The blinders are narrowing:

I'm finding it harder to care, at least find relevance about the news of rest of the world. My morning reads, as usual are to Drudge and then Sullivan's blog --- and today I realized, for example in this link to Harper'spost about a former Guantanamo prisoner guard spilling the beans on the absolutely condoned torture policies the Bush administration directed-----I just kind of feel Sorry that the U.S. is doing this, but you know what? I just see it as printed stories in an article. This opens reality to me that I already new non-visually, were going on. I'm much more concerned about my own life, family and our current hard times right now, and these prisoners abuses is really unempathetic for me.

I'm living my life day to day right now----of course the financial market is worrying almost everybody that is middle class, or less. It seems that ambition is simply not enough when you have play makers like Bernie Madoff and the like just robbing people blind, right underneath the SEC's nose. How impotent regulation is- is akin to shooting pool with a soft rope.

Or when you see on the front page of the L.A. Times today a picture showing how cozy and huggy Shaq and Kobe were together at the All Star game, it makes me wonder why--and many of my friends are zealously enamored Laker fans, anyone gives a shit about overpaid genetic freakazoids that live in a world we can never be in? Unless you bet regularly on the Lakers wins, thereby, having them actually do something for you persoanlly, or a direct beneficiary of one of their many charities which I do give them credit for doing, then why do you care so much about them?

All I know is that everybody, more or less, is in this world for themselves, but I can't help but become saddened by something that happens to someone else. The man who lost his entire family for instance during the 05 Storm La Conchita Mudslide, with the exception of his youngest daughter who went with him to get an ice cream when the disaster occurred. He lost something in one moment that would shake my foundations of sanity to the ground.When it's your turn, and most would never be able to truly empathize with a major catastrophe like that or a U.S. Prison Guard gang raping me, or being subject to a torture routine, I can be heart felt for the down and outs, but always thinking deep down sub-consciously -- "better them than me."

To prove my point, reading the L.A. Times today, California right now is an unbelievable financial crisis, and the need for one vote to pass a $14 billion recovery plan, leaders have been trying to win support by non other than our local State Senator from Santa Maria - Abel Maldanado from Santa Maria. A third generation Santa Marian whose family fortune came from the illegal labor practices of the Santa Maria agriculture industy, which is basically a local name ending with a vowel oligarchy held by the landowners of the massive fields, defined and exposed by a great essay of journalism by Eric Schlosser called Strawberry Fields from his bookReefer Madness that exposed the Black Market economy of Santa Maria sharecropping, now known as Commission Merchant's -- basically screwing over hard working illegal immigrants - over, and over, and over to amass an empire of wealth and power created of course--by breaking the very laws that this jackass is now in charge of creating. These screw over contracts are so iron clad legally, that the attorney that drafted it holds a copy wright on its contents. So now the whole State budget is being focused on garnering this mobsters approval, but he won't do it unless he gets a compromise. Ahhhh yes. Legislative compromises--"what can I do to benefit ME is the point." So what is his compromise? To make fellow lawmakers recreate the party rules in election primaries so people can vote outside the party. For democrats to be able to vote for candidates "just like him---a moderate." Gee--California is in the foothills of the erupting Pompeii volcano - and this multi-millionaire is worried about nothing other than his political ambitions for the future. Makes me think of "Fight Club" - "I am Jacks complete lack of surprise."

And so I sum it all up to this. Machiavelli knows best. Whatever it takes, and the Black Market is where survivors dwell and I am going to worry about my day, my family, my issues -- which are many, and the stories of Michael Phelps, Stimulus this, and Celebrity that--are outside the blinders I am now forced to narrow---as a matter of survival.