But this issue is a red herring, unfortunately, in terms of how one ought to properly consider casting their vote. Because the candidate who will either assume or continue the office of the Presidency will have a make-or-break term in the context of whether anything will actually get done during the term.

Some anticipatory supplementation of the below post:

Consideration should be given to the irrelevance of a moral basis for voting.

The author of this post is in favor of equal marriage rights for all.

Gay marriage rights are a simple and purely moral issue: you either believe in equal rights for all or you wish to continue the tradition of your beliefs. The results of votes at the state level are a mixed bag: there are Washingtons, New Yorks, Californias and North Carolinas. If you are a gay American citizen, your right to marry (and, in some cases, to enjoy the same tax benefits as heterosexual couples who choose to marry) is decided geographically.

Characterizing a presidential election as a question of rights for homosexuals really eases a larger and more important tension: how to save this country from financial ruin. While I respect the importance of the gay rights question, I honestly believe this election poses more important questions that will now be totally or near-totally overlooked.

I read an article yesterday indicating that Romney must be elected in order for this country to continue to function. We are past the crossroads of questioning how to best achieve the objective of righting America’s course in terms of its economic policies and have arrived at a kind of a short road towards a clearly visible cliff. This election will be about how quickly America continues to accelerate towards that cliff.

The conservative parties in this country have revealed their primary objective: to frustrate the liberal leadership and see that Obama is not re-elected. Over the past four years, undeniably, the conservatives have opposed policies they might have otherwise agreed to, had those policies been presented by a conservative authority. This conduct has been relatively patent.

Should Obama be re-elected, that conservative policy of obstructionism must continue and amplify. The sole goal of conservatives in that scenario would be to see that as few liberal policies as possible be implemented. We would reach stalemate and conceivably fall apart.

Should Romney be elected president, the conservatives would tarry perhaps a little to try and overturn some of the liberal achievements of the past few years, but probably would concern themselves more with poaching those ideas in order to become popular and capture the consensus of liberals who would have to continue to support those ideas of their making.

The overt question of this election has become: should homosexuals be accepted and normalized in American culture. The latent question is: does the voter wish for anything to be done about his country’s economic problems? My question is: are we voting for or against an accelerated collapse?

Obama and Romney truly are not that different. Truly. Hence the boringness of the electoral process up until the moment of the framing of the gay issue (when Biden pushed it). As much as I would like to see all citizens (and aliens) treated as equals to the fullest extent possible, I am revulsed that the presidential election will almost certainly hinge upon a cultural issue, rather than the policy issue of how to rectify the dangerous trajectory this country has been taking in favor of those with the money.

Plato argues that there is such a thing as justice, that some people are juster than others and most people feel little inclination to seek out what justice is, that some form of authority is inevitable, and that the individuals most qualified to exercise authority are the justest.

. . .

“Fear,” Plato explains, “was cast out by confidence in supposed knowledge, and the loss of it gave birth to impudence. For to be unconcerned for the judgment of one’s betters in the assurance which comes of a reckless excess of liberty is nothing in the world but reprehensible impudence.”

[L]egal principles evolve from factual contexts.

Wright & Seton, Inc. v. Prescott, 420 So.2d 623, 628 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982).

Mother of the last free Comanche Chief, who’d assimilated into the tribe following its massacre of her family.

Following her “rescue” decades later, she spent the last ten years of her life refusing to assimilate.

The Chanel J12 Chronograph watch is quite possibly the illest thing I have ever put onto my wrist. It intimidates me. It is an amazing piece of craftsmanship. It has ethereal properties. And is insanely elegant.

I mean, look at it.

The face of the watch has a muted steel-colored multidirectional rotating bezel. Inside, there is a kind of shiny gray iris that looks like a camera lens, over which the bright mirrored numbers appear to hover. These numbers sparkle, appearing almost white if they are able to catch even the slightest hint of good light. Within the iris is a muted grainy gray metal, with the grains running vertically. This plane contains the brand name CHANEL, white gold, in all caps, and also an axis in white that sections the grainy plane into four. The hands are also made of white gold, and are rectangular, save for the second hand, which is an arrow at one end, and a ball anchoring the other end. Parts of the hands and some dots in the ring outside the iris will glow in the dark, if previously exposed for a bit of time to the sunlight.

The whole effect of the face is to draw one into a kind of test pattern that appeared at the beginning of classic films. The photographs frankly do no justice to how the light hits the different textures of metallic surfaces in the face of the watch.

This is to say nothing of the band, which is made out of a titanium ceramic compound, and polished with diamond powder finish. The material is described in the accompanying booklet as incredibly scratch resistant and able to retain its shine, one would suppose, indefinitely. Upon first removing the watch from the elegant Chanel packaging (itself transported in a special J12-themed shopping bag), the band appears an impossibly shiny but dark grey, like the clouds portending a particularly vicious rainstorm. As the watch is drawn away from the packaging and into the light, the band, retaining all of its shine, appears to somehow take on a much lighter silver color. It takes some getting used to – the bizzarre indescribable color of the band, throwing off, chameleon like, the colors from its environment.

