Letter to the big swinging Dick Durbin

Here's my letter to the Durbin who's on his way to the dustbin of history, along with all his leftist fiends, er, friends---

"Your recent self-exposure at once damns you and is wonderful for us all. Now the truth is out. You smug leftists are so over-full of hubris that you can't help but play the losing 'Hitler' card.

The very fact that you did proves that YOU are way beyond simply blaming America first, but you are de facto an enemy combatant. It was bad enough that some spies were able to aid the USSR while in the CIA. Now we have you and your ilk in broad daylight doing the same for the Islamo-Fascists, and worse.

How can you look yourself in a mirror, or even show your face in public?

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, but we all know you leftists have no shame. It's always all about you, and the free country, America, be damned.

What a sucker you are! A real man would resign in hasty embarrassment, if not commit hara-kiri. To prove that you are not just a traitor, but stupid, you will try to follow the Clinton way. That's oh so good, because sooner or later more and more people will be unable to be fooled by people like you, and there'll be a time when you left wing fringe characters will be merely fodder for disdainful laughter, AND out of power."

posted by James at 4:10 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

The Hoary "Quintile" Con Game, Redux

Every year, there are certain days that seem to replay the same themes, over and over again. Think of the 365 specific days using a Bell Curve to rank them in terms of their vast noospheric importance. Of course, the official holidays are the 'geniuses'. But, don't forget to factor in all the religious days, and especially so many secular 'holidays', such as the Super Bowl. Then, there are those special months, such as March Madness for college basketball addicts, 'er', fans.

So, here and NOW we are, on a 'let-down' day, as summer starts to offer TV reruns, and most lazy, hazy, crazy days will be very non-special. Let's see. June 14th, a Tuesday? I just looked at the calendar, and whoa! Today IS a special day---it's Flag Day! Why, it turns out that the 'mediocre' yesterday, June 13th, was Shavuot! According to my dictionary, that's [[ < Heb (chag-ha) Shavuot, (the Feast of) Weeks < shavua, week < sheva, seven; akin to IE* septm, seven ]] a Jewish holiday, the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, orig. celebrating the spring harvest, now chiefly commemorating the revelation of the Law at Mount Sinai: celebrated on the 6th and 7th days of Sivan"

What do you know? You learn something new everyday. Oh, btw, one of the data points in this scheme, oh what a screaming 'risky scheme', is that for each individual there are always very special days, such as family birthdays, the day you might have been drafted, left the army, etc.

The reason I'm diving into this cyclic nonsense is as a reaction to the current high tide of political-economic concern by powerful pundits about the middle class. The alert and experienced Luskin squad of righties has called out using statistics to slice and dice as LIARS, the Krugman squad of lefties. That is, the only way lefties can seem to plausibly argue against a rising economic tide is to play the class warfare card, as the good-bad Marxists they are.

Well, there are certainly a plethora of 'cuts' one can make to try to explain causes for the measured-in-dollars effects, over the last fifty years, say. The money illusion continues to sell. However, allow me to take 'slice and dice' to four dimensions.

Think of a typical American's normal life span, from birth to death. The argument du jour revolves about the monetary 'value' of each person, essentially over his or her adult working, and retired, life. Why not use what Seth told the channeling Jane Roberts, that to completely understand someone, you'd have to know their death day, in vital---oh, wait, un-vital---addition. Thus, using quintiles, say you were to live for 80 years. Thus, measure the quality of life, not dollars earned or net equity, over sixteen-year spans. No doubt, even using quintiles or quartiles is absolutely arbitrary---but useful.

It's back to the most obvious insight for humanity, which permeates all previous time---the fight between 'this-world' secular materialists and 'other-world' wannabe Transcendental Realizers. This fight can also be understood to shoot through each individual's quintiles. In hoary short, people always choose between Wealth and Health, in essence. IMHO, health is wealth, but wealth is not necessarily health. Yes, for most people, just as smoking is not good for the real you, say it with preacher James, "Wealth is not (necessarily) good for you; and 'you' are a child."

All this doesn't even take into the account of previous lives, the movement between lives, and future lives chosen. Staying somewhat within the common one-life-span dimension, though, here's the big deal: I'd rather be a robust, virile guy thoroughly healthy as a 'poor' member of a low quintile than a shriveled old fart with wealth coming out my ears as my health was shot to hell.

Whatever became of 'moderation in all things'? It's all okay; there are no victims. How many of the dollar-rich need their monetary power to pay for bodily breakdowns? A Tony Snow chooses to destroy his colon; a Larry Kudlow is getting a new hip, both of them YOUNG men, relatively!

