Mixed review 5-31-12 (DEMOCRATS!)

The 1st Item of the night is: Paul Krugman talks about trical down economics.

This is Paul Krugman, American economist, op-ed columnist for The New York Times, and avid defender of Neo-Keynesian economics. First off, I have to say that there are many things I agree with here, if not in circumstantial manner: the sole pursuit of self interests is bad, the post 1970s minimum wage erosion was bad, union busting is antithetical to freedom and is bad, and tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class is also bad. All these factors are a result of a kind of trickle down economic philosophy that assumes that bosses will toss down there capital gains if given the chance, ironically only one of these could logically be called smaller government because most of these involve more government intervention, and even exploitation of the people, I mean even a philosophy of self interest when applied as Dick Chainy did for Haliburton is clearly big government, and if you consider that trickledown economics doesn't only mean tax cuts but corporate subsidies then NO these policies do not reflect smaller government. So the only one that could be called smaller government is the erosion of the minimum wage, and I agree that lowering the minimum wage particularly in our monetary system is unjust.

The funny thing is that I don't think that mandatory weekends are to far left, to me that sounds pretty rad! And I don't really think Krugman disagrees with Germany here either, I think he's throwing us a straw man because Germany is doing pretty good right now compared to other European counters, so why would he pick on their economic policies.


Paul Krugman says well fair is not one of his favorite programs, but republicans hate SCHIP. I looked up S-CHIP, it was a bill to expand health care for children, and indeed as it turns out Bush vetoed two attempts to expand  its funding- WOW! This from a guy that signed a "$190 billion farm bill that promises to expand subsidies to growers."(CNN) And to his credit  President Barack Obama signed the Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009.

Now, earlier I stated that lowering the minimum wage is unjust. This is for two reasons one because of what the New Keynesians, like Krugman, call sticky markets, this is one of the places where I agree with the Keynesians. A sticky market is the delay between an increase/decrees in demand for a commodity and the supply of that commodity, when this delay occurs the commodity is marked higher then what people will pay for it or lower then people can sell it. The other factor, for which Keynesian economics is a notorious contributor, is inflation which is caused by the watering down of the value of a currency through the increase in that currencies supply. Now for how these two factors come together, because the printing of new money through fractional reserve, and Fed lawns is a constant factor, the increase in money also is a constant factor and the devaluing of the dollar too is a constant factor, and finally the devaluing of the workers wage which is dollars is a constant factor. Then the problem is compacted when the worker instead of demanding a rise to pay his living expenses orders a credit card that contributes to the devaluing the vary wage he is trying to compensate for.
(Richard d. Wolff' talks in-depth about this in his YouTube video Capitalism Hits the Fan, you can see this video on my post capitalism and its fans.)

The final irony in all this is that because printing money lowers they value of the money, Keynesian policies lead to the devaluing of the savings of the people who most need the Medicare programs the Keynesins like  Krugman advocates, thus making those programs all the more necessary. So I say, as long as The Fed and other financial institutions, such as GM motor company, (as it turns out GM is also a bank, looks like the banks are the problem again)(CNN) continue to inflate the money supply the government should never decrees the minimum wage.

   

    Here, Paul Krugman explains that Democrats get campaign money

       From banks while republicans get theirs from corporations, hm?!

                                        

                              

Maybe you noticed something in all this talk about banking and deficit spending. The politicians that want more spending on things like Medicaid are usually more willing to support, and to take campaign contributions from banks. I want to say, that this is because programs, that hike up the national deficit, like Medicare, are going to be more favorable to those that benefit from debt, the banks, and conversely the Democrats need the support of the banks to do what they really want to do, which is pervade good health care. The problem is that programs like Medicare are needed by millions of people, and, and apart from all the corruption that surrounds them are-you know-are a good thing. So it’s understandable why "good" people, like Paul Krugman, would fever these inflationary tactics. But inflation and watering down the value of the dollar is really bad for people that depend on savings and people with flexible mortgages. So what can be done? Of of course there’s the whole End the Fed thing, which would cut the fraudulent banks off from their never ending source of paper, but that would mean that we wouldn't be able to do deficit spending. So what are some ways that we could fund the programs that democrats want without inflating the currency or promoting nepotism?

