My US Auto bailout plan

Let's take the number $34bn

Firstly Chapter 11 for GM & Chrysler LLC. States, Feds to jointly work together to decide how the end of these firms will take place.

Secondly Every dollar of this program has to be accountable to a special office of the GAO as part of the deal.

3. Take 10bn and pay the 70% of salaries, 80% of medical expenses for two years;

4. Take 5bn to continue retirement benefits of workers already retired;

5. Take 3bn to retrain the workforce for new manufacturing economy, new careers, re-education for two years of displaced auto workers;

6. Take 5bn to actively develop manufacturing of alternative energy vehicles, mass transit & engine conversion research for existing auto industry inventories;

7. Take the 11bn left over and put it in trust for expansion of this program for successful, viable ventures developed.

US Auto Bailout

'We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.'

Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter 34

The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas: An Oral Teaching

Holding illusory appearances to be true makes you weary.
Therefore when you meet with disagreeable circumstanes,
See them as illusory—
This is the practice of Bodhisattvas.

[...from The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas: An Oral Teaching by Geshe Sonam Rinchen, translated and edited by Ruth Sonam, pg. 59]

Faith

With the deepest respect I will remember: Moshe, Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg.


Peace be with you,
d

Bullet Proof Soul

I was so in love with you
You rarely see a love that's true
Wasn't that enough for you
Wasn't that enough for you
I would climb a mountain
I wouldn't want to see you fall
Rock climb for you
And give you a reason for it all

You kept on thinking
You were the only one
Too busy thinking
Love is a gun

Hit me like a slow bullet
Like a slow bullet
It took me some time to realise it

You keep on thinking
You were the only one
Too busy thinking
Love is a gun

I know the end before
The story's been told
It's not that complicated
But you're gonna need a bullet proof soul

You keep on thinking
You were the only one
Too busy thinking
Love is a gun

I know the end before
The story's been told
It's not that complicated
But you're gonna need a bullet proof soul

You were trigger happy baby
You never warned me let me free
It's not that complicated
But you're going to need a bullet proof soul
Think you got it but you got all the trouble you need
I came in like a lamb
But I intend to leave like a lion

It hit me like a slow bullet
It hit me like a slow bullet


From the album Love Deluxe,
Songwriters, Adu, Mattewman, Hale

Self-Examination

Not others’ opposition
Nor what they did or failed to do,
But in oneself should be sought
Things done, things left undone.

Dhammapada 4(6): 50

Bodhisattva without a dance partner

Doctrine of the Mind, teaches three things:
(1) To know the mind—so near to us, yet so unknown.
* What power does she have that takes my mind? Takes time from my day to do the things that I prioritize as a priority. With her wonderful smile and fabulous hair. She probably smells nice too...

(2) To shape the mind—so unwieldy and obstinate, yet may turn so pliant.
* Making me think of being that person I promised myself to be. Yes that guy... That guy before this guy.

(3) To free the mind—in bondage all over, yet may win freedom here and now.
* To free the mind, my mind from the excuse that she is the reason that these realizations are happening now.

cc 2008, deayrs

Fearlessly? Recklessly? Selflessly...?

What if you where, you where...
impermeable to pain?
Pain would pass through you like
a breeze through an open window.

Changing the window as much as the
breeze. Changing the breeze as much as the
window.

My question is this.
If you where impermeable to pain.
If love was the only remedy. Compassion its only
vehicle.

How would you love?


cc 2008, deayrs

Boddisatva as a Parent

We are confused by words.
Emotions have some utility in the
comprehension of ourselves.
The insight that those emotions afford
are at best a guess based on experience.

Love is as much a guess
as it is a practice of faith.
And for me, Thursday.

Making my son
smile as he fell slept
restores some of that faith.

Estoy a su deuda.

Official History Spotlights Iraq Rebuilding Blunders

BAGHDAD — An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/world/middleeast/14reconstruct.html?_r=1&hp

By JAMES GLANZ and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER

Scarred by past woes, Japan sees U.S. bailout as a first step

"America is walking the same road as Japan, and that road will be long and hard ahead," said Hirofumi Gomi, a former commissioner of the Financial Services Agency in Japan, the industry watchdog that oversaw the banking cleanup. "There is a lot more pain and turmoil coming."

The similarities with Japan are striking. Like the United States today, Japan in the early 1990s faced a banking and real estate crisis that undermined the entire economy and required large government intervention. Some of Japan's most venerated financial institutions collapsed as snowballing losses from failed business and property loans plunged the nation's financial system into paralysis.


By Martin Fackler
Published: October 10, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/10/asia/10japan.php

Seven Sins of the World

1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle



by Mahatma Gandhi

British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes

By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:53am BST 05/04/2008

British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government.

A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US allies.

General David Petraeus: British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes
General Petraeus: recent attacks on the green zone used Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets

The outbreak of Iraq's worst violence in 18 months last week with fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong position to destabilise the country.

"Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on the American effort in Iraq," a British official said. "Iran is waging a war in Iraq. The idea that America can't fight a war on two fronts is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves," he said.

"Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone."

Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran's covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out military strikes.

In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran, Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. "The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said. "All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."
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The humiliation of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by the Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Basra last week triggered top-level warnings over Iran's strength in Iraq.

Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will answer questions from American political leaders at the US Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday before travelling to London to brief Gordon Brown.

The Wall Street Journal said last week that the US war effort in Iraq must have a double goal.

"The US must recognise that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq," wrote the military analyst Kimberly Kagan.

There are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians across the bitter divide on Iraq. "Iran is the bull in the china shop," said Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/05/wiran105.xml

Banking on the Sex Trade

A unique financial institution helps Indian women break loose from a debilitating and demeaning profession

Kolkata-based Aditi Biswas, 29, was keen to turn entrepreneur and run her own grocery. There was one problem. Aditi was working as a prostitute and the neighborhood banks she approached for loans turned her down flat.

Enter the Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society, a bank that caters exclusively to the financial needs of Kolkata’s sex workers. The society offered Aditi seed capital of Rs100,000 ($2500) for her business, with minimal fuss and nominal interest. Away from the sleaze of her previous profession, Aditi is now an entrepreneur who not only sends her children to a good school but also just bought a one-bedroom house. “The bank has turned my life around 180 degrees,” she exults.

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=968&Itemid=34