King Arthur Movie Tristan

- Nickel Creek performing "This Side" on PBS Sound Stage in Chicago (lyrics at the bottom of my post) ....


- A video about Thomas Aquinas and the "Franciscan Thesis" ...


- Perhaps this is in bad taste, and if so, please forgive me, but sometimes I have to laugh so I won't cry ... Mr. Deity and the problem of evil ...


- Socrates on how to stand up for what you believe ...


Nickel Creek - This Side

One day you'll see her and you'll know what I mean.
Take her or leave her she will still be the same.
She'll not try to buy you with her time.
But nothing's the same, as you will see when she's gone.

It's foreign on this side,
And I'll not leave my home again.
There's no place to hide
And I'm nothing but scared.

You dream of colors that have never been made,
You imagine songs that have never been played.
They will try to buy you and your mind.
Only the curious have something to find.

It's foreign on this side,
And the truth is a bitter friend.
But reasons few have I to go back again.

Your first dawn blinded you, left you cursing the day.
Entrance is crucial and it's not without pain.
There's no path to follow, once you're here.
You'll climb up the slide and then you'll slide down the stairs.

It's foreign on this side,
But it feels like I'm home again.
There's no place to hide
But I don't think I'm scared.

I PROMISED I WOULD NOT COMMENT ON THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH LAST NIGHT

ABOVE PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE WHITEHOUSE: President Barack Obama addresses a Joint Session of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Sept. 8, 2011. Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner are seated behind the President. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

But I am not going to be like the Republicans who signed some asinine pledge and I will just say what is necessary at this time. I think that the President’s speech was superb, almost confrontational and still not devoid of that Obama willingness to compromise…It is disheartening to see how President Obama and Democrats in general have allowed the Republicans to dictate the agenda.

It makes no difference to any politician what we…the people think at this point…we are emphatically against cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and touching Social Security is not even in our radar. We are in agreement, at least the majority of us Americans that there has to be substantial increases in taxes on the wealthier and the corporations and that this business of cutting the deficit is not a priority at this time when our economy is in shambles. The President thought that it was a BIG program but most of us don’t think it is big enough.

Unfortunately, Republicans have proven how they think. Small. Petty. In their own political interests. They have shown they will do everything they can – including holding our economy back – in their obsessive drive to make President Obama a one-term president – and seize both houses of Congress.

Today, as I do every day, I received more than a dozen e-mails requesting donations. I added it up and if I were to donate to each politician running for office, each cause célèbre and each organization that has requested I would be shedding out over $250.00…and that is for one day.

Of course I will vote to re-elect President Obama…I consider the alternatives…having a Teabagger Fundamentalist-science denier, homophobic and middle class destroyer in the White House doesn’t set very well with me.

But what I am not is enthusiastic nor am I going to go out of my way like I did in the last elections…if the Republicans win then so be it…it is because the American people deserve it and I can’t think of a better punishment for their stupidity…that is if they vote for these radical extremist right wingers…that remains to be seen.

Good friend of ours Sherry made sure her daughter Carlee who is in the 2nd grade (congrats) was wearing her Underground Clown 2 tone shirt for the first day of school. As we all know she was the hit of the class styling in her new shirt.

To have you child looking fresh and different for the school year check out Theundergroundclown.com to see what we have for you.

Thanks Carlee

title: To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Ladies in Waiting, Book One)

author: Sandra Byrd

genre: historical fiction

published: ARC/ August 2011

pages: 332

source: Historical Fiction Book Tours

first line: There are many ways to arrive at the Tower of London, though there are a few ways out.

rated: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars









blurb:

Meg Wyatt has been Anne Boleyn's closest friend ever since they grew up together on neighboring manors in Kent. So when twenty-five-year-old Anne's star begins to ascend, of course she takes Meg along for the ride.


Life in the court of Henry VIII is thrilling...at first. Meg is made mistress of Anne's wardrobe, and she enjoys the spoils of this privileged orbit and uses her influence for good. She is young and beautiful and in favor; everyone at court assumes that being close to her is being close to Anne.


