TODAY'S NEWS AND EVERYDAY'S NEWS

Today’s News

Barney Frank, D-MA, yesterday spoke on the Senate floor in favor of enacting regulations designed to rein in the kind of poor loan decisions that led to our present housing value collapse. He will get a lot of flak for having the gall to suggest that the nation’s lenders are in any way out of line, but he is right.

The way we got into this mess was through the removal of restrictions on lending in place since the great depression which allowed lenders to begin making loans to otherwise unqualified buyers. Why would anyone knowingly do this? The answer is simple. He would do it because he had no scruples that held him back from bundling those loans in a portfolio and selling them as investments. Now his group could pocket the gains and not have to bear the brunt of the inevitable failure of borrowers to repay the loan.

The way out of the mess is to go back to regulations that rein in that kind of greed. Frank knows this, but he probably also knows that his chances of getting anything meaningful passed are slim to none.

I’ll be rooting for him, though.
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Everyday’s News

Through all of the horrible mess our country has become over these past few years, I have asked myself why we could do this to ourselves. The more I think about it, the more I see of it, and the more I have to listen to baseless, empty headed prating about how right we are to be at war in Iraq, the more convinced I become that the problem is that we hold the same arrogant attitude about our place in the world as nearly every other civilization has held.

From time immemorial, nearly every culture on earth has, at one time or another, held itself up as something special. We consider ourselves to have been derived from the “highest” of cultures – Western civilization, but even cultures that never held any worldwide power have considered themselves unique. Most Native American, African and Australian Aboriginal tribes each referred to themselves as “The Human Beings” while all other tribes were considered to be something less.

The western civilization we are so proud of became dominant because it spent the most effort of any people on earth in the development of weapons. That’s the baseline definition of the word civilized. Those with advanced weapons were considered civilized because they had worked out a border system that kept them from completely destroying one another with the terrible weapons they had developed. Those without borders and modern weapons were called savages.

Of course, our ancestors conveniently ignored the fact that the savages didn’t seem to need formal borders to keep from totally destroying one another. Even in the face of their continual bickering (They were human after all!), they did not usually seek to annihilate one another, but just to remind one another that they were still there and that they were still the best people on earth!

Today we have a great many people in this country willing to see us at war for no better reason (though they bloviate about the morality of their position constantly) than that they want us to win. That kind of support for savagery is nothing but the arrogance of thinking that we have the right to do as we will simply because we have the power to do what we will.

Couldn’t we find something better on which to base our belief in ourselves than the power of the weaponry we have the technology to develop? Yes, I know, we are doing it to spread democracy. We are doing it in the name of peace. We are doing it for to free oppressed peoples. We are doing it out of high moral principle so that the rest of the world can enjoy the freedoms we enjoy. We are doing it because we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, and we can do no wrong.

It would be nice if we could remember that every culture on the face of the earth has at one time or another considered itself superior to every other culture. They were not. We are not. We are all just people.

Just to poke a small hole in our patriotic fervor, let’s consider one line of the song that’s supposed to send shivers up and down our spines, The Star Spangled Banner , “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

Uniquely American, right? I thought so until I read an old history book last night and found this verse from a poem written about Ireland 1500 years before Christ in commemoration of the Milesian victories over the Tuatha de Dannon for the control of that island nation then known as Innisfail:

“And, lo, where afar o’er ocean shines
A sparkle of radiant green,
As though in that deep lay emerald mines,
Whose light through the wave was seen,
“Tis Innisfail – ‘tis Innisfail!
Rings o’er the echoing sea!
While, bending to heav’n, the warriors hail
That home of the brave and free.*

*The Story of Ireland by A. M. Sullivan, 1892

So maybe we aren’t so special after all. Maybe someone else also thinks they are brave and maybe they, too, are proud of their freedom. Maybe everybody has thought that way since the beginning of time and maybe it’s high time we thought something else.

We don’t need to bow in shame and tuck our flag between our legs, but we ought to get our heads out of that region and consider that we aren’t any better or more deserving of the world’s riches than anyone else on the planet.


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle