Holy Bank Loans! Spitzer & Bush
The $200 billion bail-out for predator banks and Spitzer charges are intimately linked
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2008-03-14 14:55.
By Greg Palast, Reporting for Air America Radio’s Clout
Listen to Palast on Clout at www.GregPalast.com
(While the artpredator doesn’t usually traipse down the sordid path of politics, this is just too stunning…please take a moment to read about this connection which I found on After 10 Downing Street)
While New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was paying an ‘escort’ $4,300 in a hotel room in Washington, just down the road, George Bush’s new Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Ben Bernanke, was secretly handing over $200 billion in a tryst with mortgage bank industry speculators.
Both acts were wanton, wicked and lewd. But there’s a BIG difference. The Governor was using his own checkbook. Bush’s man Bernanke was using ours.
This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer. Read more…
challenge to lucid dream & new poem
Recently, I’ve had the same night terror, a mild one in the scheme of things–a very tall (10′) figure draped in black–looking much like “death.” This is on one side of the bed. On the other side of the bed, floating is some undetermined glowing amber object. I also had the following dream which defied my tips for lucid dreaming.
(This is also a response to the readwritepoem prompt. For more dream poems go to readwritepoem.org)
last night, glorious
we travel by covered wagon
the earth the world
cats i had lost are found
kittens taken up beloved
orange tabby snuggles inside
pajama sleeve of my young son
we are happy
aswim in the artic
naked slippery singing
salmon dolphins penguins
sun glows above ice around
a predator soars
marine creatures dive vanish
i turn reach for my son
his head is gone bitten off
i grab his hand
pull his body up through water
to daylight to dad he grabs it
my son is dead
no hope for him
i cannot change this
i am lost no breath no life
i black out sink wake
my headless child still
floats beyond
where i can hold him
i must redeem
redream this dream
chase off menace
save us
this time
On the 5th Anniversary of the war: I am the decider
Shocking and dumbfounding, isn’t it, that we are arriving on the 5th anniversary of this unnecessary bloodbath called the “War on Iraq.”
Protest the war and show your disgust with the current administration by joining in tomorrow Saturday at one of the actions taking place all over the world. In Ventucky, several carpools are being organized by ANSWER–meet at the Ventucky Coffee Bean & Tea at the corner of Telephone and Main (near Kinkos) at 10am.
Show Bush and his ilk that he is “not the decider”–this is a democracy and we the people are the deciders. Stop the bloodshed, stop the destruction of the earth–speak up! Speak out!
click on the picture of Bush as the egghead to hear the background and the song “I am the Decider” (you can find the Beatle’s version in this post “Everything’s Hitched to Everything Else”)
I am me and Rummy’s he, Iraq is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick shoots his gun, see how I lie
I’m Lying…
Sitting on my own brain, waiting for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil money
I’m above the law and I’ll decide what’s right or wrong
I am the egg head, I’m the Commander, I’m the Decider
Koo-Koo-Kachoo
they gotta be burners
how to have happy dreams: change the channel
someone did a search on “how to have happy dreams” and found my blog.
just in case that person comes back, or you yourself want to know, this is something i have learned to do–to have lucid dreams.
i thought it would help with the night terrors. unfortunately, since night terrors aren’t dreams but essentially hallucinations that occur before REM or the dream stage of sleep, lucid dreaming techniques don’t help. lucid dreaming has helped me with many nightmares. i might have some strange dreams (see the post “antlers on my head, silene in my teeth”!) and some horrible night terrors, but i rarely have bad dreams or nightmares, and when i do, i take control of the dream and change it. sometimes the dream will scare me enough to wake me up so i go back into the dream on purpose to change it.
my 4 year old son was waking up in the night with scary dreams so this is what i taught him:
change the dream.
it is actually that simple.
every night as part of our ritual for going to sleep, i ask him:
what do we do if we have scary dreams?
we change them to happy dreams.
but mom, he said at first, they’re still scary.
it takes practice, my son, practice. just like learning to ride a bike, you’ll get better and better each time you practice using love to change the dream to one you want to have. when you’re in a dream, and you don’t like how it’s going, you can change direction, you can tell the dream where you want to go and what you want to do! you can do anything you want in your dreams.
so now when he goes to sleep i ask:
what do we do about scary dreams?
change the channel! he says triumphantly.
with lots of love, we agree.
poem: the gift of peaceful nights & happy dreams
Another poem for the Poetry Train with a train in it! This is from the 3:15 Experiment and was published in between sleeps: the 3:15 experiment 1993-2005.
The “nightmare” mentioned in the poem is actually a night terror. 
One of the bizarre aspects of Night Terrors is that you can’t remember them in the morning, or even really right after you have them. Over the years, I have tried to remember them better. By writing them down sometimes during the 3:15 experiment, I have some records about them. It seems I can remember more about them in the middle of the night than I can in the morning. Possibly the act of writing them down commits them to memory as well because I can still see the images from this one.
