A story . . .

. . . that may never, and possibly should never, be told.  It's not a story of a long lost love newly found.  Nor is it the hear-wrenching tale of a family's struggle to survive or to cope with the loss or illness of one of its members.  Not a love story or an account of injustice righted or never righted.  It's actually a story of a fungus.

The story is also one about integrity, honesty, enthusiasm, communication, timing and ignorance.  It began innocently with curiosity at the sighting of an unusual fungal growth which produced a much larger physical manifestation than one normally encounters on a lawn, wood or otherwise green area. And since there was sincere doubt as to the true identity of the specimen, a curious (have I used the word innocent yet?) the layman which encountered it chose to physically probe or otherwise accost the specimen in question out of sheer curiosity. In so doing, the uninitiated soul, without malice or intention of destruction, put an abrupt end to the life of the initially-mentioned fungal being without realizing the full range of implications, mainly as the result of past encounters with such earthly phenomena, albeit of much smaller stature and girth, which were clearly, or practically obviously, not beneficial to humankind as either nourishment or ornamentation.

Not long after the above described encounter, the party involved discovers through casual and friendly discourse, that someone possesses an enthusiastic and affectionate fascination with the very fungus by whom the former was confronted the very day prior.  Turns out the specimen is (most likely) beneficial to humankind as nourishment and may also, in the individual matter of one's own subjective opinion, be perceived as quite beautiful. In fact, the subject of the confrontation was brought up by the very one that accosted the fungus. After conversationally mentioning the encounter with the object and it's particularly impressive dimensions, the culprit learned that the appearance of this particular species had been eagerly anticipated by another party close to the situation and that he would be absolutely thrilled to learn of its whereabouts so that it could be further nurtured and possibly soon harvested.

Due to the phrasing of the initial casual observation and impression, as well as the ardent response that revelation prompted, the culprit was at a loss to relate the details of the complete encounter, i.e. the disengaging of the life form from it root/base.  And that inability haunted the culprit for an indeterminate amount of time with its accompanying feelings of guilt, dishonesty, disingenuousness and lack of integrity.

In hindsight, the best clear, concise, honest way the culprit could and should have related the original thought would have been to include the part about disengaging the thing from its trunk at the very beginning.  But, after all is said and done, a simple and heartfelt apology, although the dastardly deed was done innocently, would certainly not have hurt a thing.

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Tired . . .

. . . of hearing of . . .

 Romney's misrepresenting Obama's welfare plan.   The need for fact-checkers.  Serious and terminal illness, helplessness and grief.  Willful ignorance.  Political polarization.  The approaching end of summer.  Droning, monotone, musically elementary folk singers who are hugely popular.  Office politics.  Lack of leadership.  Bad poetry.  Higher prices.  Senseless killing.  Theistic religions with archaic tenets.  Endless, mindless drivel from the media about stupid people who have money but no sense. 

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Admirable . . .

. . . yes. . . Admiral? . . .   

No.

Inspirational and simply correct.  In the face of so much adversity in the form of office politics and some basic, simple, downright ignorance, one who can maintain his/her integrity while according all due respect, even to those promulgating the politics and victim to the ignorance.  I find it admirable and worthy of the utmost respect.  In my own, simple, lazy way, I try to emulate this most noble tack.

I fear however, that when more time is spent in discussing the aforementioned adversity that can be spent on pure, positive, pro-activity, sooner or later. . .

something's gotta give. 

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The OWS protesters. . .

". . . are filling a large hole in America’s democracy. Congress, the president, the media, and even the think tanks were not reflecting the frustration, confusion and anger among Americans. They talked, they did not listen. I have witnessed these people several times now, talked to the group twice, talked to them in private—they listen. It is quite wonderful.

But what bugs me most is the widespread criticism of their ignorance of economics. What they know and what Wall Street and much of Washington do not is that the American model has been failing for decades. Look at income inequality. More important, look at average hourly earnings adjusted for inflation, now back to their 1969 level. Look at our crummy roads, our unequal education, our uniquely absurd healthcare system. Look even at relatively weak capital investment.

Then they are lectured by people like the Competitive Enterprise Institute that they do not understand how markets work. There have been no free markets by neo-classical or even Hayekian standards for decades on Wall Street. When there is no transparent pricing of derivatives, there is no free market. When five major banks control the entire market, there is oligopoly, not free markets. When enormous banks in every avenue of finance exchange information within their own companies, information asymmetries, not to mention potential for insider trading and front-running, are rife. When the conflicts of interest between ratings agencies and their clients are built into Wall Street, who can but laugh that this is real competition. And what about asymmetric financial incentives that made the bankers rich? They rewarded risk when you won, but did not penalize when you lost.

Don’t lecture the OWS movement about competitive markets. In league with Washington regulators, Wall Street learned how to rig those markets. And then they could misprice risk and lead to runway speculation that was bound to result in failure. One number always grabs me. Private financial firms wrote 18 percent of mortgages, which resulted in 42 percent of all serious defaults. There is the culprit. And then they didn’t have the capital to cover the losses. They drove the housing market sky high. Then they built debt on the bad mortgages.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that even had markets run on more competitive lines speculation and crisis would have been completely avoided. There is little in neo-classical theory that suggests mild corrections are all that is needed to set economic growth on its inevitably stable path. But people like Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers and Ben Bernanke stuffed the deep crises of 1982, 1987, 1989, 1994, 1997, 1998 and 2000 into that mild model. The great moderation was born.

Then wise guys who cannot help but champion Wall Street with little sense of history tell us that all the OWC criticism is unwarranted. Capitalism must be allowed to make mistakes. This is true.

But on balance, OWS is not against capitalism, it is against wild capitalism. And it is against injustice. Is Wall Street?"
(by: Jeff Madrick, TripleCrisis Op-Ed http://www.Truth-Out.org)




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Not quite sure. . .

. . . how we can ever stop such ridiculousness as the Terry Jones/Koran-burning/Afghanistan riot/killing or whatever you want to call it.

The situation provides a vivid illustration of what can be achieved when ignorance and reactionary violence are combined. . . death.
Of course some parties involved not only have no objection to the resulting death, they actually welcome it.

Since I clearly see which side of THIS argument is the correct one - NEITHER side - I won't belabor any point here at all.
I only want to use it as another opportunity to repeat what I believe to be a lesson learned, or more importantly, a preventative measure to such nonsense-induced tragedy - EDUCATION.

Take the time to LEARN. I mean real objective LEARNING. This would and should entail the consultation of MULTIPLE sources (and not merely or exclusively one or another 'holy' book), discussion (objective, non-emotional discussion) followed by some REAL thinking. . .

although I wonder now if the number of human beings truly capable of such educational endeavor is, of late, dwindling. . .

Coming April 5th - ANOTHER SHOT

by Ray Jozwiak