Nobody wants to get involved...

...and certainly most people believe that there is little to know point in trying to change anything.  At least that's where middle of the road aging baby boomers that I know seem to be at.  And I'm talking about people who look at things from a pretty progressive as well as privileged position.  Not over-privileged, mind you, but doing O.K. enough to not feel personally that threatened by the deteriorations all around them.  But angered at the policies and their effects that are enacted by or on behalf of the elites.
So what to do to organize.  The professionals are all making a good career of writing or running an .org in "opposition" to the mainstream something something.  But to what end.  The ongoing rightward descent and propagandized docile acceptance of that reality is the lemming like populace the citizenfy has decayed and or stagnated into.  And here we all are in the years.  Better know how to grow some of your own food if things get much nuttier.  I mean, if the Eurozone crisis spirals the world economy into a double dip great Recession" how will that one be bailed out.  The banks have gotten there's, and the other oligarchic sectors seem impervious to any major shocks, so it will be more people suffering and austerity and "trickle down voodoo" as yet another convulsion of wealth re-distribution lurches toward the upper sectors of the economy.  Woo-hoo.  It's the best of all possible worlds.  Hope that the Big Boxes or Burger Mills are hiring, cuz ain't noplace else going to be needing the likes of most of us.  Like I've said before, I think we are all bozos on this globalization bus, and unless you are into hatcheting a lot of other peoples lives or removing a few mountaintops for your personal edification and career enhancement- and of course your individualist "job creators" bottom line... well hell, who needs you.

It's been a long pause in posting...

...and soon the long tail of what I have been dancing around getting fully immersed in for better than a decade- dating back to leaving the JOG job- will slap me into a full bore goose looney communicating whif da whirl. My experience with friends has been sobering to exasperating. But I think a few may be responsive to getting involved if my efforts are solid and appealing enough. And as far as the outside world... we shall see.

And one way or another "The Butsky's" are jumping in both feet first into the deep end of the oceanic pool of whatever lies beyond here where the way finally seems to be opening...

Just looking at this and that, and...

…So, as if I am getting any participation I will wail away at the effort and see how soon the effort starts to gain any traction whatsoever.
From the Cleveland Library, Downtown, the Stokes Wing. And checking out some stuff. Anything to recommend???
Well, Libby, there’s:
· Will Bunch’s Tear Down This Myth, How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted our Politics and Haunts Our Future. Looks like a good read, and looks recommended enough to check out. Don’t know if I need to go there… kind of a specific example of how the “Right Wing Noise Machine” has been able to quite successfully frame the mainstream the debate and give kind of a “given” status to Reagan’s supposedly great legacy and achievements. If interested try getting it through this link http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100253947 and support the dude and NPR all at the same time.
· Looking at articles in the March 18, 2009 “New Republic” reminds me of why what I want to do is not, repeat not, just find shit on the Web that I think makes sense (or doesn’t) and then Blog on it and hope to become one of the cutting edge few who get enough traffic to maybe make something of my writing that way. Though if that starts to happen hey I’ll pursue success at “all of this” that way too, Brew. Sooo…. Check out another article about Obama’s peeps getting it or not getting it right or wrong: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_stash/archive/2009/03/23/how-the-geithner-plan-could-work.aspx is a related blogpost to and article titled “Plan B, What’s stopping Tim Geithner” by Noam Scheiber. I couldn’t find the article on their Web Site but it should be their someplace.

Finally getting ready to restart the efforts...

...which of course may or not mean crap.

I have a few things in mind that I will get going on first. Things like:

1. Getting my new Web Space arranged for with hm. I just about did that today but figured to wait and think about appropriate names for what I put up and out there both in terms of the Web Domain and the organizational entity itself. Any day now.
2. Figuring out who I am starting out with as the core group of peeps I'd like to engage with around this "work" and contact very early on and ask them to be involved, comment, post, etc. etc.. Im thinking SS, AA, BL, SS, MB, and of course, TJ. Maybe some others but the idea is to start small and build.
3. And once going at all then I communicate with those I study up on as far as what they are doing and see what that leads to.

Looking at Noam Chomsky article on Obama...

... as I am just getting started back to the blogging effort:

• I googled old fave Uncle Noam and found this recent article: http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20081125.htm
  Check it out.
• I also checked out the change.gov site and the new white house site. I have to say, I did feel a great deal of idealistic hope and optimism with Bary's amazing rise and victory but now that he's in and he's doing what he can I wonder: "Sure, he's better that Sonnie Dubya but is that going to be enough. We need real national health care, a real redistribution of wealth, real education- not reform but real education of our young, period. And the minutia of what gets talked about- blogs and mainstream- tends to be about anything that can be turned into a 'gotcha' moment. Anyway..."
• And as for National health insurance there is always good old and ignored HR 676. http://www.hr676.org/ . This is one of the issues that an Obama styled genuine new progressive left movement ought to be out on the streets canvassing and rallying support for full time non stop. The hunger for real change will not be satisfied just by the election of one hero- even if he lives up to even base line realistic expectations. One of my gut level fears is that the biggest impact that Obama's election will really have is that it will be a great individual career achievement for him but the NeoCon NutJobs will have just as much sway four years from now that they had four years ago.

Wading in quicksand is more like it...

... Least that's the way she feels. I will get on with podcast/ general tech immersion in an ongoing manner from this moment on. I'm sure there will come a point when I will look back on these days of spinning my wheels- O.K., these decades then- and I will be laughing my ass off. But for now, look you now... I go pray...

Wading toward Podcasting Now...

