Gosh, Dodd-Frank is just KILLING the banks: Banks had a good year last year, posting their most profitable performance since 2006.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. Nathaniel Hawthorne

Off Road Vehicles vs. The Beach

I don't go to the beach to see a row of trucks parked. I'm trying to get away from the rat race and get into nature. There is nothing natural about parking lots. In North Carolina's Outer Banks the truckers are crying over protecting nesting sea turtles, and plovers. They act like bullies if you challenge them to their right to drive on the beach but the truth is driving on the beach is lazy!

Families with a ton of kids use those big wheel wheel-barrels to haul their gear down to the beach - I've seen umbrellas, tables, tents coolers, fishing gear, toys, buckets and shovels as well as radios, blankets, food and beer, changing bags, everything imaginable all walked down to the waters edge. If there is a choice fishing spot or break - it should be designated - with ample parking and raised designated walk ways.

If the choice spot is all the way out by the inlet and you want to go - get/rent/borrow/share a boat - off roading all the way out there will just destroy the spit of sand anyway.

There's nothing like a fresh coat of snow right - piled high by the side of the road and two days later black as coal from all the soot from our car exhaust. The snow helps us see what casual driving actually does. The beach gets impacted just the same. The pollution is real even if we can't see it as it spews out our exhaust pipes. Everyone goes to the Caribbean for the pristine waters and beautiful beaches but North Carolina is starting to look like north jersey.

I've lived in a coastal community all my life up and down the coast. Trucks on the beach lower property value. I know they hate environmentalist because they inconvenience recreation and caring about anything other than yourself is weak, but every time we degrade the environment we lower property value, we erode the draw for the economy and we lower the abundance of marine life that has a direct financial impact on the economy of the region.

Everyone talks about their rights but when your rights are counter-productive to the health and well being of the entire community then you are being short sighted. A few mom and pops went out of business because beach access was closed, but I bet there's a big new medical center and hospital with jobs for the increased population that is drawn to the area because of its natural beauty. And that there are increased services for the locals, retires, bird watchers and vacationers because of that very same draw.

In the old days when it was just a few locals bahaing out to the point - the impact was minimal on the natural population that sustains our seashore economies. But think economies of scale. I've been out to the beaches in North Carolina and it looks like the parking lot of the Meadowlands on game day.

It's a shame some people don't get more satisfaction out of the natural sounds of the waves crashing, the pelicans flying, the dolphins jumping, the terns calling or the Osprey hunting than blaring their radios. Maybe if we all understood how much we rely on the natural world to supply the raw materials that power our economies we would all be a little more respectful. The natural worlds intricacies are not completely understood by science and probably never will but we need to keep trying to understand, and to err on the side of caution.

How nature works in concert with each and every organism, tide, land, water, and air to produce the beautiful grouper that lands on our dinner plates is not something I take for granted. Getting all macho about the balance between the economy and ecology is counter-productive. Living in balance is the key. Having fun doesn't mean destroying everything around us. Overfishing, bahaing the dunes, disrespecting the earth and its intricate design that produces absolutely EVERYTHING that sustains our very existence, health, economy and happiness that's greed, reckless and decidedly unaware of where we are, and how we got here.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace

Jimi Hendrix

I give thanks for this perfect day Miracle will follow miracle, and wonders will never cease.

Unknown

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

~ Thomas A. Edison

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

Alan Watts

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

What the Bush tax breaks for the rich are worth each year for Rush Limbaugh ($2,689,135), Glenn Beck ($1,512,352) , Sean Hannity ($1,006,352), Bill O’Reilly ($914,352), Sarah Palin ($638,352), Newt Gingrich ($247,352) and George W. Bush himself ($187,552)

He who plants a tree / Plants a hope.

Lucy Larcom

You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level

Eckhart Tolle

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.

Joseph Wood Krutch

I have meant what I have done. Or--I have often meant what I have done. Or--I have sometimes meant what I have done. Or--I have tried to mean what I was doing.

~ Jasper Johns

At last I do not know how to draw!

Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec

Earth cannot escape heaven, flee it by going up, or flee it by going down; heaven still invades the earth, energizes it, makes it sacred.

Meister Eckhart

All of this focus on women troubles distracted from the other big news, which is the economy is most certainly on the rebound. Which totally explains why the Republicans have gone full-hog with the culture war.

Read more: http://ping.fm/xtmBh

Fox News’ Liz Trotta justifies why some women are assaulted in the military: “Now what did they expect?”

Virginia Republican Delegate Todd Gilbert rationalizing a state-sponsored bill mandating vaginal probes: A woman already consented to being “vaginally penetrated when they got pregnant.”

Right-wing billionaire Foster Friess delivering his contraception advice on MSNBC: “You know, back in my days, they used Bayer Aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”

Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld explaining why “liberals” support contraception coverage: “It’s more about getting rid of the poor.”

GOP Chairman Darrell Issa defending the exclusion of a woman from his all-male panel on contraception: She’s not “appropriate and qualified.”