A couple of solutions I've come across are the state bank of North Dekota, and
Dennis Kucinich's N.E.E.D act., doubtlessly the Fed needs to end, but these solutions could pick up the slack in a way that the gold standard, on it's own, might not be able to.

The 2ed Item of the night is: Bank of North Dakota the only None Fed insherd bank in America.

The Bank of North Dakota is a unique case in the United States, it is a state bank that pays no interest to the Federal Reserve. Could this be the future of banking.

                                        

Heres a motherjones interview with Bank of North Dakota presedent  Eric Hardmeyer: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2009/03/how-nation%E2%80%99s-only-state-owned-bank-became-envy-wall-street

The 3ed Item of the night is: Democrat and US Congressman Dennis Kucinich explains monetary Reform.

This is a link to the official Govermant site of H.R.2990.

Mixed Review 5-8-12 (Viva La Revolution)

The 1st Item of the night is: # GUEST WRITERS ESSAYS 27 /// Apian Semantics by Matthew Clements hosted by The Funambulist.

This is a good artical about bee communication.

http://thefunambulist.net/2012/05/09/guest-writers-essays-27-apian-semantics-by-matthew-clements/#more-10612

The 2ed Item of the night is: NOISE. Music documentary by N.O.Smith(preview).

The 3ed Item of the night is: prospects and concepts from What is Philosophy by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari.

This chaptor, chaptor 6, is about judgment. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (D&G) start the chaptor off delineating a philosophy of the consept from a philosophy of the function. As D&G would have it the logic of the likes of Frege and Russel are reductionistic and turn the consept into a function. In these kinds of logics thought is built up on propositions that "function" as suports for other ideas, the philosophical concept on the other hand is destigished by such carictoristics as its "self-reference, its endoconsistency and its exoconsistenct," which means it its identity comes from its standing in the community of other ideas.

As D&G report, "Instead of string or linking propositions, it would be better to isolate the flow of interior monologue, or the strang forkings of the most ordinary conversation." D&G say that thought in these forms are more "intrestiong" and are more able to reconquer an "immanet power of creation," then propaitional logic is. This means that although propositional logic can show you the implications of well-tried ideas, ordinary conversation on the other hand is actually better at showing new possibilities and making new ideas.

By internal affection they mean the way opinions can shift you from one mood to another, and by external perception they mean, whatever surrounds a subject is by extension the state of that subject, as in the subject is in trouble if something threatens it, and it is. But there is one form of proposition that D&G values as creative and interesting, and that is Prospect, or the proposition of opinion. D&G talk about the 2 references of opinion, "hence a concept must be produced that takes account of this situation: what opinion proposes is a particular relationship between an external perception as state of a subject and an internal affection as passage from one state to another (exo- and endoreference)." By internal affection they mean the way opinions can shift you from one mood to another, and by external perception they mean, whatever surrounds a subject is by extension the state of that subject, as in the subject is in trouble if something threatens it, and it is somber or serene respectively if its surroundings are still. The point is that the play of affections moves the moods along in such a way that the subject has enough to give back to the external perception, thus forming the individual experience.




One of the most remarkable things about this chapter is that D&G manage to show how even opinion has its start in the empirical world, in this way their philosophy manages to be realist. For D&G a prospect like smelliness is abstracted from something say like a block of chesse and that quality immediately becomes an argument about cheees, that is then compared to other qualities of cheees which are also already arguments about cheese, in this way opinion is an extension, mode, or proposition of the "real" world instead of being just- well some ones opinion. This is interesting because this makes D&G's philosophy true realism, and at the same time something of a phenomenology or study in direct experience. Phenomenology and realism have long been thought of as apposed schools of philosophy. Here they come together!



The 4th Item of the Night is: Viva La Revolution- The Adicts

The 5th Item of the night is: Max Keiser talks about fraking.

Mixed review 5-16-12 (WHAT IS IS)

The first item of the night is: Keiser Report: Central Bank Monarchs (E287).

To big to fail lets make them bigger!! Great point Keiser.



