And Now a Word from Your Local Logos: Charles Olson's "Love I"

I have believed (in the sense of obdurate hunch) that the best proofs of God in the early stage of our lives, when the thirst for him seems more a curse than a blessing, comes in a satiety of poems which proclaim that we are not made in love--but made of love. This is the primal, preceding presence we find--first as Holy Ghost which visits us, then merged with it as perfect host seeing to needs of the guests (one of which we once were). The party of the ways moves to our time and place. The sense of emergency that has governed our lives becomes emergence. We live in what poet Abdal-Hayy calls "the ecstatic exchange"--the endless procession of things as, in their highest and best use, proofs of God. At such times, Love is known and many of its characteristics declared and described. Here is one such proclamation of love as joyous, manifest Tao by Charles Olson, written around 1955, and proof that Transcendentalism was fully extant in modern-day America.

LOVE I


For that it is love and covers us

out of all the ports

For that it is not easily seen, apparently,

and is known only to those who know it.

For that it is excessive.

For that it does not yield

to anything else.

For that it keeps us

clean.



For that the hair on the head

is part of it,

for that desire knows only one end.

For that love is restless in all its other

proceedings,

however much those proceedings make possible

the end of desire

For that the beloved is ever

in one's thought.

for that this is the grace

which falls from love



For that we are clothed by it,

for that we are strengthened.

For that the feet return to be child's

feet, that is,

as hands are

For that it tears rampant

at all ports

For that it is transparent.

For that it makes each of us

lucid



For that it heightens.

For that it lightens

For that it makes a society of its own

that is only that membership,

that all others are to be wept for,

to be so bereft



For that to celebrate it

is to make it sound too easy

For it is not hornpipes, it glanceth

and so it throws its colors over anything.



For that it is not easily taken.

For that it takes.

For that what you give, you get everything

back

For that it is abundant

as nothing else is

For that it changes

the core

For that one does not live

except in its obedience

For that where it is,

life is,

and without it

there is retraction



For that the voice of love

is in the voice,

for that the eyes of love

are the eyes.

For that it does not hide,

it is in all things.

For the pity of love

is that there are those who do not love.



For all those who want it,

there is want.

For all those who will not,

there is will.

For all those who fail it,

there is failure

For all those,

love goes to them and says

love



For that all may love,

love is.

For that it has this periphery.

For that its center

is so available,

for that its center

is what all wants



For that love may be more known.


--The Collected Poems of Charles Olson, pages 370-2.

There are still killings to be made and done by the American War Machine

I love to beat a dead horse, especially when it's named Trigger. So let me repeat, through still another raised voice, that the American War Machine is robbing every Peter and Paul blind in Washington and that Obama is about to give you plenty of reason to call your senators and congressmen. If you look at who he has asked to advise him on Afghanistan, you'll see the fix was in long before the pretense of getting reasoned input.

Maybe our president isn't a sham, but he is a shame. And maybe all this war worry doesn't matter because it's not our kids who will be killing and dying nor our families, friends and neighbors who will be murdered.

But just remember this: every unprotested taxpayer dollar that goes to war will not go to health care, education or the environment. Just in case you don't know the current calculus our war makers are employing, here's a quick overview by Jo Comerford from the Huffington Post. If this doesn't get your blood boiling, then you're pretty coldblooded to begin with or newly freeze dried with complacency. For me, the war budget is mind-boggling. It should be for you, too, if you still have minds to boggle. Judging from the latest Lindsay Lohan candids made public today, I'd say amazement is now left entirely to the media. And aghastness is as lost a word as schmuck.

Jo Comerford
Cashing in the War Dividend: The Joys of Perpetual War
So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what do you know, especially with the price of the American military slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?

Forget about the butter. It's bad for you anyway. And sheer military power, as well as the money behind it, assures the country of a thick waistline without the cholesterol. So, let's sing our praises of perpetual war. We better, since right now every forecast in sight tells us that it's our future.

The tired peace dividend tug boat left the harbor two decades ago, dragging with it laughable hopes for universal health care and decent public education. Now, the mighty USS War Dividend is preparing to set sail. The economic weather reports may be lousy and the seas choppy, but one thing is guaranteed: that won't stop it.

The United States, of course, long ago captured first prize in the global arms race. It now spends as much as the next 14 countries combined, even as the spending of our rogue enemies and former enemies -- Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria -- much in the headlines for their prospective armaments, makes up a mere 1% of the world military budget. Still, when you're a military superpower focused on big-picture thinking, there's no time to dawdle on the details.

And be reasonable, who could expect the U.S. to fight two wars and maintain more than 700 bases around the world for less than the $704 billion we'll shell out to the Pentagon in 2010? But here's what few Americans grasp and you aren't going to read about in your local paper either: according to Department of Defense projections, the baseline military budget -- just the bare bones, not those billions in war-fighting extras -- is projected to increase by 2.5% each year for the next 10 years. In other words, in the next decade the basic Pentagon budget will grow by at least $133.1 billion, or 25%.

When it comes to the health of the war dividend in economically bad times, if that's not good news, what is? As anyone at the Pentagon will be quick to tell you, it's a real bargain, a steal, at least compared to the two-term presidency of George W. Bush. Then, that same baseline defense budget grew by an astonishing 38%.

If the message isn't already clear enough, let me summarize: it's time for the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, and Veterans Affairs to suck it up. After all, Americans, however unemployed, foreclosed, or unmedicated, will only be truly secure if the Pentagon is exceedingly well fed. According to the Office of Management and Budget, what that actually means is this: 55% of next year's discretionary spending -- that is, the spending negotiated by the President and Congress -- will go to the military just to keep it chugging along.

