It's a Day to Marvel at the Little Things

Dear America,

I believe.

Do you believe?

allow me to begin this morning, and thereby start the week, stealing a thought from a book by Gerald L. Schroeder -- just a guy and MIT-trained physicist and author of The Science of God, The Hidden Face of God, Genesis and the Big Bang and God According to God -- the last one taking all the credit for offering this glimpse of inspiration, going something wonderful like this:

"We grow up embedded within the marvel of existence.  By the time we are old enough to consider the wonder of nature, nature is already 'old hat' to us.  We've been experiencing it from the day we are born.  Our constant familiarity with existence throws a cloak over the wonder and makes it appear mundane."

Not only is this common within Life itself, but by bringing this notion into a more narrower view, we may begin to characterize the very existence of life in America today.  "Our constant familiarity with existence [in America] throws a cloak over the wonder [of America] and makes it appear mundane [in and around America]."

We grow jaded.  We cease the ability to see the wonder in the wonderful.  Who wants to even try to make it anymore, right? -- the rich only get richer; there are no new ideas; corporations ruin everything; there is the 1%... and then there is the rest of us; we wake up, go to work and then go home...only to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again...and then we die.  Shall we go on?

We've grown into a certain familiarity with the mundane, and sadly, all the while have grown so accustomed to the things remarkable and mind-blowing and crazy good we don't even appreciate them anymore.   By taking for granted the very existence of all that has come before us, we lose the very ability to marvel. The new iPhone5 is out.  yay.

Oh yes. We have been down this road before, a kaleidescope of days in the life in America have carried this theme.   There was the Giving Tree day -- it is some of my earlier work, dating back to 2009; reading it again is a little weird for me, for I find the day a little all over the place.  But then again, what else is new right?  There was another day -- the one about the little girl who grew up in a beautiful house on a hill and had everything she ever wanted...I would find it for you, but that one caused quite the family ruckus -- when in fact the family resemblance was not the point at all.  Needless to say, the unintended consequences came back to bite me.  Anywho, we will leave that one to the archives.

Ho Hum.

Common is what common does. Little old G could probably pontificate of the taking for granted part of American life for days on end, from end to end, with no end, until the end....And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Let's get back to the extraordinarily mundane world we live in...

We have grown a certain familiarity, haven't we though?   The act of marveling of existence has grown tired.  Now that we have come through the age of pioneering and homesteading, from farming to blacksmiths, town grocers to bankers; now that we have grown fully into our industry -- building the roads and bridges, railway to highway, low tech to high tech in what seems like a nano-second in the great scheme of life -- it's all pretty much no big deal.  We are all too familiar with it these days.

It is easy to look upon the abundance we are surrounded with and think nothing of it.

Of course! I can just get into my car and drive to the grocers and find nearly any thing my heart desires.

Matter of fact, for $3.99 I can get a frozen wood fired pizza made in Italy (that would be from Trader Joes -- which just so happens to be one of my favorite places to hang out on the face of this planet, and mention them whenever I can).  But just how in the world do they do it?

For me, this kind of thing just blows me away.  Add into the creation-equation that nearly everything they sell, they are really clever about it; like if it's a package of Pad Thai Noodles (yes, made in Thailand) it comes in a typical Asian take-out container, changing the label to "Trader Ming's".  It's like I wish I thought of this, you know?

I marvel at Trader Joes every single time I walk through their door.  SO much so, I want to go back, the sooner the better -- anticipating great things to come.

It's a business worth billions.  Privately held [hey, that's not fair!  wahhhh....kidding...].  Its first store is still open today -- in Pasadena (been there, done that).  A guy named Dan Bane is in charge these days; as well, he's 'the country-boy-next-door-voice' on the company's radio commercials.

What does Dan and Trader Joes do for America?   Besides provide over 10,000 jobs -- T.J's provides healthy, yummy, adventurous, international and American fare at a price more than fair.