But favor is fickle and envy is often laced with venom. As Anne falls, so does Meg, and it becomes nearly impossible for her to discern ally from enemy. Suddenly life's unwelcome surprises rub against court's sheen to reveal the tarnished brass of false affections and the bona fide gold of those are true. Both Anne and Meg may lose everything. When your best friend is married to fearsome Henry VIII, you may soon find yourself not only friendless but headless as well.


A rich alchemy of fact and fiction, To Die For chronicles the glittering court life, the sweeping romance, and the heartbreaking fall from grace of a forsaken queen and Meg, her closest companion, who was forgotten by the ages but who is destined to live on in our hearts forever.

About:

Best friends Meg Wyatt and Anne Boleyn grew up together in Kent. When Anne is sent to live at King Henry VIII's Court, Meg follows soon after.




Meg herself lived a difficult life at home, her father having been a harsh man and often beating her. She falls in love with Will Ogilvy, but when he is sent off to become a priest, her heart is shattered.


Not before long, Meg's father arranges a marriage for her, to a man who is decades older and whom she could never possibly love.


Life at court is tantalizing as well as dangerous, and when Anne gets herself into trouble, Meg follows her best friend in her downward spiral.






My thoughts:


The Tudor period is my favorite era. What historical fiction I've read concerning the Tudors has been by Philippa Gregory. I am so glad to have had the chance to read Sandra Byrd. She is a fantastic storyteller and superb writer and I enjoyed reading To Die For from start to finish. I was instantly transported to England in the 1500's and could easily envision King Henry VIII's court, with its luxury, scandal and drama. We all know how the story of Anne Boleyn plays out, but here we get to see her best friend alongside Anne. Meg's story takes a life of its own and I was really interested in what would become of her.


Meg and Anne were very close, and I could imagine the two of them living life in the King's court.

The first young man trained his eyes on me and smiled flirtatiously. I was unused to courtly manners. Did he intend to pay me such intense attention? Or was this a part and parcel of the illusory world of the court, where nothing was as it seemed?

p.56, To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn

Meg is truly heartbroken over Will. You can feel her pain as you read. Her heart breaks when Will tells her his plans to join the priesthood.

"I loved him to the point of anguish."





I liked seeing some well known people in this story; George and Mary Boleyn, Jane Parker and King Henry himself.


I recommend this one to fans of historicals and Tudor fiction, or to anyone looking to get swept up in a great story with plenty of drama, glitz and heartache.
Actually, I think To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn is a must read for Tudor fans.





On a final note, I really like the cover on this book. It suits it perfectly.
To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (Ladies in Waiting, Book One) will be on my top reads for 2011.











Special thanks to Historical Fiction Book Tours for making this possible.




Links of interest:


This has been a part of Historical Fiction Book Tours.





Click Here for the Tour schedule.

When I started this blog I had the option to pick many names.

I thought about it and there are lots of things I could have named it after; but the one thing that disturbs me most is that old-tired, Reagan economic theory of “TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS”.

Because I hate it so much and have time and time again pointed out what a hoax, a failure, an askew and perverse ideology it was, I opted for the name of my blog to be: “TRICKLEDOWNBS”.

Among one of the most ardent opponents of this Trickle Down crap is Robert Reich and not only is he qualified to give an opinion…he is a freaking expert on economics having served under the Clinton administration as Labor Secretary. He belongs to academia now as a professor at Berkley but he still comes out and offers us writings and opinions that are valuable and in need to be heard. I met him at the airport in Paris when we were both waiting to board a flight back to the states and I spoke to him at length for a good half hour…I was blown away by his wit and his knowledge.

In view of the fact that Republican-Teahadists live by, breath, eat and practice this odious Reagan theory…it is incumbent upon us to hear what Reich and others like him have to say on the subject.

