insanity created a new
criminal class that we are still struggling to control. People, who would not
normally have drunk, did it just because it was naughty and gangsters were
happy to meet the new demand. When our government gets too stupid, illegal
activity including smuggling becomes a viable option and criminals will step
in. It’s just business. Infrastructure: The Society of Civil
Engineers claims we need 1.6 trillion dollars to repair Back to the Weekly Notes 2007 Archives |