I don't care what Dan makes each year -- even though I tried to find out.  Whatever it is, it's worth it. I would bet he makes a lot more than the average hourly employee.  Just guessing.  Still, it doesn't matter.

I marvel at what they do and how they do it.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market with their own flare.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market at such a reasonable price.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market with the friendliest of employees, every day (and rumor has it, they even like working there, too).

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market for everyone to enjoy,  rich or poor.

I marvel at how they bring the ordinary and the extraordinary to market, catering to the seasons and needs of the community at large.

If we put this all together, we can quickly find ourselves marveling at the culmination of creation meeting up with industry answering to the age-old question of the mundane.   This is what happens in America every day.  Ordinary people advance the mundane in our every day and make it available to all of us.

Trader  Joes -- founded by Joe Coulombe in 1958 -- is a success in every way because they continue to take the time to marvel at the marketplace and rise up to the challenge of creating something extraordinary within the world of an everyday, mundane task.   Who ever would have thought grocery shopping could be so fun?

And yes, Dan Bane is handling the issues of the not so good in the every day, too -- as in the current news, recalling peanut butter for contamination of salmonella. 

Will this ruin the reputation of Trader Joes?  Will TJ's suddenly go down with the memory of what it was, leaving thousands of employees jobless at a time like this?

No.  They are on it.  They will protect the public, take the item off the shelves, and will investigate thoroughly, so that if at all possible, something like this doesn't happen again.  And because Trader Joes has grown such a following -- having built up their karmic good will with a long chain of customers -- the customer will continue to trust them with their life, literally.

My car battery died Saturday morning.  But with my AAA membership, within 20 minutes a guy had checked the bells and whistles and told me I needed a new one.  Another 20 minutes later it was installed and he was on his way to the next emergency and I was on my way to Trader Joes.  Now isn't that a beautiful world.

It's not a question.

I see it.

I believe it.

I witness it in the everyday.

When someone comes to our aid to 'save the day' -- how in the world can we come up with a fair market value for that?

I marvel at how little it costs us to live a pretty wonderful life in America --  perhaps the Occupiers should live in Cairo for awhile, maybe the Walmart picketers of last weekend (here in San Diego) should try going to market in Benghazi for a day or two, perhaps talk to the community about what it's like living and working and raising a family in crazy town.  They will probably never get a chance to open a Trader Joes in their neighborhood, all things considered.

We have roughly forty days and nights before the next election.

It is between a guy who loves loves loves the free market and all that it's about -- the opportunity for everyone to make it or break it, the freedom to do whatever it is that makes you tick, the liberty to think and grow rich in the process of bringing wonderful things to the marketplace.

For when it comes to this guy -- it is hardly commonplace.

I believe he marvels at it.  He lives, eats, breathes it, and then at the end of the day, he shares his good blessings, giving back millions of dollars.

And then there's the other guy.  A guy who has never really worked a day in his life in the private sector -- a guy who loathes the disparity between rich and poor for all the wrong reasons -- a guy who campaigns not upon the merits of his first term, but upon engineering tactics driving class warfare, racial divide, and raising the rhetoric to levels obscene.

If the 'giving tree' is America -- it's awfully hard to imagine that these two guys came from the same vine.

For kicks and giggles, let's compare what the two are selling in the general store, shall we?

Obama stands for the government super store -- the big box store -- the one that pops up in the middle of the night virtually out of thin air and creeps into our private lives.  Walmart has got nothing on the "Big O."

And Romney -- oh, he's the Trader Mitt type, by golly.   He's the guy who just wants to open the door and welcome everyone to the bounty.  There's no special membership card; there's no points to collect; and like their latest commercial says, "there's no special handshake."   It's a simple operation -- just offering good things at a fair price to one and all indiscriminately. 

This is America at her best.  If we lose this kind of marketplace, we lose everything.  And it starts when we lose our ability to marvel at the little things, and it ends with an all but manifest destiny do-over when we stop protecting, honoring, respecting the big things.


Last word -- you might as well hang it over the door before you enter --

"FOUR THINGS YOU CAN'T RECOVER:

the stone after the throw,

the word after it's said,

the occasion after it's missed,

the time after it's gone."

and one more -- 'the Republic after it's destroyed.'    It's a pretty big deal.

Make it a Good Day, G

"so he has time for Whoopie Goldberg but not for any world leaders?" 
That was Chris Wallace to Robert Gibbs, Fox News Sunday.
The president will be on The View, but somehow, some way, he cannot find the time in his schedule to meet with Netanyahu, and the like? According to Gibbs, he can just pick up the phone and talk to these guys. . .that was easy (go Staples). But Ahmadinejad just said this.

Speaking of being a little 'out of touch' -- I heard a delicious rumor the other day.  If the president gets re-elected, he's going to "phone-in" his leadership from his new 35 million dollar estate in Hawaii.  He doesn't even plan on staying in the White House!  Ever!  But again, I just heard it in the bread aisle, I'm sure there is nothing to it.

It's an Everybody Understands But Washington Thing

Dear America,

"All Americans, 

both beltway politicians and those on Main Street, 

have to do some serious soul-searching 

to bring their country back 

from a potential financial abyss"  

-- Xinhuanet.com -- 

This from China's leading on line news website, a site ranking "around 160th on its [U.S. based, Alexa website ranking system] list of 108 million global websites. Its ranking places Xinhuanet third among the world's news websites, narrowly trailing BBC and CNN, but far ahead of Reuters, The Associated Press and AFP (Agence France-Presse)."  To read the complete article from China's view, go here.
  
Now, what America finds newsworthy and the reasons why may be for entirely different reasons -- or is it motives...


 On CBS Face the Nation, presidential advisor David Axelrod summed it up like so:

 “The tea party brought us to the brink of default... It was something that should never have happened that clearly is on the backs of those who were willing the see the country default, those very strident voices in the tea party...This is essentially a tea-party downgrade.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: Axelrod: Tea Party to Blame for S&P Move
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Oh Axelrod, do you really think we are that stupid?  Washington has been operating without a budget -- let alone a fiscally responsible one -- going on TWO years now.  hello...don't even get me started on the unbridled spending sprees of the last hundred years.

And the White House, which decidedly went into immediate modus discreditus of the credit rating downgrade, citing that the findings and following decision making by the S&P to essentially lower America's credit rating was entirely based on bad math. 

Here's more from Axelrod:

“We can debate the strength of the analysis they did...They made an egregious error here, but theirs was largely a political analysis, and that is what we should focus on.”

and a statement from Geithner:

so little Timmy said, oh right, in April...that there was absolutely "no risk" -- none, nada, zippo -- he assured us that the United States of America would NOT lose it's AAA credit rating.  He promised the world that reforms would magically appear and be put in place to remedy the situation without further ado.  Duly noting all the political wrangling, he understood how some people might look upon Washington as a "hard place to read;" but have no fear, he said -- ultimately -- there is no risk to the nation  (if not the entire world); resting America's future upon false promises and empty convictions by letting us believe that Washington would do the right thing.

The S & P has been clear -- even to the extent of being quite specific with the numbers; they wanted to see at least 4 Trillion dollars in debt reduction; they even wanted to have assurances that the road ahead would lead to living within our means (translation: a balanced budget).   And they are just as clear in spelling out the reasons for the downgrade in their statement released to the public, which you can read here.  It's not political; it is a pragmatic understanding that this President, and certainly everyone within his administration, should be entirely grateful.

But this was little Timmy's reply to the S & P (getting a little testy I might add):

"They've handled themselves very poorly. And they've shown a stunning lack of knowledge about the basic U.S. fiscal budget math." 

[right, as it was flawed by 2 Trillion dollars]

The S & P makes a number of salient points, one of which:

"Our opinion is that elected officials remain wary of tackling the structural issues required to effectively address the rising U.S. public debt burden in a manner consistent with a ‘AAA’ rating and with ‘AAA’ rated sovereign peers (see Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions,” June 30, 2011, especially Paragraphs 36-41)"

Basically, without elected officials doing a little "soul searching,"  the chance for America to return to fiscal solvency is slim to none.

China, the country who buys most of our debt, understands this.

The S & P understands this.

With market reaction of the last week telling us everything we ever needed to know, Wall Street understands this.

Main street understands this.

The average Tea Party Patriot understands this.

And you know it girlfriend -- my homegirls at  SMART GIRL POLITICS understands this.

Even the average democrat, republican and independent with half a brain, understands this.

How can Washington NOT understand this and make the structural changes necessary, like, ah yesterday?

The spin on this is a crying shame.  If it weren't for the House, having the 2010 invasion of the Tea Party spirit as according to the people's mandate to change the Washington establishment, who knows where we would be.   The only voice of reason has come from the Tea Party representatives, and a fraction of others who held onto fiscally conservative convictions.

The White House should be praising the Tea Party for holding the line so firm -- even though, we -- those connected to the Tea Party cause and agenda -- all know it wasn't firm enough, now was it?  you know what I'm talkin' about.  The narrative is that the Tea people in general are happy, and that after all is said and done, the freshmen and active Tea Party congressmen were supposedly celebrating a major coup.  Really? Is that so?   In actuality, not so, ah so, the Tea people were are entirely displeased.  You will just have to take my word on that

Over the weekend The Daily Bell took a poll; as I recall, the question went something like this: "What will the S & P downgrade impact be?"  going thru the choices -- a) dollar goes down, gold up b) politicians will heed the warning... c) no one really cares what this mainstream mouthpiece says -- and last, d) pass the popcorn, the show is about to get really crazy.

[Now, just so you know, I quickly went to (d)..not only for the free popcorn, but c'mon, ya just gotta figure this is just the beginning of a beautiful friendship or something; I mean, geeze louise, something really great crazy is about to start, it's time to hang onto our hats]

Turns out, at the time of the polling, a) reached about 38% -- b) next to nothing -- c) not much better -- while d) got the most of the vote @ about 49% of the Daily Bell visitors for the day.  It may have changed since, I haven't checked.

But the thing is, we the people are onto something; Washington, not so much.  They wouldn't understand what it meant to keep a meaningful distance from the debt ceiling even if it hit them upside the head.

"Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently."

Washington just doesn't understand.

and given we are on such a downer these days, here's something funny going around --

[picture GWB] 

"know what else Obama 

inherited from Bush...

a 'AAA' credit rating."

Guess mainstream media won't be mentioning that; certainly Xinhuanet.com will be mum just the same.  But the Tea people -- we might just be running on that come 2012.

Time will tell -- and that only works if we have time left.

Word on the street, seconded by Timmy Geithner, is that there is no risk of running out of time.   none, nada, zippo, no way, no how, not under his watch.[and supposedly, the White House is sticking with Timmy for the time being]

Perhaps if we all cross our fingers and do a little soul searching things will all work out in time.

Make it a Good Day, G

It's late -- in preparation for tomorrow, when my girl comes home from vacationing with her dad -- I have made a jump on the day so that I can have more of the day to play.  As it would work out, I am up late enough to see how the market is opening on the other side of the world.  The Asian market opened on a downward slope, at times losing up to 4% -- you can go here for more -- who knows what the morning light will tell us.

It's a 'Satan Sandwich' sort of Thing

Dear America,

"Government by the elected representatives 

of the people is coming to be government 

by two (or three or four) men 

in a secret room 

pronouncing the new law 

that will be rubber-stamped -- or else! 

Accepting such a process as normal 

is a new phenomenon, 

but it is becoming in Washington 

an acceptable procedure..."  

Tony Blakely, 

a 'Washingtonian'

never short of great conservative opinion

happy monday, day before Armageddon -- oooh, but not really cuz we are working things out...


are we now?


