Scribbles on a page are just placeholders for errant thoughts and daydreams, drifting here and there, looking for anchor points of purchase.  These symbols and squiggles we call writing are feeble things, unable to hold a candle to personal observation.  It is a shame we haven't evolved the ability to directly share our observations with one another, whether singly or a few million at a time.

In a science fiction film, there would have to be wires, connections, and a massive control panel choked and jammed with clusters of lights and switches.  In my version, it would be accomplished without machines or equipment, but be done by a simple thought process one could learn early in life -- and be about as complex and demanding of you as having the inspiration to move across the room in order to get a drink of water, and then doing so.

Perhaps that broadcasted-direct-empathy ability would make the Game we all play, the one we typically call Life -- and Our Lives -- just too easy for a species on our particular trajectory. That ability, if we had it, would allow us to communicate too much, too deeply, and too fast:  It could blow out all our circuits.

Through the power of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Christian Crusader and Faith Healer Kathryn Kuhlman cured my father-in-law twice from liver cancer … before he died of liver cancer. I do not hold Jesus responsible for the death of my father-in-law. I’d say Jesus’ role in the whole affair was pretty much nonexistent because at the time He, The Son of Gawd, had been dead for almost two millennia. You can’t blame Him if His batteries were running a little low.

My father-in-law was a very pragmatic, no-nonsense, Richard Nixon-Republican, until his doctors told him he was Going To Die. Fearing for his life, he drove down to the Shrine Civic Auditorium in Los Angeles and joined the thousands of disciples, the desperate, and the doomed. He went onstage, Kathryn Kuhlman simply touched him, and filled with the Holy Spirit, he keeled right over. When he got to his feet he was cured. Later his doctors continued to tell him Very Bad News about his liver so he went back to LA for a Holy Spirit Booster Shot. That cure worked as well as the first one did. Soon after my father-in-law continued along the 5-step Kübler-Ross path, regained his dignity, and died about as well as anyone could.

Teasing out a thought sometimes means pulling along any number of odds and ends you didn't know were attached, like tugging a thread on your sweater.  Such is the case with plain ol', unpretentious Patience.  I had no idea it was hooked to so much until I started messing around with the concept.

I thought about Patience and gave it a short jerk -- like a test-yank, to see what was attached to what -- and all sorts of things fell off my mental shelf onto the floor of my skull.

I should not have been surprised Patience has that much pull.  If it is at all true we are here on this Earth, and in this Life to Work on Certain Things,  then Patience was certainly poured out of the Master Assignment Spigot and handed off to me in its beat-up tin cup.  (My Work was probably given out in a very hurried manner, too, so anxious were they to get Patience, and me, off the premises as quickly as they possibly could.)

Here's the thing, in a long overview burst:  When people are under building pressure and increasing stress, more Patience is required, not less.  It may seem counter-intuitive, like communication being much more needed by all sides during times of trouble or tension, not less.

Reality can be defined as the 'norms' that your community agrees on.... Do you believe in witches and demons? How about 'trickle down economics?' Of course, some 'realities' work better than others. The laws of nature tend to favor 'actual reality' over the ones that only exist in certain peoples' twisted world view, but over the short term utter nonsense can seem real, and even drive actual 'reality' to places we can't imagine.

We're in one of those places in time where 'reality' is being defined by consensus. We have a federal budget in the $4 trillion range, a number that seems like magic to people who count only on their digits (fingers and toes). To be fair, it's not a number you can actually 'think' about. You have to use certain tricks of the mind to make it into a useful concept, or you can just use accounting....

We are creating about $1 trillion a year in new federal debt, this freaks out the tea baggers. They didn't notice when Bush was creating debt at twice that rate, or when Reagan was doing it at twice that rate in today's dollars. You see it's all about 'creating' reality. Numbers are funny that way.

People sure do have a talent for making things lots more complicated than they need to be.  We spend so much time reading between the lines, looking for clues and clarity, it's a wonder anything gets done at all -- which, as you might guess, is a perfect cue to skewer Congress, the ultimate spot of wonder and awe should anything ever be accomplished.

Despite all the hoopla and hocus-pocus, nothing much has changed at all, not even with all the foaming and frothing at the mouth lately over finances.  There are still a couple of brands of Republicans haggling and mule-trading with a couple brands of Democrats, everyone happily and heartily posing for the folks back home, as they do their Homeric, heroic battles in the homeland of D.C., shedding all their usual stalling and finally doing their jobs, albeit at the last possible moment.

Flying the GOP banner, there are the Psychos and the Semi-Psychos:  The former are convinced they have no obligation or responsibility to fellow humans, fellow Americans, nor to the country itself.  Psychos joined government in order to bring government to a complete halt, thereby saving money that would be better lavished on billionaires.

Note: The first time I heard about "A Short History of Conservative Obstruction to Progress" was on Mike Malloy's radio program in 2008. I was so impressed with it I put it up in the "rants" section on Superbeans (http://superbeans.com/rant_02_01_08.htm)  as a readily accessible reminder that The Elite, and the Crazy Stupid People that follow them, have unrelentingly opposed everything and anything that would benefit We The People.

The key word here is unrelentingly. Conservatives are like the movie monsters from the Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th movies. You can’t stop them. You can stab them in the neck, set them on fire, or whack them in the head with a machete, but after a few seconds of getting their movie-monster-mojo together … they rise up again and again and again … and their murderous rampage continues until the closing credits. Unlike their victims, the movie monsters don’t need to stop to sleep, eat, or even catch their breath. But when their hapless quarry takes a breather … Watch Out … that’s when The Monsters Get You.

The Elite and their Crazed Conservative Shills in Congress are even more powerful than their silver screen counterparts. They can lose elections and still have the power to destroy. How could these people deny relief to hurricane Sandy victims? Because they’re monsters. Why are they still trying to destroy our social safety nets? George Carlin explained it all perfectly:

“They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else. … And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it.”

They’ll get it because they’ve spent decades and untold billions to create and condition enough dumb-asses that don’t know what the hell is going on but believe, and deeply care about, gibberish.