Starting Back Up in a Brand new context...

...Of hope blended with a little trepidation after Bary's amazing election and now is beginning to form his "center right" ruling coalition administration. But I still believe that he and his achievement give hope laike maybe never before that real change can be eventually possible. So I will try and find the "Sahara Reporters" web site Amy Goodman blogged about in her article/post about Chevron and Bary, and like I said, start back in. Better and stronger this time...

In any case, bummed by Realpolitic, American Style or not...

...the job from here is to start to communicate with everyone, whether current potentially like thinking or supportive friend or all them strangers out in Cyberville who are doing some kind of related effort and who are by the nature of what they are doing available to be communicated with and solicited to join and or support and or collaborate on the big dialogD agenda which is after all a "political call to the wild at heart" to join in an ongoing radical progressive big D Democracy overhaul throughout the political, economic, social, and cultural fabric of the United States.

For me that means spending a good chunk of time overhauling www.dialogdemocracy.org once again and getting it ready to be the Web organizing and fund development tool for all of what it is calling for. Soooo...... let the communicating and organiizing begin in earnest- finally already.

Fighting the despondency of observing the Presidential Advertising and Spin Derby...

... and that don't always come easy. You know it don't come easy. Does it Ringo.

I have to remember that transcending that despondency is crucial to moving forward with "my work"- however that is to ultimately evolve from these humble and humbling early stages.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbie_Hoffman is a look at one example of someone who just couldn't handle how far in the other direction the country's right wing pendulum swing has taken us since the mistaken assumption of many during the `60's that is was inevitable that we were going to go in an almost opposite direction that `60's popular consciousness would have lead and inspired as we "changed the world."

Checking out more sites...

...and posting from me old lad's house. Sooo.......

http://www.coopamerica.org/ is one of the best "Old School" green and sort of agrarian populist pro "real" democracy with a big D Web Sites I have run across. And I'm talking so old school that I'm pretty sure it even pre dates Al Gore's inventing of the Web.

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/ is, as best I can cipher it, the risidual PAC that came out of Howard Dean's highly successful Web enhanced grassroots try for the Democratic Nomination for President in 2004. The site is obviously a Democratic Party front albeit a very progressive leaning attempt to pull the National Democratic party in the direction of better representing the interests of it's voting and constituent bases. I wouldn't mind the Democratic party if it did that. But it for the most part it hasn't as it has chased big money and the Strident Right in this country so far to the right that they are in effect simply an emasculated "Republican Light" "loyal Opposition" party in the age of the Neo Con Nut Jobs and in a mainstream climate of business and politics so far reactioanary and right wing that by the fiat of common wisdom about what's even allowed to be up for debate the actual interests of 60%-80% of the American Citizenry cannot be considered at all.

Some Sites checked out today...

...Sites checked out Thursday, August 21st, 2008:

http://brighterplanet.com/ a "make a difference" outfit about saving the planet. Agroup to contact for sure. Learn what your carbon footprint is on their site.

http://www.earthdayny.org/ the Site for NYC's Earth Day. Earth Day is great but it's a little cult outside the mainstream economies ongoing devastation and being on the wrong path and all.

http://www.winslowgreen.com/home/ is a "Green Investment" investment and management firm it looks like. This is the kind of company, like "Working Assets" and others, that need to be researched carefully and see what they are actually doing and if they might be involved in capitalizing some of the proposed entities in dialogD or if they might be models for or have talent on board who might want to be active builders of the dialogD "Real World" presence.

www.ringoffireradio.com another Alternative Media site- a must contact to be sure for dialogD...

Organizing links from days gone by...

...and here are some highlights with brief comment:


Sites checked out Wednesday, August 20th, 2008:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45752 is an article sent to me by my Soolay Brother in Portland now but by way of ORS at SDSU (which eventually morphed into the Leisure Connection- or Leeesh, Brew). An interesting read and provides a great intellectual lude for those seeking an excuse to not do anything about anything going on in the too far gone world we live in. You know: make your separate peace in the over privileged segment of the world's economic reality that we middle class or better semi educated American perpetual adolescents occupy- and oh well- as the great social philosopher and artist Sly Stallone said when explaining why he would not be going to Iraq early on in that fiasco resource appropriation/ occupation (ostensibly to comfort and entertain our troops there who were "fightin' for freedom and good to the core...-apologies to David Alan Coe-)... anyway, Sly said something to the effect that no, he wasn't going to Iraq because "I gotta nice life..." and he had no intention of jeopardizing that reality by doing something as risky as going to a war zone...
Not that there's anything wrong with that. And I know it's a stretch their. And I personally agree with Sly's perspective. I mean I feel bad for the misled innocent kids who wound up cannon fodder for the Neo Con Nut Jobs view of how to lead America into a disastrous new 21st century policy- but Sly doing his Rocky impressions wasn't going to bring them home any sooner and safer. Soooo....

Sites checked out Tuesday, August 19th, 2008:

http://www.populistamerica.com/why_dont_you_shut_up a far outside the mainstream take on the Russia-Georgia conflict and the Bush Administration/ Neocon Nutjob role in it.

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store.aspx?s=mahacup.0 a retail shop for sundry protest gear and the like...

www.cafepress.com a retail and possibly more of a community site that dialogD might try to affiliate with

As I blog along I wonder...

...what can come of "all of this"- nay all of these- drops of mist in the ocean. Which is about what an individual blogger or his or her respective posts amount to. I will continue to muddle along with my misting droplets and gain what traction I can as I move to the next and new phase of trying to communicate and enlist the help and support of all the great and good progressive creative and productive folks and peeps "out there" who are seemingly somewhat harmoniously atuned to the need for similar kinds of radical evolutionary changes that I am trying to call for in dialogD and here there and everywhere- so to speak and to coin a phrase but in reality with all do respect and apologies to Lennon and McCartney.

Sooooo..... check out http://www.mahablog.com/ and
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store.aspx?s=mahacup.0 - a retail shop for sundry protest gear and the like...

An outside the mainstream look at the Russia-Georgia military confrontation...

... the link provided by a would be dialogD poster who for professional reasons deigns to remain anonymous. any way check out: http://www.populistamerica.com/why_dont_you_shut_up and see what you think.

Calling for Constitutional Ammendment Level Campaign Finance Reform...

... along with major electioneering law reform. This is and pretty much has to be a cornerstone to any meaningful change in direction in American politics and economics as well as a prerequisite for "We the people..." to be able to undertake the work we need to in order to address the large issues of social justice and the reasonably equitable opportunity structures that are necessary for a "civil society" to exist outside the gated community (literally and figuratively) lifestyles of only the most overprivileged segments of our citizenry. http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php is one of the best nonpartisan sites I have seen for the general information on the level of corruption too much money infesting our Democracy causes. My call for constitutional ammendment level reform: http://dialogdemocracy.org/campaign_finance_reform_constitutional_ammendment.htm is I think the central basis for forming a real world ongoing activist progressive movement in the United States. Citizen groups in all 50 states can be formed just like the Nader groups or GOTV groups or labor/union groups that canvass and collect money and signatures at various times for various causes only this one could be the major boots on the ground community by community organizing effort that forms the heart of the dailogD "2nd American (Peaceful and Democratic) Revolution".

Reconnecting with the dialogD effort...

...and sometimes it don't come easy.

Distractions distractions distractions... and now the conventions are upon us and the sporting event insipidness of this seemingly eternal Presidential selection process only worsens. The issues are so off and daffy: when does human life begin? What Supreme Court Justices would you not have nominated. Sometimes it is just real hard not to blame the stupidity and cowedness of the American people for the so called leadership they get from their so called "Democracy".

But I know from being out there and one of them that it's that We the people have been getting hoodwinked for so long that it's hard not to attach to some brand of misinformation or get focused on one single issue ruse or another- all while we lose more and more of our collective effective control over the larger forces that shape our lives, families, local communities, and opportunity structures.

More work to do from road trip this week...

...and I know, I know- that's no excuse to pander to the Presidential campaign debacle and all the up to the minute coverage and commentary on every phony, high production values advertisement. But since I actually got this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fvvNU7fBxk from a friend and my former tech guru who I want to be involved in "getting this whole thing started" and who also believes things could be changed in time- in a minute or almost overnight- if "We the people..." get our respective and collective acts together.

