В Dear Friend and Reader,
I hope the undecided voters out there have something on their Tevo to review, because the presidential debates are now over.
Last night, at Hofstra University, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain sat on ergonomic swivel chairs at half an oval table, responding to questions from Bob Schieffer, the moderator. There were nine-minute segments, in which each candidate had a two-minute response window and a chance to talk to each other directly afterwards.
By the end of it, I was convinced that McCain looked like a cross between a tortoise, the Grinch (the way his cheeks stick out) and a pirhana (all I see from this man are his bottom teeth). But let’s get to the issues.
McCain has a $52 billion bailout bill to “save the economy,” and, if I heard him correctly, he wants to use $300 billion of that to buy home loan mortgages, because there are at least 11 million homes with bad mortgages (i.e. they can’t pay them) that average American’s need to be absolved from. In other words, once he throws in another $52 billion to the “$700” billion bailout package (reports are saying it’s going to, actually, cost trillions), he wants to take half of tax payers’ money so every American can own a home, which he says is part of the American dream. Maybe he should give us a couple of his?
Obama’s $60 billion package (also over the course of two years and on top of the $700 billion one we have already is focused on creating jobs by removing tax breaks for companies that ship their jobs overseas, and adding one to businesses who keep their jobs in the country. He also mentioned a middle-class tax cut for those making under $200,000 a year, access to our IRA accounts, “without penalty,” if we experience a financial crisis, and for the long-term: a focus on energy policy, health care and the education system.
Then Joe “I’ll never ask a politician a question again” the Plumber came in. That’s when things started to go off kilter. Over the entire debate, a reporter from CNBC stated during follow-up commentary, McCain mentioned Joe the Plumber 20 times. Apparently, JP not-Morgan wanted to buy this plumbing company he’d worked for his whole life, but couldn’t under Obama’s new tax plan, because the company grosses over $250,000 a year — unlike the majority of small businesses in the US — and so he’d be experiencing a slight tax increase. (This story was relayed by McCain in his usual frustrated, high strung, scary, i’d-slap-you-if-we-weren’t-on-national-television voice laugh.)
Obama’s response was that his tax plan is going to help 95 percent of the population, and unfortunately, money has to come from somewhere. “No one likes to pay taxes,” he said, but we have to do it to save the country. Strange how McCain seems like the irrational teenager and Obama so often comes across like the voice of reason.
The next segment reminded me a lot of couple’s therapy: it was a question about negative campaign ads and how they made Obama and McCain feel. McCain went first, saying how hurt he was, watching the football game and seeing those mean, mean ads against him. Then he excused himself from what 75 percent of the population is calling a negative campaign, by bringing up those town hall meetings again. If Obama had agreed to do the town hall meetings, then he wouldn’t have sicked Sarah Palin on him and launched campaign ads saying he “palled around with terrorists” and was “dangerous.”
I’ve been in couple’s therapy before, and I’ve seen this problem in many long-term relationships around me. There’s an immediate problem: Suzie didn’t take out the trash when Bobbie asked her to do it. But Bobbie’s not just upset about the trash. He’s upset because 10 years ago, when they first bought the garbage cans, Suzie said that in a couple of years, they’d have children, and then when they’re a bit older his mom can move back in with them. 10 years later, no kids, no mommy and she won’t even take out the garbage when he asks her to!
That’s exactly what McCain sounded like Wednesday night. And yes, Obama had to describe, once again, his random ties to Bill Ayers, the University of Chicago professor who was once part of the Weather Underground. They served on a board together. And he answered the ACORN accusations too: the voting fraud has nothing to do with him, he volunteered for a get-out-the-vote campaign about 10 years before the fraud occurred. Anyway, if we’re going to talk about voter fraud, does anyone want to bring up the Republican party and the last eight years?
To sum up the final few poignant moments, we heard McCain call Sarah Palin a “breph of freth air,” and said a bit about “nuclear pants.”
