Dissolving The Past And Future

What is the past? Is it real anymore? Does it hide like a child from a parent when he/she has done something wrong? When you bring it up driving,is it present like the roses growing on the side of a public wall? Is it shared like an apple with a friend who has just ate potatoes but wants something sweet. Can the past be in two minds equally at the same time?

Why do we remember the past if it's gone? Does it hold value anymore? Who cares about the past? The past can hurt you if you let it. It can grab you when your walking in a park and make you discouraged about the present. If it upsets you,it laughs like someone watching a video of a person getting scared in a dark hallway. The past can dig a hole for you so deep that it controls sunlight. If the past is hurting you,give it the slip and make it wonder where you are. The present has no past if you want it. Tell your mind to stop thinking about it and it will go away. Stay in the present as much as possible. Watch the road..really watch the road...see the clouds come and go. The future and the past are cousins. They play the same game,a game you can never win. If a person comes before you, he/she is the most important thing in the world. Thinking about next month removes you from the beauty before you. When you realize that beauty,you are free.

Without A President In America

A committee should govern the executive branch,not one president. Power should be shared like the other branches of government. Ultimate authority isn't something that can rest in one person but should come from many. A platform should be elected,not a personality. If the Democrats win in 2020, let Harris,Warren,Biden and Buttigieg govern the country. Each could specialize in areas that interest them and interact with the given cabinet members. Each could travel to sections of the country or represent us at international meetings more frequently without difficulty. All would share the office equally and have full authority when speaking to the public after coming to a consensus. They could live outside the White House and open it up to more offices with greater support from advisors. The executive branch could be more transparent with group discussions of the designated leaders televised if appropriate. Power would come from cooperation and open to new ideas that would improve the platform the citizens have elected.

NBA: Just a business?

What is a fan of a sports team like the Brooklyn Nets? Is he or she similar to a movie or music fan? Does a fan always have to have his team win? Is there more to it than rooting for success, championship or bust? Does he or she agree with many that it's just a business like Pannara or Met Life.
I think it's a lot more than just a business and relationships form just as one does in any community. As a fan,I care about everyone on the team and want even the last player in the rotation to display the skills that got him or her to a professional team(I would mandate every player get a least one period to play). I get locked in on all the players within a given year, especially the new arrivals from the draft. I've been a Brooklyn Nets fan for the past eight years,especially the past two.
Mobility for NBA players has been a success for individual players and teams who want to be winners in the league. There is only one winner in the NBA and Toronto was the champion this year. Unfortunately,they lost their best player to free agency. My team got three free agents this year,Kevin Durant, DeAndre Jordan and Kyrie Irving. I should be happy with those moves because it is a big upgrade from last year but I'm not.
I wanted them to stay with DeAngelo Russell.(traded to the Warriors) who I have been critical of for his lack of defense and turnovers. With that said,he has improved offensively and I have seen his desire to be a productive member of the team in the areas that he needed to work on. A few other members of the team are gone who were getting old or didn't perform to their contract. I will miss them as they move on to new teams. I wanted small changes to the team I grew to respect and understand. I knew their strengths and weaknesses. Many older players couldn't be signed to new contracts because all the money went to the expensive free agents.
Winning isn't everything to me. I was a very happy fan with the season the Brooklyn Nets had last year( made the playoffs ). I just wanted to add a few pieces,good power forward and a stretch five. No great changes, everyone was important to me from that team. I like players who are humble and know their place on a team. Superstars,Irving and Durant, scare me because I want to believe in them but they seem to have bad track records, especially with the teams that pay them and the fans that invest time in their games. I hope they play hard and respect their teammates and have joy in their playing. Time will tell if Marks made the right moves.

Saving Migrants From U.S. Border Sins

Nicaragua,El Salvador, Guatemala and Hondorus have thirty-two million people living in their combined countries. Fifty percent of these citizens live in extreme poverty(16 million). Children make up half of that population, so eight million families need assistance.

I want to give them a UBI of four thousand dollars each year to help with their economic hardship. This basic income approach will hopefully stem the tide of migrating to America. Four thousand times eight million equals thirty two billion dollars. That's a good amount but we understand that a new wall would cost that much. Take a look at the defense budget($712 billion) and the number of planes the Air Force has. It has thousands of planes that cost tens of millions plus B-2 Stealth bomers that have a 3.2 billion price tag. We currently have a foreign aid budget of fifty billion and a border patrol budget of seven billion. A fifty billion total budget for Homeland Security. We can find the money in our discretionary budget.

