Butterfly and Leaf - a poem

(what? You thought I only wrote software? Enjoy....)

Butterfly and Leaf

Moca Finca, August 9, 2008
Copyright 2008, Steven Feuerstein

Flickering shadow
of a butterfly
catching the sun
seeking out color:
Alive, for a time.

Fluttering shadow
of a leaf
losing the sun
losing the branch:
Dying, in separation.

My eyes
can't tell the difference.
Living or dying,
the shadow is the same.
It communicates,
it hides.

My eyes
move on,
seeking a shadow
I can trust.

Getting weary, so weary: Big Oil's biggest quarter ever: $51.5B in all

Big Oil sucks us dry once again.

By JOHN PORRETTO, AP Business Writer Fri Aug 1, 5:11 PM ET

HOUSTON - Oil giants Chevron Corp. and Total SA wrapped up a string of gargantuan, record-breaking earnings reports Friday, a stretch in which six of the major international oil companies topped $50 billion in combined profit for the first time.

While the profits of unparalleled size have brought withering criticism from Washington and disgust from consumers across the country, very few were surprised. Crude prices during the second quarter were nearly double what they were a year ago.

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It is getting so so hard to even pretend that we live in a democracy. In what sort of democracy do its citizens allow corporations to suck us dry as they repeat the mantra of "supply and demand"? In what sort of democracy does its citizens allow a runaway, renegade, ultra-right government (which admits to hating government and wanting to privatize all) take all our tax dollars and hand them over to banks, financial "services" companies, military-industrial wacko companies like Blackwater - either when they actually blow it so badly they fail or pay off our legislators to hand them big fat no-bid contracts?

The US is not a democracy. It is a plutocracy, with manic edges of theocracy. And it is wearing me down.

I say: start doing some worse case planning.

What are you going to do with they start charging for air?

What are you going to do when the infrastructure of the country collapses (bridges, roads, etc.) and while they continue to pour our tax dollars down black holes of the War Against Extremism, they raise our taxes to theoretically repair that infrastructure (but then another suicide bombing requires another war - sorry, no infrastructure)?

What are you going to do when gas hits $10 a gallon?

If you don't plan for it now, you will be screwed, totally screwed, very soon.

And that is my mid-summer rant. See ya....