Obama said to McCain that we can’t have free trade agreements with everyone (referring to some bad deals with China and South Korea), and McCain retorted with his usual: Obama is willing to sit down and negotiate with any leader, even the bad ones. Is this the couple’s therapy thing again? I thought communication was the key to resolving conflict, but that might be on the parallel universe of wanting peace.
I have to say, this was one of the better performances from John McCain: though that isn’t saying much. We have just over two weeks left before we pick a new president, and for me, personally, it isn’t going to be volatile, old man McCain. Eric was right-on last night — I wouldn’t lend him my car keys, let alone my country.
Yours & truly,
Joe the Plumber– I mean,
I’ve had passing thoughts of suicide during my life too. It does stem from the family structure, because every angry thought of mine, or feeling of worthlessness, goes back to my family, not to my husband or children. My mother recently said that one thing was for sure, no matter what happens to me or my husband, our children will always know they were greatly loved.
What helped me wake up was watching a show about a brother and sister who were going through the grieving process after their mother died. Their mother’s diary was full of self-pity and was all about her thoughts and feelings – very self-centered. They said that by reading the diary, you would have never known she had children or was married. The diary revealed to them the true reasons their father left the mother. it was very sad – and I thought well aren’t we all a little self-centered? I resolved to live my life in a less introspective way. You can bring abundance and joy into your family structure, by believing you and they deserve it.
I have family members who are totally disabled in nursing care. Yet they both have a strong will to live. They love themselves enough to want to live. My brother’s greatest fear is that assisted suicide will become law. His hope for a cure is strong. There is a bill pending in Washington State right now, to legalize assisted suicide. The drugs would be free and the doctors wouldn’t have to notify family, according to the information I’ve read. It would help the insurance company’s profits greatly, and reduce the cost of medicare. Isn’t it always about money? (we don’t live in Washington State, btw).
When I was 28 a young family friend committed suicide. The night of the suicide, I dreamed about him. he was crying and said ‘the owl came for me!’ I woke up, knowing he was in trouble. He was a young indian who’d made a pact with his friends that if something happened to one of them, they’d all commit suicide. One of the friends died, and our young friend killed himself. It was several days before he was found or before anyone knew he had died, because he parked his car in a remote area, ran a tube from the exhaust pipe to the window, taped off the window, and died. By the time I had the dream he was already gone. Some kids have the capacity to say they will do something, and then they do it!
We have to love and trust and not say and think hateful or hurtful things. We have to teach our children how to love – it is a learned trait. Fear and hate are the enemies, and they are the baggage we take with us from home.
Love & Peace to you too, Jere and Guru Mystes.
Patty
I wanted to stay away from this one but….. I’ve known quite a few, pistols, shotguns, ropes, pills, slam alchy combos, pill wrist overpass combos, a big rig, and my ultimate favorite (which is a screwed up thing to say but, he was my best friend) a train decapitation.
I myself have sat with a rifle in my mouth, also on one bad acid trip I laid upon a butcher knife but my body wouldn’t relax enough to let me slide down, to enter “that other room”.
I love these people, dearly, and I absolutely respect them. They took a path that the universe was not willing to allow me. Now I have their memory to teach me.
Life is always transient. The one thing I have to constantly relearn is love. Love for others and love for myself.
Having experienced these “experiences”, I don’t fear death in any capacity. What that leads me to is “how do I truly LIVE?!”
Fine question, one I will scour the depths of my being ’til I’m tired of “looking” and just decide to be. Much easier said than done but,… ??? I’m here. I Love. I’m willing to learn HOW to Love. Something my friends gave their lives for.
They truly were all gorgeous people. They all had a tale to tell. Sometimes in my sentimentality I wish I would have listened a little better, but that’s not why they were here. We all are interconnected. Some, it’s already written (whatever that means!?!;), but truly it comes down to the relationship we have with ourselves, and the capability we have to open our hearts and LOVE. NOT HURT, LOVE. But, there is always a process! (Shit, I teach myself sometimes).
