The Mother of All Bail-Outs! Shame on the US Senate

Look what happens when I take a few days off from the news for Rosh Hashannah!

The US Senate gave in to everybody EXCEPT their constituents.
We know who the pigs are, lipstick or no.

Go over to Consent of the Governed for a list of who voted AGAINST the Bail-out. Anyone NOT on the list should be voted out of office. In New Mexico, we must vote against Senator Bingaman at the next opportunity . Senator Domenici will be out of in January anyway. I am going to vote for the fiscal conservative running to take his place.

LET'S TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!

And for a video refresher about who is responsible for the construction of this paper empire and the looting of the American taxpayer check out this video:






And call your congresspeople. They still have to vote.
Let's give Nancy Pelosi another vote of no confidence--if she is foolish enough to bring this bill to the floor as loaded with pork as it is!

You can find the entire text of the bill here. It is very long and laden with special interest pandering.

I'm so mad at this attempt to make the next generations of Americans tax-slaves that I can barely type.

For more background on the crisis, see this week's Objectivist Round-Up.

Disclaimer: My link to the Objectivist Round-up does not imply that I endorse their philosophy in whole or in part, nor do they endorse mine. Objectivists almost certainly consider me evil for several reasons, my religious affiliation among them. I do not advise posting comments on Objectivist blogs that use words like "selfish" or "greedy" because these words have a different connotation in the Objectivist universe: doing so unadvisedly will get your figurative clock cleaned out before you know what hit you. And even though most O-bloggers are entirely earnest and without a sense of humor, realize that they are top-notch composers of rational arguments--do not comment if you live in any kind of glass palace! However, because they are rational and do great research, you can count on their research even if disagree with some of their conclusions.

Rosh Hashanah 5769: Earth Abides

"Welcome, Star of Life, Center of the Year!"

--Ursula K. LeGuin, City of Illusions

It is the dark of the moon.

Tomorrow evening, as the sun sets, we will end the month of Elul and the year.

At sunset, we will enter the month of Tishrei, Rosh Hashanah 5769--The New Year for Counting Years.

The phases of the moon guide the circle of our Jewish year, and help us mark the times and seasons of our lives.

But the rising and setting of the sun, and the locations of the rising and the setting also help us mark the year.

And sunset is the beginning of the day, as it is written:

"And evening came, and morning followed. The first day." (B'reshit).

(Picture: Sunset on the Summer Solstice 2008).

So at sunset tomorrow night, we will begin to celebrate HaYom harat Olam--the birthday of the world.

This year, as the gates of time are opened for the Days of Awe, we also enter the year of completion for the Jewish Cycle of the Sun. According to the Rabbis of the Talmud, on a Tuesday evening every 28 years, the sun is once again in the place it was created.
(Picture: Sunrise on Winter Solstice 2007)

Astronomically, the Birkat HaChamah occurs as if the solar year was exactly 365.25 days long, and there were no precession of the equinox--so that the sun is at the same position relative to the plane of the ecliptic--as signified by the mazzarot, the zodiac-- every 28 years on a certain Hebrew day at sunrise. The Rabbis calculated this date according to the short cycle of 19 years for the intercalation of the solar and lunar year multiplied by the long cycle of 28 years to determine the year one for this counting. This 19 year cycle is based on the Saros cycle in which the sun, moon and earth return to the exact same location relative to each other in 18 years and 11.3 days.


This year, 5769 which corresponds to the Solar Western Year of 2009, is a year in which we conduct Birchat HaChamah--the blessing of the Sun.
Like all Jewish ideas, this one has controversy surrounded when this blessing should take place. One Rabbi said Rosh Hashanah--the Birthday of the World (when the sun was said to have been created). Another Rabbi said that it should be on a Tuesday evening in Nisan, the New Year for Months, in the season of Pesach. Since Pesach occurs near the vernal equinox, that is the customary day to make the blessing. This year, it will be on April 8 at sunrise.


I like the idea of Blessing the Sun at the same time as we mark the Birthday of the World.
Regardless of when we bless, however, this is a special year to mark the central place our star has to the theromodynamics that make for life on our planet, Earth.
(Picture: Sunrise on the May Cross-Quarter, 2008).

