Modus Libertatia

Shamelessly lifted from http://www.ratm.com/:

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Michael Moore e-mail
Friends, Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the pockets of their war-profiteering backers for the past five years, after lining the pockets of their fellow oilmen to the tune of over a hundred billion dollars in just the last two years, Bush and his cronies -- who must soon vacate the White House -- are looting the U.S. Treasury of every dollar they can grab. They are swiping as much of the silverware as they can on their way out the door. No matter what they say, no matter how many scare words they use, they are up to their old tricks of creating fear and confusion in order to make and keep themselves and the upper one percent filthy rich. Just read the first four paragraphs of the lead story in last Monday's New York Times and you can see what the real deal is: "Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it. "Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages. "At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees. "Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury's proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions." Unbelievable. Wall Street and its backers created this mess and now they are going to clean up like bandits. Even Rudy Giuliani is lobbying for his firm to be hired (and paid) to "consult" in the bailout. The problem is, nobody truly knows what this "collapse" is all about. Even Treasury Secretary Paulson admitted he doesn't know the exact amount that is needed (he just picked the $700 billion number out of his head!). The head of the congressional budget office said he can't figure it out nor can he explain it to anyone. And yet, they are screeching about how the end is near! Panic! Recession! The Great Depression! Y2K! Bird flu! Killer bees! We must pass the bailout bill today!! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Falling for whom? NOTHING in this "bailout" package will lower the price of the gas you have to put in your car to get to work. NOTHING in this bill will protect you from losing your home. NOTHING in this bill will give you health insurance. Health insurance? Mike, why are you bringing this up? What's this got to do with the Wall Street collapse? It has everything to do with it. This so-called "collapse" was triggered by the massive defaulting and foreclosures going on with people's home mortgages. Do you know why so many Americans are losing their homes? To hear the Republicans describe it, it's because too many working class idiots were given mortgages that they really couldn't afford. Here's the truth: The number one cause of people declaring bankruptcy is because of medical bills. Let me state this simply: If we had had universal health coverage, this mortgage "crisis" may never have happened. This bailout's mission is to protect the obscene amount of wealth that has been accumulated in the last eight years. It's to protect the top shareholders who own and control corporate America. It's to make sure their yachts and mansions and "way of life" go uninterrupted while the rest of America suffers and struggles to pay the bills. Let the rich suffer for once. Let them pay for the bailout. We are spending 400 million dollars a day on the war in Iraq. Let them end the war immediately and save us all another half-trillion dollars! I have to stop writing this and you have to stop reading it. They are staging a financial coup this morning in our country. They are hoping Congress will act fast before they stop to think, before we have a chance to stop them ourselves. So stop reading this and do something -- NOW! Here's what you can do immediately: 1. Call or e-mail Senator Obama. Tell him he does not need to be sitting there trying to help prop up Bush and Cheney and the mess they've made. Tell him we know he has the smarts to slow this thing down and figure out what's the best route to take. Tell him the rich have to pay for whatever help is offered. Use the leverage we have now to insist on a moratorium on home foreclosures, to insist on a move to universal health coverage, and tell him that we the people need to be in charge of the economic decisions that affect our lives, not the barons of Wall Street. 2. Take to the streets. Participate in one of the hundreds of quickly-called demonstrations that are taking place all over the country (especially those near Wall Street and DC). 3. Call your Representative in Congress and your Senators. (click here to find their phone numbers). Tell them what you told Senator Obama. When you screw up in life, there is hell to pay. Each and every one of you reading this knows that basic lesson and has paid the consequences of your actions at some point. In this great democracy, we cannot let there be one set of rules for the vast majority of hard-working citizens, and another set of rules for the elite, who, when they screw up, are handed one more gift on a silver platter. No more! Not again!



