Interesting concept.  Taken at face value I guess it could mean laundering the dirt from our brains.

But brains don’t have dirt.  I know this from watching Grey’s anatomy.  So it must mean something else.

How about this? Brainwashing means replacing either what was already in your brain with something else or placing something in a space in your brain formally unoccupied.

The result of washing anything is supposed to be a positive experience.  In actuality brainwashing never is.  I can say that because I know brainwashing either modifies ideas gained by your own experience, or brainwashing puts ideas of others in your head which you now claim as your own.

In either case you are now no longer your own man.  Pieces of you, or more importantly pieces of your brain, are now in the care and custody of other’s thoughts.

All people are good people at birth and most people manage to stay that way through life.  Most people just want to live and let live.

But some of us are really sick, and who can say why.  When good people fall victim to brainwashing from extremists and sickos and don’t have the advantage of contrary points of view bad things happen.

Fighting terrorism with an army is ridiculous.  Armies never get inside anyone’s head; they only destroy their bodies. Fighting terrorism is a one-on-one business.  You must win over people by example.  You can only show them a better way; you can’t force them to follow you.  We must lead by example, not try to force compliance.  One must show respect, not contempt, for people of different faiths and their beliefs.

Everybody has one.  Nobody’s is the same.

Some say let the sun shine in.  Others don’t

want anything more than a single ray to get

through their filter.

So what happened?  Who won?  I guess you

could say two opposites developed. Google,

on one side, said give me all your mail, spam

and all.  I’ve got storage for everything.

AOL, on the other hand, said they needed

permission from their client’s to forward anything

at all to their inboxes.  “Unless you, the sender,

are white-listed by our client, your mail will be

forwarded to the trash can”.

Every other mail service like Yahoo, MSN, AT&T,

etc. all have different tolerance levels.  This

spawned a whole bunch of bad grammar. All of a

sudden money became mo*ney, and free became

fr*e or fr.ee.  I am an agreeable guy but I don’t

like my lexicon mangled.

Here is my open letter to my provider:

Dear filter screen thwarter,

I like reading the Queen’s English.  I like to

connect with what I am reading and I don’t

connect with fr.ee, or fr*e or some other spam

filter frustrator abomination of the English

language.

If what you are trying to sell me you need to

sneak past my filter, I want your message to be

screened. If you can state your pitch clearly and

I like don’t like your pitch, I want you to be

spammed, damned, and banned forever more!

If, on the other hand, I like your message, I want

to be connected immediately to your server, so my

order can be processed without delay. 

And I expect you to know the difference.

Any questions?

President Obama and Prime Minister Brown touched upon the need to create a world regulating agency which would oversee all financial institutions — banking — everything, tracking all money moving anywhere.

So the bankers really blew it for themselves this time. No more international safe havens. No more protection from prying eyes.

What if all of a sudden, follow the money actually lead somewhere?

What if we could see the red stain of cash making a trail all the way from our pile in the desert back through Halliburton to Dick Cheney’s pocket? But that will never happen. Who would be brave enough to dip his toe in that river of molten lava. For all we know the last guy to disagree with Dick got his face shot off.

But maybe big oil, and big money, and the big guns got too big for their britches. (I hope — I don’t want this to pi** off anyone still important) Just maybe world government is the only way to effectively regulate big world-wide businesses.

Let’s see; from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. I make $18(average country wage) and the guy responsible for losing trillions received just shy of a half a million for that same hour. Assuming we both have weekends off, of course.

Yeah, right, I want protect this guy’s right to put all that money into his pocket at the expense of my kids education, health care, clean air and the environment. Or do I?

Here are two thoughts.

Take for example, the 30 top venture capital (hence to be called vulture capital) firms which manipulated the oil market and extracted trillions of dollars from the economy.  These top vultures paid themselves an average of $877 million for last year’s evil deeds alone.  That is over 30,000 times what the average American worker makes annually.  Yet these men put their pants on one leg at a time.

If we took just last year’s ill-gotten gains back from the dirty-thirty, allowing them to feel the pain the rest of the nation and world is feeling for just a second, we recapture $26 billion.

 Well, we just financed national healthcare and the 30 vulture donors won’t even notice the dip in their cash accounts.

 Or take the Merrill Lynch (should be lynched) top executives who paid themselves $120 million in bonuses on top of salary for last year  They took this money as fair compensation for losing billions upon billions of shareholder and depositor equity.  So we take that back and give one million people $120.  That’s one million people who are $120 happier and 4 vultures miss their bonus meal.

Think these moves would lift some spirits?  It would put an instant smile on a million people, and a sad face on 34. The rest of the country gets free healthcare for a year. You still get to go to your own doctor, and you can move ahead with the stuff you’ve been postponing for years; and when you’re all shaped up the government gets the bill. You think that would make a few people happy?

Of course this is all a pipe dream.

The local, state and mostly federal revenuers usually confiscate first and ask questions later when crimes are suspected. But not when these suspects (”gentlemen”) step out of stretch limos in Armani suits.  Then they bend over and kiss these “gentlemen’s” rings and take the fragrant grease

All kidding aside, if we did punish the real criminals for a change, I mean the really bad guys. the ones who are ruining lives by the millions I think the whole world would applaud.  Confidence would be restored in American leadership, money would pour back into the system, and we would be on our way to a full recovery.

It would appear that President Obama’s detractors

have found a very tiny target indeed.  So far they have

proven him human; he can make mistakes after all. 

But for this country he is like Don Quixote riding

Rocinante to the rescue.

We managed, despite incredible odds, to overthrow

the oligarchy and we elected a noble idealist. A great

president in time of great need  The people have spoken.

IMHO we are the most optimistic and forward

thinking nation on the planet today as a result of our

spectacular election process and result.

If we can keep the detractors away for another day,

optimism will again sweep the nation.  By spending

money on ourselves we help stem the hemorrhage of

cash moving abroad. For my money I would prefer one

or more universities and schools per state in our country

to a 700 million dollar pile of  rocks in the middle of a

foreign desert!

A few more good moves and we are on our way.

Instead of all our money going to the biggest greediest

gangsters in the world we may all get to share a little

more.  If we squeeze these crooks back by demanding

our government tax obscene profits which, coincidentally,

were a major contributor to the world financial meltdown, 

we can get that money back and spread it around

where will actually do more good than harm.