Night terrors rarely have narratives, like dreams do, but this one had a hint of one. It was still clearly a night terror in that it the threat was there in my home, just outside my window and then by my bed.
for more dream inspired poems, go to readwritepoem
August 25
315am Friday 2005 Ventucky
Been up since 230am
when a nightmare
woke me screaming
It’s hard to go back
to sleep when a
bony arm and hand with
saggy flesh has
reached up from under
the bed to get you
Lying there awake I could watch
the sliver of old moon
creep across the bed
then lighting my flesh
and my way as I wander
through it to get a glass
of water in the kitchen
the moon faint enough to
let stars show on this
rare clear night
Nights like these I
appreciate my lover
his hold on me
increasing my grip
in this reality and not
that other his hold
on me his strong presence
there his calm breath
brings my breath back home
His warmth his few
words let me find me
let me sort through the
confusing painful terrifying
images to find a way
to articulate what I have
experienced to find a
narrative for images that
lack one: I had
killed this girl off and
after years of watching
waiting she was finally
coming to get me
Lying here after speaking
not fully awake and not
really asleep haunted by the
images of her I listen
to the sounds of the night
the train passing through
the heavy trucks in the fog
the bed creaking as he
gets comfortable and falls
back to sleep the baby’s
occasional whimper
I am reluctant to rejoin
the sleeping the dreaming
the world of my slumber
lacking peace the conflicts
and fears of my days seeping
into the subconscious of my
nights
I ask the baby each time
he wakes: did you have a
good sleep? Uh huh
he says yeah he says
Did you have good dreams?
Yes he says uhhh huhhhhh
Does he even know what dreams are?
If I could ask for one thing
for my child perhaps
that might be it:
The gift of peaceful
nights and happy dreams
celebrate national sleep week: sleep tips!
Partly because of Night Terrors, I have had problems with getting to sleep and staying asleep (it’s hard to want to go to bed to sleep when you suspect you will wake an hour or so later in a full-on panic attack due to a very real hallucination!).
Here are some tips (which I added to and adapted from an interview with the editor of the Ladies Home Journal) which can help us all get more sleep!
1. let in the morning light: sit in the sun, go for a walk–don’t wear your sunglasses!
2. walk at sunset— by walking at sunset, you let those last rays of sun tell you it’s time to wind down–let the last rays of light sustain you for the night; this will help with anxiety, depression, and insomnia
3. practice yoga, both asana (active yoga poses) and restorative poses which show your body how to release and relax. yoga asana (done 3 hours before you intend to sleep) will tire you physically. yoga practice balances your hormones and other internal systems, and will teach you how to breathe smoothly and calmly. when you’re tryign to get to sleep, bring the breathing practice to bed: breathe in with gentle breaths thinking “joy” and breathe out with soft breaths thinking “peace.” focus your mind on breathing in joy and breathing out peace while doing yoga and again while dropping off to sleep.
4. or any active exercise if done 3 hours or more before sleep
5. take a hot tub or warm bath in the evening–and let your body temperature drop (that cold dash in the house will do it!) before climbing into your cool sheets
6. turn the lights down in the evening–light candles for dinner and around the house, use twinklelights, dim the lights
7. turn the media off (TV, computers etc) an hour or so before you go to bed, and turn your eyes to the page and read for awhile–let the back and forth motion of your eyes relax you, hypnotize you
8. sleep in a dark room–dim any lights, including the glow from your clock!
9. cut out or cut back the caffeine!! avoid it after 3pm–or about 8 hours before you want to go to sleep
10. enjoy light meals; avoid overindulging in alcohol or using alcohol as a sedative
11. use aromotherapy–lavender and/or myhrr in particular will calm your brain and your nerves (see previous posts on frankinscence and myrhh)–put essential oil on a pillow liner or on a handkerchief and put it in the pillow case
12. write out what’s on your mind with your left hand in a journal before trying to go to sleep
If you do wake up in the night, get up, pee, drink some water, maybe eat a small bowl of healthy cereal with or without yoghurt, and try some of the tips above like reading a little, then when you feel wound down, climb back into bed.
what works for you? post your comments below!
on the prowl for ways to get off the trail sometimes…the art predator
Fandango Americana 3/8 line-up
Night Terror Poem– 3:15 Experiment August 14, 2002
Beware to those these circus dreams
comets slipping away like
like clouds like fog like sun
and that was at first that
bizarre night terror–it is even
further cobwebby the ivy grows in the
garden of memory the lawn chair even
and the bird bath gone
There was something in the air
like narrow puzzle pieces
they glowed orange neon they shimmered
they floated suspended in the air
like a huge school of minnows or plankton
you can imagine my alarm my fear
because yes they did not belong
here floating in the air of
my bedroom but what can you do
about it
art predator 