Love Peace Happiness (the WORDS almost seem empty, wish I’d something better)
Jere
I have a very complicated view of suicide, since I have seen it up close several times in the last decade. Short form is: suicide is damn-near impossible. When someone actually pulls it off, it is part of their dharma, and built into the family romance within which they are laboring. Blame is not the word for it; *structure* and the point of rupture is the point.
This is a hideously cold thought from one perspective, and I know I am using ‘that voice’ again. It is a function of compression, folks. There’s a vatic amount of real estate behind that tiny paragraph, so it makes the volume go up, the voice bulge.
So it goes. I feel that one has to respect the act, which is clearly not a ‘right mind’ but can do things that right minds can’t.
Before there is healing, there is often ugliestugly. When kids say NO that loudly, the ugly can’t leave the room, it has to be named, reckoned, recuperated.
Tachikata, it is true. I hope you are at peace with whatever has happened to you.
I am a little sorry I wrote about the father of the hanged boy – since I blamed him not knowing the true reason for the hanging. I tend to want to blame the father, period. That seems to be the theme at this website in recent days. Yet I’ve learned things about my own deceased father that I wished I’d known while he was still alive. It explalined so much about him and I wish I could tell him that the things he went through were not his fault.
If there are readers of this blog who have family who committed suicide, I meant you no further harm. Someone who does that is not in control of his mind.
Clarification – my husband is a Sagitarrius, and my friend is sag rising. Both had similar job blow ups at the ingress of pluto to sag, and they have sag at early degrees. The blow-ups were personal, in other words – the jobs still existed but they didn’t exist in the jobs. It had a ‘meant to be’ feeling to it all. It was a life-changing moment – difficult to get through but the best thing that ever happened to them, in the long run.
With capricorn rising on Obama’s chart, I look for a a similar blow up/change coming – a ‘meant to be’ moment in the making that will change everything. I don’t know about his fourth house aspects – but suspect pluto has already made a blow-up to pluto at the fourth house, particularly since he has visited Africa and made peace with the past.
Hi Jere,
Yes – just look at what a football team can come up with during training camp. It chills my mind just thinking about a world of all men. AAAAGGGGHHH! I’ve read that there are entire villages of men in China, and we’ve all seen the videos of Muslim gatherings that are less than enchanting. I watched one this week of thousands of Muslims in Vienna who were cutting not only the tops of their own heads with knifes, but the heads of all the children in the crowd. It was horrific. Americans do not understand fanaticism of that level. We tend more to burn each other by making fun and preaching holier than thou. Even the comments in this blog are of the holier than thou variety, and make non-stop fun of the political candidate of the day. Thank God we can still do that in the USA, but should we be doing that? I don’t know.
I think most people in the USA are exhausted, just like we were after Viet Nam. Most of us thought it couldn’t happen again, but here we are.
When fourth house energy kicks in, it is no picnic. If Capricorn is rising in O’s chart, pluto is going to kick him in the ass – but it could be healing. The problem is, that pluto has to tear down first, then rebuild. It is the tearing down part that we have to get through. My spouse and best friend went through hell during the ingress to Sagitarrius in Pluto, but now they are both on a clear life-path and both headed on strong footing to new careers. I have a Sagitarrius cousin whose own mother sued her at the ingress of Sagitarrius in Pluto. They recently reconciled, Thank God.
This week, my cousin’s stepson hanged himself – supposedly over a girl. he was 20. During the funeral, all I could think was that my cousin, her husband, my aunt, my aunt’s sister, and all of them, had practically made careers of making fun of everyone and putting people down. They called it joking, teasing, whatever. Some of it was outright malicious. The kid probably thought he had no value at all.
