5/24/12

The 'Obama spending binge' Is Another GOP Lie


"The Obama binge is pure fiction: The "big surge in federal spending" started before Obama stepped into the Oval Office, says blogger Meteor Blades at Daily Kos. Obama did add $140 billion in stimulus spending that year, but over the four years that Obama actively shaped the budget, spending is on track to go from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion. Adjusting for inflation, that amounts to an average 1.4 percent annual decrease. That should burst the GOP "propaganda balloon." 
The GOP is a disaster
Obama has stuck to his thrifty ways
Lies won't cut it when the truth is crystal clear
In 1964 LBJ lied his way to a landslide
In 2012 the GOP is lying itself to oblivion




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"Sto Perigiali" One of the Surpassingly Best Tunes Theodorakis Has Written


A Setting for a Poem "Denial" Beloved by the Greek People by the Nobel Prize Winning Poet Giorgos Seferis


The remarkable video at the link above is of a performance of "Sto perigiali" Mario Frangoulis and Mikis Theodorakis in 2001.

Frangoulis and Theodorakis are joined by musicians, including two bouzouki players, and a very large audience that is completely familiar with the words. The audience joins in at Frangoulis' prompt.

This is my very favorite Theodorakis melody. Those who know Theodorakis only for his "Zorba" music are in for a treat. When I was in Athens in 1966, for a short period of study with Constantinos Doxiadis, I knew nothing of Theodorakis. But about five years later, my friend Irene Vassos sang "Sto perigiali" to us. I have never gotten the tune out of my mind.

Later, when Irene joined our group to form a travelling company performing "New Rain", I learned to pick out a few notes on the bouzouki.

The English translation of the poem to which "Sto perigiali" is set reads as follows:

DENIAL

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life: a mistake!
So we changed our life...

- Giorgos Seferis

Thanks to the music of Mikis Theodorakis, "Sto perigiali" has become one of the best-known and beloved poem-lyrics in Greece. Giorgos Seferis was a Nobel laureate and one of Greece's best loved poets.

"Sto perigiali" performed by Mario Frangoulis and Mikis Theodorakis One of the surpassingly best tunes Theodorakis has written -- a setting for a poem beloved by the Greek people by the Nobel prize winning poet Giorgos Seferis.






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Nietzsche in English and Online


 Critical Directory of Useful and Usable Sites

To my best knowledge the sites below are accessible, 
have no thinly veiled subscription requirements, 
and have accurately presented what they claim to present.

Many of the "comprehensive" pages out there 
lead to nonexistent sites or to sites 
which have various access requirements. 
Or else they have obtrusive ads.

This is a work in progress.

GENERAL






BIBLIOGRAPHIES:







ONLINE TEXTS IN ENGLISH BY NIETZSCHE:



ONLINE TEXTS IN ENGLISH ABOUT NIETZSCHE:



OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:


SUB-PAGES:






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Nietzsche Online Some Pertinent Destinations



Visit Religion Online

From:

A Christian Scholar's Dialogue with Muslims by Hans Kung

Second. in the process of secularization, modern Christianity has had negative as well as positive experiences which Islam in its unavoidable modernization quite possibly might also have lying before it. That is particularly true in regard to dealing with the modern critique of religion, as, for example, by Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.

From:

A Political Vision for the Organic Model by Robert W. Hoffert

Both politics and personality would be reinvested with a wholeness they have lost in countless ways: in Marx's economic determinism, in Nietzsche's nihilism, and in Dahl's socioeconomic statistics.

From:

A Whiteheadian Chaosmos: Process Philosophy from a Deleuzean Perspective by Tim Clark

As it was with Nietzsche, so it is with the pagan Deleuze.

From:

A Worried America by Gunnar Myrdal

We could, and did, indulge in the pessimism of a Schopenhauer or in the aggressive egocentricity of a Nietzsche,

From:

An Interview with David Tracy by Lois Malcolm

I agree with Nietzsche: our souls are too small.

From:

Anselm Kiefer: Art as Atonement by Ronald Goetz

Because Nietzsche's thought was appropriated by Hitler and Nazism (however legitimately or illegitimately the Nazis understood that self-contradictory philosopher -- and the jury is forever out on that question), Nietzsche came under a cloud in Germany immediately after World War II.

But such an eclipse could not be expected to last, and at present Germany is experiencing a Nietzschian revival, Kiefer is plainly indebted, as were his early 20-century German expressionist predecessors, to elements within the Nietzschian mind-set.

From:

Has Europe Become Theologically Barren? by John B. Cobb, Jr.