In the meantime- you go Britknee; you go Paris Hilton Paris Hilton...

And oh yeah, win this thing Barack. That is not a forgone conclusion. Look out voter rolls in Florida and voting machines in Ohio. 2000 and 2004 were OJT for the Hard Strident Right "Election Mechanics." Easily as impressive as any Nevada and Texas true card mechanics of the mythological good old days of "professional gamblers."

A pre road downs lull...

... which is to be expected with the road, AC, The Shore, The Hollow Deck, and getting back to "the life" looming. I will try to get "work" done as I can. For today I will only say that the path forward has to entail narrowing the scope or at least articulating some specifics about the major issues that a fairly radical progressive grassroots solidarity movement would have to embrace in an ongoing activist manner in order for any progress toward the substantive core sea changes that are needed and being called for in our business and politics to be even remotely approachable.

Here are the ones that always seem to come to mind off the top of my head whenever I start thinking about what has to be considered in this regard. The major issues and or slash proposals that I will focus on are:

• Constitutional Ammendment Level reform of the money in politics cancer that is an ongoing worsening problem and deterrent to "our Democracy."
• The "Bipartisan" problem of "our" gridlock and incumbancy corrupted two party system. Among the first reforms related to this quagmire is to eliminate the Electoreal College altogether or- if people want to keep it for nostalgia's sake just make it be a figurehead entity by having the Electoral Votes for each state be divided proportionately and have the number for each state be exactly a function of said state's population. I am sick of my vote counting less than any other American's based on the density of the population of our respective environs. And I also think that no President should ever again be sworn in who didn't get the most votes by the people of this country. Much much more on this "Electioneering Reform" part of "the movemnt"
• Single payer national health care- a no brainer to everyone but the Insurance company and big pharma PR legions and and all the politicians in their respective but none too respectable hip pockets.
• A complete overhaul of our public education and social welfare priorities and approaches- most especially as these institutions fail in our major urban centers and fail the people and children most at risk because of the social problems and economic and opportunity inequities exacerbated critically by the dysfunctional operations of current status quo "business and politics as usual."
• The need to develop a major new Federal Project called, for lack of a better term, the "Department of Peace." Eventually this department would become equal to on funding and scope levels as the current "Department of Defense", or the "Pentagon System for a planned economy," or the "Military Industrial (and Congressional Incumbency) Complex.
• Calling for a "Brand New and Green This Time New Deal for the American People. It's possible that this "new green deal" could be part of the above "Department of Peace" and could also be closely aligned with the new kinds of "Fair Trade" and "Fair Exchange" trade and treaty agreements we need to enact in the face of climate change and "Peak Oil and Everything Else, Too" that we will all be dealing with as we move forward into our collective, local, and global futures.
• And finally, an overhail of our archaic, draconian, and failing "War on Drugs" system of drug laws, incarceration policies, and arbitrarily unjust and unequal enforcement policies.

Addressing these at length and coming up with proposals and very specific calls to organized activism around those proposals will be where this blog and www.dialogdem0cracy.org focus for the most part for the next couple weeks. On that and on occasionally lamenting the sad state of our Democracy as the Presidential Election Seasons Prime False Advertising Campaigns heat up.

Lot's of guys and gals doing it (blogging, that is)...

... Plenty of gals doing it too, for that matter. Me, I took a little time off to reflect and kick back after another apparently failed attempt to recruit even one collaborating ally from my limited pool of like thinking- though not professional political activist- real people friends. So what does that mean. I am going to proceed as the way opens with my efforts. And I am going to work on getting www.dialogdemocracy.org more functional and coherent as I plow forth.

There are, after all, central core proposals and issues that are at the heart of what I am calling for and I do want to raise money to start some of the activity necessary for any of that to be going on in the "real world." I must say I am impressed by a lot of what I find in the Progressive literature out there. Books, blogs, organiziations that are trying to fight the good fight and so on- speak truth to power and all of that rot. Yet here we sit as the pendulum swing to the right has continued almost unabated now for a couple two tree generations now. And many people really fo believe it's too late. Check this out: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/45752 and read about on some of the links. And this is basically the response I got from my Soolay Brother when I ask him to join me on a co-blogger here on this eponymous blog.

Still, it's the old dilemna: arms (or action anyway) against a sea of troubles or making our separate peace as Rome burns- or the polar ice caps melt at any rate.

So now it's Obama playing the race card...

... mainstream media coverage of and mainstream political reaction to the new turn in the tit for tat Presidential campaign blathering is truly maddening. Where is and was the under the microscope coverage of the Republican party's racist card playing capture of the once "solid Democratic south" when they pandered shamelessly to the Wallacite working class as well as the old plantation south's modern day ruling hierarchy? And the gutless Democratic party has never really stood up to it as a major national party should because they were afraid of losing even more ground to the crazy assed new breed Neocons lead by the likes of Karl Rove and Jack Abramoff. More on this later

Open Source Internet is vital to any hoped for Re-Democratizing...

... effect that "new media" and blogging and Internet activism in general might have on the many debilitating consequences that mainstream business, politics, and media have on our lives, culture, carreers (or lack thereof), health care (or lack thereof), or quality public education system (Ibid.), or civil society with reasonably egalitarian opportunity structure (and again: Ibid.)

This truly is a cornerstone issue for any kind of Progressive Democracy Solidarity movement in the U.S. and the rest of the "Western Market Democracies" to be truly vocal and uncompromising about and is going to be my main area of investication and linking as I get started on my own efforts to take what I'm doing to that proverbial "next level". Anyway, for now check out and link around: http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/the-top-80-charities-for-open-source-and-open-access-advocates/

Jerry Brown interview of Noam Chomsky...

... well worth checking out even if it's a little dated and soooo, you know, like `90's:
http://www.wtp.org - I don't know if this link will work to the article I intend but if it takes you to the "We the people..." Web Site just click archives and it's the first article link on that page. Jerry Brown was a good politician and Governor of California. He was ruined by mainstream media and right wing smear as being Governor Moonbeam. His biggest sin was that he supposedly flip flopped on Prop 13 (incidentally a watershed occurrence in the hijacking of American Democracy by the hack kneepad Tories that have lead us to the Rove-Bush Cheny and their cronies regime) because as governor of California when it was rammed down a hoodwinked and property taxed to ruin middle class's throat by a well funded media ad campaign Jerry Brown then tried to make state government and services work as well as possible in spite of the devestating effects of the Bill. (he had of course opposed the Bill as it was making it's way eventually to the ballot initiative that ended up making it the law of the Golden State)

One of the stories that circulated in the aftermath of Prop 13 was that the year before it was enacted Bank of America was the largest property tax payer in the state of California. In the year after it passed BofA's tax bill had allegedly plummeted to a mere $0.00. So... anyone out there have the truth of the matter.? Might have just been colloquial populist hyperbolization, I know- but one way or another the anti tax-dereg-get g'uvnment off our backs "Big Boys" had bullied a huge win and gained a lot of momentum that only continued with the Reagan "states rights" oriented win of the Presidency the following year- 1980.

From Gonzo warning to the mainstream press gone wild for that maverick hero John McCain...

... A great review in a recent issue if the Cleveland Free times by Pam Zoslov (a tremendous writer on "the kultchuh" if ever there's been one) of the recent film about Hunter Thompson includes this quote:

“The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists — in Washington or anywhere else where they meet on a day-to-day basis. When professional antagonists become after-hours drinking buddies, they are not likely to turn each other in.”

Check out the complete review at http://pamelazoslov.blogspot.com/

Which leads to this link this article by Eric Alterman & George Zornick titled "Loving John McCain" in the June 19th issue of The Nation: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080707/alterman

Which leads to the inevitable hopefulness that all of this crap with McCain as the impossible heir to the Bush Family/Neocon Debacle reign in American national politics will be moot if only Obama wins in November. But while I find my own hopes hopelessly rising like a schoolboy's crush throughout my naively willing to believe psyche I know that even an Obama victory will only be a small step toward what needs to be accompished for a legitimate new Progressive Renaissance to even be on the radar screen of what's possible.