Here is one I think you should look at carefully because it comes with a very telling chart:

Monday, September 5, 2011

The Truth About Reaganomics

In a single chart, courtesy of Robert Reich, from the New York Times yesterday:

“As I have stated so often, the entire reason for the existence of the Republican party is to thieve whatever the rest of us have, and give it to the rich. Ronald Reagan was the "inspirational" figure who found a way to convince large numbers of Americans to accept that vicious concept as a good thing. The country has been run on that basis ever since. The result can be seen by anyone that can read this single graph. That is why the country is in the condition that it is today, and only a massive seizure of the ill-gotten gains of the rich, and an equally massive redistribution of it to the vast number of workers to whom it really belongs, can save us.

The truth is no more complicated or obscure than that. People who cared to open their eyes have been warning since Reagan that Republican plundering of the economy would lead us to this place, but they were shouted down by the greed-maddened fools that bought Reagan's economic lies. Really, there isn't much more to say.

Posted by Green Eagle at 12:41 PM

Robert B. Reich is the former secretary of labor, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future.”

THE 5 percent of Americans with the highest incomes now account for 37 percent of all consumer purchases, according to the latest research from Moody’s Analytics. That should come as no surprise. Our society has become more and more unequal.

When so much income goes to the top, the middle class doesn’t have enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without sinking ever more deeply into debt — which, as we’ve seen, ends badly. An economy so dependent on the spending of a few is also prone to great booms and busts. The rich splurge and speculate when their savings are doing well. But when the values of their assets tumble, they pull back. That can lead to wild gyrations. Sound familiar?

The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed. Even if by some miracle President Obama gets support for a second big stimulus while Ben S. Bernanke’s Fed keeps interest rates near zero, neither will do the trick without a middle class capable of spending. Pump-priming works only when a well contains enough water.

Look back over the last hundred years and you’ll see the pattern. During periods when the very rich took home a much smaller proportion of total income — as in the Great Prosperity between 1947 and 1977 — the nation as a whole grew faster and median wages surged. We created a virtuous cycle in which an ever growing middle class had the ability to consume more goods and services, which created more and better jobs, thereby stoking demand. The rising tide did in fact lift all boats.

During periods when the very rich took home a larger proportion — as between 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Regression from 1981 to the present day — growth slowed, median wages stagnated and we suffered giant downturns. It’s no mere coincidence that over the last century the top earners’ share of the nation’s total income peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just preceding the biggest downturns.

Starting in the late 1970s, the middle class began to weaken. Although productivity continued to grow and the economy continued to expand, wages began flattening in the 1970s because new technologies — container ships, satellite communications, eventually computers and the Internet — started to undermine any American job that could be automated or done more cheaply abroad. The same technologies bestowed ever larger rewards on people who could use them to innovate and solve problems. Some were product entrepreneurs; a growing number were financial entrepreneurs. The pay of graduates of prestigious colleges and M.B.A. programs — the “talent” who reached the pinnacles of power in executive suites and on Wall Street — soared.

The middle class nonetheless continued to spend, at first enabled by the flow of women into the work force. (In the 1960s only 12 percent of married women with young children were working for pay; by the late 1990s, 55 percent were.) When that way of life stopped generating enough income, Americans went deeper into debt. From the late 1990s to 2007, the typical household debt grew by a third. As long as housing values continued to rise it seemed a painless way to get additional money.

Eventually, of course, the bubble burst. That ended the middle class’s remarkable ability to keep spending in the face of near stagnant wages. The puzzle is why so little has been done in the last 40 years to help deal with the subversion of the economic power of the middle class. With the continued gains from economic growth, the nation could have enabled more people to become problem solvers and innovators — through early childhood education, better public schools, expanded access to higher education and more efficient public transportation.

We might have enlarged safety nets — by having unemployment insurance cover part-time work, by giving transition assistance to move to new jobs in new locations, by creating insurance for communities that lost a major employer. And we could have made Medicare available to anyone.