When we read the neo-Kantians against the background of Nietzsche's critique, they seem somewhat superficial. As knowledge of other religious traditions became more important, the easy affirmation of Christian superiority was harder to maintain. I think here, especially, of Ernst Troeltsch, and his giving up of the claim to the absoluteness of Christianity.

From:

Whitehead and Nietzsche: Overcoming the Evil of Time by Strachan Donnelley

Whitehead and Nietzsche, indefatigable process philosophers, march to decidedly different philosophic drums. Yet at a striking junction, they cross paths.

Both find human life and the temporal world of becoming plagued by an ultimate evil that is deeply involved with the nature of time -- in particular, with the essential passage of time and the temporal dimension of the past. Time threatens to devour human significance and the humanly good life.

From:

Whitehead and the Dualism of Mind and Nature by Philip Michael Rose

His [Nietzsche's] naturalistic approach removes the veil of completeness and order which reason brings to the world and reveals instead a world which is essentially incomplete -- an open-ended, chaotic world of pure contingency.



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The GOP Has Betrayed the President for a Mess of Pottage


Barack Obama will be a two term president
 We should build monument to 
the consistency of Barack Obama 
in the face of one of the most 
shameful assaults in our history 
The GOP listened to Limbaugh 
and decided to stonewall him 
as though he was a pariah and worse

A lesser man would have become resentful
 Obama remained cool 
His program remains centrist
And this time around
the Democrats who hang back
Can see the writing on the wall

GOP Betrayal
is the heart of the narrative
An Obama Victory in November
is its just and deserved conclusion

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The Not So Great Society - A Note to The President

I wrote this a while back.


When you were just a little boy Sir
We made us a compact
To stratify by race
And look
And class

We used the Great Society
To befog the reality
And then we renamed charity
As organized community

Our tokenism breathed easy
As we moved outward from the city
Built more prisons
Elected mayors
And patted ourselves on the back
And shook our heads in private



Yes we left the bulk of poverty
Moved on to great careers
You know the drill

And now the chickens barely mumble Sir
Malcolm-like and honestly
And Rome remains unburned Sir
For the nonce

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2010 How Wrong We Were - A Cautionary Post

If we cannot pull together this year ...  


Obama Will Win the Election This Fall 2010

Obama Will Win
The Election This Fall --
A Polypoem

for David Plouffe

To "On Top of Old Smoky"

We need a new Congress
Not full of wingnuts
If we don't get one
We'll be out of luck

Cause Congress will fool you
And tell you more lies
Than cross ties on a railroad
Or stars in the skies

The Republican Party
Thinks the past's on their side
Along with the pundits
And the rest of the snide

But Obama is running
And Obama's no fool
While wingnuts are boiling
He's playing it cool

But behind his coolness
A great fire burns
On the fifth of November
The nation will learn

The people will do it
They'll throw the jerks out
And when it's all over
We're all gonna shout

We have a new Congress
Obama has won
And now his agenda
Can finally get done

We'll move beyond oil folks
We'll move toward green
McCain will be silenced
And we'll be less mean

Obama will win it
As in 2008
The young and the rising
Will decide our fate

Obama's not perfect
But neither are we
Let's all pull together
And make history

Obama Will Win The Election This Fall is a song to the tune of "Old Smoky" suggesting that the President will emerge victorious following the November, 2010, elections.



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These are ontological sources of human beauty

A value is something you do 
You do not do honor unity or beauty
You tolerate 
You help 
You practice democracy 
In a spirit of non-judging non-idolatry 

These are ontological sources of human beauty
Worthy of the highest honor
Making for a healing unity


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Balancing business and environment just brings disaster closer

Shell Arctic Ocean Drilling Stands to Open New Oil Frontier - NYTimes.com: "In blessing Shell’s move into the Arctic, Mr. Obama continues his efforts to balance business and environmental interests, seemingly project by project. He pleased environmentalists by delaying the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada and by adopting tough air standards for power plants, yet he has also delighted business concerns by rejecting an ozone standard deemed too costly to the economy."


Environmentalism is the most profound realism there is
We can document and prove out  
coming environmental disasters one by one
Every time we make a concession to the short term
we increase the severity of the long term
At some point the demonstrable truth must be told
before the predictable takes hold
We need a new economy whose signature
is not drill drill drill but sustainability

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There is a spark in everyone that's more than life or breath

There is a spark in everyone
That's more than life or breath
The spark links every living soul
Because our world is one great whole
And every one is precious and
Our destiny is shared



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