The 2ed item of the night: Eugene Thacker talks about "nature." Is it different from the human?


 http://vimeo.com/22862986

The 3ed item of the night is: Body, Soul & Spirit - The Jesus Trip with John Crowder.

John Crowder points out that various ontologies used throughout the bible all point to one mystical truth. Ontology is the categories of being, of course being isn't something that can actually be divided into categories or in any other way, so categorization is just a learning tool, the actual reality is a mystery, and must be lived to be understood, and that's a good thing.




"The word spirit and soul are interchangeable, all throughout the Old Testament all throughout the New Testament, they are used interchangeably."


So there’s soul and spirit, how many other words do we use to denote parts of our being? Student, young, old, shy, construction worker, sleep, happy, ego, home decorator, punk, liberal, communist, Christian, maybe none of these describe you, maybe all of them, but in a way these kinds of words are just as good for describing a human being as spirit or soul. I mean spirit and soul might be interchangeable but from what I understand spirit and soul both have their roots in breath or wind, think about what part breath plays in your life, it's really part of who you are even if it isn’t the first thing you think of when someone asks who you are, and lots of other words could describe who you are as well; writer, singer, activist, basketball player, hiker, mother- the point is to think of all the things that make up who you are, and after that you could think of all the things that make up who God is. Have you ever thought about how each of Gods names really indicates an interaction that we might have with him. This is true of God in any religion but, certainly in Islam, Judaism and Christianity; Emanuel means God-With-Us, JEHOVAH-ROHI lord shepherd, Elohe Mauzi God our strength, And in Islam Elohe Mauzi means Exceedingly Compassionate, and As-Salām means the Source of Peace and Safety, whatever you think of these religions the point is that every one of these names denotes an action or interaction, and that even in these so called "transcendental" religions you can't get past that, the imminence of interaction is the place where each name is defined. Now there are names for God that denote pure mystery or being beyond experience, these sacred names are kind of like openings in experience that make shore we don't think that God is limited by our experience. We are limited by our experience even if that experience is intuitional; God on the other hand is not.





The 4the item of the night is: the wikipedia permaculture article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

AND the Last item of the night is: an excerpt from guy debord society spectacle.

3. The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.

The Mixed Review 5-7-12(SPACE SHIP EARTH)

The 1st Item of the night is: rorschach.

                                                      

                                                               A robert rauschenberg

A fruit is a space ship transportion a tree to another world, one small step for a piece of fruit one Giant step for a tree, one tiny step for a civilization. One roll of a dice, one swath of glow, and some red can of paint, and a deadly ocean to carry it all away. It's the hot turmoil, the lunar landscape of an apple skin.

The 2d item of the night is: Bikes, irony and mymymy genaration (a word from the sponsor).

 

I responded to a blog post by a fellow blogger, Drwatson, entitled bikers and Irony, and after I finished writing it I realized that I had misunderstood the post. But I liked the idea so I put it up here. 

Indeed! Nothin' ironic about bikes. I'm not of the generation X, I am of the generation that is constantly called ironic. There seems to be so many meanings of irony, some of them varry deep and rich, others shallow and stupid.

I think for generation X irony was something liberating if not over played,(over-played was a BIG problem back in the 90s) it was a way of being more than people thought you were without giving up anything.

For me and I think a lot of people of my generation irony is not liberating at all. We are thought to be ironic and even believe it ourselves, but are not acutely ironic at all. We are pathetically sincere. That's probably what you see in those kid rock fans. Me, I would never listne to Kid Rock not even for shits and giggles. It's just not funny.

Nothings really over played in my generation; garage rock isn’t over played it's over looked. Everything in my generation is over looked. There is a pervasive misunderstanding. A gap. A "what was that". and that is still here and it’s still misunderstood.

I think to my generation irony is a profound limitation. It's a handy cap. Like in golf. Its something that usurps our power and saves us from the void. Just like you said If you see some one of my generation with an afro and a big caller shirt you can be as shore as hell that that guy is burning in his hart for something most of us will never understand. You know, it's kind of like we're a bunch of retards. Like a bunch of super-men retards.