So despite the fascination with the sporting event styled competition with its high profile jousting ad and spin campaigns I feel the need to do more than just join the pro or con side of either of the mainstream "bipartisan" choices.

Ultimately I may "work" for Obama in one or another of the door to door GOTV campaigns. I know he represents the best hope for the possibility of the needed progressive pendulum swing that is needed in American politics, economics, and throughout Society to finally counteract and roll back the horrific consequences of the 40-60 year right wing backlash that "has my head spinning," (see http://dialogdemocracy.org/what_and_whom_we_oppose.htm for more detailed commentary) just as deposed Nixon Attorny General John Mitchell supposedly said it would as he was leaving Washington in disgrace some 35 years ago.

So now John McCain starts to play the racist's cards the Repubes...

... Have been playing successfully at least since Ron Ray-Gun's successful stressing the coded language of "states rights" all through his presidential campaigning career throughout the south. Hell, it's the biggest reason for the biggest electoral shift in modern times: the Solid South going from solidly Democratic to for sure pure Republican. And every Republican candidate since has played the same race baiting tunes and now McCain tips his hand. Check out this article by Kevin (freaking) Freking of AP: http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/politics-16/1217163842282220.xml&storylist=president

Well well well. Good to be in the post racist era of the American experiment. And good, too, to be in the post surge stage of the Iraq debacle so the Republicans can go around the country demanding loyalty oaths to the "commanders on the ground" and testemonials to all the mission accomplished successes of the preemptive seizure of a resource rich trouble spot whose cooperative and complicit U.S. backed strongman had gotten a little too big for his britches.

Norman Soloman is out there and should probably be more ...

...widely known and read than he is.
Check him out at his blog: http://www.normansolomon.com/

He has written War Made Easy; How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death- http://www.warmadeeasy.com/ and I think even more recently Made Love Got War; Close Encounters With Americas Warfare State.

Of course guys like him have been around forever conducting highly admirable careers and doing great work and some Im sure really fighting the good fight and yet we have the mainstream business and politics as usual that we have today. "Speaking truth to power" is of course a necessary part of what is needed but we have to use and better develop the projected potential of DemocracyWeb 4.0 (beta) to get better coordinated, organized, and mobilized. What say, eh?

I'm getting closer to operating on...

...at least a couple two tree cylinders, which is a start. And which also means I will soon be getting a little less smarmy and journalish at least in my post titles on this here blog. The titles should be a concise nutshell of what the post's contents is going to be about. And pretty soon after that I am going to have to take it all to the next level and start up brazen communications with other seemingly progressive democracy types I find "out there" in the ether of the Internet- so to speak. One of these guys is going to be mentioned in the title of the next post and he will be linked to in the post itself.

A conundrum wrapped in mystery posing as an insoluble dilemna...

...and that's the problem of what do we do about the best and the brightest when a huge bulk of them are, one way or another, serving as one kind of functionary or another in the current mainstream business as usual Neoliberal "New World Order."

Or something to that effect. And let's face it- part of the reason for that is that the way of the world is what the way of the world is. Which is another way of saying "Salga lo que Salga," or loosely translated "go what goes". Or for more of the song type of reference that I like so good: "Que serra serra..."

Obviously, a lot of people are doing great things and admirable work outside the mainstream and they are dedicated to peace, social justice, and economic Democracy. But in order to attract more talent and strength to that kind of endeavor we have to develop more viable livelihoods to the cause of our ongoing "Great Work." (http://dialogdemocracy.org/on_berrys_the_grerat_work.htm) And in the mean time, we have to make an appeal to the "Best and the Brightest" who would in fact join in the effort of doing that kind of Great Work but unfortunately most of the quality livelihoods "out there" to be earned and had are working for the aforenetioned "New World Order".

So check out http://dialogdemocracy.org/to_the_best_and_brightest.htm and please make some suggestions on how to create more and more employment opportunities for not only them- the current crop of the so called "Best and the Brightest"- but also everybody else- especially those at the other end of the economic spectrum and most especially among them young people who do not have the opportunity structure they should and that mddle class or better affluent Americans pretty much take for granted.

Not really gaining too too much momentum all too quickly…

…which is O.K. and just means that the grinding- again, much like Tiger had to do at Torrey Pines- has to be the emphasis. And then it’s salga lo que salga, Bru… No what I am saying?

http://www.allbookstores.com/book/compare/0275989968 will link you to Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere price compare page on allbookstores.com’s Web Site which is a great- from a consumer’s point of view anyway- bookbuying site in that it gives you a whole range of sites that sell a particular book and their prices etc. and then y’all can do what you want.

I mentioned Barlow’s book in a previous post and if interested in some comments made during a perusal of it check out…(oops, I am having trouble with my Web Hosting so I will go ahead and post the somewhat lengthy comments on Barlow’s book here and when I can link to it at dialogD I will.

Blogs as the New Free Advocacy and Organizing Press- Some Notes while reading Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere
Thursday, May 01, 2008, 11:45 AM.
A quote:
“Certainly, in looking over the backgrounds of political blogs, one quickly finds that blogs are simply allowed by technology, not that they are caused by technology. The cultural forces that led individuals to adopt the blogs so readily as a means of political expression arose long before the technology appeared. In fact, those forces first arose along with the momentum toward revolution in the middle of the eighteenth century, only to be suppressed as the growing commercial and professional news media squeezed the public sphere almost to nonexistence.”
-From Aaron Barlow’s Introduction-
*
Blogs as a new incarnation of citizen journalism. And in the case of my blogging a direct advocacy call for major citizen activism to the point of calling for a revolutionary change in American political reality…
*
5/8/2008 12:53 PM
Chapter 2 “The Rise of Advocacy Journalism”
Blogs and bloggers as a new public space outside the mainstream. From which not only advocacy for candidates and ideas and policies still rising through the ranks of and under the fundamental control of the mainstream gatekeepers (IE corporate MSM, the two major bipartisan and thoroughly co-opted by mainstream funding interests Political Parties, the perceived consensus of money’s overriding and rightful place as the be all end all of whose voice can be taken “seriously” in the course of “business and politics as usual”) but an actual advocacy and organizing entity for an entirely different agenda than mainstream everything as it now carries out it’s relatively narrow and limiting function on how things are allowed to get done. And the way things now are able to get done or not get done is at the heart of the matter, is the crux of the problem that we collectively face.
*
Blogs and what evolves from where they’re at now can also create new “Public Spaces” from which the new 2nd American Revolution can emerge out from. It will be made possible by the new technologies available through the Internet with respect to communications, education, organization, and cost efficiency in all these and other areas that will achieve a sort of flattening of access to the spheres of influence and power. It is the development of this new kind of access that a genuine peaceful yet Radically Evolutionary Progressive Grassroots Transformational Democracy Solidarity movement can actually be built from and eventually successfully gain and wield influence and power in the real world…
(a real world by the way where the Netroots play a role in organizing but are not confused as being the be all end all arbiters of what’s needed-given that the earliest bloggers and Netizens are mostly made up of “up from the upper middle class elites” and heavily techno gizmo oriented and entrenched and that crowd is so incredibly privileged within the current social, economic, and educational milieu that they can hardly be expected to be the sole cause or articulator of the radical sea changes that will be necessary for any of the semi progressive agendas they may be advocating for to be even remotely attainable)
*
Now reading about Tom Paine (again in Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere) and very nearly falling deeply asleep… (Aside to Reader: not the fault of the book, author, it’s publisher, or any of their respective heirs)
“Paine united the rebellious faction of the colonies as no one else had and expanded the universe of political discourse to include even the unlettered… Eventually someone will take advantage of 21st century possibilities in a similar way…” -p.22 par.4-
Unlike most other pamphleteers Paine actually did present a plan for the future and not just complaints about contemporary injustice. -p.23 par.1-
The genesis of the law…must lie in the people. -p.23 par.3-
Just as bloggers are stepping around… (MSM) …Paine was sidestepping the colonial elite… -p.24 par.4-
A central American debate: more Democracy for everyone or Democracy just as a media show of the elites… to facilitate the efficient governance as they see fit of everyone except them and their cronies… while living with as little public sector Democratic control styled “smaller Guv’ment” over their self interested and aggrandizing shenanigans as possible. Currently we are in the throes of a new Gilded Age reactionary backlash of perhaps the most elite centered conservative dominance in this debate as ever in our history as a Nation.
*
“Again, to date, no one of impact remotely akin to that of Paine has arisen from the blogs. It is possible that no one ever will (though, always the optimist, I believe such a person is just around the corner). However, when one remembers that is was societal demand for change along with technological change that set the stage for Paine’s entrance, it is hard to imagine that the social needs of the 21st Century, on top of the technological advances of the late 20th century, will not force Paine’s modern-day equivalent to step from the wings. –p.26 par.2-

An Interesting link here...

