Different Times - Different Measures
   PayPhones and Cowboys in the 2012 race for POTUS

Hearing former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney ridicule President Barack Obama while outlining his approach to repairing a fractured United States economy, sent my mind a wandering. Romney snickered about how by continuing to pump federal dollars into the economy to spur growth, Barack was "stuffing quarters into a payphone that was no longer connected ...Feeding the payphone in a smartphone economy."

Interestingly, while Obama’s is the very first national candidacy to master internet fundraising and elect the first Blackberry POTUS, Romney is the straggler who has pirates from the disastrous George W Bush teams as the brains behind his economic strategy; disciples of  a dementia-plagued Ronald Reagan, tightening a desperate grip on a philosophy that was tried and died in this modern mega-nation, ultra-flashy world economy. Mitt goes on to brag about jobs he created in the private sector, when he really eliminated many more jobs in his corporate takeovers. When Romney isn't busy flip-flopping, he's relaxing in a state of delusion. Besides, it’s unclear whether Mitt truly gets the old... “different times – different measures” concept, or not.

Too often, the turf between traditional practice and current reality is cluttered with people who abuse the status quo to serve their own purpose. The struggle to decide which remnants of practical evolution to cling to as we embark upon new frontiers is always going to be met with debate and division, and won't always lead to a better place.

Take the “constitutionalists; people who pretend to basically fall ill at the mere mention of thinking outside the box when that box is the U.S. constitution. It makes sense that people who believe the bible was ordained by a time-traveling, immortal, multi-world, multi-media demi-god who sprung from a human who was mystically impregnated by a god who exists only in spirit …are the same people who believe that what applied hundreds of years ago should still rigidly rule today.
 
“It’s in the constitution!” Yea, and the condom from 2004 is still in my old luggage in the garage, but I won’t swear by its effectiveness. Next, they'll be telling us that it was written by God... or a member of his immediate family.

Laissez-Faire may have made sense on some level, at some point, when economies operated more locally and the flows of moneys (real and derived) were not being manipulated near the rate that they are in this technologically enhanced world. Is it worth defending this economic philosophy at this point in time? Letting the financial octopus swim free without proper restraints and granting unwarranted tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, iS how we got into the mess we’re in?

Shucks! Maybe it made sense to encourage ordinary citizens to be armed; back when wild animals roamed close by, the law was far off and cowboys fired six-shooters. Circumstances get very different with automatic handguns and assault rifles in urban environments, and just about every freaking where else.

Maybe it made sense to encourage private health insurance companies, before they overran the system and made dictating policy, through million dollar lobbyists, the norm.                                                                                                                                                                                by: J. Blackburne

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE

Ode to HAITIan CRACK
My frightened sister, shattered hands clasped toward impatient heaven
Bleeding ears shun your somber cry
Blistered knees so sore, so swollen.
A mother’s weary heart craddles your drifting sweet, sleepy soul

My desperate brother, laying his cracked head in dark dusty loneliness
Shall never grow a wisdom tooth
nor hear his saviors' rescue boots
Kicking aside concrete blocks that press against his sunken, faded chest
We missed you in the tally, the sad silent census marking where you rest

Though I cannot reward you for the boundless bravery you bequeath
I’ll remember your smile forever, making sure true history speaks

Belonging is fleeting, like life, like moments spent on simple kisses
Like evenings passed enjoying sunsets in a distant island daydream
Big, slit, shady leaves wave goodbye on rich green banana trees
Destiny sees your face dancing in ripples atop the Caribbean Sea

Like morning dew, your tears moisten crushed encrusted children
And they shall remember
Sap your strength to bolster feeble walls around themselves
If ever again their world comes tumbling down.

May your God receive you all with glorious, wide open arms
For it is your same God who shocked you and came calling
Confirming it was your time to ascend and grace the dark night sky
We pray he sets a star to shine on where your broken body lies
...Near Port-au-Prince, in Haiti
Land where the stolen, steadfast Zulu warrior fought his way to freedom
Where you left limber limbs and life hanging by our common thread
Where you lay beneath the ruins, finished fighting, for you're dead.

Haiti Again?

Consumption Gone Wild!
(From Part VI of "Crisis of Confidence" series)

Eradicating Stupidity 
 

                                                                                                                         by The Professor
Like an army of marauding ninja vampires, slithering around the underbelly of life, waiting to slip through the smallest crevice and seize the first opportunity to reappear and muck things up.  Even while their thirst is dormant, they proceed to sink their fangs into the necks of the rational, sucking the sweet blood of logic from the veins of life.  Before you can mount a defense, or even reach for an intellectual band-aid ---Boom! It's in your face and all over your favorite pair of shoes. CONTINUE