But I heard this new debt ceiling deal was more like "a sugar-coated Satan sandwich."  That fine opinion came from a democrat (MO) and Chairman of the Black Caucus, Emmanuel Cleaver.

what else...


Oh yes, from John McCain we get this:  "I don't think without the Tea Party we would have had an agreement."


say what?  is this the same guy who read aloud, on the floor of the Senate, excerpts of a conservative opinion piece (written by Bill Krystal) who equated the Tea Party to a bunch of Hobbits...just last week?  nice flip.   just how is your neck there, John?


sideshow alert, sideshow alert.


I believe Blakely is spot on.  Washington is becoming less and less of the people, for the people, by the people and more about a few good men.


The more I delve into our dark side of human nature and governing, the more I understand -- and respect -- the Rule of Law this great nation has so defined.  Everything was built upon COMMON law that we all agreed to follow -- not tweaking towards any one person, group or special interest more than another.  It is the corruption of such Law that we are where we are.   


From John Adams:

"No man will contend that a nation 

can be free that is not governed by fixed laws.  

All other government 

than that of permanent known laws 

is the government of mere will and pleasure."

Nothing about our government seems "fixed" these days, does it?   

Even though what We the People have long assumed to be in place, a government intimately bound by the terms of our Constitution, with processes of authority and precepts of regulation to make sound Law...for the people... But this isn't what we see, is it?

Aristotle lamented that "even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion.  We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual."

By growing our debt another 2.4 Trillion dollars, we constrict our freedom even more -- how can this body of "statesmen" not see this?   They must not have any idea what it feels like to be indebted -- the burden it places on both body and mind; these men, must be merely reflecting there own magnificence -- and without a doubt, without a care or a concern, let alone an inkling of a burden, in the world.  

Who are these people, and what have they done with our Law?  respective of boundaries, limited government, leaving any and all UN-limited-ness expressly for the people? 

"Our world was built on the solid pillars of three great civilizations:  Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome.  The first taught us to pray; the second, to think; and the third, to govern.  Yet, as strong as they are, these pillars require our respectful study, contemplations, and defense, if they are to continue bearing the tremendous weight of the West.  Absent this attention, we will continue to witness our ongoing decay, and eventual collapse."  

This is a quote from a local writer, Craig Maxwell -- initially dropped into my American girl realm  a long long time ago , if according to the relativity of time on the blogosphere.  But once again, it seems to jump out from the corners of my mind as something worthy of a short fixation in the moment.   The country's "pillars" were intended to be fixed in stone in most respects; what we continue to do -- to ourselves, no less -- is a treason of the worst kind.  

Who would ever have thought we would live to see a day when making "a sugar-coated Satan sandwich" becomes just part of the everyday, occurring somewhere around noon, followed up with a three hour siesta -- only to get up the very next day and do it again.  Who would have thought?

Manufacturing numbers are way down today -- oooh, color me surprised when the only thing we seem passionate about creating is more government bureaucracy.  

This new plan -- yet to be voted on, ergo yet to be real law [done deal?  hardly...oh a girl can only hope]  -- says that there are 3 Trillion dollars in debt reduction over ten years (slashing Defense in the process) to add 2.4 Trillion in credit card debt for this administration to squander...supposedly getting us to 2013.

are you kidding me?

there is no Balance Budget caveat; it leaves entirely open a raising of "revenues" down the road -- to be so ordained by committee; it squashes the responsibility and accountability factor down to nil.

Consider the AAA credit rating gone solely because We the People, through our representation, do not deserve it.

The road ahead is neither paved with gold or conviction -- it is more like on borrowed time, along with the overpriced, perfectly and passionately, pensioned and plumped, public works guys filling in the holes, and jumping from one hot spot to the next, clinging to shovel ready projects totally fixated upon burying the United States in debt....in order to fundamentally transform everything.

 

 what else is there for lunch?

Make it a Good Day, G

Aristotle and Adams came from The 5000 Year Leap...get a fix and get this book.