Yours, Michael

MooreMMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

Ok, as hard as I've tried I haven't been able to understand christianity, buddhism, the meaning of life, or why we're all here, but I do know one thing. A young single woman should be able to afford an apartment for 60 bucks a month in Nairobi. Can't we find a way to help her? Aren't there enough peope in similar circumstances to lead us to some action? When making a decision on which new flat screen t.v. to buy, could we maybe think of how that money could be better spent by donating to a cause to help our fellow brethren just "BE"?

http://www.mapendo.org/about_blog.cfm

Ok, I'm going to momentarily diverge from my "serious" (mwa ha ha) thinking and discuss something that is actually very dear to my heart. Anybody that knows me knows that I love tattoos. I can't imagine a more personal form of supporting the arts than to have somebody you trust put their personal touch onto your vision and staple it to your body (we won't discuss those painful "first tattoo" experiences, now OR ever).

Recently I've see some posts online regarding blacklight tattoos. Wow. Tattoos you can only see under blacklight, or a way to highlight your current tattoo, I'm a fan.

Some Links:
http://www.tattooartists.org/Gal3975_UV_Blacklight_Ink.asp

http://www.tattooartists.org/Gct108_Black_Light_UV_Tattoos.asp

"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'" - Nietzsche

I've always felt that the idea of reincarnation was horrifying, absolutely the scariest thing I could ever imagine in this life. More than death, pain, or a 3rd "W" term, I fear reincarnation. And the thought that this reality, this apparent chaos that is "IS", could also be trapped in a cycle of infinite repetition is too sorrowful to bear. Nevermind the pointlessness of it all, nevermind the karmic implications, just imagine having to bear with High School again, or the first time you had to call your parents to bail you out of jail.

By studying human behavior I can kind of see how this idea could be supported. It's pretty easy to see in our own lives the repetitive chain of actions that we engage in. We often struggle with repeated patterns of behavior that trap us in our current life situations, and it seems a tremendous effort to break out of those patterns, or even to believe that there is a "breaking out" of a pattern, even when it means a certainly better life. Perhaps the idea of Karma came about as a hopeful solution to our own cycle of mediocrity.

Thankfully I have a way out of this problem, and it's name is "Entropy". Because of this one principle of science I can now view the universe as a bunch of solid matter all melting back into a big soupy mess. Not sure how much that scares me, but it's not as bad as Eternal Recurrence does. At least this equalization is some sort of straight path "towards". I like to think of it in these terms: We live on an unequaled planet (at least as far as we've determined) in regards to natural wonder, diversity of life, and it's ability to sustain our existence. At the rate of which we are destroying all of this (and each other) I think I can feel safe in not having to worry any longer about Eternal Recurrence, at least not until the next time I'm suffering the typical existential crisis. Thank God for the beer.

Having been almost a year since I've been to the ocean and more than a month away from returning I decided to dive into an escapist piece of literature about building a raft and sailing it across the world. "Voyage of the Manteno" has been an interesting read about expeditioner John Haslett's journeys across the ocean in a wood raft, or rather a series of balsa wood rafts.

Why balsa wood? Because a 15 ton vessel made out of wood logs has to stay afloat somehow. Balsa wood is about 2/3 less dense than most other kinds of hard wood, which makes it very suitable for use in situations that require buoyant materials. Balsa wood has been used in numerous rafts in anachronistic attempts at ancient ocean travel, being popularized by Thor Heyerdahl in his famous journey from Peru to the Polynesian Islands aboard the raft "Kon-Tiki". With massive logs tied together with hemp ropes so tightly that the water could not separate them and steered using the 'guara system' the dream (and subsequent reality) has been that we can conquer the oceans roadways using nothing more than the God-given tools of the earth.

Why is this so appealing to me now? Being stuck in the Gyre of Corporate America I'm half inclined to run off on an expeditionary journey of my own, but until I can find a way to properly finance my life during said adventure I will have to settle with enjoying the good life of those among us that have the intestinal fortitude to shed the false cloak of security and live life the way God intended, tied together day by day, one hemp rope at a time.