Can you speak mortgage-backed securities?
I've been stretching myself over the last year and a half, learning all that I can about the economy. I did not take Economics in college or high school, so this study is definitely self-directed and personally generated.
Understanding about "toxic assets," "shadow banks," "credit default swaps," and the US Government's "TARP" plan has been pulling me in directions that I could have never imagined more than eighteen months ago. Every night I put on my iPod Classic, drifting off to sleep listening to American Public Media's "Marketplace" with Kai Ryssdal.
What I have learned relates directly to Chaos Theory and how our world is truly interconnected now. When George H.W. Bush described his New World Order, perhaps he meant this world that we are in right now where when a folks in a neighborhood in Las Vegas default on their risky loans, then workers in Finland might find themselves out of a job.
Our world, this brave new world, is so woven together that we must figure it out fast, or get left behind.
What are ways that you are stretching yourself beyond what you know?
Paddy Hirsch--"leaves all of us badly needing a drink."
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Can't Stop the Tide: Same Sex Marriages and Gay Vice Squads
The culture wars dictate that there must be losers.
In the battle over same sex marriages, the losers try to dictate what others must do. In this case, those folks who love each other and who want to solidify lives together. We're not talking civil unions here, we are talking equals before and under God.
I, like most of us who grew up in the Black Church, was taught to fear what I really didn't know. For many of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, growing up in a small town African American community outside of Chicago--Southern Baptist inflected--in the tumultuous 1960s and '70s and being a man in love with another man or a woman who adored another woman was tantamount to existing as a social pariah, or worse. One false move, like a side-long glance at a bar or showing affection for a beloved in the privacy of your own backyard, might mean certain death.
Forty years later what has changed? Not much, really. This past fall the New York City Police Department, posing as gay men, harassed and shut down gay hang-outs.
NOW FOR THE TRIUMPH: On the other hand, Sean Penn, 'a courageous heterosexual American,' brought life and hope to his portrayal of Harvey Milk in "Milk."
So, why all the fuss about same-sex marriage? Back in my youth, the lives of the "losers" could be erased in the blink of an eye because of the people they loved--just like the lives of black people during the early part of the Twentieth Century or Jews in Nazi Germany.
Those of us who moved and escaped the "programming" of those years can claim to be more enlightened, but where are my other heterosexual brothers and sisters who are standing up against the bigotry in our time. The Prop 8s or hate ministers in the Mega-churches?
Humanity dictates that lives are sacred: all lives, all the time. No matter how bleak, no matter how black, no matter...
Today the culture wars rage on Fox News while people are huddling under viaducts with not enough to eat, sleeping in tents year 'round. W-villes. With the race-baiting, gay-hating, loser-rama's on parade, the Anne Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, and anybody that dares to take on the toxic asset that is the Republican Party circa 2009, the flood waters of history are beating against the levees of those who want to deny equality--again. Can you hear me Michael Steele? Even the extreme religious far right is beginning to moderate. They don't want to be on the wrong side of history for eternity. WWJD?
We can no longer tolerate the bigotry of those who wish to stop Humanity's rushing tide. This is not agitprop or an Obamatron talking here. It's hard to respect people who get into office by becoming turtles when the world needs giraffes, especially when all are not considered full members of the human race.
Water's rising. Can't stop, can't stop, can't hold back that rising tide.
In the battle over same sex marriages, the losers try to dictate what others must do. In this case, those folks who love each other and who want to solidify lives together. We're not talking civil unions here, we are talking equals before and under God.
I, like most of us who grew up in the Black Church, was taught to fear what I really didn't know. For many of my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, growing up in a small town African American community outside of Chicago--Southern Baptist inflected--in the tumultuous 1960s and '70s and being a man in love with another man or a woman who adored another woman was tantamount to existing as a social pariah, or worse. One false move, like a side-long glance at a bar or showing affection for a beloved in the privacy of your own backyard, might mean certain death.
Forty years later what has changed? Not much, really. This past fall the New York City Police Department, posing as gay men, harassed and shut down gay hang-outs.
NOW FOR THE TRIUMPH: On the other hand, Sean Penn, 'a courageous heterosexual American,' brought life and hope to his portrayal of Harvey Milk in "Milk."
So, why all the fuss about same-sex marriage? Back in my youth, the lives of the "losers" could be erased in the blink of an eye because of the people they loved--just like the lives of black people during the early part of the Twentieth Century or Jews in Nazi Germany.
Those of us who moved and escaped the "programming" of those years can claim to be more enlightened, but where are my other heterosexual brothers and sisters who are standing up against the bigotry in our time. The Prop 8s or hate ministers in the Mega-churches?
Humanity dictates that lives are sacred: all lives, all the time. No matter how bleak, no matter how black, no matter...
Today the culture wars rage on Fox News while people are huddling under viaducts with not enough to eat, sleeping in tents year 'round. W-villes. With the race-baiting, gay-hating, loser-rama's on parade, the Anne Coulters, Rush Limbaughs, and anybody that dares to take on the toxic asset that is the Republican Party circa 2009, the flood waters of history are beating against the levees of those who want to deny equality--again. Can you hear me Michael Steele? Even the extreme religious far right is beginning to moderate. They don't want to be on the wrong side of history for eternity. WWJD?
We can no longer tolerate the bigotry of those who wish to stop Humanity's rushing tide. This is not agitprop or an Obamatron talking here. It's hard to respect people who get into office by becoming turtles when the world needs giraffes, especially when all are not considered full members of the human race.
Water's rising. Can't stop, can't stop, can't hold back that rising tide.
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