...to an article sent to me by one of my plant guys http://jim.com/killer.htm

Although I know I gotta lotta lotta work to do...

...and it's not easy to forget about those women and that water can (with apropriate apologies to Mr Roy Orbison). But pretty soon the work is going to start fleshing out a little and taking some form. And that means that I will start the scary and somewhat tenuous process of getting in touch with many old friends and peeps from all over the place and time and see who might want to join in the blogging for democracy web 4.0 or so that is being called for and somewhat started here.

Who knows where it might lead? Not me. And I don't really care. There, I've said it.

But where ever it's going to lead the www.dialogdemocracy.org web site has to be the main focus for the most part until it is vastly upgraded and improved from where it's at and the shape it's in right now. So that's going to be the main emphasis for the next several days. Hopefully I can make some serious progress on that and do a little constructive blogging and blog related communicatin' and be in way more energized shape towards the end of next week- which will leave 2 count `em two weeks to really power on down toward the next coney island of my mind road trip. Farward and faiyaka. Minnotuh- and den gosaka.

Progressive Solidarity and Activist Convergence With All New Web 4.0 (beta)...

...yeah that's the ticket. That's what dialogD must transmorgrify towards. There is "my work" assignment in a nut shell. Yeah yeah yeah right right right. "I think of Dean Moriarty. I think of old Dean Moriarty." Google that quote. If it comes up then all might or might not be lost- to paraphrase Woodie Guthrie.

Anyway, todays lookabouting brought me to one Charles Leadbeater http://zero.newassignment.net/assignmentzero/charles_leadbeater_key_writer_thinker_consultant#
who's new book project "We think" might be worth checking out ... Soooo...
http://wethink.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

It's time for me to go back to www.dialogdemocracy.org and spruce it up and give it a little more coherence in terms of what I am really gonna try and call for whilst blogging about.

Jeff Jarvis is a guy billed as a Citizen Journalist Activist. Check him out at:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/about-me/

All these high level white folks already part of the digerati elite and living there uber upper middle class lives. Can they connect with a progressive political movement that includes people of vastly differing and diverse backgrounds and cultures? And what about the folks's that need to be mobilized who are so fundamentally left out of the opportunity structures so comfortably utilized by the college professors and writers and political organizers and other movers and shakers of the current cultural stratification reality... how do we not all just get along but how do we work for some kind of common ground or commons where we can all thrive?

Musings on being ready to Back Barack...

...
Originally written 5/2/2008 11:42 AM

I really am starting to like Barack Obama much more as the campaign and fundraising and jive ass shallow advertising drag on and on. Even though I think B.O. is somewhat automatically corrupted just by having risen this up the “mainstream” he still is I think, the most inspiring of potentially idealistic activist progressive agents for change to emerge in that mainstream American political landscape since Bobby Kennedy was gunned down in `68 just months after MLK was. Time it was and what a time it was- eh?

And I think fears that the same could happen to Barack if he’s elected are real but that isn’t necessarily the way the Right will neutralize him. He could just be a one term blip who is made to look so bad by circumstances along with the same “vast right wing conspiracy” that relentlessly badgered the Clintons even as they were out Reaganing Reagan pretty much their whole eight years of having their chance to turn the tides…

And there is so much they can do to make him look bad. Things like really letting the economy bottom out for the next four years. I mean- really let people suffer. Sure, it’s the Neocons that mismanaged everything to corruptly funnel resources to the Big Boy Cronie Network they work for- but six months into the Democrats being in power it’s going to be them and the Clintons being blamed and Barack will just be the Pawn Prez till the new Neocon annointee emerges.
(maybe not a Bush this time but I say that’s when things really are going to get scary- a charismatic newcomer who actually can pull off a better image than W. and sound like he knows what he’s talking about and that it’s him saying what he’s saying. I mean- if half the country can buy the Neocons agenda with Bush and Cheney quarterbacking their team just think how a next generation Iraq War Hero with West Point or The Citadel credentials could inspire the Great American People.)

Or maybe it won’t be a real Iraq War Hero but another actor. I’m thinking Chuck Norris now. Or what about a repackaged Newt Gingrich. He’ll come out all critical of the Bushies and trumpet the great accomplishments of his “Contract on Americans” and invoke the Saint Hood of Ronnie Ray Guns and low and behold the mainstream media will have him framed as a real life Thomas Jefferson or Tom Paine.

But however this election goes the resources of the wealthiest 1-5% will be mostly focused on seeing that no wealth or resources anywhere in the world can be used or developed for the general wealth, commons, and or well being of local populations or indigenous souls anywhere, anyhow, no way… Like always. And that is going to be a hell a lot for this current bunch (including Barack) of the so called Democratic Party opposition to overcome.

So my point is they may be able to kill the hope he represents better just by making him look ineffectual and not up to making a difference after all and four years from now look out- or, President McCain becomes the New Ray Gun and his VP will be a Dan Quayle or Sonnie Dubya type who becomes the next figurehead down the line while Cheney (and later on down the line his everlasting eternal fully functional virtual reality holigram) keeps doing what the Global Corporate Board `O the Whirl tells him from the Control Panel in his combination Hunting Lodge/ Missile Proof Bunker.

Reviewing and sharing some places I’ve been…

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
An article http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/14/10348/ at “Common Dreams” originally published on Monday, July 14, 2008 by The Independent/UK by Leonard Doyle titled “Bush to Hasten Iraq Troop Withdrawal to Help McCain Win White House”. Gee gosh, they wouldn’t do anything underhanded or politically motivated concerning how, why, or when American troops are deployed into or out of harms way, would they?

7/15/2008 11:51 AM
More and more as I gear up, ramp up, amp up my blogging toward real world real time right here right now just doing it time I think- where this all can lead has to be something more than what it’s doing so far. There seems to be two main camps on the “Potential” democratizing effects the Internet in general and the roll of blogging specifically might or should have on things. Meantime if you look around the Internet and read blogs of various partisan stripes you will find that everything under the sun is “out there”. One can pick and choose from all manner of quality and partisan niches.
So just because something is being blogged about don’t really matter. It don’t mean squat. But the big thing is the potential for a different kind of “Citizen Journalism”- yeah sure that- to evolve but also along with it new kinds of capabilities for citizen activism to emerge which might ideally level the playing field and ultimately take money out of the ultimate equation enough so that the interests of the American people might be put first rather than marginalized in the interest of serving the needs of the biggest players in Imperial Global Capitalism.
Somewhere somebody once said that if only the people who actually benefited and thrived under the policies of Ronald RayGun’s administrations had voted for him he’d have gotten maybe 5% of the popular vote. Now I think that may be a wee bit of an exaggeration but still… even if 15% could be argued the fact is that the conservative majority has been built on a foundation of duplicity, false advertising, election stealing, wholesale gerrymandering, and buying elections with their almost unfathomable material resource advantage. Which is only worsening as the Income Divide of this New Gilded Age gets worse with every newly occurring shakeout or adjustment in the “Global Economy”.
When will it become obvious enough that there can be no meaningful Democracy, economic justice, or much of a civil society (outside of the gated communities and corporate green zone bunker communities of the one percenters) when the wealthiest 1% of a country owns or controls 60+% of the wealth? Or at least obvious enough for the American people to wake up from there delusion that we’re all in this together and that our National elites are operating in the best interests of all of us out here who are just scuffling to get by? And by waking up I mean taking the kind of civic and Democratic action necessary to get us onto a different path with significantly more heart than the one displayed by Faux Macho Neocon insanity or their other side of the aisle complicitous limp wristed “bipartisan opposition.”