Human beings, ever astute astronomers, have used the cycles of the sun and moon to develop calendars. In this way we mark the times and seasons of the year, so that the linear progression of our lives is marked against the circles and spirals of planetary time.


Not only is the sun is the center of how we count time, the Circle of the Year, but all of the abundant energy for the earth's dynamic systems come from our beautiful yellow star of life. Even the fossil fuels we use to warm ourselves in winter are simply ancient sunlight caught up in carbon bonds.
(Picture: Sunrise on the February Cross-Quarter, 2008).





Plants capture photons--quanta of energy--from the sun, and use that energy to bond carbons in glucose,
which is, in turn, burned inside the bodies of all living things, to provide the energy of life.
From fire to matter, matter to fire, so our lives are fueled.
Just as the Creation of the Universe began with the Burst of Energy that propelled the expansion of Matter, more prosaically, it is the energy of the sun that began the earth's dynamism more than four billion years ago, and provided the motive power for the evolution of life on earth.
(Picture: Sunrise on the Autumnal Equinox 2008).

So I rejoice as I mark the mythical Birth of the World this year for having lived to mark the second Birkat HaChamah of my life. Life and the evolution of awareness of life--composed of elements made in stars and pieced together in our bodies by the energy of our Star of Life--how miraculous it is!

On Rosh HaShanah, we will say the morning blessings including:

"...with goodness the Eternal renews the work of creation continually...Blessed are You, Eternal One, who forms light."
(Picture: Sunset on Autumnal Equinox, 2008).

And in April, we will remember the cycle of sun, saying: "Praised are You, Sovereign of the Universe, who continually renews the work of creation."

And in this new year, I will think of Kohelet: "Men go and come, but Earth abides."

May we all be renewed and inscribed for a good and sweet New Year, as the gates of time open against the seasons and cycles of the years.

The Paper Empire and the Piper's Bill

"As soon as A observes something which seems to him
to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and
then A and B propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil
and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall
do for X. . . . What I want to do is look up C. I want to show you
what manner of a man he is . . . He works, he votes, generally
he prays--but he always pays."
---William Graham Sumner, 1883

When I was in college in the early '80's, my Dad the Libertarian got involved with something called the Universal Life Church. As best as I can recall, the purpose was to designate his house as a church and get the benefits of tax-exempt status. So Dad the Libertarian became a minister through the Universal Life Church and he needed two other people over the age of 18 to comprise the board. My mother and I were drafted . . . er, I mean we volunteered.

I didn't live at home at the time, but I wasn't too far away, so I could have attended the annual board meetings. If we had actually had any.

I guess Dad is probably still a minister, he's not been defrocked, and so could perform weddings and funerals legally. I'm not sure. And I am not sure if Dad ever reaped the benefits of tax-exempt status, either. I expect not.

But through this improbable chain of events that led to me being on the board of the Universal Life Church of S-- Street, I got some free tapes from the founder of the Universal Life Church. Instead of preaching salvation or damnation, though, this libertarian maggid* preached economic and personal self-sufficiency. So every Sunday morning, when my roommate and other denizens of my dorm floor were at actual worship services--I would sit in the beanbag chair in the lounge, coffee at the ready, and pop one of these Universal Life Church tapes into the Walkman. The messages were sensible and uplifting, and always ended with a song by the reasonably good Universal Life Swing Choir.

*Hebrew for a teller of tales, literally a preacher.

This is how, as a young person with only one introductory economics course under my belt, I understood that the whole financial system was/is, according to the Dean of the Universal Life Church, a Paper Empire. And this is why, even though my kids and I have lived through some pretty rocky financial situations, I never owned a credit card or had any other form of consumer debt. (To be completely honest, I also did not believe anyone would actually give credit to a person with no reliable way of paying it back. I have always been naive).

And this is why, when I married the Engineering Geek, I set to work convincing him to protect what had become "our" assets should the house of cards that was Wall Street, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Fed, and the U.S. Treasury. I was relatively successful. We own our house lock, stock, and barrel. We have no debt and modest savings. Our investments were all moved to low-risk mutual funds two years ago. (If I had been really successful, we'd have gotten out of them altogether).

The EG has been walking around saying: "I should have done what G-d told Abraham to do. 'Listen to your wife!' "
It's in Genesis.
Really.

Now it looks as though the Paper Empire has collapsed.
There are a lot of reasons why it did.
People treated their homes like banks.
The government legislated bad loans to people who could not afford houses.
The government has been treating money like Monopoly dollars.
Trade has been badly regulated. (Note I did not say under-regulation. We have no free market and to blame this on the free market is ludicrous).
And last Wednesday evening, there was a complete freezing of liquidity; there was no commercial paper. This meant that most businesses would have collapsed by Friday, since most businesses rely on loans for operation.

In short, the Paper Empire has collapsed just as the Universal Life Prophet predicted. Just as smoke and mirrors have a way of doing.
How's that for a mixed metaphor? Here's another one:
The party's over!

And, as my Dad the Libertarian would have said--back when he was an active minister of the Universal Life Church: "They that dance must pay the piper."

But the Nanny State has been protecting the dancers. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example, a quasi-government agency, riddled with cooked books and corruption. Instead of jail for fraud, the crooks at the top get a bail-out and a golden parachute. And now I understand that We the People own 80% of AIG.
Does this mean that I get an invitation to their Holiday party? Maybe I should buy a new dress . . .

And now other irresponsible parties--like those who bought more house than they could afford or racked up the credit cards and funded it with serial mortgages--now these people also want a bail-out. As do the big investment banks and the owners of bundled securities comprised of the bad mortgages.

All the dancers want to be relieved of their responsibility to pay the piper.

And the bill is steep, too. They are saying $700 billion (700 with nine zeros after it), but it could easily become over $2 Trillion. (That's 2 with 12 zeros after it, which is why I capitalized Trillion. It's a sufficiently weighty amount that it needs that capital T).

I suppose I'd better hold off on buying that new dress . . .

And now the weasels in Washington want to get their cut, too. They want another stimulus package. They want special favors added to the bill. They want to prove, in this election year, that they are DOING SOMETHING.

Of course, for most of the Pols in Washington, it was their DOING SOMETHING that got us into this mess.

I guess those of us who didn't dance are going to be paying the piper.
And so will our children.
And their children.
Talk about slavery.

Somehow, I don't think this is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they wrote in the Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Nowhere in this Mission Statement for the Federal Government do I see these items:
" . . . to bail-out the Irresponsible, nationalize the Mortgage Industry, and secure the Curse of endless debt for ourselves and Our Posterity."

Sigh.

It is you and I who will have to pay the piper's bill.
And we will get nothing but heartache for our money.
Maybe I should have danced.
At least I'd have the memories . . .

Walk With Me Into Autumn

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

Ragamuffin Studies is taking a break from the One Hundred Species Challenge this week in order to bring you a special Autumnal Equninox Walk with Me Wednesday.

The Autumnal Equinox marks the day upon which we have equal lengths of daylight and darkness as the days shorten in the northern hemisphere.

This was the somewhat clouded sunrise on equinox. The sun is rising almost due east. By the Winter Solstice on December 21, it will rise above the ridge on the right of the picture.

Even though summer was officially due to end,

it was still a beautiful day for a walk.

Here, the Engineering Geek,

all decked out in an astronomy T-shirt,

stands poised with Lily, ready to set off.

We finally had a chance to walk

in Sedillo Canyon again, now that the summer

rains have finished. Here we saw that the monsoon had cut the channels a bit deeper at the confluence of the east and south branches of the wash.

Although the sun is still warm,

there is gold on the mountain,

the gold of newly turning Aspens.

Caterpillars climb to the tops of slender stems. Though the sweet clover still blooms like summer, they caterpillar knows that the time of Turning has come. It wraps itself in silken tallit*, reminding us that we too must change or die.

*prayer shawl

The first sunset of Autumn, and the sky is anticipating the deep October blue.

The sunset just three months ago was at the top of the mountain at the right of the picture.

The days are getting shorter.

The sunlight is getting weaker as the solar angle becomes smaller. We can no longer ignore the seasonal shift in the light.

Autumn is here. The time and the season for counting the harvest of the year. The time and the season for Turning and Returning.

