News to me for Cecil.

[stilltrucking]

you wrote:
((i find myself unable to reply to your post))

I like that
So Zen.



I wrote that in reply to SmileGRL’s Love and Lace

Mindless ramble
it is all turtles from here on down.

Speaking of finding one's self. I once in a while I find myself in the ladies room by mistake. I beat a hasty retreat. But I knew a guy who preferred to use the ladies room. He said they were always cleaner, better looked after, they always had soap and paper towels and T.P.

Remember when it was against the law in Texas for one sex to use the other's rest rooms? A big stink (maybe a pun) about that. Women marching on Austin demanding potty parity at the football stadiums. After one woman got tired of waiting in a long line for the women's rest room and ducked into the men's room. She was arrested... The women marching in Austin wanted one toilet for every urinal in the men's room. I hear that the new heads in the US Navy are unisex now. One size fits all. I saw a picture of the new head, strange looking contraption.
I will see if I can find a picture of it.

Always a pleasure to find you here compadre

[mtmynd]

So Zen. I live with a SooZen. It ain't always Zen. So... Zen.

[mtmynd]

do you think these folks are liars?

http://factcheck.org/2009/08/twenty-six ... t-hr-3200/

vote Obama... not only last November. vote Obama every time.

[still.trucking]

Obama still a good man for the job. I am so fucking sick of pundits.

[mtmynd]

roger that. i seldom watch any political news shows lately. same old crap: liberals vs conservatives vs democrats vs republicans, to hell with the country and back. the division has gotten to me, finally.

[stilltrucking]

I read the newspapers. I listen to the radio, nothing sexy like Don Immus just Jim Lehrer the old Ex Marine on PBS. I listen to ATC and Morning edition. I listen to a lot of music. Not much silence here between the jets from the airforce base on the other side of the train tracks and the trains and the ambulances.

I feel like a slut puppy because I still read the NYTIMES and THEWASHINGTONPOST, I can't forget how pimped for Bush and the war in Iraq. But I read them still.

I am not saying the hell with the country, I might as well say the hell with the human race. I just don't put much stock in pundits anymore. How the hell did Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich become wisemen?

Mingo blames it on the Europeans I guess he has a point. The only sane society to inhabit this continent were the American Indians.

But I see the same madness and greed in China, so now what?

I been reading The Nation magazine cover to cover, I get them used at the library for ten cents. Good mag. I remember Zlatko recommened it.

[mtmynd]

yeah, i support our country. it's the politicians, repubs in particular, that seem to favor themselves over america for the most part. call me dumb ass, but i still think Obama is for America and not his wallet. things could change some day, sure... but so far that's the way i see it - a good man with a heart for the people. has something to do with his family - wife, 2 kids and his mother-in-law... they somehow give him the right perspective. i hope i'm right. damn right.. i hope i'm right. for the country.

[stilltrucking]

I don't understand republicans Cecil. I remember at the Republican National convention in 2004 there were fat cats wearing John Kerry purple heart band aids. These are the people with the 99 cent made in China magnetic stickers on their cars saying "Support our troops" I am still disappointed with Kerry for sleep walking through the campaign. It seems to me he did not take it serious until the last few weeks. As if it was all an ego trip for him, But even so he was a good man and did more to serve his country then the plutocrats wearing those band aids.

I have more respect for Eisenhower then I used to. In the 1960 election JFK painted him as a dumb dumb asleep at the switch president who left us naked to Russian agression with a "missle gap"


I think to be a Republican these days you have to be a "True Believer"

The Hoffer he is refering to is Eric Hoffer. The longshoreman and philosopher who wrote True Believers. Ike was talking about defense whan he wrote this but he could have been talking about health care reform too.

Though Eisenhower was criticized for lacking an intellectual framework or even an interest in ideas, he was drawn to Hoffer’s insights. He explained to Biggs that Hoffer “points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems — freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” The authoritarian follower, Eisenhower suggested, desired nothing more than insulation from the pressures of a free society.

Alluding to Senator McCarthy and his allies, Eisenhower pointed out that cold war fears were distorted and exploited for political advantage. “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.” Emphasis mine.



Ike's Other Warning

more about Eric Hoffer

There may be no harder form for an author to attempt than writing in aphorisms. The required combination of brevity and profundity is exceptionally hard to maintain, in fact most authors only toss off a few good ones in their entire career. The most famous exception to the rule is Friederich Nietzsche, who, whatever we may think of the destructive influence of his ideas, must be admitted to be a brilliant philosopher (see Orrin's review.) But interestingly enough, Eric Hoffer, a self educated field hand and longshoreman, is more than a match for him. There are so many quotable passages in this little book that you can seriously open to just about any page and find a sentence that will stop you in your tracks and make you ponder it's implications. It is in no way possible to address all the ideas that he broaches, so let me just try a couple.

Perhaps the most important insight in the book--and it is very hard to settle on just one--is that the members of mass movements, who ostensibly seek to better the lot of all mankind, are motivated not by altruism but by selfishness. They join such movements not because they believe in any particular ideals or goals but because they do not believe in themselves :
http://brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fusea ... ook_id/743