That’s where the potential of blogging and the internet and more efficient and coordinated progressive grass roots organizing can com into the mix in amore profound way than ever in the history of the Union. Because, as Martin Luther King once said: "Those who love peace must learn to organize as well as those who love war."

Getting back to it...

...and more and more as I study up on "what's out there" and "going on" with Blogging and the Internet and it's potential for positive progressive big D Democratic change the more I think I am more or less on the right track. Will post more on this after visiting with me old lad a little bit more and getting a mellowing and hopefully uplifting swim in at the club. Yeah that's right I said it: the club.

More from Joel Hirschhorn…

...This guy is the type `o person I will be contacting about the proposed dialogD agenda and means for working towards achieving such an agenda as I move forward with my efforts to advocate just that. This link http://www.counterpunch.org/hirschhorn11102007.html is to an article about the general state of the two party collaboration in business and politics as usual and http://www.delusionaldemocracy.com/ is a book promoting site for his book entitled, oddly enough, Delusional Democracy.

Toward a 2nd American Revolution...

Throughout dialogD there are calls for deep and profound change and re-democratization of all aspects of American politics, economics, culture, education, and society as a whole. This article http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0213-02.htm by Joel S. Hirshhorn makes a similar call…

Thinkin’ `bout blogs and blogging all my way down the road…

…Blogs have become so pervasive yet misunderstood that I feel the need to explain my own approach to why I am doing it my own self these days. I don’t want to get into a bunch of definitions or recount the history of blogs- although there are plenty of books on blogging out there now that do that and more.

I’ll just say that from the political side to what I want to do and be involved with the best resource I have found is Aaron Barlow’s The Rise of the Blogosphere, in which he describes and gives credence to blogging as already being and having considerable potential to become even more so the “New Free Advocacy and Organizing Press”. Barlow compares the new partisan bloggers as being the modern day parallels to the pamphleteers of Revolutionary Era America. Or as I like to aspire: to the Tom Payne’s and Sam Adam’s… to the real Democrats of that time.

That said, as I try to work past the kinks of my own getting started and eventually immersed in all of what my blogging and related Web Presence can become, I also can say that as a lifelong semi aspiring and yet uncommitted occasional writer the Internet in general and Blogging in particular have certainly created a new avenue to get around traditional gatekeepers and turned anyone who wants to into combination writer-editor-publisher with the click of a mouse or touch on a touch pad. As many would point out- with mixed results and varying kinds of quality and trustworthiness.

So I admit it: for now I am simply bypassing the traditional gatekeepers to me trying to “be a writer” and go forward as an admitted and proud to be partisan in the ongoing quest for “ a more perfect union,” or a greatly improved and perhaps almost revolutionarily transformed American Democracy. For more specifics on this see:
http://dialogdemocracy.org/old_epgtds_defined_ffmission_statement.htm

Laying low and working on www.dialogdemocracy.org for a few days...

...but I am also just checking out how Explorer works away from the nightmare that my home internet connection has become. Did anyone see the interview of John McCain flinching during an interview when the reporter questioning him gestured with his hands for effect while asking his question? I really think, with all the other issues being equal, that, protests about how young and fit and virile this guy tries to present himself that he is simply too freaking old to be President and that his candidacy is him "taking one for the team" and that should he happen to win he will just be the front man for the Cheney-Sonnie Dubbies Neocons who will remain highly operative in a next Republican Administration. Be very wary of the VP selection at the Re-Pube convention. It could be very telling about how serious the concerns at the highest levels of the Re-Pube leadership are about McCains health, competence, and likelihood of being genuinely "in charge" of a New Neocon Administration.

Blogging for friends and family first…

Tuesday, July 08, 2008, 10:10 AM

…yeah sort of that but sort of not- but what the heck. It’s going to be a fine line at first because I do want to slowly contact some old peeps and see who back their somewhere “down the windy halls of friendship” (Neil Young in “Thrasher”- a great tune which by the way I do and soon will be made available for download…) just might want to or be willing anyhow to get involved in either some of this here Blogging or the larger effort of getting this whole thing of great social and political organizing import (with apologies this time of course to Janis from her seminal spoken preamble to “Mercedes Benz”

As I am doing this blogging I am thinking to myself as I quote old songs and movie lines and even try to give credit where it’s due when I remember it’s not my own line- cuz, like in some cases I have incorporated and imbedded some lines from “the kultchuh” so seamlessly that I don’t even know they came from anywhere but my own rich and fertile verbal skills- anyway, I’m thinking I could be linking folks right to those classic old tunes. And someday I will do just that…

Now more stuff culled for the Blog about the Blog and why Blog anyway…

Moved here 7/7/2008 6:52 AM…

dialogD Blog and Web Site Missions and Descriptions

O.K.- the dialogD Blog is going to be a very personal melded with the political ongoing journal of my research and various “takes” on the current political season but more importantly the various larger issues with respect to the overall state of our American Democracy as we approach first the November election and then ultimately the change in leadership, one way or another, in the Executive branch of our national government.

My Blogging effort is meant to be an ongoing communication effort as well as a free form free verse call to action on various issues and activist organizing that will be called for throughout. Whenever in the course of this Blogging process I come across a person or organization that is, from what I can tell, on the same page and/or actively doing something or writing about how to get going on what needs to be done about the crisis in our Democracy and collective aspirations for as Free and civil a society as possible- well I am just going to go ahead and contact those people and organizational entities and see about enlisting them in the organized civic and entrepreneurial activism that I propose throughout the dialogD Blog and Larger Web Presence… www.dialogdemocracy.org.

*

The main way the Web Site will differ from the Blog is that it will offer more lengthy essays, position papers on issues, calls for political and organizing action, and the occasional bits of partisan bombast on the particulars being called for throughout the dialogdemocracy.org and any miscellaneous related other efforts or venues.

www.dialogdemocracy.org will also try to provide a workable organizational and central fundraising structure for what is being called for and proposed.

*

A last couple thoughts on the “Daily Thou Regimen” (which, note to dear readers if ever there are any, refers to the effort to churn out at least a thousand little words words words each and every day- whether I need to or feel like it our not):

· Even though I don’t want to get too carried away with journalizing it is in point of fact again partly what Blogging itself is except that it is making your journal type writing (to a point and to an extent usually) for potentially anyone and everyone to see that you can get to pay attention to it. So the Daily thou is being revived specifically to kind of just get the whole doing this everyday thing back to the forefront and then meld into the ongoing real work, writing, and maybe activist entrepreneurial organizing efforts.

· And hopefully my own place in all of what that can be about and lead to just harmoniously works itself out and gives me enough of a “little something for myself” for me to be happy- so I don’t have to worry about where it leads- into the brush or out of the brush it don’t matter… that is what I have to let go and just breathe into about where I am positioned right now.

· But I do occasionally have the momentary flash of epiphenal insight. And when I have those somewhat rare and all to fleeting thought flashes on whatever the fuck- why at those times I want my efforts to be about things like the following to simply surge to the surface and out:

· The ideas of the Web Site and the various kinds of Bogging (ooh… one of them there Freudian slips that I love so good… meant of course to say “Blogging” just then) that can and will go along with it- and the implied communication and conscilience and collaboration that have to go along with all of it…

As much as I know what I am trying to do I sometimes forget that ultimately it is still me trying to be a writer- whether I get paid or not or “make it” or not or even if what I produce gets read or not. But I have to find a way again to get to a point where I have my strong voice that transcends all those ifs ands or big buttes about all of that. And finding my voice right here right now is what everyday forced journalizing and Quickwrites on various topics as they come up is specifically designed and meant to do.

Another week of seeking some traction… yeah traction… that’s the ticket…

Blog posts for Monday, July 07, 2008, 6:35 AM.

I realize as I get to this second week of me at least trying to actively participate in the Blogging process that the very purpose of what I am attempting is daunting. And I have a hard time just getting past the shore break of turbulence and undertow that are right there all the time (real or imagined) at the point of “just wading in”. I think if I can just fight through the resultant feelings of fear, insecurity, and insignificance that I might be able to get “out there,” to where I can start to just be doing it and not worrying about how I’ll seem or look once I’m doing it.