That's How the Light Gets In: Elul Waning Moon

The moon is waning and we are coming to the last of the four weeks of Elul, the month of turning in the Hebrew calendar. Tonight we begin the season of T'shuvah in earnest with the ceremony S'lichot, when in the middle of the night we stand before the Holy Ark to pray for renewed hearts and a return to the paths that lead to life. I love the moment when the Ark is opened and we see the Torah Scrolls, robed in white for the first time as the High Holy Days begin.

There is a story from Kabbalah, from the Book of Creation. It is said that the Eyn Sof--Eternal, without boundaries--performed tzimtzum, a process of contraction, so that there would be space for matter and for human free will. In the process of tzimtzum, matter and choice were created, the vessels intended to contain the light--the creative power of the universe. But as the light poured into the vessels, they were not able to contain the Eyn Sof--Infinity--and they shattered, spreading the shards of the vessels and the creative sparks across the universe. And it is the job of the human being, who possesses the free will that even the angels do not have, to separate the sparks from the shards and lift them up from world to world. This work is the holy work of Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world.

At the time of my life when I was at the lowest of the low, and suffering from existential angst brought on by cancer, one of my teachers recognized that my perfectionism was at the root of my emptiness. And he gently asked me in Hebrew, "What world are you in, daughter?" And I said that I was at the lowest world. And he said, "Even at the lowest world, there are sparks to lift up." And I was comforted.

It is very tempting still for me to let the perfect become the enemy of the good, thus inducing in myself a paralysis and I sense that I am unworthy to do the work of Tikkun Olam. And as I go about the work of Elul, the work of T'shuvah, it is really easy to go there. But that is a shard of memory from which I must lift the sparks of creative power, for no human being is unworthy of the task, every human being is uniquely powerful and capable of lifting sparks of light.

And this week, again, Leonard Cohen is my guide. It seems fitting, for his is a spirituality of finding the Holy within the imperfect, the ephemeral, but infinitely rare and precious nature of the human.

As I prepare for S'lichot tonight, I will remember the joy in the moment of seeing that it is through the shards, the cracks in the vessels, that the creative power was released into the universe, the power of human free will.

"Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering,
there is a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in..."


The world that we have is living and beautiful, and infinitely varied. It is alive and ever-changing. It is full of the creative power of energy, and it is therefore not perfect.

Sarah Palin's Choice

There has been quite a furor in a small part of the blogosphere over the past two days.
The furor erupted over an article at The Rule of Reason in which Nick Provenzo condemned Sarah Palin's choice to "knowingly give birth to a child with Down's Syndrome." The meat of Provenzo's argument was that, given the publicity celebrating the morality of Palin's choice, it was necessary to state that it is moral for a woman to choose abortion in such circumstances.

However, the fury that was expressed in many of the comments to Provenzo's argument added more heat than light to the issue at hand.
It seems that many of the self-described pro-life commenters have no problem threatening the lives of those who support a woman's right to make her own decisions about her health and family.

I have made no secret of my views on the morality of abortion. I do respect a woman's right to make all decisions regarding her health and the welfare of her family without government interference. I also recognize that for most women, the decision to have an abortion is one that is of the gravest moral and personal importance. I wrote about my personal ideals and my religious views on the matter in my Blogging for Choice entry, here.

That said, I do think that in his article Nick Provenzo came very close to stating that a woman carrying a Down's pregnancy is morally obligated to have an abortion. He begins by saying:

"Like many, I am troubled by Alaska governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's decision to knowingly give birth to a child disabled with Down Syndrome."

This sounds like the problem for Provenzo is that Palin made a different choice than he would have made. She chose to go ahead with the pregnancy, rather than have an abortion. It would be easy to respond that Provenzo does not support a woman's moral right to make her own choice, unless that choice agrees with Provenzo's; that is, women really do not have the right to make a choice at all. Many of the comments did indeed make that response. Indeed, my first reaction was that Provenzo was arguing that a woman has a moral duty to have an abortion in such a case, but when I re-read his second sentence, I saw that this is not what he was saying. Rather, he makes this argument:

". . . it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus with Down Syndrome (or by extension, any unborn fetus)--a freedom that anti-abortion advocates seek to deny."

I take this statement to mean that choosing for an abortion is moral. And I agree with that. However, Provenzo did not actually say that choosing against abortion is also a moral decision in this post, and so I put in a comment to discuss it among other exceptions I took to his post. I think my comment got lost among the hateful comments, because Provenzo did not clarify his position, which left him open to the charge that a woman has a right to choose as long as her choice is the one that Provenzo thinks is right.

