limitlessness - the human predicament

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press -  4 28 09 WASHINGTON – If the Mexico swine flu becomes a global pandemic, the routines and comforts of daily life would vanish in the blink of an eye. Small towns and big cities alike would go into a protective crouch.   The worst case scenario, according to U.S. government planners: Two million dead. Hospitals overwhelmed. Schools closed. Swaths of empty seats at baseball stadiums and houses of worship. An economic recovery snuffed out.   ===================== Sam Fulwood III Sam Fulwood Iii – Fri Apr 24, 5:06 am ET http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21522.html His personal charisma is a nonverbal form of communication, sending seemingly conflicting messages: the need for radical and sacrificial change, yet the reassurance to Americans that he's as sane and stable as the guy in the next barber's chair, said Roger Wilkins, who recently retired as a history professor at George Mason University. "Hipness is a way of presenting to the world that you know what's going on and that you've got things under control," said Wilkins, who served in the Johnson administration and has had up-close dealings with every president since Kennedy. "For Obama, his hipness exudes power. He just keeps on moving, no matter what comes his way, and he doesn't lose it. That's being hip — and I don't see any contemporary public figures whom I would think of as hip." ================= Claims to authority are made in virtually every area of social life, and, in a remarkably high proportion of cases, the claims are accepted and acquiesced in by those over whom they are made. Parents claim the right to be obeyed by their children; husbands until quite recently claimed the right to be obeyed by their wives; popes claim the right to be obeyed by the laity and clergy; and of course, most notably, virtually all existing governments claim the right to be obeyed by their subjects. by Robert Paul Wolff,  Columbia University ( http://www.ditext.com/wolff/violence.html ) ============== Another busy day at the White House: First Lady Michelle Obama hosted students from Bancroft High School in Washington, who helped her plant and water the brand-new White House garden. She and Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack spoke to the students about the healthy fruits and veggies that would grow there. "It's all brain food," Obama said. She cheered the kids for bringing good weather and then sent them (and the press) home with cookies. The weather was so nice in fact, that, after President Obama received his economic briefing and met with Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the Oval Office, the POTUS and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to hold their 4:15 meeting out behind the White House--on the swing set installed for the Obama girls in March...... Striding out from the West Wing, the two seemed thick as thieves—smiling, Secretary Clinton casually swung her leg over the bench on the east side of the playground, and the president grinned and waved to gawking reporters and staff as he sat down across from her. ( http://www.theroot.com/blogs/browntable/exclusive-pic-clinton-and-obama-sandbox-again ) ============== The manipulative approach to politics is of course not a discovery of the nineteen-fifties, or even the twentieth century. Napoleon set up a press bureau that he called, perhaps in a playful moment, his Bureau of Public Opinion. Its function was to manufacture political trends to order. Machiavelli was another who made some original contributions to the thinking in this field. Manipulation of the people by a tyrant with a controlled society is a fairly simple matter, and he can be heavy-handed or light-handed about it, to taste. The real challenge comes in dealing effectively with citizens of a free society who can vote you out of office, or spurn your solicitation for their support, if they are so minded. Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1957. ============== God and God alone Created all these things we call our own From the mighty to the small The glory in them all Is God's and God's alone God and God alone Reveals the truth of all we call unknown All the best and worst of man Can't change the master plan It's God's and God's alone God and God alone Is fit to take the universe's throne Let everything that lives Reserve its truest praise For God and God alone God and God alone Will be the joy of our eternal home He will be our one desire Our hearts will never tire Of God and God alone Words and Music by Phill McHugh