And now from previous days and times…

Now it’s The 4^th Of July…

… that marked the official relaunch for my dialogdemocracy.org Web Site and Blog efforts. Between now and the November 3^rd, 2008 U.S. election we will be celebrating the end for now of the Neocon Bush Cheney two term fiasco. Of course the two stars of the administration, Old Dick and Sonnie Dubbies can’t come back personally to haunt us (at least not as public figures leading the Executive Branch of our supposedly Democratic government almost exclusively on behalf of their upper echelon corporate executive class capitalist cronies)… but if serious re-democratization of our entire society, culture, and economy doesn’t begin in earnest with this Presidential election season then I fear the Neocon Nutjobs could be back- and possibly even scarier, worse, more harmful to America’s and the world’s people than even these guys have been. And that’s saying a mouthful.

So my plan for the Blogging and the political activism is to do a formal relaunch- maybe with a new main name (“dialogdemocracy” is kind of dry and not all that catchy don’t you think?) but I will worry about minutia like names once I am really operating semi efficiently on actually just doing this thing on a consistent basis and seeing where that leads.

Official re-launch date was 4th `O July...

... But that was a Holiday but symbolically still the beginning of getting this whole thing started is at hand. I will attempt total immersion in my work over the next couple weeks or so window of opportunity I have to do so. I have to let the tech side just come to me and evolve. That's not my main strength but I do have to improve my proficiency base as I go along.

Very steady regular posting and work on the main dialogD Web Pres is the first priority. And starting to get more into the .comm side of it all and linking to stuff. All the next level.

You know, tires are like your feet only on a car and all...

7/3/2008 1:54 PM

…So, as I am gaining traction I get a better sense of where to take this. How to link over to the main dialogD WebPres and why and when. And I am ready to start the active communications phase of this effort pretty soon= first with the friends from around the land and planet and life then also with the presumed kindred spirits I find in my reading and investigating of what’s going on out there. At some point I can see this effort being routinely a part of every day a couple two tree times easy. Until then I will just try and keep grinding just like Tiger at the Open. Know what I am saying?

Time now to go see a man about a second hand dehumidifier…

Working on gaining that enigmatic traction...

Wednesday, July 02, 2008, 10:48 AM…

WiFi at Starbucks blows…

So who is surprised? There for fee T-Mobile kept superceding other attempts to connect to available unencrypted networks. Power to the largest player. Like always.

Now to some general edited and culled material that is perhaps appropriate for the dialogD and all related more personal Blog efforts.

*

7/2/2008 11:15 AM

Before getting to the gleaning of my recent writing it’s time to consider the “True Alternative Nature” at the core of what I am proposing throughout dialogD’s Blog and Web presences. A few points:

· In Cleveland, the two Weekly Independent Alternative Rags have recently announced a merger- or their parent mega alternative corporate parents did. So the Cleveland Free Times and Scene will finally be one all encompassing mega merged conglomeration of all things alternative. Yeah yeah yeah- right right right. The underground alternative scene has for the most part become so abysmally apolitical and just hipster dufus pop culture oriented that it’s minor political critique tones are by definition already marginalized and irrelevant. Just like the genuine outside the mainstream alternative progressive democracy movement is for the most part. So it’s not like the Alternative Media scene is the cause, or root of the larger problem.

· So if we are to develop alternative paths into our collective futures than those provided by International Global Corporatist Hegemony (and it’s political PR spun democracy subsidiaries) as usual we will have to do better in the next couple to twenty years of un-marginalizing legitimate alternatives as we have, say, since the Summer of `68.

*

And now folks, the edited gleanings…

5/16/2008 1:52 PM

A couple of idle ramblings now and I will be free somewhat for the weekend. Although one is never truly free when sharing one’s kitchen cabinetry with a Ratatouille wanabe.

A quote heard on NPR by some fellow in the know talking about the Internet and other digital media’s potentially revolutionary effect on Democracy with a big D:

“It’s 10:00 AM on the morning of the first day of that revolution…”

I will try my best to find out who said that and give credit when I quote him. And that’s where I think I come in. Web 3.0 Democracy Content, Advocacy, Organizing, Community Outreach, and Solidarity Building. (or will it ultimately be Web 4.0 or 5.0 by the time I get to consistent producin’?) But whatever, that’s the crux of my ticket.

*

The Name Game

Some possible renaming seems to be in order partly just because I am sick of “dialogdemocracy.org” and partly because I think the time for merely talk, or words, or books and articles- or collections of such is pretty much past. This has to be a convergence, a concilience thing, a solidarity movement in the real world around some of the content I and many many others put out or bring together… and in terms of my contribution in one place on my Blogs and related Web Presences.

So, naming possibilities:

· Alter-Blog

· Outside the Main Stream (OTMS) Alter-Blog

*

5/12/2008 10:24 AM

What I am doing now is gearing up for more of a June 1^st or maybe even more officially a Fourth `O July serious enough launch to the Blogging/dialogD (hopefully with a new and better name for branding purposes by then) efforts that I see at that point as having a First Phase- or, perhaps better: Phase One- cycle that starts with the ramping up to the conventions and the eventual November General Election and then is in full stride as the decision on who will follow Bush the Younger into the Presidency and what the climate of the country, the Congress, and the economy all are as we move towards the Inaugural Gala Season and the new Presidents “First One Hundred Days”.

That gives me long enough to establish myself, make an impact, and hopefully have me on a “Path With Heart” into my personal future on multiple levels as I proceed apace “as the way opens” from here. And tis truly not all about making money from “all of this” but it is about trying to find a way for that aspect of life also to be taken care of in a way that is harmonious with me being “T-Bone at his best” and in harmony with my true inner nature and soul.

Sooooo…

*

5/8/2008 11:58 AM

So ain’t it surprising, how time and ultimately life, just slip away. Listen to the blues, they’re playing. And listen to what the blues, are saying. (it’s Willie…)

*

5/6/2008 9:12 AM

So when it comes to my work I am fairly optimistic that I have gotten my thoughts together on writing and blogging and monetizing myself creatively for the ongoing “I don’t plan on retiring- from anything I do” stage of life as I get older from here assuming I don’t corpseded out all of a sudden and boom I’m over just like everybody else is over who is already, you know, like, dead and all.

Sooo… I am thinking that the key to my blogging is for me to be that guy who brings a specific revolutionary activist agenda to the liberal left blogging community and makes my own content the central driving aspect to the blogging I do. This crap about just being a parasitic commentator on the MSM and the mainstream politics and business as usual world is fine- and a big step in terms of regular citizens actually having a voice of any kind again- but that path is not in itself going to lead to any huge and needed and long overdue changes in that whole “Mainstream” power grid.

In any case it is “my blogging for democracy Web 3.0 (beta) convergence consilience space” thing that is going to make me my niche, and eventually that whole thing is maybe the only hope- if it can be harnessed and utilized- to actually mobilize a whole new kind of wide ranging and multi faceted movement.

In any case- I am positioned to do my thing on it somewhat over the next couple two tree months with the idea that it takes at least six months of producing to actually get noticed…

*

5/1/2008 9:21 AM

I have to say it’s up to me to find a better path and this summer is the transition time. Some reason to believe, be, and create on many levels. I need revival, I need rescue, I need the whole renewal package.

*

And of course the idea of making a palpable difference in the big picture issues is almost nil- and that is the reason, I think, that so many idealist activist types from those fabulous sixties ended up too depressed to drool as time passed and their delusions of grandeur became more blatantly ludicrous…

Sometimes I am right there- with Abbie and Phil and I don’t know who all else.

*

Yesterday's (Mon30June08) Culled For posting mess...

...so here it is. But first the link http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/327366
that convinced me to go ahead and let "The Nation" email some of my closest personal friends in order that I be entered to win an all expenses paid trip to NYC and get to spend a day at the Nation. I wonder if that includes any walkin' around money?
And now folks, from wordy yours truly:

Hey Soolay Brew, eh???

6/30/2008 2:56 PM, a manic Monday…

Or really more a depressive one. Manic will come in due course.