The 14 million American children in poverty, the millions of citizens who will remain without health insurance (even if some version of the Baucus plan is passed), the 7.6 million people who have lost jobs since 2007, all of them will have to take a number. The same is true of the kinds of projects needed to improve the country's disintegrating infrastructure, including the 25% of U.S. drinking water that was given a barely passing "D" by the American Society of Civil Engineers in a 2009 study.

And don't imagine that this is a terrible thing either! There's no shame in paying $400 for every gallon of gas used in Afghanistan, especially when the Marines alone are reported to consume 800,000 gallons of it each day. After all, the evidence is in -- a few whiners aside -- Americans want our tax dollars used this way. Otherwise we'd complain, and no one makes much of a fuss about war or the ever-rising numbers of dollars going to it anymore.

$915.1 billion in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending to date has been a no-brainer, even if it could, theoretically, have been traded in for the annual salaries of 15 million teachers or 20 million police officers or for 171 million Pell Grants of approximately $5,350 each for use by American college and university students.

Next March, we will collectively reach a landmark in this new version of the American way of life. We will hit the $1 trillion mark in total Iraq and Afghanistan war spending with untold years of war-making to go. No problem. It's only the proposed nearly $900 billion for a decade of health care that we fear will do us in.

Nor is it the Pentagon's fault that U.S. states have laws prohibiting them from deficit spending. The 48 governors and state legislatures now struggling with budget deficits should stop complaining and simply be grateful for their ever smaller slices of the federal pie. Between 2001 and 2008, federal grant funding for state and local governments lagged behind the 28% growth of the federal budget by 14%, while military spending outpaced federal budget growth with a 41% increase. There is every reason to believe that this is a trend, not an anomaly, which means that Title 1, Head Start, Community Development Block Grants, and the Children's Health Insurance Program will just have to make do with less. In fact, if you want a true measure of what's important to our nation, think of it this way: if you add together the total 2010 budgets of all those 48 states in deficit, they won't even equal projected U.S. military spending for the same year.

Take the situation of Massachusetts, for example. Yankee spirit or not, that state will see a 17.3% decrease in federal grants in 2010 no matter how hard Governor Deval Patrick wrings his hands. True to the American way, Patrick's projected $5 billion fiscal year 2010 deficit will be his problem and his alone, as is his state's recently-announced $600 million budget shortfall for 2009. Blame it on declining tax revenue and the economic crisis, on things that are beyond his control. No matter, Patrick will have to make deep cuts to elderly mental health services and disabled home-care programs, and lose large chunks of funding for universal pre-kindergarten, teacher training, gifted and talented programs in the schools, and so much more.

Still, that Commonwealth's politicians are clearly out of step with the country. On October 9, 2009, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino joined with Congressman Barney Frank in calling on President Obama to find extra money for such programs by reducing military spending 25%. President Obama, cover your ears! Menino, who actually believes that a jump in military spending contributed to "significantly raising the federal deficit and lowering our economic security," asked the federal government to be a better partner to Boston by reinvesting in its schools, public housing, transportation, and job-training programs, especially for young people. Of course, this is delusional, as any Pentagon budgeteer could tell you. This isn't some Head Start playground, after all, it's the battlefield of American life. Tough it out, Menino.

One principle has, by now, come to dominate our American world, even if nobody seems to notice: do whatever it takes to keep federal dollars flowing for weapons systems (and the wars that go with them). And don't count on the Pentagon to lend a hand by having a bake sale any time soon; don't expect it to voluntarily cut back on major weapons systems without finding others to take their place. If, as a result, our children are less likely to earn high school and college diplomas than we were, that's what prisons and the Marines are for.

So let's break a bottle of champagne -- or, if the money comes out of a state budget, Coke -- on the bow of the USS War Dividend! And send it off on its next voyage without an iceberg in sight. Let the corks pop. Let the bubbly drown out that Harvard University report indicating that 45,000 deaths last year were due to a lack of health insurance.

Hip hip...

Jo Comerford is the executive director of the National Priorities Project. Previously, she served as director of programs at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and directed the American Friends Service Committee's justice and peace-related community organizing efforts in western Massachusetts


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jo-comerford/cashing-in-the-war-divide_b_327287.html

BACK TO THE FRAY

I've been MIA for several months because posting became an act of futility with no prospect of improvement. Usually voices that speak out of whirlwinds spout violence or viable threats of moral insurgency. I'm afraid I speak with no more authority than a Fed-backed dollar.

One thing I know: Obama has gone too long without leading from the Left the near-instantaneous way Bush did from the Right--although, come to think of it, it was 9/11 that inaugurated and empowered him. Until then, he was adrift, waiting to serve all those Daddy Warbucks that helped him steal the election. That those same Big Daddys of Oil, Wall Street, and Warfare (or their surrogates) serve in the highest posts of the Obama Administration should give you some idea of just how little change there has been in Washington. Given the fact that we are in Phase One of the Second Great Depression, I'd have to say that our president has done a superb job of maintaining their comfort level. Phase Two--the coming collapse of the commercial real estate market--will strain Obama's envious abilities for accommodation and maybe even force him to realize who he is and act the part.

In any case, I'm back--to share poems, essays, news, whatever strikes my fancy. I hope to learn how to insert pix and music samples because you need to be rewarded for showing up here. Consider them door prizes given to everyone.