Brings the end of the baseball season, the beginning of the October playoffs, and the reminder that Halloween is right around the corner. Along with the invasion (or incident) with Iran. Why else would it be necessary to craft a provision to an spending authorization which made a statement of agressive acts towards Iran seem like an act of diplomacy merely by adding Secretary Gates sentence which states diplomacy is the preferred option. How many more billions and trillions will be wasted as a salve to some mindless ultra patriots ego.

But on a more pleasant note, napsters won in both leagues.

YAHOO

ESPN

I Feel like what's going on in Iraq right now is like 1776, except this time ... we're the British.

-- Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City 27 September 2007.

And now for the moment you all didn't realize you've been waiting for ....

Yep, that's my team, Nawlins Napsters, somehow brutally hitting the ball everywhere while my pitching staff holds on. I had a better pitching staff last year when I took first place. This year I've been pretty lucky. My friend Chris deserves to be in the finals instead of me, but I lucked out and beat him 5-5 because I had a better ranking all year. I won the WHIP category by 0.12, and suddenly Napsters gets to defend the championship.

It was fate Chris ... and a lights out 8th inning by Gagne.

Today I come home, and right outside my apartment building, in the 12 foot by 9 foot long corridor where the mailboxes are located, there were 4 Korean Jehovah Witnesses. The youngest, a 35-ish gentleman wearing a suit and tie, asked me if I was Korean when I walked by and greeted them. Now I look nothing like Korean, so I joked that he was a "comedian." Everyone laughed.

Now of course, I knew and anticipated that the young man was actually trying to find a way to have a discussion about God or something religious. And sure enough, the Korean man approached me and asked me if "I thought God was responsible for all of the modern ills and crises," holding up an "Awake" magazine with a darkened fireman figure amidst a fiery background, the title "Is God responsible for the crisis of modern times?"

Eerie Halloween music came to my imagination. Quick, the time has come to worship God before Armaggedom brings doom to all mankind.

I smiled though, and shared with the gentlemen my own perspective.

"No, we are responsible. All of us. The Great Spirit runs through things, pervades all things, big and small. We are all connected to, not disjoint from, the Great Spirit. If we perhaps see a reflection of ourselves in the crises of modernity, it is only because we ourselves have disconnected from the Great Spirit."

I continued. "I think you and I see things similarly in a lot of ways, but we are however, not 100% in agreement on everything. But I respect what you do."

I then smiled, and the Korean gentlemen bowed, in that Asian way that conveys respect.

The great spirit runs through all things, large and small, pervading everything, surrounding all things, connected to all things like a thread, everyone and everything attached but yet not attached, connected and yet still disjoint. Separation occurs through lack of understanding, from confusion, from the misunderstanding of an original fear, from an insecurity concealed which has transfigured into an alterego. The great spirit -- what some would trivialise as "God" -- is everywhere, connecting everyone,and yet the dissolution of the human race exists and remains ongoing. All of us are equally responsible for the relationship we have with the inate unity, but nevertheless, our awareness may not be coexistent with the fundamental truths of our actual existence. And yet the spirit which runs through all things great and small still exists.

I have a phrase that I repeat to myself everytime I meditate. Here it is.

"Oh great spirit, please come down into me and show me the things about myself that I can not see, and teach me the ways to make the most beneficial influences upon all persons and things."

I've been doing this kind of meditation since I was 22 years old.

Psst. Don't tell anyone. I'm 38 years old.

Last year, the Nawlins Napsters won the 2006 Yahoo league.

This year ? We'll have to see. My two stud pitchers have hit the injury knockout -- Cole Hamels and Erik Bedard. I made a stupid trade to grab Julio Lugo that cost me Justin Verlander, so I deserve to lose. But baseball is funny. I might get lucky.

Anyway, here are the standings and playoff schedule.

At least I was first place.

By the way, my good friend Chris is Chris Carthage. He's beat my butt bad both times we met all year, and next week we might meet for the final rematch.

Dum da dump dump. Dum da dump dump duhnnnnnnn duhn.

Sound of a cool Pink Panther theme jazz beat ....

Peace out.

That includes you Kristen.

This is a response I made to some commentary by someone who is hopelessly wedded to a defunct societal analysis. His moniker is "Capitalism rules", which for him is just a cheeky campaign button. He's too cool to read the books and get an education. He'll just strip a few slick quotes, and act like he's smart.