At my uncle’s funeral a few months ago, the boy’s father criticized my 82 year old mother and said “You have gray hair” Huh? Why? He had to say something, anything. She’s 82, what’s she supposed to look like – one of those lizard women on entertainment tonight? I took her out yesterday and she said, “Should I color my hair?” What an asshole. He also said something to my husband at my uncle’s funeral, whose response was like “what are you, a fucking hillbilly?” My husband wouldn’t attend the boy’s funeral. I don’t want to know the astrology of any of them, but I’m guessing the boy’s father is entering some big fourth house energy – maybe saturn, but maybe pluto. My cousin is a Gemini, so saturn is hitting her sun exact right now, based upon her b-day.
My big caution to everyone is to beware of how your words hurt, because they will always come back to haunt you. Your actions always come back to haunt, if they are not from a place of love.
So Jere, thank you for being a peaceful and loving person. You are a guy? Two women friends of mine are named “Jeremy”. Their fathers wanted boys. Women are still obedient to men, even when the assholes don’t deserve it.
In my opinion, the revolution of women needs to progress at a very rapid rate in Islam, China, Russia, Mexico, India and everywhere else that women are not viewed as equal partners. Americans are not the problem, and we may very well be part of the solution if Mr. O can precipitate healing for women’s rights on an international level.
Myst, light towards your bro. Thanks for the 8th d “lo*ok”. I’ve a long freakin’ way. In time (space).
Keyboards, we’ll just have to use them more profusley, eh! They’re bound to come around.
Love ya,
j
Gardner, I’m one with a 4th house pluto venus conjunction in libra, opposite a jupiter chiron conjunction, and an early scorpionic uranus thrown into that 4th for good measure. I definitely agree the baggage can be pretty intense! As far as mr. O, I’m not saying he’s sparkly clean but, I think the way he “deals” with reality is relatively even keeled. His kids seem pretty healthy, though you’d have to give Michelle, and the quality of others they kick it with, share of that credit.
As far as the chinese army, or the russian army, I’m not sayin’ they’re all going to trade in their guns for tulips, rip off their uniforms, and start skipping through the hills arm in arm, (although it would be damn cool to watch, I’d probably have to join in those festivities!). Diplomacy is going to be the only way to handle those energies. That is why it’s so important for us to elect even-tempered sane presidents from here on out, because this is all going to take a while ( I’m guessin’ at least another 100 years). As far as the women issue, maybe a good percentage of them are gay (it goes well with the tulip hill scenario!), if not we’ll all just have to share! Yeah I know, throw guns/boys/sex together and it’s a pretty nasty combo. I’m one who flips and has to vent on this shit at times, but on the world stage it’s got to be diplomacy. As far as the source and love crap I spew, I’ve noticed that interacting with people in flesh…. I can’t figure out how to put this… it almost seems that we’ve been compressed so long that we’re exhausted, we’re tired of fighting the systems, and shifting our energy towards helping each other to sustain ourselves which is awakening true interactive forms of nurturing. Wow I think I just butchered that with an incoherent run-on sentence. I’m still working on “languaging” this to myself!
Yeah… we’ve definitely got a trip ahead of us…
A most Beatiful Love Peace and Happiness on your journey!
jere
JD: “They’d be bad books but it’s one way to stay out of trouble. God knows that kid can’t fly a plane and we’ve already told the rest of the family not to give him any money.”
You probably have no idea how very accurate this is. My mother married into an AriО©ona Mc clan (they are *all* related), and the moneyed ones are very testy about their military sons. Like the Vanderbilts with a tan… no wait, make that skin cancer.
Her husband wrote a book on Viet Nam which was confiscated by the CIA, so he settled back into the game, went to Germany in the early 80s to develop online war games. Dude collected a basement full of Nazi memorabilia. Every time I’d go to visit, their preschool son would start having past-life recalls from the Death Camps. Interpenetrating atmospheric pressures, I suppose. Poor kid. He’s 25 now and specialized in demolitions.
Writing…? sure we can move over and make some room here at the desk. Though I’m not convinced that the keyboard hasn’t become the new trigger. Or versavice?