If $4,000 is too high an amount,$2,000(16 billion) could do the trick. The GDP for individuals in these countries is around $7,000 a year. America is close to sixty thousand.  UBI can be a multifier(5x) for consumer spending in the targeted countries. This added revenue in taxes would help their governments help with additional social services.

All this is worth a try..... unlikely,but it's a start to help our neighbors overcome hardship.

Buddhism: My Thoughts

Buddhism is an educational movement.A system that trains the mind and tries to help an individual overcome unsatisfactory periods.The practice is difficult and great effort is needed because our mind has developed habits that generate the same unsatisfactory periods.We tend to believe our thinking even if it might be debilitating to our contentment.How we view the world and our intentions are paramount in overcoming anxiety,discomfort and fear.Buddhists believe,through direct experience,that humans are part of nature and function due to conditions and causes.Just as plants,trees and animals function with the conditions presented to them. The main problem of an unsatisfactory period is our reaction to the present moment.If we cling to a desired outcome,expect pleasure without pain,control our experience in any way,we condition ourselves to cause anxiety.Our reactions to experience are keys that open or close doors to satisfaction.The educational movement is internal, sees the external as sacred,and accepts experience completely, without identification.Being aware,mindful without aversion,brings a peaceful state because one's personality,ego,isn't involved.All humans are mindful,experiencing the world before self generated thoughts.That mindfulness is non-judgemental and doesn't identify good and bad,pleasure or pain.Once we start to identify and desire certain outcomes,unsatisfactory periods begin.We create the unsatisfactory experience through our thinking.Attachment to outcome develops and our mind remembers our reactions and wants to satisfy the personality that created them.These attachments grow and become stronger if one doesn't practice the antidotes.

According to Buddhist beliefs,there is no permanent self.Everything is impermanent,in flux,moving like a river.Just look at nature,our bodies, to see birth,decay and everything between.Our thoughts are the same,they come and go.We change every day ,even every moment.Nothing is permanent.Even if it is in flux,it is a good world,a sacred one with humans who have the potential,Buddha nature,to be happy and content all the time.Because the mind is impermanent,we have the ability to change the conditions we have created.The first precept of the Eightfold Path is Right View.It is a view to be part of something instead of a separate entity.It posits that humans are part of the body of life,parts of a whole.That we should see ourselves as equals with others on a quest to be happy and content.The impermanence of our lives supports the view that we are not permanent islands but interconnected with everyone on many levels.Our personalities keep telling us the world revolves around us and that we are the most important person in the world because of our experience trying to control the sensual world.But doesn't everyone have this similar experience.We share our desire for happiness,comfort and love.The more one looks to dissolve our personality,ego,the more one becomes one with the body of life.All religions support this concept but use other doctrines.The more our personality grows apart from the whole,unsatisfactory periods will last.Appreciation of life,the whole body of life,brings peace to the mind. The ego is diminished by acts of patience and kindness to oneself and others.The lose oneself is to gain insight into liberation,a freedom from a desire to have something or be somebody that you currently want to be.It is an acceptance of everyone as is, without judgement,knowing that humans are just natural conditions.

More to come.

More From Rachel Maddow's" Drift"

Maddow created a to-do list in "Drift"

Going to war,being at war,should be painful for the entire country,from the start.When we ship troops off to battle,we should pay for it.Raise it through taxes and war bonds.

Lets do away with the secret military.The Air Force,not the CIA,should operate the use of drones and we should know about it.The same goes for the policy makers giving them the orders.The chain of command should never be obscured by state secrets.

Let's quit asking the military to do things best left to our State Department,or the Peace Corps or FEMA. Also stop military leaders from making judgments and decisions about policy.Presidents shouldn't defer to military commanders as whether or not to bomb Iran,etc.It's no favor to the military and it's an affront to the Constitution.

The life of the National Guardsman or Guardswoman should be mostly peacetime,civilian .When we ship these men and women off to war,civilian communities all over America should feel that loss.Today,they are really full time soldiers.

Let's wind back the privatization of the war and the military's dependence on contractors for what use to be military functions.Private contractors are not cheaper and should be held accountable for rape,murder or fraud and be prosecuted.Troops need to peel their own potatoes again,drive their own supply trucks,build their own barracks and guard their own generals.

Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer,but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.

Let's ensure that our nuclear infrastructure shrinks to fit our country's realistic nuclear mission.Let's decide exactly what we mean to deter with our nukes,and expend just exactly what we need to do that and nothing more.

Going to war is not one man's responsibility.The "imperial presidency" malarky that was invented to save Ronald Reagan's neck in the Iran-Contra,and that played as high art throughout the career of Richard Cheney,is a radical departure from previous views of presidential power,and it should be taught and understood that way.It isn't a partisan thing.Republicans and Democrats alike have options to vote people into Congress who are determined to stop with the chickenshittery and assert the legislature's constitutional prerogatives on war and peace.