-----------
You don't know what Capitalism is or even understand the "rules" you think exist.

For you the rules get to change when they enable the creation of the aristocracy of wealth accumulation at the expense of how the system allocates the wealth. This is a fact of life, not some glorified "-ism." I know this is hard for you to understand because you confuse a mantra of economic phrases with an understanding of economic interaction.

In other words you really don't know what you are talking about.

For a perfect example of your retarded analysis, consider your pathetic spin on Thom Hartmann's point that the Minnesota Republican tax cuts are a symptom of the Reagan legacy.

They [the Minnesota Democratic legislators] would want to raise taxes. That is what dems do, tax and spend.

They had plenty of money in their treasury but they did not want to allocate any of it for their infrastructure.

Number One
Repeating the same slogan does not give strength to your argument. Investments are necessary for the health and well-being of our nation so that local and regional business can compete; AND so that our citizens can efficiently (note: economic word) participate in society in a beneficial manner. Simplifying this reality by calling it "tax and spend" indicates the short-term stupidity of how you are a moron.

Here's an analogy. You refuse to spend money on toothpaste so you can have extra cash for mixed drinks on Friday night. Then when your teeth fall out at age 50 you blame everyone but yourself, including your fellow citizens who tried to warn you.

Number Two
You obviously do not understand the definition of "allocate." If you subtract 1 from 3 you get 2. If you do not raise taxes to pay for increased investments, the money you "allocate" has to come from somewhere else. But you can't replace the expensive radiator with the spare tire in the truck. Likewise you can't skim or close other important investments in order to "allocate" funds that should have come from a tax increase. That's why not one Republican administration was ever able to cut "spending." It's more difficult than your one-celled brain can contemplate.

And how much money are we really talking about here? How many people would spend $50 a year for necessary investments? If you make more than $80,000 a year after taxes, would you really see a $500 increase in taxes ($79,500 instead of $80,000) because that is essentially what the vetoed tax increase came to. But instead, it's better to let the teeth rot because you are too cheap to spend $3 a month on the toothpaste.

People like you are not only pugnaciously ignorant, but also short-sighted and selfish. You don't care about this country. All you want to do is rub 2 pennies together and get a dime. The philosophical nonsense you spew is just a justification for the corporate forms of oligarchy and greedy billionaires who really benefit.

Get over yourself CApitalism Rules. All you know is a hand-full of memorized phrases, like frozen sperm cells, completely irrelevant, stale, and out of context.

BOHICA MO-FO.

The purpose of prayer is the leftover remnants of a tribal ritual in which all group members bonded together for purposes of survival or warfare. Dancing around fires, tribal celebrations and rituals are a way for the group members to bond together for the purposes of achieving a plentiful hunt or to prepare for the battle with the invading tribe. This primitive communication system eventually transferred to ritualization of death, either to enhance the road to the afterlife or to symbolize the end.



Prayer has evolved in the modern world from these atavistic routes. However, now that man has become vastly different from the roving bands of early hominids, culture has replaced the primitive supernatural reference frames. Understanding has become scientific and logical. Prayer has now become so far removed from the origins that it can take a vicarious narcissitic turn in the minds of some individuals who consider themselves religious... BECAUSE communing with the great entity via suggestive direct communication to an external other being is absolutely preposterous. Substitute desires and dreams for prayers, then fill in the blank to the sentence "God answers your ______." As if God's purpose is to please and serve your self-serving opinions.

This is a complete misunderstanding of God, in my opinion.

Meet Rudy Giuliani.

He wants to be President, and his been touring the speaker circuit since 2001 making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to tout himself as a hero. So dedicated to his speaking revenue, Rudy couldn't find time to work with the Commission on Iraq and was fired. Money from speaking arrangements talking about responsibility is more important to Giuliani than actually being responsible.

But you should read a recent Village Voice article by Giuliani expert Wayne Barrett.

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
— John Maynard Keynes

"The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance."
— Oscar Wilde

"It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed."
— Ken Hubbard

"The key to making money in stocks is not to get scared out of them."
— Peter Lynch

"If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
— JP Getty

"You try to be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy."
— Warren Buffett

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
— Oscar Wilde

"A gold miner is a liar standing beside a hole in the ground."
— Mark Twain