JLO, I wouldn’t bet on O having a handle on the daddy material. The 4th house baggage is downright horrific at times. I’m 57 and still trying to move from victim to victor.
The source of love? Do you think the Chinese army will wake up too? I’ve been curious about their 200 million man army, and lack of women. It matches the Apocalypse, or Revelation.
JanesD, I appreciate your contributions so much. Thank you!
~J, not if we get Mr. O. It’s the best bet we’ve got to break into clarity. We all know Mcdipshit will bring on the wars out of cloudy, ignorant confusion. Obie’s got a handle on the daddy material, at least there’s some pensiveness there.
All we need is time (or Love), to buy us enough understanding to (as Mr. Lenon put it) come together. Obama isn’t going to do shit to “fix” our issues, that’s up to us. What he will do is make sure this planet breathes a little before they go ballistic (or nuclear!). Mcdumbfuck’s hands ANYWHERE near the buttons is an exceptionally freaky proposal.
Our minds/souls are movin’ like mutha fucka’s these days. A new reality is upon us, whether we accept it or not.
Some of us are in the position to (if not educate) show others the SOURCE of where we need to focus. I’ve seen it, felt it, people all over the place are waking up. It’s fucking gorgeous! This crazy connected sense, and we’re all in LOVE!
I’ll leave that alone for now but, I’m totally diggin’ your thought trains!
Let ’em run!
another J,.. a big phat skunky J, shared by all, Mr. Marley included
You know Mystes, rereading this I started thinking, JD, what is up with all this Father stuff? I get a lot of Father material whenever I consider an election. Clinton reminded me of a sixteen year old kid begging for the Beemer keys. Come on Dad! Let me drive! I promise not to use the Hyperpower!
Then we got the Legacy President. My my. Did you see George Herbert Walker crying on C-Span? He’s a good boy, a good son! We got him to rehab! He ended the Feud! He brought me the head of that bastard Hussein!
The thing is, they’re all sons, you know? They’re not fathers. They’re still vying for something, still proving something. Never got that feeling with JFK, who was all of *43* years old when they let him drive the White House. And he was on drugs!
And then I realized that Capricorn is festooned with Daddy. Paternalism. Pluto in Capricorn — I guess we can expect a whole era of kitchen fights that shower the linoleum with ex-heirloom china.
I also thought: Johnny McCain needs to lose the election once and for all. He can write books like Buchanan, all titled Go To Hell Wouldja volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4. They’d be bad books but it’s one way to stay out of trouble. God knows that kid can’t fly a plane and we’ve already told the rest of the family not to give him any money.
~j
JD writes: “You see it sometimes in a certain type of man, of a certain age, in a certain type of career. It rolls off them like invisible steam, this desperate, dreadful fear that no matter what they do it will add up to blasphemy; that their very existence is an insult to whatever universe their ancestors presided over. There’s institutional terror that they will never equal their fathers, and this is of course the terror that ensures they do not.”
Umm… yeah. This is deliriously sharp. So when does your book come out?
I don’t feel talked down to by McCain. What I get from the guy is the kind of terror you see in boys around here sometimes: the kid who’s got some hugely powerful Zeus of a father and a consort/slave mother tottering around on patent leather pumps, fully medicated with her lips suspended perpetually on the fourth word her husband slapped out of her mouth the day after their honeymoon in Hyannisport or Martha’s Vineyard or wherever else the Gods and their consorts go forth to multiply.
You see it sometimes in a certain type of man, of a certain age, in a certain type of career. It rolls off them like invisible steam, this desperate, dreadful fear that no matter what they do it will add up to blasphemy; that their very existence is an insult to whatever universe their ancestors presided over. There’s institutional terror that they will never equal their fathers, and this is of course the terror that ensures they do not.
Everyone must realize by now that World War 2 is fully a religion. Like any religion, it can fuck up perfectly lovely children and get a really impressive number of young men killed all at once.