... This seems like a no brainer for me to me. After all, I think one of the reasons I have never gotten any further with "the writin'" is not that I don't write but that I talk to damn much. So podcasting is a natural. Produce my own audio and eventually video podcasts relevant to all the myriad and miscellaneous crap that I consider to be part and partial to, "like, my work," and see where it leads. And this in conjunction with getting the new all around Web Presence, blogging, and advocacy efforts going again.

One of the many things that attracts me to Podcasting is that I already have everything I need to get started just about and it also seems to have potential crossover application to some of my old ideas about doing something with, like, my music.

So, for the purpose of me getting going on this and communicating with those I want to get involved in this and future parallel efforts I will Blog forth as I explore a couple of books and stuff I find around the Web regarding the process of getting started and then, gulp, actually starting to get this whole thing started that I am forever thinking and talking (ad nauseum) about getting started. See what I mean.

Starting out with a little of the personal...

...
Thursday, January 15, 2009, 1:19 PM.
And, again…
This time is the time. Once more. The past and the future their nothing to me now. I see that now. So I will proceed with the overall efforts to get to a much more creative, peaceful, and natural way to approach life at this place that I am now at. A lot has happened in recent months. Big stuff. Things like:
· Losing Zowie. She was a good old cat. Not much more that can or need be said. She was the best of many a fine cat I’ve had the privilege of knowing in my lifetime of never having a dog because they’re two much trouble and responsibility. (till quite recently, actually- but more on that in a later bulleted Crot)
· Continuing the process of watching my father slowly die of “this damn choking problem.” This was much tougher and more grueling than I realized as it continued over the years ever since he fell backwards down the basement stairs and then just eight months after that happened mom died in the pool at the Brooklyn Rec Center. But what are you gonna do?
· And then of course, he finally really did die like he often said he wanted to. I knew, Sue knew, we all new it would come sooner or later. Still it was strange to have him finally go. I think about him a lot- thinking I better call or stop over with eerie frequency. To be expected.
· Then there was the definitive health scare that happened with the day at the emergency room and the ongoing feeling not quite right enough. The anxiety, the paranoia, the fear, the frustration… I handle them all and minimize them all fairly well most of the time. Still…
· Getting Married and getting health care coverage. Related to the above yet a fine positive how do you do.
· And now Stony is here. And that’s a good thing.
*
I fully intended to totally kick out the jams with my “work”, and, like, my music over the winter break from school/work and now I will try and do so as I get the work at Dad’s and my house finally organized enough to get back to some kind of normalcy. I miss the possibility that believing “my work” might actually amount to something and, you know, allow me to finally “get a little something for myself”.
In any case, it is close to when I will be starting at it again in earnest. I don’t want to or need to talk or write much about it. I just need to get immersed in all of it and proceed as the way opens.
*

Sometimes it feels just like starting over...

...is all the more I get to doing. But today, lets face it, is different. Today is January 20, 2009- Inauguration Day for Barack Obama. For a long time now it seems like everybody talkin' bout Barack Obama. As well they and we should be. And as I will be too. A lot. Enough so that I would remark on it.

And this my latest restart of:

• My work;
• My music, and, perhaps most importantly to me anyhow:
• My attempts to engage this whole vast thing out there that is our world and culture and planet and politics and economy and so on and so on.

To start with this time I am beginning more or less a naked non entity just starting out and hopefully I rapidly am able to get up to speed. There are a lot of levels I want to approach my efforts on so hopefully I just do them all this time.

The plan is to just do this on a regular basis and build it as it goes. It starts with the personal with a lot of people I want to reconnect with and then moves to the more publilc and political areas I want to work in.

Still restarting... and that's. O.K....

...so for the time being I will stay in this isolated little private format as I come up with the plan for how I want to invlove myself in the dialog and debate about what's what and all from here as Bary's new administration starts up and the Neocon Nutjobs and their various minions, lackeys, and kneepad torie (sic) sycophants throughout the kultchuh try and not only undermine his efforts (for the good of the few and at the expense of the many) but also see to it that the larger hope that Bary represents is never ever able to be meaningfully realized.
My own writing and blogging and advocacy efforts will be an attempt to support the ideas and efforts that are already out their or just out of frame at this point that, with a groundswell of further true progressive and radical organizing and work, could just maybe happen to get the significant fundamental core see change needed throughout the American society, economy, and political arena started, continued, and successfully achieved.
It is my heartfelt belief that Barack Obama's election is an indication that optimism for such needed change might truly be possible- but that all the work, organizing, effort, excitement and ultimately the amazing historic victory he achieved- all of that and his administrations efforts to get us on a different path than the one we have been lead down for the 60+ years since WW2 ended will be little more than a blip or a hiccup in the ongoing history of America's drift toward the right which reached hopefully it's scariest nadir with the 8 years of Sonnie Dubya and the defacto big honcho of the Neocons: Dick Cheney.
The global exploitive and extractive economic structures of power that they represent and then fairly successfully pass off as all of our vital national security interests and the foundations of what is providing us with "our way of life"- those structures are not going to go away or change their M.O. without the progressive grass roots pro social, economic and Democratic "left" in this country doing a lot more than just celebrating that Obama won and now things will get a little moderated by the Democratic majority's efforts in Congress. Before you know it the Neocons or near as nutty supporters of the Hard Right Business agenda will be back with a new champion- perhaps way more attractive and palatable to "mainstream" America than Bush-Cheney ever were (can anyone out there say "President Patreus (sic)?)" And when they come back trust that they will have all the Facebook and Myspace styled friends and funds organizing tools and operatives that the new "Obama Model" used so brilliantly this time around.
So all I am saying is that we the people cannot rest on the laurels of one mans brilliant victory.

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.