Outside The Asylum

Usury leads to poverty of the spirit, both for borrower and lender. For the borrower, it also leads to poverty of the pocketbook. In both cases though, it puts the lie "she who dies with the most toys, wins" into the mainstream. Abortion, now that rape, incest, and medical conditions have been thoroughly discredited, is largely about poverty of the spirit: Being unwilling to share your toys with a child you are the biological parent of. This goes both for the socialite rich teenager whose father doesn't want the scandal of a pregnant teenager in the family, and the poor single mom who has to choose between birth for another child or feeding the ones she has. Likewise, quite often the original sexual union that produces an "unwanted" child is using another person as a toy- for recreational sexual gratification- and this too is poverty of the spirit. Thus Usury, and all of it's attendant ripples in society, is one of the major causes of abortion.

Yes, this is from a liberal-leaning newspaper with a decidedly anti-Catholic bias especially on the child sex scandals, where they're perfectly willing to say, hold the Pope responsible for some priest hired by the Jesuits working in a native Eskimo village in Northern Alaska; but not willing to do the same with the President of the United States and a schoolteacher in Montana. But having said that- this article on things everybody thinks they know, is extremely interesting.

Flat Earth Friedman is back this time claiming that it's a good thing that the US Senate is putting a scare into China- "But, Lord in heaven, do not let the House pass this bill. That would trigger a trade war in the middle of our Great Recession." What good ole Thomas- who fails to be as skeptical as his namesake- has failed to notice is that we've BEEN in a full fledged trade war for 40 years- a war of the elite globalists like himself against the average American worker. And for 40 years, we've been losing- and that debt, that massive, massive trade debt built out of 40 years of trade deficits, is the primary cause of the Great Recession. China has it right. We decry their protectionism- but that's exactly what we *should* be doing ourselves. We don't need to get China to stop revaluing their currency to their interests, as much as we would like to. We need to revalue OUR currency to OUR interests in defense. We don't need China to open thei...

It appears that the GOP has adopted this as their new economic slogan. But they're not the only ones- remember all those $600 Trillion in Derivatives that brought Lehman Brothers down and started the Great Recession? Turns out that instead of unraveling these CDOs and other exotic banking products, all that has been done is to concentrate them into five large American banks. And those are the same banks that the Occupy Protest is now targeting for massive deposit withdrawals . Can you say "double dip depression"?

And they're back. Four rich people making an argument about how they should be allowed to grow richer off of free trade , on the same page as the ultimate example of why workers will NEVER profit from increased business . Free trade is the tool psychopaths have used to drain the wealth of America for 40 years. Stop believing the lie.

I see the government and corporations as one and the same, since every politician I can name, got elected on corporate campaign contributions. I don't see the corporations as private businesses. A private business is one guy on his own property with no employees (or only occasional contracted help, who themselves are self-employed) turning out a product which he then sells directly to consumers (the web has brought back many such businesses, and in 1776, such businesses compromised over 90% of the American economy). As soon as the business has employees, it becomes a government- the business is governing over private decisions- which is why the state and federal governments require corporate charters and corporate governance regulations. The current depression was caused by relaxing those regulations for political purposes, both on the left (Democrats wanting more home and property ownership for minorities and the poor) and on the right (Republican destruction of banking regula...

Two very interesting articles on autism today. The first is hope for all of us HFAs trained in high technology- it seems that companies are now actively recruiting Aspies , having noticed the particular traits of these engineers bring cost savings to a development team that neurotypicals simply cannot match, especially in the areas of testing, debugging, and test-driven development. The second is the realization and conversion of a mother from the cure side of the debate to the neurotypical side , realizing that maybe sometimes an ounce of prevention is worth fifty pounds of ineffective cures. This is a significant political swing to the neurodiversity side of the debate- one that will allow for more adult HFAs to realize their potential.

This rather interesting posting about modern politics, religion, and science comes close, but rather misses the bulls-eye of the target. Yes, it's true that some politicians seem to feel the best way to protect religion is to be skeptical of scientific claims until they are proven beyond any shadow of doubt. And it's doubly true that every rational religion requires several centuries worth of scientific evidence before they will allow science to affect doctrine. But what everybody is missing is that being skeptical about science, IS science. Skepticism is the scientific method at ti's best, requiring strong evidence to change the model of the universe as we know it, before we act upon new theories we need experimentation to prove whether or not the experiment is true. And thus we should praise the skeptical politician who say, believes in theistic evolution (the idea that God uses the radiation of the sun and natural elements to mandate experimental mutations in specie...

A response to a letter to the editor in the Oregonian today : It has been 40 years since international trade was profitable for the United States. Repeated trade deficits have been in the papers and on the news for my entire life. America holds $16 Trillion in consumer and governmental debt on a GDP of only $13.5 trillion. Suzanne Bonamici gets that- John Wilkins does not. He repeats David Ricardo's Comparative Advantage theory- that while America could make everything we need right here in the United States, it's better to import cheaper goods from elsewhere. That mathematical model may be sound- but it has not matched reality in 40 years, and because of it we have a permanent 10% unemployment rate, invasive species ruining our waterways and farmland, and greater debt. I would much rather have a Tesla Motors factory here, and have Intel make my cell phone from the atom chip up to the Meego operating system, than continue to live with the problems of International Trade...

Hidden in this article on labels and the damage and good they can do is a useful gem for any parent of an autistic. Yes, encourage obsessions. But also encourage children to stretch in their obsessions. Did Temple's mother notice her daughter's affinity for animals before sending her to the aunt's farm? Maybe- but that week on the farm was the push Temple needed to turn an obsession into a career. I similarly remember my first computer- a TI-99/4A. It had a cartridge slot- but my parents wouldn't buy me any games. I had to loved the computer- but had to learn to program if I was going to have any games. I remember my first three games, very primitive- an adaptation of the infamous Space War (typed in from '99er Magazine! Then modified until I ran out of memory!), a choose-your-own-adventure I came up with on my own about strawberry fields (errors in that program taught me the proper use of if-then-else and variables, especially since I hated typing long w...

Do you like Curry? Would you like to do something about the Homeless? Come to the Our Peaceful Place Benefit Dinner, October 22, 2011, at 6pm. Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, 14175 NW Cornell Rd, Portland, OR 97229. Suggested donation $15 for individuals, $50 for families, $500 for a business to sponsor a table. For tickets- email opp_giving@comcast.net