Today, Provenzo did clarify his position in another post at the Rule of Reason. He said:
". . .a woman has the unqualified moral right to abort a fetus she carries inside her in accordance with her own judgment" (Emphasis added). It is clear then, that although Provenzo might personally disagree with Sarah Palin's choice, he does recognize her right to make it.

And that is the crux of the matter. Sarah Palin did make a choice. There are those who celebrate it for their own reasons, and there are those who condemn it for other reasons. But she made a choice in accordance with her own judgment, giving consideration to her means and ability to raise such a child and her desire to take on that responsibility.

I take exception to those who would see to it that other women have no such choice--those who would force a woman to carry a pregnancy that is, in her own judgment, detrimental to her own life and that of her family. And I also take exception to the many pundits and commentators who profess to be in favor of women making their own choices, but who condemn Sarah Palin for doing just that. Ultimately, the decision to have an abortion or not in these cases is of the gravest moral importance. A woman must consider her own life and circumstances, as well as the impact on her husband, and on any existing children in the family. She must also consider her religious affiliation and her moral convictions. None of these considerations is trivial.

Now, I do have a bone to pick with Nick Provenzo. It is his statement that a woman who knowingly chooses to give birth to a child with disabilities is a worshiper of disability. (His actual words are "the worship of retardation.") This hyperbole goes too far. Sarah Palin's decision to carry her child was a private matter. She has not discussed it in detail, nor should she be required to do so. Provenzo does not know how long Palin deliberated on this matter, nor does he know the reasoning that she used. He may guess based on her religious affiliation and public statements, but that guess could be woefully far from the mark.

An Aside: People often make ridiculous assertions about my stances on issues based on my religion. Actually, it is more that these guesses are based on their ignorance of my religion. I had one extremely ignorant supporter of "objective government" who was convinced that since I am a Jew, I must be a creationist. That one clearly knows nothing about Judaism: even the most orthodox of Jews are not biblical literalists or fundamentalists.

There are many reasons that a woman might bear and raise a child with disabilities: a sense of responsibility is one; love of the child is another. It was clear to me that, whatever other reasons Sarah Palin had for carrying Trig to term, the most powerful was love. As I watched her speech a few weeks ago, I saw her looking again and again at her child. At one point she smiled that mother's smile and mouthed "my baby."

Finally, to those of you who made a disgrace of the art of rhetoric with your name-calling and threats, I would like to close with this quote from my January 22, 2008 blog entry:

"There are those among us who would like to think that they have a particular entitlement to determine the extent of liberty allowed the rest of us. They would like to tell you and me who we can marry, how many children we ought to have, what health care decisions we must make, and what world-view we must hold. Whether they are on the left or on the right, they are tyrants. Whether they seek to rule us in small matters or large, in personal decisions or public policy, we have the obligation as free men and women to resist them."

You are the tyrants!

And finally, I do not ask anyone else to practice my religion, or to abide by its laws and customs. I recognize that others have the right to practice their own religion in peace. But I expect that those of other religions respect my right to practice mine as well. American patriotism begins with respect for the right of each individual to self-determination in all matters, including those of moral choice.

One Hundred Species: Grasses and Wildflowers

NEARLY WORDLESS WEDNESDAY

And still more for the Hundred Species Challenge!

24. Bouteloua curtipendula, Side Oats Gramma.

This is a very pretty grass!

25. Agoseris glauca, Mountain Dandelion

There are just a few of these on the slope

behind the house.

26. Oryzopis hymenoides, Indian Rice Grass

This was a species that we processed as part of the decomposition project at the Long Term Ecological Research Station. The samples were taken from the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. The work was done at the labs in Albuquerque.

27. Erigeron neomexicanus,

New Mexico Fleabane

Some people also call this a purple daisy.

28. Lactuca canadensis, Wild Lettuce.

The leaves are edible when young, but the stem contains a bitter, milky latex that ruins cow's milk.

This one is growing among:

29. Phlox divaricata, White Phlox or Sweet William.

I think that these are volunteers left over from the previous owner's gardening.

Happy plant hunting where you are!