If you "believe" hard enough in the magic feather it can take to you to great new heights (in Fantasy Land).
US Senator Inhofe spreads his wings below:
Many a pundit in economics would like you to believe:
Gee whiz, Mr. Wilson it works just like a mechanical machine.
Of course that is pure mumbo jumbo.
But where does the mumbo jumbo hide?
That will be the focus of this dissection.
Let's start with the proposition that all "transactions" are the same.
Are they?
When Mr. Farmer agrees to swap his 40 acres of wheat for 1000 barrels of Mr. Drake's oil production, is that the same as ...
When Mr. H. I. Broker agrees to sell an HI policy to Mr. S. M. Broker in exchange for 1000 shares of Enron corp.?
(HI=Health Insurance, SM= Stock Market)
Often we are positive that we know who we mean when speak of the we. Is that always true? Can "we" sometimes mean only "me"? Is "we" just the two of us?
Remember this sensitive member of the US House of Representatives?
Republican House Speaker John Boehner?
Turns out he can cry at the drop of a hat, or of an elephant turd.
As he explains it: "There are some things I feel very strongly about. ... I take what I do very seriously. And when it comes to kids. When it comes to my own family. Soldiers. You know, I get, I feel very strongly that I want America to be the country that I grew up in. A country where you really do have opportunity."
One of the things he feels "strongly" about is thing called "Obama"-care; which, as some people clearly understand, is merely hide-in-plain-sight code for the Black President Cares law.
Technically it should be called the ACA or Affordable Care Act.
But hey, who needs to get technical when we're dealing with an emotional --tears jerking-- issue like there being a dark skinned fella in the "White" House and him getting laws passed that actually try to help the little guy.
Why it brings tears to one's eyes.
(Posted on the day the GOP failed to extort the American people into giving up the ACA if they wanted to see their national parks and whatnots again.)
Some might say:
Lately we have been bedazzled
by predictions of a dawning
new age of singular abundance.
We are awash in new technologies
and in a fresh cornucopia of consumption that
these confabulations appear to bring us.
Ain't no doubt 'bout it.
Happy Days are here again.
Or are they?
Is the "New Normal"
not your grandfather's normal?
Is the sea not what we see?
Is the climate change
not to our temperament?
Is the gold not that which glitters?
Are the smiles
on super model faces
nothing but pasted-on facades?
Is stale thinking
that which buries us?
Maybe so.
But oh that parking lot.
Look at that parking lot
And the sun that sets 'ore it.
There are some people
who seem to have never
gotten past the High School habit
of dropping a few gratuitous F-Bombs in everything they say
One habitual F-bomb dropper
has finally grown up, tuned up
and dropped out.
But not before dropping one last "Humanity is F***ed" Bomb.
To imagine that the human condition can be summed up
in one simple "We're F***ed" line
is to have failed to grasp Cultural Biology.
It's much more complicated than that.
We are more than our biological genetics.
We are also our cultural connectomes.
We are the sum of our pre- and post-linguistic experiences,
many of them being social emotional ones.
What are our comprehensions of the "money" thing
even before we know how to speak?
What are our comprehensions of the Mommy & Daddy gods
and their quest for the "money" power
even before we know how to utter same sounds?