So here’s what I got, lately the ramblings gleaned a bit, for your reading pleasure and enjoyment…

*

…So I, Along With John McCain, Ain’t No Kind No Way No How Any Real Maverick In Any Genuine Sense of the Word…

From the AC Jrn. Of Sa21Jun08…

From the guest suite at Eddie Kayes’s trans shop.

That being said of course I think I still could be. So I have another week with Chris in our Coney Island of our phantasy minds and during that week I will try my best to handle the situations that do indeed come up better. That includes trying to do more of this prep writing and editing and computing and pre blogging and pre organizing work as best I can.

Then, soon enough it will be back to Cleve-A-Burg and there I will have a small short window to start really making something happen. And that’s pretty much when I will have to really prioritize making a couple of weeks conducive to me finally getting things moving in a positive direction. I know the drill and I know how easy it is to squander time when you think you have plenty of it and how easy a short little window like this can be sidetracked and gone by all kinds of minutia and other life demands. I will have to be self concerned enough to make sure neither happens the rest of this summer. Hit the ground running boy- just hit the ground running.

And whatever ancillary regimens (IE running, eating right, drinking less or not at all for awhile, cycling, nature and hiking and canoeing, losing weight, taking up golf, etc. etc. throwing parties, having Mary and the kids in or whatever) I need to be into the main thing for me to regain my serenity and balance to the extent I have ever had those in my corner the big thing is for me to make this “work” happen on all the many levels and manifestations I possibly can.

It is and will have been a long time coming, Brew. Know what I am saying?

*

In AC around 6:30PM on W25June08.

FOCK FOCK FOCK ME.

Overlooking the Beach and the Boardwalk from the hollow pool deck of the AC Hilton. Expansive viewing toward Ventnor and the South Down Beach Shore.

I have got to, quite simply, slow it down and focus and connect. The challenge of my life. But I have maybe 3-5 or 4-6 weeks to do it right here right now and if I do the rewards could be- just might be- substantial.

And the writin’ comes first. For the most part.

*

Thinking about Jimmy in his casket at his wake. And earlier about Bobby- and how psychically and spiritually Bobby and Mary are more alike than most folks in the family would think on the surface.

And what about an intentional community now. Maybe the future is a commune as the way to the new agrarian localism- which is what things are going to have to be about…

But what about the “new convergences” that are supposably (sic) going to give us all the future techno-gizmo solutions to our current apparently unsolve-able dilemmas.

I see the hope of the Internet and Blogging around the need for a new Radical Progressive political groundswell as being something that succeeds to the extent that it can be one such convergence of the communications and organizational potential of the Internet and other relatively new “Digital Age” technologies along with those technologie’s potential to help educate, mobilize, and ultimately employ large numbers of activists who engage all the “necessary work” that would be required if “meaningful change” ever were to genuinely achieved, or enacted, or realized.

And of course, the Progressive Groundswell that is needed is simply a new and inevitable reawakening in the human condition of the ongoing yearning for freedom, Democracy, civil society, justice and fairness, etc. etc..

*

I really want to do nothing but nurture the possibility of me unleashing- or really more just simply releasing, setting free, my somewhat repressed all twisted up in the game creative consciousness.

But alas and alack- what has repressed said Creative Consciousness?

Pure life. Going with the flow but letting the flow sometimes sidetrack me too much from the essence of my true nature. Being. Breathing and not breathing. And because of that tendency I sometimes think I am too other directed- maybe not in terms of what kind of person I am but in terms of what I am able to accomplish in the “real world.”

It really is such a fine line- ain’t it Doc?

The art of living can get in the way of creating art that makes one feel that one has produced something that validates their being and existence- or- in the course of geologic time… having ever actually been alive. We’re talking the quest for immortality here folks.

*

Back to Bobby: he is at times a friend so succinctly, I think anyway, that I could see him being someone that I could see being comfortable with as I was preparing to go to the other side. You know, where Jimmy is and my Mom is. The wrong side of the dirt.

*

MONEY BOUND. Write that complementary song to John Gorka’s great one. I think his greatest one. Though it’s like a great unfinished work of art. It complains of the pain but offers no way to gain in the brain what’s needed to transcend what’s yet to be transcended… (Aside to reader: the wine be kicking in there on the Hollow Deck right about now.) From, or with apologies to the Doobie’s “What a Fool Believes”.

*

I have just met, or found really, a tree I love. Right here on the Hollow Deck. It reminds me of what:

· A Bristlecone pine;

· A Monterey Pine;

· A Torrey Pine???

Each of them great trees. What is this one. I want to know (everybody wants to know) even though I don’t care about all that Botanical shit. Sorry Tim.

Tree, just shimmer in the wind and sun and that’s all I need: that’s good enough for me. Names and knowing all of them ain’t what makes it happen for me.

But writer, all that’s well and good but still, describe it for us…

It lists slightly over the Hollow Deck. One major branch, at least. And it angles and splays downbeach- from the wind it looks and feels like. And it’s all branches toward the sea side and more sparse facing land. Except at its crown.

I want to come down and photograph this tree in the morning. Let’s see If I do. (Another aside to reader: Nope, no photos of tree, Mon.)

*

What is the consciousness of a gull? Jah lowly gull. Or sometimes so they seem. Scuffling for a crust of pizza down by the Steel Pier. But I just watched one negotiate the wind way up in a thermal. And he or she cruised, soared toward the shore break without so much as moving a muscle. Or so it seemed. What did his consciousness or brain or spirit think, feel, or intuit way up air. I wonder.

*

Now some edited cullings from previous efforts to get the mind working prior to the AC trip as the school year was winding down…

Late April from sub jobs mostly:

I have dreams of not only the lions but of a big Western sojourn where I can visit and mooch off some old friends and also reconnect with perhaps both my cowboyin’ and countercultural roots.

In any case I would hope to get together with you my Soolay Brother for some portion of that part or what I’m billing as the “I’m Not Quite Ready to Get All the Way Old” tour. I tell you, I wish I could make myself stay on task enough to succeed finally at something more fun and creative. It’s getting to the point where I don’t really know that I have much faith that I will ever really change much or ultimately make all that much happen or ever really have much to with any “going out there and getting this whole thing started” sort of deallybop.

But lately I been thinking too much lately…

*

This blogging thing feels just like starting over...

... Starting over. (With apologies to Winston O. Boogie- and you know who you are)
So here it goes. The personal and the political all melded together. The plan: start communicating with my newly coined Web 4.0 approach and make contact with all the old friends I want to reach and then of course can in fact find. Try and see who of them wants to get involved in all of this "getting this while thing started" that I am proposing- and there might be a few who want to I think...
Meantime, I just wade in and JDI. Know what I am saying. Build as I go and communicate with every kindred spirit "out there" that I come across. And see where it all leads.

Trying to get restarted...

...and I will see if Mozilla might be a better "fit" once again.

So the whole point of my trying to "get this whole thing started in my own humble way is...

...That the whole potential of the Web and the Internet and modren (sic) communications might really and truly be humanity's, the planet's, freedom's, justice's, Democracy's (in the best sense of the hope and optimism that term can imply and inspire), not to mention most of our collective individualistic dreams of some kind of meaning and genuine purpose in life...

Anyway that this "Web 3.0 Legitimate Social, Economic, Political, and Cultural Democracy Rising Idea" just might be our one last collective chance and hope for making the epcohal and fundamental changes in course to put us in a position to be able to even begin to contemplate taking on Thomas Berry's The Great Work (http://dialogdemocracy.org/tbtgw.htm).

Getting back at it and it's time to get serious...

...I have heard tell that if you blog worth a crap it should take 6 months or so to gain any kind of traction for your efforts. If that's the case then I have this here month of April, Ought Eight to get my azz up to speed and firing on all cylinders so to speak. That gives me the six months leading up to the November election to make the noise and case I think I have to make.

Then, of course, there's the "we shit"- we being first of all Saul and maybe now Timmy working on some of this- how do you say- in concert. And we may add some others. But hey, the idea is a real world pro Democracy movement in these United States... so what are the chances? We shall see.

Todays Links...

