he appears to be a disingenuous, bitter and angry man who has a humongous ego and imagines

himself as someone important. He knows how to appear
honorable, he has a way of acting and speaking which
is supposed to be dignified, but if you scratch the surface
or rub him the wrong way -- heroism is not consistent with
his choices, his meanness, his vengeful passive-aggressive
posturing and sputtering. He is a little man, not a hero,
in my opinion. And all of his nobility in uniform has come
into question from many respectable sources, I'm sorry
I have no links but during the 08 campaign, much came
out. And then there is his choice of Sarah Palin. It gave
him a little boost for a while. Mavericky indeed.

Perhaps he's a wonderful noble heroic person, at least
in his dreams, or way way down deep. but there's
little in his present incarnation that would say so.

Many people have served this country but not all
of them honorably. There is the great god Egomania,
ruler of many who lust for power. People will
lie cheat and steal for that, sell their souls for a
lie.

I like to think of them as It, like an enormous Black Creep,

like the Dementors of whatchamacallit.
this darkness that has seized the minds and hearts of people,
casting a fog over the land ...
everyone in a fog.

& out of the fog emerges ta-da..!

the little Creeps of Darkness, the tea parties, the gun fiends,
the haters and cheaters, all the little liars.. who coincidentally
feed on darkness and ignorance, and can not tolerate light.

When the sun comes up, as it does, and as it is right now,
starting to come up over the horizon, Fear begins losing its
hold as people awaken and the fog starts lifting. The dark
little monsters everywhere are illuminated, and soon people
are laughing at them, not running from them, not giving
them money or time, not believing them.

In the darkness a pile of laundry appears to be a powerful
and dire-consequence-creating monster. When the sun
is up, it's just dirty laundry, easy enough to clean up.

my maternal grandmother and mother both were full of woe.

Some say the attitudes & experiences of the maternal
grandmother are passed to the grandchild directly.
The egg of the grandchild is formed within her
grandmotherly womb, when she is pregnant with a
daughter.

My mother lived dreamed and breathed thoughts
of death. She expected to die before she was 30.
I was born when she was 29 but apparently I tried
to abort myself early on; immersed in a womb
of death, what was the point of being born?
Everything died, dies, and is always dying.

When I was a child, my mother took me to visit
graveyards. I recall this as being a frequent outing,
but maybe it happened only once. I remember her
pointing out the graves of little children.. oh look,
she would say, she was only five years old...

Meanwhile I was already six, and living on borrowed
time. I said that same prayer every night.
I fully expected to die before I waked. Every day
was .. huh.. now what? Planning for tomorrow was
never a sensible option.

Book Review - about going beyond self-improvement

more at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitch-ditkoff/prem-rawat-book_b_2443702.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=3802500,b=facebook

...............................................................................
(caveat: I've been listening to Prem Rawat for more than
40 years and am probably biased -- but I love what he
has to say, & it never gets old for me.)

Juan Cole - Top Ten Reasons Chuck Hagel Should be Secretary of Defense

Top Ten Reasons Chuck Hagel Should be Secretary of Defense

Posted on 01/07/2013 by Juan

I doubt Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, and I would agree about almost anything with regard to domestic US politics. Unless his views have changed, we certainly would not agree on gay rights. ( He says, at least, that his views have in fact changed and has apologized for remarks in the 1990s, and I think he should get the benefit of the doubt here). But he isn’t being nominated for secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He is being nominated as Secretary of Defense. And on defense and foreign policy issues, Hagel’s views have much to recommend them. I testified in April, 2004, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Hagel served, about the then Mahdi Army uprising in Iraq. The chairman, Richard Lugar, and Hagel both struck me as informed and concerned about the situation. Others, like Sam Brownback, seemed almost robotic in throwing softballs to my fellow panelist, the neoconservative Richard Perle, who denied that there was any uprising. Hagel had voted for the Iraq War authorization, but raised questions even then about US ignorance of what it was getting into, and he later in the Bush years joined Democrats in voting to get out.

Here are some positive things about the Hagel nomination:

1. Chuck Hagel is a decorated war hero, having won two Purple Hearts as infantry squad leader in Vietnam. He knows what war is, unlike the usual gaggle of chickenhawks who have emerged to accuse him of not being warlike enough. The very notion of William Kristol in a uniform is enough to provoke mirth, but here is an influential man (why?) who never met a war he didn’t love. Hagel not only knows war but knows it from the point of view of the infantry and NCOs, not just the officer corps. Hagel is cautious about wars and what they can achieve, and has become more cautious over time, as his hands got burned by the Iraq resolution. This caution is admirable in a Secretary of Defense.

2. Hagel has been an advocate for veterans. He introduced legislation to limit deployments in Iraq, which failed. (Many Iraq vets served multiple 18-month tours, and many of their problems have to do with frequent, long deployments.) He was a principal co-sponsor of Sen. Jim Webb’s bill on GIs, which expanded educational opportunities for those who served after September 11 (the bill became law). Unlike many inside-the-Beltway hawks who use the troops for political purposes but cut veterans’ benefits when the war is over, Hagel cares.

3. Hagel has long opposed the use of sanctions instead of diplomacy in the Middle East, having argued on June 27, 2001 at a conference of the American Iranian Council that sanctions on Libya and Iran “isolate us” (Washington Times, March 29, 2002).