@dceiver: So, will Virginia's transvaginal ultrasound wands be outfitted with "Virginia Is For Lovers" stickers? (that one is outta here....)

The right wing has been a manservant to the One Percent for as long as I remember. In fact, a friend recently suggested to me that GOP actually stands for “Greedy One Percent.” But now, it seems, they can’t even get one percent to show up and vote.

In a state with 1.3 million people, exactly 5,585 of them cared about the Republican nominee for President enough to bother to vote. In an open caucus, not limited to voters who had registered as a Republican.

Mitt Romney won the Maine Presidential Primary with 2,000 votes.

Not BY 2,000 votes. WITH 2,000 votes.

I believe that every single event in life happens is an opportunity to choose love over fear.

- Oprah Winfrey (well okay Oprah)

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Thought I would load these ABB at the Grammy links up for everyone: http://ping.fm/VPY8D

Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.

Seneca

The public health costs of pollution from coal operations in Appalachia amount to a staggering $75 billion a year

What we do to the land, we do to the people. Recently, 21 peer-reviewed scientific studies have confirmed the truth of those words. Not only has mountaintop removal permanently destroyed more than 500 Appalachian mountains, but people living near the destruction are 50% more likely to die of cancer and 42% more likely to be born with birth defects.

I used to believe in reincarnation, but that was in a past life.

~ Paul Krassner

"As for me, I will tend my garden" Candide, Voltaire

Power is the ability to do good things for others.

~ Brooke Astor

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.

Cynthia Ozick

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

~ Anais Nin

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I need to explain to you how great the Allman Brothers are you will never understand anything pertaining to music. And I love Dickey Betts.

— Kid Rock

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money. —

Jules Renard

Aurora Over Northern US and Canada - ISS "Real-Time" HD

If everyone and I mean EVERYONE kept conscious of the fact that we are perilously surrounded by an uninhabitable, airless, waterless beast of a universe and that all that separates us from certain death is a ridiculously thin layer of atmosphere and a few drops of water maybe just maybe we wouldn't screw the whole damn thing up for what money, power - utter bullshit in the face of actual reality and the need to survive together on such a tiny and exceedingly beautiful splinter of a rock, speck of dust in space

Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

The energy doesn’t end at the hands. I want such intensity that it feels like light is streaming from every finger.

~ Bob Fosse

And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles

Walt Whitnam

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Folks will know how large your soul is by the way you treat a dog.

Charles F. Duran

Wall Street Money Moves to Romney - Will Move Back to Obama Next Week

There's a big news article reflecting that Wall Street is acting like babies and they are taking their money sourced from ill gotten gains and the tax payer bailout to fund Mitt Romney. Apparently the Mitt has a broad coalition reflecting the plurality of American national democracy of 45 whole people. Seriously he's got just 45 super rich buddies the upper, upper 1% funding him exclusively and now Wall Street wants to back the Mittster as well.

Funny thing about reports like this they are always behind the curve. And Wall Street is only further antagonizing the President when they should be kissing his ass. Not only is the republican party a complete joke of propagandizing rhetoric spewing frauds - their own self identified republican voters can't stand their blatant hypocrisy and out right phoniness either. Sure Gingrich can whip up the last remaining racists in South Carolina but other than that they've got nothing.

The sincerely religious know they are being paid lip service, the sincere tea partiers know they have been usurped by the corporate wolf in tea party clothes, and the Fox news watchers starring at the vapid news announcers are just too old and uninspired. Fox news is programing better suited for CBS and should come on after Murder She Wrote.

A lot of good people claiming to be republicans and believing in smart fiscal policy and centrist are NOT impressed with John Bohners tan or Mitts flip flopping air of rich boy entitlement.

When Romney fades in the polls with voter turn out staggeringly low compounded with the economy coming back Wall Street like the leeches they are will come back to Obama on their knees. They won't be back to demand favorable legislation or we'll take our money elsewhere, but like the diseased gamblers they are to try and curry favor and get back on his good side to beg and plead for favorable legislation.

"Please don't correct us Mr. President, and the new congressional majority," they'll plead. "We'll set ourselves right, well be honest, really. No more trickery we promise, honest guys we're just choir boys not nearly tempted by the billions and trillions of dollars we oversee. We take our fiduciary responsibility seriously. We won't try to game the system for personal gain on the backs of the nation. Honest we won't need another bail out. Honest we're not too big to succeed and you can trust us with the social security money too - wink, wink.

We're just good hard working Americans with no blisters on our hands making nothing and skimming off the top. We're just honest middle men. We wouldn't cheat anybody or break the laws or try to get around them, or take our money out of the market and hide it all off shore starving the market of capital. No we're honest we're not greedy or burdened with over sized egos focused on out earning 45 other rich old white guys for bragging rights because we can't get it up. Honest we have the good of the whole country at heart. We have learned our lesson."

If men were angels we wouldn't need laws. Throw the book at the shysters. Burn them at the stake.

Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug.

John Lithgow

There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have.

Jim Rohn

'I'm not concerned about the very poor..." Mitt Romney - yesterday. That's some religion our politicians have - beautiful baby, beautiful!