...are just stes of some .orgs that are out there... I think doing some good work and all that... part of my efforgt is to keep finding them and eventually contacting them with my proposals for doing different kinds of organization and activism and such like. It's a big ass www. and everything under the sun seems to be in it and on it. It reminds me of when I worked in a big urban school district once upon a time and went to a big district open house for all the programs they offered- you know: Magnet Schools, special Curriculum, special help, la di da and I'm telling you to look at all the brochures and talk to all the people repping this that and the other offering you would have thought you were in Educational Paradise. But when you visited schools in said unnamed district it was like you were in an alternate universe of issues, social problems, and youthful sociopathic dysfunction.
In other words- just having a www. with a literal universe of thought and ideas on what's going on or ought to be going on doesn't effectively alter the status quo of business and politics as usual one once of doodly squat.

Back at it again...

...after taking a break to update the http://www.dialogdemocracy.org/ Web Site- which of course was frought with problems. But I got the method down I hope and there is a lot more change in store for that site- the flagship site after all for pursuing something completely different as far as paths with heart go into our collective futures. And things of that nature.
Any who- I am finally working at me old lads and fixing to go out and snow blow and shovel for a spell in the continuing effort to get him dug out from the worst storm here in the Burgh `O the Cleaves in pretty nigh onto 30 years. In fact it was January of 78 when that Blizzard of the Century hit and this one wasn't that bad but it was more snow, actually.
So.... more later...

This Post Nothing but "Links of Interest" with brief comment...

Soooo.... www.robertmcchesney.com is obviously his eponymous site. This guy is the real deal and should be studied extensively. He also should be interviewed and his input and support solicited.

Then there is http://freepress.net/content/about which, according to their "About Us" page is:
"Free Press is a national nonpartisan organization working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector."

And let's not forget http://savetheinternet.com/ which bills itself, again- taken from their own "About" page:
The SavetheInternet.com Coalition is more than a million everyday people who have banded together with thousands of non-profit organizations, businesses and bloggers to protect Internet freedom.
The Coalition believes that the Internet is a crucial engine for economic growth and free speech. We are working together to urge Congress to preserve Network Neutrality, the First Amendment of the Internet, which ensures that the Internet remains open to new ideas, innovation and progress.
From its beginnings, the Internet has leveled the playing field for all. Everyday people can have their voices heard by thousands, even millions of people. The SavetheInternet.com Coalition -- representing millions of Americans from all walks of life -- is working together to ensure that Congress passes no telecommunications legislation without meaningful and enforceable Network Neutrality protections.

Link to googlebooks preview of David L. Parker's "Stolen Dreams: Portraits of Working children" http://books.google.com/books?id=G4xQGhAMSz0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Stolen+Dreams&sig=SjrfROKxXoYN65KwD_d0V2reLI0
which recalls a book I first came across at the Cleveland State libury back when I was doing some semi pro Ghost Poeting there back in the early Oughts- or maybe it might have even been way way back in the late stages of the those fabulous 90's. That one was Kevin Bales's "Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy" which had chapters on the various kinds of modern slavery that are out there and where.
http://books.google.com/books?id=P9ZhnLljWssC&printsec=frontcover&dq=New+Slavery+by+Kevin+Bales&sig=st40I8s_F2JgQe8Hi9jPPg3f2Ow
I think that if an ongoing "Democracy Solidarity" movement is going to be built with various entities working toward more social, economic, political, and cultural Democracy then a modern day Abolitionist movement that adresses the most egrigiously inhuman abuses of NeoLiberal/NeoCon "Globalization" such as that presented in Bales' book is a logical one that could draw considerable organizational traction amongst your basic idealistic young and affluent Westerners.

Getting closer to really getting this whole thing started all the time...

I had a chance to work a lot at my l'il yops this week so I went through some old notes and also worked on changes and updates to the dialogD Web Site. I still thind that when I am really moving forward with the effort in the "real world" I want a better name. But anyway...

There was an old Noam Chomsky book: "What Uncle Sasm Really Wants" from the early 90's or so- one of the little books ut out by Odonion Press then of Berkeley, http://odonian.com/ which lead to many of todays "Links of Interest" over to the left there...

But Robert McChesney, whose name and work keeps coming up ever since I saw his book "Rich Media, Poor Democracy" back in 2000 or so. I've gotten his show on U of Illinois' AM radio station when coming back from visiting Mary and the kids et. al..

Anyway, all the links I put in my links of interest list are ones that should be contacted about somehow collaborating on the kind of organizing that needs to be done to actually effectively challenge the status quo of business and politics as usual as it is ever more harshly being executed by the ruling business hard right coalition that has been strengthening its hold on more and more for decades now- at least since Prop 13 passed in California in what- 1979 or 80. But really since the end of World War Two and the death of Roosevelt.

What I really found interesting and significant about Arthur Naiman and Odonian Press is that he and it, according to the Introduction to the little Chomsky volume I re-browsed yesterday is that they contributed at least 10% of all net income off their efforts to progressive scial activist causes. This is at the heart of what I think needs to happen. Those activists and organizations that are able, through their writing and other fundraising efforts, need to pay into some kind of "Voluntary Funding Tax to Further the Causes of a Confederation of Progressive Organizations Shadow Public Sector" which is what we need to be building and building quickly.

Hey Soolay Saul where are you???

Today I didn't get me no little job so I am figuring just making the entries to this that I can get out more or less a combination personal letter and then the various political public type of things as I get to them either as I edit and read through "my stuff" or I check out sites that I have made note of or visited before that are related to the effort I am hoping we can get to eventually around what we do here...

Sooooo..... Even just a little looking randomly around the Web for ideas etc gets you realizing that there are a lot of people out there trying to "monetize" whatever screwing around they're doing with blogging and web sites and the like. And that, predictably there are countless scams and counter scams that turn out to be scams too etc. So I think we just go about the business of finding and creating quality content around our own personal integrity standards and keep at it and I'd say give it 6-12 months of really doing it and learning as we go and see if it don't get us somewhere- including to a place where actually "getting a little something for ourselves" for our efforts is an ongoing part of the results of said efforts.

To my files and some sites then... how about this here: http://www.unesco.org/cgi-bin/webworld/portal_freesoftware/cgi/page.cgi?g=Cool;d=1
an interesting resource at the very least... I first was looking for the “CERN” document server and free software from them for once dialogD gets bigger IE more documents and links and orgs cataloged.

For a little levity maybe check this out: http://www.anecdotage.com/ but hey sites like this one are not exactly what I have in mind... but then again I do think we have to talk to and try to involve, talk to, and communicate with more than just the current crop of more or less progressive liberal lefty leaning political type activists that are out there, you know, losing the war against right wing extremism and ultra unequal wealth distribution more blatantly with each decade since the 60's supposedly was going to change everything the other way and direction…

http://www.accuracy.org/

An interesting guy here, a Prof at UMass and this a recent article:
http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_5.1/wolff.htm an excerpt:

"When Marx likened wage-workers to slaves, he brought the lessons of oppositions to slavery to the emerging movements against capitalism. Put bluntly, Marx argued against forms of anti-capitalism that limited themselves to improving workers’ living conditions. Fast-forwarding to today, Marx would criticize movements such as those for “a living wage” or “pension reform” or “welfare increases” or “saving social security” and so on. A Marxist opposition to capitalism is rather one focused on its abolition as a system. Marxists, he might say, are to capitalism what abolitionists were to slavery.
For Marx, the crux of the issue is that capitalism entails exploitation. A large part of the population (productive laborers) produces a surplus that is appropriated and distributed by a small part of the population (capitalists). In capitalist enterprises, workers are hired only if the value that their labor adds (to the raw materials, tools, and equipment their work uses up) exceeds the value paid to them as wages for doing that labor. That excess value – the surplus – belongs to the capitalists since they own the outputs of production, sell them in markets, and thereby realize the surplus value in them. In the preferred language of capitalism, that surplus value comprises the “profits” of the capitalists, their “private property” to dispense in their own interests.
The less wages that capitalists must pay to workers, the more surplus they get for themselves. Exploitation thus situates tension, hostility, and conflict in the heart of production. Capitalists and workers are set into oppositional struggles. Moreover, those struggles ramify and provoke competitive struggles among capitalists and among workers. Alongside the outputs of capitalist production yielding impressive incomes and accumulating wealth, there are also the countless, ramifying social costs of the conflicts and competitions."