It feels light on the wrist, albeit far huger than any watch I’ve previously worn. This is the first watch I’ve ever owned with a face-diameter in excess of thirty mm (I believe it’s 32 – I don’t entirely care – the smallest, most elegant, and least adorned iteration from the J12 series). It has been fitted somewhat snugly for my tiny wrist, so, if it is in perfect position, the bezel sometimes pokes painfully into the back of my hand. This is how the watch commands my attention beyond my simply staring at it, looking for excuses to check the time constantly throughout my day. I am always checking the color properties of the band, and in a way seeing the world freshly, as reflected off the band of this work of art. I am as often staring into the center of the watch, where the axis meets, as if the watch is staring back at me.

If you know me outside of this particular venture on the internet, you know I am a casual girl, too distracted with trying to appear smart to devote unnecessary time to trying to look cool, or even sexy. Accordingly, wearing this watch feels like gaining admission into an ivy league school – an exclusive entity that rejects far far more than it accepts – some ultra-elite institution. The watch is certainly for ultra-elites. There are other watches, far less expensive timepieces, that reliably tell time. This watch is that “cool” watch that maybe future generations in my family will jealously gaze upon for decades, before I gift it to the most deserving.

And what sort of person would be the most deserving? One who understands the ghostly properties of this beautifully constructed timepiece, but would wear it with jeans and a scrubby shirt. A casual nerd who likes to wear one off-kilter accessory that conveys a sense of restrained inner power.

U.S. v. Holmes, (1841)

• Shipwreck
• Captain instructs life boat crew to follow the commant of the Mate
• Captain is in short boat and Mate is in long boat
• Before long boat and short boat part ways, Mate advises Captain that long boat is leaky and unless short boat takes on additional passengers, long boat would have to draw lots to throw passengers overboard
• Captain tells Mate to do what is necessary
• Long boat leaky + heavy rains + high seas
• Fourteen passengers thrown overboard at moment of desperation
• According to Mate’s instructions to the crew: not to part man and wife; touch no women
• Male passengers begged for their lives
• Francis Askin – on whose behalf suitnis intituted and maintained
• Askin offers money and requests to be allowed to live until daylight, at which time they would draw lots
• Askin was thrown overboard following a violent struggle
• At daylight, two additional male passengers who had hidden themselves were thrown overboard – after the greatest time of peril had subsided – there is conflicting evidence RE: how “stiff” the men were with cold
• Holmes – the crew member who obeyed Mate’s order to throw Askin overboard
• Holmes’ character: regarded as excellent sailor and person, obedient and efficient; Ultimately responsible for causing the rescue of the survivors, being the only person with strength and energy to identify and hail a passing ship
• The survivors were rescued the morning the two still male passengers were thrown over
• Holmes’ Defense – that homicide was necessary to self-preservation; For homicide to be considered necessary – danger must be imminent, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation
• If crew and Mate believed that some needed to be sacrifieced for the good of all – crew owed a duty to give full notice to passengers
• Nature of sailor’s vocation necessarily involves exposure to risk of death, drowning, starvation
• Necesse est et ut eam; not ut vivam – the duties of life are more than life
• The Law of Nature – cannot be supposed to obliger a man to expose his life to such dangers as may be guarded against it and to wait until the certainty of the danger has been proved, past doubt, by its result
• Is the crew in a state of subordination to the officers (Mate) or in a state of Nature?
• No part of a sailor’s duty to moralize and speculate upon the orders of his superior in a time of emergency
• Mere absence of malice does not render a homicide exuseable
• Man, in taking away the life of a fellow being, assumes an aful resposibility to God, and to society
• Law is made to meet the ordinary exigencies of life
• Considerataion must be given to: (1) the level of joepardy of the parties; and (2) the relation in which the parties stand
• At all material times, owners of vessels and all persons so employed have a the obligation of care and skill in the conduct of the journey and control of the passengers – if any defect in the care and skill results in injury to the passenger, the persons employed are liable
• Passenger, on the other hand, owes no duty but submission – cannot be bound to sacrifice his life to preserve the sailor’s
• If it came down to one passenger and one sailor in a struggle for the last plank, nothing would justify the sailor who took the plank from the passenger
• There is no general applicable rule for wholly unforsen emergencies
• ONE RULE – if the ship is in no danger, but all sustenance is exhausted and the sacrifice of one person is necessary for the survival of multiple others – selection by lot – the victim yields to his fate or force may be used to coerce submission
• Verdict – Holmes is guilty

As Rome crumbled, the remaining middle class fled to the Plutocracy’s estates to willingly become serfs, as the Imperial taxes had become so onerous that freedom was no longer a viable option.

Charles Hugh Smith, Survival+

All the fundies

Near and far

Gunning for

A Holy War

Another deeply pernicious facet to a consumer-based economy: our identity and meaning now flow from our consumption, not from production or inner resources.

Charles Hugh Smith, oftwominds.com, That Which is too Fearful to Speak