In the nineties, and I'm old enough to remember them, irony was liberating and sincerity was stifling. The freest people I know could do anything because underneath it all they weren't really a cowboy, pirate, savige, forest wizard, lizard man, or whatever they were just different. Now we can be whatever the fuck we want to be, but no one believes it, they just think it's a joke.

(Oh I just realised that youre talking about harley bikes not bisicals. That funny how hipster is a bikecyle!?!)

This is the blog that this is a response to: http://philosophicalmatters.blogspot.com/2012/03/bikers-and-irony.html?showComment=1336565934194#c9184846487862677422

The 3ed Item of the night is: # DELEUZE /// The Body as a Desiring Machine by the The Funambulist.

In this article The fuambulist explains Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari use of the Body Without Organs, or the bwo. The funambalist starts by high lighting the historical origen of the concept from Antonin Artaud to William Burroughs to Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, then he highlights the particular quality of the BWO called Desiring Machine. The bwo is not divided up into organs instead it is divided into functions called desiring machines. Each section of a body can be thought of as serving many functions and each function is then defined interims of its desire and its material mechanism, hents desiring machine. This is distinguished in contrast to thinking of the sections of a body as organs, or sections with one or a certain limited set of functions. The mouth that eats is one desiring machine with your nose that smells food, the mouth that pulls slivers out of you’re hand is another desiring machine but for Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari they are not the same organ but are sections of a larger body with out organs. One desiering machine might include your nose that smells or you’re hand that is momentarily joined with you’re teeth separating the sliver from the other body.

The main point of this article seems to be to show the history of the concept of the bwo and to give a brief introduction to the use of the concept.

http://thefunambulist.net/2011/06/24/deleuze-the-body-as-a-desiring-machine/#more-7707

The 4th Item of the night is: Globalisation: my definition & Three major forms.(a word from the Editor)

Globalization, I want to say is any totalizing pattern that expanse power or influence toward a global limit, ether by central control over a wide range of activities or through the propagation of a single pattern or activity accost the whole of the earth. This totalizing pattern, or globalization, is an abstract form that can be the pattern of any number of social, governmental, or financial institution. That is that any institution can be referred to as globalism or globalised if it ether propagates its self toward the covering or circling of the entire globe or if it organizes a multiplicity of patrons from one centralized intelligence.

There is a corporate globalism that extends manufacturing and distribution of commodities around the globe, there is a governmental globalism that organizes the patterns of social behavior and standardizes law code around the world, this might include business law, environmental law, or social law, and then there’s cultural globalism that distributes patterns of behavior and cultural norms around the world. Each of these three forms of globalization are interconnected and usually the extension of one means the extension of the others; for instance when corporations are globalized they effect influence over national economies causing those nations to write policy in response, as in the case of tariffs, or trade taxes. Also there are organizations like the WTO (the world trade organization) that enforce trade agreements that are in effect standardized law code that exceeds the borders of any individual nation. Both the law codes of international trade organizations and the economic changes that corporations bring to the nations of the world have profound effects on culture. The commodities that corporations produce are sold around the world and profoundly change the look, and emotional affect of the people that use them. They also determine the kinds of employment opportunity that are open to the people of the nations where they are located, but opportunity might be a bad word to use here because if a none-local corporation out competes the local organizations then the local organizations will go out of business living the none-local corporation as the only option to the citizens of the nation.



The last Item of the night is:  Gogol Bordello on Globalisation.

The Mixed Review 5-2-12(drinking bad coffee)

The Mixed review is a record of my daily(nightly) readings. I hope it provides a resource for your own projects and projections into the intricacies of our world.


The 1st Item of the night is: the life and times of d.a. levy.


D.A. Levy was a poet from Cleveland. For a long time sonic youth's NYC Ghost & Flowers was among my favorite albums, today through reading an article by The Funambulist( aka Léopold Lambert) it was brought to my attention that one of the tracks from that album, Small flowers crack concrete, is about the D.A. Levy. I realized that I had never read anything by the man so I did some investigation, and indeed D.A. Levy is a vivid provocative of extravagant wit. Here are some Items in honor of his life.

Here is a  colection of Levy's writings: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/dalevy.htm

The 2ed Item of the night is: ZORBA THE GREEK (1/14) - Mikis Theodorakis, Nikos Kazantzakis.