Big companies could have been required to pay severance to American workers they let go and train them for new jobs. The minimum wage could have been pegged at half the median wage, and we could have insisted that the foreign nations we trade with do the same, so that all citizens could share in gains from trade.

We could have raised taxes on the rich and cut them for poorer Americans.

But starting in the late 1970s, and with increasing fervor over the next three decades, government did just the opposite. It deregulated and privatized. It cut spending on infrastructure as a percentage of the national economy and shifted more of the costs of public higher education to families. It shredded safety nets. (Only 27 percent of the unemployed are covered by unemployment insurance.) And it allowed companies to bust unions and threaten employees who tried to organize. Fewer than 8 percent of private-sector workers are unionized.

More generally, it stood by as big American companies became global companies with no more loyalty to the United States than a GPS satellite. Meanwhile, the top income tax rate was halved to 35 percent and many of the nation’s richest were allowed to treat their income as capital gains subject to no more than 15 percent tax. Inheritance taxes that affected only the topmost 1.5 percent of earners were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and payroll taxes — both taking a bigger chunk out of modest paychecks — were increased.

Most telling of all, Washington deregulated Wall Street while insuring it against major losses. In so doing, it allowed finance — which until then had been the servant of American industry — to become its master, demanding short-term profits over long-term growth and raking in an ever larger portion of the nation’s profits. By 2007, financial companies accounted for over 40 percent of American corporate profits and almost as great a percentage of pay, up from 10 percent during the Great Prosperity.

Some say the regressive lurch occurred because Americans lost confidence in government. But this argument has cause and effect backward. The tax revolts that thundered across America starting in the late 1970s were not so much ideological revolts against government — Americans still wanted all the government services they had before, and then some — as against paying more taxes on incomes that had stagnated. Inevitably, government services deteriorated and government deficits exploded, confirming the public’s growing cynicism about government’s doing anything right.

Some say we couldn’t have reversed the consequences of globalization and technological change. Yet the experiences of other nations, like Germany, suggest otherwise. Germany has grown faster than the United States for the last 15 years, and the gains have been more widely spread. While Americans’ average hourly pay has risen only 6 percent since 1985, adjusted for inflation, German workers’ pay has risen almost 30 percent. At the same time, the top 1 percent of German households now take home about 11 percent of all income — about the same as in 1970. And although in the last months Germany has been hit by the debt crisis of its neighbors, its unemployment is still below where it was when the financial crisis started in 2007.

How has Germany done it? Mainly by focusing like a laser on education (German math scores continue to extend their lead over American), and by maintaining strong labor unions.

THE real reason for America’s Great Regression was political. As income and wealth became more concentrated in fewer hands, American politics reverted to what Marriner S. Eccles, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, described in the 1920s, when people “with great economic power had an undue influence in making the rules of the economic game.” With hefty campaign contributions and platoons of lobbyists and public relations spinners, America’s executive class has gained lower tax rates while resisting reforms that would spread the gains from growth.

Yet the rich are now being bitten by their own success. Those at the top would be better off with a smaller share of a rapidly growing economy than a large share of one that’s almost dead in the water.

The economy cannot possibly get out of its current doldrums without a strategy to revive the purchasing power of America’s vast middle class. The spending of the richest 5 percent alone will not lead to a virtuous cycle of more jobs and higher living standards. Nor can we rely on exports to fill the gap. It is impossible for every large economy, including the United States, to become a net exporter.

Reviving the middle class requires that we reverse the nation’s decades-long trend toward widening inequality. This is possible notwithstanding the political power of the executive class. So many people are now being hit by job losses, sagging incomes and declining home values that Americans could be mobilized.

Moreover, an economy is not a zero-sum game. Even the executive class has an enlightened self-interest in reversing the trend; just as a rising tide lifts all boats, the ebbing tide is now threatening to beach many of the yachts. The question is whether, and when, we will summon the political will. We have summoned it before in even bleaker times.

As the historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression, what we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.”

That dream is still within our grasp.”

CHART SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/09/04/opinion/04reich-graphic.html?ref=sunday