Here And Now

Yeah, I'm a sap. I love this video!

More about Adam Joseph

Any time we want life to be different than it is, we are caught in impatience. We lose our sense of humour; and self-pity, despair, and blame seep into the heart. Gentle forbearance includes the spirit of forgiveness. When we feel conflict with others, understanding their suffering is the first step in being able to communicate, forgive, and begin again. The practice of forgiveness happens when we are able to realize the underlying cause of our anger and impatience, and this allows us to distinguish between someone’s unskilful behaviour and essential goodness. Serenity and calm develop as we learn to accept imperfection in others and ourselves.

 - Michele McDonald

[P]erhaps I’m paranoid — I’m certainly not an economist — but do you think it’s possible that some people don’t want unemployment fixed because they’re hoping to create a catastrophe that will result in the gutting of modern Western employment, environmental and consumer protection standards?

I ask because, through the late 90s and early 00s, I found myself in discussions with people who insisted that American and Canadian workers needed to learn “to compete on a global level.” When I would ask them what we could do toward that end, they were very vague. When I specifically asked if they meant to work for the same pay and benefits packages as workers in some other areas of the world; to accept workplace safety standards found in some other countries; to allow child labour; to get rid of pesky environmental regulations that interfere with corporate profits; to accept goods made with components known to be hazardous to health; they would simply smile and repeat that we needed to learn to compete on a global level.

It seems that allowing unemployment to spiral out of control would certainly go a long way toward bringing those conditions back to North America. There’s much talk of the burden we’re putting on our children if we spend more to create jobs, but what more horrible burden could we put on them than to erase decades of human progress?

-comment posted by "JoyfulC" on Paul Krugman's NYTimes blog

I rather like this one. When dealing with American politics and business, you can never be too cynical.

This theme song conjures up some of my earliest TV cartoon show memories. I still remember the words to this song from, what, 50 years ago? We had a big old boxy GE black-and-white TV. We'd plop ourselves down in front of it early on Saturday morning and stay there until lunchtime.