The resident American from India, who writes a witty column every week or two in the WSJ (Tinku V?), had a swell one last Friday about the exceeding superiority of kids of his type to win spelling bees. As an India-phile, particularly wrt Buddhism and Hinduism, it was edifying to get to his conclusion----the culture held in highest esteem the winners in the race to become Guru. Such people WORKED 24/7 to gain verbal knowledge as a required accoutrement! Reading dictionaries for FUN!

Finally, in contrast we have Africa, whose cultures have chosen to stay very physical, and, wysiwyg.

posted by James at 1:02 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com

Holding Patterns

Life is a holding pattern. That idea, 'life is a holding pattern", is itself a holding pattern. Let's play with this "holding pattern".

Physics long ago penetrated the secret of the universe, which is that It-All merely IS mass-energy, which is merely itself AS Light. My favorite holding pattern is the hard-to-understand-to-the-bones electromagnetic spectrum of Light. Yes, in our scientifically dumbed down CW, the mass of heavy brothers can only see light as the ROY G BIV visible waving lengths that impinge on their eyeballs. However, what you hear, touch, smell, feel and even think are all simply other forms of patterns of light that hold your attention.

Another certain aspect of the universe as a holding pattern of light is that of entropy. A useful guide to the universal insight that always takes this into account is the Realization that you are always already dead, not just 'going' to die in the putative future---which is perhaps the ultimate illusory holding pattern. On this basis, playing the odds can be fun, since there's nothing to lose. Every held pattern always contains a core of total Truth. For me, taking seriously the holding pattern known as astrology, when I found out Bob Dylan was born three days and a year before I was, and thus a fellow Gemini, it was easy to understand why his holding pattern songs had plucked my correlative holding pattern, before I found out about our similarities. Thus, one of his early songs became a major key, a la symphonies---"When you ain't got nothing, you ain't got nothing to lose".

Another way of expressing this is "Be in the world, but not of it."

This all relates quite nicely with the way humans have decided how to make and keep and destroy order. To the things, themselves! Proving, yet again, that It-All, AS Light, prevails--- or is that un-veils?--- in all kinds of physical forms that come from ideas: therefore is It-All called, sometimes, Mind. Oui, we are patterns of mass-energy crawling around and on and AS God's Mind. It's as if there existed some moveable feasting entity in our own brain---hey, there's no 'as if'! Science knows that blood cells DO run on their holding pattern runways there.

Thus, a stock market is the holding pattern, ne plus ultra, on which all other holding patterns can be seen as based. Every thing is a thinking man's 'stock', and the pattern having to do with all things, considered real, that comes directly from a physical first principle, is to not only hold, but to buy and sell---that is itself another kind of holding pattern. We're back to the faux future, with 1.) Brahma = Yahweh = Creator, 2.) Vishnu = Jesus = Sustainer, 3.) Shiva = Devil = Destroyer.

Salesmen try to convince other people to buy their pattern; and we're all salesmen, using whatever powerful stocks we control. Others, who move thingly stocks from creator to consumer = destroyer, may be a buyer who helps build up the requisite inventory, where things are held in their pattern, for a while. Seemingly so, with seams to the right of us, seams to the left of us.

Reality can be understood as It-All holding court, as we all play at being judges as the apparently unique holding pattern that we are. Do you see the playful Yin/Yang = Ground/Background = Motion/Rest that 'holding pattern' not only points to, but IS? To 'hold' is big and bold in its deadly rest, or apparent non-motion, even while it quivers like a speeding fan bullet, as an infinitely fast 'pattern'. Or is it vice versa?

A profound understanding of the nature of Reality as a Field that just IS can break the screaming seeming CW held pattern; to wit that all entities are born, live for a while, and finally die. Thus can the apparent paradox of 'action at a distance' dance be pierced. I am at the center of the physical universe! Not only that holding pattern truth, but I am also at the infinite 'edge' of it, as well as every space-time in between! But, of course, this "I" is not absolutely different and unique in this Big Bang holding pattern understanding. All this is true for any entity, including thoughtful humans.

Just as science appears to know that the universe is expanding, which means space is stretching and each star is at the center of the universe, the same 'stocky' thing is true for we wee people, we sixteen billion cells of mass-energy who scurry our holding patterns across earth and in her sky and under her waters and ground.

Hold these self-evident patterns at 'your' essential heart, and mind your understandable piss and vinegar salad days and nights!

I hold your hands, thusly!

posted by James at 1:52 PM
Contact me at jfcrystal@hotmail.com