Executive Power,Privatization And Drifting Into War(Drift/Rachel Maddow)

Maddow dedicates her new book"Drift" to Dick Cheney who refuses to be interviewed by Rachel.9/11 has led us into Kabul at a rate of $5 billion a month over ten years and counting.It is still one of the four poorest countries on earth.In Kabul,there is a rich neighborhood(Wazir Akbar Khan) built by the Afghan elite with profits from the international influx of cash that accompanied the mostly American influx of war that is used to house Western aid agencies,journalists,politicians,diplocrats and private contractors who need a place to stay.You'll find properties renting for $7,000 to $25,000 a month.Of course,the elite who built these mansions are absent landlords living in Dubai,U.S and Europe.

One could also consider the water treatment plant built in Fallujah by a South Carolina company with an initial $33 million contract that was completed for $108 million seven years after its start.The project only managed to support one fourth of the city as residents labeled it "the big stink".

In the U.S.,9/11 has produced the crown jewel of sprawling intelligopolis called Liberty Crossing that houses the National Counterterrorism Center.After 9/11,the annual intelligence budget of $30 billion was increased 250% that has info gathering from 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies coordinated by the Center.The Center is slated to double in the next decade.All this,with little or no debate.

Thomas Jefferson was against a standing army.He was guided by history.The Greeks and Romans didn't have standing armies the majority of the time.As President,he cut the army by a third and left the defense of the nation to militias under the control of municipalities.He understood armies were expensive and the country's resources could be easily exhausted.Jeffersonian prudence held sway for 150 years. The professional military was an institution of limited reach and power;in times of peace we kept the regulars busy building defense works,ports and bridges.When the country went to war,the entire U.S went to war.No nation's military demobilized faster when the fighting was over.

After WWI, Congress completely dismantled The American Expeditionary Forces and reduced the active-duty military from four million to pre-war numbers of less than three hundred thousand.In 1945,there were twelve million active duty soldiers;five years later there were one and a half million.Of the 535,000 troops in Vietnam,1% were national guard and reserves.A political decision by Johnson kept them home and away from danger.He increased the draft instead avoiding the clamour from congressmen and prominent constituents who didn't want their sons in the jungles of Southeast Asia.We went to war in Vietnam in a way that we'd never gone to war before and no one liked the way it turned out.Creighton Abrams,US commander from 1968-72, changed this direction with what is known as the Abrams Doctrine-The Total Force Policy-put American politicians in the position of being"designed out"of waging war in a way that was dislocated from the everyday experience of American families.The War Powers Resolution of 1973 would be an explicit reassertion of the prerogative spelled out under Article 1,Section 8,"to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States" that Congress-and Congress alone-had the power to declare war.The Congress had allowed Johnson to push more than a half million troops without taking the case through Congress and the American people.An incensed Nixon vetoed the War Powers Resolution,but the House and Senate overrode that veto with votes to spare.The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had to go the the next President in 1975,Gerald Ford,to rein his ambitions in and disallow the executive request for $722 million to continue supporting the war.Forty years later,Ford's chief of staff,Donald Rumsfeld,would still be complaining bitterly about that "congressional backlash" and the War Powers Resolution.

Reagan increased the military budget by 20% in 1981(peacetime) and announced a strategy to double the defense budget in five years.He did so while reducing taxes by the largest amount in American history.That strategy increased the deficit by $62 billion and was sure to hit $112 billion in five years.According to Reagan,the 'evil empire"Russia,had to be stopped.

In Reagan's eight years in office,military expenditure doubled as projected from $150 billion to $300 billion which represented 30% of our overall annual budget( not counting health,medical injuries,previous debt and retirement benefits that pushed that percent towards 50%.).At the same time,Soviet general Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated"It is dangerous madness to try to defeat each other in the arms race and to count on victory in nuclear war".Russia was already teetering badly by the time Reagan took office.Reagan ignored CIA reports that felt increasing threatened by the U.S. during this time period.Reagan's annual budget deficit ballooned from 2% to a record 6.3% of GDP in his first two years in office.His yearly budget shortfalls grew from $50 billion to $100 billion to $220 billion as the self-proclaimed conservatives just kept asking for and getting more dollars for more weapons.As a result, the country neglected its schools,cities,roads, bridges and health care system.From the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor nation.America during these years also imported twice the amount of oil than 1973(33% to 60%).They didn't listen to Jimmy Carter who wanted to reverse these percents.

More from Maddow soon.