So that’s how I feel about John McCain. I think the guy is a tragedy. When I look at him I think, now this is a man who does not want to be the President, never wanted to do any of the shit the Battlepopes laid on him but there he was crashing planes and getting the living hell beat out of him by tiny demons with ropes and bamboo for endless, endless years. He was like one of those Jihadi kids, programmed to perform this excruciating interpretive dance for the real audience, the Warfathers, these color-drained grainy shadowsoldiers still crackling through on the outer frequencies.
I’m going to bet that John McCain’s real secret is that he always thought at some point he’d be able to drop out of it all and smoke dope like everybody else, hook up with some working class patchouli girls and say all the naughty antiwar backtalk he swallowed back at his parent’s dinner table. I would say Cindy McCain has the unmistakeable air of a woman married for The Career, but you know, this election is going to be over eventually and I have troubling visions of a midnight visit by their personal SAVAK.
The saddest thing is, John McCain could have been a better leader than any of the men in his family that came before. It was there, you can see it in the footage. But he was forced to live out some crappy cartoon Biblical War Story his whole life, which is now almost over. What the guy needs now is a riding mower, you know? Give him a coffeecan to spit in and a niners hat and let’s all just hope he got the chance at some point to fuck someone he actually wanted to.
Anyway while I was thinking about all this I surfed through the strangest Jungian echo.
Look at this first.
http://www.amazon.com/Faith-My-Fathers-John-McCain/dp/0375501916
Now this.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0307383415/sr=1-1/qid=1224307145/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1224307145&sr=1-1
Amazon says customers buy these together.
The cover art, even.
Odds anyone?
Are we voting between two photo albums here? How many ghost are on the ballot this year anyway?
~j
My problem with the mccain camp is that i feel talked down to. Like this is some kind of show that suggests we are somehow less intelligent and unable to handle the truth about the crisis we are facing. We are not capable of participating in the real conversation and real solutions. Of course, by knocking us out of the conversation, it allows mccain palin complete control as they make their phone calls and oval office deals in true bush style. We are left to deal with the fallout.
I believe that the mccain supporters i know have a problem with rational intelligence because they judge it elitist. Clinton gore, being scholars, got the same reaction in the way he spoke to the people. Shunning participation in the process also relieves these suppporters of any responsibility.
I am curious as to what feedback eric is getting in europe. I have been watching the european summit on cspan and it looks like european countries are uniting (they meet with bush this weekend, I think). From what i have heard, they are fed up with america’s games. Do our elected officials have a choice any more?
The good thing about this election season is that fairly mainstream commentators have dissected polical tactics, allowing us to see how swiftboating works. And this week, one of them had a discussion with two glassy eyed religilytes about people moving their religious faith from the god to the political party. This is one of two major trends that has changed this country (credit goes to junior’s discovery while doing a talk show before his run for governor in texas, when he mentioned jesus and the crowd went nuts). The other is the belief in the trickle down.
I was angry last night as i watched the two candidates make jokes at the alfred e smith gathering. Thank goodness obama tied things together at the end of his funnies and talked about the times we face and the need to be focussed on the people we serve.
McCan’t cannot begin to fathom what OBwan IS. Mc is capable only of an emotional reaction to what he does not understand. And what he does not understand is terrifying to him.
Isn’t this representative of the Great Divide in our world at this time? Poignantly pointed out by this little election in our good ol’ US of A.
Obama is indeed the voice of reason. Many of us are awake enough now to hear it speak, and grateful for an opportunity to breathe fresh air.
There are also many who are still caught up in the old language of SelfTalk; the speech patterns used by those who are holding on – for dear life – to what they Have (be it seven houses, or a way of being) because what they Have Not is too unknown – and that is terrifying.
Great analysis Rachel. Especially loved the nuclear pants.
It was the eye=rolling that got me. There’s something about Obama that gets under McCain’s skin–its a visceral reaction. It was apparent again last night, and I’ve observed it during their times in the Senate together. McCain really does not like Obama.